The dungeon lurched again, dust sifting from the vaulted ceiling with every tremor.
Pip clung to the bars of the cell, wings buzzing in a panic. "That was definitely not a draft. What is happening?"
Maximus stood rigid, palm flat against the wall, feeling the sickening pulse thrum up through the mountain. Something old. Something he'd spent centuries praying would stay buried.
He pulled his hand back. The smirk was gone. "We need to leave."
"Escape? Break the lock and run?" Pip brightened. "Ooh, I've always wanted to dramatically escape. I have a speech prepared."
"No." His eyes found the corridor. "We need to warn the Queen."
Pip's jaw dropped. "You're actually worried."
"Don't sound so surprised."
"I've never seen you worried! You faced down an entire squad of archers like you were ordering tea!"
"You've known me three days, Pip."
"Three very eventful, near-fatal days, thank you." She landed on his shoulder and peered at his face. "Your 'worried' face looks exactly like your 'constipated' face, by the way. You might want to work on that."
"Noted for never."
Footsteps hurried down the corridor — too fast for a patrol, too organized for a panic. The cell door swung open, and Kael filled the frame, his face grim, flanked by two guards and a woman Maximus hadn't met.
She wore dark crimson robes trimmed in runes that pulsed with soft blue light. A golden staff stood in her hand, its orb flickering like a trapped star. Violet eyes settled on Maximus instantly, curious rather than afraid.
"You felt it," she said.
"Yes."
"Seraphina Vale. Royal High Archmage." She tilted her head. "You're taller than the rumors."
"What rumors?"
"The ones about the insolent human who refused to kneel. They made you sound eight feet tall with horns." She smiled. "Slightly disappointed, honestly."
"Oh, great," Pip said. "Another fan. She already knows who you are."
"Everyone in the upper palace has heard about you," Seraphina said, and there was genuine warmth in it, like she was meeting a character from a book she'd enjoyed. "The guards won't stop talking. It's all very dramatic."
"Thrilled my reputation precedes me," Maximus muttered.
"It doesn't sound promising," Pip said.
"It isn't," said Kael.
Kael cleared his throat. "Her Majesty demands your presence upstairs. Now."
"Another round of endless questions?" Maximus asked.
"No." Kael's eyes flicked toward the shuddering ceiling. "The Queen has made a decision."
"When powerful people make decisions during a crisis," Pip whispered, "it usually means we're about to do something stupidly dangerous."
"Usually," Maximus agreed.
"Comforting. Love that for us."
Lyra stood before the stained-glass alcoves of the high hall, watching the crimson lanterns flicker and dim against a pressure she couldn't see. The stone beneath her boots thrummed with a heartbeat that wasn't hers.
"Your Majesty," Seraphina said, arriving first, her staff's light fluttering. "The deep vaults—"
"What did your divinations find?"
"Ask him." Seraphina gestured to Maximus, walking the length of the hall between his guards.
"You have a nightmare sleeping beneath your kingdom, Your Majesty," he said without preamble.
Lyra's expression hardened. "Explain."
"Something ancient. Something hungry."
"You hinted at this nonsense yesterday," Kael said.
"I didn't think you'd believe me then."
"I don't believe you now."
"Then we're making tremendous progress."
"Enough," Lyra said, stepping between them. "What is down there?"
For the first time since he'd entered Veyloria, Maximus's composure slipped — a shadow crossing behind his eyes, there and gone. "The Hollow King."
The hall went silent. Even the lanterns seemed to burn lower.
"You know that name," Seraphina said quietly.
"Unfortunately."
"You've encountered him?"
"We fought."
Kael scoffed. "Absurd. The Hollow King is a myth. A ghost story for dark elf children."
"'Impossible' is becoming a very popular word in your vocabulary, Commander." Maximus's tone sharpened like glass. "I expect you to believe he's waking up. And if he wakes fully, your pretty stone palace becomes a mass grave."
Boom.
The shockwave rattled the stained glass and rained dust from the ceiling. Guards scrambled for balance. Lyra didn't flinch.
Seraphina's staff flared violet, and her face went pale. "Your Majesty — the ambient mana is corrupting. The pressure from the deep vaults is spiking. Whatever's down there, it's pushing."
"Are you certain it's him?" Lyra asked Maximus.
"I'd recognize that stench anywhere."
"How long before he breaks the seals?"
"I don't know." The admission clearly cost him. "The seals were meant to hold forever."
"You fought him before. You know his capabilities."
"I know what he was capable of when I helped bury him." Maximus's voice went flat. "Three millennia rotting in dark magic — that's anyone's guess."
Lyra held his gaze a long moment, then turned to her guards. "Remove his restraints."
Kael erupted. "Your Majesty, you cannot free a suspect in the middle of a security crisis—"
"I am releasing him temporarily. He knows the nature of the entity below."
"He's dangerous! We don't even know what he is!"
"To be fair," Maximus said, "neither do I."
"That was remarkably unhelpful."
"It wasn't meant to be reassuring."
The guards unclasped the iron bindings. Maximus rubbed the red marks from his wrists, working his fingers until the stiffness eased.
"You sound remarkably calm for a man who just had his chains removed," Lyra said.
"I'm a model prisoner."
"You stayed because you were curious. And you haven't fled because you know what happens if that thing reaches the surface."
His smile faded slightly. "You're sharper than you look, Queen."
"I am the ruler of Veyloria. It is my duty to be sharp." She turned away before he could see the rest of it — the part she would never say aloud. That she had seen his face before tonight. In the dark behind her eyes. That some traitorous part of her had been waiting for him, and she had no name for what that meant, and a queen could not afford to go looking for one.
"She's worried about you, Max," Pip whispered loudly. "I can see it in her eyebrow twitch."
"Pip. Please."
"What? I'm an expert on eyebrow twitches. I wrote a pamphlet."
The ghost of a smile flickered across Lyra's face — there and gone before anyone could be sure they'd seen it. "Seraphina. You'll accompany us to the deep vaults."
"As you command."
Kael stepped up beside her. "And me?"
"You're coming as well. Somebody has to keep you from stabbing our guide."
"I'll keep a close eye on him."
Maximus put a hand over his heart. "I'm genuinely touched by your devotion, Commander."
"Don't be."
In the royal armory, the quartermaster set a long wooden tray down on the table as if it might bite.
It had, once. Everyone in the palace knew.
Upon the tray lay Maximus's sword baldric, the blade coaxed back into its worn sheath. Nobody would say who'd sheathed it. The two guards who'd done it had requested transfers to the surface farms.
Maximus lifted the baldric from the tray and settled it across his back. The runes along the sheath gave a single slow pulse — like a heartbeat quickening at the smell of food.
Seraphina went very still. "It isn't glad to see you," she said quietly. "It's hungry."
"It's always hungry," Maximus said, adjusting the strap.
Pip landed on his shoulder with a contented sigh. "Missed your oversized toothpick?"
"More than you know."
"You carry an unusual bond with that weapon," Seraphina observed, watching him check the edge the way another man might check a sleeping child's forehead. "It knows you. I felt it from across the room — it went quiet when you walked in. Like a hound hearing its master's step."
"It's kept me alive through a few unpleasant afternoons."
"How many afternoons?"
He pretended to calculate. "I stopped counting around the second century."
"He's not joking," Pip said. "He's terrible at math when it comes to time. Ask him how old he is, he just gets vague and changes the subject."
"I do not get vague."
"You got vague last Tuesday."
"That was Wednesday, and I was tired."
Seraphina laughed — light and genuine, the first easy sound anyone had made since the tremors started. Then she turned to Pip, curious. "And how long have you two been traveling together?"
"Centuries," Pip said promptly. "Decades. Months. It's all a blur when you're having fun."
Seraphina blinked. "Those are very different answers."
"Time is a construct," Pip said, with great dignity. "I've never met anyone quite like you, Maximus."
"You've known me an hour."
"And you've upended the entire royal court in that time." She folded her arms. "I haven't decided if you're a savior or a complete disaster."
"Definitely a disaster," Pip stage-whispered. "But a reliable one. Like a chair with three legs. It works if you don't think about it."
Kael thundered in, strapped into full obsidian plate, a massive heater shield on his arm. His scowl found Maximus instantly. "Scum."
"I have a name, you know. Quite a lovely one. Three syllables. Rolls right off the tongue."
"Stay where I can see you."
"That'll prove difficult."
"Why?"
"Because I'm not sure how well your peripheral vision works with your head wedged so firmly up the Queen's rear."
Pip slapped both hands over her mouth. Seraphina turned away, coughing into her sleeve, shoulders shaking.
Kael's face went purple. His hand slammed down on his hilt hard enough to make the iron groan. "You arrogant, miserable—"
"Enough."
Lyra strode in, fully armored in silver and crimson, a dark blade at her hip, her white hair bound back for war. She surveyed the group — a sarcastic ancient wanderer, a furious commander, a laughing archmage, a fairy hiding behind a collar — and privately wondered whether she'd assembled an elite tactical unit or the single greatest catastrophe in Veylorian history.
Probably both.
"We move immediately," she said.
"Where?" Maximus asked.
"The lower tunnels. The ancient seals lie beneath the old mining shafts."
His humor vanished like a snuffed candle. "No."
"What?"
"You shouldn't go down there."
Kael stepped in front of his Queen. "That is a direct command from your Sovereign. You will obey it."
Maximus kept his eyes on Lyra. "You don't understand what's waiting in that dark."
"Then explain it."
"It's a slaughterhouse. Ancient magic, corrupted rot, and a creature that eats armies for breakfast."
"Which is precisely why the Queen of Veyloria must be there," she said, closing the distance between them. "I do not hide in my palace while my realm bleeds. You are not the only one in this room with something to protect, Maximus."
He held her gaze, then let out a long breath and inclined his head. "All right. Have it your way."
"That was unnervingly easy," Kael said.
"Don't get used to it, armor-boy."
The escort formed up at the lower gates — Kael at the head with six guards, Seraphina behind him with her staff lit violet, and Maximus walking in the middle of the formation like the eye of a storm, Pip on his shoulder, Abyssalfang riding quiet across his back.
Lyra fell into step beside him as the tunnel swallowed the palace light.
"You seem remarkably cheerful for a man walking toward a nightmare," she said.
"Maybe I just enjoy the company."
They walked a dozen paces in silence, boots ringing on stone. Then, quietly, without looking at him:
"Tell me about the first time."
"The first time what?"
"You fought him."
The tunnel went very quiet, apart from the tramp of boots and water dripping somewhere in the dark.
Pip sat bolt upright. "Ooh! Story time! Is this the one with the — "
"Pip."
"What? I've only ever heard the tavern version."
"You fell asleep during the tavern version."
"Your pacing was bad!"
Maximus looked at Lyra. The humor drained out of his face like water through sand.
"All right," he said. "But you asked."