The golden door had not opened because the guardian died.
Hexen understood that only after he put on the cloak.
The Cloak of the Moon settled across his shoulders with almost no weight at all. Its dark fabric shifted like the edge of night, and for a moment the ancient doorway did nothing.
Then something inside the wall recognized him.
No hand touched the gold.
No command was spoken.
The great doors drew apart.
Fendor looked from the opening to Hexen.
“So it was waiting for you.”
Hexen touched the clasp at his throat.
“Apparently.”
“That is worse.”
“I didn’t say it was good.”
Behind them, the frozen cavern remained lit by the portraits of people who had belonged to lives older than the kingdoms above. The enormous buried guardian lay dead among shattered ice. Five names remained locked into the gold cylinder farther back.
One of them belonged to Grazim.
And somewhere within the machinery of the Path, something had called three of the heroes masters.
That alone should have been enough reason to stop.
Then the temperature began falling.
Hexen felt it first because the cloak reacted before he did. The enchanted leather tightened slightly against his body, preserving warmth as the cavern’s air sharpened around them.
Fendor’s breath thickened.
Nethnarel glanced back.
“Is it getting colder?”
“Yes,” Hexen said.
Kaylor looked toward the passage beyond the open door.
“Then we move.”
Fendor gave the freezing cavern one last look.
“Remarkably, I agree with him.”
“Write it down.”
“I intend to.”
They passed through the door.
The mist began almost immediately.
It clung low against the floor at first, spilling between their boots in thin white ribbons. Farther down the tunnel it rose until it reached their knees, then their waists, turning the corridor ahead into a place defined mostly by shapes and fading light.
The walls changed again.
The frozen cavern behind them had been natural stone invaded by ancient machinery. This passage had been worked deliberately. Its surfaces were too smooth, its curves too measured. Yet it did not feel like the architecture beneath the thieves’ warehouse or the ceremonial mechanisms surrounding the names.
Those had been strange.
This was wrong.
Fendor slowed.
The Oathbow remained in his hand.
“You feel that?”
Kaylor glanced at him.
“The fog?”
“No.”
Nethnarel understood.
The tunnel had a presence.
Not life.
Not precisely magic.
More like the sensation of entering a room where an argument had ended moments before and everyone involved had disappeared.
Hexen touched the wall.
Cold stone.
Nothing moved beneath it.
His fingers came away damp.
“Whatever this was,” he said, “it wasn’t built like the other rooms.”
Kaylor looked ahead.
“Maybe different people built it.”
“Comforting.”
“I wasn’t trying to comfort you.”
“I know.”
The passage bent northeast.
Mist thickened around the turn.
Then the ceiling vanished.
They emerged into a space so large their lights could not immediately define it.
At first Fendor thought they had reached another cavern.
Then he saw the stairs.
They rose from the mist in a broad ceremonial sweep, dark stone climbing toward a structure that should not have existed beneath Gildan.
A house.
A temple.
A fortress.
None of those descriptions survived more than a few seconds.
The building possessed the proportions of a great manor, but every familiar element had been stretched or distorted. Narrow towers disappeared into darkness. High pointed arches leaned toward one another like ribs. Balconies projected from walls in places where no reasonable builder would have needed them. Heavy stone supports curved rather than standing straight, giving the impression that the structure had grown around whatever lived inside it.
It was gothic in the oldest sense of the word.
Not merely dark.
Hostile to straight lines.
Hostile, perhaps, to people.
Kaylor stopped at the foot of the stairs.
“What is that?”
Fendor looked at him.
“You are asking us?”
Two immense statues flanked the staircase.
They occupied the positions where some noble estate might have placed lions or gargoyles.
These were neither.
The bodies were roughly humanoid, though the resemblance weakened the longer one looked. Great shoulders hunched above powerful torsos. Wings might once have been part of the design, or perhaps merely folded membranes. The heads were mostly hidden beneath crowns of curling stone.
Tentacles descended where mouths should have been.
Dozens of them.
Some wrapped the statues’ arms.
Others curled around the bases and vanished into carved waves or clouds or perhaps flesh. Weathering had smoothed portions of the figures, but not enough to make them easier to look at.
Isamu studied the nearest guardian.
“They’re statues.”
Fendor nodded.
“So were Hexen and Leonidas.”
Kaylor stepped onto the first stair.
“That one opened a door.”
“After you twisted part of it backward.”
“And?”
“And I am establishing a pattern.”
Nethnarel rose from the ground.
Flaming wings unfolded behind her, pushing the mist away in slow spirals.
“I’ll look.”
Fendor frowned.
“You said that at the waterfall.”
“And I found the dragon.”
“You found it with your face.”
“It wasn’t a dragon.”
“That somehow makes the scouting worse.”
She was already rising.
The structure became more disturbing from above.
Its footprint sprawled much farther than the façade suggested. Wings extended into darkness on either side of a central block, forming courtyards or enclosed gardens. Sections of roof had collapsed. Others remained almost perfectly intact.
Then Nethnarel saw the blue light.
It came from the left side of the structure.
Not a lamp.
Not a flame.
A glow powerful enough that narrow beams escaped through gaps in the roof and struck the mist below.
She flew closer.
Glass.
A large section of the roof had once been made almost entirely from it.
An arboretum, perhaps. A greenhouse. Some enclosed garden designed to receive light in a place where light should never have existed.
Very little of the glass remained visible.
Growth covered it.
Vines thicker than a man’s arm crawled across the panes. Dense weeds formed layered mats. Roots had spread between the metal framework and split sections apart.
Mixed among the plants were other shapes.
Nethnarel hovered.
Tentacles.
At least they looked like tentacles.
Some might have been vines twisted by centuries without sun. Others possessed curves too regular to be plants. One pressed flat against the glass before bending sharply downward into the room below.
The blue light pushed between them.
Bright enough to escape.
Not bright enough to reveal what produced it.
Fendor called from below.
“What?”
Nethnarel descended partway.
“Glass roof.”
“Can you see through?”
“Mostly plants.”
“Mostly?”
“And tentacles.”
Kaylor nodded as though that answered something.
“Good.”
Fendor stared at him.
“There is nothing good in that sentence.”
“We found the interesting part.”
“That is not the same word.”
Nethnarel flew the length of the glass roof looking for a clear opening.
There was none.
The growth had become a prison around the chamber. Even where panes were broken, vines and thick woody stems crossed the gaps like bars.
She landed again.
“There’s a strong blue light inside.”
Kaylor looked at the front door.
“Then we go in.”
They began circling the structure first.
That was mostly Fendor’s insistence.
Kaylor called it delay.
Fendor called it surviving long enough to become old.
“You’re already old,” Nethnarel said.
“I am an elf.”
“That did not answer me.”
“It answered everything.”
They found no accessible windows.
Every opening had been consumed by growth.
In several places the vines looked so dense that even Kaylor would have needed time to hack through them. Some window frames had disappeared completely beneath roots and creeping tendrils. The plants did not move when watched.
That was not reassuring.
Near the northern side of the structure, Isamu stopped.
The others nearly walked past him.
He raised one hand.
Something had been burned into the ground.
The mark occupied a broad patch of stone between the main building and the overgrown glass chamber. It was not old carving weathered into invisibility. The surface around it remained dark.
Charred.
Kaylor crouched.
At first it looked like a circle.
Then they saw the lines inside it.
Curves crossed straight marks. A central image had been seared into the stone deeply enough to leave shallow depressions. Portions resembled letters without forming any language Kaylor knew. Other shapes were simply symbols.
Nethnarel knelt on the opposite side.
“Summoning.”
Fendor looked toward the building.
“You’re certain?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“I’m fairly certain.”
“Worse.”
Hexen touched the blackened edge.
Ash came away on his fingers.
He rubbed it between thumb and forefinger.
The others watched his expression.
“This isn’t ancient.”
Kaylor leaned closer.
“How recent?”
Hexen examined another section.
Stone did not surrender dates easily, but fire left evidence.
The burn had not weathered.
Dust had not filled the shallow lines.
The darkness remained too strong.
“A month.”
Nethnarel looked at him.
“Exactly?”
“No.”
“Approximately?”
“Within that kind of time.”
Nobody spoke for a moment.
That changed the place.
Ancient machinery could remain dormant for a thousand years.
Statues could wait.
Names could be carved by people long dead.
A burn one month old required someone.
Kaylor stood.
“So somebody came through before us.”
“Or summoned something here,” Fendor said.
Isamu looked toward the glass roof.
Blue light continued bleeding through the vines.
Nethnarel studied the burned symbol.
“The Grand Sage only recently found the connection to the Pack Glitch.”
Hexen nodded.
“Doesn’t mean someone else hadn’t already found it.”
“Or been looking for it.”
Kaylor stepped across the edge of the mark.
Nothing happened.
Fendor sighed.
“You know, we could examine something without standing on it.”
“We just did.”
“You examined it. Then you stood on it.”
“Still nothing.”
“That is not evidence.”
“It is some evidence.”
They continued.
The music began on the western side of the structure.
At first Fendor thought the sound came from someone’s gear.
A faint pattern.
Three beats.
Pause.
Three beats.
Pause.
He stopped.
“Do you hear that?”
Kaylor did.
So did Hexen.
Nethnarel turned toward the wall.
Music was playing inside.
Not loudly.
The stone muffled it until only fragments escaped, but the rhythm was unmistakable.
A waltz.
Or something that had once learned what a waltz was.
The melody moved in circles without resolving. Notes climbed when they should have fallen. A pleasant phrase would begin, repeat twice, then discover some hidden dissonance and collapse into tones that made the skin behind Fendor’s ears tighten.
Then it recovered.
Three beats.
Three beats.
Three beats.
The pattern continued.
Kaylor listened.
“That’s awful.”
Fendor looked at him.
“At last, expertise.”
“I know music.”
“You own swords.”
“Those are not mutually exclusive.”
The tune became slightly louder.
For a few seconds it sounded almost beautiful.
Then the pitch bent.
Not enough to become noise.
Enough to make beauty itself feel suspicious.
Nethnarel approached the wall.
“No windows here.”
“Break it?” Kaylor asked.
“No.”
Fendor smiled.
“Progress.”
Nethnarel ignored him.
She pressed her palm against the stone.
The waltz continued on the other side.
Slow.
Elegant.
Diseased.
Hexen turned.
Something moved near the ground.
“Wait.”
A red shape slipped between two cracks in the stone paving.
Isamu saw it next.
It extended perhaps three feet before they understood that it was not blood.
Too thick.
Too deliberate.
A pseudopod of dark crimson slime flattened across the floor, paused as though sensing them, then began withdrawing.
Kaylor reached for Peacemaker.
The ooze folded downward.
Not into a hole.
Into the ground itself.
It squeezed through a seam that should not have admitted a finger and vanished beneath the paving stones.
Isamu crouched beside the place.
Nothing remained.
Fendor looked at Hexen.
“Animal?”
“No.”
“Neth?”
“No.”
“Kaylor?”
“Hit it next time.”
Fendor nodded.
“There. A complete scholarly investigation.”
The music continued.
Nobody laughed much.
They returned to the entrance.
The main doors were far smaller than the golden gate behind them but more intimidating in their own way. Dark metal reinforced black wood. The surface bore shallow patterns almost invisible beneath age and grime.
Kaylor put one hand against it.
Fendor opened his mouth.
Kaylor pushed.
The door opened.
Fendor closed his mouth.
“Disappointed?”
“A little.”
Inside, the music became clearer.
That did not improve it.
The entrance hall stretched ahead beneath a ceiling lost in shadow. Narrow corridors branched from it. Stone columns supported balconies above. Everything belonged to the same impossible architectural vocabulary as the exterior—human shapes distorted by proportion, familiar decoration pushed several degrees beyond comfort.
The figurines stood along one wall.
Kaylor passed them at first.
Isamu did not.
“Those.”
Small statues occupied shelves and low pedestals.
Dozens.
Perhaps more.
Most were no taller than a drinking cup.
The first represented a man.
At least, Fendor decided it had begun as one.
The sculptor had given the figure arms and legs, a face, shoulders, ribs.
Then tentacles erupted from the torso.
Others pierced the back.
One curled through the open mouth.
The figure’s body bent around them in a pose that could only have represented pain.
Nethnarel lifted another.
The next was different.
Not in subject.
In torture.
Human limbs had been elongated until the joints looked impossible. The spine had been twisted. Something resembling a second face protruded from the chest.
Another figurine showed two bodies joined together.
Another had been opened through the middle while tiny carved tendrils emerged from within.
Isamu studied the shelves.
“They’re all different.”
“Variations,” Hexen said.
Fendor looked at him.
“On suffering?”
Hexen did not answer.
Nethnarel examined the piece in her hand.
No magic answered her.
Whatever the figurine meant, it was only stone.
She set it back.
Kaylor picked up another.
“Can we take one?”
Fendor looked at him.
“Why?”
“To show someone.”
“Who?”
“The Grand Sage.”
Fendor considered the tiny mutilated figure.
“That may finally punish him for sending us down here.”
Kaylor put it away.
The waltz continued.
It came from deeper inside now, though every corridor made the direction less certain. At times the melody seemed to travel through the walls. At others it sounded as though someone played directly overhead.
They advanced.
The building was not abandoned.
That became clear even before they found the first crates.
Dust covered portions of the floor, but not evenly.
Some rooms held ancient furniture collapsed beneath its own age.
Others contained newer objects.
Storage boxes.
Weapon racks.
Tables.
The mixture reminded Hexen unpleasantly of the thieves’ warehouse far above.
Ancient places becoming useful to people who did not understand them.
Except whoever had been here recently understood enough to burn a summoning symbol into the courtyard.
They entered a broader chamber.
Weapons lay across a table.
Fendor stopped immediately.
“Those look useful.”
Kaylor inspected the nearest rack.
“Maybe.”
Some were ordinary.
Spears.
Blades.
Crossbow parts.
Other objects were harder to identify. Metal rods with no obvious grip. A cluster of narrow shafts ending in prongs. Several pieces that might have been armor if designed for bodies shaped nothing like theirs.
Isamu approached one of the crates.
Buzzing came from inside.
He stopped.
Everyone else stopped with him.
The sound was faint.
Steady.
Metallic.
Fendor’s hand moved toward the Oathbow.
“Bee?”
“No,” Hexen said.
The buzzing grew louder.
Nethnarel raised the Staff of Power.
Kaylor stepped between the crate and the others.
The lid moved.
Not upward.
Sideways.
A narrow gap opened.
Something silver rose through it.
A sphere.
Polished metal caught the room’s dim light. It was roughly the size of a man’s head, though several articulated sections increased its silhouette. Thin seams circled the body. Small spikes protruded and retracted as it hovered.
No wings held it aloft.
No visible magic surrounded it.
It simply floated.
Buzzing.
Fendor stared.
“I hate it.”
The sphere turned toward him.
Blue light appeared along one seam.
Fendor moved.
Lightning struck the place where he had been.
The bolt crossed the chamber and exploded against stone.
More buzzing answered from the crates.
Kaylor drew Peacemaker.
“How many?”
The first sphere rose higher.
A second emerged.
Then a third.
“Enough,” Nethnarel said.
Hexen called the wolves.
They appeared in a rush of fur and snarling movement, spreading around him as the metallic creatures filled the room.
Then Hexen changed.
The Cloak of the Moon changed with him.
That was the first surprise.
His human outline widened. Arms thickened. Hands became paws. His face pushed forward into the muzzle of a great bear.
Ordinarily, clothing and equipment vanished into the transformation or became irrelevant beneath the new shape.
The cloak did neither.
For a moment dark moonlit fabric passed through fur like shadow.
Then the magic settled into the beast.
Hexen felt protected.
Not armored exactly.
Recognized.
The sphere nearest him rotated.
Hexen reached for magic he should not have been able to use in that body.
A green lash appeared.
Thorns curled along its length.
The Thorn Whip snapped across the chamber and struck metal.
The sphere jerked sideways.
Fendor looked at the bear.
“You can do that now?”
Hexen roared.
“Excellent conversation.”
Another construct emerged from a crate.
Nethnarel raised the Staff of Power.
The spheres were spreading.
If they surrounded the party, every line through the room became dangerous.
She saw the opening.
“Move.”
Fendor shifted left.
Kaylor ducked.
Lightning erupted from Nethnarel’s staff.
Her bolt was nothing like the thin electrical strikes the constructs had used.
It crossed the chamber like judgment.
White-blue energy swallowed the nearest sphere and threw it backward through the air. Metal glowed. One side blackened.
The staff dimmed in Nethnarel’s hands.
She felt its reserves collapse almost to nothing.
“One left,” she said.
Fendor looked at the staff.
“That sounds bad.”
“It sounds sufficient.”
The damaged sphere answered.
Lightning shot from its body.
The bolt crossed Fendor before continuing into Nethnarel.
Pain tightened every muscle in the elf’s body.
He stumbled.
Nethnarel’s wings flared violently as current passed through them.
Another sphere emerged.
Its electrical attack crossed Hexen’s transformed body and struck Kaylor behind him.
The bear roared.
Kaylor barely moved.
Smoke curled from the edge of his armor.
“Annoying.”
Fendor recovered.
“You have an unreasonable definition of pain.”
A third line of lightning crossed the fight.
Isamu moved through it.
Not away.
Through.
Electricity split around him as he crossed the room with impossible speed. Nethnarel caught part of the blast behind him, but the monk emerged untouched.
One of the constructs turned toward Isamu.
This one was different.
Its metal shell opened.
A piston shot from the front.
Isamu leaned aside.
The spike missed his head by inches.
The piston retracted.
He stared at the machine.
“No lightning.”
Fendor drew the Vorpal Longsword.
“So it stabs.”
“Useful distinction.”
“Very.”
The room became movement.
The constructs had no fear.
No hesitation.
They rose from the crates one after another, selected lines through the heroes and fired. Lightning snapped between stone walls. Ozone replaced the smell of dust.
The wolves scattered beneath the arcs.
Hexen drove forward in bear form, the Cloak of the Moon preserving the strength of his transformed body even when metal spikes glanced against him.
He struck one sphere with a paw.
It spun away.
The green Thorn Whip followed.
Magic in animal form.
A gift from a cloak that had been waiting for him beneath the Path.
He had chosen Thorn Whip and Produce Flame almost experimentally.
Now the choice felt less theoretical.
Another sphere opened its metal shell.
Isamu saw several constructs clustered near the crates.
He reached into his gear.
Fendor recognized the object.
“What is that?”
“A bead.”
“Of what?”
Isamu threw it.
Force exploded.
The blast struck the clustered constructs with a violent compression that seemed to fold the air inward before releasing it again.
One sphere escaped the center.
Another did not.
Metal collapsed.
The damaged construct struck the floor and bounced once.
Isamu was already moving.
He drove his fist into the next sphere.
The blow rang through the chamber like a struck bell.
He hit it again.
The machine reeled through the air.
Fendor felt restorative power answer him.
He released it across the group.
Not enough to erase the lightning.
Enough to keep everyone moving.
“Better?” he asked.
Kaylor blocked a piston strike with Peacemaker.
“Yes.”
Nethnarel flexed a hand that still tingled from electricity.
“Marginally.”
Hexen roared.
Fendor looked at him.
“I’m counting that as yes.”
A sphere came too close.
Fendor had been waiting for that.
The Vorpal Longsword moved.
For years the blade’s most terrifying enchantment had carried the promise of a perfect stroke.
Fendor had experienced the promise more often than the fulfillment.
The sword did not care whether its target possessed a neck.
The instant his attack landed, the enchantment awakened.
The blade passed through the hovering machine.
Not merely cutting.
Ending.
The construct separated into pieces so cleanly that its buzzing continued for half a second after the body no longer existed as one object.
The halves struck opposite sides of the room.
Smaller components scattered across the floor.
Fendor stared at the sword.
Then at the wreckage.
“Finally.”
Kaylor looked over.
“You killed a ball.”
“With exceptional technique.”
“It was a ball.”
“It is now several balls.”
Nethnarel laughed despite herself.
Another construct attacked Kaylor.
Multiple pistons erupted from its shell in quick succession.
He turned slightly.
One passed his shoulder.
Another struck Peacemaker.
A third scraped across armor without penetrating.
Kaylor advanced.
The sphere backed away.
“That’s right.”
Fendor saw it.
“You are intimidating machinery.”
“It’s working.”
The wolves caught another construct low.
One jumped.
Its jaws closed around metal.
The machine tried to rise.
A second wolf seized it.
Then another.
The sphere vanished beneath fur.
Metal shrieked.
Something snapped.
The wolves tore it apart.
Hexen glanced over.
Fendor pointed at them.
“Your wolves are eating the furniture.”
The bear seemed satisfied.
Isamu marked another target.
The remaining constructs no longer controlled the room.
That was the moment the fight changed.
At first the machines had possessed surprise, height and clear lines for their lightning.
Now the heroes knew how they moved.
Veterans did not need much more than that.
Isamu caught one with his whip and dragged it off line before it could fire.
The construct fought the pull.
He stepped forward.
The whip tightened.
Metal crashed against stone.
He struck.
Once.
Twice.
The machine broke apart.
Another sphere tried to rise from behind a crate.
Hexen’s Thorn Whip caught it first.
The impossible green lash snapped around polished metal while the great bear held its ground.
He pulled.
The sphere shot toward him.
Hexen met it with claws.
The result was extremely unfair.
The machine hit the floor in pieces.
Nethnarel watched the Staff of Power.
One reserve remained inside it.
She did not spend it.
There were other ways to kill things.
Fire formed in her hand.
The old certainty of spellcraft settled over her.
Beyond it waited wild magic, as always—beautiful, dangerous and rarely interested in anyone’s plans.
She chose control.
Flame struck the damaged sphere Isamu had already weakened.
The construct spun.
Fendor’s arrow finished it.
Buzzing continued.
One.
Somewhere behind them.
Everyone turned.
A final metallic shape rose from the shadows near the weapon storage.
Fendor sighed.
“Of course.”
The sphere rotated.
A seam opened.
Blue light gathered.
Kaylor started toward it.
Isamu was closer.
Hexen’s wolves changed direction.
Nethnarel raised one hand.
Fendor drew.
Five heroes moved at once.
The final construct lasted very little longer than the argument over who killed it.
Then the room went silent.
Not completely.
Pieces of metal ticked as they cooled.
One damaged crate smoldered.
The wolves paced among the wreckage, sniffing things that had never been alive.
Hexen returned to human form.
The Cloak of the Moon settled around him.
He looked down at his hands.
Then at the torn construct lying nearby.
Fendor noticed.
“The whip worked.”
“Yes.”
“You were a bear.”
“Yes.”
“That is going to become irritating.”
Hexen smiled.
“It already is.”
Nethnarel leaned against the Staff of Power for a moment.
The lightning it had released remained in her bones as a faint ache.
“One charge.”
Kaylor looked at her.
“Enough.”
“That is what I said.”
Isamu nudged one metallic fragment with his boot.
“Construct.”
Fendor looked at the room.
“We knew that.”
“No.”
Isamu crouched.
He turned the piece over.
“These were stored here.”
That was different.
They looked toward the crates.
Toward the weapon table.
Toward the strange rods, metal pieces and devices whose purposes they had not understood.
Kaylor’s expression changed.
“Armory.”
“Maybe,” Hexen said.
Fendor looked toward the corridor beyond.
The twisted waltz had not stopped.
They had simply forgotten it during the battle.
Three beats.
Three beats.
Three beats.
The melody continued somewhere deeper inside the impossible structure.
Nethnarel looked back the way they had come.
Beyond these walls waited a summoning mark burned only weeks ago.
An overgrown glass chamber filled with blue light.
A red thing that could disappear through stone.
Statues of tortured bodies.
Weapons.
Constructs that flew and hurled lightning.
None of it belonged to a dead place.
Someone had been here.
Someone might still be here.
And whatever intelligence within the Path had welcomed them as masters had immediately warned that something was wrong.
Fendor sheathed the Vorpal Longsword.
The satisfaction of finally feeling its deeper magic answer him had already faded.
He listened to the music.
“What do you suppose they’re dancing to?”
Kaylor picked up Peacemaker.
“We’ll ask.”
Fendor looked at him.
“I walked directly into that.”
“Yes.”
Isamu moved toward the next corridor.
The wolves followed.
Hexen touched the Cloak of the Moon.
Nethnarel raised her nearly exhausted staff.
They had found the Path beneath Gildan expecting an ancient answer.
Instead they had found evidence of a recent visitor.
The difference mattered.
Ancient evil was history.
A fresh burn was intent.
The five heroes went deeper.
Behind them, the wreckage of the metallic guardians lay scattered across the floor.
Ahead, the waltz turned through another broken measure.
And did not stop.