The Ivory Star

Chapter 28

The Key held before him like an everlasting torch, Eric led them through the seemingly endless stinking sewer passages. The white light shone on glistening slime that blanketed the walls, and reflected off the knee-deep sloshing brown filth. The splashing sewage echoed thunderously down the long tunnels. And Eric felt the nearness of his goal. The Ivory Star did not call out to him as the Keys had, but by some instinctual feeling, he knew that his quest was nearly over.

The tunnel began to slope slightly downwards, and the sewage deepened. They pushed their way through the chest-deep muck. Something splashed in the water not far ahead. Something large, just outside the sphere of light.

They froze. Their steel slithered from scabbards.

Again, silence. The only sounds were the faint dripping of water, and their slow controlled breathing.

Eric reached out with his mind, trying to sense anything that might threaten them.

The sewage exploded before them in a blinding torrent.

Unable to see, they spat and wiped frantically at their eyes, trying to clear the sewage out of their mouths and eyes. When they did, the sight of the thing thrashing toward them made them yearn for blindness. Something huge and bulky thrust up out of the filth. A giant, misshapen head, at least they took it for a head, although it was not the head of any sane or normal creature. A great toad-like face heaved up, the features of which were as vague and unstable as those seen in the mirror of a nightmare. Two great circles of light glowed redly in place of eyes. It was a form blacker than the cosmic depths of space. Its outline seemed to waver and shift as they stared at it, yet its substance was real enough as it pushed through the water. The thing's details were obscure and indistinct. Their eyes could not discern where shadow ended and the beast began. It was a black blot on the face of sanity that the pure, cleansing light of the Key could neither illuminate nor dissipate.

A tentacle-like member encircled his torso. Instinctively he slashed down through the muck, but felt no resistance. But he must have cut it! Yet the tentacle was still strongly wrapped around him, now pulling him through the water.

A talon-blade sliced the air, and disappeared into that large toad-like head. Bright blue sparks struck from the ceiling above as it passed clean through.

It towered above them like a clinging black cloud, seemed to flow toward them, engulf and envelop them. Capian and Darius leaped to the fore, slashing and stabbing at the nightmarish mass. Eric's madly slashing blade tore through it again and again. He was deluged with a slimy something that must have been the creature's blood. The men were tossed about like dolls in a tidal wave in that awful battle, unable to distinguish if they were being pummeled, clawed, bitten, or crushed. Fangs and talons rent their flesh, flabby tentacles as tough as iron cables wrapped them, crushed them.

A tremendous blow to his shoulder numbed Eric's arm, and he dropped the Key. He helplessly watched it disappear into the filth. Capian thrust his sword upward, hilt deep into that mass of unearthly flesh, ripped and tore, to no avail.

Then hope.

Darius stabbed his blade into one of those terrible eyes. The pool of light disappeared, and the entire being began to thrash and writhe as if in cosmic agony. The tunnel shook violently. Capian leaped, thrusting into the other eye. The monster spasmed, giving forth no sound. It heaved up and struck the ceiling, and bits of slime and stone rained down onto their heads. The beast disappeared below the water with a tremendous splash, such a splash that the Key, having fallen to the bottom, flew into the air with the rest of the muck. Eric lunged out, stretching, praying to grasp it in time. He had it.