This time, the comet held.

It made a new clearing in the forest. The air was hot, wet and thick enough to chew. The Armory climbed out of the earth's new, smoking dent and looked around as they brushed stardust and charred forest from their clothes.

"Now what?" Powder asked.

Dagger sniffed the air. Then she sniffed again. "Smell that?"

"Smells like rot and death," Pitch said.

"Smells like work," Dagger countered.

"If that's a job," Pitch said, "somebody did it already. A week ago, at least."

The work wasn't hard to find. They just followed their noses.

The mining yard reeked of salty copper, machine oil and rust. It had rained recently, and the earthen, muddy pit of the yard sat at the center of the forest idyll like an abscess, filled with stagnant pools and swarming insects. The Armory walked past dormant, rusting machines and snapped tow chains that the mud was trying to swallow. Even the sagging buildings that still stood listed and rebelled against their foundations.

"Nature is trying to reclaim the futile works of man," Vice said.

"Would we know nature if not for the contrast provided by the futile works of man?" Pitch asked him.

Vice opened his mouth to say something. Then closed it. He looked confused.

"What?" Pitch asked him, "you're the only one that gets to say weird shit in a big, official voice?"

At the center of the yard, wood posts were driven into the mud in a spiral pattern. They were carved with symbols and adorned with feathers, beaded leather thongs and bits of polished metal and bone. Beyond them were three gaping adits that led down into the mine.

"The hell is this?" Saber asked, cautiously prodding at the dangling fetishes with the point of a knife.

Vice spat in the dirt. "Heathen iconography. They think something evil is the mines."

"And this is supposed to ward it off?" Saber asked.

"Perhaps," Vice said. "Or to keep it confined to the tunnels."

"Any idea what it is?" Dagger asked Vice. "Could this be why the Vigil's servants heard the prayers?"

"Not from this blasphemy," Vice answered. "The Vigil does not believe in the existence of evil as humans think of it."

"Finally," Pitch said, "something we agree on."

"Humans," Vice continued, "think of evil as the opposite of whatever a majority believes correct. But the Vigil would define evil as chaos, an environment antithetical to progress and growth. Humans are not chaotic by nature. They always seek order, no matter how ugly or brutal."

"Vice, I'm not sure I like all this agreement," Pitch grumbled.

Dagger looked at the hanging fetishes, and then at the tunnels. They looked like the mouths of something with retractable fangs. "We go in," she said.

"Oh, good," Saber muttered. "I've always wanted to visit an evil cave."

Dagger turned to Vice. "The Vigil's servants discuss the next exit toll with you?"

"Shit, Captain," Powder said, "You're already asking about that?"

"Doesn't hurt to be ready."

"Awful for morale, though."

"Quit moaning, Powder."

Vice shook his head. "The Vigil only considers one thing as pure evil, but it is not of this plane. And if that scourge is here, there will be no toll."

There was a moment of strained silence. As was often the case, Saber was the one to break it. "You holding us in suspense, Vice?"

"Demons," the monk said.

Pitch swore under his breath, but not with disbelief.

"Did the Vigil's servants mention demons?" Dagger asked.

"No," Vice said, "It's possible they didn't know. Or it's possible they were afraid we would not agree to go if they did."

"Aren't gods great?" Saber asked. "The world's abusive over-parents."

"Why no exit toll?" Dagger asked Vice. "Men. Demons. It's just more souls for the machines."

"No," Vice said. "Demons enter our plane of existence from one with different natural rules, where the raw material we call the soul does not exist. If there are demons in those tunnels, we can kill them by the legion and earn nothing for the Vigil. No exit."

The Armory fell silent. Dead for real this time.

"So, what kills demons?" Dagger asked.

Pitch rubbed his eyes. "Quite a bit in theory."

"Your scholarship fails you," Vice said. "Demons exist, whether you have studied their entrails or not."

"Oh, I know they exist, Vice," Pitch said softly.

"I don't give a shit about theory," Dagger said. "Both of you, start talking."

"In their world almost nothing but another demon can kill them," Vice said, "but when they come into our plane of existence, they are formed of our matter. Misshapen, yes, and stronger, more singular in will than any creature of this world but made of the same flawed material as everything else. They will bleed. They will die."

"What Vice isn't making clear," Pitch said, "is that because demons were created outside the laws of our nature, they don't feel things like fear. They have no value of life, not even their own. We can kill as many as we like. They'll just keep coming. Exterminating them isn't enough. If there are demons in that mine, and they're still inside, it's not because of some bundles of bone and leather hanging from posts."

"Then what?" Dagger asked.

"It means there's a gate," Pitch said, "and they're still coming through it. They haven't left the mine because they don't want to. They're still preparing. Building their numbers. We have to close the gate, but I've never seen one before. No scholar I know has. I don't know how they work."

"Could you close this gate, Vice," Dagger asked.

"I believe so. As could any priest."

"Well, we don't have any priest," Dagger said. "We have you, and your god's dead. Can you do it?"

"That was unkind, Dagger," Vice grumbled. "But yes."

"The idea of fighting a horde of demons in a dark tunnel has that effect. Pitch, what are you doing?"

The alchemist was divesting himself of bottle after bottle. Vials of powder littered the ground around him, along with battered tin flasks and small wooden boxes. "Getting rid of my hallucinogens, toxins for fear and for deep sleep. I don't want to throw them by accident in the dark."

"Why not?" Powder asked, glancing at the growing pile. "Don't get rid of anything that might work."

"But they won't," the alchemist said. "Demons don't sleep and I can't make them see anything worse than what they have at home. What they are."

"Maybe you could make them think they're frolicking in a field of daisies?" Saber said. "Oh, you could make them see puppies!" Dagger gave him an annoyed look, but Pitch actually stopped and considered it.

"I know you're just trying to be funny, Saber. Too hard I might add. But there's something to that. I have euphorics and sedatives. I usually save them for us. But they might affect the demons negatively."

"I have good ideas all the time," Saber said.

Pitch chuckled darkly. "No, Saber. You really don't. Dagger, I can try it."

"What's the alternative?"

"Fire. Acid. Powder's explosives. We can burn them or blow them up."

"Let’s stick to that," Dagger said, and swung her hammer up onto her shoulder. "If we meet a nice demon, you can make him see puppies."

"There are no nice demons," Vice muttered.

"Acid and fire it is, then," Pitch said.

The Armory moved toward the three tunnel mouths. Vice shuddered, hacked from the back of his throat and spat a wad of snot into the dirt.

"What's the matter with you?" Dagger asked.

"I can smell them. Their wrongness," Vice said, "they are unholy. I can taste it. It's making my throat itch."

"I get like that around cats," Powder muttered.

"Vice is allergic to demons. Great," Saber said.

"It's not an allergy," Pitch said. "What limited scientific study there is about demons speculates why the holy are so bothered by them."

"And?" Dagger asked, "anything that can help us?"

Pitch was about to answer when Vice sneezed violently. Saber chuckled and handed the monk a lace handkerchief. "Here. There's snot in your beard."

"What is this?" Vice asked, holding the silken thing by one corner like it was a live scorpion.

"A dancer in Shivar gave it to me."

Vice stared at the scrap of silk with horror.

"Don't worry," Saber said. "It's clean enough."

"Nothing about you is clean," Vice said, but blew his nose into the piece of silk.

Pitch continued. "Anyway, demons represent an essential polarity to the order imposed by the gods, and by extension the servants of gods. As the gods see it, our world is theirs to protect. Demons represent a perversion of that concept of order, another way a world can be used and organized. Holiness, when not perverted by human desire and lust for power, is essentially the idea of order and peace. It’s a framework upon which new life grows and thrives. Like a wooden lattice for vines in a garden. But demons represent the antithesis of that order. Even a god that views its congregants as little better than cattle would not want them slaughtered."

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"Even the Farmer?" Powder asked.

"Especially the Farmer," Pitch said. "When was the last time you met somebody who raised chickens or cows who liked foxes and wolves?"

"The Farmer is a vile perversion," Vice snarled. "Humans are not cattle to be husbanded, groomed and confined for their own good."

"And yet, he's one of the most powerful gods with the most worshippers," Pitch said. "That should tell you something about people."

Vice shook his head sadly. "Your mind is an ugly place, Pitch."

"Like yours is a sanctuary?"

"Which tunnel?" Dagger cut in.

"The middle," Vice said.

"How do you know?"

"I feel it."

Saber went to the adit and peered inside, then he looked down and kicked something over in the dirt.

"I'd say he's onto something," Saber muttered. It was a human arm, flayed down to the bones and tendons. It looked like something had used a vegetable grater on it. Saber moved into the tunnel with the rest of The Armory close behind. The mine swallowed the daylight only steps from the entrance.

"Hold on," Pitch said and went back to the light of the tunnel mouth, knelt and took three vials from his rig and mixed them into a tin bowl. As the chemicals blended, they gave off a fierce blue-green glow.

"Over here, everyone," Pitch said, and liberally smeared each of their shoulders with the glowing paste until they stood in a nimbus that lit the cavern all the way to the walls and ceiling.

"I don't want to quibble, Pitch," Powder said, "but we can't exactly hide like this. At least with a torch or a lantern we could have put it out or covered it."

"This leaves our hands free," Pitch said as Saber took the bowl to smear Pitch's shoulders. "It won't ruin our night vision and we can easily recognize each other."

"It also makes us stick out like fucking beacons," the gunner said.

"That won't matter," Pitch said.

"Why not?"

"Demons don't have eyes."

Saber scoffed. "Then how they hell do they see?"

"Well," Pitch said, "I could explain how sight works with light spectrums, and that vision isn't much more than the way our brains react to and interpret... yep. There we go. Barely finished my sentence and your eyes are already glazing over."

"They are not!"

Powder sighed. "I'm guessing we're not gonna like anything we see in there?"

"No," Vice said, "you will not."

Dagger looked at each of them and took stock of their rising nerves. "Pitch," she said, "dose us up."

"What do you have in mind?"

"Make us sharp, fast and numb," she ordered. "I want us able to walk out of there on bloody stumps if we have to."

Pitch borrowed one of Saber's wide cleavers and mixed powder from three leather satchels and laid out five lines of the blend on the weapon's side. After each of them had snorted a line, they advanced into the pitch black. The floor sloped down. Iron tracks for mine carts stretched before them, glinting between the spots of rust. They heard a scrabble in the dark as something sharp rasped against the rock.

"Rats?" Saber asked.

"No," Pitch said. "They'll have eaten those. But if it makes you feel better, they're a bit like rats where they come from. Or maybe locusts are a better comparison."

"It doesn't," Saber said.

"Be odd if it did," Pitch said. "In their world the rats won the—"

With a shriek, a thing of meat, angles and jaws rushed them from the darkness. Saber lunged between Dagger and Pitch, shoving them aside with the speed of his thrust. His narrow-bladed sword skewered the rushing beast through the jaws, snapping off several of its teeth as it slid into the throat behind them. The beast snarled and chewed, trying to eat the sword and cutting its mouth to ribbons as it slithered along Saber's blade toward him. Its head was membrane smooth and shiny. Shit, Saber thought, it really doesn't have any eyes.

Dagger brought down her hammer on the fleshy body. The creature roared. Its flesh bubbled and writhed. Its mouth and neck shifted impossibly with the sound of cracking bone as it re-arranged itself to wrap its claws around Dagger's hammer. Saber slid his sword free and stabbed the demon again and again as Dagger fought to free her weapon from its grip.

"Leave it pinned, Captain!" Powder yelled.

Dagger let go of her hammer. The beast squealed under its weight.

Powder stepped to the demon and set both barrels of her scatterguns against the place with all the teeth. She pulled her triggers and the jaws and cranium vanished in a spattering of lead and gore. The beast shuddered, squeaked like a rabbit in a snare, and went still. Its flesh continued to move and twitch. Dagger lifted her hammer up and brought it down again, pasting the creature against the tunnel floor.

"Burn it, Pitch," Dagger said. The alchemist poured a vial of acid out over the creature's remains. It smoked as it ate the demon down to the rock beneath. The Armory stepped back out of the smoke, coughing and spitting.

"So, that's a demon," Saber said.

"A juvenile," Vice said. "Pray they are all this young."

"Do they all look like that?" Powder asked and nudged a twitching claw. "It doesn't really look like anything, you know, except fucking horrible."

Vice grunted. "They may be defined by our natural laws but buck against them constantly. What you see is a rebellion in flesh."

"More or less," Pitch said. "If you want a more scientific explanation, they must work with the physics and matter of the world they are invading. On other planes they may look different. Our world limits their forms to perversions of the ones we already have. They copy them to survive and breathe our air, drink our water and eat our flesh. I think this one was trying to be a dog."

"Dogs don't have," Saber counted with his finger. "Seven legs and a stump that ends in another mouth."

"Three cheers for narcotics," Pitch said. "Imagine having to look at that sober."

Dagger cut a glance at Pitch. "I said I wanted us up and ready to roll. Not stoned. What did you give us?"

"Do you feel stoned, Dagger?" Pitch asked.

"No."

"Then don't worry about it," Pitch said. "I don't tell you how to smash things or lead do I?"

Dagger raised an eyebrow. "Don't get testy with me, scholar."

"When this is over, Pitch," Saber said, "I'm just gonna have you put me into a coma for about fifteen years."

"No comas for us," Dagger said and lifted her hammer. "No afterlives either. Forward."

They crept further into the twisted warren. There was only The Armory's breath and heartbeats, the sound of loose stones shifting under their boots. They found a mine cart, its wheels rusted to the track. Dagger glanced inside, sniffed and shook her head as the rest joined her. In the cart was what was left of a miner. Several rough holes had been bored through his helmet, and his chest cavity had been opened in a few places, the edges ragged and filled with splintered bone. He still clutched a pickaxe, one end crusted with gore.

"Went down fighting," Powder noted. "Looks like they sampled him, trying to figure out what was good to eat. I wonder what they decided."

"Looks like just the gooey filling," Pitch said, probing the body cavity with a slender metal tool. "All his organs are gone."

"I used to eat cream puffs like that when I was a kid," Saber said.

"Of course you did," Powder muttered.

The tunnel beyond the cart opened up and was lined with wooden platforms and scaffolding. Bodies littered the structures. Decay thickened the air. The Armory eyed the limits of their glow as the tunnel narrowed again and headed deeper into the earth.

There was a scratching in the darkness ahead and Dagger halted them just before a swarm of meat and teeth boiled snarling out of the tunnel and blocked it with their bodies, most of them bigger than the young demon The Armory had smashed. Their many mouths and clawed limbs raked and savaged at each other even as they oriented their strange, slick heads toward the humans.

"Oh, look," Saber said, and hefted his sword, "puppies."

"Guess we're not going that way?" Powder muttered hopefully as the horde crept closer, spittle turning the dusty mineshaft floor to slurry.

"You guess wrong," Dagger said.

"I knew that."

Vice glanced behind them. "Backwards is also not an option."

The path behind had a horror mob of its own, and the scaffolding was now lined with things held together with meat, wire and bent physics. The air filled with their hissing chorus that became a roar of triumph as a demon the size of a grizzly bear slammed its way to the front, crushing and devouring the smaller ones in its way.

"Where the fuck was that thing hiding?" Saber asked.

"Why don't you ask it?" Powder suggested as the creature sniffed the air with too many wet nostrils, "It looks friendly."

"I got a better idea, Powder," Dagger said.

"Yeah?"

"Shoot it."

Powder shouldered her rifle as the massive demon sauntered closer. One of its legs was too short and its gut dragged on the ground, but it moved with a peculiar grace. She pulled the trigger, the gun barked and blazed, and the bullet bit punched through the demon's head and took a bucket-worth of meat along for the ride. The behemoth barely flinched, and a smaller demon pounced on the morsel and dragged it back to its fellows, where they fought over it while the big demon roared.

"What kind of bullet was that?" Saber asked, drawing a dagger to go with his longer blade.

"Split round," Powder said with a satisfied grin. "Basically turns into a caltrop on impact."

"Sexy. Do it again."

The demons rushed the bravos, slithering down slope and scaffold in an amorphous, fleshy mass. Odd bones occasionally poked and ripped through their skin as the natural laws of the world fought their strangeness. Dagger swung her hammer in a wide arc and spattered two of them against another. The dying were eaten by their own before they could even stop moving.

"Powder," Dagger shouted, "make another hole in the big one! Pitch, give it a snack!"

Powder slung her rifle, hefted her twin shotguns from her belt and rushed the bear demon with Pitch close behind. It lunged with one clawed arm, but they rolled under the clumsy swing. Powder opened up on its belly with her scatterguns and splashed them both with gore just before Pitch heaved in a packed paper bundle. It dissolved, smoked and then burst in brilliant white flames as the chemicals mixed and burned despite the wet of the demon's belly.

It shrieked in agony. It thrashed and lay about itself with misshapen arms, killing little demons but doing nothing about the flames. Vice lunged and slammed one armored fist into what might have been a knee. The hulk stumbled. He bashed at it with his fists until it was still and backed out of range as smaller demons swarmed over the corpse in a hungry, gnawing coat.

Saber danced with a swarm of demons, leaping back and forth with his blades whispering through their flesh, but his thrusts did little damage. The demons shrieked angrily as he tried to put them down. Dagger shoved him to one side and splattered a demon with her hammer, then spun and drove the spike on the other end through another and then ripped it loose, tearing the vile thing in half.

As before, the living pounced on the dead. Horrifying though it was, these little feasts worked in The Armory's favor. The demons' hunger prevented any organized rush.

"What is it with all the eating?" Dagger called, as The Armory formed up back-to-back. "Not that I'm complaining."

"They need raw matter to grow and change," Pitch said as he drew another pair of vials to throw, "They must have used the miner's meat for the first batch. Now they're using their own dead."

"Fuck," Dagger growled. "Any ideas?"

"Find the gate," the monk said, "it is the only way to stop this."

Pitch threw his vials in both directions. The chemicals set demons alight and herded them into manageable columns as the alchemist's acids ate bones and flesh down to puddles of foul-smelling mud. When the demons scooped the red slush into their mouths, the gunk ate at them from within and they fell, writhing in more of the same. Acrid smoke filled the air and The Armory hacked and coughed, breathing through their sleeves when they could.

Saber sheathed his dagger and elegant sword and drew heavy cleavers, trading dancer's grace for butcher's work. He lodged a cleaver in meat and used it as a crude lever to turn and control demon after demon as he methodically blocked claws and lopped off hands, feet and fanged jaws to leave them crippled, easy meals for the rest.

Powder fired again and again as she slid and dodged between her comrades, her hot lead ripped off demon legs and turned their heads to pulp. The ground was slippery, but the shattered teeth and bone beneath their boots offered some traction, like sand in wet snow.

"Pitch, Powder, Saber," Dagger shouted, "handle the rear. Vice and I will clear the path ahead."

Dagger and Vice waded into the squealing demons that blocked the way forward. Hammer and armored fists shattered their line. Vice grabbed a demon by the head and crushed it, driving his fists into the confusing flesh. He found undecided bones and snapped them. Dagger pulped and pulped.

Behind them, the bear demon roared and surged awkwardly back to its feet. It slung the smaller beasts chewing at it into the walls. The scaffolding shattered and fell, crushing dozens of smaller demons beneath it. They squealed like piglets as the splintered wood impaled and pinned them down. The crippled behemoth dragged itself toward The Armory, trailing its own guts.

"Fuck me!" Saber yelled, "Can we kill it again, please?"

Powder slung her guns and dug a bomb out of her bag. She began to strike flint against the fuse, but Pitch grabbed her arm.

"You out of your mind?" he yelled. "An explosion could bring the tunnel down on us!"

Powder shrugged him off. "Do you not see that thing? Even its wounds have teeth for fuck's sake!"

She was right. The hole they'd made in its side had sprouted mismatched fangs.

"I'm thinking!" Pitch yelled.

"Can't kill it with your brain, Pitch!"

"Well, technically—"

"Shut the pedantic fuck up, Pitch!"

The behemoth was scorched and leaking. Six mouths sprouted and moved across its flesh like roving lily pads of teeth, and when they met, they slid into one another. Flesh and bone folded together into a single maw — a slavering, thick-lipped ring filled with long, needle teeth like a lamprey that could drain whales dry. It roared. Foul breath coasted over The Armory. It stank of sulfur and rotting plums. The behemoth limped toward the human threat, and now that it was too active to be food, the smaller demons forming up behind and alongside it like an honor guard.

"Can you make that throw, Powder?" Pitch asked, pointing at the mouth.

"What am I? An asshole?"

"Light a short fuse."

"I thought it'll bring down the tunnel!"

"Just fucking do it!" Pitch said. "We have to make it roar again. Saber, with me!"

Powder clipped the bomb's fuse short and lit it.

Pitch took a big jar from his bag and inched toward the behemoth as Saber moved beside him, his blades ready to take the smaller demons that might challenge them, but the creatures hung back, fearful of getting in the behemoth's way. Two did dart forward, but the behemoth snatched them up and ate them.

Pitch threw the jar.

It broke against the side of the behemoth. The liquid hit the air and burst into blue and yellow fire, hot and bright in the darkness. It roared in rage and pain, mouth open all the way down to its gullet.

Powder didn't have to be told.

She threw her bomb into that flaming ring of teeth, the fuse nearly down to the iron. The behemoth closed its mouth in shock and gulped. There was a muffled thump and it burst outwards in a cough of hot fire and rotten-plum reek that spattered Pitch and Saber with meat, hot blood and broken teeth.

The cratered behemoth wavered.

It fell.

The smaller demons swarmed the corpse. They ripped and gulped without chewing, shoveling the pieces into their swelling bellies.

"Fucking hell," Saber muttered. Powder and Pitch could only nod.

Dagger's battle roar came from behind them, and Vice screamed a prayer.

Pitch, Saber and Powder ran to their side.