The music did not end when the page returned.
It changed.
The demonic harp played a few bars of a composition none of them recognized, and for the first time the sound seemed greater than the instrument producing it. The melody rose through the Astral emptiness, crossed the drifting platforms and vanished among the stars.
Fendor listened despite himself.
There was structure in it now.
Something that had been broken had begun to remember its shape.
Nethnarel moved closer to the music stand.
The great book had already closed, but part of the title remained visible upon its cover. The letters belonged to no language she knew. Some shifted when she looked directly at them.
Fendor bent over it.
“You can read that?”
“Pieces.”
“What does it say?”
He studied the symbols.
“A tale.”
“Very useful.”
“Of an ancient hero.”
He frowned.
“Or an Ancient One.”
Kaylor looked at him.
“Those are substantially different things.”
“I am aware.”
Fendor tried again.
“The Tale of the Ancient…”
The final word escaped him.
The letters seemed almost deliberately unwilling to settle.
Fendor straightened.
“That is all I have.”
The harp struck a bright chord.
Then turned upon its base.
Its flaming face angled toward another platform far across the Astral dark.
The next road.
One stolen page returned.
Two remained.
Kaylor adjusted the frost-rimed axe across his back.
“Then we keep moving.”
The second harp was waiting for them.
That alone was irritating.
It stood upon another circular platform built into the floating stone, connected to a dormant ring of runes much like the first guardian’s gate.
The resemblance to the central harp was unmistakable.
The same dark frame.
The same infernal face worked into the crown.
The same colored strings.
But where the first harp had possessed a certain grand menace, this one seemed to have been carved in a permanently offended mood.
Nethnarel glanced back toward the distant central platform.
“Family?”
The second harp’s strings shrieked.
Everyone winced.
The demonic face twisted.
“That foul instrument is no kin of mine.”
Fendor leaned toward Isamu.
“I believe we have found the sensitive one.”
The harp’s burning eyes snapped toward him.
Fendor immediately examined the horizon.
Nethnarel smiled.
“How unfortunate.”
The harp regarded her.
“Why?”
“Because it speaks very highly of you.”
The strings shifted.
Not a chord.
Interest.
Nethnarel stepped nearer.
Kaylor knew that expression.
It was the one she wore when she had decided a situation might become entertaining.
He folded his arms.
“Neth.”
“I am negotiating.”
“You are smiling.”
“Those are not mutually exclusive.”
The harp plucked three notes.
Questioning.
Nethnarel understood the challenge without knowing how.
It was not asking for words.
It wanted an answer.
She gave it one.
Thaumaturgy carried her voice beyond the limits of any mortal throat.
A clear tone filled the platform.
The harp answered immediately.
Higher.
Sharper.
Nethnarel matched it.
Then changed the pattern.
Three notes became five.
The harp repeated them and added two more.
Nethnarel laughed.
“Oh, you want to play.”
The next phrase came fast.
She answered.
The infernal instrument drove downward into a run of notes that sounded like storm winds tearing across iron towers.
Nethnarel responded with harmony.
The Rings of Fire began to glow around her wrists.
Not because the magic required them.
Because she did.
Her voice split.
One note became two.
Thaumaturgy layered sound around her until it seemed as though three Nethnarels were singing from different points upon the platform.
The harp’s eyes widened.
Isamu sat down.
Fendor glanced at him.
“What are you doing?”
“Watching.”
“This is ridiculous.”
“Yes.”
Fendor sat beside him.
The musical duel escalated.
The harp hammered its strings hard enough to make the runes beneath it flare.
Nethnarel answered with a note so deep Kaylor felt it through his armor.
The harp leapt upward.
She followed.
It changed rhythm.
She changed first.
For several glorious seconds neither was leading.
They were playing together.
Not a contest anymore.
A conversation.
Challenge and answer.
Mockery and reply.
A melody building itself between mortal sorcery and infernal music.
Then Nethnarel changed one final note.
The harp followed.
Too late.
Its last chord landed beneath hers.
The instrument fell silent.
Nethnarel held the final tone.
Let it fade.
Then bowed.
Fendor clapped once.
Very slowly.
Isamu joined him.
Hexen grinned.
Even Kaylor surrendered.
The harp stared at Nethnarel.
Its flames had dimmed.
“You lost,” she said.
A single string twanged.
Irritated.
“Yes.”
The gate behind it opened.
But before the heroes could move, another piece of parchment appeared in the air.
Not one of the stolen pages.
This sheet was smaller.
Newer.
Music was written across it in luminous script.
The harp pushed it toward Nethnarel.
“A gift?” she asked.
The harp played a soft phrase.
The meaning reached her without words.
A single performance.
A single burst of impossible sunlight.
Power captured as music.
Nethnarel touched the page.
She understood enough to know what it contained.
Sunburst.
Magic far beyond anything she could ordinarily call upon, held inside a melody that could be performed once and then would be gone.
She carefully rolled the page.
“See?” she told Kaylor. “Negotiation.”
Kaylor looked at the harp.
Then at her.
“I am not congratulating you for seducing an instrument.”
“I did not ask you to.”
Fendor stood.
“I will.”
Kaylor stared at him.
Fendor shrugged.
“It was impressive.”
The harp gave a satisfied chord.
Then the portal brightened.
Cold rolled through it.
The Astral Plane disappeared beneath ice.
The difference was violent.
One instant they stood amid violet stars.
The next, bitter cold struck hard enough to steal breath.
Their boots landed upon frozen stone.
Or perhaps frozen earth.
Or perhaps something that had once belonged at the bottom of an ocean.
Fendor could not immediately tell.
Blue-white light filled a cavern ahead.
The floor gleamed beneath it.
Shapes were trapped beneath the ice.
Fish.
Long-bodied things with fins wider than shields.
Creatures no one recognized.
All frozen in the instant of death.
Isamu crouched.
The ice beneath his boots was nearly clear.
A dark eye stared upward from perhaps six inches below.
“Fast freeze,” he said.
Hexen nodded.
“Very.”
It was not merely cold.
It was old cold.
The kind that sank into joints and made steel painful to touch.
Nethnarel seemed less troubled than Fendor expected.
Some old enchantment or protection sheltered her from the worst of it. Kaylor weathered the air with similar ease.
Fendor did not.
Neither did Isamu.
The cold slowed every movement.
Fendor flexed his fingers.
“This place is unpleasant.”
Nethnarel glanced at him.
“You say that everywhere.”
“I have been consistently correct.”
The cavern widened.
Ahead, an immense shell of frozen water formed a dome around a raised altar.
It was not ordinary ice.
The wall curved overhead like a frozen wave caught in the instant before breaking.
Through it they could see more preserved creatures.
Fish.
Tentacles.
Bones.
Dark shapes suspended in blue.
There were two gaps through which they might enter.
Fendor moved toward the right.
Hexen took the left.
The others spread behind them.
No one saw the thing descend.
Almost no one.
Fendor heard the scrape.
Turned.
The creature dropped from the rock above him.
It possessed something of a dragon’s shape but not enough to call it one. Its body was narrow and armored. Limbs folded strangely beneath it. A long weapon—some fusion of bow and frozen bone—was already aimed.
Ice streaked toward Fendor.
He moved.
One missile shattered where his head had been.
A second cut through his cloak.
The third missed entirely.
The creature hissed.
Fendor drew his sword.
The Vorpal Longsword sang as it cleared the sheath.
The attacker had chosen the wrong elf.
Fendor closed the distance.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Then faster.
He committed fully, driving forward with the explosive precision he usually reserved for emergencies.
Six cuts in a span so short the creature had barely begun to raise its weapon.
The last strike passed through its chest.
It collapsed.
Fendor looked down at it.
“You should have stayed invisible.”
Isamu pointed upward.
“There is another.”
A second shape moved among the rocks.
This one did not surprise them.
The frozen cavern woke.
One creature became several.
They moved through rock and ice with disturbing ease, using height and concealment to loose frozen missiles at the heroes below.
Isamu was first to reach one.
He moved through the cold at half his usual speed and still seemed fast.
Something dark uncoiled from his hand.
The demon whip.
The weapon they had taken from the balor.
Until now it had been no more than a captured relic.
In Isamu’s hand, it became alive.
The lash snapped across the cold.
It struck the creature high on the rocks and wrapped briefly around one arm before releasing.
Isamu followed with his other hand.
Then his feet.
Discipline first.
Demonic weapon second.
The contrast was unsettling.
Kaylor noticed.
He filed the thought away.
There were too many enemies to judge anyone’s choices yet.
Fendor put away the sword once distance opened.
The Oathbow came free.
He loosed three arrows in quick succession.
The creature Isamu had wounded took them all.
It vanished from the ledge in a burst of ice and dark blood.
“That,” Fendor said, “is better.”
The air near the central altar shimmered.
Nethnarel saw it first.
Something was appearing inside the frozen dome.
Large.
Three shapes where one head should have been.
The magic hiding it weakened.
The creature stepped into view.
It was massive.
Heavy-bodied.
Reptilian.
Three long necks rose from a single torso, each ending in a snarling head.
Not a hydra.
Not quite.
Something close enough to make the distinction unimportant.
One head looked at Kaylor.
Another at Hexen.
The third fixed upon Nethnarel.
Nethnarel pointed.
Death answered.
The spell crossed the cavern without light.
Without flame.
Without sound.
One of the creature’s heads shriveled.
Skin tightened over bone.
The neck collapsed inward.
Then the dead head tore free and struck the ice.
The remaining two screamed.
Everyone stared at Nethnarel.
She lowered her hand.
“What?”
The monster charged.
It regenerated.
That was the problem.
Not the head.
That remained dead.
But cuts began closing almost as soon as the heroes made them.
Kaylor’s axe opened the beast.
Flesh knitted behind the blade.
Arrows pierced it.
Muscle tightened around the shafts.
Hexen burned it.
The wounds blackened, then slowly repaired.
“Enough.”
Kaylor stepped forward.
The creature struck at him.
One head caught his shoulder.
The other snapped past his face.
Kaylor twisted free.
Then pointed.
“Leave.”
The word carried power.
The monster vanished.
Not with smoke.
Not with fire.
One instant there.
The next absent.
Silence filled the cavern.
Isamu looked at the empty space.
“Dead?”
“No.”
Kaylor kept his hand raised.
“Gone.”
“For how long?”
“A minute.”
Fendor stared at him.
“You sent it away for a minute?”
“Yes.”
“And then it returns.”
“Yes.”
Hexen smiled.
“Oh.”
Kaylor looked at him.
“What?”
“We know where.”
Everyone understood at once.
Nethnarel already had both hands raised.
Fire appeared in a line across the place where the monster had vanished.
Not loose flame.
A wall.
It curved around the expected point of return, burning hot enough to turn nearby ice instantly to steam.
Hexen moved closer.
Still wearing the body of living flame he had taken during the earlier fighting, he positioned himself beside the gap.
Isamu took the opposite side.
Fendor selected the best line of sight.
Kaylor readied his axe.
Then they waited.
Nothing in the history of heroism had prepared them for the peculiar experience of arranging an ambush for a monster that was contractually obligated by magic to reappear in a specific location.
Fendor checked his grip.
“How long?”
“Not yet.”
Isamu rolled one shoulder.
“How long?”
“Not yet.”
Hexen’s fire hissed against the ice.
Nethnarel concentrated.
Kaylor counted in silence.
Then—
The creature returned.
Into hell.
The Wall of Fire engulfed it instantly.
Hexen’s elemental body struck from behind.
Kaylor attacked from the front.
Isamu hit the creature before it understood where it was.
Once.
Twice.
A third strike.
The beast fought through the flames.
Isamu struck again.
This time the blow landed precisely.
The creature froze.
Not from cold.
From interruption.
Body and will disconnected for one precious instant.
“Now.”
Fendor fired.
Arrows buried themselves in the immobilized beast.
Kaylor struck.
Hexen burned.
Nethnarel held the wall.
The creature began to recover.
Isamu hit it again.
The interruption returned.
Fendor changed weapons.
The Vorpal Longsword came free as he advanced.
He entered the fire-lit space and struck.
The monster’s remaining strength failed.
Its body crashed onto the frozen floor.
For several moments they did nothing.
Everyone had learned the same lesson.
Fendor watched the wounds.
No regeneration.
Hexen’s fire still burned around the corpse.
Nethnarel released the Wall.
Steam rolled across the cavern.
The monster remained dead.
“Now,” Fendor said, “it is dead.”
Isamu looked down at it.
“You sound disappointed.”
“I prefer certainty.”
“That is not what you said about the Gate.”
Fendor decided not to answer.
The second page appeared above the altar.
Gold and silver notes shimmered across ancient parchment.
Nethnarel caught it before it could fall.
The frozen chamber seemed to exhale.
A return circle formed in the ice.
Beside the dead guardian lay something else.
A plain-looking bag.
Kaylor eyed it.
“That seems suspicious.”
Isamu picked it up.
“It is empty.”
Nethnarel looked inside.
The interior continued much farther than the exterior permitted.
Fendor laughed.
“Oh.”
Kaylor looked at him.
“What?”
“We have another Bag of Holding.”
For a moment no one said anything.
The last one had vanished with Leonidas.
So had Pete.
So had the Demon Dice.
The memory passed through them.
Then Isamu closed the bag.
“I will carry it.”
Fendor nodded.
“You collect everything anyway.”
“That is not true.”
Everyone looked at him.
Isamu adjusted the bag over one shoulder.
“It is mostly true.”
They stepped into the return circle.
The beaten harp was still waiting.
Its eyes narrowed when Nethnarel approached.
“You again.”
Nethnarel smiled.
“You missed me.”
A sour chord answered.
The others continued toward the center.
The primary harp sensed the page before they reached it.
Its strings began moving.
The music stand appeared.
The great book opened.
This time, when the second page lifted from Nethnarel’s hand, the composition did not merely resume where it had ended.
It expanded.
The first page had restored melody.
The second restored something beneath it.
Memory.
Weight.
A theme returning after a long absence.
Fendor listened.
The same title flickered again through his imperfect understanding.
The ancient hero.
The Ancient One.
He still could not tell which.
But the music itself seemed older than either possibility.
The page settled into the torn binding.
The book closed.
The harp played.
And now the song was almost complete.
Almost.
One absence remained inside it.
One place where the melody reached outward and found nothing waiting.
The harp stopped.
Its demonic face smiled.
Then it began the final phrase.
Runes ignited at the center of the platform.
Violet light rose.
A third portal opened.
No distant guardian stood beside this one.
No rival harp.
No visible trial.
Only darkness beyond the threshold and the suggestion of a rocky world floating somewhere inside it.
Kaylor looked at the others.
They had crossed the Astral Plane.
Fought for one page.
Sung for another road.
Bled beneath frozen ice for the second.
Somewhere beyond this final Gate lay the last fragment of the song.
And beyond that—
The Crystal City.
Grazim.
Avernus.
The Lord of Swarms.
Kaylor stepped toward the portal.
Nethnarel caught his arm.
He looked back.
She nodded toward the others.
Five.
Still five.
Kaylor understood.
They gathered.
No one entered alone.
Then the heroes crossed together.