The gate waited.
That was the problem.
Had it flickered, Nethnarel might have distrusted it.
Had something terrible emerged from the other side, Kaylor could have drawn Final Word and reduced the decision to something familiar.
Had the anti-magic field collapsed or the city beyond vanished, then Oslan would have remained what it had been for thousands of years: a mystery.
Instead, the portal continued to turn within the one place where no portal should have been able to exist.
Beyond it, the impossible city lived.
Light moved across the sides of towers so tall and straight that Nethnarel still had no proper language for them. Vast panes of something like glass reflected a sky that did not belong to their world. Distant shapes moved along broad streets. Some were people. Others might have been vehicles, constructs or something for which the Heroes of the New Beginning possessed no useful comparison.
Nothing on the other side looked ruined.
Nothing looked abandoned.
Oslan had survived.
Not here.
Somewhere else.
Fendor stood several paces from the anti-magic boundary.
“We are not going through.”
Nobody answered.
He looked at Isamu.
“I am specifically saying that for you.”
Isamu folded his arms.
“I haven't moved.”
“That means nothing.”
Kaylor held the Hammer of Thunderbolts in one hand.
Within the active magic outside the circle, the weapon felt almost impossibly natural despite its size. Power traveled through the haft and into his body. Strength that had already been extraordinary had become something closer to monstrous.
He moved the hammer experimentally toward the field.
The moment its head crossed the boundary, the enchantment died.
The weapon became dead weight.
Kaylor pulled it back.
Power returned.
The gate remained open.
Nethnarel watched the test for perhaps the fifth time.
It did not make more sense.
“The field is real,” she said.
Hexen leaned on the Staff of the Woodlands.
“We established that.”
“The hammer stops.”
“Yes.”
“My Portable Hole would stop.”
“Yes.”
“Your staff would stop. My Staff of Power. Fendor’s sword. Everything.”
Fendor nodded toward the portal.
“Except that.”
“Except that.”
He shrugged.
“Then their gate is better.”
Nethnarel slowly turned toward him.
“That is an offensive simplification.”
“Is it wrong?”
She opened her mouth.
Closed it.
“No.”
Fendor smiled.
“I am going to remember this moment.”
“You won't understand why.”
“I don't need to.”
Nethnarel looked back through the portal.
That was the danger.
Not the warning symbol they had found throughout the underground complex.
Not the monsters.
Not the anti-magic fields.
Not the Titan.
This.
A question with an answer on the other side.
She had come to Oslan because she had reached the end of magic.
Or what everyone called the end.
Ninth-circle spells represented the highest achievements permitted to modern mortals. She could rip minds apart with Psychic Scream, stop creatures with impossible power, command devastating energies through her Staff of Power and bend reality in ways that would have made most court wizards weep simply to witness them.
And still—
there had been a ceiling.
Now she knew it had been built.
Oslan had existed before the walls were raised.
They had discovered principles beyond those walls.
Perhaps spells beyond them.
Perhaps an entirely different system.
And when Mystra came for them, they had not simply died.
They had escaped her.
The city beyond the gate was proof.
“Neth.”
Kaylor’s voice.
She did not turn.
“You want to go.”
“Yes.”
The answer came without hesitation.
Fendor sighed.
“I appreciate the admission.”
Kaylor looked at the portal.
“So do I.”
That made Nethnarel turn.
Kaylor’s expression had none of Fendor’s mockery in it.
He understood wanting to follow something simply because it was there.
He understood even more about doors one should not open.
“We don't know where it goes,” he said.
“A different plane.”
“We think.”
“Yes.”
“We don't know whether we can come back.”
Nethnarel glanced at the gate.
“Probably.”
Fendor stared at her.
“Excellent. That word has saved us repeatedly.”
She ignored him.
Kaylor continued.
“We don't know whether the people there want us.”
“We could find out.”
“We don't know whether time works the same.”
That stopped her.
Only briefly.
Hexen looked at the foreign city.
“Or magic.”
Nethnarel frowned.
He continued.
“Oslan escaped the rules here. Maybe they changed them there. Maybe they changed themselves.”
Isamu looked through the opening.
“Still worth seeing.”
Fendor took him by the shoulder.
“No.”
“I didn't say I was going.”
“You said the sentence that happens immediately before you go.”
Kaylor turned from the gate.
“We came here to break the binding.”
Nethnarel looked at him.
“We think we did.”
“The anti-magic field changed when the Titan died.”
“Yes.”
“The gate appeared.”
“Yes.”
“And whatever was keeping Zidara here should be broken.”
“Probably.”
Fendor pointed.
“There is that word again.”
Kaylor rested the hammer on one shoulder.
“Then we go back up.”
Nobody moved.
It was a strange thing to walk away from a doorway into another civilization.
The five of them had faced choices with greater immediate consequences. They had chosen whether to fight gods, whether to trust monsters, whether to enter the Void, whether to stand against powers capable of killing them without effort.
This felt harder in another way.
There was no obvious right answer.
Nothing through the portal attacked them.
No dying kingdom begged them to cross.
No enemy fled through it.
No prophecy demanded pursuit.
It was simply there.
An invitation made entirely of curiosity.
Nethnarel stared through for a few seconds longer.
One of the distant towers caught the foreign sun.
Light flashed across its glass face.
Somewhere in that city might be the answer to every question she had asked since discovering Oslan.
Tenth-circle magic.
Older magic.
Magic that ignored anti-magic itself.
The history of Mystra’s war against them.
The truth of what a civilization could become if the goddess of magic no longer dictated the limits of magic.
All of it might be a few steps away.
Nethnarel stepped backward.
Fendor’s eyebrows rose.
She looked at him.
“Do not make this unpleasant.”
“I wasn't going to.”
“You were.”
“I was going to say that was surprisingly responsible.”
“That is making it unpleasant.”
Fendor smiled.
The others withdrew.
Isamu was last.
Naturally.
He stood at the edge of the anti-magic field with his toes barely outside the boundary.
Fendor waited.
Isamu looked at the city.
Then back at Fendor.
“I wasn't going through.”
“I know.”
“No, you didn't.”
“No.”
Isamu stepped away.
The gate remained open behind them.
No one closed it.
They did not know how.
Retracing their path through Oslan felt different.
The underground city had not become less dangerous.
They had become less interested in what it could hide.
The corridors that had once invited investigation now felt like a road.
Past the chamber where the Titan had fallen.
Past the strange key and the door that had once murdered magic.
Past the rooms where darkness had turned gravity upside down.
Past the vault where Fendor had lost his head.
He slowed there.
Kaylor noticed.
“You want to go in?”
“No.”
“Good.”
Fendor touched his throat.
True Resurrection had left no scar.
That was almost disappointing.
A scar would have given the event boundaries.
Instead his body insisted nothing had happened.
He remembered differently.
The machine remained open in the chamber beyond.
Green residue stained the stones where the creature had died.
Fendor looked at the warning marks around the rings.
“Do we understand those now?”
Nethnarel glanced in.
“Yes.”
“What do they say?”
“We still can't read them.”
“I know.”
She smiled.
“They say don't touch it.”
Fendor nodded.
“Knowledge.”
They continued.
The strange playroom waited farther up.
Nethnarel did not stop there.
The enormous teddy bear.
The rocking horse.
The useless toys.
The place where something had reached into her mind and given her a child she had never borne.
She kept her eyes forward.
Hexen saw.
He said nothing.
There were some wounds magic could erase.
Others were memories of wounds that had never existed.
Those proved harder.
They climbed.
The stairs seemed longer going upward.
Fendor complained.
Isamu did not.
Kaylor carried a hammer large enough that ordinary men would have needed both hands merely to drag it. He treated it as luggage.
Nethnarel occasionally looked back.
Not because she believed the gate followed them.
Because leaving it felt unfinished.
Eventually even she stopped.
The air changed first.
Cold.
Thin.
Real.
The smell of stone and ancient sealed corridors gave way to mountain air.
The five heroes emerged onto the plateau.
Kaylor stopped.
The others came around him.
Nobody needed to ask why.
Zidara was gone.
The place where the dracolich had waited stood empty.
No enormous skeleton.
No green-black corpse held together by ancient magic.
No servants.
No followers.
Nothing.
Fendor scanned the plateau.
“Dragon?”
No answer.
Kaylor walked farther out.
He looked toward the ruins.
Then toward the sky.
Cloud moved beneath the height of the mountain.
Nothing moved above it.
Hexen studied the ground.
“He left.”
“Or was taken,” Nethnarel said.
Kaylor looked toward her.
She lifted one shoulder.
“We don't know.”
That was true.
The magic below had changed.
The anti-magic system had contracted.
The gate had appeared.
Now Zidara and every creature associated with him had vanished from the summit.
The obvious answer was freedom.
Obvious answers had developed a poor reputation.
Fendor drew the Oathbow and looked through the distant sky.
“Any sign at all?”
“No,” Hexen said.
Kaylor stood where the ancient dracolich had once been.
For thousands of years Zidara had guarded Oslan.
Or been trapped guarding it.
Mystra had empowered him.
Bound him.
Made him jailer and prisoner at once.
Kaylor had gone below with a simple enough bargain.
You want out.
We want in.
They had fulfilled their side.
Apparently.
“What now?” Isamu asked.
Kaylor looked at the empty sky.
“Nothing.”
Fendor laughed.
Everyone looked at him.
“That sounded painful for you.”
Kaylor ignored him.
Nethnarel looked toward the mountain edge.
“We could search.”
“For a flying dracolich?” Fendor asked.
“You've searched for worse.”
“Yes, but normally we know which direction the worse thing went.”
Hexen lifted the Staff of the Woodlands.
“We go home.”
The sentence settled them.
Home.
After Oslan’s impossible cities, fifteen-thousand-foot plateaus, undead armies, living toys, anti-magic labyrinths, Titans, alternate planes and more deaths than anyone felt like counting, the word sounded almost exotic.
Hexen cast Wind Walk.
The heroes became cloud.
Bodies loosened.
Armor faded into vapor.
Kaylor’s enormous hammer dissolved with him, its shape becoming a darker streak inside his wind-form.
They lifted from the plateau.
The three great mountains fell behind them.
For a while, Nethnarel watched.
The summit where the first dragon corpse had lain.
The ruined plateau.
The place beneath which an entire hidden city had waited.
Then cloud swallowed the mountains.
Oslan disappeared.
Not forever.
She knew that.
Perhaps none of them did.
Some discoveries did not end simply because one walked away from them.
The Manticore’s Tail was loud.
Fendor stood inside the doorway for several seconds simply listening.
Someone laughed near the bar.
A mug struck a table.
A chair scraped across wood.
From the kitchen came the smell of meat, bread and something Hexen immediately suspected had been left on the fire too long.
It was magnificent.
Kaylor entered behind him carrying the Hammer of Thunderbolts.
Conversation slowed.
Not stopped.
Slowed.
Several regular patrons had become accustomed to the heroes returning with things that seemed likely to destroy the building.
A hammer almost the size of a person merely warranted caution.
Fendor looked around.
“Normal people.”
Nethnarel passed him.
“Debatable.”
“Normal problems.”
A man at a nearby table was arguing about money.
Fendor listened for a moment.
“Beautiful.”
Isamu went directly for food.
Hexen disappeared briefly toward his grove outside the city.
Kaylor placed the hammer somewhere unlikely to collapse the floor.
Nethnarel sat with Gygax and her notes.
For the first few days, Oslan occupied everything.
They talked through what they had found.
The three cities.
The dead green dragon.
Zidara.
Mystra.
The ancient magical restrictions.
The gate.
Especially the gate.
Nethnarel drew it repeatedly.
The anti-magic circle.
The position of the portal.
The way the Hammer of Thunderbolts had lost its power while crossing the field.
The fact the gate had not.
Every time she diagrammed it, the result remained impossible.
That pleased her.
Then ordinary life reasserted itself.
A week passed.
Then another.
No gods attacked.
No undead armies appeared.
Nobody announced that another civilization intended to destroy the world.
The Manticore’s Tail continued requiring ale, food, repairs and people willing to tolerate the heroes living around it.
For several weeks, almost nothing happened.
Almost.
Kaylor hunted the dragon.
Not with Final Word.
Not yet.
With magic.
Scrying was imperfect against something like Zidara.
The dracolich possessed power given to him by the goddess of magic herself, and whatever else the heroes had done beneath Oslan, killing that power had not been among it.
Hexen tried.
Sometimes he found something.
A shadow.
The suggestion of wings.
Nothing long enough to establish a location.
The first time the vision held, Hexen expected bone.
That was what Zidara had been.
A skeletal dragon.
Ancient death wearing the memory of flight.
Instead the shadow possessed substance.
An intact wing moved through darkness.
A claw.
Not bare bone.
Something covered it.
Scales.
The vision collapsed before Hexen could understand more.
He tried again days later.
Another fragment.
A wing.
Part of a body.
Green.
Black.
Both.
Zidara was changing.
Or rebuilding.
Kaylor needed less convincing.
He began trying to find the dragon himself.
Again and again the magic failed.
Not completely.
That would have been easier.
Instead it gave him pieces.
A face.
A wing.
The outline of something enormous moving where location had been stripped away.
Then, one afternoon, Kaylor found him.
For perhaps a second.
The scrying vision steadied.
Darkness surrounded a great shape.
Green-black scales covered flesh that had once been absent.
A horn.
Part of the long muzzle.
Then one eye opened.
Not an empty socket.
An eye.
It stared directly at Kaylor.
The dragon saw him.
Kaylor knew it instantly.
Zidara was not merely being observed.
He was looking back.
The world around the dragon remained hidden.
No mountain.
No road.
No landmark.
Nothing Kaylor could use.
Only the eye.
Green-black scales.
Living shape wrapped around ancient death.
Then Zidara rejected the spell.
The vision vanished.
Kaylor remained seated in the Manticore’s Tail.
His hands rested on his knees.
Across the room, Fendor noticed his expression.
“You saw him.”
Kaylor nodded.
“Where?”
“I don't know.”
“Helpful.”
“He saw me too.”
Fendor stopped smiling.
Nethnarel looked up from her notes.
Hexen turned from the bar.
Isamu stopped eating.
Kaylor stared at the place where the vision had been.
“When we found him, he was bones.”
Nobody spoke.
“He isn't anymore.”
Outside, somewhere beyond Oxland, the evening wind moved through fields and forests and roads traveled every day by people who knew nothing about Oslan.
Nothing about the gate.
Nothing about the thing the heroes had freed.
For several weeks, nothing happened.
Then someone knocked on the door of the Manticore’s Tail.