At first, Albric thought it was the blood of his god. It seemed to form on the surface of the black sphere before dripping down in viscous blobs, then pooling together in and around the depression in the floor. It was not blood, Albric realized, but rather some kind of liquid crystal, bending and reflecting the feeble light of the orbs. Streaks of silver writhed among flecks of gold inside the substance, and it pulsed and surged as it gathered together in a thick pool on the floor.
Albric’s eyes found the shard of the Living Gate as the Chained God made his will known. Infused with the substance Tharizdun called the Progenitor, the shard would form a new Living Gate, a portal large and strong enough to shatter the walls of his prison and break his chains forever. Albric began to crawl toward the shard.
But there was another voice in the chamber. “Touch the Voidharrow,” it whispered, and its voice was the voice of the howling wind, the voice that echoed from every surface of the vaulted hall. “Take it into you and let it transform you. It will grant you power beyond your imagining.”
Albric hesitated. Was the whisper another expression of Tharizdun’s will?
While he paused, he saw Haver, Niala, and both sisters scramble to the edge of the viscous pool, reaching hesitant fingers toward the liquid.
“Wait!” he shouted, but the wind stole his voice.
When flesh came close to the liquid, the substance rose to meet it, coiling around fingers, then engulfing hands. Serpents of liquid crystal wound up their arms, and found ears, nostrils, and screaming mouths as entrances to his acolytes’ bodies. The rest of the acolytes looked on, at first in horror, as the bodies of the first four began to change.
Albric snatched the shard of the Living Gate from the floor, then looked up to meet Gharik’s gaze. “Gharik, help me!” he ordered.
Gharik nodded, then crawled over to Albric. “What is the will of the Eye?” he asked.
“He wants us to fuse that substance—the Progenitor—with this shard to make a new Living Gate.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. But what the Eye desires and what the Progenitor wants do not seem to be the same thing. Come with me.”
Albric cradled the shard of the Living Gate under one arm as he crawled awkwardly toward the Progenitor. Gharik followed, but Albric wasn’t sure whether he did so out of obedience or because he’d started listening to the liquid whispers.
Haver—or a creature that had once been Haver—stepped between Albric and the pool. Red crystals jutted from its hulking shoulders, and its arms were as thick as tree trunks. Its face was still mostly Haver’s, contorted in agony as it transformed, becoming something alien and terrible. Just as Albric tensed to fight the creature, it staggered away, racked with the pain of its transformation.
“Gharik, hurry!” Albric shouted. “Take the shard, and touch it to the substance.”
Gharik’s eyes grew wide with fear, but he knew better than to disobey or even question Albric. The shard trembled in his grip as he slowly stretched it toward the Progenitor liquid.
The substance recoiled from the shard, and the whispers in the chamber grew louder, more insistent. “Touch the Voidharrow! Let it change you! Witness the power it grants!”
Jaeran’s dragonborn acolyte, Braghad, was the next to succumb to the whispers. He tried to push Gharik away from the pool, but the big man held his ground and thrust the shard of the Living Gate into the liquid. The shard erupted in brilliant light that cast stark shadows all across the vault. At the same time, a snaky tendril of the substance wound its way up Gharik’s arm and into his mouth. Albric seized the shard from Gharik’s hand and pushed the screaming man away.
Jaeran stood before him then, madness in his eyes. “Let me help you,” he shouted over the echoing whispers.
Albric eyed him, unsure of his intent. “Help me do what?”
“Open the gate! Free the Chained God!”
Albric held out the glowing shard and Jaeran gripped it. The Progenitor substance was crystallizing around it, expanding it, fusing with it. Albric couldn’t tell where the original shard stopped and the hardened Progenitor began, or if they were really just one substance.
Jaeran and Albric gently shaped it as it exploded in size. When it grew large enough, they set it down on the stone floor, and it began to form an arched gateway.
The acolytes—still in the throes of transformation—were scattered throughout the chamber, writhing in pain. Haver, though, seemed to be reaching the final stages of metamorphosis—he stood still, hunched forward with massive claws resting on the ground in front of his feet. His face was no longer recognizable as human, let alone as Haver. As Albric’s eyes rested on him, he writhed in pain and grew visibly larger.
The gate was finished. With one voice, Jaeran and Albric chanted another invocation to Tharizdun, the words forming in Albric’s mind without any conscious effort. The gate opened, and Albric saw an ever-changing landscape on the other side. It was a maddening procession of worlds, the far end of the gate flitting through them so quickly he could barely make out the details of any one: verdant forest to bare desert, rocky coast to mountain peaks, with no sense of reason or pattern.
“We have to focus it,” Jaeran said.
Albric bent his will to the gate, and the flickering landscape slowed ever so slightly. He saw a forbidding city towering over a desolate wasteland, then a city full of graceful towers with a fire-ringed galleon drifting through the sky above it. Faerie lights danced along a wooded seashore.
As he watched, something wrapped around his ankle. It was warm and firm, more like flowing sand than an ooze. Its touch sent tiny pinpricks of pain across his skin as it coiled its way up his leg. He looked down and saw that the Progenitor pool had split into two long tendrils, one of which was writhing up his leg as the other did the same to Jaeran.
Peering around the edge of the gate, he met Jaeran’s gaze and nodded. First things first—they must free the Chained God.
Voidharrow
What has happened?” The Chained God’s form became a dark whirlwind of fury, scattering the Progenitor into crystalline mist. “You betrayed me!”
“Betrayed,” the Progenitor whispered, its echoes surrounding him.
“They would have freed me!”
“They freed us,” the whispers replied. “Now we spread, your will and my substance. The Voidharrow.”
The Chained God began to see. “Like a plague,” he said.
“Plague … A plague …”
“Your substance and my will.”
“Our will.”
The Chained God’s fury diminished, and he reached his thoughts to his old dominion where the Voidharrow had taken root. Yes, his will was present there—the merest echo of his thoughts and desires. It was more of a foothold in the universe he’d left behind than he’d ever had, though.
“It is enough,” he said.
“Like a plague.”
“I hate to interrupt this touching reunion,” Sherinna’s cold voice said, “but you agreed to help me find my companions once we’d found yours.”
Miri released her hold on Demas, and his hands dropped from her back. Miri’s eyes stung as she realized that his half-hearted embrace was the most demonstrative expression of his care for her that he’d ever given. And she’d had warmer embraces from innkeepers. Something in Sherinna’s tone irritated her just enough that she turned her frustration to the eladrin wizard.
“Is that all it is to you?” she said. “An exchange of services?”
“Of course,” Sherinna said. “What else would it be?”
“Aren’t you worried about them?”
“They can take care of themselves.”
Miri couldn’t be sure, but she thought that Sherinna put the slightest emphasis on the word “they”—as if to suggest a contrast between her competent companions and Miri, who had reacted to being separated from her companions by cowering in a temple.