Bruce Cordell - Key of Stars

Yeva scanned the scene. “What can we hope to do here?” she said. “The gate; it’s already been breached!” Her shoulders shuddered; even dead iron couldn’t contain the woman’s despair.

Thoster drew his blade and shrugged. “Find Anusha for starters,” he said. “Sure, it’s been breached, but notice how you ain’t dead? Something’s holding it from breaking altogether. Maybe that gives us a chance. But if not, and it’s all a foregone conclusion, well, at least we can go out fighting foes the likes of which few have ever faced!”

“You’re crazy,” Yeva replied.

“Not crazy enough. Or sadly, drunk enough.”

“You’re drunk?”

“You know how to wound a man! No, not even the least little bit. Damn poor time to lose my flask.”

“Thoster-wait! Look, about three quarters of the way to the gate. Isn’t that Raidon?”

He squinted. The citadel top was a wide expanse, plus it was difficult to see through the press. “Yeah!” he cried. “How the hell did he get here?”

“How should I know?” said Yeva. “But he’s obviously trying to reach the crystal gate.”

“Must think he can do some good there,” said Thoster. “Let’s give him a hand!”

“Nothing else suggests itself,” Yeva said. “So … very well. Stay near me-I can lay upon us a semblance of belonging.”

The iron woman raised a hand to her temple. The air shimmered violet around them, then faded.

“That it?” Thoster asked.

“A minor mental glamour,” Yeva said. “It won’t stand up to intense scrutiny. Let’s go! But don’t move too quickly.”

They entered the press. Thoster recognized aboleths, but nothing else. Sure, that thing over there that bayed like a wolf at the moon, well, at the Far Manifold, looked sort of like a cross between a rhinoceros and a monkey with a terrible skin condition, but it wasn’t really either. He saw what could be described as a scarily agile mass of incandescent, translucent slime in which all the organs of a living creature swam about independent of each other. He saw …

“Oh, Umberlee’s creaking knees,” he said. “That’s a beholder, ain’t it?”

Yeva turned. Another vibration ran through the metal of her body.

An armored sphere of living flesh hung in the air along their intended path. The thing possessed a wealth of eyes, most of which blinked from the ends of coiling tentacles. The largest eye protruded directly from the sphere, and did not blink. Beneath that ever-vigilant orb, a cavity lined with teeth gaped open and shut, open and shut, like a fish trying to breath air.

“Let’s go around,” murmured Yeva. “My glamour’s not up to fooling something like that.”

“Agreed,” said Thoster.

They circled around the thing. Thoster was about to declare success when Yeva yelled, “Run!”

One of the eyestalks flashed a yellow ray that caught Yeva directly in the chest. She screamed as the beam bodily picked her up and threw her back the way they’d come. The sound of her distress quickly fell away, attenuated by distance.

“Fish piss,” he said, and broke into a sprint.

The beholder didn’t even have to whirl to keep him in its sights. Three eyestalks tracked him independently, seemed to triangulate, then unleashed lines of color.

One ray was black and hissed with the promise of ultimate obliteration. He whimpered in relief when it missed. The red line burned fire across his ribs, and he convulsed but continued moving. The last ray was gray, like the color of basalt. He dropped flat on his stomach to avoid it.

A thing with green skin and a face like a melting cockroach took the beam instead. The monster’s green hue faded to gray, as it became a sculpture of unmoving stone.

Thoster scrambled back to his feet. No more running-the beholder would just cut him down from behind if he did so. The pain from the ray of fire faded-his new power of regeneration was on the job.

Which reminded him of his heritage. Not that he should have needed a reminder, standing here amid the throng of gruesomes. Most of him wanted to retch at the sight. But something deeper within Thoster felt … anger. As if everything around him was a personal affront! More than that. He felt a desire to order these lesser creatures as he willed.

What in the endless Abyss was that about? he wondered.

The beholder drifted, earthmote-like, toward him. Its central eye flashed. Thoster leaped, but the yellowish ray struck him. Tiny stars danced in his vision; it felt like someone had knocked him across the head with a club.

Still dazed, he stumbled when he tried to avoid the next colorless ray, and it caught him squarely.

His muscles seized up. He wasn’t turning to stone, thank Umberlee’s merciful wiles. But he couldn’t move.

The beholder drifted closer, and its mouth stretched wider. A grin?

He strained with all his might to break free of the magical constriction. He couldn’t tell if it was physical or mental-not that it mattered.

The beholder spoke, and Thoster was startled he could understand. “Mortals here to see the beginning of the new Age? No. Not worthy. I would like it better if you were dust.”

His anger swelled; this was how he would die? Struck down as he stood motionless before a gloating monster? Thoster redoubled his effort to move. Something inside him nearly emerged. Something huge. Something that was fury incarnate. Something that wouldn’t be restrained by the beholder’s enchantment!

The amulet around his neck burned him with a fire hotter than the aberration’s scorching ray. The trinket grew as red as a coal as it kept that which lurked in Thoster’s blood caged.

“What is that?” said the beholder. “A pretty for me?” It bobbed closer.

A yellow ray flashed from an eyestalk and lanced Seren’s amulet. The amulet jerked toward the aberration, parting the leather thong with a painful jerk.

It was like discovering a secret level in a dwelling he’d lived in his entire life. Beyond the facade, a watery vista beckoned-a font of strength that ran deep inside him, and always had.

Thoster turned inward and groped for the headwaters of his power to influence kuo-toa, to regenerate, and to recognize aspects of Far Realm influences. He descended to where blood and bone met his heritage.

The flashing light of the Far Manifold behind Thoster cast a shadow of his deeper self as it slid over his merely human-sized shade. The two shapes remained separate, hovering in between possibility and actuality.

He found the lever between what he’d always been, and what lay in his blood. He pulled it.

Green and white brightness exploded inside his stomach, throat, and head. The violence of its detonation was excruciating. Wild, raw, and uncontrollable, it tumbled his consciousness beyond the confines of his flesh for a timeless instant.

He saw his skin, bones, sinews, blood vessels, and beating heart frozen in the light of his scrutiny. Beneath that, he glimpsed another shape, rousing.

Thoster grabbed the shape, and willed it to manifest completely.

He screamed as the pain of the detonating brightness redoubled. Every particle of his existence momentarily disassociated from its neighbor before falling into a new configuration. There was a chance he’d come out of it as just so much red and gray sludge.

Thoster blinked as the pain fell away.

Only a single shadow remained-a hulking entity. At his feet lay a scatter of his clothing: his boots, his sword, his coat, and his hat.

Comprehension dawned on him.

“I am born, at last,” he said. His voice was deeper than it had been. Rougher.

The beholder remained where it had last attacked him. It looked smaller than it had before. Its many eyes were all wider too. It said, “A demon hiding in human flesh?”