The first thing the Ageless Tower did was remind Kaylor what he had done.
He had crossed perhaps thirty feet of the chamber.
That was all.
The enormous room stretched ahead of him beneath a ceiling too distant to see, its mirrored floor reflecting blue light, ancient runes and the great elemental mural on the far wall. At the center floated the Chaos Guardian, a translucent shape whose body refused to settle upon a single substance. Fire became water along one shoulder. Wind twisted through an arm. Lightning flashed beneath half-visible skin. Darkness pooled and vanished within it. Tendrils of elemental power spilled downward without ever touching the floor.
Kaylor walked toward it.
Then Craven stood in front of him.
Not truly.
Kaylor knew that almost immediately.
Knowing did not stop the memory.
A prisoner kneeling.
A command given by someone Kaylor had trusted.
A life taken because obedience had seemed righteous.
Then another image replaced it.
The dragon beneath Oslan.
Chains broken.
The ancient creature freed because the heroes had decided they understood enough to make that choice.
Kaylor saw the shadow spreading behind it.
Saw the drowned countryside.
The dead farmers.
The Hellmouth.
Five dragons over Mahi Esri.
His own life arranged before him as evidence.
You did this.
The accusation did not need a voice.
Kaylor stopped.
For years he had tried to decide whether being deceived excused the things a man did while deceived.
Craven had answered that question badly.
The Swarm Lord had answered it worse.
Kaylor had eventually stopped asking gods to answer it at all.
He looked through the illusion at the Chaos Guardian.
“No.”
The memories remained.
He continued walking.
The image of the murdered prisoner dissolved around him.
The dragon vanished.
Kaylor tightened his grip around the Hammer of Thunderbolts.
“You’ll need better than that.”
Behind him, Fendor entered the chamber.
The tower chose something better.
Nethnarel died.
Fendor saw the Eternal Dragon before he had ever truly seen it.
A vast shape caught her in its jaws. Pale hair vanished beneath teeth. Horns broke. Flesh tore from bone.
Fendor stopped.
The Oathbow lowered.
He knew Nethnarel was behind him.
He knew she was alive.
He knew the tower was lying.
The knowledge meant nothing.
He watched her die again.
And again.
He tried to force the vision away.
It remained.
Fendor had lived by precision for so long that people mistook control for lack of feeling. He knew where to put an arrow because he understood consequence. He knew when to draw a sword because distance had failed. He knew when not to speak because some moments became worse when given words.
The tower found the thing beneath all of that discipline and pushed.
Fendor dropped to one knee.
“No.”
The dragon in the vision tore Nethnarel apart.
His sword hand went slack.
The Chaos Guardian continued floating at the center of the room.
It had not attacked them.
Not exactly.
The room had.
Hexen entered next.
He came through the doors as water.
The Water Elemental flowed across the mirrored floor in a humanoid shape that never quite agreed to remain humanoid. Its arms lengthened and collapsed. Shoulders poured into a torso that moved like a standing wave. The form gave Hexen the useful confidence of possessing a body that could be destroyed without necessarily destroying him.
The Ageless Tower considered this.
Then gravity changed its mind.
Hexen fell upward.
There was no warning.
The Water Elemental left the floor and accelerated toward the invisible ceiling.
Kaylor heard the rushing sound and looked up in time to see Hexen disappear into darkness.
A few breaths later came the impact.
It did not sound like a body striking stone.
It sounded like someone had thrown a pond against a mountain.
Water exploded across the unseen heights.
Fendor, still trapped in the image of Nethnarel’s death, barely noticed.
Nethnarel did.
She entered the chamber on her wings.
“Hexen?”
A wet, distant noise answered.
Then gravity reversed for her too.
Nethnarel jerked upward.
Her wings snapped open.
For several ugly seconds she fought against a world that had decided down was somewhere above her. She arrested the ascent before reaching the distant ceiling and stabilized roughly forty feet over the floor.
Everything looked different from there.
The Chaos Guardian did not.
It remained a swirling convergence of elements and darkness.
Nethnarel pointed down.
“Fine.”
Necrotic power spread outward.
Circle of Death engulfed the Guardian.
The magic entered the swirl.
For an instant Nethnarel thought the creature had simply swallowed it.
Then one portion of the elemental mass recoiled.
Darkness collapsed inward.
The spell had hurt it.
Not predictably.
Enough.
The Guardian moved.
Until then it had waited in the center of the chamber as though the heroes were the ones being tested.
Now the test decided to fight back.
It came toward Kaylor and Fendor.
Something formed within its torso.
Not fire.
Not water.
A translucent sludge lit from within by electrical flashes.
The Guardian expelled it.
Kaylor turned too late.
The substance struck across armor and immediately began eating through it.
Acid.
But not ordinary acid.
The rot spread through the liquid in black-green veins, corroding metal while something necrotic seemed to age whatever it touched.
Kaylor tore himself free of the worst of it.
“That’s new.”
Fendor did not answer.
He was still staring at someone who was not dying.
The chaos shifted again.
Longswords emerged from empty air.
Three of them.
They did not appear in hands.
They simply came out of the elemental distortion and attacked.
Steel flashed around Fendor.
He avoided the first.
Turned the second.
The third struck brutally.
Something answered from the chaos itself.
Bone reached upward.
A skeletal shape erupted near the manifestation and seized whatever had begun emerging from the Guardian’s body.
The elemental swirl distorted.
Then a creature tore free.
Fendor stared.
It looked approximately like a shark if someone had decided a shark needed to carry an entire armory.
Blades and weaponlike projections surrounded its body. Its jaws opened. The skeletal grip held it fast against the mirrored floor.
Fendor looked at Kaylor.
“I don’t know what that is.”
“Good.”
“Why is that good?”
“I thought I was the only one.”
Nethnarel saw the trapped manifestation below.
More importantly, she saw the Chaos Guardian still producing things.
That suggested an answer.
Not necessarily a good one.
Those had become difficult to distinguish.
She raised the Staff of Power.
A Wall of Force appeared.
Not as a wall.
A curved hemisphere snapped into existence around part of the swirling mass.
For a moment nothing happened.
Then the magic did something none of them expected.
It pulled.
A shape tore out of the Chaos Guardian as though Nethnarel had caught one thread in a knot and yanked.
The creature separated from the swirl.
It struck the inside of the invisible hemisphere.
Could not escape.
Everyone stopped.
Even Nethnarel.
Fendor finally looked away from the false image of her death long enough to notice.
“Did you mean to do that?”
Nethnarel considered the trapped creature.
“Yes.”
“Liar.”
“Completely.”
The extracted thing hammered against the invisible prison.
Nethnarel smiled.
Then cast Scorching Ray into it.
Fire streaked through the chamber and hammered the manifestation repeatedly.
Behind her, the tower changed again.
Sound multiplied.
Every footstep returned a hundred times.
The crash of Hexen against the ceiling became thunder rolling through impossible corridors. Kaylor’s armor scraping across the floor returned from directions where no walls appeared to exist.
The echoes became structure.
A labyrinth built from noise.
Hexen discovered this first.
Still caught somewhere above, the Water Elemental tried to orient itself and found that every sound suggested a different direction.
The chamber folded around him.
He moved.
Returned to where he began.
Moved again.
Found the same invisible boundary.
Then the echoes rose into a crescendo.
Kaylor heard it below.
Nethnarel did too.
Fendor finally tore himself free from the last of the vision and covered one ear.
“What now?”
The sound passed through Hexen.
Water carried it.
Amplified it.
For once, the tower’s mistake belonged to the heroes.
The Water Elemental caught the vibration.
Hexen stopped fighting the echoes and let them travel through him.
Sound became direction.
The labyrinth folded.
Hexen rode the returning wave.
Water fell from the darkness above.
The elemental shape struck lower air, twisted and gathered itself.
Then Hexen decided he had had enough.
The water vanished.
A pit fiend appeared.
Fendor looked upward.
“Oh, good.”
Huge red-black wings opened beneath the impossible ceiling. Horns curved from a monstrous head. Infernal power rolled through the chamber.
Hexen descended.
“I was tired of the room.”
“That seems mutual.”
The pit fiend reached Kaylor and poured restorative magic into him before turning toward the Guardian.
Kaylor looked at the enormous devil.
“You can still do that?”
Hexen shrugged with wings.
“Apparently.”
Chaos shifted beneath Fendor.
Gravity reversed.
This time it took him.
The elf flew upward.
His carpet reacted.
Not quickly enough to stop the ascent entirely, but enough to keep the eventual collision from becoming fatal.
Fendor struck the upper reaches of the chamber, recovered and found himself standing—or floating—upon what his body insisted was now the floor.
The real floor waited far below.
He looked down.
The sharklike manifestation remained trapped.
“Fine.”
The Oathbow came up.
Arrows fell upward.
Or downward.
Fendor decided the distinction had become useless.
Four shafts struck the shark-creature in rapid succession. One carried explosive force.
The detonation rolled across the chamber beneath him.
“Better.”
Something inside the Chaos Guardian noticed.
Arrows appeared from above Fendor.
He twisted aside.
The room had begun producing attacks from any direction it pleased.
Fendor tightened his grip.
“I miss dragons.”
Below, Nethnarel’s own gravity corrected itself.
She dropped.
Her wings caught her before the floor could.
The sudden change came with another assault.
Not physical this time.
Failure entered her thoughts.
Not one memory.
Several.
The prisoners killed while Craven’s lies shaped the heroes’ choices.
The Swarm Lord.
The bargain.
The temple.
The heroes knowingly walking deeper after understanding what guarded it.
The shadow crossing the land after the dragon they had released.
Every compromise rearranged as accusation.
Nethnarel knew exactly what the room was doing.
That did not make aiming easier.
The Guardian became three possible targets.
Then five.
For one dangerous moment, one of them wore Kaylor’s shape.
Another became Hexen.
Nethnarel raised one hand.
Finger of Death gathered at her fingertips.
She chose.
The spell crossed the chamber.
The real Chaos Guardian convulsed.
Fendor saw it from above.
“Excellent choice.”
Nethnarel exhaled.
“I knew.”
“You absolutely did not.”
“No.”
She followed with a volley of force into another extracted creature.
Magic Missile curved around the chamber’s distortions and struck regardless of what space believed about distance.
Kaylor moved again.
The room reached for him.
Craven returned.
The prisoner.
The Swarm.
The dragon.
This time another memory joined them.
The shadow.
The land dying because something the heroes had freed had crossed above it.
Kaylor slowed.
The Hammer of Thunderbolts suddenly felt heavier.
He had spent much of his life being told what he was.
Paladin.
Oathbreaker.
Hero.
Traitor.
Chosen.
Corrupted.
Redeemed.
The labels had changed according to whoever needed something from him.
Kaylor stared at the illusions.
“No.”
He kept walking.
A skeletal figure appeared within the Guardian.
Not an illusion.
This one reached outward.
Its hand passed through Kaylor’s armor without touching the steel.
Cold entered him.
Life diminished.
Not blood lost.
Something more fundamental.
His body felt suddenly reduced, as though the Guardian had stolen a portion of the space in which life could exist.
Kaylor staggered.
The skeleton disappeared back into chaos.
He looked toward the central swirl.
“I’m going to kill you.”
Fendor called from the ceiling.
“That sounded personal.”
“It is now.”
Another thing emerged.
Large.
Soft-bodied.
Whiplike weapon in one hand.
Its proportions were almost comical until it struck Hexen.
The lash opened across infernal hide.
Hexen barely moved.
The creature attacked again.
Then it truly looked at him.
The fear aura of the pit fiend reached it.
The manifestation’s courage failed.
It turned.
Ran.
Fendor watched from above.
“That remains useful.”
Hexen spread his wings and pursued long enough to force the fleeing thing away from the center of the battle.
The sharklike manifestation saw him too.
It wanted to run.
The bone grip holding it prevented that.
The creature trapped inside Nethnarel’s Wall of Force showed no such reaction.
Fear did not help much when no direction counted as escape.
Hexen turned back toward the Chaos Guardian.
A Fireball formed in his hand.
It crossed the room.
Flame entered the central swirl.
This time the Guardian reacted immediately.
Fire was part of it.
So was the thing Hexen had thrown.
The two did not cancel.
The attack damaged whatever held the conflicting elements together.
The Guardian began losing cohesion.
Kaylor saw it.
The summoned creatures had changed it.
Every manifestation pulled free.
Every strange thing extracted from its body.
Every spell.
Every attack.
The Chaos Guardian had become easier to reach.
Less defended by the things inside itself.
Kaylor went forward.
The Hammer of Thunderbolts rose.
The first blow landed.
The chamber shook.
The second hit harder.
Radiant power followed.
Chaos exploded outward.
The Guardian twisted.
For one moment Kaylor saw everything inside it.
Fire.
Water.
Wind.
Lightning.
Darkness.
The skeletal thing.
The sharklike monster.
Weapons.
Faces.
Memories.
Pieces of terror the tower had pulled from somewhere and given temporary shape.
Kaylor hit it again.
Divine force entered the swirl.
The Chaos Guardian came apart.
There was no corpse.
The elemental mass simply lost the agreement that had held it together.
Fire went out.
Water struck the mirrored floor.
Wind escaped upward.
Lightning snapped once.
Darkness collapsed.
Then nothing remained.
The creatures it had drawn from itself vanished with it.
The sharklike horror dissolved before Fendor’s next arrow could land.
The whip-wielding thing disappeared while fleeing from Hexen.
The shape trapped inside the Wall of Force became empty air.
Silence returned.
Real silence.
Gravity corrected itself.
Fendor fell.
The carpet caught him.
He descended much more carefully than Hexen had.
Nethnarel landed.
Hexen remained a pit fiend for several moments longer, apparently unwilling to trust the room.
Kaylor stood where the Chaos Guardian had been.
His breathing sounded too loud.
Fendor stepped off the carpet.
“All this fighting.”
“Yes.”
“And that wasn’t the dragon.”
“No.”
Fendor looked around the chamber.
“I dislike tower design.”
Nethnarel walked to the center.
The elemental instability had not vanished entirely. Blue light still moved through the walls. The mirrored floor still seemed too perfect. Distances remained vaguely wrong if she stared at them too long.
But the violent distortions had subsided.
Gravity stayed where gravity belonged.
The room no longer reached into their memories.
She searched the floor where the Guardian had floated.
“No rune.”
Hexen returned to himself.
“Nothing?”
“Nothing.”
Kaylor looked toward the great dragon mural on the far wall.
The Guardian had stood between them and it from the moment they entered.
He approached.
The mural remained magnificent.
A dragon made from incompatible elements.
Fire and water.
Earth and air.
Chaos threading between them.
Fendor joined him.
“Is it a warning?”
“Probably.”
“A door?”
Nethnarel studied it.
“That too.”
Fendor sighed.
“Of course.”
She moved closer.
The painted surface was not paint.
Not entirely.
Depth existed inside it.
Very faintly.
Kaylor put one hand toward the dragon.
Nethnarel stopped him.
“Wait.”
Kaylor looked at her.
She formed Mage Hand.
Fendor nodded approvingly.
“Growth.”
The spectral hand touched the mural.
Passed through.
And did not come out the other side.
They all stared.
Hexen looked at Kaylor.
“Door.”
“Yes.”
Fendor looked at Nethnarel.
“Warning.”
“Yes.”
“Both.”
“Yes.”
“That seems unfair.”
They crossed anyway.
The mural accepted them one at a time.
The sensation lasted less than a breath.
Then the heroes stood in another chamber.
This one was larger.
Kaylor had not thought the tower capable of larger.
He had stopped trusting spatial logic.
A raised platform occupied the center.
Around it were ten enormous circles carved into the floor.
Each carried ancient Oslan runes.
Each pulsed with elemental power.
Nethnarel recognized the pattern before she understood the purpose.
Two burned with fire.
Two moved like water.
Two carried the weight of earth.
Two shimmered with air.
The final pair contained something less stable.
Blue rings.
Red waves.
Chaos.
The symbol they had seen before.
The symbol the dead Oslan Sage had told them to remember.
The runes upon the platform of sealing shall be your key.
Nethnarel stopped.
“Kaylor.”
He had already seen them.
The heroes looked toward the raised platform.
Something stood there.
A dragon.
Massive even by the standards of the creatures they had killed above Mahi Esri.
Its scales did not possess one color.
Green moved into black.
Black changed beneath the light.
Other hues appeared and disappeared across the body as though the dragon carried all of them somewhere beneath its skin.
Fire passed through one wing.
Lightning moved along its neck.
Darkness collected beneath its chest.
Elemental power entered and left the creature with every breath.
Its eyes opened.
Malevolence looked back at them.
Kaylor raised the Hammer of Thunderbolts.
Fendor drew the Vorpal Longsword.
Nethnarel tightened both hands around the Staff of Power.
Hexen stared at the ten rune circles.
The thing on the platform spread its wings.
For weeks they had followed its shadow.
Through death.
Through rot.
Through Hell.
Through five dragons.
Now there was nowhere left for it to hide.
The Eternal Dragon stood before them.
And the runes of its prison were already glowing.