Grazim was alive.
That fact had carried them all the way back to the Manticore’s Tail.
It did not make the empty chair easier to look at.
Kaylor sat with the others around the scarred wooden table while Oxland moved beyond the windows as though nothing had changed. Wagons rolled through the street. Hammers rang from the damaged walls. Somewhere farther down the avenue, men were still repairing what Scourge Firebreath had burned.
The world had continued.
Grazim had not.
He remained somewhere in Avernus, bound upon an altar in the abandoned fortress of the Lord of Swarms while the Naked Goddess held back a living tide of insects.
For how long, none of them knew.
Nethnarel rested both forearms on the table.
The Rings of Fire glowed faintly around her wrists.
They had been hers once.
She still did not know what that meant.
Across from her, Isamu had acquired a new addition to the collection of dangerous things the heroes seemed incapable of leaving behind. The demonic whip taken from the fire chamber lay coiled at his side, dark and still now, though Kaylor remembered very clearly what its twin had looked like when lightning had moved through it.
Fendor noticed Kaylor looking.
“Do not.”
“I said nothing.”
“You were thinking loudly.”
Kaylor turned his attention back to the table.
“We need a Gate.”
Hexen leaned against the wall rather than taking a chair.
“That was also true yesterday.”
“Today we find one.”
“Excellent plan.”
Nethnarel raised one eyebrow.
Kaylor ignored both of them.
They began with Charles the Enchanter.
Charles had helped them before. He had access to magic most merchants would never see and the contacts to find what his own shelves did not contain.
Unfortunately, a spell capable of tearing a doorway between worlds was not the sort of thing one kept beside healing draughts and enchanted daggers.
Charles did not have one.
For a short time, that appeared to end the matter.
Then word spread.
Gold helped.
Gold nearly always helped.
By afternoon, a traveling dealer had been located who possessed exactly one scroll inscribed with the spell they needed.
The asking price was seven thousand two hundred gold pieces.
Kaylor stared at the man.
“For a piece of parchment.”
“For passage between planes.”
“It is still parchment.”
“You are welcome to walk.”
Fendor placed a hand on Kaylor’s shoulder.
“We will take the parchment.”
They bought it.
They also bought healing potions.
More than they normally carried.
No one needed to explain why.
Grazim had always been there after the fighting.
Sometimes scolding. Sometimes praying. Sometimes kneeling in blood with both hands glowing while one of them tried very hard not to die.
Now they were going somewhere he could not follow.
Because they were going to find him.
They left the city before Nethnarel attempted the scroll.
Kaylor had suggested the open ground beyond Oxland’s walls.
Nethnarel had suggested somewhere without witnesses in case the magic went badly wrong.
Fendor had suggested somewhere without buildings.
Isamu had suggested simply doing it.
Hexen had said nothing, which everyone eventually recognized as agreement with Isamu.
They gathered upon a broad stretch of rocky earth beneath the mountains.
The scroll felt strange in Nethnarel’s hands.
The magic contained within it was greater than anything she normally shaped. The symbols seemed to move when she stopped looking directly at them, as though the spell had been written partly upon the parchment and partly somewhere behind it.
Kaylor stood close.
“So?”
“I am deciding whether this is a good idea.”
“You already bought it.”
“That is not evidence.”
Nethnarel began to read.
The first words came easily.
The next did not.
Something slipped.
The magic buckled sideways.
For one terrifying instant Nethnarel felt the spell trying to open somewhere that was not the Astral Plane—or perhaps not anywhere a mortal mind had a name for.
She forced herself back into the pattern.
The Rings of Fire brightened around her wrists.
Not helping.
Not interfering.
Remembering.
The final symbol left her lips.
The world tore open.
Not with an explosion.
With absence.
A vertical wound appeared in the air, filled with violet light and depths that did not belong beneath any sky.
Fendor stared through it.
“Is that correct?”
Nethnarel exhaled.
“Probably.”
“That word has done considerable damage to us.”
Isamu stepped through.
Kaylor followed.
Hexen sighed and went after him.
Fendor looked once at Nethnarel.
“Probably?”
She smiled.
Then entered the Gate.
Fendor followed.
The portal closed behind them.
There was no ground.
That was the first thing Kaylor understood.
The second was that he was standing on it anyway.
A mass of stone drifted in endless violet space beneath his boots. Beyond its broken edges there was no earth, no sky, no horizon.
Stars hung in every direction.
Not above them.
Everywhere.
Great fragments of rock floated in the distance. Some were no larger than houses. Others resembled mountains that had forgotten which way down was.
Purple light existed without any obvious source.
Nethnarel stepped off the edge.
Kaylor caught her arm.
She looked down at his hand.
“What?”
“There is nothing there.”
“Yes.”
“You stepped into it.”
“Yes.”
“You are not falling.”
Nethnarel looked down.
Her boots hung three feet beyond the stone.
She smiled.
“Oh.”
Kaylor released her.
Nethnarel remained where she was.
Isamu walked to the edge and stepped off as well.
His body drifted outward.
He frowned in concentration.
Then shot forward so quickly he nearly collided with another floating rock.
He twisted in midair and returned.
“Interesting.”
Hexen tried next.
Movement here did not belong to muscle.
The body followed intention.
Think forward and one moved forward.
Think upward and upward became whatever direction the mind chose.
Kaylor hated it immediately.
Fendor adapted more slowly.
“You are telling me,” the elf said, floating several feet above the stone with the dignity of a man determined not to admit he had no idea what he was doing, “that walking is now an intellectual exercise.”
Nethnarel drifted past him.
“This may be difficult for you.”
Fendor gave her a look.
For the first time since Grazim had disappeared, Kaylor laughed.
It felt strange.
He let himself have it anyway.
The Crystal City was not there.
That became obvious quickly.
They had reached the Astral Plane.
The Gate had not placed them at their destination.
They had crossed an ocean and arrived somewhere upon its shore.
They still needed to find the city.
Several enormous circular platforms floated among the stone fragments. Symbols were carved into their surfaces, each suggesting some form of magical transit.
And upon the largest platform waited a harp.
They moved toward it.
At first Kaylor assumed it was merely an instrument.
Then it turned its head.
The harp stood almost as tall as a man.
Its frame was dark metal or perhaps blackened bone. Strings of different colors ran between its arms. Where the upper pillar should have ended in decorative carving, a demonic face emerged instead.
Flames burned around its horns.
Its eyes followed them.
Fendor stopped.
“No.”
Hexen glanced at him.
“No?”
“The last magical book tried to summon a demon through me.”
“That is a harp.”
“It has a demon attached to it.”
“A fair distinction.”
Nethnarel approached.
The harp watched her.
Isamu wandered toward one side.
One hand reached toward the strings.
“Do not—” Kaylor began.
Isamu plucked them.
The sound was terrible.
Not dangerous.
Just terrible.
The notes struck one another like blades thrown into a bucket.
The demon face grimaced.
At the center of the platform, light began to gather.
A portal opened.
Everyone stared.
Isamu stared back.
“I meant to do that.”
“No,” Fendor said.
The harp finally spoke.
“Welcome, travelers.”
Its voice sounded like music played backward.
Nethnarel looked toward the portal.
“Where does that go?”
The harp’s burning eyes narrowed.
“Where the notes chose.”
Kaylor frowned.
“The notes choose the destination?”
“The player gives them shape. The music provides the path.”
Hexen looked between the open portal and the harp.
“So if someone knew the right music…”
“They could travel anywhere these roads reach.”
Nethnarel stepped closer.
“Do you know the music for the Crystal City?”
The harp looked offended.
“Of course.”
“Play it.”
The demon face smiled.
“I am no fool.”
Fendor muttered, “Debatable.”
The harp’s gaze snapped toward him.
He pretended to be examining the stars.
Nethnarel continued.
“What do you want?”
“Your soul.”
Kaylor’s hand went immediately to his weapon.
The harp laughed.
Then its expression changed.
“Or my music.”
“That sounds less fatal.”
“Three pages were stolen from my book.”
The amusement vanished from the creature’s voice.
“Return them to me, and I will give you the road to the Crystal City.”
Three distant platforms flared in response.
The harp described the path.
The first lay to the east.
The second to the southwest.
The third road would be revealed only when the first two pages had been returned.
Each had a guardian.
Each page would have to be recovered.
Fendor studied the demonic face.
“How did you lose three pages from a book while floating in the middle of nowhere?”
The strings shrieked.
Everyone flinched.
“Disrespect me again,” the harp said, “and we shall discover where your next song takes you.”
Fendor raised both hands.
“A reasonable boundary.”
Kaylor looked toward the eastern platform.
“Fine.”
He began moving.
The others followed.
Behind them, the harp plucked one sour note.
The guardian at the eastern circle was thin enough to look half-starved.
His body had the proportions of a man, but nothing else about him invited that comparison. Hooved feet rested upon the floating stone. His skin had the color of old ash. Strange ceremonial armor covered his chest and shoulders.
A heavy flail hung from one hand.
He watched the approaching heroes without moving.
“Welcome, travelers.”
Kaylor pointed toward the dormant portal.
“Open it.”
The others stopped behind him.
Nethnarel closed her eyes.
Fendor whispered, “Beautiful diplomacy.”
The guardian looked directly at Kaylor.
“If you defeat me in single combat, the portal shall open.”
Kaylor glanced at the others.
Hexen shrugged.
“You did ask.”
“Fine.”
The guardian walked toward the center of the platform.
Kaylor followed.
No one else moved.
The duel began.
Kaylor’s Dancing Sword left his hand first.
It swept through the air on its own while he charged behind it with the frost-rimed greataxe.
The guardian was faster than his gaunt frame suggested.
Steel struck.
The creature staggered.
Before Kaylor could finish the attack, the guardian lifted one hand.
Magic reached for Kaylor’s mind.
The sensation was horribly familiar.
Compulsion.
Command.
The demand to stop being himself.
Craven had used faith.
The ghost in the Grand Library had used memory.
This creature used naked magic.
Kaylor rejected it.
The guardian tried again.
Kaylor fought it off.
Again.
No.
Again.
No.
Each attempt made him angrier.
“You are very bad,” Kaylor said, “at understanding the word no.”
The guardian finally used the flail.
The first swing crossed through an image produced by Kaylor’s Cloak of Displacement.
The second connected.
Pain flashed across his ribs.
The magical blow carried another invasion of his thoughts with it.
Kaylor forced that away too.
Then he attacked.
The Dancing Sword struck from one side.
The frost axe came from the other.
The guardian tried to turn.
Too late.
Kaylor’s final blow dropped him.
The creature struck the stone.
For one heartbeat, Kaylor believed he had killed it.
Then its corpse disappeared.
The guardian reappeared where it had first been standing.
Whole.
Alive.
Angry.
But defeated.
“I will grant you passage.”
Kaylor rested the axe against one shoulder.
“Damn right.”
Fendor covered his mouth.
The guardian produced a flute from beneath his robes.
No one commented on it.
Not immediately.
He played several notes.
The eastern circle filled with light.
A portal opened.
The guardian stepped aside.
“Pass.”
Kaylor walked through first.
The world beyond was still the Astral Plane.
But changed.
The heroes emerged upon another drifting mass of stone surrounded by towering crystal shards. They curved upward in jagged clusters, translucent and dark enough in places to resemble enormous frozen waves.
Passages twisted between them.
Nothing moved.
That worried Fendor.
He scanned the shards.
Hexen did the same.
“There.”
Fendor followed the druid’s gaze.
For an instant the violet light bent incorrectly.
A shimmer.
Then nothing.
“Something is watching us.”
Isamu was already climbing.
Kaylor turned.
“Isamu.”
The monk stepped between two great shards.
Something appeared.
It had been invisible until it moved.
The creature was enormous and soft-bodied, a grotesque mass of flesh surrounding a circular maw. Long tendrils uncoiled from it.
One wrapped around Isamu’s waist.
He struck before it could pull him closer.
Fist.
Elbow.
Heel.
Another blow aimed precisely where body and spirit should have met.
The creature shuddered.
For an instant Isamu felt the strike land perfectly.
Then the thing simply refused to stop moving.
He stared at it.
“That normally works.”
The tentacle tightened.
More shapes dropped from the shards.
These were different.
Insectile.
Long-limbed creatures with claws and barbed tails appeared only at the instant they attacked, their bodies flickering between visibility and the distorted shimmer Fendor and Hexen had noticed.
One landed near Fendor.
Another sprang toward Hexen.
A third closed on Kaylor.
The fight became chaos.
Fendor began with the bow.
That was where he belonged.
An arrow passed through the shimmer and struck something solid.
The creature became visible around it.
His next shot followed.
Kaylor fought nearer the central monstrosity, his Dancing Sword carving at tendrils while the frost axe opened wounds in its rubbery flesh.
The thing stared at him.
Its maw twisted.
Confusion pushed against Kaylor’s thoughts.
He shoved it away.
“Everyone wants inside my head today.”
A stinger struck somewhere behind him.
One of the heroes staggered as invisible force tugged at his will, trying to turn body into puppet.
The attempt failed.
Another creature clawed at Hexen.
The druid answered by abandoning flesh entirely.
His body erupted into flame.
The fire elemental moved through the crystal field like a walking bonfire. Wherever it passed, the invisible predators revealed themselves in the heat.
Nethnarel saw too many targets.
Too close together for the magic she wanted.
Her eyes found one of the insectile creatures.
She pointed.
The monster vanished.
A grasshopper dropped onto the stone where it had been.
Everyone stopped for half a heartbeat.
The grasshopper hopped once.
Kaylor looked at Nethnarel.
“Leave it.”
“I was planning to.”
The central creature yanked Isamu closer.
Its tendrils wrapped around his body until only his arms remained free.
Isamu reached into his gear.
A small bead appeared between his fingers.
Fendor saw it.
“Oh no.”
Isamu activated the bead of force against himself.
The explosion threw the creature’s tendrils outward.
A translucent sphere snapped into existence around the monk.
Isamu was free.
He was also trapped inside a floating ball.
The sphere rolled away across the stone.
Isamu tumbled with it.
Nethnarel watched him pass.
“That was your plan?”
His voice came muffled through the magical shell.
“First half.”
The ball continued rolling.
Hexen, now made entirely of fire, slammed both burning arms into one of the predators.
Kaylor cut another.
Fendor abandoned the bow when one came too close.
The Vorpal Longsword appeared in his hand.
The difference was immediate.
One creature lunged.
Fendor stepped through the attack and opened it from shoulder to ribs.
No impossible decapitation came.
The blade remained more than enough.
Nethnarel raised both wrists.
The Rings of Fire ignited.
The feeling came again.
Recognition without memory.
The power was not foreign.
Her body already understood the rhythm.
One bolt of flame formed in each hand.
Then another pair followed.
Four streaks of fire crossed the battlefield in rapid succession.
They struck the great tendriled monster.
Fire burst across its flesh.
It collapsed into a steaming mass.
Nethnarel stared at her wrists.
For an instant she could almost see another battlefield.
Another life.
Another version of herself standing with those same rings blazing around her arms.
The image disappeared.
No time to chase it.
Something was trying to kill Fendor.
The battle tightened.
Kaylor’s Dancing Sword struck from impossible angles while he drove forward with the axe.
Fendor shifted between bow and blade as distance opened and closed.
Hexen burned everything that came too near.
Nethnarel stripped another creature of life with dark magic, watching its flesh shrivel beneath the spell.
Isamu’s spherical prison rolled slowly across the battlefield like the world’s least dignified siege weapon.
Eventually the magic ended.
He emerged immediately and returned to punching things.
No one commented.
Not until afterward.
The invisible predators died one by one.
The last true threat fell.
Silence returned to the crystal field.
Then something chirped.
Everyone turned.
The grasshopper remained where Nethnarel had transformed it.
It hopped.
Once.
Twice.
Nethnarel stared at it.
“If we kill it, the original creature returns.”
“For however long it survives the excess damage,” Hexen said.
Kaylor looked around at the five of them.
Then down at the grasshopper.
Fendor sheathed the Vorpal blade.
“This seems excessive.”
Isamu cracked his knuckles.
The grasshopper hopped again.
Kaylor raised the frost axe.
“It tried to kill us.”
“That is technically true.”
They surrounded it.
For one brief moment, five heroes who had fought dragons, dead gods, corrupted priests and things born between worlds stood in a circle preparing to annihilate an insect smaller than Kaylor’s thumb.
The grasshopper chirped.
Nethnarel almost felt sorry for it.
Almost.
“Now.”
The result was catastrophic.
For the grasshopper.
The transformation broke beneath a single overwhelming instant of violence.
The original monster began to return.
It never completed the process alive.
What remained struck the stone with a wet collapse.
Isamu looked at the others.
“Efficient.”
Fendor nodded.
“I hate that you are correct.”
Something shimmered inside the corpse.
Not blood.
Not bone.
Paper.
Kaylor reached into what remained and pulled free a single page.
It was beautiful.
Far too beautiful to have survived inside such a creature.
Music had been written across it in ink that shifted through silver and gold. The parchment was old enough to belong to the Grand Library, yet no decay touched it.
“The first page,” Nethnarel said.
Another item lay nearby.
A potion.
Nethnarel examined it.
“Speed.”
Fendor looked interested.
“Useful.”
“It goes into the common gear until someone actually needs it.”
“That sounds suspiciously responsible.”
A circle of light appeared beneath the corpse.
The return road.
Kaylor stepped toward it.
“Come on.”
The others followed.
They emerged once more beside the eastern guardian.
The creature said nothing.
Its humiliation apparently continued.
Kaylor considered speaking.
Fendor stepped between them.
“No.”
“I was only going to—”
“No.”
They returned to the central platform.
The demonic harp turned before they reached it.
Its strings began playing by themselves.
For the first time, the music was beautiful.
The stolen page lifted from Kaylor’s hand.
A music stand appeared beside the harp.
Upon it rested a great book.
The book opened.
Pages fluttered.
The recovered sheet crossed the space between them and settled perfectly into the torn place from which it had once been ripped.
The book slammed shut.
The harp played one bright, triumphant chord.
Then another.
Its demonic face smiled.
One page returned.
Two remained.
The harp turned toward the next distant platform.
The southwest road began to glow.
And somewhere beyond it waited the second piece of the song that could carry them to the Crystal City.