The water reached Isamu's knees before anyone understood where it was coming from.
There was no single opening in the wall, no broken pipe or channel pouring into the chamber. It came from everywhere at once. Thin streams burst from seams between the stones. Water spilled from cracks high above them and welled through the joints beneath their boots. Within seconds the separate flows joined, covering the floor in a cold, dark sheet that rose with impossible speed.
Behind them, the stone barrier remained firmly in place.
Kaylor struck it with his shoulder.
Nothing.
The wall had dropped from somewhere inside the ceiling and sealed the passage so completely that even the thin blade of Fendor's knife could not find a useful gap around its edge.
"That isn't moving," Fendor said.
Kaylor stepped back.
"Everything moves."
"Eventually?"
"Usually after I hit it."
Nethnarel was studying the walls instead of the barrier. Water already swirled around her thighs, tugging at her clothing.
"It's magical."
Fendor glanced down at the rapidly rising surface.
"I had guessed."
"No. The room." She turned slowly, following something only she could sense. "This isn't a reservoir emptying into us. The water is being produced."
"Can you stop it?"
"Not while I'm standing in it trying not to drown."
Kaylor looked at the sealed wall again.
"Then we make a door."
He reached for a sword.
Not Peacemaker.
The immense black weapon had proven itself against the divine guardian, and the aura surrounding it remained a potent defense against hostile magic. But Kaylor had carried other blades far longer. The Vicious Greatsword came free with the comfortable familiarity of an old argument, while the Dancing Sword rose from its place beside him and hovered in the damp air.
He pointed toward the center of the barrier.
"Same place."
The Dancing Sword turned toward the wall.
Then the water moved.
Isamu saw it first.
A shape passed beneath the surface beside his leg.
Too large for a fish.
Too quick for debris.
The new gloves tightened around his hands. Beetles surfaced along his knuckles as though sensing something he could not.
"Something's in here."
Fendor raised the Oathbow.
He looked at the water.
Then at the bow.
"This is going to be irritating."
The thing beneath the surface struck.
Water erupted around Isamu.
For an instant there was no creature at all, only a vertical surge climbing around his body. Then the surge took shape.
Arms.
Not true arms. Tendrils of clear water thickened and twisted around him, forming coils that locked across his chest and one leg. He could see the chamber through the creature holding him. His own trapped body distorted behind its rippling shape.
Isamu drove his fist into it.
The blow passed through the surface with a violent splash.
The creature recoiled.
It did not release him.
Instead the entire mass collapsed downward.
Isamu vanished beneath the water.
"Isamu!"
Hexen lunged toward him.
A second shape rose between them.
It had no face.
No eyes.
Nothing to distinguish its front from its back except the way its fluid body reached for him.
Hexen brought the Staff of the Woodlands across it. The blow scattered part of the creature across the room, but the displaced water reversed direction almost instantly and flowed back into the main mass.
"That's inconvenient."
The creature wrapped around his arm.
Cold closed against his skin.
Not merely water-cold. Something deeper. The sensation of being submerged in winter darkness where no light could reach.
Hexen twisted free before the thing could gain a better hold, then retreated toward the rising center of the chamber.
Another translucent form emerged near Nethnarel.
Another beside Fendor.
There had been more than one shape moving beneath the water.
There were many.
The room had never been the trap.
The water was.
Kaylor swung.
The Vicious Greatsword struck the stone barrier hard enough to send a crack through the chamber.
A shallow scar appeared.
The Dancing Sword hit the same place a heartbeat later.
Stone chipped away.
Kaylor hit it again.
Water climbed past his waist.
Behind him, the others fought enemies that barely had bodies.
He ignored them.
That required effort.
Every instinct told him to turn toward the struggle, to put himself where his armor and shield could absorb what would otherwise strike someone else. But killing the water creatures would not matter if the room continued filling.
The wall was the enemy that mattered.
He swung again.
The blade bit deeper.
The crack widened.
"Kaylor!"
He turned.
Fendor disappeared.
One moment the elf stood several paces away with the Oathbow held above the water.
Then something clear wrapped around his legs and pulled.
His head vanished beneath the surface.
The bow remained visible for a fraction longer before it too disappeared.
Kaylor took one step toward him.
Fendor erupted back through the surface farther away, coughing and twisting as a translucent coil tightened across his chest.
Kaylor changed direction.
Fendor saw him.
"The wall!"
It was barely a word between gasps.
Kaylor stopped.
Fendor had an arrow in one hand.
No bow.
He drove the arrow into the thing around him.
The shaft vanished inside the creature.
The water convulsed.
Fendor broke free long enough to surface properly.
"Wall!" he shouted again.
Kaylor turned back.
The elf was right.
He hated that.
The greatsword struck stone.
Once.
Again.
The Dancing Sword followed every blow, attacking the same fracture independently. Together they began carving a ragged depression into the barrier.
The wall was thick.
Too thick.
Kaylor could feel it in the way each strike traveled back through the sword and into his shoulders. This was not a decorative partition built to discourage wandering pilgrims. The slab had been designed to hold pressure.
Perhaps this exact pressure.
Water reached his chest.
The first creature came for him.
It rose silently behind his shoulder and closed around his torso.
Kaylor inhaled just before the cold covered him.
The world blurred.
He could still see the wall through the creature's transparent body, but everything beyond it bent strangely. The greatsword felt slower as water closed around his arms.
The thing tightened.
Kaylor's breath forced itself out.
He tried to plant his feet.
There was almost no weight left beneath them.
The creature lifted.
He kicked downward and touched nothing.
Then it dragged him under.
The sword remained in his hands.
That was enough.
Kaylor brought it around in a short, vicious arc.
The blade tore through the creature.
Water exploded away from him.
He fell rather than surfaced, finding the floor again as the creature lost enough cohesion to release him.
The Dancing Sword continued striking the wall.
Kaylor stared at it for a moment.
"At least one of us listens."
Then he attacked the barrier again.
Isamu stopped fighting the water.
That was the first useful thing he did.
Strength meant little when every strike entered an enemy that simply changed shape around it. The creature holding him had wrapped itself across his chest and waist, drawing him toward the deepest portion of the chamber as the water continued rising.
He let it.
For three heartbeats.
The pressure changed as it pulled him downward.
Isamu felt the shift.
The creature tightened where it expected resistance.
That was where it became most solid.
He struck.
The Swarm Gloves answered.
His fist entered the translucent mass and something beneath the leather—or whatever the gloves had become—moved with him. The impact felt different from his earlier blow. More force traveled through it than his arm alone should have delivered.
The creature shuddered.
Black specks moved beneath the water.
Insects.
Isamu almost stopped.
Several tiny forms crawled across the surface of the glove despite being submerged, then disappeared back inside it.
The water creature recoiled.
Its coils loosened.
Isamu twisted through the gap and kicked upward.
His head broke the surface.
He drew one breath.
Then another creature hit him from behind.
No time to wonder about the gloves.
That would come later.
If there was a later.
The chamber was nearly full.
Hexen had considered changing shape.
He discarded the idea almost immediately.
Being larger would make him easier to grab.
Being smaller would make him easier to drown.
There were aquatic forms that could have endured the water indefinitely, but surviving alone was not the problem.
He needed the others alive.
Nethnarel surfaced near him, hair plastered across her face.
"Can you do anything about the water?"
Hexen looked around.
The surface was now close enough to the ceiling that the chamber seemed to have shrunk around them.
"I can become something that likes it."
"Can you become something that makes walls disappear?"
"That's usually Kaylor."
They both looked toward the dragonborn.
Kaylor stood with water near his shoulders, hammering the sealed barrier. The Dancing Sword struck beside him with relentless precision. Cracks spread across the stone, but the slab remained intact.
Nethnarel watched the fracture.
"He's weakening it."
"Not fast enough."
"I know."
A water creature rose behind her.
Hexen grabbed Nethnarel and pulled her aside.
The thing passed where she had been and wrapped around Hexen instead.
He disappeared beneath the surface.
Nethnarel saw his hand once.
Then nothing.
She reached for him and touched only water.
The creature itself was nearly impossible to distinguish from the flood now. When there had been only a few feet of water, its body had shown clearly against the air.
Now they were inside its element.
That was the trap's second cruelty.
The more dangerous the room became, the harder its inhabitants were to see.
Nethnarel plunged both hands beneath the surface and found fabric.
She pulled.
Hexen emerged, coughing.
Something still held his ankle.
Nethnarel could see the distortion now.
She released him long enough to gather magic.
A bolt struck downward.
The water flashed.
The creature recoiled.
So did Hexen.
He stared at her.
"Warn me."
"You were drowning."
"I can drown and appreciate warning."
"Then next time I'll ask."
Hexen coughed again.
"Thank you."
The water reached the ceiling.
There would not be a next time.
Fendor discovered that archery underwater was exactly as effective as he had feared.
He had recovered the Oathbow.
That was the good news.
The bad news was everything else.
There was no stable distance. No clean line of sight. No reliable silhouette to aim at. Water changed the flight of every arrow and the creatures themselves existed mostly as differences in distortion.
So Fendor did something he disliked.
He moved closer.
One translucent creature had Isamu again, dragging the monk along the flooded wall. Fendor swam toward them, drew as far as the resistance of the water permitted and released from almost point-blank range.
The arrow passed into the creature.
Its shaft became visible inside the watery body.
That gave Fendor an idea.
He fired again.
Then again.
Not to kill it.
To mark it.
Three arrows now floated inside the creature's mass, moving whenever it moved.
"There."
His voice became bubbles.
Nobody heard him.
Fendor decided that was an unreasonable failure of communication.
The creature released Isamu and turned toward the elf.
Fendor immediately regretted making himself easier to locate.
He swam backward.
The creature followed.
Its movement shifted the surrounding water.
Fendor felt it before the mass reached him.
He twisted aside.
A transparent arm passed across his face.
Something dark struck through it.
Isamu.
The monk's insect-covered fist punched into the marked creature.
The water convulsed.
Fendor kicked away as Isamu struck again.
This time the creature came apart.
The arrows sank.
Fendor surfaced into the last pocket of air remaining near the ceiling.
Isamu joined him.
The gap was scarcely large enough to breathe.
"Useful gloves," Fendor gasped.
Isamu looked at his hands.
"Maybe."
"That was not praise."
The water rose another inch.
Fendor looked toward Kaylor.
"Please break something."
Kaylor no longer had room to swing properly.
The ceiling had forced him lower, and every full motion carried the risk of striking stone before the blade reached its target.
The wall was damaged.
Deeply.
A web of cracks spread outward from the place he and the Dancing Sword had attacked. Pieces had broken loose. Water pressed itself into every fracture.
But the barrier remained.
Kaylor drove the Vicious Greatsword into the largest crack and leaned against the hilt.
Stone groaned.
He pushed harder.
Nothing.
The Dancing Sword struck beside it.
A piece the size of his fist broke away.
Beyond the gap was darkness.
Open space.
Kaylor saw it.
So did Nethnarel.
The tiefling surfaced beside him beneath the shrinking pocket of air.
"There's a passage behind it."
Kaylor gasped for breath.
"I noticed."
"Move."
He looked at her.
"What?"
"Move."
Kaylor saw the magic gathering.
He pulled the greatsword free.
The Dancing Sword floated beside him.
"What are you doing?"
Nethnarel placed herself directly before the fractured section.
"Finishing your door."
Kaylor knew that tone.
He moved.
Fast.
"Everyone away from the wall!"
Fendor barely had time to understand him.
Nethnarel released the spell.
Thunder filled the drowning room.
Underwater, the effect was monstrous.
The blast did not merely sound.
It existed inside everything.
Stone shook.
Water compressed.
Kaylor felt the force pass through his armor and into his bones. Fendor lost hold of the wall. Isamu was thrown backward. Hexen vanished inside a burst of white bubbles.
The damaged barrier took the full impact.
For one instant it held.
Then the center burst outward.
The temple emptied itself.
Water found the opening and became violence.
The entire flooded chamber rushed toward the breach at once.
Kaylor was pulled off his feet.
The Vicious Greatsword disappeared from his grip.
He caught it again by the blade, gauntlet scraping along steel, and then the current took him through the hole.
Stone struck his shoulder.
He spun.
Darkness.
Then open corridor.
He hit the ground hard enough to lose whatever air he still possessed.
Water exploded around him.
Nethnarel passed next, swept through the breach in a torrent. Hexen followed, then Isamu. Fendor emerged backward with one hand still wrapped around the Oathbow.
The flood carried all five heroes down the passage.
For several terrifying seconds there was no fighting it.
Then the corridor widened.
The water spread.
Its force weakened.
Kaylor caught a broken pillar and held on until his boots found stone.
One by one the others stopped.
The flood continued away from them, rushing through lower passages and stairways, leaving behind a diminishing current no deeper than their ankles.
For a moment nobody spoke.
They simply breathed.
Fendor lay flat on his back.
His bow rested across his chest.
"I would like," he said finally, "one room in this temple whose primary purpose is being a room."
Hexen sat against the wall.
"You ask too much."
Isamu stood.
Water poured from his clothes.
The insects on his gloves were already moving again.
Kaylor looked back toward the shattered barrier.
"Everyone here?"
"Unfortunately," Fendor said.
Kaylor counted anyway.
Fendor.
Nethnarel.
Hexen.
Isamu.
Himself.
Five.
"Good."
Nethnarel leaned against the stone and closed her eyes.
The Thunderwave had taken more from her than she wanted anyone to notice.
Hexen noticed.
He said nothing.
The water creatures were not finished.
They came through the broken wall in pieces.
At first Kaylor thought the flood had destroyed them. Then one of the shallow pools in the corridor climbed upward.
Another gathered from water running down the wall.
The creatures had lost their greatest advantage.
There was no longer enough water to hide them.
Their translucent bodies became obvious against bare stone.
Fendor stood.
"Oh."
He nocked an arrow.
"That's better."
The first shot went through the center of one creature.
The second followed before it could close around anyone.
Nethnarel's Thunderwave had not killed the things, but it had changed the battle.
That was enough.
Isamu met another head-on.
His gloves struck hard. The insects remained mostly within them, but the extra force was undeniable now. Every blow disrupted the creature's shape faster than it could recover.
Hexen drove his staff into another and forced it into the path of Kaylor's sword.
Kaylor did not bother retrieving Peacemaker.
The Vicious Greatsword was already in his hands.
He cut downward.
The creature collapsed into ordinary water.
The Dancing Sword found another.
This time the battle lasted moments rather than minutes.
Without the flood, there was nowhere for the creatures to disappear. Fendor's arrows marked them. Nethnarel's magic broke their forms. Hexen and Isamu kept them from reforming long enough for Kaylor to finish the work.
The last one tried to retreat into a shallow stream.
Isamu stepped on it.
The creature surged upward around his boot.
He struck once.
It became water again.
The corridor fell still.
This time they waited.
No pool moved.
No condensation crawled uphill.
Nothing attempted to drown them.
Fendor lowered the Oathbow.
"I maintain that the wall was the least dangerous thing in that room."
Kaylor looked at the shattered barrier.
"The wall nearly killed us."
"The water nearly killed us."
"The creatures nearly killed us," Hexen added.
Nethnarel slid down the wall until she was sitting.
"So we agree the room was poorly designed."
Isamu looked back toward the flooded chamber.
"It worked."
Nobody had a useful response to that.
They rested where they were.
Not well.
Not long.
But long enough to stop shaking.
Their clothes remained soaked. Water had found everything they carried that was capable of becoming wet. Fendor spent several minutes examining the Oathbow before deciding the ancient weapon had survived with considerably more dignity than he had.
Kaylor recovered the Dancing Sword and checked the edge of the Vicious Greatsword.
Peacemaker remained secure.
That gave him a strange feeling.
He had just fought for his life with familiar weapons while the most powerful sword he had ever carried remained largely unused.
Perhaps there was comfort in that.
A new weapon did not erase what had come before.
Isamu sat opposite him, studying his gloves.
The insects were alive.
There was no question anymore.
Tiny black bodies moved between the seams. Once, something with wings surfaced near his thumb, cleaned its forelegs, and disappeared beneath the dark material.
Kaylor watched.
"Still like them?"
Isamu flexed one hand.
"They work."
"That was not the question."
"They work well."
Kaylor shook his head.
"You and Fendor should start a club."
From farther down the corridor, Fendor said, "I heard that."
"You were meant to."
Hexen watched Isamu's gloves more carefully.
He had felt the Swarm throughout the temple in fragments—attention without words, recognition without explanation.
The gloves carried that same feeling.
So did the strange changes within Hexen himself.
The fire that no longer harmed him as it once had.
The powers that belonged nowhere in a druid's training.
Grazim's impossible manifestation.
The word Emissary.
Each gift made the pattern more visible.
Kaylor had received the sword.
Isamu had received the gloves.
The Lord of Swarms had promised something for each of them.
Hexen wondered whether his own gift waited deeper inside.
The thought should have disgusted him.
Instead, part of him wanted to know.
That disgusted him more.
"You all right?" Nethnarel asked.
Hexen looked toward her.
"Yes."
She waited.
Hexen sighed.
"No."
"Better."
"Is there a prize for honesty?"
"Not in this temple."
Hexen smiled faintly.
Then he noticed the light.
A pale green glow reflected from the wet stone farther down the corridor.
It had not been there before.
Or perhaps the flood had washed away enough grime for them to see it.
Hexen stood.
Fendor immediately said, "No."
Hexen looked at him.
"I haven't done anything."
"You're looking at mysterious light."
"So?"
"We have established a pattern."
Kaylor rose and lifted the Vicious Greatsword.
Nethnarel stared toward the glow.
Unlike the divine gold of the sanctuary, this light was cool. Almost gentle.
That somehow made it more suspicious.
Isamu stood beside her.
Water dripped from his insect-covered hands.
The five heroes looked down the passage.
They had survived celestial guardians.
A well.
A room full of biting insects.
A drowning chamber filled with living water.
Somewhere deeper inside waited whatever remained of the Swarm Lord's promised gifts—and whatever good-aligned defenders had not yet died trying to stop them.
Kaylor started walking.
Fendor muttered something behind him.
Kaylor glanced back.
"What?"
"I said we're going toward the mysterious green light."
"Yes."
"You understand why I object."
"Completely."
"And we're still going."
"Yes."
Fendor sighed.
"I miss dragons."
They followed the green light deeper into the temple.