The heroes arranged themselves outside the narrow opening as though they had finally learned caution.
Fendor did not trust it.
The stalactites and stalagmites had nearly grown together along this section of the cavern, leaving only a crooked passage into the chamber Isamu had discovered. Blue-green light drifted somewhere beyond the stone. The creatures within were human-sized, floating and wrapped from head to foot in luminous bands that moved as though caught in water.
Isamu had tried speaking to one.
It had not spoken back.
That normally settled the matter.
Kaylor stood nearest the opening with the Icy Burst Longbow Fendor had given him hanging awkwardly across his back. The weapon looked wrong on him. Kaylor was built for axes and greatswords, for closing the distance and making whatever occupied the other end regret allowing him to do so.
Still, everything in the Void seemed determined to fly.
Adaptation had become necessary.
Nethnarel held the Staff of Power.
Hexen studied the stone.
Fendor nocked an arrow.
Isamu waited.
Something touched Hexen's mind.
Not words.
Presence.
A sensation of invitation carried on a thought that did not belong to him.
Come closer.
Not exactly that.
Something older than language. A pull toward the darkness beyond the stones, soft enough that obeying it might have felt like his own decision.
Hexen recognized the intrusion and shoved it away.
His breathing changed.
Fendor noticed.
“What?”
“Something tried to get into my head.”
Fendor looked toward the opening.
“Good.”
Hexen stared at him.
“That is not good.”
“It means shooting whatever is in there is becoming easier to justify.”
Isamu stiffened.
The same presence reached him.
For an instant the chamber beyond the stones seemed warmer than the cavern around them. Safer. The floating blue-green shapes no longer seemed threatening.
They seemed trapped.
Waiting.
Calling.
Isamu took one step.
Stopped.
His jaw tightened.
Whatever had reached for him pressed harder.
He resisted it the way he resisted most things: by refusing to accept the premise that it had any authority over him.
The feeling vanished.
Isamu looked into the passage.
“They're trying to pull us in.”
Fendor raised the Oathbow slightly.
“Now we have consensus.”
Kaylor had been quiet.
He touched the Helm of Brilliance.
The ornate crown looked almost absurd in the darkness of the Void, its remaining stones carrying little reservoirs of terrible magic.
Nethnarel saw his hand move.
“What are you doing?”
Kaylor removed one of the fire opals.
Fendor understood.
“Oh.”
Kaylor stepped toward the opening.
Isamu moved aside.
Through the narrow gap, only fragments of the chamber could be seen. Blue-green light. Stone. The suggestion of movement.
Kaylor held the gem between two fingers.
“Everyone agree?”
Fendor looked toward the darkness.
“We could form a committee.”
Kaylor glanced at him.
“Fireball.”
“That is also a process.”
Kaylor threw the opal.
It vanished between the stones.
A heartbeat passed.
Then the chamber became fire.
Orange light erupted through every crack in the stone. Flame rushed back through the narrow opening, licking across the cavern wall before withdrawing. The blast illuminated the entire outer chamber in violent red and gold.
The rocks trembled.
The fire died.
Silence followed.
Nethnarel tilted her head.
“Think that killed them?”
Fendor waited.
“Probably not.”
The answer came through the stone.
A wave of invisible force exploded from the chamber.
Hexen took it first.
The impact struck like an enormous open hand. He slid backward across the wet rock, boots grinding for purchase. Pain traveled through his chest without leaving a visible wound.
He stayed upright.
The next pulse found Kaylor.
Then Isamu.
The energy did not care that stone lay between them and its source. It passed through the formations and struck directly into body and mind.
Kaylor grunted.
Isamu shifted one foot and remained where he stood.
Fendor looked at the narrow passage.
“So Fireball made them angry.”
Kaylor replaced the Helm of Brilliance.
“One less opal.”
“Useful information.”
Another pulse came.
The heroes had no clear target.
That was the worst part.
They knew where the creatures were.
Roughly.
They knew something inside the chamber could attack them through rock.
They could not return the favor with equal precision.
Hexen looked at the passage.
Then at the stone around it.
Then at the ceiling beyond.
He smiled.
Fendor noticed immediately.
“No.”
Hexen looked at him.
“You don't know what I'm doing.”
“I have known you long enough that the smile is sufficient.”
Hexen began casting.
Kaylor stepped backward.
Nethnarel did the same.
Isamu watched.
Fendor moved farther away.
“That seems prudent.”
Hexen finished the spell.
The ocean arrived underground.
There was no other sensible description.
A wall of water appeared inside the narrow chamber, towering far above the floating wrapped creatures. It filled nearly the entire interior space at once, a moving mass with enough force behind it to uproot buildings.
Tsunami.
The water struck.
The sound was colossal.
Stone amplified it.
The confined chamber turned Hexen's magic into a hydraulic weapon.
Blue-green shapes disappeared.
The wall continued moving.
Bodies were driven backward through the chamber.
The current slammed them toward the far wall, pinning several there beneath impossible pressure.
Fendor stared through the opening.
“I take back several things I've said about your judgment.”
Hexen concentrated.
“Only several?”
“For now.”
The water kept moving.
Nethnarel could see almost nothing through it.
Fendor saw less.
He drew anyway.
“You cannot see them,” Nethnarel said.
“I know where the room is.”
“That is a low standard.”
“I have worked with worse.”
Fendor fired.
The arrow disappeared through the opening.
He listened.
Nothing.
Another arrow.
Then another.
One struck something.
The impact came faintly through water and stone.
Fendor adjusted.
A later shot vanished into the chamber at a poor angle. The magic woven through his training caught it, twisting the missed shaft toward another possible target hidden beyond sight.
Whether it found one was impossible to tell.
Fendor lowered the bow.
“I dislike blind archery.”
Nethnarel looked at him.
“You just fired into a chamber containing five creatures you can't see through a moving wall of water.”
“Yes.”
“And hit something.”
“Yes.”
“Then what do you like?”
“Standards.”
Nethnarel flew closer.
The passage widened higher up, enough that her wings allowed her to angle toward the opening without standing directly in front of it.
Water roared inside.
Blue-green forms were pressed along the far side of the chamber.
Five.
Perhaps.
Enough.
The Staff of Power warmed in her hands.
She did not need to see a face.
Only a place.
Another Fireball went into the chamber.
This one came from the staff.
Flame met the Tsunami.
Steam exploded.
The entire passage disappeared behind boiling white vapor.
Fendor coughed.
“I don't think this counts as a safe room anymore.”
“We haven't cleared it yet.”
“That was the original requirement.”
The creatures answered.
The force wave struck Nethnarel in the air.
She folded around it.
Her wings flickered but held.
The blast did not throw her backward.
It did hurt.
Another wave passed through the rock toward Hexen.
Then another.
They had started recognizing the sensation an instant before impact—a pressure behind the eyes, a vibration in the teeth.
Recognition did not make it pleasant.
Hexen kept the Tsunami moving.
Inside the chamber, water reached the rear wall.
Then turned.
The confined space gave it nowhere else to go.
The enormous wave rebounded.
Hexen felt the change through the spell.
His expression shifted.
Fendor noticed.
“What?”
“It is coming back.”
Fendor looked toward the narrow opening.
Water appeared.
“End it.”
Hexen released his concentration.
The spell collapsed before the entire Tsunami could return through the passage, but not before a massive surge came roaring toward the outer cavern.
The heroes scattered.
Water burst between the stalagmites and spread across the already flooded floor.
For several moments, the Void became even wetter.
Then the magical water began draining away through the holes scattered across the cavern.
Fendor looked down at himself.
“Clean.”
Hexen said nothing.
“We should use that spell in inns.”
“No.”
“Worth asking.”
The glowing creatures remained alive.
Their wrappings emerged from the darkness.
The first strip of luminous cloth shot through the opening like a whip.
It wrapped around Isamu's arm.
He tore away.
A second band struck him.
The contact felt wrong.
Not merely physical.
Something clung afterward.
A cold certainty.
As though the creature had placed a claim against his death.
Isamu looked down at the fading mark.
“What was that?”
No one knew.
The bands withdrew.
Then came for Hexen.
One struck.
Another narrowly missed.
The effect remained inside him too—a malign thread attached to the part of every living creature that knew eventually it would stop living.
Hexen understood enough to dislike it.
“If those hit you,” he said, “don't let them keep doing it.”
Fendor stared.
“That was already my plan.”
The chamber pulsed.
Nethnarel took another force strike.
Then the wrappings found her.
One luminous band curled around her in midair.
She ripped free.
The second missed.
The first had been enough.
She felt something settle into her.
Not damage.
A promise.
The next force wave came.
Nethnarel failed to remain conscious.
Her wings vanished.
She dropped.
The cavern floor struck hard.
The Staff of Power bounced from her hand.
Fendor saw her fall.
“Neth!”
She did not move.
The mark left by the glowing wrapping awakened.
Death was suddenly closer than it should have been.
Not arriving yet.
Waiting with one foot already across the threshold.
Kaylor moved.
Haste surrounded him.
He had cast it on himself earlier while they were still outside the chamber, preparing for the moment when ranged attacks stopped being enough.
That moment had arrived.
The dragonborn crossed the gap.
He entered the chamber.
The place Hexen's Tsunami had scoured was chaos.
Water ran down the walls.
Broken stone covered the floor.
The wrapped creatures floated above it, glowing blue-green beneath streaming bands. They resembled mummified corpses only at a distance. Up close, their bodies seemed made from something that had never been alive enough to rot.
Kaylor attacked the nearest.
Final Word struck.
The first blow missed.
So did the next.
The thing moved strangely, drifting away from the sword without any motion that resembled dodging.
Kaylor's accelerated body corrected.
Another swing.
This one landed.
Radiant force followed.
The creature recoiled violently.
Kaylor noticed.
Not undead.
Not fiend.
But radiant power hurt it.
“That matters.”
Isamu charged in after him.
The monk crossed the flooded chamber.
Whip first.
Then hand.
Then another strike.
The creature floated backward.
Isamu followed just far enough to hurt it, then withdrew before the wrappings could accumulate around him.
Fendor remained outside.
For exactly as long as necessary.
He wanted the Vorpal Longsword.
Nethnarel's body lay between him and the enemy.
He could not reach both.
The Oathbow solved one of those problems.
He selected the nearest floating creature.
Sworn enemy.
The ancient weapon seemed to settle in his hands.
Fendor fired.
One arrow.
Another.
Then he stopped rationing effort.
Action Surge.
The bow became continuous motion.
Six attacks tore through the chamber.
One creature absorbed the first barrage and fell.
Fendor shifted targets before the body reached the floor.
The remaining arrows went into another.
It fell too.
Fendor lowered the Oathbow.
Two glowing bodies collapsed into the water.
“That helped.”
Kaylor looked back.
“Do it again.”
“I have limits.”
“That sounds made up.”
Fendor was already moving toward Nethnarel.
Hexen reached her first.
The sorcerer was still breathing.
Barely.
Whatever the creature's wrapping had done made her collapse more dangerous than an ordinary wound. Death already had a foothold.
Hexen put healing into her.
Not much.
Enough.
Nethnarel inhaled.
Her eyes opened.
She immediately looked annoyed.
Fendor crouched beside her.
“Good.”
“What?”
“You're alive.”
“I know.”
“You did not five seconds ago.”
“I was there.”
“Debatable.”
Hexen helped her sit.
“Seven.”
Nethnarel blinked.
“Seven what?”
“Enough.”
She accepted that.
Inside the chamber, one of the creatures screamed.
The sound was not loud.
It entered through the mind instead of the ears.
Hexen stiffened.
Kaylor felt it.
Isamu took the full force.
Pain went through the monk in a single brutal pulse.
He dropped.
The same death-mark left by the wrapping awakened.
Isamu hit the floor with his own failure already waiting for him.
Nethnarel tried to stand.
Her legs disagreed.
Hexen looked from Isamu to Nethnarel.
They were running out of space between wounded and dead.
He cast again.
Healing moved through the group.
A broad pulse this time.
Isamu gasped.
Nethnarel steadied.
Kaylor's wounds tightened.
Hexen felt some of his own pain ease.
Isamu opened his eyes.
He stood.
That unsettled one of the glowing creatures more than anything else they had done.
Fendor entered the chamber.
Now he could see them.
He looked at the strange floating bodies, the luminous wraps, the wet stone.
“So that's what has been trying to kill us.”
Nethnarel pushed herself upright.
“Disappointed?”
“No. I prefer targets.”
One creature vanished.
Not invisibility.
A short fold in space.
It disappeared from where Nethnarel had been targeting and reappeared elsewhere in the chamber.
Misty Step.
Then it released the mental scream again.
The wave crossed Hexen, Nethnarel and Isamu.
They resisted enough of it this time to remain alive.
Barely.
Kaylor attacked.
Radiant light flared from Final Word and the divine force he drove behind it.
The creature shrieked.
Kaylor smiled without humor.
“They don't like that.”
Fendor looked over.
“Then continue.”
Nethnarel rose into the wider upper part of the chamber.
Her fiery wings returned.
The earlier fall had left her body furious with the entire concept of gravity.
She saw one of the floating forms around the curve of stone.
Magic gathered.
Chaos Bolt.
The spell struck.
Unstable energy rolled across the creature.
Wild magic stirred around Nethnarel with it, offering the familiar choice between control and something stranger.
For once she took control.
There had been enough surprises.
Isamu moved.
Fendor moved.
Kaylor moved faster than either because Haste was still burning through him.
The battle no longer belonged to the wrapped creatures.
Their chamber had protected them while the heroes were forced to fire blindly through stone.
That protection was gone.
Isamu attacked and retreated.
Kaylor stayed close and made every radiant strike count.
Nethnarel used the height of the chamber to keep the wrappings from surrounding her again.
Hexen healed and attacked wherever the balance shifted.
Fendor did what Fendor did whenever a battlefield finally gave him clear lines.
He punished it for taking so long.
The last wrapped creature tried to pull away.
Kaylor followed.
Four accelerated attacks came.
Not all found their mark.
Enough did.
Final Word carved through the blue-green glow.
The creature collapsed.
For one moment its wrappings floated independently in the air.
Then they faded.
The chamber became still.
Kaylor's Haste ended.
Every unnatural reserve of speed vanished at once.
He stopped.
Completely.
Fendor looked at him.
“Kaylor?”
The dragonborn stared ahead.
His body had paid the price for moving faster than it was meant to.
“Give me a moment.”
Fendor nodded.
“I have seen statues with more energy.”
Kaylor did not answer.
Then the corpse changed.
Nethnarel saw it first.
“Wait.”
The other slain creatures were disappearing.
Their blue-green glow thinned.
The wrappings became translucent.
Bodies lost definition until the darkness beneath the Void simply reclaimed them.
The last one did something different.
Its remains contracted.
Light pulled inward.
The wrappings wound around themselves.
Something solid formed at the center.
Metal.
A cylinder.
Kaylor's exhaustion disappeared from his expression.
He stepped closer.
The object settled onto the wet stone.
It looked like the first fragment.
Same diameter.
Same impossible construction.
Ends shaped not as breaks but as joining surfaces awaiting other pieces.
Fendor stared.
“Again.”
Hexen nodded.
Isamu crouched beside it.
Nethnarel looked toward the passage behind them.
They had entered the room looking for somewhere to sleep.
They had found another part of a divine weapon.
Kaylor reached down.
He picked up the fragment.
It was cold.
Then warm.
Then neither.
The magic inside it seemed to recognize nothing about him and everything about the place.
“One more,” Isamu said.
“Maybe,” Nethnarel replied.
Fendor looked at her.
“The symbol.”
That was the only measure they had.
The great design outside had changed when the first fragment appeared. If it changed again, perhaps they could finally understand how many pieces the Void expected them to find.
Not yet.
First they needed to survive long enough to care.
Hexen looked around the chamber.
The walls were solid.
The narrow entrance was its only obvious approach.
Everything that had occupied it was dead.
“This works.”
Fendor stared.
“For what?”
“Rest.”
Fendor looked around.
Then toward the bodies fading into nothing.
Then at the opening through which force waves, magical wrappings, fire and an entire Tsunami had traveled during the last hour.
“This is your definition of a safe room?”
“It is now.”
No one had a better one.
Hexen approached the narrow passage.
Stone softened beneath his magic.
The stalagmites and wall around the gap began flowing together. Rock folded over the entrance until the cavern beyond disappeared.
Fendor watched the last opening shrink.
“Air.”
Hexen left a narrow crack.
Fendor nodded.
“Excellent. We will die from something other than suffocation.”
Then they waited.
For the first time since reaching the bottom of the Void, waiting worked.
Minutes became an hour.
An hour became several.
Nothing scratched at the wall.
No mithril dragon descended from the ceiling.
No construct came through the floor.
No mimic disguised itself as a pillow.
No glowing creature appeared from the darkness.
The heroes slept.
Not comfortably.
Not peacefully.
But completely.
The Void gave them one night.
That felt suspicious enough that none of them commented on it.
When they woke, the difference was extraordinary.
Nethnarel's wounds had finally stopped measuring her life in individual mistakes.
Isamu no longer carried the invisible pull of death left by the creature's wrappings.
Fendor could move without discovering another place he had been bitten.
Kaylor's exhaustion was gone.
Hexen looked irritatingly satisfied that his wall had worked.
Then he began preparing breakfast.
Fendor smelled it.
“Please tell me that is not Goodberry.”
“Better.”
Magic spread through the sealed chamber.
Food appeared.
Not rations.
A feast.
Warm bread.
Fruit.
Meat.
Drink.
The strange abundance looked absurd amid the broken stone and water beneath the Void.
No one complained.
Heroes' Feast had saved them before.
They ate.
The magic settled into them.
Strength beyond simple healing.
A deeper resistance of mind.
Courage reinforced against supernatural fear.
The feeling that whatever waited beyond Hexen's wall would have to work harder than usual to make them regret waking up.
Nethnarel leaned back against the stone.
“This may be the best room we've found in the Void.”
Fendor looked at the melted wall.
“It does not have a door.”
“That may be why.”
Eventually they stood.
They had two fragments.
The Naked Goddess still waited somewhere beyond everything they understood.
So did the rest of the Void.
Hexen touched the stone sealing the passage.
“Ready?”
No one said yes.
They were.
The wall had hardened completely during the rest. Magic had made their shelter; brute force would make the exit.
An enchanted rod joined the effort.
Stone cracked.
Kaylor's strength finished what magic began.
The seal broke outward.
Cold cavern air entered.
Fendor stepped through first far enough to inspect the darkness.
Nothing attacked him.
“Suspicious.”
Isamu emerged.
Then Kaylor.
Nethnarel and Hexen followed.
They returned toward the center of the great cavern.
The immense symbol waited beneath the shallow water.
The first time they had approached it after finding a staff fragment, liquid mithril had spread through one portion of its design.
Now more light moved.
A second broad section began filling.
Metallic liquid flowed through ancient grooves with no visible source, tracing geometry carved into the floor long before anyone remembered the Void had a purpose.
The heroes stood around it.
No one joked.
Two pieces.
Two reactions.
More of the symbol alive.
More still dark.
Kaylor took out the fragment recovered from the wrapped creature.
He held it beside the first.
They belonged together.
Not joined yet.
Waiting.
Nethnarel stared into the remaining unlit portions of the floor.
“How many?”
Fendor looked at the design.
“Enough.”
Isamu crouched and studied the lines.
The map of the symbol suggested an answer.
Perhaps three pieces.
Perhaps more.
Ancient geometry was not obligated to make itself convenient.
Hexen looked toward the distant cavern passages.
“We keep searching.”
Kaylor secured the fragments.
Fendor raised the Oathbow.
Nethnarel's wings ignited.
Isamu adjusted the Helm of Teleportation.
The safe room remained behind them.
Their first true rest inside the Void.
Their second piece of the staff.
And ahead, beyond the edge of the mithril light, the darkness was already watching them again.