The people did not stop chanting when the heroes entered.
That frightened Nethnarel more than if they had screamed.
The sanctuary should have erupted into panic.
A section of its ancient wall had just melted away. Five armed strangers stood in the breach. One of those strangers had already been a red dragon, then a blue dragon, and Hexen was presently expanding into something enormous again.
None of it mattered to the congregation.
Men and women filled the pews shoulder to shoulder. Some wore the simple clothes of farmers. Others looked like merchants, craftsmen, travelers or laborers. Nethnarel recognized the same burning-woman symbols they had seen on the road into the mountains. Some hung from cords around necks. Others had been painted onto cloth or sewn into robes.
They were the pilgrims.
The people who had walked voluntarily toward this place.
The people who had told Kaylor that money would soon be meaningless.
The people who believed the world was about to be cleansed.
Their faces remained turned toward the altar.
Their voices remained joined.
Behind them, above the distant priest, light gathered.
Not a single sphere.
Several smaller masses of radiance moved around one another, swirling like fragments of a constellation that had forgotten the sky. At their center, a brighter shape continued forming.
Female.
Beautiful.
Angelic.
Almost.
The outline had not yet become flesh.
Nethnarel could not decide whether that made it better.
Hexen entered the sanctuary.
He became a Dragon Turtle.
The transformation consumed the doorway.
Flesh expanded into armored shell. His head rose above the nearest pews while enormous legs settled onto stone already damaged by age and battle. The congregation nearest him should have scattered.
They did not even look up.
Fendor stepped beneath the Dragon Turtle's raised body.
“This is disturbing.”
Kaylor entered behind him.
“They're focused.”
“On what?”
The chanting rose.
Fendor looked toward the forming light.
“Probably that.”
Then the light attacked.
One of the luminous swarms broke formation.
It crossed the sanctuary in a blur and struck Hexen.
There was no single creature within it. The thing seemed to be made from dozens of small motes, each moving independently while somehow sharing purpose. They struck the Dragon Turtle from multiple angles at once, flashes of radiance bursting against his scales.
Another swarm followed.
Hexen absorbed the impacts.
His enormous size made knocking him aside impossible.
That did not make the attacks harmless.
Isamu disappeared between the pews.
He had learned long ago that some enemies were easier to understand by hitting them.
The whip cracked through one of the luminous masses.
A single light vanished.
Isamu struck again.
Another disappeared.
He stared at the remaining swarm for exactly as long as he needed to understand the rule.
Individual pieces.
Individual deaths.
He attacked a third.
The formation weakened.
“Seven,” he said.
Fendor was drawing the Oathbow.
“Seven what?”
“Lights left.”
“You counted?”
“Yes.”
“Of course.”
Nethnarel had stopped listening.
She was looking past the congregation.
War-priests stood near the altar.
The celestial gladiators who had survived outside had regrouped there as well. The principal priest remained behind them, still chanting and still working the magic gathering overhead.
There were enough hostile creatures clustered within sight.
More than enough.
Nethnarel had been saving something.
She rose several feet above the pews.
Fendor saw the expression on her face.
“You're screaming.”
“Not yet.”
“That distinction has become important.”
The spell had limits.
Twenty minds.
A fixed reach.
Too many enemies beyond it.
Nethnarel pushed against those limits anyway.
She had done that all her life.
Magic had rules.
Wild magic had suggestions.
She reached farther.
For one impossible heartbeat, something answered.
Not the goddess.
Not anything inside the temple.
Something older in Hexen's tangled alliances—the distant favor of the Hunt that had touched their lives before—seemed to bend probability just far enough.
Nethnarel smiled.
Then screamed.
No sound came from her mouth.
The sanctuary screamed anyway.
The attack existed inside thought.
The luminous swarms failed first.
Every remaining mote went out at once.
One instant they orbited the altar.
The next there was nothing.
Priests staggered.
Gladiators froze.
Several defenders simply stopped moving, their minds locked inside bodies that no longer understood how to act.
Two of the casters near the altar died.
Their heads burst.
The sound finally made some of the townspeople flinch.
Only flinch.
Then they resumed chanting.
Fendor looked at Nethnarel.
She was breathing hard.
“Effective.”
“Mostly.”
“Mostly?”
She pointed.
Three figures near the altar remained fully mobile.
Fendor sighed.
“Of course.”
The temple answered.
One of the priests raised both hands.
The ground moved.
Not metaphorically.
The entire sanctuary lurched sideways.
Stone cracked from one wall to another. Pews jumped from the floor. Ancient columns groaned. Dust poured from the ceiling as a wave of violent motion traveled beneath the temple.
Earthquake.
The first rupture split the aisle.
People screamed.
They kept chanting.
That was worse.
Kaylor lost his footing as stone collapsed beneath him.
One moment he stood beside Fendor.
The next the floor swallowed his legs.
Broken masonry fell inward around the dragonborn and pinned him waist-deep.
Hexen's enormous Dragon Turtle body shifted as the ground failed beneath one side of him, but mass worked in his favor. The collapse could bury houses.
It had difficulty burying Hexen.
Isamu crossed the shaking floor without stopping.
Of course he did.
Nethnarel remained airborne.
Fendor caught himself against the Dragon Turtle's shell.
The earthquake rolled again.
Some of the congregation was not as fortunate.
A section of ceiling collapsed near the pews.
Stone fell.
Chanting voices disappeared beneath it.
The others continued.
Kaylor tore at the rubble around him.
“I'm stuck.”
Fendor looked down.
“I noticed.”
“Help.”
The earth moved again.
Fendor tightened his grip on Hexen.
“Later.”
Kaylor glared.
Then solved the problem himself.
Magic surged through him.
Haste.
The dragonborn moved with sudden impossible speed, ripping stone away from his armor and dragging himself out of the fractured floor.
He stood.
Dust covered him.
Blood ran down one side of his face.
Fendor nodded.
“Good.”
Kaylor vanished toward the altar.
Not literally.
Almost.
Hexen moved forward.
Fendor looked at the Dragon Turtle's shell.
Then at the priest they needed dead.
The idea arrived fully formed.
“No.”
Hexen's huge head turned.
Fendor climbed onto his back.
“Actually, yes.”
The elf ran up the Dragon Turtle's tail, crossed the shell and planted himself high enough to see over the surviving pews.
The Oathbow came up.
The principal priest stood near the altar.
Fendor chose him.
The weapon answered the oath.
The first arrow crossed the sanctuary.
It struck.
The second followed.
Arcane magic spread from the shaft in twisting poisonous brambles, wrapping the priest and binding his movement.
Fendor fired another.
Shadow clung to the arrow.
Then another shot threaded through bodies and ruined stone with the impossible geometry Fendor had built his reputation upon.
The priest staggered.
Still alive.
“Persistent.”
Hexen started moving with Fendor riding his shell.
Fendor adjusted his stance.
“This is surprisingly effective.”
Hexen continued forward.
“You're heavy.”
“No, I'm not.”
“You are while shooting.”
“That makes no sense.”
The priest began another spell.
Isamu saw him.
He spent a fraction of his remaining ki and became movement.
He crossed the sanctuary.
Pews became obstacles other people had.
He vaulted one, stepped across another, avoided the earthquake fissure and reached the altar almost instantly.
His first whip strike hit the priest's armor.
Barely mattered.
The second bounced away.
The man wore protection formidable enough that attacks which would have killed ordinary soldiers simply rang against him.
Isamu tried again.
The priest remained standing.
Kaylor appeared from another angle.
The dragonborn struck.
Once.
Twice.
Radiant power detonated with one of the blows.
The priest reeled.
Above him, the golden shape continued forming.
The congregation continued chanting.
Nethnarel watched them.
She wanted the chanting stopped.
That part was simple.
How was not.
She descended toward the crowd.
Then changed herself.
Her horns disappeared.
Her skin altered.
Her silhouette lengthened into something radiant and imposing.
A towering guardian angel hovered above the pews.
Nethnarel spread luminous wings that were not her own.
Then she amplified her voice.
“HEAR ME.”
The sanctuary shook with it.
Some of the fighters looked up.
The congregation did not.
Nethnarel pushed harder.
“I AM THE MESSENGER OF YOUR LORD.”
Her voice rolled through the temple.
“YOUR SERVICE IS COMPLETE. KNEEL. BE SILENT.”
A few faces twitched.
One woman in the third row looked upward.
Then the priest's chanting continued.
The congregation answered.
Their voices rose.
Nethnarel's borrowed angelic face tightened.
“Come on.”
Nothing.
The people ignored her.
Not because they could not hear.
Because whatever held their attention mattered more.
Nethnarel let the false angel fall away.
Her tiefling form returned.
She stared toward the altar.
“Are they controlled?”
No one answered.
She reached with magical senses.
Something was happening.
That much was obvious.
The chanting was feeding power into the ritual.
But she could not determine how.
A spell?
Faith?
Compulsion?
Willing participation?
The difference mattered enormously.
Nethnarel searched for a single point she could break.
One priest.
One object.
One enchantment.
Nothing resolved.
The congregation kept chanting.
The golden female figure became clearer.
Isamu looked back from the altar.
“Stop them.”
Nethnarel heard him.
She also heard Fendor from atop Hexen.
“How?”
No one had a good answer.
That was the problem.
They were used to monsters.
Monsters clarified things.
Monsters tried to kill you.
Then you killed them first.
The people in the pews were ordinary.
They had fed cattle.
Raised children.
Worked stalls.
Walked roads.
Some had probably spent their entire lives doing nothing more sinister than believing the wrong promise.
Perhaps they had chosen this.
Perhaps they had been enchanted.
Perhaps the distinction no longer mattered to whatever they were bringing into the world.
The chanting reached a crescendo.
Nethnarel looked at the forming figure.
Then at the congregation.
Then at the heroes.
“Circle of Death.”
Fendor stopped drawing his next arrow.
He understood immediately.
“No.”
Someone nearer the altar said, “Do it.”
Nethnarel looked across the pews.
“They're innocent people.”
The earthquake shook the temple again.
More stone fell.
Several worshippers died beneath it.
The survivors kept chanting.
Kaylor was still fighting the high priest.
He did not look back.
The forming woman became brighter.
The air tasted like lightning.
Nethnarel tried once more to sense what held the congregation.
Nothing.
No chain she could cut.
No spell she could dispel.
No enemy whose death promised to release them.
Only voices.
Feeding power.
“We've tried,” Isamu said.
Nethnarel hated him slightly for being right.
She lifted one hand.
Necrotic magic gathered.
Circle of Death was not subtle.
It was not precise.
That was the reason they were considering it.
The spell's radius spread through Nethnarel's mind.
Sixty feet.
A hundred and twenty feet across.
Enough.
More than enough.
It could catch nearly every person still chanting.
It could also catch friends if she placed it poorly.
Nethnarel adjusted the center.
Fendor watched.
“Neth.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“No.”
That ended the conversation.
The congregation continued chanting.
Nethnarel released the spell.
Death moved through the sanctuary.
There was no explosion.
No flame.
No lightning.
The air simply changed.
Warm skin paled.
Voices broke.
Hundreds of people inhaled at once.
Then began dying.
Bodies withered in the pews.
Hands shriveled around prayer symbols.
A man near the aisle reached toward the woman beside him and collapsed before touching her.
One voice stopped.
Then another.
Then twenty.
Then hundreds.
The chant disintegrated.
What had been a unified roar became scattered cries, gasps and silence.
Within seconds, almost none remained.
Nethnarel hovered above them.
She did not move.
Neither did Fendor.
Kaylor turned from the enemy in front of him.
For the first time since entering the sanctuary, he looked at the congregation.
Rows of bodies.
People.
Not demons.
Not monsters.
People.
A sound came from Kaylor.
Not a word.
A howl.
The anger in it was older than the temple.
Nethnarel looked at him.
Kaylor looked back.
Then the surviving demon attacked.
The moment ended.
It had been called through a Gate spell by one of the priests and had never possessed any particular loyalty to its summoner. The creature turned almost at random, tore into the war-priest nearest Kaylor and bit the man's head away.
Fendor stared.
“That is useful.”
Kaylor turned his grief toward the demon.
The axe struck.
The creature screamed.
“Not useful enough.”
The battle resumed around the dead.
The celestial gladiators that had survived Nethnarel's Psychic Scream began breaking free of their stunned state one by one.
Isamu met the first.
Whip.
Strike.
Flurry.
The woman fell.
Fendor jumped from Hexen's shell and killed another with the Oathbow before closing with the Vorpal Longsword.
Hexen continued forward in Dragon Turtle form until the need for size disappeared.
Kaylor hammered the gated creature with everything anger had left him.
The thing staggered.
Fendor came from the side.
The Vorpal Longsword flashed.
The demon's head separated.
The body fell among the dead worshippers.
Above the altar, the angelic figure was fading.
Nethnarel saw it.
The moment the chanting had stopped, the manifestation had weakened.
Now its outline dissolved into golden haze.
The beautiful face disappeared first.
Then the shoulders.
Then the light.
Whatever they had prevented from entering the world had not been the Naked Goddess herself.
The priest had been summoning something celestial.
An intermediary.
A servant.
Perhaps something worse behind a beautiful face.
They would never know.
One final gladiator remained.
She attacked.
Missed.
Nethnarel rose above the battlefield and lifted both hands.
Magic Missiles crossed the sanctuary.
One after another.
The last defender fell.
Silence arrived.
Actual silence.
Not the pause between chants.
Not the hush before a spell.
Silence.
The temple was full of dead people.
Kaylor put his axe across his back.
He looked at Nethnarel.
She expected anger.
What she saw was worse.
Disappointment.
Then Kaylor turned.
He walked out of the sanctuary.
“Neth,” Fendor said.
“I know.”
“No. I don't think you do.”
Nethnarel looked around.
Bodies filled the pews.
“I know exactly what I did.”
Isamu started after Kaylor.
Nethnarel stopped him with a word.
“Tell him—”
Isamu waited.
She looked toward the dead.
There was magic powerful enough to undo almost anything.
Somewhere among the party's remaining treasures was still the possibility of a wish.
Maybe.
The thought felt obscene immediately after the act.
“If there's a way to restore them,” she said, “tell him I'll do it.”
Isamu studied her.
Then followed Kaylor outside.
Fendor said nothing.
Hexen returned to human form.
He stood among the pews and looked at the ruined temple.
For once, no one made a joke.
Then Kaylor stopped in the outer hall.
The sword on his back changed.
The runic blade they had recovered beneath the farm had carried wrongness ever since the farmer's son dragged it home from his father's corpse.
That wrongness disappeared.
No flash.
No voice.
No final demon.
The pressure simply released.
Kaylor reached over his shoulder.
He did not draw the blade.
He knew.
The curse was gone.
Whatever the cult had done to the guardian's weapon had been tied to the ritual, the temple or the power sustaining it.
With the Gathering broken, that corruption had broken too.
Beneath it remained the sword that had existed before.
A powerful weapon.
Old.
Divine.
Its nature became clear enough that the name finally meant something.
Final Word.
Kaylor closed his eyes.
The name did not improve his mood.
Behind him, Isamu stopped.
“The curse is gone.”
Kaylor nodded.
“That doesn't fix anything.”
“No.”
Inside, the others began searching the temple.
The work felt ugly.
Necessary did not always feel better than ugly.
The principal priest and his defenders had carried extraordinary equipment. The surviving armor included plate and shields enchanted beyond ordinary craftsmanship. A heavy maul bore a dark consecration powerful enough to make even Kaylor wary of it.
There were scrolls.
One held Earthquake.
A wand designed to strengthen a war mage's attacks.
A small silver raven figurine carrying transformation magic.
Potions.
One for breathing water.
Another powerful enough to repair wounds that should have killed a man.
Then Fendor found the cards.
He stared at the deck.
Nethnarel saw him.
“No.”
“I didn't do anything.”
“Put it down.”
Fendor looked at the painted cards.
“Deck of Many Things.”
Hexen turned immediately.
“Put it down.”
Fendor set it carefully with the other recovered objects.
“Everyone is suddenly very cautious.”
Nethnarel looked around at the temple.
“Today has encouraged growth.”
Between art, coin and valuables, the temple held thousands in gold.
No one cared very much.
There were too many bodies.
Then Hexen noticed the wall.
A section of newer plaster had cracked during the Earthquake.
Something older showed beneath it.
Color.
He crossed the sanctuary and pulled at the loose material.
The surface broke away.
Mosaic appeared.
Not the cult's symbol.
Older.
Much older.
Fendor joined him.
Nethnarel came next.
Kaylor eventually returned from the outer hall, though he remained several steps behind the others.
Isamu stood beside him.
The heroes began uncovering the wall.
Piece by piece, the temple told them what the people who rebuilt it had tried to cover.
A woman fell from the heavens.
Naked.
Not sensual.
Not beautiful.
Broken.
Her body descended through the mosaic like a star thrown from the sky.
The earth rose to meet her.
At the moment of impact, something in her hands shattered.
A staff.
The artist had depicted the break deliberately.
Several pieces flew apart from the falling figure, scattered outward by the force of her collision with the world.
Nethnarel moved closer.
“There.”
Hexen traced the mosaic without touching it.
The story continued.
Ancient symbols surrounded the broken fragments.
Some were difficult to decipher.
Others were clearer.
Fendor read part of it.
Then stopped.
Kaylor came forward.
“What?”
Fendor looked at the image of the fallen goddess.
“We can't kill her.”
Kaylor's expression hardened.
“Everything dies.”
“Not like this.”
Hexen worked through more of the old writing.
The meaning became clear by degrees.
The staff had broken when the goddess fell.
Its fragments had been scattered.
The weapon—or focus, or divine instrument—had once been associated with her power.
The ancient message was explicit about one thing.
If the Naked Goddess returned, mortal weapons would not be enough.
The staff had to be found.
Reassembled.
Used against her.
Otherwise she was effectively beyond them.
Invulnerable to mortal attack.
Nethnarel stared at the mosaic.
“Of course.”
Fendor looked at her.
“What?”
“We need another artifact.”
“You sound surprised.”
“I was hoping we'd grown beyond that.”
“No.”
Kaylor studied the painted impact.
“Where did she fall?”
That answer existed too.
Not written as a convenient map.
The heroes already knew the place.
Everyone in this part of the world knew the place.
A scar large enough to survive kingdoms.
A crater so immense that maps treated it less like geography and more like absence.
Nethnarel understood first.
“The Void.”
No one spoke.
The name felt different inside the temple.
The great crater.
The place where the Naked Goddess had struck the world.
The obvious place to begin looking for pieces of the thing that had shattered with her.
Fendor studied another section of mosaic.
“There's something else.”
A shape rose from the crater.
Dragon.
At least that was the closest useful word.
The artist had painted an immense serpentine form emerging from—or guarding—the Void.
Metallic scales caught stylized light.
But not gold.
Not silver.
Not bronze.
The material looked wrong.
Stranger.
Paler.
Almost like metal that belonged to a story rather than a mine.
Kaylor leaned closer.
“Mithril?”
Hexen considered.
“Maybe.”
Fendor looked at the scale suggested by the mural.
“If that's accurate, it is enormous.”
Nethnarel looked at him.
“Ancient art isn't known for scale.”
“That is the most comforting possibility.”
The dragon appeared to rise from the crater itself.
Guardian.
Prisoner.
Enemy.
Witness.
The mosaic did not explain.
It only warned them that if they went to the Void, something waited there.
Kaylor touched the scabbard of Final Word.
The curse was gone.
The sword had its true nature again.
It was still not the weapon they needed.
Nethnarel looked back across the sanctuary.
The Gathering was over.
The people who had performed it lay dead.
Whether they had been victims, believers or both would not change what had happened here.
The manifestation had failed.
The cult's fortress had fallen.
The last guardian's warning had been vindicated centuries too late.
And still they had not stopped the Naked Goddess.
They had only learned how impossible stopping her would be.
Hexen looked at the broken staff in the mosaic.
“We find the pieces.”
Isamu nodded.
Fendor looked at the painted dragon.
“Then?”
Kaylor answered.
“We go to the Void.”
Outside the temple, evening had reached the mountains.
The repaired settlement lay quiet.
The roads that had once carried pilgrims toward the Gathering were empty now.
Far beyond those mountains, somewhere past everything they could see, the world held a wound.
A crater.
A shattered divine weapon.
A dragon made from impossible metal.
And perhaps a fallen goddess waiting beneath all three.
The calm before the storm was over.
The storm had a name.
The Void.