"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.
Just ahead, the tunnel widened into a cavern that overlooked the river before turning sharply right. This gave her two options: she could follow the tunnel, or the river. She ran to the edge of the cavern and peered out, toward the bridge that spanned the river.
What she saw sent a shiver through her.
Ooze after ooze, differentiated from each other only by color, flowed across the bridge to the main part of the Promenade. At first Cavatina thought they were coming from the caverns on the far side of the river, but as she watched, a bulge formed on one of the three stone columns that supported the ceiling at the far side of the bridge: another ooze. As it plopped to the ground, quivering, another slime bulged out of the column. It was as if the stone wept slimy tears.
That column must be the portal Karas had led the fanatics through. She wondered how the Nightshadow fared-if he were any closer to the ruined temple than she was. No wonder he'd been so shaken; unleashing this horror on the Promenade would have driven anyone to tears.
The voice of Erelda, Rylla's second in command, sounded in Cavatina's mind. Protectors! Fall back on the Cavern of Song. The oozes are converging upon it!
Cavatina's heart pounded as she realized the implications. Oozes were near-mindless things, driven by basic instincts like hunger-or the need to draw closer to their god. She could think of only one reason for them to converge upon the Cavern of Song: to reach the Pit. Had the fanatics already succeeded in wrenching open the planar breach?
The seals, Cavatina sent back. Are they still intact?
Erelda's response came a moment later. The Mound is untouched. The seals are in place.
Cavatina sighed in relief. There's a planar breach at the bottom of the Pit, she warned Erelda. If the seals are destroyed…
They won't be. By sword or song, we'll do whatever it takes to prevent that.
Cavatina heard a sound behind her: another ooze, headed her way. She debated which way to go. The tunnel she'd been following was the most direct route to the ruined temple, yet its narrowness would make it easy for the oozes to block her way.
She decided to swim, instead.
She sheathed her sword-she needed at least one hand free to swim-and dived into the water, the scepter held out in front of her. The shock of hitting cold water made her sputter as she surfaced, but a quick prayer blunted the worst of the cold. As the current moved her to the bridge, she sang a hymn that rendered her invisible. It wouldn't fool the oozes-they'd sense her footfalls the moment she climbed from the water. But it would conceal her from any fanatics who might be nearby.
As if on cue, a drow tumbled out of the portal column. Even from this distance, Cavatina could see the eye symbol on the front of his tabard. As he stood, another of Ghaunadaur's fanatics emerged from the portal. Then a third, and a fourth. They stood in a group as the first one pointed downriver-away from Cavatina, and away from the ruined temple.
The bridge loomed, cutting off her view. Cavatina swam to the wall on the far side of the river from the fanatics. Above her was a cavern mouth. At the back of that cavern, down a short corridor, was a door leading to the ruined temple. If she could drive the oozes back, using the blast scepter, she might reach it.
She climbed.
Halfway up, she glanced over her shoulder to see where the fanatics had gone. She couldn't spot them. She'd have to be wary, in case they'd crossed to this side of the bridge.
As soon as she reached the ledge, she used the blast scepter to drive the oozes back from the cavern, then heaved herself up onto its acid-slick floor. Additional blasts from the scepter kept the oozes at bay. They retreated to the left and right, revealing the corridor that led to the ruined temple.