Dagger gasped, sat up and gently touched her head. It was very much intact.

She was on a dusty stone floor, cracked and aged as if a hundred armies had marched across it. The space she sat in had borders of shadow that gave one the sense of a hidden, limitless distance. The pale light overhead had no apparent source, but she knew from experience that walking in any direction would carry one no further from it. Dagger scanned the expanse until she saw four other shadows.

"We all here?" Dagger called softly.

"Yeah," Saber answered as he gingerly touched beneath his chin and the top of his head. He sighed with relief.

"Sound off," Dagger said.

"Arms, legs and idiots accounted for," Powder said and gently shook Pitch. The alchemist coughed, clutched around his body and laid back down with a groaned swear. Vice was already on his knees, praying gratitude for their deliverance. Dagger did not disturb him. She could see his armored hands were clean again, not so much as a bloody scrap of hair or skin decorating the rivets that studded the banded steel.

"Everybody got all their shit?" she asked and patted her hammer. The rest nodded or grunted in answer.

"You have arrived safe," a dry voice whispered.

The figure was a few respectful feet away, shrouded in flowing cloth. Its hands were clasped at what could have been its waist. Its face, if it had one, was hidden by the deep shadow of its hood. For all the Armory knew, the servants of the Vigil may as well have been stone obelisks in monk's robes. Their garments had no color, no weave of fiber, no pattern. Even the wrinkles seemed painted on. Its whisper came from the space around each of their ears, not the figure itself.

"Thank you for the exit," Dagger said.

"You paid the toll for the return, and several others besides. How is our little brother? The one who actually believes," the figure said wryly.

Dagger turned to look at Vice, who was still on his knees, his face contorting with the force of his prayer.

"Ecstatic," Dagger muttered.

"He's a good servant," the robed figure said. "As for the rest of you, we're grateful. Even the Watcher in the Darkness, though his eyes have closed, is grateful."

"How do you know?" Dagger asked. She would have preferred that Vice make this kind of small talk with his god's servants, but at least they spoke to her in an ordinary manner, instead of like some religious text.

"Faith, I suppose," the figure replied. "Come. Your return is nearly ready."

"Already?"

"We need you down there, not up here. Don't forget that."

"Be hard to forget."

"Yes. Forgive me," its tone held genuine compassion, "You all serve the Vigil, and it's appreciated. But the machinery must be tended. Our stores are running dry. We are on edge."

Dagger nodded. "We'll go. Better not to rock the boat."

"Or the afterlife in this case," the robed figure said with a dusty chuckle, "such as it is. This is not a place for the living. Come. We must hurry. The cargo you brought us must be processed before their gods notice the theft."

"Do they even have a god?" Dagger asked, recalling that she'd seen no churches in the industry town.

"Where there is value, there is always a claim, however faint."

Dagger gestured and the rest of the Armory followed. Powder was about to rouse Vice from his prayers, but Dagger stopped her.

"Leave him. He'll follow when he's ready."

The four mercenaries followed the Vigil's servant into the shadows. The pale light paced them and seemed to shine a path on the floor ahead. It led them to a much larger, weakly lit space in the shadows like an anemic dome.

More robed figures milled around the edges of the dark boundary, tending to clumps of gray-scale people who seemed to buzz and flicker. Dagger was sure if she stared hard enough, she might have been able to see through them. Their shoulders were, one and all, slumped and defeated. Every now and then, one would look up and glance around this limbo they waited in, fruitlessly and forever, and then return their eyes to the space between their feet as if words of consolation were written on the stones.

What was not empty, or filled with milling, disconsolate souls, was wound back and across with old machinery that stuttered and rumbled. Pipes coiled like serpents, leading to and from a network of boilers, funnels and large tanks. The robed figure led the Armory to a cage suspended a dozen feet above the ground. Inside were the people they'd killed just before the end in Dahlsvaart. They shouted and rattled the cage bars. Unlike the others in this place, they were full color and tangible. Some still held the weapons they'd died with and were fruitlessly trying to break free. This was not the beyond their faiths had promised. Many of them had probably given up on gods in this age of industry and had expected a velvety blackness when their eyes closed for the last time.

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

"Twenty is steep for a return," Dagger said. "Where's the rest of them?" She asked. There looked to be less than twenty souls in the cage, not nearly as many as the Armory had killed before Roth turned on them. She looked for the former mayor and found him in the middle of the throng. His eyes were staring at nothing. His lanky arms were wrapped around his knees. Two of his citizens were standing on him in an attempt to reach the top of the cage.

"Twenty was just for your exit and return," the Vigil's servant said. "The others you... collected—"

"You mean killed."

"Yes, I suppose. Those went to repairs the moment they arrived. The machines have grown far less efficient," the robed figure said.

They passed a trio of the robed figures around a large vat beneath which burned gray fire. Pipes connected to the vat's belly extended away into the darkness. Robed servants of the Vigil grabbed a soul from Dahlsvaart and pushed him protesting into the vat and he screamed once before he was melted down to nothing, and the pipes glowed dully as his soul was piped away. Tools and machinery clanked somewhere in the darkness.

"Less efficient..." the Vigil's servant continued. "Let us be honest. It is falling apart. We fix it as best we can but..."

"But you didn't build it."

"No," the robed figure said sadly. "And every year, the prayers from below grow fainter and fewer. More of our believers come here to wait forever. So, we must continue to steal."

Dagger nodded. Nothing lasted forever. Not even heaven. "Works out in our favor."

"Yes, it does."

"Let us the fuck out of here!" One of the workers screamed from the cage.

"Shortly," the robed figured said. Vice pushed his way through the rest of the Armory to kneel before the robed figure.

"Rise, little brother," the robed figure said in a more formal tone. "The one you are kneeling to can no longer see it, and I am not fit to stand in the Watcher's place."

"It's all breaking down isn't it?" Vice said.

"It is," the robed figure said. "There are so few out in the world keeping us sustained. You must soon return to offer protection. To affirm their faith."

"We are ready. Where?"

"Speak for yourself," Saber said, "I could use a break."

"A town," the Vigil's servant said. "Their lives have been... interrupted. There is a mortal threat. We think. Perhaps a few hundred souls."

"You think?" Dagger asked.

"We only just became aware of them. They are not praying to us."

"What do you mean?" Dagger asked. "How could you hear them? Are you listening to the other gods' prayers?"

"No, though we are trying to," the servant said. "We stumbled across them. Their prayers are not directed to any god. It's as if they've never had gods at all, but still they cast their eyes skyward and beg deliverance. If we were to answer them, then we would become the place they turned to for help. They would be new faithful. That is enormous power."

"How long have they been praying?"

"We don't know. It is odd. As if something suddenly allowed the prayers to come through. They are indistinct, as if partially hidden. They sound tired and I fear they are close to giving up."

"So, they could have been praying for years," Dagger said. "Decades even."

"That is possible."

"That's a long time."

"No, it is not."

"They could already be dead."

"No. We hear them still, and the signal has even grown clearer."

Some of the stolen souls in the cage still screamed to be freed. Others sat, dejected and confused. Some shouted to friends they recognized outside the cage, the others the Armory had killed in Dahlsvaart, as the servants of the Vigil prodded and forced these extra souls, one by one, into the rendering cauldron. The servants of the Vigil collected the glowing material in buckets and used it like hot metal to patch and repair their various contraptions.

"These souls are fine for now," the Vigil's servant said and gestured to the cage. "They'll power the machines a bit longer. But they're nothing compared to the sustained prayers of the living. Render what aid you can. Save them. Tell them of us. Win new converts."

"Maybe we leave out that god is dead?" Dagger suggested.

"That would be wise," the Vigil's servant said.

Dagger nodded. "Prep the return. We're ready."

The servant threw a lever. Mechanisms coughed and heaved to life and the cage holding the souls of Dahlsvaart moved until it was above a funnel. A different servant threw another lever and the funnel rattled and shook with a sharp whine of steel-on-steel. The souls in the cage stopped protesting to look down. Then they started screaming again. Several tried to climb the bars and each other in a raw panic, stomping and trampling and kicking. Dagger didn't know what they saw exactly, and didn't ever want to, but she imagined a lot of really fast teeth.

The cage bottom split and dumped its cargo into the funnel. A few of the workers managed to catch the edge of the funnel or hang onto the bars of the cage, but the rest fell slid in with a wet, chewing sound. The Vigil's servants went around the cage with long poles and casually prodded the clinging souls until they fell.

"Into the Soul Hole you go," Saber muttered.

"The what?" Powder asked.

"That's what I call the big meat grinder," Saber said. "Soul hole."

"That isn't meat it's grinding," Pitch said.

Lights blazed on all the machines in the room as they coughed into dusty half-life. The light overhead brightened and the shimmering clusters of the Vigil's faithful sighed and raised their hoods to their heaven's sun.

Dagger gestured and the Armory followed the Vigil's servant to a platform bathed in light.

"Your chariot," it said.

"Will it hold this time?" Dagger asked, "Or will we and our weapons get scattered to the four winds again?"

"That was a fresh malfunction. We have adjusted."

The Armory stood upon the platform. "Go ahead," Dagger said.

Somewhere, yet another switch was thrown. The Vigil's heaven blurred and faded to black as star stone formed from the very air and encased the Armory.

Then they were hurtling through the heavens in an igneous ball, as fast as if they'd been fired from the bore of Powder's gun.