The Enderman moved in flashes and jerks, grabbing my helm and attempting to rip it off of my head. I moved to unclip my sword, but Berith acted first. He uttered something in the guttural tongue of demons, and the Enderman blinked back a pace. Asmodeus added his voice to the command, and the monster froze in place, visibly struggling against the force of their combined wills.

Its violet eyes blazed, and its toothless mouth opened impossibly wide, emitting another echoing cough, but Berith continued to speak, forcing it to its knees.

My sword slipped free, ringing as it arced toward the creature's neck, decapitating the Enderman in a single stroke. Its tall, dark body slumped as the head rolled free, and Berith growled in annoyance.

“Why did you kill it?” He demanded, “It was under our control.”

“The Vierimaa are valuable tools,” Asmodeus hissed.

“We can’t take it with us,” I replied. “You stopped it here, but are you telling me that Agares wouldn’t have been able to take it back from you? Astaroth and Forneus are around too, if we face them together, any entity we have with us becomes a liability.”

“Perhaps,” Asmodeus said, his head lowering on his long neck, “but we could have sent it back to the others. It would have been yours then.”

I was uncomfortably aware of how similar this discussion was to the argument I’d just had with the snake demon about killing people who weren’t a threat. Of course, the Enderman was not a person, it was a monster that had attacked me; but the threat had been removed, so there was something to their position.

“We’re too deep in the city to send monsters running around,” I said. “We kill whatever fights us, but don’t worry, you’ll both be rewarded for what you do here. One, what did you call it, Vierimaa? One of these won’t compare to what you’ll both soon have under your command.”

It bothered me that I was having to have this conversation, but the demons seemed placated. I turned my attention to the wall. Exchanging the sword with my pick, I mined out a passage.

“Who’s down there? Announce yourselves!”

The voice was human, coming down from the rampart high above. We were still concealed by Berith’s mist, and that concealment went both ways, but Asmodeus muttered a spell, and both his daggers flew out of sight. There was a scream, and the soldier came tumbling down off the wall, landing face first and laying still. Both the scream and the landing were far from silent, and soon there were more shouts from above. By the time I was through the wall, a warning bell had started to ring. I gritted my teeth at the death. We were going to have to address Asmodeus’s trigger finger at some point.

Past the curtain wall, the noise of the Eternal Engine was almost enough to drown out the bell, a mechanical cacophony that filled the air and shook the ground beneath my greaves. Gears chugged and metal clanged, generating a relentless rhythm underscored by periodic hisses of steam and the long, drawn-out groans of straining iron. As if to announce our arrival, the great whistle pierced the night again, so loud that I felt it in my chest.

The mist was blocking my view, turning the Engine into a vast, mysterious form in constant motion, with the scattered points of the torches transformed into will-o-the-wisps.

“Can you clear a line of sight?” I asked Berith. “We need to be able to see this thing.”

Berith’s hands sprang into motion, and the fog shaped itself into a tunnel, clearing a view of the Engine while keeping us concealed. Its body stretched out before us, too large to take in all at once, a seemingly endless serpent coiling around itself at the heart of Nargul. Gargantuan wheels, each taller than a man, spun ceaselessly, bearing the burden of the colossal structure as it ran its never-ending course.

Gothic architecture had been fused with an industrial nightmare. Towers and buttresses jutted from the tall cars, giving it the air of a cathedral on wheels. Chains connected the structures, rattling and clanking, many apparently with no purpose other than to enhance the ambiance.

Smokestacks poked from the back of a car, spewing ash and cinders into the air to mix with the dark clouds above. The rain had abated, but the train was still glistening and wet as it rattled along, its head nowhere in sight, but what had to be the caboose was trundling our way.

It was even blockier and more ungainly than the other cars, looking like nothing so much as a mobile prison fortress. There were slitted windows along the upper level, but the lower half of the car was completely sealed. This hardly constituted proof that the lillits were being kept there, but it was as good a place to start as any, and if we worked our way forward from the back of the train, we at least wouldn’t miss anything.

“All aboard,” I called to the demons and jogged forward. The guards on the wall already knew something was up, so stealth was over with. My boots clomped along the cobbles, but the armor felt light. It had taken me too long to get this far, and I was energized by the thought of finding the lillits.

The Eternal Engine was churning along at a little over a walking pace, its path perpendicular to us, so it didn’t take long to close the gap and catch up. There wasn’t any reasonable way to climb the wheels, but one of the heavy chains hanging from the side of the caboose was swinging low enough for me to hop up and grab it. Scaling the chain only took a few seconds, and then I was awkwardly tapping my way through the outer plating of the car.

Asmodeus appeared beside me, holding on to the siding as easily as a gecko, and watched me work. Berith caught up a moment later, ascending a different chain. The alarm bell continued to ring, and an arrow plunked into the side of the caboose as I worked, missing me by a wide margin. I wasn’t worried about the soldiers, their weapons couldn't dent my armor even if they shot me point blank, but they could still get in the way.

The outer shell of the caboose was made up of a shell of iron slabs, and when the first square disappeared, I saw the layer behind it was stone. Harvesting enough of the plating to get through was going to take longer than I wanted to spend hanging by a chain on the outside of this train.

“Asmodeus, can you do something about this?” I said, gesturing to the section of iron siding I was trying to harvest.

“As you wish,” the serpent hissed. He needed his hands to cast spells, but he partially detached himself from the side of the car, somehow hanging on by his toes alone. After a few words and gestures from the demon, the iron plates nearest me peeled away like flakes of dead skin. I tore at them to speed the process, and with one arm wrapped around the chain that supported me, retrieved my pick to mine through the stone beneath.

Once the hole was a few feet in diameter, I crawled through, falling unceremoniously onto the floor within. The interior was a claustrophobic space, reverberating with the heavy churn of the wheels. The clink and clatter of machinery was oppressive, and through the filter of my visor, I tasted air that was thick with the tang of metal and sweat.

At least a dozen lillits were cramped in the space, staring at me with wide, glassy eyes. They were chained to their stations, imprisoned amid valves and levers, though their work stopped at my appearance. A maze of pipes rose around and above them, glowing with sanguinum, interconnecting in a complex network without an apparent beginning or end.

Their faces were pale and drawn, their skin stretched tightly over fragile bones. I’d never seen unhealthy lillits before, they were a supernaturally hale, clean, and long-lived race, but the men and women I saw here had been reduced to playing the role of cogs in a tremendous, uncaring machine, and it showed.

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There didn’t appear to be any guards in the chamber, but they wouldn’t need to be guarded, confined as they were. As I got to my feet, Asmodeus slithered in behind me, and one of the women wailed in despair at the sight of the demon.

“No,” I said, holding up my hands, one of which still clutched the pickaxe, “I’m not going to hurt you. I’m here to help.”

They didn’t seem comforted by that declaration, and when I started harvesting their chains, they watched me with confusion. “The Dark Lord is gone,” I said, not feeling like this was the moment to explain that I was the new Dark Lord, “I’m here to stop this. Whatever this is, it’s going to stop. You’re all getting out of here.”

“Who are you?” One of the men asked. I didn’t recognize him, but there was a spark of defiance in his eyes that was heartening to see. His hair was matted to his forehead with sweat and grime, and there was peach fuzz along his jawline, the closest thing I’d ever seen to a full beard on a lillit.

There was something about the way he held himself that set him apart from the others, signs of resilience. The look he gave me was unwavering, though there were lines of exhaustion etched deep into his face.

“My name is William,” I said. “I don’t know if you remember me.”

There were a few scattered gasps from the others, and the man’s eyes widened.

“We thought you were dead.”

“I was dead,” I said, “a bunch of times. But I’m here now, and I’m sorry it took so long.”

The chain and manacle disappeared from his leg, converted into a medallion that I didn’t bother storing, leaving only the ring where it had been attached to the wall. The woman who had wailed before started to cry.

Berith climbed in after Asmodeus, and both of them looked impatient for us to move on, but I wasn’t going to leave these people in chains.

“What’s your name?” I asked the man who had spoken up, moving on to free the next lillit.

“Falmon,” he said, rubbing the place on his ankle where the manacle had been. He looked like he couldn’t believe that it was gone.

“What can you tell me about the Engine? Are all the lillits here, or are there housing facilities somewhere else in Nargul?”

“We are all here,” he said, then his brow furrowed. “I think. There are pens all along the train, and the guards collect us to lock us in our stations every morning, then they put us away at night. They treat us like we’re a part of the machinery.”

My jaw clenched, and I tried not to think about slaughtering every guard on the train. The soldiers were just following orders. That excuse might have been a cliche, but it was also the reality of how human beings worked, at least as far as I’d ever observed or experienced. People like to think that they are special, that if they had been born in a different time or place, they wouldn’t have taken part in whatever injustice or atrocity that period of history was known for. But most people, most of the time, will just go along with the program, no matter how insane or monstrous that program obviously is the moment you step outside of it.

Having spent most of my previous adult life as a prisoner, my opinions on the matter of humanity's moral nature were probably biased, but in general, if human beings were inherently heroic in the way that most people thought about heroism, history would have involved way fewer genocides. This was a city ruled by literal demons. The men who served them probably weren’t happy about what they were doing, but they would find ways to cope. It was Kevin who was at fault here. He’d created this system. He’d set the machine in motion, and I doubted he had shown a lot of lenience to anyone who had stood up to him over the last few centuries.

I suddenly didn’t feel as bad about keeping him in a box.

“Where are the soldiers now?” I asked Falmon, keeping my tone level. “They have keys, right? If I take care of them, can you help free everyone else in this car?”

The lillit stood up. Despite his obvious malnourishment, he looked strong, and there was fire in his eyes.

“I’ll do whatever I can,” he said, then pointed to a door at the back of the compartment. “There’s a guard station at the rear end of this car, and at least three more rooms like this with more of us in chains.”

As if on cue, the locking mechanism in the door clicked and spun, lifting an iron bar. A man in full plate stepped through holding a cudgel.

“What’s going on in…” he trailed off when he saw me and the demons.

Asmodeus’s knife leaped from his hands, slipping under the man’s chin and into his throat. For once, I wasn’t upset with the demon for shooting first and asking questions later. I left the lillits to step over the guard and found myself in a rec room full of soldiers hurriedly putting their helmets on.

I returned the pick to my inventory.

“Hold it, all of you. I am your Dark Lord, Emperor of Dargoth, who sits upon the Throne of Shadows. I demand your obedience.”

One of the soldiers was quicker than the others, he already had his sword out. “You are no Dark Lord, you are an imposter. Duke Agares has already warned us against your lies.”

Well, it couldn’t work every time, I guess. I hefted Kevin’s crossbow.

“Put down your weapons. One of these bolts will tear through that armor like tissue paper.”

The metaphor was probably lost on them, given that tissue paper didn’t exist in this world, but they would get the gist.

“More lies,” the man scoffed, taking a step toward me. “This armor came from the forges of Mount Doom, it is blessed by the craft of our Dark Lord, and no mere crossbow bolt can pierce it.”

It seemed like he was buying time for his fellows to get themselves ready. They would be suited up and prepared to mob me in a few more seconds. I shot him in the leg. The bolt went in with a satisfying plunk, penetrating the steel plate as if it were the aforementioned tissue.

Thank you, [Piercing]. The man cried out in pain and surprise, stumbling back, and the others froze.

“Listen,” I said, “listen, I am the Dark Lord now.” Two demons entered the room behind me, lending their authority to my declaration. “Agares is going to be dead before the end of the night. You can all surrender or you can die. I would prefer having you work for me over having to clean up your bodies, but I’ll be fine either way. What do you say?”

The men looked from their leader to me and the monstrous faces of the demons behind me. A few of them still looked ready to fight, but when one dropped his sword, several more followed. Then someone knelt.

“What are you doing?” The injured man shouted. “He is an imposter.” Even with a crossbow bolt in his leg, he managed to lunge at me. His sword scraped harmlessly off of my breastplate, and rather than shoot him again, I backhanded him with my other hand, and he went down hard.

“Anybody else?” I asked.

“Long live the Dark Lord,” the kneeling soldier said.

Someone else repeated it, and soon the whole room was doing a weird culty chant thing. I raised my hand to silence them.

“I will accept all of your oaths of allegiance when this is finished. For now, here are my orders. Every lillit on this train is to be freed. Who has the keys?”

As it turned out, the man who had tried to fight me was the sergeant in charge of this car. He tried to get up, and I knocked him down again, ripping the ring of keys from his belt clip.

“Restrain him,” I commanded the others, and they hopped to it. In the other room, Falmon accepted the keys from me with an air of reverence.

“You have twice freed us,” he said.

“Not yet, but that’s the idea.”

There was a long way to go before we reached the head of the train, and there were probably dozens more soldiers on the upper level of this car alone, but I didn’t think the soldiers would be the problem.

Agares could have monsters serving him I’d never seen, magics I’d never heard of, and worst of all, he already knew that the lillits were important to me. The chances of this not developing into a hostage situation were very low. The best thing I could do was move fast, reaching the Duke before he had a chance to create a situation where I would be forced to sacrifice lives to stop him.

I grabbed one of the soldiers.

“Which car does the Duke stay in? Do you know where he is?”

This soldier hadn’t had a chance to get his helmet on. His face was younger than I had expected, with the smooth complexion of a boy who had barely left adolescence. Wide dark eyes, framed by messy brown hair, met mine with a mix of fear and awe. Sweat beaded on his pale forehead, making his skin gleam faintly in the dim light of the train car. His lips trembled.

“I…I know where he resides, my lord. I do not know if he is there.”

“Tell me.”