They knew what happened when Kaylor drew the sword.
He drew it anyway.
Fendor would later maintain that this was not as foolish as it sounded.
They had learned three things about the weapon already. It had belonged to the dead farmer before the men occupying the abandoned mountain settlement murdered him. It now carried magic neither his wife nor his son remembered. And whenever the blade was exposed, something inside its runes reached toward the people who saw it and tried to force impossible names through their mouths.
Those were precisely the sort of facts that required investigation.
Preferably from very far away.
Kaylor apparently disagreed with the final condition.
The farmer’s widow and her son had retreated toward the house after telling their story. Both remained shaken, the woman by grief freshly transformed into certainty, the boy by months of fear finally spoken aloud. The dead fiend still lay near the barn. The many-armed serpent demon Fendor had unknowingly summoned was collapsing into accelerated decay farther out in the yard, its curved blades scattered around the corpse.
The farm had been peaceful that morning.
Fendor had begun to doubt it ever would be again.
“Everyone ready?” Kaylor asked.
“No,” Fendor said.
Isamu nodded.
Hexen looked at the sheathed weapon.
Nethnarel folded her arms.
“That is not actually a plan.”
Kaylor held the scabbard in one hand.
“We need to know what it does.”
“We know what it does.”
“It summons things.”
“Yes.”
“What things?”
Fendor pointed toward the dead demon.
“That.”
“One thing.”
“That was enough.”
Nethnarel considered the sword.
“He’s right.”
Fendor stared at her.
“Which one of us?”
“Kaylor.”
“That question has never improved my day.”
Hexen studied the farmhouse.
“If we’re doing this, move them farther away.”
That, at least, everyone accepted.
The widow required very little persuasion.
She had seen enough of her husband’s blade to understand that proximity was becoming a poor decision. She took her son, crossed the little bridge over the stream and continued toward the road until more than a field separated them from the heroes.
The boy looked back several times.
His mother did not.
Kaylor waited until they were clear.
Then he drew the sword.
The steel left the scabbard with a sound too ordinary for what followed.
The runes awakened.
Pale light raced down the blade.
The pressure struck all at once.
Isamu felt it first and rejected it with the same disciplined refusal he brought to pain, enchantment and most conversations longer than necessary.
Something wanted a word from him.
He gave it nothing.
Fendor felt the same impossible shape entering his thoughts.
The first time, the name had erupted through him before he understood that he was being used.
Now he knew what it was.
That helped.
Not enough.
He clenched his jaw.
The thing behind the runes pushed.
A syllable formed.
Fendor swallowed it.
For one instant he thought he had won.
Then Hexen shouted.
The sound was not any language he knew.
It began deep in the druid’s chest and ended in a clicking consonant that seemed physically wrong for a human tongue.
Hexen stopped.
His eyes widened.
Nethnarel spoke at almost the same moment.
Her word was different.
Longer.
Sharper.
Part of it seemed to echo after her mouth had closed.
Fendor’s resistance broke with the distraction.
Something escaped him too.
Not the name he had spoken before.
Another.
He heard only the final fragment.
Then reality answered.
Three shapes appeared around Kaylor.
The first was horribly familiar.
A woman’s upper body rose above a coiling serpent tail armored in overlapping scales. Multiple arms spread around her, each holding a different curved blade. Her face was beautiful in the deliberate way of a mask designed to make the thing beneath it harder to understand.
Fendor looked at her.
“Again?”
She hissed.
“Apparently.”
The second creature appeared with its wings already open.
At first Nethnarel thought dragon.
Then she saw the bones.
Much of the creature had died long ago. Hide clung in blackened strips around ribs and wing joints. The skull retained enough draconic shape to make the resemblance unmistakable, but darkness lived between the bones where flesh should have been. Cold light occupied the eye sockets.
Whatever it was, it resembled a dragon that death had failed to make less dangerous.
The third creature arrived lower to the ground.
Pale.
Long-limbed.
Its claws were too large for its arms and its mouth opened farther than its skull should have allowed. Fluid shone around its jaws.
Kaylor stood in the middle of all three.
He looked at the sword.
Then at the creatures.
“Useful.”
Fendor drew the Vorpal Longsword.
“You have an increasingly unusual definition of that word.”
The serpent demon attacked Nethnarel.
She was already airborne.
Ten feet should have been enough.
It was not.
The creature’s reach was astonishing. Several blades came upward in sequence, crossing one another as though the demon had spent centuries practicing the precise problem of murdering flying sorcerers.
Nethnarel twisted away from the first.
The second struck.
Pain opened across her side.
A third blade followed.
Then another.
By the time she climbed out of reach, three wounds burned through clothing and armor.
The demon’s tail snapped after her.
Nethnarel climbed just beyond it.
She looked down.
“That was rude.”
Fendor had seen how hard the blades landed.
“You all right?”
“No.”
“Useful answer.”
“I’m still flying.”
“That was not what I asked.”
“It’s the answer you get.”
The undead dragon turned toward Hexen.
The druid had not waited.
Water appeared where there had been none.
Not a wave.
A turning body.
A dark circle formed across the earth, broad enough to consume much of the yard but placed with careful attention to where Kaylor and Fendor stood. Water spun faster, dragging mud, grass and loose debris into a deepening spiral.
The last of Hexen’s summoned wolves vanished as his concentration shifted.
Fendor saw them disappear.
“You dismissed the wolves.”
“I needed something larger.”
The Maelstrom answered.
The three summoned creatures felt the pull.
The dragon-corpse caught itself with its wings.
The serpent demon resisted with the immense strength of its lower body.
The pale creature was less fortunate.
Water seized its legs and dragged it several feet toward the center.
The ground beneath all of them became treacherous.
Hexen tightened the spell.
“Stay out of it.”
Fendor looked at the churning water.
“I had already reached that conclusion.”
The pale creature escaped the edge.
It saw Fendor.
Its jaws opened.
Something erupted from its mouth.
A concentrated stream crossed the yard fast enough that Fendor reacted before understanding what it was. He stepped sideways on instinct. The jet passed his shoulder and struck the ground behind him, splashing across grass in a hissing sheet.
The creature came after him with one enormous claw.
Fendor ducked.
“Unpleasant.”
He closed.
The Vorpal Longsword moved.
Once.
Again.
Again.
There were moments when Fendor fought as an archer who happened to carry a sword.
This was not one of them.
The weapon had been part of him long enough now that the distinction between decision and strike had almost disappeared. His first attack opened the creature. The next followed before it could turn. Then the old discipline of the Arcane Archer simply became another form of precision applied at arm’s length.
He accelerated.
Six attacks became one continuous assault.
The creature staggered backward.
The Vorpal enchantment never found the perfect line it wanted.
Fendor did not care.
When he finished, the pale thing had discovered that a magical decapitation was not required for a sword to become an extremely serious problem.
Isamu saw the opening.
He crossed the stream.
Water might as well have been road beneath his feet when he moved at speed. He struck the far bank, crossed the distance and transferred the mark of his attention to the nearest enemy.
The whip snapped.
First strike.
Second.
Then the disciplined violence hidden beneath Isamu’s calm began accumulating.
His attacks were never wild.
That made them worse.
Every movement had a purpose.
Every purpose ended in damage.
The creature tried to turn toward him.
Isamu was no longer there.
It followed.
He returned from another angle.
Fendor saw him.
“How much did you hit it?”
“Enough.”
“That answer has become meaningless.”
The thing remained standing.
Isamu looked at it.
“Not enough.”
He moved again.
Nethnarel had chosen her target.
The undead dragon and the serpent demon had drifted close enough together for what she wanted.
She raised one hand.
Fendor saw flame gathering.
“Neth.”
“I know where Kaylor is.”
“That was my concern.”
“I am insulted.”
“You have earned the concern.”
Fireball crossed the farmyard.
The explosion rolled across both summoned horrors while stopping short of the dragonborn. Flame climbed dead wings and washed over the serpent demon’s many arms.
Kaylor did not flinch.
He had a different problem.
The sword.
He had continued holding it.
He should not have.
Perhaps that was obvious.
It was obvious to Fendor.
Less so to Kaylor.
The dragonborn attacked the nearest fiend with the unknown weapon, putting his own strength and the terrible residue of his old divine power behind the blow.
The steel connected.
The runes flashed.
Kaylor felt the sword react.
He struck again.
Radiant force tore through the enemy.
The creature fell.
Then the sword glowed brighter.
Not the runes alone.
The entire blade.
Kaylor stopped.
Something moved inside the corpse.
Fendor saw it first.
“No.”
The dead creature split.
Not from the wound.
From the magic.
Another serpent-bodied woman emerged into the world beside the fallen thing, blades unfolding around her as though she had been waiting inside death for someone to open the door.
For several seconds no one spoke.
Then Nethnarel pointed at Kaylor’s weapon.
“Put that away.”
Kaylor stared at the new demon.
The sword dimmed.
Fendor nodded.
“Yes. We have completed the experiment.”
Kaylor looked at the blade.
“It did something when I killed it.”
“We noticed.”
“That’s useful information.”
“It summoned another demon.”
“Also information.”
“Kaylor.”
The dragonborn sighed.
Then sheathed it.
The change was immediate.
Nothing vanished.
The demons already present remained.
But the pressure around the weapon disappeared.
The farm stopped feeling as though another name might be ripped from someone at any moment.
Kaylor reached instead for his great axe.
Fendor approved.
“Good.”
Kaylor looked at him.
“Now you’re doing it.”
“I regret the influence.”
The new serpent demon charged.
The farmer’s widow and her son ran for the house again.
No one stopped them.
The farm had become a war zone for the second time in less than an hour, and whatever trust they had placed in the Heroes of Oxland no longer required them to stand close enough to watch.
Nethnarel climbed higher.
One demon followed her movement.
She had an idea.
Telekinesis closed around the creature.
Nethnarel tried to lift it.
Thirty feet would be enough.
Drop it into Hexen’s Maelstrom.
Let the water do something interesting.
The demon’s body rose perhaps an inch.
Then stopped.
Power slid away from it.
The creature resisted the spell with infuriating ease.
Nethnarel pushed harder.
Nothing.
The serpent demon looked upward at her.
Nethnarel released the attempt.
“I dislike her.”
Hexen heard.
“Which one?”
Nethnarel looked at the two nearly identical monsters.
“Both.”
The Maelstrom kept turning.
The undead dragon entered its reach again.
Water caught at dead wings and dragged the creature toward the center.
The second demon struggled against the current.
Hexen maintained the spell despite a sword striking him from the side.
Pain opened along his ribs.
The spell trembled.
He held it.
The water continued turning.
Fendor saw the attack.
“You good?”
“Yes.”
Hexen had no spare breath for more.
The undead dragon came at him.
Claws struck.
Most missed.
One landed hard enough to force Hexen backward.
The druid absorbed the impact and kept his concentration.
That was the important part.
The Maelstrom did not care whether Hexen was comfortable.
It cared whether he remained conscious.
So did Hexen.
The battle spread across the farm.
Nethnarel descended too close to one of the serpent demons and paid for it.
A blade caught her as she tried to escape.
She climbed away, but blood followed.
She looked down at herself.
Far too much red.
Her breathing had become shallow.
The injuries from the first assault had already been serious. The latest cut brought the total somewhere much closer to disaster than she preferred.
Fendor saw her falter.
“Nethnarel.”
“I know.”
“You’re almost dead.”
“Then stop announcing it.”
“Get away from them.”
“That was already my plan.”
For once, she did not argue with the tactical advice.
She climbed out of reach and moved toward the far side of the Maelstrom.
Isamu intercepted the demon that tried to follow.
His whip caught one arm.
Another strike crossed the creature’s torso.
The monk entered close enough to unleash everything he had held in reserve.
Hands.
Feet.
Whip.
Movement.
The sequence became impossible to separate.
The demon attempted to follow him with its many swords.
It was trying to fight someone who refused to occupy the same place from one heartbeat to the next.
Isamu struck.
Moved.
Struck again.
By the time he disengaged, the demon looked considerably less immortal.
“Sixty-two,” someone said.
Fendor looked around.
“What?”
Isamu did not answer.
Probably for the best.
Kaylor entered with the axe.
The first swing missed.
That offended him.
The second did not.
Divine power followed.
The old contradiction returned again: an Oathbreaker calling upon power that still answered most clearly when something truly evil stood in front of him.
Radiance detonated through the demon.
It reeled.
Kaylor struck again.
No cursed runes.
No unknown names.
No additional monster crawling out of a corpse.
The axe suddenly seemed beautifully uncomplicated.
“I like this.”
Fendor heard him.
“You own several axes.”
“I know.”
“Use them.”
The serpent demon attacked Kaylor with almost everything it had.
Six blades.
Tail.
The Cloak of Displacement turned him into several possibilities at once.
A sword passed through the wrong one.
Then another.
A third corrected too slowly.
Steel found only air.
One blade finally struck.
Kaylor barely moved.
The tail missed.
The creature hissed.
Kaylor smiled.
“You should have brought more swords.”
Fendor stared.
“It already has too many.”
“Not enough.”
“Of course.”
Fendor switched weapons.
The bow came back into his hand.
Range had opened.
The Icy Burst weapon drew smoothly.
He fired.
Three arrows crossed the battlefield.
The first struck the dragon-corpse.
The second followed.
Cold spread across dead bone and leathery tissue.
The third landed near the wing joint.
The creature staggered.
Fendor moved before it could close.
He had no intention of stepping into Hexen’s Maelstrom simply because the shortest route suggested it.
The dark water continued doing its work.
Every few moments one of the enemies lost its footing and slid toward the center. The spell pulled at them, slowed them, forced them to spend strength merely remaining in the fight.
It also made the farm look as though Hexen had decided to construct a private lake in the middle of someone else’s property.
Fendor considered mentioning that.
Another demon attacked Hexen.
The joke waited.
A curved blade struck the druid.
Hexen grunted.
His concentration almost broke.
Almost.
The Maelstrom held.
“Still good?” Fendor called.
Hexen looked at him.
“No.”
“Useful answer.”
The sword on Kaylor’s back remained quiet.
For perhaps twenty seconds.
Then Kaylor glanced over his shoulder.
He had been thinking.
Fendor knew because the expression always caused trouble.
“No.”
“I haven’t said anything.”
“You are thinking about the sword.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“I need to know whether it does that every time.”
“We already know enough.”
“You don’t.”
“We are being attacked by the answer.”
Kaylor looked toward the fresh serpent demon.
Fendor pointed at it.
“That one is literally evidence.”
Kaylor left the blade sheathed.
For once.
Nethnarel was running out of easy solutions.
Fire had worked.
Telekinesis had not.
The demons resisted too much of what she tried, and every time she descended close enough for a clean angle, someone with six swords attempted to rearrange her.
She needed certainty.
She chose a target.
Not the most wounded.
The one most likely to survive everything else.
Power gathered around her hand.
This spell was different from fire.
Different from cold.
It did not burn.
It did not freeze.
It told matter that continuing to exist had become optional.
Nethnarel focused.
The creature moved.
She adjusted.
Sorcery flowed through the spell, strengthening it, forcing the unstable edges of her power back toward the result she wanted.
A green-white line crossed the yard.
Disintegrate struck.
For an instant the enemy remained whole.
Then it became dust.
Nothing fell.
No corpse.
No weapon.
Only a collapsing outline that turned to drifting particles before reaching the ground.
Fendor lowered his bow slightly.
“Effective.”
Nethnarel was breathing too hard to smile.
“Yes.”
“Stay up there.”
“Stop giving orders.”
“You have approximately enough blood left to fill a cup.”
“Large cup?”
“Neth.”
She moved higher.
That was as close to agreement as Fendor expected.
The battle was finally changing.
Not over.
Changing.
They had stopped multiplying the enemy.
That helped enormously.
Kaylor’s mysterious sword remained on his back.
The Maelstrom continued damaging and dragging the surviving creatures.
Isamu moved through them with relentless precision.
Fendor shot whatever gave him a line.
Nethnarel spent what remained of her magic carefully.
Hexen endured.
And Kaylor discovered that conventional weapons were remarkably effective when they did not open doorways to hell.
One serpent demon died under the accumulated punishment.
Another nearly escaped.
Isamu followed it.
The whip cracked twice.
He closed and unleashed another short burst of strikes.
The demon collapsed beyond the worst edge of the churning water.
The undead dragon remained.
It struck at Hexen.
Fendor hit it from the side.
Kaylor’s axe followed.
Nethnarel attempted another attack and felt how little power remained.
Isamu came through the opening.
Then the creature stopped moving.
For several seconds, nobody trusted that.
The Maelstrom still turned.
Hexen looked around.
No fiends moved.
Kaylor kept the cursed sword sheathed.
Nethnarel hovered above the yard.
Fendor tracked the corpses.
Isamu listened.
Nothing.
Hexen released his concentration.
The water collapsed.
What had been a violent spiral became an impossible volume of water spreading outward through churned earth and ruined grass. Mud surged around boots and carried fragments of scorched debris toward the stream.
Fendor watched it go.
“Farm looks better.”
Hexen stared.
Fendor nodded.
“That was sarcasm.”
“I know.”
The widow and her son had disappeared.
Not magically.
Sensibly.
At some point during the demon battle, they had fled through or around the house and continued away from the farm. Whether they had gone toward the road, the fields or simply anywhere that did not contain the people repeatedly summoning infernal creatures beside their barn, no one could say.
Nethnarel descended.
Her legs nearly failed when she landed.
Hexen caught her.
She glared.
“Don’t.”
“You’re hurt.”
“I am aware.”
That ended the argument.
They used what healing remained.
Not enough to erase the battle.
Enough to keep Nethnarel upright.
Enough to ease Hexen’s wounds.
Enough that Isamu stopped favoring one side.
Fendor had been hit less badly than most and tried not to look pleased about it.
Kaylor, infuriatingly, appeared prepared to continue.
Fendor looked at him.
“You still have the sword.”
Kaylor reached over one shoulder and touched the scabbard.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m not leaving it here.”
“That is the first reasonable thing you’ve said about it.”
Nethnarel looked toward the house.
“The magic we felt earlier.”
Hexen followed her gaze.
“The sword.”
“At least most of it.”
They had suspected the farm.
The widow.
The boy.
The dead husband.
Something hidden in the land.
Now the simplest answer lay strapped across Kaylor’s back.
The sword had been saturating the place with wrongness.
That did not answer why.
Only where.
They searched.
The house was meager.
Not poor enough to suggest desperation, but built around work rather than possessions. The furniture had been repaired many times. Clothing had been patched. Food stores were practical. Nothing in the rooms suggested a family secretly wealthy enough to own an artifact that could repeatedly summon demons.
They found the husband’s things.
Clothes.
Tools.
A few objects kept because throwing them away would have meant accepting his death before his wife was ready.
Among them were old records.
One small book survived from his earlier life.
The writing was incomplete and not always easy to follow, but Hexen pieced together enough.
The farmer had not always been a farmer.
Once, he had traveled.
Fought.
Adventured.
Not at the level of the Heroes of Oxland. Not a man who killed dragon turtles in lakes or challenged gods beneath mountains.
But real.
Experienced enough to have survived dangerous roads and stranger places than most people ever saw.
Then he met the woman who became his wife.
He stopped.
They settled near the abandoned mountain town because land was available, trade roads existed nearby and nobody particularly wanted to live close to ruins everyone considered useless.
He became a husband.
Then a father.
Then a farmer.
Fendor looked toward Kaylor’s back.
“So the sword belonged to an adventurer.”
“Yes,” Hexen said.
“That explains why he owned one.”
“Not why it does this.”
“No.”
Nethnarel leaned against the wall while Hexen continued through the records.
“Maybe it didn’t.”
Fendor looked at her.
“What?”
“When he carried it.”
She nodded toward the mountains.
“The wife said she never saw any of this.”
Kaylor understood.
“The temple changed it.”
“Maybe.”
Fendor frowned.
“We still don’t know.”
“No,” Nethnarel said. “But he went there with a family blade. He died. His son brought back something that can summon demons.”
Hexen closed the book.
“That is not a coincidence.”
Isamu had been searching the floor.
Fendor noticed only when the monk stopped in front of the hearth.
“What?”
Isamu moved the rug.
Dust marked the edges of a square in the floor.
Not recent dust.
Old.
A small iron ring lay flat inside a recessed groove.
Fendor came closer.
“Trapdoor.”
Kaylor looked at the widow’s modest house.
“Did she mention a cellar?”
“No.”
Hexen crouched.
He ran his fingers along the edge.
The seams were packed with dirt.
Whatever lay underneath had not been opened for a very long time.
Nethnarel looked at the dead quiet house.
Then toward the mountain settlement beyond the windows.
Then down at the hidden door.
“I thought we were going to the town.”
Fendor sighed.
“We will.”
Isamu already had his hand on the iron ring.
“After we go down.”
Fendor looked at him.
“Of course.”
Kaylor adjusted the unknown sword across his back.
He was keeping it.
That decision was now obvious.
Leaving it with the widow was impossible. Destroying it without understanding it might be worse. Taking it toward the very settlement where it may have been corrupted was probably foolish.
That made it approximately the sort of decision their lives specialized in.
Isamu pulled.
The old wood resisted.
Then shifted.
A thin line of blackness appeared around the edge.
Cold air breathed through it.
Not the air of a cellar.
Something deeper.
Something that had waited beneath the farmhouse long before cultists returned to the mountains and pilgrims began walking toward the Naked Goddess.
The heroes looked down.
The farm had contained one secret beneath the cow.
Apparently it contained another beneath the hearth.