The gold dragon did not leave.
For thirty seconds, Kaylor had believed she would.
The released spirit had risen through the broken heart of the City of Glass, passed beyond the shattered crystal and drifted toward the Astral dark while the shield beneath her died.
Then Isamu called to her.
And the dragon stopped.
Far above the ruined forge chamber, gold turned against violet.
The spirit had no flesh. No true wings. No body Kaylor could recognize as belonging to a living dragon. She was light and smoke and memory, a luminous presence moving through the open heights of the crystalline city.
Yet something in that brightness turned.
Looked down.
Listened.
Isamu stepped onto the broken dais.
Bodies lay around him.
Some belonged to the people who had attacked them.
Others belonged to people who had been preparing the crystal the heroes had asked them to prepare.
The distinction no longer felt useful.
Behind Isamu, Hexen searched the fallen and the shattered forge for anything that might explain how the ancient ritual had worked.
Fendor wiped blood from the Vorpal Longsword.
Kaylor watched Hexen.
Nethnarel watched the dragon.
The city screamed beneath them.
Without the golden shield, things from the Astral dark had begun crossing freely among the crystal towers. Shapes moved where nothing had been allowed to move before. Citizens fled across bridges and through streets once protected by the imprisoned soul now hovering above them.
They had freed her.
They had also doomed the refuge built around her captivity.
Neither truth erased the other.
Isamu raised his voice.
“Fann.”
The name came strangely into the chamber.
Ancient.
Simple.
The gold presence halted.
Fendor looked toward him.
“You are certain that's her name?”
“Fann.”
“With two n's,” Nethnarel said.
Fendor glanced at her.
“How do you know how a spoken name is spelled?”
“I know things.”
“That was not an answer.”
“It was the only one you are getting.”
The spirit began descending.
Slowly.
Not toward the forge.
Toward Isamu.
Kaylor tightened his grip on the greataxe.
Isamu noticed.
“Do not.”
“I haven't done anything.”
“You were about to.”
Kaylor looked up.
The gold cloud drew nearer.
Something touched Isamu's mind.
He stiffened.
At first there were no words.
Only confusion.
Then rage.
A thousand years of rage.
The sensation struck with such force that Isamu nearly staggered.
Darkness without movement.
Confinement without sleep.
No sun.
No sky.
No sense of time except the slow passage of power being drawn away.
A city drinking from her.
Generation after generation.
The dragon did not know where she was.
She did not know when she was.
For one terrible instant, she did not know who Isamu was.
Her mind pushed into his.
Searching.
Accusing.
The thought came less as speech than as violence.
You.
Isamu stood still.
The fury tried to drag him into itself.
He let it come.
But he did not let it take him.
“We freed you.”
The pressure increased.
Isamu's vision blurred.
Memories moved beneath the dragon's touch.
The mountain where they had awakened.
The mines.
Lady Frost.
Craven.
The broken mirror.
Grazim.
The Grand Library.
The City of Glass.
And finally Hexen's maul striking the crystal.
Isamu did not resist the memories being seen.
Only the madness behind the search.
“You were imprisoned here,” he said. “We did not put you there.”
The golden spirit recoiled.
Not far.
Enough.
The rage did not disappear.
It changed shape.
Confusion returned.
Isamu felt the terrible emptiness of someone discovering that everyone she remembered was dead.
Nethnarel approached.
“Tell her about Scourge.”
Isamu did.
The name changed everything.
“Scourge Firebreath.”
Gold exploded upward.
The spirit struck the ceiling of the forge chamber hard enough that surviving fragments of crystal broke loose and fell.
Kaylor ducked beneath one.
Fendor stepped away from another.
The dragon's essence tore at the shattered opening above them as though she meant to rip the entire citadel apart.
Isamu heard no confusion now.
Only hatred.
Scourge.
Recognition deeper than memory.
Kaylor looked at Nethnarel.
“I assume that means she knows him.”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
“That did not look good.”
“He's our enemy.”
“So was half the city five minutes ago.”
Kaylor did not answer.
Isamu kept his attention upon the dragon.
“Scourge threatens our world.”
The spirit stopped striking the crystal architecture.
“We need your help.”
The answer did not come in words.
But Isamu understood the refusal to leave.
That was something.
Around them, Hexen had found what he was looking for.
Symbols covered the rim of the forge.
They had been nearly invisible while the ritual was active—lines of old writing etched into the crystal beneath layers of accumulated magic.
Hexen knelt beside them.
His fingers followed the script.
Nethnarel noticed.
“What is it?”
“A spell.”
“For what?”
Hexen did not answer immediately.
The language was ancient elven.
Not precisely any form he knew.
Close enough.
Fragments of meaning assembled themselves as he read.
Preparation.
Containment.
Essence.
Soul.
His expression changed.
“The forge wasn't merely doing the spell.”
Nethnarel came closer.
“The forge is the spell.”
Hexen nodded.
Written into the architecture.
A ritual enormous enough that no ordinary scroll could have held it in the same way.
A method for transforming one of the perfect crystals into a vessel capable of receiving something far greater than itself.
A soul.
Perhaps even the soul of an Old One.
Hexen reached for parchment.
Kaylor noticed.
“What are you doing?”
“Copying it.”
“Now?”
“Yes.”
Around them, the City of Glass continued collapsing into chaos.
Kaylor stared at him.
Hexen looked up.
“Do you want to need another one someday?”
Kaylor thought of the empty crystal Isamu had pulled from the forge.
The one they had intended to use against the Lord of Swarms.
The answer had been yes.
Now he was less certain what they intended to do with anything.
“Copy it.”
Hexen began.
The writing was dense.
Worse, it was built around the forge itself. Some phrases continued across separate rings of crystal. Others were represented as sequences of symbols whose placement mattered as much as their meaning.
Nethnarel crouched beside him.
“I can read part of this.”
“Then take that side.”
She did.
Together they began transcribing the spell.
Behind them, Isamu still held the attention of the dragon.
Fann's rage had faded enough for something else to move beneath it.
Questions.
Where was she?
How long?
Who were these people?
Isamu answered what he could.
A city had been powered by her imprisoned spirit.
They did not know who had first done it.
The people now living here had not known what their crystal contained.
That last truth mattered.
Fann had wanted enemies.
Instead she found descendants.
Strangers.
Refugees living beneath the protection of a crime committed before their grandfathers' grandfathers had been born.
Her fury had nowhere simple to go.
Kaylor understood that better than he wanted to.
Craven had taught him what happened when anger discovered that guilt was not distributed neatly.
Movement appeared along the southern gallery.
Hexen heard it first.
Boots.
Many.
He stopped writing.
“They're coming.”
Kaylor looked toward the stairs.
“Of course they are.”
Isamu retrieved the enormous blank crystal.
It had cooled since he had torn it from the forge.
The heat that had burned him had belonged mostly to the ritual itself. Now the gem rested safely enough in his hands.
It was still absurdly large.
Still valuable beyond any sensible measure.
Still empty.
He lifted it above his head.
The first warriors appeared along the gallery.
They stopped.
More came behind them.
No one attacked.
Not yet.
Their attention fixed upon the crystal in Isamu's hands.
The last thing capable of restoring what the heroes had destroyed.
Fendor lowered the Vorpal blade slightly.
“They think that's their power source.”
“It could be,” Nethnarel said without looking up from her work.
“If they finish preparing it.”
Hexen glanced at their progress.
“We need time.”
Isamu stood beneath the gathering soldiers and held their future where all of them could see it.
The warriors did not advance.
Fendor slowly exhaled.
“Effective.”
“I have my moments.”
“You ran through a magical forge.”
“That was also effective.”
A woman appeared at the top of the far stairs.
Not the leader they had killed.
Another authority.
She raised one hand and the soldiers behind her stopped completely.
Then her voice crossed the enormous chamber.
“What have you done?”
Isamu looked toward the shattered crystal above.
The gold dragon moved through Nethnarel's reach now, drifting closer to the heroes.
“We freed a noble soul.”
The woman's face hardened.
“You destroyed the protection of this city.”
“That protection depended upon imprisoning an ancient gold dragon.”
“We did not know.”
“I believe you.”
Kaylor looked at him.
Isamu continued.
“But she was imprisoned.”
The woman looked toward the empty forge.
Then the crystal in his hands.
“Return the vessel.”
More warriors appeared.
Isamu raised the crystal higher.
“Any move against us and this is destroyed.”
Kaylor turned his head.
Fendor did the same.
No one challenged Isamu.
The woman's hand remained raised.
The soldiers stopped.
“This crystal,” Isamu said, “may be the salvation of your city.”
The words carried through the forge.
“It is your choice whether you receive it intact.”
The silence lasted.
Then the woman's arm lowered.
The warriors remained where they were.
Kaylor leaned toward Isamu.
“That was better diplomacy than mine.”
“Most diplomacy is.”
Kaylor decided he deserved that.
Nethnarel continued copying beside Hexen.
The ancient writing became clearer as the pattern developed.
One sequence prepared the vessel.
Another drew an essence toward it.
Another closed the prison.
She did not like that word.
Prison.
They had spent days insisting they would capture the Lord of Swarms in this crystal.
Now Fann hovered above them after centuries of imprisonment inside another exactly like it.
The resemblance was impossible to ignore.
Fendor had already asked the question.
Why imprison another being for a city they did not know?
At the time the answer had been easy.
Because the other being was the Lord of Swarms.
Now even easy answers had edges.
Nethnarel kept writing.
The woman across the chamber called again.
“What do you want?”
Isamu looked at Kaylor.
Kaylor answered.
“A Gate.”
The woman frowned.
“There are many.”
“The one that can take us where we need to go.”
Kaylor had spent half the journey to the Crystal City believing that meant Avernus.
Grazim.
Hell.
But something Hexen had said during their escape returned to him.
The last place they had physically seen Grazim had not been Hell.
It had been the Grand Library.
The Lord of Swarms' prison.
Hexen had received a message.
He is yours to claim.
Kaylor looked at him.
Hexen was still writing.
“We go back to the library.”
Nethnarel's quill stopped.
“What about Avernus?”
“Grazim was taken through the prison.”
Hexen nodded slowly.
“And the Lord told me he was mine to claim.”
Kaylor's mouth tightened.
He did not like relying on anything the Lord of Swarms had said.
But going directly to Avernus meant entering a demon lord's fortress with five battered heroes and no cleric.
The library was a known road.
A known prison.
And if they were wrong, they could still go to Hell afterward.
“The library,” Kaylor said again.
Isamu addressed the woman.
“You will escort us to the Gate.”
A murmur moved among the warriors.
Isamu lifted the crystal.
“There is also a spell built into this forge that can prepare another vessel like this one.”
The woman's gaze shifted toward Hexen and Nethnarel.
“They are copying it.”
That surprised her.
“You will have the knowledge after we are gone.”
Hexen looked up.
Kaylor understood immediately.
A bargain.
Not forgiveness.
Not peace.
A trade made at swordpoint over the corpse of a city.
Isamu continued.
“Take us safely to the Gate. We return the crystal.”
Nethnarel glanced at him.
“We do?”
“We have Fann.”
The gold presence moved inside the chamber.
“We no longer need to trap her.”
Fendor looked at the blank crystal.
“We might need it for something else.”
“We can create another.”
Hexen lifted the parchment.
“If we survive long enough to build a forge.”
Fendor sighed.
“There is always that.”
The woman finally nodded.
The soldiers withdrew enough to create a path.
No one lowered a weapon.
No one pretended they were friends.
That seemed more honest.
Hexen and Nethnarel finished copying the last sequence.
They left the broken forge behind.
The City of Glass had changed in less than an hour.
Without the shield, the Astral Plane had entered.
Gravity weakened in places.
Air moved strangely.
Creatures from beyond the city's former boundary prowled the distant streets while defenders tried to hold them away from fleeing civilians.
The heroes walked beneath armed escort.
Kaylor felt every stare.
He could not decide whether the citizens knew who had destroyed the shield.
He hoped they did not.
He hoped they did.
Both thoughts made him uncomfortable.
Fann no longer drifted above them.
Nethnarel had made a choice.
She had opened herself.
Not as a prison.
Not even as a vessel in the way the crystal had been a vessel.
An invitation.
The moment she did, Fann descended.
The gold essence entered Nethnarel without violence.
Heat spread through her body.
Not burning.
Presence.
Her blood felt briefly too small to contain what had entered it.
She could sense Fann somewhere behind her own thoughts.
Confused.
Wounded.
Still angry.
But not controlling her.
Not yet capable of conversation.
More like someone newly awakened in a strange room, watching through half-open eyes.
Nethnarel offered only three things.
Safety.
Friendship.
Freedom.
You may leave whenever you wish.
The answer was not a word.
But the presence remained.
For now, that was enough.
Kaylor watched Nethnarel carefully.
She noticed.
“Don't.”
“I haven't said anything.”
“You are staring.”
“You have an ancient dragon living inside you.”
“For the moment.”
“That does not improve the sentence.”
Fendor walked beside them.
“I would like it recorded that this is somehow not the strangest thing that has happened this week.”
They reached the temple containing the Gate.
The escort stopped outside.
Apparently even the warriors of the City of Glass had limits regarding sacred boundaries.
The heroes entered.
Then barred the doors behind them.
Inside waited another group of the city's people.
Monastic figures.
Related somehow to the tall gray warriors, but robed rather than armored. Their movements were quiet, disciplined.
At the center of the temple stood the Gate apparatus.
One of the monks moved into their path.
He was larger than the others.
Broad-shouldered.
His face resembled the warriors Kaylor had already fought, though something more bestial shaped the jaw and brow.
He looked past Kaylor toward the barred doors.
Then at the heroes.
“The command of the mistress does not bind me.”
Kaylor stared at him.
The monk planted himself before the Gate.
“You will not pass.”
Fendor closed his eyes.
Nethnarel muttered, “Please don't.”
Kaylor took one of the silver greatswords they had recovered from the fallen warriors.
He did not raise it.
He threw it.
The enormous blade struck the floor at the monk's feet and slid to a stop.
Runes along the weapon flared.
The monk recognized them.
Kaylor stepped forward.
“The man who carried that tried to stop us.”
Silence.
“If you do the same, you will share his fate.”
The monk looked down at the sword.
Then toward Kaylor.
Whatever he saw there convinced him.
His expression broke.
He dropped to his knees.
Then moved aside.
Fendor stared.
Kaylor looked at him.
“What?”
“I was waiting for the part where you attacked him.”
“I told you I can be diplomatic.”
“That was a threat.”
“It worked.”
Isamu approached the Gate.
Nethnarel and Hexen examined the ancient controls.
The same language used in the forge appeared here.
Now they understood enough to manipulate it.
The portal woke.
Violet light spiraled into existence.
For one heartbeat, everyone looked at the crystal in Isamu's hands.
The thing they had crossed worlds to obtain.
The prison they had planned to put the Lord of Swarms inside.
The object that had nearly destroyed the City of Glass.
Isamu tossed it high.
The gem spun through the temple.
Nethnarel smiled.
Thaumaturgy answered.
Light appeared inside the crystal.
Golden.
Moving.
For one instant it looked as though a spirit already lived within.
The monks stared upward.
The crystal came down on their side of the Gate.
The heroes stepped through the portal.
Fendor crossed last.
He looked once over his shoulder.
The blank crystal lay in the temple of the City of Glass, shining with false life.
Then the Gate closed.
The Grand Library was quiet.
That was worse than expected.
They had left death here.
Books.
Ancient gods.
A prison.
Jorah.
Grazim.
When the Gate released them into the familiar halls beneath the mountain, Kaylor felt the entire weight of the place return.
The Book of Vile Darkness was somewhere behind them.
The Book of Knowledge waited in its hidden chamber.
The Lord of Swarms had first spoken to them here.
And somewhere deeper—
Grazim.
They rested.
None of them liked the decision.
All of them needed it.
The City of Glass had nearly killed them.
The fight had lasted less than a minute, yet it had spent everything they had.
There was no Grazim to mend them.
No cleric to replenish what blood and magic the forge had taken.
So they slept in the place they had already cleared.
No statues awakened.
No rats came.
No book whispered.
Nethnarel dreamed of gold.
Hexen did not dream at all.
Kaylor woke with his hand on the axe.
Then they went down.
Five heroes entered the old prison chamber.
Six figures waited inside.
Grazim sat upon the altar.
Cross-legged.
Hands resting upon his knees.
Alive.
For one impossible heartbeat, no one saw anything else.
Kaylor's chest tightened.
“Grazim.”
The figure looked up.
The relief died.
The person on the altar was Grazim.
There was no mistaking him.
And yet nearly everything about him was wrong.
The halfling body given to him after his reincarnation was gone.
He wore something closer to the human form he had possessed before his death in the Shattered Mirror.
But thinner.
Gaunt.
His skin had a deathly pallor.
Darkness gathered around his eyes.
He looked as though someone had taken the man they remembered and redrawn him from memory using only black ink.
Isamu moved sideways.
His eyes narrowed.
Behind Grazim's shoulders were scars.
No.
Not scars.
Wounds.
Two mutilated places where something might once have grown.
Wings.
Removed.
Clipped.
The impression made no sense.
Grazim had never possessed wings.
Not in either body.
Yet looking at him created the undeniable certainty that they had been there.
Fendor whispered, “That is not right.”
Grazim's eyes went first to Hexen.
The druid stopped.
He had done what he could.
Everything since the Grand Library had been driven by the need to recover the cleric.
The bargain.
The Crystal City.
Fann.
The broken shield.
Blood.
All of it.
Hexen looked at him.
“I've done what I can to bring you back.”
Grazim smiled.
Then turned toward Nethnarel.
Fann stirred inside her.
Alarm.
Too late.
Something entered Nethnarel's mind.
She fought it.
The first pressure broke.
A second followed.
Deeper.
Older.
Not Grazim.
The Lord of Swarms.
The command arrived whole.
Burn the binding.
Nethnarel tried to move away.
Her body did not obey.
The Rings of Fire ignited.
Kaylor saw it.
“Neth?”
She raised both hands.
“No.”
The word came from her.
The action did not.
Flame struck the ancient sigil carved into the chamber floor.
The pentagram of containment had survived centuries.
Ninurta's prison.
The thing that had held the Lord of Swarms when the heroes first opened his sarcophagus.
Fire from Nethnarel's rings touched one line.
The rune ignited.
Flame raced along the groove.
Around one point.
Then another.
Like oil burning through a pattern drawn across stone.
Kaylor understood.
Grazim had looked at Nethnarel.
Then she had begun destroying the prison.
The same prison the Lord of Swarms had begged them to break.
“Kaylor,” Fendor said.
Kaylor was already moving.
Grazim raised his hands.
Power gathered around him.
Kaylor attacked.
The frost-rimed greataxe struck first.
Not to kill the friend he had come across worlds to rescue.
To stop whatever now wore his shape from finishing the spell.
Grazim reeled.
Kaylor struck again.
Dark power followed the axe.
Fendor hesitated exactly one heartbeat.
Then drew.
He had followed Kaylor through too many battles not to recognize the dragonborn's certainty.
His arrows hit Grazim hard.
One.
Another.
Another.
Isamu did not attack.
Not yet.
He watched.
Nethnarel's fire continued burning the binding.
She screamed through clenched teeth.
“Stop me!”
Fann moved inside her.
The gold dragon struck the presence occupying Nethnarel's will.
For an instant the sorcerer saw neither chamber nor friends.
Only gold against black.
A swarm without shape filling her thoughts.
Fann tore through it.
The domination broke.
Nethnarel staggered.
But the fire had already traveled too far.
The last rune burned.
The ancient containment circle went dark.
Hexen felt something inside him release.
A pressure he had not understood he was carrying.
A debt.
A hook.
The Lord of Swarms spoke to him without sound.
The bargain is fulfilled.
Then the presence receded.
Hexen stared at the dead runes.
Freedom should have felt good.
It did not.
Grazim attacked Kaylor.
The warhammer came around with exactly the same economy Grazim had always used.
That made it worse.
The first blow missed.
The second struck Kaylor's armor.
Steel and divine force carried the impact.
Then the swarm came.
Black insects erupted around the hammerhead and poured across Kaylor's body.
They entered beneath armor.
Bit through scales.
Cold death followed them.
Kaylor staggered.
“That's not Grazim.”
Isamu moved.
The demonic whip snapped from his hand.
It wrapped around Grazim's body.
Arms.
Chest.
The cleric pulled against it.
Isamu planted both feet.
“No.”
The whip tightened.
Grazim was restrained.
For the first time, Hexen had a clear look at him.
Their friend.
Their payment.
The thing given back to them by a demon lord.
There were probably ways to hesitate.
Hexen did not find one.
The maul appeared in his hands.
The same impossible weapon he had used against the gold dragon's prison.
Kaylor saw him raise it.
“Hexen—”
The blow fell.
Grazim collapsed.
For a moment, everyone froze.
Hexen stared at the body.
He had spent days trying to recover Grazim.
Then he had killed him.
Something moved in the corpse.
Shadow rose.
Not resurrection.
Not life.
A specter pulled itself free.
It carried Grazim's shape only faintly now.
Armor became mist.
The warhammer became memory.
Eyes of pale light opened within a face made from darkness.
Nethnarel backed away.
“What did you do?”
Hexen did not know how to answer.
The power had come naturally.
Too naturally.
Something in him had reached toward the slain soul.
The specter waited.
Not hostile.
Bound.
To Hexen.
Kaylor lowered the axe only slightly.
He looked at the specter.
Then Hexen.
Then back to Grazim's dead body.
“We came here to save him.”
No one answered.
Kaylor's gaze hardened.
“We crossed the Astral Plane.”
Nothing.
“We destroyed a city.”
Nethnarel flinched.
“We freed a dragon.”
Kaylor pointed toward the corpse.
“And we killed Grazim.”
“He wasn't Grazim anymore,” Fendor said.
Kaylor looked at him.
Fendor did not sound certain.
That mattered.
Isamu approached the specter.
He did not raise the whip.
“Grazim.”
The ghostly face turned.
“Are you suffering?”
Nothing came aloud.
The answer touched Isamu's mind.
Not pain.
Not fear.
Not the imprisoned consciousness of their friend screaming inside whatever Hexen had created.
Peace.
Or something close enough that Isamu accepted it.
He looked at the others.
“He isn't asking us to free him.”
Kaylor frowned.
“He's dead.”
“Yes.”
“He's a specter.”
“Yes.”
“And you're calling that good?”
“No.”
Isamu looked at Grazim.
“But I don't think his soul is trapped the way it was.”
Silence.
At last he said, “Grazim is at peace.”
Kaylor's eyes moved to Hexen.
The druid still held the maul.
“Are you?”
Hexen let the weapon disappear.
“No.”
That, at least, Kaylor believed.
Fann shifted within Nethnarel.
Her presence had protected the sorcerer from the Lord's domination once the command had been carried out.
But Fann had seen the binding burn.
She had seen Grazim.
She had seen Hexen.
And somewhere in the ancient dragon's confusion was now a new memory of the people carrying her toward Scourge.
Nethnarel suddenly felt very tired.
“We gained nothing.”
“No,” Hexen said.
Kaylor looked at him.
“Grazim is dead.”
Hexen glanced at the specter.
“Again.”
“That doesn't improve it.”
“No.”
Nethnarel rested one hand against her chest.
“We have Fann.”
Everyone looked toward her.
For the first time, the gold dragon answered clearly.
Not words spoken through Nethnarel's mouth.
Meaning.
Memory.
The image of a red dragon.
Scourge.
Ancient beyond kings.
Protected by something woven into his very being.
Magic dying against him.
Weapons losing their enchantment at the moment of contact.
Exactly as the Book of Knowledge had warned.
Then another image.
Gold wrapped around red.
Not fighting him.
Suppressing something.
Breaking a shield.
Nethnarel understood.
“She'll help us.”
Kaylor stepped closer.
“Against Scourge?”
“Yes.”
Fann's memories continued.
Tiamat.
Fire.
Scourge.
Death.
A body destroyed so long ago that even Fann no longer knew how many centuries had passed.
There was no dragon corpse waiting somewhere to receive her soul.
No resurrection they could offer.
When this was finished, Fann wanted only one thing.
Rest.
Nethnarel swallowed.
“She doesn't want another body.”
Isamu watched her.
“She wants revenge?”
“Not exactly.”
Fann corrected her.
Justice.
Perhaps.
Or simply conclusion.
“She'll weaken Scourge's protection. Enough that our magic and weapons can affect him normally.”
Fendor's expression sharpened.
“She can remove the anti-magic?”
“Suppress it.”
“For how long?”
Nethnarel listened.
“I don't know.”
Kaylor nodded.
“It doesn't matter.”
Fendor looked at him.
“It matters considerably.”
“We kill him before it ends.”
“That is not a plan.”
“It is the important portion of one.”
Nethnarel continued.
“Fann can't fight him for us.”
Kaylor frowned.
“She is one of the first dragons.”
“She is also dead.”
That ended the argument.
“She can make him vulnerable,” Nethnarel said. “We still have to kill him.”
“And afterward?”
“I let her go.”
The answer came without hesitation.
No crystal.
No prison.
No bargain.
Fann would go wherever the spirits of ancient gold dragons went when nothing remained binding them to mortal worlds.
After everything they had just done in the City of Glass, no one suggested otherwise.
Kaylor looked again toward Grazim's specter.
It stood beside Hexen.
Temporary.
Bound until the magic ended.
A shadow where their friend had been.
Kaylor's expression darkened.
“We still need a cleric.”
No one disagreed.
Fendor broke the silence.
“We also need an army.”
Kaylor looked at him.
Fendor raised one eyebrow.
“You intend to attack one of the oldest red dragons in existence with five people and Grazim's ghost?”
Kaylor considered.
“When you say it that way—”
“It sounds stupid?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
They returned to Oxland.
The hill giants remembered Fendor.
That was useful.
They remembered him because he had defeated their king.
That was less reassuring.
Among hill giants, however, those facts apparently amounted to much the same thing.
Fendor stood before the surviving clans and called in the authority they had accepted after the old king's defeat.
He did not ask them to fight a dragon.
Not in those words.
He asked them to come throw rocks at something enormous.
The distinction produced substantially more volunteers.
Four giants agreed.
They arrived carrying sacks until Fendor pointed out that the mountain itself contained more stones than they could possibly carry.
One giant considered this.
Then dropped the sack.
Another seemed disappointed.
“They are our catapults,” Isamu said.
Fendor looked toward him.
“They are people.”
One of the giants tore a boulder from the ground and lifted it over his head.
Fendor reconsidered.
“They are also catapults.”
They asked Oxland for archers.
Few volunteered.
Everyone had seen Scourge Firebreath fly over the city.
Courage survived many things.
The memory of an ancient red dragon's shadow crossing your home was not always one of them.
They tried to find a priest powerful enough to provide the kind of blessing that could sustain an army through what waited on the mountain.
Oxland possessed priests.
None volunteered to accompany them.
Kaylor did not blame them.
That surprised him.
Once he might have.
Once he would have thought fear could be overcome by faith if faith were strong enough.
Craven had cured him of sentences like that.
Hexen returned to the awakened trees.
They were no longer servants.
The magic that had first awakened them did not make obedience permanent.
That pleased him more than he expected.
He asked.
Some refused.
A few agreed.
They would walk beside the heroes because they chose to, not because Hexen's magic required it.
After the City of Glass, the difference mattered.
Kaylor called for his steed.
The creature that answered was a peryton—antlered, winged and predatory, its shape somewhere between stag and bird of prey.
Fendor stared.
“What happened to horses?”
“They don't fly.”
“Neither should that.”
“It does.”
Hexen summoned a great elk.
Isamu looked at it.
Then at the peryton.
“Mine is better.”
“You don't have one.”
“I have a hill giant.”
The giant looked down at him.
Isamu looked up.
The arrangement was apparently settled.
All the while, Grazim's specter followed Hexen.
Kaylor never turned his back on the druid.
Not once.
Hexen noticed.
Eventually he said, “You can ask.”
Kaylor's gaze remained forward.
“Can I trust you?”
Hexen considered the question.
“Yes.”
Kaylor finally looked at him.
“That is exactly what someone I couldn't trust would say.”
“True.”
“You made a deal with the Lord of Swarms.”
“Yes.”
“You freed him.”
Hexen looked toward Grazim's specter.
“We freed him.”
“Neth was controlled.”
“And I made the bargain that made any of it possible.”
Kaylor's jaw tightened.
The answer was not defensive.
That made it harder.
“The Lord told you the deal was complete?”
“Yes.”
“Do you still feel him?”
Hexen searched himself.
The connection that had once pulled like a hook had weakened.
Perhaps broken.
Perhaps merely gone quiet.
“Not the way I did.”
“That isn't an answer.”
“It is the only one I have.”
Kaylor looked toward the mountain.
“I'm not turning my back on you.”
Hexen nodded.
“I wouldn't.”
For a moment neither moved.
Then Hexen deliberately turned his back on Kaylor.
Kaylor stared.
Fendor saw it.
“Children.”
Neither man answered.
The army gathered.
Five heroes.
Four hill giants.
Awakened trees.
A flying peryton.
A giant elk.
And the fading specter of the cleric they had crossed worlds to save.
Inside Nethnarel burned the soul of Fann, ancient gold dragon, sister and enemy to the creature waiting above.
The heroes had entered the Lord of Swarms' story looking for a way to kill a dragon.
They had found one.
It had cost them Grazim.
The City of Glass.
The freedom of something a god had imprisoned.
And perhaps something in Hexen none of them yet understood.
Kaylor looked up.
The mountain rose northeast of Oxland.
Black rock.
Smoke.
A scar against the sky.
Somewhere beyond the ridges waited Scourge Firebreath.
The mate of Tiamat.
One of the first chromatic dragons.
A creature whose flesh murdered magic.
Fann stirred inside Nethnarel.
Recognition.
Hatred.
Readiness.
Fendor checked the Oathbow.
Isamu tightened the demonic whip at his side.
Hexen rested one hand upon his staff and looked once toward Grazim's specter.
Kaylor lifted the frost-rimed greataxe.
Behind them, the hill giants gathered stones.
Ahead, the mountain waited.
Book Three had begun with a dragon over Oxland.
Now the heroes were finally going to answer it.
They started walking.
And somewhere high above, beyond smoke and stone, something ancient opened its eyes.