Bruce Cordell: Plague of Spells

True, no direct communication had occurred between her and the Sea Mother or any of the Sea Mother's exarchs… but what of her dreams? She knew the Sea Mother wanted something of her, something the divine being was somehow unable to articulate directly.

A frightening thought! If something prevented the Sea Mother's clear communication, it must be a dire threat indeed! At least, so Nogah interpreted the signs. Others, untroubled by dreams, declared Nogah unstable.

Despite the risk of being outcast, she persisted in her claims, describing how her visions revealed a taint welling up from a near-bottomless trench, a hole in the earth where none had been before.

And hadn't she been vindicated with the discovery of a newborn vent's existence? And how else could she have predicted its location in the dim, uncharted depths?

Despite her successful predictions, or perhaps because of them, Nogah remained alone in her conviction that the Sea Mother had revealed the cavity for a reason. She was convinced the newly opened vent must be plumbed, and no argument could sway her. The other whips of the Sea Mother told her the cavity was just one more altered feature of the landscape left in the Spellplague's wake a decade earlier. By every estimation, this particular seafloor vent numbered among the least remarkable of the changes wrought by the Weave's collapse. When compared to whole kingdoms erased, continents rearranged, plaguechanged monstrosities, floating motes of water and land, renewed contact with Abeir, and the real threat that the Sea of Fallen Stars would drain completely into the Underdark… yes, this particular vent seemed a minor issue. The kuo-toa were more concerned that even the celestial and infernal realms themselves still fluctuated. The Spellplague had chewed through earth, stone, magic, and planar boundaries as readily as through fallible flesh. Empty, drowned crevices that apparently led nowhere were judged a waste of attention.

Thus, the senior whips decreed Nogah's plan would divert resources that could be better used elsewhere. Threats to the people were always gathering. The Weave's failure, combined with the ongoing realignment of the celestial dominions, put even the Sea Mother at risk!

Nogah growled. As if her current task were not meant to stem just such a threat! Hadn't the Sea Mother directed her on this venture through her strange silences, as if urging Nogah to investigate the mystery? The other whips were blind. Always decisive, Nogah committed to the exploratory dive despite the consensus building against her, and before that consensus solidified into official directive. She used up the last of her favors to gain the use of this fabulous sea coach, its harnessed beast, and a leave from her duties in the city of Olleth.

Now here she was, miles below the seafloor in the vent she'd first glimpsed in dreams. The strange flavor of the water all around her seemed to promise grim consequences to those who failed to heed its warning. The odd scent seemed to go hand in fin with the interference that made communion with the Sea Mother difficult. Nogah took it as further evidence the Sea Mother wanted her here, to investigate that which lay at the shaft's nadir.

Nogah's translucent, third eyelids snapped open. She decreed, "No, we shall push on. Time grows short. The… taint? The… hindrance grows stronger each day we fail to discover its source!"

Curampah merely nodded. Perhaps her junior whip did not share Nogah's sense of urgency. She guessed Curampah preferred the majority opinion in the kuo-toa ruled city of Olleth. Not that what he thought mattered. The beliefs junior whips harbored in their secret hearts were unimportant. Their duty was only to obey. Curampah would do as she commanded.

Nogah twitched the reins, and the great catfish surged straight downward once more, jolting the coach. The immense nautilus shell descended through a sudden rush of silvery bubbles born in the thrashing wake of the fish's wide tail.

Nogah woke to her name voiced in air. Splinters of the dream faded, the same dream she always had, of the Sea Mother beckoning to her from across a vast gulf of sea-fine particulates and rushing water, warning her, warning…

She lay in her creche within the inmost chamber of the spiral nautilus.

A voice, Curampah's, said again, "Nogah, Daughter of the Sea, wake!"

Blinking toward full awareness, but not yet stirring her limbs, she said, "I am awake. I…" She could still hear the groaning water from her dream. The walls of the shell moaned and vibrated, as if being squeezed. Had they struck the vent wall? Nogah mentally checked the status of all the divine rituals she'd applied to the sea coach.

The subsidiary rituals of maintenance and protection lacing the nautilus's shell were intact. The bubble of air trapped within the coiled corridors of the shell was stable and fresh. The magic that maintained the equilibrium between air and water was firm. She mentally expanded her examination of the ritual prayers underlying the sea coach and was relieved to find the enchantments holding the catfish also remained active. The protective prayers warding off crushing pressure seemed intact, but…

"Mother preserve!" The linchpin charm was half unraveled! The groaning noise was precursor to the nautilus shell's collapse.

She lurched upright, her webbed hands already tracing the runes necessary to renew the prayer. She worked quickly, invigorating the lines of divine force required. A heartbeat later, the frayed linchpin was repaired. But how could it have failed so precipitously?

She looked at Curampah. "Explain," she commanded.

"Daughter of the Sea," he said, "I found a side cavity in the vent. As I slowed the coach to study the hollow space, the nautilus began to buckle and shudder. So I woke you."

"What lies within this cavity?"

"Crumbled and blasted dwellings, Daughter. Ruins of structures unable to withstand the crushing weight of water this deep."

"A drow city caught in the backlash of Mystra's demise?" Nogah half smiled to think of a city of their old tormentors so overcome.

Curampah's silver-black eyes blinked rapidly. "No. It is illithid."

Nogah grabbed her staff and arrowed past Curampah.

The cavity was riddled with half-exposed, winding passages striated with the cryptic textures of illithid text carved in stone. The crust's split that created the vent a decade ago broke this deep dwelling mind flayer cyst wide open. The illithids likely hadn't even picked themselves up from where the quaking earth had thrown them before a weight of seawater had smashed through the breach, a quantity too great for even the wizened entity at the community's hub to deal with. The elder brain's basin was split asunder. All that remained of this illithid community's nascent proto-deity were fragments of flash-petrified cerebral tissue. Dried husks of larval illithids floated here and there throughout the ruin. Remnants of mind flayer garb, implements, and unidentifiable trash were everywhere, but of the adult illithids themselves, no sign remained.

"Did any survive?" wondered Curampah, as he stared over the side. Nogah had maneuvered the sea coach into the side cavity.

She replied, "The Spellplague's hunger did not spare those who derive their power from mind. Of course, it seems this community was destroyed as an indirect consequence of the catastrophe. We would have been attacked already, if any mind flayers remained in this drowned cyst."

Curampah inclined his head.

Despite her words, an irrational fear tightened her scales. She was a competent whip, but she couldn't hope to stand before a mind flayers vicious brain blast. She didn't want to end up a meal, or worse, a mind-dead thrall. But she was being foolish, of course; how could that happen? The cyst was obviously long bereft of its former dwellers.