The moment one of the man's thrashing arms touched the pod, a shiny tide rushed to cover the crew member's entire body, cutting off his screams. Not even a boot or grasping hand protruded a heartbeat later. The pod lazily resumed its former upright position at the end of its stalk, still thickening and thinning, though perhaps slightly larger than it had been. Other than that, there was no evidence that a man's life had just been snuffed out. Raidon used the Blade Cerulean to cut the strands tangling his legs. He snapped to his feet.
"Cut the stalk," Seren yelled, pointing at the bulb.
Kill the aboleth, Angul urged, pulling him around to face the malevolent watcher.
Raidon charged the aboleth.
It vomited a fist of slime that whined past his head.
His advance was slowed by the rippling grass, which kept tripping him. He managed to avoid most of the blades, but not all. His attack failed several paces short of punching the blade through the aboleth's belly.
Instead, he was forced to use Angul to cut away the sea of entangling, angry blades that writhed around him like a nest of headless hydras.
The aboleth's eyes tracked him. He felt their malign power attempting to burrow into his brain and overwrite it with new thoughts and new goals.
Raidon shook off the influence. His mind was too well schooled to be suborned. Or perhaps it was the Blade Cerulean, who didn't like competitors.
Fending off a tentacle slap with a savage cut from Angul, he advanced once more. He managed to pare away one of the aboleth's tentacles. The creature didn't seem to care that one of its four limbs lay severed and squirming in the grass. It was as if the aboleth had no fear for its own safety.
Not that Angul cared either, for considerations of defense or even caution. By extension, neither did Raidon.
The haze surrounding the creature pulsed, becoming momentarily thick as mud. Then it sleeted everything in glistening slime the color of bilge water and no less smelly. He heard the shouts of his compatriots, caught in the same ooze burst.
Raidon found himself slimed under a layer of hardening muck that sought to immobilize him, making him once again easy prey for the silvery grass.
The monk put his free hand to his chest and summoned energy from the Cerulean Sign. A blaze of pure blue light burst from it. The illumination shattered the hardening shell of slime.
Even as the aboleth tried to blink the afterimage of the cerulean light from its five eyes, Raidon crossed the final distance between them. He slid the entire length of Angul into the aboleth's brain.
The aboleth's death gurgle rattled down the corridor. Raidon pulled Angul free. The blade burned the creature's nasty blood from its length with a sheet of fire.
"Hey, Raidon, some help, eh?"
He turned.
Thoster remained caught in the entangling grass. The privateer was half again as close to the pod as he'd started.
A coating of hardened slime resisted the man's every move. The captain slashed his clicking sword to sever strands of grass, but for every strand he cut, two more twined around him.
Seren had enshrouded herself in a translucent globe of protective spell light. The defensive magic had apparently shielded her from the ooze burst and-so far, at least- resisted the increasingly frantic attempts of the silvery blades to penetrate it. He could hear her chanting the arcane precursors to another spell.
Of the crew, only a single struggling woman remained. Raidon saw it was Mharsan, Thoster's newest first mate.
Blood streaked her legs where the cruel blades cut deep in their attempt to pull her toward a quicksilver embrace.
The bulb now measured more than twice its original diameter. The slow waves washing across its surface continued unabated.
Raidon moved to destroy the pod, but lurched to a stop. The grass had caught him again when he'd stopped to kill the aboleth. He bent, once again bringing Angul to bear.
Seren finished her spell. She lobbed a tiny sphere of pulsating white light through the golden glow of her ward.
The ball traced a perfect arc through the air to meet the pod. As with the crew members, the silvery mass absorbed the light the moment contact was made.
The bulb stopped undulating. It emitted a gasp of intestinal distress from an orifice Raidon couldn't discern.
Then it exploded, bathing the tunnel in a rain of silvery fluid.
"Oh goody, more goo," said Thoster. The blades of grass holding Raidon fell limp. The silvery vegetation lining the passage wilted in a widening ripple. The tinkling of bells ceased, leaving only the sound of the captain's ongoing litany of sarcastic curses and the surviving crew member's hoarse breathing to fill the air.
"The sentry is dead," Raidon said, "as is the aboleth. We should go, before others come to investigate."
Thoster pulled himself to his feet using his sword as a crutch. Drooping filaments of grass loosed their hold on his legs. Then the captain yelped in alarm. A glob of the silvery fluid smoldered on his jacket. The man ripped off the fancy black coat and threw it to the ground. In hardly any time, the entire jacket was consumed by the acidic residue.
Everyone spent a moment looking at their own clothing and skin to make certain no other spatters from the bulb had found them.
Raidon noticed many of the bandages beneath Thoster's torn shirt had been ripped loose in his struggle with the voracious vegetation. What he could see of the man's abdomen and chest, and even upper arms, was covered in grayish green scales. Scales that reminded him of something he'd normally see at the end of a fishing line.
"What is wrong with your skin, Thoster?" said Raidon.
The captain's eyes went wide. He glanced at the wizard and then back at the monk.
Seren said, "He suffers from… a curse. It's something I've been helping him deal with. I'm surprised this is the moment you've chosen to notice our captain's distress. Perhaps you should reconsider your priorities. We just lost three of Green Siren's crew!"
They are unimportant, said Angul.
The half-elf gritted his teeth and waited for a twinge of guilt, but none came. He sheathed his sword. He felt as hollow as ever.
Raidon shook his head and said, "I'm sorry."
Seren's face was tight, as if she wanted to make an issue of Raidon's lack of empathy, but she remained silent.
He turned back to Thoster. "I am sorry, Captain, for the loss of even more of your crew."
The captain grimaced and said, "They'll be missed, aye."
"But," continued Raidon, "why do you have kuo-toa scales covering you? My Sign is tingling ever so slightly at your presence. Why?"
"I… I have a condition," the man finally said. "Seren's stopped its progression, though." The captain lifted his amulet and showed the monk.
Raidon reached out with his mind through the Cerulean Sign.
As before, the overwhelming influence of the surrounding city made it difficult to discern fine details. Still, he was able to see Thoster was lightly touched with an aberrant taint. It wasn't especially strong, but it bore watching. His skill with the Sign wasn't sufficient for him to tell if the amulet in the man's hand was indeed holding the condition in check.
He turned to Seren and said, "Is it a curse? Can't you just remove it?"
The wizard shrugged. She said, "Most times, a curse will melt your skin or make it diseased, or something else vile. Thoster's 'curse' wasn't one he gained recently. It is bred into him, but only recently triggered. It is slowly transforming him into a marine creature."
"A kuo-toa," said Raidon.
Seren said, "Could be. I don't really know the specifics. Nor does he."
The half-elf regarded Thoster. "How do you feel? Any urge to fall in with these aboleths?"