To Nightingale, the whole world was a dream. Rampart City, the demons, Kaylen, it was all imaginary and one day she would wake up and it would all be gone. So she tried not to stress too much. What was the point in worrying about making bad choices when the entire world was doomed? True, she tried to avoid actively accelerating the world’s destruction. She was fairly certain that dying would be enough of a shock to awaken her, so although she was willing to take risks, she didn’t go around throwing herself off of buildings.
Kaylen had saved her from awakening and in doing so had saved the entire world. No one but Nightingale understood the significance of that. Even Kaylen had no idea how close it had all come to ending. In that moment, as she had gazed up at Kaylen, she had remembered how beautifully delicate the world was. It was like being a child again and desperately wanting to see everything before it all ends. Was it any surprise that Nightingale had fallen in love then and there?
She was glad that she was going to visit the Demonic Realms. She wanted to see as much of the universe as possible before it ended. She had always assumed that she would never get an opportunity to visit places like the Demonic Realms, the Deadlands, and the various heavens. After all, those were places where people went when they died and when she died they would all be erased. But now here she was, at Calamity City, the site of the tear between the human and demon worlds. She could barely contain her excitement.
She didn’t bother to hide her identity as she walked down the dusty streets. Why should she? After all, the worst that could happen was that she would wake up. Calamity City was mostly slums, it seemed, populated by people who wanted to get out of the Demonic Realms, seeking the promise of the world of the living, but ran out of money as soon as they made it through the tear. The surrounding wastelands were dangerous to cross, even for demons, so if one couldn’t afford a train ticket, it would be easy to become trapped here.
The tear itself loomed over the city, a red gash across the blue sky extending for miles in either direction before it sunk from view. Nightingale wondered what it looked like from the sides or back. The people who lived here must have had a completely different perspective on life and death than anyone else in the world. For those in the world of the living, death remained mysterious and frightening, even with as much as people knew about the afterlife. There was always the fear that one might be rejected by whatever god they worshipped and cast into Hell, or captured by demons on their way to heaven and stuffed into a demon body, or they might become lost to wander the Deadlands or tossed into the Great Unknown. For those in the Demonic Realms, the world of the living was a mountain to be mined, or a wilderness in which to hunt. Humans, orcs, and elves were just souls that hadn’t been placed into proper demon bodies yet.
But here, with the tear in view it became impossible to ignore that the difference between life and death was vague at best. After all, demons ate and slept and bled just like living people did. When their bodies grew old, they just had new ones made. Even the humans who lived on the southern continent didn’t see the truth. How could they fail to see that they were no different from demons? That their bodies were simply their first bodies and that at any time they wanted, assuming they could afford it, they could trade those bodies in for new ones? At Calamity City people were faced with this reality. Then, they were faced with two questions. First, when would everyone else finally notice that the existence of the tear altered the entire nature of their world? And second, what would the world look like once this fact became commonly accepted? Nightingale imagined that these were difficult questions to face for anyone who didn’t know that it was all just a dream.
Aside from the tear itself and the buildings immediately surrounding it, which were carefully guarded by the Demon King’s soldiers, most of Calamity City was controlled by a series of gangs. Or perhaps they were future demon nobles carving out their territory to become the Duc or Duchesse of Calamity City. Maybe one day one of them would accumulate enough power to challenge the Demon King himself.
In fact, it seemed that a pair of newcomers were rapidly gaining influence by deposing gang leader after gang leader. Nightingale had learned of this from a remarkably helpful demon. Once she had disabused him of his notions of taking her rifle, he had been willing to tell her much of the political structure of Calamity City. Furthermore, the horn she had gotten from him would be a useful way to warn off potential attackers.
The newcomers he had described were a pair of imps. Normally, it seemed, imps were considered lower-class demons. Their small bodies and limited magical potential meant that no one wanted to be an imp with the exception, Nightingale imagined, of those with Riven’s proclivities. It seemed that sometimes those demon nobles who concerned themselves with aesthetics would keep imps as servants, surrounding themselves with tiny pretty flying people, but imps as leaders were a rarity.
Of course, as she entered the ramshackle apartment building the imps, Mag and Lave as they were known, used as their lair, she wasn’t thinking about them. Instead while she ignored the protests of the huge doorman who recoiled at the sight of the still-bloody horn in her hand, she thought about the remarkably powerful human the imps were said to employ. As she climbed the stairs, accidentally scratching her free hand on an exposed nail on the banister, she thought about the fact that this remarkably powerful human was said to have a habit of shouting “Die, demon” as she dispatched the imps’ rivals. And as she walked down the hall, whistling an old song and tapping the horn on the wall to keep the beat, she thought about what she was going to say when, in a few moments, she saw her dream girl after a year apart.
It should be something cool like “I believe you have something of mine—my heart,” she thought.
One-by-one she opened the doors of the apartments and peeked inside. When she reached the fourth or fifth she paused, hearing voices from the other side. With a shaking hand, she slowly pushed the door open.
Inside, the room was clean and newly furnished, a stark contrast to the rest of the building. The two imps were sitting on a desk, looking up with surprise at Nightingale. And there next to them, looking just as she had a year ago save for the new outfit and the addition of a pair of horns, was Kaylen.
Emotions began to overwhelm Nightingale. She could barely think. She wanted to steal locks of Kaylen’s hair and keep them in a locket. She wanted to write songs about her and wander the streets, singing them. She wanted to lock Kaylen in a tower to protect her from the world.
She had to admit even to herself that she was a creep.
“Who are you?” asked one of the imps. Mag, from the description Nightingale had gotten.
“Nightingale?” said Kaylen.
“Yay, Nightingale’s here,” Nightingale said softly, then cringed inwardly. Hadn’t she used that line already? She didn’t want to seem uncreative in front of Kaylen.
The two imps began asking questions over the top of each other. “Wait, do you know her?” — “Is that an elf?” — “Is she holding somebody’s horn?”
“I’m here to rescue you,” Nightingale said, attempting her most dashing, heroic voice. “Er, that is, if you want to be rescued.” It wouldn’t due to rescue someone without her consent, of course.
“There’s nothing to rescue her from,” said Lave, standing.
“Yeah, she’s working for us of her own free will,” added Mag.
“That’s not true,” protested Kaylen. “You tricked me!”
Mag shrugged. “You still signed the contract. That means you agreed to it. That’s how it works.”
“That contract is void,” said Nightingale. She slowly stepped forward to join the others at the desk. “Kaylen already belongs to me.”
She wasn’t sure why she said that. She supposed she was trying to bluff. Hopefully Kaylen wouldn’t think she was being too forward.
“A conflict of interest?” Lave asked.
“We don’t have time for this,” Mag said. “Kaylen, kill her.”
Kaylen frowned. “What? I’m not going to kill her.”
Nightingale smirked. “She can’t kill me because she belongs to me. No matter how much you order her, she won’t be able to do it.”
At least, Nightingale hoped that was the case.
Mag rolled her eyes. “Oh, please, she refuses to follow orders all the time.”
Nightingale shrugged. “Probably because they contradict orders I gave her.
Lave and Mag looked at each other. “That would make sense. I mean, people who have contracts with the Demon King have to follow his orders. They can’t just refuse, otherwise contracts would be pointless,” Lave said.
“Don’t tell me you actually buy this,” Mag replied.
“Listen, I can prove it.” Nightingale tossed the demon horn across the room. “Kaylen, fetch!”
Kaylen looked at the horn, then at Nightingale. “Nightingale, what are you talking about? You don’t own me.”
Nightingale quietly cursed Kaylen’s adorable innocence. How had she not gotten the message?
“You see?” Nightingale said with full conviction. “Even now she remembers the order I gave her to not fetch things for me.”
Lave gasped. “That’s just like what she does when we order her to get something.”
“Please, she could just be faking not getting it,” Mag said, though she was sounding increasingly uncertain.
Were they actually buying that terrible lie?
“Anyway, it seems like there’s no harm done,” Nightingale continued. “It sounds like she earned you a bunch of new followers, but since it’s due to a mixup and it looks like you took good care of her, I won’t bill you for the work she did. We’ll just call it even.”
Lave nodded. “That sounds fair.”
Mag scowled at Lave. “No, it doesn’t.” She turned back to Nightingale. “That’s not enough. We need her. She’s the most powerful follower we have. I don’t know what kind of deal she made with Comtesse Ember, but she must have been absolutely loaded with vengeful desire because she’s more powerful than some of the most powerful demons I’ve ever seen.”
Nightingale sighed heavily. “Well, I tried being nice. But if you aren’t going to hand her over willingly, I’m going to have her kill you.”
“Nightingale, I can’t—” Kaylen began.
“Now, there’s no need for that,” Lave interrupted. “Maybe we can still find a solution. What if you were to get the leader of the Gnash Gang to sign a contract with us?”
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“He is thought to be as powerful as Kaylen,” Mag said thoughtfully.
Nightingale paused momentarily, to give the impression that she was considering this. “I suppose that’s fair enough. I wouldn’t want to leave you high and dry, after all. If he’s as tough as you say, though, I’ll need some extra muscle.”
“Yes, fine. Kaylen, go with her,” Mag said dismissively.
Lave fluttered up to hover before Nightingale. There was something graceful in the way she stepped into the air as if suddenly gravity didn’t matter anymore. She pointed a finger and a piece of paper appeared before Nightingale, who touched it to her forehead in a salute.
“I’ll have this signed and back to you before the sun goes down. Come along, Kaylen,” she announced, then turned on her heel and walked out, a confused Kaylen trailing after her.
They made their way out of the building and partway down the street before Kaylen spoke up. “Nightingale, what are you doing here?”
Nightingale felt herself tense. Around Kaylen, her confidence was like a balloon that carried her higher than she had ever imagined, but just as soon as she grew to expect the soaring sensation, it popped, leaving her plummeting to the ground.
“Uh...the truth is…” she stammered.
“You came here to find me,” Kaylen finished.
Nightingale halted and attempted to look Kaylen in the eyes, ultimately setting for the shoulder instead. “I was worried about you. And I wanted to help.”
Nightingale could feel Kaylen’s eyes boring into her. “Do you know why I’m here?”
“To kill the gods,” Nightingale murmured. She sounded like a chastened child. Not cool at all.
“Why do you want to kill the gods?” Kaylen asked.
Nightingale hesitated. She hadn’t really given it much thought.
“I don’t know,” she said, finally, wringing her hands. “I thought the gods might be okay. I mean, they let you and other priests heal people. But then they took that power away from you and now you want to kill them and I figured you must have a good reason. Why do you want to kill them?”
“Because they hold us back,” Kaylen replied. “They give us some nice powers and let us help people as long as we follow their rules. But these days there’s nothing priests can do that alchemy and magic can’t. The gifts aren’t worth as much, but the rules remain. And those rules lead to a lot of vulnerable people being hurt.”
Nightingale nodded firmly. “That’s why I want to kill them, too. Because of the rules holding us back.”
Kaylen frowned. “You’re just repeating what I said.”
“Anyway, we should probably get going,” Nightingale said a little too loudly. She started walking.
Kaylen trotted to catch up. “We’re going the wrong way. The Gnash Gang is in the other direction.”
“We’re not going to the Gnash Gang,” Nightingale replied. “We’re going through the tear so that you can find whatever it is you need to kill the gods.”
“But Mag and Lave told us to get the Gnash Gang’s leader to sign with them,” Kaylen protested.
Nightingale shook her head. Right now, she imagined, Mag and Lave were probably thinking that having the Gnash Gang’s leader would be pretty neat, but that having both him and Kaylen would be even better. If Nightingale followed through with her promise, she would likely find an army of bodyguards ready to take her down. “Nope. They told me to do that, but I didn’t sign any contract.”
“But I still have a contract with Mag and Lave,” Kaylen said.
“So what?” Nightingale asked with a shrug. “They’re not around to give you orders. The last thing they told you was to come with me, which is exactly what you’re doing. Hey, how does it feel when they give you orders, anyway?”
“Well, it’s not like I automatically follow them or anything.” She paused, searching for the words to describe it. “It’s more like an itch. Or when you have a bunch of dirty dishes and you know that you need to wash them. You can put it off if you want, but they’re going to stay there in the back of your mind until you actually clean them. And then you feel better once you do. Riven would love it.”
“So that means that until they give you another order, following me around is…” Nightingale felt her cheeks redden as a grin spread across her face.
It was unclear exactly when they passed through the tear. As they walked, the red part of the sky grew larger and larger until the line between blue and red slowly passed overhead and eventually the blue diminished to smaller and smaller size.
There were fewer buildings on this side. Even though there was little difference on one side versus the other, those who were trapped in this in-between city wanted to be as close to the endless potential of the world of the living and as far from the blighted Demonic Realms as possible.
Even though the Demonic Realms represented a past best left behind, the alchemic rail had found its way even here and stretched past the city outskirts. Part of Nightingale longed to purchase a ticket to a random location and see what mysteries this world held, but there were more important things to take care of.
“So where are we going? How do we find this weapon that’s supposed to kill the gods?” Nightingale asked, pausing at an intersection.
“It’s somewhere in demon-controlled territory,” Kaylen replied.
“Well, yeah, I know that. What other clues have you found?”
Kaylen just stared at Nightingale.
“You haven’t found anything? In an entire year?”
Kaylen shook her head. “A few people knew that it was supposed to exist, but no one knew any details.”
Nightingale gaped at Kaylen. In all that time she hadn’t thought to change her approach? That was so adorable.
“In that case, maybe we should pay a visit to the demon who originally told you about it,” Nightingale suggested. The barrel of Nightingale’s rifle would determine whether she had held back any information when she had told Kaylen about the weapon.
“Comtesse Ember? You know magic, don’t you? Couldn’t you just summon her like Riven did?”
“Summoning isn’t really my area of expertise. Although…” She paused to think for a moment. “Summoning is basically connecting one plane to another, isn’t it?”
“I have no idea,” Kaylen replied, wide-eyed.
“Yes, it is. And it draws a being from one plane to another. However, due to the metaphysical properties of the world of the living, summoning circles can only be passed by a creature from another plane. Like a demon or a spirit. But since we’re already in another plane, I’m not sure that rule applies to us.”
Kaylen nodded as if she understood. “What does that mean?”
“It means that in theory we could summon ourselves. If we wanted to travel to, say, the Deadlands or Hell,” Nightingale finished triumphantly.
“So? What good does that do us?” Kaylen asked.
“Or the Realm of the Gods.”
With a cocky grin on her face, Nightingale waited for Kaylen to gasp with shock. The gasp never came.
“Oh. That’s neat. I guess that’ll be helpful after we find the weapon.”
Nightingale gaped at Kaylen. “Did you already have a way to get there?”
Kaylen shook her head. “I guess I hadn’t really thought about it. I’ve mostly been focused on finding the weapon.”
Nightingale sighed. “Anyway, I might be able to make a summoning circle if I had Magi-Net, but without it there’s no way.”
“I have Magi-Net,” Kaylen said, excitedly pulling out a book she had hidden somewhere in her cloak.
Nightingale’s eyes widened. Kaylen was full of surprises. “Perfect. Let’s find a place to summon this Comtesse.”
The buildings in this part of the town were increasingly sparse, which made it easy for the pair to find a field in which to work. Nightingale opened Kaylen’s Magi-Net book, hastily scribbled over several messages from Andra, then found a page on summoning. Next, she pulled a chunk of wood off of the siding of a nearby building and enchanted it to mark anything the tip touched. Using it, she began drawing the circles, pausing frequently to consult the book while Kaylen crouched nearby, looking over her shoulder.
After about an hour of work, Kaylen spoke up. “Hey, could you make the circle able to summon the strongest thing around?”
Nightingale frowned. She had been able to find enough information about the Comtesse on Magi-Net to summon her directly. Why change the plan now? “I guess so, but wouldn’t that just summon the Demon King?”
“No, because the power that the gods fear must be even greater than the Demon King, right? We could just summon it directly to us.”
Nightingale looked at the circle doubtfully. The curves weren’t quite perfect and some of the symbols seemed off. “Are you sure that’s a good idea? I’ve never done this before.”
Kaylen nodded eagerly. “Absolutely. If we can’t find the weapon, it makes sense to bring it to us. Besides, you’re really good at this. This circle looks exactly like the one Riven made.”
Nightingale blinked. “It does? Really? Because mine’s not quite symmetrical…”
“That’s no problem,” Kaylen said, waving a hand dismissively. “Does Riven seem like the sort of person who worries about details like that?”
Nightingale supposed Kaylen had a point. Riven was just as reckless as she was. She wouldn’t worry about whether she’d accidentally drawn the Rune of the Compass upside-down or whether the Sign of the Voice overlapped with the outer circle. All things considered, Nightingale had done a pretty good job for a first time, especially since it was apparently so close to the work of an expert like Riven.
After making a few adjustments to the symbols so that it would summon the most powerful entity it could instead of Comtesse Ember, she knelt and positioned the book between her legs, then placed both hands on the edge of the circle. She had to crane her neck somewhat awkwardly to read from the book, but the incantation was too long to memorize right now. Focusing enough to bring magic to her fingertips was easy enough, it had long ago become second nature to her, but doing so while reading a series of difficult-to-pronounce words out loud was somewhat trickier. Especially when whoever had written this page had a bad habit of not dotting their i’s, making them difficult to distinguish from l’s. Nightingale prayed that she had recited it correctly.
The markings began to glow, then a small flame appeared in the center of the circle. It quickly grew to the edges of the circle, then breached the circle on the side opposite Nightingale, spreading across the field. The flames grew upward, too, quickly outgrowing the roofs of the nearby buildings.
Nightingale and Kaylen both stepped back as the flames vanished, revealing what they had summoned. It towered over them, all skinless muscle and six slender legs. Its body was impossibly thin, with a cat-like head that stared down at the pair as it raised one of its clawed feet.
“Uh, you wouldn’t happen to be the power the gods fear, would you?” Kaylen asked.
The creature’s claw came swinging down, crashing into the ground just as the pair leaped out of the way. The scent of rotten flesh nearly choked Nightingale. Before she could recover, Kaylen was pulling her back, and standing before her protectively. “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it.”
She extended an arm and a spidery arm made of shadow, with an oversized clawed hand stretched out from her sleeve, flying up at the creature with impressive speed only to be interrupted by the creature’s other front claw, which caught it, pulling it to the side, and causing Kaylen to stumble forward. The creature’s huge, fanged mouth grabbed the arm as its claw pinned it down and its head yanked upward like a predator pulling the meat from its defeated prey. The arm snapped off and Kaylen collapsed like a marionette.
Nightingale reached into the pouch at her belt and pulled out one of the bullets Andra had sent to her. It was supposedly made of alchemically treated metal and blessed by an Athorian priest, hopefully making it powerful enough to kill the Demon King. She whispered an incantation, instructing the bullet to seek out the creature’s brain.
She had set her rifle to the side when drawing the circle and it still sat there now. As the creature’s claw swung downward at her, Nightingale dove forward, nearly losing her head in the process, and landed next to the rifle. She snatched it up as quickly as she could and loaded the bullet into the chamber, then fired upward blindly.
There was a loud crack, and everything seemed to freeze. Laying helpless as she was, she waited for the creature’s claw to finish her off, but it never came. Instead, the hideous red of the creature’s head turned grey, and this greyness spread throughout its body. Then it began to crumble. Nightingale expected ash to rain down upon her, but it seemed to vanish in midair shortly after falling from the creature, until all signs of it had vanished. Whatever that thing was, Athor was not fond of it, it seemed.
Nightingale sprang to her feet and checked on Kaylen. Darkness was spreading on the ground around her, as though evening was approaching from every direction at once. Her shadow was bleeding. Shadows could bleed? Nightingale tried to shake her to consciousness, but she did not respond.
She needed—what? An alchemist? A priest? A mage? Who could heal a wounded shadow? Were there even any healers in this city? Nightingale remembered the magic circle. Maybe her theory that it could be used to summon herself was correct, but where should she transport the two of them? Who had access to the widest variety of resources?
She scrubbed out a few of the magic symbols, using her enchanted stick to replace them with symbols which she hoped would make the circle work in reverse. Then she wiped off the symbols indicating strength and replaced them with the runic equivalent of von Ekko. Finally she dragged Kaylen’s body, leaving a trail of darkness behind her, into the circle. Nightingale knelt down next to Kaylen and placed her hands on the outer edge of the circle. With the book in front of her, she repeated the summoning incantation.
This was a dream, she thought to herself. It shouldn’t matter whether or not it worked. And yet she was more terrified than she had ever been in her life.
Flames sprang up around the pair.