The road to Oxland began with thirty-five thousand gold pieces they could not carry.
The chest had survived the mirror.
That did not make it light.
Hexen remained in earth-elemental form long enough to drag it down from the bare summit to a deep split in the mountain. Stone hands widened the crevice. He lowered the chest into darkness, placed the unresolved suit of ethereal plate across the top of the coin and drew broken rock back over the hiding place.
Fendor watched the last glimmer of metal disappear.
“We are leaving a kingdom’s ransom beneath a pile of stones.”
“We are hiding it beneath a mountain,” Hexen replied. His voice came from deep inside the elemental body. “That is more secure.”
“Mountains have not been especially secure for us.”
Kaylor studied the slope, the distant valley and the modest city beyond it. They marked the place as carefully as they could: three cuts upon a black boulder, a narrow stand of wind-bent pines and a line from the peak to the river below.
They would return.
Until then, the chest and the unclaimed armor remained behind.
Hexen released the elemental shape.
Stone contracted into flesh. He stood once more as a man, the Staff of the Woodlands in one hand and mountain dust covering his clothing.
“Oxland is two days on foot,” he said.
Isamu looked toward the city.
“Then we should not walk.”
Hexen planted the new staff against the ground.
Wind gathered around him.
It did not blow across the mountain. It rose from the six heroes themselves, pulling at cloaks, hair and armor until the edges of their bodies began to blur. Kaylor became a cloud shaped like a dragonborn warrior. Fendor thinned into silver-gray vapor around the outline of the Oathbow. Nethnarel’s horns remained visible for one moment longer than the rest of her before they dissolved into mist.
Grazim looked down as the grass vanished beneath him.
His halfling body became no smaller than anyone else’s cloud.
“That is an improvement,” Isamu said.
Grazim’s mist turned toward him.
“Do not become accustomed to it.”
The wolves Hexen had called inside the mirror faded as the older summoning ended, returning to whatever wild spirit had answered him.
The spell lifted the six heroes from the slope.
They moved with the wind.
The mountain fell away behind them. Plains opened beneath their passing, broad and green, crossed by thin roads and autumn-browned fields. Hexen recognized the shape of the land more deeply than any map could have allowed. His first village lay somewhere beyond the northern hills. Nethnarel’s distant homeland waited far to the southwest among volcanic lands shared by tieflings and dwarves. Roads led toward places the heroes remembered, places they had failed and places they had never been given the chance to save.
They were home.
The knowledge did not make the world safe.
The road below bent around a stand of trees.
A wagon had been stopped there.
Two enormous figures stood beside it, each broad-bellied and wrapped in hides. Hill giants. Smaller two-headed giants moved around them, arguing between their own pairs of mouths while they tore open bundles and barrels. Wolf-like beasts circled the wagon with shoulders nearly level with the frightened people trapped beside it.
One woman knelt in the road.
Another tried to pull a man away from a giant’s reach.
The hill giant leaned over them and shouted.
The heroes drifted above the trees unseen.
Kaylor began turning solid.
Fendor’s cloud moved beside him.
“We have not made a plan.”
Kaylor’s armored shape formed inside the mist.
“They have.”
“What is it?”
“To rob people weaker than they are.”
“That is their plan.”
Kaylor’s feet struck the earth.
“Yes.”
The hill giant had its back to him.
Kaylor drew the Sword of Sharpness and attacked before the creature understood that the cloud behind it had become an enemy.
The blade struck with perfect violence.
It entered the giant’s upper arm, passed through muscle and bone and emerged on the opposite side. The severed limb fell beside the wagon with the giant’s club still clenched in its hand.
Blood covered the road.
The giant stared at the empty space beneath its shoulder.
Then it screamed.
The remaining clouds condensed around the battlefield.
The wolf-like beasts answered the giant with a shriek that was too sharp and too deliberate to be an ordinary howl. The sound struck the mind as much as the ears, carrying the demand to flee.
Kaylor did not move.
His new cloak shifted his image several inches away from his real body. The one-armed giant snatched for the club it no longer possessed, swung its remaining fist through the false Kaylor and struck only displaced air.
Grazim became solid at the edge of the road.
His boots sank into the dust.
His new legs were shorter. His stride was not.
He raised one hand toward the bleeding giant.
A bell sounded where no bell existed.
The creature’s body tightened as Toll the Dead found the life already spilling from it and called more away.
The second hill giant turned from the wagon.
Its club came down upon Grazim.
The halfling lifted his shield.
The impact drove him to one knee.
The giant struck again.
Grazim disappeared beneath the head of the club and reappeared when it rose, battered but still holding the shield between himself and something more than four times his height.
Isamu reached the nearest ettin.
One of its heads saw him.
The other did not.
His flame-wreathed blade struck between them. A palm followed the cut, carrying focused ki through the giant’s chest. The ettin’s four eyes widened. Its two bodies of thought stopped at once inside the same stunned frame.
“Remain there,” Isamu said.
The ettin remained.
Hexen entered with both spears.
The Spear of Death opened the hill giant’s side. The Spear of Life struck immediately afterward, its restorative magic reaching back through the weapon toward the druid. Hexen had not yet been injured enough to need what it offered.
The giant was considerably less fortunate.
Fendor landed near the trees.
The Oathbow was already bent.
Three arrows crossed the road so quickly that the first had not struck before the third left the string. They entered the hill giant’s chest, throat and shoulder. The creature staggered away from Grazim.
Nethnarel became flesh beside the motionless ettin.
The two-headed giant towered over her, every muscle locked by Isamu’s strike.
She considered it.
Then cast Polymorph.
The ettin vanished.
A snail dropped into the blood-soaked grass.
Isamu looked down.
“That is smaller.”
“It is easier to manage,” Nethnarel said.
“For how long?”
“As long as no one steps on it.”
The surviving ettin charged Kaylor.
Both heads shouted different threats. Two axes came down from different angles. One struck the shifted image created by the cloak. The other scraped Kaylor’s armor without finding flesh.
Kaylor answered with both blades.
The Sword of Sharpness cut through the one-armed hill giant’s remaining defense. The Dancing Sword moved independently beside him and entered from the opposite side.
The giant collapsed between the two attacks.
One of the trapped commoners saw the opening and ran.
She passed too close to the second hill giant.
Its club moved sideways.
The blow struck her before anyone could reach her.
She fell and did not move.
“No,” Grazim said.
The giant raised the club again.
Isamu left the stunned space where the ettin had stood and crossed the wagon in a single movement. He planted one foot upon the wheel, ran over the wagon bed and came down upon one of the wolf-like beasts.
His burning blade opened its back.
The creature twisted beneath him.
Isamu struck it with his free hand. Ki entered the blow. The beast’s limbs locked and it fell against the wagon.
Hexen lifted the Staff of the Woodlands, then chose power he already knew.
Ice fell from a clear sky.
The storm exploded across the road beyond the wagon, crushing and freezing the clustered beasts and the surviving ettin. Hailstones broke branches, flattened grass and struck giant flesh like sling stones. Kaylor stood near the edge of the blast, shield raised while cold rolled around him.
Several creatures remained standing.
They no longer looked eager.
Hexen spoke a Healing Word toward Kaylor. Green light crossed the road and closed the worst of the wound beneath his armor.
Fendor continued firing.
An arrow entered the ettin’s upper chest. Another struck one of the wolf-like creatures attacking Kaylor. A third missed, curved in flight and found a different target near the wagon.
Grazim ran beneath the surviving hill giant’s reach.
The warhammer looked enormous in his new hands.
It had not become less effective.
He struck a wolf-like beast beside Kaylor and drove it into the road.
Kaylor attacked the remaining ettin.
Sword and dancing blade crossed four arms, two axes and two roaring heads. The creature endured the first strikes. Then it began to come apart beneath them.
Behind the wagon, the transformed snail attempted to move through the grass.
Nethnarel watched it.
The spell required her concentration. The giant would return if the snail were injured without being destroyed quickly enough.
She opened the Bag of Beans.
Hexen looked toward her.
“You do not know what that will produce.”
“That is why I am using it.”
She drew one bean and threw it at the snail.
The seed struck the ground.
Stone erupted beneath it.
A statue rose from the earth with Nethnarel’s horns, Nethnarel’s face and an expression of greater severity than Nethnarel had ever managed. Its base formed directly beneath the snail.
The small shell vanished under several tons of rock.
The polymorphed ettin died before it could return.
Dust settled around the statue.
Nethnarel walked to its side.
Isamu looked from the stone likeness to the tiefling.
“It is taller.”
“It is accurate in the important ways.”
“It crushed a snail.”
“It crushed an ettin.”
“That is a more impressive description.”
The last wolf-like creatures tried to surround Kaylor and Isamu.
Kaylor’s displaced image drew their bites into empty space. Isamu moved across the wagon again, his blade and hands striking from angles the beasts could not follow. Hexen vaulted the opposite side with both spears. Fendor’s arrows found every opening the others created.
The second hill giant attempted to retreat from the road.
Grazim’s hammer struck its knee.
Hexen’s spear entered its side.
The Oathbow’s next arrow drove through its throat.
The giant fell among the shattered barrels it had intended to steal.
Silence returned slowly.
The wind carried away the last of the unnatural howl.
Two commoners remained alive beside the wagon.
The third lay where the club had thrown her.
Grazim reached her first.
He placed one small hand against her chest.
“She has not been gone long.”
Kaylor stood over him, blood from the giants running along both swords.
“Bring her back.”
Grazim called upon Revivify.
Divine power entered the dead woman in one sharp pulse.
She inhaled.
Her body arched against the road. Her eyes opened wide and found the halfling kneeling over her.
For one confused moment, she looked past him, perhaps searching for the larger cleric whose voice she had heard.
“I am Grazim Von,” he said.
She continued staring.
“I was taller yesterday.”
The woman began to laugh.
The sound broke into sobbing almost immediately.
Her companions gathered around her.
The heroes gave them water, bound what wounds remained and listened.
They had fled Oxland at dawn the previous day.
The giants had come down from the mountains in numbers large enough to break resistance before the city understood it was under attack. Hill giants and ettins entered through the gates. Packs of the shrieking wolf-like creatures hunted anyone who ran. Mammoths pulled wagons through the streets.
The invaders were filling them with grain, preserved meat, cloth, tools and anything else Oxland had stored for winter.
“How many?” Kaylor asked.
The revived woman shook her head.
“Too many.”
“That is not a number.”
“It is the number that killed the guards.”
One of the others spoke more steadily.
“There were giants at both gates. Giants in the square. More around the keep. Ettins. Beasts. Mammoths. We saw wagons leaving and others coming in.”
“Are they killing everyone?” Grazim asked.
“No.”
The answer held no relief.
The giants had done this before.
They descended when autumn stores were full and winter stood close enough to make their theft deadly. They stripped the city without destroying it completely. Enough people were left alive to plant, harvest and gather again. Some prisoners were taken. The rest were permitted to survive the cold with whatever remained.
“They harvest Oxland,” Fendor said.
The commoner nodded.
“Like a field.”
Kaylor looked toward the distant city.
“Who leads it?”
“They took the keep. The city leaders were there. We do not know if they still live.”
The woman who had been revived pointed toward the southern wall. A small guard tower stood just outside the city. She had heard that an old passage connected it to the interior, though she had never used it.
“It might get you through the wall.”
Hexen looked at the thinning mist still clinging to his hands.
“We do not need a passage.”
The heroes left the commoners with the wagon, the food the giants had not ruined and the warning to remain off the road until the fighting had moved elsewhere.
Then Hexen returned them to the wind.
They reached Oxland unseen.
As mist, they passed above the northern gate and between the stone teeth of the wall. Below them, hill giants carried barrels beneath their arms. Ettins dragged carts while arguing over direction. The wolf-like beasts moved in small packs through alleys and around piles of abandoned weapons.
Mammoths stood harnessed to wagons built from entire trees.
The wagons were already heavy with Oxland’s winter.
Dead guards lay near the gates.
The townspeople still living had been forced into buildings, courtyards and work lines. Giants watched them load their own food onto enemy wagons.
The heroes drifted toward the keep.
Tusked giantkin stood at its doors. They were larger than the hill giants, broader through the shoulders and better armed. One occupied the central courtyard and shouted orders that the others obeyed.
Kaylor hovered above it.
The cloud of his body tightened.
Fendor moved into his path.
Not enough to stop him.
Enough to remind him that becoming solid inside a captured keep would be a decision made for all six.
Kaylor remained mist.
They circled the city again.
There were enemies at both gates, enemies in the square and more moving through streets the heroes could not see all at once. Even if they killed every giant within reach, the fighting would spread among the civilians trapped below.
They withdrew beyond the wall and became solid in a stand of trees south of the city.
Kaylor spoke first.
“We can kill the one giving orders.”
“And every giant surrounding him,” Fendor said.
“Yes.”
“And the ones at both gates.”
“Yes.”
“And the ones who enter the streets while we are doing that.”
Kaylor looked back toward the wall.
“Yes.”
Isamu sat upon a fallen trunk.
“That is not a plan. That is a list.”
“We could reduce the list.”
Nethnarel looked toward the mountains beyond the city.
“The city is not their home.”
Hexen understood before she finished.
“Most of the tribe is here.”
“Their lair will have fewer guards,” she said. “Perhaps their true leader. Perhaps whatever makes them return every winter.”
Grazim looked toward the mountains.
“And if we take the lair, those in Oxland have nowhere safe to carry the stolen food.”
Kaylor’s cloak shifted his outline against the trees.
“Then we go to the mountain.”
The trail was not difficult to find once they stopped looking for subtlety.
Giant footprints broke the earth. Mammoth tracks sank deep enough to hold rainwater. Broken branches marked the path of wagons and stolen timber. Hexen read the signs where the road ended, following older tracks away from Oxland and into the rising land.
The trail entered the mountains through a valley scarred by repeated passage.
Eventually, the heroes found the cave.
Its entrance opened in the stone like a mouth large enough to swallow a house.
No guard stood outside.
That made Kaylor more suspicious, not less.
They withdrew into a narrow hollow screened by boulders and took the rest the mirror realm had denied them for so long.
No glass creature rose beneath the ground.
No invisible wall divided them.
No voice entered their minds.
For the first time in days, sleep ended because they chose to wake.
Before entering the cave, Hexen called animals from the surrounding wild.
Wolves emerged from the darkness in ones and twos until sixteen stood around him. They were not the warped beasts serving the giants. Their eyes were clear. Their bodies moved as a single living pack divided only by the space between them.
Isamu examined the cave.
“That is more wolves than usual.”
“There are more giants than usual,” Hexen said.
They entered.
The outer passage had been widened by tools and larger bodies. Its floor was packed with mud, old bones and the marks of heavy traffic. Side tunnels opened into darkness. One sloped toward another exit, perhaps a route the giants used to avoid trapping themselves inside their own den.
Kaylor led.
Grazim walked close beside him.
The halfling had refused to be carried.
He had also refused to move behind anyone simply because the giants could now step over him more easily.
The passage widened.
Kaylor stopped.
A faint scrape came from ahead.
Stone against leather.
A breath held too carefully.
“Ambush,” he said.
Nethnarel opened one hand.
Gygax climbed from her sleeve and disappeared along the wall.
Through the familiar’s eyes, she saw the tunnel split around shelves of stone. Several wolf-like beasts crouched behind boulders. Giant shapes waited farther back, positioned to strike anyone who entered the open chamber.
Gygax returned to Nethnarel’s hand.
“Dogs first,” she said quietly. “Giants behind them. They are waiting for us.”
Kaylor looked toward the bend.
“Then we should not arrive where they expect.”
He vanished.
Misty Step carried him through the stone-shadowed gap and placed him behind the nearest beast.
The Sword of Sharpness entered its side.
The ambush became a battle.
The wolf-like creature twisted and launched itself at Kaylor. Its jaws closed upon the displaced image created by his cloak, slid through nothing and found the real dragonborn only when its full weight struck him. Claws scraped armor. The beast tried to drag him to the ground.
Kaylor remained standing.
Grazim charged around the bend.
“You were instructed not to leave me.”
“I do not remember that instruction.”
“You were instructed now.”
Grazim lifted his holy symbol.
Spirit Guardians filled the passage.
The figures that answered were radiant warrior-women carrying shields and spears. They moved with the same fierce certainty as before Grazim’s death.
They were also noticeably shorter.
Isamu reached the chamber and looked at them.
“Your reincarnation affected the spell.”
“It did not.”
One of the small radiant guardians struck a wolf-like beast across the face.
“It did.”
The guardians swept through the ambush.
They passed through Kaylor and the heroes without resistance, then tore into every giant and beast close enough to reach. The waiting enemies had chosen confined ground to trap intruders.
Grazim’s prayer turned the confined ground against them.
Hexen released the wolves.
The pack divided around the heroes and flooded into the chamber. Eight struck the nearest beast from different directions. It disappeared beneath gray bodies and snapping jaws. Another group reached a hill giant and attacked its legs, forcing the creature to turn from Kaylor.
Isamu moved through the opening they created.
His burning blade struck a wounded guard. Two unarmed blows followed. He held back the ki required to stun it; the battle had only begun, and deeper enemies waited beyond the visible cave.
The giant remained upright, barely.
Nethnarel pointed toward it. Darts of force crossed the chamber and struck one after another. The final Magic Missile entered the giant's chest and ended what Isamu had begun.
Fendor remained near the bend.
The Oathbow gave him every angle he needed.
An arrow passed beside Kaylor’s shoulder and entered a wolf-like creature. Another crossed the chamber to strike a giant behind the rocks. Fendor’s hand touched the hilt of the Vorpal Longsword once.
The enemies remained too far away.
He continued shooting.
Kaylor cut down the beast before him and sent the Dancing Sword at the nearest giant. The independent blade opened the creature’s thigh while the Sword of Sharpness turned aside a descending club.
A second giant emerged from a lower passage.
It carried a boulder in both hands.
Isamu saw it draw back.
He moved.
Not far enough.
The stone crossed the chamber and struck him hard enough to lift him from his feet. He hit the ground, rolled and came up with blood at the corner of his mouth.
“That,” he said, “was excessive.”
The giant reached for another boulder.
Nethnarel stepped into the chamber.
A wolf-like beast came from below the rock shelf and hit her before she could complete the spell forming in her hand. Its weight drove her to the ground. Teeth closed near her shoulder.
The nearest conjured wolves changed direction.
They struck the beast as a pack and tore it away from her.
Nethnarel rose.
Flame gathered around both hands.
She saw another beast beside the boulder thrower and placed the fire behind them.
The Fireball filled the lower passage.
One wolf-like creature vanished in the explosion. The giant emerged burning, wounded but alive.
Wild magic answered.
For one moment, the fire did not leave Nethnarel. It turned inward, becoming warmth rather than destruction. Bruises closed. The bite across her shoulder sealed. Strength returned in a rush powerful enough to make her laugh.
The giant did not share her reaction.
Grazim stepped between Nethnarel and the open passage.
He called down Flame Strike.
Radiance and fire descended through the mountain ceiling without breaking the stone. The pillar engulfed the boulder thrower. Its roar became a single broken sound inside the light.
When the strike faded, the giant remained upright only long enough to fall.
The battle spread through the outer cave.
A hill giant charged Hexen’s wolves and killed two with sweeping blows from its club. The remaining animals closed around its legs. They could not pull the creature down, but they held its attention.
Hexen entered behind them.
The Spear of Death struck first.
The Spear of Life followed, drawing vitality from the wound and returning it through his hands. The giant swung at him. Hexen turned the blow with one shaft and drove the other weapon deeper.
Kaylor moved to the opposite side.
The giant’s club struck his false image.
The Sword of Sharpness found the opening.
Grazim arrived beneath the creature’s guard. He drove his shield into its knee. The giant resisted the shove through raw weight alone.
The warhammer struck where the shield had failed.
Once.
Twice.
The giant collapsed over the wolves surrounding it.
The animals escaped before the body reached the ground.
Another guard came from an upper shelf and hit Isamu while he crossed the chamber. The first swing passed close enough to move his clothing. The second struck and drove him backward.
Isamu looked up at the creature.
“You have had your turn.”
He attacked.
His blade crossed the giant’s stomach. A heel struck its knee. His final blow turned the creature toward Fendor.
The Oathbow fired.
The arrow entered beneath the giant’s jaw.
It fell against the rock wall and slid to the floor.
One wounded wolf-like beast remained near the center of the chamber.
Fendor loosed three arrows.
All three struck.
The beast still tried to crawl.
One of Hexen’s wolves ended the attempt.
Silence returned to the outer cave.
The radiant guardians faded.
The surviving conjured wolves gathered around Hexen. Two had been killed. The others carried blood upon their muzzles and waited for the next command.
Kaylor listened.
No alarm horn sounded deeper in the mountain.
That did not mean the battle had gone unheard.
The chamber narrowed toward the west.
A door stood there.
It had been built for giants: nearly twenty feet across, reinforced with whole tree trunks and iron bands thick enough to serve as shields. The rock around it carried the marks of long use. Whatever lay beyond was not another forgotten side passage.
This was the entrance to the true lair.
Hexen approached with the Staff of the Woodlands.
“The opening can be sealed.”
“With stone?” Nethnarel asked.
“Or thorns.”
Isamu looked back across the bodies of the outer guards.
“Before we enter or after?”
“After,” Kaylor said.
Fendor examined the door.
“If we seal it behind us, retreat becomes difficult.”
Kaylor placed one hand against the wood.
“So does pursuit.”
Grazim joined him at the door, small beneath its impossible height.
Beyond it waited the giants who had emptied Oxland for winter.
Perhaps their ruler.
Perhaps the reason they had come down from the mountains year after year.
The six heroes stood before the inner entrance while Hexen measured the passage and the surviving wolves listened to something moving far beyond the wood.
No one opened the door.
Not yet.