Bruce Cordell - Key of Stars

“Don’t just stand there drooling, simpleton!” commanded the Lord of Bats. “Apply your fancy new pact to slow the break! I’ll deal with Malyanna as I should have done before!”

The archfey shed his humanoid form like an old rag. A bat the size of a house ripped free of his confining, human flesh and took to the air. Tentacles lashed, but none caught Neifion.

Malyanna, a grin on her face, whipped her gaze up to regard the oversize bat, which seemed to pause at the top of its dive.

“My old ally!” she called. “Come to congratulate me on my success?”

Neifion folded his wings and dived, his fangs and eyes gleaming with Feywild vigor.

The Lord of Bats and the Lady of Winter’s Peace engaged. A flurry of fur and phantom light burst from where they came together.

Incoherent swirls of brightness and atonal distortions of sound drew Japheth’s attention above the fracas to the splintering crystal. Distortions played around the crack which, still spreading, now stretched nearly a quarter way up the face of the crystal. Through the lens’s facets, a kaleidoscope view revolved: Translucent, gelatinous, onion-thin layers of fleshy landscape were pierced by bone white rivers of foul fluid, seepages of blue slime, and undulating eel-like worms. He glimpsed incalculably large shapes drifting at the edge of sight through the semi-solid substance composing a singular amoebic sea. The shapes were blurrily reminiscent of creatures from the deepest sea trenches of Faerun. Others seemed quite familiar-they had the vague silhouette of aboleths. But many of the indistinct forms seemed as large as cities-and those were the small ones.

Before the lens had cracked, what lay beyond the gate rarely touched the rational world. It had never been a place people could visit; it was only a place from which terrible, insane influences originated. In the Far Realm, contradictions and toxic cosmic laws were born at whim, only to dissolve like vapor to make way for newer, more insane dreams.

The vast entities residing there were so alien that reality would buckle under their scrutiny. Dread was like a dagger in his chest as he watched the crack in the barrier between reality and insanity widen further.

What could he do? he thought. The Lord of Bats had bidden him to delay the damage to the Far Manifold with his star pact. Could he?

Of course he could try. But it seemed even odds that merely attempting to use the powers of his star pact while standing on the Citadel of the Outer Void would consume his mind instantly. He’d be just one more brain-cored servitor rampaging on the ziggurat the roof. Fear made him hesitate.

It occurred to him that, even though she might fear it, Anusha would do it. What would she think of him if he quailed to even try?

“Wherever you are, know I love you,” he muttered.

An aboleth the size of a whale slid past him on its route to the Far Manifold, but paused as if puzzled at Japheth’s vocalization.

It was just one of the hundreds of terrible creatures, already manifest from ages of slow leakage from the Far Manifold. They’d been ignoring him, apparently caught up in the excitement of what was about to happen.

The thrice-damned aboleth brought its three red eyes around to stare at him.

Japheth knew only one spell of concealment. It was from his star pact. Speaking it would be a good test. He raised his gloved hands, focused his eyes on the patterns of vines that swirled amid the weave, and whispered, “Caiphon, unfurl your stairs!”

He was jerked upward. His flesh became as substanceless smoke. Last time he’d used that spell it seemed he’d walked upon a phantom stair that bridged a pseudo-landscape very similar to the Citadel of the Outer Void.

He laughed when a hand of writhing tendrils grasped his body, which threatened to disperse in the lightest wind. Not that that would have been unwelcome, given how unreserved he suddenly felt. Everything seemed so beautiful, so glorious. It all finally made sense. No more struggle. No more-

No! Concentrate on … hands. Yes. The gloves! What had the Lady of the Moon promised? Strength? Whatever, it didn’t matter. He triggered the magic woven into the gauntlets.

Cool confidence surged up his arms, into his heart and his head. His thoughts sharpened. The vista lost its beauty, its allure. His willingness to disintegrate into the effluvia of Far Realm leakage died. The gloves increased a user’s strength, but the mere discharge of Feywild magic into Japheth’s flesh was what anchored him.

The aboleth that had paused to fix its mind-shattering gaze on Japheth moved on. He was invisible while he stood on Caiphon’s stairs. He couldn’t stand upon them indefinitely, but probably long enough to try his scheme.

Last time he’d been on the stairs, the illusory world he’d seen had possessed a pseudo-horizon over which something awful lay hidden. In the Citadel of the Outer Void, that sunrise was literally the Far Manifold breaking.

Japheth reached for his newly forged star pact, for its innermost chains of connection linking what lay beyond the gate with his mind and soul, and pulled them.

Instantly, fear and agony clawed at his sense of self. His vision splintered into reverberating layers of diabolic darkness and searing light.

The growing crack in the Far Manifold, when viewed through the lens of his star pact, was like a river surging ever higher, fed by a mighty snowmelt somewhere high beyond imagining. Its waters were foul, but in its raging substance was power undreamed of for any star pact initiate who dared the torrent’s inchoate force.

He sipped from the overflowing river and screamed. Or perhaps his mouth merely formed an Oas he threw back his arms and legs as if transfixed upon some heathen crucifix. But he didn’t release the connection; he tightened his grip on it. And with a slick new energy burning like a vice between his temples, he attempted to stem the river’s flow.

It was intolerable. He knew he couldn’t keep straining like that for even one more heartbeat. Yet a heartbeat passed. Then another. And another after that. His flesh wavered, and seemed on the brink of flashing away into so many chasing motes.

He called upon the power in the gloves a second time. The strength that answered his summons buffered him for a moment, giving him another span of heartbeats to maintain the struggle. Far too quickly, the anchoring power lent him by the Feywild gauntlets waned.

He had just enough mental reserve remaining to wonder if he was having any effect at all.

The Year of the Secret (1396 DR)

Citadel of the Outer Void

Thoster raced Yeva up the last flight of stairs. The woman’s footfalls, iron hammering on stone, announced their approach to whatever foes might await them. But there wasn’t anything for it but to keep on going.

Even before he reached the top, Thoster spied the edges of the Far Manifold. He knew it immediately. Something in him was drawn to it. Seren’s amulet simultaneously burned hot, as if to remind him to take care. Or as if something indescribable wished to strip him of his mental protection and claim Thoster for itself.

When they crested the last stairs, horror’s own army waited for them. And towering over that awful host, the Far Manifold shimmered and vibrated. A massive crack marred its face, though the fissure hadn’t lengthened enough to completely breach the gate.

The hundreds of milling creatures didn’t rush Thoster and Yeva as the captain had assumed they would-most seemed mesmerized by the Far Manifold’s incipient opening.

“If I trawled all the seas of Faerun and brought up only the ugliest sons of sharks and daughters of sirens, I wouldn’t even come close to matching these unsightly bastards,” Thoster said.