"Gethshemeth!" Anusha said. "The kraken is here?" "Apparently so."
"Well, it doesn't matter, I hope. Free us and we can all escape this monstrous city."
Japheth's stained gaze was his only response.
Anusha said, "Are you well? Doesn't your dust allow you to see the unseen? I've consciously rendered myself visible so you can see me. Yeva remains a dream figment. But why can't you see her? Your eyes are as red as I've ever seen them."
"I haven't taken a grain in several hours. My eyes are red with the symptoms of too much dust taken too long."
"But doesn't your pact protect you?"
"My pact is shattered. My powers are gone. Soon enough, I'll reach the end of the crimson road with no hope of return."
"What? I don't understand…"
"Behroun finally shattered my pact stone. All the extra strength I had from the Lord of Bats, as well as all the abilities granted by our pact, returned to him. I've got nothing left except for this cloak. My spells and rituals… they're gone. And with them the protection the Lord of Bats granted me from my addiction to the dust."
Anusha put a hand to her mouth. Japheth's claims seemed like some cruel joke, not the truth.
Yeva said, "So… you can't free us or yourself from Xxiphu, and you're succumbing to some lethal drug. Is that right?"
"Yes," replied Japheth. "But… I have some time before that happens."
"There must be something you can do," Anusha pleaded. "You swore a pact to the Lord of Bats for power.
What about those other creatures you learned about in that old Candlekeep tome? Swear a pact to one of them!"
Japheth began to shake his head, then paused. His pose grew thoughtful, even as a minor tremor in his hands gave the lie to his exterior calm.
"What? Is that possible?" Anusha asked. She hated the desperate sound in her voice.
Anusha noticed a low hum growing louder. She realized she'd been hearing it for some time. Now it swelled, a thunderous noise like subterranean waters rushing just beneath their feet.
The ice sheet crusting the wall behind them cracked. Splinters, of ice calved off but turned to glowing steam before they struck the floor. Several entombed dreams dropped free.
Two were filthy humanoids wearing uncured animal skins for clothing. They lay gasping on the tunnel floor, their eyes rolling in terror. Another creature slid down the wall near them, its shape at first hidden by a billow of steam. When the mist of the evaporating ice swirled away up the tunnel, the creature was revealed as a dark — skinned female elf with hair the color of bleached bone. Her lower body was like a huge spider. The woman-
some sort of drow? — loosed a full-throated bellow of rage.
"What is it?" said Japheth, looking around in bewilderment. "I can't see what made that sound."
"Some sort of drow… thing!" said Anusha. "And two savages."
Japheth's cloak flared and enveloped her.
She found herself and Japheth standing several yards farther from the disintegrating ice. Seeing the rictus of hate on the drow's face, she swallowed her protest. Instead, she raised her sword.
The two grimy humanoids tried to scramble away from the drow thing's stamping spider legs, but an arachnid foot, tipped with an ebony spike, skewered one through the chest. He was pinned to the floor. His confused, forlorn cry faded with his life.
Japheth extended his arms as if trying to find a wall in the dark. His head swiveled as he tried to locate the source of the sounds. "The drow monster killed a savage, and now it's going after the other one," whispered Anusha. "Let's go this way-"
Then the drow and the remaining humanoid screamed. The sound conveyed horror that outstripped the earlier cry of the one the drow had stabbed. They screamed for their eternal souls.
Both melted into so much swirling steam, just as the ice that had entombed them had. The mist spun away up the tunnel as if being drawn by a mighty vortex.
Yeva's eyes widened. She stumbled away from the swirling steam and stood so her shoulder touched Anusha's.
She was breathing heavily.
"Now what?" Japheth said.
"It's over-the creatures were never real. They unraveled and were drawn away."
They stood silently a moment, eyes riveted to the remaining ice that still looked solid. Anusha wondered how long it would remain so.
"The Eldest's awakening continues, I think," said Yeva. "Its memories and the dreams captured in them are being drawn back to it as its consciousness reassembles."
"Bane's bloody boots," said Japheth. His arm had found its way around Anusha in a protective embrace. Anusha was surprised-she'd subconsciously willed her pauldrons solid enough to give Japheth's arm purchase. It was only an illusion that he could offer physical security, but leaning into him, she realized it was an illusion she appreciated.
"That would be my fate, if not for Anusha," Yeva said, pointing to where the released memories had screamed and dissipated. "And it may still be."
A shiver vibrated through Japheth and into Anusha.
"Are you all right?" she asked, not knowing what else to say.
"At this very moment? Yes, I am," he said. "I can feel you shaking."
He let his arm drop and said, "It's a symptom of my withdrawal. Without my pact to hold it in check, the consequences of too much traveler's dust are coming to a head."
"How long until you succumb?" said Yeva.
"A few days, maybe a tenday…"
Anusha wondered which would happen first, Japheth falling to his addiction or she and Yeva to the Eldest's unremitting wakening.
The thundering, echoing thrum of rushing water fell away to a whisper, still present only because they now recognized it. In the stillness, a different noise became audible-a sucking, sliding sound issuing from the passage below. All turned to see. The faintest glimmer of purple light reflected on the slick sides of a cluster of aboleth eggs down where the tunnel bowed out of sight.
"A lamplighter's coming," Yeva hissed.
A bluish aboleth rounded the corner, sliding forward on a thin layer of slime. It moved until it reached a stubby obelisk. It touched a tentacle-fin to the obelisk's top, and another purple flame blossomed.
The creature slid around the protuberance and advanced toward them. Everyone took a step back.
Anusha had made herself visible so Japheth could see her, so she knew the creature could see her too. She called her sword and set it aglow with golden light. She raised it, imagining its blaze as bright as the sun.
The aboleth stopped dead in the tunnel. Its three eyes blinked in unsynchronized rhythm. Two eyes swiveled to fix on her, and one stared at Japheth.
Japheth spoke three syllables and thrust his hands forward. Except for the way his fingers shook like the gnarled digits of an old man, nothing happened.
The aboleth's T-shaped mouth opened and it made noises like the sound boots make when walking through mud. Yeva stiffened on hearing the sloshing, sucking noises as if she understand their meaning.
Japheth dropped his hands and shook his head, confused and miserable. "I… I must find-"
The warlock's foot caught a ridge in the floor and he fell over backward.
The monster rushed forward. Its tentacles lashed across the width of the corridor. Its tri-slit mouth gaped wider, and the sucking sounds transformed into a high-pitched keening. The air around the charging monster churned with a fine mist of slime. Anusha interposed herself between the creature and Japheth. Seizing every advantage, she let go her visibility to waking creatures. She recalled how she'd used her sword against the water-wrinkled hag back on Green Siren and against the black wyrm Scathrys on the kraken's island.
Yeva lurched ahead of the advancing creature until she came even with Anusha. It was obvious the aboleth couldn't see the woman. Anusha whispered, "Remember, it can't hurt us with a merely physical attack."