Bruce Cordell - Key of Stars

“A demon scion, you unlucky bastard,” replied Thoster. “I’m a descendent of Dagon!”

“Dagon-some ancient, watery demon lord?” the beholder said. “Doesn’t matter. What matters is why you’ve come. Are you here to proclaim yourself a servitor of the Sovereignty, and that which is about to unmake the worlds?”

Several aberrations near Thoster turned to regard him. None moved closer, and a couple slid or stepped back a pace. He wondered what he must look like. But raw anger at the beholder’s words made his fingers tingle.

“Your Sovereignty has usurped what ain’t yours to take,” Thoster said. “Kuo-toa were never meant for aboleths and their ilk; Dagon’s claim is older, and deeper. I ain’t here to serve the Sovereignty. I’m here to show you bastard aberrations what for!”

Thoster lurched forward. He was more top-heavy than he had realized, but he managed to leap as he tripped forward. He reached out to grab the beholder. His arms were great masses of scaled green muscle, corded to an almost absurd extent. His hands were huge, and each finger ended in a massive green claw.

The beholder loosed a salvo of multicolored rays. A beam of fire slid across Thoster’s stomach, raising a painful welt. A purplish ray shone in his eyes, but he shook off the confusion. A line of light the color of sand tugged at his consciousness. But he was too angry to sleep.

He crashed into the beholder and bore it to the ground. The beholder bit him. Ichor the color of the sea dripped from the wound.

But he punched his clawed hands deep into the beholder’s sides and squeezed, grabbing shreds of organ and muscle beneath.

The beholder uttered an oddly plaintive wail that grew in volume.

Several more eye rays played up and down Thoster’s scaled length, some cutting terrible fissures in his flesh, others trying their best to fry his mind.

But Thoster would be damned if he was going to release the mewling servitor just because of a little pain.

Uttering a roar so loud he surprised even himself, Thoster exerted the entirety of his strength and yanked.

Everything grew quiet for a moment. Thoster stood and tossed away two limp fragments of beholder.

Thoster looked around. He’d gathered an audience. All were scary, nightmare-inducing monsters. But he was taller than nearly all of them. And, by the sight of his own scaled arms, legs, and torso, he wasn’t too far from being a nightmare-inducing monster himself. He wondered what his face looked like. One thing was certain: he was stronger than before, tougher. And descended from royalty.

Curiosity about his new likeness would have to wait; the aberrant horde drew forward. They knew he didn’t belong here.

He shouted, his fury reborn in an instant. Most of the anger was the power of Dagon in his blood. But some of it was his own wrath at what the creatures represented, and what they wanted to do to Faerun.

But they were all in his way, preventing him from reaching the eladrin noble, Malyanna, the author of the world’s imminent misfortune.

Thoster decided it was she whom he would make pay. It would be even easier to pull an eladrin in two than a beholder. But, first things first. He scooped up his clothing, sword, and hat, and stuffed them into a handy fold of skin running down his torso. Those might be useful later!

The Year of the Secret (1396 DR)

Citadel of the Outer Void

Storm light ripped flickering lines across Taal’s eyelids. Agony clogged his throat, ran like magma in his veins, and crouched on his back like a red-hot anvil, holding him face-down against a surface that rubbed at his skin like sandpaper. All around him, shrieks like a chorus of fervent devils pierced his ears.

He was dead. His soul had been dropped into the Nine Hells for an eternity of torture.

Except … that couldn’t be.

Anything beyond the discontinuity, including the Citadel of the Outer Void, lay outside the dominion of the gods. Even the disposition of immortal souls! Instead of being taken up by Kelemvor, spirits of the slain would simply fall and gutter out like dying embers.

He couldn’t be a disembodied soul feeling the first lashes of eternity’s punishment; the fact he was having these thoughts at all meant … he was still alive.

Why? Taal wondered.

He’d openly defied his oath. He’d aided an enemy of Malyanna, then instructed that same enemy to kill her.

The memory spiked fresh lava across his skin, and he cried out.

And still he didn’t die, though the pain was so extreme he wished he could expire to escape its viselike jaws.

If the oath didn’t have the clout to kill him, there at the Citadel of the Outer Void where his mistress’s power was arguably stronger than anywhere else, had it ever had the power to slay him?

It didn’t seem likely.

The disconnect reminded him of something. Something that hadn’t completely hung together, though he’d accepted it at the time. When they’d arrived at the ziggurat’s base, Malyanna had crowed how she’d known all along about his secret misgivings in serving her. According to the eladrin, those misgivings were sufficient to allow him to deactivate the defenses of the Citadel; they showed he wasn’t an aberration or touched by aberrations, because he served his oath first.

But Malyanna had sworn him to an oath that would kill him if he swayed from serving her. And she was a priestess of the Sovereignty! Wasn’t that the definition of being “touched” by an aberration? Whether forced into service or choosing to take up service willingly, he was a servitor; he had no choice but death or do the will of Malyanna, thanks to the magic she’d imparted when he had sworn the oath.

Yet he wasn’t dead, and he had been able to bypass the Citadel’s defenses.

Which meant what? he wondered.

It meant, he realized, that despite what she’d originally claimed and repeated over the years, Malyanna hadn’t woven a ritual of lethal enforcement into the oath he’d sworn to her.

The only thing that powered the oath, he realized, was the strength of his own belief that once one’s word was given, that word should never be foresworn, no matter what.

He remembered Raidon asking him how that made any sense at all, given that the world was a changeable place. Situations change, people change, and new information comes to light. He’d always believed that being unwavering in one’s beliefs and in one’s duties and obligations was a sign of true strength-the sign of someone above the common, changeable rabble, who could flip-flop on an issue with hardly a care.

As he lay there puzzling it out, it came to Taal that sticking to one’s stated intention-or oath-regardless of how the situation changed, was more reasonably the sign of a simpleton.

The monk from Faerun was right.

For the very first time since he’d taken his oath, Taal felt shame.

Always before he’d felt at least some pride at his ability to keep his word no matter what the provocation. He recognized, finally, at the end of everything, that it had been fool’s pride all along.

If he could do it over again, he’d break that oath the moment he realized Malyanna was playing him false.

The searing pain lifted away from him like a kite on the wind.

Taal rubbed his eyes. He rose.

The abominations who’d answered the call of his mistress surged all around him. Their combined utterances were a grinding, chattering, teeth-gritting rasp. Many moved to contest the progress of a enormous humanoid with green scales, despite it seeming nearly as much of an aberration as those it contested.

He witnessed an enormous white griffon slash terrible wounds in the flanks of the shadow hound Tamur. The hound fastened its teeth on the griffon’s neck.