Bruce Cordell: Plague of Spells

He didn't want her to see him die.

The mass of writhing kuo-toa where Raidon had fallen continued to shake and writhe. The monk was still fighting under the shroud of scaled flesh. Amazing.

Japheth forced himself to look up again at the nightmare hovering over them.

The Dreamheart was so close! He could see it, clutched at the tapering end of one of Gethshemeth's many arms. The stone seemed to glow with an anti-light all its own. It was too close for Japheth to ignore any longer.

He glanced at Angul. Should he take up the weapon Raidon said was forged to kill aberrations? He released a short grunt of derision. No, he'd never so much as held a sword before, not even in play as a child.

He'd have to rely on the Lord of Bats's gifts.

Claws raked Raidon's back, face, and exposed forearms. Teeth bit at his calves, exposed chest, and even his ears. A hundred mouths screamed their unending, insane paean, even as they strove to smother Raidon under the press of their bodies and drown him by holding his head beneath the rising water.

The sheer number of wrestling forms was the only reason Raidon hadn't already succumbed to the onslaught. Far more claw rakes and bites scored bleeding gashes and gaping wounds on other kuo-toa than were visited on the monk.

But he couldn't take much more. He was dribbling blood from the wound given him by the harpooner, and his thinking was growing fuzzier by the moment, thanks to the incessant scream. He managed to get his head above water long enough to suck in another desperate breath. One of his foes pulled the harpoon head out of his thigh. More blood flowed.

His vision narrowed, and the screams around him deepened, as if he entered a tunnel mouth. He knew his perceptions were skewing, not reality.

A sweet, curious voice out of time asked, "Papa? Are you hurt?"

"No, Ailyn," he responded automatically. "Just taking a little rest."

"Can we play, Papa?"

"No, Papa has something he must finish first…"

Raidon blinked away the waking vision. He didn't want to be seen a liar, even if it was a lie told to his daughter's trusting memory.

The spellscar fire on his chest guttered, as if in danger of failing. He'd forgotten it. He was growing addled indeed. He put Ailyn from his mind and concentrated his focus through the Sign, and it blazed bright and cold once more, illuminating the cavities of the dark, living heap he struggled beneath.

Wide kuo-toa eyes shuttered in pain as the sudden purifying radiance dazzled them. Raidon took his opportunity and struggled upward through the press like a man swimming upstream through rapids. Rapids composed of cold, scaled, wet fish-men. He couldn't seem to draw the same vigor from his Sign he'd used moments earlier to render the statue to a pile of broken rock. He sensed he hadn't given the spellscar time to recuperate. It was tired, just as he was. The jolt of vigor he'd managed to pull from the Sign was already running its course, and his limbs burned again with overexertion.

A clawed hand clamped down on his left bicep. Hampered by his position, Raidon couldn't simply tear it away. It held Raidon fast and began to squeeze.

Then a kuo-toa below him bit his foot, the same foot the plaguechanged ghoul in Starmantle had nearly bitten off.

A shriek of pain burst from him as a stream of bubbles. That old ghoul-bite had never healed right, and all the pain it had given him returned threefold.

The monk thrust his free hand straight up past wriggling bodies, a desperate gesture, his hand working spasmodically, looking for purchase.

Someone took his hand and pulled. The hand was small, but it was strong. Strong enough to lift him up and pull him out of the scrabbling kuo-toa. It pulled him higher still, until he was ten feet above water. It had to be Anusha who'd saved him. Again. With the help of his savior, he kicked free of the tumult, save for two fish-men that retained their grips.

One dangled from his bicep, the other continued to bite down on his foot.

Raidon breathed freely in great heaving gasps. With his body finally unimpeded by dozens of clawing foes, he was able to torque his free leg upward to deliver a vicious knee to the crown of the kuo-toa holding his arm. A crunch of bone and it stopped its scream and limply fell away.

The one on his other leg was scrabbling for a better hold, but its mouth remained clamped tight on his foot.

The big kuo-toa with the harpoons chose that moment to loose another spear. Raidon saw him this time. He pulled up both legs and twisted, interposing the kuo-toa on his leg between himself and the harpooner. The spear buried itself in the creature's back. It gurgled and dropped.

The hand holding his began to shake. The girl was tiring, Raidon guessed. He couldn't imagine how she was holding him up in the first place. Before she could drop him, he swung his legs back, then forward in a violent jerk, releasing Anusha's invisible hand as he did so.

Raidon somersaulted through the air and landed just inside the wizard's fiery, water-defying perimeter.

His wounded leg and bad foot buckled, as he'd suspected they would. He managed to save himself from falling face first into the cold water by dropping into a seated posture. The jolt on his tailbone traveled up his spine and rattled his teeth.

The jet of water forming a solid column of water suddenly ceased, stoppered as if by Gethshemeth's mere wish. And it was likely so.

The raw-throated screaming of the kuo-toa fell to nothing, as did the background roar of jetting water. The deluge of cold water splashing and dripping off the ceiling diminished to a sprinkle. The mist encompassing the vault began to clear. The thousands of ripples across the surface of the water filling the vault to a depth of a foot or more died away.

Without the constant pattering rain, the surface of the water calmed to become a perfectly reflective surface. Raidon saw reflected the monoliths, domes, kuo-toa, and the shadowed, menacing shape of the great kraken over all.

He saw his own weary reflection in the surrounding water, and that of his compatriots, including an image of a woman in golden armor standing midway between where he sat and Japheth. She stood on the water's surface as if it were solid ground.

Japheth's gaze followed Raidon's, and his eyes widened. "Anusha, flee!"

"Flee?" responded the girl, incredulous. "I'm not running again! I-"

A voice pealed from a chitinous beak that protruded from an orifice beneath Gethshemeth's enormous bulk. "I see you, ghost. Enough of your interference."

Seren clapped her hands over her ears and squeezed her eyes shut.

The warlock yelled a desperate garble of arcane syllables and pointed a finger at the behemoth. A shimmering emerald coil of eldritch power projected from Japheth's finger, higher and higher. When it reached the soft, sinful flesh of the great kraken, it began to coil around the creature, round and round, as if to restrain the great beast. Where the green energy touched the kraken, its skin blistered and grew scorched. An odor akin to fried meat and dog excrement blew wetly through the vault.

Gethshemeth shrugged its colossal tentacles. The green coils shattered into so many disconnected links in an eye-blink, and faded to nothing.

A lone tentacle extruded from Gethshemeth's mass, the one enwrapping the round stone. It dropped down toward Anusha's reflection.

Raidon's heart froze. He lunged for Angul's hilt and felt a tearing pop in his leg.

His fingers grazed the cool, smooth metal of Angul's hilt. Even that brief contact was enough to erase the harpoon pain in his leg and lessen the burning fire in his foot. He dragged himself another few inches closer and grasped the hilt in both hands.

A portion of his anxiety melted. A hint of new strength rippled through his muscles, starting in his hands and spreading quickly through his body. When the energy reached his chest, his Sign responded with a pulse of illumination nearly equal to the blade's pure fire. With the energy of his own Sign, he was able to shield his thoughts from the sword's overweening ego.