The ruined outpost faded behind them as they stepped back into the crystal jungle. The song was louder now, more insistent, as if the forest knew they were moving and emphatically disapproved.
Koronos led, though every step cost him. The teleportation power still flickered at the edges of his control, a shimmer that came and went without warning. He could feel it waiting, hungry, ready to tear him out of reality and drop him somewhere else entirely. Every use of his power made it worse. Every moment on Hadron fed it. But stopping wasn't an option.
Shelove pressed against his side, and through the Bond, her senses overlaid his. She heard what he could not: the distant scrape of metal on crystal, the subtle shift of air currents, the heartbeat of the jungle itself. She smelled what he could not: the acrid tang of golem exhaust, the sweet rot of crystallized death, the faint trace of something ancient and watching. Together, they were more than either alone.
A squad of golems passed in the distance, their metal joints scraping against crystal in a rhythm that set his teeth on edge. Shelove froze. Through her, Koronos felt the precise moment to stop, to wait, to breathe. The golems passed without sensing them, their empty green eyes scanning nothing.
They moved on.
As they traveled, Koronos studied the creatures of this shattered world. Nothing here was natural. Everything had been shaped by ten thousand years of raw majik and Supremus's influence.
Gliding sky-eels drifted through the air like ribbons of living crystal, their translucent bodies catching the sickly light. They were beautiful in the way fire was beautiful; mesmerizing, and deadly. Koronos sensed something sinister about them, as if the energy around them was being sucked in. Perhaps their touch could drain lifeforce, leaving nothing but a husk behind? Best to steer clear.
Crystal-shelled burrowers moved beneath the surface, their carapaces glowing faintly as they carved tunnels through the rock. Shelove's sharp senses would catch their movement at the edge of her vision. Some of those tunnels were large enough for a person to pass through. Some, perhaps, led where they needed to go?
The realization settled over Koronos like a weight: these creatures were not just survivors. They were tools. Supremus had likely created them, possibly inadvertently, a byproduct of the raw majik that saturated this place. He probably didn't control them in any meaningful way. They had their own instincts. Their own needs. Their own hungers. And hunger could be used.
Koronos reached out with his Everliving power, the Bond, the same ability that let him speak with Shelove, with animals, with the wild things of the land, sky and sea.
He didn't try to command. He asked.
To the sky-eels, he sent a pulse of intent. Watch. Warn. Drift in patterns that confuse. They responded not with words, but with movement: shifting their paths, creating distractions, becoming a living screen between the group and the golems above.
To the burrowers beneath foot, he reached deeper. The crystal-shelled creatures sensed him. Not as a threat. Not as food. As something else. He asked them to dig, to create paths, to show him the way.
One surfaced ahead.
It was larger than the others, its crystalline shell catching the light in patterns that hurt to look at. It looked at Koronos. It wasn't really looking because it had no eyes, but with its vibrational sense, that held something ancient and unknowable. Then it disappeared back into the earth and rock.
Where it had been, there was now an opening. A tunnel leading down, then forward, carved through crystal and stone by generations of burrowers.
Koronos didn't hesitate. He led them into the darkness.
The tunnel was not entirely dark. Glowing green crystals lined the walls, casting a soft, pulsing light that made the shadows dance. Shelove's senses guided them, her presence a steady warmth in the Bond. The burrower's path took them deeper, closer to their goal or closer to a trap?
Hours passed. The tunnel twisted and turned, sometimes narrow enough that they had to duck, sometimes opening into chambers where burrowers had made their nests. The song of the crystal jungle faded, replaced by the silence of the deep earth.
Koronos felt each step in his bones. The shimmering hadn't stopped. It had only quieted, a vibration beneath his skin that never quite went away. But he pushed through. Because stopping wasn't an option.
Finally, the tunnel ended. A crack in the rock, just wide enough to slip through. Beyond it, air that was different: colder, stiller, tinged with something ancient.
Koronos went first.
They emerged into a cavern at the base of the prison fortress. And now they saw it up close.
A massive, organic-looking structure of fused black stone and pulsating green crystal veins. It rose above them like a living mountain, its surface writhing with slow, rhythmic pulses. The walls breathed power. The stones remembered.
The fortress wasn't just built on Hadron. It was in many ways, Hadron itself. Supremus had been converting the entire planetoid into his domain for ten thousand years. The walls were alive. The stones were his.
Koronos reached out with his senses; carefully, so carefully. And he felt it. Faint, but unmistakable: Zeyzey's magical signature. Somewhere inside.
And the portal machine. Its power was impossible to miss, a thrumming presence that vibrated in his bones. And something else. Something more. The Everliving warlock himself. Supremus. A presence so vast, so ancient, so wrong that it made Koronos's stomach turn.
He didn't tell the others. Not yet. He didn't know what it meant, didn't know if Zeyzey was prisoner or traitor or something else entirely. He kept it to himself until he could learn more. Leaders carried the heaviest weights alone.
Moving along the base of the fortress, they found it: a fissure in the living stone, big enough for them to squeeze through. The edges were rough, unfinished: perhaps a flaw in Supremus's construction, perhaps something else. Perhaps an invitation or a trap.
Koronos looked at his companions. Corvannafax, ready. Daggeroth, silent. Shelove, unwavering. They'd come this far. There was no turning back now. One by one, they slipped through the crack into the fortress itself.
The inside was worse than the outside, if one was inclined to make a tally card.
Walls pulsing with green light. Floors that seemed to breathe. Corridors that branched and twisted in ways that defied logic. The walls were mostly smooth metal, rising so high you couldn't see the ceiling. The air was thick with majik, pressing against them like a physical weight.
And the patrols. Golems moved through the halls in endless circuits. Not many. The fortress was so vast, even Supremus couldn't watch every corridor. But enough. Always enough.
They encountered their first patrol in a wide corridor lined with glowing crystals. Three golems, moving in perfect synchronization, more or less, their empty eyes scanning for threats.
Koronos signaled.
Corvannafax struck first, her crystal blade finding the joint where neck met torso. The golem crumpled silently.
Daggeroth's arrow found another's eye socket, piercing the crystal orb that passed for a brain.
Koronos, with the Sword of Otepi, cleaved through the third in a single, blazing arc.
They dragged the metal bodies into the shadows, hid the evidence. No alarms sounded. No reinforcements came. For now, they remained unseen.
The pattern repeated. Move. Hide. Kill when necessary. Hide again.
Corvannafax's blade. Daggeroth's arrows. Koronos's sword. Shelove's claws. A silent, lethal dance through the bowels of a god's fortress. And always, Koronos felt it: Zeyzey's signature, ahead, deeper. Drawing them forward like a thread through a labyrinth.
Toward the heart of the beast. Toward whatever waited.
They found a moment of safety in a small chamber off the main corridors. Unused, apparently forgotten. Koronos called a halt. They needed rest. They needed to plan.
He looked at his companions. They were battered, exhausted, haven't eaten for a couple days aside from a handful of jerked deer meat, running on will alone. But they were alive. They were here. They were still fighting.
He still hadn't told them about Zeyzey. He would. Soon. But not yet.
Somewhere ahead, in the heart of the fortress, Supremus waited. And Zeyzey. And the portal. And possibly the end of everything. Koronos closed his eyes, felt the flicker of teleportation waiting beneath his skin, felt the weight of the Sword in his hand, felt the warmth of Shelove against his side.
She's here, he thought. Zeyzey. I don't know why. I don't know whose side she's on; probably her own side.
He opened his eyes.
But I'll find out. And when I do, I'll be ready for whatever comes next.