Into the ruins we went, at first light. The sunrise shone a golden color on the landscape for a time. The desert looked like everything was bathed in golden light, except the shadows held every kind of dark dream of the fallen creatures. Demons and monsters of every shape and size, living shadows, darkness dwelling hungrily in the sub shade. They served the mouldering remnants, the Sons of Araek, that drifted like hollow sheets on bones through the air above, killing with their thoughts. It was the time when such things were in the shadows of the tides of light, clinging to the last vestiges of the night.

"There are so many demons, I cannot even say the names of most of them." Cory noticed the things of the shadows, as they dug shallow graves, retreating from sunlight.

"Please don't." I told my crow. I was already frightened enough at the sight of them.

"What is it?" One of the ARTHUS asked me. They all looked the same in their gasmasks and armor. The only way I could tell them apart, at first, was by their primary weapon. The one talking to me was their leader.

"We are surrounded by a lot of invisible creatures. We should avoid any shadows, like hills or huge boulders." I said.

The leader of the ARTHUS avoided the shadows, luckily for us.

We reached the ruins and had to fan out to search for the Sons of Araek. I doubted that the ARTHUS could stop such monsters, but it was worth a try. A least I would have died trying to do something about it. We didn't find them. Not at first.

We picked up several survivors and escorted them to the edge of town, except the ones that wanted to volunteer and had already survived against undead sorcerers, and wanted revenge. They were recruited, deputized by ARTHUS to help search and destroy. The survivors knew where the Sons of Araek were, but none of them would say so.

"My Lord, many of these killers of dead are hiding what they know about the Sons of Araek." Cory told me.

ARTHUS followed their lead to wipe out the infected and the insane that followed the returned sorcerers. Still there was no sign of the Sons of Araek. ARTHUS decided to look somewhere and they wouldn't go any further. The survivors scattered to where they had come from. It looked, at first, like a mountain of rubble.

But then it was apparent that the Sons of Araek had made the kingdom of Hythe in an instant, from the ruins of the shattered town. The fortified city state stood in contrast to the desert like a horrible god-palace, looming and terrible and casting a shadow for miles in the sunset.

"We will have to blow that up." An ARTHUS with explosives said.

"Or we could just shoot our way in." An ARTHUS with a machinegun said.

"Too loud. We just cut our way in." An ARTHUS with swords said.

"Or we just, blow it up?" The ARTHUS with explosives insisted.

The entire team of them, some thirteen, as I recall, created a formation and spoke in hushed chatter. Together they looked powerful and capable of battling a god. As they advanced towards the gate of the city they grew quiet. They had never seen or even heard of anything as terrifying as the Sons of Araek. I was just a civilian so I stayed far back with Cory and watched what happened to them. They got to the gate and set some explosives.

After they had blown up the gate they went in and were met by several attendants. Then I hid because of the appearance one of the dreadful floating nightmares. It blasted away the chunks that dangled in its way. The skull wore a jeweled miter with side vestments and fluttering wrappings upon its bones where it hovered. I looked no longer at it as I asked Cory: "Which one is that?"

"How should I know, my Lord?" Cory asked.

We heard the terrified screams of the ARTHUS as they shot at and attacked the horror. The Son of Araek, whichever one it was, slaughtered them. Then someone caught it up with magic. A sorcerer among the ARTHUS. Another of them used a device that somehow caught the creature's magic in a temporal loop. The remaining ARTHUS then closed in and used enchanted weapons to dismember and behead the Son of Areak. I gasped at their efficiency and at the cost, half of them dead and several more badly wounded. There were more Sons of Araek and still the nightmare hordes of the one they had killed.

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I could not believe their luck, impossible to kill a god. Or so I had thought.

The air was shimmering and thin and there was a heaviness to their stoop. ARTHUS stood in cold shock, their fellowship shattered and their formation broken. What they had done, they could not do again. Some of them had done all they ever could for after facing such a creature they had no more courage. Their shadows became darker and their thought became pale. I sensed the change in them, knowing they had given it all, alive or dead made no difference after facing such towering evil.

"You did well." I told them.

"We lost half our friends." The leader of the ARTHUS told me.

"Death will always happen." Cory them.

We went back to the La Cucharacha and we were debriefed by Lieutenant Colonel Scipio. He found them to be unable to continue and dismissed them. I watched him know with grim acceptance that none of them had come back. He was left alone as he sat there.

I wandered out into the twilight where dust blew past us. The ruins stood in a glow. There was a silence as the encampment around us was emptied that filled with activity when more people arrived. The National Guard had gone in and found more survivors. The Red Cross could come in. Death had not always happened.

I went and found the remaining FBI, sorting out the rest of the case on the Triad Killers and expanding it to tracking the movements of the Sons of Araek. Cory went over and helped them identify the Sons of Araek When he was done he returned to me and said:

"Isn't it marvelous that the letter, designated by the Agents, coincidentally matched the first pronounced English letter of the name of a Son of Araek?" Cory asked.

"How is that possible?" I wondered, amused by Cory's amazement.

"Some alignment of chance; by pure chaos." Cory theorized alchemically. Crow logic.

Then the beginning of another awfulness caught everyone off-guard. The crown and Lothstone went missing. The suddenness was punctuated by Cory's admonishment:

"How quickly you forgot that demons held his mind and would do so again."

"What will he do?" I asked.

"I see the use of the crown of flames as a beacon of destruction. Worldwide destruction." Agent Saint told us of a vision she'd had.

The FBI tracked him by his refueling along desert highways with his credit card and got help from the Air National Guard in intercepting him along his route. I waited with them and Detective Winters was there.

"How did he manage to steal the crown, out of thin air? It was guarded by seven FBI agents, a retired Detective and a crazy guy with the talking crow." Detective Winters wondered.

"You forgot how powerful Azoza was before. Now it has dozens of demons to support it. Now we know what it knew: that we would lead it to the crown of flames. Now it has it."

Lothstone got out of his humvee and started to refuel it. The pumps were off and then the FBI emerged from hiding and closed in on him. He laughed demonically and leapt up onto the top of the humvee and then he wore the crown.

"Get down!" I warned them. I ran for some rocks as the torrents of flame ignited all he pointed to. I worried that the FBI were all dead. Lothstone walked out into the desert and I wandered into the burning gas station.

Agent Saint was still alive and so were the rest of them. Lothstone had spared them, this time. I helped them as I dragged them to safety. The gas station went up in a mushroom cloud of orange and black. The helicopters came and we searched for him from the air. When Lothstone reached some ancient ruins in the desert, he stopped. We landed and followed him up the trails.

"This will lead to our certain doom." I told them all.

"Azoza is powerful, but not invincible." Cory speculated.

"No, it is completely invincible." I decided. "My crow just wants to give you hope. He thinks it is funny because you are certain to die and yet you persist in pursuing Azoza."

"You are going with us." Agent Saint pointed out.

"Yeah. But Cory is right. We are fooling ourselves." Detective Winters agreed with my talking crow.

We spotted him with a fresh victim. A sacrifice tied naked to an altar. He had a dagger ready to gash the throat. The FBI took up positions. Agent Saint yelled:

"FBI, don't move Lothstone!" You're under arrest."

Lothstone gashed the throat of the sacrificial victim. The sniper rifle of Pyresh blew off the hand with the dagger in it. Azoza shrieked and used the crown of flames to immolate him. As Agent Pyresh screamed in agony from the flames the other FBI started shooting the creature.

Agent Grayson and Agent Heller were burning alive. Detective Winters shot the creature from behind and blew off its head. He took the crown and tossed it to Agent Saint. "Just another serial killer."

"You are free from the demons." Cory told Lothstone's ghost. My crow tilted his head, listening to the silent and invisible remains as they lingered.

"He says that anyone that uses the crown is cursed to burn in Hell. As Azoza is now cursed." Cory said, speaking for the dead man's ghost.

"What about Azoza?" I asked.

"Back to wherever it came from. I am sure you know where." Cory said, saying the last part in Corvin.

"Did we win?" Detective Winters asked me and Cory. Cory clicked at him and said:

"For now."