Plague of Spells (3 page)

With one hand still grasping the reins, she pulled her pincer-staff from its holster and rapped sharply on the nautilus shell behind her tether post. The mammoth shell’s winding interior was large enough to hold pockets of air, capable of serving as living space for six additional kuo-toa, though only she and one junior whip inhabited it. The few who retained enough respect to have accompanied Nogah on her journey of discovery remained in Olleth. She had set them to propagandize the expedition, lest her enemies sink her reputation while she was absent.

Curampah, her junior whip, slithered out of the opening, his bulging, silver-black eyes blinking a question. She had sponsored his study and apprenticeship to the Sea Mother’s worship, and he owed her direct service, regardless of his opinion of the expedition’s worthiness. This close, the tingle of electric affinity all whips shared danced on her scales.

“Curampah, what ails this beast?” she asked, tiny bubbles escaping upward with each word. “It fed according to its usual schedule, yet it continues to balk.”

“Daughter of the Sea,” he replied, using the honorific due her, “if I may, you have urged it downward past its span of strength. It grows weary. Even with the protective prayers enclosing us, some hint of the growing pressure beyond leaks inward. Can’t you feel it, Nogah? I can, and it wearies me. My dreams are troubled.”

Nogah allowed her translucent, inner lids to half close, blurring Curampah’s image. It was her conscious look of calculation, useful for cowing subordinates. It made them wonder if she would respond civilly or curse them to a literal, painful death.

The junior whip trod precariously close to disrespect. She knew to what he referred, and to lecture her about it was insolence, should she choose to view it as such. Even with the fortitude provided her by her connection to the Sea Mother, a fortitude that Curampah’s fledgling association couldn’t hope to match, she sensed the unrelenting grip of the sea. Beyond her magical barrier, it obstinately tried to crush them— catfish, nautilus shell, and scales—in one final spasm.

But she would not sing poison into his blood or cause his heart to explode, which he also knew. She had too few resources to throw away subordinates without greater cause than simply reminding her of unpleasant truths.

Under such conditions, any other senior kuo-toa whip would turn back or find another way downward.

But her tenacity was born of divine decree, or so she chose to believe.

True, no direct communication had occurred between her and the Sea Mother or any of the Sea Mother’s exarchs… but what of her dreams? She knew the Sea Mother wanted something of her, something the divine being was somehow unable to articulate directly.

A frightening thought! If something prevented the Sea Mother’s clear communication, it must be a dire threat indeed! At least, so Nogah interpreted the signs. Others, untroubled by dreams, declared Nogah unstable.

Despite the risk of being outcast, she persisted in her claims, describing how her visions revealed a taint welling up from a near-bottomless trench, a hole in the earth where none had been before.

And hadn’t she been vindicated with the discovery of a newborn vent’s existence? And how else could she have predicted its location in the dim, uncharted depths?

Despite her successful predictions, or perhaps because of them, Nogah remained alone in her conviction that the Sea Mother had revealed the cavity for a reason. She was convinced the newly opened vent must be plumbed, and no argument could sway her. The other whips of the Sea Mother told her the cavity was just one more altered feature of the landscape left in the Spellplague’s wake a decade earlier. By every estimation, this particular seafloor vent numbered among the least remarkable of the changes wrought by the Weave’s collapse. When compared to whole kingdoms erased, continents rearranged, plaguechanged monstrosities, floating motes of water and land, renewed contact with Abeir, and the real threat that the Sea of Fallen Stars would drain completely into the Underdark… yes, this particular vent seemed a minor issue. The kuo-toa were more concerned that even the celestial and infernal realms themselves still fluctuated. The Spellplague had chewed through earth, stone, magic, and planar boundaries as readily as through fallible flesh. Empty, drowned crevices that apparently led nowhere were judged a waste of attention.

Thus, the senior whips decreed Nogah’s plan would divert resources that could be better used elsewhere. Threats to the people were always gathering. The Weave’s failure, combined with the ongoing realignment of the celestial dominions, put even the Sea Mother at risk!

Nogah growled. As if her current task were not meant to stem just such a threat! Hadn’t the Sea Mother directed her on this venture through her strange silences, as if urging Nogah to investigate the mystery? The other whips were blind. Always decisive, Nogah committed to the exploratory dive despite the consensus building against her, and before that consensus solidified into official directive. She used up the last of her favors to gain the use of this fabulous sea coach, its harnessed beast, and a leave from her duties in the city of Olleth.

Now here she was, miles below the seafloor in the vent she’d first glimpsed in dreams. The strange flavor of the water all around her seemed to promise grim consequences to those who failed to heed its warning. The odd scent seemed to go hand in fin with the interference that made communion with the Sea Mother difficult. Nogah took it as further evidence the Sea Mother wanted her here, to investigate that which lay at the shaft’s nadir.

Nogah’s translucent, third eyelids snapped open. She decreed, “No, we shall push on. Time grows short. The… taint? The… hindrance grows stronger each day we fail to discover its source!”

Curampah merely nodded. Perhaps her junior whip did not share Nogah’s sense of urgency. She guessed Curampah preferred the majority opinion in the kuo-toa ruled city of Olleth. Not that what he thought mattered. The beliefs junior whips harbored in their secret hearts were unimportant. Their duty was only to obey. Curampah would do as she commanded.

Nogah twitched the reins, and the great catfish surged straight downward once more, jolting the coach. The immense nautilus shell descended through a sudden rush of silvery bubbles born in the thrashing wake of the fish’s wide tail.

*****

Nogah woke to her name voiced in air. Splinters of the dream faded, the same dream she always had, of the Sea Mother beckoning to her from across a vast gulf of sea-fine particulates and rushing water, warning her, warning…

She lay in her creche within the inmost chamber of the spiral nautilus.

A voice, Curampah’s, said again, “Nogah, Daughter of the Sea, wake!”

Blinking toward full awareness, but not yet stirring her limbs, she said, “I am awake. I…” She could still hear the groaning water from her dream. The walls of the shell moaned and vibrated, as if being squeezed. Had they struck the vent wall? Nogah mentally checked the status of all the divine rituals she’d applied to the sea coach.

The subsidiary rituals of maintenance and protection lacing the nautilus’s shell were intact. The bubble of air trapped within the coiled corridors of the shell was stable and fresh. The magic that maintained the equilibrium between air and water was firm. She mentally expanded her examination of the ritual prayers underlying the sea coach and was relieved to find the enchantments holding the catfish also remained active. The protective prayers warding off crushing pressure seemed intact, but…

“Mother preserve!” The linchpin charm was half unraveled! The groaning noise was precursor to the nautilus shell’s collapse.

She lurched upright, her webbed hands already tracing the runes necessary to renew the prayer. She worked quickly, invigorating the lines of divine force required. A heartbeat later, the frayed linchpin was repaired. But how could it have failed so precipitously?

She looked at Curampah. “Explain,” she commanded.

“Daughter of the Sea,” he said, “I found a side cavity in the vent. As I slowed the coach to study the hollow space, the nautilus began to buckle and shudder. So I woke you.”

“What lies within this cavity?”

“Crumbled and blasted dwellings, Daughter. Ruins of structures unable to withstand the crushing weight of water this deep.”

“A drow city caught in the backlash of Mystra’s demise?” Nogah half smiled to think of a city of their old tormentors so overcome.

Curampah’s silver-black eyes blinked rapidly. “No. It is illithid.”

Nogah grabbed her staff and arrowed past Curampah. *****

The cavity was riddled with half-exposed, winding passages striated with the cryptic textures of illithid text carved in stone. The crust’s split that created the vent a decade ago broke this deep dwelling mind flayer cyst wide open. The illithids likely hadn’t even picked themselves up from where the quaking earth had thrown them before a weight of seawater had smashed through the breach, a quantity too great for even the wizened entity at the community’s hub to deal with. The elder brain’s basin was split asunder. All that remained of this illithid community’s nascent proto-deity were fragments of flash-petrified cerebral tissue. Dried husks of larval illithids floated here and there throughout the ruin. Remnants of mind flayer garb, implements, and unidentifiable trash were everywhere, but of the adult illithids themselves, no sign remained.

“Did any survive?” wondered Curampah, as he stared over the side. Nogah had maneuvered the sea coach into the side cavity.

She replied, “The Spellplague’s hunger did not spare those who derive their power from mind. Of course, it seems this community was destroyed as an indirect consequence of the catastrophe. We would have been attacked already, if any mind flayers remained in this drowned cyst.”

Curampah inclined his head.

Despite her words, an irrational fear tightened her scales. She was a competent whip, but she couldn’t hope to stand before a mind flayer’s vicious brain blast. She didn’t want to end up a meal, or worse, a mind-dead thrall. But she was being foolish, of course; how could that happen? The cyst was obviously long bereft of its former dwellers.

The senior whip urged the catfish deeper into the demolished community. It could be that which drew her into the depths below Faerűn would be found in this very space! The far wall of the hollow remained obscured in haze, and she wanted to be sure of the cavity’s bounds.

The sea coach was drawn inward. It passed only feet over crumbling edges of unspecified structures without roofs, now only unmarked crypts where many monstrosities had met a sudden, moist end.

A new structure began to resolve from the swirling water. Its architectural style was different from the foregoing ruins. It retained most of its walls and many of its roofs. It was several stories high, unlike any of the other structures in the cyst, and it had no windows. Something about the new structure reminded Nogah of how the linchpin prayer had almost failed. Was it coincidence the divine ritual most vital to their foray would show instability just as they descended to the depths of the dead illithid community?

Perhaps the charm’s collapse and the ruined cyst’s proximity were no accident.

Nogah pulled back on the reins. “Curampah—”

The catfish screamed, a scale-shivering sound so intense Nogah dropped the reins. A region of free-floating detritus whirled in on itself, becoming a tight column of spinning water. Nogah scrambled for the reins. A moment later the whirling column expanded into a humanoid shape. Violet slime glistened over its rubbery skin. It’s awful head riveted Nogah’s attention. Four long tendrils writhed there, muscular tentacles with bloodstained tips. Its eyes were darkened hollows, empty save for seawater.

“It’s undead!” croaked Curampah, bubbles escaping his mouth in two exclamatory clusters. His pincer staff quivered in his unsteady grasp. “Mind flayer undead!”

Nogah forgot the reins. She yelled, “Curampah! Think!” If Curampah would stop panicking, they could—

Malign influence burst upon Nogah’s brain, trying to insinuate alien desires into her core awareness. The catfish’s scream burbled away. Curampah gasped and let his pincer staff float free.

The vacant-eyed mind flayer drifted toward them, making no movement yet accelerating. It had gained a facility in the water in undeath that its kind did not possess in life. What hoary god empowered this husk? It should have rotted to nothing like all its compatriots.

The very fact she could still formulate questions meant she had avoided the brunt of the blast that had left Curampah drooling. But without her fellow whip, she couldn’t co-generate an answering stroke strong enough to offer salvation.

She tried to think through the terror. Curampah wasn’t dead. It should still be possible…

She slapped Curampah’s limp shoulder with her empty palm. Instantly, the tingle that alerted fellow whips to each other’s presence intensified into a full-fledged connection. An electric spark burned between them, an eel of chaotic, fluctuating light.

The contact literally jolted Curampah from his mind-numbed haze. The junior whip blinked witlessness from his eyes.

Thank the Sea Mother! In the Spellplague’s wake, many whips had lost the ability to co-generate the storm’s sword. But not her, and not Curampah. Its call to destruction burned away the aftereffects of the mind flayer’s blast.

The illithid undead slowed its approach, its tentacles suddenly writhing in some new configuration.

Nogah drew back her hand, and the lightning bridged the two whips. The crackling arc widened, then began to curve, bowing out toward the approaching illithid. The creature’s tentacles writhed so fast now, the water began to froth. The hollows of its empty eyes glimmered with red light.

The connecting spark widened, grew into a ravening bolt that seared the water, creating a shroud of twinkling bubbles. Jittering shadows danced madly across the cavity’s walls.

Nogah released the bolt. The stroke discharged the full brunt of her and Curampah’s redoubled strength into the mind flayer’s necrotic flesh. Its left arm, half its torso, and its left leg flashed away into ash.