The Crystal City had looked impossible from a distance.
From inside it, it was stranger still.
Kaylor had expected something cold.
A city carved from crystal should have felt like a monument, he thought. Something beautiful but lifeless. Towers that existed to be admired rather than inhabited.
Instead, the streets were crowded.
Bridges of translucent stone crossed canals of violet light. Buildings rose in layers, some so clear that Kaylor could see figures moving through chambers several stories above him. Strange lamps glowed without flame. Crystal arches bent over avenues wide enough for giants.
And everywhere there were people.
If people was broad enough a word.
A horned devil wearing a merchant’s robes argued amiably with a pale, long-limbed creature whose face seemed almost skeletal. Two armored warriors with gray skin walked past an undead thing carrying a stack of books. Winged figures crossed overhead. Creatures Kaylor would once have attacked on sight passed within arm’s reach and barely glanced at him.
Nothing attacked.
That was almost more unsettling.
Fendor watched a red-skinned fiend disappear into a crowded shop.
“I preferred the Astral Plane when everything tried to kill us.”
Isamu looked toward him.
“Why?”
“You knew where you stood.”
Hexen nodded toward Kaylor.
“He knows where he stands.”
Kaylor ignored them.
He was staring at the sky.
Or what passed for one.
Above the city, the Astral Plane stretched forever—violet emptiness, distant stars and drifting mountains of stone. Yet none of its impossible physics seemed to function within the city itself.
They had crossed the Astral void by willing themselves forward.
Here, when Isamu experimentally leaned off a bridge and concentrated, nothing happened.
He remained subject to gravity.
Nethnarel looked upward.
“The crystal.”
They could no longer see the golden jewel itself.
From their arrival platform, distance and refracted light had made the source above the great central pyramid seem like a brilliant gem suspended over the city.
From below, its true arrangement was clearer.
The crystal was hidden somewhere inside the highest reaches of the central citadel.
Only its power escaped.
A column of yellow-gold energy rose from the spire, spread outward and curved over the entire metropolis.
A shield.
Beyond it, fragments of Astral debris drifted toward the city and were subtly turned aside.
Within it, air moved.
Weight existed.
Up and down mattered.
The Crystal City had built a piece of the mortal world inside a plane where such rules had no obligation to exist.
And the soul of a dead gold dragon made all of it possible.
Kaylor watched children—or what he assumed were children—run across a nearby crystalline bridge.
The Book of Knowledge had made the problem sound simple.
Remove one soul.
Replace it with another.
Now he understood what those words meant.
If they took the gold dragon without a replacement, this city might die.
Not metaphorically.
The shield above them could fail.
The Astral Plane would reclaim everything.
Thousands of lives depended on the prisoner they had come to steal.
Nethnarel seemed to reach the same conclusion.
“We do this correctly.”
Kaylor looked at her.
“That was already the plan.”
“Yes.”
She watched a group of strangely dressed merchants cross the avenue.
“Now it matters more.”
They found a tavern.
Of course they did.
The establishment had grown around an enormous awakened tree whose branches disappeared into the crystal ceiling. Bottles rested between roots thicker than Kaylor’s waist. The ancient tree seemed to serve drinks through a collection of smaller animated limbs while patrons of a dozen races occupied tables around its trunk.
Fendor stopped inside the entrance.
“You found a tavern in the Astral Plane.”
Isamu looked pleased with himself.
“It was here.”
“That is not what I meant.”
Hexen approached the tree.
One of its branches turned toward him.
The druid regarded it.
The tree regarded the druid.
Neither said anything.
Nethnarel walked past them.
“I am not waiting for that conversation.”
They did not stay long.
Grazim made leisure impossible.
Every delay carried an invisible question with it.
Was the Naked Goddess still holding?
Was the light around Grazim’s altar still intact?
Were the swarms still outside it?
Or had something already changed while they fought for the harp’s pages?
Kaylor did not say any of it aloud.
He did not have to.
They left the tavern.
Before they approached the central citadel, Fendor stopped.
“The Gate.”
Kaylor turned.
“What?”
“We came here for Grazim.”
“I remember.”
“Then before we begin negotiating over the soul of an ancient dragon, perhaps we should confirm the road to Hell actually exists.”
That was difficult to argue with.
Fortunately, the Book of Knowledge had given them more than the name of the city.
It had shown the Gate’s location.
They crossed several elevated streets until the shape became recognizable: a templelike structure near the city's upper quarter, far from the central pyramid.
The entrance bore planar symbols Nethnarel recognized immediately.
She studied them.
“This is it.”
“To Avernus?” Kaylor asked.
“To the first Hell.”
Kaylor stood before the structure.
Somewhere beyond that door—or whatever mechanism lay within it—was the realm where Grazim had been taken.
His instinct was immediate.
Go now.
Find him.
Deal with everything else afterward.
But the Book of Knowledge had connected all of it.
Grazim.
The Lord of Swarms.
The Crystal City.
The gold dragon.
Scourge Firebreath.
They could rush into Avernus and perhaps rescue their friend.
Then return to a dragon they still had no hope of defeating.
Or they could solve both problems.
Kaylor hated plans that required patience.
“We know where it is,” Nethnarel said.
He nodded.
“We come back.”
Then the five heroes turned toward the center of the city.
The citadel rose from the great pyramid like a spear of translucent stone.
The closer they came, the more Kaylor understood that it was not simply a palace.
It was government.
Temple.
Fortress.
Machine.
The golden power above flowed through its architecture before spreading across the city.
Gaunt warriors guarded the entrance.
They were tall and thin, with gray skin stretched tightly over angular faces. Their armor was severe rather than ornamental. Long blades rested at their sides.
One stepped forward.
When it spoke, Kaylor heard the words in his own language.
More than that.
The cadence was familiar.
The inflection.
The rhythm.
It sounded almost as though the creature had learned speech wherever Kaylor had.
“Travelers. How may we serve you?”
Isamu looked at the others.
“Hugs.”
Fendor closed his eyes.
The warrior stared at Isamu.
Something that might have been amusement touched its face.
“We heard this was an excellent place for them,” Isamu continued.
Nethnarel stepped between them.
“We need to speak with whoever understands the crystal powering your city.”
The humor vanished.
The warrior did not appear alarmed.
But its attention sharpened.
For a moment it stood completely still.
No words.
No gesture.
Kaylor had the odd impression that a conversation was occurring anyway.
Then the guard stepped aside.
“You may enter.”
They were escorted upward.
The audience chamber was enormous.
Rows of crystal columns rose into darkness overhead. Warriors occupied positions along the edges of the hall. Officials, petitioners and creatures wearing clothing Kaylor could not place moved quietly through the lower floor.
At the far end stood an elevated dais.
Someone sat upon it.
Gray hair.
Thin frame.
A face difficult to read at that distance.
Others stood around the court.
Two figures were leaving the dais as the heroes approached, moving past them without comment.
One was a woman.
Fendor noticed her.
Then forgot her.
For a moment.
A floating courtier drifted forward.
He resembled the warriors at the gates, though his robes and bearing suggested wizard rather than soldier.
“Why have you come before this court?”
Kaylor stepped forward.
“We have a problem that may become yours.”
Nethnarel glanced at him.
Kaylor continued.
“Our world is threatened by a dragon called Scourge Firebreath.”
No reaction.
“We have learned there is a way to make him vulnerable. The power we need is contained within the crystal that protects your city.”
That caused a reaction.
Small.
But unmistakable.
Several warriors shifted their attention.
Kaylor raised one hand.
“We are not asking you to surrender your protection.”
Nethnarel took over.
“We know the crystal powers the shield. We want to replace what is inside it with another source of equal power.”
Hexen added, “Then take the existing crystal—or at least the essence within it.”
The floating courtier watched them.
“What source?”
That was more difficult.
Kaylor considered how much to reveal.
“The essence of an ancient being.”
The courtier remained silent.
Then magic touched them.
Hexen felt it.
No light.
No gesture he could see.
Just the sensation of something passing across his thoughts like fingers drawn over a locked door.
He resisted instinctively.
His head turned.
The woman who had passed them moments earlier stood behind the party.
Watching.
Hexen leaned toward Kaylor.
“She cast something.”
Kaylor did not look around.
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
“On us?”
“Yes.”
Fendor had begun watching her too.
Unlike the others, he was not studying her face.
He was watching her hands.
One finger moved.
Then another.
A tiny gesture.
Across the chamber, one of the guards shifted position.
Another gesture.
A courtier stepped backward.
Fendor’s eyes narrowed.
“The throne is not giving the orders.”
Kaylor looked at him.
Fendor nodded almost imperceptibly toward the woman.
“She is.”
Kaylor turned.
The woman met his eyes.
He looked back toward the dais.
“We came here peacefully,” he said, louder now. “And while we explain why, someone in this room is casting spells on us.”
The court stiffened.
The apparent ruler rose.
“No act of hostility has occurred.”
“I did not say hostility.”
Kaylor’s voice hardened.
“I said magic was used against us.”
The woman behind them began walking forward.
A larger warrior accompanied her.
Fendor watched the others in the chamber.
They reacted to her.
Not to the throne.
Now he was certain.
The woman stopped before him.
She did not address Kaylor.
She addressed Fendor.
“Does this breaker of oaths speak for you?”
The room changed.
Not visibly.
But Kaylor felt it.
Craven.
The temple.
The oath he had believed in.
The lies wrapped around every prayer he had spoken.
The moment the certainty he had built his entire life upon had collapsed beneath him.
He had been judged by priests.
By gods.
By himself.
He had no patience left for strangers joining the line.
Fendor answered first.
“Yes.”
The woman studied Kaylor.
“You place trust in one whose faith has fallen?”
Kaylor’s hand settled upon the haft of his axe.
He did not draw it.
“You have no right to judge me.”
Two guards moved.
Kaylor saw them from the corner of his eye.
“You do not know what I have lived through.”
The larger warrior stepped directly toward him.
“You will speak when you are addressed.”
Kaylor looked at him.
“No.”
The warrior stopped.
“I will speak,” Kaylor said, “when I choose.”
Steel whispered from scabbards.
Kaylor drew his axe.
The first blow was his.
Years later, if any of them argued about who began the fight, that fact would remain inconvenient.
Kaylor would insist the warriors had surrounded him with drawn swords.
They would insist he attacked.
Both would be correct enough.
His Dancing Sword leapt from his hand.
The blade swept toward the largest warrior.
It missed.
Kaylor followed with the frost-rimed axe.
The first strike landed.
Cold exploded across the warrior’s armor.
Kaylor called upon the darker divine power that still answered him and drove it through the wound.
He swung again.
The blow should have struck.
Instead, the warrior looked at him.
Simply looked.
Kaylor’s axe shifted by inches.
The blade passed harmlessly beside the creature.
Kaylor knew he had not missed.
The warrior had made him miss.
That irritated him considerably.
“We did not come here to fight,” Kaylor growled.
The warrior raised his sword.
“Yet here we are.”
Nethnarel reacted differently.
Darkness exploded around her.
One instant she stood among the others.
The next, a sphere of perfect black swallowed her and a portion of the chamber.
A guard moved toward the darkness.
Then stopped when he realized entering it would mean blindness.
Nethnarel moved within the black sphere, carrying it with her.
“Defensive,” her voice came from somewhere inside. “For now.”
Isamu set his feet.
Fendor had an arrow ready.
Hexen watched the entire room.
Too many guards.
Far too many.
Then one vanished.
A flash of planar magic.
He reappeared beside Kaylor.
The greatsword came down.
Kaylor’s cloak twisted his position.
The blade cut through an image.
Another warrior vanished.
Reappeared.
Struck.
This time the sword found Kaylor.
Blood darkened his armor.
The shifting images around him snapped back toward his true body.
Now they knew where he was.
Another warrior teleported.
Another.
Kaylor suddenly stood in the center of a tightening circle of blades.
He smiled.
Fendor saw it.
“Oh, that is not good.”
Kaylor lifted the axe.
Then the woman raised one hand.
The world disappeared.
Kaylor struck a table.
It broke.
That improved nothing.
He struck another.
That helped slightly.
The Crystal City was gone.
The Astral Plane was gone.
He stood inside the tavern from which their journey had begun—the last place their magic had anchored them before the Gate carried them between planes.
Or something like it.
Planar travel had become difficult to describe in ordinary language.
He could sense the others.
Not with him.
Not truly.
But echoes remained here, distant and unreachable, as though some part of them had never completely left the place where their journey began.
Kaylor did not care.
He was furious.
The woman had not teleported him across a room.
She had severed his connection to the Astral Plane.
Cut him out of the city.
Dismissed him.
Kaylor kicked over a chair.
“They want an Oathbreaker?”
He brought the axe down through the table.
“I’ll give them—”
He stopped.
There was no one there to hear him.
That somehow made it worse.
Back in the City of Glass, silence followed Kaylor’s disappearance.
The woman stepped from the edge of Nethnarel’s darkness.
Her voice expanded through the chamber.
“Your companion is gone.”
Five guards had weapons pointed toward Isamu.
More faced Fendor.
More surrounded Hexen.
The chamber contained enough armed warriors to turn the next few seconds into a massacre.
The woman looked toward the darkness.
“Do you wish to follow him?”
Isamu did not move.
Neither did Fendor.
Hexen slowly lowered his hands.
Nethnarel stood inside the magical darkness and thought about why they had come.
Grazim.
Not pride.
Not Kaylor’s temper.
Not this court.
Grazim.
They needed the Gate.
They needed the gold dragon.
They needed the city to survive long enough for any of that to matter.
Destroying the people who possessed the thing they needed was an exceptionally poor negotiation strategy.
“We need the crystal,” Fendor said quietly.
Hexen nodded.
“And if we kill them?”
“We probably do not get it.”
“Insightful.”
From inside the black sphere came Nethnarel’s amplified voice.
“We are trying to stop the Lord of Swarms.”
The court went still.
The woman’s attention sharpened.
Nethnarel continued.
“He is gaining strength on the first Hell. We have fought him. We have seen what he is doing. We are trying to prevent him from returning fully.”
The woman did not respond immediately.
Nethnarel added, “The darkness is protecting me. It is not an attack.”
A pause.
Then the woman waved one hand.
The guards eased back.
Not far.
Enough.
“I will listen.”
Nethnarel released the spell.
Darkness vanished.
She stood revealed in the center of the chamber, Rings of Fire glowing faintly around her wrists.
No weapon in her hands.
The woman approached.
She studied Nethnarel in a way that made the sorcerer uncomfortable.
“You are curious.”
“So I have been told.”
“No.”
The woman’s eyes narrowed.
“Difficult.”
Nethnarel understood.
“You cannot read me.”
Something almost like fascination entered the woman’s expression.
Nethnarel smiled.
“I have lived a complicated life.”
Fendor coughed.
“Two of them.”
Nethnarel glanced toward him.
“Thank you.”
Then she looked back at the woman.
“All of us have crossed time. We have lived before. Died. Returned. There are things about us even we do not completely understand.”
The woman’s attention shifted.
“The name you spoke.”
“Lord of Swarms.”
Another name passed quietly across the woman’s lips—something ancient, perhaps the being’s true name.
Recognition came slowly.
Then disbelief.
“That presence has not been felt here for thousands of years.”
“It has now,” Nethnarel said.
“You are certain?”
“We fought him.”
The woman waited.
So Nethnarel told her.
The prison beneath the Grand Library.
The sarcophagus.
The swarms.
The floating eyes.
The centipedes.
The insects thick enough to become walls.
The ancient containment.
The influence extending into the first Hell.
Grazim taken into the abandoned fortress there.
Nethnarel did not embellish.
She did not need to.
When she finished, the woman was no longer looking at the sorcerer as an intruder.
She was looking at her as a messenger carrying news she had hoped never to receive.
“He is returning,” the woman said.
“Yes.”
“And you intend to imprison him.”
“If we can.”
The woman looked toward the golden light filtering through the crystal architecture.
“And then place his essence into the heart of this city.”
Nethnarel nodded.
“In exchange for the soul already there.”
For the first time, the woman seemed uncertain.
“You know what is within our crystal?”
“You do not?”
The question landed harder than Nethnarel intended.
The woman turned toward the court.
No one answered.
Generations had lived beneath the shield.
Generations had depended upon its power.
They knew how to maintain it.
They knew where its magic came from.
But not what had been sacrificed to create it.
Nethnarel spoke carefully.
“It contains the soul of a gold dragon.”
Shock moved through the chamber.
Not fear.
Something closer to shame.
Hexen watched the woman.
“She was one of the first.”
The Book of Knowledge had shown them enough to understand the magnitude of the being imprisoned there.
Ancient beyond kingdoms.
Pure enough that even death had not erased what she was.
The woman looked upward.
For the first time since the heroes had entered, the Crystal City’s golden light seemed less beautiful.
“You intend to free her.”
“Yes.”
“And replace her with the Lord of Swarms.”
“If we can capture him.”
The woman was silent for a long time.
Then she nodded.
“There may be a way.”
The crystal currently protecting the city was not unique.
At least, the vessel was not.
Long ago, before anyone now living remembered the city’s founding, another crystal had been recovered from a chamber elsewhere upon the Astral Plane.
An ancient place.
A source.
A proving ground.
The records remained even though the people who had first entered it were gone.
“If you can recover another crystal,” the woman told them, “we can prepare it.”
“For what?” Hexen asked.
“To receive a soul.”
Nethnarel stared at her.
The entire chain connected at once.
A blank vessel.
Enchanted by the Crystal City.
Taken to Avernus.
Filled with the essence of the Lord of Swarms.
Returned here.
The old crystal removed.
The new one installed.
The city survives.
The gold dragon goes free.
And Scourge Firebreath loses the protection that made him nearly untouchable.
Fendor let out a slow breath.
“That is considerably better than destroying the city.”
Isamu nodded.
“It is.”
The woman looked toward the place where Kaylor had vanished.
“Your companion complicates matters.”
Nethnarel almost laughed.
“Yes.”
“Will he continue attacking my people?”
Hexen answered.
“Probably not.”
Fendor turned toward him.
“Excellent confidence.”
Hexen amended it.
“If we are there.”
The woman considered that.
“Will you take responsibility for him?”
Everyone looked at everyone else.
Fendor sighed.
“Yes.”
Isamu nodded.
Nethnarel did the same.
Hexen finally said, “Bring him back.”
Kaylor was midway through destroying his third piece of furniture when the world seized him.
The tavern vanished.
Crystal returned beneath his boots.
Warriors surrounded him.
Every sword was drawn.
Kaylor still held the axe.
For a single dangerous heartbeat, everyone waited.
He looked at the nearest guard.
The guard looked at him.
Kaylor tightened his grip.
“Kaylor.”
Nethnarel’s voice.
He turned.
She walked toward him slowly.
“We have an agreement.”
“With them?”
“With them.”
Kaylor looked past her to the woman.
“They threw me across planes.”
“You attacked their guards.”
“They drew weapons.”
“Kaylor.”
“They did.”
“I know.”
That stopped him.
Nethnarel came closer.
“We need them.”
Kaylor said nothing.
“We found a way to replace the crystal without destroying the city.”
That reached him.
“How?”
“We recover another vessel. They prepare it. We use it to trap the Lord of Swarms.”
Kaylor’s eyes narrowed.
“And the gold dragon?”
“Freed.”
“And Grazim?”
“The Gate is where the book said it was.”
Kaylor looked toward the distant wall as if he could somehow see through the city to the temple containing the planar road.
Nethnarel lowered her voice.
“We are closer.”
The axe remained in his hand.
One of the warriors shifted.
Kaylor noticed.
Nethnarel noticed Kaylor noticing.
“Do not.”
He looked at her.
“Because it is you,” he said, “I trust this.”
The distinction was deliberate.
Not them.
This.
Her.
The others.
His party.
Kaylor looked around the chamber.
“I do not trust them.”
The woman heard.
Her expression did not change.
Kaylor did not care.
“And I am tired,” he continued, “of being judged by people who know nothing about what happened to me.”
For a moment the ruined temple returned.
Craven’s face.
The lies.
The oath.
The gods who had allowed all of it to happen.
Then it was gone.
Kaylor shifted the axe to one hand.
He did not put it away.
“But I will stand down.”
Fendor exhaled.
“Progress.”
Kaylor glared at him.
Fendor smiled.
The woman gave them directions.
They would not need to wander the Astral Plane blindly. Guides from the city would take them to the ancient chamber where the first crystal had been recovered.
There was a guardian.
Of course there was.
No one living remembered exactly what the guardian was.
The records were thousands of years old.
The chamber had not been entered in generations.
Kaylor listened.
Then looked toward the golden light above.
“How long?”
“To reach it?” the woman asked.
“To recover the crystal.”
“That depends upon you.”
Kaylor disliked that answer.
Isamu seemed pleased with it.
Nethnarel adjusted the Rings of Fire around her wrists.
Hexen checked his staff.
Fendor settled the Oathbow across his shoulder.
Five heroes.
Still five.
Grazim was the reason they had crossed worlds.
But now they carried more than one life with them.
An entire city hung beneath the protection of a stolen soul.
A gold dragon waited inside a crystal.
Scourge Firebreath waited in their world.
And somewhere beyond the Gate to Avernus, insects still battered themselves against the light protecting their friend.
Kaylor turned toward the exit.
“We’ll be back.”
The woman watched him.
“When?”
Kaylor looked at the others.
“Hours.”
Then back at her.
“Not days.”
They left the court.
The people of the City of Glass watched the strangers pass.
Some knew what was at stake.
Most did not.
Above them, golden light continued to spread across the shield.
For thousands of years, the city had survived because one ancient soul remained imprisoned.
Now five strangers intended to change that.
All they needed first was another crystal.
And whatever had guarded it since the beginning of the city was still waiting.