Oxland welcomed them as though they had killed every hill giant in the mountains.
The truth was stranger.
They had killed one giant king, made Fendor his successor and convinced the rest of the tribe to go home.
The people at the eastern gate did not care about the distinction.
They saw six familiar figures walking toward a city that no longer belonged to its occupiers. They saw no mammoths on the road, no giants beside the walls and no smoke rising from fresh destruction. The word passed faster than the heroes could walk.
The giants were gone.
Doors opened.
People came into the streets.
At first they approached carefully, as though the raiders might return the instant anyone celebrated too loudly. Then someone recognized Kaylor’s blue-and-silver armor. Another saw Fendor’s pale hair and the bow across his shoulder. A child shouted that the heroes had returned.
The city broke around them.
Oxland had endured only a few days beneath the giants, but fear had made those days feel longer. Families spilled from houses. Shopkeepers abandoned doors they had been repairing. Men and women who had hidden from the raiders now crowded close enough that Isamu began finding paths through them simply to keep the group moving.
Hands reached for Kaylor’s shield.
Others touched Hexen’s green robes or called blessings upon Grazim.
Grazim disappeared briefly behind three taller townspeople.
Isamu looked down into the crowd.
“Do you require assistance?”
“I require them to remember that I am standing here.”
A woman realized she had nearly stepped upon the halfling war-priest and pulled back in horror.
Grazim lifted one hand.
“I was taller before the giants came.”
The explanation did not help.
Nethnarel laughed.
Fendor received a different welcome.
Someone had heard that the giants now obeyed him.
By the time the heroes reached the central square, the story had improved. Fendor had not merely defeated the hill-giant king. He had challenged the entire tribe, slain three kings, ridden a mammoth into the mountain and returned with every surviving giant sworn to his service.
None of the versions mentioned that he had spent much of his brief reign refusing to sit upon the throne.
A city official met them outside the low stone keep at the center of Oxland.
The building had served as the seat of local government before the occupation. Its doors were broken. One wall bore the mark of a giant’s club. Inside, the rooms had been stripped of food, furniture and anything else the raiders believed useful.
The people who had governed Oxland were alive.
Some had been held in the keep. Others had hidden or escaped before the giants fully secured the city. They emerged exhausted, bruised and deeply aware that the six strangers before them had ended a battle Oxland could not have won alone.
Their spokesman offered coin.
Kaylor declined before the amount was named.
The official looked toward the other heroes.
Nethnarel appeared more interested.
Fendor spoke before she could.
“The giants took your winter stores.”
“They took much of them.”
“Then keep your gold.”
Nethnarel looked at him.
“You are becoming very generous with property you do not need.”
“We have thirty-five thousand gold pieces hidden in a mountain.”
“We have thirty-five thousand gold pieces that we cannot conveniently move.”
“That remains more than this city can spare.”
The official considered the problem.
Then he offered them an inn.
The Manticore’s Tail stood just off the central square. It was a broad, gray building with a high common room, a vaulted roof and enough smaller chambers to house both travelers and the people who served them. Its former owner had abandoned the city during the occupation and had not returned. Whether the gift represented property, stewardship or the grateful city’s refusal to accept another answer did not become entirely clear.
Kaylor looked at the building.
“That appears to be a responsibility.”
“You do not have to operate it yourselves,” the official said.
Isamu examined the front doors.
“We could leave a giant behind the bar.”
The official’s face changed.
“No,” Fendor said.
“The glasses would be large.”
“No giants.”
“The townspeople are already afraid,” Kaylor said.
“That was my second concern.”
It was the first permanent place anyone had offered them since they had awakened beneath the monument.
They had slept in inns, barns, ruined houses, temples, prisons, vaults and worlds made of mirrors. They had entered cities as refugees, fugitives, investigators and people carrying warnings no one wanted to hear.
Now Oxland gave them a door with a key.
The celebration began before they had decided what to do with it.
Tables were dragged into the square. What food remained in the city was brought out in quantities that made Grazim object until the people explained that every household had contributed something. Musicians appeared. Barrels were opened. Flowers rained from the roof of the Manticore’s Tail through the work of one of the lesser enchanted wands the heroes had accumulated and almost forgotten.
For one night, Oxland chose not to be afraid of winter.
Hexen found a tree outside the inn.
It was not an ancient oak or a towering pine. The trunk was only slightly broader than a man’s waist, and its highest branches barely reached the roofline.
Hexen placed the Staff of the Woodlands against its bark.
Nature listened.
The tree shuddered.
Roots loosened from the soil without tearing free. Branches bent in ways no wind had caused. The trunk twisted slowly until a suggestion of shoulders, arms and a face emerged from wood and leaf.
The awakened tree looked at Hexen.
Then at the inn.
Then at the crowd.
“We require a bartender,” Hexen said.
The tree considered this new purpose with the solemnity of a creature that had possessed thoughts for less than a minute.
Isamu set an empty mug upon one of its lower branches.
The branch curled around the handle.
“It learns quickly.”
Nethnarel watched the tree carry the mug toward the bar.
“It may be the most qualified owner among us.”
The people loved it.
By the end of the night, the tree had learned that cups should be filled rather than absorbed through its roots, that customers became louder with each drink and that Isamu would continue asking for beverages merely to test whether the branches could catch a thrown mug.
Over the next two days, Hexen awakened smaller trees and shrubs around the inn. Some carried trays. One stood near the door with the unmistakable posture of a guard. Another became fascinated with sweeping and continued long after the floor was clean.
The Manticore’s Tail acquired staff before the heroes had decided whether they were staying.
The celebration diminished but did not truly end.
People came to thank them. Families brought food, tools and furniture to replace what the giants had broken. Children gathered outside to stare at Kaylor, then fled whenever he looked toward them. Fendor received three requests to settle minor disputes because someone had decided kings possessed universal legal authority.
He refused all three.
On the second day, the earth moved.
The first tremor was so slight that only the cups upon the bar noticed. They clicked together in a brief, irregular rhythm.
The awakened bartender steadied them with three branches.
Then the floor shifted beneath the heroes.
Dust fell from the beams.
A chair moved several inches without anyone touching it.
Outside, people stopped speaking.
The tremor passed.
No wall fell. No street split. The city suffered no visible damage.
The people of Oxland returned to what they had been doing with the practiced caution of those who had survived enough recent trouble to distrust any new sound.
Hexen did not.
He stood with one hand against the floorboards.
“Does this happen here?”
The inn’s nearest customer shook his head.
“Not in my lifetime.”
Kaylor looked toward the mountains.
The hill-giant range stood dark against the northern sky. The tribe had been traveling away from Oxland, not toward it. The tremor had not come with the sound of marching feet.
“It was small,” Fendor said.
“Small things announce larger ones,” Grazim replied.
Nothing followed that day.
The next morning, a commoner came to the Manticore’s Tail asking for one of the heroes.
He chose Fendor.
The man had apparently decided the leader of the hill giants was also the safest person to approach about a bad smell.
Fendor listened without expression.
“The main well tastes wrong,” the man said. “Not spoiled. Not like something fell into it. It smells sharp.”
“How sharp?”
The man struggled for a comparison.
“Like burned eggs.”
Nethnarel looked toward Hexen.
The druid was already moving.
The central well stood in the square within sight of the inn. It supplied much of the surrounding district. People had gathered around it but no one was drawing water.
Hexen lowered the bucket.
When he raised it, the water appeared clear.
He smelled it.
Sulfur.
Faint, but unmistakable.
He dipped two fingers into the bucket and tasted the smallest amount.
The flavor confirmed what the scent had suggested.
The water had passed through earth newly disturbed by heat.
Hexen looked toward the mountains.
The tremor.
The sulfur.
The sudden change in groundwater.
Old stories connected those signs to more than volcanoes.
“Something has opened a lair,” he said.
Kaylor joined him beside the well.
“What?”
Hexen watched the distant ridges.
“A dragon.”
The square became very quiet.
Nethnarel folded her arms.
“What kind?”
“Sulfur and heat suggest red.”
Grazim looked back toward the Manticore’s Tail.
“We have owned the inn for two days.”
Isamu nodded.
“That is longer than some of our previous homes.”
Fendor studied the sky.
No wings crossed it.
“Recently arrived?”
“Or recently awakened,” Hexen said. “The mountain moved. The water changed afterward.”
Kaylor’s hand settled upon his sword.
“Then we prepare.”
They did not know where the dragon was.
They did not know whether the disturbance had awakened it, released it or announced its arrival from somewhere beyond their world. They knew only that Oxland had been freed from one danger and might already be standing within the shadow of another.
Grazim called for a feast.
The prayer shaped a table inside the Manticore’s Tail. Platters appeared across it, carrying meat, bread, fruit and steaming dishes no kitchen in Oxland could have prepared so quickly. The awakened bartender watched the miracle with what appeared to be professional jealousy.
The six heroes gathered around the table.
The meal strengthened flesh, steadied the mind and drew the last weariness of the hunting grounds from their bodies. The magic could not tell them when the dragon would come.
It could make them harder to kill when it did.
They had nearly finished when the screaming began.
A woman’s voice rose outside the inn.
Then another.
The sound spread through the square.
Kaylor reached the door first.
The sky above Oxland had become fire.
A red dragon crossed over the city.
The creature was so large that the mind resisted its scale. Its wings seemed broad enough to roof the square. Each beat drove smoke and ash through the streets. Red-black scales covered a body built less like an animal than a living siege engine.
It banked above the rooftops.
Flame poured from its jaws.
A row of buildings ignited.
People fled through the streets below it.
For one instant, the six heroes stood beneath the shadow of something older than the kingdoms they remembered.
Then Nethnarel attacked.
She stepped into the square and raised both hands.
Three bolts of eldritch force crossed a distance no ordinary spell should have reached. Two vanished beneath the dragon’s passing wing.
The third struck the scales along its chest with perfect force.
The dragon turned its head.
Its eyes found her.
Nethnarel lowered her hands.
“I believe I have its attention.”
“You have the entire city’s attention,” Isamu said.
The dragon changed direction.
It had been burning Oxland without opposition.
Now it came for the heroes.
“Spread out,” Fendor said. “Do not give it one target.”
Kaylor ran toward the nearest building and climbed to the roof. Isamu took another path upward, moving from ledge to awning to stonework without slowing. Grazim remained in the street long enough to direct civilians away from the square before seeking a clear line through the buildings.
Fendor reached the Manticore’s Tail roof with the Oathbow in hand.
Hexen remained below.
Fire wrapped around him.
The Investiture of Flame did not burn his clothing or flesh. It sank into him, making heat harmless and cold distant. Then his body dissolved into wind.
The druid became a living current of air with fire turning inside it.
He rose above the square.
The dragon approached from nearly half a mile away, descending until its claws seemed to skim the rooftops.
Isamu reached the ridge of a house and drew the boomerang he carried for targets unwilling to stand within reach.
His focus narrowed.
The weapon left his hand.
It crossed the space cleanly.
The dragon shifted one wing.
The boomerang struck a scale and turned aside without finding a weakness. It curved back toward Isamu.
He caught it.
“That was unhelpful.”
The dragon opened its mouth.
Fendor saw the light gathering behind its teeth.
“Down!”
The fire reached them before the word finished.
A cone of white-orange flame swept across the roofs and square. Stone blackened. Shutters vanished. The edge of the Manticore’s Tail roof erupted.
Fendor disappeared inside the blaze.
Grazim stood in the street below him.
The fire struck both.
The feast’s magic had strengthened them moments earlier. Without it, the breath might have ended either life before the battle truly began.
Even with it, the world became pain.
Fendor’s cloak burned at the edges. The wood beneath his boots caught fire. He remained upright only because the Oathbow gave him something to hold.
Below, Grazim’s shield glowed. Heat passed around it and through every gap in his armor. His new body was smaller, but the dragon’s flame made no allowance for size.
The breath ended.
Smoke rolled over the square.
The dragon passed above them.
Fendor emerged blackened, burned and alive.
Grazim lowered his shield.
His face had lost every trace of humor.
“Radiance,” he said, “is not fire.”
A line of sunlight erupted from his hand.
The beam crossed the dragon’s flank as it passed, white-gold against red scales. The creature roared and turned away from the light.
Fendor raised the Oathbow.
He named the dragon as his chosen enemy.
The bow answered.
His first arrow struck beneath one wing.
The second hit the joint where the neck met the shoulder.
Then Fendor ceased firing like an archer and became something faster.
Arrow followed arrow before the dragon had cleared the square. Six shafts crossed the smoke. One found a gap no eye should have seen at that distance and drove deeply enough to make the dragon’s wing falter.
The others struck around it, each guided by the oath he had placed upon the creature.
The dragon climbed.
Nethnarel watched it pass over the rooftops.
The fire had placed it beyond the safest reach of her companions.
Safety had not been part of her plan.
She raised both hands again.
Darkness gathered high above Oxland.
The spell formed a vast sphere around the dragon, large enough to swallow the creature without touching the people below. Within it, the air died. Color vanished. Necrotic force closed around living flesh and tried to pull the years from it all at once.
The Circle of Death collapsed.
The dragon emerged from the fading darkness with several scales cracked and blood trailing behind it.
It was wounded.
It was not close to dying.
Kaylor ran across the roofline beneath it, searching for any point from which he could reach the creature. His cloak dragged his image beside him, making him appear to leap in two places at once.
The dragon remained too high.
Kaylor jumped anyway.
His sword passed beneath one claw.
He landed hard upon the next roof, rolled and came up still moving.
The dragon turned toward him.
A tail wider than a tree trunk swept across the tiles.
Kaylor dropped beneath it. The displaced image beside him took the blow instead, vanishing as the tail shattered a chimney.
Isamu’s boomerang flew again.
This time it struck the softer scales beneath the dragon’s jaw before returning to his hand.
The wound was small.
The dragon noticed it.
“That was more helpful,” Isamu said.
Hexen rose behind the creature.
As an air elemental, he possessed no wings and needed none. Wind wrapped around the dragon’s body as the druid caught it from below. His first blows dispersed against the creature’s armored hide.
He stayed with it.
The dragon accelerated.
So did Hexen.
The burning air struck again, this time finding the edge of a damaged scale left by Fendor’s arrows. Wind drove into the opening. The dragon twisted in flight.
For a moment, the two enormous shapes crossed above the city: red wings and a storm carrying fire within it.
The dragon had expected prey.
It had found resistance.
Fendor fired again from the burning roof.
The Oathbow’s string moved too quickly to follow. One arrow missed as the dragon banked. Another struck the ribs. A third buried itself near the wound Nethnarel’s first blast had opened.
The dragon roared.
Its flight changed.
It was no longer circling Oxland.
It was leaving.
Kaylor saw the turn.
“Drive it out!”
Every hero who could still reach the creature attacked.
Grazim’s beam of sunlight crossed the sky again.
Nethnarel sent more force after it.
Isamu ran the roofs, throwing whenever the angle opened.
Fendor continued firing until distance began to defeat even the oath-bound arrows.
Hexen pursued closest.
The dragon looked back.
Its tail came around with the speed of a whip.
The strike passed through the outer wind of Hexen’s elemental body and caught the denser current at its center. The druid was thrown sideways above the rooftops.
He recovered before falling.
The dragon gained distance.
Then, as if unwilling to leave without proving it could still choose the terms of destruction, it folded one wing and dived.
Hexen followed.
The dragon swept over the far side of the city.
Fire poured downward.
Two buildings vanished behind a wall of flame.
The creature rose again before the heroes could close around it.
It climbed beyond the rooftops, beyond arrows and thrown weapons, beyond the reach of Kaylor’s fury.
The people of Oxland watched from the streets as it turned toward the mountains.
Not toward the hill giants’ hidden valley.
Toward another peak in the same distant range.
Smoke already rose from that mountain.
At first it resembled the beginning of a volcanic plume. Then the heroes saw the opening beneath it: a wound in the rock newly broken, glowing faintly within.
The dragon flew directly toward it.
No one pursued farther.
Hexen descended into the square and returned to human form. His robes smoked, though the fire had not harmed him. One side of his body carried the pain of the dragon’s tail.
Fendor climbed down from the Manticore’s Tail roof.
His burned clothing clung to him. Grazim met him below, equally scorched and considerably shorter.
Nethnarel looked from one to the other.
“You both appear terrible.”
“We noticed,” Grazim said.
Kaylor stood in the street watching the mountain.
Around him, people carried water toward the burning buildings. The awakened trees from the inn had joined them. One passed buckets from branch to branch. Another dragged burning debris away from a doorway while citizens pulled a family into the street.
The dragon had damaged only a few structures before the heroes drove it off.
That was not victory.
It was proof.
The creature could reach Oxland within minutes. It could burn the city, retreat to the mountain and return whenever it chose. The giants had needed food. They could be reasoned with once their survival no longer required raiding.
The dragon had crossed the sky because it wanted the city to burn.
Fendor looked at the arrows still visible in its distant silhouette until it vanished into the smoke.
“That was larger than the last dragon.”
“Considerably,” Isamu said.
Hexen watched the mountain.
“Ancient.”
The word settled over them more heavily than the ash.
Grazim turned toward the Manticore’s Tail.
Part of the roof burned. The awakened bartender had abandoned the bar and was helping extinguish it.
“We have owned that building for two days.”
Isamu looked at the flames.
“It remains standing.”
“For now.”
Kaylor drew his sword and pointed it toward the smoking mountain.
The dragon had not hidden where it had gone.
Perhaps it believed no one who saw its size would dare follow.
Perhaps it had never learned what kind of people had returned to Oxland.
The six heroes stood together in the ash-darkened square.
Behind them, the city fought the fires.
Ahead of them, smoke rose from the dragon’s mountain.
The greater threat had shown itself.
And now they knew where it lived.