For several long seconds, no one moved.
The wall of vermin churned where the entrance to the prison chamber had been.
Flies crawled over flies. Rats climbed atop writhing masses of beetles and pale worms. Winged eyes drifted through the living curtain, vanishing and reappearing in the blackness. Yet not a single creature crossed the invisible boundary laid into the ancient floor.
On this side of it, there was only silence.
Kaylor still held the torn strap from Grazim’s armor.
“Grazim!”
The dragonborn’s voice struck the barrier and died there.
Nothing returned.
No cry.
No answer.
Not even the roar of the swarm passed through.
Hexen caught Kaylor by the arm before he could take another step toward it.
“You saw what that did to us.”
Kaylor looked at him.
“You’re suggesting we leave him.”
“I’m suggesting that if you go through there again, we may lose two of you.”
“Then find another way.”
Nethnarel stood several paces away, still trapped in the enormous body Hexen had forced upon her during their escape.
The giant ape’s breathing filled the corridor.
Blood matted portions of its fur. Insects still clung to it, some dead, some twitching. Nethnarel tore one beetle from her shoulder with fingers large enough to crush a man’s skull and flung it against the wall.
Isamu was in little better condition.
He sat with his back against an ancient shelf, pulling thin black legs from a wound in his forearm with the same expression he might have worn while cleaning mud from a boot.
Fendor watched the barrier.
His bow remained in his hands.
There was nowhere to aim.
That seemed to irritate him more than the monsters themselves.
“We cannot hear him,” he said.
Kaylor’s head turned.
“That does not mean he is dead.”
“No.”
“Then stop speaking as though he is.”
Fendor met his eyes.
“I did not.”
The answer should have ended the exchange.
It did not.
Kaylor’s hand tightened around the torn strap.
They had already lost one companion in the Grand Library.
Jorah’s blood had barely dried on the stones behind them.
Now Grazim had vanished into a prison filled with creatures that could strip flesh from bone before a man finished screaming.
Kaylor turned back toward the wall.
“I can make it through.”
Hexen stepped in front of him.
“No.”
“I made it through once.”
“You were dragged through once.”
“I am going back.”
“And what happens when you reach the other side?”
Kaylor had no answer.
That was the worst of it.
The fiend had filled the prison chamber until there was no ground to stand upon, no clear path through the swarms and no certainty that Grazim remained anywhere near the place where they had last seen him.
Worse still, the Lord of Swarms waited somewhere beyond that living wall.
Waiting was precisely what creatures like that did best.
Kaylor lowered the strap.
Not because he had accepted defeat.
Because he had finally accepted that charging blind into the prison was not a rescue plan.
He placed one hand against his battered armor and drew upon the strength still remaining within him. Warmth spread beneath his palm. The worst of his wounds tightened. Blood slowed.
Then he moved among the others.
He began with Isamu.
Then Fendor.
Then Hexen.
The healing was not enough to erase what the Grand Library had done to them, but it returned steadiness to shaking hands and color to faces that had begun to gray.
Nethnarel watched all of it from the body of the ape.
When Kaylor approached her, she showed him an enormous palm.
He stopped.
“You understand me?”
The ape stared at him.
Then raised one finger.
“Excellent.”
A second finger.
“I am going to assume that means something.”
The ape pointed at Hexen.
Hexen sighed.
“Yes. I know.”
The magic holding Nethnarel’s form loosened.
The giant ape shuddered.
Its shoulders folded inward. Black fur withdrew into red skin. Heavy hands became slender fingers. Within moments Nethnarel stood where the beast had been, swaying slightly as her own body remembered its shape.
She looked down at herself.
Then at Hexen.
“Next time you decide I would survive better as a giant ape, I would appreciate some warning.”
“You were dying.”
“I said I would appreciate warning. I did not say it was a bad idea.”
“That is almost gratitude.”
“Do not become accustomed to it.”
Kaylor glanced back toward the swarm.
“We still need Grazim.”
Nethnarel followed his gaze.
“Yes.”
“And we still have no way through.”
“Also yes.”
Isamu rose from the floor.
“Then perhaps we find something that does.”
It was the simplest suggestion anyone had made.
They began searching.
The Grand Library had already tried to summon a fiend through Fendor, animate its guardians against them, possess Kaylor and swallow Grazim beneath a wall of insects.
Even so, they had explored only a fraction of it.
The place was enormous.
The true archive spread through the mountain like the interior of some buried city. Reading halls connected to galleries. Galleries narrowed into corridors. Shelves vanished into darkness far above the reach of their light.
Most of it had been disturbed.
Some books had rotted where they stood. Others lay scattered across tables or piled beneath collapsed stone. Whatever scholars had once tended the collection were gone so completely that even their bones had disappeared.
Nethnarel found the break in the pattern.
Or, rather, she found it because she was still thinking like something much larger than herself.
A stretch of wall south of the prison chamber looked wrong.
Not magically wrong.
Structurally wrong.
One seam stood deeper than the others. The stones around it had settled unevenly. Dust gathered in a line too straight to be accidental.
She ran a hand along it.
“Here.”
Fendor joined her.
“A door?”
“Once.”
“No hinges.”
“No visible hinges.”
Kaylor looked at Hexen.
“Can you open it?”
Hexen examined the stone.
“Probably.”
Isamu stepped closer.
“Or we could break it.”
Nethnarel smiled.
“I had the same thought when I was taller.”
She backed away.
Then struck the wall.
The first blow shook dust from the ceiling.
The second cracked mortar that had survived centuries.
By the third, Kaylor joined her.
Stone split.
The disguised section collapsed inward.
Air rolled from the darkness beyond.
Dry.
Cold.
Undisturbed.
Fendor lifted one of the library’s pale lamps and stepped through.
A small chamber waited on the other side.
Compared with the endless grandeur of the Grand Library, it seemed almost intimate.
A narrow bed stood against one wall.
A desk occupied another.
There was a single great bookcase, much of it emptied long ago, and on the desk lay one volume that had not aged at all.
Its leather was supple.
Its brass corners shone.
No dust touched it.
Everyone stopped.
Fendor pointed at it.
“No.”
Nethnarel laughed despite herself.
“What?”
“The last book nearly summoned a demon through me.”
“Technically, you nearly summoned the demon.”
“The distinction does not improve the experience.”
Kaylor approached the desk.
The book did not whisper.
It did not open itself.
No black letters climbed his skin.
All of those seemed promising.
He touched the cover.
Nothing happened.
He opened it.
The pages were blank.
Kaylor frowned.
“Useful.”
Then the first line appeared.
Not written by any hand.
The words simply emerged upon the page.
Kaylor leaned closer.
More followed.
The language shifted as he watched it, symbols becoming letters, letters becoming meaning.
He understood.
“This book answers questions.”
Nethnarel came around the desk.
“What kind?”
Kaylor read farther.
“I think… any kind.”
Fendor remained several steps away.
“That sounds substantially worse than the other book.”
“No. This one is different.”
“How?”
“It is trying to help.”
“That is exactly what an evil book would want you to think.”
Nethnarel peered over Kaylor’s shoulder.
“He is right about one thing. The magic is nothing like the other volume.”
Hexen joined them.
“How many questions?”
Kaylor studied the shifting words.
“Four.”
That ended the humor.
Five heroes stood around the desk.
One question came before all others.
Kaylor placed both hands against its edge.
“Show me how we save Grazim Von.”
The words vanished.
Pages began turning.
Slowly at first.
Then faster.
A breeze filled the chamber despite the absence of any open door or window. Hundreds of pages passed beneath Kaylor’s hand before the book stopped.
An image formed on the left page.
Kaylor forgot to breathe.
“Grazim.”
The others crowded closer.
The image was not a drawing.
It moved.
Grazim lay upon a dark altar.
Not the sarcophagus they had opened.
Not the chamber beyond the swarm.
Somewhere else.
The halfling’s armor had been torn open. His hammer lay beyond his reach. Black insects crawled across the altar and gathered around him in waves.
Yet they could not touch him.
A woman stood over Grazim.
At first she seemed no more than light given human form.
Then Kaylor recognized her.
The Naked Goddess.
Her hands were extended.
A radiant shell surrounded Grazim.
The swarm struck it continuously.
Flies blackened the light.
Worms climbed over one another against it. Thin insect legs probed for cracks that did not exist.
The shield held.
Barely.
Nethnarel whispered, “He is alive.”
Relief moved through the room so sharply it almost hurt.
Kaylor bent nearer to the page.
Words appeared beside the vision.
The meaning entered his mind as he read.
The creature imprisoned beneath the Grand Library had not merely been present inside the containment chamber. The broken sarcophagus had opened some deeper connection to its true domain.
Grazim had been taken through it.
The book showed a fortress on the first plane of Hell.
A citadel of black stone rising beneath a red sky.
The place belonged to the Lord of Swarms.
And somewhere inside it, Grazim lay upon that altar while the Naked Goddess held back the corruption trying to consume him.
Fendor’s relief vanished first.
“We have to go to Hell.”
Kaylor looked at him.
“Yes.”
“That was not a complaint.”
“It sounded like one.”
“It was an observation.”
Nethnarel studied the image.
“How long can she hold them?”
The book did not answer.
They had not asked.
The distinction suddenly mattered.
Kaylor looked down at the pages.
“Then our second question is how we reach him.”
The book turned again.
This time the pages opened upon color.
Brilliant color.
A city hung in a sky without horizon.
Towers made from translucent crystal rose in impossible angles. Bridges stretched through empty air. Light flowed within streets as though the city itself possessed veins.
Beyond it was darkness filled with stars.
Not night.
Something larger.
Nethnarel leaned forward.
“The Astral Plane.”
The words confirmed it.
The Crystal City.
Somewhere within that impossible metropolis existed a passage—a place where travelers could cross from the Astral Plane into other realms.
One such road led to the first Hell.
To the fortress where Grazim was held.
Kaylor read until the words ended.
“So we reach the Astral Plane.”
“Then the Crystal City,” Hexen said.
“Then the portal.”
“And then Hell,” Fendor finished.
Isamu folded his arms.
“Simple.”
No one laughed.
Nethnarel stared at the city.
“We cannot reach the Astral Plane.”
Kaylor looked at her.
“You cannot?”
“Not from here.”
“Could someone else?”
She considered.
“Yes.”
The knowledge came from long study rather than the book. There were spells capable of tearing open roads between planes. Magic powerful enough to create a gate where no path existed.
None of them possessed it.
But someone might.
“We would need a master of planar magic,” she said. “Or a scroll carrying the same spell.”
“Then we find one.”
Fendor tapped the edge of the desk.
“We have used two.”
Kaylor looked toward him.
“You know what the third one is.”
They all did.
Oxland.
The burning rooftops.
The shadow crossing the city.
A dragon so enormous that even the ancient wyrms of legend seemed suddenly inadequate.
Scourge Firebreath.
The reason they had come to the Grand Library in the first place.
Kaylor spoke carefully.
“Show us how to defeat the red dragon that attacked Oxland.”
The book turned.
The city vanished.
Fire replaced it.
Two dragons appeared upon the page.
One was the red wyrm they had seen above Oxland.
The second was a creature of nightmare—many heads rising from one immense draconic body, each bearing the color of a different chromatic breed.
Even Kaylor recognized the name written beneath it.
Tiamat.
Then the page revealed the relationship between them.
Nethnarel read the line twice.
“Oh.”
Hexen looked at her.
“That is not a reassuring sound.”
“Scourge Firebreath is her mate.”
Silence.
Fendor looked at the image.
“Of course he is.”
The book continued.
Scourge was no ordinary red dragon.
Not merely ancient.
Not merely immense.
He was counted among the progenitors of the chromatic dragons themselves.
And the terrible protection surrounding him was not armor.
It was part of him.
Magic died against his flesh.
Spells unraveled.
Enchanted weapons became ordinary steel at the instant they struck.
The magic did not fail before reaching him.
It failed because it had reached him.
Kaylor thought of the weapons they carried.
The impossible blade at Fendor’s hip.
Nethnarel’s sorcery.
Hexen’s staff.
His own swords.
Against Scourge, every advantage they possessed would be stripped away.
“What does that leave us?” Isamu asked.
“Strength,” Fendor said.
“Against that?”
Fendor watched the image.
“I did not say sufficient strength.”
The pages turned again without prompting.
Another dragon appeared.
Gold.
Beautiful even in death.
The book told them that she was Scourge’s sister.
She had opposed Tiamat.
And Tiamat had killed her.
But beings of such age did not always die as mortals did.
The gold dragon’s essence had been preserved inside a crystal.
A soul made jewel.
If restored to the place where her body rested, her spirit could return long enough to break Scourge’s protection.
Not destroy him.
Not weaken his claws or extinguish his fire.
But make him mortal.
A dragon that could bleed beneath magic.
A dragon their weapons could truly wound.
Kaylor felt the first shape of hope.
“Where is the crystal?”
The answer was already forming.
Nethnarel saw it before anyone else.
“No.”
The Crystal City appeared again.
Not as a map this time.
As a machine.
Light flowed from a brilliant gem buried somewhere within its heart.
The gold dragon’s soul.
The entire city was powered by it.
Fendor leaned both hands against the desk.
“So to save Grazim, we need the Crystal City.”
“Yes.”
“To kill Scourge, we need something inside the Crystal City.”
“Yes.”
“And taking that thing may destroy the Crystal City.”
Nethnarel looked at him.
“Yes.”
Fendor nodded once.
“I wanted to ensure I understood the shape of our good fortune.”
One question remained.
Kaylor looked around the group.
No one needed to discuss it.
He spoke.
“How do we free the gold dragon’s soul without destroying the Crystal City?”
The pages turned for the fourth and final time.
The answer was worse than any of them expected.
The Crystal City required power.
Ancient power.
If the gold dragon’s essence were removed, something of comparable magnitude would need to replace it.
The book showed the Lord of Swarms.
Not dead.
Contained.
Bound again as he had been bound beneath the Grand Library.
His essence could sustain the city.
For several moments, no one spoke.
Then Nethnarel said, “We trade prisoners.”
Hexen’s gaze sharpened.
“Not exactly.”
“We take the gold dragon out.”
“And put him in.”
Kaylor’s expression hardened.
“He is already imprisoned.”
“In the library,” Hexen said.
“And in his own fortress, if what we learned is true.”
Nethnarel studied the page.
“The connection between those prisons may be the reason Grazim was taken.”
The implications piled upon one another.
Save Grazim.
Reach the Astral Plane.
Enter the Crystal City.
Travel from there into Hell.
Recover Grazim from the Lord of Swarms.
Somehow capture or bind the Lord himself.
Return that power to the Crystal City.
Free the gold dragon.
Restore her spirit.
Strip Scourge Firebreath of the protection that made him nearly invulnerable.
Then fight the mate of Tiamat.
Isamu considered the chain of events.
“That became complicated quickly.”
Fendor gave him a thin smile.
“It began with us opening a sarcophagus covered in warnings.”
“That part was simple.”
Kaylor closed the book.
He tried to lift it.
It did not move.
He pulled harder.
Nothing.
Nethnarel tested it with magic.
The volume remained fixed upon the desk as though the mountain had grown around it.
“The knowledge stays here,” she said.
Fendor looked pleased.
“One dangerous book we cannot accidentally carry away.”
Hexen searched what remained of the shelves.
Most volumes were ruined or mundane histories, but several had survived well enough to interest collectors and scholars. Their age alone made them valuable.
“Nearly a thousand platinum,” Hexen estimated after examining the best preserved volumes.
Kaylor stared at him.
“You can determine that by looking at them?”
“I have learned that everything has a value to someone.”
“That philosophy explains more about our adventures than I would like.”
They gathered the salvageable books.
Then they returned to the corridor.
The swarm still churned beyond the containment barrier.
Grazim was no longer there.
At least now they knew where he had gone.
That knowledge did not make walking away easier.
Kaylor stopped one last time.
The creature imprisoned beyond the wall had offered them another route.
Recover the rings of fire.
Burn away the Hunt Lord’s binding.
Free the Lord of Swarms.
The opened prison might then become a road directly into the fiend’s domain.
It would also release his influence onto their world.
Kaylor remembered Craven.
Every bargain that began with urgency.
Every rationalization built upon necessity.
Every moment when doing the dangerous thing had seemed easier because someone could explain why there was no other choice.
“No,” he said.
Hexen glanced toward him.
“No what?”
“We do not free him.”
Hexen looked at the wall of insects.
“He could take us directly to Grazim.”
“He could.”
“And we know Grazim is alive.”
“For now.”
“All the more reason to move quickly.”
Kaylor turned.
“Then we find a gate.”
The druid’s face remained difficult to read.
Kaylor continued.
“The god of the hunt imprisoned that thing for a reason. We do not tear down the cage because the prisoner offers us a shorter road.”
Nethnarel nodded.
“Agreed.”
Fendor did as well.
Isamu simply started walking.
Hexen remained behind for one heartbeat longer.
Then followed.
Their route toward the surface took them again through the sanctuary of the ancient water god.
The colossal stone figure still watched over the chamber.
It had seemed immense when they first entered.
Now, after what they had learned below, even gods seemed less reassuring.
Isamu noticed the glint first.
High upon the statue’s chest, something reflected their light.
He pointed.
“There.”
Fendor narrowed his eyes.
“I see it.”
Kaylor looked up.
“I see stone.”
“You are looking at the wrong stone.”
Isamu was already moving.
He crossed the base of the statue, climbed a broken decorative ridge and sprang upward.
What would have required ropes and careful climbing from another man became a series of effortless leaps. He caught a fold in the statue’s carved robe, pulled himself higher and disappeared briefly behind one massive arm.
When he returned, he held something in his hand.
A key.
If key was the proper word.
The object was long, asymmetrical and cut with teeth in directions no ordinary lock could have accepted.
Nethnarel took it.
“We already found one like this.”
“The trident chamber,” Fendor said.
Kaylor looked toward the southern passage.
“And there was another door.”
They had nearly forgotten it.
A sealed portal they had encountered during their first exploration of the complex.
Heat had radiated through the stone.
At the time they had lacked any way to open it.
Now they had a key.
Fendor sighed.
“Why do I feel we are about to postpone leaving?”
“Because you know us,” Nethnarel said.
They found the door where they remembered it.
The stone was warm beneath Kaylor’s palm.
Not hot enough to burn.
Hot enough to promise that something on the other side might.
Nethnarel searched the frame.
At first there appeared to be no lock.
Then her fingers found a narrow opening hidden inside the carvings.
The strange key fit perfectly.
“Everyone stand back.”
Kaylor obeyed.
Isamu obeyed.
Fendor had already done so.
Hexen remained where he was.
Nethnarel looked at him.
“Back.”
“I am back.”
“You are beside me.”
“That is farther back than in front of you.”
Nethnarel decided not to debate the geometry.
She raised one hand.
An invisible force took hold of the key.
From a safe distance, she turned it.
Something massive unlocked within the mountain.
The door opened.
Heat rolled over them.
Beyond lay a stone bridge.
Nothing supported it.
It extended from the threshold into absolute darkness.
No walls.
No visible floor beyond the narrow path.
No ceiling.
Just a bridge crossing a void that swallowed their light.
Fendor looked over the edge.
The darkness did not merely resist his sight.
It consumed it.
He withdrew.
“I dislike this place.”
“You disliked the books,” Isamu said.
“I was correct about the books.”
Nethnarel stepped onto the bridge.
A sound touched her ears.
She stopped.
Kaylor noticed.
“What?”
“Fire.”
Hexen listened.
“I hear nothing.”
Nethnarel moved closer to the edge.
There.
Again.
The crackle of burning wood somewhere far beyond sight.
Soft.
Distant.
Almost imagined.
Then another sound joined it.
Water.
Fendor came beside her.
“I hear the river.”
“You hear it?”
“I hear water.”
“Not the fire?”
“No.”
They continued.
The bridge passed beneath an arch carved into the dark.
Beyond it, greenish water flowed beneath a second span, vanishing immediately into the surrounding void.
No source.
No destination.
Just a river crossing nowhere.
Nethnarel heard something hiss.
Fire meeting water.
The others did not.
She stared into the darkness.
For one instant, she thought she saw orange light moving beyond it.
Then it vanished.
“Something is out there.”
Kaylor drew one sword.
“When is something not out there?”
“That was almost philosophical.”
“It was not intended to be.”
They advanced.
The darkness on either side began to move.
Hexen stopped.
“Kaylor.”
“I see it.”
A black veil hung around them.
No longer empty space.
A surface.
A curtain.
And it was falling.
“Kaylor—”
The void vanished.
Fire erupted.
A circular wall of flame surged upward between them.
Fendor disappeared.
Then Isamu.
Then Hexen.
Nethnarel shouted as another burning barrier slammed down.
Kaylor reached for her.
Too late.
The Grand Library was gone.
The bridge was gone.
Each hero stood alone within a ring of roaring fire.
Something enormous moved beyond Kaylor’s flames.
A serpent’s head emerged first.
Its scales glowed red beneath the heat.
Molten light leaked between its fangs.
Elsewhere, something cracked like a whip.
Not leather.
Lightning.
Then came another sound.
A second lash burning through the air like liquid flame.
Kaylor raised his sword.
The creature beyond his circle stepped closer.
For the first time since losing Grazim, there was no one beside him.
And whatever waited within the fire had been expecting them.