Gildan remembered them.
That made entering the city considerably easier than the last time the heroes had needed answers from powerful people.
There had been years when a closed gate meant negotiation, deception, climbing, breaking something or allowing Kaylor to become increasingly persuasive while everyone else pretended not to know him. Craven had taught them what happened when institutions controlled access to truth. The Crystal City had taught them that being welcomed somewhere did not mean anyone intended to answer honestly.
Gildan offered a different problem.
The guards knew their faces.
Word moved through the gatehouse before the five heroes had finished crossing beneath the outer arch. A captain appeared, recognized Kaylor, recognized Fendor a moment later and then abandoned whatever formal challenge he had been preparing.
The Heroes of Oxland had returned.
That title opened doors.
Kaylor was still deciding whether he liked that.
The city spread around them beneath a bright afternoon sky, all stone streets, crowded markets and river air. Gildan had grown since they last saw it. New construction filled spaces that had once stood open. Warehouses crowded nearer the water. A second bridge had appeared upstream. Houses climbed outward beyond districts Kaylor remembered as fields.
Human cities changed quickly.
That had once seemed ordinary.
After walking through a tomb that had remained sealed for thousands of years, it felt almost aggressive.
Fendor looked along a street lined with shops.
“Do we know where we’re going?”
“The place with books,” Nethnarel said.
“That eliminates very little in a capital.”
“The place with people who read them.”
“Marginal improvement.”
Hexen barely heard them.
Varietal.
The name had followed him through the gates.
Now that he remembered it, he could not understand how he had forgotten.
Perhaps that was simply what several lifetimes did to memory. Their minds contained too many versions of themselves: people who had lived a thousand years ago, people awakened without those lives, heroes reconstructed from instinct and fragments, survivors who had spent the last several years discovering who remained when the world finally stopped demanding everything from them.
Some memories returned because they mattered.
Others waited until something forced them loose.
Varietal had waited.
The Naked Goddess.
A divine being connected somehow to Grazim’s old faith and history, although not in any way Hexen trusted himself to reconstruct from fragments alone.
And the creature riding the blue dragon had prayed to her.
That mattered more than titles.
They needed someone who knew old things.
Gildan had many such people.
The Grand Sage was the one who agreed to see them.
His title sounded more impressive than his office.
The room assigned to him occupied part of an old civic building near the center of the city, where generations of records had accumulated faster than anyone could invent places to store them. Books climbed walls. Scroll cases occupied shelves above more books. Maps hung behind stacks of documents no one had apparently touched in years.
The sage himself seemed entirely comfortable inside the disaster.
He listened while the heroes explained.
Not everything.
No one had the endurance for everything.
Thomas Lightfoot.
The disappearances.
The Crossroads.
The strange creatures.
The blue dragon.
The rider.
Varietal.
The Naked Goddess.
Then Ragnap.
That caught his attention.
“You found Ragnap’s tomb?”
Fendor leaned against one of the few unoccupied portions of wall.
“Technically the tree found us.”
The Grand Sage looked at him.
Fendor decided explanation would not improve matters.
Hexen continued.
“There was a prison inside. A large diamond. Something had been bound within it.”
“What?”
“A spirit. Ragnap described it as a horned warrior with powerful magic. A servant of an ancient evil.”
The sage became still.
“And the diamond?”
“Empty.”
That was the word they had settled upon.
Not broken.
Not stolen.
They did not know enough for either.
The prison had been breached.
Whatever it held was free.
Kaylor folded his arms.
“Something powerful came into the tomb, broke the wards and cursed everyone buried there.”
“And you believe this is connected to the creature at the crossroads?”
“We know the timing matches,” Hexen said. “That’s all.”
The sage nodded approvingly.
That surprised Hexen.
Most people preferred conclusions.
Scholars, when they were useful, preferred facts.
“And the dragon rider invoked Varietal.”
“Yes.”
The Grand Sage looked toward the shelves.
“Describe him.”
The heroes did.
Badly.
Distance had hidden detail. The rider had remained atop the dragon through most of the encounter. Magic, movement and several hundred feet of empty sky did not produce reliable portraiture.
Still, the description was enough to change the direction of the sage’s interest.
The dragon became secondary.
That irritated Kaylor.
“We came here looking for a blue dragon.”
“Blue dragons are easier.”
Kaylor stared.
The sage glanced at him.
“Not easier to kill.”
“Good.”
“Easier to understand.”
That was worse.
The old man disappeared into his books.
They waited.
Kaylor lasted perhaps four minutes.
Then he began pacing.
Nethnarel found a text without asking and sat down.
Fendor watched her.
“Can you read that?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know what it is?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know you can read it?”
Nethnarel looked at the page.
“Because there are words.”
Fendor decided not to continue.
Isamu stood near a window.
Gildan moved beyond it.
People crossed the streets below carrying baskets, tools, ledgers and complaints. Carts rolled toward the river. Somewhere in the district a bell marked an hour that mattered to someone.
Nobody below knew that an ancient prison had been opened.
That a servant of a fallen celestial had attacked the crossroads.
That something buried for millennia might be moving through the world again.
That was the strange burden of knowing danger early.
Life continued.
Until it did not.
The Grand Sage returned carrying three books and one roll of parchment.
Dust followed him.
“I found something.”
Kaylor stopped pacing.
The sage spread the oldest volume across the table.
Its pages had become brown at the edges. Several portions were repaired with material newer than the text around them. The language had shifted enough that Nethnarel leaned closer despite herself.
“This is about the dragon?”
“No.”
Kaylor sighed.
“The rider?”
“Perhaps.”
The sage traced one passage.
“The being you describe has parallels in old accounts. A creature of pact and patronage. The transcription is inconsistent.”
“Pack Glitch,” Fendor said.
The sage’s mouth tightened.
“That is one rendering.”
“What does it mean?”
“It means the scribes disagreed.”
Fendor nodded.
“Excellent scholarship.”
“But the important part is not what it was called.”
The sage turned several pages.
“The old accounts describe beings whose power was tied to another entity. Patronage. Service. Worship, depending upon the source.”
Hexen thought of the prayer shouted from the dragon’s back.
Varietal.
“So it serves her.”
“I would say your evidence supports that.”
Kaylor looked at the old text.
“And the diamond?”
The sage studied him.
“You said the thing imprisoned inside was horned.”
“Yes.”
“Powerful magic.”
“Yes.”
“And Ragnap believed it served something ancient.”
“Yes.”
The old man sat back.
“Then I would be very careful about assuming you have found separate stories.”
Hexen felt Fendor look at him.
That was exactly the conclusion Hexen had refused to make at the crossroads.
He still refused it.
“Careful isn’t the same as certain.”
“No.”
The sage smiled faintly.
“Which is why I said careful.”
He pulled the parchment open.
A map of Gildan appeared.
Not the Gildan outside.
An older city.
Smaller.
Its walls followed different lines. The riverfront had been narrower. Several modern districts did not exist.
The sage placed another map beside it.
Older still.
Then another.
Fendor leaned closer.
“Those aren’t the same city.”
“They are.”
“No.”
“They occupy the same ground.”
The sage tapped the maps one after another.
“Gildan has been built upon itself repeatedly. Floods. Fires. Expansions. New foundations over old streets. Old structures incorporated into newer ones. Parts of the original city now lie far below places where people live today.”
Nethnarel understood first.
“The temple.”
The sage nodded.
One of the references he had found connected the old pact-being to a place of worship or occupation within ancient Gildan.
A presence.
A sanctuary.
Perhaps a temple.
The surviving language did not distinguish cleanly.
Whatever it had been, the place had existed in the northwest portion of the old city.
That district no longer existed.
Not at street level.
Kaylor leaned over the map.
“So we dig.”
Fendor looked at him.
“We have been in the city less than an hour.”
“Efficient.”
The sage raised one hand.
“You may not need to.”
Old municipal works still reached below Gildan.
Aqueducts.
Cisterns.
Drainage channels.
Systems abandoned when newer construction replaced them.
If the old records aligned correctly, one sealed access point entered the ancient underground near the area where the pact-being’s sanctuary might once have stood.
“Might,” Fendor repeated.
“Yes.”
“How likely?”
The Grand Sage considered.
“Likely enough that I would send someone else first.”
Fendor smiled.
“I like him.”
They rested before going underground.
That had been suggested as prudence.
Hexen turned it into a feast.
The magic required preparation, time and food enough to make anyone observing from the outside believe the Heroes of Oxland had abandoned investigation in favor of an unusually elaborate dinner.
Kaylor did not complain.
Hero’s Feast did more than fill stomachs.
Warmth moved through the body afterward. Strength settled into tired muscles. Fear became distant—not impossible to understand, but unable to take easy command.
Hexen watched the others eat.
For years Grazim had been the one who made preparation feel like protection.
A prayer.
A blessing.
A hand upon a wound.
Hexen’s magic did not feel the same.
It should not.
He was not replacing Grazim.
No one could.
But five heroes had learned to distribute burdens once carried by six.
Fendor caught him looking.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Good.”
By the following morning, they stood before an iron gate no ordinary traveler would have noticed.
The entrance lay below street level behind a neglected stone service way in Gildan’s northwest quarter. Newer masonry surrounded it on three sides. The gate itself belonged to another age.
Its iron had blackened.
Chains crossed it.
No official seal remained visible beneath rust and years.
Fendor studied the barrier.
“How long has this been closed?”
Nethnarel looked at the walls.
“A long time.”
“Technical?”
“Yes.”
Kaylor grasped one chain.
“It opens.”
“Everything opens when you define the word broadly enough.”
Kaylor pulled.
Metal complained.
The old fastening broke.
Behind it waited darkness.
The tunnel descended.
City noise followed them only a short distance.
Then Gildan disappeared overhead.
The passage smelled of wet stone, stagnant water and all the things a city preferred not to remember it had buried. Parts of the aqueduct still functioned. Thin streams ran along channels in the floor. Other sections had become clogged with black sludge and mineral deposits.
They went deeper.
Eventually the tunnel ended above a subterranean pool.
Kaylor looked down.
“Of course.”
The water below was dark enough that even those who could see well in darkness gained little comfort from it.
A narrow ledge followed part of the cavern.
Something metallic hung from the stone near the water.
A chain.
Kaylor reached it first.
Fendor immediately said, “Don’t.”
Kaylor looked back.
“You don’t know what it does.”
“Neither do you.”
“That is why I’m pulling it.”
Fendor closed his eyes.
Kaylor pulled.
The water began to swirl.
Nothing emerged immediately.
That made it worse.
Hexen looked into the pool.
Movement.
Not current.
Living things.
“There’s something down there.”
Isamu stepped forward.
His whip came loose.
Nethnarel lifted from the ground, preferring several feet of air between herself and whatever lived beneath the surface.
The first creature climbed from the water near Isamu.
Its shell gleamed wetly.
Large pincers opened.
The thing resembled a crustacean distorted upward toward a body capable of killing armed men—too large, too aggressive and entirely comfortable in the black water.
Isamu’s whip snapped.
The creature recoiled.
Nethnarel’s magic followed.
Force struck the thing repeatedly until its armored body disappeared beneath the surface again.
More movement came from the deep.
Something larger.
Much larger.
A long head broke the water.
Jaws opened.
Kaylor had fought dinosaurs before.
That was not a sentence most people ever had reason to think.
He recognized enough of the shape to know this one belonged somewhere far from an underground cistern beneath a human capital.
“Why is there a dinosaur under Gildan?”
Hexen raised his staff.
“Maybe it was here first.”
The creature lunged.
Kaylor avoided the jaws.
Hexen cast Thorn Whip.
Living magic lashed through the darkness, wrapped the great aquatic reptile and dragged.
The creature fought.
Hexen pulled harder.
Several tons of furious predator came partially out of the water.
Kaylor smiled.
“Thank you.”
He attacked.
Fendor’s arrows struck from farther back.
Isamu moved across the water as if it were road.
That particular magic made the impossible briefly ordinary.
For everyone else, the pool remained an obstacle.
For Isamu, it became floor.
The monster thrashed.
Water struck walls.
Then the combined attacks drove it beneath the surface.
Other shapes circled farther out.
They did not approach.
That interested Hexen.
“They’re learning.”
Fendor nocked another arrow.
“I would prefer less intelligent food.”
The deeper they went, the stranger the old waterworks became.
The first cavern narrowed into another channel.
Water dropped to knee height.
Then waist.
Then rose again.
The heroes followed old passages no modern engineer would have recognized, choosing turns through instinct and whatever direction seemed least likely to return them to where they started.
The city above became impossible to imagine.
No footsteps.
No carts.
No bells.
Only water.
Then Isamu found the wrecked boat.
The remains lay caught against stone where the subterranean channel widened.
Wood had rotted enough that nobody should have trusted it.
Isamu stepped onto it anyway.
Fendor stared.
“Why?”
Isamu bounced once.
The boat creaked.
Something moved beneath it.
Isamu bounced again.
“He’s baiting the water,” Hexen said.
“I understand what he’s doing. I asked why.”
The boat exploded.
A crocodile the size of a siege engine came through it.
Isamu jumped.
Wood became splinters beneath him.
The monster’s jaws snapped where he had been.
Isamu landed upon the water.
The crocodile followed.
Then stopped.
Not voluntarily.
Isamu struck precisely beneath the jaw.
The creature went rigid.
Fendor stared.
“You stunned a crocodile.”
Isamu looked at the immense motionless animal.
“Yes.”
“How?”
“I hit it.”
Another giant crocodile surfaced behind Hexen.
Its jaws closed around the druid.
Hexen resisted the pull toward deeper water.
“Less discussion.”
That solved Fendor’s philosophical problem.
Fire answered.
Hexen called down a storm of flame across both creatures.
Nethnarel attacked from above.
Fendor traded the bow for the Vorpal blade when the nearest reptile came within reach.
Kaylor stayed where enormous teeth could find him instead of someone else.
For several furious minutes, the underground water boiled with violence.
Then it quieted.
One crocodile sank.
Another rolled onto its side.
A third attempt to reach the heroes ended beneath combined steel and magic before it gained useful ground.
Isamu took one tooth.
Fendor noticed.
“Souvenir?”
Isamu looked at it.
“Maybe.”
“Good. I was worried we hadn’t collected enough strange things.”
They continued.
The tunnel split.
They chose left.
Lightning punished them for it.
The bolt came from darkness.
Hexen sensed something a heartbeat before the flash and shifted away from the center of the passage.
The others received no such warning.
White light filled the tunnel.
Power bounced through water and armor.
Nethnarel staggered.
Fendor swore.
Isamu endured.
Kaylor looked toward the place the magic had come from.
“Finally.”
Fendor stared at him.
“Finally what?”
“Something with a direction.”
Another bolt answered.
Hexen ducked.
Magic struck stone behind him.
Then several shapes emerged from the dark.
Fendor would later insist they looked like octopuses attempting to carry small cities upon their heads.
That was not entirely accurate.
It was not entirely wrong either.
Their bodies combined tentacles with upright forms and strange ridged structures above them. They were roughly human-sized, which made the mixture worse rather than better.
One raised a limb.
Force struck Kaylor.
Another released lightning.
“They cast spells,” Nethnarel said.
Fendor drew.
“I had gathered that.”
The creatures spread through the half-flooded cavern.
Lightning crossed the water.
Magic missiles came from places where the heroes could barely see their casters.
One creature closed upon Isamu and attempted to pull him into its tentacles.
He slipped free.
Nethnarel rose higher.
Fire gathered.
The first Fireball turned darkness orange.
Three of the creatures screamed.
The smell that followed was unmistakably seafood.
Fendor looked toward her.
“Now I’m hungry.”
“Hexen fed you.”
“That was hours ago.”
Kaylor vanished from one place and appeared beside the creature that had struck Hexen.
Misty Step carried him across the water.
His axe arrived a heartbeat later.
The caster folded beneath the blow.
Fendor fired into another.
Isamu crossed the water at impossible speed, whip snapping toward shapes at the edge of his light.
The creatures answered intelligently.
They stayed apart.
They attacked from range.
They forced the heroes to cross water while bolts of lightning turned every mistake into pain.
Then one of them cast something worse.
Nethnarel recognized the spell too late to stop it.
Power erupted through the group.
She tried to counter it.
Failed.
The blast struck.
Nethnarel fell from the air.
She hit the water.
Kaylor turned.
“Neth!”
Fendor fired without looking away from her.
His arrow struck the caster.
At the same moment, magic spread from the Oathbow’s wielder through the others—not enough to restore everything the creatures had taken, but enough.
Nethnarel surfaced.
She inhaled violently.
Her eyes opened.
Fendor looked back toward the enemies.
“Thank me later.”
Nethnarel wiped water from her face.
“Kill them first.”
“That was the plan.”
She stood.
The next spell she cast did not miss.
Firestorm poured through the cavern.
The spellcasting creatures disappeared inside flame.
When the light faded, several were gone.
The survivors did not last long.
Kaylor reached one.
Isamu reached another.
Fendor put arrows into the final caster until it stopped producing lightning.
Silence returned to the underground.
Nethnarel stood in knee-deep water, soaked, exhausted and alive.
Again.
She looked around.
“I dislike this city.”
Kaylor wiped his weapon clean.
“We’re under the city.”
“That has not improved it.”
They searched the creatures.
The answer to why strange magical things survived in forgotten tunnels often turned out to be because nobody sensible had come looking for them.
These ones collected shining objects.
Gems appeared among their lairs.
Many.
Thirty-six worth keeping.
Nethnarel held one toward the light.
Fendor did the calculation before anyone asked.
“Very worth keeping.”
A potion lay among the treasure too.
The magic inside it carried physical strength on a scale beyond ordinary enchantment.
Storm giant.
Kaylor looked at it.
Fendor looked at Kaylor.
“No.”
Kaylor frowned.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were thinking about drinking it immediately.”
“I was not.”
“You had the face.”
“What face?”
“The giant-strength face.”
Nethnarel put the potion away.
“We save it.”
Kaylor sighed.
“Fine.”
Hexen looked beyond them.
The passage continued.
Dark water slipped beneath an opening in the stone.
Something larger waited farther below.
He could feel the space widening.
The air moved differently.
And somewhere ahead came the distant sound of falling water.
They had found evidence that the old places beneath Gildan were occupied.
They had not found the temple.
Not yet.
Fendor looked back toward the bodies of the spellcasting creatures.
“We could go upstairs.”
Nobody moved.
Fendor nodded.
“I thought I’d ask.”
Kaylor stepped into the next passage.
The others followed.
Far above them, Gildan continued its ordinary day.
Far below it, the Heroes of Oxland went looking for a sanctuary belonging to something that should have remained buried with the oldest version of the city.
And the water carried them deeper.