The gate was inside the house.
That much, at least, had become simple.
Nethnarel hovered above the broken street while another two-headed creature forced itself through the ruined doorway below. The walls had already suffered badly from the fighting. One side sagged inward. The door itself was little more than splintered timber hanging from iron straps.
But beyond it—
Magic.
A fixed wound in the world.
She could feel it now that she knew where to look.
The monsters were not hiding in Aalune.
They were arriving.
Kaylor finished the creature in front of him with the frost axe and looked toward the building.
“Can you see it?”
“Not from here.”
“Then get closer.”
Fendor glanced toward him.
“You just told her not to go in alone.”
“I told her not to go inside.”
Nethnarel descended.
“That distinction may save your reputation.”
“I have a reputation?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
“That was not praise.”
She dropped lower until the building’s interior became visible through the destroyed entrance.
The gate stood in the rear room.
It was not an arch built into the wall.
No ancient stones framed it.
No ceremonial symbols marked the floor.
Space itself had opened.
A vertical pool of distorted color occupied the room, rippling without wind. Darkness moved behind it. For moments Nethnarel thought she could see shapes beyond—stone perhaps, or another chamber, or simply the distortion of a place that was not supposed to be visible from Aalune.
Then a shadow approached the far side.
Another monster.
“Gate,” she called.
Fendor drove his shield into a two-headed attacker.
“We established that.”
“I can see it.”
“That is new information.”
Hexen returned to human form nearby.
The great turtle-shape collapsed inward, leaving the druid standing beneath the Cloak of the Moon.
“How large?”
“Large enough.”
“Can you shut it?”
Nethnarel reached for her gear.
“I have an idea.”
Fendor heard the tone.
“No.”
She pulled out a gemstone.
Small.
Unremarkable.
Old enough that even she had nearly forgotten it existed.
Then memory returned.
Craven.
The prison.
A completely different war against a completely different kind of corruption.
She had carried the thing through years of battles waiting for a problem important enough to justify using it.
A gem of anti-magic.
Kaylor saw it.
“What does that do?”
“Stops magic.”
“How much?”
Nethnarel frowned.
“A lot.”
Fendor stepped back from another attack.
“Specific.”
“About a hundred feet.”
Everyone stopped.
Hexen looked at her.
“A hundred feet?”
“Yes.”
“And everything magical inside that?”
“Yes.”
“Including us?”
“Yes.”
Fendor stared.
“This is an unusually democratic artifact.”
Kaylor looked toward the gate.
“Use it.”
Hexen pointed at himself.
“I’m using magic.”
“You can become Hexen again.”
“I am Hexen.”
“You know what I mean.”
Fendor fired into the monster approaching them.
The arrow struck.
The creature kept moving.
“Please make the philosophical arguments after the portal stops manufacturing meat.”
Nethnarel studied the building.
The gem had to reach the gate.
Not near it.
Not the room.
The gate.
Once the anti-magic field erupted, she had no idea exactly how the portal would react. It might collapse.
It might reject the gem.
It might cut the connection long enough for the heroes to destroy whatever maintained it.
It might do something considerably worse.
That last possibility made the plan feel appropriately familiar.
She flew closer.
A monster broke through the doorway.
Kaylor intercepted it.
“Go.”
Nethnarel drew back her arm.
Fendor stared upward.
“You are throwing it?”
“Yes.”
“Into an interplanar portal?”
“Yes.”
“Wonderful.”
She threw.
The gem left her hand.
For one terrible instant, everyone watching understood that this had not been Nethnarel’s finest throw.
The gemstone struck the edge of the opening.
Fendor winced.
Kaylor swore.
Nethnarel stared.
Then the portal pulled.
The gem slid sideways.
Not fell.
The distorted surface caught it like deep water catching a stone.
The anti-magic activated.
Silence struck the street.
Not the absence of sound.
The absence of magic.
For one impossible heartbeat, the world felt empty.
Nethnarel’s fiery wings vanished.
She dropped.
Not far.
Enough.
Hexen’s magic collapsed around him.
The last remnants of his altered form disappeared completely, leaving only the man beneath the cloak.
The wolves vanished.
Magical light dimmed.
Enchantments sputtered at the edge of the effect.
And inside the building, the portal convulsed.
The surface folded inward around the gemstone.
Something on the far side reached the opening.
A limb appeared.
Then disappeared.
The gate contracted.
One of the monsters already inside Aalune staggered.
Its outline became transparent.
Fendor saw the effect spread through it.
“What—”
The creature vanished.
Another followed.
Then another.
Not killed.
Removed.
Whatever held them here had been severed.
The gate shrank to a thin line of violent color.
The anti-magic gemstone crossed fully through.
The line snapped shut.
The house became a house again.
Broken.
Burned.
Half destroyed.
But entirely part of the same world.
Nethnarel landed.
For several seconds no one moved.
Kaylor looked toward the ruined doorway.
“Is it closed?”
“Yes.”
Fendor lowered the bow.
“The gem?”
Nethnarel stared at the empty room beyond.
“Gone.”
“You waited years to use that.”
“I know.”
“Worth it?”
Another monster vanished from the street.
Nethnarel smiled.
“Yes.”
Hexen adjusted the Cloak of the Moon.
His magic returned slowly as the anti-magic pulse faded from the area.
“You erased my transformation.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I wasn’t thanking you.”
“You should.”
Isamu looked around.
The fighting had stopped.
Not diminished.
Stopped.
The remaining creatures associated with the gate were gone.
No hooks struck.
No two-headed thing came through another wall.
No scream rose from a nearby street.
Aalune breathed.
The silence felt unfamiliar now.
Fendor looked toward the rooftops.
“I dislike this.”
Nethnarel stared at him.
“You disliked the monsters.”
“Yes.”
“And now they’re gone.”
“Yes.”
“You are impossible.”
“Silence has become suspicious.”
Kaylor listened.
A door opened.
Slowly.
A tiefling man looked outside.
Another window followed.
Then another.
People emerged cautiously from hiding, uncertain whether the battle had ended or merely moved beyond sight.
Hexen surveyed the damage.
Scorched road.
Broken houses.
Dead creatures.
The remnants of thorns.
Fendor’s two severed heads still lying where he had dropped them.
The night was far from over.
But for the moment—
calm overtook Aalune.
For now.
Isamu looked toward the villagers.
“They need training.”
Fendor turned.
“What?”
“They don’t know how to defend themselves.”
“They are farmers.”
“That can change.”
Kaylor nodded.
“Teach them.”
Isamu considered the village.
“The Way of Isamu.”
Fendor stared.
“No.”
Isamu looked at him.
“What?”
“You are not founding a martial tradition between monster waves.”
“Why not?”
“Mostly the name.”
Hexen smiled.
“I like it.”
“Of course you do.”
Isamu crossed his arms.
“They would survive longer.”
That ended the joke more effectively than anyone intended.
Fendor looked toward the villagers.
Some carried knives.
One had a wood axe.
Another held a spear badly enough that Isamu physically winced from twenty feet away.
“Later,” Fendor said.
Isamu nodded.
“Later.”
The heroes regrouped near the center of the damaged street.
The question of rest came naturally.
They had already fought several times since reaching Aalune.
Nethnarel had spent major magic.
Hexen had transformed repeatedly.
Fendor had been wounded.
Isamu had suffered the psychic hooks of the two-headed creatures.
Kaylor looked essentially fine, which Fendor found personally irritating.
“We could sleep,” Hexen said.
Fendor stared toward the dark village.
“Here?”
“We’ve slept in worse places.”
“That is a terrible standard.”
Nethnarel checked her remaining magical reserves.
“We need time.”
Kaylor looked toward the surrounding streets.
“We may not get it.”
No one argued.
They moved through Aalune instead.
Not randomly.
Never randomly anymore.
Isamu watched roofs.
Fendor watched alleys.
Nethnarel watched for magical residue.
Hexen listened to the living world around the village.
Kaylor searched for evil.
The villagers stayed close to their homes.
Some watched from doorways as the heroes passed.
Others had become bolder now that the first gate was gone.
Hope was dangerous that way.
People saw a monster vanish and decided danger had vanished with it.
Kaylor did not.
He had felt the evil when they entered Aalune.
It had weakened.
Not disappeared.
Then Isamu stopped.
He looked upward.
A dark speck crossed the stars.
Then another.
Then six.
Fendor followed his gaze.
“What?”
Isamu pointed.
Shapes circled high above the village.
Small at first.
Growing.
Fast.
Kaylor’s old senses answered as they descended.
Undead.
“More.”
Fendor raised the Icy Burst bow.
“From where?”
“Sky.”
“That was not the answer I wanted.”
The creatures came lower.
At first they resembled tiny dragons.
Then the lantern light found them.
Bone.
Mostly bone.
Thin skeletal bodies supported narrow wings made from stretched remnants of dark membrane. Long necks ended in skull-like heads. Their tails trailed behind them as they descended in widening circles.
They were not dragons.
They had been designed by someone who had understood dragons well enough to make a cruel imitation.
There were at least six.
Perhaps eight.
“They’re undead,” Kaylor said.
Hexen looked up.
“Yes.”
Fendor drew.
“They are also extremely shootable.”
He fired.
The first arrow climbed into the night.
The new bow bent smoothly beneath his hand.
Cold followed the missile.
The arrow struck one skeletal flier in the chest.
It jerked.
Fendor fired again.
Then again.
Three arrows found the same creature before it completed one circuit above the village.
Bones broke loose.
The thing wobbled.
Did not fall.
Fendor frowned.
“These are also difficult.”
Hexen looked upward.
“They’re clustered.”
That was the mistake.
The undead descended together.
Perhaps they had never encountered a druid capable of putting daylight wherever he wished.
Hexen raised his hand.
Night became noon.
Sunburst erupted above Aalune.
Not at ground level.
Not through houses.
High enough that the heroes below saw only the underside of radiance blooming across the sky.
For one glorious instant the entire village stood beneath artificial daylight.
The undead caught the full force.
Radiance passed through bone.
Several creatures simply came apart.
Wings separated.
Spines shattered.
Skulls became fragments of white against white.
One fell through the air already dead.
Another struck a roof hard enough to break through the shingles.
A third tumbled beyond the nearest houses.
The formation disintegrated.
Most of the flock was gone.
Fendor shielded his eyes.
“That was effective.”
Hexen smiled.
“Thank you.”
“I prefer the earthquake less.”
“Noted.”
Three remained.
One descended sharply.
Nethnarel aimed upward.
Cold gathered around her.
“Again?”
Fendor glanced toward her.
“Ice?”
“Yes.”
“They’re skeletons.”
“They’re flying.”
“I fail to see the relationship.”
Cone of Cold swept through the air.
The spell struck one of the surviving creatures.
Frost coated bone.
The wings locked.
The undead thing fell.
It struck the ground outside the street with enough force to scatter ribs across several yards.
Nethnarel lowered her hand.
“Two.”
Fendor looked at Isamu.
“Do not.”
Isamu was already moving.
The nearest surviving creature remained above roof height.
Isamu found a tree.
Not a large tree.
Not an especially well-positioned tree.
Fendor saw him look upward.
“No.”
Isamu ran.
He hit the trunk.
Three steps carried him vertically.
A branch bowed beneath one foot.
He pushed away.
The jump was inelegant by Isamu standards.
That meant everyone else would have considered it impossible.
The monk rose toward the passing undead.
His whip snapped.
The weapon caught bone.
Isamu pulled himself the final distance.
His strike landed with enough force to break the creature’s flight.
It spun away.
Isamu dropped.
He landed in the tree.
Mostly.
Several branches disagreed.
Fendor stared.
“You are too old for that.”
Isamu climbed down.
“No.”
The wounded flier tried to recover.
Nethnarel attacked it from below.
Fendor’s arrow arrived almost simultaneously.
The creature fell.
One remained.
The last skeletal flier banked away from the village.
Fendor tracked it.
Waited.
Released.
The arrow caught the creature beneath one wing.
It descended.
Another shot finished it.
The body vanished behind a roof.
Silence returned.
Again.
Kaylor stared at the sky.
“Where did those come from?”
Nethnarel looked toward the building where the first portal had been.
“Not there.”
Hexen studied the dead skeletal creature nearby.
“These weren’t the same kind.”
“No.”
Fendor retrieved what arrows remained usable.
“So closing the gate didn’t end the night.”
Kaylor smiled grimly.
“No.”
Nethnarel looked at him.
“You enjoy being right too much.”
“Yes.”
A villager came cautiously from a house.
“Is it over?”
No one answered immediately.
Fendor looked toward Kaylor.
Kaylor looked toward Hexen.
Hexen looked toward the surrounding darkness.
Isamu was already scanning the rooftops again.
Nethnarel finally said, “Go inside.”
The villager did.
Fendor nodded.
“Good answer.”
The heroes continued searching.
Their pace had changed.
Before the flying undead, they had hoped the gate had explained the attack.
Now they knew better.
Aalune was not dealing with one portal.
Or one kind of monster.
Or one assault.
Something was testing the village.
Perhaps several somethings.
Kaylor’s senses tightened.
He stopped.
“There.”
A small hut stood ahead.
Nothing remarkable.
One story.
Wooden walls.
A roof that had seen better decades.
Dark windows.
Fendor looked at it.
“What?”
“Evil.”
“Specific.”
Kaylor pointed.
“That building.”
Isamu moved first.
He climbed onto the roof.
Not because anyone asked him to.
Because apparently roofs had become his preferred contribution to village defense.
Fendor looked up.
“Comfortable?”
“Yes.”
“Wonderful.”
Something fluttered inside the hut.
Then another shape crossed the doorway.
Bone.
Wing.
The same skeletal creatures.
“They’re inside,” Nethnarel said.
Kaylor frowned.
“They came from the sky.”
“Some did.”
Hexen moved toward the hut.
Light gathered in his hand.
Not sunlight this time.
A focused line.
He raised his arm.
Sunbeam lanced through the opening.
The narrow ray burned across the interior.
Something shrieked.
Hexen shifted the beam upward as one skeletal creature burst from the building.
Radiance struck it mid-flight.
The undead recoiled.
Fendor fired.
The arrow followed.
Another creature emerged.
Then another.
“They keep changing where they come from,” Nethnarel said.
Kaylor watched the hut.
“No.”
He could feel it now.
Not the creatures.
The source behind them.
“Same thing.”
Nethnarel looked at him.
“Another gate?”
Something flew at Kaylor.
He ducked.
The skeletal attacker raked the air above him and climbed again.
A second passed toward Fendor.
Bone claws struck his shield.
Dark energy followed.
Not a cut.
A chill that sank through armor without caring whether steel had stopped the physical attack.
Fendor grunted.
“Necrotic.”
“Bad?” Hexen asked.
“It is rarely associated with wellness.”
Nethnarel considered a wall.
Something strong enough to cut off the building.
Then abandoned the idea.
The creatures could fly.
Stone would merely create a structure they could circle.
She reached instead for the Rings of Fire.
The old magic answered around her wrists.
Flame gathered.
One bolt struck the skeletal creature passing over Kaylor.
A second hit the one turning toward Fendor.
The night flashed orange.
Both creatures reeled.
Kaylor hit the nearest when it came low enough.
Fendor put an arrow through the other.
Isamu dropped from the roof onto a third.
The fight became brief and ugly.
These enemies were dangerous only if given time.
The heroes gave them none.
Then Nethnarel saw the room beyond the broken doorway.
A small portal shimmered inside.
One more skeletal creature was appearing within it.
Not through a corridor.
Not from a hidden cellar.
Its bones were literally materializing against the impossible light.
“There.”
Kaylor followed her gaze.
“Another.”
Fendor looked at Nethnarel.
“Use the gem.”
She stared at him.
“I had one.”
“Oh.”
“The portal ate it.”
“Right.”
The creature inside the gate stepped forward.
Hexen’s Sunbeam struck it.
The thing recoiled.
Nethnarel searched her magic.
Counterspell was wrong.
She needed to end something already active.
“Dispel?”
She looked at Hexen.
He frowned.
“Maybe.”
Nethnarel lifted one hand.
“I have another idea.”
Fendor immediately said, “No.”
She ignored him.
Water gathered.
Not from the village well.
Not from a convenient stream.
Magic formed the mass in front of her.
A wall of water appeared.
Then moved.
Tidal Wave hit the hut.
The entire side of the building disappeared beneath water.
Wood cracked.
The remaining skeletal creature vanished inside the surge.
The wave reached the portal.
And the portal drank it.
Nethnarel stared.
Most of the summoned water disappeared into the opening as though poured down an infinite drain.
One creature caught near the gate was pulled backward.
Its claws scraped across the floor.
Then it vanished through.
The water subsided.
Half the hut was soaked.
Parts of one wall had collapsed.
The portal remained.
Fendor looked at Nethnarel.
“Did you drown another dimension?”
“Possibly.”
Kaylor stepped through the wet doorway.
“Portal’s still here.”
“Yes.”
“Try again.”
“With what?”
“Something better.”
Hexen came beside her.
“Dispel Magic.”
Nethnarel looked at him.
“You have that?”
Hexen looked mildly offended.
“I have many things.”
“You have turned into a turtle twice tonight.”
“That does not answer the question.”
“It explains why I forgot.”
He raised his hand.
The portal rippled.
Hexen reached into the magic itself.
Druidic power did not always look like green light and roots. Nature included boundaries.
Seasons.
Cycles.
The difference between what belonged somewhere and what did not.
The gate did not belong in Aalune.
Hexen told it so.
The spell struck.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Fendor waited.
Nethnarel waited.
Kaylor leaned closer.
Then the portal folded.
The light contracted toward its center.
The surface shivered.
Collapsed.
The final trace disappeared with a sound like a distant breath.
Hexen lowered his hand.
Nethnarel stared.
“That worked.”
“Yes.”
“I was going to do that.”
“No.”
“You don’t know.”
“I do.”
Fendor looked around the ruined hut.
“Two portals.”
Kaylor nodded.
“So far.”
Everyone looked at him.
Kaylor shrugged.
“What?”
Nethnarel pointed.
“You added the last part.”
“Because there could be more.”
Fendor sighed.
“He has learned pessimism.”
“I’ve learned pattern recognition.”
They stepped back into the street.
The night was quieter again.
Two gates had been destroyed.
One with an artifact Nethnarel had carried since the Craven years.
One with magic almost embarrassingly straightforward once they remembered to use it.
The distinction annoyed Nethnarel.
She chose not to discuss it.
Hexen checked the others.
“Who needs healing?”
Fendor flexed the arm struck by necrotic energy.
“I’ve had worse.”
Kaylor looked fine.
Again.
Isamu’s wounds from the earlier fight remained more serious, but the monk stood straight and showed no sign of wanting to stop.
Nethnarel had taken little in the latest exchange.
Hexen himself could endure by becoming something with another body’s reserve of strength if necessary.
They all understood the same thing.
Do not spend everything.
Not yet.
The night had already taught them that.
Nethnarel had almost reached for the Staff of Power against the flying undead.
Someone had stopped her.
Save it.
This was an all-night affair.
That phrase had sounded like table humor when it first occurred to them.
Now it felt like strategy.
Fendor checked his arrows.
Hexen kept the stronger healing magic in reserve.
Nethnarel counted what remained.
Kaylor rolled one shoulder and looked down the next street.
Isamu climbed from the roof.
“No rest?” he asked.
Fendor considered Aalune.
The houses.
The frightened faces behind windows.
The bodies in the roads.
The sky that had delivered undead after the first gate fell.
The second gate they had found only because Kaylor could feel evil leaking from a hut.
“No.”
Isamu nodded.
No complaint.
Of course not.
They moved again.
Five heroes through a village waiting for the next scream.
Behind them, the soaked hut stood empty.
Farther away, another ruined house contained the place where Nethnarel’s anti-magic gem had disappeared forever.
Two gates closed.
Two wounds sealed.
The people of Aalune began to hope.
The heroes knew better.
The night had gone quiet twice.
Both times it had lied.
For now, though, the streets were still.
For now, no monster came through a doorway.
For now, nothing descended from the sky.
For now, Aalune breathed.
And the Heroes of Oxland kept walking.