Annihilation

"As you wish, Mistress," the draegloth said finally.

Danifae forced herself not to smile.

You will grow accustomed to the motion after a time, Mistress, Yngoth reassured her. Eventually, you won't notice it at all.

The vipers could speak to her, directly into her mind, but Quenthel didn't know they could sense what she was feeling. She hadn't articulated, aloud or telepathically, how uncomfortable she was with the motion of the undulating deck.

It's the water that's pushing us up and down, K'Sothra offered.

Quenthel ignored her, choosing instead to look out into the cold gloom of the Shadow Fringe.

"Care, all," Pharaun said, his voice distant and echoing in the strange environment. "We'll be crossing into the Shadow Deep. There are dangers there. . creatures, intelligences. . keep your arms and legs inside the rail at all times, please. Try not to make eye contact with anything we might pass. Be prepared for any ma

Only a wizard, Zinda hissed, could offer such vague and meaningless warnings. Does he expect any of us to jump overboard in the Shadow Deep?

He's right, Yngoth argued. The Shadow Deep hides many dangers.

"Hold onto something," the Master of Sorcere advised.

Perhaps the draegloth could keep you from falling, Mistress, Hsiv advised.

Quenthel's lip curled in a sneer, and she flicked the offending snake under his chin. She looked over at the draegloth. Danifae's hand absently stroked his mane, and the draegloth stood very close to her.

Quenthel looked away, trying her best to rid her mind of the image. She kneeled on the deck and wrapped her arms around the bone and sinew rail. No sooner had she tightened her grip than the world—or the water—dropped out from under the ship.

They fell, and Quenthel's stomach lurched up into her throat. Her jaw clenched, and all she could do was hold on, her body tense and ready for the inevitable deadly stop at the bottom of whatever they were falling into.

It took a terribly long time for that to happen. Finally Quenthel began to relax—at least a little—even though they were still falling and she continued to hold on to the rail for dear life. Quenthel gathered her wits enough to survey the rest of the expedition.

The ship's deck was elongated and twisted, as if it had been pulled at either end by a strong but careless giant. Pharaun seemed twice as far away, Valas twice as close, and Danifae and Jeggred appeared to be hanging upside down. The draegloth held the battle-captive in one arm and the rail in the other.

All around them black shapes flitted in and around the rigging, up and under the hull, and between the falling dark elves. The air was ribboned with black and gray, and there was a dull roar like wind but not wind that all but deafened her. The flying black shapes were either bats or the shadows of bats. In the Shadow Deep, Quenthel knew, the shadows would be the more dangerous of the two.

We're stopping, Qorra said, and Quenthel knew it to be true.

The sensation of falling had wafted away. It wasn't that they had slowed in their fall, and they certainly hadn't hit bottom, they simply weren't falling anymore.

"Sorry, all," Pharaun apologized, his voice cheerful and bright. "A bit of a rough transition, that one, but you'll forgive my general inexperience with the whole piloting a ship of chaos thing, I'm sure."

Quenthel didn't forgive but also didn't bother to say anything. The ship was perfectly still, as if it had come up on solid ground, and the high priestess risked a glance over the rail.

They hadn't come to rest on the ground, she saw, but had stopped in midair above a rolling landscape of gray cluttered with vaguely translucent silhouettes of trees. The shadowy, batlike things still raced all around them.

"Oh, yes," Pharaun added suddenly, "and don't touch the bats."

Quenthel sighed but never touched a shadow-bat.

Pharaun extended his senses out into the Shadow Deep, using the properties of the ship of chaos in a way that felt natural to one who had become part of the demonic vessel. He did it the same way he would have strained to hear some distant sound.

The Shadow Deep is not unlike your Underdark after all, Aliisza said, and like the Underdark it has its own rules.

Pharaun nodded. He didn't pretend to understand those rules in any but the simplest way. He'd always been smart enough not to linger in the Shadow Deep.

We won't linger now, Aliisza said.

She touched his shoulder, and Pharaun took a deep breath. He was reassured by her touch, and not only for her help navigating and piloting the ship. With Ryld dead, he was alone with a group of drow who'd be as happy to see him dead as not. The alu-fiend might be more enemy than friend, but still Pharaun couldn't help thinking she was the only one he could trust.

Can you feel it? she asked.

Pharaun was momentarily taken aback. He thought she meant—

The gateway, she said. Can you feel it?

There was a lightness in his head and an itch on his right temple that made the ship turn and accelerate. His fingers curled, instinctively gripping the deck.

I feel it, he said. The barrier is thi

Yes,the alu-fiend breathed.

She wrapped an arm around him from behind and pressed into his back. Pharaun's heart beat a little faster, and the wizard was amused with himself. He couldn't see her, but he could feel her, he could smell her, and he could hear her voice echoing in his skull. He liked it.

At Pharaun's unspoken command the ship drifted across vast distances in insubstantial leaps. Like shadow walking, the ship slid across the Plane of Shadow faster than it should have, the distance compressing beneath it.

Will we fall again? Pharaun asked Aliisza as they neared the place where the Shadow Deep gave way directly to the endless expanse of the Astral.

No,she said, it will be different.

It was.

The ship was through in an instant. The darkness of the Shadow Deep with its sky of black and deep gray blazed into a blinding light. Pharaun's eyes clamped shut and were instantly soaked with tears. The ship shuddered. It felt as if the vessel were being battered on its side. Pharaun's breath caught in his chest, and there was a hard pressure there, a tightness. Fear?

Don't be afraid, Aliisza whispered.

Pharaun cringed at the word but had to admit to himself at least that he was afraid.

He blinked his burning eyes open, and his head reeled so he almost fainted. There was such an expanse of nothing on every side of them that he felt too out in the open, too vulnerable, too. . outside to be anything but tense and jumpy.

The sky around them was gray, but it also held what Pharaun could only describe as the essence of light. There was no sun or any other single source of luminescence. The light was simply there, coming from everywhere at once, saturating everything.

Bright streaks of multicolored luminescence rippled across the backdrop of saturated light—brilliant and chaotic aurorae.

The ship rocked and shuddered, and Pharaun tensed again, fully prepared for the thing to shake itself apart. He held his teeth closed, then closed his eyes, and would have closed his ears if he could.

No,Aliisza advised, don't close your eyes. Don't shut yourself off from it.

Pharaun opened his eyes, mentally brushing off the resentment that boiled to the surface. He didn't like being told what to do, even when he knew he needed it.

She squeezed him tighter and whispered in his ear, "Think it. Think the name of it."

It?he thought to her.

Again she whispered with her real voice, her lips so close to his ear Pharaun could feel them brushing against the sensitive skin there: "The Abyss."