As our carriage passed beyond the temple gates and into the city of Dreadthorn, I looked out the window and into the sky. The red sun sat there in the haze, burning like a cigar. I’d grown used to the opulence of the tower, its lofty heights receding behind us. So I was surprised by the sight of rain-slicked gutters clogged with trash and crumbling brick roads that caused us to bounce and shake as we drove.

The road sloped toward the more low-lying parts of the city as my eyes soaked in the dismal architecture. All the buildings we passed were essentially the same, square or rectangular, made from identical blocks of black stone. They were brutal in their simplicity, usually no more than two stories. They had holes for windows, covered with metal grates for security. It was strange to be down here, amid the sprawl I had only seen from above.

We passed a demon strolling with hunched shoulders, his hands in his pockets, and a cigarette in his mouth. Other than his polished horns, glinting in the late afternoon light, and his dark green skin, the sight reminded me of Earth. A memory flashed in my mind of nights spent walking home from the bus stop with that same weary gait that I saw now. He glanced up, and our eyes met for a moment. His eyebrows raised, and I wondered if he realized who I was. Or, more accurately, who I was not.

“This road is terrible,” I said, as the seat of the carriage bounced against my ass, and my teeth rattled in my skull. I turned my attention to my entourage—Mona, Ilmatar, and Lucifron, who seemed to function as the head of security when out and about. Not that he’d done a great job last night, but I was trying not to hold it against him. Everything had worked out fine, in the end, just barely. If anything, it had made me more convincing, so perhaps I would have thanked him for his failure if the demons weren’t allergic to gratitude.

No one had replied to my comment. I’d expected Ilmatar, at least, to say something defensive or offer to look into the city’s budget. I wondered again if being so casual with him earlier had been a mistake. Well, too late now.

“Do we not have the resources for repairs?” I prompted.

This time Ilmatar’s eyes darted to Lucifron, and Lucifron looked back at him as if to say, no, you take this one.

“Our finances have been tight in recent years, Dark Lord,” Ilmatar said. “And admittedly, our struggle for survival has taken precedence over our civic infrastructure.”

“Hmph,” I said. I couldn’t blame them for that, though Lucifron’s eyebrow twitched slightly, as well as the corner of his mouth, almost as if he’d been forced to stifle laughter. What did he know?

The carriage suddenly rolled to a stop in front of a large building with a sign above the door that read Smithing Guild Workshop - Ward 14 in Demonic runes. That was fast, I thought. But I supposed we had been speeding along the whole way at a slight downhill slope. And I assumed the route had been cleared for us, as there had been no traffic. Looking down the street, I saw other similarly large buildings, many with steam or smoke pouring from their chimneys.

Lucifron opened the door and led me onto the street, then through the building’s double doors. We entered a large, high-ceilinged room with a line of forges along one wall. Anvils, workbenches, drafting tables, and other furniture filled the rest of the space. About twenty demons were working inside—doing things such as hammering, tempering, shoveling, and in one case, writing in a logbook.

The demon writing in the logbook looked at us pointedly while still pretending to write, as if she did not wish me to notice her. She was an older demoness with pale, reddish pink skin, and silver-white hair. Something about her looked strangely familiar, but she turned back to her logbook, and my attention moved on.

As I stepped forward—Mona standing next to me and Ilmatar and Lucifron a step behind—the rest of the demons began to notice us, and their eyes widened as if in awe. My eyes fixed upon the demon standing at the far end of the hall, directing another at a drafting table, and as he turned towards me, I recognized him as the one and only Gil Ravennest, Guildmaster.

His eyebrows raised at the sight of us, and he nodded and hurried in our direction, the other demon he’d been talking to now forgotten.

“Dark Lord! You honor us with your presence!” he called out, and his words had the effect of causing every other conversation to cease until the only sound in the room was the sputtering of the forges.

“Guildmaster Ravennest,” I said, “I am pleased to see your workshop in person.” I scanned my eyes around the room. Everyone was staring at me. Behind me, I heard a sound at the door and saw four members of the Winged Legion file quietly in behind us, their wings folded neatly behind them. I felt a pang of longing—I wished I could fly. How cool would that be?

It was strange to have such an entourage. I wasn’t sure I’d ever get used to it. “Let us go where we can discuss things privately,” I said.

“Of course, my Lord,” Gil said, bowing at the waist, his scraggly beard hanging below his chin. He pointed with his arm towards the back of the workshop, to a small iron door cut into one of the side walls.

I followed him inside, looking around and wondering if he had chosen the wrong room, for we had emerged into a large storage room packed full of crates. A closed garage door was at the far end of the room. A few crates sat open nearby, and I saw they contained piles of gleaming ore. Only after Gil closed the door behind us did the sound of work outside resume.

“I apologize,” Gil said. “It is the most private area in the building.”

“No matter,” I replied. “I came to ask you for an update on your progress arming the Legion. You mentioned it may take some time before our soldiers are entirely equipped.”

“Ah, yes,” Gil said, sounding almost nervous now as I looked at him. I wasn’t trying to look at him in a threatening way, but I suppose I must have seemed imposing.

I tried to flash a smile, and he winced. Okay, so smiling was worse than a cold, neutral expression. Fair enough.

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Gil cleared his throat before continuing. “Dark Lord, our total output has increased fifty percent in the past two years. I am working us to the bone. No whip or incentive has been spared. Despite the delays, I want you to know we are working hard for Dreadthorn. And we have made a ton of these…”

He gestured towards the opposite wall, which was almost entirely covered in stacked crates. As I approached, I spotted one box off to the side, its lid slightly ajar.

“Ah,” I said, peeking inside. In a bed of straw sat spherical glass canisters, with metal valves that I assumed could be used to fill them. The canisters were empty for now, but I think I already knew what Phaedra was planning to use them for.

“We modified them, as requested,” Gil said. “Of course, we can’t redo the ones we’ve already made, but all the new ones will be made to specifications.”

“As requested,” I repeated, as if I knew what he meant.

“Yes, right here.” Gil walked up beside me and reached into the box. Pulling one of the glass canisters from the straw, I saw that trailing behind the canister was a pair of metal fins. Would this serve to stabilize the canister in flight? I remembered Lucifron mentioning they would be hard to deploy yesterday, when they looked more like grenades than bombs. Had they changed the design so quickly?

“Is this more to your liking, Captain?” I asked, holding one of the canisters out towards Lucifron.

He took it gingerly, as if afraid of breaking it, then brought it up towards his face, his eyes staring at me through the glass, distorted. “I have no strong opinion,” he said after a moment and abruptly handed the canister back to me.

I thought he hated it. But they’d improved slightly on his main criticism, so now he didn’t wish to complain. I looked at the canister and tried to imagine how many of these things a legionnaire could even carry without accidentally dropping or breaking any of them too early. After a moment of reflection I handed it back to Ravennest, who accepted it with pride, his eyes beaming at us.

“It’s fine work,” I said. No doubt about it, it had excellent craftsmanship. It was clear to me, now, why our army was short-handed. Our blacksmiths had been too busy building bombs to make spears or whatever weapons were used by most of the Demonic Legion.

I turned around to look behind me and spotted Ilmatar with an uncomfortable look on his face as if he’d just eaten something peculiar, but I couldn’t see Mona. I walked to the other side of a stack of boxes, expecting to find her there, but she was gone.

Had she just left? I pretended to browse the aisle, my eyes inspecting the different crates and barrels. Some sections of the room, closest to the workshop floor, were filled with raw materials. The rest, close to the garage door, which I assumed led out to a loading dock, were filled with finished products.

I came to a stack of rather long crates compared to the rest, next to shelves piled high with similarly sized boxes. All of these crates were sealed, however.

Gil had been following a few steps behind me. “Allow me, Dark Lord.” He took a metal crowbar from the top of a nearby crate and opened the box.

Inside was a glaive made of black metal. I guessed it was about ten feet long, with a curved blade at one end that tapered to a gleaming point. It surprised me that it was entirely made of metal, as this seemed like a weapon that would have been made with a wooden handle on Earth, and would have been longer than this one. I realized that in my entire time here, I had seen barely anything made from wood. Mushroom, yes, but almost everything else was metal, stone, or bone. Were trees so precious here?

Gil looked up at me, and he must have noticed a look of approval on my face because he picked up the closest weapon and placed it gently into my hand.

Though afraid I would make a fool of myself, I carefully lifted the glaive and held it aloft, blade pointed at the ceiling. It was lighter than I expected, and I noticed that the handle had a rough texture, for improved grip. It seemed like an acceptable weapon, not that I had any real point of reference. I was probably biased by the weapons I’d seen wielded by celebrities on giant screens, anyway.

“Dark Lord, you would honor me if you kept that farstab.”

“I… Ah.” I had stopped myself before blurting out, what? Were they really called farstabs? I suppose it sounded better in the original Demonic—in my head, when I sounded out the word, it sounded like uuzkoolesh. But the literal translation to English left a lot to be desired. I looked at the glaive in my hands, checking its balance and weight. “It’s a bit too large for my carriage. Have it sent to the tower, and the Majordomo will see that it reaches me. I’ll take good care of it.”

I leaned it carefully against the stack of boxes, trying to avoid poking anyone’s eye out with the unwieldy pole weapon.

Ilmatar had approached me from the other side, with Lucifron patiently following, such that I was now surrounded in the cramped aisle of the storeroom. But still, Mona was nowhere to be seen. I turned to Ilmatar, wondering if he had done something to piss her off again. I hadn’t even had a good opportunity to talk with him yet.

“Where’s the High Priestess?”

“Oh,” he said. “She’s probably speaking with her mother.”

I stared at Ilmatar, dumbfounded for a moment. “Her what?”

“Well, you didn’t think she just formed from the secretions of a marshslug, did you?”

I almost repeated myself—what? But thankfully, I stopped in time and bit my tongue. Greg-Theryx probably knew what a marshslug was and would not have been impressed. “Ilmatar, don’t be willfully obtuse. I know how children are created, but no one informed me that her mother worked here.”

“Oh,” Ilmatar said, suddenly stammering, “I apologize, Master. I would have mentioned it, but I assumed the High Priestess had already told you.”

“Indeed,” I said through clenched teeth. “That would have been a reasonable assumption.”

I turned to Gil, gesturing towards the farstabs, or, uh, uuzkooleshes, whose name I still felt needed work. “How many more of these do we need?”

“Four thousand, Dark Lord.” Gil dipped his head slightly as if bowing or expecting a blow, but I only stood there digesting the news.

“And how many did you make last month?”

“About thirteen hundred throughout all the city, Dark Lord.”

“That will be tight, but we should finish before we march.”

“Of course, Master.” Gil nodded repeatedly. “We will not fail.”

“To that end, I shall leave you to your work. Unless there’s anything else you feel merits discussion, Guildmaster?”

He shook his head. “No, Dark Lord. You have been terribly merciful. Considering our slow progress merited a personal visit on your behalf, I had only assumed…”

Based on what these poor people expected Greg-Theryx to act like, I had once again come across as far too sane. I picked up the glaive and admired it under the orange light of the storeroom, tilting it until I caught sight of Gil’s reflection in the blade.

Maybe there was something I could do.

I smiled again, this time showing my teeth, including my fangs. Gil flinched back, though I could tell he had tried hard not to. “Ravennest,” I said. “Why would I punish you? After all, you have not failed me yet.” I placed quite some emphasis on that last word, and stared at Ravennest for perhaps a few heartbeats longer than I needed to.

“Understood, my Lord,” he said. “As I said … we will not let you down.”

I placed the weapon back down, this time letting it clatter amongst the others.

“I trust that you won’t. And two other things…” I gestured towards the empty bombs in the far back. “How many of those have you made? And how much sooner would you have finished the—” I tried to keep myself from sighing. “—farstabs if you hadn’t needed to make them?”

“We’ve produced over five thousand of the specialty ordnance for Priestess Midnight,” Gil said, still nodding as he spoke, his nervousness now fully displayed. “And oh, I’m not sure exactly, I suppose it’s rather hard to estimate.” I stared at him until he gave me an answer. “Six months ago?”

But his words were almost besides the point. The fear in his eyes, and the way his Will had shrunk in on itself, had been all the answer I needed. They had bet a lot on Phaedra’s new weapon.

I hoped that bet would pay off.