The monitors continued to close on her, thinning the crowd with brutal efficiency. If the monitors cared so little about Olleth's citizens, then the whips still perched on the breach above were probably even now readying another bolt to blast her and any creature around her. They wouldn't hold back for fear of killing an innocent. And the idiot kuo-toa continued to draw away from Nogah, as if on purpose!

Nogah mentally reached for the stone, straining the thin connection that remained between them. Through that link she attempted to summon fire.

The Dreamheart roared with black flame. A piercing scream emerged from the thief an instant before his body flashed away to cinders. The stone fell back to the floor, already cooling.

The crowd shrank from the cremated residue, creating a buffer. Nogah rushed triumphantly into the space and snatched up the Dreamheart. Her link with the relic resurged. It made her a little giddy. The reunion wasn't a moment too soon.

A ray of brilliant green energy burst from the head whip's pincer staff. Wherever the ray reached, portions of the floor, clothing, and screaming kuo-toa disappeared in puffs of gray dust. The ray touched down some ten or so feet from Nogah, then tracked toward her.

She sucked energy from the relic, hardening her form against the ravening green ray. When the emerald light touched her, she couldn't help flinching. Then she smiled. The Dreamheart provided her more than enough strength to withstand the prayers of destruction granted by the Sea Mother. That was the point of her sermons, that she, Nogah, was ascendant. The green ray played over her form as if no more than colored light.

Nogah decided it was time to show all the kuo-toa of Olleth that Nogah wasn't to be trifled with. Time to seize the reins of power. Time to call up the relic's untapped reservoir of energy, more than she had ever tried before.

The relic still hid most of itself from Nogah, despite her small successes in channeling some of its fringe energies. Every day she learned a little more. For instance, she discovered the relic could command the minds of certain kinds of creatures. Not a tenday ago she had urged the Dreamheart to extrude mental tendrils of influence across the Sea of Fallen Stars. Tendrils seeking creatures of the deep who might be convinced, with the relic's aid, to do Nogah's bidding.

More than one of those questing lines had grown taut since then. Like fishing lines, Nogah knew she had hooked some big ones.

Now comes the great gamble, she thought. Not knowing exactly what she summoned, Nogah mentally tugged on one of the Dreamheart's tendrils of influence. As she did so, a name resounded in her mind.

Gethshemeth.

The name was familiar…

Oh.

Nogah's recognition nearly severed the summoning tendril of connection. Gethshemeth was a great kraken, a monstrosity of the sea bottom. Truth be told, the kuo-toa of Olleth had hoped Gethshemeth was slain in the Spellplague. The great one had been an ally of the morkoth Arcanum and had no love for the whips for their part in wiping out the former residents of the city.

Could even the Dreamheart hold Gethshemeth to her wishes?

Too late for second thoughts. The great kraken was already close, as if anticipating being called. Or, as if the kraken had felt the Dreamheart's questing tendril days ago and had traveled over the last tenday to investigate the source of the strange flavor in the water…

"Nogah!" screamed one of the kuo-toa whips, "I see you! Though you struggle like a minnow in the net, we have you now! Give yourself up to the Sea Mother's just retribution for a blasphemer! Every moment you struggle is another eon your soul shall twine in the Sea Mother's grotto!"

Nogah shook her head in negation, almost sadly. She said, "It is your struggle that ends today. If you flee immediately or forswear the Sea Mother here and now, as I have done, perhaps I shall not take your life."

Incredulity widened both whips' already bulbous eyes. One of the monitors, having closed nearly to within striking distance, gave out an involuntary yelp of indignation.

Then a shadow fell across the whip's shoulders. It rose from behind them.

There was a sound like a bursting bladder, and one of the whips was gone.

Where the sky and light had been visible through the shattered ceiling was now a mountain of undulating, dun-colored flesh. Then came the stench of a thousand rotting fish, and the second whip screamed.

Gethshemeth had come.

A tentacle as tall as a tower squirmed into view. The remaining whip brought up his pincer staff and began to scream a prayer of dreadful power. Too late. The tentacle smashed down upon him. A spray of fluids rained down onto the kuo-toa below, whose own screams escalated in pitch.

Nogah concentrated on the Dreamheart and her connection to Gethshemeth. She sensed the kraken's powerful mind through the link. The squid-like brain was not suffused with hate, as Nogah would have supposed, for being forced to the will of another. No, the kraken felt only curiosity. And a gruesome sort of giddy greed.

A monitor punched her with a fist that felt more like an iron mace than flesh. Two more blows hammered her and she was down, screaming, protecting not her own body, but the Dreamheart. Blood pooled in one of her eyes, blurring her vision.

Nogah directed a mental image of the two monitors who remained within the chamber into the relic, and out along the tendril connected to Gethshemeth.

Three more tentacles groped in through the fissure, crumbling the rent wider with the force of their entry.

Nogah screamed, her words mush with hurt, "Your flesh is forfeit for striking me, groveler!"

The monitor had time enough to glance back before one of the kraken tentacles snatched him up and retracted, bearing him instantly away. A faint scream and crunch followed.

The remaining monitor stood his ground, assuming a guarding stance. When the second tentacle lashed forward, he evaded, and in doing so, landed a kick. The kick's amazing strength sent an undulating wave up the tentacle. A mighty, monstrous voice roared in surprise.

The third barbed tentacle snapped forward, encircling the monitor around the neck. With a yank and snap, the kuo-toa warrior's head parted from its body.

Quiet descended on the ruined hall then, save for the raw-throated whimpering of the surviving congregation. They were too terrified to scream any longer.

A tentacle propelled itself along the broken ground and dead bodies. It quested toward Nogah like a side-winding serpent. It touched her on the leg, then reared up. The tip of the tentacle waved back and forth, as if waiting.

Nogah took short, painful breaths as she watched Gethshemeth's boneless limb gesticulate. Aches from the monitor's attack made her vision unsteady. It occurred to her that she needn't suffer so. With a thought, she drew wholeness from the Dreamheart. Well-being sparked out from her hands, up her scaled forearms, and vanquished the pain. Her facility with the stone was increasing.

Nogah rose, using the Dreamheart to push herself up before finally lifting it to cradle it in her arms like a newly hatched child.

Scarlet light bathed the room. Nogah looked up at the widened fissure in the ceiling. A single, vast, red eye peered down through the rent. Her heart stuttered, and her breath caught.

Leave foolishness behind you, Nogah reprimanded herself. She was master, and this great leviathan of the deep was leashed to her will via the Dreamheart. Why else had it come?

Nogah spoke, "Great one of the depths, I thank you for your service."

The eye regarded her, unblinking. She felt curiosity through the light mental connection the Dreamheart provided.

Curiosity sidling toward yearning.

Nogah decided to send the great kraken away. She had proved she could summon the creature at need. She was growing uncomfortable under the creature's unwavering scrutiny.