Safe in the temple of her mind, Rhea Brightwind sat cross-legged on a crystal pillar in a verdant grove, meditating on fractal patterns of sunlight that danced across her vision. They dappled the foliage in infinite permutations, as varied in their form as anything else in nature.

She wondered if it was sinful to use her powers to daydream. As a paladin, did it dishonor her to flee from what was real? In reality, she was locked in a dungeon no one had ever escaped from, and when she opened her eyes, all she could see was an empty wooden bowl, stone walls, and the rusted bars of her cell.

The guards stood to either side of the door so that she could not see them, and she heard them only occasionally when they coughed or shuffled their feet, or when the guard changed, their footsteps echoing through the stone tunnels that ran under the tower. So far, she had mostly been left alone with her thoughts. Thoughts of her failure.

“Rhea,” her father’s voice said in her mind, his words straight from her memory of the day she had left Lycanta. “This family does not rest on your shoulders alone.”

As it turns out, it will not rest upon me at all, she thought sadly, and a vision came to her of her father engraving her name on the family tomb.

She blinked her eyes and shook her head. Sometimes, she gave herself visions without meaning to, things she would have been better off not seeing. She had always possessed great power over the Light, even within her own mind. It had made her both a worthy disciple and a skilled paladin.

Now it seemed like a curse.

On her first two nights here, she had still entertained the possibility that she would find some way to escape—that perhaps she could channel Sun-Domia’s strength into her hands, breaking the metal shackles that kept her chained to the wall. But the metal was enchanted and seemed to absorb the energy she pushed into it.

Though the bowl was empty, the smell of the stew, some faint trace of it, still lingered in her nostrils. She had finally given in this morning and shamefully eaten breakfast. Whoever had made it had faithfully recreated the recipe in the style of Lycanta, though with some alternative ingredients. Foxhead root presumably could not be grown here, and would have been a costly import. Despite the alterations, the dish brought back a warm nostalgia of her childhood, a simpler time in her life before she had been weighed down by the weight of her duties and failures.

She remembered playing barefoot in the yard of her family home, running in tiny circles until the dizziness overwhelmed her and she rolled onto the ground, staining her dress with grass and dirt. Her younger brother and sister, who were twins, watched her from the porch and laughed while the maid ran out screaming.

Dorahn and Kylia, will I ever see you again?

Rhea shook her head. There was no time for that. If she lost faith now, it would have all been for nothing. That had been part of her reasoning this morning when she had licked the bowl clean. She had felt ashamed with every maddeningly flavorful taste. It was hardly food for a prisoner.

But the truth was that she did not wish to die. Rhea could not let it all be for nothing. She would not betray the trust that had been placed in her by the Goddess, but she would try to survive if she could.

With no one watching her, she had reverted to her hybrid form. Her normally human-looking face had elongated into a snout, and her hands and feet had grown fur and claws. To remain in her mostly human form—still with the ears and tail of a dog, as she had never been able to get rid of those—took concentration and effort. To be like this, in her natural state, was a relief.

In Lycanta, it was illegal to display one’s beastkin features in most public areas. After all, the curse that defined them was taboo, a product of the same Void they were now fighting against. To suggest those features were something to be proud of was a sin against Sun-Domia and a denial of the true light within each being.

But she could not suppress her nature forever. That ideal would always be unattainable.

Rhea’s sense of smell was heightened in this form, and she sniffed at the air for a moment, trying to confirm the ominous yet unmistakable scent she had just detected.

Greg-Theryx, The Great Devourer, had returned.

Maybe I shouldn’t have eaten breakfast after all, she thought. During their first encounter, she had felt a kind of dread at the sight of him, and his fake, manipulative demeanor had only made her more worried. He had to be up to something. The Devourer did not feed his prisoners. He fed upon them.

Yet, she had eaten that morning, and it had been nutritious food, luxurious for a dungeon. His behavior was unexpected. It seemed only a matter of time before whatever game he was playing would be revealed. Rhea felt his presence growing nearer, the darkness at the pit of his soul creeping down the dungeon’s winding hallways. When she closed her eyes, she could see the paths of the tunnels they had dragged her down before throwing her in here. She remembered every turn.

Someday, Rhea would get out of here or die trying. She didn’t know how, exactly, but she would take any opportunity.

“No. You were right to let me know, Darkstar.” She heard the distant voice of the Dark Lord himself. His tone had not quite matched her expectations. It seemed far too conciliatory and diplomatic. He spoke to the other demons as if they were his peers or business partners rather than fanatical subjects. It was highly unnerving. “I only looked angry because when I opened the door, I thought you were the Majordomo.”

Their footsteps echoed, boots marching against the polished stone. Rhea guessed there were four demons by the sounds of them. She wondered if the woman with the pink skin and blue hair would be here again—the High Priestess with her command of fire.

Rhea had run through their fight in her head dozens of times and come to the conclusion that if she had been about a half-second slower, the demoness would have killed her. By stopping the spell, Rhea had survived. She wasn’t sure if that would’ve been better or worse than being captured.

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“Hey, now.” A new voice echoed down the hallway, one with an almost theatrical edge, like the actors in the outdoor plays she had so often gone to see with her family as a child. “Dark Lord,” he said, “I was exactly one minute late. That’s how determined I was not to disturb you too early. I just wanted to mention it.”

“Effort noted, Ilmatar,” the Dark Lord said, a note of good humor in his laconic voice.

Rhea realized she was still in her hybrid form, and she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She focused on the cursed energy flowing within her body, and pressed it down as much as possible. Soon she was back to just ears and a tail, otherwise human, which was the proper appearance in front of her enemies. Rhea would project her best self to those who flaunted their own monstrous natures.

A moment later, he appeared at the cell door, a tall, red, imposing figure clothed in black with gold buttons. His horns were adorned in gaudy metal, a sign of his vanity, and he walked with a slight stoop as if he carried the world, or at least the broken half of it, on his broad, muscled shoulders.

He blinked slowly, which felt worse than when he looked at Rhea directly—as if her skin was being peeled away, as if he saw her at a deeper level than she could perceive herself. She scowled at him and reached her hands forward, testing the length of the chains that bound her.

The Devourer opened his eyes and motioned to one of the guards, who let him into the cell. The High Priestess followed closely behind him, and the one who had electrocuted her, who she supposed was called Darkstar, entered next. But the fourth one stayed outside. He had the most prominent horns, she noticed, almost comically so. Yet his status in the demon’s hierarchy seemed lower than the others.

Greg-Theryx stood a few feet beyond Rhea’s reach, waiting for another guard to enter and place a chair in the center of the cell. The chair was made of black metal, with a thin seat cushion upholstered in blood-red silk.

“Would you like a seat?” the Dark One asked. “It must be tiring being chained to the wall all day.”

She looked at him and said nothing. Food was one thing, the barest means of survival, but she refused to be bribed or coddled. She bared her teeth, revealing her prominent fangs, and growled from the back of her throat.

“Okay,” he said, raising his hands defensively—a strange gesture and not one she would have ever expected from him. He must have been mocking her, she realized. He reveled in how harmless she was to him. “You can stay like that if you want.”

After a moment, he dragged the chair slightly towards her and sat down in it himself, still just beyond the reach of her claws. She stared at him for another moment, still tugging at her restraints, but he merely smiled at her, and she felt her heart pound in rage.

But what was the point?

She could do nothing to him, and it seemed foolish to try. Rhea sighed and stepped back, the iron chains rattling against the wall as they slackened. She placed her back against the stone and sank to the floor. When she sat like this, her arms could hang more comfortably, rather than being pulled by the shackles. It was a small comfort.

She stared at him, a cold, dead feeling in her gut, somewhere between resignation and despair. She imagined how it would have felt to bring her sword down on his cursed neck, if only the High Priestess had been a bit slower.

Rhea’s eyes flicked between the Dark Lord and his right-hand woman. The High Priestess looked back with a skeptical expression, as if she thought this all to be a waste of time.

“Ah, you still don’t want to talk,” the Dark Lord said, and Rhea’s eyes snapped back to regard him.

He stretched his hands out in front of him, and after a moment of concentration, a flame appeared between them, like the one the High Priestess had been trying to form two days ago, down in the temple, when Rhea had dispersed it.

It had been cold down in the dungeon, but the heat from this new flame was great, and Rhea had to admit the warmth of it felt good to her, easing the chill that had worked its way into her bones.

Even The Great Devourer’s fingers tensed and relaxed as if enjoying the flame’s heat. Seeing that gesture, a god taking pleasure in such a banal and simple experience, gave her pause in a way she didn’t fully understand.

“It was impressive, the way you destabilized Lady Desdemona’s spell,” he said. He looked over his shoulder, to where the High Priestess glared at the Dark Lord with an annoyed expression. The High Priestess was allowed to do that? Glare at her god? And it went unremarked upon? Rhea raised an eyebrow. “No offense intended.” He turned back to Rhea, and looked into her eyes. “You channeled your Will—”

“No, I didn’t.” She had spoken the words without thinking, seeking to correct his falsehood, forgetting for a moment her practiced silence.

“Oh?” The Dark Lord raised an eyebrow. “What did you do, then?”

“Sun-Domia’s light guided my sword, and with the fury of her justice, I was able to—”

His eyes widened. “Wow,” he said, and she clamped her mouth shut, her train of thought interrupted by how surprised he seemed. Were gods supposed to be surprised? Even if he was more of a demigod than a true god, he was not how she had imagined him. She had expected someone easier to hate. “Is that really what Sun-Domia has taught you to believe?”

“It’s the truth,” Rhea said. “Because of my devotion, I can channel her divine light through my blade. Her power snuffed out your priestess’s fire.”

“Interesting,” he said serenely. “That’s not what I saw. I saw your Will running through your sword as if it were an extension of your body. The energy flowed within the blade, so that when you sliced through the flame, it stopped the High Priestess’s Will from circulating between her hands. Just like that, no more fire. I was impressed.” He looked at Rhea and smirked. “But if it was just my dear sister Sun-Domia, I needn’t have been.”

She shook her head. “You dare speak of the Goddess of Light in such a way? You’re scum.”

“I’m scum, and yet you’re the one who attacked me during a temple service. Why did you do such a foolish thing? You blew your cover.”

“You saw through my disguise,” Rhea said. “The look you gave me…”

“I didn’t,” he said, and she cringed. The whole reason for her attack, an indisputable fact she had accepted, was that the Dark Lord had seen through her illusion. If she hadn’t attacked him, would she have been able to escape? “Your Will looked different than the other priestesses when I looked at you. That’s all.”

Sadly, Rhea did not feel comfort in knowing that if she’d acted differently, she might have been able to complete her mission—to collect reconnaissance on the layout of Dreadthorn Tower.

It was reassuring to know that the Dark Lord was not, as some had speculated, entirely omniscient. The fact he hadn’t been able to divine her true intentions was a defect in his godhood, a flaw that could be exploited if only she could find a way to deliver a report to the Goddess and her Order.

Though that seemed a difficult task from down here in the dungeon, and assumed the Devourer had told her the truth, not merely a lie designed to make her question her actions.

Nevertheless, his explanation made no sense. “This Will you speak of is a fabrication,” Rhea said. “No such thing exists, so you could not have seen it. Magic flows from divinity.”

To her surprise, the Dark Lord only laughed. He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms as he chuckled. Then he shook his head. “Ah. Now I understand. You’ve been lied to.”

Rhea glared at him, refusing to look away. He returned her gaze placidly, as if he did not much care. He smirked at Rhea, amused, before turning to look at the High Priestess.

“Mona, you happen to be a capable sorceress. What do you think?”

“It is as you described, Master. Though I cannot see it as you can, I draw upon my Will’s eternal fire.” The High Priestess turned to glare at Rhea. “If all of Lycanta is as lost as this stray, no wonder they turned against us.”

Now it was Rhea’s turn to smirk. There seemed little point in arguing with her captors. She had already spoken to them too much. And yet, part of her could not resist. “Lycanta turned against you because we were tired of being destroyed.”

“You traitorous cu—” Desdemona started to say, but she was cut off when the Dark Lord left everyone stunned, including his companions.

“No,” he said. “I understand.”