ARC 7: CHAPTER 35: THE MAKE OF OUR WORLD

I departed the circle while Falstaff called his people together. Delphine and I moved out of earshot, and the doctor spent some time admiring Morgause, who suffered the attention stoically while I fretted about what came next.

After some minutes, I realized the doctor was trembling. “Are you alright?” I asked.

She threw me a nervous glance. “Not really? That was terrifying. I thought we were going to die.”

I chuckled. “I admit, I thought we were done for when you told him that you can use the scroll. That was stupid, by the way.”

Delphine sighed. “I know. I wasn’t really thinking, just… acting. I believe I’m starting to realize that academic acumen doesn’t put me above making foolish decisions under pressure. Still, it seems to have worked out alright.”

“Hm.” I hummed uncertainly.

Delphine frowned. “You disagree?”

“It’s just…” I scratched at my jaw. “He was always going to help, probably.”

Delphine scoffed. “What? Then what was that whole argument between you?”

“Showboating, mostly. If the Keeper was serious about turning me over to the Credo, he’d have just ambushed us and kept himself well away from danger, or he’d have brought Saska. She’s his muscle. He wanted me to think he was considering it because he wanted to get as much information from me as he could. Probably he was on the fence, and he would have given the order to take us if I’d shown weakness, but…”

I’d wondered why he hadn’t brought Saska. It was my first tipoff during the talk that the rogue crowfriar might have been willing to cooperate with us. Had he not wanted her to sway him towards fighting the Credo?

I put it out of my mind and shrugged. “Your whole speech about what he stands to lose was good, but he probably knew all of that already.”

“Oh.” Delphine cleared her throat. “Well, good to remind him. Men can be arrogant.”

I nodded sagely. “I think it did help, honestly. Just because the Keeper understands all the elements of this doesn’t mean his people do, and you put him on the spot by laying out the whole picture in front of them.”

She let out a tired sigh that frosted in the winter air. “You’ve made friends with some scary people, Alken.”

I shrugged. “Friends is a strong word. The Keeper and I despise each other, but we’re also useful to each other. It’s not at all the same.”

“I’ve heard of the Backroad,” she said in a pensive voice. “It’s just surprising, is all, considering who you were once.”

“You mean what I was. I’ve had to abandon many of those scruples. They never sat well on me anyway, I just…”

Wanted to be a good knight, whatever that meant. Delphine didn’t ask me to elaborate, and I fell silent. She didn’t need to know about Catrin or my full life story. We’d been seduced by the same demon and fought the same devils, it didn’t make us friends.

Delphine’s voice lost some of its lightness. “After all of this is done, I’m calling in my debt. I want to know about that last day, do you understand?”

“…I understand.”

We didn’t have anything to say after that. Eilidh returned after a while. She held a lantern now, an old fashion one rather than one of the newer alchemical baubles.

“The rest of us have talked,” she told us. “The Keeper wants some things in return for his help.”

I nodded, bracing myself. I’d expected this.

“First,” Eilidh said in a businesslike voice, “he wants some guarantees from you in your official capacity. For one thing, he wants the Backroad Inn recognized as neutral ground by the Choir, the Seydii, and the Accorded Realms.”

I laughed, unable to help myself. “What, does he want a private meeting with the Emperor too? Can I get him a duchy while I’m at it?”

Eilidh wasn’t amused. “That’s what he wants. He knows it will be difficult, but he expects if you survive tomorrow that you will do everything in your power to make it happen. Talk to whoever you need to, set up some meetings, whatever. That’s how he’s calling in the debt. He asks that the Headsman of Seydis provide guarantees that the Backroad will face no retaliation from Urn’s free peoples.”

I cursed aloud. “The damn man wants me to become one of his patrons.”

Eilidh shrugged. “So do you agree?”

I folded my arms. “And what will he give?”

“His support for you, for one thing. You’ll have an open invitation to the inn so long as you remain our benefactor, which means it’ll be easier to find it when you need to, and you won’t have to bargain so hard for our help in the future. There are other boons, but you can discuss those with him. He’ll grant his blessing to this endeavor. He’s already called for volunteers. He doesn’t rule us, but his word carries a lot of weight.”

I nodded along, though inwardly I cringed at what he was asking for. I’d be putting my influence on the line for the Nightborn, which could have far reaching and complicated implications.

But if it got me the help I needed now… I decided to cope. This mattered. “And who volunteered?” I asked.

Eilidh’s grimace made my heart sink. “Not many. Most of them are convinced this isn’t our problem, that human affairs should remain human affairs. Seeing as I was human not too long ago, I tried to add my voice in, but I don’t have much sway with the community.”

“The community?” Delphine asked curiously.

Eilidh waved a hand. “Changelings mostly, and some others. There’s not really a specific word for us, is there? Half breeds, rogue undead who don’t want to dwell in Draubard, shapeshifters.” Her voice took on an edge. “Monsters.”

“Oh. Right.” Delphine gave the other woman an apologetic look.

“Who’s agreed to help?” I asked.

“Two of the inn’s vampires, Maryanne and Flora. Lucienne decided to come too. The rest are mostly regulars at the inn rather than workers. Tam, Jean-Luc, and Sans all volunteered.”

“Sans? He didn’t seem too fond of me.”

Eilidh shrugged. “Maybe your speech convinced him? He’s a fickle sort, and I’m certain he’s got reasons. Besides him, you also have one of the bouncers we hire sometimes and a dyghoul.”

“Eight?” I rubbed at my temple, feeling a headache coming on. “Just eight?”

“It’s no army, to be sure, but honestly it’s more than I expected. Don’t look a gift chimera in the mouth, Al. They’re all capable, and they understand the stakes. I think some of them are after revenge, being honest. It wasn’t long ago those Penitents attacked the inn, and everyone lost someone they cared about. They blame the crows for that.”

I decided not to mention that it was an onsolain behind the Knights Penitent. The Credo shared much of the responsibility, to be certain, and I didn’t need these angry nightborn to be confused about who we were fighting.

“You’ve got me as well,” Eilidh added. “I’ve got family in the city. My brothers and I don’t get along too well, but there’s my mother and a whole gaggle of nieces and nephews.” Her expression became troubled. “Don’t much want them getting eaten by hellspawn, you know? My heart might be cold now, but I still remember what it felt like.”

Nine then. Eleven, counting me and Delphine. Eleven against all the might of the Iron Tribunal and those it had bent to its will. “Where are the others?” I asked.

Eilidh tilted her head into the woods. “I’ll take you.”

She led us into the forest, but not back to the clearing where I’d met the Keeper. Instead, the vampire brought us to an old hunting cabin further on. It was lit from within, and I guessed there’d been no threshold to prevent the Backroad’s creatures from making use of the shelter.

Eilidh knocked at the door, and after a brief pause it opened. A tall, well muscled man stood there, clad in simple clothes too light for the weather. He had shaggy black hair, a short beard, and eyes dark as obsidian. A lazy smile crept over the man’s mouth as he studied me.

“Well well,” he said. “The man of the hour. You were… uh, Allen or something?”

Eilidh rolled her eyes. “You know who he damn well is, Caleb. Now move, it’s freezing out here.”

Caleb laughed. “You can’t even feel the cold!”

“These two are human and they can, now stop being rude and get out of the fucking way.”

I noticed that Delphine did look a bit blue. I kept my expression and tone neutral. “We haven’t introduced ourselves. Alken Hewer.”

He grunted, scratching at the dark hair on his cheek. “Oh, I guess we didn’t last time we met.”

At my confused look, his eyebrows lifted while that drowsy smile remained fixed on his face. “Oh, you don’t remember? You interrupted my session with Half-Dead Cat. Paid a pint of blood and some gold for that, and she ups and runs off with you! I admit, it was a touch frustrating at the time.”

I realized I did recognize him, then. After my battle with the Priory, I’d gone to confront Catrin on the suspicion that she’d been feeding my secrets to the Keeper. She’d been with a customer when I’d found her. This man.

“My apologies,” I said in a quiet voice. “We had pressing business at the time.”

Caleb snorted. “I imagine.”

“Caleb…” Eilidh’s tone sharpened.

“Right, right.” He held up his hands and moved out of the doorway. I went in first, ignoring his appraising stare. Delphine marched in after me, breathing a sigh of relief when she realized the lodge was indeed warmer than the outside air.

Within a single room, the group who’d volunteered to help us gathered in the light of a lit fireplace. The faces that turned to stare at me were mostly familiar, at least in passing. I saw the changeling Tam, still in the form of an enormous humanoid toad, who dominated a whole corner of the lodge by himself. Near him stood Jean-Luc, who still wore the colorful garments of a continental lansquenet. The necromancer, Sans, sat on a stool near a small window as though trying to keep as far from the warming fireplace as possible. He still dressed as a woodsman in heavy furs and hides. The angular brand beneath his right eye stood out in the firelight, almost like it caught the glow.

I recognized the two vampires immediately, though I wasn’t sure which was which. One was short and dark haired, with red lips and an easy smile, while the other had a taller build with blue eyes and straw-yellow hair. That second did not smile. Lucienne sat nearest to the fire, and if I didn’t know what lay under her skirts I’d have believed she just sat sidelong. She wore a contented expression as she absorbed the heat, and might have been humming.

The only one I didn’t recognize on sight was a tall figure in the far corner of the room. They stood stock still, mostly hidden in shadow, but I could make out the shape of a sheathed sword at their hip. That would be the revenant, I assumed.

Eilidh shut the door behind us as we stamped snow off our boots. Caleb moved to stand by Sans, leaning back against the wall and folding his arms.

A long silence followed my arrival, broken only by the lamia’s soft humming. Wind rustled the canopy outside and made the cabin creak.

“Well?” Sans spread his hands out. “We’re here. So what are we doing?”

“Fighting devils, apparently.” This came from Jean-Luc, who spoke with a thick accent. I wasn’t familiar enough with Edaean dialects to place it, but it didn’t sound Bantesean.

One of the vampires, the short one with black ringlets, raised her hand. “Um… aren’t we devils?”

“Word gets tossed around a lot these days, doesn’t it?” The taller vampiress noted dryly.

She and her companion both wore revealing dresses, flashing breast and colorful stockings. At least Eilidh and Sans actually dressed like it was winter outside. None of them had come with war gear besides the shadowed figure in the corner. I hid my sigh and spoke before the conversation could spin out of control.

“We are fighting Zosite.” That quieted the room. I paused a beat before continuing. “You all heard what I told the Keeper, but I’ll lay it out like this; the Credo Ferrum, who you might better know as crowfriars, are conducting a ritual in Baille Os. They intend to open a gateway to the realm of their masters, which will allow the angels of Hell to enter our world in number.”

“Ah.” the dark-haired vampire nodded. “Those would be our devils.”

“As real as you can get,” I agreed. “You all heard what I said to the Keeper, and you all know what’s at stake. I’m not going to mislead you. This is going to be a desperate play. I need to get close enough to kill whoever’s got their hands on that damn scroll, then keep them from doing what they did last time and just having someone else sign it.”

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I’d already considered that possibility. This time, the damn thing wouldn’t leave my sight.

I gestured to the gathered beings in the room. “That’s where you all come in. I’m not asking anyone to fight side by side with me, but what’s important here isn’t how many devils I can cut down. I can smite monsters, but what I need to actually succeed here are…”

I searched for a word.

“Smugglers?” Eilidh suggested.

“Close enough. So that’s the help I require.”

“A heist,” Caleb said. “We’re stealing something, is that it? Only, it’s louder than most thievery I’ve done. We put you in, you make a ruckus and grab the whatsit, then we ferry you back out before the whole damn crusade comes crashing in.”

“Why do you need to grab it?” Sans asked. “Why not just be a distraction and give one of us the chance? Seems like the devil scroll is a better target for finer hands, no?”

I hesitated. He was right. This was a sort of heist, as Caleb suggested, with the real goal being to grab the Zoscian. Only, I didn’t want the Keeper getting it. I knew these rogues probably had orders I wouldn’t like, but I’d expected to not need to deal with it until after.

“Because stealing the scroll isn’t all we’re trying to accomplish.” Delphine moved forward to stand next to me. She seemed to steel herself as inhuman eyes fixed on her. “We don’t just want to take it. That’s delaying their plans, not stopping them. The Credo will give chase, as will anyone they’ve subverted to their will. Do you really want to lead that back to your inn?”

Sans scowled, but didn’t say anything. Delphine continued. “What we want, more than stopping the Cardinal from signing his name and complete the ritual, is to get me in front of it. I’ve memorized lines that will complete a script already coded into the artifact. Once done, it won’t matter who has the scroll — the Lords of Orkael will be barred from this land, and we’ve won.”

Sans leaned forward. “And what’s to say that the Sulfur Monks haven’t already figured out this sabotage? This thing fell out of their hands for a long while, wouldn’t they look for that sort of tampering?”

Delphine opened her mouth to answer, but paused as an uncertain look came over her.

“That is possible,” I said. “But the wizard who did this is a clever man, so we’ll have to trust that he hid it well enough that we still have a chance. Either way, we need to stop them from completing their work before what Miss Roch can do will matter.”

I gestured to myself with a thumb. “That’s my job. I’m going in loud, but I need some of you to help Delphine get in at the same time and get close to the scroll. She can’t go in with me, or I’ll be too distracted protecting her to break through to the Cardinal. It could also tip Vicar off to our plan.”

Caleb scoffed. “And you really think you’re bad enough to do that alone? There’ll be an army there! Inquisitors, knights, guards, clerics, not to mention the crows themselves.”

“You were in Garihelm earlier this year, weren’t you Caleb?” This came from the taller vampire. “You remember the bells ringing the night the Headsman collected Horace Laudner.”

The man cleared his throat. “That wasn’t at all the same, Flora. Just the Priory. This is bigger.”

“You’re right,” I said. “But things are different now. The Credo will be expecting me to do something, but I’m not a vigilante anymore.” I tapped the golden buckle on my belt, the one that held my Knight’s Mark. “I don’t have to sneak in.”

“The Hyacinth Knight joins the crusade at last. Shall he bloom or shall he wither?”

We all turned our heads towards the slender figure reclining in front of the fire. It was the first time I’d heard Lucienne speak. She had a musical voice, at once soft and clear, pretty as wind-chimes but with an ever so subtle hiss of something more predatory beneath it. She leaned back in a disturbingly boneless motion and locked her eyes on mine. The pupils were narrow slits, the irises such a pale gray as to be nearly white.

“The Hyacinth?” Caleb frowned. “That knight who fought Siriks Sontae in the Emperor’s tournament last summer? But wasn’t he…”

He turned his face to me and trailed off. “Oh. Damn it all, that was you?”

“I watched you fight, Ser Knight.” Lucienne’s flirtatious smile flashed sharp fangs very like those the vampires possessed, while the end of her tail rattled loudly beneath her skirts. “You caught the flower I threw down. I was so pleased.”

Of course the Keeper had people watching that festival. It didn’t surprise me, though her admission about the flower I’d whimsically caught and taken a name from did.

It didn’t matter now. “So you all understand your role in this?” I looked at the rest. “To get the doctor where she needs to be?”

“And what if you die before we can?” Sans asked. “While you’re busy swinging steel and acting the big hero.”

“He will not.”

I felt a shiver in the air as the dyghoul stepped forward. Immediately, I knew he — she? they? it?— was old. Od clung to them so thickly it looked like umbral flesh, but it didn’t quite hide the bare bones they’d been reduced to. They wore the remnants of fine clothes like an aristocrat at court, including an archaic fashion of tricorn crowned in rotted feathers and layered coattails framing what might have once been a skirt or gown. The silver sword at their hip gave off a slight glow.

The dead thing dipped into a courtly bow. “We meet at last, Knight of Seydis. I am Casimir.”

The dyghoul’s grinning skull turned about, the motion causing the miasma clinging to it to shift. “The Zosite would see all the dead burn to power their engines. We may defy the edicts that would consign us to the lands below, and in that defiance be damned, but there are worse purgatories. I will fight.”

With that, they retreated back into the shadows. The shorter vampire, who I guessed to be Maryanne, hugged herself as though cold.

“That bastard Vicar led those things to us that night,” Flora said in a dark voice. “He’s the reason we lost Petunia, Lily, Dorris, Eleanor, and even poor Terrance. He’s got a score with us, and we need to teach everyone that not even these infernal fucks mess with the Backroad.”

She met each pair of eyes in turn with her red ones. “So can we stop dithering and figure out how we’re going to get this woman near that whoring scroll?”

“Point of order,” Sans said and raised his hand.

Maryanne scoffed in disgust. “By the God-Queen’s golden tits, Sans, can you give it a rest?”

The necromancer ignored her, his gaze fixed on Delphine. “The Zoscian is a well known treasure of the occult world, and anyone who studies it knows one thing — it’s a fragment of the whole, and the only way to make any great change in the Law of Hell is to reconnect the two. So how are you going to use the scroll against them the way you’re saying? You’d have to let the portal open, go to where they are.”

Everyone stared at Delphine, including me. It was a good question, one I hadn’t considered.

“I don’t,” Delphine said as she met Sans’s stare. “I believe that the core will come to us.”

“And how do you figure that?” I asked in alarm.

Delphine seemed to think a moment, then marched forward to stand in the middle of the group. She studied the floor, then started ripping aside the fur rugs laid across it. Lucienne was in the way and hissed at her, but Delphine just muttered a hasty apology and kept working. The lamia slithered away, revealing her serpentine tail as she curled up next to Tam to pout. The toad-like changeling just stared at the doctor curiously.

Delphine produced a piece of chalk from her pouches and knelt down on the wooden floor, beginning to draw. She worked fast, almost feverishly, sketching long lines and complex angles with a hasty but sure hand. For several minutes, the cabin filled with the scratching of that stick of chalk.

“What is she—” Caleb began, but Sans hushed him.

When done, Delphine had drawn something very like an occultist’s diagram on the floor, though it didn’t quite seem like a ritual circle to me. There were no runes, for one thing, and it didn’t form any particular pattern I recognized. At the center was a long horizontal oval filled with fractals.

Delphine pointed to the central ellipse. “Our world.”

I realized what I was looking at. The fractal shapes were coastlines, dividing land from sea. She’d sketched a very accurate approximation of the subcontinent, and done most of eastern Edaea as well.

Maryanne’s eyes widened. “That… that’s a map? That’s… everything?”

It struck me that the woman might have never seen a map of the world before. She looked awed.

“Not everything.” Delphine was on her knees, studying her work like a self-critical artist. “But enough to demonstrate.” She tapped the middle of Urn, her chalk striking not far from where Osheim would be. “Sans, as a student of the occult, I am guessing you’ve also studied cosmic geometry? So you are aware of the Extraplanar Axis theory?”

At his confused look, she explained. “You’re all aware, I’m certain, that our existence is made up of layers. The world is not just a solid plane. Just like there are caverns and underground rivers that riddle the earth beneath us, so is it with the fabric of reality itself.”

“The Wend,” I said.

Delphine nodded. “The Wending Roads are a system of… let’s call them wormholes in reality. Only, they aren’t random.

They are connective tissue in an incomprehensibly vast system, like blood veins in the body of Creation.”

“Ah.” Sans clasped his fingers together and nodded. “You’re talking about the Star Tree.”

“A rather outdated model with more basis in superstition, but it serves well enough.” Delphine ignored Sans’s expression and turned back to her drawing, beginning to add new lines to it. She started to draw squiggling marks that circled around the “planet,” almost like roots. Some of these seemed to connect the outer circle to the world. After a moment’s thought, she drew moons as well, more than the two there should have been, and made more lines connecting all of them.

“Other planets,” she explained to us. “Some are just moons, and there are far more than this, but I’m trying to keep things parsable.”

“Other worlds?” Maryanne asked in excitement. Lucienne had crawled forward, studying the growing diagram curiously. Her forked tongue flicked out once.

“Yes!” Delphine was growing more confident. “Astrologers believe that every star in the sky is like our sun, and each one produces a radius of light around it that attracts these bodies. Light and gravity. These are the ones that share our star.”

“Amazing,” the dark-haired vampire said with clear wonder on her face. Even Flora looked taken aback.

“So what does this have to do with anything?” Caleb asked, less impressed by the model of our existence.

“I’m getting to that.” Delphine adjusted her hair and started drawing again, adding more lines. “Despite the insistence of some scholars…”

The way she said this made it clear she doubted that status.

“…Our planet is not actually the center of the universe. That honor belongs to a greater realm, referred to in astrological study as Astram Domini.”

“Heaven,” I said. “Onsolem.”

Eilidh, who stood closest to me, flinched.

Delphine pointed at me with her chalk, using it like a general’s baton. “Yes, or so the theory goes. It is believed that the Wending Roads once connected to the center, to the throne of all Creation if you’d like to think of it that way. They were like highways spread out from the capital of a great empire that spanned all layers of existence, though verticality should be factored in if you think of Onsolem as the uppermost height.”

“Please stop using that word,” Flora pleaded in a strained voice. “It hurts.”

Delphine blinked, seeming only then to remember that her audience was made up of undead and shapeshifters. She shivered and continued. “But that’s not true anymore. The Wend was shut off, tangled up if you will, and became a closed system. It lets you travel about our world and to some parallel dimensions that got caught up in the event, but it’s nowhere near as far reaching as it used to be, or so the theory goes.”

“All very fascinating,” Jean-Luc noted. “But it doesn’t really answer Master Sans’s question, does it?”

Sans didn’t seem to agree. I could see the calculation behind his dark eyes. I didn’t know where Delphine was going either, and just watched with folded arms.

“If we think of reality as a body, of the paths that connect its various layers as veins, then what is a problem every living thing suffers?” The doctor searched our faces.

“Hunger?” Maryanne suggested.

“Death,” Flora said softly.

“Disease?” Tam tossed out uncertainly. He had a surprisingly soft voice.

“Close,” Delphine said and pointed with her stick at the changeling. “Parasites.”

I understood. “Demons.”

Delphine added another section to her diagram. Opposite the enormous star she’d used to represent Onsolem, “beneath” the ellipse of our planet, she drew a jagged-edged funnel large enough to swallow the whole. I knew immediately what it was.

“The Abyss,” Delphine said. She trailed off a moment, her expression becoming remote. She shook it off and continued. “These shapes I’m drawing are all representative by the way, so the connections between these forces make sense. I’m leaving out many intermediary planes… but I digress. At the uppermost layer of this dimension…” She tapped the funnel. “Lies Orkael, the realm of the Zosite.”

She drew a series of curving lines at the top of the funnel, so they formed something like islands above the enormous pit. “This is where our enemy is coming from,” she said and pointed at those circles. “Trick is, this is where the verticality I mentioned comes into play. Think of the Wend like a river flowing out from Onso— from Heaven.” She cleared her throat. “Going downriver is relatively easy, it happens naturally, but going up requires much more effort. It’s why demons and devils need help to escape where they’re from and get here, someone to cast out a fishing line and tug them up, as it were. It’s even harder now, because most of those paths are redirected and form loops, or they’ve become choked with qliphoth.”

She scratched out several of the lines connecting Hell to our world. “The Credo doesn’t just want to rip open an unstable gate between their realm and ours. That would be disastrous for everyone. It’s what happened in Seydis, and that land is still bleeding.”

That was true enough. I’d seen it in that vision, like the once verdant land had become an open, festering wound.

“The Zosite value order, and it won’t benefit them to literally unleash Hell in the middle of the kingdoms they want to usurp. They want to do something more precise than that, but they also need to, as Master Sans pointed out, reconnect their relic to its original body. So what do they do?”

Sans cursed. “A Chthonian Nail.”

When everyone stared blankly at him, he explained. “It’s a method used in powerful necromancy. There aren’t many easy paths into the Underworld, and where there are ways they’re guarded. So if you want to call up the dead from Draubard, you punch a hole and let them slip through. It’s always small, precise as the doctor pointed out, and easy to close afterward. It leaves a scar, but not a permanent gap that’ll trouble you later. Good for letting a handful of spirits loose without making it a flood. Most necromancers develop an Art that functions as a Chthonian Nail for this reason.”

“So…” I struggled to keep up. “They’re going to use their own god as a nail to punch into our dimension, by calling to it with the Zoscian?”

“Remember that Zos is more a machine than a sentient being,” Delphine reminded me. “All the mechanisms of Vicar’s home realm connect back to It. Still, the outcome will be… rather dramatic. I imagine they’re going to use the ritual of the thing to make it look like a godly act to any of the knights and priests who’ll be watching.”

“It will require a sacrifice,” Sans said darkly. “Death, and not a peaceful one. Aura erupts when someone dies, especially if that death is violent, and they’ll need that to form a strong enough signal.”

“I imagine more than one sacrifice for something on this scale,” Delphine agreed.

“How are they going to sell that to all these holy types?” Flora asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “But they’ve been preparing this for years. Delphine, I’m not sure our plan is something I can settle with. If it means letting them kill innocents…”

“Likely they’ve already been doing it to weaken the barriers between planes,” she told me. “The God-Queen put powerful wards over this land to prevent this kind of intrusion, so they’ll have needed to weaken those. They’re taking advantage of all the damage the Traitor Magi caused too, I’m certain. Besides…”

She considered, her eyes wandering to her model of the cosmos. “I think they’ll use crowfriars as the sacrifices. Their souls are already bound to Orkael, so their deaths will form a stronger connection. It’s the only reason why they’d need to gather the entire order together for this.”

“Anyone who’s signed their souls over would work,” Sans told the doctor.

I cursed savagely. “That’s it! That’s why they wanted the Priory. Every single prior, priorguard, and penitent attached to the order works for this sacrifice. They’ve prepared themselves a mass slaughter.”

Delphine drew in a sharp breath. “My God… I think you’re right. I’m very glad I didn’t sign anything when I came on with them.” Her face twisted into an odd expression. “Come to think of it… Vicar is the one who stopped me from signing a contract to formalize my arrangement with the Priory. Strange.”

“How do we know they haven’t already started?” Eilidh asked.

“We don’t.” I closed my eyes and focused on the feeling in the air. It would be morning soon. I could feel the sun rising through my newly strengthened senses. It came with a sense of trepidation rather than with comfort, perhaps just because I knew what this next day would bring.

There was more to discuss, details and strategies, but I’d mostly leave that to the others. They were all experts in one way or another, or the Keeper wouldn’t have encouraged these to take part.

My role was simple, and insanely reckless. I’d prepared myself best as I could.

“Ready yourselves,” I told that group of heretics and monsters, the devils that Urn’s kingdoms knew. “In a few hours, we’re going to save the Aureate Crusade from itself.”

I looked to Sans. “I’m going to need fog. Lots of it.”

The necromancer smiled. “I can do that.”

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