The trapdoor exhaled when Isamu opened it.
The smell came first.
Not rot exactly. Rot required something once living, and although the air beneath the farmhouse carried traces of decay, its deeper quality was age. Dust. Damp stone. Minerals sealed away from daylight. The stale breath of a place that had forgotten people existed.
Isamu released the iron ring and leaned back.
Fendor did the same from several feet away.
“That has been closed a while.”
Hexen crouched beside the opening. “We established that from the dust.”
“I am now establishing it with my nose.”
The square opening descended into blackness beneath the hearth. It was too deliberate to be a natural collapse and too substantial for the ordinary storage cellar the farmhouse might reasonably have possessed. Narrow stonework framed the first portion of the descent, but the construction vanished rapidly below, giving way to a passage that angled beneath the house.
Nethnarel knelt.
“Gygax.”
The little bat stirred.
He had survived enough adventures with Nethnarel that being sent alone into unexplored holes had ceased to qualify as a surprising request. She lowered him toward the opening, and a moment later the familiar vanished into darkness.
Nethnarel closed her eyes.
Through him, the world changed.
Air became vibration. Stone became returning echoes. The tunnel below descended steeply at first, then began leveling out. It was narrow but passable, though not comfortably so for anyone with armor, a shield or a collection of oversized weapons strapped across his back.
She opened her mouth.
Isamu stepped into the hole.
Nethnarel opened her eyes.
“Gygax is scouting.”
“I know.”
“You’re supposed to wait until he comes back.”
Isamu disappeared below the floor.
Fendor watched him go.
“He has never understood that part of scouting.”
Kaylor followed.
The mysterious runic sword remained strapped across his back beside weapons whose behavior was, by comparison, reassuringly conventional. He had not drawn it since the battle outside. No one had asked him to.
Fendor looked down into the opening.
“Are we all doing this?”
Hexen stood.
“You know we are.”
“That was not the question.”
Fendor went next.
Hexen followed, and Nethnarel came last after calling Gygax farther ahead.
The tunnel swallowed the daylight behind them.
The first portion descended sharply enough that Fendor kept one hand against the wall. Packed earth gave way to stone. The passage bent, flattened, then narrowed as though whoever had created it had stopped caring whether ordinary people could move comfortably through it.
That bothered Hexen.
Natural caves possessed a logic of their own. Water widened some places and abandoned others. Roots broke stone. Pressure cracked layers apart. Creatures dug burrows according to the shape and needs of their bodies.
This place had several logics overlapping one another.
The stone nearest the farmhouse looked old but worked.
Farther down, the walls became rougher.
Then they changed again.
Dark granite surrounded them, shot through with pale crystalline flecks that caught what little magical light the heroes carried. The effect was almost beautiful. Every movement revealed another tiny point of reflected light, as though someone had trapped a poor imitation of the night sky underground.
Fendor touched one wall.
“Natural?”
Hexen examined the texture.
“Some of it.”
“That answer concerns me.”
“It should.”
The passage opened slightly.
Gygax fluttered back through the darkness and landed against Nethnarel’s shoulder.
She listened to the impressions coming through the familiar.
“There is something ahead.”
Kaylor stopped.
“What?”
“A chest.”
Fendor looked toward the tunnel.
“Of course.”
“And things on the floor.”
“What things?”
Nethnarel frowned.
“Eggs.”
Silence settled briefly among them.
Fendor turned to Hexen.
“Natural?”
Hexen looked ahead.
“No idea.”
“Excellent.”
The first egg appeared at the edge of their light.
It was not large.
That made Fendor feel better for approximately three seconds.
The object rested directly upon the cavern floor, pale against the dark stone and slightly translucent beneath the glow of their magic. More lay farther ahead, scattered irregularly through the passage.
Not a nest.
At least not one made from grass or brush.
Simply eggs on stone.
Isamu crouched beside the nearest.
Nethnarel was behind him.
“Don’t.”
Isamu looked down.
Then stepped on it.
The shell gave with a wet crack.
Fendor closed his eyes.
“Why?”
Isamu lifted his boot.
A thick fluid spread across the rock beneath it. There was yolk, or something close enough that comparison served. Clearer liquid. A half-formed membrane. Nothing leapt out. Nothing screamed. No swarm erupted from beneath the shell.
Isamu studied the mess.
“Fresh.”
Hexen came closer.
That was worse.
The egg had not become some ancient mineralized remnant of whatever lived beneath the farm centuries ago.
Something had laid it recently.
“How recently?” Kaylor asked.
Hexen shook his head.
“Recently enough.”
Fendor looked farther into the cavern.
There were more than he had first realized.
Some nestled in shallow depressions. Others lay alone. Their pale shapes continued ahead into shadow around the narrow approach toward the chest Gygax had seen.
Isamu started forward.
This time he avoided them.
“Progress,” Fendor said.
Isamu ignored him.
The tunnel narrowed again until even Nethnarel would have struggled to spread her wings. The heroes moved in a line. Isamu ahead, Kaylor close behind, Fendor trying to maintain enough space for a bow if he needed one, Hexen and Nethnarel bringing up the rear.
Gygax moved beyond them.
The chest waited farther ahead.
Small.
Almost delicate.
Its surfaces reflected the light differently from the surrounding stone, giving it a glasslike appearance.
Nethnarel felt magic there.
Strong enough to matter.
Before she could say so, Kaylor moved forward.
Isamu had slowed where several eggs blocked the cleanest route. Kaylor placed one armored hand against the monk’s shoulder and shifted him aside.
Isamu looked at him.
“I was moving.”
“Slowly.”
“I was avoiding the eggs.”
Kaylor stepped carefully around one.
Fendor noticed.
“So you did learn.”
Kaylor ignored him.
Nethnarel was studying the wall.
Something about it had changed.
The tunnel around the eggs did not look carved.
Not in the ordinary sense.
The surfaces curved too smoothly in some places and broke abruptly in others. Scratches scored the stone where no tool marks should have existed. Portions seemed almost polished from repeated pressure.
She touched one.
“This wasn’t made for us.”
Hexen came closer.
He saw it then.
The shape of the corridor.
Its width.
The strange smoothness.
The eggs.
Fendor understood from their expressions.
“Oh.”
Kaylor turned.
“What?”
Hexen looked toward the darkness ahead.
“This may not be a tunnel.”
The ground trembled.
Everyone stopped.
Another tremor followed.
Loose crystalline flakes skipped across the stone.
Fendor drew the Icy Burst bow.
“Please say earthquake.”
Hexen listened through his feet.
“No.”
“Of course not.”
The wall exploded.
Stone came inward.
Not much.
It did not need much.
Something enormous tore through the rock beside Kaylor.
The head appeared first.
Its mouth filled the entire width of the corridor.
The creature had the shape of a worm only because language did not offer a more useful category. Its body was vast enough that the heroes saw only part of it at once, thick flesh forcing itself through stone as though rock were merely another medium through which it swam.
The mouth opened.
Rings of teeth caught the light.
Isamu looked down at the shattered egg near his boot.
Then at the worm.
“Mother?”
Fendor drew an arrow.
“Do not apologize.”
The worm screamed.
The sound came through the walls as much as the air.
Isamu attacked before it finished.
His whip struck the enormous head.
He moved with the particular precision that appeared whenever he decided something deserved the full measure of his attention. Another strike followed. Then another, each one carrying far more force than the weapon’s slender form suggested.
The worm recoiled.
There was nowhere for it to go.
Its own body filled the opening.
Isamu continued.
Kaylor watched him.
“How angry are you?”
Isamu struck again.
“Enough.”
The first assault would have crippled most living things.
The worm merely became furious.
It forced more of its body through the stone.
The tunnel suddenly seemed much smaller.
Nethnarel had a clear line only because the creature was impossible not to see.
She reached for something deeper than flame.
The psychic power formed behind her eyes.
Fendor recognized the expression.
“You’re screaming again.”
“Not at you.”
“Good distinction.”
Nethnarel released the spell.
Nothing visible crossed the corridor.
The effect arrived inside the worm.
The creature convulsed.
Its mouth snapped shut.
Its entire body went rigid where it had forced itself through the wall.
Psychic violence tore through whatever passed for thought within the enormous creature, leaving it stunned and shuddering.
Nethnarel exhaled.
“That worked.”
Fendor stepped sideways, searching for a line between Kaylor and Isamu.
There was almost none.
The corridor had not been designed for archery.
Neither had his friends.
He found three inches.
Enough.
The first arrow passed beside Isamu’s shoulder and entered the worm.
The second glanced from hardened flesh.
Fendor frowned.
“The first one was better.”
Kaylor looked back.
“You’re shooting through us.”
“I am shooting past you.”
“There is not much past.”
“Then remain narrow.”
The worm’s body spasmed.
Something seeped from it.
At first Hexen thought the creature had released fluid into the cavern.
Then the smell arrived.
It passed through the walls.
That should not have been possible.
A chemical foulness spread along the stone itself, emerging from tiny cracks and mineral seams. It was not ordinary poison vapor drifting through air. Whatever the worm produced traveled through the surrounding rock as though the stone carried it.
Nethnarel coughed.
Fendor’s eyes watered.
Hexen felt the contamination pressing against his body and remembered the poison of Aalune with immediate resentment.
Isamu merely breathed.
Fendor noticed.
“You’re fine?”
“Yes.”
“Of course you are.”
Years of discipline had made the monk’s body an exceptionally poor home for poison.
The rest of them were less fortunate.
Hexen fought off the worst of it.
Nethnarel retreated several steps from the wall.
Fendor covered his mouth with one arm and continued looking for angles.
Kaylor remained nearest the creature.
The worm recovered enough to attack.
Its mouth opened around Isamu.
The monk saw darkness, teeth and the back of a throat large enough to turn him into a brief inconvenience.
He moved.
The jaws closed on empty air.
Isamu emerged beside them and rolled across the stone.
Kaylor attacked the worm’s exposed head while its mouth was still closing.
The blow landed.
Again.
The creature screamed.
The poison thickened.
The cavern had become a contest between overwhelming size and heroes who refused to occupy the places where overwhelming size expected them to be.
Nethnarel’s Psychic Scream had bought them time.
They used it.
Kaylor hacked into the flesh.
Fendor sent arrows through whatever openings his companions gave him.
Isamu struck with a violence that made his earlier assault look restrained.
Hexen attacked from the rear of the line when space allowed magic through.
The worm’s enormous head sagged.
Its body twitched.
Then stopped.
For a moment, nobody moved.
Fendor lowered the bow slightly.
“Dead?”
Isamu kicked it.
The corpse did not react.
“Dead.”
The problem became obvious immediately.
The worm was still enormous.
Its body filled the corridor from wall to wall.
Beyond it, something moved.
A second scream came through the stone.
Fendor stared at the corpse.
“No.”
Hexen tilted his head.
Another vibration passed beneath them.
Another worm.
Farther ahead.
The dead creature had not been alone.
Perhaps the eggs had more than one parent.
Perhaps the entire cavern system belonged to a brood.
The taxonomy did not matter.
The second worm cared that they were there.
The first one’s carcass now separated the heroes from it.
Kaylor looked at the wall of flesh.
Then reached for the new two-handed sword.
Fendor saw his hand move.
“Kaylor.”
“We need through.”
“You could use literally any of the other weapons strapped to you.”
Kaylor paused.
That was difficult to argue with.
He took another blade instead.
Fendor relaxed by a fraction.
They began cutting.
There was no dignified method.
The corpse was simply too large.
They hacked into it, widened wounds, pulled away thick sections and attempted not to think too hard about what they were walking through.
Nethnarel stared.
“I have magic.”
Fendor dragged a piece of worm flesh aside.
“Save it.”
“I could turn it into something smaller.”
“It’s dead.”
Nethnarel considered.
“That complicates it.”
“Good.”
“That is not the word I would use.”
Hexen had another solution.
His body contracted.
Fendor turned in time to watch the druid disappear.
A tiny black shape landed on the stone.
A beetle.
Hard-shelled.
Small enough to fit through gaps that none of the others could use.
Fendor looked down.
“Hexen?”
The beetle crawled into the dead worm.
Fendor stared.
“No.”
Isamu watched it disappear.
“Efficient.”
“That does not make it better.”
The beetle forced its way through the carcass.
The passage was unpleasant even by beetle standards.
Hexen emerged on the far side, crossed several feet of blood-slick stone and changed back.
His human shape expanded almost directly in front of the second worm.
Hexen looked up.
The creature looked down.
“Perhaps,” he said, “too efficient.”
The worm struck.
Hexen moved.
Its teeth scraped stone.
Isamu came through the opening they had cut behind him, followed by Kaylor.
The second fight began before Fendor and Nethnarel had fully cleared the first corpse.
That changed the battle into something uglier.
The second worm possessed the same poisonous presence. Its body forced unnatural vapors through the rock. Its jaws filled the corridor. It tried repeatedly to swallow whoever stood closest.
But it lacked something the first worm had possessed.
Surprise.
The heroes knew the shape of the problem now.
Isamu attacked and withdrew.
Kaylor occupied the center of the passage, turning the worm’s size against it. The creature could not maneuver without exposing more of itself.
Hexen fought from the far side after his insect-sized infiltration, forcing the monster to divide what little attention it could manage.
Fendor fired through the opening in the first corpse.
Nethnarel attacked from behind him.
The worm screamed.
Fendor’s arrow disappeared into its mouth.
Another struck the side of the head.
Isamu hit it.
Kaylor hit it.
Hexen struck from somewhere Fendor could not see.
The enormous body shuddered.
Then collapsed.
Its head hit the cavern floor hard enough to shake the eggs.
Silence followed.
This time the silence held.
Fendor waited.
“Another?”
Hexen listened.
Nothing moved through the stone.
“No.”
Fendor nodded.
“That is the correct use of that word.”
The poison faded with the creatures.
Not immediately, but quickly enough that they understood the connection. The chemical wrongness traveling through the rock weakened as the worms died, until the underground air returned to ordinary stale foulness.
Ordinary stale foulness felt remarkably pleasant.
They cleared enough of the carcasses to continue.
The task required far more physical labor than anyone wanted after the fight. Kaylor cut. Isamu pulled. Hexen found places where the bodies could be shifted. Fendor participated while complaining with enough consistency that Nethnarel eventually told him he could stop helping if he preferred.
He did not.
A modest wave of healing passed through the group when they were finally done, restoring bruised flesh and easing injuries accumulated through the cramped battle. It did not make anyone fresh.
It made continuing less foolish.
That was enough.
The eggs remained.
Hexen examined one without touching it.
“No reason to destroy the rest.”
Fendor stared.
“They hatch into those.”
“Probably.”
“Your argument needs work.”
“They’re animals.”
“They tried to eat Isamu.”
“Many animals would.”
Isamu nodded.
Fendor looked between them.
“I have selected poor companions.”
They left the surviving eggs alone.
The chest waited ahead.
It stood in a shallow widening of the tunnel beyond the worst of the brood, small enough that Kaylor could almost have carried it beneath one arm. Its surfaces caught the light like smoked glass, though the material did not quite seem to be glass.
Nethnarel approached.
The magic around it was obvious now.
Strong.
Contained.
Old enough that she could not tell whether the worms had guarded it or merely nested around something that had been there long before them.
Isamu crouched beside the chest and examined its seams.
“Trapped?”
Nethnarel joined him.
“Maybe.”
Fendor remained several steps back.
“Excellent distance.”
Kaylor looked at him.
“You stood next to a cursed sword.”
“I am improving.”
Between Isamu’s scrutiny and Nethnarel’s magic, they found a way through the chest’s protection without discovering what failure would have done.
The lid opened.
Nothing exploded.
Fendor waited an additional heartbeat anyway.
Inside lay a piece of cloth.
He stared.
“That is disappointing.”
Nethnarel reached down.
The fabric was black.
Perfectly black.
Not dyed cloth so much as darkness persuaded to become material. It was roughly circular when unfolded, perhaps a foot across, light enough to drape over one hand.
No runes.
No jeweled border.
No visible enchantment.
Nethnarel felt the magic immediately.
Her expression changed.
Fendor saw it.
“No.”
“I haven’t done anything.”
“You have the same face you make immediately before doing something.”
“I am examining it.”
“From here?”
She ignored him.
The power inside the cloth was difficult to identify.
Not because it was hidden.
Because it did more than the categories she expected.
Spatial magic.
Certainly.
Something related to passage.
Movement.
But the destination did not resolve.
Nethnarel turned it over.
Nothing.
She folded it.
The magic remained.
She opened it again.
“I can’t fully read this.”
Hexen came closer.
“Dangerous?”
“Probably.”
Fendor folded his arms.
“There is a refreshing change.”
Nethnarel looked toward the cavern wall.
“No.”
Fendor recognized his own word.
“That was mine.”
“I know what you’re going to say.”
“You do not.”
“You’re going to tell me not to put it on the wall.”
“Yes.”
Nethnarel walked toward the wall.
Fendor sighed.
Kaylor smiled.
“I like this plan.”
“You would.”
Nethnarel pressed the black cloth against the stone.
For half a heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then the circle expanded.
Not the cloth.
The opening.
A dark line raced outward around Nethnarel’s hand, growing until a round passage nearly six feet across occupied the cavern wall.
Stone disappeared from within it.
Not broken.
Not removed.
Replaced.
Another world existed on the other side.
Everyone stopped.
The cavern ceased to matter.
Beyond the circular opening lay a horizon beneath a sky that looked wounded.
The colors were wrong.
Not impossible individually, but assembled according to rules the heroes’ world did not use. Dark vegetation twisted across a broad landscape. Shapes moved among it, too far away to identify and too unpleasant in silhouette to invite closer inspection.
Something like rain fell upward in the distance.
Or ash.
The horizon itself seemed to bend.
Fendor moved beside Nethnarel despite every instinct telling him to remain farther away.
“What is that?”
Nethnarel did not answer.
She had seen other planes.
Other worlds.
Mirror realms.
Ancient machines that ignored distance.
Portals connecting places that had never been neighbors.
This was different.
The cloth had not opened a prepared gate.
It had selected somewhere.
Randomly.
A destination chosen without care for whether the people standing before it could survive there.
A long shape moved through the vegetation beyond.
Another rose behind it.
Nethnarel grabbed the edge of the cloth.
“Enough.”
She peeled it away from the wall.
The opening collapsed.
The terrible horizon became a shrinking circle.
Then nothing.
Stone returned.
The cavern was dark again.
No one spoke.
Nethnarel looked at the cloth in her hands.
Fendor eventually said, “I preferred it when it was disappointing.”
Kaylor approached.
“Do it again.”
“No.”
Everyone looked at Nethnarel.
She folded the cloth.
Kaylor looked surprised.
“You said no.”
“Yes.”
Fendor smiled.
“Growth.”
“I said no now.”
Fendor’s smile disappeared.
“Less growth.”
Nethnarel understood the item at last.
Not every detail.
Enough.
“A Well of Many Worlds.”
Hexen looked at the folded black fabric.
“I’ve heard of them.”
Fendor had too.
The stories differed because objects capable of making stories leave one reality for another tended to create unreliable witnesses. Some versions described a cloth like this one. Others a magical opening that could be carried folded in a pocket. Cast against a surface, the Well created a passage to somewhere beyond the world.
The danger was the destination.
Kaylor looked at the wall where another reality had existed moments before.
“Can you choose?”
Nethnarel shook her head.
“Not like this.”
“Random?”
“Yes.”
“That makes it better.”
“No,” Fendor said.
Kaylor looked at him.
“It could get us out of somewhere.”
“Into somewhere worse.”
“Still out.”
“That is not how improvement works.”
Hexen considered the possibilities more seriously.
An army too large to defeat.
A prison with no ordinary exit.
A collapsing plane.
A dragon.
A god.
A place from which any destination might be preferable.
The cloth was not a weapon.
It was not exactly an escape.
It was chance given a doorway.
That made it one of the most dangerous useful things they had found in years.
Nethnarel folded the Well carefully.
The black fabric became innocuous again.
Small.
Light.
Easy to carry.
Fendor disliked that almost as much as the portal.
“You’re keeping it.”
Nethnarel placed it among her gear.
“Yes.”
“Of course.”
Kaylor touched the scabbard of the unknown runic sword across his back.
Fendor noticed.
“No comparisons.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were thinking that yours summons demons and hers opens worlds.”
Kaylor smiled.
“Mine has a sword.”
“That sentence accomplished nothing.”
Their voices faded into the stone.
Behind them lay the farm.
A dead adventurer.
A murdered investigator.
His widow and son driven from their home.
A blade that had returned from the cult settlement carrying names no mortal should know.
Beneath all of that had waited a tunnel filled with eggs and creatures large enough to swim through rock.
And now a piece of black cloth capable of opening the world itself.
Fendor looked back toward the way they had come.
“What exactly was that farmer involved in before he retired?”
Hexen considered the question.
“Maybe nothing.”
Fendor looked at the Well hidden in Nethnarel’s gear.
“The cursed sword?”
“Could have changed later.”
“The underground worms?”
“They could have come later.”
“The door to another world?”
Hexen paused.
“That is harder.”
Nethnarel looked ahead.
The cavern did not end with the chest.
There were other branches behind them, portions of the underground passages they had not explored while the worms blocked their way. The stone changed color farther back. One wall had already seemed too regular to be natural.
Whatever lay beneath the farmhouse had not begun with the cult.
That much was becoming clear.
The people rebuilding the abandoned town in the mountains were new.
This place was not.
Isamu turned.
“More tunnel.”
Fendor sighed.
“Of course.”
The heroes moved back into the dark.
Nethnarel carried a doorway to anywhere.
Kaylor carried a sword that knew the names of demons.
Neither of those things explained what had been buried beneath the farm.
They were beginning to suspect the answer would be worse.