The sword was exactly where Kaylor remembered it.
That should have been impossible.
He had never stood in this sanctuary before. He had never walked beneath these pillars or crossed a floor stained with the blood of celestial defenders. He had never seen the immense golden mechanism turning above the altar, its rings shifting around one another with the slow precision of a machine built by hands that understood eternity.
Yet he knew the sword.
The dream returned without invitation.
Not all of it. Dreams were rarely generous enough to survive waking intact. What remained were fragments: darkness, a promise, the impression of something waiting beyond a road he could not yet see. And the weapon. Always the weapon. A black greatsword too large to be mistaken for anything ceremonial, its blade broad and dark, its shape severe rather than ornate.
He had awakened from that dream knowing that somewhere in the world, something had been prepared for him.
Now it stood upright upon an altar surrounded by divine light.
Behind him lay the bodies of beings who had died trying to prevent the Lord of Swarms from reclaiming this temple.
Kaylor had learned not to trust irony.
It was too often merely truth arriving with bad timing.
"Kaylor."
Fendor's voice came from somewhere behind him.
Kaylor did not answer.
The great guardian moved.
Its outer ring rotated clockwise. A second structure crossed against it, passing through the first without touching. Golden plates opened around a central figure whose shape suggested a warrior only because mortal minds preferred things with faces.
Light burned where eyes should have been.
The sanctuary trembled.
Nethnarel backed away from the altar.
"That thing was waiting for us."
"No," Hexen said quietly.
He was looking at Kaylor.
"I think it was waiting for him."
The guardian's gaze settled fully upon the dragonborn.
Kaylor felt it.
There was no mistaking divine attention.
He had spent too much of his life seeking it.
Once, he had knelt willingly beneath sacred banners. He had sworn words before powers he believed were incapable of corruption because he had not yet understood that institutions could wrap themselves around faith and squeeze until nothing honest remained inside. He had believed obedience and righteousness were close cousins.
Craven had cured him of that.
Painfully.
The oath had broken because the men who claimed to represent it had broken everything beneath it first. Faith had become manipulation. Duty had become a weapon aimed at the innocent. Kaylor had watched people use holiness as camouflage and had discovered, too late, that a righteous symbol could hang above a room where terrible things happened.
He had walked away from his oath rather than pretend otherwise.
And now something divine was judging him again.
The guardian raised one enormous hand.
Radiance gathered in its palm.
Kaylor tightened his grip on his frost-rimed axe.
"Of course," he muttered.
Isamu glanced toward him.
"What?"
"Nothing."
The guardian struck.
Light crossed the sanctuary without traveling through the intervening distance.
One instant Kaylor stood before the altar.
The next, the world became white.
He felt the blow inside his armor rather than against it. It passed through steel, flesh and bone and found something deeper, something that had no physical location but hurt all the same. Every broken promise, every doubt, every act he had justified after abandoning the path he once believed sacred seemed to flare beneath that light.
Kaylor staggered.
His shield struck the floor.
For one dangerous moment, he remained on one knee.
The guardian did not speak.
It did not need to.
Judgment required no argument.
Kaylor looked up.
"So that's how this is going to be."
The golden rings began to turn again.
Fendor loosed an arrow.
It struck the guardian near the shoulder and vanished in a burst of radiant sparks. The immense figure turned toward him.
That was enough.
Isamu ran.
He crossed the sanctuary with the speed of a man who had long ago stopped accepting that distance was an obstacle. He reached the guardian as another ring moved into position and struck the exposed portion of its body before the mechanism could close around it.
The impact rang through the room like a hammer against a temple bell.
The guardian barely moved.
Isamu did.
He stepped aside before the answering blow crushed the place he had occupied.
Nethnarel raised both hands.
Magic gathered around her fingers.
"How attached are we to the ceiling?"
Fendor drew again.
"Moderately."
"Useful."
The first bolt of magic hit the guardian's rotating structure.
The second vanished into a wash of gold.
The third forced one of the outer plates backward.
Not much.
Enough.
Hexen watched the machinery move.
"It's protecting the center."
"Then shoot the center," Kaylor said.
Fendor looked at him.
"I had somehow reached the same conclusion."
Kaylor stood.
The guardian's attention returned to him.
Again.
Not Fendor, despite the arrows.
Not Nethnarel, despite her magic.
Him.
Because of the sword.
Kaylor understood that now.
The guardian had not awakened merely because intruders entered the room.
It had awakened because Kaylor approached the altar.
He looked beyond it.
The black greatsword waited.
"Keep it busy."
Fendor frowned.
"We are keeping it busy."
"No. Keep it busier."
Kaylor moved.
The guardian reacted immediately.
A ring swung down between him and the altar.
Kaylor ducked beneath it.
Another segment rotated across his path, its edge bright with concentrated radiance. He raised the shield and took the impact.
The force drove him sideways.
He remained standing.
Barely.
The guardian turned again.
Isamu struck it from behind.
Fendor's arrow hit almost simultaneously.
Nethnarel sent a blast of force into the mechanism.
For the first time, the enormous figure lost its perfect rhythm.
One ring stopped.
Another continued.
The two collided.
Stone dust drifted from the ceiling.
"That," Fendor said, "seems promising."
The guardian tore the damaged ring free.
It hurled the broken section toward him.
Fendor threw himself behind a pillar.
The golden arc smashed through the stone.
"Less promising."
Hexen called upon the temple floor.
Roots did not answer him here the way they would have in open earth, but ancient stone was never as empty as it appeared. Moss, buried seeds, tiny stubborn remnants of life existed wherever water had ever touched.
The druid found them.
Green erupted through cracks.
Not a forest.
Not even close.
But enough growth twisted around one of the guardian's lower mechanisms to slow its rotation.
The divine construct looked down.
Kaylor ran past it.
The altar was three strides away.
Two.
One.
He reached for the sword.
The world stopped.
Not metaphorically.
His hand closed around the black hilt and every muscle in his body locked.
Kaylor could still see.
He could still hear.
That was worse.
He heard the battle continue behind him. Steel striking divine metal. Fendor shouting something. Nethnarel's magic detonating against stone. Isamu's feet moving across the sanctuary.
Kaylor could do nothing.
His fingers remained closed around the sword.
His arm would not move.
He tried to pull.
Nothing.
He put both hands around the hilt.
Still nothing.
The sword might as well have extended through the altar into the foundations of the world.
He had lifted impossible weights before.
He had broken doors designed to stop giants.
He had wrestled creatures whose limbs were thicker than his entire body.
The blade did not move a fraction.
Then cold passed through him.
Not the cold of his axe.
Not winter.
Stillness.
The same terrible stillness that existed in old crypts after the last prayer had been spoken.
Kaylor could not release the weapon.
"Kaylor!"
Isamu.
He tried to answer.
His jaw would not open.
The guardian turned.
Golden light gathered.
Kaylor saw it preparing to strike him.
He could not raise his shield.
Could not duck.
Could not step away.
Could not even swear.
The last one irritated him most.
The guardian's arm descended.
Isamu intercepted it.
He could not stop the blow.
Nobody could.
But he changed it.
The monk struck the guardian's arm at the point where two rotating sections crossed. The divine weapon moved less than a handspan from its intended path.
That handspan saved Kaylor's life.
Radiance smashed into the altar beside him.
Stone exploded.
The sword remained untouched.
Kaylor remained frozen.
Fendor's next arrow buried itself in the guardian's central body.
Nethnarel attacked the same point.
The opening widened.
Hexen saw what they were doing.
"So much for keeping the temple intact."
"I stopped caring," Fendor called.
"Good."
The guardian's rings accelerated.
Light gathered throughout the sanctuary.
This time the attack was not aimed solely at Kaylor.
It spread.
The radiance rolled outward like sunrise turned violent.
Hexen threw himself behind the broken altar.
Fendor vanished behind another column.
Isamu had nowhere to go.
Neither did Nethnarel.
The wave struck them.
For a moment there were only silhouettes inside gold.
Kaylor watched.
Still unable to move.
Still holding the sword.
Still failing.
Something inside him gave way.
Not strength.
Anger.
He had spent years believing strength solved enough problems if applied decisively.
Then came Craven.
Then the broken oath.
Then the Lord of Swarms.
Then Grazim.
Then the Crystal City.
Scourge.
Again and again the world had placed impossible choices in front of him and refused to allow the comforting lie that the strongest man in the room could simply hit the correct enemy hard enough.
Now a sword had been promised to him in a dream, and even after he crossed half the world, killed a dragon and walked voluntarily into a demon lord's temple, the damned thing refused to be lifted.
Perhaps that was the joke.
Perhaps he had misunderstood the dream.
Perhaps the sword had not been promised to him.
Perhaps it had merely been shown.
There was a difference.
Craven had taught him that too.
Kaylor stopped pulling.
He stood frozen with both hands upon the hilt and looked at the weapon.
Black metal.
No sacred inscription he could read.
No symbol of the order he had abandoned.
No familiar crest.
Nothing to tell him what it wanted.
"Fine," he whispered.
His mouth moved.
Barely.
Enough.
"I don't need you."
The sword remained locked.
Kaylor almost laughed.
That sounded right.
He had spent enough time begging power to approve of him.
The guardian struck again.
His friends were fighting it while he stood uselessly at the altar.
That decided things.
Kaylor tried to release the sword.
His hands would not open.
"Then let go of me."
Nothing.
He pulled once more.
Not because the sword belonged to him.
Not because a dream said so.
Because there were four people behind him bleeding while a celestial machine tried to kill them.
That was reason enough.
His arm moved.
Only slightly.
Kaylor froze again.
But not in the same way.
The resistance had changed.
The sword was still impossibly heavy.
Yet for the first time he had felt it shift.
He tightened both hands around the grip.
Behind him came an enormous crash.
He could not turn to see what happened.
Fendor swore.
Nethnarel shouted Isamu's name.
Hexen answered.
The guardian continued.
Kaylor pulled.
The black blade moved another fraction.
Pain ran through his shoulders.
He ignored it.
The altar cracked around the weapon.
The guardian stopped.
Every rotating ring aligned.
Kaylor felt its attention return.
Not anger.
Judgment.
Pure and absolute.
The golden figure raised both arms.
Light filled every seam of its body.
Hexen saw what was coming.
"Kaylor!"
The dragonborn looked up.
The guardian released everything.
Radiance struck him.
There was no shield between them now.
No Cloak of Displacement clever enough to mislead something that had already fixed upon his soul.
The light hit.
Kaylor's hands remained on the sword.
He felt the temple vanish.
He stood somewhere without stone or flame.
For an instant—perhaps less—he saw himself as other powers might see him.
Paladin.
Oathbreaker.
Hero.
Murderer.
Protector.
Fool.
A man who had tried to serve something pure and discovered that purity in mortal hands could rot.
A man who had responded by breaking his oath and telling himself that at least his choices were his own.
He saw Craven.
Not the man himself.
The wound.
The place in Kaylor where certainty had once lived.
He had spent a long time treating that emptiness as freedom.
Perhaps it was.
Perhaps freedom was simply more frightening than obedience because there was no one else to blame.
The light searched him.
Kaylor waited for condemnation.
None came.
No voice declared him worthy.
None declared him damned.
The judgment simply ended.
And Kaylor remained.
He inhaled.
The sword released.
Not gradually.
One moment it was part of the altar.
The next it came free so suddenly Kaylor nearly stumbled backward.
The black blade rose in his hands.
It was enormous.
Perfectly balanced.
Power moved through it immediately, but not like the magic in his frost axe or Dancing Sword. Those weapons felt like tools—potent ones, but separate.
This felt like standing inside a storm that had decided not to strike him.
The guardian reeled.
Kaylor looked at the sword.
Then at the divine construct.
"All right."
He turned.
The first swing cut through one of the rotating rings.
The black blade passed through golden metal with a sound like a bell being torn in half.
The ring fell.
Everyone stopped for a heartbeat.
Fendor stared.
"I suppose it likes you now."
Kaylor looked at the broken section.
"Apparently."
"Good. Hit it again."
Kaylor did.
The guardian had been formidable when its machinery protected every vulnerable point.
With two rings broken, it became merely enormous.
That was easier.
Isamu attacked low, forcing the guardian to shift its weight. Hexen's roots tightened around damaged mechanisms. Nethnarel struck openings that would have disappeared too quickly earlier in the battle. Fendor abandoned any attempt to spread his shots and concentrated everything on the widening breach in the guardian's chest.
Kaylor carried the black greatsword into the center of it.
The weapon hit with unnatural certainty.
He felt resistance when it met divine metal, then the resistance vanished. Plates split. Radiant mechanisms failed. The guardian struck back, but something around Kaylor had changed.
Magic bent.
Not enough to disappear.
Enough to falter.
A golden burst that should have engulfed both Kaylor and Isamu broke strangely around them, its force weakened as it crossed the invisible boundary surrounding the sword.
Nethnarel noticed first.
"Stay near Kaylor!"
Fendor, twenty paces away, looked offended.
"That is extremely inconvenient."
"Then enjoy being magical debris."
Fendor moved closer.
The next radiant surge reached them.
It diminished.
Not completely.
But undeniably.
Hexen's eyes went to the sword.
"That's not normal."
Kaylor struck the guardian again.
"Very little is."
The guardian's central light flickered.
It lifted both hands.
Isamu hit one arm.
Kaylor severed the other.
Fendor's arrow entered the exposed core.
Nethnarel's magic followed.
The guardian staggered backward into the altar.
For the first time, the enormous rings stopped moving.
The sanctuary became unnaturally quiet.
The guardian looked down at Kaylor.
Something passed between them.
Not words.
Recognition, perhaps.
Or resignation.
Kaylor did not know.
He had expected hatred.
He felt none.
That was somehow worse.
He lifted the sword.
The guardian did not defend itself.
Kaylor hesitated.
Only for a heartbeat.
Then he drove the black blade through its radiant core.
The light went out.
The entire structure collapsed.
Not all at once.
The outer rings struck the floor first, each heavy enough to crack stone. Then the central body folded inward as whatever divine force had held its impossible architecture together disappeared. Golden fragments scattered across the sanctuary.
One enormous piece struck the altar and split it down the center.
Then nothing moved.
Kaylor stood amid the wreckage with the black sword in both hands.
Nobody spoke.
The room had the feeling of a cathedral after blasphemy.
Fendor was the first to break the silence.
"Well."
Kaylor looked at him.
"Well what?"
"I was waiting to see if the sword exploded."
"It didn't."
"Yet."
Nethnarel approached carefully.
"Hold still."
Kaylor immediately looked suspicious.
"Why?"
"I want to see what it's doing."
"I know what it's doing."
"No, you know the sharp part."
"The sharp part is important."
Nethnarel ignored him.
She moved around Kaylor and the weapon, studying the air rather than the blade itself.
Magic felt different nearby.
That was the only way she could describe it.
The sword did not suppress magic entirely. Her own power remained. She could still feel the familiar chaos beneath her skin.
But something around Kaylor resisted magical intrusion.
A boundary.
An aura.
"The guardian's magic weakened near you after you pulled that free."
Kaylor looked at the blade.
"I noticed."
Fendor joined them.
"So if someone casts something unpleasant at us—"
"Stand near Kaylor," Nethnarel said.
Fendor grimaced.
"There is always a cost."
Kaylor pointed the greatsword toward him.
"I can fix that problem."
"See? Already drunk on power."
Isamu walked around the fallen guardian.
He looked less interested in the sword than in the thing it had killed.
"Was that your gift?"
Kaylor's expression changed.
The question removed the humor.
He looked again at the weapon.
The Lord of Swarms had promised each of them something.
This sword had appeared in Kaylor's dream before they reached the temple. Whether the demon lord had created it, knew about it, arranged for Kaylor to find it or merely understood that it waited here remained unclear.
Kaylor disliked every possibility.
"The Swarm Lord knew it was here," Hexen said.
Kaylor looked toward him.
"That's not the same as it belonging to him."
"No."
Hexen stepped closer.
Insects did not gather.
Nothing whispered.
The black sword seemed strangely incompatible with the presence Hexen associated with the Swarm.
That did not make it holy.
It did not make it safe.
It simply made the truth less convenient.
Fendor regarded the weapon.
"What do we call it?"
Kaylor frowned.
"It's a sword."
"A very large black magical sword you saw in a prophetic dream, guarded by a divine machine that attempted to judge you to death."
"Still a sword."
"We name everything."
"We do not."
Hexen glanced toward Isamu's infernal whip.
"We probably should name fewer things."
Nethnarel looked at the sword.
"Peacekeeper?"
Fendor shook his head.
"Too optimistic."
"Judgment?"
Kaylor's expression made clear what he thought of that.
Isamu said, "Peacemaker."
The others looked at him.
He shrugged.
"It ended the argument."
Fendor stared at the wreckage of the divine guardian.
"That is an alarming definition of peace."
Kaylor tested the sword's balance.
"Which makes it appropriate."
"You're actually calling it that?"
"For now."
Fendor sighed.
"Peacemaker."
The black sword offered no objection.
That was as much agreement as they were likely to get.
Only after the guardian was dead did Kaylor look properly at the sanctuary.
The bodies of the celestial defenders remained.
Golden blood—or whatever passed for blood in their radiant forms—had dried in thin lines across the stone. Broken sections of the guardian lay among them. The altar had been shattered when Kaylor tore the sword free and the construct collapsed.
Nothing in the room had transformed after death.
No hidden corruption emerged.
No demonic mark appeared beneath the guardian's armor.
They had killed exactly what they believed they were killing.
Kaylor stood with Peacemaker resting against one shoulder.
The name suddenly felt less amusing.
Hexen stopped beside him.
"You're doing it again."
Kaylor glanced over.
"Doing what?"
"Thinking."
"I told you. I don't do that."
"Poorly, then."
Kaylor looked toward the dead celestial.
"Did we need to kill them?"
Hexen took longer to answer than Kaylor expected.
"To get the sword?"
"To keep going."
"Those aren't the same question."
"No."
The druid stared across the sanctuary.
The Lord of Swarms had promised rewards for clearing his temple.
The party had known what that meant in theory.
It was different when the dead had faces.
"We could still stop," Hexen said.
Kaylor gave him a sideways look.
"You believe that?"
"That we physically can? Yes."
"That's not what I asked."
Hexen exhaled.
"No."
Kaylor nodded.
Neither did he.
Not because of compulsion.
That would have been easier.
They had gone too far because each step produced a reason for the next. Answers lay deeper. Gifts lay deeper. The Swarm Lord's influence lay deeper. Hexen's unanswered connection lay deeper.
And now Kaylor had a sword that changed the shape of magic around everyone close to him.
Walking away would not undo the celestial corpses.
It would not remove the sword from his hand.
It would not make the bargain unmade.
"Craven would have loved this," Kaylor said.
Hexen turned toward him.
"What?"
"Not the temple. The logic."
Hexen waited.
Kaylor continued.
"One choice makes the next one necessary. Then that choice makes another one necessary. Eventually you're somewhere you never would have agreed to go if someone showed you the whole road at the beginning."
Hexen looked down.
"That's cheerful."
"I have a gift."
"So I've noticed."
Kaylor looked at Peacemaker.
For all the unease it created, he could not deny what the weapon felt like in his hands.
Right.
Not morally.
Physically.
It had been made for someone of his strength. Its balance suited him. The grip fit his hands. He could feel the protective force surrounding it like a second shield.
The sword was magnificent.
That was part of the problem.
Bad decisions were easier to recognize when they offered nothing.
Fendor approached them.
"We should rest."
Isamu nodded from across the room.
Nethnarel had already found a position near a wall where she could watch two entrances at once.
Kaylor looked toward the corridor leading deeper into the temple.
Nothing moved there.
"Here?"
Fendor spread his hands.
"We killed everything in this room."
"Comforting."
"And I would rather discover whatever that sword does while we're not actively being stabbed."
Kaylor rested Peacemaker against the broken altar.
The moment he let it leave his hands, he felt the protective presence around him change.
Still there.
Centered on the weapon.
Interesting.
Nethnarel felt it too.
"Definitely the sword."
"Good," Fendor said. "We can carry Kaylor less often."
Kaylor stared at him.
"You have never carried me."
"Exactly. I would like to preserve that record."
Isamu sat down near the remains of the guardian.
"We rest. Then continue."
Hexen looked toward the darkness beyond the sanctuary.
"Assuming the temple lets us."
As though the structure had been listening, something far away shifted.
Stone against stone.
Then silence.
Fendor looked at Hexen.
"Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why say things like that?"
Hexen sat.
"Tradition."
They rested.
Or tried to.
Kaylor remained near the sword.
The others gradually settled into the wary stillness that passed for recovery in dangerous places. Weapons stayed within reach. Armor remained on. No one truly slept at first.
The sanctuary's golden light had almost completely faded.
Peacemaker remained black.
Kaylor watched it.
He thought about the dream.
He had once assumed the weapon represented an answer.
Now he wondered whether it had been a warning.
Perhaps there was no difference.
Eventually he reached out and rested one hand upon the hilt.
The sword did not freeze him.
The invisible protection around it strengthened.
Kaylor looked into the dark corridor.
Whatever waited farther inside the Temple of the Swarm would find them better armed than when they entered.
Whether that was good news depended entirely upon who one asked.
Somewhere beyond the sanctuary, very faintly, came the sound of water.
Then something else.
Buzzing.
Isamu opened his eyes.
The sound stopped.
For the moment.