The Heart Returned
The road out of Krinrith was lined with the dead.
The first bodies belonged to guards from the city and the Sanctum. They lay where the road narrowed between low stone walls, armor torn open and weapons scattered around them.
Something crouched among them.
It resembled a ghoul only in the broadest sense. Its body sagged like a sack made from rotting skin. Fangs filled a mouth too large for its head. It tore flesh from one of the fallen soldiers and swallowed without chewing.
The creature looked up as the heroes approached.
Kaylor drew the Sword of Sharpness.
Isamu was already moving.
He vaulted the wall, crossed the road and brought his flame-wreathed blade down twice before the creature could rise. The strikes opened blackened wounds through its swollen body.
The thing remained alive.
It attacked with surprising speed. One claw passed Isamu. The other struck hard enough to tear away the last of the protection still clinging to him from the previous battle.
Grazim advanced as far as his armor allowed and raised his holy symbol.
The sound of an unseen bell rolled down the road.
The goddess appeared for only an instant within the light of Toll the Dead, and the flesh-devouring creature collapsed beside the soldiers it had been eating.
“Check its pockets,” Isamu said.
“It has no pockets,” Fendor replied.
“That is disappointing.”
They had no time to search further.
Three translucent shapes appeared among them.
Each resembled a knot of pale tendrils gathered around an indistinct body. They did not emerge from the ground or descend from the sky. They simply became present beside Kaylor, Hexen and Nethnarel.
The tendrils struck.
Kaylor felt something reach for the inside of his body. His new aura hardened around him, and the creature failed to attach itself.
Hexen tore away from another.
Nethnarel did the same, then answered with hellfire. Flame raced through the ethereal shape and made it briefly solid enough for Fendor’s arrow to pass through its center.
The other creatures closed.
Magic Missiles curved through the road. Hexen’s spears crossed in front of him, one carrying death and the other life. Isamu moved between targets faster than the tendrils could turn. Kaylor’s sword opened pale bodies that did not seem fully present in the world.
Grazim raised his symbol again.
Divine authority struck the undead things. They recoiled from him, their tendrils curling inward as they tried to retreat.
Then the sky darkened.
An ethereal dragon descended over the road.
Its body was built from mist and memory. Wings spread above the ruined guards. Light shone through its ribs. Its mouth opened, and a breath that carried no flame or frost passed through the heroes.
Pain entered the mind rather than the flesh.
Memories broke loose beneath it. Kaylor saw Ishgar’s hands upon his shoulders. Nethnarel heard the voices from the monument. Hexen felt a forest die in a time he could not name. Isamu staggered beneath a fear that had no shape.
They endured.
Isamu turned and hurled both boomerangs into the creature’s descent. Grazim answered the dragon’s assault with a blast of divine power. Nethnarel fired through the ghostly body while Hexen rose to meet it in the air.
Fendor declared the dragon his enemy.
The Oathbow answered.
His first arrows struck with impossible precision. One exploded inside the dragon’s translucent chest. Another followed the creature when it tried to turn away.
Kaylor’s anger strengthened everyone fighting near him. He drove the remaining tendril creature away from Nethnarel and cut it apart before turning toward the sky.
The dragon made one final pass.
Hexen struck it from above.
Nethnarel’s Ray of Frost entered through its open jaws.
Fendor’s arrow emerged from the opposite side of its skull.
The ethereal dragon came apart over the road.
Darkness lifted from the landscape.
The heroes continued into the settlement beyond the dead guards. The place had been attacked only weeks earlier, according to the reports recovered in Krinrith, but the ruin looked centuries old. Roofs had collapsed. Trees grew through foundations. Stone had weathered as though whole generations had passed while the rest of the world continued without it.
More of the ethereal dead waited among the buildings.
The heroes cleared them street by street.
When the last presence fell, the pressure over the town released. The surviving darkness withdrew toward the mountain north of the ruins.
No treasure waited among the dead guards. No written confession explained what had happened. Only the road leading upward remained.
The ancient temple stood near the mountain’s face.
It had decayed in the same impossible way as the settlement below. Pillars had fallen across the courtyard. Roots split the stairs. A graveyard occupied the lower terrace beside the approach.
The graves opened when the heroes entered.
Ghouls clawed their way through the soil.
One reached Nethnarel and struck before she could retreat. Cold paralysis passed through her body. She remained standing, unable to move, while the creature raised its claws again.
Fendor’s arrow struck it through the shoulder.
A second arrow followed.
Isamu crossed the graveyard and met another ghoul with a perfect strike. The creature’s head snapped back, and the monk finished it before it touched the ground.
Kaylor extended one hand toward a third.
“You will obey me.”
The power of the Oathbreaker pressed against the undead creature.
For one heartbeat, it seemed the ghoul might submit.
Then it resisted with impossible certainty and lunged instead.
Kaylor cut it down.
Hexen and Grazim reached Nethnarel before the ghoul threatening her could strike again. The Spear of Death entered first. Grazim’s hammer finished what remained.
Movement returned to Nethnarel’s hands.
“I disliked that,” she said.
“Noted,” Isamu replied.
The graves became still.
Grazim extended his divine senses toward the temple.
His expression changed.
“Evil ahead.”
“How much?” Fendor asked.
Grazim looked up the mountain.
“Everywhere.”
Nethnarel lifted Gygax from her shoulder.
The mouse stared at the broken temple.
“I know,” Nethnarel said. “Again.”
Gygax ran across the courtyard and climbed the ruined foundation.
Nothing moved at first.
Then the dead rose together.
Bodies buried beneath the temple grounds crawled over one another, joining into a single mound of limbs, skulls and torn armor. The mass grew until it stood taller than Kaylor and stretched across much of the courtyard.
Gygax fled back toward Nethnarel.
The corpse mound followed.
Hexen took to the air and struck first. Fendor’s Grasping Arrow entered the moving mass and filled it with thorned magic that tightened whenever the creature advanced.
It advanced anyway.
Nethnarel released three Scorching Rays. Fire ran across the bodies composing the thing, but more corpses rolled over the burning ones and carried it forward.
The mound answered by firing sharpened bone.
Fragments crossed the courtyard like arrows. One struck Hexen and remained embedded, pulsing with magic. Others shattered against Kaylor’s armor and Fendor’s shield.
Kaylor met the creature directly.
The Sword of Sharpness opened a path through intertwined bodies. The Dancing Sword cut from the other side. Divine power entered the wounds.
The mound collapsed forward and tried to roll over him.
Kaylor disappeared beneath dead limbs.
Hexen tore the magical bone from his own body and dove. Isamu climbed the shifting creature as though it were a wall. Grazim’s hammer broke skulls and ribs near the edge while Nethnarel burned the hands reaching for Kaylor.
The dragonborn erupted from beneath the mass and drove his sword upward.
The corpse mound came apart.
It was not the temple’s last defense.
Larger undead emerged from the ruins, swollen things carrying weapons heavy enough to crush a horse. Behind them walked a knight in blackened armor.
The death knight carried the authority of the place more clearly than any crown could have.
It raised one hand.
A wave of thunder and death crossed the courtyard.
Stone split. The heroes staggered. Necrotic force entered every wound the day’s fighting had opened.
Nethnarel disappeared from sight and moved toward the shelter of the temple wall.
Fendor fired a shadowed arrow into one of the larger undead. Darkness swallowed its vision and left it swinging blindly at empty air.
Isamu reached the second creature and struck at the joints of its dead body. Hexen changed shape and hit it with enough force to turn the enormous weapon aside.
Grazim slammed his shield into the first undead brute, knocked it from balance and brought his hammer down upon it.
Kaylor walked toward the death knight.
The knight met him blade to blade.
Their first collision rang through the ruined temple.
The death knight struck with force enough to drive Kaylor backward. Kaylor returned with the Sword of Sharpness and the Dancing Sword attacking from opposite sides. His Vicious Smite followed, carrying none of the sanctified beauty his old oath had promised and all of the certainty he now required.
The death knight remained standing.
Nethnarel reappeared behind cover long enough to send magic into it. Fendor’s arrows found the openings Kaylor created. Isamu abandoned the fallen brute and crossed the courtyard to attack the knight from behind.
Hexen and Grazim destroyed the remaining undead together.
The death knight lifted its weapon for another great strike.
Kaylor caught it.
For one moment the two figures remained locked in place.
Then every hero acted.
Fendor’s arrow struck the knight’s shoulder. Nethnarel’s fire entered the crack it opened. Isamu attacked the knee. Hexen drove both spears through the black armor. Grazim’s hammer struck with the sound of a judgment bell.
Kaylor broke the blade away and finished the assault.
The death knight fell before the altar.
Silence returned to the mountain.
Upon the altar rested a small sealed cask.
The heroes approached carefully.
No one trusted containers found inside ancient temples anymore.
Isamu checked for mechanisms. Nethnarel examined the lingering magic. Grazim searched for undeath. When none found an immediate threat, Kaylor opened it.
Inside lay a human heart.
It was dead, but not decayed. Old magic had preserved every vessel and chamber. A faded cloth beneath it carried the symbols of the Sanctum of Serenity from before Ishgar’s rise.
The curse holding the temple broke when the heart left the cask.
The air changed. The impossible age pressing upon the ruins loosened. Far below, sunlight reached places in the settlement that had remained dark.
Kaylor stared at the heart.
“I could eat it.”
Everyone looked at him.
He did not smile.
“This entire order has done nothing but feed people to its foolishness.”
Grazim held out both hands.
“Kaylor.”
The dragonborn looked at the preserved heart, then toward the dead knight and the temple beyond it.
Finally, he gave the heart to Grazim.
They returned to Krinrith carrying it between them.
The temple was no longer called Craven’s by those who had survived him. Its true name had begun returning with the name of the leader he had erased.
Telmari.
The surviving Sanctum clerics prepared the hidden chamber where his body waited. Grazim had one prayer of sufficient power remaining.
He placed the heart into the empty chest.
Light spread beneath his hands.
Telmari’s body arched.
His heart beat once.
Then again.
Air entered lungs that had not moved since Craven stole the Sanctum.
Telmari opened his eyes.
He tried to rise.
Grazim pushed him back onto the stone.
“Do not.”
The restored man stared at the strangers surrounding him, then at the broken chamber.
“Ishgar?”
“Craven,” Kaylor said.
Telmari looked toward him.
Kaylor told him enough.
The Sanctum had been stolen. Riverwind had been destroyed. Joraya’s witness had been murdered. Craven had fractured reality using power purchased with Telmari’s heart.
Craven was dead.
Telmari listened with one hand over the newly restored wound.
When Kaylor finished, the rightful leader looked toward the missing insignia on his armor.
“You no longer serve the Sanctum.”
“No.”
Telmari did not demand that he return.
“Then remain long enough to tell the truth about what it became.”
Kaylor considered him.
“That I can do.”
Word of the restoration passed through Krinrith faster than any official proclamation.
The bells began first.
Then the people came.
The city filled the roads around the Sanctum. Craven’s hidden chambers were opened. Records were preserved. The names of the disappeared were gathered. Joraya and Riverwind would be investigated publicly, including the heroes’ part in breaking the prison’s protections.
Kaylor insisted upon the complete account.
The city celebrated anyway.
The heroes had stopped an unknown apocalypse. Songs were composed before anyone had learned all the verses. Mead appeared in quantities even Hexen considered excessive. People promised statues, though the heroes had already been memorialized once and knew how little stone understood the people it represented.
Isamu accepted the cheering easily.
Nethnarel and Fendor enjoyed the celebration with equal enthusiasm. Hexen joined whenever food, drink or a sufficiently improbable story became involved. Grazim spent much of the night ensuring Telmari did not die again from attempting to stand too soon.
Kaylor remained apart.
The city called him a hero.
The Sanctum guards who had hunted him now saluted.
He felt no desire to return the gesture.
The institution’s rightful leader had returned, but Viran had not. The witness from Riverwind had not. The innocent workers at Hunter’s Landing had not.
Kaylor was glad Craven’s rule had ended.
He was not ready to love the place that had allowed it.
After the celebration, the six heroes rested.
Their work in Krinrith was complete, but their own world still waited. Leonidas and Pete remained somewhere beyond their reach. Other people they had left behind still needed them.
The ancient mirror offered the only road home.
Telmari assembled the surviving wizards who understood its use. They brought the black-framed mirror into a cleared chamber and began the long spell required to call a place and time into its surface.
“Where do you wish to appear?” one wizard asked.
The question proved more difficult than expected.
Kaylor belonged to the time in which they now stood. The others had been returned from earlier lives and awakened in a later age. They had crossed time once already and still did not understand exactly what the monument had made them.
They chose the world they had been trying to save when the mirror first carried them away.
The glass brightened.
A village appeared within it beneath a clear sky. People moved through sunlight. Flowers grew where the heroes remembered oppression and darkness.
For the first time, the mirror showed something gentle.
“Ready?” Fendor asked.
“No,” Isamu said.
He stepped through anyway.
One by one, the heroes entered the glass.
The first emerged into what appeared to be the village beyond.
The second followed.
Then the third.
Kaylor waited until his companions had crossed. He looked once toward Telmari and the Sanctum that no longer belonged to Craven.
Then he entered the mirror.
As the final hero passed through, a booming voice entered every mind.
Do you believe you have ruined my plans?
The village vanished.
You shall pay.
The mirror closed behind them.