ARC 7: CHAPTER 40: TOLL

My gaze lingered on Flora. Her head hadn’t been cut off, but torn off. Some spine remained attached to it, exposed vertebrae and gore hanging below the jaw like a beard. Her eyes were still open, her sharp teeth bared and clenched.

I lifted my face to the devil knight. He stood more than a head taller than me, a tower of black iron cloaked in cinders. Chains dangled from his armor, each ending in a barbed hook which rattled with every step. The skull mask nailed to his helm emitted no sound, only cold silence. He moved with steady strides, each measured, not running and yet advancing with alarming speed.

His upper body torqued to one side as he lifted his spiked warhammer, his armor — his prison — groaning in protest. I lifted my arms just in time to block the hammer with the flat of my blade.

A mistake. The hammer struck, and an explosive blast of force erupted between us. It knocked me into the air. The world spun in a sickening cascade of motion. I twisted end over end, unable to control the movement, then slammed against something — a pillar — and went down hard.

It took me too long to stand, moments longer for the room to stop reeling. Flecks of stone and dust tumbled on me from the pillar I’d landed against. I wanted to vomit, could only manage a cough.

My ribs were in agony. If I hadn’t been in armor, hadn’t sheathed my sword in aura…

I’d be dead. That would have broken every bone in my body. When I blinked down at my sword, I saw a small crack in the blade. Blood trickled down my temple from a cut on my scalp.

The scorchknight never stopped moving. Even in the time it’d taken me to stand up he’d cleared half the space between us. Each time his black sabatons struck the crypt’s floor, the ground shuddered and hissed smoke.

He lifted his unadorned shield and started to raise his hammer again. I took a guard, but even as I did I knew I couldn’t keep blocking it like that. He was fast for his size, and if he landed a hit dead on…

I realized something else then in a flash of panic. When he’d hit me, all the auratic fire I’d been burning had snuffed out. I felt cold. Not empty, the power was still in me, but he’d frozen it somehow. Some kind of Orkaelin sorcery, similar to what Vicar’s seraph had once used to subdue me in Garihelm.

I felt the shadows in the crypt start creep closer. My ghosts sensed the light in me falter, and they advanced with hungry intent. Mist began to form around my ankles, spilling out over the crypt’s floor.

Fight-harder-kill-spill-blood-feast-hate-let-none-live-slaughter-punish-hate-hate—

I tried to shake the insidious thoughts off. Some of the ghosts were seeping through the cracks in my spiritual armor. A consequence of showing weakness, and a reminder that they weren’t my allies. I bared my teeth in an effort of will, both to push them away and to revive my magic. It stirred and started to flicker back to life.

Too slow. I wouldn’t be able to muster a defense before he reached me. I tensed and prepared to swing. Offense would be the best defense, but if he moved faster than I could—

He did. With a shock of speed, the scorchknight shifted from stilted movement to a single sudden lunge forward. The hammer, wrapped in that soul-eating cold, swept back for a horizontal swing.

Hate. Hate this.

There was strength to be had, and not just from the Alder. It whispered all around me. So I stopped fighting against the presence eating at the edges of my mind.

Instead, I directed it.

Hate him. I focused on the infernal juggernaut. He would drag you all down with chains and condemn you to eternal torment. He’s a jailer. Hate him.

The scorchknight faltered and stumbled, his weapon hand going limp as the mist thickened around him and became a burdening pressure. The chains dangling from his armor crackled with frost, his armor groaned, and shapes began to congeal on his shoulders. Small, wrinkled things, malformed shades who laid themselves on the devil and weighed him down. They gnawed at his neck and hands with small, gray teeth.

Not just ghosts, either. A shape flung itself at the devil knight from the side. Already off balance, he stumbled sideways. A very angry vampire clung to him, scrabbling with her claws for any gap in his armor. The shades fled, muttering bitter curses at the one who’d poached their meal.

“Bastard!” Maryanne screeched. Her voice was garbled through a mouth that’d grown into something more like a snout or muzzle. “You killed Flora!”

The scorchknight’s only reply was to straighten himself, barely seeming to register the vampire’s weight. His helm fixed again on me, ignoring the claws gouging superficial scratches in his armor. I’d only bought time, not actually hurt him.

But Maryanne interfered with his shield arm, giving me a clear opening in his guard. But in order to do any damage to the juggernaut, I’d have to throw every ounce of my strength into the blow. She would be hurt too.

The vampire’s shiny black eye, an animal eye, glinted as it turned to me. “Do it,” she hissed.

I finally broke free of the cold and sheathed my sword in golden fire. I heard Eilidh’s voice cut through the noise, stiff with panic. “Wait, don’t—”

I struck. The knight tried to block my sword with his hammer, but I cleaved through it. A flash of bright yellow light burst to life where my burning blade struck him. The light brightened and bled of color, becoming a brilliant white. The noise it made wasn’t quite that of fire. It was more discordant, howling.

When it cleared, Maryanne lay a distance away on her side. Her stolen nun’s habit burned, and she didn’t move. Eilidh wasn’t far, staring at the scene with an expression of numb horror. King Kale’s men had broken through when I’d distracted the Credo, and they’d also been fighting back. Many of them let out exclamations of wonder at the scene.

Delphine stood nowhere in my immediate sight. Neither did Oraise.

The scorchknight lay a distance away, hurled by my smite. Fire crawled across the creature’s black armor and it didn’t move. The surviving humans in the room stared at the fallen monster in shock.

Can’t be that easy, I thought.

And sure enough, the scorchknight began to stir and rise. Chains rattled. It moved like a puppet lifted on invisible strings, dragged into the air almost weightlessly despite how heavy it must have been. A low, hollow growl emerged from the skull mask.

But I’d hurt it. That was enough to chase away the kernel of despair I’d started to feel. I’d faced worse than this. I’d beaten worse than this.

I hadn’t wanted to hurt an ally to do so. I tried not to look at the burning figure sprawled out nearby. Two now. Maryanne and Flora, and who knew who else.

I looked for sadness, for regret, but all I felt in that moment was resentment and rage.

Focus, I thought. They were still stalling me, and something felt wrong. Before Idiobi attacked, Vicar had implied he’d realized something.

Where were the abgrüdai? What was the catch, the plot? If I hadn’t been here, the Credo would have already succeeded. Wouldn’t they have?

My eyes went to the dais. The Cardinal still stood by the pulpit where the Zoscian rested. Why wasn’t he moving to sign it? Eirik was dead, there wasn’t any reason to wait.

And where were Delphine and Oraise? My bad feeling started to evolve into a terrible one.

The pile of corpses, of sacrifices, in front of the altar pulsed again. Dead limbs twitched to life and raw throats gasped, broken teeth clacking together in a chorus that scourged my ears.

The bones in the walls weremoving, and not just because of the ghosts I’d brought. The damned were starting to slip through the gate, and they would want bodies. Already skulls and femurs and cracked ribs were starting to tumble free, creating a clattering racket that filled the room in a growing tide of noise. It almost sounded like applause.

Saint Perseus moved for the first time since Eirik’s death. His veiled face tilting in my direction. “You fight well, warrior. Indeed, you give me such hope for us.”

Not sure if he could even hear or understand me, I tried speaking to the exhumed priest. “Cardinal, listen to me. You’ve been deceived, but it’s not too late to stop this.”

I couldn’t see the undead saint’s face through the veil, but had an impression of sadness from his regard. “Oh, my dear child, we have all been deceived for so long. I have seen it. He has shown me.”

“Zos is not a god,” I said. “It’s just a machine, an engine, put to the purpose of those who’ve got their hand on the wheel. Don’t bring Hell here, Your Holiness. We keep our demons there for a reason.”

The corpses pulsed again, more violently this time. The bones were beginning to assemble themselves around the edges of the room. I could barely hear myself think over the dreadful whispering beginning to emanate out from the very stone that framed the chapel. The tomb.

The scorchknight regained his feet. He emitted plumes of smoke and a dull heat seemed to burn off him, setting his black armor to glowing. One of the stylized horns on his helmet had broken clean off, dislodging the crest it’d helped hold. His weapon was ruined, but he still looked very capable of killing me.

The Cardinal just stared at me. My jaw set.

Fine. I’d do it the direct way. And where the hell was Delphine? Had she gone like Flora, been dismembered during all the violence?

The scorchknight stepped forward, but stopped when an arrow broke itself off his left pauldron. He turned slowly towards the Osheimers.

Kale Stour stepped up to my side. He bled from a wound to his stomach where his chain had been breached and from his temple. The first looked fatal, if a clericon didn’t see to it. He held a hand to it, but blood seeped through.

“You’re Alken Hewer,” he said to me. “Damn odd timing, for a devil to show up when we need saving from devils.”

I inclined my head. “I am glad to see you alive, Sire.”

“You can stop this?” He pointed at the bodies and the pulpit.

“A companion of mine can, if she lives.” I nodded to the scorchknight, who seemed torn on which threat to focus on between me and the group of well armed soldiers. “We need to take care of him.”

There were still plenty of fetterfiends, hellhounds, and crowfriars in various shapes in the room, but they’d all paused when the Cardinal had started speaking.

Eilidh knelt by the prone form of Maryanne. I wouldn’t count on help from there.

Kale got the message. “We’ll keep these blasphemous things off you, Headsman, but I’ll want a full account of this business afterward.” His gaze went to the vampires, and I saw his expression darken.

I shrugged. “As you wish, Sire.”

I lifted my sword. The king and his retinue readied their own weapons. The horde of monsters before us stamped, snorted, and whined, eager to taste mortal blood.

I caught movement in the corner of my vision. Two figures were clambering up onto the dais on the far side of the sarcophagus, moving furtively as they could. There they were. The Presider had his silver knife out, and his eyes locked on the Cardinal.

Silver for the dead. Maybe I didn’t have to be the one to put the mad corpse down, after all.

And yet… this all still felt wrong. We were all deceived. Vicar’s last words kept circling in my mind.

“Perseus!” A voice cried out. It was Krile, who had adopted her burnt-corpse form but still looked more human than most of the Credo in that moment. “Enough stalling! Eirik is dead, sign the volumen!”

The Cardinal shook his veiled head. “No. There is one more who must join us, one more name to be added.”

Krile blinked, as surprised by this as me. “What? What are you talking about?”

The simmer of dread building in my chest became a boil. I started to speak, to call out and warn Delphine to get away even though she’d drawn so close to the podium that held our goal.

Just then a bright, pale light bloomed at the top of the room, amid the vaulted ceiling and ancient rafters. Many of the fiends let out piteous whines and cringed from it, while Kale and his men gasped and threw up their hands.

I stared into it, squinting. An echo of that same light lay in my eyes, so it didn’t blind me. It was too bright to see through for a lingering moment, but when my sight adjusted I could make out a shape in it.

It descended down from above. Multiple sets of airy wings brushed the columns. The feathers on those wings tinkled like wind chimes, for they were white silver, and they reflected the hellish scene below in a hundred fractal angles. Its skin was alabaster white, its lithe form androgynous.

It had one leg.

Kale broke that silence with five words. “My God, it’s an angel.”

“No,” I said and started to move. “It’s not.”

Not anymore. My eyes drifted up the shining form to the shoulders, and higher, and as the blinding light faded and I saw all of him I understood in a sudden wave of horror.

Chamael was dead. Or as dead as an immortal can be. His body had been brutalized, pierced by claws and spears driven through him and left there. I understood, somehow, that it’d been done so he resembled Tuvon after the Alder Knights betrayed him and left their swords sheathed in his body. A mockery.

But that wasn’t the worst part.

His heads were missing. All three of them.

The decapitated angel levitated down until it hovered directly over the pulpit where the Zoscian waited. It produced no sound, seeming to exude an atmosphere of silence. I couldn’t even hear my own breath, my own heartbeat.

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Krile, Melmoth, and all the other crowfriars had frozen in shock. They clearly hadn’t expected this. The fetterfiends and scorchknight hesitated, waiting for orders.

But one of their fellows hadn’t reacted that way at all. Dis Myrddin stared up at Chamael, and smiled.

We have all been deceived.

Vicar had let Lias escape, perhaps in a moment of pique. He’d fled his order and the Priory and taken matters into his own hands, tried to recover the Zoscian rather than trusting his fellows to do it. He’d never said as much, but it’d been obvious he didn’t trust them.

Pieces of the puzzle were finally clicking into place.

The Credo Ferrum had traitors. How long had they wandered the earth with scant contact from their infernal masters? How long had it taken them to be infiltrated?

And if one wizard could make a servant of Hell doubt, why not another?

The bearded crowfriar saw me sprinting towards the dais and his grin faded. I burned my aura and leapt, further and higher than any man should have been able to even without so much extra weight in metal.

I swung. The headless seraph beat its wings once.

Pain. A flash of blinding white agony and shock. I lost moments, didn’t remember being flung back or striking the balcony beneath the crypt’s doors and digging a hole into solid carved stone.

But it all must have happened, because when I came back to myself I lay in a pile of rubble. My vision reeled, and when I tried to pitch forward and stand a torrent of vertigo seized me. I did vomit then, and there was blood in it.

Groaning, I tore myself free of the hard nest and stumbled to my feet. Dust settled, and I saw that Chamael hadn’t moved at all. Dis Myrddin had moved to stand below him and near the Cardinal. A slow, rasping cackle had begun to bubble out of the crowfriar’s throat. I’d first encountered him in Garihelm the same night I’d executed Horace, as the second member of the Credo I’d met in person. A short, stocky man with a mantle of dirty furs and a black mane of matted hair, he looked more like a wild hermit than a Monk of Orkael.

Krile stared at the other friar in disbelief. “What are you doing, brother?”

Dis shrugged. “What does it look like, sister?”

Krile’s expression didn’t have the rage I might have expected. She looked perplexed. “But… you are contracted, like all of us. You cannot betray the Tribunal, it is impossible.”

“Not impossible.” Dis scratched at his pockmarked cheek with a thumbnail. “He was able to break the binding easy enough. The Tribunal left itself too many loopholes for the sake of playing nice with the old regime. Foolish if you ask me, especially since they want to be top dogs now.”

“Madness.” Krile shook her head. “Blasphemy.”

He? Perseus had also said that. “Who broke your bindings?” I demanded aloud. “Are you talking about the Gorelion?”

I had to pause to cough dust out of my lungs, but even without hearing an answer I doubted my guess. Was it because Ager Roth had been an angel? Did he have capabilities beyond any other demon?

Dis just sneered at me. “Die ignorant, mortal. This isn’t your show.”

Krile turned her gaze to the scorchknight. “Take him. He will face punishment back in Orkael. Destroy the wreckage of that seraphim as well.”

Beren In Irons began to turn and move towards the dais.

Dis Myrddin’s grin returned.

Chamael lifted an arm. The limb trembled, as though straining against some unseen force. The fingers curled in a squeeze.

The scorchknight crumpled. Literally. Every piece of his armor suddenly imploded, shrinking the hulking form down into something less than half its original mass. Rancid blood exploded forth like juice from a squeezed fruit, raining so far some of it struck me and stained the ceremonial drapes hung around the room.

The remnants of the infernal warrior collapsed and did not move again. I stared in dumb disbelief. He still had this much power, even with such a ruined form?

The corpse pile beneath the angel pulsed once more. Those were getting faster. Almost like a heartbeat, I realized. The rotted bones that’d fallen from the crypt’s walls were starting to rise. It was hard to call them skeletons — they weren’t intact enough for that, and the pieces were all haphazardly arranged. They were shambling things that glowed with toxic looking fire. There must have been scores of them.

They started to lurch forward. The walls themselves were shifting, sliding into one another, impossible spaces opening within new gaps. A single long crack split the far wall of the crypt. A freezing wind came out of it. I could hear the groaning of something enormous in that wind. It sounded like gears turning, like hammers slamming against anvils, like iron mechanisms with the strength to crack worlds.

Hell lay in that.

“Zos is near,” Krile said in a breathless voice. “Can you feel Him beating against the walls of this world? He will puncture into this place like a nail through flesh and His disciples will be among us.” Her attention went sharply back to Dis. “You are the fool, and whatever you intended, it’s too late.”

“The paladin said it himself,” Dis said and gestured to me. “Zos is just a machine, and It’s already done Its job. We only needed a gap wide enough to slip through, and we’ve got it. All we need now is the right wish for the core to grant.”

For what to slip through? But I already felt I knew.

This wasn’t an invasion. It was a jailbreak.

On the ceiling high above the headless angel, I could make out the impression of a shadowy form. No one else seemed able to see it, but a faerie king had crafted my eyes. Something like a spider perched there, with long spindly legs and a body resembling a mass of cancer. It worked the seraph with lines of black thread like a puppeteer.

It wasn’t the only demon in the room. I could feel them in the scars on my face, which had begun to throb with pain.

I had to stop this, now. I didn’t want to find out where this led. So I swept my sword back, shaped my will, and swung.

Seraph’s Halo was a more complex technique, one I favored when I couldn’t get in reach for a proper smite. It focused my aura into a thin blade of golden light that spun through the air like a sharp discus. I didn’t prefer it against other adepts, because it was relatively slow and easy to avoid or counter, and no stronger than ordinary steel once it did connect, which limited its use against armored or quick opponents.

But I wasn’t aiming for Chamael. Just the thing puppeting him.

The Art worked, to my relief, and the sliver of spinning phantasm arced through the air. It sliced through the shadowy webs attaching the onsolain to the demon on the ceiling, and severed them.

Chamael slumped to the ground, and all at once the bright light his body exuded winked out. Only an ash-gray carcass remained, seemingly lifeless. The thing on the ceiling screeched in rage.

At the same moment, Oraise came up behind Cardinal Perseus and sheathed his silver dagger into the undead saint’s back. The Cardinal let out a gasp like air through a sepulcher, a hollow sound that seemed to fill the whole room.

I was already running forward. Had to get to the Zoscian, keep any more of these lunatics away from it.

“Alken!” Delphine cried out. She stood by the sarcophagus and was trying reach the scroll, but devils — both those who’d been here already and those skeleton-things who’d started to appear — were flooding up the side of the dais.

She had to finish Lias’s addendum and close this gate now. The crypt seemed to be unfolding around us, becoming larger, its shape unspooling into something that made little sense. The fissure in the far wall grew wider.

Growling, I swept out with my sword and sent an arc of fire forward. Not quite well-shaped enough to be a proper Art, but it got the job done. The plume of fire tore past the creatures moving towards Delphine and caused them to recoil. The gilt flames lingered in a line over the ground, forming a wall between the doctor and the fiends.

They wouldn’t burn for long. I kept running.

Delphine set her face and marched forward despite the danger. The Cardinal had slumped, and Oraise stared down at him dispassionately. The thing on the ceiling had started to move. It was huge, bigger than anything else in the room including Chamael.

I felt something come through the gate. It emerged from the fissure in the back wall and went into the pile of corpses. They’d started to fuse together, becoming a pulsing mass of limbs and teeth and viscous gore. Even as I saw this, a huge and many-jointed arm burst free, nine fingers scrabbling at the slick floor.

Despite its monstrous proportions, the arm shone marble white and the claws were like black ice. It seemed to shine with its own cold light. That was no demon. The Zosite were coming, and they were building themselves bodies from those their servants had sacrificed.

Just like Yith.

“Hurry, Delphine!” I roared.

Before I could reach the dais, a berserk fetterfiend charged and forced me to defend myself. Chaos had erupted again. Kale’s men were fighting devils, the devils were fighting eachother as more traitors revealed themselves, and Oraise brandished his silver knife as every flavor of evil crept close to him and the doctor. He was just a man though, and couldn’t stop that tide.

I killed the creature who’d attacked me and turned just in time to see Delphine reach the podium. When she moved her hand near the scroll, she winced. Her finger began to bleed, as though just drawing near the thing cut it.

Close. But she needed to finish Lias’s work. How long would that take?

I’d give her all the time I could. More monsters were drawing close. The swung at me with smoldering pitchforks and wicked tools attached to rattling chains. Worse, more spirits were slipping through the cracks forming between dimensions. They weren’t all visible, lacking flesh, but they made themselves known in other ways. The room made no sense anymore, becoming like a waking, breathing nightmare.

Kale shouted something, and I turned just in time to see him go down under a charge of three fetterfiends. What was left of the Credo were trying to reach the Zoscian too, stop Delphine, but the pulses of power emanating out from the center of the room seemed to be pushing them back.

Even I struggled to get close. Every step cost me effort, and the monsters that kept getting in my way weren’t helping. The air felt like molasses, growing worse the closer I got to the room’s center.

Strangely, Dis Myrddin made no move to stop Delphine. He sat off to the side, watching with intense interest. The thing on the ceiling hadn’t tried to stop her either. It was sending more threads down towards Chamael’s body, and already the seraph began to emit light again and twitch.

Chamael can’t use the Zoscian anyway, I thought, remembering Lias’s words on how the artifact worked. Angels can write conditions, but only a mortal can sign it and compel Zos to act.

A wish. Dis Myrddin had called it a wish. What wish?

Something hit me, hard. It was very fast and very strong. An apish thing with iron tusks and chains dangling from a collar bolted to its blubbery neck. It slammed one of those tusks into my breastplate just below the ribs, breaking through the armor.

A flash of hot pain. I grunted and punched it repeatedly in the side of the head as we grappled, my steel fist breaking its skin and splattering tarry blood across my arm. Its skull was iron too, however, and it barely reacted. With a ripping snarl it dislodged itself, breaking its tusk and leaving a section of it stuck in my side. It struck me with a fist powerful as a siege ram, sending me reeling to the floor.

I blinked through the agony and looked up just as the devil brought its fists up above its head, meaning to pulp my skull.

Its ankles were blistered and thin, the left rubbed down nearly to the bone. I kicked it. It broke, and the fetterfiend went down with a squeal of pain. I rolled onto it, got my rondel out, and stabbed it until it stopped moving.

By the time I’d finished, I was drenched in caustic, reeking blood and heaving. I looked up, and watched Delphine as she stared down at the volumen laid before her. She seemed to be hesitating.

No… she was crying. Silent tears streamed down her face, and she shook her head and said something I couldn’t hear. Something stood behind her, a horned shape.

A shadow.

It survived. It attached itself to her. How hadn’t I noticed?

Because the doctor, the occultist, knew how to keep me from noticing. If she took it into her dreams, how would I have known? I’d have needed to look into her soul, and I hadn’t, because I’d thought our words in the wendwood bared it well enough.

I’d been a fool, again.

Idiobi stood up there too, a tall shape with small empty eyes and permanently bared teeth, barely visible in the gloom behind the podium. The spider-thing lurked further back, a spindly shadow big as a young tree which hid behind its puppet angel’s luminance. Other shapes congealed around the dais, each its own unique nightmare.

The abgrüdai. They’d gathered to bear witness.

Oraise stared all around, looking panicked at the appearance of the demons. Some of the smaller shapes were starting to pull at the hem of his coat like children eager for attention.

Have to get to her. Have to save her.

Delphine caught my look and held it. Her expression set and she said something that seemed directed at me. I didn’t hear it over everything else, but the way her lips moved…

It looked like she said I’m sorry.

And I knew. I knew then what she wanted, what she planned, what she’d been planning.

“No.” My voice came out small. No one would have heard it. “Don’t. Please.”

Too late. She wrote something on the scroll.

Everything stopped.

I was no scholar. I couldn’t understand all the minutia of how Zos actually worked, but this was my understanding of it.

The crowfriars were trying to weave a spell, an Art, which used their dark deity like a battering ram to punch through the strong walls that’d been set to guard our world. It required brute force, the Zoscian acting like a signal to draw its greater body’s attention. The machines of Hell pounded at the walls over and over, widening the crack until it grew large enough for the Iron Tribunal, Hell’s ruling body, to send its more powerful agents through en masse. An invasion, a hostile takeover.

The effort always matches the need. If a needle is required, then Zos will use a needle. If a hammer, then it shall strike like a hammer. But once the goal is completed, the contract fulfilled, then the mechanisms will cease. Their contract with the Priory, so far as I understood, was that the mortals who’d abetted them would help open the way, with their own flesh and blood if necessary, to bring Zos and Its servants into our world.

A technical way of looking at it. What I’d failed to understand until that moment was why it required a mortal to make Zos act, why the Credo Ferrum and the Iron Tribunal needed mortal dupes to compel their own deity.

Dis Myrddin already said it. Zos granted wishes.

I’d wondered why Delphine knew the infernal script, why she’d studied demonology, become obsessed with alchemy and folk magic. It seemed awfully convenient that she could do what Lias, a Magi, had dedicated a decade of his life trying to learn just when we needed it.

But of course she had. She’d been pining for this chance for twelve years. She’d risked infiltrating the Inquisition and gone through every other danger just for this moment.

And I’d brought her here.

The effort always matches the need. What need had she just etched into that cursed scrap of flesh, what wish to be granted?

There was only one answer.

No. No, no, no, no—

The thing striking against the barriers of reality, that iron machine I could hear like the toll of a distant bell, struck just once more. The tomb shuddered once before settling. Every pair of eyes in the room looked to its center.

The huge arm of the still forming seraphim emerging from the corpse pile stiffened suddenly. Its movements became more frantic as it tried to grasp for purchase, but its body wasn’t complete yet and it remained attached to the charnel. Its movements became more desperate, claws scrabbling for anything to grasp onto. The scene was disturbingly silent, just a scraping, squelching noise accompanying it.

Then, abruptly, the arm was pulled back into the gore and vanished. The whole mass shivered.

A pool of blood began to trickle out of the flesh pile. The flow grew faster quickly, until a crimson pond spilled forth to cover the laid stones of the tomb’s floor in an incomplete circle around the bodies, the dais with the coffin, and the podium rising behind it. It couldn’t have been deeper than the width of my smallest finger, but something told me it was deep enough to drown in.

This instinct became confirmed when the corpses of slain devils were caught at the edges of the pool and pulled in, sinking down into the red and vanishing. I stumbled back when the one I’d wrestled with got tugged under. As I looked up at the the sacrifices piled before the platform, I realized they didn’t look like a pile of distinct bodies anymore. They’d fused into a mass of stretched limbs and shimmering red glowing from within. The whole thing pulsed gently, like a heart… or a cocoon.

Then it unfolded, and I realized it could be more accurately described as a flower. It bloomed, splitting open to reveal complex patterns of stretched sinew, thorns of sharp bone, and feverish scarlet hide. Steam poured out of it, along with a horrible reek like the worst battlefields I’d ever walked, a wave of odious fumes that filled the lower chamber and choked visibility.

I knew I should move, do something, but I couldn’t. I remained kneeling there amidst all the maimed and broken bodies of the melee I’d just fought through and stared, transfixed. Everyone else in the room seemed the same.

A light burst forth from the goreflower. It wasn’t unlike Chamael’s light, only it shone in shades of vermillion. At first it remained too bright to see through, but soon faded enough to reveal a pool of blood at the flower’s center that bubbled and spat.

Something rose out of that red nectar. First a head covered in matted, blood-drenched hair. Then pressed lips, a narrow chin, a slim neck sloping down into bare shoulders. The form was naked beneath all the filth, and had its arms wrapped about its chest as though to shield its modesty. Threads of sinew and glistening membrane from the goreflower attached to the figure’s arms and back, and as they tightened they acted like ropes on a pulley dragging it out of the blood. The blood clung, sticky and viscous, as though regretful to let the form go.

The rising form revealed what at first seemed like a very human body, and female. She was lithe and long limbed, dripping with blood, unfolding as she rose from what had been a fetal posture. Her legs cleared the pool and told the lie to that human shape. The right leg was normal and tapered into a dainty foot, but the left ended in a cloven hoof.

The demons gathering around the platform behind the bloom were whispering in excitement in a myriad of dreadful voices. I didn’t understand all the words, but a few I did, and they echoed through the chamber like an abyssal chant.

“Welcome.”

“Welcome back, be welcome—

“Welcome sister.”

“Sister of Torment.”

“She is here!”

“She’s back. She’s free.”

“She has returned.”

“She Who Listens.”

Idiobi’s voice slithered through the cacophony of foul whispers. He’d risen to his full height atop the dais, his long arms stretched out wide. “Be welcome, Tormentsister. We have been waiting for you.”

The demon inside the flower opened her eyes. They were pale as dead moons, devoid of iris or pupil, haunted and empty.

Yet, that face… even through the mask of blood and blood-wet hair, I knew that face from memory, and dreams.

“Shyora!”

“Shyora is back.”

“It’s Shyora.”

“Pernicious Shyora is here.”

I barely heard any of it. I could only gasp out a single breathless word.

“Fidei.”

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