Ascendancy of the Last - Lisa Smedman [91]
A ragged cheer went up from the priestesses around her, and she realized her foe had been the last of the fanatics. Yet the bubbling ooze remained. Thankfully, it was smaller, reduced in size by the priestess's attacks. "Praise Eilistraee," Erelda gasped. "We will hold the temple."
She realized she could hear herself speak. For the first time in decades, the sacred song had faltered. "The Evensong!" she shouted. The priestesses next to her took up the hymn. With her sword raised, Erelda stepped forward to finish off the ooze.
The world flip-flopped. Up became down. Erelda tumbled, flailing, to the ceiling, together with the handful of defenders who had been standing next to her. She slammed into stone, and saw stars. She scrambled upright-the floor of the cavern reeled dizzily over her head-and realized the ooze had somehow distorted the natural laws of reality. She hurled a bolt of moonlight and shadow "up" at the ooze, but it didn't stop the thing. The ooze slithered over the statue of Qiluй, fouling it. Then it disappeared down the staircase leading to the top of the Pit.
Erelda and the others fell. Erelda's wrist snapped as she landed, and pain flared. She rose, cradling the arm against her chest, and sang a hymn of healing. Without looking to see how the others fared, she clambered over the slime-fouled statue and ran to the staircase, shaking feeling back into her hand.
She ran down the spiral stairs two steps at a time, one hand on the inside wall to steady herself, the other tightly gripping her sword. She slipped, scrambled, sometimes tumbled down the steps, which glistened with the multicolored slime left by the creature as it squeezed its way down the narrow staircase. Always the monster was just around the bend. Just out of sight.
Gasping, Erelda at last reached the bottom of the staircase. She slipped on the final steps and tumbled into a cavern. Its floor was a bumpy field of broken stone: the fragments of the walls Qiluй had collapsed to fill the Pit. The Protector who'd been stationed at the top of the Mound was gone. The ooze was just ahead, bubbling toward the statue of Eilistraee. The statue, made up of tiny chips of magic-suspended stone, was no longer moving. It would have halted its dance when the sacred song faltered. That it hadn't resumed its slow pirouette was a grim sign. Hadn't anyone survived above?
Erelda leaped, her sword flashing. It sliced through the ooze, severing one glistening sac after another. The ooze deflated-but as it did, a rush of multicolored energy rippled outward from it and struck the statue. Half of the stone chips instantly disappeared, and the rest were transmuted to mud that fell like dirty rain onto the spot where it had stood.
Erelda gasped. Her throat tightened. The seal on the Pit-gone!
The rubble where the statue had stood glowed with a purple light. Tendrils of violet mist seeped out through cracks between the stones. A feeling like ice slid into Erelda's gut as she realized what this meant. The breach at the bottom of the Pit had opened!
The rubble quivered. Something was rising upward through the Pit.
"Eilistraee!" she cried. She leaped over the deflated ooze and hurled herself, face down, atop the Mound. She couldn't fuse the rubble-only Lady Qiluй could do that with her silver fire-but she could sing into being a blessing that would hold back whatever was rising out of the Pit, for a time. "At this time of darkness, I call down your light. Make holy this-"
Her song slowed to a dirgelike moan as the purple mist filled her lungs. The cavern was thick with the stuff; she could no longer see the walls. A tentacle erupted out of the rubble next to her, as thick as her arm and glistening with slime. It knocked her tumbling. She turned-slowly, slowly-and saw the eye at