The mountain had a road.
Kaylor had expected that to make things easier.
It did not.
The path climbed through Scourge Firebreath’s mountain in long, broken turns, cut between ridges of black volcanic stone. In places the walls rose so steeply on either side that the force had no choice but to follow the trail. Loose rock covered the ground. Smoke drifted down from somewhere above. Heat came through the soles of their boots.
The mountain did not look inhabited.
It looked occupied.
There was a difference.
Kaylor circled above the others on the peryton.
The creature’s antlered head turned constantly beneath him, wings beating against the rising heat. From the air Kaylor could see farther than anyone on the path, though not as far as he would have liked. Ridges overlapped one another. Crevasses opened and disappeared. The mountain seemed designed to conceal whatever waited above.
Below him came the strangest army Oxland had probably ever sent to war.
Five heroes.
Hill giants.
Awakened trees.
Hexen riding a giant elk.
Isamu moving among creatures large enough to step over him without noticing.
Fendor walking with the Oathbow ready and the uncomfortable authority of a man who had killed a giant king and somehow become responsible for what came afterward.
Nethnarel moved near the center of the formation.
Fann was silent within her.
Not absent.
Nethnarel could feel the ancient gold dragon as a warmth behind thought, immense and patient in a way Nethnarel did not understand.
Ahead waited Scourge.
Fann’s brother.
Enemy.
One of the oldest red dragons still left in the world.
Behind them lay the Grand Library.
Grazim’s body.
The ruined City of Glass.
Kaylor had discovered that armies became less impressive when one knew exactly how much blood had purchased them.
He looked down.
One of the giants bent, tore a loose boulder from the mountainside and tested its weight.
The stone was larger than a horse.
That part, at least, remained encouraging.
Fendor looked up at Kaylor.
“Anything?”
Kaylor shook his head.
“Nothing yet.”
Isamu glanced toward the ridges.
“That means something.”
“It means I see nothing.”
“That has historically meant something.”
Kaylor considered arguing.
Then the mountain answered for him.
Fire appeared beside the first hill giant.
Not flame rising from stone.
Not a creature descending from above.
One instant there was empty air.
The next—
skulls.
Dozens of them.
Perhaps hundreds.
Burning.
They moved together in a shrieking cloud, each skull trailing ember-red flame, overlapping until they resembled one monstrous face assembled from many smaller deaths.
The swarm struck the giant.
Fire washed across his chest.
The giant staggered backward with a roar.
Isamu was already moving.
He came off the path at a run, boots striking loose stone faster than any ordinary man could have crossed it. The demonic whip uncoiled from his hand.
The weapon remained wrong.
Every time Kaylor saw it, the same thought returned.
It belonged to something else.
Something crueler.
Isamu had simply made cruelty efficient.
The whip cracked through the burning mass.
His other hand followed.
For an instant the skulls separated around him.
Then his strike passed through the center of the apparition.
The swarm collapsed.
Flaming shapes scattered like sparks struck from a forge and vanished before reaching the ground.
The giant remained standing.
Barely.
Fendor looked toward Hexen.
The druid had gone still.
“What?”
Hexen did not answer.
He was staring at the place where the burning skulls had disappeared.
He had felt them.
Not merely seen them.
Not recognized them as enemies.
Felt them.
A thread had tightened somewhere inside him the moment they appeared.
Not the hook that had bound him to the Lord of Swarms before.
That obligation was gone.
The Lord had said so.
The bargain is fulfilled.
This was different.
Recognition.
Kinship.
Hexen hated the word even as it formed.
Kaylor noticed his expression from above.
“Hexen?”
The druid looked up.
“I’m fine.”
Kaylor’s stare lingered.
They both remembered the conversation before leaving Oxland.
Can I trust you?
Kaylor had never received an answer he liked.
Hexen had never found one he believed would help.
“Keep moving,” Fendor said.
They climbed.
Kaylor took the peryton higher.
One hundred feet.
Perhaps a little more.
The mountain opened beneath him in black shelves and narrow cuts.
For several minutes nothing moved.
Then Kaylor saw fire ahead.
High.
Level with him.
The burning skulls gathered out of empty air.
He had enough warning this time.
The peryton turned before the swarm finished forming.
“Go.”
The creature surged forward.
Kaylor drew the frost-rimed greataxe as they closed.
Cold gathered along the blade.
The contrast felt appropriate.
The axe struck through the burning skulls.
Several shattered.
Others broke around the blade and reformed behind it.
The peryton raked through them with talons.
Then the swarm answered.
It did not bite.
It enveloped.
Burning skulls poured around Kaylor and his mount, striking from every direction at once. Heat flashed across Kaylor’s armor.
The Cloak of Displacement fractured his position into uncertain images.
Half the swarm attacked dragonborn who were not there.
The other half found the peryton.
The creature screamed.
Kaylor felt it falter beneath him.
“Stay with me.”
The skulls pulled away.
Kaylor pressed one hand against the peryton’s neck.
Healing flowed through his palm.
Not much.
Enough.
The creature’s wingbeat strengthened.
Below, the mountain came alive.
Another swarm appeared behind the giants.
Then another.
One of the hill giants turned.
The skulls rushed him.
The giant lifted both hands as though to strike—
and stopped.
Fear changed him.
Kaylor had seen giants angry.
Hungry.
Confused.
Drunk.
He had rarely seen one terrified.
The creature dropped its boulder.
Then ran.
“Hold!” Fendor shouted.
The giant did not.
Fendor had inherited authority among the hill giants through one of the stranger traditions he had encountered in a long and increasingly strange life.
He had killed their king.
Therefore, by their customs, he mattered.
That authority had redirected a tribe.
It had convinced giants to march against an ancient red dragon.
It did not overcome whatever rode inside the burning skulls.
“Hold!” Fendor shouted again.
The giant ran faster.
Isamu watched him disappear down the path.
“That worked poorly.”
“Thank you.”
Another giant stood his ground.
Barely.
A swarm came toward him.
He bent, snatched up a boulder and threw.
The stone crossed the mountainside like a siege shot.
It missed.
Kaylor leaned sideways as another boulder passed dangerously near his peryton.
He looked down.
“Watch it!”
The giant waved.
Kaylor decided that was probably an apology.
One of Hexen’s awakened trees moved forward.
Its roots struck stone like heavy feet. Branches spread wide above the road.
The awakened trees did not fear the burning skulls.
That did not mean the skulls could not hurt them.
Fire blossomed across the tree’s bark.
The creature groaned.
Not the sound of wood burning.
Pain.
Hexen felt it.
The trees had chosen to come.
That distinction had mattered to him.
He had asked.
They had answered.
Now one of them was burning because it had answered yes.
Hexen urged the giant elk forward.
The elk leapt across broken stone with surprising grace for something so large.
Hexen struck at the nearest swarm.
Behind him, another awakened tree hammered burning skulls apart with a branch thick enough to crush a man.
The skulls dissolved beneath the blow.
Nethnarel raised both wrists.
The Rings of Fire ignited.
A bolt crossed the mountainside and vanished through one apparition.
The second struck true.
Flame met flame.
The skulls burst apart.
Nethnarel frowned.
There was something satisfying about using fire to kill fire.
Perhaps too satisfying.
Fann moved faintly behind her thoughts.
No warning.
No objection.
The ancient dragon remained watchful.
Nethnarel gathered different magic.
Chaos answered.
A twisting bolt of unstable energy leapt from her hand and tore through another swarm.
The burning shapes disappeared.
Then the magic turned back upon her.
Nethnarel opened her mouth.
Nothing came out.
She blinked.
Tried again.
Silence.
Fendor looked toward her.
“Neth?”
She gestured irritably toward her throat.
Fendor waited.
Nethnarel made a considerably less polite gesture.
“Ah.”
Kaylor descended on the peryton.
“What happened?”
Nethnarel pointed at herself.
Opened her mouth.
Nothing.
Then pointed at the fading residue of her own magic.
Kaylor nodded.
“Wild magic.”
Nethnarel gave him a look that said she was pleased someone in the group could identify the obvious.
Another swarm appeared.
The climb became a running war.
There was no front.
The skulls did not defend a gate.
They did not hold ground.
They manifested wherever the mountain decided to put them.
Ahead.
Behind.
Above.
Beside giants.
Over trees.
Near Nethnarel.
Near Hexen.
Every time the force gained distance, fire assembled somewhere else.
Every attack carried more than heat.
Fear came with it.
Presence.
Something that made the mountain feel watched.
The hill giants began looking toward every shadow before it moved.
One stayed.
Another fled.
Fendor shouted commands until his throat hurt.
Some giants listened.
Others discovered that whatever loyalty they owed the slayer of their king did not extend to being consumed by flaming skulls born from a demon lord’s nightmares.
The awakened trees continued forward.
They were slower than fear.
Steadier too.
Isamu remained close to the giants.
At one point a giant seized him.
Isamu had enough time to look offended.
Then the giant threw him.
He crossed the battlefield like another boulder.
Fendor watched him fly.
Isamu struck a swarm in midair.
Fire burst outward.
The skulls vanished.
Isamu hit the ground, rolled and came back to his feet.
Fendor stared.
“I assume that was intentional.”
Isamu adjusted his clothing.
“Yes.”
The giant nodded enthusiastically.
Isamu nodded back.
An agreement had apparently been reached.
They climbed again.
The path narrowed.
Smoke thickened.
Kaylor lowered his altitude.
The peryton had been wounded twice now.
He could feel fatigue in the creature beneath him.
Ahead, the road climbed toward a black opening in the mountain.
A cave.
Finally.
Fendor saw it too.
“Entrance.”
“Looks like one,” Kaylor called.
“Anything guarding it?”
Kaylor looked.
“Not yet.”
Fendor grimaced.
There was always a yet.
The next attack came before they reached it.
A swarm descended beside another hill giant.
The giant screamed.
Isamu jumped from his shoulder before the creature could carry him back down the mountain.
“Hold fast.”
The giant did not.
It fled.
Isamu watched it go.
“Well.”
Behind him, another awakened tree erupted into flame.
Hexen turned.
“No.”
He felt the Swarm before he saw it.
The sensation moved through him like remembered blood.
The flaming skulls gathered near the tree.
Another mass appeared closer to Hexen.
The connection tightened.
For one heartbeat the battle disappeared.
The mountain disappeared.
The burning tree.
Kaylor.
The giants.
All of it faded behind something vast.
Darkness moved behind Hexen’s thoughts.
Not emptiness.
Millions of tiny movements.
Wings.
Legs.
Mandibles.
Things crawling over one another without end.
The Lord of Swarms.
Hexen had heard him before.
He had bargained with him.
Served him.
Called upon powers he did not understand and watched those powers answer.
The bargain was finished.
The Lord had said so.
But finished did not mean forgotten.
The presence reached toward him.
Not commanding.
Inviting.
Join us.
Hexen stopped breathing.
The words came again.
Join us.
The swarm before him shifted.
For an instant Hexen understood it.
Not merely as an enemy.
As something he might direct.
The realization was worse than the voice.
Power waited behind surrender.
Give over.
Yield.
Let the strange part of himself that recognized the Swarm stop pretending it was separate.
And the creatures might obey.
Hexen tightened his hands around his weapon.
He did not answer.
The swarm attacked.
That made the choice easier.
Burning skulls crashed around him.
Hexen drove forward.
One strike.
Then another.
The apparition recoiled.
Arrows passed close enough to stir his clothing.
Fendor.
The first arrow entered the burning mass.
The second followed.
Then another.
The swarm came apart.
Hexen looked toward the elf.
Fendor lowered the bow only enough to speak.
“You looked occupied.”
Hexen stared at the place where the skulls had vanished.
“I was.”
“With what?”
Hexen looked up the mountain.
“Later.”
Kaylor heard that.
He did not like it.
There had been too many laters surrounding Hexen.
Later they would discuss the Lord of Swarms.
Later they would understand Grazim.
Later they would understand the maul.
Later they would understand why Hexen could call powers that belonged nowhere in the druid Kaylor remembered.
Kaylor had begun to suspect later was simply another word for surviving long enough to be frightened by the answer.
A swarm struck toward Isamu.
The monk slipped beneath the first rush.
The second caught him.
He staggered, then drove the demonic whip through the moving skulls and dragged part of the apparition apart.
Another appeared near Nethnarel.
She raised one hand.
Nothing.
The spell in her mind required a word.
Her voice remained gone.
Nethnarel’s expression hardened.
Fine.
She reached into the Bag of Beans.
Fendor saw her hand disappear inside.
“No.”
Nethnarel looked at him.
“No beans.”
She smiled.
Fendor pointed at the mountain.
“We are attacking an ancient dragon.”
Nethnarel removed one of the beans.
“This is exactly when we should avoid unexplained magical agriculture.”
She could not speak, of course.
So the argument occurred entirely through expression.
Nethnarel won.
She hurled the bean.
It struck the ground near the flaming swarm.
For one heartbeat nothing happened.
Then the mountain moved.
Earth erupted upward.
Something enormous came out of it.
Armor-plated.
Hungry.
A land shark.
The creature opened a mouth large enough to swallow a man.
Then swallowed the burning skulls.
All of them.
The apparition disappeared inside it.
The creature landed.
Burrowed.
And vanished back into the mountain.
Everyone stared.
Isamu looked at Nethnarel.
Nethnarel spread both hands.
Fendor slowly lowered the bow.
“I hate the beans.”
Nethnarel smiled.
Kaylor and the peryton dove toward another swarm.
The mount struck first.
Antlers and talons tore through the burning mass.
Kaylor’s axe followed.
The apparition scattered.
Another rose beneath them.
Too close.
The swarm hit the peryton.
The creature screamed.
Kaylor felt its body convulse.
“Move!”
The mount tried.
The swarm struck again.
Fire and something colder than fire passed through the creature.
The peryton’s wings stopped.
Kaylor knew before they fell.
The mount was dead.
The mountain rushed upward.
Kaylor kicked free.
He hit the slope hard, rolled across loose black stone and came to one knee.
The peryton landed farther down the path.
It did not move.
For a moment Kaylor stared at it.
The creature had answered his call.
Carried him into a battle that had never belonged to it.
Then the skulls came for him.
Grief became easier when something was available to hit.
Kaylor stood.
The frost-rimed axe came around.
The first swarm broke beneath it.
The Dancing Sword tore free and struck from another angle.
Fire scattered.
Kaylor stepped through it.
“Next.”
Another swarm found Fendor.
The elf turned too late.
Burning skulls rushed him from every side.
One passed through the distortion of motion and flame surrounding the battlefield.
Another struck.
Then another.
Fendor stumbled.
Pain crossed his face.
He raised the Oathbow anyway.
“That,” he said, “was irritating.”
He shot the nearest skull through the mouth.
The arrow continued into the mass beyond it.
The formation collapsed.
Then the burning awakened tree groaned.
Hexen turned.
Fire had spread through its branches.
Flames ran into its crown.
The tree tried to continue walking.
One root moved.
Then another.
The trunk split.
The awakened tree fell across the mountainside.
It burned where it lay.
Hexen stopped.
No spell returned that choice.
No command could send it home.
It had come because it chose to.
Now it was dead because Hexen had asked.
The Lord of Swarms touched the edge of his thoughts again.
No words this time.
The invitation remained.
Hexen looked at the burning tree.
Then at the skulls.
Whatever the Lord believed Hexen was becoming, it had misunderstood something important.
Recognition was not loyalty.
Power was not obedience.
Hexen moved.
A hill giant reached the same enemy first.
He lifted an enormous boulder.
Fendor saw what was about to happen.
“Hexen!”
The rock came down.
Hexen threw himself aside.
The boulder struck the burning swarm with a sound like a building collapsing.
Skulls vanished beneath shattered stone and fire.
Hexen rolled onto his back.
The giant looked pleased.
Hexen stared upward.
“Thank you.”
The giant grinned.
Another burning apparition appeared.
Then another.
The army kept moving.
Not in formation anymore.
Formation belonged to battlefields where enemies respected direction.
This was survival by momentum.
Fendor fired.
Isamu struck.
Kaylor fought from the ground now, his dead mount behind him.
Hexen stayed near the remaining awakened trees.
Nethnarel worked without a voice, relying upon whatever magic did not require one, upon the Rings of Fire and upon the dangerous collection of objects she had accumulated over two lives of questionable judgment.
Then, suddenly, sound returned.
Nethnarel inhaled.
“Finally.”
Fendor turned.
“You can speak.”
“Yes.”
“I had noticed the silence.”
Nethnarel glared at him.
The last swarm gathered farther up the road.
“Later.”
Fendor smiled.
“That appears to be popular today.”
Nethnarel raised one hand.
Three bolts of eldritch force tore across the path.
The first struck the burning mass.
The second punched through its center.
The third scattered whatever remained.
The final skull faded.
Silence fell across the mountain.
No one trusted it.
Kaylor waited.
Axe ready.
Nothing appeared.
Fendor kept an arrow drawn.
Nothing.
Isamu watched the ridges.
Nothing.
Hexen felt for the terrible affinity inside himself.
The connection had receded.
Not vanished.
The distinction mattered.
Nethnarel lowered her hand.
Behind her thoughts, Fann remained silent.
The ancient dragon had not come to save them from the mountain.
That had never been the agreement.
The heroes looked back.
The road behind them was marked by scorched stone.
A dead awakened tree.
The body of Kaylor’s peryton.
Hill giants who had fled and would not be coming farther.
Smoke curled from places where the Swarm manifestations had burned the mountain.
The assault had not reached Scourge Firebreath.
They had not even entered his lair.
Kaylor stared upward.
“This was the approach.”
Fendor understood.
“Yes.”
Isamu looked toward the dark opening ahead.
“Then we should probably go inside.”
Kaylor gave him a tired look.
“That is your conclusion?”
“Yes.”
Hexen urged the giant elk forward.
The surviving force climbed.
The black opening widened.
Heat rolled from it.
Not ordinary cave air.
Something deeper.
Hot enough to taste.
They reached the entrance.
The passage beyond descended through volcanic stone.
Its walls were smooth in places, as though something molten had once run through them and hollowed the mountain from within.
A lava tube.
Large.
But not comfortably large.
The giants would fit.
Barely.
Fendor looked into the dark.
“So.”
Kaylor came beside him.
“So.”
“We lost people before reaching the door.”
“Yes.”
“Your flying mount is dead.”
“Yes.”
“One of Hexen’s trees burned alive.”
Hexen looked toward him.
Fendor corrected himself.
“Burned to death.”
“Better.”
“Some of the giants ran.”
Kaylor looked back down the mountain.
“Yes.”
“And the Lord of Swarms is apparently still speaking to Hexen.”
Kaylor turned slowly.
Hexen said nothing.
Fendor noticed.
“Oh.”
Kaylor’s expression changed.
“What did he say?”
Hexen looked into the lava tube.
There were several ways he could answer.
None of them improved the situation.
Finally he said, “He asked me to join him.”
Kaylor stared.
Isamu looked at Hexen.
Nethnarel stopped moving.
Fendor broke the silence.
“And?”
Hexen rested one hand against the Staff of the Woodlands.
“I’m here.”
Kaylor held his gaze.
For once, that answer was enough.
Not forever.
For now.
From deep inside the mountain came a low sound.
Stone shifting.
Or fire.
Or something moving through both.
Kaylor raised the frost-rimed greataxe.
The weapon steamed in the hot air.
Behind them lay the first battlefield.
Ahead waited Scourge Firebreath.
Between the two, the mountain opened its mouth.
The heroes entered.