The broken corpse, and the monster hiding inside of it, watched me from its perch on the table. Within the gloom of the study, surrounded by stacks of tomes and research papers and other arcane equipment, it looked like some foul thing called up as part of an occult experiment. The multi-faceted eye within Kieran’s broken jaws glowed like a putrid coal.

I wanted to check on Lias, see if he lived, but I couldn’t risk taking my eyes off the immediate threat. I heard movement off to the side. Emma.

“Keep back!” I barked, and heard her stop. Just like Lisette, Emma had no experience fighting abyssals.

Yith quivered with laughter.

Both of the Silver Queen’s pets…

And the scion of Astraea Carreon!

The demon’s host spread its arms out wide in jubilation.

I am truly blessed!

How did it know Emma’s identity? I caught sight of her in my peripheral vision, seeing the shock on her face.

Had it smelled her bloodline? Or had it been spying on us?

I blew out an amber-misted breath, stood straight, and brought Faen Orgis up into a salute. I whispered into its blade, and the flickering golden flames wreathing it condensed, sinking into the alloy and causing the patterns in the metal to glow. The light spread up my arm. My skin took on a metallic tint.

Yith’s gaze focused on me. Kieran’s corpse shuddered, his neck bulging again. I prepared to dodge, expecting another spray of blood.

But he didn’t spit at me. Instead, even more gruesomely, he vomited onto the floor. A gush of boiling blood and skittering red beetles with wrinkled faces on their shells cascaded over the floor, quickly spreading. Within moments, hundreds of crawling shapes swarmed toward me.

Worse, part of the swarm broke away to crawl toward Emma.

I dashed forward in a blur of amber light. I swept my axe back, jumped over the swarming beetles, and swung down in a furious assault as I closed on the possessed corpse. Yith watched me the entire time, the insect eye impassive, poor Kieran’s own features stretched and hollow, unseeing.

At the last instant, the demon threw itself back. My axe split the table it had been perched on down the middle in an explosion of splintered wood. I rolled into the swing, my momentum carrying me forward, and I hit the ground with a jarring impact. I halted my roll in a crouch, one knee braced, immediately looking for my target.

I heard the demon’s laughter, drawing my eyes upward. The twisted body crawled over the ceiling, moving with the unsettlingly mechanical speed of a huge spider.

I started moving, but a flash of pain in my leg drew my attention downward. The beetles swarmed around my boots, crawling up onto my calf, getting under the leg of my pants. Biting.

A primal instinct, one every human feels, compelled me to start stomping and screaming in horror, to panic. I pushed that gibbering madness down with an effort of will, forced calm over myself, and drew strength from my inner core of power. I scoured my own body with aureflame, sending the golden light rippling down my limbs. The tinge of metallic gold that’d touched my skin grew more pronounced, granting it a reflective tint.

The fiendish beetles scattered from the burst of blessed fire. The ones attached to me burned and died. The fire singed me, the pain even worse than the biting insects, but I'd rather be scorched by the Alder Table's unstable flames than eaten alive.

Once, that fire wouldn't have harmed me at all. It was still very angry.

Oh, you are truly blessed.

Yith coiled in the shadows above, a concentration of bile and hate in the room. Its undulating voice sang out in eerie cadences.

Not her, though.

The gods do not love her at all.

My eyes shot to Emma. She’d leapt up onto a table, trying to get away from the crawling flood of red beetles. She'd drawn her sword, and blood dripped from one outstretched hand.

But her Art wouldn’t stem that tide. I cursed. Yith buzzed with laughter.

Slay me or save her!

Choose, paladin!

Choices. Instead of making one, I felt my own malicious little smile form.

Emma’s brow furrowed in concentration, but she did not panic. Instead, she swept her long, narrow-bladed sword up into a fencer’s salute, the chipped tip of the gently curved blade aiming toward the ceiling. She ran her left palm across the steel, smearing her own blood across it, and the blade began to take on a scarlet glow.

As the beetles scurried up the legs of the table and reached its surface, Emma began to swipe low with her sword. She moved with a speed and finesse I could never have matched, her weapon flitting through the air like an angry steel wasp, blurring with speed. She kept her off hand crooked into the small of her back. With every pass the crawling demon bugs boiled, shriveled, and died.

Not an Art, but the same boiling magic Emma used to conjure her clan’s phantasmal pikes could be put to other, less dramatic uses. She’d mimicked the way I wielded my aureflame for this particular technique, and it proved devilishly effective.

I hadn’t taught her that, not directly. She’d learned how to do it from observing me, and experimenting with her own powers.

When the beetles swarmed together, their numbers outpacing Emma’s cuts, she deftly leapt to another long work desk. She turned, swept the burning blade out, and caught several of the large beetles as they split their shells and took flight to chase her. She continued to do this, using the room’s various obstacles to get distance whenever the swarm grew too dense. Her sword never stopped moving, and neither did her feet — she danced, and the fiend-beetles died.

Emma Orley was no damsel in need of saving.

Yith chittered in rage, seeing the same thing I had. Kieran’s body tensed on the ceiling where it clung to the rafters, preparing to leap.

I didn’t give him the chance. I brought my axe back. The light around it intensified. The blade, dramatically curved into a hooked shape, flashed in a sudden burst of luminescence. In an instant, the faerie blade grew larger. Not the handle, as happened when the malison oak drank blood, but a phantasm of pale gold which encased the physical blade.

I lunged forward, intercepting his leap. I swung, and that golden crescent moon caught Yith and sank into one shoulder, passing through with no resistance. It cut through him, slicing the body from shoulder to waist.

The phantasmal blade scattered into petals of gilt glass which quickly vanished. The room turned dark again.

The two halves of the demon-possessed corpse fell to the floor with heavy thuds. I landed a moment later, sliding across the floor for several feet. I released an amber misted breath and began to approach the fallen corpse, my senses keyed for any tricks. I held my blade low to one side, prepared to swing. I could still hear beetles scuttling throughout the study, but none dared approach me while I burned with aureflame.

That flame will turn on you.

It already burns you.

Are you not so blessed, after all?

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

I reacted on instinct, feeling the attack nearly the same instant it came. The upper half of the corpse suddenly shot upward, propping itself on one arm and then launching itself at me. I caught a flash of complex movement, the shape of something sharp, and turned into a swing.

Faen Orgis’s burning edge ground against solid resistance in a teeth-grinding clash. I staggered to one side, knocked down a chair, and turned. Yith glared at me from the center of the study, his crystal eye bright within Kieran’s broken skull. From the gaping opening which had once connected the upper left third of the body to the rest, long, many-jointed legs covered in dark brown hair and tipped in serrated claws had emerged.

The neck twisted, broke, and the tattered remains of Kieran’s shirt shredded away. More legs began to emerge from within what remained of the body as the enormous thing which had condensed itself to fit inside began to unfold. The legs grew longer with the sound of tortured cartilage, bladed claws sinking into the wooden floor with rhythmic cracks.

How had I not sensed the demon hiding inside the boy?

I answered the question almost as soon as I asked it. The cold aura of the undead had concealed the creature. I’d sensed the chill of Kieran’s presence, and hadn’t bothered looking further. It wasn’t until I’d attempted to break through the block I’d sensed in his memory that Yith had been forced to reveal himself.

The demon had probably intended to wait until Lias had let his guard down, and then kill him. Which told me something very important about the dark spirit, something which made sense of previous encounters.

Yith was not very strong. Definitely not as strong as Raath El Kur, who I’d beaten in a fair fight.

The nightmare unfolding from the remnants of Kieran’s body shivered. The eerie voice emerged from within, no longer gravid with preternatural might but very real. “Don’t get cocky, broken thing. You have still failed. Failed this child, and failed to save your comrade.”

“You think Lias is dead?” I asked the demon, tilting my head to one side.

The many-limbed thing paused, twitching. I couldn’t see the whole of its shape, though I came closer than in previous encounters — most of it remained wrapped inside its host, folded in like a squashed spider. What I could see of it resembled a fly, and a spider, and something entirely alien to the world. Its eyes were green crystal, the thick hair on its limbs sharp as needles.

“If he were dead,” I told it, “this sanctum would have collapsed.”

Yith let out a furious chitter and turned toward where Lias had fallen.

The wizard’s body had vanished.

“Where is he!?” Yith screamed.

I am everywhere.

I shivered. I recognized it as Lias’s voice, but it rang with a hollow, otherworldly potency.

This seclusium is mine own flesh.

In a scattered series of explosive bursts, gaping holes appeared in the wooden ceiling. Long-limbed, blank-faced Marions dropped from them, landing in inhumanly elegant stances on the ground. They clattered and rattled, and all faced the demon.

Yith brought his many limbs inward, aiming serrated claws in a threatening, defensive gesture in all directions. It lashed out, tearing into the dolls, ripping them to pieces in a series of furious, mantis-quick blows as they lunged forward with their own sharp appendages.

Yith began to melt. Hairy limbs and crystal eyes collapsed into a viscous, sickly dark liquid, quickly beginning to sink into the floorboards. Trying to flee.

“Emma!” I shouted.

And, from her own position in the wings, Emma struck. She dashed forward, summoning a single pike of blood iron into her off hand. She tucked it under one arm, couching it like a jouster, and slammed it into Yith’s center mass, right where the insectoid body emerged from Kieran’s remains. The transformation stopped, the potent blood forming the core of the phantasmal spear anchoring the demon’s spirit in place.

I hadn’t taught her that, but she’d intuited my intent. Or perhaps she already knew how versatile blood could be when dealing with spirits, as a novice warlock. Either way, I felt a surge of gratitude for my very competent disciple.

Yith screeched and swiped out with a claw. It caught Emma in the shoulder, tearing through her fine shirt, and she fell back with a shout of pain. The pike, however, remained lodged in place.

And then, like a moon breaking through clouds, Lias was there in the room again. He stood tall, clad all in black yet seeming to blaze with cold light. He lifted up his staff, then slammed it against the ground once.

All the Marions shone in that instant with the same cold power. The steel blades they had for hands shone bright, forming a phalanx of spear tips like shards of a pale moon. They closed in with a blur of movement, locking into a single body, interlinking arms and legs, twisting their forms together to form a cage of wood and brass around the demon.

Yith’s crystal eye found me.

“You are all doomed. All damned. Especially you, Alken Hewer.”

It was the first time the demon had used my name. It felt it like a lance of ice into my soul.

Yith erupted with a flash of abyssal power, rancid green flame burst out to catch the Art-strengthened Marions and scatter them. The form within the flames rose.

The demon resembled a great, bloated fly. It had bulging multi-faceted eyes and many limbs, and loomed more than ten feet in height even hunched beneath the ceiling.

Lias wouldn’t be able to form another Art immediately, not with two broken in such a short period. Even using two in a row as he had was an incredible feat. His aura would need time to stabilize itself, time we didn’t have.

I picked my moment. I hurled myself into the demon fire, my own sacred magic blazing. I didn’t know if it would be enough to protect me, and I didn’t care.

Yith turned. The empty sack of Kieran’s flesh still clung to the huge fly’s head. A long proboscis uncurled, aiming directly toward me.

I swung. Yith’s proboscis shot out.

My axe cleaved through the evil beak, and the ensuing guillotine of light carried forward in a brief, bright wave. It struck the demon dead center, lashing like a burning whip over his skull, his hunched back.

Yith recoiled from the golden fire, his legs curling in defensively. I landed on him, planting one boot on his chest, another on his head, and he collapsed under me. His many serrated legs shot out, driving into my shoulders, my chest, my ribs.

I’d used an Art to reinforce my body in lieu of armor. It wasn’t perfect, but the metallic tinge my skin had taken on also made it tough as iron, and less prone to bleeding. The claws still broke through my skin, scraping bone, rending flesh, but they didn’t punch through my body and end the fight there.

I grit my teeth through the pain. With a roar echoing with auratic power, I swung the axe down directly into his skull. Gold and green fire intermingled, warring around us.

The green died, Yith went still. The smoking form went limp beneath me, blackening, shriveling in on itself, deflating like a popped sack. It emitted a foul smelling vapor.

“You are… Ours. You belong to us. You are marked.”

The scars on my face felt like fire in my flesh. Growling, I brought the axe up to swing again and finish it. Before I could, Yith erupted into a choking black smog. There were buzzing, biting insects in it. I stumbled back, swinging wildly, trying to keep them at bay.

The dark presence in the room grew fainter.

No.

“Lias, he’s trying to escape!” My voice sounded hollow in the smog.

I heard movement, but the smoke blinded me. My blessed eyes did nothing for it. I backed away, cautious of attack, listening. My heart pounded in my chest.

Soon the smoke cleared, revealing the devastated room. Books and work tables lay scattered everywhere, some broken or burned, and lab equipment had been smashed as well. A chemical scent hung in the air. I tracked it to an array of glassware and copper wires which had caught fire, the flames tinted odd colors.

Lias stood in the midst of it all, staff raised. More war dolls had arrayed around him like bodyguards. His one eye tracked the thinning smoke a moment, then he shook his head.

“Gone. He’s hurt, but he got away. His little minions are everywhere. He’s probably hidden himself among them, and this sanctum has too many holes… It was meant so I could hide and move about, not trap anything.” He ground his teeth and spat out a curse. “Damn it all!”

A red beetle scurried past my feet. I stamped a boot down on it, crushing it flat. “Shit!” I snarled, fists tight on my axe.

I heard a groan. My eyes found Emma lying on the floor, holding her head. I went to her in an instant, dropping to one knee to check her injuries. Yith had scored her with a claw. Had he maimed her? Cut something vital?

She had bites on her arms and legs, and a nasty welt on her head from where she’d struck it falling, but seemed otherwise unharmed. Yith’s claw had struck Caim’s armor, probably bruising her but failing to open flesh. She waved me off when I tried to help her up.

“I’m fine!” She said, wincing and holding a hand to her head. “Where’s my sword? It isn’t damaged, is it?”

Worried about her pretty blade now of all times. I nodded to where it had fallen, and she scooped it up.

We all stood a while, waiting, but the silence came like the thunder after lightning. The monster had fled.

“You hurt it very badly,” Lias said to me. “Almost mortally. I doubt it will recover any time soon, or act so brazenly again.”

I slammed a fist into a table, causing it to jump. “I could have ended this!” I seethed. “Fuck!”

Emma stared at Lias. “I saw you die,” she said. “That blood… It melted your flesh down to the skull.”

She must have seen more of Yith’s attack at the beginning of the struggle than I had. I’d only seen Lias fall.

“Art can be very flashy,” Lias said with a savage grin, flashing his teeth. “He never struck me, only my phantasm.”

Emma considered that, and nodded in appreciation.

“Yith is not the mastermind here,” Lias turned his attention to me. “This is a victory! Likely, it had intended to use the boy to get into the castle once you’d retrieved him. You maimed it instead.”

That douse of ice water brought me out of my rage. I turned to Lias. “The Emperor?”

Lias nodded. “That is my thought. The Emperor, Rosanna, any number of dignitaries here for the meeting of the Azure Round. Or, if the Inquisition had taken him, he could have gotten a shot at the Grand Prior. This seemed opportunistic to me, rather than planned. Kieran was a wild card.”

“Kieran…” I blinked, and my shoulders slumped.

“Over there,” Emma said, her voice subdued. She pointed to a spot amid the wrecked lab equipment.

I approached the spot and found what remained of the young painter on the floor. The body had been destroyed when Yith had emerged from it, but the nearly tangible spirit which had clung to the corpse remained. It lay on the ground, barely a few curls of wispy blue light resembling moonlit mist. I could make out a human skull, some hair, a single pale eye.

The demon had eaten him. Most of him, anyway. What remained wouldn’t hold itself together long.

The dead boy looked up at me. “I…”

I could barely hear the voice. I knelt over him to hear better.

“I… Didn’t… Want…”

“I know,” I said softly. “I’m sorry I couldn’t save you.”

“Lae… Please, don’t… Your—”

I strained to hear, but the voice became an inaudible murmur. The features faded away, leaving only wisps unrecognizable as a person. I glanced back at Lias, silently pleading. He only shook his head, leaning on his staff.

“There’s not enough of him,” the wizard said. “Nothing I can do. Not even enough for him to make the journey to Draubard. These are just scraps. Memories of will. The boy is gone.”

Even still, I drew as close as I could to hear what the shade said next.

“Why…” Kieran’s shade murmured. He sounded lost. Confused. “We could have been… You and me… I loved you.”

“I’ll tell her,” I said. My throat felt tight.

“No…”

I couldn’t tell if he’d responded to me, or even knew I was there.

“Help…”

I lifted a hand, reaching out toward the dregs of that soul. I hadn’t been able to heal flesh since Elfhome had burned, but could I still heal a spirit? Ease its pain? Give it a light to guide it, at the very least.

I’d sworn to be a light in the darkness, a guide, a protector.

I tried. I focused on my oaths, trying to draw from the well of power which let me inflict violence so easily and dramatically. I could still wield sacred fire, so why couldn’t I do this?

What was the point if I couldn’t do this?

I touched the mist. A brief flicker of golden flame sparked, and Kieran scattered away.

“Hurts… Hurts, hurts, hurts, it hurts…”

“Lae.”

Then he was gone.

I hadn’t saved him.

image [https://i.imgur.com/djBcGHm.jpeg]