The first creature came down the southern road dancing.
That was the only word Kaylor could find for it.
It did not run. Its limbs did not move with any rhythm meant for ordinary travel. The thing bounded and spun through the shifting colors surrounding the crossroads, sometimes touching the ground with two limbs, sometimes four, sometimes none that Kaylor could clearly follow. Its body seemed built from pieces that had never agreed upon an anatomy. Four thick arms swung around a hulking torso. There was no head in any familiar sense, only a wet opening where a neck should have been, a broad mouth and a heavy tongue working inside it.
No eyes.
No face.
Nothing Kaylor could look into and recognize as thought.
Yet it came directly toward him.
The noise arrived with it.
Blue was not a sound.
Kaylor knew that.
The sound was blue anyway.
It crawled behind his eyes as much as through his ears, a warbling vibration that made distance difficult to judge. The strange colors hanging over the crossroads pulsed in answer, gold folding into violet, green running through bands of blue that seemed too bright to belong beneath the afternoon sky.
Another creature appeared from the western road.
Then another.
Fendor drew the Oathbow.
“That answers whether something was coming.”
Kaylor already had a weapon in hand.
“Not what.”
“I was trying to preserve one success.”
The nearest creature spun faster.
The road around it erupted.
Black tendrils burst through the packed earth in a circle, twisting upward like roots that had learned hunger. They lashed around Kaylor’s legs and waist.
He moved before they closed.
Whatever force had filled his body since the creatures first revealed themselves still carried the unnatural acceleration of haste through his muscles. He crossed the space between the tendrils while they grasped empty air.
Then the creature reached him.
Four arms struck in a flurry.
Kaylor’s displaced image tore sideways.
The first blow hit nothing.
So did the second.
The third passed through the false dragonborn and shattered a piece from an abandoned wagon behind him.
The fourth Kaylor stopped with steel.
The impact numbed his arms.
He smiled.
Not because the creature was amusing.
Because this part he understood.
Whatever had poisoned the swamp, corrupted Ragnap’s tomb and emptied the roads around them remained hidden behind questions. But a monster standing directly in front of him trying to tear him apart required very little interpretation.
Kaylor attacked.
His first strike opened the thing’s side.
The second drove it backward.
The creature did not cry out.
The blue noise changed.
Perhaps that was pain.
Kaylor did not care.
He kept hitting it.
Fendor moved toward Nethnarel.
That choice came from instinct rather than planning.
Nethnarel’s power had made her one of the most dangerous people on every battlefield they had crossed together. It had also made enemies notice her. Whatever intelligence directed the things around the crossroads had already tried to seize her mind once.
Fendor had no intention of allowing them another attempt.
He drew the Vorpal Longsword.
Then his boot caught the broken edge of a wagon rut.
The elf twisted.
His ankle rolled.
For one absurd heartbeat, Fendor of the Forest—who had killed a hill-giant king with one impossible stroke, fired arrows through gaps other people could barely see and survived dragons, gods and a demon lord’s temple—nearly fell over in the middle of an empty road.
He caught himself.
Nethnarel saw.
Fendor looked at her.
“Nothing happened.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were going to.”
“I was.”
“Don’t.”
The creature approaching them continued its blue wailing.
Nethnarel smiled.
Then wings appeared behind her.
Magic unfolded from her shoulders in a rush.
She rose from the ground.
The creature had no eyes to follow her.
That did not make it helpless.
Tentacles exploded from the earth beneath her previous position.
Nethnarel climbed higher.
“Good guess.”
The thing spun.
Nethnarel pointed.
Magic caught it.
The hulking body folded inward.
Arms shortened.
The terrible mouth collapsed.
The entire creature shrank until the thing that remained on the road was enormous only by the standards of ordinary slugs.
It glistened.
Slowly.
Fendor stared.
“Better.”
The giant slug moved several inches.
“Much better.”
Isamu chose a different approach.
He ran toward the third creature.
At the last moment he jumped.
The ring he carried turned the leap into something unreasonable.
Isamu rose over the creature’s first flailing arms and landed upon its shoulders—if the place where its upper body widened could be called shoulders.
The thing convulsed.
Isamu remained.
His hands struck down.
The Swarm Gloves answered each blow with force far beyond what flesh alone should have produced.
The creature spun.
Isamu rode the movement.
Another arm came around.
He ducked beneath it and struck again.
The thing’s body shuddered.
Isamu pressed two fingers against a place near what might have been a spine.
The disciplined interruption he had used against hundreds of opponents passed through his hand.
The creature resisted.
Isamu frowned.
“All right.”
It threw itself sideways.
He jumped clear before being crushed beneath it.
Hexen looked across the crossroads.
They were fighting three.
He could hear more.
That was the problem.
The strange noises came from places where nothing yet stood. Some sounded beyond the trees. Others seemed to travel underneath the roads. The colors in the air made the forest shift whenever he tried to judge distance.
Something larger was approaching.
He felt the change before anyone saw it.
Wind.
Not much.
Enough.
Hexen looked upward.
“Above!”
The dragon came through the treeline.
Blue scales caught the strange light over the crossroads.
For one instant the creature seemed almost part of the phenomenon, another impossible shape born from the same colors.
Then the wings beat.
Trees bent beneath the force.
The dragon descended in a shallow dive directly toward the heroes.
Kaylor turned.
The dragon’s jaws opened.
No flame gathered.
Lightning did.
“Move!”
Isamu did.
He left the ground in a single impossible leap.
The bolt came through the crossroads.
It was not merely lightning from the sky.
The dragon breathed it.
White-blue energy tore from its mouth in a sustained line, carving through the air exactly as Scourge’s fire once had.
Hexen saw it coming.
Fendor did too.
Neither had time to escape completely.
The lightning passed through Hexen, Fendor and Kaylor almost in the same instant.
The world became white.
Kaylor’s armor screamed with electricity.
Hexen smelled burning cloth.
Fendor lost feeling in one hand.
Then the dragon was past them.
It climbed.
Fast.
“That’s new,” Fendor gasped.
Kaylor looked upward.
“We’ve fought dragons.”
“Blue dragon.”
“Still dragon.”
“That attitude is why they keep finding us.”
Something rode upon its back.
Hexen saw the figure as the dragon banked.
Humanoid.
Or nearly enough to be uncomfortable.
The rider leaned down.
One arm extended.
Dark force struck Hexen in the chest.
The blast lifted him from his feet and threw him backward.
He landed hard in the road.
Fendor saw where the attack came from.
His expression changed.
The ankle stopped mattering.
The crossroads stopped mattering.
The rider became one target in a world containing many.
Fendor drew the Oathbow.
The ancient weapon seemed to sharpen in his hands.
“You.”
The oath required no elaborate ceremony.
The figure on the dragon’s back became Fendor’s chosen enemy.
The dragon was already climbing.
Too far for ordinary archery.
Fendor had stopped caring about ordinary archery years ago.
He drew.
Released.
Drew again.
The first arrow crossed the entire crossroads and vanished into the sky.
The second followed.
Then a third.
Fendor stopped measuring the distance in mortal terms.
Six arrows left the Oathbow in rapid succession, streaking after the retreating dragon and rider.
Some missed.
Several did not.
The rider twisted as an arrow struck.
Another shaft buried itself near the creature’s side.
The dragon climbed harder.
Nethnarel was already pursuing.
Her wings carried her upward.
Not fast enough to catch a dragon.
Fast enough to refuse helplessness.
The distance stretched.
Two hundred feet.
More.
The rider and mount were becoming silhouettes.
Nethnarel gathered power.
She reached for a spell she had rarely needed.
The air around the dragon withered.
Moisture vanished from the wind itself.
The dragon’s wings faltered.
The rider recoiled.
The spell had reached them both.
Not enough to bring them down.
Enough to make them understand that distance was not safety.
Kaylor watched from below.
“Good.”
Then the creature in front of him tried to tear his arm off.
He returned to the more immediate problem.
The battlefield divided vertically.
Below, the eyeless things spun among the wagons, calling tentacles from the earth and striking with four arms.
Above, the dragon and its rider circled beyond the reach of ordinary weapons.
Isamu attempted the shoulder leap again.
The creature shifted at the last moment.
He came down wrong.
The ground beneath it opened.
Tentacles caught him.
Black coils wrapped around his legs, waist and arms.
Acid burned where they touched.
Isamu strained.
The tendrils tightened.
He could not move.
The creature turned toward him.
Isamu looked at the arms.
Then at his own trapped hands.
The gloves were still free enough.
“Good.”
He struck.
Restrained did not mean helpless.
The Swarm Gloves hammered into the creature whenever it came close enough. Every impact loosened the tentacles slightly. Not enough to release him.
Enough to make the monster regret where it had put him.
Kaylor attacked another from the side.
Fendor shifted between the ground battle and the sky, choosing whichever target offered the greatest threat at the moment.
Hexen recovered.
The lightning had hurt.
The blast had hurt more.
He responded with fire.
Heat wrapped around him.
The creatures recoiled from it.
That mattered.
Hexen’s eyes narrowed.
“Fire.”
Nethnarel heard him from above.
“What?”
“They don’t like fire!”
Fendor, cutting at the nearest monster, said, “Most things don’t.”
“These like it less!”
“Useful distinction!”
The dragon had stopped retreating.
For a moment.
It turned in the sky.
The rider remained on its back.
Nethnarel flew after them despite every sensible reason not to.
She was still hundreds of feet away.
The figure pointed at her.
Power crossed the distance.
The first blast hit.
Nethnarel’s flight lurched.
A second struck.
Then a third.
Magic tore through her.
Her wings faltered.
The world below tilted.
Nethnarel lost consciousness in the air.
She fell.
Kaylor saw.
“Neth!”
Her magical wings did not vanish entirely.
They lost purpose.
Instead of flying, they slowed her descent just enough to turn a lethal fall into something survivable.
Nethnarel struck the road.
She did not move.
The dragon banked away.
Fendor looked from Nethnarel to the rider.
He wanted another shot.
He wanted six.
He wanted the thing dead before it disappeared beyond the horizon.
But Nethnarel lay unmoving.
That decided things.
“Get her!”
Isamu was still caught.
Hexen was farther away.
Kaylor moved.
The dragon accelerated.
It was leaving.
The rider turned upon its back.
Its voice crossed the impossible distance.
Not shouted.
Magnified.
A prayer.
The words came distorted through wind and magic, but one name emerged clearly.
“Varietal!”
Hexen stopped.
Kaylor did too.
Fendor heard it.
Something stirred in memory.
Not enough.
A name from somewhere.
A story.
A fragment heard before memory returned completely.
Kaylor looked toward Hexen.
“You know that?”
“No.”
Hexen frowned.
“Maybe.”
Fendor’s eyes remained on the retreating dragon.
“I’ve heard it.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
The rider’s prayer faded.
The dragon became smaller.
Then smaller still.
Fendor made one final decision.
The giant slug remained in the road.
Still transformed.
Still harmless.
Still technically one of the creatures trying to kill them.
Fendor looked at it.
Then the dragon.
Kaylor saw the expression.
“No.”
Fendor picked up the slug.
“What?”
“No.”
“I haven’t said anything.”
“You don’t need to.”
The plan was ridiculous even by their standards.
That had never prevented anything.
Fendor secured the transformed creature as best he could, drew for distance and sent the entire problem after the retreating dragon.
The shot vanished into the sky.
So did the slug.
Kaylor stared.
Fendor lowered the bow.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Good.”
They got Nethnarel breathing again.
Healing restored color to her face.
Her eyes opened.
She looked up at Kaylor.
Then Hexen.
Then Fendor.
“What happened?”
“The dragon ran,” Fendor said.
Nethnarel tried to sit.
“And the rider?”
“Also ran.”
She frowned.
“I dislike that.”
“So do we.”
“Where’s the slug?”
Nobody answered.
Nethnarel looked at Fendor.
“Why?”
“It seemed useful.”
“For what?”
“We’ll find out.”
The strange colors above the crossroads began to fade.
Kaylor felt the haste leave him.
The world slowed all at once.
His body objected.
He staggered.
For several seconds every muscle seemed to remember all the movement it had been forced to perform and demand payment simultaneously.
Kaylor sat down.
Fendor looked at him.
“Graceful.”
“Shut up.”
Then the earth moved.
At first Hexen thought the sensation belonged to Kaylor collapsing.
It did not.
A tremor passed beneath the crossroads.
The abandoned wagons shook.
Loose tools rattled inside a merchant’s cart.
The remaining color drained from the air.
Fog rose from the ground.
Not ordinary mist.
It seeped upward through packed earth in thin streams, gathering around the heroes’ legs.
Isamu looked toward the road.
The dirt rippled.
Not in one place.
Everywhere.
A circular disturbance moved through the ground around them.
Something was closing in.
“No,” Nethnarel said.
Kaylor forced himself back to his feet.
“More?”
Hexen watched the moving earth.
“Different.”
The tremors deepened.
Four roads stretched away from them.
All four seemed to move.
For one strange moment the crossroads resembled the center of a pond after stones had been thrown into every shore at once.
The ripples came inward.
Hexen planted his staff.
Life answered.
Grass erupted.
Roots thickened beneath the road.
Shrubs expanded along the verge. Low plants became dense vegetation almost instantly, transforming a wide area around the heroes into tangled growth.
The moving earth slowed.
Whatever approached was forced to push through the sudden wilderness.
Fendor looked around.
“That’s going to be annoying when we leave.”
“We’ll survive the arrival first.”
“Reasonable.”
Hexen changed.
His body sank downward as much as expanded.
Skin became stone.
Arms thickened.
His human shape vanished beneath earth.
The elemental that replaced him stood massive and heavy among the unnatural vegetation.
Kaylor looked up.
“Subtle.”
The earth erupted beside Hexen.
Bodies came out.
Not one.
Dozens.
Perhaps more.
Dead things twisted together into one moving mass.
Bones.
Dry limbs.
Pieces of armor.
Skulls trapped between ribs that belonged to different corpses.
The entire collective hurled itself upward as though the ground had vomited its dead.
Then it flew.
Hexen had time to recognize the impossibility before the mass struck him.
Bodies slammed into stone.
The creature attempted to wrap itself around the earth elemental, clawing with a hundred hands.
Fire answered.
Hexen’s protective magic burned across every corpse that touched him.
The effect was immediate.
Dry bones blackened.
Ancient cloth ignited.
Several bodies fell free.
The thing kept attacking.
Another corpse-swarm erupted near Kaylor.
He stared.
“You have got to be kidding.”
The mass came at him.
Kaylor raised his frost-rimed axe.
“Fine.”
He struck.
Divine power followed the blade.
For one instant the entire writhing collection of dead bodies lit from within.
Then Kaylor tore through it.
Bones exploded across the road.
Arms separated.
Skulls bounced through the undergrowth Hexen had created.
What remained fell apart around him.
Fendor stared.
“That worked.”
Kaylor wiped something ancient from his armor.
“I noticed.”
Another swarm rose behind an overturned wagon.
Then another.
Nethnarel had recovered enough to stand.
Not enough to tolerate the situation.
One of the corpse-masses came toward her.
She waited.
Closer.
The swarm climbed over the wagon.
Nethnarel released the spell.
Fire swallowed it.
The effect was spectacular.
One corpse burning might remain dangerous.
Thirty burning corpses tied together created a chain reaction.
Flame jumped from body to body.
Dry bones split.
Clothing disappeared.
The collective lost cohesion almost immediately.
The thing collapsed as burning pieces.
Fendor looked at the remains.
“Cremation.”
Nethnarel lowered her hands.
“You’re welcome.”
They learned quickly.
Swords worked.
Arrows worked.
Fire worked much better.
The dead swarms had power in mass. A weapon could destroy one body and leave two dozen still moving.
Flame did not care how many bodies shared the same shape.
More emerged.
The ground shook.
One rose inside Hexen’s plant growth and became trapped almost immediately, its hundreds of feet and hands tangled among suddenly thick roots.
Another mass surged toward Fendor.
He backed away and fired.
Each arrow removed something.
Not enough.
Kaylor entered from the side and hacked through the collective.
Fendor switched to the Vorpal blade when the dead came close.
He carved through limbs faster than the mass could replace them.
The Oathbow had always made death precise.
The Vorpal sword turned this fight into butchery.
Fendor disliked the distinction less than he expected.
Something screamed above them.
Isamu looked up.
A dead bird descended from the sky.
Enormous.
Not merely skeletal.
Its body looked assembled from death the same way the swarms below had been, but this one retained the broad outline of a predatory bird. Torn wings carried it through the fog. A great beak opened.
It dove directly toward Isamu.
Fendor saw it.
“Move!”
Isamu did not.
He waited.
The bird descended.
Fifty feet.
Forty.
Thirty.
Isamu jumped.
The ring answered.
He met the creature in the air.
For a moment man and dead bird crossed against the gray sky.
Then Isamu landed on its back.
The creature shrieked.
He struck.
One fist.
Then another.
The Swarm Gloves punched through dead feathers and whatever magic held the thing together.
The bird twisted violently.
Isamu held on.
Its head turned farther than any living bird’s neck should have allowed.
The beak snapped at him.
Isamu leaned away.
Not enough.
The bite caught him.
Pain tore across his side.
Something else traveled with it.
A curse.
He felt the magic trying to take hold.
Isamu rejected it.
Not through prayer.
Not through magic.
Through the same disciplined refusal he brought to everything else.
His body belonged to him.
The curse failed.
The bird climbed.
Nethnarel looked up.
Isamu was still riding it.
“You all right?”
“No.”
“Good enough.”
Power gathered around her.
Green energy formed around one hand.
The magic shifted blue.
Then green again.
Wild power twisted close to the spell without changing her intention.
Nethnarel pointed at the flying corpse.
A thin green ray crossed the sky.
The bird disintegrated.
Not burned.
Not broke.
Ceased.
One moment Isamu sat astride it.
The next nothing supported him.
He fell.
Nethnarel’s eyes widened.
“I forgot that part.”
Isamu dropped forty feet.
He landed on his feet.
Mostly.
The impact bent his knees and drove him almost to the ground.
Then he straightened.
Nethnarel stared.
Isamu looked toward her.
“I’m fine.”
Fendor shouted from across the road.
“Of course he is.”
Hexen went underground.
Stone and earth closed over his elemental body.
The movement looked impossible from above. The ground barely disturbed as he traveled through it.
Then he rose beneath one of the remaining corpse-swarms.
Earth exploded.
The creature lifted.
Fire caught it as it came down.
Kaylor reached another.
His axe tore through most of the bodies holding it together.
Fendor finished the rest.
The battle became smaller.
One swarm trapped in the plant growth.
Another burning near the wagons.
A final mass still moving at the edge of the crossroads.
The dragon did not return.
Fendor checked the sky more than once.
Neither did the rider.
That worried him.
Enemies who fled could return.
Enemies who escaped with a purpose usually did.
He forced the thought aside.
One problem at a time.
The last corpse-swarm struggled through Hexen’s overgrown road.
Slowly.
Pathetically, compared with everything else that had attacked them.
Fendor looked at it.
Then at the distance.
He could simply shoot it until nothing remained.
That seemed dull.
He reached into his equipment.
Kaylor saw.
“What now?”
“A better solution.”
“Those words—”
“I know.”
Fendor launched a small bead.
It struck the corpse-mass.
Force snapped around it.
The entire swarm compressed.
Bodies that had occupied several yards of road were suddenly trapped inside a transparent sphere barely large enough to contain their writhing shape.
Arms pressed against one another.
Skulls struck bone.
The collective rolled slightly.
Then stopped.
Fendor lowered his weapon.
Kaylor looked at the impossible ball of dead bodies.
“Better?”
“Much.”
The last active tremor faded.
Nobody moved.
They waited.
The earth remained still.
The fog began to thin.
Sunlight returned slowly, revealing the crossroads one piece at a time.
The abandoned wagons.
The roads.
The remains of creatures that had disappeared when they died.
Charred bones.
Broken earth.
Hexen’s newly grown vegetation.
No travelers.
No horses.
No guards.
No answers.
Nethnarel looked toward the sky.
The blue dragon was gone.
So was its rider.
The name remained.
Varietal.
She had been unconscious when it was spoken.
The others told her.
It meant nothing to her.
Or perhaps not nothing.
That was the frustrating part.
The name seemed to catch on the edge of memory and then slide away.
Hexen felt the same thing.
He had heard it.
Somewhere.
Long ago.
Kaylor walked into the center of the four roads.
This was where Thomas Lightfoot’s people had vanished.
This was where Oxland’s guards had vanished.
They had found monsters.
They had found a dragon.
They had found something powerful enough to twist minds with color and sound.
That was more than they possessed when they arrived.
It was not enough.
Fendor searched the nearest wagon again.
Goods remained.
Coins.
Tools.
Supplies.
Nothing had been taken.
No body lay beneath the cart.
No blood marked the road.
The people were still simply gone.
“These things killed them?” Isamu asked.
Hexen looked at the scattered remains of the battle.
“Maybe.”
Kaylor turned.
“You don’t think so.”
“I think if they killed everyone here, we’d find something.”
Fendor nodded.
“Bodies.”
“Or blood.”
“Clothes.”
“Anything.”
Nethnarel studied the strange road.
“Then maybe they didn’t kill them.”
Kaylor looked toward the southern road.
“Where did they go?”
Nobody answered.
A breeze moved across the crossroads.
For the first time since they arrived, it sounded like ordinary wind.
Kaylor hated it.
He preferred monsters.
Monsters could be fought.
An empty wagon could not.
Fendor looked at the sky again.
Nothing.
“No dragon.”
“No rider,” Hexen said.
“And the other things are gone.”
Isamu looked toward the road.
“The crossroads are clear.”
Kaylor glanced at him.
“For now.”
That was the only certainty they had earned.
The heroes had reached the place where people disappeared.
They had survived what waited there.
They had driven off a blue dragon and the strange creature riding it. They had burned the dead back into the ground. They had broken the confusion that filled the air.
And still they did not know where a single missing person had gone.
Kaylor rested the axe against his shoulder.
Several years of peace had ended with a halfling walking into an inn.
Four days later they had found a corrupted swamp.
Then a tomb built around a diamond prison.
Now an unknown creature rode a blue dragon, prayed to a name half-remembered from somewhere in their lost history, and abandoned wagons stood on four roads without their owners.
He looked at the others.
“We’re not done.”
Fendor stared toward the horizon where the dragon had vanished.
“No.”
Hexen looked north, toward the Moaning Waters and the tomb beneath the Linnar tree.
Something had broken Ragnap’s prison.
Something had been freed.
The disappearances had begun recently.
He did not know whether those facts belonged together.
Not yet.
But for the first time, he was beginning to suspect the answer might matter more than Thomas Lightfoot understood when he asked for help.
The breeze moved again.
Far down one of the roads, something blue flickered once against the sky.
Then vanished.
The crossroads fell silent.