The city woke angry.
Dust rose first.
It gathered around Kaylor’s boots in thin spirals, harmless enough that he nearly ignored it. Then the spirals widened. Grit struck his armor. Broken Oslan streets disappeared beneath moving curtains of dirt drawn from cracks that had lain undisturbed for centuries.
Across the ruins, figures shimmered into existence.
Not all at once.
One appeared beside a fallen wall, transparent enough that Kaylor could see stone through its chest. Another emerged farther north wearing the remains of armor with a horned helm above a dead face. A third formed near Isamu, carrying a sword and staring from a skull in which no living eyes remained.
More followed.
The lantern still burned at the center of the ancient platform.
Isamu stood beside it.
“What did I do?”
Fendor drew the Vorpal Longsword.
“I believe the technical term is everything wrong.”
“I don’t remember putting it there.”
“That does not improve the situation.”
Kaylor stepped forward before the nearest dead warrior became fully solid.
The dust thickened around him.
It struck like a thousand tiny stones, not dangerous individually but relentless enough to sting exposed skin and rattle against plate.
Kaylor raised his shield.
“Spread out.”
Fendor looked around at the enemies appearing on every side.
“We are spread out.”
Kaylor glanced back.
“Yes.”
“That was not praise.”
Nethnarel moved first.
The Staff of Power came into her hands.
The horned dead warrior near Isamu was still stabilizing into the world, its outline wavering between corpse and memory. She sighted along the broken avenue.
Isamu was directly between them.
Nethnarel smiled.
Fendor saw that.
“No.”
Lightning erupted from the staff.
The bolt passed so close to Isamu that blue-white light outlined every strand of his hair.
He did not flinch.
The magic curved through the broken ruins and struck the undead warrior beyond him.
Electricity crawled over ancient armor.
The creature convulsed.
Smoke rose from it.
Isamu looked back at Nethnarel.
“You could have warned me.”
“You would have moved.”
“Probably.”
“Exactly.”
The ruined city continued filling with the dead.
Kaylor understood then that they were not facing one kind of guardian.
These had once been different people.
Different soldiers.
Different purposes.
Some wore ancient armor and carried swords or axes. Others looked more decayed, their flesh clinging loosely to bone beneath ruined robes. One had no eyes at all. Another carried a great axe large enough that Kaylor would have respected it even if its owner possessed blood.
The lantern had not merely summoned monsters.
It had summoned Oslan.
Or what was left of it.
The eyeless warrior approached Kaylor.
He held Final Word ready.
“Come on.”
Fendor heard him.
“You need another phrase.”
“No.”
“You have been saying that to things for years.”
“It works.”
The dead warrior entered striking distance.
Kaylor met it.
Final Word cut across its body.
Radiant force followed.
The creature staggered but did not react with the particular agony Kaylor had expected from undead flesh.
Not vulnerable.
He noted it and struck again.
Then light fell from above.
Kaylor looked up.
There had been no cloud break.
No sunbeam.
The radiance simply descended from empty sky and struck him.
His armor flashed.
The damage was minor.
The effect was not.
Light remained upon him.
It traced the seams of his plate and the edges of his scales until the dragonborn stood in the ruins like a signal fire.
Fendor stared.
“You’re glowing.”
“I noticed.”
“Very heroic.”
Kaylor blocked a sword.
The dead warrior’s blade scraped across his shield.
Another creature appeared behind him.
Kaylor turned.
A great axe descended.
It missed by inches and broke a piece from the ancient pavement.
Fendor moved toward him.
“Still heroic?”
“Busy.”
The dust storm expanded.
It had begun around Kaylor.
Now it spread through the streets, swallowing ruined walls and curling around everyone in the plaza.
Nethnarel rose above it.
The storm followed.
“This place is irritating.”
Fendor coughed.
“You wanted to come here.”
“I can be correct and irritated simultaneously.”
Isamu had more immediate concerns.
Something stood across from him holding the lantern.
He blinked.
The lantern had been on the platform.
Now it was in the creature’s hand.
The dead thing wore the remnants of ancient armor and possessed far too many bones visible through its decayed flesh. The lantern’s fire burned without illuminating its face.
Isamu stared at it.
“I brought that.”
The creature raised one hand.
A skeletal finger pointed directly at his chest.
Then it spoke.
One word.
“Death.”
The sound entered Isamu through bone.
His heart seemed to stop.
Not actually.
Almost.
Power struck him with enough force to fold a lesser person onto the stones. Isamu staggered one step, felt something trying to turn the command into fact, and refused.
His heart beat again.
He straightened.
“That was rude.”
The creature pointed a second time.
Isamu was already moving.
Hunter’s Mark shifted.
The lantern bearer became prey.
The whip cracked.
Then Isamu closed.
One strike.
Another.
A third came so fast the creature never found space to answer.
Ancient bone shattered.
Armor collapsed.
The dead thing fell.
The lantern slipped from its grasp.
Isamu reached for it.
He never touched it.
The lantern landed.
Fire spilled from its glass without going out.
The flame stretched.
It climbed.
For an instant the fire had the shape of a woman.
Then the shape became flesh.
Or something pretending to flesh.
A female figure rose from the fallen lantern wrapped in old garments and sickly light. Her face might once have been beautiful. Death had made it severe.
The lantern’s fire remained part of her.
She lifted it toward Isamu.
He stared.
“You were an object.”
Fendor, approaching from the far ruins, heard him.
“That sentence should concern us more than it does.”
The woman thrust the lantern forward.
A beam of diseased light struck Isamu.
Not fire.
Not exactly.
It felt like rot given brightness.
The magic passed through skin and pulled at whatever part of a living body knew it would eventually become a corpse.
Isamu endured it.
He moved toward her.
The woman recoiled.
Behind him, Hexen became a dinosaur.
There were moments in a battle when events remained strange only because one had not yet seen the strangest thing available.
The triceratops came out of the dust like an avalanche that had acquired horns.
An undead warrior turned.
That was its mistake.
Hexen hit it at speed.
The impact lifted the dead soldier from its feet.
The triceratops continued.
A second creature stood in his path.
It disappeared beneath several tons of druid.
Stone cracked.
Ancient weapons flew.
Fendor stopped running long enough to watch Hexen thunder across the ruined plaza.
“I object.”
Nethnarel hovered above him.
“To what?”
“Nothing should be allowed to solve problems that efficiently.”
Hexen turned his enormous head.
Fendor pointed toward another group of undead.
“There.”
The triceratops charged.
Fendor nodded.
“I withdraw the objection.”
The city had fully awakened now.
More dead forms shimmered into solidity beyond the first rank.
One wore a broad helmet and carried a sword.
Another looked like a northern warrior from some age no history had preserved, heavy armor hanging from a body that should long ago have become dust.
A third raised a weapon toward Nethnarel.
She climbed higher.
The creature threw its axe.
Fendor saw it happen.
He was already engaged with another dead warrior.
He cut once.
Again.
The undead turned from him toward Nethnarel.
Fendor struck before it could complete the motion.
The Vorpal Longsword passed deep through the dead thing’s side.
The creature twisted.
Its great axe left its hand anyway.
It died while throwing.
The weapon crossed the ruins.
Nethnarel saw it coming too late to avoid the entire strike.
The axe clipped her and spun away.
She hissed.
Fendor looked at the corpse.
“You died badly.”
Nethnarel landed briefly on a broken wall.
“That was for me?”
“No.”
“You killed it while it was attacking me.”
“Coincidence.”
“Of course.”
Fendor moved on.
Nethnarel smiled despite herself.
Then the next dead warrior attacked her, and sentiment became inconvenient.
The woman with the lantern remained Isamu’s problem.
He preferred it that way.
Hunter’s Mark still burned against her.
He closed again.
Whip.
Fist.
Another strike.
She tried to turn the lantern toward him.
Isamu stepped inside the motion.
The weapon became useless at that distance.
His final blow broke something fundamental in her.
The dead woman came apart.
Not like flesh.
Like the memory holding her together had been dismissed.
She collapsed into black fragments and light.
The lantern hit the stones.
Clang.
The flame remained burning.
Isamu looked at it.
“No.”
He left it there.
Two more undead moved toward him.
He met them instead.
The storm worsened.
What had been swirling dust became a broad moving wall of grit that covered the battlefield. It found eyes, mouths, seams in armor. Every breath tasted of the mountain.
Kaylor was still glowing inside it.
Fendor could locate him from half the city away.
“That is actually useful.”
Kaylor drove his shield into an undead warrior.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
The creature attacking Kaylor raised a sword.
Another came behind it.
Another farther back.
The dragonborn had achieved what he often did in large battles: he had become the place where enemies accumulated.
Some of this was intentional.
Some was Kaylor.
The nearest creature struck.
He blocked.
A second blow got through.
Then another.
Kaylor remained standing.
The radiance surrounding him made every impact flash.
He looked like a saint painted by someone who had never met him.
Nethnarel saw the crowd around him.
She considered a spell.
Discarded it.
Too many allies were moving through the same space.
Then remembered something she had been waiting to use.
Seven motes of starlight appeared around her head.
Not flame.
Not lightning.
Stars.
They orbited her in a slow crown, pale points burning far brighter than their size should have allowed.
Fendor looked up.
“That’s new.”
“I’ve had it.”
“You’ve been hiding stars?”
“I haven’t had a good opportunity.”
Fendor gestured toward the undead-filled city.
“Apparently this qualifies.”
Nethnarel selected one mote.
It shot from the crown.
Radiant light crossed the plaza and struck the creature nearest Fendor.
The impact exploded against its torso.
The undead stumbled sideways.
Fendor glanced up at Nethnarel.
“I approve.”
“I was hoping.”
“Do it again.”
“There are rules.”
“Disappointing.”
The dead pressed inward.
One of them opened its mouth.
Nothing resembling breath should have remained inside the corpse.
Something came out anyway.
A cone of killing cold swept across the ruins.
Hexen took it first.
Frost formed over the hide of the triceratops.
Fendor turned away and felt the cold knife through armor.
Nethnarel caught the worst of it in the air.
Her fiery wings guttered.
For one moment she dropped.
Then they flared again.
She climbed, furious.
“All right.”
Fendor shook ice from his cloak.
“What?”
“I have decided I dislike that one.”
“You were undecided?”
“I was prioritizing.”
The dust storm struck all of them again.
Hexen answered with mass.
The triceratops charged through the undead line.
There was no elegant way to be hit by a triceratops.
One ancient warrior went down beneath the first impact.
A second was thrown sideways.
Hexen continued directly toward Kaylor.
Kaylor saw him coming.
There was a brief moment in which the dragonborn had to decide whether the charging dinosaur was more dangerous than the undead surrounding him.
He chose.
Kaylor ducked.
Hexen passed over him.
The underside of a triceratops briefly became Kaylor’s sky.
Then the dinosaur smashed into the creatures beyond.
Fendor stared.
“Kaylor?”
The dragonborn stood.
“I’m fine.”
“I am disappointed.”
“You wanted him to hit me?”
“Not seriously.”
Kaylor raised Final Word.
“You are a terrible friend.”
“I am an excellent archer.”
“That was not the question.”
Kaylor looked toward the dead warrior Hexen had knocked onto the stones.
Then he turned Final Word in his hands.
Sacred power gathered along the blade.
Holy Weapon.
The sword brightened.
Not the strange mark placed on Kaylor by the enemy.
This light belonged to him.
The next strike landed with enough radiant force to tear through ancient armor.
The undead warrior collapsed.
Kaylor turned toward another.
“You’re next.”
The creature did not understand him.
That was fine.
It understood the sword.
Isamu fought near the lantern.
He struck one opponent, then another, shifting between them before either could establish a defense. The Swarm Gloves crawled restlessly across his hands, but disciplined violence remained enough.
Fendor entered the same knot of enemies from the opposite side.
The elf’s sword work lacked Isamu’s speed and possessed none of his restraint.
He struck four times.
The dead warrior before him seemed briefly surprised that an archer had become the more dangerous person standing within arm’s reach.
Then it stopped having opinions.
Another undead pulled away from Fendor and turned toward Nethnarel.
Fendor cut it down while it moved.
The axe it had already thrown struck her a heartbeat after the creature died.
“Again?” she shouted.
Fendor pointed at the corpse.
“I killed it.”
“It still hit me.”
“I cannot control events after death.”
Nethnarel stared.
Fendor thought of Grazim.
“So far as we know.”
That silenced both of them for a moment.
Then a bony finger pointed at Fendor.
“Death.”
Fendor looked at the creature.
“No.”
Power struck.
The answer remained no.
Across the ruins, Kaylor continued dismantling the creatures Hexen knocked down.
Holy Weapon turned Final Word into a bright line through the sand.
Hexen charged again.
The triceratops passed dangerously close to Kaylor a second time.
Kaylor moved just enough.
“That one was closer.”
The triceratops did not apologize.
Fendor laughed.
The battle had begun as an ambush.
It was becoming something else.
The dead of Oslan were powerful.
Some carried spells or powers unlike anything the heroes had seen. Some hurled axes. Some called light from empty sky. One had commanded death with a finger. Another had weaponized the lantern. The storm itself seemed bound to them, grinding constantly at the living.
But the heroes were not explorers caught unprepared in an ancient ruin.
They were the people who had died beneath a mithril dragon and come back annoyed.
Once they understood the shape of the fight, the dead began losing ground.
The lantern woman fell.
Kaylor destroyed another warrior.
Hexen trampled two more into the ruins.
Isamu moved between wounded enemies and finished them before they could recover.
Fendor carved through one and immediately turned his last strike into the next.
Nethnarel’s Crown of Stars continued circling her, each mote waiting for the moment she chose to send it.
The dust storm began to feel less like a threat and more like the dying breath of a city refusing to admit the battle had turned.
One ancient warrior tried to reach Kaylor.
Hexen reached it first.
The triceratops lowered its horns.
Kaylor saw the charge coming.
Again.
“You are doing this deliberately.”
Hexen thundered past.
The undead disappeared beneath him.
Kaylor stepped through the wake.
Final Word fell.
The creature did not rise.
Farther north, another dead soldier remained.
Fendor saw it.
So did Nethnarel.
She was badly wounded now.
The battle had accumulated on her in cuts, cold and strange beams of energy. Her wings still burned, but more from stubbornness than abundance.
She raised one hand.
Fire gathered.
Then she reconsidered.
A star left her crown instead.
The mote struck one enemy while other magic followed.
The creature staggered.
Fendor had already changed weapons.
The Oathbow came up.
The last meaningful distance between them ceased to matter.
He fired.
The arrow crossed the ruins.
The final undead warrior fell.
Silence did not return immediately.
The storm took time to understand.
Dust still circled Kaylor.
Then the unnatural glow surrounding him went out.
At almost the same instant, the great moving cloud of grit weakened.
The wind died.
Sand settled across the broken city.
For the first time since Isamu had placed the lantern on the ancient platform, the ruins became truly still.
Fendor lowered the bow.
“Everyone alive?”
Kaylor looked at him.
“Yes.”
“Hexen?”
The triceratops snorted.
“Good.”
“Neth?”
Nethnarel descended.
“Technically.”
“Isamu?”
No answer.
Fendor turned.
Isamu stood beside the lantern.
He looked down at it.
Fendor crossed the ruins.
“Do not.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“You are looking at it.”
“That is permitted.”
“Not for you.”
Hexen resumed human form.
The transformation shrank tons of dinosaur into one druid standing amid the damage he had caused.
Kaylor surveyed the streets.
Ancient dead lay scattered between ruins.
Some were already fading.
Others had collapsed into heaps that resembled ordinary remains now that whatever sustained them had departed.
Nethnarel sat on a broken wall.
“I would like to formally revise my opinion of Oslan.”
Fendor reached the lantern.
“To?”
“More dangerous.”
“You needed the fight?”
“The magic failing at eight thousand feet was suggestive.”
“The ancient dragon corpse?”
“Circumstantial.”
“The four undead at the statues?”
“Moderately persuasive.”
“The possessed lantern that raised an army?”
Nethnarel considered.
“Compelling.”
Fendor picked up the lantern.
Nothing happened.
Everyone watched.
He held it at arm’s length.
Still nothing.
Isamu looked offended.
“It likes you.”
“No. It fears good judgment.”
“You lit it.”
“I did not.”
“You were going to.”
“I am holding it safely.”
Kaylor walked toward the edge of the ruins.
The fissure they had seen earlier split the mountain not far away. From here he could look down into it.
Far down.
The crack seemed to run almost through the entire mesa, a narrow wound descending thousands of feet toward the lower world.
Fendor came up beside him.
“How far?”
“Far enough.”
“Hell?”
Kaylor listened.
A bird called somewhere beyond the ruins.
“No.”
Fendor nodded.
“Good.”
Hexen approached the lantern.
“We still need to know what it does.”
Fendor stared.
“It wakes the dead.”
“That is one thing it does.”
“One is sufficient.”
Nethnarel joined them, moving more carefully than she would have liked.
“The first obelisk moved us.”
Isamu looked toward the platform.
“This one probably does too.”
Fendor looked at him.
“You put the lantern there because you were enchanted.”
“Yes.”
“That is generally a sign not to repeat an action.”
Kaylor looked back toward the platform.
“The creatures are dead.”
Fendor’s face changed.
“No.”
Kaylor took the lantern from him.
“No.”
Fendor pointed.
“That is exactly what you said before hitting the statue.”
Kaylor walked toward the platform.
“Different situation.”
“You saw something when you hit that statue.”
Kaylor stopped.
Only for a moment.
Fendor noticed.
Nethnarel noticed Fendor noticing.
Isamu noticed everyone.
Hexen looked between them.
Kaylor kept walking.
Fendor sighed.
“We are going to discuss that.”
“Later.”
“That means never.”
“Probably.”
Kaylor reached the platform.
The lantern’s flame had never gone out.
That was perhaps the most disturbing part.
Through the battle, through its possession by the dead woman, through the fall to the stones, the small fire had continued burning.
Kaylor looked at the receptacle.
Then at Isamu.
“You want to do it?”
“No.”
Fendor looked delighted.
“Growth.”
Kaylor placed the lantern back where Isamu had put it.
The response was immediate.
Light spread across the ancient platform.
A circle traced itself into the stone.
The same kind of circle that had carried them from the cave into the ruins.
No undead appeared.
No dust storm rose.
No dead woman crawled out of the lantern.
The gateway simply waited.
Fendor looked around.
“That is suspicious.”
“It worked,” Nethnarel said.
“It also worked last time.”
“That transported us.”
“And then attempted to murder us.”
“That was afterward.”
“You have an unhealthy definition of success.”
Hexen lowered himself onto a fallen block of stone.
“We should rest.”
No one argued.
That alone established how badly they needed it.
They did not attempt sleep.
Not here.
Not with an active Oslan circle glowing twenty feet away and a lantern whose recent history included possession.
They stayed together.
Weapons remained close.
The hour passed beneath a sun that seemed too normal for the place.
They bound wounds.
Recovered breath.
Let magic settle.
Isamu sat with his back against one of the ruined walls, eyes occasionally drifting toward the lantern.
Fendor noticed every time.
“If you begin walking toward it without talking, I’m shooting you.”
“Where?”
“The leg.”
“Which?”
“I’ll decide in the moment.”
Nethnarel rested the Staff of Power across her knees.
“What if the next circle takes us higher?”
Hexen looked toward the distant mountains.
“That would fit.”
Three cities.
Three mountain plateaus.
One had stood at ten thousand feet.
The others were higher.
Fendor followed his gaze.
“We climbed all this way so the ancient people could invent stairs made of teleportation.”
Nethnarel smiled.
“Better than stairs.”
“Not if the stairs summon undead.”
Kaylor sat apart from them.
Not far.
Enough.
He looked toward the ancient green dragon skeleton somewhere beyond the ruined city.
He could not see it from here.
The vision remained.
A skeletal face.
Turning.
Looking at him.
He had told them nothing.
He still did not know whether that was caution or cowardice.
Kaylor preferred to call it patience.
Final Word rested across his legs.
For one brief moment he remembered the warning at the statues.
He will not be happy.
Perhaps they had already met the warning’s subject.
Perhaps not.
Something told Kaylor they had not.
The hour ended.
Fendor stood.
“So.”
The circle still glowed.
The lantern still burned.
No dead army had returned.
Isamu rolled his shoulders.
Nethnarel rose.
Hexen picked up his staff.
Kaylor stood last.
The five heroes gathered around the ancient gate.
Fendor looked at the circle.
Then at Kaylor.
Then at Isamu.
“I want it understood that we have now gathered extensive evidence against doing this.”
Nethnarel stepped closer.
“And?”
Fendor drew the Oathbow.
“And apparently we are going anyway.”
Beyond the circle waited another piece of Oslan.
Another height.
Another city.
Maybe answers.
Probably worse questions.
Kaylor looked once toward the ruins behind them.
The dead had been waiting for centuries.
The lantern had called them back for less than an hour.
That was enough.
He faced the circle.
“Ready?”
Nobody said yes.
That had never stopped them before.