Grazim Von.
Kaylor kept his hand against the ancient tile.
The name remained beneath his fingers.
For several years the heroes had learned how to live with Grazim’s absence by refusing to make every silence about him. They spoke his name when it mattered. They remembered him when memory came naturally. They did not build a shrine out of every empty chair.
That was survival.
This was different.
Someone had carved Grazim’s name into a machine buried so deep beneath Gildan that an entire city had risen, fallen and rebuilt itself above it without remembering the thing existed.
Kaylor slid the tile.
Stone moved inside stone.
The cylinder resisted at first, then turned with ponderous precision. Grazim’s name descended through a maze of golden tracks toward the waiting recesses at the base.
One slot already held Hexen Brew.
Now another accepted Grazim Von.
A metallic note sounded from somewhere inside the column.
Not loud.
Final.
Fendor stood several paces back with the Oathbow ready.
“I don’t like that.”
“You didn’t like it before the sound,” Nethnarel said.
“Correct.”
Hexen stared at his own name.
“Maybe mine comes back out.”
Kaylor looked at him.
“Want me to try?”
“No.”
“Then stop complaining.”
“I wasn’t complaining.”
Fendor nodded toward the gold cylinder.
“You were considering it.”
Kaylor continued searching.
The inscriptions covered the monument in languages from different ages. Some belonged to kingdoms he knew. Others had survived only in old prayers, dead alphabets or fragments carved into ruins.
The farther he worked around the cylinder, the stranger it became.
There were names he almost remembered.
People from lives before their current lives.
Enemies.
Companions.
Figures who had existed when the heroes themselves had been different people walking a different world.
The machine knew them.
That was becoming impossible to dismiss.
Kaylor moved the tiles one after another.
Five recesses waited at the base.
Five names belonged there.
The cylinder had been built expecting them.
Nethnarel watched the last tile descend.
“Who made this?”
Kaylor kept turning the mechanism.
“No idea.”
“Who knew we’d come back?”
“No idea.”
“Who knew Grazim would come back?”
Kaylor stopped.
Nobody answered that.
Grazim had not merely been born once.
None of them had.
Their lives had already crossed time, death, memory and return in ways that made ordinary explanations useless.
Still, there was something disturbing about seeing that mystery planned in metal.
Kaylor reached the last name.
The final tile moved reluctantly beneath his hand.
He leaned closer.
Turned it.
Lowered it.
The instant it entered the fifth recess, the water around his boots froze.
Kaylor looked down.
Ice flashed outward from the cylinder.
Not formed.
Appeared.
One moment dark water moved around his feet.
The next, translucent blue ice locked both boots to the floor.
The cold climbed over his ankles before stopping.
Kaylor pulled.
Nothing.
He pulled harder.
The ice groaned.
“Of course,” Fendor said.
Kaylor glared at him.
“You want to help?”
“I am helping.”
“How?”
“By recognizing the trap.”
“After I triggered it.”
“Still recognition.”
Isamu heard the sound before the others.
A dry scratching carried through the frozen cavern.
He turned.
The noise came from the northwest.
Something moved along the ice-coated wall.
Then stopped.
Isamu drew the Flame Tongue.
“Something’s coming.”
That ended the conversation.
He went to Kaylor first.
Fire awakened along the blade.
“Hold still.”
Kaylor looked down at the burning weapon near his legs.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
Isamu struck the ice.
Steam hissed.
A crack spread through the frozen mass.
Not enough.
He struck again.
The ice resisted.
Hexen whistled.
His wolves moved.
They had been prowling around the edge of the cavern, uneasy ever since the descent. Now they gathered around Kaylor in a circle.
Kaylor looked down at them.
“What are they doing?”
“Protecting you.”
“From what?”
“The thing Isamu heard.”
One wolf sniffed the ice.
Another licked Kaylor’s armored boot.
A third apparently interpreted Hexen’s command to warm the ice with considerably less dignity.
Kaylor stared at Hexen.
Hexen shrugged.
“I told them to help.”
Fendor looked away.
Nethnarel did not.
She laughed.
The scratching returned.
Closer.
Kaylor braced himself and pulled.
The ice cracked.
Muscles tightened beneath armor.
A second fracture raced through the frozen surface.
Then Kaylor tore one foot free.
He twisted.
Pulled again.
The remaining ice shattered.
He stepped away from the cylinder.
“There.”
Fendor nodded.
“Masterful trap disarmament.”
“Say another word.”
The first creature appeared beside Isamu.
Not emerged.
Appeared.
One instant there was only ice.
Then something beautiful stood upon it.
Beautiful was the wrong word.
Beautiful implied harmlessness.
This thing had the shape of a woman, but winter had created her instead of flesh. Pale skin seemed translucent beneath the cavern’s blue light. Hair moved around her despite the still air. Long limbs ended in fingers that blurred into curling strands of frost.
Isamu saw no footsteps behind her.
No approach.
She had come out of the wall.
An arm snapped toward him.
Ice lengthened from it like a tentacle.
Isamu twisted aside.
The strike grazed him.
Cold penetrated cloth, skin and muscle in an instant.
Fendor saw her.
The Vorpal Longsword came free.
He crossed the distance before the creature could disappear.
His first stroke cut through the icy limb.
His second struck her side.
The sound she made was not entirely a scream.
Part of it became wind.
Frost burst from the wound.
Fendor stepped back.
“That worked.”
Then she looked at him.
For an instant, Fendor forgot why he was holding a sword.
Nethnarel saw the change.
“Fendor.”
He blinked.
The creature smiled.
The moment passed.
Barely.
Fendor attacked again.
The maiden withdrew into the cold.
Nethnarel rose from the cavern floor.
Flaming wings spread behind her.
The warmth changed the entire chamber.
Firelight reflected through thousands of ice crystals.
The maiden recoiled.
Nethnarel lifted the Staff of Power.
A sphere of flame erupted around the creature.
Ice became steam.
The maiden vanished inside the blast.
When the light faded, nothing remained.
Hexen watched the mist disperse.
“One.”
The cavern answered with cracking ice.
Not one.
Fragments tore themselves from the walls.
Some were thrown.
Others moved with deliberate aim.
Nethnarel turned in midair.
Three jagged shards struck her before she could move.
Fendor drew his bow.
Another creature flickered into sight thirty feet above them.
For a heartbeat it resembled the first maiden.
Then its body dissolved into something more like living wind.
A vortex of frost and air plunged toward Kaylor.
Kaylor raised Peacemaker.
The creature slammed around him.
He swung through it.
The black blade disrupted the whirling form enough that frost scattered across the cavern.
Isamu ran up the wall.
He struck the creature while still vertical.
Flame followed.
The thing twisted away.
More maidens appeared.
Some remained nearly invisible until they attacked.
Others ripped icicles from the cavern walls and hurled them like spears.
The quiet frozen chamber became a storm.
Fendor traded the frost bow for the Oathbow.
The decision required no discussion.
There was little reason to shoot winter with more winter.
His first arrow found a maiden hiding along an icy ridge.
The second followed before she recovered.
Isamu moved between the walls and frozen floor as if neither had authority over him.
He marked one of the creatures and pursued it with whip and flame, refusing to allow its drifting body to create distance.
Hexen changed.
Bone thickened.
His body expanded.
Green magic disappeared beneath hide, horn and impossible weight.
The triceratops shook frost from its back.
Fendor glanced over.
“Subtle.”
Hexen charged.
The cavern trembled.
One maiden barely escaped the horns.
Another did not.
The impact threw her across the ice.
Kaylor laughed.
“Again.”
The triceratops snorted.
Nethnarel rose higher.
She searched for the shapes hiding against the walls.
Found one.
Fire followed.
Then Fendor got too close.
The maiden stood on a ridge of ice.
She was different from the others.
Not stronger in any way he could immediately see.
Just more beautiful.
That should have been warning enough.
He approached with the sword.
She did not retreat.
Fendor raised the blade.
The maiden reached for him.
He should have cut the arm away.
Instead, he hesitated.
Her fingers touched his face.
Cold passed into him.
Not painful.
Warm.
Impossible in that place.
Warmth filled his chest.
The cavern became quiet.
The danger disappeared.
The people attacking the maiden became monsters.
She leaned close.
Her lips touched his.
Fendor lowered the sword.
Nethnarel saw everything.
“Oh, no.”
Fendor turned.
His friends were threatening her.
His friends were trying to kill the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
That could not be allowed.
The maiden touched his shoulder.
Fendor stepped between her and the others.
Hexen charged.
Fendor raised the Vorpal Longsword.
“Hexen.”
The triceratops did not stop.
Fendor attacked.
The blade struck Hexen’s transformed body with brutal force.
The triceratops staggered.
Kaylor stared.
“Fendor!”
“Leave her alone!”
Nethnarel understood before Kaylor did.
“He’s controlled.”
“No,” Fendor said.
The maiden smiled behind him.
Nethnarel flew down.
She seized Fendor from behind.
“Come here.”
He barely moved.
Nethnarel pulled harder.
Fendor’s strength surprised her.
The elf twisted away.
“Let go of me.”
“You’ve been charmed.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
Nethnarel’s eyes narrowed.
Flames erupted around her.
Fendor stared.
“What are you—”
She kissed him.
Not gently.
Fire surrounded both of them.
For one improbable moment, battle paused long enough for Kaylor to notice.
Fendor pulled away.
His expression remained completely devoted to the ice maiden.
Nethnarel stared at him.
“Really?”
Fendor raised the sword.
“She’s better.”
Nethnarel looked offended.
“Now I want her dead.”
The maiden attacked Nethnarel with a storm of ice.
Nethnarel avoided the worst of it.
Hexen did not wait for anyone else to solve the problem.
The triceratops charged again.
Fendor moved to intercept him.
Too late.
Hexen’s horns caught the maiden.
One drove through her body.
The other lifted her from the ice.
For a second, the beautiful creature hung there.
Then she cracked.
The sound was small.
Almost delicate.
The maiden shattered around Hexen’s horns.
Fendor stopped.
The charm broke.
Reality returned.
He stared at the broken ice.
Then at Hexen.
Then at the Vorpal Longsword in his own hand.
A dark line of blood marked the triceratops’s side.
Fendor lowered the sword.
“I dislike this place.”
Hexen snorted.
Fendor took that as forgiveness.
Probably.
The remaining maidens did not give them time to discuss it.
One called upon deeper magic.
Power gathered across the cavern.
Nethnarel recognized the shape of the spell.
“No.”
She cut the magic apart before it formed.
The maiden recoiled.
Fendor looked upward.
His humiliation had become focus.
The Oathbow came up.
One arrow.
Two.
Three.
Then the rhythm accelerated.
The final maiden tried to vanish against the ice.
The arrows followed.
She fell from the wall in pieces.
Silence returned.
For several seconds nobody trusted it.
Isamu listened.
Nothing.
Kaylor checked the walls.
Nothing.
Nethnarel remained in the air.
Fendor looked at Hexen.
Hexen was still a triceratops.
“Are we discussing what happened?”
Hexen shook his enormous head.
“Good.”
Nethnarel landed beside them.
“I saved you.”
Fendor looked at her.
“You kissed me.”
“I was trying to break the spell.”
“It didn’t work.”
“That’s not the point.”
Kaylor sheathed Peacemaker.
“I thought it was convincing.”
Nethnarel smiled.
“Thank you.”
Fendor stared at both of them.
“I preferred the ice demon.”
Hexen bumped him with one horn.
Not hard.
The argument ended.
They healed what they could.
Nethnarel drank one of the more powerful healing draughts they carried.
Hexen stayed transformed while the others searched.
The cylinder had stopped moving.
Its five recesses were filled.
Nothing else opened.
Instead, a faint glow appeared far across the cavern.
Blue at first.
Then gold.
They followed.
The ice became smoother beneath their feet.
A raised platform emerged from the darkness.
At its end stood a door.
Golden metal covered most of it, untouched by the corrosion that marked everything above.
The door was enormous.
Not giant-sized.
Ceremonial.
Two shallow steps rose from the ice before it.
Isamu climbed them.
Kaylor followed.
Shapes began appearing across the gold.
Fendor stopped.
The first image formed slowly.
A face.
Then shoulders.
Armor.
Another figure appeared beside it.
Then another.
The people whose names Kaylor had moved through the cylinder were manifesting upon the door.
Not words.
Portraits.
Memories cast into metal.
Hexen approached.
The triceratops attempted the shallow step.
His rear foot slipped.
Several tons of druid slid forward and struck the golden door with a tremendous crash.
Everyone froze.
Hexen remained pressed against the door.
Fendor looked at Kaylor.
“Do not say anything.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“You were.”
The door remained intact.
Hexen recovered his footing.
Nethnarel walked closer.
The portraits continued forming.
Some faces were familiar.
Some belonged to memories that had not yet fully returned.
Fendor studied one.
Then another.
Something inside him tightened.
The three of them heard the voice simultaneously.
Fendor.
Hexen.
Nethnarel.
Not through the air.
Inside.
Masters, you have returned.
Nethnarel turned.
Kaylor’s expression showed he had heard nothing.
Isamu had not either.
Fendor looked at Hexen.
The triceratops stared back.
The voice stopped.
For several heartbeats there was only the frozen cavern.
Then it returned.
Different.
Confused.
Something is foul.
A pause.
Something is wrong.
The ground moved.
Not cracked.
Moved.
A vibration passed beneath the ice.
Nethnarel seized Fendor.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting off the ground.”
Her wings beat.
Fendor rose with her.
Isamu climbed onto the upper frame of the golden door.
Kaylor stepped away from the wall and waited.
Hexen turned toward the cavern.
The vibration intensified.
Something struck from below.
A black spine erupted through the ice beside Kaylor.
It was longer than a spear.
Jointed.
Armored.
The limb stabbed.
Kaylor swung.
Peacemaker struck the appendage as it withdrew.
Another leg burst from beneath Hexen.
The triceratops turned too slowly.
The spike drove deep.
Poison followed.
Hexen roared.
The limb vanished into the ground.
Fendor fired downward as another appeared.
His arrow struck the joint.
Then the thing disappeared again.
“What is it?” Nethnarel shouted.
Kaylor watched the ice.
“Big.”
“Helpful.”
More spines erupted.
The creature remained mostly beneath them.
Only pieces emerged.
A leg.
A spike.
A section of chitin.
Then gone.
Isamu held position above the floor and waited for the next strike.
When it came, his whip snapped around the limb.
The creature withdrew before he could hold it.
Hexen’s transformed shape collapsed inward.
The triceratops vanished.
Human Hexen stood where it had been, badly wounded but mobile.
He looked at the holes closing through the ice.
“It’s digging.”
“Can you stop it?” Kaylor asked.
Hexen raised one hand.
A vine appeared.
Not from soil.
From magic.
Green life in a place determined to contain none.
It plunged into one of the freshly broken holes.
Hexen felt it catch.
His eyes widened.
“Got it.”
The vine tightened.
Something pulled back.
Hexen braced himself.
The floor cracked.
A section of the buried creature rose.
Not enough to reveal the whole body.
Enough.
Armor plated its back.
Huge segmented legs spread beneath it.
Spines covered nearly every visible surface.
Isamu moved.
His whip struck.
Then his hands.
Kaylor reached the exposed section and drove Peacemaker into it.
From above, Fendor fired.
Nethnarel carried him higher until no one remained directly beneath her.
Magic gathered in her hands.
She released it downward.
The blast tore through ice.
The creature convulsed.
The floor exploded.
Its full forward body erupted from beneath them.
The thing looked less like a spider than the idea of one remembered by something that hated spiders.
A massive armored cone rose above jointed legs.
Its mouth opened.
Cold erupted.
The blast crossed half the cavern.
Hexen disappeared inside white frost.
Kaylor raised an arm.
Isamu twisted away from the worst.
Ice coated stone.
The creature struck again with its legs.
One spike nearly impaled Hexen.
Another glanced from Kaylor’s armor.
Poison burned where the tips struck flesh.
“Pull it out!” Kaylor shouted.
Hexen tightened the vine.
The creature fought downward.
Nethnarel attacked.
Fendor’s arrows followed.
Isamu crossed the broken ice.
The monster’s head turned toward him.
Another wave of cold began forming.
Isamu reached it first.
He struck once.
The armor cracked.
Again.
The creature sagged.
It still tried to burrow.
Isamu hit the damaged seam a final time.
The body collapsed.
The great legs folded.
Silence came down with it.
Isamu stood beside the corpse.
“I am beginning to notice a pattern.”
Fendor lowered the bow.
“What pattern?”
“I finish things.”
Kaylor looked at the body.
“You say that every time.”
“Because I keep doing it.”
Fendor allowed a pulse of restorative magic to pass through the group.
Pain eased.
Hexen’s bleeding slowed.
Nethnarel descended with Fendor.
They searched the creature.
Mostly because after everything else in the Path, nobody trusted a corpse to be merely a corpse.
Metal gleamed inside the broken armor.
Coins.
Electrum.
Then cloth.
Hexen pulled it free.
At first it looked like a cloak tangled around the remains of something the creature had swallowed long ago.
Then moonlight passed across the fabric.
There was no moon underground.
Everyone noticed.
Hexen unfolded it.
The material was dark.
Not black.
The blue-gray of night sky immediately before stars become visible.
Sections had been reinforced with fine studded leather, but the armor was lighter than it should have been.
Magic moved through it like breath.
Hexen touched the cloak.
Recognition came before understanding.
“The Cloak of the Moon.”
Kaylor looked at him.
“You know it?”
“No.”
“You named it.”
“I know.”
Fendor walked around him.
“That’s becoming common down here.”
Hexen placed the cloak over his shoulders.
The magic answered.
His body changed for only an instant.
Not fully.
A suggestion.
Horn.
Claw.
Wing.
Fur.
Shapes passing through him so quickly they became one continuous shadow.
Hexen inhaled.
The cloak strengthened the part of him that crossed boundaries between forms.
He could feel another reserve within it.
Another change held in waiting.
More than that remained uncertain.
Magic that might follow him into animal form.
Protection that did not vanish when flesh changed.
Something connected to the old paired spears he had carried through another age.
The cloak knew him.
That was the disturbing part.
It had been waiting inside a creature beneath a door that called him master.
Kaylor looked back toward the golden portraits.
“Reward.”
Fendor frowned.
“What?”
“The thing was guarding this.”
“Or ate whoever owned it.”
Kaylor pointed toward Hexen.
“It fits him.”
“Many things fit Hexen.”
“Very few make his magic stronger.”
Hexen stared at the fabric.
A thought he did not like formed slowly.
“What if this place was built for us?”
Nobody answered.
The golden door opened.
No hand touched it.
The portraits brightened.
Ancient mechanisms moved inside the wall.
A narrow passage appeared beyond.
Fog drifted through it.
The Path continued.
Fendor looked at the dark opening.
“Masters.”
Nethnarel glanced toward him.
“You heard it too.”
“Unfortunately.”
Hexen touched the new cloak.
Something is foul.
Something is wrong.
The second message mattered more than the first.
Whatever had built this place had recognized them.
It had expected them.
And when they returned, it had discovered something had changed.
Kaylor walked through the golden doorway.
Isamu followed.
Nethnarel went next.
Fendor hesitated beside Hexen.
“Did you ever own that?”
Hexen looked down at the Cloak of the Moon.
“I don’t know.”
“Useful.”
“Extremely.”
They entered together.
Behind them, the golden portraits continued glowing in the frozen cavern.
Five names had opened the way.
One of them belonged to a dead friend.
And whatever waited farther along the Path already knew the others had come home.