The green light led them to an altar.
That was becoming a pattern.
The passage widened gradually as the heroes followed the glow, its pale reflection sliding across wet stone left behind by the flooding chamber. Unlike the golden radiance of the sanctuary, this light carried no warmth. It seemed almost organic, the color of sunlight filtered through deep leaves, though there was nothing alive anywhere in sight.
The chamber at the end of the corridor had once been ceremonial. Whatever stood there originally had been broken long ago. Fragments of carved stone surrounded a low ruined altar whose surface had split across the middle. Dust filled the cracks. Water from their clothes darkened the floor behind them.
Five crystals lay among the debris.
Fendor stopped at the threshold.
"Of course they do."
Kaylor glanced at him. "You object to rocks now?"
"I object to objects arranged invitingly in rooms designed by people who kill visitors."
"Reasonable."
"Thank you."
"Still going in."
"I knew the agreement wouldn't last."
They approached carefully.
The crystals were different from one another in color and shape, though all looked deliberately cut rather than naturally formed. None was large enough to require two hands. They might once have been set into something larger; empty depressions in the broken altar suggested as much.
Nethnarel studied them without touching.
The green one glowed.
Not brightly. The light seemed trapped beneath its polished surface, shifting when she moved her head.
The others were merely stone.
"This one," she said.
Hexen looked around the chamber.
"The others?"
"Nothing obvious."
"Which in this place means?"
"Probably something unpleasant."
Isamu crouched beside the altar. Living insects shifted almost imperceptibly across his new gloves.
The green crystal brightened.
Isamu straightened.
It dimmed.
Everyone looked at his hands.
"I didn't do anything."
Fendor nodded toward the gloves. "Your hands now contain wildlife. I'm not sure that statement means what it used to."
Kaylor walked around the altar, Peacemaker resting across one shoulder. Its presence dulled the edge of the magic when he came close enough, but did not extinguish it. The green light inside the crystal contracted, then returned when he moved away.
Nethnarel noticed.
"So whatever it does, your sword doesn't stop it completely."
"Good."
She frowned. "Why is that good?"
"I'm tired of solving every problem by standing next to something."
"That is most of your career."
Kaylor decided not to dignify that with an answer.
Hexen hardly heard them.
The crystal was not what held his attention.
There was another green light in the chamber.
He had thought it was only a reflection at first, perhaps the glow from the crystal caught in polished stone. But this second point of light remained fixed no matter where Nethnarel moved.
It came from behind the broken altar.
Low.
Almost hidden.
Hexen circled toward it.
"Here."
The others joined him.
A narrow line of green radiance shone from a recess barely visible between two blocks of fallen masonry. The opening was too small to be a passage. It might once have held some kind of ornament, lock or magical device.
Nethnarel looked from it to the crystal in her hand.
Fendor took one deliberate step backward.
"No."
She looked at him.
"I haven't done anything."
"Not yet."
"Do you want to stay here forever?"
"I would like us to consider at least one option that doesn't involve placing the glowing magical object beside the matching glowing magical hole."
Isamu regarded the recess.
"That is clearly what it wants."
"Yes," Fendor said. "That is exactly my concern."
Hexen extended a hand toward the green crystal.
Nethnarel gave it to him.
The moment his fingers closed around it, something moved through the stone.
Not a voice.
Recognition.
Hexen nearly dropped the crystal.
For the briefest instant he had felt the same alien attention that had followed him since the Lord of Swarms first entered his life.
Then it was gone.
Kaylor saw his expression.
"What?"
"I felt something."
"Swarm?"
Hexen looked down at the crystal.
"I don't know."
That answer no longer comforted anyone.
He moved the stone closer to the hidden glow.
The two green lights intensified.
Fendor sighed.
"Excellent."
Hexen stopped.
Nothing happened.
He moved closer.
The chamber disappeared.
Fendor saw Hexen vanish.
No flash.
No portal opening.
No dramatic collapse of reality.
One moment the druid stood beside the broken altar holding the green crystal.
Then the place where he had been was empty.
Fendor stared.
"I would like it noted—"
Kaylor grabbed the green crystal before it struck the floor.
"Later."
"That I specifically objected—"
"Later."
Nethnarel crouched beside the recess.
The hidden green glow had become stronger.
"He's alive."
Kaylor looked at her. "You know that?"
"No."
Fendor spread his hands.
"Wonderful."
Something changed in the light.
It stretched toward Kaylor.
Peacemaker reacted.
The strange aura surrounding the black greatsword pressed against the magic, bending the glow away from him.
The light searched sideways instead.
Isamu disappeared.
Kaylor swore.
Fendor drew the Oathbow.
"At what?"
"I don't know."
"Then perhaps the sword can shoot the room."
Nethnarel looked sharply toward him.
"Don't give him ideas."
The green glow expanded.
This time they all felt the magic.
The chamber seemed to lean toward the broken altar.
Fendor reached for a pillar.
His hand missed it because the pillar was suddenly somewhere else.
Then Fendor was gone too.
Kaylor stared at Nethnarel.
She stared back.
"Your turn or mine?"
The magic answered for them.
Nethnarel vanished.
Kaylor stood alone.
The dragonborn looked down at Peacemaker.
The sword's aura still resisted the pull.
For perhaps three seconds, Kaylor considered simply leaving.
He could walk back through the temple.
Find another route.
Let whatever mechanism this was fail against the weapon's protection.
Then he imagined explaining that decision if the others survived.
Kaylor lowered Peacemaker.
The resistance around him weakened.
Green light reached him.
"Fine."
The temple took him.
Hexen landed in sunlight.
That made no sense.
He remained underground. He knew that before he opened his eyes.
But warmth touched his face, and the smell around him was so completely wrong for the Temple of the Swarm that for several seconds he simply lay where he had fallen.
Soil.
Leaves.
Flowers.
Wet bark.
Growing things.
Hexen opened his eyes.
A greenhouse stretched around him.
The chamber was enormous, far larger than the room containing the crystal should have permitted. Stone walls rose at the edges, but nearly everything else belonged outdoors. Trees twisted upward beside thick flowering vines. Broad-leafed plants crowded one another across rich black soil. Moss climbed ruined statuary. Roots cracked flagstones apart.
Above him was a ceiling of crystal.
Green-white radiance poured through it like daylight.
Hexen slowly stood.
The druid in him reacted before the rest of him could.
Life surrounded him.
Not imitation.
Not illusion.
Life.
Then he felt what was wrong with it.
Everything was growing.
Too quickly.
A vine near his boot thickened while he watched. A new leaf unfurled, reached full size and darkened within seconds. Roots shifted beneath the soil with enough force to lift stones.
Hexen stepped away.
"That's probably bad."
The ground opened.
A stalk erupted beside him.
It grew past his shoulder in an instant, twisting upon itself as branches split from its sides. Pale flowers opened along the stem.
Then the flowers turned toward him.
Light gathered inside them.
Hexen moved.
Radiance struck the ground where he had been.
Stone blackened.
"Definitely bad."
More cracks appeared.
Plants rose from them.
Isamu arrived fighting.
That was less deliberate than it appeared.
He materialized several paces above the ground, dropped through a cluster of broad leaves and landed with one knee in the soil. A thorned vine was already reaching for him when he looked up.
He struck it.
The Swarm Gloves hit harder than his bare hands should have allowed. The vine snapped.
Two more grew from the severed end.
Isamu stared at them.
"Unhelpful."
Hexen shouted from somewhere among the foliage.
"Don't let them grab you!"
A radiant blast cut between two trees.
Isamu moved before it struck.
"I had worked that out."
Another plant erupted under his feet.
He jumped.
The vine followed him upward.
It wrapped around his ankle.
Isamu twisted in the air and struck downward. His fist crushed the thick stem, but more growth immediately surged around his other leg.
The plants were not merely defending the room.
They were herding him.
He saw it as soon as he stopped treating each attack separately.
Every vine that missed remained between him and one part of the chamber. Every new root narrowed his movement. The radiant blossoms struck when he tried to retreat.
They were forcing him toward the center.
Toward the crystal ceiling.
"Hexen!"
"I know!"
The druid was fighting the same pressure.
Fendor appeared inside a tree.
Not literally.
It merely felt that way.
Branches exploded around him as he arrived amid dense foliage. He fell, caught one branch, lost it when the wood suddenly grew another three feet, and landed badly in a bed of enormous ferns.
He sat up.
An arrow was already in his hand.
A plant hit him with light.
Fendor went backward again.
He decided he disliked greenhouses.
The Oathbow came up.
Finding targets was the problem.
There were no bodies to shoot.
Every enemy was part of the room.
Vines moved from three directions. Flower heads opened along a distant trunk. Roots rose like snakes from the soil.
Fendor chose the flowers.
His first arrow severed one stalk.
The blossom fell.
A second arrow destroyed another before it released its light.
That was useful.
Fendor began moving.
"Hexen!"
"Here!"
A staff rose briefly above the foliage.
Fendor moved toward it.
The forest changed around him before he covered half the distance.
That was less useful.
Nethnarel arrived in a shower of green sparks.
She immediately hated the place.
Not because it was dangerous.
Danger had become expected.
She hated it because the magic was beautiful.
Sunlike radiance filtered through the crystal ceiling. Leaves glowed translucent around the edges. Flowers of colors she had never seen outside magical gardens covered the ground. Tiny motes drifted through the humid air.
Then a vine wrapped around her waist and threw her into a tree.
Beauty, she reflected, had become deeply suspicious.
She blasted the vine apart.
Wild energy snapped through the air after the spell. For one uncomfortable heartbeat she felt the familiar instability of her magic twisting toward something else.
Then it settled.
Mostly.
A nearby patch of moss began glowing purple.
Nethnarel pointed at it.
"You stay there."
The moss seemed agreeable.
Kaylor appeared behind her.
He landed heavily, Peacemaker already in his hands.
A plant struck him with radiant light.
The sword's aura weakened the magic enough that Kaylor remained upright.
He looked around.
"Where is everyone?"
Nethnarel pointed in several directions.
"Plants."
"I can see that."
"No. Everyone is somewhere in the plants."
A vine struck at Kaylor.
Peacemaker cut through it.
The black blade passed through living wood as though the stalk had been waiting to fall apart.
Then the severed pieces began growing roots.
Kaylor stared.
"Hexen's room."
Nethnarel looked at him.
"What?"
"This is Hexen's problem."
"Everything involving plants is not automatically Hexen's problem."
A tree branch bent down and tried to crush them.
Kaylor hacked it away.
"This one is."
The five heroes found one another by destroying enough of the greenhouse to create sightlines.
Hexen was not pleased about that.
He was less pleased about being killed.
The plants had become increasingly aggressive as the party regrouped. Radiant flowers opened across the chamber. Their blasts crossed overhead in lines of white-green light. Thorned creepers wound around Kaylor's armor. Roots tried to pin Fendor's boots. Nethnarel burned holes through masses of vegetation only to watch new growth fill them.
Every moment made the chamber denser.
Hexen understood why before anyone else.
"The big ones aren't the problem."
Fendor shot another radiant blossom.
"It attacked me."
"They're connected."
"To what?"
Hexen looked upward.
The crystal ceiling.
Roots clung to it from above.
He had mistaken them for cracks.
They moved.
A shadow shifted beyond the translucent panels.
Something enormous was growing on the other side.
Kaylor followed his gaze.
"Can we break the ceiling?"
Nethnarel looked up.
"Probably."
Fendor said, "The last time we broke a wall, several thousand gallons of water attacked us."
"Different room."
"That does not improve our record."
A thick vine caught Hexen around the waist.
Kaylor stepped forward.
Hexen raised one hand.
"Don't."
Kaylor stopped.
The vine tightened.
Another wound around Hexen's chest.
Isamu stared at him.
"Why?"
"They're trying to move us through the ceiling."
Hexen could feel the pull now.
The plant had no interest in crushing him.
It was lifting.
"What is above us is controlling this."
Fendor lowered his bow slightly.
"So your plan is to let it drag you toward the larger thing?"
"Yes."
"That is the worst plan you've had today."
Hexen considered.
"The day is young."
The vines pulled.
Hexen rose.
Kaylor took another step.
"Hexen."
"I need to see it."
"You can turn into a bird."
Hexen looked at the crystal ceiling.
"I don't think the ceiling cares."
Another vine caught him.
The plants pulled harder.
Hexen ascended toward the green-white panels.
Fendor watched.
"This is why druids die."
Nethnarel glanced at him.
"He's died?"
"Give it time."
Hexen hit the ceiling.
The crystal did not feel solid.
His body passed through.
For a moment green light swallowed him.
Then the greenhouse vanished beneath his feet.
The world above was roots.
Hexen emerged into a chamber that might once have been another sanctuary but had long since been consumed.
An enormous plant filled it.
Calling the thing a tree would have been inaccurate, though parts of it resembled one. Roots thicker than Hexen's body spread across the floor and vanished into the structure below. Twisted trunks had grown together around a central mass whose shape seemed almost deliberate. Branches pressed against walls. Pale leaves trembled in air that had no wind.
The entire greenhouse existed beneath it.
Everything below was an extension of this creature.
And lodged among its roots was a scythe.
Hexen forgot the battle.
The weapon looked ancient even beside the temple.
Its shaft was dark wood or something that resembled wood, polished by hands long gone. The curved blade showed no rust. It seemed dull until Hexen looked directly at its edge; then the metal caught light where no light fell.
The roots had grown around it.
Not protecting it.
Trying to contain it.
Hexen felt the same certainty he had experienced when entering the greenhouse.
Life.
And beneath that—
Death.
Not corruption.
Not decay.
Harvest.
The difference mattered to a druid.
Death was not nature's enemy. Nothing living escaped it. Forests fed upon fallen forests. Predators killed. Winter stripped branches bare so spring could begin again.
The scythe understood that.
Hexen moved toward it.
The great plant reacted.
Roots tore free from the floor.
One struck Hexen hard enough to lift him off his feet and throw him across the chamber.
He rolled.
The scythe remained where it was.
Below the crystal ceiling he could hear the battle.
Kaylor shouting.
Fendor's bow.
Magic.
His friends were fighting pieces of the creature.
Hexen had found the heart.
He stood.
"All right."
The great plant attacked.
Below, the greenhouse became violent.
Every vine in the chamber convulsed at once.
Isamu was pulled off his feet.
Nethnarel disappeared behind a wall of leaves.
Fendor fired upward, though he could no longer see Hexen through the glowing ceiling.
Kaylor planted himself beneath the place where the druid had vanished.
"Hexen!"
No answer.
Then insects appeared.
Isamu felt them first.
The creatures embedded in his gloves began moving rapidly, crawling over one another in sudden agitation.
He looked at his hands.
The swarm spilled outward.
Not all of it.
Enough.
Black insects spiraled into the air.
Nethnarel emerged from the leaves and froze.
"Kaylor."
The dragonborn saw them.
His grip tightened around Peacemaker.
The swarm gathered several paces away.
It formed a silhouette.
Small.
Armored.
Impossible.
Grazim Von stood among the plants.
Not alive.
No one could mistake that now.
His halfling body existed only approximately, its edges dissolving continuously into moving insects. Portions of his armor seemed real until beetles crawled through them. The face was Grazim's and not Grazim's, memory held together by the Swarm.
Kaylor stopped breathing.
He had already seen this once.
That did not make it easier.
"Grazim."
The apparition turned toward him.
For one fleeting second the old cleric seemed entirely present.
Then the plants attacked.
Grazim raised one hand.
Fire came down from above.
Not ordinary flame.
A column of divine fury struck the greenhouse, pouring through leaves and branches in a roaring pillar. The plants caught fire. Radiant blossoms burst. Vines curled into blackened shapes.
Fendor threw an arm across his face.
"You know, I missed that."
Grazim lowered his hand.
Insects poured from one shoulder.
Isamu stared.
There were questions no battle permitted.
Kaylor chose the only one that mattered.
"Can you fight?"
Grazim turned toward the rising plants.
Apparently he could.
That was enough.
For now.
Above them, Hexen reached the scythe.
The great plant had driven him across the chamber twice. Blood ran from one side of his face where a root had caught him. His Staff of the Woodlands lay somewhere behind him.
He no longer cared.
The scythe waited three paces away.
A root came down.
Hexen shifted aside.
Another swept low.
He jumped.
A third caught his leg.
Hexen struck it with both hands, broke free and lunged.
His fingers closed around the scythe.
There was no resistance.
No test.
No divine judgment.
No paralysis.
The weapon knew him.
That certainty arrived complete.
Hexen sucked in a breath.
Magic moved from the scythe into his hands and from his hands into every part of him. He had experienced attunement before. It usually required patience—a gradual understanding between wielder and artifact, a careful exploration of what magic permitted.
This was nothing like that.
The scythe opened itself to him.
A name followed.
Grim Harvest.
Hexen did not hear the words.
He knew them.
The root around the weapon tightened.
Hexen pulled.
The scythe came free.
The great plant screamed.
The sound traveled through roots rather than air.
Below him, the entire greenhouse convulsed.
Hexen staggered.
Grim Harvest felt unnaturally light in his hands.
The blade caught the green radiance from below and turned it almost black.
The enormous source-creature recoiled.
Hexen looked at it.
Then at the scythe.
He understood one thing about the weapon.
Enough.
The great plant lunged.
Hexen swung.
Grim Harvest entered living wood.
For an instant nothing happened.
Then the scythe pulled.
Not sap.
Not blood.
Something deeper.
Light appeared beneath the great plant's bark.
It raced through every root and branch toward the place where Grim Harvest had struck. Green radiance poured into the blade in thin streams at first, then in a flood.
Hexen tried to release the weapon.
His hands would not open.
The great plant withered.
Leaves browned in seconds.
Branches collapsed.
Roots that had cracked stone for centuries shrank and split.
Below, every defender in the greenhouse stopped moving.
Kaylor saw the vine around his arm become brittle.
Isamu watched a radiant blossom turn gray.
Fendor's target collapsed before he released the arrow.
The life of the entire organism was being drawn upward.
Into the scythe.
The great plant's scream became something Hexen felt in his teeth.
He held on.
He had no idea whether he was killing a monster, a guardian, or something that had simply been grown here to defend the temple from exactly such intruders.
That question came too late.
Grim Harvest finished its work.
The last green light vanished into the blade.
The creature turned to ash.
Not gradually.
One heartbeat it filled the chamber.
The next it lost all substance.
Trunk, roots, leaves and branches collapsed inward in a gray cloud.
Hexen fell through it.
Ash covered him.
The scythe remained clean.
The greenhouse died.
Sunlight vanished from the crystal ceiling.
Plants sagged across the floor. Some returned to ordinary vegetation. Others crumbled completely, their unnatural growth unable to survive the death of whatever had fed them.
The crystal panels overhead darkened.
Then Hexen came through.
Not falling violently.
Descending through the same place the vines had carried him, surrounded by drifting ash.
He held a scythe.
Kaylor stared upward.
"That's new."
Hexen landed.
The moment his feet touched the ground, he nearly dropped the weapon.
Not because it was heavy.
Because he understood that he had not chosen to attune to it.
The bond already existed.
Fendor approached cautiously.
"Please tell me that's a gardening tool."
Hexen looked at the black-edged blade.
"No."
"Naturally."
Nethnarel stepped closer.
"What did it do?"
Hexen looked around the ruined greenhouse.
"You saw."
"I saw an entire room die."
"So did I."
Isamu flexed his insect-covered hands.
"What is it called?"
Hexen hesitated.
He did not know why the name disturbed him.
Perhaps because it had come so easily.
"Grim Harvest."
No one laughed.
Kaylor rested Peacemaker against his shoulder.
"Subtle."
"Your sword is called Peacemaker."
"Exactly."
Fendor nodded. "He's got you there."
Hexen ran one thumb along the scythe's shaft.
Not the blade.
He had no interest in discovering what its edge would do to flesh by accident.
There was more inside the weapon.
He could feel that too.
Something unanswered.
A power waiting for a particular moment.
Hexen did not probe it.
He had learned, finally, that not every closed door benefited from immediate investigation.
Across the chamber, insects began falling.
Kaylor turned.
Grazim still stood among the dying plants.
For several seconds nobody moved toward him.
The apparition looked smaller now.
Less substantial.
The Flame Strike had burned much of the vegetation around him, leaving a broad circle of blackened earth.
Hexen tightened his grip on Grim Harvest.
He had called Grazim.
That was the part he could not escape.
He did not fully understand how.
He did not understand what answered.
But when the battle demanded help, some instinct or power inside him had reached beyond death and brought back the man Hexen himself had killed.
Grazim looked toward him.
The swarm moved across the cleric's face.
Hexen felt suddenly unable to speak.
There were apologies too large for words.
There were questions no answer could make bearable.
Grazim raised one hand.
Not in blessing.
Not quite farewell.
Something between the two.
Then his fingers became insects.
His arm followed.
The halfling shape came apart from the edges inward until only a small cloud remained hovering above the scorched ground.
The swarm circled Hexen once.
Grim Harvest seemed to react.
Very slightly.
Then the insects vanished into cracks in the stone.
Grazim was gone.
Again.
Fendor lowered his bow.
No one had realized he was still holding it ready.
Kaylor looked at Hexen.
"Was that him?"
Hexen stared at the place where Grazim had stood.
"I don't know."
It was the only truthful answer.
Isamu looked at his gloves.
The insects there had become still.
Nethnarel watched Hexen instead.
"You summoned him."
"I called."
"And he came."
"Something came."
Kaylor understood the distinction.
He wished he did not.
"Did the Swarm do that?"
Hexen looked down at Grim Harvest.
The scythe did not answer.
Neither did the temple.
"I don't know."
Three words.
They had become Hexen's most reliable prayer.
They searched the greenhouse after the danger passed.
There was surprisingly little to find.
The vegetation had hidden the architecture so completely that they had expected secret doors, chambers, perhaps another altar.
Mostly they found broken stone and ash.
The crystal ceiling had become opaque without the magic feeding it. Through it, the chamber above was only a dark shape now. Hexen's path through the panels no longer worked when Kaylor experimentally pressed one gauntlet against them.
"Solid."
Fendor looked upward.
"Good."
Kaylor turned.
"You don't want to see the enormous dead plant?"
"I have seen enough enormous dead things recently."
"Fair."
The green crystal remained important.
Where exactly it had gone during the teleportation was less clear.
Nethnarel found herself thinking back through the transition and could not say with confidence who had held it last. The magic that brought them here had treated the stone more like part of a mechanism than ordinary treasure.
They would search.
They would argue about it.
But not now.
Hexen stood apart from them.
Grim Harvest rested against his shoulder.
The weapon suited him.
That was obvious and unpleasant.
A druid carrying a scythe should have looked almost natural. Harvest belonged to the same cycles he had served all his life.
Yet nothing about this weapon felt ordinary.
It had consumed something.
Not merely killed it.
Hexen had felt the life of the great creature pass through the blade.
Part of it might still be there.
He wondered whether that should horrify him more than it did.
The Lord of Swarms had promised them gifts.
Kaylor had found Peacemaker.
Isamu had received his living gloves.
Now Hexen held Grim Harvest.
Three gifts.
Three weapons, in their own ways.
Fendor and Nethnarel had received nothing yet.
Hexen looked toward them.
The realization passed through the group without anyone needing to say it.
They were not finished.
Whatever remained deeper inside the temple still expected them.
Perhaps that was the most dangerous thing about the Swarm Lord's generosity.
Every gift became another reason to continue.
Kaylor checked the corridor leading onward.
Unlike the greenhouse, it was dark.
No inviting light.
No plants.
No water.
Fendor joined him.
"Anything?"
"No."
"Wonderful."
Kaylor looked at him.
"You're happy there isn't anything?"
"I'm trying something new."
Nethnarel walked past them.
"You'll hate it."
"Probably."
Isamu followed.
His gloves crawled softly.
Hexen remained behind for one last moment.
He looked at the ash covering the greenhouse floor.
Somewhere beneath it were the remains of a creature whose life now lived—or had ended—inside the weapon he carried.
Somewhere behind him Grazim was dead.
Somewhere ahead, celestial beings still guarded this temple against the demon lord whose gifts the heroes were accepting one by one.
Hexen tightened his hand around Grim Harvest.
Then he followed the others.
The scythe made no sound.
But for the first time since entering the Temple of the Swarm, Hexen wondered whether the most dangerous thing walking its halls might not be waiting ahead of them at all.