Bruce Cordell: Plague of Spells

Japheth ignored him. The warlock yelled into the stone with a voice augmented with magical tremolo, "Wake up! Wake up! Anusha, if you're in there, wake up! Ignore the thrice-damned elixir!"

The Sign on Raidon's chest fell in temperature so precipitously the monk's breath began to steam.

"Wake up!" Japheth yelled again with all the force of an invocation.

The Dreamheart bucked in the warlock's hand. It woke up.

A seam on the stone parted, an eyelid shuttering open. Raidon met the eye's primordial stare.

It was like looking down on the clouds of some distant, storm-tossed world, clouds that ringed a pupil empty as death.

Japheth gasped.

Raidon took two more steps, plunged his arm into the water, and came up with the Blade Cerulean. It was the only tool capable of destroying the relic. He whirled, charged, yelling, "Release it!"

"No," replied Japheth. "I'll not abandon Anusha so easily."

The great eye blinked. The darkness in the pupil's center rushed out, seemed to billow and inflate the warlock's cloak with a malign influence all its own.

Japheth stepped backward into the darkness and was gone.