Zaltys gasped, and her fingers let go of the bowstring without her volition. The shot was spoiled, she was sure, but the arrow flew straight, flickering out of sight when an armless derro spurting blood from his wounds stumbled into its path, and reappearing on the other side of the obstruction. The crystalline arrowhead hit Iraska dead in the center of her chest, knocking the old yuan-ti onto her back among the mushrooms. The moment the arrow struck the Slime King, the phantasmal bahannoth that surrounded her like a foul aura writhed wildly, screamed, and disappeared.
Zaltys rapidly used up the rest of her arrows, loosing them almost casually at the surviving derro. She used the two with magical arrowheads too, and so one of the derro burned, and one turned to stone, but she didn’t pay much attention. Her great-great-grandmother or aunt or whatever she might have been was dead. The rest was just mopping up. The last few derro broke and tried to run back to the settlement, but the yuan-ti slaves chose that moment to act, surging forward with their clubs and taking them from behind, swinging wildly but effectively. Zaltys winced. They were taking out the frustrations of long captivity on their oppressors, she understood that, but still, attacking fleeing enemies seemed like poor form.
Julen touched her shoulder. “Are you all right?” he said.
“I am. I don’t know about Krailash.” Alaia was kneeling beside the fallen dragonborn, and Julen and Zaltys hurried to her side.
“I can’t understand you,” Alaia was saying. “Krailash, I’m sorry, I’m trying, but your jaw, it was broken on the wall, I can’t-”
“Voo. Geen. Ortals.” Krailash’s face was smashed, and he was trying to stand up, with Alaia doing her best to hold him down. The fact that she, a hundred-and-ten-pound human, managed to hold a three-hundred-pound dragonborn down suggested his injuries were grave.
“Mother, heal him, please,” Zaltys said, “he’s suffering.”
She shook her head. “I can’t, Zaltys, I wish I could. My powers have, ah … It’s complicated. If we can get him to the surface-”
“Ortals!” Krailash tried to shout, and blood spurted from the remains of his mouth. His eyes were wide and intent.
“Is he saying ‘portals’?” Julen said.
“Probably,” the Slime King said. Zaltys turned, and Iraska was there, holding the arrow that should have killed her in her hand. All the portals above the field and over the settlement had somehow formed together into a single vast orb, which hovered just behind her, big as a manor house. The yuan-ti in the field were cowering and covering their heads, hiding from its terrible blue-green light.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” Iraska snapped the crystalline head off the arrow and slipped it into her sleeve, then broke the arrowshaft in her hands, dropping the pieces. “You shot me with a shard of the Living Gate, which once formed a wall between the realms of madness and the Astral Sea. Impressive. But that crystal kills aberrations-not necessarily mortals. All you did was banish my balhannoth. Which was a bit like halfway dying myself. I hadn’t realized how deep into my body and my being its tendrils had extended. But that’s the Far Realm for you. So subtle and insidious it makes the cunning of Zehir seem like a brass band falling down the stairs in comparison. Shame you wasted the arrow, Zaltys. If you’d loosed it into my portal, I bet it would have closed up.” She walked closer, the gate hovering behind her, and Julen threw a knife, but the portal flared bluer, and a rosy pink tentacle lashed out of the portal and dashed the blade aside. Even with her balhannoth dead, Iraska still had the support of creatures in the Far Realm.
“That was my last dagger,” Julen said quietly. “Oh, well. Good effort, everyone.”
“You can still join me, Zaltys. Turn on these fools. You can be a hero, the sole survivor of the massacre that killed the rest of the Travelers. I can show you the pathways of power. I don’t want to let my friends from the Far Realm come through this portal just yet. We haven’t quite come to terms, and they’d much rather emerge in a more populated place anyway, like Delzimmer. Especially since your family has been preparing the way all these years by poisoning so many citizens with terazul flowers, turning the addicts into unwitting pawns of the realm of madness, just waiting to be activated. When we invade, the taint in their blood will transform them into aberrations.”
Zaltys looked at her mother, eyes wide-the terazul were connected to the Far Realm? Alaia wouldn’t meet her gaze.
Iraska went on. “They’re gluttonous, you see, and prefer a larger meal, and more chaos. But if you force my hand, I’ll open the gates now. Well?”
“Run, Zaltys,” Alaia said. “Use your armor, slip through shadows. Get to the surface. Get the Guardians. Tell them to avenge us.”
“There’s another way,” Zaltys said, and jumped at Iraska.
Only to fall on her face when Krailash seized her ankle with one of his hands. He spoke, and though the words were a bit mushy coming from his ruined face, she could understand him: “My duty.”
The dragonborn heaved himself from the cavern wall, axe in hand, and barreled straight for Iraska. Her eyes widened, and a tentacle licked from the portal, but he swung his axe almost casually and severed it. Krailash struck Iraska with his head lowered and his shoulder out, lifting her off her feet and driving her into the portal. His own momentum carried him through the portal with her, and they both vanished.
The portal writhed and sparked and twisted, curling in on itself, losing length and width and depth until nothing remained but a wisp of greenish vapor and a chemical stink like something from an alchemist’s shop.
“The arrowhead,” Zaltys said. “She still had it in her sleeve, the piece of the Living Gate.” She shook her head. “The portals are closed. And Krailash …”
“He gave his life to protect the family,” Alaia said. “I wasn’t sure he would. I’m ashamed I ever doubted him.”
“That portal didn’t close,” Julen said, pointing to one Zaltys hadn’t noticed before, hovering near the cave wall. “Why didn’t it join with the others?”
“It is very old,” one of the yuan-ti said, slithering over, wringing his oddly humanlike hands. “The other slaves, some of them have been here for much longer than we have, and they said this portal has always been here. It was opened by the first Slime King long ago.”
“Are those terazul?” Zaltys said, squinting. “The vines, coming out of the portal … Those are our flowers, aren’t they? That’s what Iraska meant, isn’t it, about us poisoning the people of Delzimmer-about us preparing them.”
“Zaltys,” Alaia said carefully. “I didn’t know. I swear. I had no idea they came from the Far Realm.”
“You do now,” Zaltys said. “So what do you propose to do about it?”
“I propose we leave before the other derro come back. I propose we take your, ah, original family members back with us, and then return to camp, and go home. I’ll tell the other ranking members of our family what I’ve found out, and I’m sure they’ll do the right thing. Given some time and preparation, we can diversify the business a bit better, make some investments, and ease out of the terazul trade.”
Julen snorted. “No offense, Aunt Alaia, but do you think the Traders will care that the flowers come from the Far Realm? They’ll just start saying the drugs are ‘imported from an exotic faraway land’ and charge twenty percent more per dose.”
“We should destroy the flowers and close that portal,” Zaltys said. “The things I saw in that derro city, the cruelty, the madness-it’s all the influence of the Far Realm. And we’ve been getting rich off selling people poisonous flowers from that place. We have to stop. It’s wrong. Iraska’s gone, but how long before another Slime King rises and opens more portals? Maybe the next one will succeed in attacking Delzimmer, and if we’re still selling the flowers, we’ll be paving the way for that invasion. We have to do what’s right.”