It was Seren! And... Captain Thoster too. The wizard unleashed a volley of fire into one of the aboleths advancing upon Raidon. By the spread of smoking, twitching, and nearly cleaved in twain aboleth bodies that spread out from the wizard and pirate, they had obviously been at it for some time. The two had achieved quite a tally, nearly equal to his own. It was almost as if they'd received help—

An acidic slime wave buffeted him, drawing his face into a rictus. Angul burned off the excess goo even as Raidon leaped into the air. As he reached the zenith of his jump, he pulled his elbow up next to his face, then slashed down with it in tandem with his own descending weight, channeling all the force of his body into an aboleth's brow. The creature stopped moving. It was dazed, stunned, or dead, it didn't matter. He scribed another glyph.

But curiosity made him scan the room again before he pressed ahead. Japheth was nowhere to be seen. Good.

Seren and Thoster must have stopped the warlock and his tainted cargo after all.

In another few moments, his binding circle would be complete. A Seal of Slaying would lance the Eldest, strong enough to end its stony vigil forever.

*****

Japheth uttered the final words of the ceremony. A jolt of energy transfixed him. Purple sparks burst from the Dreamheart, traveled along the rod, and grounded themselves in his drugged brain.

His vantage literally flashed upward, as he was bodily snatched into the air. Like a rag doll yanked by an angry toddler, he was borne to the chamber's zenith. The sudden acceleration followed by the jerking stop nearly snapped his neck.

He'd avoided meeting the Eldest's many-eyed gaze before. Now his ritual and the immediacy of the ancient aboleth compelled him to do so.

His proximity and drug-addled perspective showed the Eldest's skin to be something other than stone. It was a luminous expanse of chaos that churned and seethed. Indescribable forms entwined within that inconstant flesh, surging, billowing, and changing their shape. It was as if the skin was an interface between the world and something terrible. So close, awful sounds scraped at Japheth's ears too. Keening, bleating, and altogether atrocious.

But the eyes were what dazed Japheth and nearly struck him dead before he could conclude his purpose.

Though most were shuttered, the few that caught him in their alien regard burned him with a cosmic malignancy that brought gorge to his throat. The star pact, that terrible oath he'd sworn in Xxiphu's spawning halls, was the only thing that saved his mind from being instantly blasted. The pact had inoculated him. Though he might later gouge out his eyes in a fit of lunacy, for the moment he retained the barest ability to think.

Japheth averted his vision. He wanted to stop up his ears too, but he had to extend one hand and lay it upon the Eldest.

"Relinquish she whose dream is here with us," said Japheth, his voice brittle but strong, "she who is called Anusha Marhana. Relinquish Anusha Marhana, and her companion named Yeva." Japheth wished he still had the strand of hair he'd used before.

"By the power of the natural world, I beseech you. By the power of arcane formulas, I ask you. By the power of your own flesh, the Dreamheart, through which you have allowed your influence into the world, I command you!"

An indefinable period of time passed. Japheth kept his palm pressed against the roiling, repellent flesh. His hand sizzled.

Something tickled the back of his mind. At first he thought it was a passing fancy, perhaps due to remnants of the traveler's dust not burnt out of his system by the ritual. Then he realized the feeling came from outside.

It was the Eldest. Or actually, a tiny fraction of the Eldest's still slumbering attention.

The knowledge of what he must do to secure Anusha's final release bloomed across the warlock's brain.

He sighed. So it was to be one final bargain?

Yes. Of course.

The warlock's life was one great tapestry of oaths, pacts, and deals, each balancing him on the knife-edge between achieving his ends and utter ruin.

Despite what it would mean for the world, Japheth nodded his head in agreement. He accepted the arrangement.

At least the Eldest didn't require he swear another pact! That last thought gave him an idea. Even in the face of a creature whose wrath could well equal a god's fury, Japheth designed one last deceit.

*****

Anusha thrust her dream sword into the heart of the last aboleth threatening the monk—or at least where she hoped its heart was located. She hit something vital, it leaned over and died.

She stepped away and raised her blade in triumph, though it wavered under the onslaught of her headache.

Raidon glanced in her general direction. The half-elfs face didn't betray his thoughts, though Anusha assumed the monk wondered how the creature had suddenly perished. She would have smiled, but with the pain pounding through her, it was all she could do to retain her form.

She'd felt the onset of similar distress once before when she had overextended herself. It seemed the pain had come quicker this time, and more intensely. Was it because she also maintained Yeva's form too, dreaming the woman real?

The monk didn't waste any more time looking for invisible allies. With his burning sword, he continued to cut glyphs into the floor, one after the other, and faster now that aboleths didn't contest his every step. Without the swarming aboleths to obscure the floor, the shape he scribed in bkte fire was clearly visible to every creature in the chamber. Raidon swiftly approached the end of this task.

The tone of the chanting creatures overhead warbled and broke, then resumed in a more frantic tone. The aboleths seemed torn between finishing their ritual and abandoning it in order to descend upon the monk.

Then the decision was no longer theirs. Raidon completed the circuit.

The circle of glyphs took fire. A shock wave of force blew the monk away from his own creation. The shock wave expanded in all directions and caught the soaring aboleths underneath. The force tumbled the creatures, great and small, in uncontrolled arcs through the air. Their chant, already on the hysterical edge of failure, collapsed.

The inscribed circle flamed so brightly, Anusha looked away.

A sound came from above. A booming, creaking noise like mountains make when they settle into their foundations. She glanced up.

The few eyes open on the great petrified belly began to squint and close, as if the fire of Raidon's circle was too bright for them. The Eldest was not rousing. It was falling back into slumber, perhaps even the sleep of true death!

Raidon Kane had killed the Eldest! Could it really be?

Harsh exclamations of fury echoed through the chamber. The aboleths buffeted from their ritual by the monk's counterworking cried out as one. They lashed their tentacles and writhed in a paroxysm of rage. Their beady eyes found Raidon, Seren, and Thoster, and a few even fixed on Anusha and Yeva.

"Back to the ship!" screamed Seren. "This way!" She turned toward a different passage than the one by which they had entered the throne chamber.

Anusha saw Raidon glance up. She followed his gaze to the screeching, gargantuan aboleths. The creatures were regaining control of their single-minded fury. Malicious red light burst from one of the massive, dark-hued elders. Another gesticulated with its tentacles in wide spirals, from which a green haze began to spread.

Yeva and Thoster darted after the retreating wizard. But Raidon wasn't moving. He just stood and stared at the great creatures flitting overhead. They no longer flew in their ritual formation, but instead prepared a revenge stroke on the tiny half-elf below, apparently unconcerned with the cerulean fire he wielded.