Fendor used the bow.
For a while.
The Vorpal Longsword remained at his side, sheathed and innocent in the way only a weapon that had recently been copied and used to remove its owner’s head could manage.
Nobody mentioned this.
For almost three minutes.
Then Isamu looked at him.
Fendor pointed ahead.
“Whatever you are about to say, don't.”
“I wasn't going to say anything.”
“You were looking at the sword.”
“I was looking at you.”
“That is worse.”
Kaylor led them onward.
The vault that had killed Fendor disappeared behind them, along with its open machine, warning-marked rings and residue of the green thing that had lived inside it. The corridors returned to the narrow, unforgiving geometry of underground Oslan.
Twenty thousand years of lost magical achievement, Nethnarel thought, and apparently none of it had included wider hallways.
Isamu walked ahead.
Not far enough to disappear this time.
Fendor had instituted another emotionally motivated rule.
The monk had accepted it for almost ten minutes.
Then he stopped.
One hand rose.
Kaylor immediately halted.
“What?”
Isamu tilted his head.
The others listened.
At first there was nothing.
Then—
A wet sound.
Soft.
Dragging.
As though something liquid were learning how to crawl.
Isamu frowned.
“Slithering.”
Fendor looked down at the floor.
“Liquid?”
“Yes.”
“Those words should not go together.”
Nethnarel peered ahead.
The corridor bent into another chamber.
Kaylor moved first.
The thing beyond the corner floated.
That made the sound worse.
It possessed no visible eyes.
A swollen head hung beneath a body that did not seem entirely committed to solidity, while long tentacles drifted around it as though suspended underwater. The creature hovered several feet above the floor without wings, limbs or any obvious means of keeping itself there.
Its flesh gleamed damply.
Fendor looked at Isamu.
“Slithering liquid.”
“Yes.”
“Accurate.”
Kaylor studied the blank face.
“No eyes.”
Nethnarel raised her staff.
“That doesn't mean it can't see.”
The tentacles turned toward them.
That answered the question.
Hexen rose above the others in Air Elemental form, compressing himself through the corridor until he reached the higher ceiling of the chamber beyond.
The creature sensed him.
Hexen acted first.
Death gathered at the end of an outstretched elemental arm.
The spell was grotesque even when cast by something with flesh.
Coming from a creature made of living wind made it worse.
Finger of Death struck.
Green-black power crossed the chamber and slammed into the floating thing.
Its entire body convulsed.
Tentacles curled inward.
The eyeless head twisted toward Hexen.
It did not die.
Fendor looked up.
“Misleading name.”
Hexen’s voice came from rushing air.
“Very.”
A second creature drifted from farther inside the room.
Kaylor stepped forward.
That was exactly what the first one wanted.
Two tentacles snapped toward him.
The first missed.
The second wrapped around his torso.
The grip itself barely hurt.
Then the creature pulled.
Kaylor planted his boots.
His strength meant very little.
The tentacle dragged him across the stone.
Toward the body.
“No.”
It pulled harder.
Kaylor disappeared partly into the creature’s hanging mass of slick flesh and coiling appendages.
Something bit him.
Or squeezed.
Or both.
He could not tell.
The creature wrapped itself around him until Final Word was pinned awkwardly between bodies.
Fendor raised the Oathbow.
“Can you move?”
“Yes.”
“Can you duck?”
“No.”
“That was the important question.”
Isamu went past him.
The flame whip cracked.
It struck the creature holding Kaylor.
Isamu followed with another blow.
Then drove ki through the weapon into the monster’s nervous system.
The thing shuddered.
Resisted.
Isamu hit it again.
Another Stunning Strike.
Again it fought him off.
Kaylor twisted inside the tentacles.
“You done experimenting?”
“No.”
The whip struck a third time.
This time Isamu found something important.
The monster froze.
Every tentacle stopped.
Kaylor dropped free.
He hit the floor covered in slime.
Fendor looked at him.
Kaylor raised one finger.
“Don't.”
“I didn't say anything.”
“You were going to.”
“Yes.”
Fendor entered the room.
The stunned creature hung helplessly in front of him.
He drew the sword.
There was a brief pause.
Fendor looked at it.
The Vorpal Longsword looked back in the philosophical sense that weapons generally did not.
“Behave.”
He attacked.
The first blow opened the creature.
The second finished it.
Its body collapsed into a slick heap around Kaylor’s boots.
The other floating horror turned.
Fendor was already moving.
Two more strikes.
Then another.
The creature tried to recoil.
Isamu kept it from escaping.
Fendor cut through the tentacled mass until it stopped floating.
The second corpse hit the stone.
Silence.
Hexen drifted downward.
Nethnarel approached one of the bodies.
“Anything useful?”
Fendor wiped goo from his sword.
“No.”
“You didn't look.”
“I have developed criteria.”
Kaylor scraped slime from his armor.
“Let's go.”
They found another door.
That had become less exciting with repetition.
Isamu tested it.
Locked.
He kicked it.
Nothing.
The door did not vibrate.
Did not bend.
Did not acknowledge the existence of his foot.
Isamu looked impressed.
Fendor nodded toward it.
“Again.”
Isamu kicked harder.
Still nothing.
He drew the acidic flail.
The enchanted head struck the door.
Acid hissed across the surface.
Nothing happened.
Not resistance.
Indifference.
The acid simply failed to matter.
Nethnarel moved closer.
The door was made from the same dark, ancient material they had encountered near the warning machine.
She took out her Portable Hole.
Fendor immediately moved away.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You moved.”
“I remember the last strange object you interacted with.”
“This is our strange object.”
“That is not comforting.”
Nethnarel pressed the Portable Hole against the wall beside the door.
The black circle opened.
For several feet it behaved exactly as it should.
Then—
Nothing.
The darkness vanished.
The extradimensional opening ceased to exist.
Nethnarel pulled the fabric backward.
The Portable Hole returned.
She stared.
Then pressed it forward again.
At the same invisible boundary, its magic died.
Nethnarel slowly withdrew it.
Kaylor saw her expression.
“What?”
“Magic stops.”
Fendor looked at the door.
“Completely?”
Nethnarel extended her senses.
Magic surrounded them everywhere in subtle ways.
Their weapons.
Their equipment.
The Staff of Power.
Fendor’s bow.
Hexen’s staff.
Her own wings and spells.
But near the door there was a dead place.
Not darkness.
Absence.
A space in which magic ceased functioning.
Kaylor stepped toward the threshold.
On the door was a symbol.
He recognized it.
Not the language.
The warning.
The same mark they had encountered on the machine that released the green creature.
“Danger.”
Fendor looked at him.
“Wonderful.”
Nethnarel took out her tools.
“If it has a mechanical lock—”
She worked for several minutes.
Then stopped.
There was no weakness to find.
No mechanism she could exploit.
Not even the kind of impossible lock that rewarded perfect skill.
The door was simply beyond her.
She packed the tools away.
“We need a key.”
Fendor smiled.
“That is almost normal.”
“Almost.”
They went around.
The underground complex offered another route, circling through corridors that seemed deliberately designed to frustrate anyone attempting to understand them. Twice they thought the path would return to the anti-magic door.
Twice it did not.
Then the passage opened into a room.
Darkness began at the edges.
Kaylor noticed first.
Light withdrew from one corner as though something were drinking it.
Then another.
The darkness spread.
Not shadow.
Magic.
It rolled through the chamber like black fog.
Kaylor stopped.
The light from Final Word vanished.
So did the faint illumination from the corridor behind them.
Within seconds he could see nothing.
“Kaylor?”
Fendor’s voice.
“Here.”
“Can you see?”
“No.”
That answer did not apply equally to everyone.
Fendor could still make out movement through the strange darkness, though the room looked distorted and wrong. Hexen retained enough perception in elemental form to navigate. Nethnarel could distinguish shapes imperfectly.
Isamu did not exactly see.
He did something more irritating.
He listened.
The room was silent.
Too silent.
Kaylor moved one hand against the wall.
“I don't hear anything.”
“Neither do I,” Isamu said.
“That generally means something is waiting.”
“Yes.”
Fendor sighed.
“You two have become very cheerful.”
They entered.
Carefully.
Nothing attacked.
At first.
Isamu took several steps.
Stopped.
Something moved behind him.
He did not see it.
He felt the disturbance.
He turned and swung.
The whip struck something made from darkness.
Green light flashed inside it for an instant.
The creature recoiled.
Another moved nearby.
Then the room filled with them.
They were difficult to look at even for those capable of seeing through the spell.
Bodies formed from drifting blackness, humanoid only occasionally, their edges dissolving into smoke. Small flashes of green glimmered within them like distant lights behind storm clouds.
Isamu struck again.
His attack missed.
He listened.
Adjusted.
Struck a second shape.
This time the whip connected.
He drove Stunning Strike through it.
The shadow creature resisted.
Isamu attacked the next one.
Ki surged.
The thing stopped moving.
“Got one.”
Fendor entered the darkness.
He could see enough.
That was all he required.
The Vorpal Longsword came out.
One of the darkness creatures turned toward him.
Fendor went directly at it.
The first strike cut through shadow.
The second found resistance.
The creature reeled.
Fendor changed targets and hit another.
Behind him Hexen swept forward in elemental form, slamming into a shape Isamu had pinned in place.
Nethnarel raised the Staff of Power.
Lightning filled the darkness.
For one brilliant instant the entire chamber appeared.
Kaylor saw almost nothing of it.
The flash existed and vanished too quickly for his blinded senses to matter.
The lightning struck one of the shadow creatures.
It died.
The darkness remained.
Fendor looked around.
“That wasn't the one.”
“The one what?”
“Making the room dark.”
Then gravity reversed.
Kaylor hit the ceiling.
There was no warning.
One moment his boots stood on stone.
The next the world threw him upward.
His shoulder struck first.
Then the rest of him slammed against the ceiling.
Nethnarel hit nearby.
Her wings flared instinctively.
It did not matter.
The magic was not making them fall upward.
It was rewriting which direction counted as down.
She found herself pinned against the ceiling as though the mountain had turned over.
Below—
Above—
Fendor remained on the floor.
He had managed to catch himself against a piece of ancient furniture.
Isamu stood beside him, somehow balanced as though reversing gravity were merely another environmental inconvenience.
Kaylor lay blind on the ceiling.
“This is ridiculous.”
Fendor looked up.
“I can see you.”
“I can't see you.”
“You look excellent.”
“Fendor.”
“Yes?”
“Kill something.”
“That I can do.”
Isamu moved.
The darkness made ordinary vision useless, but his other senses were enough.
Something shifted.
There.
He attacked.
Missed.
Moved closer.
Struck again.
The whip connected.
Stunning Strike followed.
The shadow creature froze.
Isamu pointed into blackness.
“This one.”
Fendor came.
The sword struck.
The creature died.
The darkness vanished.
Light returned so suddenly that everyone blinked.
At the same instant gravity remembered itself.
Kaylor fell from the ceiling.
He hit the floor.
Nethnarel caught herself better with her wings, though the drop still left her swearing.
Kaylor rolled onto his back.
Fendor stood above him.
“Good news.”
Kaylor stared.
“No.”
“You can see.”
Kaylor stood.
“That was not worth falling twice.”
The room looked worse in the light.
Several shadow creatures remained.
One struck Hexen with a burst of rotting energy that seemed to reach through his elemental body and claw directly at thought.
Hexen staggered.
Nethnarel moved around Fendor.
Her earlier Melf’s Minute Meteors still circled her.
She selected several.
Small burning spheres streaked into the nearest shadow creature and exploded.
Fire illuminated black limbs from inside.
Kaylor finally reached something he could see.
Final Word struck.
One blow.
Another.
The creature weakened.
Isamu went after the last remaining shadow.
The whip snapped.
Once.
Again.
The second blow finished it.
The darkness did not return.
Neither did reverse gravity.
Nobody moved for several seconds.
Kaylor looked at the ceiling.
Then at Isamu.
“How did you stay down?”
Isamu shrugged.
“Balance.”
Fendor sheathed the sword.
“Do you realize how much I dislike him when he says things like that?”
“Yes.”
They searched the room.
A ruined desk stood against one wall.
Most of what it had once contained had rotted into fragments.
Nethnarel moved through them carefully.
Paper became dust beneath her fingers.
Bindings crumbled.
Then she found something intact.
A small old folio had been wrapped around an object to protect it.
The markings on the cover were Oslan.
Most meant nothing to her.
One did.
Not because she could suddenly read the language.
Because she had seen it before.
The warning symbol.
Danger.
Nethnarel opened the brittle wrapping.
A key rested inside.
Not shaped like any ordinary key.
Its shaft contained angles and grooves too complicated for a simple lock, almost like a piece of a larger mechanism.
Fendor looked over her shoulder.
“Please tell me it isn't marked danger.”
Nethnarel held it up.
“It came with the symbol.”
“That is not better.”
Kaylor took the key.
He knew exactly where it belonged.
They backtracked.
The corridors were easier now.
Not because Oslan had become comprehensible.
Because they knew what they were looking for.
The anti-magic door waited exactly where they had left it.
Dead to every spell.
Untouched by acid.
Impervious to Nethnarel’s tools.
The danger symbol stared back at them.
Kaylor inserted the key.
It fit.
Nobody spoke.
He turned it.
A heavy click sounded from the other side of the door.
Nethnarel felt the change immediately.
Magic returned.
Not everywhere.
To the threshold.
The dead zone withdrew.
The invisible wall that had extinguished her Portable Hole vanished.
Fendor raised his eyebrows.
“That did something.”
Nethnarel touched the Staff of Power against the doorway.
The staff remained alive.
“Yes.”
Kaylor opened the door.
The chamber beyond was enormous compared with the corridors behind them.
At its center stood a circle.
Summoning.
Binding.
Or something close enough that none of them liked it.
Inside the circle rested a skull.
Human.
Apparently.
Except it was four times the size a human skull had any right to be.
Isamu approached.
Fendor saw him.
“No.”
Isamu crouched beside the skull.
“No what?”
“You know.”
“I am investigating.”
“You investigate with your hands.”
“Yes.”
“That is the problem.”
Isamu looked into one enormous eye socket.
Then reached inside.
Kaylor sighed.
The air changed.
A shimmer appeared over the circle.
Isamu withdrew his arm.
Too late.
The figure began forming.
First legs.
Giant.
Then torso.
Larger still.
The creature rose until its shoulders towered above the heroes.
It resembled a giant only in the broadest sense.
Its abdomen was open.
Things moved inside.
Worms.
Snakes.
Long living shapes spilled from the cavity in its stomach, twisting around one another as though the giant carried an entire nest inside its body.
One enormous hand tightened around a massive hammer.
The other reached for a great blade.
The Titan looked down.
At Isamu.
Isamu looked up.
Fendor drew the Oathbow.
Kaylor raised Final Word.
Nethnarel’s stars began circling again.
Hexen shifted his grip on the Staff of the Woodlands.
The key marked danger remained in the door behind them.
And at last, the heroes understood why.