The mountain swallowed them slowly.
The entrance they had fought so hard to reach did not open into some vast dragon hall or ancient gate. It narrowed almost immediately, volcanic walls drawing together until Scourge Firebreath’s mountain seemed determined to test whether the army outside could be forced through the same hole one creature at a time.
For the hill giants, it very nearly could not.
The first giant bent nearly double and turned one shoulder as he entered. Stone scraped hide. His club struck the ceiling with a dull crack, dislodging a rain of black grit that scattered over everyone behind him.
Fendor watched him struggle another few feet.
“This was an excellent idea.”
Kaylor glanced toward him.
“You agreed to it.”
“I have agreed to many excellent ideas. Their quality often becomes apparent afterward.”
The awakened tree following the giant had even more trouble. It drew its limbs inward as far as it could, branches creaking against one another while roots found purchase on stone never meant to carry a walking forest. Hexen’s giant elk lowered its antlers and followed behind.
There had been disagreement over the order.
That seemed inevitable.
A giant first, because anything waiting ahead might prefer to strike the largest target. One of the awakened trees behind him. Then the heroes, close enough to intervene if the creatures in front became trapped. The remaining giants and tree would follow as the passage allowed.
An army reduced to a line.
Kaylor hated it.
On the mountainside they had at least been able to see what was killing them.
Here there was only the back of the creature ahead, the scrape of stone, and the breath of the mountain moving against his face.
Hot breath.
The deeper they went, the hotter it became.
The black rock had been burned smooth in places and torn into sharp ridges in others. Thin orange veins glowed within cracks along the walls. At first they appeared only occasionally. Then every dozen steps. Then everywhere, until the tunnel itself seemed to pulse with buried fire.
Kaylor carried the frost-rimed greataxe across his body.
The cold along its blade steamed faintly in the heat.
He had lost the peryton less than an hour earlier.
The creature’s body still lay somewhere below them on the mountain.
There had been no time to mourn it. No time even to decide whether mourning a summoned steed made sense when magic might someday call another creature in its place.
It had carried him because he had asked.
Then it had died beneath him.
That seemed real enough.
So did the absence walking with them.
Grazim would once have filled a passage like this with complaints.
The cleric had possessed a gift for looking at six people willingly entering an obviously lethal place and making them feel unreasonable for doing so. After his reincarnation, when he had been reduced to the body of a halfling and forced to look up at nearly everyone while delivering those judgments, the effect had somehow improved.
Now there was no voice behind Kaylor telling them to stop.
No warhammer against stone.
No shield.
No irritated prayer when someone did something reckless.
There were five heroes.
Kaylor had stopped counting because he wanted to.
He had not stopped noticing.
Ahead, the giant halted.
The entire column compressed behind him.
“What?” Kaylor called.
The giant said something low and unhappy.
Fendor translated only the expression.
“He dislikes whatever is ahead.”
“Useful.”
Kaylor pressed past the awakened tree.
The tunnel widened.
Then ended in fire.
A river of lava crossed the passage from wall to wall.
It moved slowly, thickly, its surface blackening in places before splitting again to reveal the orange-white heat beneath. The current vanished beneath the rock on one side and reappeared through a broader tube beyond them.
The route continued on the far side.
Perhaps forty feet away.
Perhaps less.
Distance became less comforting when the ground between was liquid stone.
Isamu stepped beside Kaylor and looked across.
Kaylor saw the monk shift his weight.
“No.”
Isamu glanced at him.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were about to do something.”
“I was looking.”
“You look with your feet.”
Isamu considered that.
Then the giant in front of them panicked.
Not the fear that had driven some of his kin from the swarming skulls outside.
This was recognition.
He tore a boulder from the edge of the passage and hurled it into the molten river.
The rock struck with enough force to throw lava several feet into the air.
Something moved beneath it.
A dark shape recoiled.
Then the lava rose.
At first Kaylor could not tell where the river ended and the creature began. Molten stone gathered upward in a column, folding into a rough body that seemed only temporarily interested in possessing arms or a head. Liquid fire streamed from it continually, returning to the river below.
The giant roared in satisfaction.
“He saw it before we did,” Fendor said.
Isamu stepped forward.
The monk stared at the creature.
Then at the lava.
Kaylor understood what he was considering.
“Isamu.”
The monk ran.
His first step touched molten rock.
Kaylor expected flame.
Instead Isamu was already somewhere else.
His feet struck the surface only for instants, moving too quickly for the lava to claim him. Heat wrapped around his legs. The soles of his boots smoked. He crossed the river as though it were water beneath rain.
The creature turned.
Isamu reached it first.
The fire-bearing sword he sometimes carried remained dark. He had extinguished its enchantment before attacking something made from the same element.
Steel struck molten flesh.
Once.
Again.
The creature deformed around the blows. Isamu struck a third time, then retreated with the same impossible speed, racing back across the lava before the thing could answer.
He reached solid ground.
Smoke curled from his boots.
Kaylor stared at them.
Isamu looked down.
“Fine.”
“Your boots are smoking.”
“They’ll stop.”
Fendor had already drawn.
The Oathbow thrummed.
An arrow crossed the lava and disappeared into the creature’s body.
It did not fall.
Instead the river beside Kaylor erupted.
A second mass of molten stone threw itself upward.
This one struck before anyone could reposition.
Kaylor’s cloak twisted his image.
The thing slammed into a dragonborn who ceased to exist at the instant of impact.
Then it struck again.
The second blow found him.
Molten weight crashed against Kaylor’s armor, driving him backward. Fire crawled across plate and scale, but the heat that should have cooked flesh beneath the metal faded before it reached him with its full strength.
Kaylor planted his feet.
He had survived too much fire to be impressed by ordinary burning.
The creature changed.
Fendor felt it before he understood what had happened.
The world near the lava seemed to lose agreement with itself.
The thing occupied one place.
Then another.
Then both.
For a heartbeat the creature was not moving through space so much as convincing space it had always been somewhere else. The tunnel lengthened and contracted around it. Light from the molten river arrived at the wrong moment.
Fendor’s stomach tightened.
Something reached for his perception.
Time slipped.
He resisted.
The mountain snapped back into place.
The creature remained blurred, edges breaking apart into overlapping positions.
Fendor raised the Oathbow.
“I dislike that.”
Kaylor looked at him.
“What did it do?”
“I’m not entirely certain.”
“That bad?”
“Yes.”
For perhaps the first time since entering the tunnel, the narrowness mattered more than the enemy.
The giant blocked part of the path. The awakened tree filled another. Hexen’s elk could not turn. Everyone behind them was forced into whatever space remained. The lava creatures could emerge anywhere along the flow.
The heroes could not.
Nethnarel saw the problem.
She also saw the mountain.
Stone surrounded them.
Enough stone to bury cities.
She stepped toward the lava.
“Move.”
Isamu looked at her.
“Where?”
“Not there.”
He moved.
Nethnarel planted one foot, raised both hands and reached into the mountain.
The first sound was not an explosion.
It was a groan.
Deep.
Structural.
A slab of rock pushed upward through the lava.
Then another.
The molten current spilled around newly forming stone as section after section rose and locked together. Nethnarel did not build a wall upward.
She laid it down.
Across the river.
The new stone stretched from one bank to the other, wide enough for a human to cross comfortably and, with considerably more care, for a hill giant.
Steam rolled from its surface.
Kaylor looked at her.
“A bridge.”
“That was the idea.”
Isamu looked at the stone, then at the path he had just run across the lava.
“This is easier.”
Nethnarel smiled.
“Yes.”
The giant stepped onto it.
The bridge held.
Then Fendor’s next shot struck the creature across the lava.
Cold traveled with the arrow.
The reaction was immediate.
The molten body contracted violently around the wound. Orange-white fire blackened at the edges.
Fendor saw it.
“So.”
Kaylor’s frost axe rose.
“So?”
“They don’t like cold.”
Kaylor smiled.
Finally, something about the mountain he could work with.
The giant attacked before he could.
A boulder flew over the heroes and crashed into the lava creature Isamu had wounded. The impact crushed much of its form back into the molten flow.
The creature died.
And the tunnel became fire.
The explosion did not resemble the slow violence of lava.
It was sudden.
A sphere of white-orange heat filled the passage and struck everyone near the bridge. Kaylor turned his shoulder. Isamu disappeared beneath the flash. Hexen threw himself toward the elk. The awakened tree behind them took the blast full across its trunk.
When the fire receded, the tree was burning.
Not entirely.
Enough.
Orange lines raced through bark already scorched during the assault outside. Leaves curled black. One branch cracked under its own weight.
The tree made a sound Hexen would remember.
Not a word.
It did not need one.
Pain did not become less real because a creature expressed it differently.
Hexen moved toward it.
“Hold.”
The tree shuddered.
He pressed his palm against scorched bark, feeling living wood beneath the damaged surface.
Alive.
Still alive.
It had chosen to come.
That thought had mattered in Oxland.
The awakened trees were not servants. Hexen had not commanded them into war. He had asked.
Some refused.
These had agreed.
Now one burned inside a dragon’s mountain because Hexen had given it something to agree to.
There were bargains inside bargains, he had discovered.
Not all of them required demons.
Behind him the lava surged again.
“Hexen!”
He turned.
The remaining molten creature collapsed inward.
For one strange instant it seemed to die.
Then it deliberately tore itself apart.
Lava filled the tunnel.
The wave hit everyone.
Kaylor vanished behind molten orange.
Nethnarel raised an arm before her face. The fire wrapped around her but found a body already changed by too many years of dangerous magic.
Isamu moved through the eruption rather than against it.
The giants roared.
The awakened trees burned.
Hexen stood in the middle of it.
And waited for pain.
It came.
But not enough.
He looked down.
Fire moved over his hands.
Along his sleeves.
Across his chest.
The heat should have been unbearable.
Instead it felt distant.
Muted.
As though something stood between Hexen and the flame.
He knew what it was before anyone said the word.
That knowledge frightened him more than the fire.
He had been given power in pieces.
The maul that appeared when he needed it.
The impossible healing that had brought Kaylor back from death in the City of Glass.
The strange curse that had settled so easily over his enemies.
The ability to shatter himself into razor-winged butterflies.
Grazim’s specter.
None of it belonged naturally beside the moon, the forests, the wild shapes and old elemental powers Hexen had understood as his.
Now fire itself seemed reluctant to claim him.
A word surfaced from somewhere he could not identify.
Not whispered into his thoughts as the Lord of Swarms had whispered on the mountain.
Not spoken aloud.
A name for a condition that already existed.
Emissary.
Hexen looked toward the molten river.
The bargain was finished.
The Lord of Swarms had said so.
His service had been paid.
Grazim had been returned.
The ancient binding had been destroyed.
Whatever debt had existed between them was done.
So why had the gifts remained?
Why did the mountain’s fire treat him differently?
Why had the voice still reached toward him outside?
Join us.
The lava drained from the tunnel.
Kaylor looked toward Hexen.
The dragonborn’s armor smoked.
“You all right?”
Hexen looked at his own hands.
“Yes.”
Kaylor’s eyes narrowed.
“Why?”
Hexen understood what he meant.
Everyone else had been battered by the eruption.
Hexen had stood inside it.
“I don’t know.”
Kaylor’s expression hardened immediately.
“That answer is getting old.”
Hexen almost told him.
Emissary.
The word waited.
Instead he looked toward the lava.
“We still have one.”
Kaylor knew a deflection when he heard one.
He also knew when the mountain had made an argument more urgent than mistrust.
“Later.”
Hexen nodded.
Later had become an overcrowded place.
The final creature resisted everything that followed.
Kaylor battered it with the frost-rimed axe whenever the narrow passage allowed him close enough. Each cold strike hardened part of the molten body and tore fractures through it.
Fendor found angles past giant shoulders and tree limbs.
Nethnarel abandoned fire entirely.
She unleashed a volley of pure force instead.
Bolts of magic streaked through the volcanic gloom and struck one after another, punching craters into the creature until its body could no longer hold shape.
It died.
Fendor saw the collapse begin.
“Back!”
There was nowhere to go.
The creature exploded.
The blast filled the passage.
A hill giant stood directly in its path.
For an instant the enormous creature existed only as a dark shape inside the fire.
Then the flames vanished.
The giant remained upright.
He looked down at himself.
Took one step.
And fell.
The impact shook the bridge.
No one spoke.
The dead giant lay partly across the volcanic stone, one hand still closed around the club he had carried up the mountain.
Fendor stared at him.
The giants had first followed Fendor because he had killed their king.
That fact had been funny once.
Absurd, certainly.
A tribe governed by the simple logic that defeating the ruler made you the ruler had placed an elf archer in a position none of them expected him to occupy.
Fendor had used it.
He had redirected them away from Oxland.
Returned their hunting grounds.
Then brought some of them here.
Throw rocks at a dragon, he had told them in one form or another.
They had understood that.
It sounded almost simple.
Now one was dead before they had even seen Scourge Firebreath.
There was no joke in it.
Fendor reached for whatever healing remained to him and sent it outward.
Warmth passed through the battered force.
The giants still standing straightened. Kaylor’s breathing eased. Cuts tightened. Strength returned where it could.
The dead giant did not move.
Fendor looked away.
“Across.”
The others obeyed.
One by one, they passed over Nethnarel’s bridge.
The lava moved beneath them.
The mountain continued beyond.
The tube opened into a chamber wide enough for the giants to stand upright again.
The relief lasted only seconds.
This cavern was different.
No river divided it.
Instead the floor itself had broken into great plates of black stone with thin channels of orange between them. Lava flowed beneath the crust, visible through cracks that traced the chamber like veins beneath skin.
The heat was less immediate than beside the river.
That made it worse.
The fire was under them now.
Hexen stopped.
Everyone behind him nearly walked into the elk.
“What?” Kaylor asked.
Hexen raised one hand.
He had felt movement.
Not through sound.
Through the stone.
Druids knew the ground in ways that did not require explanation. Roots moving through soil. Water beneath earth. Burrowing animals pressing faint histories into the land.
Something below them was walking through lava.
Hexen stared at one cracked section of floor.
A shape passed beneath it.
Humanoid.
A head.
Shoulders.
A body made visible only where the molten light shifted around it.
“Under us.”
Weapons rose.
Fendor saw nothing.
“Where?”
Hexen pointed.
The shape moved.
“There.”
He did not wait.
Water answered his call.
An impossible volume of it gathered in the volcanic chamber, cold and dark against orange light. For one heartbeat it hung above the cracked floor.
Then the tidal wave fell.
Water struck molten stone.
The mountain screamed.
Steam exploded upward in a white wall.
The sound was so violent it seemed alive: a shrieking hiss that filled the chamber and drove everyone back.
The figure beneath the crust convulsed.
Parts of the floor darkened as the lava cooled.
Not enough to seal the cracks.
Enough to hurt whatever was below.
Hexen heard the scream inside the steam.
Then four creatures erupted from the floor.
They were more recognizably humanoid than the shapeless lava masses at the river, but that made them no less unnatural.
Bodies of blackened stone held fire within them. Lava leaked from joints and mouths. Burning blades—curved like scimitars—formed in their hands as they pulled themselves out of the cracks.
They were furious.
Isamu met them before they fully emerged.
He moved into the steam and struck the nearest creature twice with such precision that the first blow opened a fracture in the crust Hexen’s water had created and the second drove directly into it.
The elemental folded inward.
Isamu struck again.
Then withdrew before molten retaliation could reach him.
The creature remained standing.
Barely.
One of its companions flowed toward a hill giant.
It did not walk where the lava cracks were widest.
It used them.
Fire streamed through the fissures and reassembled closer to its target, the burning scimitar rising as it came.
The giant took the first blow.
Flame ran across his side.
The second nearly drove him to one knee.
Fendor saw fear replace anger.
He stepped toward the giant.
“Stay.”
The giant looked at him.
Fendor knew the creature understood enough.
They had fought together before.
Not like this.
The elf pointed toward the elemental.
“Stay.”
The giant looked at the enemy.
Then at the narrow passage behind them.
Fendor saw the decision.
“No.”
The giant turned.
He pushed past one of the awakened trees and fled back toward the stone bridge.
Fendor watched him go.
He could have ordered the others to stop him.
He did not.
The giant who remained chose differently.
A wave of lava struck across his chest.
He roared.
Then stepped into it.
The club came down.
The first blow caught the elemental across the shoulder and drove it sideways.
The second landed harder.
Fire burst from the creature.
The giant roared again, not from fear now but fury.
Isamu glanced toward Fendor.
Fendor already knew what the monk was thinking.
“Do not.”
Isamu said nothing.
“Do not rank them.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You were.”
The giant struck again.
Isamu nodded appreciatively.
Fendor sighed.
Kaylor entered from the side.
The frost-rimed greataxe hit the elemental.
Steam exploded from the wound.
The creature recoiled far more violently than it had from the giant’s club.
Kaylor felt the difference through the haft.
Cold did not merely hurt these things.
It undid them.
He struck again.
The axe buried itself in molten stone. Frost crawled outward from the edge, solidifying glowing flesh into brittle black crust.
Kaylor tore the weapon free.
The crust shattered.
“Fendor.”
“I saw.”
A frost-laden arrow was already on the string.
It flew.
The creature screamed.
Cold spread through its torso.
For a brief moment it resembled a statue built around a furnace.
Then the internal fire broke through again.
Another elemental released a wave of lava.
The attack crossed the chamber in a sheet.
Kaylor braced.
Hexen did not have time.
Fire hit him.
Again the pain was wrong.
Too little.
The word returned.
Emissary.
Not a title he wanted.
Not one he remembered accepting.
Yet his body answered it.
The Lord of Swarms had not needed to lie.
The bargain really could be finished.
Perhaps the bargain had never been the dangerous part.
Perhaps accepting the power once was enough.
Hexen reached for magic before he had fully decided what he wanted.
Something appeared beside him.
A weapon made from light.
It floated in the air.
Hexen stared.
He recognized it immediately.
That made no sense.
He had watched Grazim summon such weapons countless times.
A war cleric’s prayer given shape.
Divine force pretending to be steel.
The spectral weapon turned toward the nearest elemental and struck.
Kaylor saw it.
His own attack stopped half completed.
“What is that?”
Hexen looked at the weapon.
“I know what it is.”
“That was not my question.”
“No.”
The weapon struck again.
Kaylor stared at Hexen.
Grazim’s absence suddenly felt even less empty.
Hexen had killed their friend.
Hexen had raised his specter.
Now Hexen wielded one of the forms of magic Kaylor associated most strongly with the dead cleric.
The suspicion Kaylor had carried since the Grand Library became something colder.
“Did he give you that?”
Hexen knew who he meant.
The Lord of Swarms.
“I don’t know.”
Kaylor’s jaw tightened.
Hexen raised his own weapon.
“I truly don’t.”
There was no time for more.
One of the fiery humanoids hurled molten force across the chamber.
The surviving giant took the worst of it and stayed upright.
Another elemental rushed Kaylor.
The Cloak of Displacement split the dragonborn’s position into uncertain possibilities. The burning scimitar passed through one image.
Kaylor answered with frost.
Fendor’s arrows followed.
Isamu struck wherever cracks opened.
The battle became steam and fire and impacts that could be felt through the mountain rather than heard.
Nethnarel stayed behind the front line and watched the elemental nearest her friends.
Fire would accomplish little.
She had learned that already.
So she reached for something else.
Something much darker.
The spell gathered without heat.
The temperature around her seemed to fall, though no frost formed.
Life was not a single thing, Nethnarel had learned.
It was a collection of agreements.
Blood continued moving.
Thought continued.
The soul—or whatever part of a creature resembled one—continued inhabiting flesh.
Magic could persuade those agreements to stop.
She extended one hand.
Negative energy struck the elemental.
The creature screamed.
Not with the hissing rage Hexen’s tidal wave had produced.
With pain.
Its molten light guttered.
The scimitar fell.
The creature collapsed onto the volcanic floor.
Dead.
Nethnarel lowered her hand.
Then the corpse moved.
She stared.
One arm bent beneath it.
The elemental pushed itself upright.
The fire within its body had changed.
It still burned, but dimly now, contained within cracked black stone like embers in a corpse after the pyre had gone cold.
The creature stood.
Turned.
Looked toward Nethnarel.
And waited.
Fendor saw it.
“What did you do?”
Nethnarel watched the dead elemental.
“I killed it.”
“Yes. I was present for that.”
“It appears to have objected.”
Isamu studied the creature.
“It’s dead.”
“Yes.”
“It’s standing.”
“Yes.”
Kaylor looked from the corpse to Nethnarel.
“Is it ours?”
Nethnarel felt the connection then.
A simple magical certainty.
Not friendship.
Not thought.
Obedience.
“Yes.”
Fendor slowly lowered his bow.
They had entered the mountain with hill giants, awakened trees, a peryton, an elk and five heroes.
The peryton was dead.
One giant was dead.
Others had fled.
Trees were burning.
And now Nethnarel had added a corpse made from lava.
“This army is getting stranger.”
Nethnarel looked at him.
“It was strange when we started.”
“Fair.”
The flaming zombie lurched toward its former allies.
It was not graceful.
Death had not improved its coordination.
But it obeyed.
One of the living elementals attacked it.
The zombie endured.
Nethnarel found herself smiling despite everything.
Then she stopped.
There was something dangerous in how quickly impossible things became useful.
The City of Glass had taught them that.
So had the Lord of Swarms.
Power rarely arrived with an invoice.
That came later.
The fight rolled deeper into the chamber.
Nethnarel conjured two blades of darkness into her hands.
The weapons seemed to drink the orange light around them. She threw both.
One vanished through steam.
The other struck.
Then the blades returned as easily as thought.
Nethnarel caught them.
Another remembered power.
Another thing she had apparently once known how to do.
She had stopped being surprised by that.
She was not sure when.
Nearby, the remaining giant struck an elemental hard enough to scatter molten rock across the floor.
The creature answered with its scimitar.
Kaylor pressed another from the opposite side.
His axe turned lava to brittle stone wherever it landed.
Hexen’s spectral weapon hammered down again.
The druid stared at it every time it moved.
He hated how natural commanding it felt.
He hated more that part of him had already stopped wondering whether it would obey.
A surviving elemental shifted.
Space bent around it.
Fendor saw the blur.
He remembered the first creature at the lava river.
The impossible fold.
The moment when distance had stopped being trustworthy.
This time he did not try to understand it.
He drew.
The frost arrow left before the distortion completed.
The creature moved.
The arrow went where it moved.
For one perfect instant the world aligned.
Frost struck molten fire.
The elemental came apart.
Fendor lowered the Oathbow.
One less.
The battle was almost finished.
Almost had killed enough of their companions already.
The giant fought on.
The lava zombie attempted to imitate him, swung one dead arm and accomplished very little.
Isamu moved through an opening.
Kaylor battered another enemy until cracks ran across its entire body.
Hexen’s strange weapon missed, recovered and hovered above the melee.
Nethnarel’s shadow blades flew once more.
Then there was one.
The final creature retreated toward the far side of the chamber.
Not fleeing.
Seeking space.
Fendor followed it with the bow.
His breathing had become deliberate.
His shoulder hurt.
One side of his armor still carried black scorch marks from the tunnel.
The giants had bled for this mountain.
The trees had burned.
Kaylor’s steed lay outside.
Somewhere ahead waited the creature responsible for all of it.
Scourge Firebreath had not yet needed to lift a claw.
Fendor drew.
The elemental moved.
He released.
The first arrow struck.
The creature staggered.
Fendor drew again.
Everything else in the chamber became irrelevant.
The lava.
The shouting.
Kaylor.
The dead thing following Nethnarel.
The hovering weapon beside Hexen.
The giant.
There was only the target.
The second arrow crossed the chamber.
Cold burst through the elemental’s chest.
The internal fire vanished.
The body collapsed into black stone.
No explosion followed.
For several seconds no one moved.
They had learned not to trust silence.
The mountain remained still.
The only sound came from the lava beneath the cracked floor.
Kaylor lowered his axe.
Isamu turned slowly, looking for another enemy.
Nethnarel’s shadow blades disappeared.
The zombie remained standing beside her.
That ruined the moment somewhat.
Fendor looked at it.
The creature’s jaw hung at an awkward angle.
Molten light glowed behind its teeth.
“I was hoping that would go away.”
Nethnarel shook her head.
“No.”
“For how long?”
She considered the magical bond.
“I think until someone destroys it.”
Fendor stared at the flaming corpse.
“Wonderful.”
Hexen’s spectral weapon faded.
He watched it disappear.
There should have been relief.
Instead he felt only the absence it left behind.
Kaylor had noticed.
Of course he had.
The dragonborn walked toward him.
Behind Kaylor, the surviving allies gathered themselves.
One hill giant stood where another had died.
A second had fled.
The awakened trees were scorched.
One badly.
The giant elk remained with Hexen, trembling from the heat but alive.
Their army was becoming a collection of survivors.
Kaylor stopped in front of Hexen.
“The fire.”
Hexen knew there was no point pretending not to understand.
“Yes.”
“You barely felt it.”
“I felt it.”
“Not like the rest of us.”
“No.”
Kaylor glanced toward the place where the spectral weapon had vanished.
“And that?”
Hexen looked at the same empty air.
“I told you. I know what it was.”
“You cast it.”
“Yes.”
“You are not a cleric.”
“No.”
Kaylor’s expression changed at the word.
Neither of them needed to say Grazim’s name.
Hexen looked away.
Across the cavern, Isamu had already moved toward the far wall.
He stopped.
“There’s another tunnel.”
Fendor closed his eyes.
Naturally.
Kaylor did not turn.
“What did the Lord of Swarms do to you?”
Hexen could have told him nothing.
Could have repeated that the bargain was over.
That much was true.
Could have said the Lord no longer pulled at him the way he once had.
Also true.
Could have pointed out that they were alive partly because of powers Kaylor was now questioning.
True again.
None of those answers mattered.
Hexen remembered fire flowing over his skin.
He remembered the impossible weapon.
The maul.
The curse.
Grazim’s shade.
He remembered the skull-swarm on the mountain and the invitation moving through him.
Join us.
And beneath all of it, the word that had felt less like a name being given than a truth finally being recognized.
“I think there’s a name for it.”
Kaylor waited.
Nethnarel had come close enough to hear.
So had Fendor.
Isamu remained near the next passage but turned back.
Hexen looked at his companions.
People who had crossed worlds with him.
Killed gods and monsters beside him.
People who had followed him into bargains without understanding them and paid prices none of them could undo.
Grazim should have been among them.
Instead there were five.
And Hexen.
Whatever Hexen was becoming.
“Emissary.”
Fendor frowned.
“Emissary of what?”
Hexen looked toward the fire under the floor.
He wished the answer were difficult.
“Of the Swarm Lord.”
No one spoke.
The lava moved beneath them.
Kaylor’s grip tightened around the frost-rimed greataxe.
“The bargain is finished.”
“Yes.”
“He told you that.”
“Yes.”
“Then why are you his emissary?”
Hexen met his eyes.
“I don’t know.”
Kaylor almost reacted.
Hexen stopped him.
“And I know you hate that answer. So do I.”
The anger remained in Kaylor’s face.
But something else lived beside it.
Fear.
Not fear of Hexen in a fight.
They had fought beside worse things than whatever Hexen was becoming.
Fear of another Craven.
Another trusted thing wearing a shape they understood while something else moved beneath it.
Kaylor had already watched faith become a weapon in someone else’s hand.
He would not willingly do it again.
Hexen understood that.
That did not make knowing it easier.
“The Lord asked me to join him outside,” Hexen said.
Nethnarel’s expression changed.
Kaylor went very still.
“You didn’t mention that.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t join him.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
Hexen looked toward the next lava tunnel.
“No. It isn’t.”
Fendor broke the silence.
“We have an ancient red dragon somewhere ahead of us.”
Kaylor did not look away from Hexen.
“I know.”
“We have fewer giants than we started with.”
“I know.”
“One of the trees is barely standing.”
“I know.”
“Nethnarel has somehow acquired a flaming corpse.”
The zombie shifted behind her.
Nethnarel glanced toward it.
Fendor continued.
“And apparently our druid is now the emissary of a demon lord whose prison we recently destroyed.”
Hexen looked at him.
“Yes.”
Fendor drew a slow breath.
“I would like to address all of those concerns.”
“So would I,” Kaylor said.
“But?”
Fendor pointed toward the far wall.
Isamu stood beside a descending passage.
Orange light breathed from within it.
“But the mountain continues.”
That was the problem with surviving.
It rarely provided time for understanding what survival had cost.
Kaylor finally looked away from Hexen.
The next tunnel descended more sharply than the first. Its walls glowed red from heat farther below. Air moved through it in slow waves.
Something waited down there.
Perhaps more fire creatures.
Perhaps the lair.
Perhaps Scourge himself.
Inside Nethnarel, Fann stirred.
The ancient gold dragon had remained mostly silent through the lava tunnels.
Now her presence sharpened.
Nethnarel felt recognition.
Not of the creatures they had fought.
Of the mountain.
Of something deeper.
Scourge.
Nethnarel placed one hand against her chest.
Kaylor noticed.
“Fann?”
“She knows we’re close.”
That ended the argument.
Not forever.
Nothing about Hexen was resolved.
Nothing about the Swarm was resolved.
Grazim remained dead.
The City of Glass remained broken.
A hill giant lay cooling behind them on volcanic stone because Fendor had asked him to come.
An awakened tree still smoldered.
Kaylor’s peryton would never leave the mountainside below.
The heroes had not escaped the consequences of the Lord of Swarms.
They had carried them into Scourge Firebreath’s mountain.
Kaylor raised the frost-rimed greataxe.
“Form up.”
The surviving giant stepped forward.
The awakened trees followed more slowly.
Hexen mounted the giant elk.
Nethnarel gestured.
Her flaming dead servant lurched obediently after her.
Fendor stared at it one last time.
“I reserve the right to complain about that later.”
Nethnarel smiled.
“You usually do.”
Isamu entered the passage first.
Kaylor sighed and followed.
This time he did not bother telling him not to.
The mountain closed around them again.
Behind lay the bodies of fire creatures and the first of the giants who had followed them into Scourge’s domain.
Ahead, the lava tube descended into darkness lit from below.
Deeper into the mountain.
Closer to the dragon.
And Hexen Brew walked among his friends carrying a title none of them trusted—
Emissary of the Swarm Lord.