The dead man lay where the titan's tongue should have been.
Isamu's light found him first.
The glow from the gem at the monk's throat spread across the stone floor, climbed the inner curve of the colossal jaw and settled upon a human body facedown among the dust. The corpse wore travel-stained clothes and carried no banner, badge or mark that identified him. He had not been dead long enough to become part of the ancient ruin, but long enough that even Grazim's strongest prayers could not simply call him back.
Kaylor stopped beneath one of the stone teeth and studied the darkness beyond.
The chamber did not merely resemble a skull. It was a skull rendered as architecture. The floor curved like a tongue. The walls rose into hollow cheekbones. Great cavities opened above them where the eyes of a titan might once have looked upon the world. Whether the builders had carved the mountain into this shape or built the shape around something older, none of them could tell.
"The book called this a library," Isamu said.
"Books may be deeper in," Nethnarel replied.
Jorah remained a few paces behind Fendor. The elf had entered willingly, but his hand never strayed far from the knife at his belt. Kaylor still did not trust him. Neither did Grazim. Fendor had granted him the narrowest measure of acceptance, and for the moment that was enough to keep everyone from reaching for weapons.
Isamu crouched beside the dead man.
"No obvious wound," he said.
"Then assume the room killed him," Kaylor answered.
"Encouraging."
The dead man's pack contained stale rations, a coil of rope and little else. Beneath his cloak, however, Isamu found a metal rod as long as his forearm. Six small studs ran along its side. The object seemed plain until Nethnarel held her hand above it.
Her eyes narrowed.
"That is not plain."
She turned it slowly, studying the magic pressed into its surface.
"A Rod of Lordly Might," she said at last.
Isamu looked from the rod to the dead man.
"He had a grand name for it. It did not help him."
Nethnarel ignored him. "It can become several weapons. A sword, an axe, a spear, a mace. It can lengthen into a pole, brace a door or strike with enough force to break one. There are other powers bound into it as well."
Kaylor took it, tested the balance and handed it back.
"Not mine."
Fendor had no need of another weapon. Isamu was already carrying more ways to kill a man than most armories. Hexen turned the rod over once, then shook his head and rested both hands upon the Staff of the Woodlands.
Grazim accepted it.
The rod looked oversized in the halfling's hands. Almost everything did now. He had grown accustomed to fighting beneath shields made for taller men and sitting in chairs that treated his feet as an afterthought. He had not yet grown accustomed to the way ancient weapons seemed to find him.
"It will take time before it recognizes me," he said. "Until then, it is an expensive club."
"You have used worse," Kaylor said.
"I have traveled with worse."
Isamu stood.
"We are all relieved you are feeling like yourself again."
They found more bodies farther inside.
Those had been dead much longer. Some hung upon sharpened stakes driven into crude barricades. Others had fallen between broken columns and had never been moved. One still carried a sealed potion of powerful healing. They added it to the party's shared supplies and left the dead where they lay.
The titan's skull opened into ruined halls beyond the jaw. The architecture changed as they crossed each threshold. Stone ribs and curved bone-shapes gave way to fallen columns, broad steps and temple walls made for beings far larger than any human. Green mist drifted close to the ground. It smelled faintly of wet copper and old moss.
Three doors barred their progress.
Jorah examined each one with the care of a man who knew exactly how much a lock could hide. Two had been secured from the far side. The third possessed a mechanism so old and intricate that even after Isamu and Jorah studied it together, neither found a way to open it.
"I could break it," Kaylor offered.
"You could break the wall," Jorah said. "The door may survive out of spite."
A narrow opening led west into a collapsed sanctuary. Broken pillars leaned against one another like exhausted soldiers. At its center, beneath a pale green glow, something metallic rested upon a pedestal.
A key.
Its teeth twisted into an unfamiliar shape, more like a piece of sculpture than something made for a lock.
"That was easy," Isamu said.
No one moved.
Hexen called several great wolves from the old paths of nature. They emerged around him in a shimmer of fur and cold breath, crowding the ruined hall with shoulders nearly as high as Grazim's head.
Isamu pointed toward the pedestal.
"One of you first."
One wolf padded beside him as he crossed the chamber.
The ceiling fell.
Stone slabs tore loose without warning. Isamu twisted between them, moving so quickly that the first block struck only the place where he had been. The wolf was not as fortunate. Falling rock crushed it beneath the pedestal, and the summoned body vanished into mist almost before the key struck the floor.
Isamu rolled beneath a second slab, came up with the key in hand and ran back through the dust.
Hexen stared at the place where the wolf had disappeared.
"That was one."
"One what?" Jorah asked.
"One reason not to volunteer."
The key fit the northern lock.
Its strange teeth vanished into the mechanism, and ancient pieces moved within the door with the slow precision of machinery that had waited centuries to be used. The slab withdrew just far enough for Kaylor to pass.
The room beyond appeared empty.
Its floor was tiled in broad dark squares. The ceiling rose higher than Isamu's light could reach. Green haze hung above the stone, motionless despite the open doorway.
Hexen stopped before the threshold.
Isamu stopped with him.
"What?" Kaylor asked.
Hexen looked across the floor. "The room is pretending."
Nethnarel raised one hand, feeling for illusion or warding magic. She found something, but not quickly enough to name it.
The floor convulsed.
Tiles split apart. Whole sections dropped into a churning mass beneath them. Purple slime surged through the cracks, thick as tar and moving with deliberate hunger. Fendor fell first. Grazim vanished beside him. Several wolves tumbled after them as tentacles rose from the muck.
Kaylor threw himself backward and caught the edge. Isamu landed upon a tilted slab. Hexen drove the end of his staff into solid stone and held himself upright while Jorah retreated into the doorway.
The broken floor was not covering a pool.
It was covering a creature.
The purple mass filled the chamber from wall to wall. Its tentacles were merely the parts it chose to lift above the surface.
The wolves attacked from within the slime, tearing at whatever they could reach. Their teeth sank into the rising limbs, but the creature had no bones to break and no body to drag down.
Isamu drew his fire-bearing blade. Flame ran along its edge, reflecting across the wet chamber. He cut one tentacle nearly through and sprang onto a block of fallen stone before the slime could close around his ankles.
Jorah fired from the doorway. His bolt disappeared into the mass.
Nethnarel stepped past him.
"Move."
She extended both hands and spoke a word that withered living things.
Blight struck the nearest tentacle.
The effect did not remain there. Every part of the creature recoiled at once. The purple surface tightened, wrinkled and drew inward as if a great heat had suddenly stolen the moisture from it. Tentacles all across the chamber shuddered in pain.
"One body," Nethnarel said. "However many arms it pretends to have."
Beneath the surface, Fendor fought blind.
The slime forced itself into his mouth and around his arms. He drew the Vorpal Longsword in the narrow space and cut where resistance felt thickest. Each stroke opened a temporary wound that sealed behind the blade.
Grazim vanished deeper. For one breath he saw nothing but violet murk. Then the current carried him through a narrow opening and dropped him into a concealed cavity beneath the main room. Fendor was dragged after him. The creature's heart, or something close to it, pulsed in the cramped chamber with them.
Grazim raised his warhammer.
"There you are."
Above them, Kaylor's Dancing Sword tore at one rising limb while his frost-bound axe hacked through another. Hexen's wolves kept biting despite the slime closing around their legs.
Then Nethnarel opened the Bag of Beans.
Hexen looked at her.
"That is your plan?"
"It is a plan."
She placed one seed in his palm.
Hexen spat on it and hurled it into the slime.
The chamber shook again.
Something enormous erupted from beneath the creature. A plated head burst through the purple surface, followed by shoulders like armored hills. The summoned land shark opened a mouth wide enough to swallow Grazim whole and tore a great chunk from the slime.
For one glorious instant, it appeared that the new monster had solved the old monster.
Then the land shark turned toward Kaylor.
"Of course," Kaylor said.
The purple creature lashed across the chamber. Two wolves disappeared beneath its tentacles. Another coil caught Isamu and dragged him from his stone perch. His burning sword vanished under the muck, its light turning the slime red from within.
In the hidden cavity, Fendor found the pulsing center.
He drove the Vorpal Longsword into it with both hands.
The creature collapsed.
Its tentacles lost their strength. Purple sludge poured away through cracks in the floor. Grazim, Fendor and Isamu emerged coughing and coated from head to foot as the chamber drained around them.
The land shark remained.
Kaylor met its charge with shield and axe. The Dancing Sword carved a bright line across its plated cheek. Hexen's surviving wolves closed on its flanks, worrying at the softer joints beneath its armor.
Jorah slipped through the confusion.
He appeared behind the creature, drove a narrow blade into the seam beneath its skull and twisted. The land shark shuddered, crashed onto its belly and went still.
For a moment, no one spoke.
Purple slime dripped from Fendor's hair.
Isamu wiped it from his face.
"The bean was effective."
"The bean summoned another monster," Kaylor said.
"An effective monster."
A lever stood in the corner of the hidden cavity. When Grazim pulled it, stone ground against stone somewhere north of them. A bar withdrew from the rear door, opening a path back to the others and releasing another passage deeper into the complex.
The place was no simple archive.
It was a collection of sanctuaries, tombs and trials built together beneath the mountain. Whatever knowledge had once been kept here had been protected by gods, monsters or both.
The next hall confirmed it.
Two giant hands rose from the floor, palms up, as if the buried arms of a colossal statue were reaching toward the ceiling. Beyond them stood a black stone head, its features severe and its open mouth large enough to swallow a wagon. Onyx or obsidian formed the face. A towering mirror rested between the hands, framed in the same dark stone.
The mirror glowed.
Fendor lowered his bow.
Isamu stepped forward.
They moved at the same moment, their faces gone strangely calm.
"Zexor," they whispered.
Hexen turned.
"What did you say?"
"Zexor," Fendor repeated.
Isamu was already halfway to the mirror.
Hexen thrust out a hand and bound Fendor in place with magic. The elf froze before he could take another step. Isamu was too fast. He reached the glass, touched it and disappeared.
The room awakened.
One of the giant stone hands swung down at Hexen. It struck hard enough to crack the floor beneath him, then rose for another blow.
Nethnarel answered by shaping a hand of packed earth from the stone itself. Her conjured fist seized the enormous wrist. For several breaths, the two hands strained against one another like wrestlers locked across an invisible table.
Kaylor faced the black stone head as its eyes opened.
"I knew you would move," he said.
The head lunged from its pedestal and snapped at him. Kaylor's shield caught the lower jaw. His Dancing Sword slashed across one cheek while he hacked at the other with his axe, sending black stone across the floor.
Grazim summoned a radiant warhammer in the air above it. The spectral weapon struck the statue's brow with a sound like a temple bell.
Inside the mirror, Isamu stood in a chamber made from reflection and darkness.
An undead figure waited before him. It had once been human, or close enough to human for the bones to remember the shape. Pale light gathered around its hands. Its eyes burned from deep sockets.
"Who dares disturb my sleep?" it demanded.
Isamu lifted his blowgun.
The dart carried a Bead of Force.
It struck the guardian in the chest. The bead burst, and a transparent sphere snapped into existence around the undead creature. Zexor rose from the floor inside it, trapped and furious.
"We are looking for a library," Isamu said.
Zexor pressed both hands against the invisible wall.
"Your companions destroy my servants."
"They started it."
Outside the mirror, the second stone hand tore free and swept across the hall. Jorah ducked the first blow and took the second against his shoulder, tumbling across the floor. Fendor strained against Hexen's spell while the giant hand rose above him.
Kaylor shattered the stone head's nose, but it opened its broken mouth and exhaled fire.
Flame rolled across the hall. Kaylor turned behind his shield. Grazim threw himself flat. Hexen's robes caught along one edge before he beat the fire away with the Staff of the Woodlands.
Inside the mirror, Isamu drew the small enchanted hand mirror he had carried since Joraya.
He held it toward the towering glass.
Reflection faced reflection.
The space between them folded.
Zexor's prison vanished from the mirrored chamber and appeared in the real one. The force sphere bounced once across the stone floor with the undead guardian still inside it.
Isamu grinned and shoved it toward a wall.
The sphere struck, rebounded and spun. Zexor remained upright despite the impact, his hatred undiminished.
"Impressive," Isamu admitted.
Zexor began a spell.
Green-black vapor gathered around his fingers and spread toward the sphere's edge. Nethnarel recognized the shape of the magic and cut it apart before it could fill the chamber. The vapor vanished with a foul hiss.
Grazim's spectral hammer struck again.
Then the halfling cleric went beneath the black head's reach and drove his physical warhammer upward into the cracked jaw. Radiance burst through the stone. The enormous face split from chin to crown and collapsed in pieces.
The hands faltered.
Hexen released Fendor.
The elf moved before the last trace of binding magic had left him. He raised the Oathbow and loosed into the nearest hand. One arrow cracked a knuckle. The next split the wrist. A final shot broke the arm where it emerged from the floor. The great hand toppled sideways.
Grazim called down a column of divine flame upon the remaining one.
Black stone glowed, fractured and burst apart.
The magic holding Isamu inside the mirror weakened. He followed the distortion made by his smaller mirror, stepped through a seam of false light and emerged beside the broken frame.
Zexor's force prison faded.
The undead guardian dropped to the floor and raised both hands.
Hexen was ready.
He lifted the Staff of the Woodlands, and a beam of concentrated sunlight crossed the dark hall.
Zexor screamed.
The light burned through robe, flesh and old magic. The guardian became a black outline within the brilliance, then collapsed into ash.
The great mirror cracked from top to bottom.
A concealed door slid open somewhere beyond the shattered statues.
They searched before continuing.
Among the broken pieces of the black stone head, Grazim found a scroll sealed in a metal case. The divine script upon it held the pattern of Flame Strike. He added it to his supplies beside the Rod of Lordly Might.
"The dead man carried the rod," Isamu said. "The angry dead man carried the scroll."
"Perhaps they were librarians," Grazim replied.
"This is the worst library I have ever visited."
"You have not found the books yet."
They healed what wounds they could. Grazim's prayers closed Isamu's worst injuries and eased the burns across Fendor's arms. Jorah accepted healing without thanks, then retrieved his knife and resumed his place near the rear.
The newly opened passage led into a temple built for giants.
Its altar rose above Grazim like a fortress wall. A stone hunter stood behind it, broad-shouldered and crowned, one arm raised over the image of a many-headed beast. At the statue's feet rested a great bowl cut into the altar.
The bowl was cracked.
Isamu poured water into it. The water escaped through the fracture and ran down the front of the stone.
Grazim tried holy water. It did the same.
Nethnarel passed the Wand of Secrets around the altar. The wand revealed no hidden switch, trap or concealed compartment.
Hexen studied the hunter's face.
Recognition came slowly.
"Ninurta," he said.
The name settled across the chamber like something remembered by the stones.
"A god of the hunt. Old even in the oldest stories. He slew the hydra."
Kaylor looked at the empty bowl.
"Then the bowl wants blood."
"Perhaps," Hexen said. "But it will not hold anything as it is."
He placed both hands against the altar and cast Stone Shape.
The cracked edges softened beneath his palms. Stone flowed like wet clay, closing the fracture and restoring the basin. When he finished, the bowl looked as it had before the temple fell into ruin.
Grazim filled it again with holy water.
Hexen rested the Staff of the Woodlands across the altar and spoke a short prayer to the forgotten hunter. He asked for guidance, not allegiance. He asked for the path that would lead them to what they sought.
The water darkened.
A voice entered the chamber without passing through the air.
Blood of the hydra.
The water vanished into the stone.
Isamu looked up at the many-headed beast carved beneath Ninurta's raised hand.
"Conveniently specific."
A western door remained barred from the opposite side. Another route led toward a pair of half-jammed doors beneath a sickly green glow.
The smell reached them before they arrived.
Acid.
Jorah approached the gap, took one careful step and sprang backward. Smoke curled from the soles of his boots.
"The door is not locked," he said. "The floor is trying to eat me."
Hexen and Nethnarel both heard movement on the far side.
The remaining wolves lowered their heads and growled.
"Stand back," Hexen said.
He raised the staff.
A wall of water thundered down the passage.
The Tidal Wave struck the doors, smashed them inward and rolled across the chamber beyond. Green acid scattered beneath the flood. Steam rose in choking clouds.
Something roared.
Five heads lifted through the mist.
The hydra filled the far chamber. Its body was broad and low, armored in scales scarred by its own corrosive secretions. Acid streamed from its jaws and collected around its feet. The flood had thinned the pool, but not removed it.
Isamu ran across the surface.
The Ring of Water Walking carried him over water and acid alike. He reached the hydra before the creature had fully recovered from the wave. His flaming blade cut into one neck. He followed with a bare-handed strike that broke bone and tore the head free.
The wolves charged behind him.
They had no ring and no protection from the acid. Their paws smoked as they crossed. They reached the hydra anyway, dragged down a second head and vanished one by one beneath the corrosive spray.
Hexen watched the last of them disappear.
"That was the rest."
Jorah's dagger flashed past Isamu's shoulder and buried itself in the hydra's chest.
The elf opened his hand.
The blade tore free and flew back to him.
Kaylor noticed.
Jorah noticed Kaylor noticing.
Neither said anything.
The hydra's two severed necks swelled.
Four new heads erupted from the wounds.
Seven mouths opened.
The creature sprayed acid across the entire chamber.
Kaylor turned his shield. Fendor ducked behind a fallen block. Grazim's armor smoked. Nethnarel covered her face with one arm as the corrosive mist burned across her skin. Jorah rolled aside too late and came up with one sleeve half dissolved.
Isamu remained upright in the middle of it.
Kaylor advanced.
The Dancing Sword struck first, distracting the nearest head. Kaylor followed with his frost-bound axe and the full force of his broken oath turned toward justice rather than obedience. Divine power blazed along the weapon.
One head fell.
Then another.
Then a third.
Four remained.
Nethnarel drew the small meteors orbiting her into a tight line and sent them into the hydra's body. They burst against its scales in rapid succession, blasting open wounds beneath the remaining necks.
Fendor put away the Oathbow.
He drew the Vorpal Longsword and entered the acid.
The elf moved with sudden, impossible speed. The blade crossed the first neck, reversed into the second, cut beneath the third and rose through the fourth before the hydra could turn all its jaws toward him.
Four heads struck the floor.
The body did not die.
Muscle tightened beneath the severed necks. New flesh began to gather at the wounds.
Hexen cast fire into the exposed body. The smell of scorched blood filled the chamber, but the hydra still moved.
Grazim stepped through the steam.
He placed one small hand against the creature's flank.
"Enough."
Harm passed from him into the hydra.
The creature convulsed. Its legs collapsed. The forming heads withered before they could open their eyes, and the enormous body settled into the acid with a final hiss.
No one celebrated.
They were too busy collecting blood.
Fendor and Kaylor dragged one of the severed heads from the thinning acid. Isamu held the jaws shut while Grazim and Hexen carried it back through the temple. Dark blood ran from the neck and left a trail across the ancient floor.
At Ninurta's altar, they lifted the head above the repaired bowl.
Hydra blood filled the basin.
The statue's stone eyes opened.
The western door groaned. Bars withdrew on the far side, and the massive slab slid into the wall.
Then the god of the hunt spoke.
"Thou shall pass. What you seek is to the west."
The voice faded.
Beyond the open door, darkness waited beneath the mountain.
Hexen looked once more at Ninurta's face.
The Grand Library had given them no books, no histories and no weapon against the dragon.
Not yet.
It had given them a hunt.