We're stopping, Qorra said, and Quenthel knew it to be true.
The sensation of falling had wafted away. It wasn't that they had slowed in their fall, and they certainly hadn't hit bottom, they simply weren't falling anymore.
"Sorry, all," Pharaun apologized, his voice cheerful and bright. "A bit of a rough transition, that one, but you'll forgive my general inexperience with the whole piloting a ship of chaos thing, I'm sure."
Quenthel didn't forgive but also didn't bother to say anything. The ship was perfectly still, as if it had come up on solid ground, and the high priestess risked a glance over the rail.
They hadn't come to rest on the ground, she saw, but had stopped in midair above a rolling landscape of gray cluttered with vaguely translucent silhouettes of trees. The shadowy, batlike things still raced all around them.
"Oh, yes," Pharaun added suddenly, "and don't touch the bats."
Quenthel sighed but never touched a shadow-bat.
Pharaun extended his senses out into the Shadow Deep, using the properties of the ship of chaos in a way that felt natural to one who had become part of the demonic vessel. He did it the same way he would have strained to hear some distant sound.
The Shadow Deep is not unlike your Underdark after all, Aliisza said, and like the Underdark it has its own rules.
Pharaun nodded. He didn't pretend to understand those rules in any but the simplest way. He'd always been smart enough not to linger in the Shadow Deep.
We won't linger now, Aliisza said.
She touched his shoulder, and Pharaun took a deep breath. He was reassured by her touch, and not only for her help navigating and piloting the ship. With Ryld dead, he was alone with a group of drow who'd be as happy to see him dead as not. The alu-fiend might be more enemy than friend, but still Pharaun couldn't help thinking she was the only one he could trust.
Can you feel it? she asked.
Pharaun was momentarily taken aback. He thought she meant—
The gateway, she said. Can you feel it?
There was a lightness in his head and an itch on his right temple that made the ship turn and accelerate. His fingers curled, instinctively gripping the deck.
I feel it, he said. The barrier is thinnest there. The ship will pass through.
Yes,the alu-fiend breathed.
She wrapped an arm around him from behind and pressed into his back. Pharaun's heart beat a little faster, and the wizard was amused with himself. He couldn't see her, but he could feel her, he could smell her, and he could hear her voice echoing in his skull. He liked it.
At Pharaun's unspoken command the ship drifted across vast distances in insubstantial leaps. Like shadow walking, the ship slid across the Plane of Shadow faster than it should have, the distance compressing beneath it.
Will we fall again? Pharaun asked Aliisza as they neared the place where the Shadow Deep gave way directly to the endless expanse of the Astral.
No,she said, it will be different.
It was.
The ship was through in an instant. The darkness of the Shadow Deep with its sky of black and deep gray blazed into a blinding light. Pharaun's eyes clamped shut and were instantly soaked with tears. The ship shuddered. It felt as if the vessel were being battered on its side. Pharaun's breath caught in his chest, and there was a hard pressure there, a tightness. Fear?
Don't be afraid, Aliisza whispered.
Pharaun cringed at the word but had to admit to himself at least that he was afraid.
He blinked his burning eyes open, and his head reeled so he almost fainted. There was such an expanse of nothing on every side of them that he felt too out in the open, too vulnerable, too. . outside to be anything but tense and jumpy.
The sky around them was gray, but it also held what Pharaun could only describe as the essence of light. There was no sun or any other single source of luminescence. The light was simply there, coming from everywhere at once, saturating everything.
Bright streaks of multicolored luminescence rippled across the backdrop of saturated light—brilliant and chaotic aurorae.
The ship rocked and shuddered, and Pharaun tensed again, fully prepared for the thing to shake itself apart. He held his teeth closed, then closed his eyes, and would have closed his ears if he could.
No,Aliisza advised, don't close your eyes. Don't shut yourself off from it.
Pharaun opened his eyes, mentally brushing off the resentment that boiled to the surface. He didn't like being told what to do, even when he knew he needed it.
She squeezed him tighter and whispered in his ear, "Think it. Think the name of it."
It?he thought to her.
Again she whispered with her real voice, her lips so close to his ear Pharaun could feel them brushing against the sensitive skin there: "The Abyss."
The Abyss, he thought. The Abyss.
There it was.
"What is that?" Quenthel asked.
"We're heading right for it," the draegloth said.
Pharaun laughed and moved the ship faster toward the disturbance.
That's it, Aliisza prodded.
They were moving toward a black whirlpool in the sky. It was as big as Sorcere itself, maybe bigger. It was huge. The closer they got to it, the bigger it became, and not only because they were moving closer to it. The thing was actually growing.
"We're not projections here," Valas said. "If we fly into that thing. ."
"We'll end up where we meant to go," Pharaun said.
His own voice sounded strange in his ears, as if he hadn't spoken in ages.
Tell them to hold on again, Aliisza said. They won't need to, but it'll reassure them.
"Hold on," the wizard repeated. "Hold onto something, and hold on tight or you'll be tossed overboard and lost in the limitless expanse of the Astral Plane for all eternity, set adrift for all time to come, never to be seen or heard from again."
Aliisza giggled, quietly in his ear, her breath tickling him.
They made straight for the whirlpool, and when the tip of the bow hit the trailing end of the disturbance, all Hell broke loose.
Literally.
Pharaun couldn't help but scream as the ship was whirled so madly around that his head snapped back and forth. His hands threatened to come away from the deck. Something hit him in the back of the head. Aliisza squeezed him, then let go, then squeezed him again. Pain flared in his legs and side, and he didn't know precisely why. The others were making noises as welclass="underline" screaming, growling, calling out questions he couldn't understand, much less answer.
"This is it," Aliisza shouted into his ear. He still couldn't see her. "This is what you came for. This is where you're going. You brought yourself here, but now it's time for the Abyss to decide if you live to walk its burning expanse. The Abyss will decide if you get what you want."
"What?" Pharaun asked. "What do you mean?"
"The Abyss decides, Pharaun," the alu-demon said, her arms slipping away from him, "not you."
"We're almost there," the wizard said. "I feel it. It'll let us in."
Not me, Aliisza whispered into his mind. I leave you here.
"Why?" he asked, then thought to her, Come with me.
The alu-demon giggled then was gone, and Pharaun screamed again.
Until the roaring of the whirlpool dropped to nothing and his own screaming rattled his eardrums.
The ship stopped spinning but continued to fall, accelerating down and down while Pharaun struggled to regain control. Aliisza was gone, and the subtle help she provided, the extra consciousness at the helm, was gone with her. He tried to think of some spell to cast, but his mind, tied to the ship that was damaged in ways he was only dimly aware of, wouldn't form the list of spells.
The sky had gone red, and there was a sun, but it was huge and dull. The heat was stifling, and Pharaun had trouble drawing a deep breath. Sweat poured from him, stinging his eyes and soaking his forearms.