The Eternal Dragon looked down at them as though disappointed by the effort it had taken to arrive.
That was Kaylor’s first thought.
Not anger.
Not fear.
Disappointment.
The creature occupied the raised center of the chamber with wings spread wide enough to cast their shadow across several of the enormous rune circles surrounding it. Its scales refused a single color. Green darkened into black, then caught flashes of red, blue and pale elemental light whenever the moving energies beneath the floor crossed its body.
Ten circles surrounded the platform.
Two fire.
Two water.
Two earth.
Two air.
Two chaos.
Each was enormous enough that a hero standing inside one looked less like someone occupying a symbol than someone walking across a piece of architecture.
The chaos circles were easiest to recognize.
Blue rings.
Red lines writhing inside them.
The same symbol Hexen had seen on the guardians.
The same mark that had appeared wherever the tower joined death, corruption and elemental disorder.
The same thing the Oslan Sage had told them would matter.
The runes upon the platform of sealing shall be your key.
Kaylor looked from the circles to the dragon.
The dragon smiled.
It was not an expression that belonged naturally on anything that large.
“You dare challenge me?”
Its voice filled the Ageless Tower without effort.
The chamber seemed to hold it after the words ended.
“Mortals. Fleeting lives. Trying to bind the unbindable.”
Nethnarel tightened her grip on the Staff of Power.
Fendor said nothing.
Hexen remained in the enormous Pit Fiend shape he had carried from the chamber behind them, red-black wings held partly open and infernal flame moving beneath his hide.
The dragon’s eyes moved across them.
“I am Thorax.”
The rest of the ancient name came with it, but the old pronunciation slid strangely through the chamber—something between title and name, language and elemental resonance.
The important part was clear.
“Born of chaos. Wielder of the elements. Eternal destroyer of civilizations.”
Behind the words came certainty.
Not boasting.
Memory.
The Oslan had known this creature.
Their empire had ended.
Thorax spread his wings farther.
“They believed they could contain me.”
The fire circles brightened.
“They believed knowledge made them my equal.”
Water shifted beneath another pair of runes.
“They paid for their arrogance.”
Stone groaned.
Wind moved through a chamber with no open windows.
Thorax looked directly at Kaylor.
“And now you will pay for yours.”
Kaylor held the dragon’s gaze.
That hurt more than he expected.
Not because the creature frightened him.
Because it had chosen the right wound.
“You freed me.”
The words went through him.
Oslan.
Chains.
The dracolich.
The decision to release something they had not completely understood.
Then Marcus’s father.
The spreading shadow.
The swamp.
The Hellmouth.
Mahi Esri.
Five dragons.
Thorax watched recognition pass across Kaylor’s face.
“Your world shall be consumed by the tempest you unleashed.”
Fendor finally spoke.
“We have heard longer speeches from worse people.”
Thorax turned his head toward him.
“That was not an invitation.”
Fendor drew the Vorpal Longsword.
“Good.”
Thorax’s eyes narrowed.
He spoke of their friendship as though it were weakness.
Their loyalty as something that would break.
Their heroism as a moment too small for history to remember.
The names of the Heroes of the New Beginning, he promised, would be lost to the winds of chaos like everyone who had challenged him before.
Nethnarel almost laughed.
Not because it was funny.
Because after everything they had survived, being threatened with obscurity felt strangely unimpressive.
They had awakened without knowing their own names.
Being remembered had never been the reason they fought.
Thorax lifted his head.
“This world ends with you.”
His jaws opened.
Nethnarel saw it happen.
Not the breath.
The instant before it.
The brief separation between monologue and murder.
She had already been holding the Staff of Power.
“Now.”
A shimmering globe snapped into existence around her and those nearest enough to share its protection.
Thorax exhaled.
The breath crossed the chamber.
Nethnarel expected fire.
Or ice.
Lightning.
Acid.
Perhaps all of them at once.
Instead came poison.
A green-black cloud erupted from the dragon’s jaws in such volume that the far wall disappeared behind it. The vapor rolled across the platform and engulfed the heroes.
The magical globe did almost nothing.
This was not a spell crossing its boundary.
It was breath.
Poison entered the sphere.
Fendor disappeared inside the cloud.
Kaylor tasted bitterness.
Nethnarel felt the vapor strike her lungs.
Hexen stood within it as the towering devil.
Then nothing happened.
The poison moved through them and found no place to take hold.
Heroes’ Feast.
Again.
For several moments the chamber remained hidden beneath a breath weapon that could have exterminated armies.
The heroes stood inside it.
Alive.
Thorax stopped breathing.
The poison thinned.
Kaylor became visible first.
Then Fendor.
Nethnarel lowered the Staff.
Hexen’s Pit Fiend silhouette emerged last.
Thorax stared.
Fendor coughed once for effect.
“Breakfast.”
Hexen’s infernal face somehow looked smug.
The Eternal Dragon roared.
That was considerably louder than the speech.
He launched himself from the platform.
The rune beneath him burned red.
Thorax descended directly toward them.
Fendor moved first.
He had spent the previous night sword-fighting dragons in the sky.
Another dragon did not improve his mood.
The Vorpal Longsword flashed.
Then Fendor accelerated.
One strike became several.
Several became the impossible blur that appeared whenever he released the reserve he kept beneath ordinary battle.
Action Surge.
Steel hammered against ancient scales.
Some cuts glanced away.
Others opened narrow wounds through hide that had survived the end of a civilization.
Thorax twisted.
Fendor stayed with him.
The sword came around again.
The dragon finally recoiled.
Not far.
Enough.
Fendor stepped back and dragged breath into his lungs.
His free hand closed briefly against his armor.
Second Wind.
Some of the damage remaining from the tower’s first chamber eased.
Thorax looked at him.
“Insignificant.”
Fendor examined the blood on the Vorpal blade.
“Your blood disagrees.”
Kaylor unlimbered the Hammer of Thunderbolts.
Then stopped.
Thorax had called them echoes.
Shadows of the people who came before.
Kaylor looked at the dragon and understood something he had spent too long learning.
Perhaps they were echoes.
Every hero was.
Every oath came from someone who had spoken before.
Every temple was built from another ruin.
Every sword had passed through another hand.
Every mistake had already been made by someone older.
That did not excuse repeating it.
It also did not condemn anyone to repeat it forever.
“We did release you.”
The dragon turned toward him.
Kaylor continued.
“We may have done exactly what you say.”
Fendor glanced at him.
Nethnarel did too.
Kaylor’s grip tightened around the hammer.
“But we’re still here.”
Light moved across him.
“We may fall today.”
His voice remained quiet.
“That doesn’t mean you leave.”
The oath answered.
Not the first oath.
Not the innocent one.
The one built after betrayal.
After Craven.
After Kaylor learned that morality was more complicated than obedience.
Dark radiant wings erupted from his back.
Avenging Angel.
The aura around him changed.
Menace entered the air.
Thorax had destroyed the Oslan.
Kaylor gave him something new to fear anyway.
He rose from the floor.
Vow of Enmity settled between them.
Thorax’s gaze fixed upon him.
“You.”
“Yes.”
Kaylor flew directly at him.
Thorax’s tail moved.
The impact hit like siege stone.
Kaylor spun sideways in the air.
Armor rang.
The force would have thrown a lesser warrior across the chamber.
Kaylor corrected his wings.
Stayed airborne.
Thorax followed the motion with satisfaction.
Kaylor smiled.
“Again.”
Behind him, Nethnarel raised both hands.
She had been saving the spell.
Not because she had lacked opportunities.
Because there were spells one did not cast simply because an enemy was inconvenient.
Meteor Swarm required a better reason.
An Eternal Dragon who intended to end civilization qualified.
She gathered everything she could reach.
The air above the chamber changed.
Four burning stars appeared in impossible distance.
Nethnarel looked at Thorax.
Then at the runes.
The Sage had told them the circles mattered.
No one had explained how.
There were two of each.
Thorax hovered above one.
Another matching circle waited elsewhere.
Nethnarel chose experimentation at the scale of catastrophe.
“One for you.”
The first meteor descended toward Thorax.
“One for that.”
A second targeted the rune beneath him.
“One for its twin.”
The third streaked toward the matching circle across the platform.
The fourth she drove toward the place from which Thorax had first risen.
Fendor looked upward.
“Oh.”
The chamber became fire.
The impacts did not sound separate.
They became one sustained destruction.
Stone exploded.
Flame rolled across the platform.
The shockwave crossed the mirrored floor.
Thorax vanished inside it.
For one glorious heartbeat Nethnarel thought she had found the answer.
Then the rune beneath the dragon answered.
Fire bent.
Not outward.
Inward.
The ancient circle blazed with red-gold light.
Flame flowing across Thorax’s scales sank into him.
Wounds closed.
Scales repaired.
The dragon rose through the burning air stronger than he had entered it.
Nethnarel stared.
“No.”
Hexen understood first.
“He’s using the rune.”
The fire from the meteor continued pouring into Thorax.
Kaylor saw the injuries Fendor had opened diminishing.
The physical force of the meteor had hurt him.
The flame had healed him.
Nethnarel looked at the second fire circle.
It was glowing too.
Not randomly.
Resonance.
Two of each.
The paired symbols were connected.
Thorax laughed.
It sounded almost pleased.
“You stand within my prison and feed me.”
Nethnarel’s expression hardened.
“I learned.”
Fendor flew past on the carpet.
“You always say that after setting something on fire.”
“This time I mean it.”
The runes were not decorations.
They were not merely keys.
They were part of the dragon.
Or the prison.
Or both.
Thorax’s position relative to them mattered.
Kaylor looked down.
The floor had become a battlefield and a puzzle at the same time.
That was unfortunate.
They were better at one of those.
Hexen attacked.
The Pit Fiend closed with Thorax.
Claws.
Bite.
Tail.
The first attacks glanced from the dragon’s scales.
The bite found flesh.
Infernal poison entered the wound.
Thorax barely reacted.
Hexen struck again.
The dragon answered immediately.
Its wings beat.
Not for flight.
For violence.
The entire chamber moved.
Air hit them like a wall.
Broken pieces of stone and debris tore from the platform and became weapons.
Fendor crossed his arms before his face.
Kaylor was struck from the side.
Hexen’s enormous Pit Fiend body absorbed the worst of it.
The blast passed.
Everyone remained standing or airborne.
Barely.
Then the runes moved.
Nethnarel saw it first.
The circles slid across the platform.
No mechanism.
No stone grinding against stone.
The symbols themselves changed position as though the floor beneath them were a map being rearranged by an invisible hand.
Thorax shifted with them.
One circle passed beneath a wing.
Another settled beneath his body.
He was now positioned over two.
Fendor stared.
“They move.”
“Yes.”
“Did the ghost mention that?”
“No.”
“Poor briefing.”
The color beneath Thorax had changed.
Not simply fire anymore.
Two elemental powers overlapped beneath him.
Nethnarel tried to track which.
“Do not hit him with whatever those are.”
Fendor looked at the dragon.
“That leaves sword.”
“Excellent.”
He drew the Oathbow instead.
Kaylor glanced over.
Fendor shrugged.
“I’m farther away now.”
The bow recognized Thorax.
Whether an Eternal Dragon counted as the creature the Oathbow had been waiting a lifetime to hate did not particularly matter.
Fendor named him anyway.
Sworn enemy.
The first arrow crossed the chamber.
Then another.
Then another.
Magic traveled with them.
Grasping force tried to coil around Thorax.
Shadow reached for his sight.
Weakening magic entered another shaft.
The dragon rejected the worst of it through raw will.
The arrows still struck.
Thorax whipped his tail toward Fendor.
The carpet dropped.
Not far enough.
The tail caught him and nearly tore him from the air.
Fendor recovered.
Thorax turned back toward Kaylor.
Kaylor attacked in the same instant.
Their violence folded together.
Tail.
Sword.
Hammer.
Reaction answering reaction until there was no clean distinction between whose turn the battle belonged to.
Thorax struck Kaylor again.
Kaylor answered with steel.
The dragon struck.
Kaylor answered.
Fendor watched.
“You two are going to keep doing that?”
“Yes,” Kaylor said.
Thorax snarled.
“Yes,” Fendor translated.
Nethnarel rose.
Not directly.
She circled above the dragon while Kaylor held his attention.
Thorax’s wings moved.
His head followed the paladin.
Fendor’s arrows continued coming.
Hexen threatened from another side.
For six seconds—perhaps less—the Eternal Dragon had too many things to kill.
Nethnarel reached the space above him.
Fire moved along her hands.
Not a Fireball.
Not Meteor Swarm.
The flame was simply the visible edge of something aimed much deeper.
She opened her mouth.
The scream made no sound at first.
It entered thought before air.
Psychic Scream.
The Ageless Tower itself seemed to recoil.
Thorax’s head snapped upward.
The force struck his mind.
Not scale.
Not elemental body.
Not rune.
For the first time since the battle began, the Eternal Dragon stopped moving.
His wings locked.
His eyes widened.
The great body hung in the air.
Stunned.
Nethnarel stared down.
Everyone did.
The creature who had ended Oslan.
The unbindable.
The Eternal Destroyer.
Frozen by one scream from a mortal woman.
Then Thorax’s will asserted itself.
His head moved.
One wing twitched.
The stun began to break.
Kaylor saw it.
There would not be much time.
He raised the Hammer of Thunderbolts.
And flew toward the dragon.