The creature stepped through the flames.
Kaylor had fought demons before.
He had killed things that wore holy faces while hiding corruption beneath them. He had watched fiends walk through the temple of his faith and call themselves servants of righteousness. He had stood before Craven and learned how easily evil could speak with a trusted voice.
This thing made no attempt at disguise.
It was enormous.
Fire moved beneath blackened flesh as though its body had been forged around a furnace. Horns swept back from a skull more beast than man. One hand carried a whip burning with red-orange flame.
The other held lightning.
Not a weapon surrounded by lightning.
Lightning itself, braided into a lash that snapped and twisted as though alive.
Kaylor stared at it through the circle of fire.
The fiend smiled.
He heard Fendor shout somewhere beyond the flames.
Then the walls rose higher.
The others vanished completely.
Kaylor tightened his grip on the frost-rimed axe.
“So,” he said.
The fiend spread its wings.
Kaylor’s Cloak of Displacement stirred around him, blurring his outline into false dragonborn shapes.
“You and me.”
The balor came forward.
Fendor saw teeth.
That was the entirety of his world for the first heartbeat.
Fiery jaws descended through the wall of flame and closed around his shoulder.
The elf twisted before the bite could take his arm with it, but the creature’s fangs tore through leather and flesh. Heat followed the wound.
Not ordinary heat.
Fire entered him through the bite.
Fendor struck the serpent across the jaw and broke free.
The creature recoiled.
It was enormous—far larger than any natural snake, its scales glowing between the seams as if molten metal flowed beneath them. Fire leaked from its nostrils. Its eyes were yellow pits.
Beyond it was nothing.
No Kaylor.
No Hexen.
No Nethnarel.
No Isamu.
No Grazim.
Only the serpent.
Fendor glanced at the bow in his hand.
Then at the creature only a few steps away.
“No.”
The bow went over his shoulder.
The Vorpal Longsword came free.
The serpent lunged again.
Fendor stepped inside the bite.
The blade struck once across the lower jaw.
Again beneath the skull.
A third cut carved through the armored scales along its throat.
Black blood hissed when it struck the stones.
The serpent screamed.
Fendor pulled the sword free.
“I prefer the bow.”
The creature attacked again.
Nethnarel had always hated being trapped.
She had forgotten many things about the woman she had once been.
That had survived.
The ring of flame surrounded her so completely that the fire itself became a wall. There was no gap beneath it. No place above it where she could see anything except orange light and rolling smoke.
Something moved within the circle.
A serpent came through the fire without burning.
Of course it did.
Nethnarel raised one hand.
The creature struck.
Its teeth caught her side.
Fire rushed through the wound.
Most of it died before it could truly harm her.
The old blood in Nethnarel answered the flame with flame of its own.
She staggered but remained standing.
“Thank you,” she muttered, “to whichever infernal ancestor thought ahead.”
The serpent opened its jaws again.
Nethnarel gave it fire in return.
The magic washed harmlessly across its scales.
She stared.
The serpent seemed almost pleased.
“Yes. Fine.”
She changed the answer.
Both hands came together.
The air exploded.
Thunder struck the serpent like an invisible hammer.
Its long body lifted from the floor and slammed backward into the wall of flame.
The result was immediate.
The creature screamed.
Not from the force alone.
Something about the violence of the thunder tore through it more deeply than fire ever could.
Nethnarel saw the reaction.
So did the serpent.
“That,” she said, “you disliked.”
It charged.
Isamu did not waste time testing the walls.
The moment the serpent attacked, he moved.
It struck at the place where he had been.
His heel landed against the side of its skull.
The second blow hit beneath the jaw.
He twisted through the creature’s coils as they closed around him, planted one foot against its body and drove both fists into the same wounded point.
The serpent was hot enough that smoke rose from his wrappings.
Isamu ignored it.
His next strike carried more than force.
He drove the blow into one of the points where body and spirit met and willed the creature to stop.
For a heartbeat, it almost did.
Then the serpent shook itself and snapped at him.
Isamu ducked.
“Worth trying.”
He struck again.
Hexen waited.
The serpent circled him, testing the strange human who had made no move toward it.
Hexen kept both hands low.
The creature lunged.
He moved aside.
Teeth closed upon empty air.
The serpent turned with astonishing speed.
Hexen slipped away again.
Its tail struck stone hard enough to crack it.
The druid watched the heat ripple around its body.
Fire was not going to kill it.
Perhaps the opposite would.
He called winter.
Cold gathered around him.
Not the gentle cold of a mountain morning.
The killing cold beneath old glaciers.
Frost spread across the stone at Hexen’s feet.
The serpent slowed.
Its glowing scales dimmed.
The creature tried to recoil from him.
Hexen stepped closer.
Ice formed along its jaw.
The serpent convulsed.
Cracks spread across the heated scales as cold drove inward.
It collapsed.
The circle of fire vanished.
Hexen blinked.
Beyond the place where the wall had stood, the larger chamber returned.
He could see the bridge.
He could see scattered circles of flame.
And in the center of it all, Kaylor was fighting something far worse than a serpent.
“Oh,” Hexen said.
The balor’s lightning whip cracked across the darkness.
“Of course.”
Kaylor crossed thirty feet in a heartbeat.
One moment the balor stood beyond reach.
The next, mist folded around the dragonborn and he emerged directly before it.
The fiend had barely turned when Kaylor’s axe struck.
Frost burst across its burning hide.
The balor roared.
Kaylor felt the resistance of flesh beneath the blade and knew immediately that the cold hurt it.
Good.
He struck again.
Divine power followed the steel.
Whatever remained of the oath he had once carried no longer came to him in the same way. The certainty was gone. The clean faith that had once told him the world could be divided into righteous and wicked had been destroyed with Craven.
But the power had not abandoned him.
It had changed.
So had he.
Kaylor drove it into the balor.
The fiend staggered.
Then smiled.
The flame whip came first.
Kaylor’s cloak blurred him into three overlapping shapes.
The lash passed through one that did not exist.
The lightning whip followed.
Kaylor ducked beneath it.
The balor snarled.
Kaylor grinned.
Then the flaming lash changed direction.
It wrapped around his arm.
Fire burned across his armor.
The whip pulled.
Kaylor planted both feet.
The balor pulled harder.
Stone cracked beneath the dragonborn’s boots.
For an instant they stood linked by the burning cord, monster and Oathbreaker each waiting for the other to give.
Kaylor yanked back.
The balor had not expected that.
It stumbled one step.
Kaylor raised the axe.
“That all?”
The balor answered with lightning.
Fendor was bleeding badly.
The serpent was bleeding worse.
That seemed fair.
The elf shifted the Vorpal Longsword between his hands.
The creature lunged again.
He cut once.
The serpent twisted aside.
Fendor followed.
Steel opened another glowing wound.
The creature’s tail struck him across the ribs and threw him hard against the stones.
For a moment his vision narrowed.
He stayed down.
Not from injury.
From decision.
He drew one breath.
Then another.
The training returned.
Pain moved somewhere less important.
His breathing steadied.
Fendor stood.
The serpent attacked.
The Vorpal Longsword entered beneath its jaw and drove upward.
The creature collapsed.
For one heartbeat nothing happened.
Then the wall of flame surrounding Fendor went out.
Noise returned all at once.
Roaring fire.
Cracking lightning.
Shouting.
The balor towered over Kaylor at the far end of the chamber.
Fendor looked at the sword in his hand.
Then at the distance.
He sheathed it.
The Oathbow came free.
“That is better.”
He began running.
Nethnarel hurled lightning into the serpent.
The bolt connected.
The result surprised both of them.
Electricity raced beneath the creature’s molten scales. Its entire body locked rigid. Light poured from its mouth.
The serpent crashed to the floor.
The wall of fire disappeared.
Nethnarel saw the battle outside.
Kaylor stood before the enormous winged fiend.
Hexen had just emerged from another circle.
Fendor was moving into position with his bow.
Isamu remained hidden behind flame.
Nethnarel took one step toward Kaylor.
Another fiery serpent rose between them.
She stopped.
“I am beginning to dislike this room.”
The creature breathed.
Molten fire erupted from its mouth.
Nethnarel threw herself aside.
The stream struck the stones where she had stood and burst into fragments of glowing rock.
One struck her shoulder.
Another tore across her thigh.
She hit the floor.
The serpent came after her.
Fendor chose the balor.
The world narrowed.
Distance.
Angle.
Wind that did not exist in an underground chamber.
The movement of Kaylor below.
The shifting wings of the fiend.
Everything else disappeared.
He named the creature his enemy.
The Oathbow answered.
The first arrow flew.
Then the second.
Then another.
Fendor drew faster.
Arrow after arrow crossed the chamber.
One struck the balor’s shoulder.
Another entered beneath the ribs.
A third punched through one wing.
The fourth buried itself in the fiend’s chest.
The fifth struck beside it.
The sixth drove into the throat.
For an instant the balor seemed held upright by arrows alone.
Kaylor looked over his shoulder.
“Finally.”
Fendor lowered the bow.
“You appeared occupied.”
The balor roared.
Kaylor faced it again.
“I have it.”
Hexen approached from the side.
“No, you do not.”
His thorn whip snapped across the chamber and wrapped around the balor.
Hexen pulled.
Nothing happened.
He pulled harder.
The balor looked down at the vine.
Then at Hexen.
Hexen released it.
“Worth trying.”
Isamu’s wall of fire vanished.
The monk came running.
Kaylor hit the balor.
Once.
Twice.
Cold burst through the wounds.
Power followed.
Fendor’s arrows had already weakened it. Hexen’s attack had distracted it. Isamu was closing from the flank.
Kaylor gave the fiend everything left in the strike.
The axe entered its chest.
Radiance exploded.
The balor’s roar stopped.
For a moment it remained upright.
Then the enormous body folded.
It struck the stones hard enough to shake the bridge.
Kaylor tore the axe free.
Silence lasted less than a breath.
Something appeared behind Hexen.
Fendor saw it first.
“Behind you!”
Hexen turned.
Another burning creature stood where nothing had been.
Not a serpent.
Another balor.
Its wings opened.
Kaylor stared at the first corpse.
Then at the second fiend.
“You have got to be kidding me.”
The second balor raised both whips.
Around the chamber, new serpents crawled through the fire.
The battle changed.
No more isolated duels.
The heroes had broken most of the circles.
Now the chamber became one enormous killing ground.
Hexen’s cold rolled through the fire like winter invading a furnace.
One serpent slithered too close.
Frost climbed its body.
The creature stiffened.
Then it died.
The death was violent.
Its body erupted.
Fire swallowed the center of the chamber.
Kaylor saw the blast coming.
Hexen did too.
Isamu moved before either.
The monk turned his body through the expanding flame, slipping through the edge of the explosion where no safe path should have existed.
Kaylor raised an arm.
Hexen ducked.
The blast struck.
Heat filled everything.
One of the remaining serpents was caught almost entirely within it.
When the fire cleared, that creature was dead as well.
Nethnarel pushed herself upright.
Her hair was scorched.
Blood ran down one side of her face.
She looked at the second balor.
“How many of these are there?”
“No more than we kill,” Fendor said.
“That is not how numbers work.”
“It is how this room works.”
The balor charged.
Isamu met it first.
His fists struck the fiend’s leg.
The size difference should have made the attack absurd.
Isamu hit again.
His foot swept behind the creature’s knee.
The balor’s leg buckled.
The enormous fiend crashed to the ground.
Everyone stared.
Isamu stepped away.
“Knees are knees.”
Fendor drew the Vorpal Longsword.
There were times for arrows.
There were times to get closer.
He ran.
The balor tried to rise.
Fendor reached it first.
The Vorpal blade struck downward.
Once.
Twice.
Again.
With the creature prone beneath him, every opening was larger.
Every weakness clearer.
The sword bit deep.
Kaylor could not reach the fiend immediately.
He did not need to.
He drew in a breath.
Cold gathered in the dragonborn’s chest.
Then he exhaled.
A cone of freezing air swept across the fallen balor.
Fire vanished from patches of its skin.
Ice formed along one wing.
The creature screamed.
Fendor glanced toward Kaylor.
“Useful.”
“I have my moments.”
The balor surged upward.
Fendor jumped clear.
One whip snapped toward him.
It missed.
The other struck stone and shattered the surface into molten fragments.
Nethnarel lifted both hands.
Stone answered her.
Walls erupted around the surviving creatures.
One slab rose.
Then another.
Then another.
The chamber shook as thick barriers locked into place.
A serpent lunged for the opening.
The final section of stone slammed down before it reached them.
The creature struck the other side.
The wall held.
A second impact followed.
Then another.
Nethnarel kept both arms raised until the last piece settled.
The trapped monsters roared behind the barrier.
She exhaled.
“Now they can stay there.”
The wall shook.
“Preferably.”
The second balor remained outside.
Hexen marked it with pale green light.
The glow clung to its wings and horns, outlining every movement.
Isamu rushed it again.
His first blow struck.
The second missed.
The third landed against its ribs.
He drove the next strike into the same hidden point he had sought before.
This time something inside the fiend faltered.
Only briefly.
Briefly was enough.
Fendor cut.
Kaylor attacked from the opposite side.
Nethnarel sent force and lightning through every opening she could find.
Hexen’s magic carried cold into the creature’s wounds.
The balor fought back with both whips.
Fire crossed lightning.
Kaylor’s displaced image took one strike.
Fendor ducked another.
Isamu was caught across the back and spun to the ground.
He rose before the balor could finish him.
The creature bled fire.
The heroes bled blood.
Neither side stopped.
Then the balor faltered.
Fendor stepped in.
Kaylor struck.
The enormous fiend fell.
No one cheered.
They had learned better.
Everyone backed away.
Nothing exploded.
After several heartbeats, Isamu approached the corpse.
The flame whip had gone dark.
The other still twitched with thin blue arcs of electricity.
Isamu crouched beside it.
Kaylor saw him.
“Do not touch that.”
Isamu looked up.
“I am looking.”
“You look with your hands.”
“That is efficient.”
Kaylor pointed toward the whip.
“Leave it.”
Isamu looked back at the weapon.
He said nothing.
Fendor leaned against his bow.
“I predict that object will somehow become our problem later.”
Nethnarel wiped blood from her mouth.
“Everything becomes our problem later.”
“Fair.”
Behind the stone wall, one of the trapped creatures struck again.
The barrier did not break.
No one suggested waiting to see whether it eventually would.
They healed what they could.
It was not enough.
Without Grazim, the absence of their cleric became physical.
Someone should have been complaining that they were wasting divine power on scratches.
Someone should have been ordering them to hold still.
Someone small, stubborn and armored should have been walking from one wounded hero to another with a hammer hanging from his belt.
Instead, they had what remained.
Hexen closed Fendor’s worst wound.
Nethnarel accepted enough healing to remain upright.
Kaylor bound the cuts where the whips had opened his armor.
Isamu claimed he was fine.
No one believed him.
They started toward the far end of the chamber.
Fendor stopped.
His face tightened.
“What?”
Nethnarel asked.
“I have made a decision.”
“That sounds dangerous.”
“I am going back to shooting things.”
Kaylor glanced toward the Vorpal Longsword.
“You seemed effective with that.”
“I was.”
Fendor slung the Oathbow over one shoulder.
“I prefer effective from farther away.”
Even Kaylor smiled.
It lasted only a moment.
Then they continued.
The bridge led them to an altar.
After everything else in the room, it was almost disappointing.
No burning statue.
No waiting demon.
No inscription demanding blood.
Just a broad stone block standing at the far edge of the chamber.
Kaylor approached it.
“Nothing?”
Nethnarel studied the surface.
“Nothing obvious.”
“Those words have killed us before.”
Kaylor ran one hand along the side.
A seam.
He crouched.
“There is a compartment.”
Fendor immediately took three steps backward.
Kaylor looked at him.
“I thought you preferred distance.”
“I am demonstrating.”
Kaylor found the recessed grip.
He pulled.
Something clicked.
A needle snapped from the stone.
It drove through the gap in his gauntlet.
Kaylor jerked his hand back.
Isamu looked at the tiny puncture.
“Dead?”
“Not yet.”
Nethnarel leaned closer.
“Poison.”
Kaylor waited.
Nothing happened.
He flexed his hand.
“Apparently unimpressive poison.”
“You say that as though disappointed.”
“I expected more from the room.”
He pulled the compartment open.
Everyone stopped.
Two rings lay inside.
Not finger rings.
They were broad bands large enough to slide over the forearm, each carved from a metal that reflected fire without becoming warm. Runes covered every surface.
Orange light moved through them.
Nethnarel stepped closer.
She had seen them before.
Not in the Grand Library.
Not anywhere since awakening on the mountain.
But she knew them.
Her mouth went dry.
Fendor noticed.
“What?”
“I…”
Nethnarel reached toward one ring.
Stopped.
Reached again.
The moment her fingers touched the metal, recognition moved through her body.
Not memory.
Something older than memory.
Her hand knew its weight.
Her wrist knew where the band belonged.
She lifted one.
Then the other.
“They were mine.”
Kaylor turned toward her.
“You remember them?”
“No.”
She stared at the runes.
Then shook her head.
“Yes.”
Hexen came closer.
“That is not generally how remembering works.”
“It is for us.”
Nethnarel slipped the first ring over her wrist.
It fitted.
The second followed.
The runes ignited.
Fire gathered around both hands.
Nethnarel instinctively separated them.
One flame became two.
She stared.
A simple bolt of fire formed above one palm.
Its twin appeared above the other.
She understood.
Not everything.
Enough.
She could release both.
With effort, perhaps more.
The rings did not teach her.
They reminded her.
A flash passed through her mind.
Not a scene.
Not a place.
Only the certainty of standing in battle long ago with fire streaming from both hands.
Then it vanished.
Nethnarel lowered her arms.
“They were mine,” she said again.
This time no one questioned her.
Kaylor looked at the rings.
“The Lord of Swarms wanted those.”
The warmth of discovery vanished.
Hexen’s expression changed.
“Yes.”
Fendor understood next.
“He said they could burn through the containment.”
Nethnarel looked down at her wrists.
The symbols glowing there suddenly seemed less like a gift.
The Lord of Swarms had known these rings were here.
He had offered them a bargain.
Recover the Rings of Fire.
Use them to burn away the ancient binding.
Free him.
And in return, he had promised power.
Knowledge.
A path.
Grazim.
Kaylor looked toward the way they had come.
They possessed the key now.
Not the stone key Isamu had found upon the water god.
A far worse one.
Nethnarel could return to the prison chamber and put these flames against the Hunt Lord’s binding.
They could tear it open.
And if the fiend had spoken truth, perhaps the road to Grazim would open with it.
Hexen spoke first.
“We could do it.”
Kaylor turned.
“No.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I know exactly what you mean.”
“We have the rings. Grazim is alive. We know where the passage leads.”
“We also know what happens if the prison opens.”
“We know what he claimed.”
“And you trust him?”
Hexen’s voice remained calm.
“No.”
“Then there is no argument.”
“There is always an argument.”
Kaylor stepped closer.
“Not this time.”
Nethnarel looked between them.
Hexen gestured toward her wrists.
“Those rings might give us the fastest path to Grazim.”
“And release the Lord of Swarms here.”
“Yes.”
Fendor folded his arms.
“Those are not equivalent outcomes.”
Hexen looked at him.
“Tell that to Grazim.”
Silence.
That landed.
Kaylor’s jaw tightened.
For one dangerous moment, no one spoke.
They could all see Grazim upon the altar.
The Book of Knowledge had made that impossible to forget.
Insects crawling over the radiant shell.
The Naked Goddess holding them back.
For how long?
None of them knew.
Nethnarel slowly closed her hands.
The runes upon the Rings of Fire dimmed.
“We find the Gate.”
Hexen looked at her.
She continued.
“We find someone who can open the way to the Astral Plane. We reach the Crystal City. We find the passage into Hell.”
“That takes time.”
“Yes.”
“And if Grazim dies while we search?”
Nethnarel met his gaze.
“Then we live with choosing not to free something the god of the hunt imprisoned beneath a mountain.”
Hexen looked toward the dark corridor.
There was no anger in his face.
That made Kaylor trust the silence less.
Finally the druid nodded.
“For now.”
Kaylor heard the qualification.
So did Fendor.
Neither challenged it.
They left.
The journey back through the Grand Library felt longer without Grazim.
Five footsteps.
Always five.
Kaylor found himself listening for the sixth.
The small scrape of armored boots.
The knock of a hammer against a shield rim.
A complaint from somewhere below his shoulder.
Nothing came.
They passed the water sanctuary.
The old god remained silent.
They passed the true library.
The Book of Knowledge waited behind its hidden wall.
They passed the chamber of the Lord of Swarms.
The insects still filled the prison.
Nethnarel stopped.
The Rings of Fire grew warm.
Not hot.
Aware.
Something beyond the swarm shifted.
Kaylor looked back.
“Do not.”
“I am not.”
The runes on the rings brightened.
For one instant, Nethnarel thought she heard a voice beneath the buzzing.
Not words.
Recognition.
The Lord of Swarms knew.
She covered the rings beneath her sleeves.
The light disappeared.
They kept walking.
Oxland appeared beneath a gray evening sky.
The city still carried wounds from the dragon’s attack.
Blackened rooftops.
Scorched walls.
Soldiers on towers watching the mountain.
Somewhere beyond the horizon, Scourge Firebreath waited.
Somewhere infinitely farther away, Grazim waited as well.
The Manticore’s Tail was loud when the five entered.
Then people noticed them.
Conversation faltered.
Someone counted.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
Kaylor hated that more than questions.
He took the first empty table.
Nethnarel sat opposite him.
Hexen ordered food.
Isamu drank water.
Fendor leaned his bow against the wall where no one else could reach it.
For several minutes, no one spoke of the missing chair.
Eventually Nethnarel pushed back her sleeves.
The Rings of Fire shone around her wrists.
Everyone at the table looked at them.
“We have a weapon,” Fendor said.
“We have a temptation,” Kaylor corrected.
“Both can be true.”
Hexen lifted his cup.
“They usually are.”
Kaylor looked at him.
Hexen drank.
Nethnarel touched one of the runes.
A thread of flame crawled over her finger.
The magic felt familiar.
Not newly learned.
Returned.
Another fragment of the people they had once been had found its way back to them.
Unfortunately, so had another fragment of their old war.
Kaylor unfolded the rough notes they had made from the Book of Knowledge.
Astral Plane.
Crystal City.
First Hell.
Grazim.
He placed one finger upon the first.
“We need someone who can open a Gate.”
Fendor looked toward the dark window.
“And after that?”
Kaylor moved his finger to the second.
“We find the Crystal City.”
Then the third.
“We go to Hell.”
Isamu nodded as though Kaylor had announced a walk to the market.
Nethnarel covered the Rings of Fire.
Hexen stared into his drink.
No one mentioned the Lord of Swarms again.
Not that night.
But far beneath the mountain, the ancient binding remained intact.
And for the first time in ages, someone walking the world above it carried the fire capable of breaking it.