The battle at the fountain did not end cleanly.
Most battles did not.
Later, the heroes would remember fragments rather than sequence: Isamu impossibly high above the plaza, feet finding purchase on a column of water that should never have supported him; Hexen charging through the flooded ruins as a triceratops; Nethnarel fighting with a dead finger buried against her ear while stones wheeled around her like an angry little constellation; Fendor knee-deep in water with the Vorpal Longsword moving faster than the eye wanted to follow; Kaylor standing at the center with Final Word burning in his hands.
The servant of the Master remained above them.
Until it did not.
Whether Isamu’s whip dragged it low enough for the others to reach, whether Nethnarel’s animated stones broke whatever held it aloft, whether Kaylor’s radiant blade or Fendor’s impossible precision finally ended it mattered less than the result.
The thing fell.
The column supporting it collapsed.
Thousands of gallons of water struck the plaza at once.
Isamu came down with it.
For a brief and extremely satisfying moment, Fendor believed the monk had finally discovered a height from which he could not land gracefully.
Then Isamu hit the water, rolled once and stood.
Fendor stared at him.
“No.”
Isamu looked over.
“What?”
“You are not allowed to make that look intentional.”
The last of the skeletal guardians came apart soon afterward.
Without the servant above them, the battle lost whatever organizing will had driven it. The creatures continued fighting, but not together. Kaylor and Fendor broke one cluster. Hexen’s enormous body scattered another. Nethnarel burned away the magic holding a third together while Isamu pursued whatever tried to escape.
Then there were only bones.
Water moved among them.
The fountain continued overflowing as though the city had merely been waiting thousands of years for someone to remember how to turn it on.
Nethnarel stood in the shallows with one hand pressed to the side of her head.
Gygax remained perched on her shoulder.
The mouse was glaring at the skeletal finger with the unmistakable outrage of someone who had already attempted the problem once and considered the failure personal.
Fendor approached.
“Still there?”
Nethnarel looked at him.
“What do you think?”
“I think I would like confirmation before putting my fingers near your ear.”
“Get it out.”
Fendor examined the offending piece of bone.
The finger no longer writhed with the same force it had possessed during the battle. Whatever intelligence had driven it seemed to have diminished when the guardians fell.
He gripped it.
Nethnarel’s eyes widened.
“Wait.”
Fendor stopped.
“You said—”
“I know what I said.”
“Excellent.”
“Just—”
She took a breath.
“Do it.”
He pulled.
Nethnarel made a sound that convinced several dead guardians to remain dead.
The bone came free.
Fendor held it between two fingers.
Small.
Crooked.
Disgusting.
Gygax immediately bit it.
Fendor looked at the mouse.
“I respect that.”
Nethnarel rubbed her ear.
“Burn it.”
Fendor dropped the finger into the water.
Nethnarel incinerated it.
No one objected.
For several moments afterward, the heroes simply stood amid the wreckage.
The city around them remained almost completely flattened. The fountain and its beautiful stone woman had survived devastation that erased nearly everything else, and now the water surrounding it reflected five exhausted people who had climbed fifteen thousand feet looking for a civilization that supposedly understood magic better than they did.
Fendor looked at the fountain.
“So.”
Hexen returned to human form.
“So.”
“We filled it.”
“Yes.”
“It tried to kill us.”
“Yes.”
“I would like that added to the official history of fountains.”
Nethnarel looked around.
“We learned something.”
Fendor stared at her.
“What?”
“The Master is real.”
“That is not information I wanted.”
Kaylor had gone quiet.
That was not unusual.
The way he was looking toward the lower mountain was.
He could not see the first plateau from here. The edge of the higher mesa hid most of it, and distance reduced the world below to pale stone and cloud.
But he could see the dragon in his memory.
A skeletal face turning toward him.
The dead green dragon on the first summit.
The warning.
He will not be happy.
Then the servant at the fountain.
The Master would not want you here.
Kaylor had delayed telling the others because he had wanted proof.
Now he had accumulated enough uncertainty to make silence unreasonable.
“I saw something.”
Fendor turned.
“There it is.”
Kaylor looked at him.
“What?”
“I knew you saw something.”
“When?”
“When you hit the statue and suddenly developed the conversational warmth of a tomb.”
Nethnarel moved closer.
“What did you see?”
Kaylor hesitated.
Then told them.
The skeletal dragon.
Its face.
Its horns.
The way it resembled the ancient green dragon whose corpse lay on the first plateau.
The sensation that the creature had turned and noticed him.
Hexen listened without interruption.
Isamu looked back toward the path by which they had come.
Nethnarel’s expression grew increasingly interested.
Kaylor finished.
Fendor nodded slowly.
“And you decided not to mention the enormous undead dragon watching you.”
“I wasn’t sure.”
“You were sure enough to remember it.”
“That is different.”
“Is it?”
“Yes.”
Fendor considered.
“No.”
Nethnarel looked toward the lower mountain.
“Dracolich.”
Kaylor’s eyes narrowed.
“Probably.”
Hexen shook his head slightly.
“Not necessarily.”
“The dragon is dead.”
“Yes.”
“Kaylor saw its skeleton looking at him.”
“Yes.”
“And something calling itself the servant of a Master just tried to stop us.”
Hexen considered this.
“Probably.”
Fendor spread his hands.
“Progress.”
A shadow crossed the water.
All five heroes looked up.
Nothing passed overhead.
The shadow came again.
Larger.
This time it moved across the ruined city from behind them.
Kaylor turned.
The air beyond the fountain darkened.
Not storm.
Wings.
Something enormous climbed over the distant edge of the plateau.
Bone appeared first.
A skull.
Long horns.
The same architecture Kaylor had seen in his vision.
Then wings spread against the sky.
Not skin and membrane.
Death stretched into the shape of flight.
The dragon rose until its full skeletal form cleared the plateau.
Fragments of ancient green hide still clung to portions of its body. Most had vanished. Bone and dark magic held the rest together. Pale light burned in eyes that no longer existed.
Fendor drew the Oathbow.
Kaylor lifted Final Word.
Nethnarel stared.
Hexen said, very quietly, “That answers that.”
The dracolich landed.
The ruined plaza shook.
Water rippled outward from the fountain.
The creature was immense, though not remotely comparable to the Mithril Dragon that had killed them. This was an ancient dragon reduced by death and prolonged existence into something leaner and somehow more unsettling. Nothing living needed to hold those bones together.
Magic did.
Very old magic.
Kaylor recognized the skull.
The same one.
He stepped forward.
The dracolich lowered its head.
“You.”
The voice did not come from lungs.
It emerged from the space inside the skeletal chest and seemed to vibrate through every surface around them.
Fendor kept the bow drawn.
“Promising.”
Kaylor looked into the dead dragon’s eyes.
“You were watching me.”
“I felt you.”
“That statue?”
A pause.
“Yes.”
Kaylor raised Final Word slightly.
“You’re the Master.”
The dracolich’s jaw shifted.
If the expression had belonged to a living dragon, Kaylor might have called it amusement.
“I am called many things by those who remained.”
Nethnarel stepped forward despite the bow Fendor had begun subtly moving across her path.
“What are you called by yourself?”
The dragon turned toward her.
“Zidara.”
The name settled into the dead city.
Nethnarel repeated it.
“Zidara.”
The dracolich looked at her longer than the others.
“You are the one who searches.”
That stopped her.
“How do you know that?”
“Because you came.”
Fendor glanced toward Hexen.
“I dislike ancient things that answer questions like that.”
Hexen nodded.
“Usually means they know more than they’re saying.”
Zidara’s skull turned toward him.
“I know enough.”
“Then tell us about Oslan,” Nethnarel said.
The dragon became still.
Wind moved through its ribs.
Far below, cloud gathered along the cliffs.
For a moment Nethnarel thought it would refuse.
Then Zidara spoke.
“Oslan reached too high.”
Kaylor glanced at the ruined city.
“Apparently.”
“Not these mountains.”
The dead dragon looked upward.
“Magic.”
Nethnarel forgot the finger that had nearly crawled into her skull.
Forgot the battle.
Forgot that the creature speaking to her was a dracolich ancient enough to remember a civilization everyone else considered legend.
“What did they do?”
“They ceased accepting the boundaries.”
That sentence found her more effectively than any spell.
Nethnarel stepped closer.
“What boundaries?”
Zidara’s dead gaze remained on her.
“The ones you know.”
Silence followed.
Fendor looked between them.
“This is becoming one of those conversations.”
Nethnarel barely heard him.
“There was more.”
“There is always more.”
“Magic beyond what we can use now.”
“Yes.”
Her heartbeat accelerated.
The frustration that had driven her back into the old library suddenly felt less like obsession and more like recognition.
She had been right.
Not theoretically.
Not philosophically.
Historically.
The ceiling existed because someone had built it.
“Why can’t we reach it?”
Zidara’s head lowered.
“Because your goddess does not permit it.”
Hexen’s expression changed.
“Mystra.”
The name seemed to affect the air around the dracolich.
Zidara did not bow.
Did not praise.
Did not curse.
“Yes.”
Nethnarel looked across the annihilated city.
“What happened here?”
“Oslan became dangerous.”
“To Mystra?”
“To everything.”
Fendor raised an eyebrow.
“That sounds conveniently theological.”
Zidara’s gaze moved toward him.
“It is not praise.”
That interested Hexen.
“You serve her.”
“I was made to serve.”
Different.
Not subtle.
Different.
Kaylor heard it too.
“You guard this place for Mystra.”
“I guard the entrance.”
“To what?”
Zidara looked toward the center of the mountain beneath their feet.
“Oslan.”
Nethnarel frowned.
“We’re standing in Oslan.”
“No.”
The answer came without hesitation.
“You stand upon the grave left above it.”
The wind seemed colder.
Fendor looked down at the stone.
“Of course there is more underneath.”
“There is always more underneath,” Isamu said.
Fendor nodded.
“That should be our motto.”
Nethnarel ignored them.
“Mystra destroyed Oslan.”
Zidara’s skull tilted.
“She stopped them.”
“By destroying the cities?”
“Yes.”
“And changing magic?”
The dracolich regarded her for a long moment.
Then spoke.
“There was a time when mortal hands reached farther.”
No one interrupted.
“Spells climbed beyond the highest workings you know. Power accumulated. Knowledge multiplied. Oslan believed that anything understood could be commanded.”
Nethnarel almost smiled.
Zidara noticed.
“Do not admire them too quickly.”
Her smile disappeared.
“The world nearly learned the cost.”
“What cost?”
The dracolich’s enormous claws scraped against the stone.
“Enough that the goddess of magic chose limitation over risk.”
Fendor looked toward Nethnarel.
“You’re making the same face you made when we discovered the mountains.”
“What face?”
“The one where warnings become invitations.”
Nethnarel looked back at Zidara.
“What is the highest magic still allowed?”
The dragon gave an answer in terms the heroes understood less as numbers than as circles of mastery: the greatest spells available to mortals occupied the ninth and final reach of modern magic.
Beyond that, nothing.
Not because no one had ever gone farther.
Because farther had been closed.
Nethnarel whispered, “There was a tenth.”
Zidara did not answer immediately.
That was answer enough.
“There was.”
The words struck harder than the revelation of the destroyed cities.
Nethnarel had spent years feeling the edge of something she could not touch.
Now an ancient dracolich had given the edge a history.
She looked toward the dead city beneath them.
“Is it still there?”
“Knowledge does not cease existing because someone forbids it.”
Fendor sighed.
“That is absolutely an invitation.”
Zidara’s skull turned toward him.
“It was not.”
“You may want to work on delivery.”
Kaylor stepped closer.
“You said you were made to guard the entrance.”
“Yes.”
“From us?”
“From everyone.”
“Then why are you telling us this?”
The pale light in Zidara’s eye sockets shifted.
“Because I have guarded a dead civilization for thousands of years.”
Something in the words carried more than age.
Kaylor recognized it.
Resentment.
He knew that emotion well.
Zidara looked toward the broken summit.
“Mystra gave me purpose. Purpose became duty. Duty became imprisonment.”
Kaylor lowered Final Word a fraction.
“Can you leave?”
“No.”
There it was.
The beginning of something neither of them understood yet.
Kaylor stared at the ancient dead dragon.
He had wanted to kill it from the moment he saw its face.
That desire did not vanish.
It changed shape.
“Then maybe we fix that.”
Fendor turned toward him.
“What?”
Zidara’s skull tilted.
Kaylor looked up at it.
“You want out.”
“Yes.”
“We want in.”
Nethnarel stared at Kaylor.
Hexen did too.
Isamu nodded once.
Fendor slowly lowered the Oathbow.
“I hate when his terrible ideas have structure.”
Kaylor ignored him.
“Show us the entrance.”
Zidara did not move.
“You may find nothing below but death.”
Kaylor glanced around at his friends.
“We have experience.”
Fendor nodded reluctantly.
“He does have us there.”
The dracolich turned.
It moved toward the far side of the ruined plaza, enormous wings folding against its skeletal body.
The heroes followed.
The entrance was not grand.
That surprised them.
No massive gate stood beneath statues. No glowing magical seal announced the boundary between modern magic and whatever Oslan had hidden.
Instead, Zidara led them to a section of broken stone where part of the plateau had collapsed.
Beneath it, steps descended.
Old.
Narrow.
Human-sized.
Nethnarel stood at their head and looked down.
Darkness swallowed the stairs within fifty feet.
“How deep?”
Zidara looked at her.
“Far.”
Fendor sighed.
“Everyone is becoming Hexen.”
Hexen frowned.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
Kaylor looked back at Zidara.
“You’re not coming?”
“I cannot.”
The dragon’s claws stopped precisely at the threshold.
There was nothing visible there.
No wall.
No rune.
Yet Zidara would not cross.
Kaylor noticed.
“Magic?”
“Her command.”
Nethnarel stepped onto the first stair.
Nothing stopped her.
Zidara watched.
“If you break what binds this place, understand that you may release more than knowledge.”
Nethnarel turned.
“What else?”
The dead dragon’s face gave nothing away.
“That is why the warning exists.”
Then she descended.
The others followed.
Fendor went last.
He paused beside Zidara.
“If we find tenth-circle magic, I assume you don’t want any?”
The dracolich stared at him.
Fendor nodded.
“Thought I’d ask.”
He entered the dark.
The city beneath Oslan had not been built as a city.
Not at first.
The passages were narrow, old and brutally functional. Stairs descended through stone. Corridors crossed beneath one another. Doors stood at irregular intervals, some collapsed and others surviving with the stubbornness of whatever workmanship had characterized Oslan.
The air smelled ancient.
Not merely stale.
Sealed.
As if thousands of years had accumulated without being permitted to leave.
They found the first dead soon afterward.
Bones.
Armor.
Weapons.
Nothing moved.
That lasted.
For a while.
The first chamber contained objects scattered across the floor.
Swords.
Armor.
Tools.
Fragments of things none of them recognized.
Fendor stopped at the threshold.
“No.”
Nethnarel looked at him.
“We haven’t done anything.”
“They’re on the floor.”
“Yes.”
“In an ancient dungeon.”
“Yes.”
“That is enough.”
Kaylor stepped inside.
Fendor sighed.
The objects moved.
Not individually.
Together.
A sword dragged itself across stone.
Then a breastplate.
Several pieces of armor rolled and scraped toward one another. Weapons rose. Leather straps twisted without hands.
Within seconds the room assembled its debris into something that resembled a creature only because creatures were the nearest available category.
It attacked.
The heroes destroyed it.
Not easily enough to be insulting.
Not long enough to deserve respect.
When the last enchanted pieces collapsed, they waited.
Nothing reassembled.
Isamu nudged a broken sword with his foot.
It remained a broken sword.
“Safe.”
Fendor looked at him.
“Temporary.”
They searched.
Some of the objects were ordinary.
Others were not.
A shield revealed itself differently from everything else.
At first it seemed incomplete: plates or sections fitted together through some mechanism too clever to be simple hinges. When activated, the pieces assembled into a broad defensive barrier.
Nethnarel took it.
That surprised Fendor.
“Shield?”
“It does more.”
The Oslan mechanism locked itself in space.
Nethnarel pushed.
It did not move.
Kaylor tried.
Nothing.
The shield behaved like an Immovable Rod translated into a defensive wall.
Then they discovered the stranger property.
Missiles pulled toward it.
Not every weapon in the room.
Only those traveling from the direction the shield faced.
Fendor fired an experimental arrow.
Its line changed.
The shield caught the attack.
Fendor stared.
“I like it.”
Nethnarel held it.
“You can’t have it.”
“I said I like it.”
“That means you want it.”
“I contain multitudes.”
“You contain arrows.”
“Also true.”
She kept the shield.
The next piece of armor looked worse.
Bone plate.
Real bone, as far as they could determine, shaped and fitted into articulated protection. Whoever made it had understood anatomy well enough to make death wearable.
Nethnarel stared at it.
Fendor stared at her.
“No.”
She looked at him.
“You’re wearing the shield.”
“Carrying.”
“Different.”
Nethnarel put on the bone plate.
Kaylor watched.
“Anything happen?”
She waited.
“No.”
Fendor nodded.
“That usually means the horrible part is delayed.”
A polearm also survived among the recovered equipment, long enough to be useful and awkward enough that none of them wanted it. Kaylor examined it.
Fendor looked at Final Word in the dragonborn’s hand.
Then at the polearm.
“You have enough.”
Kaylor put it down.
That might have been the most mature decision anyone made underground.
They went deeper.
The passages opened around pockets of strange material.
Mud.
Not damp earth.
Pools of thick brown sludge collected where no natural watercourse should have deposited them.
Hexen crouched beside one.
“Don’t.”
Fendor had learned enough not to specify whom he was addressing.
The pool moved.
Isamu stepped backward.
A mass rose from the mud.
Then another part of it.
Then more.
The creature had no clean anatomy. Its shape changed every time gravity pulled at it, an enormous thing made from wet earth and whatever magic kept that earth angry.
It struck.
The fight became filthy immediately.
Kaylor disappeared to the knees.
Isamu crossed the mud without allowing it to hold him.
Fendor discovered that arrows behaved poorly against something whose internal organs were theoretical.
Nethnarel discovered that enough magic solved even poorly defined anatomy.
Hexen understood mud better than the others and therefore disliked the creature more efficiently.
Eventually they broke it.
Or dispersed it.
The distinction was academic.
The giant mud-like mass collapsed into the pools from which it had risen.
Silence followed.
Isamu remained standing with scarcely any strength left to waste.
Fendor looked at him.
“You look bad.”
“I am fine.”
“You have said that before.”
Isamu wiped mud from his face.
“I am alive.”
Fendor considered.
“Low standard.”
They searched the chamber.
No other exit.
No secret passage.
Nothing.
Only mud and the scattered evidence of the fight.
Nethnarel leaned against the wall in her bone plate with the strange Oslan shield nearby.
“We came all the way down here for a dead end.”
Fendor looked toward the doorway behind them.
“No.”
Kaylor followed his gaze.
“The previous room.”
“There was another door.”
Isamu started walking.
Fendor shook his head.
“Eleven breaths from death and he is already leading again.”
Isamu did not look back.
“Keep up.”
They retraced their path.
Past the room where the enchanted debris had assembled itself.
Past discarded pieces of armor and weapons that now possessed the good judgment to remain objects.
Back to the surviving door they had not opened.
Kaylor reached it first.
He put one hand against the ancient mechanism.
No magic resisted.
The door opened.
A corridor descended.
Shallow water flowed across its floor.
Not much.
A thin greenish layer reflecting faint light from farther ahead.
Kaylor leaned through.
The passage turned.
Beyond the bend, something circular stood in a wider chamber.
A well.
Or something close to one.
Water leaked over its rim and spread across the floor.
Fendor came beside him.
“Water.”
“Yes.”
“Underground.”
“Yes.”
“In Oslan.”
“Yes.”
Fendor drew the Oathbow.
Kaylor looked at him.
“That seems premature.”
“I am learning.”
Behind them, Nethnarel adjusted the strange Oslan shield.
Hexen looked at the flowing water.
Isamu stepped forward despite having no business doing so.
Kaylor entered the passage.
The water moved around his boots.
Somewhere ahead, something beneath the surface began to boil.