Bruce Cordell - Key of Stars

Just as when they had traveled across the Feywild after visiting Stardeep, native agility and speed propelled Raidon with an amazing swiftness. Japheth couldn’t hope to keep up with the monk, but his cloak made all the difference, allowing him to move a dozen or more feet with each stride.

To his right, the mottled stone gave way to a series of receding sand dunes. As they passed, something stirred beneath the sands: a seaweedlike mass of fibers, a tangle of rotting stalks and bladders, and a swarm of small objects too far away for Japheth to identify with certainty. Whatever they were, they had far too many legs.

Their speed was such that they passed the dunes and its rousing denizens in just a half a dozen heartbeats, and soon left them far behind in the all-enveloping mists.

At one point, they discovered the furrows they followed intersected another trail, that one also formed by something being dragged, something heavier and less regular in shape. Slick, phosphorescent goo covered the second trail, implying it was formed in some fashion by aboleths.

All they could do was continue onward, though Japheth’s anxiety ramped up another notch. He was almost sick with worry.

He flexed his hands within the gloves Raidon had given him. They were woven of fabric so fine, they almost seemed like leather. What did that remind him of?

Leather … leathery … bat wings! He’d seen a giant bat in the void winging after the armada, just before they’d fallen through the discontinuity to the hapless plain.

Another complication to worry about. Neifion would find him once more before all was played out, he was certain.

The Year of the Secret (1396 DR)

Citadel of the Outer Void

Taal gazed up at the structure. It rose, block upon block like a primordial’s dais, forming a gargantuan ziggurat. It was the Citadel of the Outer Void.

A set of stairs small enough for mortal creatures crisscrossed its way up the side of the ziggurat, changing directions each time they reached a new landing. Cascading falls of clear liquid trailed off the sides of several landings, but the stairs appeared dry.

The thousands of Xxiphu-sized “columns” surrounding the citadel formed a kind of porch, similar to temple floor plans Taal recalled from his youth. Of course, the scale was wildly at odds with those merely human-sized structures, and they’d had roofs. No roof could ever hope to be massive enough to encompass all the columns on the plain, which spread away in all directions for miles. He supposed the colorless sky that overlay the fog-shrouded land of horror served that purpose well enough.

Each “step” of the great pyramid rose … a hundred yards at least, or maybe triple that. Distances were so hard to judge. But the entire structure seemed to shimmer. At first Taal thought it was the ubiquitous mist interfering with his vision. But no. As they approached, he saw the walls themselves were responsible for the effect.

From one instant to the next, the structure’s substance shifted. First granite, then maybe ebony, or crystalline mineral, or amorphous slime, then lava. Each new manifestation never lasted long enough for him to fully grasp the actual composition, just the barest hint.

“Why does it keep changing?” he said.

“This close to the Far Manifold, reality is uncertain,” Malyanna replied. “The Citadel fluctuates. It makes one wonder if the stories in Carnis’s cache of Far Lore were true.”

“I can’t imagine anything more unbelievable than the Citadel itself. What could be more hard to believe than the truth before us?”

“Ah, Taal, are you so eager for the burden of even more knowledge?”

“I learned my lesson of leaping before I look, long ago, when I met you.”

Malyanna laughed. “Perhaps the Eldest knows the truth, but its mind remains half petrified stone.”

“Never mind.”

“Too late, you asked. Carnis believed the Citadel was built by ancient self-appointed guardians of reality, beings so powerful they defeated the primeval aboleths. So despite appearances, this place is not a place of worship. All the aberrant leakage occurring here was a foreseen side effect, which the Watch of Forever’s Edge was formed to stem. The Citadel is a place of containment; a patch designed to cover up a massive tear in existence.”

“And so?”

“So, despite that there is only one Far Realm, a crumbling tome in Carnis’s library claimed many cosmologies exist side by side, each completely isolated from the next. But the Far Realm threatens them all. So the Far Manifold and the Citadel of the Outer Void that supports it might well exist in them all too, protecting them as it does ours. The flickering we see in this construction are glimpses of all the many forms the Citadel takes in realities other than our own.”.

Taal considered the possibility. It was hard to grasp. But …

“If you open the Far Manifold here, assuming what you’re saying isn’t merely some loremaster’s daydream, would it open in all these parallel worlds too?” he asked.

Malyanna grinned like a wolf peering into a chicken coop. The totem on Taal’s shoulder loosed a deep warning growl.

Taal wondered-if he leaped for the woman, could he immobilize and permanently slay her before the strictures of his oath burnt him to a cinder?

Pain seared his vision red.

She put a hand to his shoulder, and the agony dissipated.

“Come, Taal, quit your daydreaming,” she said. “All your questions will be answered after I complete my task.”

Though she’d nullified the pain, his limbs trembled with residual agony. He’d nearly blacked out. Nearly, but yet he remained. Had his oath lost something of its original unfathomable strength after so many centuries? Or, in such a place meant to contain aberrations, as Malyanna explained it, had the Oath lost something of its vigor?

If so, then perhaps he could finally try to stop the crazed woman. Another tsunami of agony gathered as he considered the unthinkable, but the hand she continued to rest on his shoulder kept it in abeyance.

How strange that she didn’t know what turned in his head. Of course, he’d never given her any reason to doubt him. He’d always been a man of his word.

He tried not to think about that. No, what he needed to do was find just the right opportunity to cross her, when she was distracted. Otherwise, with the Dreamheart in hand, she would slay him with a thought.

She squeezed his shoulder, overly hard, then let go. Her eyes returned to the ziggurat, and the smaller set of stairs meant for mortal creatures.

“We must reach the top of the Citadel,” decreed Malyanna. “But the going won’t be easy.”

“Why doesn’t the hound translate us, or the aboleths fly us to the top?” Taal asked.

“That wouldn’t be advisable. Observe,” the eladrin replied.

Malyanna waved her hand up at the aboleths circling above them.

One broke formation and squirmed closer to the flickering structure.

A bolt of sky blue fire ravened from the top of the tower. Its width was easily five times that of the flying aberration. The creature was completely swallowed in the glare. Taal blinked away the afterimage of the stroke. Nothing remained.

“Such a stroke would even give the Eldest pause, had it been roused as foretold,” said the eladrin noble.

“Then how are we to approach?” Taal asked.

“A mortal creature of the natural world, untouched by aberration, must open the way.”

“What? Who?”

She fixed him with her lambent eyes and lifted a single eyebrow.

“Are you suggesting that would be me?” Taal said. “But I am sworn to the Far Realm, just like you.”

“No, you are sworn to me, the Lady of Winter’s Peace.”