Immersed in nothingness, Iahn's consciousness slowly leached away.
He had no limbs to flail, no voice to protest, and no magic to dispense. He was an insect in pitch, and soon he'd be extinguished. A touch jolted the vengeance taker. The single sensation was sufficient for him to find a focus. The sensation grew more pronounced. Something touched his open eyes. He blinked, or he thought he did. Yes… he was on his feet, moving in a daze over some hard surface, but he couldn't see what. Despite his stubborn nature, he allowed himself to be guided forward, into a sudden, blinding light. Before him, in a broad hallway lit with Kiril's blazing sword, stood the swordswoman, the elemental with a tiny dragonet perched on one shoulder, and Warian and his uncle. Ususi pushed him forward. Of the darkness, he saw no sign. Ahead, a bronze-colored iris stood partially dialed open, and additional light streamed through the crack. He turned to look at Ususi and blinked. Her eyes were like twin stars, blue-white and twinkling as if at some great distance. Warian said, "Thank you for saving us from that… that awful blot." The young man's voice was strained and his features pale, as were Zel's, and probably the vengeance taker's as well. The wizard responded as if to some different statement. "My uskura is lost." "You pushed us clear of the darkness," Warian insisted, waving behind him. No evidence of the veil of life-sucking night remained, except in memory. "I didn't push us clear. I saw through the darkness and helped you all do the same. But at what cost, I wonder? My sister may have given up her special sight…" Ususi's eyes, glittering cold and hard, drifted out of focus. "Your sister?" asked Iahn. "You have news of Deep Imaskar?"
"Slaughter walks the streets, she said…" The bronze iris at the end of the hallway spun open. Beyond was a spacious, moon-bright hall, but a human figure just inside the opening partially blocked the view. An icy breeze flowed from the figure, and a black vapor streamed away from its body, tinged with violet light. Iahn recognized the aura of a Pandorym agent. The figure spoke in the vengeance taker's native tongue. "Imaskari scions, if the dark won't have you, I shall." It was Shaddon. Before the figure could unleash its lashing ribbons of murderous darkness, the earth lord's long arm delivered a terrific punch, smashing Shaddon back into the glaring white chamber beyond.
Iahn rushed in. Monolith's blow was mighty, and Shaddon's form smashed against the far side of a great chamber. Many creatures moved about the edges of the room. He understood then why the chamber was called the weapons cache. The vengeance taker's eyes widened. He ran, aiming neither for Shaddon nor the clot of creatures milling through the chamber. He saw something that his training called out for him to seize for himself.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Zel watched the naturally pale, dangerous vengeance taker charge ahead. Zel tightened his grip on the pickaxe and whispered, "So much for common sense." Then Zel ran into the Imperial Weapons Cache.
Others barreled ahead of him. The pallid foreigner had gone first, and the wizard woman dashed after her compatriot. The foul-mouthed elf with the burning sword was only a step behind her. Even his own nephew beat him through the door. Zel's checks flushed, and he asserted, "I'm not afraid!" He yelped when a great stone hand grabbed him. The elemental lord pulled him back and turned him around, looking Zel in the eye. "Stay back, and remember what happens here today. And please guard my little friend." The crystal dragonet on Prince Monolith's shoulder hopped from the elemental to Zel. Zel was surprised to find that the creature weighed practically nothing. The earth lord turned and dashed after the others. The dragonet belled loud and long, but the sounds emerging from the chamber were earsplitting. Zel moved forward tentatively to watch, relieved and ashamed that he had an excuse to remain out of the conflict. The fabled Imaskaran Imperial Weapons Cache was essentially a fat, egg-shaped cavity seemingly wider than the tower's dimension could contain. Ususi's first impression was a cloud-swaddled sky, but the lines of the floor and curving walls and ceiling quickly resolved. Thousands of circles of every size were set into the floor. All were at least three or four feet in diameter, though many were much larger. The circles capped thousands of inset storage cylinders sunk below floor level. The capacity of the chamber's thousands of hidden silos took away Ususi's breath. The caps along the periphery of the great chamber were plain metallic bands, unadorned but for a simple symbol-sword blade, spear, bow, quiver, and so on. The wizard was no tactician, but she supposed there were enough of these mundanely-stamped silos to equip a small army with arms and ammunition, presuming each sunken locker contained what its stamp promised. Toward the middle, intricate mechanical locks adorned the caps. At the hub of the great chamber, elaborate warding glyphs of inlaid Celestial Nadir crystal inscribed the sunken storage cylinders.
Hundreds of protective warding circles were inscribed across the tops of all the innermost silos, some layered over one another, forming a diagram of staggering complexity, not dissimilar to the designs inscribed on the Great Seal back in Deep Imaskar. But a great swath of the interlocking wards and circles was tangled and uneven. Here and there, cylinders stood raised from their compartments, their contents revealed. The wizard saw glittering black swords, slender steel wands, smooth-stocked crossbows, glassy darts filled with phosphorescent pink liquid, scarlet goggles, beetle-black gauntlets, dragonfly blades like the one Iahn carried, and other equipment that reminded Ususi of scuttling insect limbs and carapaces. But most disturbing were the raised cylinders that resembled sarcophagi more than equipment chests.
The sarcophagi were faced with glass. Creatures hung within, in a pale green briny solution, preserved against the long, slow grind of time.
Ususi saw trolls behind the glass windows, demonic hoof-footed humanoids, human-sized eggs the color of flesh, bony shadow efts, mantis-headed insectoids, human-dragon hybrids, and at least one tentacle-faced humanoid with soulless white eyes frozen open in its captivity: a mind flayer of ancient vintage. Several dozen unjacketed canisters yawned, open and drained. The creatures once contained therein, clustered near the room's center, were decanted and active.
Thankfully, the wizard saw no mind flayer lords. Those freed were bad enough. Some were monstrosities she had faced in the caverns below the world. A few she knew through her studies. She recognized trolls, a dozen or more mantis-men. One figure towered over all the others, human in shape, but at least twenty paces tall! This giant's skin was light green, as were its eyes and glittering hair, though it bore a purple crystal on its chest. A storm lord? Here was Shaddon, too, staggering back to his feet, though he seemed damaged from Monolith's bold strike. Her arcane studies were unable to identify all of the monsters. She spotted a free shadow eft! She shuddered, remembering again the sea passage across the Golden Water. Each of the loosed creatures bore a violet-flaring Celestial Nadir crystal, some on cords, others pierced directly into loathsome flesh. The cluster of Pandorym-controlled monsters stood poised and dangerous, guarding that which lay at the cache's center. The top edge of a canister ten paces in diameter peeked just above the floor's surface, like a dais. The canister was only partially unjacketed from its silo. Ususi saw that the mechanical locks that once kept the container secured were only partly engaged. Worse, several lines of protection inlaid with Celestial Nadir crystal across the canister's lid were chipped and broken. The canister wasn't entirely free of its storage silo, and the bulk of it still languished in its cavity. But for the thing sealed within, the slender gap in its cage was enough. A whirling scab of lightlessness, as perfectly black as Ususi's most terrifying childhood dream of the dark, streamed from the narrow gap in the floor. The darkness hovered, straining and pulling, but didn't move more than a few feet from the canister from which it emerged, as if tethered.