And so it was when the entrance to its tunnel was eclipsed by a shaggy figure, the gnurg lunged immediately, and subsequently discovered how an invasive species could disrupt an isolated ecosystem like the crags at the top of a dungeon mountain. This was in part because magic and nature had also conspired to make Trolls into unstoppable killing machines, and in part because the gods had yet to dream up anything that could stop this particular Troll from getting into this particular mountain.

Natural selection quickly rendered its grisly verdict. Every battle has a tipping point, beyond which it’s not so much a struggle as a grim certainty playing out over the loser’s protest. Once the Troll punched through an eyehole and got a grip on the faceplate of the gnurg’s armor, the creature’s fate was sealed. The Alpine Gnurg’s final scream cut off with a grim crack.

The Troll hardly paused long enough to slick the ichor from his eyes. A moment later, he charged down the monster’s burrow at a full sprint, the wounds and gashes in his skin already closing. The smarter nightmares would stay out of its way. The more foolhardy ones would share their fates with the gnurg. Neither would give Thane much pause.

Nothing on Arth could stop him from getting to her.

“Bloody stubborn,” Gorm growled at the thing that had once been Dagnar Firdson, the Golden Dawn’s resident Dwarf. This observation was only half true; the desiccated husk of a Dwarf before him was the farthest thing from bloody that a corpse could be. It didn’t have a drop of fluid remaining in it. Dry heat radiated off the creature like a desert wind, and Gorm felt his own skin cracking under the withering glare of its empty eye sockets.

But the dead bastard was surely stubborn, as obstinate as a tectonic plate. Gorm punched his axe through his opponent’s face. Dagnar’s head exploded in a cathartic cloud of dehydrated flesh and brittle bone, run through with a web of wiry beard hair. Yet the grim particulate left gravity’s call unheeded. A buzzing noise filled Gorm’s ears as the cloud slowed to a stop in midair and, after pausing just long enough to mock the other laws of physics, coalesced into Dagnar’s face once more, grinning mirthlessly beneath his empty eyes. The thrumming in the air took on the stilted, irregular rhythm of laughter.

“What are these thrice-cursed things? They’re too tough to be zombies!” Gorm shouted to his party. Dagnar took a clumsy swing at him, and the berserker barely felt the blow in his shield. “And too weak to be revenants!”

A silver arrow burst through Dagnar’s chest, and he staggered back as his torso re-solidified.

“Too solid to be a ghost!” Kaitha called, taking aim again.

“Too ugly to be vampires,” Heraldin added. He parried an attack from the powdered shade of Rod Torkin. The dead man staggered back into the arc of Gaist’s mace and was pulverized from the shoulder up, if only momentarily. “And too crumbly,” the bard added.

Jynn stepped behind Gorm, back-to-back as Agatha of Chrate’s corpse advanced. “It’s a novel form of necromancy,” he said over his shoulder.

“You said necromancy can’t work here!” Gorm blocked another blow from Dagnar.

“I didn’t think it could!” the omnimancer insisted.

“Well, there are some things you need to be thrice-cursed certain of!” Gorm shouted, punching his axe through Dagnar’s skull again. “Can ye unweave the enchantment?”

“It’d be hard to, because most necromancy doesn’t work here!” Jynn’s voice had the shrill timbre of a man about to set aside rational thought for a moment, but any rant he was about to embark on was silenced by a sudden gout of flame. Agatha disappeared within the wall of fire, and a moment later a similar blast enveloped Dagnar.

“Fire does!” Laruna wore a smug grin as she waved from the center of another walkway.

“But only for a moment,” Gorm countered. Already Dagnar’s ashes were swirling back around the small stone⁠—

The stone!

Gorm grabbed the small idol, carved in the shape of a three-eyed skull, and thrust it into the air. “The stones!” he shouted. “The stones are the source of their magic!”

“Aha! A powerful artifact!” said Jynn.

“Right!” said Heraldin. He turned back to the abomination in front of him, who was advancing on the bard with a cudgel. “Now, I just need to⁠—”

Gaist’s fist erupted from Rod Torkin’s chest, clutching the stone. The weaponsmaster pulled the sorcerous heart from the corpse and, with a swift punch, sent Rod’s crumbing body plummeting over the edge of the walkway into the darkness below.

“That was way too smooth,” Heraldin said. “Like this wasn’t your first time punching into a man’s chest and ripping out his… well, whatever drives him.”

Gaist shrugged.

“Really? I’d assume the rib cage gets in the way,” said the bard.

Gaist flattened his hand and demonstrated a short, piercing jab by way of morbid illustration.

“That is both awesome and terrifying,” said Heraldin.

“All right.” Jynn held up Agatha’s stone. “Now what do we do?”

“You’re the wizard,” said Gorm. “I thought ye’d know.”

“Oh, researching the right spell to use on an artifact can take days. Weeks. And… uh… we have much less time than that.” The wizard nodded to Gorm’s hand.

“What do ye—thrice-cursed bones!” Gorm cursed as he looked at the ash swirling around his hand like a cloud of flies. “Drop ’em!”

He hurled the stone out into the black depths of the cavern. It dropped, as stones do, followed by those thrown by Gaist and Jynn. The air thrummed as three clouds of dust and ash swarmed after the artifacts down into the darkness, like bees after their queens.

Gorm and the heroes took the moment to join ranks as the clouds bore their stones back to their platform. “They just keep coming back,” he growled.

“So how do we stop them again?” Heraldin asked.

“That’s the million-giltin question,” said Kaitha. “It’s a trick fight.”

“Thrice curse it,” swore Laruna.

Jynn shook his head. “A wha⁠—”

“A trick fight,” snapped Gorm. “Ye wizards are always makin’ traps and artifacts and weird creatures, right? And you’re always trying to make ’em invincible and foolproof and all that, right?”

“If you mean wizards generally try to make their creations succeed, then yes,” said Jynn.

“Right. Only nothin’s invincible. Nothin’s foolproof. A potion of fire resistance washes off in water, right? A spear keeps cavalry at bay, but it ain’t so useful once the enemy’s in close.”

“A knight’s armor has holes in front of his eyes which, as it turns out, is a great place to shoot a knight,” Kaitha offered. “And sometimes a wizard gets close enough to perfecting their creation that there’s only one or two ways to kill it. You can’t overpower the threat. You have to know the trick. They’re very dangerous”

“They’re thrice-cursed obnoxious, that’s what they are,” said Gorm. “Only silver lining is that usually the trick is killin’ all the wizards.”

“I doubt that would help in this case,” said Jynn.

“Not directly, anyway,” Gorm grumbled.

Kaitha ignored him. “Heraldin, try hitting one with water. Gaist, see if the stones have any loose bits or carvings that come off. Jynn, go through our potions and your spells for ideas. Laruna, can you get a stone hot enough to melt it?”

“Maybe?” said the solamancer. “It depends on the enchantment around the carving.”

“Well, it’s worth a shot.” The Elf fired off a silver arrow for emphasis. “We need to figure it out before we tire.”

“And if we don’t happen to be fortunate enough to be lugging around whatever their weakness is?” asked Jynn.

A thrumming, buzzing chuckle filled the air as the corpses of the Golden Dawn advanced.