No Way Back
The dead walked through the fire.
Nethnarel’s burning wall stretched across the opened maze, dividing the heroes from the treasure chamber. The first creatures entered it without hesitation.
Flames swallowed them.
Clothing vanished. Dead flesh blackened. Several bodies stumbled within the blaze, momentarily transformed into upright silhouettes of fire.
Then they came out the other side.
Some were nearly destroyed.
None had stopped.
Isamu waited at the edge of the flames with his rapier ready.
The first creature emerged beside him.
He struck before it could raise its arms.
The rapier entered beneath its ribs. Isamu stepped inside the creature’s reach and drove his palm into its chest.
Focused ki passed through dead flesh.
The creature froze.
Kaylor stood close enough for the dark force surrounding the Oathbreaker to strengthen Isamu’s attacks. The monk felt it enter every movement—not divine favor, but the certainty of Kaylor’s fury carried into the people beside him.
Isamu struck twice more.
The stunned creature remained upright.
“Bring another,” he said.
The fire obliged.
A second corpse walked through.
Then a third.
Grazim raised his shield as both converged upon him. One slammed its fists into the metal. The other reached around it and struck the cleric’s shoulder hard enough to turn him.
More bodies entered the flames behind them.
The maze’s temporary walls had disappeared. Every chamber had opened at once, releasing the creatures that had remained trapped behind invisible barriers.
Only Nethnarel’s permanent Wall of Stone remained.
Six dead things still pounded against it from the other side.
The rest were free.
Fendor looked across the advancing horde.
“There are too many.”
“That is becoming a common observation,” Hexen said.
The druid remained in earth-elemental form, his stone body occupying much of the narrow ground between the heroes and the fire.
A corpse emerged beside him and expelled a stream of black fluid.
The diseased filth struck Hexen’s chest and ran through cracks in the elemental stone.
The creature attacked immediately afterward.
Its fists struck like hammers.
Hexen barely moved.
Another corpse came through the flames and joined it.
Nethnarel held her concentration.
The Wall of Fire burned hotter.
The creatures still inside it convulsed beneath the heat. Those leaving the far side carried the damage with them, spreading smoke and the smell of cooked decay through the mirrored chamber.
She raised her other hand.
Three beams of crackling force crossed the battlefield.
The first struck a creature attacking Grazim.
The second tore through one emerging from the flames.
The third missed its target and shattered against the mirror floor.
The reflected chamber multiplied the light until Eldritch energy appeared to cross from every direction.
Nethnarel moved closer to Grazim.
“Open your mouth.”
The cleric looked at her.
“This is not the time.”
“It is exactly the time.”
She touched his shoulder.
Magic entered him.
Heat gathered inside Grazim’s lungs.
He understood before she explained.
The next group of creatures forced its way through the Wall of Fire.
Grazim lowered his shield.
Then breathed.
A cone of flame erupted from his mouth.
It spread across three of the dead, adding fresh fire to the magic already consuming them. One collapsed immediately. The others staggered forward, burning from within and without.
Grazim stared at the smoke leaving his mouth.
“That was unusual.”
“You may do it again,” Nethnarel said.
“Good.”
Kaylor attacked the creature Isamu had stunned.
The Sword of Sharpness struck first.
The Dancing Sword came from the opposite direction.
Kaylor called upon the power still available to him and drove it through every opening his weapons created.
The creature broke beneath the assault.
It fell in pieces.
Kaylor looked beyond it.
More than a dozen still advanced.
“We hold here.”
Isamu glanced at the vanished maze.
“There is nowhere else.”
The mirror they had entered through had disappeared.
The exit waited beyond the treasure chamber.
Between the heroes and that portal stood nearly every creature the mirror realm had kept inside its invisible cages.
No path led backward.
The horde reached them.
Fendor fired into the densest concentration.
The arrow struck one of the dead near the rear.
Force erupted from the shaft.
The blast spread across the tightly packed formation, tearing into creature after creature. Seven or eight staggered beneath the same explosion.
Fendor immediately loosed another arrow.
It missed its first target.
The shaft curved in flight and struck a different creature trying to circle the Wall of Fire.
That one fell.
The others continued.
One corpse reached Grazim.
It struck his shield.
Another attacked from the side.
The cleric blocked the first blow but not the second.
A third emerged from the flames directly behind them.
Grazim turned too slowly.
Both fists struck.
The war-priest fell.
Before his body touched the mirrored floor, it disappeared.
No flash marked the transition.
No portal opened.
One heartbeat Grazim was falling.
The next, nothing occupied the space where he had been.
His shield struck the glass.
The warhammer fell beside it.
“Grazim!” Kaylor shouted.
No answer came.
The dead closed over the empty space.
Kaylor forced them back.
He struck one with the Sword of Sharpness and sent the Dancing Sword after another, but the loss had broken the front line.
Isamu moved into the opening.
Nethnarel tried to find Grazim through the reflections.
Hundreds of mirrored clerics had vanished with the real one.
Nothing remained.
“He did not die,” Isamu said.
“You do not know that,” Fendor replied.
“There is no body.”
“In this place, that proves nothing.”
Far from the battle, Grazim opened his eyes.
He sat against a stone wall.
Iron restrained both wrists above him.
The chains were short enough to prevent him from reaching the lock or standing comfortably.
For several seconds, he remembered only the last blows.
The dead creatures.
The mirror chamber.
The sensation of falling.
He examined himself.
No wounds remained.
His armor was intact. The pain from the battle had disappeared. Strength filled limbs that had been moments from death.
His shield and hammer were gone.
The room around him was a cell.
Bars separated it from a dark corridor. Other cells stood beyond, though Grazim could not see whether they were occupied.
No reflected surfaces covered the walls.
No mirror showed him another version of himself.
For the first time since entering the ancient portal, the world looked solid.
That did not make it safe.
Grazim pulled against the chains.
They held.
He tried to summon divine power.
The prayer came slowly.
Something about the restraints interfered with the gestures and focus required to shape his magic. Power remained within reach, but the chains made reaching it difficult.
He stopped struggling.
Whoever controlled the mirror realm had not allowed him to die.
It had taken him.
Back in the maze chamber, Hexen released his elemental form.
Stone contracted.
The druid emerged bloodied and exhausted, his natural body carrying the injuries that remained after the transformation.
The horde surrounded them.
“I need space,” he said.
Kaylor blocked another attack.
“You have very little.”
“Then move.”
Water appeared beneath the advancing dead.
At first it spread in a shallow circle.
Then it began to turn.
The rotation accelerated, becoming a broad whirlpool across the mirrored floor. Water that should have flowed away instead gathered depth and force, dragging at every creature inside it.
The Maelstrom seized most of the horde.
Dead legs slid toward its center.
Bodies collided.
Several creatures that had nearly reached the heroes were pulled backward into the turning water.
Isamu was caught at the edge.
The current dragged one foot out from beneath him.
He recovered before falling.
“You included me.”
“You were near them.”
“That was intentional.”
“So was the spell.”
The Maelstrom pulled harder.
Several creatures failed to resist and were dragged toward its center. The water battered them as it turned, crushing dead bodies against one another.
The remaining ground became difficult to cross.
Even the creatures strong enough to resist the pull could advance only slowly.
Hexen held the spell.
A corpse reached him despite the current and expelled another stream of diseased matter.
This time Hexen felt the corruption enter his living body.
It settled beneath the skin like fever waiting for permission to begin.
The creature struck him.
Hexen stumbled but maintained concentration.
Kaylor stepped between them.
The disease clung to his armor but found no place within him. Whatever power had once protected the paladin from sickness remained part of the man he had become.
Isamu possessed a different immunity born from perfect control of his own body.
The corruption could not remain within either of them.
Hexen was not so fortunate.
“Something entered me,” he said.
“Can you remove it?” Fendor asked.
“Later.”
“That answer assumes later.”
“I am trying to create one.”
Nethnarel’s Wall of Fire continued burning across the chamber.
The Maelstrom churned beyond it.
The dead were caught between flame and water, burned as they crossed the wall and then dragged together by the turning current.
The heroes attacked anything that escaped both.
Kaylor destroyed another with sword and independent blade.
Isamu struck one repeatedly, then stepped over its failing body to reach Nethnarel.
Two creatures had begun moving toward her.
He met the first.
His rapier missed.
The creature raised both fists.
Isamu shifted position and drove an unarmed strike into its jaw.
The blow turned its head.
His next strike carried ki.
The dead body locked in place.
Isamu planted one foot against its chest and vaulted over it.
He landed beside Nethnarel as the second creature attacked.
The first blow missed.
The second cut across his defenses and struck hard enough to drive him sideways.
Another corpse emerged from the Maelstrom.
Then another.
Isamu looked at the crowd.
“This was a poor decision.”
“The treasure?” Nethnarel asked.
“The entire room.”
“We have not seen the treasure yet.”
“That improves nothing.”
Fendor continued firing from behind them.
The Oathbow’s arrows struck creatures pulled into clusters by Hexen’s spell. One target fell. Another arrow redirected toward a corpse approaching Nethnarel.
Kaylor’s presence strengthened every strike made near him.
The heroes could feel the difference.
Fendor’s arrows entered more deeply.
Isamu’s blows landed harder.
Even Hexen’s physical attacks carried a portion of the Oathbreaker’s fury when he stood close enough.
Kaylor was not inspiring them.
Inspiration implied hope.
He was making surrender feel impossible.
The Maelstrom dragged another group inward.
Hexen saw the line created by their movement.
He released a second spell.
A Tidal Wave rose from the mirrored floor and swept across the formation.
Water struck the dead in a broad line.
Bodies lifted.
Several were thrown prone.
Others disappeared beneath the wave and did not rise when it passed.
The survivors remained inside the Maelstrom, dragged toward the center while struggling to regain their footing.
Hexen maintained the vortex.
The Tidal Wave had required no continuing concentration.
Two spells now worked together—the wave knocking bodies down, the Maelstrom holding them where they fell.
Isamu stared at the devastated line.
“That was effective.”
“Yes.”
“You included me in the first spell.”
Hexen looked toward him.
“You survived.”
“For now.”
The remaining creatures tried to escape the current.
One failed.
Water pulled it back and battered it against another corpse.
A second reached the edge but emerged barely intact.
It rushed toward Nethnarel.
She had spent much of her strongest magic.
The Wall of Fire still demanded her focus. The mirror realm had denied them rest, and every room had taken more from her.
She raised one hand.
A magical shield started forming.
Too slowly.
The creature struck.
Pain crossed her body.
The second blow followed.
Nethnarel fell.
She vanished before Isamu could catch her.
The Wall of Fire disappeared with her.
Flame folded inward and was gone.
The horde beyond it remained inside Hexen’s Maelstrom, but the burning barrier protecting the heroes no longer existed.
Isamu stared at the empty floor.
“Nethnarel!”
Nothing answered.
Kaylor looked from the place where Grazim had vanished to the place where Nethnarel had disappeared.
The realm was not simply killing them.
It was removing them.
“Stay standing,” he said.
Fendor drew another arrow.
“That was already the plan.”
The four remaining heroes tightened their formation.
Hexen’s Maelstrom continued turning.
The dead inside it tried to force their way out.
The six creatures sealed behind the permanent Wall of Stone still struck the prison surrounding them.
The treasure waited somewhere beyond the horde.
The exit remained beyond the treasure.
No retreat existed.
In the distant cell, Grazim heard movement.
A body appeared beside the opposite wall.
Nethnarel arrived already falling.
She struck the stone floor and rolled.
For an instant, Grazim expected blood.
There was none.
Nethnarel inhaled sharply and sat upright.
Every wound she had suffered inside the mirror chamber was gone.
Iron chains secured her wrists to the wall behind her.
She pulled once.
The restraints tightened.
“Grazim?”
“I am here.”
She looked through the bars.
“Where?”
“I do not know.”
“The others?”
“Still fighting, unless they have also been taken.”
Nethnarel closed her eyes.
She searched for Gygax.
The familiar’s presence was distant and indistinct, as though something stood between them. The connection had not been severed completely, but she could not see through it.
She tried to shape a spell.
The chains interfered.
Power gathered and slipped away before forming.
“Antimagic?”
“No,” Grazim said. “Restraint. Deliberate restraint.”
Nethnarel examined the cell.
Their captor had restored their bodies.
It had preserved their equipment.
It had left their magic close enough to feel and difficult enough to use.
This was not mercy.
Mercy would have returned them to their companions.
This was preparation.
“What happens when the others fall?” she asked.
Grazim looked toward the empty chains fixed along the remaining walls.
“We find out.”
Far away, the dead continued advancing through the Maelstrom.
Kaylor stood at the front.
Isamu beside him.
Fendor behind them.
Hexen held the vortex with the last of his concentration.
Four heroes remained in the mirror chamber.
Two waited in chains.
Whatever had built the realm had not saved Grazim and Nethnarel from death.
It had collected them.