Scourge Firebreath moved first.
For all the distance the heroes had crossed to reach him, for all the lives the mountain had already taken, Kaylor had imagined there would be some final moment of recognition.
A challenge.
A threat.
Perhaps the ancient dragon would name them before killing them.
Instead, Scourge simply attacked.
The red dragon crossed the floor of the caldera with terrifying speed.
Nothing that large should have moved that quickly.
The volcanic basin seemed built around him rather than occupied by him. His claws found purchase on black stone slick with heat. Wings shifted against the smoke overhead. Every motion displaced enough air to make cloaks snap and loose ash spiral across the ground.
The heroes had seen dragons before.
Scourge made the memory feel childish.
Above them, gold and crimson spirits tore through the open throat of the volcano.
Fann climbed in a spiral around the thing that had risen from Scourge. The red spectral dragon matched her, and the two vast forms twisted through smoke and fire until it became difficult to see where one ended and the other began.
That battle belonged to another world.
Theirs stood directly in front of them.
Isamu reached it first.
Of course he did.
He had consumed what preparations he intended to use before the fighting truly began, and whatever remained of ordinary human speed ceased to apply. The monk crossed ground so quickly that even Scourge’s enormous head had difficulty tracking him.
Then the dragon’s presence struck.
It was not fire.
Fendor had expected fire.
The fear was worse.
It arrived like memory.
Not his own memory, but something written deeper into living creatures—the ancient understanding that dragons had hunted things like them before civilization had names.
Scourge did not need to roar.
His existence was enough.
Fendor felt his body betray him.
His breathing shortened. His hands tightened on the Oathbow. Every instinct demanded distance.
He moved backward.
Not because he wanted to.
Because some older part of him had already decided.
Kaylor saw him retreat.
He understood immediately.
The dragon’s fear pressed against him too.
Kaylor refused it.
Perhaps once faith would have been the reason.
Now anger was sufficient.
Craven had taken too much from him for Kaylor to surrender control of himself merely because another ancient monster expected obedience.
He stepped forward instead.
Scourge turned.
The dragon’s claws came down.
Kaylor’s Cloak of Displacement broke his position into overlapping possibilities. The first strike tore through a false dragonborn and shattered stone beneath it.
The second missed as well.
Then Scourge bit.
The jaws closed around Kaylor with enough force to crush armor.
Pain exploded through him.
He tore himself free before the dragon could lift him.
There were teeth larger than swords.
Kaylor looked up into Scourge’s face.
Then raised the frost-rimed greataxe.
If the dragon expected fear, it had chosen the wrong opponent.
Above, Fann attacked the red spirit.
She did not breathe fire.
The knowledge came naturally to Nethnarel while she existed within that impossible golden shape.
Fire would accomplish nothing.
Scourge’s essence was born from it.
Fann knew another weapon.
She drew breath.
What emerged was not flame.
A strange weakening force rolled across the spectral red dragon.
Its strength faltered.
Not dramatically.
Enough.
Fann went after it.
Claw.
Bite.
Tail.
The two ancient spirits struck each other hundreds of feet above the caldera, and Nethnarel felt every impact as if her own body had suddenly become the size of a cathedral.
It was impossible.
And yet there was a peculiar clarity to it.
Fann knew how to be a dragon.
Nethnarel merely had to stop interfering.
Below, Isamu reached Scourge.
His first attacks found scales thick enough to turn lesser weapons.
He adjusted.
There were seams even in ancient armor.
Places where one plate overlapped another.
Places where a limb bent.
Places where the head met the neck.
He struck there.
Again.
Again.
The dragon reacted.
That alone mattered.
Scourge could be hurt.
The entire journey had been built around that one possibility.
Fann was holding the impossible protection away.
Their weapons remained magical.
Their spells remained spells.
The dragon bled.
Kaylor saw it.
Dark blood marked the red scales near one foreleg.
He had never seen anything more encouraging.
Hexen moved farther into the caldera.
The powers surrounding him had become a problem without a solution, but they were still powers.
Darkness gathered around him.
A black sphere swallowed the druid and part of the volcanic floor, cutting him from Scourge’s sight while giving Hexen somewhere from which to work.
It was not elegant.
Neither was anything else they had done since entering the mountain.
Fendor continued backing away until the supernatural pressure loosened.
His lungs remembered how to work.
The tremor in his hands eased.
He could still feel Scourge’s fear.
Distance made it something he could argue with.
He stopped.
Raised the Oathbow.
There was old magic in the weapon.
Not merely enchantment.
Purpose.
The bow had been made for hatred refined into precision.
Fendor named Scourge Firebreath as the enemy it had been waiting for.
The response was immediate.
The bow seemed to settle into him.
Fear remained.
The Oathbow simply gave him something stronger to place beside it.
He drew.
The first arrow crossed the caldera.
Then another.
Scourge turned toward him.
Too late.
The arrows struck.
Fendor stayed where he was.
The dragon could terrify him.
It could not prevent him from shooting.
Kaylor reached for the potion.
He had carried too many magical objects through too many impossible places to remember when every vial had first entered the party’s possession.
This one had a simple purpose.
Speed.
He drank.
The world changed.
Scourge became slower.
Not truly.
Kaylor became faster.
The effect sharpened everything. The next movement seemed to arrive before he finished deciding upon it.
He closed.
The Dancing Sword flashed beside him.
The frost-rimed axe followed.
One attack glanced from a scale.
Another struck.
Kaylor drove everything he could into the opening.
The power that answered him was not the radiant certainty he had once associated with holy vows.
It was darker now.
Harder.
It did not ask whether Kaylor believed himself righteous.
It only asked where he wanted the force to go.
Into Scourge.
Kaylor answered.
The impact shook both of them.
The dragon recoiled.
Cold spread across red scales where the axe had struck, but unlike the magma creatures below, Scourge did not show any special weakness to it.
He was simply wounded.
Kaylor could live with that.
He attacked again.
And again.
The dragon’s tail swept toward him between blows.
His cloak scattered his position.
The tail passed through one false image and smashed a furrow through the caldera floor.
Kaylor did not stop.
Scourge had spent centuries teaching kingdoms what happened when they could not hurt him.
Now they could.
Kaylor intended to make the lesson memorable.
Above, the red spirit healed.
Nethnarel felt the change through Fann.
The thing was not merely an echo.
It possessed resilience of its own.
A will.
A refusal to end.
Fann attacked harder.
The spectral dragon clawed her in return.
Pain traveled through their shared form.
Nethnarel experienced it as something almost abstract at first—the knowledge that damage had occurred.
Then more came.
A second claw.
A tail strike.
Enough to make the gold dragon reel in the sky.
Fann recovered.
Nethnarel understood something then.
Fann could lose.
The ancient gold dragon had promised help.
Not victory.
There would be no effortless divine correction to everything the heroes had done.
Fann was fighting because they had asked her to.
Because Scourge deserved to be stopped.
And because after centuries trapped inside crystal, she wanted the story finished.
Nethnarel made a decision.
She reached beneath Fann’s instincts for one of her own spells.
It felt strange using sorcery through a dragon’s body.
Possible.
That was enough.
The red spectral dragon circled.
Nethnarel watched it.
Measured the distance.
Then reached for transformation magic.
Fann understood what she intended.
There was no objection.
Nethnarel cast.
The red dragon spirit resisted.
For one heartbeat.
Then it changed.
Wings vanished.
The enormous body collapsed inward.
Horned head became something small and furred. Ancient claws disappeared. The terrible crimson presence that had risen from Scourge Firebreath became—
a possum.
A very frightened possum.
Five hundred feet above a volcano.
Gravity took immediate interest.
The creature fell.
Nethnarel stared through Fann’s eyes.
That had not been the part of the plan she had considered carefully.
Fann dove.
Golden wings folded.
The caldera rushed upward below them.
The transformed spirit tumbled through the air, small enough now that centuries of terror had been reduced to a dark speck against volcanic smoke.
Fann reached it.
One golden claw closed.
Carefully.
Not crushing.
Containing.
The possum struggled.
The ancient gold dragon climbed again.
And suddenly the battle above was over.
Or paused.
The spirit of Scourge remained alive.
But it was a small animal held in Fann’s grasp.
Below, Scourge’s physical body continued fighting.
Nethnarel could sense that the transformation would not last forever.
That made the problem simpler.
The heroes had time.
They needed to use it.
Scourge turned his full attention upon Kaylor.
The dragonborn had become impossible to ignore.
Speed magic drove him forward.
The Dancing Sword cut from angles no ordinary warrior could cover.
The greataxe carried smiting power into every opening he could create.
Scourge struck back.
Claw.
Claw.
Bite.
Kaylor survived the claws.
The jaws found him.
The world became red scale and teeth.
Then he was free again.
Barely.
Scourge’s tail came around.
Kaylor saw it.
The Cloak of Displacement tried to save him.
This time the dragon adjusted.
The tail struck.
Kaylor left the ground.
He hit volcanic stone hard.
Everything went dark.
For an instant, perhaps less than an instant, Kaylor experienced nothing.
No Craven.
No oath.
No dragon.
No rage.
Then pain returned.
With it came sound.
A bowstring.
Fendor.
The elf had seen Kaylor fall.
The dragonborn lay motionless beneath Scourge.
There was no Grazim at his side.
No cleric.
No easy miracle.
Fendor had something else.
The Oathbow carried more than death.
Whatever strange reserve of healing had revealed itself through the weapon remained one of the least understood gifts they possessed.
Fendor used what was left.
Warmth spread through the battlefield.
Not much.
Enough.
Kaylor breathed.
His eyes opened.
The first thing he saw was Scourge.
That seemed unfair.
He tried to rise.
His body refused.
Then the air changed beside him.
Insects appeared.
Kaylor froze.
Not again.
The swarm gathered from nowhere.
Bees.
Flies.
Dark winged things too numerous to distinguish.
They spun above the volcanic stone in a tightening column.
Hexen stood beyond them.
One hand extended.
Kaylor understood before the shape became complete.
Grazim.
Or what now answered to Grazim’s name.
The manifestation stepped from the swarm.
It resembled their dead friend only enough to make the difference hurt.
A cleric-shaped figure.
Armor remembered through shadow.
The suggestion of Grazim’s face beneath movement that would not remain still.
Insects surrounded him like a living aura.
Kaylor’s hand moved toward his axe.
Hexen saw it.
The manifestation did not attack.
It knelt.
One spectral hand reached toward Kaylor.
Then the swarm descended.
Insects covered the dragonborn’s wounds.
Kaylor nearly struck at them.
Then pain disappeared.
Not entirely.
Enough that he could breathe deeply.
Enough that broken flesh began rebuilding beneath armor.
Enough that Kaylor realized what the thing was doing.
Healing him.
Grazim’s manifestation raised its head.
Kaylor looked into a face that belonged to his dead friend and did not.
The swarm continued its work.
Seventy heartbeats of pain seemed to vanish in moments.
Kaylor sat up.
Hexen watched him from beyond the darkness.
He had summoned Grazim.
Again.
Kaylor did not understand what that meant.
He did not know whether he wanted to.
The dragon was still alive.
Understanding could wait.
The manifestation rose.
Kaylor stood with it.
For one strange moment, the old pattern almost existed again.
Grazim behind them.
Kaylor at the front.
Fendor at distance.
Isamu moving too fast for common sense.
Hexen bending the battlefield around them.
Nethnarel bringing impossible magic from somewhere no one else could reach.
Almost.
Then Kaylor looked at the insects crawling across Grazim’s spectral armor.
The illusion broke.
This was not the six restored.
It was five survivors using whatever remained of the sixth.
Hexen cast another strange spell.
A curse settled upon Scourge.
Kaylor felt it in the air rather than saw it.
The druid’s new powers had stopped respecting categories.
Cleric magic.
Dark magic.
Swarm magic.
Druid magic.
Hexen wielded all of them with increasing ease.
Kaylor hated that.
He also used the opening.
The Potion of Speed still burned through him.
Kaylor attacked.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Every strike that found Scourge carried smiting force behind it.
The dragon shuddered.
Kaylor drove more power through the axe.
And more.
Until the caldera seemed to flash with every impact.
Scourge tried to turn away.
Kaylor followed.
The Dancing Sword struck.
The axe struck.
Dark divine force tore through ancient scales.
The dragon roared.
Not triumph.
Pain.
That sound mattered.
The great Scourge Firebreath could feel pain.
Kaylor had spent too long being told what could not be done.
Craven could not be challenged.
The institution could not be wrong.
Scourge could not be harmed.
There was something satisfying about watching certainty bleed.
Fendor fired.
Scourge’s fear reached for him again.
The Oathbow answered.
Arrow after arrow crossed the caldera.
Fendor had once been forced backward simply by the dragon’s presence.
Now distance belonged to him.
He used it ruthlessly.
Some arrows glanced away.
Others found seams beneath Scourge’s wings and around the shoulders.
The elf did not waste motion celebrating any of them.
A dragon this old did not die because a warrior felt pleased with his last shot.
It died when there were no attacks left to make.
So Fendor kept firing.
Scourge attacked Kaylor again.
The claws came first.
One missed.
The second tore armor.
The bite followed.
Kaylor staggered.
Above them, Fann still held the possum.
The absurdity of that would have been funny somewhere else.
Here it was terrifying.
A demon-dragon spirit thousands of years old had been reduced to something small enough to fit in an ancient gold dragon’s claw.
And yet Nethnarel could feel the force inside it.
Waiting.
Polymorph had changed the shape.
Not what was imprisoned within it.
Every second mattered.
Scourge’s body had to fall before the spell ended.
Nethnarel looked down at her companions.
She could remain wholly within Fann and continue using the dragon’s physical might.
Or she could reach through their shared existence for her own magic.
She chose the second.
Death gathered.
Far below, Scourge turned toward Kaylor.
Nethnarel extended the gold dragon’s awareness toward the physical body and cast through it.
The spell crossed the distance.
Finger of Death.
The same terrible force that had killed the volcanic humanoid and raised it again as her servant struck Scourge.
The ancient dragon endured.
Of course he did.
Nethnarel felt frustration flare through her.
There were things in the world that even death magic had to persuade repeatedly.
Below, the lava zombie lumbered toward the battle.
Its movement remained painfully slow compared with everyone else.
It had been created to obey.
No one had promised competence.
Still it came.
Fire glowed through the cracks in its dead body.
One arm rose.
Scourge moved out of reach before the creature could accomplish anything meaningful.
The undead servant continued after him.
Nethnarel would have laughed if she had possessed her own mouth at the time.
Kaylor nearly died again.
Scourge’s tail struck him hard enough to send him sideways.
He remained standing.
Barely.
The dragonborn’s breathing had become ragged. Blood covered one side of his armor. The Potion of Speed made him move as though none of that mattered.
Eventually it would matter.
Eventually everything did.
Not yet.
Hexen moved under cover of darkness.
He had placed another of his strange curses upon Scourge.
Now he attacked from within the black sphere, appearing at its edge only long enough to strike before withdrawing again.
The dragon could smell him.
Could hear him.
Seeing him was another matter.
Scourge snapped at darkness.
Found nothing.
Hexen struck.
The curse deepened the wound.
He moved away again.
There had been a time when Hexen’s battlefield role made sense.
A bear.
A wolf.
An elemental.
Entangling roots.
Storms.
Healing through the old ways of nature.
Now he hid inside unnatural darkness while a swarm-cleric version of his dead friend stood nearby and a demonic curse weakened an ancient dragon.
The transformation had occurred so gradually Hexen could not identify the moment he should have become frightened.
He was frightened now.
He kept fighting anyway.
Scourge’s breath did not return.
The dragon tried to draw the ancient fire back into himself.
Nothing.
Again.
Nothing.
Kaylor saw the chest expand and thought the flame was coming.
It did not.
They had been fortunate once already when the tunnel attack failed to kill them.
They would not survive many repetitions inside the open caldera.
The dragon knew that too.
Scourge fought harder.
The next sequence nearly broke them.
Kaylor took the worst of it.
Claw.
Claw.
Bite.
Tail.
Even with the Cloak of Displacement turning some attacks aside, enough found him.
The dragonborn reached the edge again.
Fendor responded with the Oathbow.
Hexen called Grazim’s manifestation forward.
The spectral cleric raised one hand.
For a moment the swarm around him arranged itself into something almost like the old holy symbol.
Then blessing spread through the heroes.
Not clean radiant light.
Nothing about Grazim’s manifestations was clean anymore.
But the effect felt familiar.
Their hands steadied.
Their attacks found truer paths.
Something of the cleric they had lost remained inside the borrowed shape.
Kaylor felt it settle over him.
That almost hurt more than the dragon.
He raised the axe.
“Thank you.”
Whether Grazim heard him, Kaylor did not know.
The manifestation stood among the insects.
No answer came.
The battle entered its final movement without anyone realizing it.
There was no announcement.
No sudden certainty that Scourge had become weak.
Ancient dragons did not conveniently explain when death had drawn near.
There were only signs.
One wing dragged lower.
Blood ran freely beneath several scales.
The head no longer moved with the same terrible precision.
Fendor’s arrows accumulated.
Isamu’s attacks forced Scourge to keep shifting his feet.
Hexen’s curse remained.
Nethnarel’s magic continued to reach down from Fann’s golden form.
The dragon still looked capable of killing them all.
That was the danger.
Kaylor had learned that some enemies looked strongest immediately before they fell because everyone fighting them was too exhausted to notice the difference.
Scourge struck.
Kaylor survived.
Isamu went in.
The monk attacked repeatedly, speed carrying him through the dragon’s reach before Scourge could close upon him.
Not every blow found purchase.
Enough did.
He moved away.
Fendor shot.
The Oathbow answered.
Hexen attacked.
His curse bit deeper.
Scourge remained standing.
The dragon’s lungs began gathering fire again.
Kaylor saw the glow.
Not yet enough for breath.
Soon.
There would not be another chance.
He stepped forward.
The speed magic was still inside him.
So was the blessing.
So was every failure that had brought him to this place.
Kaylor remembered Craven.
He remembered the Sanctum.
He remembered standing in a ruined temple and discovering that obedience had helped build the lie around him.
He remembered becoming an Oathbreaker and everyone who heard the word deciding they already understood the story.
He remembered the City of Glass, where strangers had judged him for that broken oath.
He remembered Grazim dying beneath Hexen’s maul.
The peryton falling.
The mountain.
Every corpse left behind.
None of it made Kaylor righteous.
He was done needing righteousness as permission.
Scourge Firebreath needed to die.
That was enough.
Kaylor attacked.
The first blow struck.
The frost-rimed axe bit deep beneath the foreleg.
Scourge twisted.
Kaylor moved with him.
The second blow landed.
The dragon roared.
Dark power followed the steel.
Kaylor struck again.
The axe opened another wound.
Scourge’s head came around.
Fire brightened behind his teeth.
Almost.
Kaylor poured the last strength he could reach into the attack.
Not one enormous miracle.
Not a divine judgment descending from the heavens.
Steel.
Cold.
Smiting force.
A furious dragonborn refusing to stop.
The final sequence tore through Scourge.
For a moment the dragon remained upright.
His wings spread.
The breath weapon returned.
Kaylor saw the fire awaken fully inside him.
Too late.
Scourge Firebreath fell.
The body struck the floor of the caldera.
The impact shook the volcano.
One wing collapsed across broken stone.
The great head hit last.
Fire escaped between Scourge’s teeth without becoming a weapon.
Then stopped.
Silence moved through the caldera.
Kaylor stood beside the corpse.
The axe remained raised.
He waited for movement.
None came.
Fendor did not lower the bow.
Isamu did not approach.
Hexen remained half concealed within the remnants of his darkness.
The lava zombie lurched another step forward, apparently unaware that the battle had ended.
Scourge’s body was dead.
That did not mean Scourge was gone.
Nethnarel knew it first.
She was still above the volcano.
Still Fann.
Still holding the possum.
The transformed creature struggled inside one enormous golden claw.
The physical dragon below had been a body.
The thing Fann held had been inside it.
The heroes had separated the two.
Now they had to decide what death meant for something that could possess another form.
Nethnarel descended.
Fann’s wings carried her down through smoke until the caldera opened beneath them.
Kaylor looked up.
The gold dragon landed.
Stone cracked beneath her weight.
In one claw, almost ridiculously small by comparison, was the possum.
Scourge.
Or enough of him that none of them were willing to release it.
The heroes gathered.
For several moments, no one knew what to do.
They had once intended to use a crystal.
That possibility had been lost in the City of Glass.
The blank vessel had been left behind.
The forge that could prepare such things lay on another plane in a city they had nearly destroyed.
There was no prison waiting here.
Killing the spirit might not solve anything.
That possibility came through Fann.
Ancient beings did not always die the way mortals expected.
Destroy the manifestation and it might return elsewhere.
Release it and Scourge might simply find another body.
They had not crossed worlds to postpone the problem.
Kaylor looked toward Grazim.
The swarm-cleric manifestation remained.
Temporary.
Unnatural.
Useful.
The irony was difficult to ignore.
The solution to Scourge might come from the friend they had already failed to save.
“Banishment,” Hexen said.
The word settled over them.
Send the spirit away.
Not destroy it here.
Force it off their plane entirely.
Fann approved.
Nethnarel felt that much clearly.
Scourge did not belong here in the form he currently possessed.
If banishment took hold properly, the transformed spirit would be driven back beyond the mortal world.
The heroes could not guarantee forever.
They had stopped believing in forever.
Gone was enough.
Grazim’s manifestation moved.
Kaylor watched him.
The specter raised one hand toward the animal in Fann’s claw.
Magic gathered.
The possum struggled.
Its eyes were not the eyes of a possum anymore.
For an instant Kaylor saw the red dragon spirit behind them.
Ancient hatred.
Recognition.
Promise.
Scourge Firebreath understood what they intended.
Grazim cast.
The spell struck the transformed spirit.
Resistance rose immediately.
A will that had survived thousands of years tried to anchor itself to the plane.
Fann held it.
The heroes gathered around.
Kaylor’s broken oath carried its own strange weight against enemies now. Hexen’s curse lingered. The accumulated forces surrounding Scourge made resistance harder than it should have been.
For several agonizing seconds, nothing happened.
Then—
a sharp sound.
Not an explosion.
A pop.
The possum vanished.
Fann’s claw closed on empty air.
Scourge Firebreath was gone.
No corpse became smoke.
No mountain collapsed.
No voice declared victory.
The ancient red dragon’s body remained dead upon the caldera floor, an enormous red ruin of scale and blood.
But the spirit that had animated the greater threat had been driven away.
Off the plane.
Back toward whatever realm could contain it.
Kaylor finally lowered the axe.
For the first time since they entered the mountain, nothing was trying to kill them.
Fann stood before them.
The gold dragon no longer needed Nethnarel to interpret every feeling.
Gratitude moved through the bond.
Not triumph.
Fann had lost too much for triumph.
Her body had died ages ago.
Her soul had been imprisoned and burned for the protection of strangers.
Her brother—or whatever Scourge had become across the centuries—had survived long enough to become another ancient horror.
Now that story was finished.
As finished as stories involving creatures like them ever became.
Nethnarel felt Fann begin to separate from her.
There was no fear in it.
Only weariness.
The gold dragon looked toward the open sky above the caldera.
For centuries she had seen nothing.
No stars.
No clouds.
No sun.
Only the inside of crystal.
Now ash moved across a living sky.
It was not beautiful.
It was enough.
Nethnarel felt one final impression.
Freedom.
Then Fann began to fade.
Golden scales became light.
The edges of enormous wings turned transparent.
Heat passed through her without burning.
Nethnarel emerged slowly from the ancient form, standing once more upon the volcanic stone while the dragon’s presence gathered above and around her.
She did not try to stop it.
That had been the agreement.
Fann had helped them.
They would not imprison her again.
The gold light lingered for a moment.
Then rose.
No crystal pulled it back.
No city drank from it.
No spell demanded service.
Fann disappeared into the sky.
Nethnarel stood watching long after the last gold had faded.
Isamu came beside her.
He did not speak.
That helped.
Across the caldera, Hexen looked toward Grazim’s manifestation.
The spectral cleric remained for the moment.
Insects moving through the shape of someone they had loved.
They had used him to survive.
Again.
Hexen did not know whether that was mercy or another form of selfishness.
Kaylor approached the body of Scourge Firebreath.
The corpse was enormous even in death.
The dragon’s head alone rose nearly to Kaylor’s chest where it rested sideways upon the stone.
One dead eye remained partially open.
Kaylor stared into it.
There should have been satisfaction.
There was some.
Not enough to balance anything.
Oxland would survive.
The dragon would no longer burn cities simply because nothing could stop him.
That mattered.
But victory had not restored the City of Glass.
It had not resurrected the giants.
It had not brought back the awakened trees.
It had not returned Kaylor’s peryton.
It had not made Grazim alive.
They had reached the end of Scourge Firebreath carrying every cost that had made the ending possible.
Fendor lowered the Oathbow at last.
The surviving hill giant stood at the edge of the caldera, battered and scorched, looking at Scourge’s corpse with an expression Fendor could not read.
Perhaps giants understood victory more simply.
An enemy stood.
Then it did not.
Fendor envied him.
Isamu looked around the cavern.
The monk’s attention had already moved beyond the corpse.
Not because he did not care.
Because this was Isamu.
Danger ended.
He looked for what came next.
Nethnarel’s lava zombie finally reached Scourge.
It raised one arm.
Paused.
There was nothing left to attack.
The arm lowered.
Fendor looked at it.
Then at Nethnarel.
She noticed.
“No.”
Fendor had not said anything.
He turned away.
Hexen almost smiled.
The moment passed.
Scourge Firebreath lay dead.
His spirit had been driven from their world.
Fann was free.
For the first time since the dragon had flown over Oxland, there was no greater task hidden behind the immediate one.
No book directing them toward the next necessary piece.
No city between them and their enemy.
No ancient soul still waiting for release.
Only the caldera.
Smoke.
A dead dragon.
Five exhausted heroes.
One surviving giant.
The temporary shade of a friend.
And whatever consequences still waited for them when they finally climbed back down the mountain.
Kaylor looked toward the others.
He did not make a speech.
There was nothing left to say that would improve what they had done.
He rested the frost-rimed greataxe against one shoulder.
Then looked at Scourge Firebreath one last time.
The dragon had awakened believing the world still belonged to creatures like him.
It did not.
Not anymore.