A vial of fluid tumbled through the cabin with the rest of her belongings. It was one of the potions Japheth had prepared for her, back when she had first learned of her ability. He’d created the sleeping elixir to help her fall asleep.
The fluid had been responsible for trapping her in dreamform when the Eldest snatched her-
Her head smacked hard against the edge of the bureau, and she saw only white for a moment.
Every part of her body ached with pain. The cabin continued to spin and jerk. She had to get out of there, or she’d die. But even as she spun through the air, a view through the porthole revealed that beyond Green Siren lay an abyss of black space. If she managed to exit her room and the cabinway, she’d probably be flung off the spinning ship.
The purple vial tumbled until it struck the cabin’s far wall, and lodged against a shelf.
She’d never completely forgiven the warlock for how his potion had kept her from escaping the Eldest’s reach. That stuff was a dangerous drug! If she’d drank it before her last visit to the aboleth city, she might have become trapped all over again! It was unthinkable she’d even consider-
The ship slammed her to the floor, and all her breath fled.
“Torm, forgive my stupidity,” she gasped. It was the elixir or death.
She gathered her legs and leaped for the vial.
A package of hardtack struck her temple, and she came down hard on her shoulder. She scrabbled through the loose detritus that had gathered for a heartbeat along the wall that briefly served as the floor.
She plucked the vial from the mess. The cabin shuddered, and suddenly the ceiling was the new floor. She curled into a ball around her prize, and managed to hold onto it even when she hit the ceiling so hard her left arm went numb with the impact. She heard the sound of the porthole shattering, and cold air swirled in.
Anusha pulled the stopper out with her teeth and sucked down the vial’s purplish fluid.
The pain disappeared like a heavy blanket being pulled away. Anusha looked upon her bruised and scraped sleeping body.
She savored her success for a heartbeat, and imagined herself accoutered in her golden panoply. Then the “floor” tilted, threatening to catapult her sleeping body through the gaping porthole.
Anusha intervened. She plucked her body from the air and cradled it in the arms of dream.
The cabin continued to pitch, but Anusha decided to treat the floor as the floor, no matter Green Siren’s orientation.
Items battered her, but her armored dreamform protected her sleeping body.
What in Torm’s name was going on?
She stepped to the porthole and gazed through.
Outside was the void of darkness she’d glimpsed earlier. Broken timbers, flailing crew, and shreds of sail fluttered and fell away into an endless sky.
“Oh gods,” she whispered.
Something large rotated into view as Green Siren continued spinning.
Anusha gasped.
Xxiphu hovered in the darkness. A halo of water and cloud vapor trailed behind the aboleth city, almost as if the city moved at speed through the void. Green Siren was part of that halo.
Anusha remembered Malyanna staring into the Dreamheart and laughing, and the opening in the sky … The ship had been caught up when Xxiphu fell out of the world! The wooden craft was like one of Selune’s Tears, trailing the moon through the night.
Except Green Siren was gradually disintegrating.
Anusha turned away from the desolate view. She walked to her cabin door, her feet steady on the planking despite what gravity wanted. Her body felt as light as a sleeping cat. She shifted her grip, then unlocked the catch with her other hand.
Yeva was in the cabinway.
The iron woman was wedged into a crevice between two stanchions. Part of the ceiling was missing, but Yeva had avoided falling through it. She had one arm hooked around a stanchion, and another around the first mate, Mharsan, who was unconscious.
Anusha willed her dream form visible. “Yeva!” she said. “Are you all right?”
Yeva’s expressionless face whipped around to regard Anusha. “Fires of Tu’narath!” she said. “You’re alive! What happened up there?”
“Malyanna used the Dreamheart. She called a portal, and Xxiphu went through.”
“And so did we. We’re in trouble.”
“Where’s Captain Thoster?”
“Somewhere out on deck, if he was fast enough to grab something. I’ve seen more than a dozen crew flung off since Green Siren began spinning.”
“Are you all right here?”
Yeva snorted. “Until this whole ship comes apart, yes.”
“Then I’m going to find Thoster. The spin seems to be slowing.”
Anusha held her sleeping self tighter and walked to the cabinway’s far end. The hatch was gone, twisted from its hinges. She gazed down the length of the deck.
The mainmast was gone, though loose sails fluttered like white waves across half of the starboard side. What she could see of the remainder of the deck was empty of everything save a litter of detritus that hadn’t yet been flung away, and a few crew clinging to whatever piece of solid railing or trailing rope was nearest at hand.
Thoster stood by the mainmast stump, one hand closed in a deathgrip around a stanchion. His sword was in his other hand, and he was waving it around as if expecting to hold off a hoard of boarders. The captain’s hat was gone. For good, Anusha supposed. The man’s eyes were fixed on something overhead.
Looking up into the void was wholly different than when she’d peered out through the porthole. From the deck, the night seemed to go on forever, in all directions. The barest glints of distant lights showed the space wasn’t absolute. However, the far-off stars didn’t cheer Anusha. Rather, they brought home the magnitude of the gulf through which Green Siren fell. She shivered.
The rotation was definitely slowing. When Xxiphu rotated into view again, it crawled up the horizon formed by the broken deck, rising almost as slowly as a real moon, if a moon could ever look so dreadful.
Colorful flashes, like distant explosions, flared in the darkness beyond Xxiphu. Hints of sinuous bodies flashing away in fire put up the hair on the back of her neck.
Anusha looked back to Thoster. “Hail, Captain!” she cried.
Thoster glanced at her. His scowl lightened for a moment. “You’re a sight for sore eyes,” he said. “I thought the city got you.”
“No … No more than it ‘got’ all of us, anyway,” she said.
“Damn straight,” said Thoster. “We were a little too close when the city plunged into this benighted realm.” The captain made to say more, but concern suddenly sharpened his expression.
“Brace yourself!” he yelled.
“What? I don’t see anything,” Anusha said. “We’ve almost stopped rolling …”
“Remember, I hear Xxiphu’s song,” Thoster said. “It prepares to breach something called the ‘discontinuity’! Be ready.”
“Oh, wonderful,” she said.
How could she brace herself? She was already holding her dreamform in place merely by effort of will. Still … She stepped back into the open cabinway and gripped the door frame with her free hand. Her sleeping body continued to take long, untroubled breaths.
“There!” came Thoster’s voice. He pointed to Xxiphu with the tip of his blade. Beyond the receding city, the blackness wavered, as if it was actually an ebony flag undulating in a night wind.
The city plunged into the face of the rippling field. Green Siren followed.
A pale light stung Anusha’s eyes. A panorama of mist stretched to every horizon. A pale blot of light flared across an alien sky. Monsters flitted around the light like moths around a candle flame.
Then the floor dropped beneath her feet.
The entire ship was falling! Whatever influence had held them in the aboleth city’s sway was concluded. She glimpsed Xxiphu for half a heartbeat as they hurtled downward into the waiting arms of substanceless fog.