The sound from the passage was not breathing.
Not exactly.
It rose and fell with the slow rhythm of breath, but beneath it lay the grinding of stone, the groan of hidden machinery, and the distant movement of fire through the bowels of the ziggurat.
The labyrinth was changing again.
Kaylor stood before the open doorway, pale light reflecting from his sword onto the red walls beyond.
“We should move before it closes.”
Hexen Brew attempted to rise.
His arms failed him.
He caught himself before striking the floor, but only barely. The wounds left by the salamanders had closed beneath Grazim’s healing, yet the strength had not returned to his body.
Fendor had few arrows remaining. Grazim’s prayers felt distant. Isamu’s movements had lost their effortless precision, and even Nethnarel’s flames had dimmed to an uncertain glow around her fingertips.
They had reached the limits of what their half-remembered power could sustain.
Grazim looked into the descending passage.
Whatever waited below had waited for centuries.
“It can wait a little longer.”
The heroes withdrew into a narrow corridor between the chamber of black glass and the mosaic room. The space was scarcely wide enough for them to lie beside one another, but it offered only two entrances and no visible path beneath the floor.
Fendor drove iron spikes beneath one door.
Isamu secured the other with a thick metal rod taken from among their equipment. He did not remember where it had come from, only that once fixed in place it would resist nearly any force.
Kaylor took the first watch.
The others slept.
For several hours, nothing disturbed them.
Then something opened in the room beyond.
Kaylor heard the scrape of metal sliding across stone.
He woke Grazim with one hand against his shoulder.
Together, they listened.
The sound came from the chamber where the dog-faced creatures had leapt from the floor. The great circular grate was opening again.
A faint light rose through the cracks around the barricaded door.
Something climbed from below.
There came the soft impact of bare feet, then the dragging of several objects across the floor.
Kaylor tightened his grip on his sword.
The footsteps approached their corridor.
Stopped.
For a long while, something stood on the other side of the door.
Grazim could hear it breathing.
This breath was real.
Wet.
Uneven.
A fingernail—or perhaps a claw—scraped slowly down the wood.
Then the footsteps retreated.
The grate closed.
Silence returned.
When the others woke, the iron spikes had not moved.
No marks remained upon the door.
Nethnarel examined it from several angles.
“Perhaps nothing happened.”
Kaylor looked at her.
“You believe that?”
“No. But I preferred the sound of it.”
They returned to the lava chamber.
Three doors led away from it, though one returned toward the rooms they had already crossed. The heroes chose the western passage, moving through a short corridor ending at an old stone door.
Isamu inspected the lock.
“It is not trapped.”
“Are you certain?” Hexen asked.
“No.”
“That is less reassuring than when Fendor says it.”
Fendor placed his hand against the stone.
“It is probably trapped.”
“Much better.”
Isamu opened it.
Nothing happened.
Beyond waited an immense chamber, nearly a hundred feet from end to end. Six shallow stone bowls had been set into the floor at equal distances. From each rose a column of flame eight feet high.
The fires were not red or orange.
They burned blue, green, and violet, the colors changing as the heroes watched.
Nethnarel stepped closer.
Her own magic answered with a flicker around her hands.
“I do not like them.”
“You like fire,” said Hexen.
“I like my fire.”
Kaylor lifted his sword and called upon the fragment of divine awareness that had awakened within him.
The chamber blurred.
For an instant, every living presence vanished from his perception.
The flames remained.
“Undead,” he said. “There is something dead inside each one.”
Grazim entered the chamber.
The symbol against his chest became warm. He raised it beside his hammer, and the faint figure of the warrior goddess appeared behind him.
The six fires bent away.
Four of them moved.
Flaming skulls rose from within the bowls, their blackened bones surrounded by shifting magical fire. Their jaws opened in silent screams as they fled toward the far corners of the chamber.
The other two remained.
Their empty eye sockets flared.
Bolts of fire crossed the room.
One struck Hexen’s shield and exploded around him. The second shattered against Grazim’s armor, filling the air with sparks.
Fendor fired through the flames.
His arrow passed into the nearest skull and emerged through the back of its cranium trailing blue fire.
Isamu ran beneath another volley. He leapt onto the edge of a stone basin and struck a skull with the heel of his hand.
The creature spun through the air.
Kaylor’s sword met it before it recovered.
The skull shattered.
Its fire went out.
The four fleeing creatures reached the walls, but the goddess’s light no longer held them completely. One after another, they turned and came back.
Their eyes released lances of flame.
Grazim raised his shield. Fire broke across it and divided around him.
Nethnarel chose one of the returning skulls.
A thread of lightning leapt from her hand and connected them. Violet energy wrapped the creature, crackling across its burning surface.
The skull tried to flee.
The magic followed.
Nethnarel smiled.
“This one is mine.”
The creature turned upon her.
Twin rays of fire struck her chest and shoulder. She staggered, but the lightning did not break.
Nethnarel closed her fist.
The bolt intensified.
The skull burst apart.
“Still mine,” she said.
Hexen summoned the wolves.
They appeared around him in a rush of gray bodies, called from whatever hidden places life still occupied within the labyrinth. The animals could not easily reach the flying skulls, but they drove the creatures lower, snapping at them whenever they descended to attack.
Fendor used the openings.
One arrow.
Then another.
Each shaft struck through a different color of flame.
Kaylor’s blade danced beside him, moving without his hand while he fought with a larger sword. Grazim advanced beneath the goddess’s radiance, forcing the undead fires away from the others.
The last skull fled toward the ceiling.
Nethnarel’s lightning had faded, but magic remained in her raised hand.
She released it.
The spell missed.
It struck a distant wall and transformed a patch of sandstone into violet glass.
Fendor’s arrow passed through the skull a heartbeat later.
The creature fell into one of the empty fire bowls.
Its flames died.
All six columns vanished.
The room became cold and dark.
Only Kaylor’s sword, Grazim’s hammer, and Nethnarel’s blue flame illuminated the chamber.
Hexen looked at the blackened bowls.
“Six again.”
“Six heroes,” said Isamu. “Six tombs. Six doors. Six fires.”
Nethnarel examined the violet glass her magic had created.
“Perhaps whoever built this place lacked imagination.”
“Or wanted us to notice,” Grazim said.
No treasure lay within the bowls. No inscription explained the burning dead.
The labyrinth provided only another door.
Beyond it waited a chamber split by a narrow fissure in the floor. Molten stone moved through the crack like a slow underground river, filling the room with heavy waves of heat.
Fendor found several serpentine shapes moving beneath the lava.
Nethnarel picked up a copper coin recovered from one of the earlier creatures.
She threw it into the fissure.
Something snapped at it.
A long head emerged from the molten stone. The creature resembled a snake formed from hardened lava, its eyes glowing white behind black scales.
Nethnarel struck it with a ray of frost.
The serpent froze instantly.
Its body became black stone and broke apart as it fell back into the fissure.
Several more heads rose.
“So much for caution,” Kaylor said.
“I discovered they dislike cold.”
“You also discovered there are several of them.”
“Both useful discoveries.”
The fire serpents surged from the lava.
Kaylor met the first as it crossed the floor, his armor shedding the heat that would have burned another warrior. The creature coiled around his sword arm and tried to drag him toward the fissure.
Grazim struck it with his shield.
The blow forced the serpent against the ground.
Hexen drove both spears through its neck.
A pulse passed through one of the weapons and into his arms—warm, restorative magic that tried to mend wounds no longer open.
“The spear remembers more than I do,” he said.
A second serpent erupted behind him.
Isamu caught Hexen’s shoulder and pulled him aside. The creature’s fangs closed upon empty air.
Isamu struck the side of its head.
The heat scorched his skin, but the blow turned the creature toward Fendor.
An arrow entered its mouth.
Nethnarel finished it with another burst of cold.
The remaining serpents withdrew into the fissure.
The heroes waited.
Nothing moved.
Fendor selected a broken piece of stone and tossed it into the lava.
No creature answered.
“Either they have learned,” he said, “or we killed them.”
Hexen looked into the molten crack.
“Which do you prefer?”
“That we killed them.”
The only exit was sealed by a door that appeared untrapped.
Nethnarel’s wand revealed a tiny lever hidden within the floor. Isamu pressed it, and machinery shifted behind the walls.
The door opened without releasing the blade that had been waiting above it.
They followed the corridor beyond.
It curved.
Turned.
Descended.
Then opened into a chamber they recognized.
The circular grate waited at its center.
The same lever stood beside it.
Kaylor looked back through the door.
The corridor behind them no longer existed.
Only stone remained.
“The labyrinth sent us backward,” Grazim said.
“Or forward,” Nethnarel replied.
“No.”
“It was worth considering.”
They searched the grate but found no sign of the thing that had climbed through it during their rest. Light shone faintly from below, revealing a chamber they could not reach without reopening the gate.
The heroes chose another door.
The next passage led to a small circular room, then through another stubborn lock and into a chamber filled with refuse.
Broken crates had been piled in its center. Rotted ropes, shredded cloth, rusted tools, and the remains of ancient provisions formed a mound taller than a man.
The smell stopped them at the entrance.
Hexen covered his nose.
“I have become animals that smelled better than this.”
Isamu moved around the pile, searching for tracks.
Nethnarel extended her wand.
The rubbish shifted.
A shape crawled from within.
At first it appeared human.
Then it raised its head.
Its body was made from rats.
Hundreds of them twisted together beneath scraps of cloth and broken armor. Their tails formed fingers. Their teeth filled a mouth shaped from a human skull. Dozens of red eyes opened across its chest.
The creature screamed.
The sound was answered beneath the rubbish.
Thousands of rats poured across the floor.
They moved in swarms so dense that the stone disappeared beneath them.
Kaylor attacked the rat-thing before it could fully stand. His sword cut through layers of vermin, scattering burning bodies across the chamber.
The creature reformed around the wound.
Hexen’s wolves struck it from three sides.
They tore away great masses of rats, shook them apart, and drove the creature back against the refuse mound.
The thing raised one long arm.
Every rat in the chamber turned toward the wolves.
The swarms attacked.
Fur vanished beneath black bodies.
The wolves snapped and rolled, crushing dozens, but more climbed over them. One disappeared entirely beneath the mass.
Fendor fired into the largest swarm.
His arrow passed through several animals, curved in flight, and struck a second group behind them.
Nethnarel raised both hands.
Small stars of fire appeared around her head.
They circled once, shedding sparks across her horns, then flew toward the rats.
The first star exploded.
A swarm vanished inside the blast.
One of Hexen’s wolves was caught at its edge and disappeared with them.
Nethnarel winced.
“Sorry.”
The surviving wolves did not look at her.
They were too busy tearing the rat-formed creature apart.
Kaylor struck again.
Grazim brought his hammer down into its skull.
The creature collapsed into hundreds of separate bodies.
For an instant, the rats tried to reform.
Hexen’s wolves descended upon them.
The Rat King ceased to exist.
Three great swarms remained.
They surrounded Grazim and climbed his armor. He could feel their claws beneath the plates, teeth searching for the gaps at his wrists and neck.
The goddess appeared above him.
Golden light spread from his body.
The rats fell away smoking.
Isamu moved through the chamber, never remaining still long enough for the creatures to climb him. His feet struck the ground in a rhythm that sent rats flying in every direction.
Fendor’s arrows divided the swarms.
Kaylor’s burning sword drove them back.
Nethnarel released the remaining stars.
When the last one exploded, the floor became visible again.
The few surviving rats fled beneath the doors and through cracks in the walls.
The wolves chased them until Hexen called them back.
The chamber became silent.
Nethnarel looked over the remains.
“I believe we have discovered what came through the grate.”
“Do you?” asked Isamu.
“No. But I would like that to have been it.”
They searched the rubbish.
Most of it was worthless, but beneath one shattered chest they discovered several lengths of embroidered silk, a sealed potion, and a wooden drinking mug inlaid with green jade.
Nethnarel examined the cup.
Magic clung to it.
“What does it do?” Hexen asked.
“I do not know.”
“You always know.”
“I often know.”
Isamu reached for the cup.
Nethnarel pulled it away.
“No.”
“You do not know that it is dangerous.”
“That is precisely why the answer is no.”
They packed it with the other recovered objects.
No further passage led from the refuse chamber. Once again, the labyrinth had drawn them through danger only to return them to a road already crossed.
They backtracked.
A southern door led into a room so dark that even their magical light seemed reluctant to enter it. The walls were ordinary stone, yet they absorbed every glow cast upon them.
At the chamber’s center, white light rose from a round opening in the floor and struck the ceiling in a perfect column.
Isamu dropped a coin through the hole.
It struck stone below after only a short fall.
A second room waited beneath them.
Fendor secured a rope.
One by one, the heroes descended.
The lower chamber was smaller and lit by torches fixed to the walls. At its far side stood an enormous double door formed from entire tree trunks bound in black metal.
Heat rolled through the wood.
Grazim approached but did not touch it.
“Hotter than the salamander chamber.”
Nethnarel conjured a spectral hand and sent it toward the doors.
The hand grasped the wood.
Pulled.
Slowly, the massive doors opened inward.
Heat struck the heroes like a physical blow.
Beyond them lay a vast six-sided chamber filled with lava.
A moat of molten stone surrounded a raised platform at its center. The gap was perhaps twelve feet across, but no bridge connected the doorway to the island.
Dark tiles formed a series of shallow terraces upon the platform.
At their center rose a great crystal shard.
It was taller than Grazim and jagged like a piece broken from an immense blade. Light moved inside it—white at first, then red, then the pale blue of ancient ice.
They had found the Shard of Everlasting Life.
No one celebrated.
The room felt occupied.
Kaylor could feel it before he saw anything.
A presence.
Celestial, but touched by something older.
Divine power mingled with the memory of dragons.
The heat was nearly unbearable for Grazim, Fendor, Isamu, and Hexen. Kaylor’s armor protected him, while Nethnarel’s ring turned aside much of the flame.
Kaylor stepped backward, then ran toward the moat.
He leapt.
For one terrible moment, his boots struck the far edge and slipped.
Hexen began changing into a great eagle.
Kaylor caught himself and rolled onto the tiled platform before the transformation was complete.
Nethnarel crossed next.
Magic gathered beneath her feet, carrying her over the lava in a tumbling arc of violet light. She landed beside Kaylor and bowed as though the movement had been entirely deliberate.
Hexen completed his transformation and flew across.
Isamu used the unnatural strength hidden within his body to clear the moat in a single bound.
Grazim followed, armor ringing as he landed.
Fendor took several steps backward.
He ran.
For an instant, he seemed suspended above the molten stone, cloak spread behind him like wings.
Then he struck the island and rolled safely across the tiles.
The six gathered around the shard.
The crystal changed color.
A shadow formed behind it.
Something enormous rose from the heat.
The being stood nearly twenty feet tall. Its lower body vanished into fire, while its upper form carried the shape of a warrior armored in gold and black. Great curved horns swept back from its head.
Its face possessed both celestial beauty and the unmistakable severity of a dragon.
Wings of living flame unfolded behind it.
The heroes raised their weapons.
The being looked down upon them.
Its eyes burned white.
Its voice shook the lava.
“Who dares approach the Shard of Everlasting Life?”
Kaylor stepped forward.
The creature’s gaze settled upon the dragonborn.
Something passed between them—recognition without memory, blood calling faintly to blood.
Kaylor lowered his sword, though he did not release it.
“I am Kaylor,” he said, “guardian of those who cannot guard themselves.”
The being’s flames rose.
“And why should such a guardian possess what I have protected since the fall of your world?”
The Heroes of the New Beginning stood before the shard they had crossed the labyrinth to find.
Between them and their salvation waited the Herald of Fire.