“Shit,” Dorian said. He looked down the street and back again. “Which way is it? Damn it!”

Corvo did not know. A moment before he had been terrified enough to run without stopping to think. Yet now he did think, and he could think of nothing else but Mother—what was happening to her, if she were even still alive—it seemed guaranteed that she would be killed, and then they would never see each other again. And how would he ever be safe without her?

“Damn it!” Dorian said again. He grabbed Corvo’s arm and tugged him one direction down the street. “This way, chicklet. Come on.”

They started walking. The buildings were tall, and the road was dark. Trees clogged the boulevard between concrete canyons. Corvo saw a pair of orange eyes flashing through a window in a crumpling building. In another was a goblin who did nothing but watch as they passed by.

“Here. Up here!” Dorian said.

He pulled Corvo through a doorway, chosen at random. It was dark and barren and smelled like guano, but they soon found a staircase, and up and up they went, flight after flight and floor after floor, until they were high enough up to scan the horizon for the Obelisk.

They spotted it. At least a mile away, again, or maybe farther. Dorian shook his head.

“I’m sorry, Corvo,” he said. He sounded exhausted, he was panting, and he sat down for a moment. “I didn’t think—I couldn’t see it! I didn’t know where to go….”

He tried to hug him. But Corvo remembered what had happened the last time, and he cringed away. Dorian looked at him, almost confused, but hung his head.

“Your mother will be fine. I’m sure of it,” he said. “And she can find you. She has spells for that, you know. We just need to stay safe. She’ll come to us.”

Clawed feet skittered on the floor above them. Dust fell from the ceiling and onto their heads.

Dorian stared upward.

“We’ll stay safe someplace else,” he whispered.

They ran back down the stairs. Then they were in the streets again. They stuck to back alleys and paths that had been overgrown with trees, where they had cover from the towers’ vantage points, but Dorian had a poor sense of direction. He often became confused, and lost.

Corvo didn’t. He remembered which way to go, always, and he tugged Dorian’s arm.

“This way,” he said, and led them on toward the Obelisk again.

But they must have seemed easy prey. Before, traveling with Mother, in her armor and with her staff, she would have looked like an elf to any creature hiding in the dark of Seneria. Corvo had hardly seen anything except stray animals and oblivious monsters in that time. Now, for their renewed aggression or his own nervousness, he saw more. And more. And more. Huge spiders poured from windows and stalked them down the streets. They were black and red and the size of horses, and they walked along the edges of the towers. Birds with beaks lined with razor-like teeth congregated on columns and watched them pass with violet eyes. Pig-like creatures with black skin and long tails gathered in alleys, sticking to the shadows, yet always following.

“Don’t look, Corvo,” Dorian said. “Keep moving.”

“I’m tired,” he said. His legs ached too badly to keep moving.

“If you can’t run, I’ll carry you. Can you run?”

Corvo wiped the tears that had gathered on his nose. He snorted, but he nodded. He could run for a while longer yet.

They came to a dead-end. The road stopped suddenly, splaying instead to the left and right, as towers blocked the way forward. But Corvo spotted the Obelisk again down the right path, and he tugged Dorian that way.

But the spiders had cut them off.

Corvo screamed, scrambling back behind Dorian for cover. There were two of them, both black and red, and they approached from the sides of the street. Their eight legs skittered in huge motions like the oars of a galley, and they did not stop until they were very close.

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Dorian drew his sword.

“Get back!” he shouted, swiping the blade their way. “Stay back!”

One of the spiders recoiled. The other stayed put. It hissed, and its countless eyes focused on Corvo as it came closer.

“Keep behind me, chicklet!” Dorian shouted.

Both spiders stopped.

The one to the right pounced.

It leaped at Dorian with its fangs bared, trying to tackle him. Corvo dropped to get out of the way, and Dorian cut at it with his sword; he sliced off a leg, and his blade swept upward into the monster’s exoskeleton, cutting into its thorax. But its weight impacted him anyway, and they fell to the ground. The spider leaked bubbling green blood over Dorian as it bit at him in the neck with its fangs, but he drew his dagger, and he thrust it into its head, tearing through five eyes at once.

He pushed it off over him. It thrashed still, kicking its legs while upside down, but it was slain

The other was upon him next. But he threw his dagger as it ran toward him, and the blade was lodged to the hilt in its head. It screeched and turned and ran, routing like a wounded goblin as it fled to a tower’s wall. It climbed up to a window and disappeared within.

Corvo helped Dorian to his feet.

Dorian grabbed at his neck. Blood poured between his fingers.

“Dorian!” Corvo said.

“I’m fine,” he said. “I’m fine. Come on. We’re almost there.”

But he did not sound fine, and they were not almost there. He stumbled and went slowly. Corvo had to help him stay upright.

The sword fell from his fingers.

Corvo grabbed it and gave it back to him.

The pigs stalked them. More birds congregated on perches, watching them still. The largest of the pigs, a boar with tusks the color of tar, came up close to Corvo.

“Get back,” Dorian said weakly. “Get back.”

Corvo did not know what to do, so he screamed, “Go away!” to the boar as loudly as he could.

It recoiled at his voice. It snorted and turned its head. A moment passed—and then it fled past him. It ran the opposite way from which it had come, fleeing deeper into the City and toward the Obelisk. The rest of the pigs followed. Their hooves kicked up thick clouds of dirt as they stampeded to get away.

He stood still and silent.

The birds nearby took flight. The air was filled with the flurrying of wings. Then, for a moment, they were alone as they ever had been in Ewsos. They were free to run. No one would stop them now.

Then a blue light appeared far behind them. For the first time in hours Corvo saw his shadow clearly cast ahead of him, and the towers to their sides were bathed in sky-colored light.

He and Dorian held their breath, and they turned.

The blue demon hovered in the air down the street.

Its long, worm-like body twitched gently as it levitated at Dorian’s eye level. It approached slowly, slithering through the air, cocking its head.

Its mouth opened. It did nothing more than that.

Dorian stumbled another foot. But he fell, and no amount of tugging at his shoulder could get him to stand back up.

The demon drew closer.

Dorian stared at it. Finally he rose, panting, and he pushed Corvo away.

“Go,” he said. “I can’t come, chicklet. Go on. Eris will be there for you soon. Go!”

Corvo stumbled backward, never looking from the demon’s translucent body. “No,” he whispered.

“Go! We can’t run! Just go, Corvo! You don’t owe me a thing! I’m an old man! Run, and don’t look back!”

The demon was very near now. Dorian centered himself, and he raised his sword toward it, as though preparing to fence.

Corvo shook his head. But as the demon came close enough distance to touch, he gave in. He was too afraid to stay. He couldn’t think, and he sprinted down the road.

Dorian stayed put.

“Don’t look back,” Dorian called. “I’ll keep him busy.”

But Corvo did look back. When he reached the end of the street, as he chose another path at random, he looked over his shoulder, and he saw Dorian and the demon face-to-face.

He stepped toward it, slashing at its neck. It was a clean cut—a cut that would have bisected any mortal foe.

Yet the blade passed through the demon’s body like nothing.

It floated closer. Drifting onward, until its head was adjacent to his.

Dorian lifted off the ground. Six inches, then twelve. His arms were pulled backward. His whole body was restrained, and his head threw backward.

The demon opened its mouth.

A green light trailed from Dorian’s lips.

The demon swallowed the light whole. It snaked down its throat, through its neck, before settling at last in its belly.

It lasted only for a moment. There wasn’t much to take—just a trace of a single spell. Then that was it.

An invisible force wrenched Dorian’s sword from his hands. It floated at his side for a moment. Then it twisted around, and its blade was pointed to his chest, until suddenly it thrust forward as though in the hands of a knight.

The blade pierced Dorian’s gambeson. It tore through to the hilt and emerged on the other side, covered in blood.

He gasped. Then his arms and legs stopped fighting against the demon’s spell, and he stilled. He did nothing more.

His body dropped to the ground.

The demon shivered.

Corvo screamed. Now he ran. He did not look back. He went, and went, and went, until he could no longer breathe, and his legs burned, and he coughed and felt spasms in his thighs.

He tripped and tumbled to the ground at the entrance to a tower. It was blocked by a huge steel door, but beneath it, at its foundation, was a small hole—a crawlspace into pure darkness.

He crawled into it. He could not see, but he kept going, and going, until he was so far within the black that he could barely lift his head or turn and he was halfway stuck, and he closed his eyes.

And he cried, certain that Mother would never find him, certain that he would suffer Dorian’s fate.