Key of Stars

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

The Year of the Secret (1396 DR)

Citadel of the Outer Void

The stairs on the crazy Citadel didn’t bother Anusha; she took them three at a time. The walk across the hazy plain had seemed interminable, but had provided her mind a chance to rest.

She knew she was leaving Yeva and Thoster behind, but they would have to get to the top when they could; something big was happening up there! At least she’d convinced Yeva to leave the capsule protecting her body at the foot of the ziggurat. The iron woman would move much faster without hauling that around.

Of them all, only Thoster was susceptible to purely physical fatigue. Then again, with his newly discovered regenerating ability, Anusha wasn’t sure even that was true.

She sprinted across one final landing, leaped another channel filled with white fluid, and ignored more of the sprawled bodies that looked as if they’d been dead for centuries. She had no time to investigate curiosities.

She flew up the last set of stairs and finally gazed across the uppermost level of the ziggurat. A throng of ghastly creatures swirled in an ever-widening knot around the base of a gargantuan plug of crystal. The disparate creatures before her were awful to behold, but didn’t hold a candle to what she saw through the crystal.

Through it, the malignant, all-too-cognizant end of the world stared out.

The sound of fighting, fist on flesh, metal on metal, and the muttering of spells was audible above the hunting screams of the monsters, but the physical press hid from view what was going on at the base of the crystal lens. The number of aberrations only continued to grow as more and more gyred down from a sky cleared of mist.

Anusha rendered her armored form as invisible as the dream it was, and dashed forward. She drew her golden blade, but avoided assassinating every monstrosity that stumbled into her path. No need to draw attention to her presence before she knew what was going on.

Then she saw two human-sized figures facing off amid the press of creatures. One was Taal, the man who served Malyanna. The other was Raidon! It took her a moment for the fact of the monk’s presence to sink in.

Her heart hammered. If the half-elf was there, it meant he and Japheth had successfully tracked the crazy eladrin!

But where was the warlock? She gazed around the Citadel. Such a horde of cawing, huffing, and gesticulating creatures had gathered that it was impossible to say. Her throat tightened.

Anusha ran for the monk, dodging hulking beasts she didn’t care to examine closely. Among the creatures that flopped, slid, and flew across the wide ziggurat top, she recognized several aboleths. Thankfully, none resembled the yellow-hued variety that could see her even when she didn’t want to be noticed.

She raised her sword to slay Taal as she closed. The man wouldn’t even know she was there before her dream sword ended his existence. Then Raidon could tell her what had happened to Japheth.

Something cackled with unearthly glee. She glanced to her left and stopped dead.

A human-sized ogre hunched on double-jointed knees. Its arms hung down and trailed clawed hands on the ground. It had no neck, and its “face” was a single massive eye that stared unblinking at her. A mouth gaped beneath the eye, which opened wider as the thing produced a crazed laugh that would have done an asylum inmate proud.

Could it see her?

The eye pulsed orange-red, and its iris swirled. Oh my. How indescribable; how beautiful! Anusha stumbled forward to get a better look at that swirling, whirlpool design …

When she reached the creature, its clawed arms came up and swiped through her dreamform. Had she been flesh, the claws probably would have disemboweled her. As it was, it broke the spell that compelled her to stumble up to it like a rapt fool.

“I don’t have time for this,” she said and lunged at the thing with her sword.

The thing easily evaded. She took a step and sliced again, and the creature jumped back, just outside of sword range.

It wasn’t so easy to strike down foes who could see you coming.

The thing cackled like a demented crone as its lone eye pulsed black. An echoing black miasma appeared around Anusha. Pain doubled her over. A mental attack!

All it had to do was look at her to affect her. The eye pulsed again. Her golden armor faded to a dull yellow. Parts of it corroded still further, and turned to dust. Beneath it was her bare flesh. She stared at her arm in dismay-the revealed skin bubbled, roiled, and dripped. The pain was like the time as a child she’d accidentally spilled boiling water on herself.

She turned and ran from the creature.

It hopped after her.

“No!” she cried.

Where could she hide? She could retreat back to her body … No, the elixir still kept her under.

When the answer came to her, she nearly smote herself in the head for being such an idiot.

She stopped. The floor, like every other material of the waking world she interacted with, was something she’d merely decided was necessary to hold her dream. Since she wasn’t real, or at least she was only as real as she wanted to be, the floor should be no barrier to her, despite how it couldn’t seem to decide whether it was granite, snow, or soft black foam.

What if the floor were no more solid than water? Like the Sea of Fallen Stars, which she had once swam in every tenday to satisfy her father’s desire that she be prepared should she ever fall from one of the Marhana ships.

Anusha sank into the changeable ground, until only her head remained above the “surface.”

Her pursuer paused, but dropped its gaze. She’d have to “go under” for her plan to work.

Steadying herself, she took a deep breath, and put her head beneath the floor.

It was dark. No hint of light pierced the surface. Like a tomb of rock sealed beneath the earth.

Stop that! she thought. She “swam” forward, moving through varying mediums. Or at least she hoped she was moving. It was impossible to tell without reference points.

When she reached the point a few paces past where she estimated her one-eyed foe had been, she spared a moment to imagine her armor once again securely fastened around her body. Then she surged up, reaching for light exactly like a drowning person reaches for air.

Relief was sweet when the sickly illumination of the Citadel found her again.

Her foe was still more or less where she had hoped it would be.

She shoved her dream sword directly into it, imagining it sharp enough to cut and kill.

The cackler ceased its laughter and died.

Anusha gazed around to get her bearings. She’d lost sight of Raidon and Taal. She still didn’t see Japheth anywhere.

But she saw Malyanna. The hateful woman stood an arm’s reach from the crystal.

In the eladrin’s hand dangled an amulet blazing with a symbol of a leafless tree. It looked like the symbol seared into Raidon’s flesh. How odd, she thought. The eladrin handled it with almost holy reverence. Anusha hoped it wasn’t the Key of Stars.

As if on cue, as happens in nightmares, Malyanna touched the amulet to the crystal disk.

“No!” a voice yelled out. That sounded like-

The noise of shattering glass drew her up short. She, along with every creature in range, watched what happened next.

A fissure splintered up the crystal. It was a line of absence, and with every yard it traveled and branched up the surface of the Far Manifold, something seemed to tear at her mind.

“Oh, no,” she whispered.

Through the crack, oily fluid began to seep.

Japheth gaped. By the burning beards of the Nine, the gods-damned woman had cracked the gate. He blinked. Had it really happened?

“Don’t just stand there drooling, simpleton!” commanded the Lord of Bats. “Apply your fancy new pact to slow the break! I’ll deal with Malyanna as I should have done before!”

The archfey shed his humanoid form like an old rag. A bat the size of a house ripped free of his confining, human flesh and took to the air. Tentacles lashed, but none caught Neifion.

Malyanna, a grin on her face, whipped her gaze up to regard the oversize bat, which seemed to pause at the top of its dive.

“My old ally!” she called. “Come to congratulate me on my success?”

Neifion folded his wings and dived, his fangs and eyes gleaming with Feywild vigor.

The Lord of Bats and the Lady of Winter’s Peace engaged. A flurry of fur and phantom light burst from where they came together.

Incoherent swirls of brightness and atonal distortions of sound drew Japheth’s attention above the fracas to the splintering crystal. Distortions played around the crack which, still spreading, now stretched nearly a quarter way up the face of the crystal. Through the lens’s facets, a kaleidoscope view revolved: Translucent, gelatinous, onion-thin layers of fleshy landscape were pierced by bone white rivers of foul fluid, seepages of blue slime, and undulating eel-like worms. He glimpsed incalculably large shapes drifting at the edge of sight through the semi-solid substance composing a singular amoebic sea. The shapes were blurrily reminiscent of creatures from the deepest sea trenches of Faerun. Others seemed quite familiar-they had the vague silhouette of aboleths. But many of the indistinct forms seemed as large as cities-and those were the small ones.

Before the lens had cracked, what lay beyond the gate rarely touched the rational world. It had never been a place people could visit; it was only a place from which terrible, insane influences originated. In the Far Realm, contradictions and toxic cosmic laws were born at whim, only to dissolve like vapor to make way for newer, more insane dreams.

The vast entities residing there were so alien that reality would buckle under their scrutiny. Dread was like a dagger in his chest as he watched the crack in the barrier between reality and insanity widen further.

What could he do? he thought. The Lord of Bats had bidden him to delay the damage to the Far Manifold with his star pact. Could he?

Of course he could try. But it seemed even odds that merely attempting to use the powers of his star pact while standing on the Citadel of the Outer Void would consume his mind instantly. He’d be just one more brain-cored servitor rampaging on the ziggurat the roof. Fear made him hesitate.

It occurred to him that, even though she might fear it, Anusha would do it. What would she think of him if he quailed to even try?

“Wherever you are, know I love you,” he muttered.

An aboleth the size of a whale slid past him on its route to the Far Manifold, but paused as if puzzled at Japheth’s vocalization.

It was just one of the hundreds of terrible creatures, already manifest from ages of slow leakage from the Far Manifold. They’d been ignoring him, apparently caught up in the excitement of what was about to happen.

The thrice-damned aboleth brought its three red eyes around to stare at him.

Japheth knew only one spell of concealment. It was from his star pact. Speaking it would be a good test. He raised his gloved hands, focused his eyes on the patterns of vines that swirled amid the weave, and whispered, “Caiphon, unfurl your stairs!”

He was jerked upward. His flesh became as substanceless smoke. Last time he’d used that spell it seemed he’d walked upon a phantom stair that bridged a pseudo-landscape very similar to the Citadel of the Outer Void.

He laughed when a hand of writhing tendrils grasped his body, which threatened to disperse in the lightest wind. Not that that would have been unwelcome, given how unreserved he suddenly felt. Everything seemed so beautiful, so glorious. It all finally made sense. No more struggle. No more-

No! Concentrate on … hands. Yes. The gloves! What had the Lady of the Moon promised? Strength? Whatever, it didn’t matter. He triggered the magic woven into the gauntlets.

Cool confidence surged up his arms, into his heart and his head. His thoughts sharpened. The vista lost its beauty, its allure. His willingness to disintegrate into the effluvia of Far Realm leakage died. The gloves increased a user’s strength, but the mere discharge of Feywild magic into Japheth’s flesh was what anchored him.

The aboleth that had paused to fix its mind-shattering gaze on Japheth moved on. He was invisible while he stood on Caiphon’s stairs. He couldn’t stand upon them indefinitely, but probably long enough to try his scheme.

Last time he’d been on the stairs, the illusory world he’d seen had possessed a pseudo-horizon over which something awful lay hidden. In the Citadel of the Outer Void, that sunrise was literally the Far Manifold breaking.

Japheth reached for his newly forged star pact, for its innermost chains of connection linking what lay beyond the gate with his mind and soul, and pulled them.

Instantly, fear and agony clawed at his sense of self. His vision splintered into reverberating layers of diabolic darkness and searing light.

The growing crack in the Far Manifold, when viewed through the lens of his star pact, was like a river surging ever higher, fed by a mighty snowmelt somewhere high beyond imagining. Its waters were foul, but in its raging substance was power undreamed of for any star pact initiate who dared the torrent’s inchoate force.

He sipped from the overflowing river and screamed. Or perhaps his mouth merely formed an O as he threw back his arms and legs as if transfixed upon some heathen crucifix. But he didn’t release the connection; he tightened his grip on it. And with a slick new energy burning like a vice between his temples, he attempted to stem the river’s flow.

It was intolerable. He knew he couldn’t keep straining like that for even one more heartbeat. Yet a heartbeat passed. Then another. And another after that. His flesh wavered, and seemed on the brink of flashing away into so many chasing motes.

He called upon the power in the gloves a second time. The strength that answered his summons buffered him for a moment, giving him another span of heartbeats to maintain the struggle. Far too quickly, the anchoring power lent him by the Feywild gauntlets waned.

He had just enough mental reserve remaining to wonder if he was having any effect at all.