Unlike before, it functioned properly and pulled him through darkness. Japheth stepped forward onto the top of the stump, only a dozen paces from the eladrin.
The tentacled corpse had lapsed back into solid immobility and Malyanna had arranged the grotesque sculpture on a conjured sledge of silvery light. She was pulling the conveyance effortlessly, following her dark hound down a lane of shadow. Taal brought up the rear.
Japheth lifted his rod and loosed a blast of eldritch fire. He aimed at the sledge, but the enemy monk interceded. Taal flinched at the impact, but failed to fall.
Malyanna glanced around and sneered at Japheth. She made a clawing gesture in the air. He heard a sound like parchment tearing, but couldn’t discern where it came from.
Raidon crested the side of the stump and launched himself across the uneven petrified wood. He drew Angul as he charged forward. The blade screamed in triumph as the air kindled cerulean fire on its greedy edge.
Darkness closed in behind Malyanna.
“Face me!” yelled the half-elf.
Japheth reached for the knowledge bequeathed by his pact. Maybe if he could disperse the shadows used by the hound quickly enough …
He channeled the fire of Ulban. A blaze of blue-white fire streamed from his fingers and rent the shade that sought to steal away his foes. The light hurt his eyes, making him squint. It burrowed in after Malyanna, Taal, and her silvery sledge, but darkness won. The light went out.
They were gone.
The sound of tearing parchment grew louder. The empty space in front of Raidon rippled like distortions at the bottom of a water glass. A hulking red something emerged from the wavering light and threw itself into the monk’s path.
Raidon dived beneath the creature’s arms and rolled, holding Angul to one side to avoid snagging the blade on the irregular ground.
The thing moved as fast as the half-elf, stamping down. It trapped the monk beneath a giant hooflike foot. Japheth heard bones crunch.
Raidon swept Angul around and up. The blade sheared through the creature’s calf, severing half the hoof. The thing screamed, but in redoubled fury, not pain.
Japheth realized the vaguely manlike horror was red because it was skinless. Its muscles, raw and oozing ruby-bright blood, slid over each other like a disturbed nest of snakes. A prickle on Japheth’s skin told him what he could have guessed: the foul thing was a spawn of Malyanna’s twisted star pact.
The warlock raised his rod. A snaking strand of golden light lanced the creature’s oozing chest.
Its eyes darted to meet Japheth’s. It stumbled, its rage suddenly turned to confusion. It took a step backward, removing its weight from the half-elf. Taking instant advantage of the creature’s distraction, Raidon spun up off the ground as if caught by a whirlwind. Angul, still held straight out from the monk’s body, cleaved the creature’s skull in two.
Japheth turned to regard the dimness where the eladrin had escaped, but no-the shadow lane was rolled up and gone. Japheth, Raidon, and a slowly liquefying skinless corpse were all that remained beneath a starless sky.
Raidon held Angul at full extension, its blade pointed to the empty heavens. A wave of healing energy surged from the sword’s hilt, straightening the bones of his leg and knitting his skin where the aberrant skinless creature had stomped on him. The feeling, like hot wires being pulled through his flesh, was worse than the original injury. He ignored the pain, just as he ignored the blade’s insistence he stick it point first into the nearby warlock.
This one’s soul, imparted Angul, is entangled with the same putrid filth as the creature who lies melting at your feet. Why not-
The half-elf plunged Angul into its sheath instead.
Lightness went out of him, and clarity of purpose. He wanted to sag, but his trained muscle memory kept him upright.
Then again … He was surprised the cavity in his well-being wasn’t as wide as he’d expected. His mind didn’t instantly slide back into the sucking pit of despair where he’d spent most of his time lately. Sure, he could feel the black mood waiting to claim him, but … He breathed deeply of the cool air.
Despite everything, something of the atmosphere of the dying demiplane was a balm to his ragged spirit.
Raidon touched the design on his chest, the stylized tree, and wondered if the stump upon which he stood was related.
Of course, it must be. If so, it was dead, like the citadel of Stardeep crushed beneath the weighty hill and shifting realities.
Shouldn’t that be a cause for despair?
Maybe. But it was also a clear demarcation of an ending. And there was peace to be had in endings.
The spellscar held the essence of a Cerulean Seal, a gift from his vanished mother. A gift that had brought him here long before in search of her. Though he’d never found her, he’d discovered something of her history. And her name: Erunyauve.
And he was back, for the very last time, he knew. When Raidon had witnessed the great tree break apart on their arrival, something in him recognized a sort of cosmic symbolism. In endings, new beginnings were born.
“Raidon?” said the warlock.
Japheth stood near the center of the stump. The man’s expression was tight. The warlock apparently felt more put out by events than Raidon did.
“Yes?” the monk replied.
“They got the Key of Stars. Did you see?”
“I was fighting a hound that used shadow more skillfully even than you; I was preoccupied.”
“Malyanna pulled a petrified thing-half man, half monster-out of the tree. It was dead, but she animated it long enough to tell her it had what she wanted-a Key of Stars. That’s why she took the corpse with her when she left.”
“If that’s true,” said Raidon, “then the petrified corpse must have been the Traitor’s. Stardeep was built to contain him, lest he raise Xxiphu and usher in the age of the Abolethic Sovereignty.”
“Hmm.”
Raidon sighed. “I gave much, once, to see him contained,” he said. “All my effort was for naught.”
“But he never escaped … This tree caught him,” said Japheth.
“Which is perhaps why the Sovereignty remains contained in a single city of sleepy monsters,” replied Raidon. “But Malyanna retrieved the Traitor and his Key. The full power of the Sovereignty may soon wash across Toril, and beyond.”
The warlock scowled. “You don’t seem particularly perturbed by that thought,” he said.
Raidon smiled. Some of Angul’s lucidity returned to him, but it wasn’t the artificial clarity of the blade; it sprang from somewhere inside his own heart.
“What is, is,” the monk said.
“You’re saying we should give up?” asked Jephath.
“No. I’m saying that, here on the precipice of all things … I will make my own choices; I will not bow to the obligations of my past failures, or the manic purpose of a sentient blade.”
“You sound no less crazy than before, my friend,” the warlock said, studying him as if looking for signs of mental instability. Raidon didn’t blame him.
“In any event, it’s time to leave this cemetery plane, and seek our friends,” the monk said. “We should be after Malyanna before she prizes the Key loose from the Traitor’s petrified hands.”
“Listen, did you see who I was talking to before you ran up?” said Jephath.
“Yes-I assumed he was a servitor of Malyanna, and that you’d ensorcelled him,” replied Raidon.
“No. Well, yes, he serves the eladrin, but I didn’t manage to tag him with a spell. He got the drop on me. Funny thing was that once he had me where he wanted me, he stopped to warn me off instead of attack me.”
“He didn’t want to take the time to dispatch you?”
“Maybe, though he seemed a little too forthcoming. I know where Malyanna is going-we won’t have to resort to tracking her with my star pact.”
“Where?”