While I gave Kieran time to reflect on what I’d said and prepare himself to answer my questions, I brought Lias up to speed on recent events. In particular, I told him about the Woed I’d slain beneath Rose Malin, of my encounter with the demon Yith, and of the storm ogre who’d fallen into Garihelm’s streets the previous night.

“You know there was a time when such attacks were common?” Lias said musingly, sipping at a steaming cup of tea. He'd known about the attack on the city, though I'd provided him more first-hand details. “My auguries have detected many spirits lurking on the subcontinent’s borders of late, especially in the north. I haven’t investigated the Fences, or been to the south in years… Even still, this is quite the escalation.”

We sat in his study, in a space mostly clear of clutter. I had a cup of hot tea in my hands as well, though I just stared at it, my mind elsewhere. We sat on two comfortable chairs near a lit hearth along one corner of the large room. The wizard had one slim leg crossed over the other, and he’d done somewhat to clean himself up, brushing his hair and shaving. He still looked haggard, but no longer quite like the madman in the tower.

“Do you think it has to do with the Riven Order being broken?” I asked him.

He cast me a put upon look. I help up one hand. “I’m not trying to guilt you,” I said. “It’s an honest question.”

The magus blew out a breath, leaning back in his chair. “Maybe. I did investigate the potential consequences of the divide between east and west, and what might happen if it were mended. It’s not like we’ve been completely isolated, you know. Things get through all the time. Travelers, traders, spirits, monsters… There have even been invasions. Raids. Piracy has been common throughout our land’s history. Think of the Crusades!" He lifted his cup. "Do you think our territorial aggressions in that time only had an effect one way?"

Territorial aggressions. I frowned at his words. He made it sound like something base. "Our ancestors fought those wars to reclaim lands lost to the Cambion."

Lias only stared at me, his expression neutral.

“This is the first time the nominal leader of our nations has opened the door,” I said, changing the subject. “It changed something. It let the Zosite return.”

Lias’s eyes narrowed. “And what do you know of the Zosite?”

I shrugged. “I learned about them in Seydis. Mostly from…”

Lias waited patiently at my pause. I sighed.

“From Fidei,” I admitted. “And from other clericons, but… Mostly her. She tutored me as part of my education with the Table. It was one of the Cenocaste's roles. They wanted me to know more about the evils I might be set against.”

The irony of that wasn’t lost on me.

“Evils,” Lias scoffed. “Do you still believe in such a thing?” He waved a hand. “Don’t answer that. I forget sometimes you are still a paladin.”

“Barely,” I muttered. “And… I do. Still believe in it, I mean. I’ve seen it.”

Lias didn’t answer, and for a time only the crackling fire broke the silence.

“Do you think it’s true?” I asked after a while. “That Reynard might still be alive?”

Lias considered the question and sipped his tea again. “I have spent resources trying to answer that very question for years now,” The magus said, narrowing his eyes. “Ever since he went missing before the war ended. In truth, I never believed him gone. He was the strongest of us, Alken. We were all afraid of him.”

I’d never heard Lias admit to fear so readily before. “Could he be behind this?” I asked. “Yith implied that he’s one of Reynard’s minions, but demons lie.”

“Hard to say,” Lias murmured into his cup, his pale eye unfocused. “I did some more research on Yith Golonac after we found his name on that scroll. He’s not the mightiest Abyssal by any stretch, but he’s old and cunning. I guess you could say he’s one of the more sane ones. I doubt he let this information slip by accident. Don’t trust it, but don’t disregard it either. I will see what I can find.”

“What if he’s the mind behind this council I’ve been hunting?” I asked. “Lias, we might have stumbled on something very dangerous.”

“It’s not impossible,” the wizard agreed. “But remember, Reynard was only allied to the Recusant Lords by convenience. He had one goal, which was the destruction of the Seydii elves and the death of their monarch, ostensibly to undo the seals they protected. If he’d thrown in with them fully, we may very well have lost that war.”

Lias leaned forward and spoke in a low, exacting tone. “Reynard is a wild card. We cannot predict where he may turn up, or what he intends.”

A disturbing thought. Almost more so than the idea he was behind everything.

Lias threw me a sour look and added, “I suppose you told Rosanna all of this?”

“I had no idea you’d been banished, or that you and she weren’t speaking.” I glared at him, making certain my feelings on the matter were clear. “I did. She knows you’re in the city, too.”

Lias sighed. “Wonderful.”

“That’s what you get for keeping your secrets,” I told him curtly. “And don’t give me any of that waste about them being like currency for wizards, I needed to know these things.”

“…Perhaps,” Lias admitted, without looking at me.

“You should talk to Rose,” I told him, relentless.

He shook his head. “Maybe I will. When all of this is done.”

I didn’t press him. A few minutes later, the opening of a door along one wall of the study drew our attention. Emma stepped inside with Kieran in tow. She had an oddly somber look on her face, and I suspected they’d been talking. Kieran saw me, and his ruined face set into a determined mask.

“I’m ready,” he said.

I stood and put my tea down, then beckoned to him.

“What do you intend to do?” Lias asked, having also stood.

“Talk to him at first. Compulsion, if I need to.” I winced even as I said it. “I doubt he has a very clear memory, but my blessings help me demand answers from fey spirits and the dead. It won’t be pleasant for him, but he’s agreed to it.”

“Isn’t this the sort of thing you didn’t want me doing?” Lias murmured, lifting a thin eyebrow.

“My method is cleaner,” I said. “Besides, I made a promise to a girl. This is my responsibility.”

“You and your responsibilities,” Lias sighed. “Very well. I will be nearby to assist, if you need it.”

I had Kieran sit by the fire, and I pulled up the second chair to face him. We stared at one another a long moment, both appraising the other.

“What now?” Kieran asked.

I nodded. “I need information. We’ll start with questions. First, do you remember when you started having your visions? The bad dreams, the hallucinations, any of it?”

Kieran frowned, thinking. “It’s hard to say… About a month ago? I thought it was just nightmares. Stress. I’ve always had strange dreams.” He shrugged and adjusted what remained of his wavy hair.

We went on like that for a while. I asked him questions, mostly to ascertain how sharp his memory was, how many details he could recall. Eventually, I started to get to the meat of the matter.

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“Do you remember anything unusual around the time you started having the visions?” I asked. “Anyone you talked to, any place you’d been? Anything that struck you as odd or different.”

Kieran frowned, bowing his head so his faded brown hair fell over his face. It covered the gaping hole where his left eye had been, making him seem a little more human.

“There was a gala,” he said, flexing the fingers of his remaining hand. “An event hosted by the nobility. Important people connected to the art movement were invited to show off their work, mingle with the nobles, look for patrons… I called in a favor from a friend, a porter, and managed to sneak in with the serving staff. I had some of my paintings with me. I thought if I showed them to someone who mattered, I could maybe catch a break.”

“When was this?” I asked.

“Five weeks ago?” Kieran said, rubbing his chin and furrowing his brow in thought. “Just before everything got strange.”

I felt my heart skip in my chest. Is this it? I thought. Leaning forward, I prodded him. “Did you talk to anyone there? See anything strange?”

“There were a lot of strange people,” Kieran said doubtfully. “The guest of honor was a master who did the murals on a new cathedral in Oshelm. But there were these foreigners too, a group of sculptures from the continent, and entertainers. And…”

The undead boy’s frown deepened.

“What is it?” I asked, leaning closer.

“I talked to someone there. None of my friends believed me when I told them, but I swear it was Anselm, the painter.”

I folded my arms, trying to place the name. It sounded familiar. It struck me after a moment, though the detail had almost been lost in the flurry of events preceding my foray into Rose Malin.

“Anselm of Ruon?” I asked, recalling the gruesome painting I’d seen in Yselda’s bedroom.

Kieran nodded, suddenly almost alive with animation. “Yes! You’ve heard of him?”

“I saw one of his works in a manse in the Fountain Ward,” I said. “It was… Macabre.”

“He is very good,” Kieran said eagerly. “The best the subcontinent has to offer. He’s doesn’t just work with oils — he’s helped design new churches too, and dabbled in sculpting, automatons, even philosophy. He’s one of Urn’s best polymaths, a match for any of the great names in the west. I listened to one of his lectures last year.”

And right after you talked to him, a demon started haunting you. I didn’t say it aloud. It might have been a coincidence, but after seeing this mysterious artist’s work in Yselda’s room — the only piece there she hadn’t made herself — it struck me as suspicious.

“Do you remember what he looked like?” I asked.

Kieran opened his mouth to speak, then paused. “I…” He frowned, tilting his head to one side. “Strange. I can’t. I know it was him, I’d seen him before, but…”

I caught Lias’s gaze across the room. He’d been listening, and I saw the same realization dawn on his face. He jerked his chin toward the boy, and I knew what he wanted me to do.

I took a deep breath, steeled myself, and focused on Kieran. “Look at me,” I ordered him.

He did, and I caught his eyes with my own. He winced, as though hit by a sudden bright flash, then froze as I leaned closer. His remaining eye went very wide, and a bit of gold glinted off the icy blue as his iris reflected the light in my gaze.

“What did this man say to you?” I said, putting an edge of authority into my voice.

“He said…” Kieran looked dazed, as he stared into my eyes like they were deep wells with something bright and beckoning deep within. “He said I had a gift. He told me I should cultivate it, whatever it took. He liked my work. Anselm of Ruon liked my work!”

He let out a breathy laugh.

“Was that all?” I asked him. “I need you to remember, Kieran. Remember all of it. What did he say to you, exactly? What did he do?”

The aura in my eyes intensified as I spoke, becoming a piercing light. With a human or a beast, I could use my gaze and my voice to influence them, especially if they weren’t prepared to defend themselves. Many supernatural beings, from wizards to vampires, can do something similar, though the commanding power of a paladin is far less subtle than a vampire’s allure. I’m more like a blunt instrument, a hammer of will.

I tried to be gentle, but Kieran had very little defense. He was basically just a shade tenuously bonded to his own corpse, and my powers were especially potent against him.

“He told me the future wouldn’t be decided by swords,” Kieran said, his voice almost a whisper. “But by the brush and the pen… He called me a champion of the new age. He told me I could accomplish anything, but…”

“But?” I encouraged.

“Change would be frightening,” Kieran said, his expression distant. “Beauty and horror would marry, one to the other, and birth a new and terrible time. Great things would topple, and in their foundations we would see rot. We will falter, and stumble, and feel great fear. We must not be afraid of fear, or loss, for there is no splendor without pain.”

I shivered. I’d heard something similar before.

Someone said something in the background. My attention remained too narrow to know who spoke, or what they said. I ignored the distraction and focused on Kieran.

“There will be great pain,” Kieran said. His voice had become strange, hollow. “Such terrible pain.”

“What did he look like?” I asked him. “This man?”

“He…” Kieran squirmed in his seat, and shivered. He bared his broken teeth at me. “He… He was… He is… He, he, he, he, he! Ah, it burns! Please, no more! The light, it’s too bright! Too bright!”

Damn it. I was losing him. His mouth had fallen open, his eye wide and reflecting the aura pouring out of my own, like a pool of golden water. But it was the empty socket of his left eye which drew my gaze. I thought it my imagination at first, or some trick of the half-visible od clinging to him, but I swore I’d caught movement within that cavity.

I looked closer. And I saw—

No. No.

“Alken! Get away from him!”

I blinked. Kieran had begun to shake from head to toe, quivering and twitching as though he were having a fit. His remaining eye rolled up into his skull, showing only white, and his open mouth hung agape, revealing the cavern of his tongueless mouth.

There were crawling shapes inside of him. Many-legged, scuttling, deeply red. They were in his throat, in the empty socket of his missing eye.

Beetles. One of them scuttled into view, and I could make out a pattern resembling a wrinkled face on its shell. Then the eyes on the face blinked at me, and I knew it wasn’t a pattern.

I stood. My chair clattered to the floor. The scars on my face had begun to itch, the discomfort quickly evolving into a hot pain. Someone, Emma I think, said something I didn’t catch. An oath, maybe. Lias yelled at me, telling me to move. The fire in the hearth had dimmed and turned a sickly color, pale, its heat dying to leave the room in a deep chill.

Kieran spasmed and twitched on his chair. His skin bulged, his wounds widening, revealing more beetles. His mouth continued to open wider, and wider, a silent scream slowly consuming his features. Something cracked, and his lower jaw fell loose. From the crawling darkness of black and red inside his throat, something stared out at me and giggled. In an eerie, shivering voice, it spoke.

Naughty.

This one is mine, paladin.

“Yith.” I bared my teeth. “Let him go!”

There is nothing left!

I told you.

I crawl in the hollow places.

I drew my axe in one swift motion, clearing it from the tail of my coat. Amber flame burst from the crescent blade.

Will you destroy this empty shell?

You should.

Oh, how he suffers.

“Alken, get clear!”

Lias. I felt a shiver of power in the air — the wizard had begun to weave an Art.

Kieran’s head swung toward the magus on a twisted neck. He shivered, and the demon’s voice let out a hissing laugh. A cold spike of fear lanced through me. The sudden thrill of triumph I felt in the creature’s attention…

I’d forced it to reveal itself earlier than it had intended, but it didn’t care about me.

It wanted to kill Lias.

I turned, starting to shout a warning. Lias had his staff outstretched, the nail driven through its head seemed very bright, no longer dull iron but shining steel. His other hand swept out to one side. A shape formed behind him — a small, bright moon of pale fire, with Lias at the center, almost eclipsing it. Everything else turned black as a starless night, so for a moment the magus seemed to be a celestial form hanging alone in a great void.

He had become so very powerful. I could count the number of times I’d seen such a potent phantasm on one hand.

He never got to finish his Art. Kieran’s neck bulged out, toad-like, and he spat a globule of blood at the wizard. It shot across the room like an arrow, clearing fifteen feet in a flash, striking Lias in the face. He fell, his power broke, the moon and void vanishing with an effect like breaking glass to reveal the cluttered study again.

Yith literally shook with laughter, the sound like a thousand chittering insects. Then he turned to me. From within Kieran’s broken, gaping maw, a many-faceted eye like a fly’s stared at me.

At last!

I have done it!

I have felled the silver whore’s dog!

Kieran’s broken body began to caper. I lunged, slashing at him with my axe, but the corpse danced out of the way with preternatural speed, the demon cackling. It backflipped, nimble as a jester, and landed in a crouch on one of the tables. The crystalline insect eye stared at me from within the dead face’s open jaws, sickly green and alien.

The golden flame in me broiled with righteous fury, the Alder ghosts howling for retribution. Burner! They cried. Defiler! Unclean thing! Send it back into the Dark!

Their zealous wrath more than matched my own. This wasn’t just a shadow, like in Castle Cael or the dungeons of the priorguard. The demon, Yith Golonac, stood before me.

It had been hiding inside Kieran's corpse the entire time.

image [https://i.imgur.com/ZLwj1Qs.png]