CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The Year of the Secret (1396 DR), Xxiphu
Anusha's feet lost contact with the balcony. Someone was screaming. She realized it was herself. Terror ruled her.
Her thoughts loosened and evaporated like dew in the morning sun. Anusha's form too, starting with the golden armor, began to unravel into a mist of nothing.
A hand found hers and squeezed. Anusha grasped back with desperate strength. It was an instinctual response, her identity was peeling away, and-with it-reason. Horrified, she was aware of each memory as it smoked up and away toward a waking monstrosity hungry for minds.
Yeva jerked her down, off the balcony and once more into the slimed tunnels of brooding Xxiphu.
The moment she passed the threshold, Anusha's dream form solidified. She gasped, Tin Anusha!" She'd nearly forgotten. Yeva dragged her another twenty or so paces down the tunnel, away from the balcony exit.
Moisture filled Anusha's eyes. Dream tears, anyhow, as understanding washed over her at how narrowly she'd just escaped her end. She'd almost awakened from her dream. But the focus of her mind was now centered on the Eldest instead of her physical body or even the center of the orrery below. Waking would entail her mind and soul being eaten by and incorporated into an ancient horror. She'd have been consumed, gone forever.
Her situation was unbelievable. She was still alive, but how was she going to escape? Anusha couldn't leave the cursed city. If she did, she would start to wake up again. She couldn't stay either. Sooner or later one of the aboleths capable of seeing her would find her. Or the Eldest would fully rouse and call her to itself in an instant.
Tm doomed," she whispered from where she lay on the tunnel floor.
Yeva shrugged and said, "We're all doomed. Some of us just struggle at the end of fate's thread longer and harder than others before it is yanked. Beyond that, eternal nonexistence is everyone's destiny."
Anusha shook her head, gazing out through the false hope the tunnel exit offered. "I don't think that's true."
Yeva said, "What else, then?"
"When we die, we go to a better place." The yellow-hued woman said, "Many things are possible."
Anusha nearly screamed. "But I'll be denied finding that out if the godsdamned monster on top of this godsdamned city eats my soul!"
Yeva blinked, then said, "True. The same holds true for me. If your mind falters, my mind dies too. I haven't even the hope of a body to return to. A moment ago, before I pulled you back, I faded too."
Anusha wanted to throw herself down and give up. Or run in a random direction screaming away her concerns and sanity in a blind panic. If her fate was death, it would be so much easier to get it over with.
A deeper, dispassionate part of her knew she wouldn't do any of those things. There was no one to surrender to.
That same, stark knowing reminded Anusha that giving in to fright was guaranteed not to lead to a happy outcome. She wouldn't consciously betray herself so. And it wouldn't be dignified!
She half smiled at herself and felt better for it. She said, "Thank you for pulling me back, Yeva. You did save me. Sorry to fall apart like this."
"I reacted very the same earlier, remember? You calmed me. I'm glad to return the favor."
Anusha replied, "Maybe I should-"
Something fiery and swift passed the balcony, sweeping highlights of orange and yellow illumination down the tunnel. Anusha had the distinct impression the object she'd glimpsed possessed wings of molten fire.
*****
Mapathious drew near the end of its journey and, with it, the term of its current contract. The unstable passage it traveled, composed of briefly unraveled planes and stretched reality, began to fray. The ring on the angel's finger pointed to a great cavity in the earth. The hollow vault was many miles deeper than any other subterranean passage it had ever visited. Mapathious was intrigued.
The angel sheathed its sword. The interdimensional tunnel collapsed. Mapathious flashed into the cavern whose lower third was filled with an ancient sea. An obelisk was caught in the space like a spike hammered askew. A frieze writhed on the age-worn exterior. The inscriptions shifted and changed even as Mapathious drew closer. The angel recognized the style to be similar to those of its order, and it nearly dropped its burden in realization. Its earlier fear was prophetic.
This was a fragment of the Citadel of the Outer Void. A fragment lying below the world like a seed waiting to germinate. By the way the exterior images crawled as if half alive, the angel guessed the seed was sprouting.
The ring guiding Mapathious's exploration vibrated with proximity. She to whom it was connected lay within one of the balcony-like cavities along the obelisk's side. The angel altered its course.
It would drop the trek bell upon that very balcony. That would conclude the terms of the expedition. Then it would flee back to the higher domains, where it would warn its order of Xxiphu's existence.
Mapathious passed the balcony once, bleeding off velocity with its wings open wide. As it circled back to drop the bell on the narrow ledge on the obelisk's vast face, something emerged from the ancient sea far below.
Something big, with too many arms by far.
*****
The curved interior of the bell tilted and bucked without warning. Japheth clutched for a handle but banged his hand instead. A massive jolt threw him off the bench. The warlock's vision skewed sideways, and his head rapped against something unyielding. Stars exploded and his body went limp. He fell out of the opening in the bottom of the trek bell.
Smears of white light resolved, showing that he lay on a stone balcony. He was grateful not to be falling through a planar vortex.
A crash and a thump pulled his head to the left. The bell he'd been riding in was fetched up against a stone archway. Cracked pieces of the arch rained down. An odd luminescence glowed in the passage beyond the arch, though the trek bell obscured half of the opening.
A recent dose of traveler's dust yet hazed Japheth's perceptions. Plus his head rang with pain from his violent introduction to the floor. He tried to piece together the events that led to him lying limp and dazed there, wherever "there" was…
A shout jerked Japheth's attention in the opposite direction. The warlock saw that if he'd landed a few feet more to his right, he'd have fallen off the balcony into a vast cavern partly drowned in water black as tar. Nausea added its own sickly note to the pain in his head and the blurred confusion from his drug. A light flared below, and with it another shout, this one a cry of challenge. Japheth saw a creature with burning wings and sword.
"The angel of exploration," he breathed. It all came back to him. Anusha, the Lord of Bats, the journey via the trek bell down to Xxiphu… That must be where I am now, he thought. Japheth struggled to his hands and knees to get a better vantage on Mapathious.
The angel's wings worked frantically, but something held it in place. Its sword fell again and again on a length of black tentacle that reached up from the darkness of the ancient waters. Tracing the tentacle down to its source, he saw that it emerged from a nest of at least a dozen more slithering arms reaching upward. Hideous eyes glared upward too.
"Gethshemeth!" hissed the warlock. Japheth knew with drugged certainty what and who the creature was holding the angel. It was the great kraken from whom he'd stolen the Dreamheart. The Dreamheart that lay nestled somewhere within his cloak's extra dimensions.
Japheth rolled away from the edge, hoping the great kraken was too far away and so distracted by the angel that it hadn't noticed him. The warlock briefly considered helping Mapathious with a curse or two but thought better of it. He'd have to expend power to descend to the level of the fight. Gethshemeth had nearly won the last time Japheth faced it, and he'd had the aid of several more allies then. Japheth was in Xxiphu to save somebody, but it wasn't the angel.