Midnight had come and gone when our brave prince left the ball. He was in no rush or hurry, and though he offered a slipper to his little cinder girl she simply raised one eyebrow and asked him where in the ballyhoo he’d got that.

The documents had switched hands - I won’t say where, or how - and Caedes was twisting a gold ring on his finger as he stepped out the door and back into the cold and dark of a winter’s night. Claireholm was with him, bundling his scarf over his coat and telling Cindy and her father what a wonderful evening they’d had, and wouldn’t they have to do this again sometime. The mayor quite agreed, enjoying Claireholm’s talk as much as his music, as did Cindy - who had, believe it or not, found some time to speak to some of the guests amid all that dancing.

And then she did something very immodest, and held Caedes’ hand. She leaned in close, and after whispering some words in his ear that made him blush she gave him a smirk, flicked her hair over her shoulder, and returned to the house.

The mayor bowed once, and he too departed, and two of our heroes were left all alone.

It had been nice, for winter, earlier that evening; nice it was no longer. A fog had crept in, a thick fog of frigid crystals, sharp and obscure. There was no snow, nor wind, but many clouds - not an inch of the sky could be seen.

“Be careful. This is no natural fog,” Caedes said, adjusting his hat on his head. The Doll hopped down from Claireholm’s shoulder, waddling along beside them.

“It’s been a while since I’ve seen a technique like this,” he remarked, his tone surprisingly angry, and his buttons scanned the fog with a look of distinct disgust.

The silence was oppressive as they walked down the city streets, the absence of any other people or forms of life distinctly notable.

“I’m afraid I don’t recognise it. Is it some sort of spatial deterrence technique?” Caedes asked.

“Your qi relict detection is terrible,” the Doll replied, with a bitter voice that was cleared directed at his surroundings. Caedes was about to ask what he meant when he tripped over a corpse in the fog.

It was an old woman, probably. There were so many pieces it was hard to tell.

“Qi relict detection - it’s all very well and good to detect someone when they’re warm and full of qi, but even if most of it flees the body at death you can still detect the trace of what should be there,” the Doll continued, bounding over a small body. He paused and closed her eyes, though he couldn’t remove the expression of terror that had been emblazoned across their face.

“It’s useful when cleaning up after a battle…or detecting an ambush.” His button eyes spun around as he examined the street, and Caedes shivered as he saw a single tear drip down his stuffed head, freezing before it could reach the street.

“How many?” The demonic cultivator said.

“It is better for you that you do not know.”

Caedes uttered a stream of words that were not fit for publication, an axe of pure black qi materialising and spinning in his hand.

“Where is the man responsible?” He asked the Doll, a frigid rage in his heart.

“Sadly, it’s not him you have to worry about,” came the reply. But before Caedes could inquire about who he should be worried about, a twisted spire flashed towards him out of the fog.

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The axe spun once, smashing through the spear and into the concrete.

For a moment, Caedes had the impression of some foul and blasphemous thing stalking him in the fog, a screwed together monstrosity utterly beyond appreciable taste…and then he realised it was just an abstract sculpture.

The sculpture produced awful twisting noises as it rumbled across the road. Now that he knew what it was, Caedes recognised the artwork. It was a commemorative statue documenting the increasing right of children to work. The “spear” (it had no regular shape) was some sort of statement on the value of alternative methods of payment, per the artist’s own statement.

There were clattering, rumbling noises, and a half dozen other statues clanked and clicked and dragged themselves gratingly down the road towards them. Caedes grinned viciously and switched the axe out for two hammers. The Doll pulled out a paintbrush.

The City of Tombstones had dispensed with its old statues long ago, and what pressed down the street towards them, moving in and out of the fog, were a shambling mess of avant-garde art forms and art which had no form at all. There were babies with no eyes and a creature with the head of a man and the body of a bull, but a pair of hands where the eyes should be, and something that looked like a duck had rotted and then died.

The Doll began to paint in midair, his strokes broad but clean and simple. A dragon slowly uncoiled from the fog and began swimming through the sky towards the oncoming statues. Then he started on a half dozen warriors and a pair of gryphons.

Caedes dashed forwards, hammering at the misbegotten artwork. Unlike the homunculi, they were merely animated statues, and thus were powderized under his hammers. He torpedoed some sort of fish with moose antlers, then dismembered something that might have looked like a man, or perhaps a mouse, or perhaps a mushroom.

It was the Doll’s paintings that did most of the work, however. They floated beautifully across the devilish landscape, eviscerated and crumbling statues falling in their wake.

“Can you sense him?” The Doll asked calmly, drawing a host of ogres with tree trunks for clubs. Caedes spread out his senses, his stomach churning as he felt hundreds of little bits of qi that must have belonged to people who no longer breathed. He strained himself, seeking any sign of life, finally picking up on a lone dot, smearing itself across the night.

“There he is,” he growled, and fell into the shadows. There was the rushing of stars and the light of the wind, and the feeling of something tousling his hair, and he stood on the roof of a building.

Facing him was the culprit. He was a thin man, his clothing clinging tight to his skin, and his black hair fell in front of his eyes. Caedes didn’t bother confirming who he was, or on whose orders he was acting. He knew well enough.

“Well well well,” the man started, and then scrambled backwards as a two foot long blade slammed into the roof, mere inches from where his head had been.

“You dare,” he tried next, the ‘courting death’ lost as he leapt to the side. There was an implosion as the space he’d been in ceased to be.

“Can you let me finish what I’m saying?” He swore as a half dozen blades arced through the air, seeking to impale his head. He was forced into an elaborate series of backflips and contortions as Caedes did anything but let him finish, a wave of knives, sickles, swords, and even a polearm launched straight for his chest.

“You’re supposed to let the bad guys monologue,” he cried, and then screamed in pain as one of his limbs bent backwards. There was a vortex of demonic qi, and Caedes danced backwards as the panting demonic cultivator managed to retaliate.

“By Satan’s knickers, the way you’re carrying on you’d think that some of those children were yours.” He got out, and then toppled forwards.

Caedes, standing behind him, flexed his fingers.

“Turns out there’s something to being a non-commutative existence after all.” He said, voice blank, grateful to Yaaroghkh for having taught him the basics of his technique.

And he descended back down to earth. Sadly, the fog had cleared with the death of whoever that was, and he could now see precisely how many lay on the ground.

“I should have kept that bastard alive a little longer.”

“It is best you did not, for we have a more important job now,” the Doll said sorrowfully.

Caedes thought he meant burying the dead, and was about to agree, when he saw what the Doll was looking at.

There was Claireholm, lying on the street - with a stone lance impaled in his chest.