My eyes fell on Fladnag's stump. It looked bruised, gray, and purple around the edges. What he said didn't make any sense. He was a thousand years old, or something like that. By his own account, he'd had multiple families, and many children, across that span. Who had the demons taken from him, and how were they keeping them captive? Why was this child in particular so important to him when he'd cut ties with all his human connections a lifetime ago?

"Fladnag," I said, "You don't have to do this. We can work together. Tell me what happened."

The old man put his hand on top of Leto's head and petted him like he was a cat. He didn't have a weapon out, so it was hard to estimate what the immediate threat was. Either Gastard or I should have been able to rush him and take him out before he harmed my son, but something held me back.

His aura was brighter than that of a demon. He'd been disguising himself from the beginning, and I had no idea what he was capable of. He'd once been able to heal with a touch, and from what he'd told us, that ability had been replaced by its opposite. If he wanted to kill Leto, there was no doubt in my mind that he wouldn't need a blade to do it.

"Nadia was pregnant when they took her." His voice pitched low, and even in the silence of the surrounding camp, I almost didn't hear it.

That was a hell of a revelation, but it made the entire situation even crazier. "You said she was gone when you went to find her. Wasn't that hundreds of years ago? If they kept your child, how could he still be alive?"

"I told you," Fladnag said. "A body is just a vessel. Nadia was under the protection of Mizu, and her soul could pass on. But our son…" his jaw tightened, "the One Who Knocks claimed him. The demons allowed him to be born. Then they took him to Bedlam. He is in a realm that stifles the flow of time, trapped but alive. They have shown him to me.

He belongs to the One Who Knocks, body and soul, and there is no escape for him unless I do as they demand."

"How can you trust that? You're talking about the thing that the demons are afraid of. Why would it ever let your son go, if it knows it can get you to do what it wants by keeping him?"

"There are laws that bind even the gods.” He sounded desperate, as if he was trying to convince himself. “ I made a compact with their master, something far deeper than the oaths spoken on your blade, and with a greater cost. He will honor it."

Gastard had been rising cautiously as we debated, and now he threw himself forward.

"Wait!" My cry came too late. He had committed himself. His sword flashed, and he covered the distance between us and the old man in a blink, but it wasn't fast enough. Fladnag's stump burst, and a host of purplish, fleshy tubes sprang out. Dozens of tentacles, stretching impossibly far, acting with minds of their own. They swept Gastard from his feet, wrapped around his sword arm, and pressed his face into the dirt. Erdene raised her voice in prayer, calling out to Harmony for a portion of its power, and one of the purplish limbs stretched to snap around her throat. It tightened like a noose, stealing her voice.

I could barely see Leto behind a wall of tentacles, but I heard him. "Dad!"

It was the first time he had called me that. Esmelda froze beside me, her face white, her mouth open in horror. She took a step forward, then caught herself, her hands lifting and falling helplessly.

"It's okay," I said. "He's not going to hurt you."

"That's correct," Fladnag said. "Your father and I are on the same side, and you are going to be fine."

He took his hand off of Leto's head and placed it on the flank of his ox. The beast shivered and lowed, its deep voice echoing across the camp like a signal horn. Its muscles bulged under its skin, broadening its frame, and an extra pair of horns sprouted from its head, growing like twisted vines.

Snorting and stamping its feet, the ox shuffled around to face us, as if expecting a challenge.

"I'll do whatever I need to do," I said, reaching out for Esmelda so that her hand disappeared within my gauntlet. She looked back at me, her eyes hard, and nodded. She was even less inclined to bring down a monument to the goddess than I was, but her intention was clear. We would do what was necessary to keep our son safe.

The irony of that decision, given that it mirrored Fladnag's motivations, did not escape me. The moment there was an opportunity for me to get Leto away from him, I would take it. Until then, we would have to play along.

Over the next hour, the camp's remaining resources were broken up as my followers made ready to move. Gulf barely batted an eye when I told him we weren't returning to Mount Doom yet, but would instead continue our journey into Atlan. If the soldiers of Dargoth complained, they did it out of earshot of their Dark Lord. Most people avoided looking at Fladnag, who was now more tentacle than man. The mass of shifting limbs connected at his wrist, their size and number defying all natural anatomy, and he never allowed Leto out of his reach. My son was putting on a brave face, with only a hint of the terror he was feeling visible in his eyes.

Fladnag lifted the boy and settled him lightly on the back of his monstrous ox, nestled between two crates of what I could only assume were explosives or their ingredients. Esmelda insisted that she be allowed to walk beside him. I strayed further back, hoping to have a conversation with Astaroth out of Fladnag’s hearing. Sunlight weighed on the demon, causing his shoulders to slump, and he had covered his head so that only his beak poked out from under a cowl.

"Did you know about him?" I asked.

"No," Astaroth murmured. "Bael and Valefor, the first ten harbingers, kept many secrets to themselves. Demons have come and gone from this world, whichever of us dealt with him in the past may no longer reside in Plana. It sounds as if the bargain he made was above us all."

"Your job hasn't changed," I said. "Your priority is protecting my family. Don't worry about anything else."

His beak dipped. "I understand."

The harpies had spread out overhead, and small groups were scouting the surrounding grassland. I'd considered having Celaeno organize a rescue mission to get Leto away from Fladnag, but there were a thousand ways that could go wrong. For the moment, they could at least warn us if the orkhans showed up. Batu and the other surviving warriors had made their exit shortly before Fladnag's big reveal. If that led to another army appearing, there wasn't much I could do about it. We no longer had a monster regiment, and there was only one weakened demon on my team. The Atlan cavalry would run right over us unless it turned out that Fladnag had a few hundred more tentacles up his sleeve.

Erdene and Gastard were ahead of us sharing a horse. Gastard's mount, Marie, was as reliable as ever, one of the few animals that remained. I had a diamond shard prepared to give to the shaman when I could do so without being noticed. Whether her magic would have any effect on Fladnag was an open question, but we needed every advantage we could get. She may not have been a staunch ally, but at least I could be sure she was opposed to whatever he was more than she was opposed to me.

Clouds gathered overhead, far less ominous than those that I was used to. They were wool gray, lacking the browns and blacks of the storm over Dargoth, as well as the flashes of yellow and red lightning. It looked like rain.

Atlan was a beautiful country. Mostly flat, with a sea of golden grass that stretched to every horizon. It seemed peaceful, even knowing that there were hordes of horsemen somewhere amid all that emptiness ready to rain down arrows on our heads. My fingers were itching fiercely, and my gauntlets felt wrong and ill-fitting. I didn't take them off to look. Every time I killed a demon, it changed me. If the only consequence of taking out Gaap and Malphas was growing claws, I would consider myself lucky. I'd been worried I might sprout feathers.

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Salenus came into view sooner than I would have expected.

A cobalt blue monolith, rising hundreds of feet above the plain; at first I took it as nothing more than a discolored strip of sky. As the sun fell into the west, shading the grasses in deeper hues, Salenus became a shadow standing out against the flow of the light.

I sped up to get closer to Fladnag, who was sharing his ox with Leto, tentacles hanging down from its sides like a nightmare saddle blanket. The old man didn't turn as I approached, but he sensed me.

"Keep your distance," he said.

"Are we going to camp for the night?" I slowed. "The men have been on their feet for almost two days straight."

"Any delay will bring the orkhans closer. We keep moving. If anyone can't keep up, we leave them behind."

It was what I had expected. We were on a clock in more ways than one. My curse was going to keep deducting points from my attributes until I either faced off with Orobas or made peace with the dark side. And he was right. If we had turned back the moment the demons were dead, we could have made it out of Atlan before we were attacked again. Now, it was only a matter of time.

Upon learning we wouldn't be stopping, Gastard and Erdene dismounted so that Esmelda could ride beside the ox. I could tell she was exhausted, and the switch made it easier for me to talk with my templar. We allowed ourselves to drift back through the ranks of my followers, and I spotted Gulf.

The soldier's pack was stuffed with supplies. Everything that we'd been carrying on the wagons was now on the backs of the men and women who were with us, and feet were dragging. I'd converted a few crates worth of vegetables into coins to make them easier to transport, but having me as the sole distributor of food wasn't efficient when there were a hundred mouths to feed.

"Hey," I said, getting Gulf's attention. "Why don't you start a marching song?"

His brow furrowed, but he nodded, and his voice rose in a steady rhythm. Alone at first, but after the first few lines, other soldiers picked it up. The words didn't matter, something about the indomitable fortitude of Dargoth's loyal defenders and the endless reach of the empire. I just wanted some background noise to make it harder for our conversation to be overheard.

"How does he intend to have you bring down Salenus?" Gastard asked. "Illuminators may be dangerous to a man, but I can't see how they would threaten a structure of that size."

"The same ingredients can produce a much bigger bang." Even without gunpowder, I could simply mine out enough of the base of the monument to cause it to collapse. Not that destroying it was my goal, but if we couldn't neutralize Fladnag before we got there, it might become necessary.

"The Great Eagle will not allow it," Erdene said. "You march to your deaths."

"Didn't you say he wasn't always around?"

Erdene's face darkened. "He is not, but if Salenus is threatened, he will come. I am sure of it."

Yet another problem I had no idea how to handle. Without a wagon to alight upon, Celaeno came down ahead of us. She stretched her wings, and people veered out of the way. Her violet gaze settled on mine.

"The flock brings a warning. Riders. Behind and ahead. They come."

"Will they get to us before we reach the monument?"

She quirked her head, the glossy black feathers of her neck marked by the last bands of the fading light. "It is difficult to say."

"What about your visions? Anything you can tell me?"

"The tower is in a fog. Though fate sometimes speaks to me, I cannot ask it questions. I think the lillit is important, though I do not know why."

"She's important to me," I said. "They both are."

Celaeno let out an annoyed squawk. "That isn't what I mean. There is fire ahead, shadow and fog, and something that fills me with fear. A predator."

"The Great Eagle?"

"Perhaps. It is not clear. But I think that if the tower falls, something new will be born, something terrible. Or not new, something old. Still terrible."

"That's very helpful," I said, and the harpy ignored or either did not notice my sarcasm.

"Of course," she flapped her wings. "We help however we can."

A man shouted an alarm, interrupting the marching song. He was backing away from a zombie, the first spawn of the night. Astaroth raised one hand, and the monster dropped its head before shuffling meekly toward us. Celaeno took off, promising to warn me if the riders were getting close. No sign of them stirred on the horizon, but even if we reached Salenus before they did, we would be surrounded shortly thereafter.

Fladnag seemed to be aware of the situation without having to be told. He increased the pace, and the men and women around us were soon struggling to keep up. It wasn't a problem for me. The System had developed my body beyond normal human limits, but Gastard was showing the strain. The armor I had made for him didn't boost his strength, and he'd had as little sleep as everyone else.

As the soldiers bunched together ahead of us, I slipped closer to Erdene and handed her the diamond shard wrapped in linen cloth. She gave me a suspicious look but accepted the gift, and her eyebrows shot up when she peeked at what was under the cloth.

"Can you use it?" I asked.

She nodded, clutching the object to her chest. The shard was about a foot long, a few inches in diameter, and tapered to a point at both ends. It was several times the size of the gem she had previously used to channel her spells, and I hoped that made a difference.

"It will serve."

"I'm trusting you," I said, "not to do anything that would endanger my son."

She frowned, the silver edge of her irises flickering. "Salenus is more important than any one life."

"Not to me."

As the hours passed, the monument grew more solid, the lone scar in an otherwise seamless sky. Phantoms shrieked as harpies mobbed them, and what was left of my army kept moving. People fell behind, their pace slowing to a crawl, and we left them. The non-combatants couldn't do

anything to help us now, and given what was coming, it was hard to say if they were safer with the group or on their own. If there was an Atlan force sweeping in from the south, they could be killed or taken captive. But I couldn't protect everyone. The way things were going, I might not protect anyone.

We picked up more zombies along the way, but they were too slow to keep up with the march, and Astaroth sent them wandering away rather than risk them attacking our stragglers once they were out of range of his control. As the moon reached its apex, we got a troll, and it loped along beside us.

Salenus grew and grew. As a kid, I went on a trip to DC with my family. All I really remembered about that vacation was the hotel pool and a hot tub. But we had seen the Washington Monument, and this was just as big as that had been. It had to be fifty feet to the side. Squared edges with a flat top.

It was hard to tell from a distance, but I had a feeling that the dark blue stones that made up its structure were one-foot cubes exactly. A crafter had built this, maybe even the same man who had forged the armor I wore.

The clouds had been promising rain for the last twelve hours, and they finally delivered. Droplets plunked against my pauldrons and my helm, and Fladnag stopped so we could catch up to him. He slid down off the back of his ox, taking Leto with him. My son was resting in a bed of tentacles holding him aloft, and he didn't look thrilled about it.

"Let him down," Esmelda said. "We're doing what you wanted."

"He's perfectly safe," Fladnag said, turning from her to me. "Take the materials. Craft what you need to craft."

"If I bring it down," I said, "will you let him go?"

"I will."

I met his eyes. They had sunken so deeply into his face that he looked like a hollow. There was no sympathy there. Fladnag had made his choice, and he was lying. Binging down one monument wouldn't be enough to make Walter White happy. There were others, and he couldn't release his hostage until we had destroyed them all. Walking over to the ox, I flipped open the crates it was carrying to reveal the waiting ingredients; charcoal, saltpeter, and sulfur. All that talk about not using gunpowder to hurt human beings; had it been a part of his act? Maybe it was something he had cared about once, but the person he had been was gone.

Might: E

Speed: F+

Presence: E