Bruce Cordell: Plague of Spells

The lobster-clawed humanoid sprayed him with crimson fluid.

"Raidon, no!" he heard someone shout, perhaps the invisible girl, or maybe the panicked wizard. Then silence claimed him.

When a coral dome sealed the monk away, Anusha's fear returned like a thick gag threatening to choke off her breath. She'd expected Raidon Kane would rise to this final challenge, as she'd seen him do against the threats they'd faced on the surface. Instead, the kraken neutralized him with its first move.

Close by, the wizard Seren seemed to be crying, even as she launched a wave of lightning at the closest kuo-toa phalanx. A crack of thunder knocked six or seven fish-men backward, head over flippers, to land in a heap, dazed and hurt. But more kuo-toa continued to pour into the area. Seren's lament grew louder even as she prepared another blast. She sobbed, "We're all going to die!"

Anusha stood near Japheth. His eyes were locked on the kraken, or perhaps the orb the kraken wielded. Her fear crystallized. "Wait!" she counseled him, thinking he was about to engage Gethshemeth himself. "Wait for Raidon's help! I can free the half-elf as I did you!"

Without a backward glance she dashed through the press of scaly bodies. She called up her dream blade and lay around her with it as she passed. She imagined her blade's edges as real and sharp as Angul's steely edge.

Anusha's passage was a bloody furrow through the kraken's advancing minions. Composed as it was of dream matter, no blood stained her armor or even her sword. That's how she dreamed it should be, and that's how it was. The creatures only sensed her by her bloody deeds. Kuo-toa squealed and died.

She reached the lobster-clawed statue where Raidon was entombed. Captain Thoster had so far avoided a similar fate, but what was he doing? Thoster was on his knees in the pooling water facing the eidolon, his sword sheathed and his arms outstretched as if in entreaty or worship. The man chanted something in a singsong tone, perhaps a prayer.

His strangely liquid vowels were having some sort of effect. The statue wavered, tried to step, paused, vibrated, then shuffled sideways.

"Whatever you're doing, keep it up," she murmured, and plunged into the stone that imprisoned Raidon. She had just trawled three similar stone shrouds, so she knew what to look for. Almost immediately she located Raidon's form. She grabbed the rigid monk beneath his arms and heaved, but her hands slipped free. She tried again, remembering to will his flesh to be as her dream body, like smoke flowing through air. She heaved once more, and a moment later the man was free of the clutching stone.

Raidon resumed his charge as if nothing had detoured him. Even as Thoster retained the eidolon's attention, the monk jumped at the end of his trajectory and smashed the statue in the chest with the heel of his palm.

The crack of rending stone echoed through the chamber. Fine lines burning with cerulean fire suddenly spidered the statue, thickest at the point of impact.

Anusha came up behind Raidon and brought down her dream blade. Jarring impact surprised her.

"No!" said Thoster suddenly "Don't attack her!"

Her? Anusha wondered why the pirate would suddenly refer to the animated statue as a "she," and wish to protect it. Had his mind been suborned by Gethshemeth?

Raidon spared a puzzled glance at the captain's insane plea but didn't cease his assault on the stone figure. Even as stone claws snapped toward the monk, he evaded them by slipping to one side and around the statue. From there, the monk launched into a fury of stinging blows. The sound of crunching stone, like Anusha imagined might issue from a mine shaft, accompanied Raidon's unstoppable onslaught. The half-elf’s hands and feet had somehow become harder than stone.

The kuo-toa swarming into the cavern paused to watch, their eyes fixed on Raidon. Moments later, the statue's swift demolition was complete. Raidon stood on a pile of slick, wet rubble above the rising water line. His hair was molded to his head in the constant drizzle and his clothes sopped, but in that moment he seemed unstoppable. The monk's eyes lifted and focused on the kraken itself as if in challenge.

The immense, slime-slick monstrosity didn't fall upon the man with its tree-thick arms, as Anusha had guessed it would. Instead Gethshemeth writhed its tentacles over them like baleful clouds. As if in response, every single kuo-toa in the vault screamed with a single voice. It was the sound of unquenchable madness. A madness that threatened to infect Anusha's mind with its awful atonal volume.

The screaming kuo-toa charged, forgetting formation, forgetting discipline, and forgetting their fear of death.

The wizard cried with such anguish, Anusha heard her over the roar of the kuo-toa. Her shoulders shaking, Seren managed to call up a perimeter of burning fire, as if to mark the site of her last stand.

Raidon leaped from the pile of stone, grabbed Captain Thoster by the lapels of his flapping coat, and dashed back toward Japheth, Seren, and Angul. The pirate allowed himself to be pulled, but his eyes remained fixed on the rubble pile. He had already slipped into insanity, Anusha judged. Or perhaps not. Despite his limp posture, Thoster retained his grip on his blade.

The monk used his free hand to bat away the swarming kuo-toa between him and his goal. Their screams hardly changed pitch even after a solid blow knocked them prone.

Anusha moved with them, helping Raidon ward off stray claws, spear thrusts, and bites.

A fish-man, bigger than the others, appeared suddenly in Raidon's path. The large kuo-toa brandished a harpoon with cord attached to it. It carried a wide, slime-slick shield. Several additional harpoons were lashed to its back.

The monk instantly transferred all his forward momentum into his arms. Even as he stopped dead, he released Thoster in a high arc that cleared the harpooner's reach by a couple of feet. The pirate captain crashed down with a great splash within the protective circle of fire that burned despite the cold seawater still pouring down from above.

Watching the captain's flight distracted Anusha, and perhaps the same was true of Raidon. Even as Thoster came down hard, the harpooner loosed its broad-bladed spear. It caught Raidon in his left leg. Blood sprayed from the wound, black in the witchlight-illuminated cavern.

Raidon jerked away, too late. The point broke off in the wound with the cord still attached. The harpooner gave a terrific yank. The slick, water-covered ground betrayed the monk, and he went down. The swarming, screaming kuo-toa were on him in an instant.

Japheth was entranced by the sinuous movements of the great kraken that, unaccountably, failed to help its slaves kill them. A single slap of one of its ten-foot-thick tentacles would crush two or three of them at once. Why did it hold back?

The warlock guessed it was playing with them, like a cat toying with a mouse. How often did such sport offer itself to the beast?

Not that its thronging, screaming servitors required any help. Out of the corner of his eye, Japheth saw the Shou fall beneath on onslaught of writhing, scaled bodies.

I'll be next, he predicted.

Three kuo-toa near the perimeter fire hissed, sounding more like snakes than Japheth imagined fish could, then leaped over the barrier into the ring. The fire blazed up, crisping each one instantly.

Seren whispered, "I can only keep out four or five more- if more than that rush us, the perimeter will collapse." Her eyes were red with grief, and she looked at Japheth as if for answers.

He felt as drained and exhausted as she looked. He had no hope to offer the wizard. The kraken's mere proximity was sufficient to extinguish heroism and squash the aspirations of the boldest.

Japheth glanced around, hoping to glimpse Anusha. She was nowhere to be seen, of course. She might even have retreated to her physical body once more. He wouldn't blame her if she had. In fact, he hoped she had fled.