"Listen to me," Cale said to all of them. "I brought us here and I will get us back. I just need some time to figure out-" to figure out what I am, he thought-"to figure out how." He looked at each in turn. "Well enough?"
Jak nodded. Riven said nothing, merely stared at Cale appraisingly. Magadon adjusted his pack and said, "Well enough."
"Now let's get the Nine Hells out of this bog," Cale said.
Jak brightened at that. Magadon grinned.
"Which way?" Jak asked, and held his wand above his head as though it would better pierce the twilight. It did not. "I can't see anything worthwhile in any direction."
Cale looked to Magadon and said, "You're our guide."
Magadon's pale eyes glowed in the twilight.
"I should have charged you more than three hundred gold," he said with a chuckle.
Cale could not quite bring himself to smile in response.
"Which way, Magadon?" Cale asked instead.
Magadon concentrated for a moment, and a nimbus of dim light flared around his head.
"That is north," he said when he opened his eyes, nodding in the direction behind Cale. "As good a direction as any. Follow me, and step where I step until we're clear of the bog."
With that, they geared up and Magadon set off. His long strides devoured the distance. Tedium devoured the hours. More than once Magadon steered them away from a path that ended in a sinkhole or bog pit. Without the psionic woodsman to guide them, Cale had little doubt the swamp would have killed them all.
As they journeyed, Cale glimpsed small, furtive creatures at the edge of his vision, apparently drawn to Jak's light. They always darted away into hidden dens and burrows before Cale could clearly see them. Instead, he caught only flashes of twisted bodies, gangly legs, and malformed heads. He felt their eyes upon him as he passed. Calls like curses, alien screeches, chatters, arid howls sounded in the twilight behind them. With Jak's bluelight wand cutting a dim path through the shadow, Cale imagined they must have stood out like a goblin in a gnome delve.
They walked the hours in silence. Throughout, the darkness was unrelenting. Shadows saturated them, clung to them like oil. Even their clothes seemed to be absorbing the pitch. Once blue cloaks faded to gray, green tunics to black. Moods too went from dark to darker. Cale saw in the transformation of their clothing an uncomfortable metaphor for his soul.
His soul-villendem, in Chondathan. He wondered if the transformation had stripped him of it.
No, he thought, and shook his head. I'm still myself.
But he wasn't himself, and something deep in his consciousness, some black, secret part of his brain, protested against his obstinate refusal to accept the truth. He fought down the feeling and put one foot in front of the other.
Later, Jak slipped beside him and said in a low tone, "I know what you said earlier, Cale, but I think this is worse than anywhere we've ever been. Even worse than when we were in the Abyss. That was evil through and through. You could feel it, so it was easy to keep yourself separate from it. This place, it seeps into your skin. I feel awash in it. It's almost. . ."
"Seductive," Cale finished for him.
Jak looked at him sharply, worry in his eyes.
"I was going to say, 'insidious.'" The halfling touched his arm and added, "Cale-"
"I know."
"Don't get comfortable here," Jak said. "Don't."
"I won't."
But Cale already was comfortable there, and that frightened him.
* * * * *
Events were proceeding as Vhostym had foreseen. With his slaadi about their appointed task in the Underdark, he would hasten the Weave Tap's production of a second seed. For that, he would have to feed the artifact, fertilize it-and the Weave Tap benefited from only specialized kinds of fertilizer.
Just as Shar and Sylune embodied the dual aspect of the primordial universe that had spawned them, just as the Weave and Shadow Weave embodied the dual nature of magic on Toril, the Weave Tap embodied a dichotomous duality. Crafted with Shadow Magic, the Tap nevertheless reached its roots and limbs into both the Weave and the Shadow Weave; it existed simultaneously in both the Prime Material Plane and the Plane of Shadow. The Weave Tap, a living artifact, bridged the two sources of Toril's arcane energy, drawing power from both.
Vhostym found it fascinating, and was mildly chagrined that he had not thought to craft it himself.
To satisfy its dual nature, the Weave Tap required the life-force, the very magical natures, of both fiends and celestials. Vhostym long had kept plenty of the former in his pocket plane as spell component material, and he prepared to procure the first of the latter.
Like many of the chambers that honeycombed the underground realm of his pocket plane, Vhostym's summoning chamber was a spherical cyst of stone with no apparent ingress or egress. Engraved runes traced in platinum and gold covered the walls. A circular slab of polished granite floated in midair in the center of the chamber. Upon its face was etched a thaumaturgic circle.
The chamber was unlit, though Vhostym could see well enough. In fact, the magical darkness in the chamber was so complete that not even magical light sources could penetrate it-a necessary precaution when summoning celestials. Though not even the strongest of the celestials could approach Vhostym in power, their ability to generate and radiate light could prove painful unless Vhostym took precautions.
He floated around the slab, running his long, pale fingers along the etching, examining the lines for imperfections. As expected, he found none.
Vhostym took a moment to prepare a few defensive spells, warding himself against all but the most powerful magic and rendering his body impervious to physical attack. Ready, he moved his hands in complex gestures. Waves of arcane power gathered, went forth from his fingers, and coalesced above the granite slab. The lines of the thaumaturgic circle began to glow a soft, almost imperceptible, yellow.
When the power reached the necessary level, Vhostym spoke aloud an arcane phrase and felt a hole open in the walls between the planes. He called the name of the celestial being he sought to summon.
"Phaedriel," he pronounced.
Vhostym felt his magically augmented voice reach through the planes, find the deva, and try to pull the creature back to him. He felt the celestial's resistance, but it lasted only a moment before being overpowered by the force of Vhostym's calling.
A muted flash of pure white light flared in the midst of the summoning platform, forcing Vhostym to shield his eyes. Had he not prepared a spell ahead of time to mute it, the flash would have bli nded him and charred his skin. When the spots from even that dim light cleared from before his eyes, Vhostym saw that his calling had been successful.
Phaedriel stood on the summoning platform, bound by the lines of power that went up from the floor. The tips of the deva's feathered wings, white and opalescent even in the darkness, touched the edge of the binding. Pale gold skin covered the celestial's perfectly proportioned, well-muscled body. A silver mace, powerfully magical, hung from the deva's belt. Piercing white eyes gazed out from over an aquiline nose and strong jaw. The smell of flowers filled the summoning chamber. The deva surveyed the space.
"What is this plane?" said Phaedriel, in the purest tenor voice that Vhostym had ever heard.
"You are on a plane of my own devising," Vhostym answered.
The celestial made no response, only fixed his eyes on Vhostym. A lesser being would have recoiled at the force emitted by those orbs, but Vhostym answered the deva's stare with one of his own.
"What type of creature are you?" the deva asked at last. "Neither Githyanki nor Githzerai, but... similar."
Vhostym replied, "I am nothing that you have encountered before, celestial. Nor will you encounter my kind again."