The half-elf gritted his teeth and waited for a twinge of guilt, but none came. He sheathed his sword. He felt as hollow as ever.

. Raidon shook his head and said, "I'm sorry."

Seren's face was tight, as if she wanted to make an issue of Raidon's lack of empathy, but she remained silent.

He turned back to Thoster. "I am sorry, Captain, for the loss of even more of your crew."

The captain grimaced and said, "They'll be missed, aye."

"But," continued Raidon, "why do you have kuo-toa scales covering you? My Sign is tingling ever so slightly at your presence. Why?"

"I... I have a condition," the man finally said. "Seren's stopped its progression, though." The captain lifted his amulet and showed the monk.

Raidon reached out with his mind through the Cerulean Sign.

As before, the overwhelming influence of the surrounding city made it difficult to discern fine details. Still, he was able to see Thoster was lightly touched with an aberrant taint. It wasn't especially strong, but it bore watching. His skill with the Sign wasn't sufficient for him to tell if the amulet in the man's hand was indeed holding the condition in check.

He turned to Seren and said, "Is it a curse? Can't you just remove it?"

The wizard shrugged. She said, "Most times, a curse will melt your skin or make it diseased, or something else vile. Thoster's 'curse' wasn't one he gained recently. It is bred into him, but only recently triggered. It is slowly transforming him into a marine creature."

"A kuo-toa," said Raidon.

Seren said, "Could be. I don't really know the specifics. Nor does he."

The half-elf regarded Thoster. "How do you feel? Any urge to fall in with these aboleths?"

The captain chuckled and shook his head. "No, 'fraid not. Though I do feel a sort of... current? Like a tide coming in."

"A tide you can resist?"

The captain nodded. "My mind is my own, even if my body seems stuck between human and fish." He held out his amulet. "Seren's amulet is my anchor. I haven't grown a single new scale since she fashioned this for me back on the ship."

Raidon studied the man's face. He judged Thoster believed he spoke the truth.

"The world is a wide place," the captain continued. Thoster had regained his equilibrium. "There's room in it for all sorts. Even someone like me. Hells, I might prove more useful in this quest—I got an inside perspective on what fish folk think."

"Perhaps so," said Raidon. "At least I saved my hat," said Thoster. He reached up and adjusted the great black thing still stuck on his head.

"We'll revisit this topic later, once I've slain the Eldest," Raidon decided. He drew Angul and faced down the tunnel.

"Sure, unless we're all dead," Seren said.

*****

They moved deeper into the city, angling inward and upward at every opportunity. On more than one occasion they detoured around encrustations of translucent ice. Seren said she could see people inside.

"People?" inquired Thoster.

"More like images of people..." Seren trailed off as her eyes widened. She ran a finger across the ice slab that roughly coated one side of the tunnel. She shook her head. "It's more like frozen dew."

"Dew? Condensed from what?"

"From the memories of a sleeping god perhaps. The, um, Eldest. These images are memories that have settled out of its petrified consciousness and, in the process, caught up any creature whose nightmares swerved too close."

Thoster whistled. He said, "So, we should avoid sleeping in Xxiphu."

Seren blinked as if the idea hadn't occurred to her. Then she nodded emphatically.

Raidon motioned for the others to follow him. There was no time to study the phenomenon and determine whether Seren was right about the ice. He and Angul were in agreement— events were too close to disaster to waste time sightseeing.

Still, Raidon worried he was forgetting something. The enthusiasm of the Blade Cerulean seemed ideal for this stage of their attack on the Eldest, but part of him wondered if he wasn't being too hasty. Shouldn't he have been more suspicious of Thoster's unsettling skin condition?

In any other circumstance, Angul would have happily obliged such a request. Thoster engaged in just the sort of seemingly inconsequential, petty crime that used to drive the weapon to feats of righteous vindictiveness. But Thoster, no matter the source of his strange curse, couldn't hold a candle to the burning forest Xxiphu represented.

Nothing else really mattered to Angul save finding and ending one of greatest banes ever to threaten Faerun.

Not that Angul cared a fig for the world.

Raidon was aware the sword influenced him more than he'd normally allow. The clarity, warmth, and comfort streaming from the hilt was his first clue. The half-elf was disciplined enough to disentangle himself from those emotions and keep them separate from his core self. But to say AnguPs persuasion was having no effect would be a lie.

On the other hand, like the soul-forged weapon, Raidon himself was a servitor of the Cerulean Sign that blazoned his chest. With the Sign's energies enlivening the monk's mind and body, he and Angul were far more aligned in philosophy than he cared to admit.

It was the Cerulean Sign that pulled him forward now, not Angul, for all its sky-burning bluster. In a sense, he had become a living manifestation of the Sign.

The corridor opened into a larger space.

Raidon continued forward without taking the time to reconnoiter. He found himself on the periphery of a circular grotto that smelled unpleasantly of herb and copper. Several other corridors fed into the same chamber.

Thin yellow vines grew across the naked stone of the curved walls. The tangled vines resembled arteries bulging just beneath skin. Indeed, they slowly pulsed with dark fluid. Here and there along each vine, red leathery fruits sprouted. Most were the size of fists, but a few were ripe and heavy with growth. These were closer in size to a man curled in a fetal position. Raidon didn't let that last comparison go unmarked, but the central features of the grotto claimed his attention.

A perfectly circular pool occupied about two-thirds of the chamber's floor space. Stone obelisks clustered around the pool, each burning with a purplish flame. Mucus trails coated the floor of the chamber around the pool in thin streaks, emerging from one tunnel, circling the pool, then leading out into one of the other tunnels.

Raidon stepped up to the water and peered in. Or perhaps it wasn't water—a crystal clear liquid lapped slowly against the edges of its containment, more like gel than anything else. But whether it was water or slime, phosphorescent images played out in the pool's depths. Images that didn't seem dissimilar to the visions his Sign had given him on occasion. Seren and Thoster joined the monk at the pool's edge. Both studied the confusing welter of lines and shapes of dull green and orange light visible in the fluid. Mharsan, the first mate, remained in the tunnel entrance.

"I can't make any sense of it," said Thoster. He turned away to look at one of the larger vine fruits. A worried frown grew on his face.

Seren wrinkled her brow but continued to watch the pool. "Do these glowing lights hold any meaning for you?" she asked the half-elf.

"Yes," admitted Raidon. Against Angul's stern insistence, he sheathed the blade. The moment the hilt left his grip, the monk sighed.

"What?" said Seren.

Instead of explaining, he pointed into the pool with one hand and lay the palm of his other hand flat across the Sign.

"This is some sort of meeting chamber. Were Xxiphu completely awake, this grotto would be swimming in aboleths."

"Auspicious that everyone is still asleep," said Seren.

"Or otherwise occupied," said Raidon. "Ah yes. I can sort order from this chaos with the Cerulean Sign, enough so you can see too."