Japheth finally managed to get his free hand on the animate statue. With the last breath that remained in his contracted lungs, he uttered the Blight of Writhing Shadow.
The swarming witchlights dimmed as tissue-thin streamers of black fog issued from the ground. The darkness wrapped the effigy's legs in semisolid bands of sinuous force.
The creature tried to step out of the shadow that clutched at it, but found itself caught in slicing, cold darkness. Shuddering, it redoubled its effort to escape. Simultaneously, the pressure the thing exerted on him noticeably eased. Japheth gasped, drawing new air into his aching lungs. In another few moments he would have blacked out.
Thoster yelled, "Can you wriggle free, warlock? I don't want to strike again what might be an idol to whom I pray for calm seas!"
At the sound of his voice, the eidolon stopped struggling. Its empty rune face seemed to ascertain Thoster's position despite its lack of eyes, ears, and nose. Simultaneously, Japheth smelled a rank odor of rotting fish and something far worse, like the smell of shadows decaying.
Thoster blanched but shook his head. He said, "Begad! That ain't the Sea Mother!"
The rune on the idol's face sprayed red water. The fluid arced through the air, curving up and over the captain's retreating form. Even as the wave's leading edge was about to strike the damp ground, it solidified. The captain was gone. What remained was a compact coral dome, on which runes were scribed. Japheth could read these runes, for they were in Common. The words read, "Captain Aulruick Thoster. Preserved for sacrifice 1396."
The captain's shocking entombment jolted the warlock into a frenzy. He writhed without regard to how he might hurt himself against the hard stone-
Before he quite realized he was free, he struck the ground, turning his ankle. He didn't pause to examine it; as soon as he hit the floor he called on his cloak to transfer him as far as it could…
Japheth was spit from the discontinuity of his cloak some fifteen paces behind the animate statue. For the moment, it couldn't see him.
Its non-gaze swept to the left, stopping at Seren. She screamed, "You'll not have me, stoneborn!" and released a torrent of electricity. The jagged white gout carved great smoking craters in the idol's rock carapace.
The light of the wizard's electrical attack was brighter than the floating witchlights. So bright that Japheth glimpsed something moving up and behind them. Something vast. In the shadows of the great cavern, many sinuous arms fluttered and coiled, each longer than the Green Siren's deck. One clutched a head-sized orb of stone. The long arms all emerged from a fleshy cylindrical mantle, from which two white eyes burned with hate. Each time the great arms moved, the animate statue rocked and shifted.
Nausea roiled Japheth's guts and his breath caught. Gethshemeth.
"Seren! The eidolon is not the true threat! The great kraken is in here with us! The statue is its puppet!"
The wizard glanced away from the idol, and saw in the fading light of her final blast what Japheth described.
Even as her mouth opened, in dawning surprise, the eidolon sprayed another gout of seawater. Seren tried to evade and failed. Where the wizard had stood was a small obelisk labeled, "Seren Juramot. Preserved for sacrifice 1396."
Japheth mentally reviewed his options, even as he sidled away from the idol and from the darkness behind it that hid Gethshemeth.
He could channel arcane might wrested from primeval entities. He could commune with infernal intelligences and fey spirits, scour enemies with potent blasts of eldritch power, and bedevil them with compelling curses. While he wore the Lord of Bats's cloak, all his abilities were redoubled, at least. But even with all his advantages, he knew he could not defeat a great kraken and its eidolon ally alone. Especially a great kraken whose own power was magnified in some unholy way by the enigmatic relic the ex-whip had called the Dreamheart.
On the other hand, he would certainly die if he put his back to the threat. He stopped. Japheth squared his shoulders and turned to fully face the idol, and yes, the hints of swift movement just visible behind and above the animate statue. His hands came up, and from his lips leaped words that were transformed into a golden mist. A great cloud of shining, yellow haze billowed forward, bypassing the unthinking eidolon, expanding in size even as its interior light began to more fully illuminate the great kraken beyond. For the first time, Japheth realized how strange it was that the creature seemed completely at ease in open air. Was that ability to transcend water an effect of the Dreamheart, as Nogah had suggested?
The haze enveloped the massive squid. Japheth continued uttering the syllables that fed the spell, giving it the power to plunge Gethshemeth into a waking dream of eldritch beauty and illusion.
The haze was having an effect! Or, was it? Wait- The idol's rune flashed like a star. Water sprayed through air toward the warlock. Drops of the transformative moisture speckled Japheth's upturned face and unprotected hands.
His spell was ripped from him. A cold tide overtook him, and his body was locked in a vault of stone.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The Year of the Secret (1396 DR) Plague-wrought Land, Vilhon Wilds
Blue, green, and gold streaked the ground beneath Raidon's feet, as if some god had knocked over creation's easel, spilling change over the world. The paint still ran, congealing and mixing to form ever stranger colors and textures.
The air was a haze of wavering orange and sapphire, thick with the scent of jasmine and licorice. He could hardly make out his hand before his face. It was as though he walked through the base of a heatless, if pleasant-smelling, flame. Raidon wondered if the dancing color was the spellplague itself, or merely a telltale by-product of the infection that writhed below the earth. Thankfully, he showed no signs of illness or dissolution… unlike Hadyn. The avatar of Grandmother Ash guided him forward through the brilliant murk by song. Her voice was a wind whistling through a forest of pines, leading him. His feet found solid ground with each step. The woman-like being of bark, leaves, and root disdained walking. Instead, she grew into each new point on the landscape she desired to visit.
Her latest incarnation came clear from the burning haze as he approached. With each new manifestation, her precise configuration of flowers, thorns, roots, and bark differed slightly.
As her eyes found his, she ceased her guiding song. This time, her eyes appeared as two blooming irises.
Raidon asked, "Do you send rootlets burrowing ahead each time you rise up?"
The avatar craned her head to one side. She said, "Why send new shoots if my root system already lies beneath all in the Plague-wrought Land?"
"Ah." Raidon wondered if Grandmother Ash was being truthful about the extent of her growth. If so, her real size, including all the woody growth below the earth, was something he couldn't quite imagine.
The avatar continued to stare at him. She said, "That is strange."
"What?" Had he become infected and didn't realize it? He quickly checked his hands, arms, and legs.
"I sense two entities inhabiting your fleshy form, where before I detected only one. I am concerned."
"Well met," came a voice. Cynosure's voice. Raidon breathed easier.
"Worry not, avatar," explained Raidon. "You sense the presence of my friend, Cynosure. I mentioned him when we first met. Cynosure, where have you been?"