Lisa Smedman - Ascendancy of the Last

The running figure wore a purple robe with a leering black eye on the front of his tabard-Ghaunadaur's symbol. His anxious expression and frightened glances over one shoulder suggested he wasn't in control of the ooze. As it threatened to overtake him, he halted and raised his tentacle rod. He whipped it forward, lashing at the ooze with its tentacles. In that same instant, the monster bulged and squirted out a line of emberlike motes. Tentacles met glitterfire in a thundering explosion. Waves of heat and cold exploded out of the corridor.

Qilue's scepter grew warm as it absorbed the heat. But it proved no protection against the cold. Cavatina drew in a lungful of icy air, and shivered. She marveled at what she'd just seen: Ghaunadaur's faithful, fighting each other?

Before the fanatic could turn, she sang a hymn that rendered him rigid. He toppled. She ran to where he lay, intending to drag him out of harm's way and question him at sword point. The glittering ooze was faster however. It was about to engulf her fallen foe.

She raised the scepter. "Eilistraee!" she cried. "Smite this abomination with your song!"

A peal sounded from the scepter-louder, even, than the clanging alarms. Sound waves shimmered through the air, expanding into a cone that slammed into the ooze. The glittering monster was blown back like a yanked carpet folding upon itself. The ooze surged forward again, but Cavatina blasted it a second time, and a third. As the third soundburst struck, the ooze exploded, splattering golden sparks onto the wall. These glowed for a moment, then faded. A few smears of mucous-like goo, dotted with black soot, were all that remained of the ooze.

The fanatic groaned. His robe smoldered in spots, and was damp with melted frost in other places. As he flopped over, Cavatina recognized him. Karas, in disguise! He must have been among the spies Qilue sent out.

She dispelled her hymn and extended a hand. "What's going on, Karas?"

The Nightshadow rose shakily to his feet. "I just came from Llurth Dreir," he shouted back over the clangor of alarms. "Qilue's orders: I brought Ghaunadaur's fanatics through a portal. I was to lead them into a trap, but oozes followed us."

He yanked a black ring off his thumb and flung it aside, then kicked the rod after it. The rod rolled away, its limp tentacles flopping. He spoke a word, and his robe and tabard transformed into a close-fitting black shirt and trousers; his sash shimmered and became a mask. Tying it into place around his face seemed to calm him. All traces of the frustration he'd shown a moment ago disappeared.

Cavatina shook her head in exasperation. "Couldn't you tell something was wrong with Qilue?" She had to shout to be heard over the clanging alarms. "With this 'plan' of hers? It didn't occur to you to question the logic of leading our enemies into the heart of the Promenade?"

Karas met her eyes. "She's the high priestess. Through her, the Masked Lady commands-and I obey."

"Did the fanatics enter the trap?"

He hesitated. "I'm not sure. I didn't see what happened. The ooze chased me this way." He eased back a step, expecting a reprimand. Yet this wasn't his fault. He'd only done as Qilue had ordered.

Four priestesses ran past, toward the fighting. As soon as they spotted Cavatina, their fearful expressions vanished. They shouted that fanatics, backed up by oozes, had invaded the Stronghall. Cavatina waved them on, saying she'd lend her sword to the battle in just a moment. Karas turned to follow the priestesses, but Cavatina caught his arm.

"Karas," she said urgently, "Qilue was tricked. Her 'trap' is actually a portal-one that renders you ethereal. It leads to the bottom of the Pit. To a planar breach. That breach was intermittent when I saw it, but if the fanatics reach it, and open it fully, Ghaunadaur's avatar will be able to pass through."

Karas's voice came out as a croak. "I don't understand. Why would the Masked Lor-Masked Lady permit-"

"I don't have time to explain. What's important is that we prevent the fanatics from getting to that portal. We'll make for the ruined temple by different routes: I'll go south, through the Stronghall, and you circle around through the Cavern of Song. Eilistraee willing, at least one of us will reach the portal in time."

Karas stood, unmoving. His mask wavered slightly; he must have been praying.

"Let's move!"

He swallowed, then bobbed his head in a nod.

She watched long enough to make sure he was headed in the right direction, then sprinted down the corridor to the Stronghall. As she reached it, she saw a battle that could use her assistance. A priestess and three lay worshipers were fighting a jellylike mass of roiling shadow. Cavatina blasted it with the scepter as she ran by. Her attack drove it back, giving Eilistraee's faithful the moment's reprieve they needed to regroup. As she ran on, she heard them cheer her name behind her.

Everywhere she looked, the faithful desperately fought tentacle-wielding fanatics and a host of Ghaunadaur's minions. Cavatina spotted an ooze that looked like an enormous puddle of blood, glowing with searing heat; another like congealed fog, chill as a wind from the grave. A third resembled a roiling cloud of snowflakes. Yet another flickered with a purple light that twisted into glowing symbols, deep within itself. The latter ooze spat out a snake from one puckered orifice, a centipede from another. Both animals glowed with a fiendish light that marked them as creatures summoned from the Abyss. Cavatina slashed at centipede and snake, killing both, and blasted the ooze itself with the scepter. The half-dozen lay worshipers who'd been retreating from the monster cried a prayer of thanksgiving.

She had run almost the length of the Stronghall; the corridor leading to the ruined temple was just a short distance ahead. She pounded around the corner of a building, only to find the street blocked by a bone white ooze that had overwhelmed a Protector. The priestess lay, screaming, as the mass flowed onto the lower half of her body.

Cavatina's eyes widened. It was Tash'kla-the Protector who had fought so valiantly beside her during the expedition to the Acropolis.

She raised the scepter, but realized that its sound blast didn't discriminate between friend and foe. She sang a moonbeam into existence instead, and hurled it at the creature. The ooze shuddered as twined moonlight and shadow bored through it, carving a wound that bled sour-smelling clay. The ooze pulled back from the fallen Protector.

It took Tash'kla's bones with it, reducing her legs to empty, bloody sacks of muscle and skin. Cavatina watched, horrified, as the ooze splintered the bones and squeezed the marrow out.

Furious, she attacked the ooze with the scepter. It took more than one blast to kill the thing. When the ooze at last exploded from the sonic attack, a bone splinter whizzed past Cavatina's ear. She didn't flinch. She moved to Tash'kla, kneeled, and touched her throat.

No blood-pulse. Tash'kla was dead.

Fortunately, the ooze hadn't consumed her utterly. Enough remained that Tash'kla might be resurrected-assuming anyone from the Promenade survived to revive her. In this cavern alone, there were so many oozes that Cavatina was starting to have doubts about how the battle would go.

She wiped a splatter of ooze from her forehead with a shaking hand. Was this how it had been for Qilue, when she and her companions battled Ghaunadaur's avatar? Cavatina's sword was slippery with foul-smelling slime, and its song was a dirge. She tightened her grip on the weapon, grimly wondering where the high priestess was. Trapped within her own body by the demon-forced to watch as her cherished temple fell?

No, Cavatina thought angrily. It wouldn't come to that. Eilistraee wouldn't permit it.

She ran down the street, and at last reached the corridor she'd been making for. It turned out to be choked with the bodies of the fallen. Most were unrecognizable, reduced by acid to weeping mounds of reddish flesh, or blackened by searing heat to unrecognizable lumps. She gagged at the sour smell of spilled entrails and charred flesh and pressed on, slipping and sliding on the fouled stone.