Kaylor remained on his knees with both hands clamped against his head.
The metallic scream had stopped.
His body had not received the message.
The sound still seemed to exist inside his skull, a blade of vibration drawn backward and forward through bone. He could see the cramped Oslan corridor. He could see Nethnarel’s fire. He could see Hexen transformed into living flame, filling most of the passage ahead.
He simply could not make himself move.
“Too loud,” Kaylor managed.
Fendor squeezed past him.
The corridor was barely wide enough for one armored man. Getting around an armored dragonborn required considerably less dignity than either of them possessed.
“Stay there.”
Kaylor glared upward.
“I am not choosing this.”
“Yes. That is why I’m helping.”
The steel creature came down the corridor.
It was long and articulated, all hard plates and cutting edges, its metallic body scraping both walls as it advanced. Sparks followed it. The construct moved with impossible speed for something so large and so badly fitted to the passage.
Hexen met the first one as a Fire Elemental.
Flaming hands closed around ancient metal.
The result was immediate.
The construct softened.
Not dramatically. Oslan steel did not become liquid merely because Hexen touched it. But edges warped. Plates blackened. Parts of the thing sagged around his hands.
Nethnarel saw it.
She raised both hands.
Her Rings of Fire answered.
Bolts of flame struck the construct in rapid succession. Each impact left another glowing wound in the metal.
Then she sent one of the stars orbiting her head after them.
Radiance hit where fire had already weakened the shell.
The construct shrieked.
Not the stunning sonic attack this time.
Pain.
Fendor liked that better.
The second steel horror forced itself around the opposite corner.
There was almost nowhere to stand.
Nethnarel wedged herself behind Fendor. Isamu went partly up the wall because that was apparently simpler than asking other people to move. Hexen occupied most of one corridor as living fire. Kaylor remained stunned in the middle of everything.
Fendor drew the Vorpal Longsword.
“Fine.”
He squeezed past Kaylor.
The metal construct lunged.
Fendor ducked a claw, stepped inside the thing’s reach and swung.
The Vorpal blade met Oslan steel.
For an instant resistance traveled up his arms.
Then the enchantment found the precise place where craftsmanship ceased to matter.
The creature’s metal head came free.
It hit the floor with a crash.
The body continued moving for half a second.
Then collapsed.
Fendor looked at it.
“That works too.”
Another construct came after him almost immediately, clawing past the ruined body of the first.
It struck twice.
Armor saved Fendor from worse, but the impacts drove him backward into the wall.
Behind him, Kaylor tried again to master his own body.
He shook his head violently.
“Leave.”
The command was directed at the sound inside him.
It remained.
Kaylor slammed the side of his helm against the wall.
“Leave my mind!”
Something broke.
Not bone.
The resonance.
The invisible pressure vanished.
Kaylor sucked in a breath.
His fingers closed around Final Word.
Fendor glanced back.
“You?”
Kaylor stood.
“Yes.”
“Excellent. Become large somewhere useful.”
Hexen took the brunt of another construct’s attack.
Claws plunged into elemental flame. A jaw of metal snapped through fire that possessed no flesh to sever, though the magic sustaining Hexen still suffered.
The construct stayed too close.
That was its mistake.
Heat rolled from Hexen merely by proximity.
Then he struck it.
Again.
Metal folded inward.
Great sections glowed red.
Nethnarel found a line through the cramped corridor.
“Move your head.”
Fendor ducked without asking whose head she meant.
Disintegrate crossed above him.
The green beam struck the construct.
A portion of its body simply ceased to exist.
No molten metal.
No fragments.
One moment armor and internal mechanisms occupied the passage.
The next there was a ragged emptiness through the creature large enough to see the wall beyond it.
The construct kept coming.
Nethnarel stared.
“Persistent.”
Fendor looked at the missing half of its torso.
“Insultingly.”
He attacked the damaged thing.
The first stroke struck metal.
The second found the impossible line again.
Another head fell.
Nethnarel looked at him.
“How many times are you going to do that?”
“As many as necessary.”
“That sword is disturbing.”
“You own bone armor that summons giant skeletal hands.”
“Fair.”
The remaining constructs converged.
Isamu ran up the wall, crossed part of the low ceiling upside down and dropped behind Hexen’s burning shape.
His whip struck.
Fire traveled along it.
Even the small amount of flame in the weapon seemed to bite more deeply into Oslan metal than it should have.
Isamu followed with an unarmed strike, forcing his body into the defensive rhythm that made him almost impossible to pin down.
The creature tried anyway.
Claws struck.
Isamu twisted past one.
Another clipped him.
He stayed upright.
Nethnarel watched the damaged construct in front of them and made a decision.
Eldritch power gathered around both hands.
Then multiplied.
Sorcery broke one attack into a barrage.
Bolt after bolt hammered into the ancient machine. Eight streams of force crossed the corridor so rapidly that the impacts sounded like one sustained crack.
The creature sagged.
Still alive.
Barely.
Nethnarel looked upward.
Five stars remained in her crown.
One flew.
The radiant mote struck the construct where its shell had already been peeled apart.
The machine collapsed.
Nethnarel’s wings flared behind her.
For the briefest instant she looked toward the others with the delighted expression of someone who had discovered that being among the most powerful mortal spellcasters alive was, in fact, enjoyable.
“I love being twentieth level.”
Fendor pointed deeper into the corridor.
“One more.”
Hexen was still fighting it.
Isamu ran across the ceiling to reach them.
Nobody commented anymore.
There were only so many times a man could use a ceiling as a road before it became ordinary.
The last construct clawed through Hexen’s flames.
Fendor squeezed into position.
Hexen struck.
Isamu struck.
Fendor found what remained of the thing and finished it.
The steel body crashed into the corridor.
Silence followed.
No fluttering.
No screaming metal.
No skittering beneath the floors.
For once, nothing immediately replaced what they had killed.
Hexen returned to human form.
Kaylor leaned against the wall.
Fendor was bleeding again.
Isamu had accumulated a collection of new wounds.
Nethnarel’s magic remained formidable, but even she looked tired.
Kaylor surveyed them.
“Rest.”
Nobody argued.
They barricaded the nearby doors as well as they could and sat among the metallic wreckage.
The short rest was not elegant. They did not sleep so much as stop moving and allow their bodies to remember how healing worked. Bandages appeared. Water was passed around. Isamu leaned against one wall with his eyes closed. Fendor sat with the Vorpal Longsword across his knees.
Nethnarel studied it.
Fendor opened one eye.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re looking at the sword.”
“It killed two constructs.”
“Yes.”
“Very cleanly.”
“Yes.”
“You’re pleased with yourself.”
“Yes.”
Nethnarel smiled.
“Just confirming.”
When they were ready, they continued.
The next room contained no monster.
That made it immediately suspicious.
A machine occupied the center.
It stood apart from the walls, entirely self-contained, a heavy Oslan mechanism composed of interlocking rings, collars and wheels fitted around a central housing. Symbols had been engraved around each rotating section. Some repeated. Others aligned only when adjacent collars were turned into particular positions.
After thousands of years, the device moved as though it had been built yesterday.
Kaylor touched one of the outer rings.
It rotated with almost no resistance.
Fendor moved farther away.
Kaylor looked at him.
“What?”
“Experience.”
Nethnarel approached.
Her interest had returned in full.
“This isn’t controlling the room.”
“How do you know?” Fendor asked.
“No conduits. No visible connection to the walls. No mechanism extending beneath the floor that I can see. It’s self-contained.”
“Which means?”
“I don’t know.”
“Excellent.”
She examined the symbols.
None of them could read Oslan.
But language and warning were not always the same thing.
One grouping repeated near the central housing. The marks were larger. More forceful. Their shape carried the visual logic of something intended to be noticed.
Nethnarel ran one finger above them without touching.
“Caution.”
Fendor folded his arms.
“You can read it now?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know?”
“Because every civilization eventually invents a way to write do not touch this.”
Kaylor looked at the machine.
“So naturally we touch it.”
Fendor stared at him.
“You learned nothing from the lantern.”
“Different machine.”
“The fountain?”
“Different.”
“The toys?”
“Different.”
“The well?”
Kaylor looked at Nethnarel.
“She wants to know what it does.”
Nethnarel nodded.
Fendor sighed.
“I hate that this argument works on me.”
The collars could be aligned.
That much became obvious.
Lines carved through each rotating ring continued onto the next. Some symbols formed incomplete shapes until the wheels were moved into proper position.
It was a puzzle built for someone who did not necessarily need to read the instructions.
Kaylor placed both hands on the first ring.
Fendor backed toward the door.
Isamu joined him.
“Cowards,” Nethnarel said.
“Observers,” Fendor replied.
Kaylor turned the first collar.
Click.
Nothing happened.
Second.
Click.
Third.
The carved lines began joining.
Fourth.
Fifth.
Hexen watched the doors.
Nethnarel’s Crown of Stars remained active.
Kaylor aligned another circle.
The markings were nearly complete now.
The final ring resisted slightly.
He stopped.
Everyone watched him.
Fendor shook his head.
“Don’t.”
Kaylor looked at the warning symbols.
Then at the unfinished pattern.
He turned the ring.
The doors slammed shut.
Every door.
At once.
Fendor closed his eyes.
“There it is.”
Heavy locking mechanisms engaged inside the walls.
Kaylor immediately reversed the ring.
Nothing happened.
Somewhere beyond the room, an alarm began sounding.
Muffled by ancient stone.
Persistent.
A hiss came from the machine.
Nethnarel stepped backward.
The central housing cracked.
Panels spread outward like the petals of an iron flower.
Green fluid poured onto the floor.
Fendor raised the Oathbow.
“Is it poison?”
The fluid continued coming.
Too much for the size of the machine.
It spread around their boots in a viscous layer.
Kaylor tried the ring again.
Still nothing.
Nethnarel lifted herself several feet from the ground on her wings.
Isamu moved toward the corner.
Hexen raised his staff.
The green liquid moved.
Not downhill.
Toward them.
A mound formed.
Then another.
The pool rose into itself until something roughly humanoid stood in the room without having bones, skin or any structure that should have allowed it to stand.
Fendor looked at the machine.
“The machine said danger.”
“Yes,” Nethnarel said.
“We opened it.”
“Yes.”
“Good. I wanted the record clear.”
The green creature surged toward them.
Isamu moved first.
Hunter’s Mark settled over the thing despite the philosophical difficulty of deciding where one part of a blob ended and another began.
His whip cracked.
Once.
Twice.
The second strike found resistance.
The green body recoiled.
Fendor saw it.
“So we can cut it.”
He entered.
The Vorpal Longsword came around.
One strike.
Two.
Three.
Four.
The green thing parted around the blade and reformed, but each attack stripped pieces from it.
On the last stroke the Vorpal enchantment activated.
There was no head to remove.
The sword did something else.
A great section of the creature simply split apart.
Green fluid crashed across the floor.
The creature reeled.
Then psychic force burst through the room.
Everyone felt it.
A wave of alien pain.
Kaylor raised Final Word.
“What is it?”
Fendor never answered.
The ooze grew an arm.
The arm grew a hand.
The hand formed a sword.
Not merely a blade.
Fendor’s blade.
The green weapon lengthened into the shape of the Vorpal Longsword.
Fendor stared.
“No.”
The creature swung.
The copied sword flashed.
There was one perfect stroke.
Fendor’s head left his body.
For a second nobody moved.
His body remained standing.
The Vorpal Longsword slipped from his hand.
Then the body collapsed.
Fendor’s head struck the floor several feet away.
Nethnarel screamed his name.
Isamu froze.
Kaylor looked from the corpse to the green creature.
Something inside him went very still.
Hexen moved toward Fendor.
There was nothing to heal.
Not with ordinary magic.
The green monster swelled.
A wall of itself rose.
Then broke over the room.
Isamu vanished between one ripple and the next, body moving through gaps no one else could have found.
The others were caught.
Acid covered them.
It burned through cloth, skin and armor seams.
Kaylor staggered.
Nethnarel cried out and climbed higher, but the blast had filled the chamber too completely to avoid from only a few feet above the ground.
Hexen endured it.
Fendor did not react.
Kaylor looked at the body.
Then at the monster.
“You’re dead.”
The ooze formed another weapon.
His.
Final Word.
It struck.
Kaylor barely avoided the copied blade.
He swung back.
The creature answered the motion with another imitation, producing weapons from itself as though every attack taught it a new way to kill.
Nethnarel understood.
“It learns from us!”
“That would have been useful before Fendor!”
“I know!”
She reached for a spell she rarely used.
A spell that did not burn.
Did not freeze.
Did not require a blade.
Abi-Dalzim’s Horrid Wilting.
Nethnarel stretched one hand toward the green mass.
Moisture vanished.
The effect was hideous on living flesh.
On something whose body was largely fluid, it was devastating.
The creature shrank.
Sections of its surface puckered and collapsed inward.
Green slime thickened into leathery folds.
The demon-thing howled.
It survived.
Hexen stepped into position.
Sunlight gathered between his hands.
A beam struck the monster.
Sunbeam burned through it.
The creature recoiled from the radiance and pulled away from Hexen, trying to escape the path of the light.
Isamu attacked again.
The whip cut through the green body.
A tendril formed in response and struck back at him.
The monster did not need identical anatomy to imitate violence.
It only needed an example.
Isamu moved away.
Kaylor considered fire.
Considered another sword strike.
Then tried something the creature had not seen from him.
He drew in a breath.
Cold gathered in his chest.
The dragonborn exhaled.
A cone of freezing air filled the room.
Frost covered the walls.
Ice formed across the green mass.
Then slid away.
The creature remained unharmed.
Kaylor stared.
“Of course.”
The ooze surged.
Two attacks missed him.
The final tendril did not.
It wrapped around Kaylor and slammed him hard enough to rattle his teeth. Acid entered the impact.
Kaylor nearly dropped.
Nearly.
Final Word remained in his hand.
The creature had copied it.
That did not make the copy his.
Kaylor struck.
The blade sank deep.
The green mass convulsed.
He struck again.
Holy power followed steel into the thing.
The creature collapsed.
Not slowly.
Whatever force had permitted it to hold shape vanished at once.
Green fluid fell across the floor.
The copied weapons dissolved with it.
The psychic presence disappeared.
Kaylor remained standing over the spreading pool.
For a moment he sensed something beneath the death.
Demonic.
Powerful.
Much more powerful than the shapeless body suggested.
Then even that presence was gone.
Nobody celebrated.
Nethnarel landed beside Fendor.
His head lay near the wall.
His body lay several feet away.
The Vorpal Longsword rested between them.
Isamu approached silently.
Kaylor wiped Final Word once and sheathed it.
“Hexen.”
The druid was already kneeling.
He looked at Fendor.
Then at the others.
“I can bring him back.”
Nethnarel swallowed.
“His head—”
“Doesn’t matter.”
That got everyone’s attention.
Hexen placed one hand on Fendor’s armor.
“True Resurrection.”
Even at their level, the words carried weight.
This was not a battlefield healing spell.
Not Revivify in the frantic seconds after death.
Not the lesser restoration of a body that remained largely intact.
This was one of the deepest calls mortal magic could make across death.
“It takes an hour,” Hexen said.
Kaylor looked toward the locked doors.
“We have an hour.”
The alarm continued somewhere beyond them.
No enemies came.
Not yet.
Hexen began.
The others guarded.
There was nothing dramatic at first.
No pillar of light.
No choir.
Hexen simply sat beside the dead elf and worked magic so old and profound that the room seemed to become quieter around him.
Fendor’s head remained separated from his body.
That changed.
Not because anyone moved it.
The spell did not repair the wound so much as deny that death had the right to keep it.
Bone rejoined.
Flesh became whole.
The severed line vanished.
Scars disappeared.
The acid burns from the fight faded.
Every injury that had followed Fendor through the underground city ceased to exist.
The others rested while Hexen worked.
Kaylor bound what wounds remained on himself.
Isamu sat with the acidic flail across his knees.
Nethnarel studied the machine from a safe distance.
During the hour, she and Kaylor eventually worked out how the emergency locks had engaged. Once the vault had opened, the mechanism could be released manually from inside.
They did not touch the alignment rings again.
Nobody suggested it.
At the end of the hour, Fendor inhaled.
A full breath.
His eyes opened.
He stared at the ceiling.
Then at Hexen.
Then at Kaylor.
Then at Nethnarel.
Fendor sat up.
Everyone watched.
He touched his throat.
There was no wound.
He looked toward the floor.
His Vorpal Longsword remained where it had fallen.
Fendor stared at it.
Nobody said anything.
Finally Kaylor asked, “You all right?”
Fendor looked at him.
“I was killed by my own sword.”
“Technically a copy.”
“That does not improve it.”
Nethnarel smiled despite everything.
“You did say you were pleased with yourself.”
Fendor picked up the Vorpal Longsword.
He examined the blade very carefully.
Then sheathed it.
Isamu raised an eyebrow.
“No sword?”
Fendor reached for the Oathbow.
“For a while.”
Kaylor laughed.
The vault doors unlocked.
Ancient mechanisms rolled aside.
The corridor beyond waited exactly where they had left it.
The machine stood open behind them, empty now except for the green residue of the creature it had imprisoned.
Nethnarel looked once at the warning carved into its rings.
She could not read the word.
She no longer needed to.
They left it behind.