"The tentacles aren't our concern. What worries me is whether we can kill it before its birthing scream quickens too many of these eggs!"
Then the monster was before them. The mucous haze surrounding it whispered around the women with no apparent effect. Anusha brought her dream sword down at an angle. The creature charged full into the intangible blade, forehead first, oblivious to the weapon's presence.
A burst of blue flame limned the creature. Its highpitched utterance paused briefly before resuming. One of the creature's tentacles fell limp, and one of its eyes dulled and closed. But it kept moving toward Japheth.
Anusha instinctively stepped out of its path to its left, Yeva to its right.
As it swept past, Yeva glared at the monster, her eyes achieving a lethal focus. A barrage of rainbow colors swept across the aboleth. It shuddered and twisted as tears and cuts spontaneously appeared on its skin in a dozen places. Dark blood oozed forth to mix with the aboleth's coat of slime.
The aboleth shuddered to a halt mere paces from where the warlock struggled to regain his feet. It began to flail the space around it with its still-functioning tentacles. The few times one swept through where either she or Yeva stood, the creature shuddered. Its keening continued unabated.
Anusha slashed and hewed at the slick bulk with abandon.
"Be quiet!" she yelled, and cut the beast again. Its maddening scream finally began to gutter. "Anusha!" came Japheth's yell.
She followed the direction of his pointing finger with her gaze, back down the corridor where the aboleth had emerged.
A jelly sac of eggs on the ceiling containing three or four particularly large white orbs was quivering and swinging like a pendulum.
One of the eggs in the mass deflated. A flaccid abolethic bulk slid forth and slumped to the tunnel floor. Then another. And another. Two were nearly as large as the aboleth she and Yeva had just dispatched, and one was only half that big. But the smaller eggs also gave up their progeny, producing toy-size aboleths that plopped directly onto their larger siblings or slid down the walls on either side.
The creatures jerked and shuddered, slowly blinking their newborn eyes. They righted themselves within the corridor, flexing their slug bodies and grabbing with their questing tentacles. They looked like nothing so much as a writhing swarm of worms.
Then each and every one cried out, keening like the first one they'd just slain. The sound nearly dashed Anusha from her dream body. Up and down the corridor, the egg sacks that hadn't reacted to the first aboleth's scream twitched and shuddered.
"Run!" she shrieked. She needn't have said it. Yeva and Japheth were already dashing away up the corridor.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The Year of the Secret (1396 DR) Green Siren, Beneath the Sea of Fallen Stars
Seren entered her cabin, closed the door behind her, and slid the latch. She was alone again. Finally.
Her cabin didn't rate a porthole. Part of the compensation she'd received when Thoster retained her services was a space to call her own. On a ship packed with cargo and crew, privacy was a luxury. She'd argued that if anyone needed time by herself, it was a wizard. Thoster had relented but given her the smallest, meanest cabin on Green Siren. Truth was, she was glad to be without a porthole. A window, even on the sea, would have been one more place the world could spy on her. Even though she no longer did Thoster's bidding, she held on to her room.
With a wave of her hand, she illuminated the confined space, revealing a table and stool, a bunk, and a narrow wardrobe crammed into the far end of the cabin. Scrolls, tomes, charts, and diagrams were heaped on the table. Chalk marked the walls, and dried ink dribbled the floor.
Seren settled on the stool and closed her eyes. She could only stand the company of others so long before she needed to get away. Her basic dislike of people was something she previously hid, but on a ship filled with pirates, no one really cared that she kept to herself. Concealing her distaste for company hadn't been necessary since she'd left the Red Wizards.
She snorted. She hadn't left willingly. She'd been the victim of circumstances beyond her control. How could anyone have predicted the Spellplague would sweep across Faerun when it did? No one could have. But she was being held to account for it regardless.
Seren seemed to have a knack for collecting ungodly powerful enemies. First Szass Tam, then Gethshemeth… and soon enough, probably this Eldest monstrosity Raidon described.
From his place in the circle on deck, the monk had claimed a couple hours of descent lay ahead of Green Siren.
Time enough for her to sneak a nap, she'd thought.
Of course, now she was too keyed up to sleep.
Seren sighed and rose. She turned to the wardrobe and opened it. Her assortment of personal effects hung from the wooden rod or lay folded on the standing closet's single lower shelf. Everything was white, including her spare sari, a long leather coat, a robe, and extra sandals and boots. Everything-except for one heavy crimson robe.
Seren ran her hand along the red robe's dramatically flaring collar. She recalled how much she'd enjoyed wearing the colors of Thay's elite wizard body. People made way for her based solely on her association with the dark mesa. Even other Red Wizards!
The memory of the day she lost everything ambushed her.
They'd been at the zenith of a mountain pass in the Earthfasts, making for Impiltur. The caravan she hired stretched out behind her own wagon, horse-drawn boxes growing progressively smaller down the switchback trail. Each was filled with a portion of the gold taken from the disbanded Red Wizard enclave of Raven's Bluff.
The day was clear but cold. At the top of the pass, she could see for what seemed forever. She imagined the shadowed ridges to the east might be the ramparts of Thay, calling her to a new phase of service.
She was uneasy with her decision, despite her bold pledge and subsequent vicious actions commandeering the treasury. She'd betrayed more than a few acquaintances. Some of them saw Seren's actions as treachery and swore vengeance. All that, and Szass Tam was her new master. He had been Seren's least favor ite zulkir, as she was repulsed by necromancy. But when he seized power in Thay, what choice had she? Become a fugitive like so many others? Give up all she had worked for and achieved?
No.
She had pledged herself to the new order. It was onward, to Thay and hopefully to- The sky flashed.
Seren shaded her eyes and looked up. The sun's normally yellow face was frosted behind a steely sheen. Flares of blue fire ringed it, growing longer every moment Seren watched. The filaments of fire reached toward Faerun, as if eager to embrace the world at long last.
Something slipped effortlessly into Seren's mind and squeezed. She uttered a curse and fell from the seat of her wagon. The impact with the ground wasn't as bad as the pain in her mind.
The Earthfasts shook and the horses reared. Seren rolled into a gully to escape the flashing hooves. But she couldn't escape seeing the wagons lower on the trail pitch over the edge of the trembling precipice.
She blacked out.
When awareness returned, the pain was gone, but so was the treasury-and her magic.
Seren blinked, and she was back in her cabin on Green Siren. The red robe she hadn't worn in eleven years hung before her. She ran her hand down its side, feeling its wellmade weave.
Her past had found her. Red Wizard rebels and probably Thay knew she lived. Morgenthel or other bounty hunters would try to pick up her trail once more. Red Wizards who had a bone to pick with Seren would keep an eye out for her, desiring some measure of payback.
Her plan of remaining beneath her enemies' notice while she recovered a treasure equal to what she'd lost was compromised. At least she'd regained her spells, and then some, in the decade since the catastrophe. And she'd accumulated a tidy sum during that time too. If Raidon was true to his word, the remainder of what she required might finally be hers.