Bruce Cordell - Key of Stars

“What?” Japheth asked.

“I was just reflecting about what’s important,” she said. “At least, what I once thought was. And … Well, I’m thinking a little differently now, is all.”

“Mmm,” Japheth said, touching his lips to her forehead.

“You held the Far Manifold from breaking open completely after Malyanna unlocked it,” she said.

“Yeah. I didn’t know if it would work. I had to use the star pact to forge a connection. If I hadn’t had the gloves, I would have been lost. And Neifion, even as he fell to Malyanna, lent me a last gasp of fey strength too, if you can believe that.”

“Did you know I was on top of the ziggurat?”

“No. I didn’t know for sure where you were. For all I knew, you’d been killed.” Remembered concern pinched his mouth for an instant.

“But you did it anyway. You put the world ahead of yourself. You’re not a child. You’re a man. A man I love.”

He ducked his head and pressed his lips to hers. Japheth’s kiss was warm and tasted like him.

The Year of the Ageless One (1475 DR)

Nathlekh, Faerun

I still can’t believe it,” Japheth said.

“Believe what?” said Anusha.

“How in some ways, not much has changed,” he replied. “But in other ways, everything must be different.”

He waved one arm in a gesture meant to illustrate his point.

“Hmm. Really?” said Anusha. “I think the Shou remembered their dead in this fashion a lot longer than we’ve been gone.”

They stood in Nathlekh’s odd graveyard. With them were Taal, Yeva in a concealing cloak, Captain Thoster sporting his cleaned-up hat, and even the eladrin noble Erunyauve. They were surrounded by short markers resembling beehives. The markers were scattered in small clusters. In each grouping, smaller markers spiraled around the larger. More traditional tombstones poked up randomly, but those were the exception.

Japheth laughed. “No, not the city of the dead; Faerun!” he said. “The sky’s the same, the rise and fall of the land, mostly. The general shape of each city, I’m sure. But the particulars!”

“I know; I was teasing,” she replied.

“Everyone we knew must either be dead or changed so much we might not even recognize them,” he continued. “Seren, Behroun, all the librarians I knew in Candlekeep, tavern and shop keepers we used to see every day-everyone!”

The enormity of what Japheth was saying threatened to make his head spin. He closed his eyes, and thought back to their journey “through time.”

When the knights had winged back to Forever’s Edge, the few star spawn and aberrations they’d encountered in the void had been dazed and inactive, as if shocked by having their victory yanked from them so precipitously.

Everyone was relieved to find the Watchtowers waiting on the other side of the gulf. Xxiphu was nowhere to be seen.

They later learned that several decades had passed since they had first set out across the void. Xxiphu had reappeared about halfway through that span. The skeleton forces remaining behind along the towers panicked, but the aboleth city had only approached close enough to slip back through the aperture of its initial appearance, which hadn’t completely healed over. The millennia Xxiphu had spent below the Sea of Fallen Stars had given it an affinity for the world. When Malyanna had released her hold on it, the city had been pulled back to Faerun.

The Eldest, half petrified though it was, likely had something to do with that, Japheth reflected.

They and the surviving knights enjoyed a hero’s welcome. A revelry lasting three full days, as well as long rests in sumptuous quarters, went a long way toward renewing all their spirits. Anusha in particular was glad to shuck her dreamform and walk again in her own skin for the entire time they stayed with the eladrin.

She and Japheth had been given separate quarters. Of course, he hadn’t done more than look into those they showed him. When they were not attending the ongoing revelry, he and Anusha spent the majority of their private time in her suite.

Whatever darkness had lurked between them was forgotten. They celebrated their survival and each other.

But a shadow still lay on them. Raidon’s sacrifice was an omnipresent fact. Everyone felt the monk’s final request shouldn’t be put off long, especially given the time disparity that continued to widen the gap between Faerun and everyone remaining in Forever’s Edge. Though not as extreme as the differential past of the discontinuity, it still pushed the calendar forward in a way that made Japheth slightly giddy when he considered it overlong.

The Lady of the Moon herself led them back into the world. The Throne of Seeing had, upon their return, given up its claim on her. She would remain warden of the Spire of the Moon until such time as someone else groomed for the title took the seat.

An expedition set out from Forever’s Edge across the blasted heath, toward the glimmering horizon. The Lady of the Moon preceded them out of the darkness and into the light. She led them through a glimmering wood, which gradually lost its fey qualities to become “merely” a forest of the natural world called Gulthandor.

Erunyauve explained that many places had grown strong connections with Faerie since its return, especially Forest of Amtar in Dambrath, the Forest of Lethyr in the Great Dale, and several others the warlock didn’t remember. But one was Gulthandor on the Dragon Coast.

As the eladrin had obviously known, Nathlekh was visible from the eaves of Gulthandor Forest. Or rather “Nathlekh City,” as they had learned upon entering the architecturally striking metropolis. Since they’d been gone, the city had become the capitol of a Shou-dominated region called Nathlan.

They spent a tenday preparing to have Raidon interred. Thankfully, stories of xenophobia in the city must have been only tall tales. That, or in the decades since-

Somewhere beyond the gravesite, a city bell tolled.

“It is time,” said Erunyauve.

Japheth blinked and focused on the present.

“Let us lay my son to rest,” the eladrin continued.

They gathered close to a newly constructed hardened clay marker. A plaque upon it read “Raidon Kane. Beloved son, friend, and hero. He saved everyone.”

A smaller, much older marker was next to Raidon’s. It belonged to the monk’s long-dead adopted daughter.

“The door is closed,” the Lady of the Moon said. “All the Keys are destroyed. The Sovereignty will not launch a thousand more seeds like Xxiphu across Toril as the Far Realm’s vanguard. The aboleths sought to collapse the wall between creation and madness, but failed.

“Thanks to Raidon Kane.

“My son. I was with him for the first ten years of his life, and after that, I was with him in thought. I loved him as much as any mother adores her child. He was my legacy, and now I’ve survived him. But without his sacrifice, none of us would be here now. It was a necessary sacrifice. Still, my heart is broken. I go back to Forever’s Edge diminished, knowing Raidon is gone. Knowing I could have saved him, had I not given him the Key of Stars, and set him on his path.”

Erunyauve stopped speaking. Her cheeks glistened with tears.

Anusha knelt before the marker. “Good bye, Raidon,” she whispered. “I’m sorry.”

She traced Raidon’s name on the plaque, then rose and stepped back.

Japheth knew he should say something, but his throat was tight. He forced out, “Raidon conquered foes of every sort. Not just monsters, but ones he battled inside himself. In the end, he defeated them all. He found peace. Not many can claim that. He is an inspiration. I’ll never forget him.”