The crystal was empty.
That should have made it simple.
Hexen watched the people of the City of Glass carry the vessel into the forge chamber with the reverence normally reserved for a holy relic. Two of them bore its weight between their hands while others walked ahead, speaking softly in a language the heroes did not understand.
The gem caught every light in the corridor.
Clear.
Perfect.
Waiting.
They had crossed the Astral Plane to find it. They had fought the Crystal Star for the right to possess it. The thing was worth more gold than any of them could sensibly imagine, and yet its value as a gemstone had already become irrelevant.
If the city's mages succeeded, that crystal would become a prison.
For the Lord of Swarms.
Then the gold dragon would be freed.
Then Scourge Firebreath could be made vulnerable.
Then—
Grazim.
Always Grazim.
Hexen followed the crystal into the chamber.
Malareth walked ahead of them.
They had finally learned the name of the woman who seemed to hold more power in the City of Glass than the figure who sat upon its throne. She offered little explanation of herself, but enough conversation during their return filled some of the blanks.
The city was not merely a settlement.
It was a refuge.
A haven built in the Astral Plane for creatures that might otherwise have been enemies anywhere else. Fiends walked streets beside the dead. Exiles shared markets with beings from worlds whose names had been lost. Whatever a traveler had been elsewhere mattered less here than what they did beneath the golden shield.
Obey the laws.
Do not prey upon the others.
Do not bring the endless wars of the planes inside.
For thousands of years, that had apparently been enough.
Kaylor had already nearly ruined it once.
Hexen was about to do considerably worse.
He had not told anyone.
Not yet.
The forge chamber occupied the highest interior level of the crystalline citadel. It was less a forge in any ordinary sense than a circular hollow built around a pit of white-gold radiance.
There was no anvil.
No hammer.
No coal.
The fire itself seemed magical, rising from channels cut through the crystal floor and twisting upward around a central platform. Six attendants took their places around it, each wearing loose robes instead of armor.
The blank crystal was placed within the light.
Immediately, its perfect transparency changed.
Threads appeared inside it.
At first they looked like flaws.
Then they began moving.
Nethnarel stepped nearer.
“That's the preparation?”
Malareth nodded.
“The vessel must be taught to receive what it will hold.”
Fendor frowned.
“You teach a crystal?”
“The word is imperfect.”
“So is our understanding.”
“Yes.”
Fendor accepted that with surprising grace.
Isamu circled the forge.
The Bag of Holding rested against his side. The demonic whip hung beside it, dark and motionless.
“Once a soul is inside,” he asked, “how difficult is it to remove?”
One of the attendants looked toward Malareth.
Malareth looked toward the crystal.
“We do not know.”
Kaylor's expression changed.
“That seems important.”
“It has never been attempted.”
“Never?”
“The crystal that protects this city has endured beyond the lives of everyone now living here. Beyond their parents. Beyond memory.”
Nethnarel looked upward.
The ceiling of the forge chamber opened thirty or forty feet above them.
Suspended within that open space was another crystal.
The old one.
Its facets were no longer clear.
Gold moved inside.
Not light reflected from the forge.
Something living.
A swirling luminous presence turned within the crystal in slow currents, filling it with the color of sunrise.
Above the gem, power escaped through a narrow channel in the citadel.
From there, the energy became the shield.
The same golden shell they had seen arching over the City of Glass.
The thing that gave the city gravity.
Air.
Protection.
Life.
Nethnarel had seen the crystal before.
She had known what it contained.
Seeing the soul move inside it was different.
“That is her.”
Malareth followed her gaze.
“You told us what the vessel contains.”
“One of the first gold dragons,” Nethnarel said.
The oldest surviving texts had made the creature almost impossible to comprehend in mortal terms.
Sister to Scourge Firebreath.
Enemy of Tiamat.
Not merely ancient, but one of the beings from which the long history of dragons had begun.
Dead.
And not dead.
Her body gone, her spirit imprisoned in crystal and burned as fuel for a city that had forgotten her name.
Kaylor looked at Malareth.
“No one knew?”
“No one living.”
“You knew how to make another vessel.”
“We have records describing the preparation. We knew where the original vessel was recovered.”
“But not what had been put into this one.”
“No.”
Kaylor stared upward.
“That is convenient.”
Nethnarel looked at him.
“Kaylor.”
“I said nothing.”
“You were about to.”
“I was considering it.”
Fendor moved closer to the forge.
“How secure is the new vessel after the ritual?”
Malareth shook her head.
“You ask questions for which there are no living answers.”
“That is becoming a pattern.”
“The soul above us has remained contained for generations.”
“That tells us this crystal works,” Fendor said. “Not whether the thing we intend to place inside the next one can break out.”
The attendants began chanting.
Not words.
Tones.
Each voice entered at a different pitch until the chamber itself seemed to hum around them.
The blank crystal brightened.
The forge fire climbed higher.
Hexen stopped listening.
He was staring upward.
The gold moved inside the old crystal.
Once.
Twice.
Slowly.
Like something sleeping.
His friends continued talking around him.
Kaylor asked another question.
Nethnarel studied the ritual.
Fendor watched the attendants.
Isamu looked for the fastest route out of the chamber because Isamu always looked for the fastest route out of any room, whether anyone had asked him to or not.
Hexen watched the dragon.
Grazim lay in Hell.
The thought entered without invitation.
Grazim lay upon a black altar while insects threw themselves against the light of the Naked Goddess.
The Lord of Swarms had taken him.
The City of Glass possessed the road to reach him.
The heroes possessed the vessel meant to imprison his captor.
And above Hexen floated the soul of the one being they had been told could strip Scourge Firebreath of the impossible protection that made their enemy nearly untouchable.
They had every piece.
Almost.
And now they were waiting.
Waiting while the crystal was prepared.
Waiting while the city decided what ancient magic could and could not do.
Waiting while no one knew how long the Naked Goddess could hold.
Hexen had spent too much of his life discovering that plans usually survived only until someone became brave enough—or foolish enough—to break them.
He looked at the old crystal.
Then at the distance.
Forty feet.
Perhaps less.
He could reach it.
Nethnarel noticed his expression.
“Hexen?”
He looked at her.
For a moment, she thought he might answer.
Instead he said, “I'm going to do something stupid.”
Kaylor turned immediately.
“What?”
Hexen disappeared.
His body broke apart.
Not into flame.
Not into the form of a wolf or bear.
Not into any of the creatures the others had watched him become since awakening on the mountain.
His flesh scattered into wings.
Hundreds of them.
For a heartbeat, the swarm looked almost beautiful.
Then the heroes recognized the butterflies.
Razor wings.
The same murderous creatures they had encountered before, each wing thin enough to cut flesh when the swarm passed.
Kaylor stared.
“What in the—”
The butterflies rose.
Straight toward the gold crystal.
Nethnarel reacted first.
Not to stop Hexen.
To hide him.
She drew the Wand of Flowers.
Kaylor saw it.
“Neth?”
Flowers erupted around the forge.
Not a bouquet.
A garden.
Green shoots burst from cracks in the crystal floor. Vines twisted upward around the attendants' robes. Bright blossoms opened against the white-gold fire—blue, red, yellow, violet—growing with such impossible speed that one of the chanting mages opened his eyes in confusion.
Another faltered.
The harmonies of the ritual slipped.
Nethnarel smiled brightly.
“Nothing to worry about.”
Fendor looked from her to the ascending swarm.
“You are helping him.”
“I am distracting them.”
“That is helping him.”
“Yes.”
Kaylor's hand settled upon the frost-rimed greataxe.
Isamu looked upward.
The butterflies reached the crystal.
They converged.
Hexen became a man again.
Forty feet above the floor.
Standing on nothing.
He hung there for the barest fraction of a heartbeat.
Then a massive maul appeared in his hands.
Kaylor had never seen the weapon before.
Neither had Fendor.
It was not the Staff of the Woodlands.
It was not one of Hexen's ordinary tools.
The weapon came from somewhere beyond sight, dark metal and brutal weight dropping into the druid's grasp as though it had been waiting for him to call.
Hexen raised it above his head.
Nethnarel stopped smiling.
“Oh.”
Kaylor understood.
“No.”
Hexen swung.
The maul struck the crystal.
The sound was enormous.
Not the ringing of glass.
Something deeper.
A crack through the architecture of the city.
Power followed the blow.
A radiance none of them associated with Hexen flooded down the haft of the maul and entered the crystal.
The old vessel fractured.
One line appeared across its surface.
Then another.
Gold blazed through both.
Every light in the forge chamber flickered.
The chanting stopped.
Hexen fell.
The moment after the strike had contained too many consequences for gravity to seem important.
Then gravity remembered him.
Hexen dropped forty feet toward the crystal floor.
Nethnarel raised one hand.
“Levitate.”
His fall stopped so suddenly that his boots hung inches above the ground.
Hexen rotated slowly in the air.
Kaylor stared at him.
Nethnarel lowered him.
“That,” she said, “would have been the stupid part.”
Hexen looked up.
“No.”
The crack widened.
That was the stupid part.
Golden light poured through it.
Not light.
Essence.
The swirling mass imprisoned within the crystal began pushing outward, first in thin streams and then in a growing plume of luminous energy.
The citadel shuddered.
Fragments of crystal broke free from above and fell around them.
One shattered against the floor.
Another struck the edge of the forge.
The attendants woke.
One moment they had been kneeling in meditation.
The next they were staring upward at the destruction of the thing that had protected their city for generations.
Then at Hexen.
Then at the heroes.
There was no confusion in their faces for long.
Isamu moved.
The new crystal remained inside the forge.
Still being prepared.
Still surrounded by white-gold fire.
He ran straight through it.
Heat swallowed him.
For an instant his clothes began smoking.
His skin reddened.
The blank crystal had become nearly incandescent.
Isamu grabbed it with both hands.
The heat drove into him.
He did not release it.
“Isamu!”
He pulled the gem from the forge.
Smoke rose from his palms.
The crystal remained bright enough to cast light across his face.
He staggered clear and dropped it into a thick leather carrier before the flesh of his hands could burn away completely.
The bag smoked.
Isamu slapped at it once.
“Got it.”
Fendor stared at him.
“You ran into the forge.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“We need the crystal.”
Fendor had no argument.
Above them, the gold continued escaping.
The forge attendants began to rise.
Nethnarel looked at them.
Then upward.
She had perhaps one heartbeat in which to choose whether they were still guests.
The choice had already been made.
Hexen had shattered the heart of their city.
Isamu had stolen the vessel they were preparing.
Nothing Nethnarel said next would turn the moment back into diplomacy.
She raised one hand.
Fireball blossomed above the chamber.
The explosion filled the space around the cracked gold crystal with flame.
The blast was not meant to destroy the fleeing spirit.
It was spectacle.
Noise.
Heat.
One more impossible thing for the awakening attendants to look at while the heroes moved.
It worked.
For half a heartbeat.
Fendor drew the Vorpal Longsword.
The first forge keeper had barely reached his feet when the elf struck.
Kaylor followed.
He hit another with the frost axe hard enough to drive him backward through the flowers Nethnarel had conjured.
There was no clean line separating defense from attack.
No command to surrender.
No declaration of war.
The heroes had broken the city's power, seized its new crystal and begun cutting down the people who had been preparing it for them.
They had reasons.
They always had reasons.
That did not make the blood disappear.
Hexen watched the gold stream from the crystal.
The others fought.
He barely heard them.
A thought pushed everything else aside.
Grazim.
He did not speak aloud.
He did not know whether he was praying.
Or bargaining.
Or demanding payment.
He simply sent the thought toward the place inside himself where strange power had begun answering.
I want my friend back.
Nothing.
Hexen clenched his jaw.
My cleric.
The chamber vanished from his awareness.
For an instant there was only darkness.
Then a voice.
Not loud.
Not angry.
Worse.
Certain.
He is yours to claim.
Hexen's blood went cold.
The chamber returned.
Fendor's sword struck another keeper.
Nethnarel's fire burned overhead.
Kaylor was shouting something.
Isamu guarded the blazing crystal.
No one else had heard.
Hexen made himself invisible.
Then the war truly began.
The first reinforcements came from the northern stairs.
Fendor heard them before he saw them.
Armored boots.
Many.
“More.”
Kaylor tore the axe free from a fallen defender.
“How many?”
“Enough.”
A silver sword appeared in the hands of one of the warriors already inside the chamber.
Fendor recognized the weapon.
He had seen them carried throughout the city.
Until now he had assumed the name came from the metal.
The first blow taught him otherwise.
The blade struck his shoulder.
Steel cut flesh.
Something else cut deeper.
For an instant, Fendor felt the Astral Plane move beneath him.
Not physically.
A tether.
Invisible.
Extending from somewhere inside him toward the world they had left behind.
The silver sword touched it.
Fendor staggered.
Pain exploded inside his skull.
He saw the Grand Library.
The mountain.
Oxland.
The Astral void.
All of them at once.
Then the connection steadied.
He remained where he was.
The warrior attacked again.
Fendor raised the Vorpal Longsword.
“Do not do that again.”
Steel met silver.
The warrior did not answer.
He did not need to.
Another defender appeared from nothing beside Kaylor.
Then another.
The city warriors moved through the chamber in short bursts of planar magic, vanishing and reappearing in angles that made ordinary formations useless.
Kaylor's Cloak of Displacement twisted around him.
One silver sword cut through a false dragonborn.
Another found the real one.
The blade struck armor.
Psychic force struck behind it.
Kaylor grunted.
He had been attacked by enough magic aimed at his mind that he recognized the sensation immediately.
“Everyone in this city,” he growled, “needs to stay out of my head.”
A larger figure came down the northern stairs.
Fendor saw him.
“Oh.”
Kaylor looked.
The warrior was enormous.
Broad where most of the city's people were gaunt, bald-headed and carrying himself with the same controlled violence Kaylor remembered from the court.
The one he had fought before being thrown bodily from the Astral Plane.
Kaylor smiled despite the blood at his side.
“You.”
The warrior charged.
Behind him came Malareth.
She did not hurry.
That was worse.
The leader of the City of Glass descended into the ruined forge chamber while the golden heart of her city cracked apart above her.
She saw the dead.
The forge.
The empty place where the new crystal had been.
Hexen, briefly visible before vanishing again.
Nethnarel surrounded by flowers and flame.
Fendor with blood running down one arm.
Isamu holding the stolen vessel.
Kaylor standing amid the bodies.
Something in Malareth's face changed.
Not shock.
Judgment.
Kaylor hated that expression.
“Do not,” he said.
Malareth continued down the stairs.
Kaylor lifted the axe.
“I mean it.”
She did not stop.
Isamu moved toward her.
A wall appeared.
He struck it with his shoulder.
Nothing visible stood in the way.
Yet the impact stopped him completely.
Isamu stepped back.
Reached forward.
His palm found resistance.
An invisible surface curved around him.
He moved left.
Still there.
Right.
Still there.
Up.
The wall curved overhead.
He was inside a sphere.
Isamu stared through something he could not see.
Fendor glanced toward him while parrying another silver sword.
“You all right?”
Isamu pressed both hands against the invisible wall.
“No.”
“Can you get out?”
“No.”
“Excellent.”
Isamu's expression became deeply offended.
That was usually dangerous.
Nethnarel raised both hands.
Small stones of flame appeared around her.
Not ordinary fire.
Compact burning motes circling her like miniature stars.
She sent three toward one defender.
Three toward another.
The chamber filled with streaking light.
The first warrior disappeared beneath the impacts.
The second staggered.
Fendor used the opening.
The Vorpal blade crossed the man's chest.
The impossible edge never found the perfect stroke that might have taken his head.
It did not need to.
The warrior fell.
“Finally,” Fendor said.
Another silver blade struck him from behind.
Pain exploded behind his eyes.
Fendor spun.
“All right. Perhaps not finally.”
Invisible Hexen moved along the edge of the fighting.
The strange powers that had begun answering him felt disturbingly easy now.
He marked one enemy.
A curse settled over the warrior like a shadow.
Hexen appeared as his maul struck.
The defender recoiled.
The next attack came from another direction.
Magic gathered around a city warrior near Kaylor.
Hexen felt it before he understood it.
The spell was enormous.
Planar.
Kaylor vanished.
For one impossible instant, the dragonborn found himself outside.
Far above the city.
Astral emptiness surrounded him.
Below, the golden shield flickered.
Crystal towers stretched beneath his boots more than a hundred feet away.
Kaylor had just enough time to understand that he was falling—
Then Hexen shouted.
“Counterspell!”
The world snapped.
Kaylor reappeared in the forge chamber exactly where he had stood.
His axe was already raised.
He looked at Hexen.
The druid—or whatever Hexen was becoming—stood with one hand extended toward the enemy caster.
Kaylor stared.
Hexen lowered his hand.
“Later.”
Kaylor nodded.
“Later.”
The bald warrior reached him.
The fight became personal.
Isamu examined the invisible prison.
He punched it.
Nothing.
Kicked it.
Nothing.
Ran one hand across the surface.
Smooth.
Unbroken.
There was no seam.
No hinge.
No opening.
The battle raged beyond him while he stood inside a perfectly transparent cage.
One of the city warriors passed within feet of him and ignored him completely.
Isamu disliked being ignored almost as much as he disliked being contained.
He reached into his equipment.
Found a bead.
Fendor saw what he held.
Even through the battle, the elf's expression became alarmed.
“No.”
Isamu looked toward him.
Fendor shook his head.
“Whatever you are about to—”
Isamu slammed the Bead of Force against the invisible wall.
The explosion was mostly contained inside the prison.
Mostly.
Force struck Isamu from every direction.
The invisible sphere became visible.
Cracks appeared across nothing.
White lines spread through the air like fractures in glass.
One.
Ten.
Hundreds.
Then the prison shattered.
Pieces of invisible magic fell around Isamu and vanished before touching the floor.
Isamu stepped through.
Fendor stared.
“That worked?”
“Yes.”
Malareth was directly ahead.
Isamu ran.
She turned.
The first strike hit her beneath the ribs.
The second came toward the shoulder.
She blocked it.
Isamu spun.
Heel.
Palm.
Elbow.
Malareth matched him.
Not perfectly.
Close enough.
For the first time since entering the City of Glass, Isamu fought someone whose body understood battle in much the same way his did.
No wasted movement.
No unnecessary strength.
Every shift of weight prepared the next attack.
Malareth caught his wrist.
Isamu twisted free.
She struck.
He slipped aside.
He drove one fist toward the place where nerve, muscle and will met.
The blow landed.
Malareth froze.
Her eyes widened.
The leader of the City of Glass remained standing.
She simply could not move.
Isamu looked toward the others.
“Now.”
Kaylor would have enjoyed that invitation.
Unfortunately, the bald warrior was trying to cave in his chest.
Nethnarel lifted one hand.
Death spread from her.
The spell expanded through the forge chamber as a dark sphere, not flame, not lightning, but the sudden absence of the small force that told living bodies to continue being alive.
Circle of Death.
It rolled across several city defenders.
Some resisted.
Some did not.
Every one of them staggered.
Nethnarel had hoped for more.
“Fine.”
The Rings of Fire brightened.
She could feel the memory inside them.
Not words.
Rhythm.
One attack became another.
Then another.
Flame crossed the chamber in a relentless volley.
A warrior raised his silver sword.
The first bolt struck the blade.
The second hit his chest.
The third his shoulder.
The next two landed almost together.
The final blast engulfed him.
When the fire cleared, little remained but ash.
Nethnarel stared at her hands.
She was becoming very good at that.
She did not have time to decide whether she liked it.
Fendor cried out.
One of the silver swords had struck him again.
Nethnarel turned.
The warrior facing him raised the weapon for another attack.
She reached into her gear.
Found the wand.
“Fendor.”
He ducked without asking why.
Nethnarel unleashed the Wand of Magic Missiles.
Eight streaks of light crossed the chamber.
The warrior had time to turn.
That was all.
One missile struck.
Then another.
Then all of them.
The final impact threw him backward.
Fendor straightened.
He looked at Nethnarel.
“Thank you.”
“You're welcome.”
A different warrior attacked him.
Fendor sighed.
“I withdraw the sense of completion.”
The Vorpal Longsword rose again.
Malareth recovered.
Isamu had bought them seconds.
No more.
She moved directly for Kaylor.
Of course she did.
Kaylor saw her coming while the bald warrior still occupied most of his attention.
Malareth dropped into a low stance.
Isamu recognized it.
Kaylor did not.
He recognized only that her hands were empty.
That seemed promising.
It was not.
Malareth struck him in the chest.
The blow passed through armor in a way no ordinary punch should have.
Physical force came first.
Then something psychic entered behind it.
Kaylor staggered.
She hit him again.
Harder.
His cloak produced three Kaylors.
Malareth's fist passed through one.
Her next strike found the real dragonborn.
Kaylor nearly fell.
He looked at her.
She looked at him.
For a moment they stood almost still amid the battle.
The woman who had judged him.
The Oathbreaker who had refused the judgment.
“You started this,” Malareth said.
Kaylor spat blood.
“No.”
His eyes flicked toward Hexen.
“He did.”
Somewhere behind him, Hexen said, “Fair.”
Kaylor attacked the bald warrior.
The axe struck.
Once.
Again.
The Dancing Sword flashed from another angle.
The larger fighter blurred.
Magic distorted his outline, leaving Kaylor cutting through uncertain positions.
Kaylor adjusted.
He stopped chasing the image.
Watched the feet.
Struck where the body had to be.
The axe landed.
Power followed.
The warrior's protective magic broke.
His outline snapped back into focus.
“There.”
Kaylor hit him again.
Across the chamber, Hexen was nearly killed.
The city warrior facing him moved with astonishing speed.
One strike carried physical force.
Another hit with a psychic shock that folded Hexen sideways.
Then came a kick.
Hexen had enough time to recognize that Isamu might have appreciated the technique.
The blow landed.
Pain exploded through him.
Another followed.
For several seconds, Hexen could do nothing except remain conscious.
Barely.
He raised the maul.
The warrior moved.
Hexen swung.
Connected.
Bone broke.
The city defender fell.
Hexen leaned on the weapon.
Three heartbeats.
That was all he allowed himself.
Then he looked toward Malareth.
She was still fighting Isamu.
Still alive.
Still standing between them and the road to Grazim.
Hexen tightened his grip.
Fendor had stopped trying to use the bow.
Every time he found distance, another warrior appeared beside him.
So the Vorpal Longsword remained in his hand.
That was not a complaint.
The blade was extraordinary.
It wanted openings.
Not literally.
Fendor had owned enough dangerous magical objects to avoid assuming a sword had desires unless it explicitly began speaking.
But the weapon rewarded precision.
Every neck became a possibility.
Every shift of armor an invitation.
He struck.
Again.
Again.
The impossible killing edge never came.
Fendor grimaced.
“Now would be an excellent time.”
The sword remained silent.
The warrior did not.
His silver greatsword struck Fendor across the ribs.
Pain flashed.
Psychic force followed.
Fendor nearly went down.
He stepped away.
Breathed.
Found the reserves buried beneath exhaustion.
The pain receded enough to move.
Not gone.
Manageable.
He attacked again.
The warrior fell.
Another arrived.
Fendor looked upward.
“Grazim, wherever you are, I would like to formally complain about your absence.”
No divine answer came.
That felt appropriate.
Isamu hit Malareth again.
The demonic whip cracked between them.
Dark leather—or whatever infernal substance formed the weapon—wrapped briefly around her arm before sliding free.
Isamu followed with his hands.
Malareth blocked the first.
The second hit.
The third found the same hidden junction he had struck before.
He tried to stop her body again.
This time she resisted.
Isamu struck once more.
Then twice.
Malareth staggered.
She was hurt now.
Badly.
She knew it.
So did Hexen.
He crossed the final distance.
Malareth turned toward him.
She was still trying to recover from Isamu's assault.
The maul came down.
She raised one arm.
Too late.
The weapon struck.
Malareth collapsed.
For a moment no one reacted.
The woman who had ruled the City of Glass lay on the crystalline floor beneath the broken soul of the dragon that had powered it.
Hexen stared at her.
He had no triumph to offer.
Only one thought.
He is yours to claim.
He did not know whether the words were promise or warning.
The fight continued.
Kaylor killed the bald warrior.
It took nearly everything he had.
The man simply refused to fall.
Kaylor's axe struck.
The Dancing Sword followed.
The warrior answered every attack with another.
Kaylor bled from cuts across his side and shoulder. One eye had begun swelling. His breathing had become ragged enough that even he knew how close he was to the edge.
He struck again.
The warrior remained standing.
Kaylor stared.
“You are becoming irritating.”
The man attacked.
Kaylor's cloak blurred.
The silver weapon missed.
Kaylor drove the axe upward.
The final blow ended it.
The huge fighter went down.
Kaylor barely remained upright.
Fifteen heartbeats.
Perhaps fewer.
That was how close he felt to collapse.
Another silver-sword warrior saw it.
He came straight for Kaylor.
The first blow struck.
Kaylor took it.
The second landed deeper.
The room tilted.
Kaylor heard someone shout his name.
Then the floor hit him.
The dragonborn did not rise.
Hexen saw him fall.
There were still enemies standing.
One near Kaylor.
One pressing Fendor.
The city itself groaned beneath them.
Overhead, the old crystal was almost empty.
Only a few threads of gold remained caught within it.
The great shield above the city flickered.
Hexen moved.
Not toward the enemy.
Toward Kaylor.
He dropped beside the dragonborn.
Placed one hand against Kaylor's chest.
Warmth answered.
Again, power that should not have belonged to Hexen flowed through him.
Not druidic.
Not the wild strength of moon and beast.
Something else.
Kaylor gasped.
His eyes opened.
He looked at Hexen.
Neither spoke.
There would be many questions later.
Assuming there was a later.
Hexen hauled him upright.
“Thirty seconds,” Kaylor muttered.
“What?”
“How long has this been happening?”
Hexen looked around the ruined chamber.
Bodies.
Fire.
Broken crystal.
A dead ruler.
Astral warriors.
The soul of an ancient dragon escaping through the ceiling.
“Not long.”
Kaylor laughed once.
Then regretted it.
The final warrior stood alone.
He knew it.
The heroes knew it.
The chamber had begun to crack around them.
The defenders were dead.
Malareth was dead.
The forge keepers were dead or dying.
The city's great warrior had fallen.
Above them, the shield was failing.
The last man could have run.
He did not.
Isamu respected that.
The warrior raised his silver sword.
Isamu advanced.
The demonic whip snapped.
The defender avoided it.
Isamu punched.
Blocked.
Kicked.
Blocked.
Then the monk drove one strike precisely beneath the warrior's guard.
The man's body locked.
Isamu hit him again.
And again.
The warrior fell.
Silence arrived.
Not immediately.
The broken forge still hissed.
Crystals continued falling from above.
Someone breathed too loudly.
Kaylor's Dancing Sword hovered for another heartbeat before dropping into his hand.
Fendor's Vorpal blade remained raised.
Nethnarel still had fire burning around her wrists.
Hexen leaned on the maul.
Isamu stood over the final defender.
Then the last gold left the crystal.
Everything changed.
The dragon came free.
There was no body.
Not yet.
Only spirit.
A vast golden presence poured from the shattered vessel and rose toward the open channel above the forge.
The light expanded as it climbed.
For a few seconds it resembled smoke caught in sunlight.
Then something inside it suggested wings.
A head.
A neck long enough to belong to a creature greater than any ordinary dragon.
The heroes looked up.
So did the dead city, though they could not see that from inside the chamber.
The final fragment of the old crystal broke.
The shield vanished.
Not faded.
Vanished.
The golden shell above the City of Glass simply ceased to exist.
The city went silent.
Kaylor felt it before hearing it.
Gravity shifted.
Not enough to throw him from his feet.
Enough to remind him that the city had been forcing rules upon a plane that had none.
The hum beneath the streets stopped.
The golden channels inside the walls went dark.
Every lamp tied to the ancient power dimmed.
For perhaps three seconds, the City of Glass existed in perfect stillness.
Then the Astral Plane noticed.
Fendor climbed the northern stairs first.
A balcony opened beyond them.
He reached it and stopped.
Nethnarel joined him.
Then Kaylor, moving slowly despite Hexen's healing.
From the height of the citadel they could see across the city.
Thousands of crystal towers.
Bridges.
Markets.
Temples.
Homes.
The refuge they had walked through only hours earlier.
The protective light was gone.
Beyond the city, things moved.
The Astral Plane had never been empty.
The shield had simply convinced them to stay away.
One creature drifted toward the city.
Something broad-winged and pale.
It reached the place where the golden barrier had once existed.
Nothing stopped it.
The creature entered.
Far below, people began running.
Another shape approached from a different direction.
Then another.
The first scream reached the citadel.
Fendor lowered his sword.
“Oh.”
Nethnarel stood beside him.
Flowers still clung to one sleeve.
The absurdity of that detail made the destruction below feel worse.
“We did that.”
No one corrected her.
Hexen reached the balcony last.
The golden dragon spirit drifted above the city.
Free.
For the first time in thousands of years.
Below it, the haven its imprisonment had sustained began descending into chaos.
Hexen watched the spirit.
He had wanted Grazim back.
He had broken the crystal.
Both things remained true.
Kaylor turned toward him.
“Why?”
There were many possible answers.
The dragon.
Scourge Firebreath.
The blank crystal.
The uncertainty of the ritual.
The fact that no one knew whether the Lord of Swarms could escape once imprisoned.
The fact that the gold dragon had already spent generations trapped for the benefit of people who had forgotten what she was.
Grazim.
Especially Grazim.
Hexen looked toward the golden shape above the city.
“I was done waiting.”
Kaylor stared at him.
That answer did not satisfy him.
It was still an answer.
Before he could say more, Isamu approached carrying the recovered crystal.
The leather around it still smoked.
“Whatever happens next,” he said, “we still have this.”
Everyone looked at the vessel.
The ritual had begun.
How far it had progressed before Isamu tore the crystal from the forge, none of them knew.
Had it been prepared enough to hold the Lord of Swarms?
Maybe.
Maybe not.
They had killed most of the people who might have answered.
Fendor looked back into the chamber.
“We should search them.”
Kaylor stared at him.
“For information.”
“That sounded better after you added that.”
They returned inside.
The dead carried unusual treasures.
Malareth possessed a gray bag containing magic Nethnarel recognized only after examining it—a Bag of Tricks, its contents impossible to predict without using it.
One of the fallen warriors wore a ring.
Nethnarel touched it.
Invisible force tugged against a nearby shard of crystal.
“Telekinesis.”
Fendor looked interested.
The silver swords were stranger.
Most were greatswords.
Two-handed.
Beautifully balanced despite their size.
They did not radiate magic in the way Fendor expected, yet everyone who had been struck by one knew they were far from ordinary.
“They cut the connection,” Kaylor said.
Fendor nodded.
“The Astral tether.”
One of the blows had nearly torn his consciousness from the plane.
The weapons offered another route home.
Strike the cord.
Return to the world they had left.
The heroes looked toward the city.
Then toward the unseen district where the Gate waited.
A road to Avernus.
A road to Grazim.
Nethnarel lifted one of the silver swords experimentally.
“So we can leave.”
“Yes,” Fendor said.
“Or go to Hell.”
“Yes.”
Isamu adjusted the Bag of Holding at his side.
“We came here to reach Hell.”
Kaylor looked at Hexen.
The druid had not forgotten the words inside his mind.
He is yours to claim.
Hexen met Kaylor's gaze.
“We go get Grazim.”
Outside, another scream rose from the city.
The golden dragon spirit continued drifting into the Astral dark.
The heroes had freed her.
They had also killed the people who had helped them.
Broken the shield protecting thousands.
Turned a refuge into a battlefield.
And they still did not know whether the crystal in Isamu's possession could contain the thing they intended to put inside it.
There would be a price for all of that.
Perhaps more than one.
But somewhere beyond the Gate to Avernus, Grazim Von was still alive.
For now.
Kaylor looked at the five of them.
Still five.
Not for much longer.
“Then we finish what we came here to do.”
Behind them, the dead heart of the City of Glass cracked apart.
Ahead waited Hell.