Something moved above them.
Isamu saw it first.
That was becoming less an accomplishment than a law of nature.
The others had begun settling around the center of the cavern, hoping to salvage the short rest that the steel constructs had interrupted. The first fragment of the shattered staff lay secured among their equipment. Nearby, one section of the immense symbol carved into the floor shimmered with liquid metal, proof that recovering the fragment had awakened something beneath the Void.
No one yet knew whether that was good.
Then Isamu looked up.
A shape spiraled downward from the darkness.
At first it resembled another construct. The creature caught the faint light and returned it with the cold sheen of metal. Wings extended from a compact draconic body. Its scales looked less like armor laid over flesh than a living substance halfway between silver and moonlight.
It was not enormous.
That was almost disappointing.
The mosaic beneath the cult temple had depicted something vast enough to rise from the Void like a second mountain. The legends attached to that image described a dragon of impossible size, a creature whose metallic body had become part of the mythology surrounding the crater.
This dragon was merely dangerous.
It descended until it hovered perhaps sixty feet above them.
Its eyes fixed on Isamu.
The monk studied it.
The dragon studied him.
“Friendly?” Kaylor asked.
The creature drew back its lips.
Fendor looked up.
“I’ll take that as no.”
Hexen was staring more carefully.
He knew dragons.
More importantly, through Shapechange he knew the distinction between creatures his magic could imitate and creatures it could not.
“This one,” he said slowly, “I could become.”
Nethnarel looked from him to the hovering beast.
“What is it?”
Hexen already suspected.
The name arrived from the old stories.
“Mithril dragon.”
Silence held for perhaps half a heartbeat.
Fendor looked at the modest-sized creature.
“That?”
“The legend is bigger.”
“How much bigger?”
“Massively.”
The dragon snarled.
Isamu shifted his weight.
Fendor nodded.
“I believe we’ve offended this one.”
The short rest ended before it began.
The mithril dragon inhaled.
What emerged was not flame.
Metal screamed through the air.
A narrow stream of brilliant shards descended from its mouth, dozens of needle-like splinters moving so quickly that they appeared liquid until they struck stone. They drove into the cavern floor where Isamu had been standing, leaving glittering spikes embedded in the rock.
Isamu stood several feet away.
He looked at the new patch of metal.
Then up at the dragon.
“Missed.”
Another shape moved overhead.
Then another.
Fendor looked toward the darkness.
“Of course there are more.”
There were enough that counting stopped being useful.
The smaller mithril dragons descended from the cavern roof in loose spirals, their bodies appearing and disappearing among stalactites. They were not the legendary monster from the mural.
They did not need to be.
The heroes were already exhausted.
That made ordinary dragons quite sufficient.
Fendor drew first.
The Icy Burst bow bent.
His arrow crossed the sixty feet between them and struck mithril with a ringing sound unlike flesh, scale or armor.
The dragon turned.
Fendor released another.
The second shaft struck.
Arcane energy followed the third.
Bursting Arrow detonated around the creature in a wave of force, catching another dragon sweeping too close beside it.
Neither fell.
Fendor moved immediately.
“Spread out.”
Nethnarel was already airborne.
“That was my idea.”
“You were flying before the problem existed.”
“That doesn’t make it less my idea.”
One of the dragons chose her.
It accelerated.
Nethnarel saw the first claw coming and twisted aside.
The second struck.
The mithril talons cut differently from steel.
They did not merely open flesh.
They left it unwilling to close.
Nethnarel gasped as blood streamed from the wound.
The dragon came around again.
Another claw.
Another cut.
Fresh blood followed the first.
She climbed.
The creature stayed with her.
Pain accumulated faster than she could ignore it.
The magic that had kept her alive through the temple had restored much. It had not restored infinite blood.
The third strike nearly finished the argument.
Nethnarel looked down.
The cavern floor seemed much farther away than ten feet.
She knew exactly how little life remained in her.
Almost none.
“Hexen.”
He had already seen it.
The druid looked toward the fight overhead and made a decision he would later describe as giving up the opportunity to do something more entertaining.
Magic struck Nethnarel.
Her body expanded.
The mithril dragon recoiled.
Nethnarel’s horns vanished into the changing shape of her skull. Wings widened. Her tail thickened. Crimson scales replaced skin. Her neck stretched. Claws large enough to tear trees apart appeared at the end of limbs that had been human a moment earlier.
An adult red dragon now flew where Nethnarel had been.
Fendor stared upward.
“Well.”
The red dragon looked down.
“Don’t.”
Her voice had changed.
Fendor smiled.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were going to.”
“Yes.”
The transformation had given Nethnarel a new reservoir of flesh between herself and death.
It had not given her everything.
She inhaled.
Nothing happened.
No fire gathered.
The Polymorph carried strength, claws, jaws and the immense bulk of the creature Hexen had chosen for her, but not the full inheritance of an actual dragon’s supernatural breath.
Nethnarel tried again.
Still nothing.
She looked at Hexen.
“You made me defective.”
“You were at three hit points.”
Nethnarel considered.
“Acceptable.”
The mithril dragon attacked her.
Nethnarel attacked back.
Claw.
Claw.
Bite.
The two dragons collided in midair.
Red scale met mithril.
Their bodies twisted above the cavern while the smaller creature’s razor-edged talons carved wounds across Nethnarel’s borrowed hide.
Even transformed, the cuts bled unnaturally.
Mithril droplets seemed to linger in the wounds like fragments of glass.
Fendor watched the aerial struggle.
“This would have been easier if Kaylor had a bow.”
Kaylor stood beneath the fight with an axe.
“I’ve been saying that.”
“No, you’ve been complaining that everything keeps flying.”
“Same thing.”
Another mithril dragon crossed above Isamu.
The monk watched its path.
An idea occurred.
That was generally when the others became nervous.
Isamu took out his boomerang.
Fendor saw it.
“No.”
Isamu looked at the flying dragon.
Then at the boomerang.
Then at Fendor.
“What?”
“You have the expression.”
“I don’t have an expression.”
“You absolutely do.”
Isamu threw.
The boomerang spun upward.
Then Isamu jumped onto it.
For one extraordinary instant, the plan almost looked plausible.
He landed one foot on the rotating weapon, intending to use it as a springboard high enough to reach the mithril dragon with his whip.
The boomerang obeyed several basic physical principles that Isamu had neglected to consult.
It fell.
So did Isamu.
He hit the ground, rolled and skittered across wet stone.
The boomerang clattered away.
The mithril dragon continued flying.
Everyone stared.
Isamu stood.
Fendor lowered his bow.
“Successful?”
“No.”
“Good. I wanted to make sure.”
Isamu retrieved the boomerang.
He had fallen farther than most people could comfortably survive.
For him it was mostly embarrassing.
The dragon overhead inhaled.
Another stream of mithril spikes came down.
Isamu stepped aside.
Metal embedded itself in the floor exactly where he had been.
He looked at the dragon.
Then at the boomerang.
This time he stayed on the ground.
He threw it.
The weapon struck.
Returned.
Isamu caught it and threw again.
“See?” Fendor said. “Improvement.”
The battle moved through three dimensions.
Mithril dragons circled above them, diving whenever an isolated hero offered a target. Fendor tried to remain far enough from the others that one line of metallic breath could not catch several people at once. Isamu moved constantly. Kaylor shifted around the floor beneath the flyers, waiting for anything foolish enough to enter reach.
Hexen fired cold magic upward whenever he found a line.
Nethnarel remained an adult red dragon and fought at their own altitude.
Then one of the mithril dragons made a mistake.
It descended toward Fendor.
Perhaps it had decided the elf’s arrows were becoming irritating.
That was true.
Its solution was poor.
The creature flew low enough to claw him.
Fendor dropped the bow.
The Vorpal Longsword came out.
Storm-giant strength still lived inside him from the potion he had consumed at the fortress.
Fendor had spent most of the battle irritated that the dragons refused to come closer.
Now one had volunteered.
“Thank you.”
The mithril dragon struck.
Fendor moved with it.
The Vorpal blade hit once.
Again.
Again.
The dragon’s metal hide resisted the enchantment’s hunger for an easy decapitation, but it could not resist everything else the sword represented.
Fendor cut through neck and shoulder.
The creature came apart in the air.
Two halves struck the shallow water.
Fendor looked down.
“That is much better.”
Nethnarel’s dragon form roared overhead.
The sound was less triumphant than annoyed.
Another mithril dragon had opened fresh bleeding wounds along her side.
Hexen’s concentration remained the only reason those wounds belonged to several hundred pounds of expendable red-dragon flesh rather than Nethnarel herself.
Fendor looked up.
“Stay a dragon.”
Nethnarel’s head turned.
“I had not planned to become smaller.”
“Good.”
Hexen smiled.
Then another metallic dragon came for him.
The creature passed low.
A ray of frost met it.
Cold spread across mithril scales.
The dragon faltered.
Hexen struck again.
The creature dropped from the air and hit the cavern floor.
Kaylor watched it fall.
“Dragon slayer.”
Hexen looked at him.
“Do not start.”
Fendor heard.
“Too late.”
The remaining mithril dragons became more aggressive as their number fell.
One caught Fendor with a devastating diving attack.
Claw.
Bite.
The metallic teeth tore through armor.
Fendor staggered.
Then blood began running faster than the wounds justified.
He looked down.
“That is becoming a theme.”
The dragon pulled away.
Fendor reached for the bow.
Another arrow went up.
The creature twisted.
The shot missed.
Fendor’s magic corrected.
The arrow curved through the darkness toward another available target.
It did not quite find the line he wanted.
Fendor frowned.
“I need to practice that.”
The mithril dragon apparently took the attempt personally.
It descended again.
Kaylor remained underneath the battle, increasingly offended that the enemies refused to fight at a respectable altitude.
Fendor glanced toward him.
“You need a bow.”
“Yes.”
“I have extras.”
“You tell me this now?”
“I didn’t realize it was going to become a lifestyle problem.”
The last few minutes had made the point.
Eventually Kaylor produced a modest enchanted shortbow.
It looked almost absurd in the hands of a dragonborn accustomed to great weapons and divine power.
He drew.
The mithril dragon overhead was badly wounded.
Kaylor fired.
The arrow struck.
The creature folded in the air and dropped into the water.
For a moment no one said anything.
Fendor looked at the shortbow.
Then at the dragon.
Then at Kaylor.
“You killed a mithril dragon with that.”
Kaylor lowered the bow.
“Yes.”
“That bothers me.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know yet.”
The final combatant fell soon after.
Then the cavern became still.
No shapes circled overhead.
No mithril rain came screaming down.
No claws descended from the darkness.
The attempt to rest had become another pile of corpses.
Nethnarel remained a red dragon.
Hexen looked at her wounds.
The bleeding had slowed.
He waited.
Nethnarel lowered herself to the cavern floor, red wings folding around a body that occupied an inconvenient amount of space.
When the unnatural bleeding finally stopped, Hexen released the spell.
The dragon collapsed inward.
Nethnarel reappeared.
She stood.
Looked down at herself.
Still alive.
“That was unpleasant.”
Fendor sat heavily against a rock.
“You had more hit points than the rest of us.”
“I had them temporarily.”
“So do all living things.”
Nethnarel stared at him.
Fendor closed his eyes.
The mithril wound in his side was still bleeding.
“Perhaps later.”
They spent more magic.
There was no choice now.
Healing spread through the battered group in several pulses, closing the worst of what the dragons had opened. It did not restore them to anything approaching the condition in which sane adventurers would deliberately seek another fight.
It restored them enough to keep looking for somewhere safe to stop.
That had become the immediate objective.
Not the staff.
Not the goddess.
A room in which nothing attacked them for one hour.
The Void appeared to consider that ambition unreasonable.
Isamu began searching the perimeter again.
Fendor watched him go.
“If something bites you, I am staying here.”
Isamu continued walking.
“That wasn’t a joke.”
The edge of the cavern sloped upward.
The ceiling lowered gradually there, from the immense darkness above the central chamber to perhaps thirty or forty feet. Stalagmites and stalactites thickened near the wall. In several places they nearly met, turning stone formations into crude bars.
Water ran around them toward one of the small whirlpools.
Debris had collected nearby.
Bones.
Scraps of old wreckage.
A broken structure that might once have been part of an airship, though so little remained that identifying it required optimism.
The remains of things that had entered the Void and stayed.
Isamu found the treasure among them.
A bag rested near one of the drainage holes.
Not buried.
Not hidden particularly well.
Simply waiting among bones.
Isamu crouched.
Fendor had followed far enough to see him.
“Don’t.”
Isamu looked back.
“Why?”
“Because there is treasure sitting conveniently beside a pile of dead people.”
Isamu considered.
Then grabbed the bag.
The bag grabbed him.
Teeth appeared.
Fendor closed his eyes.
“Of course.”
The mimic barely had time to celebrate.
Isamu’s whip was already in his hand.
Flame struck the thing.
Then his fist.
The creature recoiled.
Isamu hit it again.
Whatever evolutionary process had taught mimics to disguise themselves as irresistible treasure had never been required to account for nineteenth-level monks.
The creature collapsed.
Isamu looked at Fendor.
Fendor shrugged.
“I warned you.”
“You said you weren’t helping.”
“I didn’t.”
Inside the false treasure pile lay actual treasure.
This somehow annoyed Fendor more.
A magical dagger.
Useful.
Unremarkable by their current standards.
And a helmet.
Isamu picked it up.
Kaylor had reached them now.
Nethnarel followed more slowly.
Hexen remained near the center, watching the darkness overhead in case the legendary enormous version of the mithril dragons decided to investigate its dead relatives.
Isamu examined the helmet.
Then put it on.
Fendor stared.
“You didn’t identify it.”
Isamu adjusted the fit.
“Now we can.”
“That method has weaknesses.”
Magic moved through the helm.
Understanding followed.
Teleportation.
Not the limited step Kaylor used in battle.
Not the world-breaking uncertainty of Nethnarel’s Well of Many Worlds.
True teleportation, stored within the helmet and available several times before its magic required time to replenish itself.
Isamu smiled.
That was concerning.
Fendor looked at Nethnarel.
“We made him faster.”
Nethnarel looked at Isamu.
“I don’t think distance was his problem.”
The Helm of Teleportation fit remarkably well.
Isamu walked toward the thick formations at the edge of the cavern.
Fendor called after him.
“Where are you going?”
“Looking for a room.”
“With the teleporting helmet.”
“Yes.”
“Those two ideas together are worrying.”
The stalagmites narrowed.
Isamu squeezed between them.
Beyond was darkness.
Not another open cavern exactly.
A chamber.
Enclosed enough that if they cleared it, perhaps they could finally defend a place long enough to breathe.
Isamu went farther.
His exceptional perception saw movement before the thing hidden beyond the stone could surprise him.
A humanoid shape floated in the darkness.
Human-sized.
Wrapped from head to foot in luminous strips or bands that drifted around it like cloth underwater. Blue-green light escaped between the wrappings.
It looked dead.
It also looked very active.
Isamu stopped.
The creature turned toward him.
The monk raised one empty hand.
“I don’t want to fight you.”
The floating thing continued watching.
Isamu tried again.
“Whatever has you here, maybe we can free you.”
No answer.
Something moved deeper in the chamber.
Perhaps another.
Isamu glanced behind him.
The narrow stone opening suddenly felt considerably narrower.
He had recently watched Kaylor demonstrate the consequences of scouting too far ahead in the Void.
Growth occurred in unexpected places.
Isamu touched the helmet.
The cavern vanished.
He reappeared beside the others.
Fendor jumped.
“That is going to become irritating.”
“There are things in there.”
“What things?”
“Glowing.”
“Excellent description.”
“Wrapped.”
“Improving.”
“Floating.”
Fendor looked at Hexen.
“Do you know what that is?”
“No.”
“Back to excellent.”
Isamu pointed toward the narrow passage.
“It may be a closed chamber.”
Nethnarel understood.
“If we clear it—”
“We might rest.”
For the first time in what felt like hours, the party became genuinely enthusiastic about killing something.
Fendor began sorting through his collection of bows.
Kaylor watched.
“How many do you have?”
“Enough.”
“You said you had extras.”
Fendor produced one.
The weapon carried the same cold enchantment he had used before, the limbs faintly rimed with frost.
A +2 Icy Burst Longbow.
He held it toward Kaylor.
“You’re taking this.”
Kaylor stared.
“I don’t use bows.”
“You killed a mithril dragon with a shortbow ten minutes ago.”
“That doesn’t mean I’m good at it.”
“You are proficient with martial weapons.”
“That is technically true.”
“And everything in the Void flies.”
Kaylor took the bow.
Fendor handed him arrows.
“I have armed the paladin.”
Nethnarel looked at the two of them.
“Should we be worried?”
“Yes,” Fendor said.
“No,” Kaylor said.
Isamu returned to the narrow gap.
Not through it.
Not yet.
This time the heroes lined up together.
Fendor took one angle.
Kaylor tested the unfamiliar weight of the Icy Burst bow.
Nethnarel raised the Staff of Power.
Hexen prepared magic strong enough to fill a chamber if necessary.
Isamu waited beside the opening with one hand near his new helm.
They had come into the Void seeking the fragments of a divine weapon.
So far they had found one.
They had also found steel dragons, mithril dragons, a mimic, a teleporting helmet and a room full of glowing dead things.
Fendor looked toward the narrow entrance.
“Safe place to rest.”
Isamu nodded.
“Maybe.”
Fendor raised his bow.
“At this point, I assume anything described as safe is trying to kill us.”
Something moved behind the stalagmites.
Blue-green light brightened.
The heroes waited.
They had not rested.
The Void had.