Key of Stars

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

The Year of the Secret (1396 DR)

Citadel of the Outer Void

Thoster raced Yeva up the last flight of stairs. The woman’s footfalls, iron hammering on stone, announced their approach to whatever foes might await them. But there wasn’t anything for it but to keep on going.

Even before he reached the top, Thoster spied the edges of the Far Manifold. He knew it immediately. Something in him was drawn to it. Seren’s amulet simultaneously burned hot, as if to remind him to take care. Or as if something indescribable wished to strip him of his mental protection and claim Thoster for itself.

When they crested the last stairs, horror’s own army waited for them. And towering over that awful host, the Far Manifold shimmered and vibrated. A massive crack marred its face, though the fissure hadn’t lengthened enough to completely breach the gate.

The hundreds of milling creatures didn’t rush Thoster and Yeva as the captain had assumed they would-most seemed mesmerized by the Far Manifold’s incipient opening.

“If I trawled all the seas of Faerun and brought up only the ugliest sons of sharks and daughters of sirens, I wouldn’t even come close to matching these unsightly bastards,” Thoster said.

Yeva scanned the scene. “What can we hope to do here?” she said. “The gate; it’s already been breached!” Her shoulders shuddered; even dead iron couldn’t contain the woman’s despair.

Thoster drew his blade and shrugged. “Find Anusha for starters,” he said. “Sure, it’s been breached, but notice how you ain’t dead? Something’s holding it from breaking altogether. Maybe that gives us a chance. But if not, and it’s all a foregone conclusion, well, at least we can go out fighting foes the likes of which few have ever faced!”

“You’re crazy,” Yeva replied.

“Not crazy enough. Or sadly, drunk enough.”

“You’re drunk?”

“You know how to wound a man! No, not even the least little bit. Damn poor time to lose my flask.”

“Thoster-wait! Look, about three quarters of the way to the gate. Isn’t that Raidon?”

He squinted. The citadel top was a wide expanse, plus it was difficult to see through the press. “Yeah!” he cried. “How the hell did he get here?”

“How should I know?” said Yeva. “But he’s obviously trying to reach the crystal gate.”

“Must think he can do some good there,” said Thoster. “Let’s give him a hand!”

“Nothing else suggests itself,” Yeva said. “So … very well. Stay near me-I can lay upon us a semblance of belonging.”

The iron woman raised a hand to her temple. The air shimmered violet around them, then faded.

“That it?” Thoster asked.

“A minor mental glamour,” Yeva said. “It won’t stand up to intense scrutiny. Let’s go! But don’t move too quickly.”

They entered the press. Thoster recognized aboleths, but nothing else. Sure, that thing over there that bayed like a wolf at the moon, well, at the Far Manifold, looked sort of like a cross between a rhinoceros and a monkey with a terrible skin condition, but it wasn’t really either. He saw what could be described as a scarily agile mass of incandescent, translucent slime in which all the organs of a living creature swam about independent of each other. He saw …

“Oh, Umberlee’s creaking knees,” he said. “That’s a beholder, ain’t it?”

Yeva turned. Another vibration ran through the metal of her body.

An armored sphere of living flesh hung in the air along their intended path. The thing possessed a wealth of eyes, most of which blinked from the ends of coiling tentacles. The largest eye protruded directly from the sphere, and did not blink. Beneath that ever-vigilant orb, a cavity lined with teeth gaped open and shut, open and shut, like a fish trying to breath air.

“Let’s go around,” murmured Yeva. “My glamour’s not up to fooling something like that.”

“Agreed,” said Thoster.

They circled around the thing. Thoster was about to declare success when Yeva yelled, “Run!”

One of the eyestalks flashed a yellow ray that caught Yeva directly in the chest. She screamed as the beam bodily picked her up and threw her back the way they’d come. The sound of her distress quickly fell away, attenuated by distance.

“Fish piss,” he said, and broke into a sprint.

The beholder didn’t even have to whirl to keep him in its sights. Three eyestalks tracked him independently, seemed to triangulate, then unleashed lines of color.

One ray was black and hissed with the promise of ultimate obliteration. He whimpered in relief when it missed. The red line burned fire across his ribs, and he convulsed but continued moving. The last ray was gray, like the color of basalt. He dropped flat on his stomach to avoid it.

A thing with green skin and a face like a melting cockroach took the beam instead. The monster’s green hue faded to gray, as it became a sculpture of unmoving stone.

Thoster scrambled back to his feet. No more running-the beholder would just cut him down from behind if he did so. The pain from the ray of fire faded-his new power of regeneration was on the job.

Which reminded him of his heritage. Not that he should have needed a reminder, standing here amid the throng of gruesomes. Most of him wanted to retch at the sight. But something deeper within Thoster felt … anger. As if everything around him was a personal affront! More than that. He felt a desire to order these lesser creatures as he willed.

What in the endless Abyss was that about? he wondered.

The beholder drifted, earthmote-like, toward him. Its central eye flashed. Thoster leaped, but the yellowish ray struck him. Tiny stars danced in his vision; it felt like someone had knocked him across the head with a club.

Still dazed, he stumbled when he tried to avoid the next colorless ray, and it caught him squarely.

His muscles seized up. He wasn’t turning to stone, thank Umberlee’s merciful wiles. But he couldn’t move.

The beholder drifted closer, and its mouth stretched wider. A grin?

He strained with all his might to break free of the magical constriction. He couldn’t tell if it was physical or mental-not that it mattered.

The beholder spoke, and Thoster was startled he could understand. “Mortals here to see the beginning of the new Age? No. Not worthy. I would like it better if you were dust.”

His anger swelled; this was how he would die? Struck down as he stood motionless before a gloating monster? Thoster redoubled his effort to move. Something inside him nearly emerged. Something huge. Something that was fury incarnate. Something that wouldn’t be restrained by the beholder’s enchantment!

The amulet around his neck burned him with a fire hotter than the aberration’s scorching ray. The trinket grew as red as a coal as it kept that which lurked in Thoster’s blood caged.

“What is that?” said the beholder. “A pretty for me?” It bobbed closer.

A yellow ray flashed from an eyestalk and lanced Seren’s amulet. The amulet jerked toward the aberration, parting the leather thong with a painful jerk.

It was like discovering a secret level in a dwelling he’d lived in his entire life. Beyond the facade, a watery vista beckoned-a font of strength that ran deep inside him, and always had.

Thoster turned inward and groped for the headwaters of his power to influence kuo-toa, to regenerate, and to recognize aspects of Far Realm influences. He descended to where blood and bone met his heritage.

The flashing light of the Far Manifold behind Thoster cast a shadow of his deeper self as it slid over his merely human-sized shade. The two shapes remained separate, hovering in between possibility and actuality.

He found the lever between what he’d always been, and what lay in his blood. He pulled it.

Green and white brightness exploded inside his stomach, throat, and head. The violence of its detonation was excruciating. Wild, raw, and uncontrollable, it tumbled his consciousness beyond the confines of his flesh for a timeless instant.

He saw his skin, bones, sinews, blood vessels, and beating heart frozen in the light of his scrutiny. Beneath that, he glimpsed another shape, rousing.

Thoster grabbed the shape, and willed it to manifest completely.

He screamed as the pain of the detonating brightness redoubled. Every particle of his existence momentarily disassociated from its neighbor before falling into a new configuration. There was a chance he’d come out of it as just so much red and gray sludge.

Thoster blinked as the pain fell away.

Only a single shadow remained-a hulking entity. At his feet lay a scatter of his clothing: his boots, his sword, his coat, and his hat.

Comprehension dawned on him.

“I am born, at last,” he said. His voice was deeper than it had been. Rougher.

The beholder remained where it had last attacked him. It looked smaller than it had before. Its many eyes were all wider too. It said, “A demon hiding in human flesh?”

“A demon scion, you unlucky bastard,” replied Thoster. “I’m a descendent of Dagon!”

“Dagon-some ancient, watery demon lord?” the beholder said. “Doesn’t matter. What matters is why you’ve come. Are you here to proclaim yourself a servitor of the Sovereignty, and that which is about to unmake the worlds?”

Several aberrations near Thoster turned to regard him. None moved closer, and a couple slid or stepped back a pace. He wondered what he must look like. But raw anger at the beholder’s words made his fingers tingle.

“Your Sovereignty has usurped what ain’t yours to take,” Thoster said. “Kuo-toa were never meant for aboleths and their ilk; Dagon’s claim is older, and deeper. I ain’t here to serve the Sovereignty. I’m here to show you bastard aberrations what for!”

Thoster lurched forward. He was more top-heavy than he had realized, but he managed to leap as he tripped forward. He reached out to grab the beholder. His arms were great masses of scaled green muscle, corded to an almost absurd extent. His hands were huge, and each finger ended in a massive green claw.

The beholder loosed a salvo of multicolored rays. A beam of fire slid across Thoster’s stomach, raising a painful welt. A purplish ray shone in his eyes, but he shook off the confusion. A line of light the color of sand tugged at his consciousness. But he was too angry to sleep.

He crashed into the beholder and bore it to the ground. The beholder bit him. Ichor the color of the sea dripped from the wound.

But he punched his clawed hands deep into the beholder’s sides and squeezed, grabbing shreds of organ and muscle beneath.

The beholder uttered an oddly plaintive wail that grew in volume.

Several more eye rays played up and down Thoster’s scaled length, some cutting terrible fissures in his flesh, others trying their best to fry his mind.

But Thoster would be damned if he was going to release the mewling servitor just because of a little pain.

Uttering a roar so loud he surprised even himself, Thoster exerted the entirety of his strength and yanked.

Everything grew quiet for a moment. Thoster stood and tossed away two limp fragments of beholder.

Thoster looked around. He’d gathered an audience. All were scary, nightmare-inducing monsters. But he was taller than nearly all of them. And, by the sight of his own scaled arms, legs, and torso, he wasn’t too far from being a nightmare-inducing monster himself. He wondered what his face looked like. One thing was certain: he was stronger than before, tougher. And descended from royalty.

Curiosity about his new likeness would have to wait; the aberrant horde drew forward. They knew he didn’t belong here.

He shouted, his fury reborn in an instant. Most of the anger was the power of Dagon in his blood. But some of it was his own wrath at what the creatures represented, and what they wanted to do to Faerun.

But they were all in his way, preventing him from reaching the eladrin noble, Malyanna, the author of the world’s imminent misfortune.

Thoster decided it was she whom he would make pay. It would be even easier to pull an eladrin in two than a beholder. But, first things first. He scooped up his clothing, sword, and hat, and stuffed them into a handy fold of skin running down his torso. Those might be useful later!