The next tunnel descended.
There was nothing remarkable about that at first.
The mountain had been descending around them for so long that Kaylor had begun to think of the world in slopes. Behind them lay the winding route they had fought through, the stone bridge Nethnarel had raised over molten rock, the bodies of creatures that had climbed from lava, and allies who would never walk back out.
Ahead waited more heat.
More darkness.
Perhaps the dragon.
That final possibility had become strangely difficult to believe.
Scourge Firebreath had dominated everything since the heroes first saw him over Oxland. They had crossed mountains because of him. Entered the Grand Library because of him. Bargained with powers no sensible person should bargain with because ordinary magic could not touch him. They had crossed the Astral Plane, shattered the peace of the City of Glass and freed the soul of his ancient sister.
Yet Scourge himself remained an idea.
A shadow over Oxland.
A name in the Book of Knowledge.
Fire in the distance.
The mountain had killed for him without requiring his presence.
Kaylor wondered whether that was what great power eventually became: the ability to destroy people without knowing they existed.
They entered the tunnel.
Only one awakened tree remained.
Two hill giants had survived as far as this passage, though neither looked like the creatures who had swaggered out of their reclaimed hunting grounds. Their hide was burned. One dragged a foot. Both carried clubs instead of the easy heaps of stones they had gathered for the assault outside.
The army had become smaller with every turn.
Nethnarel still had her dead thing.
The fire creature she had killed and dragged back into motion followed several paces behind her, a grotesque servant of blackened stone and dim molten cracks. Death had robbed it of whatever fluidity it once possessed. It walked badly, each movement accompanied by the faint sound of cooling rock grinding against itself.
No one liked it.
No one had suggested leaving it behind.
That distinction troubled Nethnarel.
The mountain was teaching them how quickly revulsion became practicality.
Isamu passed the zombie and moved toward the front. His Ring of Water Walking had carried him across acid, flood and molten surfaces before; the absurd little piece of magic had survived long enough to become one of the most dependable things they owned. His Potion of Speed remained unspent, another resource held in reserve for the enemy they still had not reached.
Kaylor stopped him before he disappeared around the bend.
“Not alone.”
Isamu paused.
He did not argue.
That worried Kaylor more than if he had.
The lead giant forced his way through the narrow passage. Hexen followed with the Staff of the Woodlands in one hand, though the staff had begun to feel almost ceremonial beside the powers that now answered him without explanation.
The spectral weapon he had summoned during the previous battle still drifted nearby.
A translucent shape made from force and intent.
Grazim had once used such magic.
Hexen tried not to think about that.
It followed anyway.
Everything involving Grazim followed.
The tunnel widened enough for the giant to straighten.
Then widened again.
The floor changed.
Until then the volcanic stone had been mostly solid, broken only by narrow channels of glowing red.
Here the crust had thinned.
Cracks spread everywhere.
Some were inches wide. Others opened into deep seams through which molten stone moved far below.
The giant stopped.
Isamu moved around him.
The floor sagged slightly beneath one foot.
He shifted his weight back.
The entire chamber seemed hollow.
Nethnarel studied the ground.
“This isn’t stable.”
No one needed a second warning.
They had learned what the mountain did with unstable ground.
Isamu took the front anyway.
He moved slowly this time, placing each foot where the crust appeared thickest. The others spread as much as the cavern allowed, giants and tree making that difficult.
Nothing attacked.
For twenty paces.
Then the floor struck first.
Molten stone erupted beneath Isamu.
A towering creature rose through the crust as though the rock were water.
It was larger than the fire-beings they had fought before. Broader. Almost giantlike itself, though no flesh existed beneath the fire. Its body continually slumped and rebuilt as magma rolled over it. Huge hands formed at the ends of arms thick enough to crush a wagon.
It swung one of them.
The strike missed Isamu by inches.
Not because the creature was slow.
Because Isamu was not where the blow expected him to be.
A second fist tore through the crust and threw molten stone across the cavern.
Isamu danced away from that too.
Behind him the mountain opened in several places.
More molten shapes emerged.
Not as large.
No less dangerous.
The remaining tree shuddered.
Fendor raised the Oathbow.
They had not reached Scourge.
They were going to have to earn the right to be killed by him.
The first arrows crossed the cavern before anyone said another word.
Fendor had abandoned the idea that the mountain should fight fairly.
The Oathbow answered him with the clean violence of certainty.
One arrow entered a molten creature and vanished inside.
The second carried cold.
That one mattered.
Frost spread across glowing stone.
The creature slowed.
Kaylor saw it.
He moved.
The Dancing Sword left his hand and attacked from one side while the dragonborn came from the other.
His frost-rimed greataxe struck the great magma creature with enough force to split its shoulder.
Cold flooded the wound.
The change was immediate.
The creature did not bleed.
It hardened.
Black crust formed across its body. Part of one arm became solid and cracked beneath its own weight. Molten stone spilled through the fracture and cooled again.
Kaylor struck a second time.
The axe landed perfectly.
For one heartbeat, the mountain seemed to freeze around the blow.
Power traveled from Kaylor through the weapon and into the creature. What had been a flowing mass became layers: red fire underneath, dark stone above, white frost between.
The creature slowed until its movements became almost laborious.
Fendor adjusted his aim.
The others understood.
Cold.
The mountain had given them an answer.
They used it.
Isamu moved through the gaps Kaylor created, striking the hardened places rather than the flowing ones. Each impact broke away another piece of cooled stone. The great creature tried to rebuild itself, drawing heat from the floor beneath it, but Kaylor kept forcing cold into the wounds faster than the mountain could repair them.
Hexen’s spectral weapon descended from above.
It struck once.
Again.
Hexen barely had to think about commanding it.
That remained the worst part.
The spell felt natural.
Not learned.
Not borrowed.
Remembered by some part of him that Hexen did not recognize.
He forced his attention elsewhere.
The awakened tree advanced toward one of the smaller magma creatures. Its great limb struck like a siege beam, scattering molten fragments across the chamber.
The thing struck back.
Fire ran up the tree’s arm.
Hexen felt his stomach tighten.
Not again.
The tree remained standing.
For now.
Nethnarel moved along the edge of the chamber, looking for an angle beyond the great magma creature.
She found one.
Stone answered her.
A wall erupted from the cavern floor.
Not another bridge.
This time she raised it vertically, a massive barrier splitting the battlefield and forcing the molten creatures onto one side.
The maneuver gave the heroes room.
For a few breaths.
Then the mountain groaned.
Nethnarel felt it beneath her boots.
Too much weight.
The wall stood upon a crust already stretched over molten emptiness.
One of the hill giants took a step near its base.
The stone beneath him fractured.
A line shot outward.
Then another.
The sound was quiet at first.
A dry crack.
Almost insignificant.
Fendor heard it.
His head turned.
The floor fell away.
Everything happened at once.
The section beneath Nethnarel’s wall collapsed into the magma below. Great slabs of stone tilted and vanished. Molten light exploded upward through the opening.
Kaylor threw himself toward solid ground.
Isamu ran.
The Ring of Water Walking saved him where footing disappeared completely, carrying him over molten stone as easily as if the disaster had merely replaced floor with a lake.
Nethnarel caught the edge of the collapse and pulled herself clear.
The hill giant did not.
The crust vanished beneath his feet.
For one instant the enormous creature remained upright despite having nowhere to stand.
Then he fell.
Fendor saw one hand reach upward.
The club vanished first.
Then the giant.
Magma closed over him.
There was no body left to recover.
The awakened tree fell next.
Its roots scraped desperately across tilting stone.
The trunk struck the edge of the broken floor, caught there and remained half suspended over the molten cavity.
Then fire climbed it.
The branches ignited.
Hexen moved toward it.
The collapse cut him off.
The tree burned.
He could hear it.
That was the part he would remember.
Not the flames.
Not the color.
The voice.
A deep wooden groan rising through the cavern as living sap boiled inside a creature that had once stood quietly in the woods outside Oxland.
Hexen raised the staff.
Water.
He needed water.
Tidal Wave would do it.
Tidal Wave might also shatter what remained of the floor, drown the others in steam or throw someone into the magma.
He hesitated.
For too long.
There were other possibilities somewhere in the equipment they carried. Wands. Magic. Old tricks.
None came quickly enough.
The awakened tree stopped moving.
Flame continued upward through dead branches.
Hexen stared across the molten gap.
The tree had chosen to come.
He had told himself that mattered.
It still did.
Choice did not make the death smaller.
Behind him, the battle continued.
Fendor saw the other hill giant looking at the place where his companion had disappeared.
This was the last one.
The giant who had survived the ascent.
The skull-swarms.
The lava tunnels.
The explosions.
The deaths of his kin.
He stared at the molten cavity, then at the great magma creature still moving beyond it.
Something changed in his face.
Fear had driven other giants away.
This one had nowhere left to retreat that did not pass the bodies of everyone who had followed him.
He raised his club.
And charged.
The blow struck one of the smaller molten creatures hard enough to fold it into the ground.
Another hit followed.
The creature disappeared beneath the club.
The giant roared into the heat.
Fendor watched.
He had never asked to rule hill giants.
Their custom had imposed that absurdity on him after he killed their king.
At first the authority had been useful.
A tool.
A way to end the raids without slaughtering the tribe.
Then the giants had followed him.
That had changed the equation.
The dead were no longer someone else’s problem simply because the decision had been theirs.
Fendor raised the bow.
He stopped rationing arrows.
The cavern filled with movement.
Kaylor drove into the slowed magma giant while Isamu attacked from its blind side. Nethnarel unloaded force magic where flame would have been useless. Hexen kept the spectral weapon moving while searching for something in the mountain’s heat that he increasingly understood too well.
The magma creatures attacked as the mountain attacked.
Not like living things.
Like eruptions.
A fist became a wave.
A body collapsed into a flowing surge and reassembled somewhere else.
One creature vanished into molten rock and emerged beneath Kaylor.
Another struck Isamu, missed and crashed into the cavern wall with enough force that its weakened body broke itself apart.
Molten fragments scattered.
The creature did not reform.
The larger one endured.
Kaylor hit it again.
The frost axe sank deep.
The magma hardened around the blade.
Kaylor planted one foot against the creature and tore the weapon free.
A slab of cooled stone came with it.
The giant charged in from the side and brought his club down.
The magma creature collapsed into its own pool.
This time it did not rise.
Silence arrived unevenly.
One enemy remained.
Then none.
The cavern continued burning even without them.
The awakened tree was dead.
The fallen giant was somewhere beneath the lava.
The surviving giant stood alone among his kind.
Hexen dismissed the spectral weapon.
He did not want to look at it anymore.
It faded reluctantly—or perhaps Hexen only imagined the reluctance because he had begun expecting strange power to possess intentions.
The heroes gathered on the surviving portions of stone.
They had won another battle.
The word had almost lost meaning.
Nethnarel’s wall had partly collapsed with the floor, leaving broken slabs half submerged in molten rock.
Fendor used what healing remained.
Not enough.
Never enough anymore.
Grazim’s absence had become most tangible in moments like these. The cleric had not merely been a companion. He had been the difference between injury and disaster, between one terrible fight and the ability to survive the next.
Without him, every wound traveled with them.
Magic closed some.
Potions closed others.
Nothing replaced what was gone.
They distributed healing anyway.
The last hill giant received what they could spare.
Kaylor healed himself.
Potions changed hands.
Hexen accepted more than he wanted to admit he needed.
No one proposed a long rest.
Scourge knew they were coming.
If he had not before, the mountain had certainly told him now.
They remained still only long enough to breathe.
Then they found the next passage.
Another magma tube.
Of course.
It waited beyond the ruined cavern, narrower at first, then rising sharply before curving away.
Kaylor looked at the surviving force.
Five heroes.
One hill giant.
Nethnarel’s dead fire-servant.
Hexen’s giant elk.
No awakened trees.
No peryton.
No Grazim.
The army that had begun outside could no longer reasonably be called an army.
Perhaps that was appropriate.
In the end, Scourge Firebreath had always been theirs.
They entered.
The next stretch of mountain was quieter.
No skulls.
No elementals.
No collapsing floor.
Only heat.
The lack of attack became its own kind of threat.
Kaylor began hearing things in the silence.
The scrape of armor.
The giant’s breathing.
The faint cracking noises from Nethnarel’s undead servant.
His own heartbeat.
And something else.
Deeper.
Rhythmic.
A sound too slow to belong to anything human.
Breathing.
He stopped.
The others stopped behind him.
Ahead, the tunnel opened into darkness.
Not ordinary darkness.
A cavern large enough that the glow of lava no longer reached the far wall.
Isamu moved a few steps closer.
The smell reached them first.
Sulfur.
Ash.
And something old.
Kaylor had smelled dragons before.
Not like this.
This was less an animal scent than the atmosphere around a thing that had spent centuries breathing fire into the same stone.
The last giant shifted uneasily.
Fendor raised the Oathbow.
Kaylor healed one final wound and stepped forward.
A voice came from the darkness.
Low.
Deep enough to vibrate through the tunnel walls.
The first words were indistinct.
Then clearer.
“I smell flesh.”
No one moved.
The voice seemed amused by that.
Not eager.
Not surprised.
Scourge Firebreath had not been waiting nervously at the heart of his mountain.
He had smelled them coming.
Kaylor understood, suddenly, how prey must feel when it realizes the thing in the dark has known where it was the entire time.
The voice called them closer.
No one obeyed immediately.
They prepared instead.
Weapons were checked.
Healing finished.
The Potion of Speed that Isamu had carried since the Shattered Mirror was discussed again, no longer as treasure but as something that might buy a few more seconds against what waited ahead. The Ring of Water Walking that had seemed almost comically specialized had already justified its existence several times over.
Fendor remained committed to distance.
The Oathbow was his advantage.
He had no intention of giving it up merely because the Vorpal Longsword might offer a miraculous stroke if he somehow reached the throat of one of the oldest dragons alive.
Kaylor understood.
His own frost axe had proven itself against the mountain.
Against Scourge, they did not yet know whether even that would matter.
Not while the protection remained.
He turned toward Nethnarel.
“Fann.”
Nethnarel had been waiting for the question.
The gold dragon was awake within her now.
Not merely present.
Alert.
The closer they came to the cavern, the more ancient emotion had flooded through the bond.
Recognition.
Rage.
Grief.
Something older than all three.
Scourge.
Fann knew exactly what waited ahead.
“We need her to break the protection,” Kaylor said.
Nethnarel nodded.
That had been the entire point.
The Book of Knowledge had shown them the problem with terrifying simplicity. Scourge’s power did more than protect him from spells. Magic ceased being itself around him. Enchanted weapons became ordinary metal at the moment of contact. Sorcery unraveled. Divine force failed.
Fann could suppress that.
Not destroy Scourge.
Not win the battle.
Open the door.
The heroes still had to walk through it.
Nethnarel closed her eyes.
Fann answered.
Then fire came down the tunnel.
There was no warning beyond the sudden color.
Darkness became red.
Kaylor saw the interior of the mountain illuminated all the way to the cavern beyond.
Then the breath struck.
It was not the fire of the skull manifestations.
Not the lava-creatures’ crude heat.
This was dragonfire.
Ancient.
Focused.
A weapon refined by a creature that had been burning things since before kingdoms existed.
The entire tunnel became flame.
Kaylor turned into it.
His resistance saved him from the worst, but the force alone drove him backward.
Hexen disappeared inside the fire and emerged smoking, the strange protection of his Emissary nature again reducing what should have killed him.
Isamu threw himself flat.
Fendor found the edge of the blast.
Nethnarel endured.
The last hill giant caught fire.
The creature screamed and struck at its own burning hide with one enormous hand.
Then something happened inside Nethnarel.
Fann stopped being a presence.
She became action.
Gold erupted through the tiefling.
Nethnarel’s form changed.
Not slowly.
There was no careful transformation from woman to dragon.
One instant a tiefling stood in the tunnel.
The next, golden light filled it.
The shape expanded with impossible speed. Horns became the crown of something vastly larger. Arms became wings. Red skin disappeared beneath ancient golden scales.
The mountain could not contain her.
Fann surged forward.
The gold dragon flew into the cavern.
For thousands of years she had possessed no body.
No sky.
No freedom.
Now, whatever form this was—spirit, manifestation, memory temporarily made flesh—she moved like a creature remembering flight.
She entered Scourge’s presence.
The red dragon answered.
Kaylor saw him for the first time.
Scourge Firebreath filled the caldera.
Even knowing what they hunted had not prepared him for scale.
The creature was ancient enough that the word dragon seemed inadequate. His body occupied stone the way a fortress occupied land. Red scales lay over one another like plates of heated armor. Horns swept backward from a skull large enough to swallow a horse. Wings rested partly furled along the slopes of the inner crater.
His eyes opened fully.
They were not animal eyes.
They were older than Kaylor.
Older than Oxland.
Perhaps older than every oath Kaylor had ever sworn.
Fann flew at him.
And Scourge changed.
A second presence tore loose from the red dragon.
Kaylor could not have explained what he saw afterward.
Something spectral rose from Scourge’s flesh.
Red.
Draconic.
Vast.
Not the body before them, but an essence wrapped through it.
A guardian.
A second self.
Perhaps the very force that murdered magic around him.
Fann struck that presence.
Gold met red.
The collision shook the caldera.
The two dragon spirits wound around one another and climbed.
Higher.
Through the open throat of the volcano.
Toward the sky.
For an instant Kaylor saw them silhouetted against smoke above the crater, ancient gold and ancient red twisting together in a battle that belonged to an age before any of the heroes had been born.
Fann had said she could not defeat Scourge for them.
Now Kaylor understood.
She was fighting the part of him they could not fight.
Below, the physical dragon remained.
Scourge’s body shifted.
The appearance changed subtly as the spectral presence left it. The terrible pressure that had surrounded him seemed to thin.
Not vanish completely.
Enough.
Nethnarel felt it.
Magic no longer died at the edge of the caldera.
Fann was doing what she had promised.
Above them, the spirits continued to climb.
Below, Scourge Firebreath turned his head toward the five heroes.
One hill giant.
One dead servant.
The remnants of an army.
Kaylor stepped into the caldera.
The frost-rimed greataxe steamed in his hands.
Fendor moved to find distance.
Isamu lowered his center of gravity.
Hexen stood beneath the open sky of the volcano and felt the Swarm Lord’s powers resting uneasily inside him.
Nethnarel looked upward once.
Fann was gone from her.
For the first time since the City of Glass, the ancient dragon was no longer behind her thoughts.
She was above them.
Holding the impossible part of Scourge away.
Buying them time.
The red dragon rose.
Stone slid from beneath his claws.
His wings began to open.
The heroes had lost giants.
Trees.
A mount.
A friend.
They had destroyed a city’s protection and freed something ancient enough to remember the first wars of dragons.
All of it had been for this.
Scourge Firebreath looked down upon them.
And for the first time—
their magic still worked.
Kaylor raised the axe.
The dragon roared.
The battle began.