For one breath, there were two of them.
Two pairs of red eyes glowed in the darkness overhead. Two impossible arrangements of legs shifted against the ceiling. Two enormous bodies seemed to occupy the black space above the chamber.
Then the creature moved.
The darkness moved with it.
What had looked like a second body resolved into overlapping limbs and shadow, one vast shape folding across itself so quickly that the eye had mistaken pieces of the same horror for another.
One creature.
That was enough.
A leg came down.
Calling it a leg felt inadequate.
It was a column with joints.
A black, armored shaft thick enough to support a building drove toward Kaylor with the speed of a striking spear.
He turned.
The first impact glanced across him and still hit hard enough to stagger the dragonborn several steps.
The second did not glance.
The pointed end punched between plates of armor and drove through with terrible force.
Kaylor grunted.
For a moment the immense appendage seemed to have pinned him to the earth.
Then it withdrew.
Blood followed.
Fendor stared upward.
“That is not a spider.”
No one answered.
The creature had eight legs, a broad body suspended forty feet above them, and small red eyes moving along a head that had been almost invisible against the ceiling.
Spider was still the closest available word.
It was simply insulting to spiders.
Another pair of legs struck Isamu.
He had barely recovered from being burned almost to death in the chamber behind them. Hexen’s healing had returned his strength, but recovery did not make the blows less real.
The first caught him.
Then the second.
Isamu was fast enough to make most creatures look slow.
The thing above them was not most creatures.
He was thrown across the black organic floor and landed hard.
Above him, another leg slashed toward Hexen.
The druid was still in eagle form.
He banked.
One strike missed.
The next clipped him.
Feathers exploded through the air.
The eagle faltered.
Kaylor recovered his footing.
The leg that had struck him remained within reach.
Final Word came around.
The enchanted blade hit the appendage.
The result sounded like a smith striking an anvil.
KLANG.
The shock traveled all the way through Kaylor’s arms.
Final Word bounced away.
There was no cut.
No blood.
No mark.
Kaylor stared.
The leg was not flesh.
Not externally.
It was something closer to living steel.
“Body!” he shouted. “The legs are armored!”
Fendor had already drawn the same conclusion.
The problem was reaching anything else.
The body hung far above them.
Isamu looked upward.
So did Fendor.
The two men reached very different solutions.
Nethnarel never got the opportunity.
Another leg struck.
The bone plate she had taken from the earlier Oslan chamber absorbed some of the impact.
Then the armor woke.
Nethnarel felt it before she saw it.
Something beneath the room answered.
Bone erupted through the black floor.
Not a skeleton.
Not exactly.
A hand.
A colossal skeletal hand clawed itself upward beside her, finger bones thicker than Nethnarel’s body. It rose with savage purpose and seized the leg that had struck her.
The creature above convulsed.
The skeletal fingers closed.
The leg stopped.
Nethnarel stared at her armor.
Fendor stared at the hand.
Kaylor stared at Nethnarel.
She looked down at the bone plates covering her body.
“That’s new.”
Fendor pointed at the enormous skeletal hand.
“I like the armor.”
“You objected when I put it on.”
“I have revised my position.”
The creature pulled.
The skeletal hand held.
One of its eight armored legs was trapped against the floor.
Then the red eyes turned toward Nethnarel.
She felt them before she looked up.
Something entered her mind.
Not a voice.
A presence.
Cold.
Predatory.
She knew the instant it touched her that this creature possessed more than physical strength.
The air between them remained empty.
Inside Nethnarel’s thoughts, a web flew.
She saw it perfectly.
Fine threads unfolded from the creature’s face and expanded toward her in a shimmering net.
Nobody else reacted.
Because nobody else could see it.
Nethnarel tried to move.
The psychic web struck.
It wrapped around thought instead of flesh.
Pain came with it.
Then she left the ground.
Fendor turned.
“Neth?”
Her boots rose.
Nothing visibly held her.
She climbed another foot.
Then another.
The invisible force dragged her toward the creature above.
Nethnarel looked down.
“I would appreciate assistance.”
Fendor ran toward the flying carpet.
Isamu ran toward the monster.
That was more characteristic.
He accelerated across the chamber, flame whip already uncoiling from his hand.
The creature’s legs formed a forest around him.
He jumped.
The whip snapped around one armored column.
Isamu swung.
Released.
Caught another.
He climbed the creature the way another man might climb rigging on a ship.
One leg.
Then another.
He used momentum rather than strength, whipping himself upward in great arcs as the thing thrashed around him.
Fendor stopped long enough to watch.
“That is absurd.”
Kaylor blocked another descending leg with his shield.
“Do something useful!”
“I am appreciating technique.”
“Appreciate faster!”
Isamu reached the top.
The creature looked different from above.
The armored legs were almost impenetrable, but the body between them was not.
Its upper surface was covered with coarse, spiked growth, but beneath the armor lay softer tissue.
The head turned.
Small eye stalks shifted toward him.
Isamu smiled.
“There you are.”
The flame whip struck.
The creature shuddered.
He hit it again.
This time the weapon buried itself into softer tissue.
The thing screamed.
Not loudly.
Deeply.
The sound came through the floor.
Fendor reached the carpet.
He climbed aboard and sent it upward.
Unlike Isamu, he saw no reason to turn reaching the enemy into an athletic demonstration when someone had already invented furniture that flew.
The carpet climbed past Nethnarel.
She was still being dragged upward by nothing.
Fendor looked at her.
“Comfortable?”
“No.”
“Good. I would have been concerned.”
He continued.
The creature’s head emerged from the shadows.
Fendor drew the Vorpal Longsword.
He brought the carpet alongside the thing’s face.
Three attacks landed.
The first cut.
The second cut deeper.
The third opened a long wound through flesh no armored leg had protected.
The creature thrashed.
Fendor rode the movement as the carpet tilted beneath him.
“No vorpal.”
Isamu glanced over from the creature’s back.
“Disappointed?”
“Deeply.”
Below them, Kaylor looked up.
The creature was enormous.
Fast.
Partially armored.
Psychic.
And currently occupied by two men who had decided climbing onto monsters was a tactical category.
He considered his options.
Then stepped backward.
Kaylor had spent much of his life solving problems with swords.
He had learned, occasionally, that distance helped.
He raised one hand.
Dark divine magic gathered around his gauntlet.
“Go away.”
The creature turned one red eye toward him.
Kaylor cast Banishment.
Reality folded.
The monster vanished.
There was no explosion.
No flash.
No dramatic collapse.
One moment a forty-foot horror occupied most of the chamber.
The next—
Nothing.
Nethnarel fell.
The psychic web disappeared with its owner.
Her descent slowed almost immediately under her own magic, turning what should have been an unpleasant fall into a controlled drift.
Isamu fell farther.
He twisted in the air.
Fendor’s carpet dipped toward him.
Isamu caught its edge, swung once and dropped safely to the floor.
Then something enormous hit beside them.
The leg.
The one Nethnarel’s armor had trapped.
The skeletal hand had not vanished with the rest of the monster.
Its fingers remained closed.
When Banishment pulled the creature away, the hand held on.
Something had to yield.
It was not the hand.
The armored leg had torn free.
It crashed onto the floor with enough force to shake the room.
Everyone stared.
Fendor looked at Kaylor.
“Did you just banish a seven-legged spider?”
“It’s coming back.”
That altered the mood.
“How long?”
“One minute.”
Fendor smiled.
Kaylor did not.
“You should not be smiling.”
“We have a minute.”
“To prepare.”
“Yes.”
“That is why you’re smiling?”
“Yes.”
Nethnarel landed beside them.
The colossal skeletal hand released the severed leg and sank slowly back beneath the organic floor.
Bone disappeared.
The surface closed.
Nothing remained except the leg.
Nethnarel touched her armor.
“I really like this.”
Fendor nodded.
“I officially withdraw all previous criticism.”
Hexen returned to his natural form.
“What happens when the creature comes back?”
Kaylor looked at the empty space overhead.
“Same place.”
Fendor’s smile widened.
“There.”
“No.”
Nobody had proposed anything yet.
Kaylor knew Fendor.
That was enough.
“We know exactly where it’s going to appear,” Fendor said.
“Yes.”
“We have rope.”
“No.”
“Two hundred feet.”
“No.”
“We fly circles around its legs—”
“No.”
Isamu looked interested.
Fendor gestured broadly.
“Think about it. It comes back, we wrap the legs together, it tries to move—”
“It breaks the rope.”
“You don’t know that.”
Kaylor looked at the severed leg.
Fendor followed his gaze.
“All right. Probably.”
Hexen looked upward.
“We could wait above it.”
Isamu nodded.
“Drop onto the body.”
“That,” Kaylor said, “is marginally less stupid.”
Nethnarel looked at the Oslan shield.
The strange device rested near her equipment, folded into itself.
Three sections.
Three pieces that could lock into position.
Fendor noticed where she was looking.
Then he understood.
“Oh.”
Kaylor heard that.
“No.”
Again, no proposal had yet been made.
Nethnarel smiled.
“The shield doesn’t move.”
“Correct.”
“Once activated.”
“Yes.”
Fendor pointed at the place where the creature had vanished.
“And we know where its body will be.”
Kaylor stared at both of them.
“No.”
Nethnarel picked up the shield.
Fendor continued.
“We put it there.”
“Inside the place where the creature returns.”
“Yes.”
“That could kill whoever is holding it.”
Nethnarel shrugged.
“Potentially.”
Fendor looked at Kaylor.
“See? She understands.”
“That was not agreement.”
They had less than a minute.
The argument became planning.
Fendor and Nethnarel worked out the position.
Hexen could fly.
The carpet could carry others.
Isamu required no assistance reaching heights that sensible people avoided.
Kaylor would remain below.
Someone needed to be ready for the armored legs when the thing returned.
The Oslan shield unfolded.
Three broad sections extended from the central mechanism, forming a protective wall around the person operating it.
Nethnarel activated the locking mechanism.
The shield became immovable.
Not heavy.
Not difficult to push.
Immovable.
The distinction mattered.
Fendor placed one hand against it.
Nothing.
Kaylor pushed.
Nothing.
Isamu braced both hands against one section.
Nothing.
Fendor looked upward.
“This is an excellent idea.”
“It is an idea,” Hexen said.
“That is unnecessarily hurtful.”
They positioned themselves.
Nethnarel took to the air.
Isamu waited above the creature’s expected position.
Hexen changed form and climbed.
Fendor rode the carpet higher, keeping close enough to the shield arrangement to exploit whatever happened.
Kaylor stood below.
Final Word ready.
The minute passed slowly.
Ten seconds.
Twenty.
Thirty.
Nothing.
Fendor looked down.
“Kaylor?”
“Concentrating.”
“I’m checking.”
“If I stop concentrating, it comes back now.”
Fendor became silent.
Forty seconds.
The room waited.
Fifty.
Isamu rolled his shoulders.
Hexen circled.
Nethnarel watched the empty space where the creature had vanished.
Fendor positioned the carpet.
Kaylor tightened his grip on Final Word.
Sixty.
The monster returned.
It screamed instantly.
The trap worked.
Not elegantly.
Reality tried to restore an enormous living thing into a space the heroes had deliberately obstructed with an object that refused to move.
The creature’s body formed around the Oslan shield.
Flesh displaced.
Armor twisted.
The shield punched into its center and locked there.
For one terrible moment creature, shield and heroes occupied geometry the world had never intended.
Then the monster convulsed.
Fendor disappeared.
“Fendor!”
His voice came from inside the creature.
“I’m fine!”
Nethnarel stared.
“How?”
“I have reconsidered the meaning of fine!”
The reappearance had caught the elf within the cavity created by the shield’s impossible placement. The three Oslan plates held apart enough soft tissue to keep him from being immediately crushed.
It was still an extremely poor location.
Fendor looked around.
Everything was wet.
Everything moved.
Nothing was armored.
His expression changed.
“Oh.”
Outside, Nethnarel raised both hands.
“I need something that won’t kill Fendor.”
Kaylor looked up.
“That would be preferable.”
“Thank you.”
Nethnarel selected the simplest option available.
Four bolts of Eldritch power streaked upward.
Several struck.
The creature convulsed.
Inside, Fendor was showered with things he decided never to identify.
“I dislike this plan!”
“You liked it a minute ago!” Nethnarel shouted.
“I possessed incomplete information!”
Isamu dropped.
He landed on the creature’s back.
The flame whip struck almost immediately.
Then again.
He followed with a devastating martial burst, fists and enchanted strikes hammering into the softer body between armored joints.
The creature tried to move.
Its legs pushed.
The body did not follow.
The Oslan shield held it.
One immense leg descended toward Kaylor.
It stopped short.
The trapped body could not shift far enough to give the appendage the reach it needed.
Kaylor looked up.
Fendor’s muffled voice came from somewhere inside.
“Still think it was stupid?”
“Yes!”
“Unreasonable!”
The creature abandoned the physical attack.
Its eyes searched.
Found Hexen.
The invisible psychic web struck outward again.
Hexen felt the foreign presence enter his mind.
He saw the net.
For a moment the creature tried to seize him the same way it had seized Nethnarel.
Hexen rejected it.
The web tore apart before it could close.
He remained free.
The monster shrieked.
Fendor heard it from the wrong side of the skin.
He tightened his grip on the Vorpal Longsword.
Outside, armored legs were almost impossible to damage.
Inside—
Fendor smiled.
“Oh, you have made a mistake.”
He attacked.
The first stroke opened tissue that possessed no protection at all.
The second cut through something essential.
The third made the entire creature spasm.
Fendor braced one foot against whatever passed for an internal support and drove the blade harder.
He had fought dragons.
Giants.
Undead.
Demons.
Swarm horrors.
God-touched monstrosities.
This was the first time he had fought something while technically being part of its digestive geography.
He decided not to develop the skill.
The Vorpal Longsword came around again.
The creature shuddered.
Isamu felt it from above.
Kaylor saw the armored legs weaken.
Nethnarel saw one red eye roll backward.
Hexen moved clear.
Fendor struck once more.
The monster died.
Its legs collapsed.
The enormous body dropped.
Kaylor ran.
“Fendor!”
The creature hit the floor.
The chamber shook.
Dust fell from the ceiling.
The immovable shield remained exactly where it had been locked, which meant the dead body sagged around it in a grotesque curtain.
For several seconds no one saw Fendor.
Then the corpse moved.
A sword point emerged.
It cut downward.
Sideways.
Another stroke.
The elf carved himself out.
His head appeared.
Then one shoulder.
He crawled through the opening drenched in fluids no living person should have to identify.
Fendor stood.
Everyone stared at him.
He looked down at himself.
“No.”
Isamu landed.
“No what?”
“No jokes.”
Kaylor lowered Final Word.
“I wasn’t going to.”
“You were.”
“Yes.”
Hexen returned to human form.
Fendor wiped something from his face.
It stretched between his fingers.
He looked at Hexen.
“Can you clean this?”
“Eventually.”
“Now.”
“Eventually.”
Nethnarel deactivated the shield.
The three Oslan plates folded.
The corpse collapsed the rest of the way.
Fendor stepped away quickly.
Kaylor looked at the immense body.
“One.”
Fendor looked at him.
“What?”
“There was only one.”
They all looked upward.
No second pair of eyes remained.
No second set of legs moved.
Whatever doubling they had seen in the darkness had been the overlapping profile of one creature.
Fendor nodded.
“One was sufficient.”
Nobody argued.
They searched the chamber after the battle.
Carefully.
The dead creature offered little they wanted to carry.
Someone suggested harvesting venom.
Someone else suggested never touching any part of it again.
Fendor strongly supported the second position.
Kaylor used Lay on Hands on himself, closing some of the deep wounds left by the opening strikes.
The others spread through the room.
The dead organic floor remained unpleasant but inert.
Nothing moved overhead.
No new red eyes appeared.
Eventually one of them noticed the wall.
At first it was nothing.
A change in stone.
A line so faint that even standing beside it, the eye wanted to dismiss it as natural variation.
Then the outline became clear.
A door.
Secret.
Perfectly fitted into the wall.
Fendor approached.
“That seems promising.”
Kaylor searched for a handle.
Nothing.
Isamu pressed along the edges.
Nothing.
Nethnarel inspected the stone for magical or mechanical activation.
Nothing.
Hexen looked at the seam.
“Move.”
He became air.
His body dissolved into wind and vapor, flowing toward the invisible crack.
The others waited.
Nothing passed through.
The elemental form struck the wall and stopped.
Hexen tried again.
He searched every edge.
No gap.
No microscopic opening.
The secret door was sealed so perfectly that even air could not enter.
Hexen reformed enough to communicate.
“The way is shut.”
Fendor stared at the wall.
“We are twentieth-level heroes.”
“Yes.”
“We have killed gods.”
“Some.”
“We have died.”
“Yes.”
“Multiple times.”
“Yes.”
“And we cannot open a door.”
Nethnarel folded her arms.
“It is a very good door.”
Fendor pointed at her.
“Do not admire it.”
They considered resting.
They needed it.
Nethnarel especially.
The battles had accumulated on her body until even her considerable reserves had become thin.
Hexen looked at her wounds.
“Hold still.”
He began a longer spell.
Healing entered Nethnarel differently this time.
Not as a burst.
As persistence.
Regenerate.
Flesh began repairing itself slowly, minute after minute. Cuts tightened. Bruises faded. Deeper wounds rebuilt themselves.
Nethnarel exhaled.
“That is better.”
“It’ll continue.”
“How long?”
“An hour.”
Fendor sat against the wall.
“Then we wait an hour.”
Kaylor looked at the sealed door.
“There was another way back there.”
“Yes.”
“After this.”
Nobody objected.
They settled into a guarded pause.
Not sleep.
Oslan had cured them of casual sleeping.
Weapons stayed within reach.
Fendor tried unsuccessfully to find a section of his clothing that did not smell like monster.
Isamu sat cross-legged near the severed armored leg.
Nethnarel continued healing.
Hexen watched the room.
Kaylor listened.
Ten minutes passed.
Then the ground moved.
Not much.
A faint tremor.
Everyone stood.
Fendor had the Oathbow in hand before the second vibration came.
Something moved beneath the floor.
Large enough that they felt it through their boots.
It traveled somewhere beyond the chamber.
Then stopped.
Nobody spoke.
They waited.
Nothing emerged.
The black organic floor remained intact.
Kaylor listened longer.
Silence.
Fendor lowered the bow slightly.
“How much longer on the healing?”
Nethnarel looked at Hexen.
“Long enough.”
Nobody sat back down quite as comfortably.
The secret door remained closed.
Something lived beneath them.
And the only other way forward led deeper into Oslan.