The water was barely deep enough to deserve the name.
It spread across the ancient corridor in a thin greenish sheet, slipping around Kaylor’s boots and carrying centuries of dust toward the chamber ahead. The dragonborn looked down at it, then at the ring on his hand.
He activated the Ring of Water Walking.
Fendor stared at the quarter inch of water covering the floor.
“Necessary?”
“No.”
“Good.”
Kaylor stepped forward.
His boots remained perfectly dry.
Fendor shook his head.
“Twenty levels of power, and this is how you use it.”
“I own the ring.”
“That is not a defense.”
The passage opened into a circular room.
At its center stood the well.
At least, well was the closest word any of them had. It was a broad stone structure surrounded by ancient Oslan workmanship, its rim rising several feet from the floor. Water leaked continuously over the edges and spread outward through the chamber.
There was no visible source.
No bucket.
No rope.
No mechanism.
Only water emerging from somewhere below.
Isamu came up beside Kaylor.
He was pale.
That worried Fendor more than Isamu admitted.
The mud creature they had fought earlier had nearly killed him. Hexen had done what he could, but Isamu was still standing through a mixture of discipline, stubbornness and the conviction that dying was something one could avoid through superior footwork.
Fendor looked at him.
“You should stay back.”
Isamu looked at Fendor.
“No.”
“I knew you were going to say that.”
“Then why ask?”
“Hope.”
Isamu drew his bow.
Kaylor moved farther into the chamber.
The water rippled.
Not beneath his feet.
At the well.
Hexen stopped.
Nethnarel raised the Staff of Power.
The surface inside the stone ring began to boil.
Large bubbles broke through.
Then larger ones.
Something moved below.
Kaylor drew Final Word.
“Here.”
The water exploded.
A head rose from the well.
Long.
Thick.
Serpentine.
The creature hauled itself upward in a surge of water and pale, glistening flesh, a monstrous sea-snake shape with a mouth too large for the head that carried it. Heavy teeth lined its jaws in rows that looked almost absurd until the jaws opened.
Fendor stared.
“It needs a dentist.”
Isamu fired.
He did not wait for the others.
Hunter’s Mark shifted from whatever prey had carried it previously and settled over the creature as the first arrow crossed the chamber.
The shaft struck.
A second followed.
The serpent recoiled.
Isamu was already moving backward.
Kaylor glanced at him.
“Running?”
“Strategic distance.”
“That’s running.”
“Yes.”
Kaylor charged instead.
He crossed the shallow water without disturbing it, the ring carrying him over the surface, and Final Word cut into the creature as it rose farther from the well.
The first strike opened thick flesh.
The second went deeper.
Oil seeped from the wounds.
Kaylor noticed.
So did Fendor.
“That’s not blood.”
“No.”
“Of course it isn’t.”
Fendor entered behind him and attacked.
The Vorpal Longsword struck with the efficient violence of an elf who had long ago stopped expecting ancient things to remain peaceful merely because they had been left alone for several millennia. Steel carved through the serpent’s side. More oily fluid spilled into the water.
The smell arrived immediately.
Sharp.
Chemical.
Flammable.
Hexen’s face tightened.
“That is bad.”
Nethnarel raised one hand.
“Why?”
The serpent answered.
It rose like a cobra.
Its head pulled back.
For a moment Kaylor expected poison.
Instead, the creature sprayed oil.
The stream swept across the chamber.
Fendor caught it across the front.
Hexen took the next part of the blast.
Nethnarel twisted away but was struck by the edge of it.
Isamu had moved behind Hexen.
He was congratulating himself on that decision when oil splashed around the druid and struck him anyway.
“No.”
The creature’s mouth opened.
Deep inside its throat, something clicked.
A spark.
Fendor saw it.
“Oh.”
Fire filled the room.
The oil on the floor ignited first.
Then the oil on them.
Flame ran across the water in a single furious sheet.
Nethnarel’s natural resistance blunted the worst of it.
Fendor threw himself sideways.
Hexen endured the blast.
Isamu did not.
He had entered the chamber with almost nothing left.
The fire took the rest.
He collapsed.
Fendor saw him fall through flame.
“Isamu!”
The monk hit the stone.
The serpent lunged toward Kaylor, coils twisting around the well as though trying to seize him.
Kaylor moved just far enough.
The body passed where he had stood.
Fire crawled across Final Word.
Oil burned around his boots without touching them through the strange magic of the ring.
Fendor was on fire.
He disliked that.
Nethnarel was on fire.
She disliked it less, but still enough.
Hexen ended his transformation.
Human form returned through the burning shape he had been wearing, and the druid turned immediately toward Isamu.
The fight could wait several seconds.
Death would not.
Hexen reached him.
Healing magic flowed.
Isamu inhaled.
Hard.
His eyes opened.
Fendor looked over while blocking the serpent.
“There.”
Isamu sat up.
“Did I die?”
“No.”
“Close?”
“Yes.”
Isamu stood.
Fendor stared.
“You could remain down for another moment.”
“No.”
“Of course.”
The serpent attacked again.
Isamu drew his bow.
The battle resumed.
Kaylor and Fendor kept pressure on its front while Isamu shot from outside the reach of its coils. Nethnarel repositioned above the burning water, wings carrying her clear of the flames.
The creature was bleeding more oil now.
Every sword wound added fuel to the room.
That made attacking it feel increasingly like fighting a lamp.
Then Hexen became fire.
The druid’s body vanished inside elemental flame.
A humanoid inferno rose from the burning water and moved toward the serpent.
Fendor saw him.
“Hexen.”
The fire elemental struck.
The oil ignited.
The serpent shuddered.
Then its wounds began closing.
Everyone stopped for half a heartbeat.
Nethnarel stared.
Hexen stared.
Fendor stared.
The creature looked healthier.
Fendor pointed.
“You healed it.”
Hexen’s flames shifted in a way that somehow conveyed offense.
Isamu lowered his bow.
“Again?”
“No.”
“Just checking.”
The serpent rose higher.
Fresh flesh knitted over several injuries.
Fire danced happily across its oily hide.
Kaylor backed away from Hexen.
“Not fire.”
Nethnarel looked down from above.
“I gathered that.”
She had already been reaching for another spell.
Fireball died uncast in her mind.
Scorching Ray had been amusing.
This required something else.
Nethnarel climbed higher.
The serpent turned toward Kaylor.
Fendor struck it again.
Oil sprayed.
Hexen withdrew rather than continue feeding the creature.
Nethnarel reached the angle she wanted.
She raised the Staff of Power.
Fendor looked up.
“What are you doing?”
“Learning.”
“That is an alarming answer.”
Cold gathered around the staff.
Not winter air.
Something harder.
A spell capable of taking heat from flesh faster than life could produce it.
Nethnarel aimed downward.
The cone opened.
It caught the serpent.
Missed Kaylor.
Missed Fendor.
Barely missed Hexen.
Fendor felt frost form on his cloak anyway.
The serpent’s reaction was immediate.
Oil thickened.
Flesh hardened.
Its body stopped moving.
Ice raced from head to tail.
The enormous creature froze solid.
For one perfect moment it remained upright above the well as a grotesque sculpture.
Nethnarel lowered the staff.
A crack appeared across its chest.
Then another.
The serpent shattered.
Frozen flesh collapsed across the well and the surrounding chamber in great pieces.
The head struck the stone.
Broke.
Part of its long body slid into the water.
The room became quiet except for fire still burning along the edges.
Fendor looked at Nethnarel.
“Useful.”
She descended.
“I know.”
Kaylor put Final Word away.
“That killed it.”
“Yes.”
“You should do that first next time.”
Nethnarel stared at him.
“You spent the first half of the battle cutting open its oil glands.”
Kaylor considered.
“Fair.”
Hexen returned to himself.
Isamu lowered his bow.
He was alive again.
That seemed worth acknowledging.
Fendor walked over.
“You still have all your limbs?”
Isamu checked.
“Yes.”
“Any internal skeletal fingers?”
“No.”
“Good.”
They searched the remains.
That was when Hexen found the organ.
Almost everything else had been ruined by the cold. Flesh had cracked. Internal structures had burst.
One thing remained largely intact.
It resembled a swollen gland.
Roundish.
Soft.
About the size of a small melon or an oversized ball.
Hexen lifted it carefully.
The smell was immediate.
Fendor recoiled.
“That is horrible.”
Nethnarel leaned closer.
“Kerosene.”
“Does that word mean something where you’re from?”
“It means don’t light it.”
Hexen inspected the organ.
The serpent had sprayed an oily substance over them before igniting it.
Whatever this was, it appeared to be the reservoir.
Isamu looked at it.
“Weapon.”
Everyone turned.
Isamu shrugged.
“What?”
Nethnarel smiled.
“He’s right.”
Fendor pointed at the dripping gland.
“You are not putting that in anything I own.”
Nethnarel opened the Portable Hole.
“We can store it.”
“Inside the extradimensional storage full of our possessions.”
“In a sack.”
Fendor considered.
“A very good sack.”
They found one.
The gland went inside.
The sack went into the Portable Hole.
Nethnarel closed it.
Fendor watched.
“If that explodes inside there—”
“It won’t.”
“You do not know that.”
“I strongly believe it won’t.”
“That is substantially worse.”
Hexen moved among them afterward, tending burns and restoring what strength he could.
Fendor had taken a punishing amount of damage between the earlier fights and the burning well. Healing helped.
Not enough to make him fresh.
Enough to continue.
That was the standard now.
Nobody suggested leaving.
They had come too far.
And Nethnarel had finally found proof that the ancient city below the mountains contained things the modern world did not understand.
Not only magic.
Engineering.
Creatures.
Defenses.
Weapons.
Everything in Oslan seemed built upon principles that almost overlapped with the world they knew without ever quite belonging to it.
They searched the chamber.
There was no obvious way forward.
The well descended into darkness.
Nobody volunteered to climb into it.
Fendor considered the others.
“Progress.”
Kaylor looked toward the door through which they had entered.
“We missed something.”
They went back.
There was another door.
Locked.
The construction was ancient, but the mechanism had survived.
Nethnarel crouched in front of it.
Fendor blinked.
“You know how to do that?”
Nethnarel removed a set of tools.
“I contain multitudes.”
Fendor narrowed his eyes.
“You stole that.”
“From whom?”
“Me.”
“You don’t own sentences.”
“Yet.”
Kaylor moved farther away from the door.
Hexen did the same.
Isamu watched.
Nethnarel looked over her shoulder.
“Why is everyone backing up?”
Fendor continued retreating.
“Confidence.”
“In me?”
“No.”
She turned back to the lock.
The mechanism was complicated.
Not magically so.
Just old, precise and unfamiliar.
Nethnarel studied it.
Found the pressure points.
Adjusted.
The lock released.
Nothing exploded.
Fendor looked mildly disappointed.
Nethnarel opened the door.
The next room smelled dead.
Not corpse-dead.
Older.
The thick organic odor of something that had once lived, then spent centuries becoming material.
The floor was covered in a dark, oily layer that yielded slightly beneath Kaylor’s sword when he tested it.
Peat.
Rot.
Ancient organic matter compressed into something neither soil nor flesh.
Hexen crouched.
“Dead.”
Kaylor looked around.
The room was enormous.
Eight columns rose from floor to ceiling.
They were irregular.
Too irregular.
At first that registered only as poor architecture.
Fendor stepped through the doorway.
“Those are ugly pillars.”
No one disagreed.
The chamber above them disappeared into darkness.
Forty feet.
Maybe fifty.
The light they carried barely reached the ceiling.
Isamu moved along the edge of the room.
The others spread behind him.
He placed one foot against the wall.
Then ran up it.
Fendor looked up.
“Why?”
“Better view.”
“That is irritatingly reasonable.”
Isamu moved along the vertical surface as easily as another man crossed a hallway.
Higher.
Farther.
His perspective changed.
The columns no longer blocked the same lines of sight.
Something glimmered overhead.
Isamu stopped.
Two red lights.
Dim.
Far above.
He stared.
They vanished.
Then returned.
Not vanished.
Blinked.
Isamu looked down.
The others had not seen them.
He kept moving along the wall.
The red points remained.
Watching.
Hexen saw Isamu’s posture change.
“What?”
Isamu pointed upward.
“Eyes.”
Fendor raised the Oathbow.
Kaylor looked.
Nothing.
Nethnarel looked.
Nothing.
Hexen changed.
The human body became a great eagle, feathers spreading as he launched into the chamber.
He climbed.
Circled.
His eagle eyes found what ordinary sight could not.
Two red globes.
High above.
He screeched.
Fendor looked between the eight columns.
Something bothered him.
Their spacing.
Their angle.
The way they did not quite meet the floor like architecture.
Isamu was still staring downward from the wall.
His gaze shifted from the red lights to the columns.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Eight.
He understood.
“Oh.”
Fendor did not like the sound.
“What?”
Isamu pointed.
“The pillars.”
“Yes?”
“They’re not pillars.”
The chamber moved.
Kaylor stepped backward.
One of the columns lifted.
Its base left the floor.
Then another.
The enormous thing above them unfolded.
Eight vast legs spread through the chamber, each one thick enough to have been mistaken for a support column. High between them hung a body hidden until now against the darkness of the ceiling.
Red eyes burned above.
The creature descended with terrifying speed.
Fendor raised the bow.
Kaylor brought Final Word up.
Nethnarel’s Staff of Power flared.
Hexen banked hard in eagle form.
Isamu dropped from the wall.
Then something else moved in the darkness.
A second set of legs.
Another pair of red eyes.
Fendor looked up.
“No.”
There were two.