Nothing disturbed the chamber but the soft breaths of the party as they each marveled at their rewards. Anilith, sheathing the Blade of Shifting Purpose alongside one of the blades Temperance made for her, looked around the room, marveling in turn at each shining gemstone.

  Every crystal projected a beam upon a clear gem set in the ceiling’s center, which absorbed the collective energy. As she watched, the translucent crystal drank the light in droves, until even the violet gemstone joined the mix, adding a measure of its own energy despite the still very much alive goblins lurking beyond the gate. The moment its faint beam struck the crystal, the once clear stone adopted a blackened hue, shimmering around the edges, appearing to shift between every color.

  The black crystal, when it finally drank its fill, it seemed, pulsed with unusual intensity before it fired its own darkened, rainbow beam at the violet gemstone, which changed before her eyes. Where once there was a vibrant purple stone, an opal-white stone now lay embedded in the wall, scintillating with energy. White light shone from the stone, searing as the sun itself, and no less blinding. The Barrier blocking the gateway, a dense, colored field, was no longer broken into disparate layers of color. It pulsed rhythmically in time with an unheard tune of the opalescent rock, which thrummed like the heart of an elemental beast.

  Knowing they could have opened this gate before venturing onto the battlements and an awareness of the significant changes the Keep had undergone made Anilith wonder at the full extent of the consequences for clearing the battlements.

  Just how difficult did we make this for ourselves? If the gobbers are to be believed, following our course restored this place to a semblance of its ancient glory, whatever that means…but is that all we did? I can’t help but feel there’s more to it than that, more than just shifting stones and lightwork. They’re tied to this place, whatever that brings.

  “So,” she said, “I take it from the silence that everyone got some nice trinkets, too.”

  Orion was the first to stir and grunted in acknowledgment. “A fair replacement for the bow I lost, an’ somethin’ tells me you already know about the ring.”

  “Wouldn’t trade mine for anything,” Razhik replied, his voice barely a whisper, a new bauble dangling from the “crown” on his head. Anilith couldn’t help but notice the new ornamentation on his ivory crest, which made him appear every bit the regal creature he always claimed.

  The Barrier flashed brightly six times, cycling through the colors that comprised it, before fading entirely, leaving the way forward clear, disrupting Anilith’s observations.

  “I wish we had more time to test them out,” she said, rolling her shoulders, “But I think we’re all anxious to have this behind us.”

  The moment was upon them—the commensurate accumulation of their experience in this sequestered place.

  Without delay, she walked into the darkness beyond, torches flaring to life as she approached. A stairway waited for them, climbing up into the darkness. In the distance, a pinprick of light marked their destination, the ultimate destination of the Hidden Dungeon.

  An unmistakable grumble followed her through the gate. “I’m really gettin’ sick of all these stairs.”

  The sky was clear and blue when they escaped the confines of stone, not a cloud in sight, and the Wind whispered, “Peace.” Sunlight, unfiltered by any magical means for the first time since entering the Keep, momentarily blinded Anilith as she stepped through the gate atop the stairs. The sun shone bright in the thin mountain air, up where even the clouds only venture on a whim.

  In the absence of natural sight, the Wind, free in this open space, laid bare the secrets of the arena before her. Movement in the air refreshed her, washing away the unnatural stillness that struggled to breathe in the magically stifled space. Departing the confines of the stone, the group emerged onto the central roof they’d glimpsed through the window, the immense walls of the battlements hemming them in on all sides—a cage that could never contain the Wind.

  The great, tiered structure rose before them, and goblins inundated the area, creeping from openings around the base that had been nigh invisible from above. The gateway stood proud, a monument to their successes, yawning from the depths of the Keep, yet the trial before them was unlike anything they’d seen. The jagged teeth of the portcullis loomed, a silent threat at their backs, and the army of brackish-skinned goblins—

  --people, Anilith thought, They’re just people—

  The army of brackish-skinned people blessed with longevity, yet cursed by duty, assembled before them, each person a reason to turn back, a life to be changed through their conquest.

  How many reasons will I need to quit? What could be bigger than the need that drove me here? A shiver ran through her. How much pain has been inflicted by people like me, people just trying to save their own? How much horror is the work of heroes? She shook her head, banishing the thought.

  Orion gave a short whistle. “Seems we have our work cut out for us here, eh, kid? Even more of them now than before.”

  “Too late to turn back?” Razhik asked. Two quick, vehement glares had him reeling that line back in. “Fine, fine! I was kidding, anyway.”

  A wave of shifting goblins had them all on guard, the trio suddenly clad in Razhik’s signature darkness. The enemy made no move to advance, yet the clamor raised from so much motion spoke loudly enough of the danger before them. The tension that precedes inevitable death swamped the rooftop in the wake of the commotion.

  A hard, booming laugh barreled through the strained atmosphere.

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  “So, it seems you’ve made it here at last. It’s about damned time.”

  If any of them had doubts on the speaker’s identity, the army split like a river, revealing an artistry of stonework leading to the massive form of the Warlord, who stood looking down at them from the precipice of the great pyramid before them.

  “I can’t thank you enough for loosening our shackles. It will be good to wield a semblance of our forsaken potential. Our power is bound to this place, as much as it binds our power. Only once before has anyone made it here, and they didn’t exactly bother exploring this place, content to defeat my Wardens and come for my head.” He turned and walked away, the goblins closing ranks. “Let’s see if you have a measure of their ability; reach me, if you can.”

  A great roar descended from on high, taken up by the army before them until a sea of voices crashed over them, punctuated with the banging of metal on metal and the scraping of claws on stone.

  Anilith relaxed into a ready stance, letting tension bleed from her body. Tension was the enemy of form; another lesson she’d assimilated from her Master. Faced with a siege, she couldn’t afford anything but her best. Her life, if Fate came for her that day, would come at the cost of innumerous immortals, a price so great that she would live on even in the songs of her enemy.

  A deep, resonant tone bubbled up from the depths, vaulting from the gate behind them and answering the roar in kind. The sound conjured the hunters’ horns of Anilith’s people, but she had never felt horns rich as this. No resonant metal shaped the sonorous call, and the timbre was beyond any bugle a hunter’s horn might cry. Chill air crept from the gate’s yawning mouth, colder still than the crisp mountain air, frosting over the stones as it oozed, and still, the horns echoed from the deep.

  The slapping of multitudinous bare feet slapping stone, bearing the rhythm of soldiers, the cadence of war, beat freely from the stone arch behind them. The horde heard the noise and roared with renewed vigor, a challenge to all invaders on the mountaintop. The sound of wet skin on stone grew louder by the moment, and Grokar bubbled from the lonely stair.

  A trickle became a torrent became a flood, until an amphibious army formed around the trio. Before them, a blockade of juggernauts stood as a buffer against the mountain of goblins. On either flank, ranks of hydromancers, Grokar bearing three-pronged spears, and countless Grokar variants they hadn’t faced in their ascent to the Keep.

  Seems like the goblins weren’t the only ones held back by restrictions, Anilith thought.

  The unmistakable sense of creeping filth, not unlike the unsettling sense that follows ichor spatter, with which any adventurer must become intimately acquainted, culminated in the voice of Chieftain Kewrok when he exited the aperture—last, of course.

  He needed no herald to announce him; his own charisma was more than up to the task.

  Next to the presence he exuded, her own gore-splattered countenance seemed the picture of cleanliness. Privately, she’d lamented how long it had been since she’d had a chance to properly clean herself or her gear. Orion seemed more adapted to such circumstances, no doubt due to the nature of the long life he’d lived, one she’d doubtless influenced for the better. The stench that followed, her blades the only gear she was able to keep clean and oiled, a necessary habit ingrained in her by her Master, seemed insignificant next to the power of Kewrok’s unpleasantness.

  Not that she’d turn down the opportunity to bathe.

  When he spoke, her skin crawled and, for a moment, she imagined a world where she might have allied with the goblins instead, that she might not be subject to such supernatural unpleasantness.

  “Hmph. I was beginning to think you’d gone and died; we waited so long in the ratholes beneath this place. Releasing the chains on our power, letting us bring our full might against the carrion that inhabit this once splendid place, barely makes up for that slight.”

  “Our apologies,” Orion spat, “oh, great and magnificent lord. How dare we afford ya this chance to realize your lofty aspirations? Seems to me we really shoulda thought harder on how us riskin’ our lives put you in a bind.”

  Kewrok, wide lips downturned, looked down on the man, eyes flitting up and down.

  “I don’t remember asking your opinion, vassal of the Serpent. Your betters are conversing—know your place! I expected better of your regal highness, even from so minor a king,” The mass of slime-ridden flesh said as it turned to address Razhik with a mockery of a bow. “Allow us to demonstrate the might of the Sea Tribes, insomuch as we are able, according to the Rules. You but tasted our power in your trespass.”

  Before the army had a chance to move, the Warlord boomed from on high, “Beware the tides, Challenger! Pity that you sully my halls with these sacrificial drones. I had hoped you might not need the crutch the Protector offers, but I recognize it can be hard to rid yourself of scum once it takes hold.”

  “SCUM,” the Sea Chieftain roared, “I would scoff at such slander, coming from one willing to cling to life no matter which bits your great ‘Protector’ scrapes away, but even that would be beneath me. You are nothing more than an obstacle to the Sea Tribe’s emancipation. You cannot stop our freedom—nothing can withhold it from us!”

  “Even after you’ve lived all these years, forgetting even your true name, you are still so lost.” The Warlord’s laugh rumbled down the pyramid, a cascade bearing the force of an avalanche. “All these years and you’ve yet to wrest the seat of Power from me, proving your own worth. You are the lesser spawn of greater cowards, hiding behind will-deprived spawn who only live to die. You know nothing of honor, clinging to your illusory freedom. None of us is free from the games of those with Power.”

  “As if you know anything of the honor that is to be mine when I claim victory. Is it cowardice to value the gift of the life you were given? To be unwilling to twist yourself to abomination? It is not the place of a footman to question a general, and they die gladly serving their purpose. We embrace death, while your people flee its embrace, cowards that you are. How long will your people deny the lie, believing those who return are the same who departed?”

  “You confuse honor for glory, old fool. It is not cowardice, but duty. Duty,” the Warlord paused, the Wind revealing his long-drawn breath, “And faith. Your people, the great Sea Tribes, see nothing but your own shortsighted goals. Enough of the philosophical debate. Our world is lost, claimed by the darkness, and we were not enough to stop it. Our duty is to prepare the ones who might not fail, no matter the personal cost. Faith in the protector, in something more than yourself, is something your people will never understand.”

  A croak, low and throaty, escaped Kewrok.

  “These Age-old arguments will get us nowhere. Let us find the truth as the old ways dictate: in battle.”

  “I wouldn’t have it any other way,” the Warlord grinned, tusks enhancing his terrible visage, painting him in a manic caricature of glee. “I look forward to taking your head, or more likely, witnessing your moment of enlightenment, when you flee back to your hole to await the next spawning.”

  As one, they bellowed, “Destroy our enemies!”

  “—send them back to their Protector!”

  “—for Honor and Death!”

  Chaos broke beneath that clear, blue mountain sky as armies clashed. A tempest brewed in the heavens, and the Wind lamented. Stomping feet reverberated in the stone, and Earth cried, “War!”