The guides left them at the mouth of the chamber.
Kaylor noticed that first.
The people of the City of Glass had been willing to show them the way. They had crossed the strange avenues of the Astral Plane with the five heroes, passing beyond the golden protection of the city and into regions where gravity became suggestion again and distance obeyed rules Kaylor had stopped pretending to understand.
But when the road reached the ancient place, the guides stopped.
None offered to accompany them farther.
Ahead, darkness waited inside walls of crystal.
Not the brilliant crystal from which the city had been built.
This stone swallowed light.
Great black facets rose on either side of the passage, reflecting distorted fragments of the heroes as they passed. A dozen Kaylors moved in the walls. Nethnarel’s horns multiplied into a forest of silhouettes. Fendor appeared and disappeared between planes of glass. Hexen’s reflection stretched until it no longer looked human.
Isamu seemed largely unconcerned.
He walked first.
“Of course you do,” Fendor said.
Isamu looked back.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
They had promised the rulers of the City of Glass that they would return in hours rather than days.
Kaylor intended to keep that promise.
More importantly, Grazim did not have days.
The image from the Book of Knowledge returned whenever Kaylor allowed himself a moment of silence: a halfling laid upon a black altar beneath the red skies of Avernus, insects battering themselves against the radiant shield of the Naked Goddess.
Alive.
For now.
Everything they had done since discovering the Book of Knowledge had been measured against those two words.
For now.
They had found the City of Glass.
They had found the Gate to the first Hell.
They had somehow managed not to turn a disastrous confrontation with the city’s rulers into a massacre.
And now the impossible plan had acquired another piece.
A blank vessel.
A crystal capable of holding a soul powerful enough to replace the gold dragon imprisoned at the heart of the city.
All they had to do was find it.
Kaylor looked into the black chamber.
That was usually the part where things went wrong.
The corridor widened.
The heroes entered an enormous cavern formed almost entirely from dark crystal. The walls rose beyond the reach of their light. The floor beneath their boots was smooth in places and jagged in others, as though the chamber had grown rather than been carved.
No dust lay upon it.
No bones.
No abandoned weapons.
No evidence that anyone had entered in centuries.
The silence had the quality of something preserved.
Nethnarel touched one of the walls.
Cold traveled through her fingertips.
“Natural?”
Hexen studied the surface beside her.
“I don’t know.”
“That is reassuring.”
“It is crystal.”
“I had reached that conclusion.”
Fendor glanced between them.
“Perhaps we should concentrate on finding the extremely valuable magical object we came here to steal.”
“We are not stealing it,” Kaylor said.
“Recover.”
“Better.”
Isamu continued forward.
Kaylor watched him disappear around the first great formation of black crystal.
“Isamu.”
The monk stopped.
“What?”
“Stay where we can see you.”
Isamu looked around at the forest of reflective walls.
“That may be difficult.”
“Make an effort.”
Fendor smiled.
“He means wait until the rest of us are close enough to be attacked with you.”
“That makes more sense.”
They moved deeper.
Then the chamber spoke.
The voice came from ahead.
It was not loud.
It did not need to be.
The sound seemed to originate in the crystal itself, resonating through wall and floor before entering their bodies through bone. It had the depth of a great horn and the harmonic quality of an instrument struck in a cathedral.
Words emerged inside the music.
“Many millennia have passed since travelers entered my chamber.”
Everyone stopped.
Kaylor’s hand moved toward the frost-rimed greataxe across his back.
The voice continued.
“Approach.”
Fendor sighed.
“No.”
Kaylor looked at him.
“No?”
“I am establishing my position before we discover what approach means.”
“Approach means approach.”
“It has never meant anything good.”
Isamu started walking.
Fendor watched him go.
“There. He can approach.”
The five followed.
The dark crystal opened around a broad central expanse.
Something waited there.
At first Kaylor mistook it for another formation growing from the floor. Then it moved.
The being stood perhaps twice the height of a man, though its posture made precise judgment difficult. Its body carried the suggestion of draconic ancestry without belonging to any dragon species Kaylor recognized. Long limbs ended in heavy claws. Plates of crystalline armor seemed to grow directly from its body. A narrow head rose upon a powerful neck, framed by ridges that caught the weak light and returned it in dark rainbows.
It was not dragonborn.
It was not a dragon.
It was something older than either comparison.
And despite the chamber’s age, there was nothing tired about it.
The creature watched them.
Kaylor stepped forward.
“We were sent here by the City of Glass.”
No response.
“We need one of the crystals that came from this place.”
The being’s head shifted slightly.
Kaylor tried again.
“Preferably without destroying anything.”
Behind him, Nethnarel made a quiet sound.
Kaylor glanced over his shoulder.
“What?”
“Nothing. I was appreciating the improvement.”
“I can be diplomatic.”
“Apparently.”
The guardian finally answered.
“It is not mine to determine whether you are worthy.”
The voice vibrated through the chamber.
Fendor folded his arms.
“That sounded promising until the last word.”
Kaylor ignored him.
“How do we prove it?”
The guardian raised one arm.
One claw pointed deeper into the crystalline cavern.
“Enter.”
A pause.
“Earn thy worthiness.”
Then the creature vanished.
Not faded.
Vanished.
One moment it stood before them.
The next the dark floor reflected only five heroes.
For several seconds, no one moved.
Kaylor stared at the empty place.
“I am becoming very tired of ancient beings giving me orders.”
“Then don’t go,” Isamu said.
Kaylor looked toward the passage the guardian had indicated.
“I didn’t say I wasn’t going.”
“That was my assumption.”
Fendor drew his bow.
“Worthiness normally involves violence.”
Hexen glanced toward him.
“What makes you say that?”
Fendor looked at him.
Hexen nodded.
“Fair.”
They entered.
The chamber narrowed again before opening into a second crystalline vault.
This one was brighter.
Light moved beneath the floor.
Not flame.
Not any illumination Nethnarel recognized.
Threads of pale color drifted inside the crystal itself, crossing and separating like luminous veins. They appeared beneath one foot and vanished beneath another, responding perhaps to movement—or perhaps merely creating the illusion that they did.
Isamu crouched.
The light changed direction beneath his hand.
He stood.
“Something is here.”
Fendor raised the Oathbow.
“Where?”
Isamu looked farther into the room.
“I don’t know.”
That was apparently invitation enough.
He walked forward.
One step.
Two.
The crystal beneath him erupted.
The creature rose through the floor without breaking it.
There was no crack.
No shower of stone.
The solid surface simply became fluid around an enormous form as it spiraled upward in a column of refracted light.
Isamu had just enough time to turn.
The blast caught him directly.
A ray of sparkling force struck the monk with the violence of a siege engine.
He disappeared from beside Kaylor.
A heartbeat later he hit the floor nearly sixty feet away, rolled once and came back to his feet.
Silence.
Fendor looked toward him.
“Are you alive?”
Isamu straightened.
“Yes.”
“Good.”
The creature finished emerging.
It was magnificent.
And furious.
Its body combined draconic lines with something crystalline and unnatural. Great limbs formed from translucent material through which stars seemed to shine. A broad head turned toward the heroes. Light moved beneath its surface like lightning trapped under ice.
The floor had not opened to release it.
The creature belonged to the floor.
Kaylor drew the axe.
“Is this the guardian?”
Nethnarel shook her head.
“No.”
The answer came from somewhere deeper than scholarship.
She could feel the difference.
The being they had spoken with had been a keeper.
A herald.
This was the test.
The creature’s head turned toward Isamu.
Isamu adjusted his grip on the demonic whip.
Apparently being hurled across the chamber had offended him.
He moved.
The monk crossed the distance with impossible speed.
One moment he stood where the blast had thrown him.
The next he was running along the crystalline floor, body leaning forward as discipline and ki carried him faster than ordinary muscle could manage.
The black whip uncoiled.
Isamu had carried it since the fire chamber.
Every time Kaylor saw the weapon in the monk’s hand, something about the image remained wrong.
Isamu had always fought with economy.
Hands.
Feet.
A blade when necessary.
No wasted movement.
No unnecessary flourish.
The demonic weapon was the opposite.
It wanted attention.
The lash cracked across the chamber.
It wrapped briefly against the Crystal Star’s body, dark against luminous stone.
Isamu released.
Stepped inside.
Struck with his other hand.
Then he was moving again, refusing to remain where the creature could answer.
Fendor had already drawn the Vorpal Longsword.
Kaylor noticed.
“You have a bow.”
“I know.”
“It is very good.”
“I know.”
“Then why are you running toward it?”
Fendor passed him.
“Because I want to cut it.”
Kaylor considered the answer.
“Fair.”
The elf closed.
The Vorpal blade struck the crystalline creature and produced a ringing sound that traveled through the cavern.
Fendor struck again.
And again.
The Crystal Star recoiled, not from fear but from surprise.
That did not last.
It inhaled.
Hexen saw the light gathering inside its throat.
“Move.”
He threw one hand outward.
Darkness swallowed the creature.
The spell erupted into a sphere so absolute that the Crystal Star disappeared inside it. Pale reflections vanished from the nearby walls. The luminous floor became black beneath the magical void.
Fendor was somewhere inside.
Kaylor heard him swear.
“That includes me!”
“You’re welcome,” Hexen called.
The answer came as winter.
A cone of killing cold exploded from the darkness.
Frost raced over the chamber floor.
Crystal screamed as temperature changed too quickly.
Hexen took the center of the blast.
The breath tore through him hard enough to drive him backward, ice forming across his clothing and hair.
His concentration wavered.
For one instant the Darkness shuddered.
Then held.
Hexen forced himself upright.
“Cold,” he said.
Nethnarel stared at him.
“Insightful.”
The creature erupted from the edge of the Darkness.
Its jaws closed around Fendor.
The elf twisted.
Teeth scraped armor and flesh.
One claw followed.
Then another.
Fendor was thrown sideways.
He hit the floor, rolled and came up with the Vorpal Longsword still in his hand.
Blood marked one side of his armor.
Kaylor started toward him.
Fendor pointed the sword at the creature.
“Do not.”
“You’re bleeding.”
“I noticed.”
The Crystal Star lunged.
Fendor met it.
Steel rang against crystal.
Kaylor came from the opposite side.
The frost-rimed axe struck the creature’s flank.
This time the reaction was different.
Cold spread outward from the blade.
The Crystal Star recoiled.
Kaylor felt resistance beneath the axe.
Then yielding.
It could be hurt.
More importantly, it could be hurt by cold.
He smiled.
The creature looked at him.
“You like that?”
He struck again.
Power followed the axe.
Not the clean radiance he remembered from the life before Craven.
That certainty had died.
What answered Kaylor now was harder.
Darker.
It carried no promise that he was righteous merely because he wielded it.
He preferred that.
The force entered the wound.
The Crystal Star staggered.
Kaylor stepped after it.
“Good.”
Something appeared beside him.
Small.
Four feet tall at most.
Kaylor turned.
The creature resembled the greater being only in the loosest sense. Draconic features sat upon a body too small for them. Wings or fins of crystal shifted behind its shoulders. Its eyes shone with prismatic light.
For the briefest instant, Kaylor thought of Pete.
If Pete had been considerably larger, draconic and inclined to malicious magic.
The creature looked at him.
Something pressed against Kaylor’s mind.
He recognized the sensation immediately.
Control.
Not Craven’s voice.
Not the ghost’s stolen memories.
Not the commands of the guardian he had fought among the Astral platforms.
But the intention was the same.
Yield.
Kaylor’s anger answered before thought did.
No.
The pressure broke.
The little creature opened its mouth.
A spray of glittering light washed across Kaylor’s face.
Again the magic searched for a weakness.
Again it found none.
Kaylor stared at the creature.
“Stop doing that.”
It seemed genuinely surprised.
Across the chamber, Nethnarel lifted both hands.
The Rings of Fire ignited around her wrists.
Then she hesitated.
The Crystal Star had risen from refracted light.
It breathed cold.
Perhaps fire would—
She gathered more.
Not the simple bolts the rings had taught her to remember.
Something larger.
Older.
Fire answered from every direction.
The air above the creature tore open.
Flame descended in a storm.
Not one blast.
Many.
Sheets of fire filled the space around the Crystal Star. The light beneath the dark walls turned orange. Heat rolled across the chamber hard enough to send Fendor retreating several steps.
For an instant, the creature disappeared.
Nethnarel lowered her hands.
The flames cleared.
The Crystal Star remained standing.
Its body glowed.
Not damaged.
Glowing.
The fire moved across its crystalline plates like sunlight through stained glass.
The creature lifted its head.
If a being made largely from crystal could look pleased, it did.
Nethnarel stared at it.
“Oh.”
Fendor backed toward her.
“That is not the response we wanted.”
“No.”
“It enjoyed that.”
“I noticed.”
“You have other magic?”
Nethnarel looked offended.
“I have considerable other magic.”
“Excellent.”
The Crystal Star roared.
Kaylor charged.
The frost axe struck once.
The creature turned.
The Dancing Sword tore free and attacked from the other side.
Kaylor followed it.
The Crystal Star’s claws scraped across an image of the dragonborn that vanished beneath the impact.
His Cloak of Displacement rippled.
The real Kaylor was already somewhere else.
The axe came down.
Cold spread through the creature again.
This time the blow carried enough force to buckle one of its forelimbs.
Kaylor did not let it recover.
Another strike.
Then another.
The creature’s body rang like a struck bell.
Behind him, Fendor changed pace.
The elf stepped away.
Not retreat.
Distance.
His sword returned to its sheath.
The Oathbow came free.
Kaylor saw it.
“Finally.”
Fendor ignored him.
The first arrow struck.
Then the second.
Then Fendor stopped pacing himself.
He drew faster.
The bow sang.
Arrow after arrow crossed the chamber.
One deflected from a crystalline plate.
The next entered a seam beside it.
Another struck the neck.
Another sank near one shoulder.
Five attacks landed in the space another archer might have required for one.
The Crystal Star turned toward him.
Fendor already had another arrow ready.
“Come closer if you’d like.”
It did.
Fendor’s expression changed.
“That was not a request.”
Hexen moved with it.
Darkness rolled across the chamber as he repositioned, keeping the creature inside the sphere whenever he could. From within it came the sounds of impact, steel and the Crystal Star’s frustrated cries.
Then Hexen entered his own spell.
Kaylor could not see what happened.
None of them could.
That, apparently, was Hexen’s intention.
A heavy impact rang from the darkness.
Then another.
Something struck the floor.
The entire chamber shook.
Isamu sprinted toward the black sphere.
Nethnarel caught his arm.
“You can see in there?”
“No.”
“Then why—”
A roar cut her off.
The Darkness collapsed.
Light returned.
Hexen stood near the Crystal Star.
The creature was badly damaged.
Cracks webbed across its luminous body. One side had partially collapsed. Fendor’s arrows remained buried in several seams. Frost filled others where Kaylor’s axe had struck.
Hexen’s weapon came around again.
The blow landed.
For one heartbeat, the Crystal Star remained upright.
The smaller draconic creature beside Kaylor flickered.
Once.
Twice.
Then disappeared.
The Crystal Star lowered its head.
Light escaped through the cracks.
Its front legs failed.
The creature struck the crystalline floor.
The sound went on for a long time.
No one moved.
Kaylor held the axe ready.
Fendor kept the Oathbow drawn.
Nethnarel watched for fire.
Isamu watched the floor.
Hexen stood closest to the fallen creature.
“Dead?” Kaylor asked.
Hexen looked down.
“I think so.”
Fendor did not lower the bow.
“You thought the book was safe.”
“I never said that.”
“You touched it.”
“That is not the same thing.”
The Crystal Star began to crack.
Everyone backed away.
Great fractures traveled through its body.
Light spilled from them.
Then the creature sank.
Not collapsed.
Sank.
The crystalline floor accepted it.
Limbs disappeared first.
Then the broad torso.
The great head remained for several seconds, becoming increasingly translucent as the chamber reclaimed it.
Nethnarel moved.
She reached the body just before it vanished.
Her hand closed around one of the smaller crystalline claws at the edge of a forelimb.
She pulled.
The piece broke free with a sharp crack.
The rest of the creature disappeared beneath the floor.
Nethnarel stood holding the fragment.
Fendor looked at it.
“Why?”
She examined the dark, translucent talon.
“Because everything we nearly die fighting eventually becomes valuable to someone.”
Fendor considered.
“That is disturbingly close to Hexen’s philosophy.”
Hexen looked over.
“I heard that.”
The musical voice returned.
“You have been judged.”
The heroes turned.
The herald stood where the Crystal Star had first appeared.
It—or she, Kaylor decided now, though the being’s form remained only distantly mortal—seemed untouched by the battle.
No weapon.
No anger.
No disappointment.
Only the same ancient composure.
Kaylor rested the axe against one shoulder.
“And?”
The herald raised both hands.
“Worthy.”
Something appeared between them.
Everyone forgot the fight.
The crystal was almost perfectly clear.
That made it difficult to see at first.
Only the facets revealed its edges, catching the strange light from the chamber and splitting it into pale rainbows.
It was enormous for a gemstone.
Roughly the size of a large melon.
Perhaps larger.
No clouding existed within it.
No flaw.
No captured light.
Nothing moved in its depths.
Blank.
Waiting.
The vessel.
Nethnarel stepped closer.
She could feel magic within it.
Not a spell.
Potential.
The same way an empty page was not truly nothing.
It was a place where something could be written.
Kaylor looked at the crystal and thought of the Lord of Swarms.
A being whose prison beneath the Grand Library had required ancient runes, a sealed sarcophagus and the power of a god.
They intended to put that inside this.
Fendor seemed to reach the same conclusion.
“That does not look large enough.”
“Neither did the other one,” Nethnarel said.
“The other one contains a dragon.”
“Yes.”
Fendor frowned.
“I am aware.”
Isamu had stopped beside them.
His attention was not on the magic.
It was on the gemstone itself.
He tilted his head.
“What?”
Kaylor asked.
Isamu looked at him.
“That is worth a lot.”
Fendor laughed.
Nethnarel did not.
She was beginning to understand the same thing.
Not hundreds of gold pieces.
Not thousands.
The heroes had hauled treasure from ruined temples and dead kingdoms. They had walked away from the Shattered Mirror carrying wealth that would have changed the fortunes of ordinary families for generations.
This was different.
There were kingdoms that could not purchase it.
Perhaps nations.
Even without whatever ancient function the stone possessed, the purity alone made ordinary measures ridiculous.
Kaylor watched Isamu.
“No.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were thinking.”
Fendor nodded.
“He does that with his hands.”
Isamu looked back at the crystal.
“We could retire.”
Nethnarel smiled.
“We have died before.”
“Some of us,” Kaylor said.
“That seems like an argument for retirement.”
Hexen stepped toward the herald.
“We need the crystal.”
The ancient being extended it.
No demand.
No further test.
No warning.
Hexen accepted the weight carefully.
The stone looked strange in mortal hands.
Too perfect.
Too clear.
A prison without a prisoner.
Kaylor looked at the herald.
“What was that creature?”
“The Crystal Star.”
The words resonated through the chamber.
Kaylor glanced toward the place where it had disappeared.
“And you?”
No answer.
The herald’s purpose, apparently, did not include autobiography.
Nethnarel lifted the crystalline claw she had broken free.
The herald showed no concern.
Fendor lowered his bow at last.
“So this has happened before.”
The being looked toward him.
“Long ago.”
“The people of the city defeated the Crystal Star?”
“Those who were worthy came.”
“And took another vessel.”
“Yes.”
“The one powering the city now?”
The herald did not answer.
Perhaps she did not know.
Perhaps the question belonged beyond the limit of whatever ancient duty held her here.
Kaylor stared at her.
“Do you know what they put in it?”
Nothing.
He expected as much.
The City of Glass had survived for generations beneath the strength of a soul its own rulers had not understood.
Whoever had recovered the original crystal from this chamber had taken knowledge with them that had not survived.
Or had deliberately hidden it.
A gold dragon.
One of the first.
Sister to Scourge Firebreath.
Killed by Tiamat.
Reduced to power for a city whose inhabitants no longer even knew her name.
Kaylor felt anger trying to find somewhere to settle.
There would be time for that later.
First Grazim.
Then the Lord of Swarms.
Then the dragon.
Everything had become a chain.
Break one link and the rest failed.
The herald began to fade.
“Wait,” Kaylor said.
The being paused.
“When we use this—if we use it to hold something—can it escape?”
The dark eyes regarded him.
No answer came.
Kaylor’s jaw tightened.
“Of course.”
The herald vanished.
Fendor looked toward him.
“You expected instructions?”
“I expected something.”
“We received a gemstone worth more money than we could spend in several lifetimes.”
“And no instructions.”
“That is still above average.”
Hexen shifted the crystal in his arms.
“Can we leave?”
No one argued.
They turned back.
The chamber seemed different now.
Not safer.
Merely finished with them.
The luminous threads beneath the floor no longer followed their movement. The black walls reflected five battered figures returning through the ancient cavern.
Five.
Kaylor still noticed.
Every time.
He remembered how Grazim would have reacted to Isamu being hurled across the chamber.
First healing.
Then criticism.
Possibly in the opposite order.
He remembered the halfling trying to maintain dignity beneath armor originally made for a larger man after his reincarnation.
Remembered the warhammer.
The shield.
The voice from somewhere below everyone else’s shoulders insisting that perhaps, for once, they might consider not touching the obviously cursed object.
Grazim would have hated the Grand Library.
He would have been right.
Kaylor touched the torn edge of his armor.
“We have it.”
Nethnarel walked beside him.
“Yes.”
“So we go back.”
“Yes.”
“They prepare it.”
“That is what they said.”
“And then we take it through the Gate.”
Nethnarel looked toward him.
“To Avernus.”
Kaylor nodded.
No uncertainty.
No hesitation.
The Crystal City might have needed their help.
The gold dragon deserved freedom.
Scourge Firebreath still threatened Oxland and everything beyond it.
But beneath all of that was something simpler.
Grazim was waiting.
Kaylor had failed too many people already.
Not this one.
The dark chamber ended.
Astral light returned.
Their guides—or perhaps replacements sent when the heroes failed to return immediately—waited beyond the entrance.
None appeared surprised to see them.
One looked toward the clear crystal in Hexen’s arms.
Then bowed.
Apparently that was enough.
The journey back required no trials.
No roaming monsters.
No demonic harps.
No frozen caverns.
The guides knew the route.
The five followed.
The City of Glass eventually appeared against the Astral dark.
Golden light curved over it in a vast protective shell.
From a distance it looked peaceful.
Safe.
A jewel floating among stars.
Kaylor could see the central citadel.
Somewhere inside it, far above the streets, the imprisoned gold dragon still turned within her ancient crystal.
The new vessel in Hexen’s arms was empty.
For now.
Soon the city’s mages would prepare it to receive a soul.
Then the heroes would carry it into Hell.
Kaylor looked toward the distant district where they had found the Gate to Avernus.
They had the vessel.
They had the road.
And somewhere beyond it, the Lord of Swarms possessed something Kaylor intended to take back.
Grazim Von.
The five heroes crossed beneath the golden shield and returned to the City of Glass.
They had promised hours.
Not days.
They had kept their promise.
Now the city had to keep its own.