The first thing that ran from them was shaped like a man.
That was almost comforting.
Kaylor saw it between the trees while the last of the creatures from the previous fight still bled into the black water. A hunched figure moved through the deepening fog, long-limbed and furred, its head carrying the unmistakable silhouette of a hyena or jackal. It had been close enough to watch the battle.
Now it was fleeing northeast.
“Movement.”
Fendor turned.
The thing was already disappearing through the trees.
Kaylor reached for the ice-cold longbow he had carried since Fendor passed it to him. The weapon had spent years changing hands and names in conversation—frost bow, ice bow, the burst bow—but its purpose remained uncomplicated.
He drew.
The arrow vanished into the gray.
Something moved ahead.
Kaylor drew again.
Then the creature was simply gone.
Not hidden.
Gone.
Fendor stared toward the place where it had been.
“Did you kill it?”
“No.”
“Did it run?”
Kaylor lowered the bow.
“No.”
Hexen was still a mammoth.
The enormous druid stood among the wreckage of the previous battle, tusks streaked with mud, his body occupying enough of the ruined road that the others had learned to navigate around him rather than ask him to move.
Nethnarel looked northeast.
“Teleportation?”
“Maybe.”
Nobody liked that answer.
Isamu was not with them now. He had turned back toward Oxland after the previous fighting, leaving the others to push farther into the corruption without him. The absence was noticeable not because Isamu spoke often, but because empty space formed differently when the monk was gone. There was no sudden blur vanishing into danger before everyone else. No quiet figure standing somewhere impossible. No enemy abruptly discovering that the smallest movement it had failed to notice was the one that mattered.
Four heroes remained beneath the fog.
Then the forest began making noise.
At first Fendor thought it was the fleeing creature.
Branches snapping.
Brush breaking.
Something moving fast through dense country.
Then the sound came from somewhere else.
And somewhere else.
And somewhere else.
Fendor turned slowly.
The noise did not come from behind them.
That was the only useful thing he could determine.
North.
Northeast.
Southeast.
All through the woods ahead, something was moving with enough force that whole trunks shook.
“What is that?”
Kaylor listened.
The nearest crash sounded less like an animal forcing its way through the forest than a wagon being driven through it without the inconvenience of a road.
Then came another.
And another.
Hexen’s mammoth head lifted.
The trees themselves were moving.
Not swaying.
Moving.
Roots tore through wet earth. Branches twisted against one another. Shrubs bent in directions the wind was not blowing. The canopy shifted overhead as though something beneath it had inhaled.
Nethnarel opened her wings.
“I’m going up.”
She climbed.
Or tried.
The forest had become too dense.
Yesterday there had been dead trees separated by swamp and patches of corrupted growth. Today their crowns overlapped. Branches knitted together above the heroes in tangled layers. Vines had climbed trunks that could not possibly have supported their growth yesterday. Leaves crowded into every opening.
Nethnarel forced her way upward until branches raked against her armor and wings.
She could not see through.
The canopy was closing.
Below, Hexen planted his massive feet and lifted one foreleg.
The gesture would have been ridiculous if they had not seen what Hexen Brew could do with plants.
Magic moved into the ground.
Everything north of them erupted.
Fern, thorn, vine, grass and root surged upward in violent abundance. Existing vegetation thickened into walls. Branches grew across paths. Roots rose into ridges. What had already been difficult country became nearly impassable.
Fendor looked at the sudden wilderness.
“That is helping?”
“It will slow whatever is coming.”
The words emerged from mammoth form as an enormous rumbling approximation of speech.
Fendor looked into the woods.
“I would prefer stopping.”
The forest answered.
It rose.
There was no creature.
That was the first problem.
No trunk stepped forward and revealed itself as a treant. No vine gathered into the outline of a monster. No buried flower opened its maw.
The entire landscape simply became hostile.
Earth buckled.
Trees bent.
Rocks tore free of the soil.
A wall of branches, root, mud and stone surged toward Hexen and Kaylor with the force of a landslide.
Kaylor threw himself sideways.
Hexen could not.
Several tons of mammoth disappeared beneath the impact.
Boulders hammered into his flanks. Whole branches struck hard enough to break against him. A tree trunk caught him across the ribs and drove him sideways through the muck.
Kaylor staggered as the edge of the eruption struck his armor.
Then the ground opened beneath Hexen.
Not a hole.
Hands would have been easier.
The earth itself softened around the mammoth’s legs. Mud climbed. Roots tightened. Soil swallowed him past the knees and continued pulling.
Hexen strained.
The deeper he fought, the more the ground took him.
Fendor raised his bow.
“What exactly am I shooting?”
Kaylor already had an answer.
“Everything.”
Another section of forest moved behind them.
This time the shape became visible only because enough material gathered into one place to suggest a body.
Trees bent inward.
Roots tore free.
Shrubs, stones and broken timber folded together around a core that was not flesh and may not have been anything at all. It advanced without walking, drawing the forest into itself as it moved.
Kaylor met it with the Hammer of Thunderbolts.
The weapon struck.
Thunder rolled through the trees.
The hammer should have crushed almost anything.
Instead it disappeared into a mass of roots and timber, scattering bark and mud without doing nearly enough.
Lightning crawled across the thing.
That did even less.
Kaylor pulled the hammer free.
“That’s unfortunate.”
Fendor loosed.
An arrow buried itself in the living forest.
Magic erupted from the shaft.
Thornlike bonds tightened across the moving mass, catching branches and roots together. The enchanted growth fought the corrupted growth, slowing it as Fendor sent another arrow after the first.
The thing roared.
A forest should not have been capable of roaring.
This one was.
The sound began in the trees and passed into the ground. Trunks vibrated. Stones jumped. Water rippled outward in perfect circles.
The force struck Fendor through his chest.
His vision blurred.
For an instant every bone in his body seemed to hum.
He planted one foot behind himself and refused to fall.
Kaylor looked over.
“You all right?”
Fendor straightened.
“The forest yelled at me.”
“Yes.”
“I dislike this place.”
“You’ve mentioned that.”
“I am becoming more correct.”
Hexen changed.
The mammoth vanished into fire.
One instant several tons of fur and tusk were sinking into the earth.
The next, a humanoid inferno erupted from the mud.
Flame rolled upward in a living column. The roots restraining Hexen blackened where they touched him, though they did not burn as quickly as they should have.
That bothered him.
Fire was one of the oldest answers to an angry forest.
This forest barely cared.
Hexen forced himself upward until the soil released him.
He struck the mass beside him.
Flame spread through leaves.
Some curled.
Most did not.
“What are these things?” Fendor called.
Hexen looked at the impossible body made from the landscape.
“No idea.”
“Excellent.”
The ground beneath Kaylor moved.
He felt it too late.
Mud climbed over his boots.
Roots tightened around his legs.
The earth pulled.
Kaylor fought against it with strength that had become absurd even by his standards. The Hammer of Thunderbolts could make him stronger than giants.
The forest did not seem impressed.
It dragged him down far enough to lock his legs in place.
Then the trees hit him.
One trunk slammed across his shoulder.
Another struck his breastplate.
Kaylor remained upright because the ground holding him gave him nowhere else to go.
He looked at the hammer.
Then at the moving forest.
Wrong weapon.
He put the Hammer of Thunderbolts away.
Final Word came free.
The great blade looked almost ordinary beside the weapon he had just abandoned.
Until he swung it.
Steel cut where thunder had failed.
Roots parted.
Branches fell.
Kaylor carved into the mass and immediately understood the difference.
“This works.”
Fendor looked at his bow.
Then at his sword.
“I was hoping you would say that.”
He drew the Vorpal Longsword.
Nethnarel descended beneath the canopy.
Small stars of brilliant light circled her head.
The Crown of Stars had become one of those spells that changed the way she entered a battle. Once, Nethnarel had needed to choose between surviving and attacking.
Now lethal magic simply waited around her until she required it.
One star streaked downward.
It struck the living forest and burst against it.
The mass recoiled.
“Radiant works,” Kaylor said.
Nethnarel lifted the Staff of Power.
“Then lightning should—”
The bolt tore across the battlefield.
Blue-white power split the darkness.
Branches exploded.
Leaves flew.
For one perfect instant the entire corrupted forest appeared in stark illumination.
Then the light passed.
The creature remained.
Almost untouched.
Nethnarel stared.
“No.”
Fendor reached the nearest mass.
The Vorpal blade entered wood.
That worked.
He cut again.
And again.
The thing was too large to have a neck, which had rarely discouraged Fendor from trying to solve problems with the same sword anyway.
He severed heavy roots and carved through gathered trunks, opening deep channels through the thing’s makeshift body.
Nethnarel adjusted.
She had spent half her life discovering which kind of magic an enemy wished she would stop using.
Lightning had failed.
So she changed the question.
Eldritch force struck the forest.
Once.
Twice.
Again.
Again.
Each impact tore material away.
“That works.”
Fendor kept cutting.
“Very informative.”
The ground grabbed Hexen again.
The fire elemental sank.
Hexen looked down at the roots dragging him into the earth.
Then upward.
The woods roared.
The sound hit him with enough force to extinguish portions of his body for an instant. Flame guttered and returned.
The thing slammed into him.
Fire scattered.
Hexen absorbed the blow through a body that was not truly his.
That was why he liked becoming things with other bodies.
He had only so much Hexen Brew to spend.
There was no reason to use it first.
Kaylor was not afforded the same convenience.
The forest pulled him down again.
Another roar passed through him.
He lost his footing and went hard against the mud.
Before he could recover, branches crashed down.
One struck.
Then another.
Pain became white behind his eyes.
Nethnarel saw him disappear beneath the violence.
“Kaylor!”
He answered by swinging Final Word from the ground and cutting halfway through the mass trying to bury him.
Fendor joined him.
The Vorpal blade flashed.
The moving forest had grown thinner now. Not smaller exactly, but less coherent. Too many of its roots were severed. Too many trunks lay cut behind it.
Still it moved.
Still the fog remained.
Still the forest pressed inward.
Hexen looked toward the things attacking them.
Then he did something Kaylor had not expected.
He called a name.
“Grazim Von.”
The battlefield changed.
Not the way it had when the forest rose.
Not violently.
For a heartbeat, everything seemed to become still around the name.
Then Grazim appeared.
Kaylor stopped.
It lasted less than a second.
Less than that.
The part of him that knew the difference between hope and stupidity caught the mistake before hope could become anything dangerous.
Grazim was dead.
They knew this.
They had buried that truth inside themselves too many times to mistake what stood among them for resurrection.
Yet Grazim Von was there.
Not returned.
Not alive again in the ordinary sense.
There.
Called somehow through Hexen’s power, appearing for the battle as he had once before.
Fendor stared at him.
“Well.”
That was all he managed.
Grazim lifted his hands.
Radiance exploded.
Sunlight did not belong beneath the corrupted canopy.
It came anyway.
For an instant the gray world turned gold-white.
The living masses of forest recoiled as holy light tore through them. Leaves blackened. Roots contracted. The strange gathered bodies shuddered as though, for the first time, something had reached whatever passed for life inside them.
Nethnarel shielded her eyes.
Kaylor did not.
He looked at Grazim.
Just once.
Then the forest hit him again.
The roar knocked Kaylor back into the mud.
A trunk smashed into him.
The moment disappeared into pain.
Nethnarel’s expression changed.
She raised one hand.
A thin line of death crossed the battlefield.
Finger of Death struck the mass above Kaylor.
The effect was not spectacular.
That made it worse.
Life simply abandoned what it touched.
Leaves withered.
Wood grayed.
Roots collapsed.
The strange forest-body shuddered as necrotic power passed through it.
One of Nethnarel’s waiting stars followed.
The creature folded.
Fendor was already tearing apart the other.
His Vorpal sword worked through gathered trunks in savage, economical arcs. He was not trying for a miraculous severing now.
He was cutting down a forest one piece at a time.
Kaylor forced himself upright.
Mud released his legs.
He got one foot beneath him.
Then the other.
Final Word rose.
The corrupted mass turned toward him.
Kaylor struck.
Once.
The blade opened it.
Again.
The remaining support collapsed.
Roots tore loose.
The thing came apart across the ground in a long avalanche of dead branches, stones, leaves and mud.
Nothing remained that resembled a body.
Only forest.
Ordinary-looking forest.
Except ordinary forests did not bleed darkness into the ground when they died.
Kaylor stood over it breathing hard.
Fendor looked toward Nethnarel’s target.
“That one?”
She stared at the withered remains.
“Dead.”
“Good.”
Hexen’s fire dimmed.
The living elemental body fell away until the druid stood in the mud again.
Grazim remained.
For a few more breaths.
That was enough.
Enough for the old cleric to lift his hands one final time.
Healing spread across the battlefield.
Not a trickle.
Not the measured restoration Kaylor used when he placed a hand upon someone’s shoulder and returned what strength he could afford.
This was Grazim.
Life rushed through them.
Bruises vanished. Torn flesh closed. Crushed ribs eased. The deep pain left by tree trunks, stones and living earth disappeared almost before the heroes understood how badly they had been hurt.
Fendor flexed one shoulder.
“Oh.”
Kaylor looked toward Grazim.
There were a hundred things he could have said.
None would have mattered.
The manifestation faded.
No dramatic farewell.
No resurrection.
No second return.
Grazim Von was simply no longer there.
For several moments, the four did not speak.
Then Fendor sheathed the Vorpal Longsword.
“I suppose asking how Hexen does that would be pointless.”
“Yes,” Nethnarel said.
Hexen looked at the place where Grazim had stood.
“Yes.”
Kaylor put Final Word away.
That was all.
There were some things they had learned not to examine too quickly.
They searched instead.
The forest had gone quiet.
Not peaceful.
Quiet.
The difference had become important.
The hyena-headed creature was nowhere to be found.
Ahead, through the gray, a faint light remained.
They moved toward it.
The light belonged to something almost painfully ordinary.
A lantern.
Old.
Weathered.
Standing beside what remained of the road.
For a moment none of them understood why that bothered them.
Then Kaylor did.
“This was here before.”
Hexen looked around.
Before the swamp.
Before the fog.
Before trees had swallowed the road.
The lantern had been part of the ordinary countryside.
A marker beside a route farmers once traveled carrying crops toward Oxland.
The corruption had not built it.
It had simply failed to erase it.
Fendor searched around the post.
“No tracks.”
“That surprises you?”
“No. I am maintaining standards.”
The creature they had followed had vanished.
Again.
Whether it had teleported, slipped through shadow or simply possessed some other means of escaping them, the result was the same.
Their guide was gone.
But the road remained.
It continued northeast.
They followed.
The trees thickened around them.
The fog swallowed the lantern within a few dozen paces.
Soon its light was gone completely.
The road divided ahead, one branch curling away into a dark hollow while the older path continued north through the woods.
Kaylor stopped.
The Hammer of Thunderbolts came back into his hands.
Fendor looked at the weapon.
“I thought the sword worked better.”
“It did.”
“Then why the hammer?”
Kaylor stared farther down the road.
“Because I don’t know what comes next.”
Fendor considered that.
“Fair.”
They had entered the corruption believing there was a dragon somewhere ahead.
Then they had discovered that the dragon’s wake contained monsters.
After that, they had learned the monsters could be anything.
Plants.
Shadows.
Sorcerers.
Worms.
Things crawling with insects.
Now the forest itself had tried to kill them.
Behind them, one of the most powerful regions of corrupted woodland they had encountered lay torn open.
Ahead, the fog was darker.
Again.
Kaylor looked northeast.
Whatever had passed this way was not merely poisoning the land.
It was changing what the land was allowed to become.
And somewhere beyond the next bend, something had been waiting long enough to run when it saw them coming.
They followed.