The guards on the wall did not look like pilgrims.
That was the first problem.
The second was that Kaylor could feel what they were.
The dragonborn stood before the closed gate while the chanting rolled over the fortress walls in a single enormous rhythm. Twenty-five feet of old stone separated the heroes from the courtyard. Beyond it rose the temple itself, half-hidden inside a second glow of yellow-orange magic.
The outer barrier was subtler.
It followed the fortress wall so precisely that at first it seemed only an aura cast by the stone. Then Nethnarel watched dust move toward it and stop. A faint shimmer passed through the air.
Not merely light.
A shell.
The figures on the parapet looked down at them.
Some were almost human.
Others less so.
One woman possessed the unsettling beauty of a statue built by someone who had only heard humanity described. Another carried serpentine features that reminded Fendor unpleasantly of old stories about women whose eyes could turn men to stone. Armor differed from one guardian to another, but the same symbols appeared among them.
The Naked Goddess.
Kaylor reached through the senses that had survived his broken oath.
He had once imagined holiness as a simple thing.
Light was light.
Darkness was darkness.
Celestial beings served good powers because the universe ought to have possessed enough decency to keep at least that distinction uncomplicated.
Experience had corrected him.
He felt no undead.
No fiends.
But something divine lived within the defenders.
Celestial.
Kaylor frowned.
Fendor noticed.
“What?”
“They’re celestial.”
Fendor looked up at the parapet.
One of the guardians stared back without expression.
“That’s inconvenient.”
“It doesn’t mean they’re good.”
“More inconvenient.”
Hexen studied the temple.
“The goddess could be the source.”
Kaylor nodded.
The celestial presence felt wrong only because he had expected it to feel right. It carried radiance, but radiance belonged to gods before it belonged to morality.
The Naked Goddess had apparently claimed her own.
The defenders did not attack.
Not yet.
They simply watched.
Behind them, hundreds—perhaps thousands—continued chanting.
Isamu approached the wall.
He touched the glowing barrier.
Energy crackled against his fingers.
He withdrew them.
“Solid.”
Fendor looked at the stone wall behind it.
“The wall was already solid.”
“This is more solid.”
“That is upsettingly precise.”
Isamu stepped back.
Then ran.
Three strides carried him toward the fortress. His foot hit stone. Then another. He moved upward as naturally as most men crossed level ground, body almost horizontal against the vertical face.
Ten feet.
Fifteen.
Twenty.
Then he struck the magic.
The barrier curved with the fortress rather than ending at the battlements. Isamu hit it, changed direction and somehow found himself running along the outer surface of an invisible dome.
For one remarkable moment he continued.
Fendor watched from below.
“Is he running on the spell?”
Nethnarel tilted her head.
“Yes.”
The dome curved farther overhead.
Isamu slowed.
Gravity eventually reasserted an opinion.
He came back down.
Kaylor looked at him.
“Can you get over?”
“No.”
“Could you keep running?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Isamu considered.
“Because.”
Fendor nodded.
“That is the correct answer.”
They tried the gate.
A heavy portcullis stood behind the magical shell. It might have been lifted with enough strength.
Reaching it was the problem.
Fendor produced a potion.
The liquid inside was dark and charged with faint threads of energy.
Nethnarel looked at it.
“Storm giant?”
“Yes.”
“You’ve been carrying that?”
“Yes.”
“Since when?”
Fendor drank it instead of answering.
Power hit him almost immediately.
His posture changed.
Not visibly enough to make him resemble a giant, but the strength inside his body stopped obeying elven proportions.
He stepped to the barrier and reached toward the portcullis.
His hands stopped against smooth magical resistance.
Fendor pushed.
Nothing.
He pushed harder.
The barrier did not care whether the man outside it had the strength of a storm giant.
“That seems wasteful,” Nethnarel said.
Fendor looked at her.
“The potion lasts longer than this conversation.”
Kaylor tested the barrier with steel.
His weapon struck.
Magic flashed.
The blow rebounded without leaving so much as a scratch in the glow.
Hexen tried a more civilized approach.
He lifted his staff, gathered dispelling power and sent it into the barrier.
For an instant, the outer shell erupted with white-green cracks.
The magic shuddered.
Then settled.
Still there.
Hexen lowered the staff.
“Strong.”
Fendor flexed his newly enhanced hand.
“More technical analysis.”
“We have established a standard.”
The guards above still had not attacked.
That was beginning to bother Kaylor.
They watched the heroes test the barrier as though none of it mattered.
Because perhaps it did not.
The chanting continued.
That was the purpose of the wall.
Not to kill intruders.
To waste their time.
Kaylor looked past the portcullis.
The interior courtyard was visible through the gate.
So was the space immediately beyond the magical shell.
He knew that distance.
He vanished.
Misty Step carried him through.
The barrier did not stop him because Kaylor never crossed it.
One moment he stood outside.
The next he stood inside the fortress.
The nearest guardian stared.
Kaylor smiled.
“Hello.”
Weapons came out.
The waiting ended.
Kaylor called divine power into his axe.
Holy light wrapped the blade, bright enough to reflect from the inside of the magical dome.
The nearest defender charged.
Kaylor met her.
His first blow almost cut her from her feet.
The second drove her backward.
Whatever celestial substance lived inside the woman did nothing to make steel less convincing.
Outside, Fendor looked through the barrier.
“Kaylor is fighting.”
Nethnarel nodded.
“Yes.”
“We should probably join him.”
“Probably.”
Isamu was examining the barrier again.
He had another idea.
That was rarely comforting.
A Bead of Force appeared in his hand.
Fendor saw it.
“What are you doing?”
“Testing.”
“We did testing.”
“Different test.”
Isamu struck the magical shell with the bead.
The bead activated.
A sphere of force blossomed against the larger barrier, wedged partly within the same impossible boundary. One magical surface met another and refused to surrender.
A bubble inside a bubble.
Isamu studied it.
Nethnarel stared.
“That is ridiculous.”
“Yes.”
“Will it work?”
Isamu looked toward the trapped sphere.
“Maybe.”
Inside, Kaylor blocked another attack.
The defenders had finally accepted him as a genuine problem.
He welcomed the promotion.
Nethnarel flew toward the gate.
The fiery wings she carried now were no longer spectacle to the others. They had watched her cross lakes, villages and battlefields with them blazing from her back. She rose to the height of the portcullis, close enough to touch the invisible barrier.
Her hand stopped against it.
She looked at the force shell.
Then she remembered something.
“Oh.”
Fendor disliked the sound.
“What?”
Nethnarel began digging through her gear.
“Something old.”
“That narrows it down poorly.”
She pulled out a folded circle of black fabric.
Not the Well of Many Worlds.
Fendor was relieved for approximately half a second.
Then he recognized the other object.
“Is that a Portable Hole?”
“Yes.”
“What are you doing with it?”
Nethnarel spread it against the magical barrier.
The cloth adhered.
Reality became negotiable.
The black circle opened.
Not into the extradimensional storage space it normally created against a mundane surface.
Through.
The force shell disappeared inside the circle.
Beyond it waited the courtyard.
For several seconds, everyone simply stared.
Nethnarel looked through the opening.
“Well.”
Fendor smiled.
“That is analysis.”
Kaylor saw the hole appear from the other side.
He laughed.
The defenders did not.
Nethnarel stepped through first.
Isamu followed.
Fendor arrived behind them, Storm Giant strength still burning through his body.
Hexen came last.
The fortress barrier remained intact everywhere except one black circular opening where Nethnarel had persuaded an extradimensional object to disagree with it.
Fendor glanced at her.
“You’ve been carrying that too?”
“Yes.”
“You own too many holes.”
“That sentence sounds like your problem.”
It was difficult to argue.
The courtyard had already become a battlefield.
More defenders appeared along the parapets and stairs. Some carried blades. Others began shaping magic.
The temple beyond them remained wrapped in its inner aura.
The chanting continued.
That mattered most.
Kaylor regrouped with the others.
“We need through the second barrier.”
Fendor drew the Oathbow.
“We should survive the first one.”
“Also useful.”
Hexen looked toward the defenders.
He had threatened to become a dragon before they reached the wall.
Now he decided to stop threatening.
His body changed.
Not into an elemental.
Not into a wolf, turtle, insect or any of the other forms the others had learned to accept without comment.
He grew.
The courtyard suddenly became much smaller.
Green cloth and human flesh vanished beneath red scales. Arms became immense forelegs. Wings unfolded across the stone. A long neck rose above the heroes. Horns swept backward from a skull large enough that Fendor could have stood inside the mouth if he suffered a catastrophic failure of judgment.
An adult red dragon stood inside the fortress.
Everyone stopped.
Including several heroes.
Fendor’s hand tightened around the Oathbow.
His mind supplied one useful fact.
Dragon.
Another supplied another.
Very large dragon.
Instinct began suggesting a third.
Run.
Then Kaylor’s presence cut through it.
The old courage around the dragonborn remained even after everything else about his oath had changed. Fear reached toward those nearest him and found no purchase.
Fendor exhaled.
He looked up at Hexen.
“You could have warned me.”
The dragon lowered its head.
Hexen’s voice emerged deeper, roughened by a throat built for fire.
“I did.”
“You said you might become a dragon.”
“I became one.”
“That is not the same thing.”
The defenders had worse problems.
Hexen opened his wings.
Fright rolled across the fortress.
Not magic exactly.
Something older.
The knowledge buried inside mortal creatures that certain shapes had once owned the sky.
Several celestial guardians broke.
One turned and ran.
Another backed toward the outer force barrier, discovered that fear did not make the wall less solid, and remained trapped against it.
Others resisted.
One raised both hands.
Cold exploded through the courtyard.
A cone of frost swept toward Kaylor.
Ice formed over armor and stone.
Kaylor endured it, the magic blunted by his defenses but not erased.
Another defender answered Hexen with a storm of frozen force that burst across the dragon’s scales and caught Fendor near the edge.
Fendor ducked behind broken masonry.
“Everyone became very interested in cold after the red dragon appeared.”
Nethnarel looked toward Hexen.
“It is sensible.”
“I did not say it wasn’t.”
Isamu moved.
He had solved his force-bubble experiment.
The magical sphere he had created against the barrier became a weapon against the barrier’s geometry itself. He used its repelling force at precisely the right angle, accepted the blast rather than resisting it and let the magic throw him through the impossible overlap.
He emerged on the inside.
Landed.
Straightened.
Fendor stared.
“You could have used the hole.”
Isamu looked toward Nethnarel’s open passage.
“I know.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I had already started.”
Fendor considered that.
“Reasonable.”
It was not.
But it was Isamu.
The celestial defenders attacked in earnest.
Spears and magic crossed the courtyard.
Kaylor held the center.
Hexen became the largest tactical problem anyone could see.
Nethnarel remained mobile, wings carrying her toward whatever angle the force barrier and towers failed to protect.
Fendor finally had distance.
That improved his mood.
He raised the Oathbow.
The weapon’s old magic waited.
Fendor chose one of the defenders who had resisted Hexen’s fear.
“You.”
The oath settled.
He fired.
The first arrow struck.
The second followed.
The third crossed the space before the defender had fully reacted to the first.
Years ago, Fendor had considered three impossible shots in succession an achievement.
Now it was simply what happened when something remained visible long enough.
The target survived.
Fendor frowned.
“No.”
Arcane force entered the next arrow.
It struck.
Bursting energy exploded outward.
The blast caught another defender close enough that Fendor had not even been aiming at him.
That one fell.
Nethnarel saw it.
“You killed the wrong one.”
“I killed an additional one.”
“That is not the same.”
“It is better.”
A spell formed beneath Hexen.
Blades appeared.
Hundreds of them.
The air became a revolving storm of sharpened metal, each edge flashing as it turned. The barrier of blades occupied the space around the red dragon and threatened to shred anything remaining there.
Hexen moved.
The storm did not.
The spell remained behind as a whirling trap in the courtyard.
Fendor looked at it.
“Do not stand there.”
Hexen stared down at him.
“Thank you.”
“I provide tactical guidance.”
“You provide observations.”
“Good observations.”
The battle spread across the fortress.
Some defenders fought.
Some fled from Hexen.
Others recovered from the supernatural fear and turned back.
Kaylor pursued one who tried to retreat, striking as the enemy moved. The attack opened the defender badly enough that she stumbled into the wall of force, trapped between an Oathbreaker and an invisible barrier.
Not an enviable location.
Nethnarel flew through the Portable Hole.
Then upward.
Once inside the courtyard, she gained enough height to see a defender beyond one of the structures.
Magic gathered around her hand.
Green-white light condensed into a narrow point.
Fendor noticed.
“Disintegrate?”
“Yes.”
“Try not to hit the fortress.”
Nethnarel glanced at the acres of stone surrounding them.
“I’ll do my best.”
She released it.
The beam crossed the courtyard.
The defender resisted the spell’s worst effect, refusing to vanish into dust, but the impact still tore through armor and celestial flesh.
The enemy remained standing.
Barely.
Nethnarel looked offended.
“I dislike that.”
Kaylor had reached another defender.
He did not bother with a complicated response.
The axe came down.
Once.
Again.
The celestial warrior collapsed.
Kaylor moved on before the body hit the ground.
The chanting continued.
That was becoming intolerable.
Every fight in the courtyard consumed seconds.
Every frightened guardian they drove away created another opening.
Every spell thrown at them represented more time for whatever waited within the temple.
Hexen rose.
The great red wings spread.
He climbed high enough to clear his companions and turned his head toward three defenders clustered along the interior wall.
He inhaled.
Everyone who knew what he had become recognized the next part.
Fendor stepped away.
Fire came out.
Not a spell.
Not a fireball with boundaries shaped by a caster’s intent.
Dragonfire.
It crossed the courtyard in a roaring cone.
Stone blackened.
Armor glowed.
One defender disappeared inside the inferno and never came out.
The others survived only technically.
When the flames passed, Hexen’s Frightful Presence struck them again.
One resisted.
Another turned and fled.
The fortress had been built to repel armies.
It had not been designed for an adult red dragon appearing inside the walls.
Fendor smiled.
“I admit this is better than Earthquake.”
Hexen looked down.
“I know.”
A defender struck back at the dragon.
Magic slammed into Hexen with enough force to twist his body in the air.
The red dragon roared.
Not fear this time.
Pain.
He remained airborne.
Kaylor’s aura held around the companions closest to him. The celestial defenders had magic of their own, but the heroes were no longer discovering their capabilities one at a time.
They were adapting.
The defenders were not.
That difference had killed gods before.
Nethnarel circled.
Isamu moved beneath her.
Fendor’s bow never stopped.
Kaylor continued forcing enemies away from the gate and toward the temple.
Hexen dominated the center of the courtyard simply by existing there.
And still the inner aura glowed.
Still the chanting continued.
The fortress defenders were not the Gathering.
They were only its skin.
Fendor saw that before anyone said it.
He had spent years learning the difference between the target and what stood in front of the target.
The Oathbow made that lesson difficult to forget.
“They’re stalling us.”
Kaylor looked toward the temple.
“Yes.”
Nethnarel descended briefly beside them.
“The inner barrier is stronger.”
“You checked?”
“I can feel it.”
Fendor shot another arrow.
“Can your hole solve that one too?”
Nethnarel looked toward the temple.
“Maybe.”
“Good.”
“I said maybe.”
“That is the most hopeful word we’ve had all day.”
Another guardian fled from Hexen.
This one possessed enough discipline to fight against the terror.
It failed.
It ran until the outer magical shell stopped it, then turned desperately, trapped between the impossible wall and the dragon that had caused the fear.
Hexen did not pursue.
He did not need to.
Fear removed enemies almost as effectively as killing them.
Almost.
One defender resisted entirely.
Another used sheer discipline to break the effect.
The fortress had not been manned by ordinary converts.
These were chosen protectors.
Celestial servants empowered by the same goddess whose followers filled the temple.
Fendor fired again.
The battle answered him with magic.
Kaylor cut down another enemy.
Nethnarel’s wings carried her through a hail of supernatural force.
Isamu disappeared behind one tower and emerged near another defender before the creature realized he had moved.
Hexen’s enormous shadow crossed all of them.
Then more defenders appeared.
Not many.
Enough.
The heroes had breached the wall.
They had not broken the fortress.
Yet.
The chanting changed.
Only slightly.
A shift in rhythm.
A deeper note moving through the hundreds of voices inside the temple.
Nethnarel heard it first.
Her head turned.
Kaylor saw.
“What?”
“Something changed.”
The inner glow brightened.
Yellow became gold.
Gold became nearly white at its center.
For one heartbeat the temple doors were visible within it.
Then the light thickened again.
Fendor felt the Oathbow vibrate in his hand.
Not from magic.
From another arrow leaving the string.
He struck a defender and watched the creature stagger.
They were winning the wrong battle.
Kaylor knew it too.
He looked at the heroes.
“Push forward.”
Hexen beat his wings.
Air hammered the courtyard.
Isamu started toward the inner stairs.
Nethnarel climbed.
Fendor moved along the wall searching for the angle beyond the defenders.
Kaylor followed.
Behind them, the Portable Hole remained fixed against the outer barrier—the absurd black doorway through the magic that had been built to stop armies.
Ahead, the second barrier waited.
The chanting became louder.
A defender raised a spear.
Another gathered magic.
Hexen roared.
Some of them ran.
Others did not.
The Heroes of Oxland advanced into the fortress while the ritual continued around them.
They had gotten through the wall.
Now they had to reach the goddess.
And the Gathering was not waiting for them.