The magistrate arrived at the Manticore’s Tail with two wizards and the expression of a man who had already run out of ordinary solutions.
Kaylor noticed that first.
People came to the inn for many reasons now. Some wanted favors. Some wanted stories. Some wanted to see whether the Heroes of the New Beginning actually drank in the same common room as everyone else. Others brought requests so small that the heroes’ reputations almost embarrassed them: a missing child, a creature beneath a bridge, a road merchants no longer wished to travel after sunset.
This man had not come hoping legends might help.
He had come because everyone else was dying.
The two wizards appeared with him in the middle of the common room, the last shimmer of teleportation folding away from their robes. One immediately looked toward the doors as though expecting something to have followed. The other kept one hand near a wand.
The magistrate barely noticed the room.
“Heroes.”
Fendor looked around.
“No Grazim. No Isamu.”
The magistrate stared at him.
Fendor gestured vaguely toward the table.
“You have four.”
Kaylor gave him a look.
“What?”
“Not helping.”
“I was establishing inventory.”
Isamu had not returned to the field with them. Whatever kept him in Oxland, the surviving four had learned not to delay every crisis until the world arranged itself around their preferred company.
Grazim was different.
Grazim remained dead.
The magistrate seemed willing to accept four.
“My name is Kidden.”
He was breathing hard despite having teleported rather than run.
Hexen pushed a chair toward him.
“Sit.”
“I don’t have time.”
“That usually means you should.”
Kidden did not sit.
Instead he told them about the castle.
It stood in the mountains beyond Gildan, among the heights of the Lesnora Forest, though calling the place a castle turned out to be an oversimplification. It was ancient even by the standards of kingdoms that measured themselves in centuries. Gildan had guarded it longer than anyone living remembered. Generations of soldiers and wizards had watched the same walls without knowing precisely what they protected.
Nobody entered the central tower.
Nobody opened it.
Nobody experimented with the power sealed inside.
They guarded it because their ancestors had guarded it, and because whatever slept beneath those stones radiated enough magic that prudence had survived even after knowledge did not.
Fendor leaned back.
“So naturally someone wants inside.”
Kidden looked at him.
“Everything wants inside.”
That quieted the table.
The attacks had begun when the shadow began crossing the land.
Kaylor stopped moving.
Kidden saw the reaction but could not have understood it.
He explained what his people knew. A darkness had moved across Gildan’s territories—not ordinary weather, not a single army, not anything consistent enough to name. Where it passed, strange things appeared.
Undead.
Flying creatures.
Monsters from places that had no reason to share a battlefield.
Some nights one kind came.
The next night something entirely different.
There was no order.
No army to scout.
No commander to kill.
Only pressure.
Every night, something tried to reach the ancient tower.
For nearly two weeks, Gildan’s soldiers had held.
And every night there were fewer of them.
Kidden’s voice changed when he described the hill.
Bodies thrown from the cliffs.
Men torn apart on the walls.
Wizards spending everything they possessed against creatures they could not predict and then facing something entirely different the following night.
They had managed to keep the central structure sealed.
So far.
“How many soldiers remain?” Kaylor asked.
“Not enough.”
“How many wizards?”
“Not enough.”
“What happens if the tower falls?”
Kidden looked toward the four heroes.
“We don’t know.”
Fendor closed his eyes.
“Of course.”
Kidden continued before anyone could turn uncertainty into an excuse.
“What we do know is that Gildan has spent millennia keeping whatever is inside from being released.”
“Or stolen,” Nethnarel said.
“Yes.”
“Or awakened.”
“Yes.”
“Or used.”
Kidden hesitated.
“Yes.”
Fendor opened his eyes.
“I liked ‘released’ better.”
Kaylor had stopped listening to the individual possibilities.
His mind had returned northwest.
Marcus’s father looking upward.
The dragon-shaped shadow crossing the sky.
The land changing behind it.
A swamp where plains had been.
Plant creatures.
Shadow creatures.
Acid worms.
A forest that moved.
A Hellmouth.
All of them unrelated except for the path.
“Your attacks started when the shadow arrived.”
Kidden nodded.
“We believe so.”
“You’ve seen the dragon?”
“No.”
“Do you know the shadow came from it?”
“No.”
That mattered.
Kaylor forced himself to keep it mattering.
The heroes knew more than Kidden did. They had released Zidara from the ancient prison beneath Oslan because they had believed doing so was necessary. They had watched the dracolich disappear. Kaylor had Scried upon him later and seen the impossible restoration of flesh over ancient bones.
Then the dragon looked back.
Marcus’s father disappeared that same day.
But suspicion remained suspicion.
The road from that moment to this tower was becoming very long.
“Describe the things attacking you,” Hexen said.
Kidden did.
It was the answer Kaylor expected.
Everything.
Not literally.
Close enough.
Undead one night. Flying horrors another. Things crawling up cliffs. Creatures moving through darkness. Monsters Kidden’s soldiers knew and monsters no one had names for.
The same impossible mixture they had been fighting outside Oxland.
Fendor looked at Kaylor.
“The fog.”
“Maybe.”
“The dragon.”
“Maybe.”
“You’ve become very cautious.”
“We were used by Craven.”
Fendor nodded.
“That remains an annoyingly effective argument.”
Kidden looked between them.
“Will you come?”
Kaylor stood.
“Yes.”
Hexen sighed.
“I suppose I should make breakfast.”
Heroes’ Feast had become less ceremonial with repetition.
Once, producing a supernatural banquet capable of fortifying mortal bodies against poison and terror might have been the event around which an entire evening revolved.
Now Hexen used it the way experienced travelers checked the weather.
Necessary.
Useful.
Best done before leaving.
Fendor ate without complaint.
That alone marked progress.
By the time they were ready, Kidden’s wizards had produced a small object intended to guide teleportation to the fortress. The heroes hardly needed it; between their own magic, Fendor’s equipment and years of solving problems by appearing where responsible people wished they would not, transportation had stopped being one of their major obstacles.
But there was value in precision.
Nethnarel examined the token.
“This puts us inside the defenses?”
“Yes.”
“Not beneath the cliff?”
“Yes.”
“Not inside a wall?”
Kidden stared.
“Has that happened?”
“No,” Fendor said. “But now that she mentioned it, I’m concerned.”
The Manticore’s Tail vanished.
The mountain arrived.
Cold air struck them first.
Then the smell.
Death had a way of remaining after bodies were moved.
The fortress stood upon the crown of a high, flat rise, stone walls following the natural edge of the summit. Beyond them the land fell almost vertically for nearly a hundred feet before continuing into forested mountains.
The view should have been extraordinary.
Instead Kaylor saw bodies.
Gildan’s soldiers had cleared the fortress grounds, but the cliffs told the truth. Men lay on ledges where no one had yet reached them. Broken bodies rested among stone below. Scraps of armor and torn banners clung to branches growing from the cliff face.
The defenders had held the wall.
The mountain had collected the cost.
Fendor stood near the edge.
“Twelve nights?”
“One of the officers said something like that.”
Fendor looked down.
“They’ve been busy.”
The surviving Gildan force looked worse in daylight.
Men slept against walls in armor.
Others repaired stone damage with the careful slowness of people too tired to hurry. Wizards worked in pairs because neither trusted himself to complete delicate magic alone. Bandaged soldiers carried stone and timber while watching every direction at once.
Nobody celebrated when the heroes appeared.
Several looked relieved.
That was different.
Kaylor understood relief.
Relief was what people felt when they had stopped believing they could save themselves.
The fortress itself was not ruined.
That surprised him.
Repairs showed where repeated attacks had damaged outer structures, but the walls remained formidable. Buildings clustered around the summit, most utilitarian additions from later centuries.
At their center rose the tower.
Four hundred feet of ancient stone climbed into the overcast sky.
No window stood open.
No door invited approach.
Every visible opening had been sealed from within.
Nethnarel walked toward it.
Magic reached her before she reached the wall.
She stopped.
Fendor noticed.
“Problem?”
“Power.”
“That is generally why we’re here.”
“No.”
Nethnarel looked upward.
“Power.”
The others felt it once they paid attention.
The structure did not merely contain enchantment.
It hummed with it.
Something immense rested inside the tower, hidden behind stone and age.
Nethnarel took flight.
She rose along the outer wall, searching shutters, repaired sections, cracks—anything that might give her sight into the sealed interior.
There was nothing.
The tower had been built to keep the world out.
Or something in.
When she descended, she had noticed something stranger.
“The outside isn’t the oldest part.”
Hexen looked toward the tower.
“What do you mean?”
Nethnarel pointed.
“Look at the base.”
Once she showed them, Kaylor saw it.
The visible tower had been built around something else.
Later masonry encased a core whose angles and construction did not match the castle surrounding it. Tiny fragments emerged where repairs had exposed deeper stone.
Kaylor knew that work.
They all did.
Oslan.
Not necessarily the mountain city they had left behind.
The same civilization.
The same impossible age.
A remnant of the people who had once understood magic differently from everyone living now.
Nethnarel stared at the tower.
Her entire journey into Oslan had begun because she had wanted to know what existed beyond the rules imposed upon modern magic.
Now they were standing in front of another answer.
Buried.
Sealed.
Guarded for millennia by people who no longer remembered why.
Fendor watched her expression.
“No.”
Nethnarel glanced at him.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were thinking about opening it.”
“I was thinking about understanding it.”
“That is how opening begins.”
Hexen looked at Fendor.
“You said the same thing about statues.”
“And I remain correct.”
One of the remaining Gildan generals approached before Nethnarel could answer.
He was missing part of one ear and had fresh bandages wrapped beneath his armor.
“The attacks come after dark.”
Kaylor looked at the sky.
It was daytime.
Technically.
Clouds covered the mountains in a dim ceiling, and the air carried the same oppressive grayness they had seen spreading across the land.
“The weather always like this?” Hexen asked.
“No.”
That was answer enough.
The general explained their defense.
There was no strategy for predicting the enemy because there was no pattern. Creatures approached from every side. Some climbed the walls. Some flew. Some appeared within the mountain itself. Some simply came out of the dark.
Everything had one objective.
The tower.
“If they reach it?” Kaylor asked.
“Kill them.”
“I mean if they touch it.”
The general looked tired.
“Kill them faster.”
Fendor nodded.
“A sophisticated plan.”
“It has kept the tower closed.”
That ended the joke.
The heroes spread out.
There were only four of them.
They had defended cities with fewer.
That did not make Kaylor feel better.
Night did not fall cleanly.
The mountain simply became darker.
The clouds lowered.
The surviving soldiers withdrew to positions from which they could reinforce the heroes if necessary, though everyone understood how little reinforcement meant when the people they were reinforcing killed dragons for a living.
Kaylor summoned his pegasus.
The celestial creature appeared in pale light against the gray.
He mounted and rose above the fortress.
Fendor settled onto his flying carpet.
Nethnarel simply opened her wings.
Hexen became air.
The four circled the ancient tower at different heights.
For several minutes nothing happened.
That was worse than immediate attack.
Kaylor flew farther from the tower.
Below him, the fortress walls formed a rough crown around the summit. Beyond them, cliffs vanished into shadow.
Something flickered below the northern wall.
Light.
Faint.
Too low.
Kaylor circled.
The glow came from deep between rocks beneath the cliff.
Then he saw movement.
Not a body.
A cloud.
It crept upward along the mountain.
Lightning flickered inside it.
The thing did not climb the cliff so much as search for darkness and use it. Wherever the rock provided shadow, the cloud poured through, staying low, flowing between cracks, crawling toward the fortress.
Kaylor turned.
Something moved southeast.
Different.
Fast.
Skittering.
He could not see the creatures yet, but he heard stone scratching against stone.
Two fronts.
He drove the pegasus back toward the others.
“Northeast and southeast.”
Fendor looked toward the walls.
“What?”
“Something electrical north. Something crawling south.”
Nethnarel was higher than everyone else.
Much higher.
She had climbed until she hovered near the upper reaches of the tower, where the fortress below had become a pattern of walls and rooftops.
That was why she heard the water first.
She frowned.
The sound made no sense.
A river.
Not rain.
Not wind.
Running water.
A tremendous amount of it.
Somewhere beyond the northern edge of the fortress, something was coming with the sound of a river moving where no river existed.
Nethnarel looked down.
The others were too far below to hear her ordinary voice.
So she used another.
Magic magnified it until the tiefling’s warning rolled across the fortress like thunder.
“GET OFF THE GROUND.”
Soldiers looked upward.
Fendor looked at Kaylor.
“What?”
Nethnarel pointed north.
“WATER!”
Then the first spider reached the wall.
Its legs appeared above the parapet.
One.
Then several.
Then too many.
Nethnarel saw the mass below.
The creatures were enormous individually, but individuality almost ceased to matter at that scale. They covered the cliff face and one another, crawling over bodies below them to gain height.
A living avalanche of legs.
The lowest creatures became footing for those above.
The wall was not being climbed.
It was being buried.
Nethnarel raised one hand.
Distance ceased to be a meaningful inconvenience.
She poured sorcerous power into the spell, stretching its reach far beyond what an ordinary Fireball should have managed.
Then she sent it into the mass.
Fire detonated below the wall.
For an instant the mountain became orange.
Spiders burst.
Others lost their grip.
A section of the living mound collapsed backward, bodies carrying bodies into the darkness below.
Fendor stared.
“Effective.”
The movement did not stop.
More crawled upward.
Hexen swept toward the southern edge as an Air Elemental.
From above, he finally saw how many there were.
Thousands might have been an exaggeration.
Hundreds was not.
The mass filled cracks and ledges beneath the wall.
He had no interest in counting.
Hexen cast Incendiary Cloud.
Fire and smoke formed below the parapet.
Then he drove it downward.
Not at the spiders nearest the top.
At the ones beneath them.
The cloud burned into the foundation of the living pile.
Creatures died.
Those above lost support.
Entire sections slid downward.
The result looked less like a battle than controlled demolition.
Nethnarel saw what he was doing.
She smiled.
Then sent a Tidal Wave over the same edge.
Water crashed downward through burning bodies.
The spell did not extinguish Hexen’s magic completely, but it removed what remained of the spiders’ footing.
For several seconds the entire southern cliff moved.
Then it was empty.
Fendor looked over the opposite wall.
“That’s one side.”
Lightning flashed.
The cloud had reached them.
It rolled over the northern wall like storm mist.
Not through a gate.
Over the stone.
Electricity snapped through its body.
Fendor raised the Oathbow.
He fired.
The first arrow vanished into vapor.
The second struck something.
The cloud convulsed.
Lightning raced through it in violent branching arcs.
Fendor drew again.
“I made it angry.”
Kaylor landed nearby.
“You shot a storm.”
“Yes.”
“And expected?”
“Professional courtesy.”
Nethnarel descended.
She studied the electrical mass.
Cloud.
Creature.
Both.
She had fought enough things made from impossible substances that the distinction mattered less than it once had.
“What if it isn’t vapor?”
Fendor stared at her.
“It looks like vapor.”
“That was not my question.”
She cast.
The transformation took hold.
The enormous electrical cloud contracted.
Lightning vanished.
Vapor thickened.
Metal formed.
The creature became iron.
Too much iron.
Its mass remained immense even after magic forced it into solidity, and gravity immediately took an interest.
The transformed body crashed across the wall.
Part fell outside.
Part fell inside.
Stone cracked beneath the weight.
For one quiet second everyone stared at it.
Fendor looked toward Nethnarel.
“That worked.”
“I know.”
The iron moved.
Fendor sighed.
“Of course.”
A shape pulled itself from the collapsed mass.
Thirty feet tall.
Broad.
Humanoid only because its limbs happened to occupy familiar positions.
It looked as if the cloud had remembered what it was while trapped inside iron and simply rebuilt itself from whatever material Nethnarel had given it.
The thing stood.
Then turned toward the tower.
Kaylor reached for his Hammer of Thunderbolts.
“No.”
Fendor looked at him.
“What?”
“I’m tired of things ignoring us.”
He moved to intercept.
Kaylor tore one of the enchanted jewels from the Helm of Brilliance he carried.
Fire answered.
A wall erupted between the iron creature and the tower.
Sixty feet of flame.
Twenty feet high.
The thing reached the fire.
Stopped.
Everyone waited.
Then it walked through.
Fendor looked at Kaylor.
“Strong objection.”
Kaylor watched the creature emerge burning.
“Apparently.”
Fendor swept upward on the carpet.
The Vorpal Longsword came free.
The creature was tall enough that Fendor could meet its head without descending.
He slashed as he passed.
Metal tore beneath the blade.
The monster turned.
Kaylor struck from the other side.
Hammer against iron.
The sound rang across the fortress.
Nethnarel joined them with stars circling her head.
One streaked downward.
Radiant force tore chunks from the metal creature.
Then she looked toward the southern wall.
Spiders were beginning to climb again.
“Hexen.”
“I see them.”
Hexen drove his Incendiary Cloud sideways.
Nethnarel sent another wave down.
Bodies tumbled.
The wall cleared again.
The iron creature opened itself.
A storm of metal fragments erupted from its body.
Fendor swerved.
Kaylor was less fortunate.
Iron struck armor like sling stones fired by giants.
The pegasus cried out.
Kaylor almost lost the saddle.
Then the creature hit Fendor hard enough to turn the carpet sideways beneath him.
Fendor recovered.
“Now I’m offended.”
He attacked again.
Four sword strokes.
Then more.
The iron thing staggered.
Kaylor drove the hammer into its center.
Metal collapsed.
The enormous body lost coherence and came apart across the stone.
Kaylor did not celebrate.
Something was crawling across the side of one of the fortress buildings.
Hexen saw it first.
Shadow.
Not a shadow cast by something.
Shadow behaving as something.
It moved low along stone, almost impossible to distinguish from the darkness around it.
And it was heading directly for the tower.
Hexen struck it with death magic.
Nothing happened.
The creature continued.
“Necrotic does nothing,” Hexen called.
Nethnarel turned.
The shadow reached the tower.
Darkness expanded around it.
Not natural shadow.
A sphere of magical black swallowed part of the outer wall.
Hexen could still see.
Pit fiends saw through magical darkness.
He was not yet a pit fiend.
That thought solved itself quickly.
The Air Elemental dropped.
Hexen hit stone.
Then changed.
The form that replaced him was the same red-black infernal body he had used beneath the corrupted countryside.
Pit fiend.
Horns.
Wings.
Claws.
Fear.
Fendor saw him from across the battlefield.
“You really like that one.”
“It works.”
The shadow-creature lashed at the tower.
A pseudopod struck stone.
Acid splattered.
Smoke rose.
The tower survived.
But the acid left a mark.
Kaylor saw it.
“They’re not just trying to reach the tower.”
Nethnarel understood.
“They’re trying to open it.”
The thing struck again.
Stone began dissolving.
Fendor turned his carpet toward it.
Then another problem appeared overhead.
Skulls.
Hundreds of them.
Human skulls flew through the dark like a swarm of insects, empty eyes burning as they rushed toward the tower.
Nethnarel raised the Staff of Power.
“Absolutely not.”
Force appeared around the swarm.
Invisible walls locked into place.
The skulls struck them.
Again.
Again.
Again.
The entire mass trapped itself inside Nethnarel’s prison, swirling like angry bees inside a glass jar no one could see.
Kaylor looked upward.
“Good.”
“Temporary.”
“Still good.”
A second swarm appeared.
Fendor changed targets.
Arrows flew.
One detonated inside the formation.
Skulls burst apart in midair.
Kaylor mounted the pegasus and charged into another group, the Hammer of Thunderbolts scattering burning fragments through the sky.
One dying skull exploded.
Fire washed over horse and rider.
The pegasus screamed.
Kaylor felt the creature stagger beneath him.
“Stay with me.”
The celestial horse did.
Barely.
Below, Hexen crossed the courtyard in Pit Fiend form.
The spider-creatures that had begun finding a way around his fire stopped when they saw him.
Most fled.
One did not.
The single creature launched webbing.
It covered Hexen’s infernal body.
For a moment Fendor watched the great devil struggle inside silk.
He smiled.
Then the web began smoking with acid.
Hexen tore through it.
“Don’t.”
Fendor’s smile vanished.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were going to.”
“Yes.”
Hexen called more fiends.
Two Barbed Devils appeared in the courtyard.
Fendor stared.
“This is becoming difficult to explain.”
“To whom?”
Fendor looked around at the surviving Gildan soldiers.
Several had stopped fighting long enough to stare at Hexen.
“Fair.”
The devils rushed toward the shadow clinging to the tower.
Nethnarel attacked it first.
She tried death.
The darkness barely flickered.
She tried radiant force.
That hurt it.
Not enough.
The creature remained attached to the tower.
So Nethnarel stopped trying to target what she could not see.
She filled the darkness with blades.
Cloud of Daggers erupted inside the black sphere.
The effect was immediate.
The darkness vanished.
The creature came away from the wall.
It fell.
The mass hit the courtyard and began losing cohesion.
Fendor looked toward Nethnarel.
“That one.”
“Yes.”
“Do that again.”
“Helpful.”
Behind them came a sound like a building collapsing.
Except the building was still standing.
Nethnarel turned.
The river had arrived.
Water rose beyond the northern wall.
Not a river.
A creature shaped like one.
A massive living wave stood forty or fifty feet high and moved across the ground as though gravity had become negotiable. It hit the tower.
Stone cracked.
Everyone stopped.
The tower had resisted spiders.
Skulls.
Acid.
Iron.
It did not ignore that.
Chunks of masonry broke free.
The living wave drew itself back.
Then struck again.
Kaylor felt something cold settle beneath his armor.
Not fear of the creature.
Fear of what was inside.
The outer tower cracked.
For the first time, deeper stone became visible.
It glowed.
Nethnarel stared.
The ancient structure beneath the fortress skin shone with the impossible architecture of Oslan.
They had been right.
Gildan’s tower was not the treasure.
It was the lock.
The living wave struck again.
Fendor wheeled his carpet away from the spray.
The electrical cloud had begun reforming on the opposite side of the fortress.
He turned toward it.
“Fine.”
He raised the Vorpal Longsword.
Nethnarel looked at him.
“You’re going to sword the cloud.”
“Yes.”
“That sentence should bother me more.”
Fendor flew straight into it.
Lightning closed around him.
The cloud engulfed horse-sized sections of air at once, electrical tendrils crawling across Fendor’s armor and carpet.
Fendor swung.
Once.
Again.
Again.
Then the careful elf vanished beneath the part of himself that believed sufficient violence eventually became precision.
He attacked until there was almost no distinction between separate strikes.
The Vorpal Longsword passed through the heart of the storm.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Again.
The cloud came apart.
Not dispersed.
Destroyed.
Electricity snapped outward and died.
Fendor emerged from the fading vapor with white hair standing farther from his head than usual.
Kaylor stared.
Fendor lowered the sword.
“Don’t.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything.”
“You were.”
“Yes.”
The tower shook.
The living wave had struck again.
Hexen’s Barbed Devils moved to intercept another crawling thing.
Nethnarel searched the darkness for the next threat.
That was when a shadow passed over her.
Large.
She looked upward.
For one moment the creature above was only a pale shape against black cloud.
Then a wing moved.
White scales caught what little light remained.
A dragon circled the tower.
Diseased-looking hide stretched across a tremendous body. Frost gathered along its jaw. Its wings spread wider than the fortress roofs below.
Nethnarel watched it bank.
There had already been spiders.
A living storm.
Flying skulls.
An iron giant.
A shadow that ate stone.
A wave trying to tear the tower open.
And night had only begun.
The white dragon turned its head toward her.
Nethnarel tightened her grip on the Staff of Power.
Below, Kaylor followed her gaze.
Fendor did the same.
Hexen slowly spread the wings of the pit fiend.
The dragon opened its mouth.
And the air began to freeze.