Hundreds of blades whistled through the air.
Faith never flinched. Letting them bounce off her armor and clatter to the floor, she mourned, “Oh, she was so much cuter when she was playing with dolls instead of daggers.”
That, of course, was when one of her baby cousin’s new toys grazed the side of her neck.
Ash and I didn’t waste time dodging either. Turning my head to protect my face, I drew Grandfather, while Ash jumped sideways and charged straight at Dunvil.
“Get the Eye!” Faith yelled after him. “That’s the most important thing!”
Pointing his lightning hook at the Preceptor, Ash starting channeling the essence of That Which Hungers. Yellow lines that glinted like gold spiraled through the crackling blue energy and leaped out to strain for the Eye. It looked like it was going to work – until gold light boiled out of Ash’s skin and blazed up around him. Blinded by his god’s insatiable need to possess everything, especially artifacts of the Church, Ash stumbled and fell to his knees.
At the same time, I prowled towards Lauretta, who re-formed her cloud of daggers with one sharp, beckoning gesture. They hung midair, tips quivering.
I can help, child, Grandfather offered.
Maybe later.
I circled Lauretta, hunting for a path through her daggers. Like Djera Maha, Admiral Strangford, and Elder Rowan before her, she neither wore armor nor carried mundane weapons – and, in some ways, fighting an Ascendent who was still new to her powers was easier than dueling, say, one of Mylera’s sword masters.
There.
Zigzagging between daggers that turned a fraction of a second too late, I slashed at Lauretta’s belly. Grandfather’s blade parted her robes and opened up a long gash exactly where it would bleed most. Crimson blossomed across cream silk. I spun and sprinted back out.
With a cry, Lauretta shoved both palms outward and pelted me with blades. I parried as many as I could, but some still got through, and no matter how sturdy my armor was, it hadn’t been designed for a hail of knifepoints. Blood started to trickle down my chest, soaking my undershirt.
Lauretta summoned the daggers back into a swarm. Teeth gritted, I went back to circling her.
Out of the corner of my eye, I glimpsed Faith crouched in front of Setarra, sketching a series of wards in pink chalk. By now I’d seen enough of her and Ash’s arcane work to recognize runes that would weaken Dunvil’s barrier. “Teacher, please, I need you,” she appealed. “I hope you forgive me for everything I’ve done!”
The demon glowered down at her with no hint of reprieve in her flat, black eyes.
Unfazed, Faith produced a sheath of notebook paper covered with pre-drawn wards and arranged them behind her own work. These runes were brightly colored and slightly crooked – and very obviously done with crayons from the orphanage art supply closet, wielded by the orphans themselves.
We were going to have to talk about that.
Later.
Faith finished off her ritual by tying pink ribbons onto every tentacle within reach. Then she stood back, placed her hands on her hips, and twinkled at the demon, “No, wait, I was just kidding. They were delicious!”
One black tentacle lashed out, striking and denting the barrier. Dunvil grunted, gripped the Eye more tightly, and redoubled his chanting.
Meanwhile, Ash had scrambled to his feet and was running forward again. Charging his lightning hook with electroplasmic energy only this time, he blasted Dunvil’s hands.
The Ascendent jolted but managed to hang on to the Eye. He scowled at the raw stone floor in front of Ash, and a giant spike shot up like a skewer.
Ash skipped sideways – but not far enough. The tip caught him in the side and ripped through armor and flesh. With a grunt, he doubled over.
If I eliminated Lauretta, I’d be free to help him and Faith. Dancing through gaps in her swarm, I landed little cuts all over her body, aiming for the spots that would bleed most. In response, she clapped her hands and sent all the daggers sailing straight at my sword arm. I spun on my heel so they didn’t hack it clean off, but they still pierced it all the way from elbow to wrist. She clapped a second time, and they tore back out, splattering me with blood.
However, when the swarm re-formed around her head this time, the blades had shrunk. Now they were only two-thirds their original size. Jaw clenched, I flexed my muscles experimentally, shifted my grip on Grandfather, and rushed her again.
At the same time, Faith was flinging pink ribbons and crayon runes at Dunvil. “Have some ribbons!” she cried gaily. “Have some wards!”
I wasn’t sure what the ribbons were for, but the wards shattered his spell. A gout of white-hot energy snapped back into the Eye, distorting the air around it and knocking Dunvil backwards. He kept his footing – but he actually winced.
Free at last, Setarra flared all of her tentacles and spread to full size, towering over the room and looking terrifyingly like a leviathan in the Void Sea. The glare she directed at Faith overflowed with hatred and screamed, I really hate you, but right now I have more important people to kill.
Blowing her a kiss, Faith stepped out of the way.
A storm of black tentacles whipped past her at Dunvil, who bellowed something and flung up an arcane shield. Setarra’s tentacles oozed all over it, hunting for any kind of crack or crevice to wedge into, while her suckers made wet, squelching, popping noises combined with ear-piercing screeches as the razors scraped against Dunvil’s magic.
With the Preceptor distracted, Ash pulled out a device that resembled a miniature leviathan-hunter harpoon gun and pulled the trigger. Trailing a long, clear tube, the harpoon whistled through the air and thunked into the Ascendent’s back. Something inside the gun clicked, and dark red blood started to flow through the tube. Dunvil swatted at the harpoon, failed to dislodge it, and nearly got crushed by a tentacle.
Ash scowled, disgruntled that he’d had to resort to mundane techniques rather than the power of his god.
Lauretta, meanwhile, was starting to flag. She obviously hadn’t come into her Ascendent powers fully yet, and both she and her blades were growing sluggish. By now, blood had soaked through her robes and was pooling underfoot, and she slipped with each step. Every time she re-formed her swarm, the number and size of the daggers decreased, and it was getting easier and easier for me to duck between them and stab her over and over and over. I should be done here soon, I thought.
When I glanced at the others, Setarra had wrapped half of her tentacles around Dunvil and was holding him off the ground while he flailed and kicked, while Faith was staring at the Eye, calculating the best way to get it.
“Faith! Here!” Ash snatched a ritual tool that resembled a sharpened tuning fork from one of the dead priests and lobbed it across the room.
She plucked it from the air, ran at Lauretta instead of Dunvil, and plunged the prongs into her cousin’s back. Then she twisted them.
With a cry, Lauretta collapsed. Blood gushed out around the prongs – much more blood than I’d expect for a simple stab wound. She craned her neck to see her attacker, so Faith moved into her line of sight. Kneeling, she patted her dying cousin on the head. “It’s okay,” she soothed, “maybe in the next life you’ll be good enough to replace me.”
Hatred flared on Lauretta’s face. With the last of her strength, she snapped her fingers and pointed at Faith. No larger than paring knives at this point, her daggers wobbled through the air, most of them falling uselessly to the floor. Only two got far enough to nick Faith’s shoulders. Trembling all over, Lauretta strained to re-form her swarm and raised it one inch off the floor. Then she convulsed and went still.
The knives dropped.
A strangled gasp from Dunvil made us whirl. Setarra had clenched her tentacles and cracked his ribcage and was on the verge of crushing his lungs.
Whipping her lightning hook around, Faith shot an arc of electroplasmic energy straight into – the tentacles.
They spasmed and loosened. Dunvil sucked in a ragged breath.
“What are you doing?” I yelled.
“Get the Eye!” Faith shouted back as she charged her lighting hook again. “It might let us survive Setarra!”
There was no time to argue. The demon was already lashing out with her back tentacles to wrap Dunvil from head to toe, and if I didn’t move now, the artifact was going to disappear into a cocoon of void monster ooze. I raced across the room, took a running leap that carried me past Dunvil at its peak, snatched the Eye from his hands, kicked off a tentacle, and landed in a crouch on the far side of the chamber.
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Panting, I inspected my prize. The bronze frame glinted, the green gem winked – and suddenly all the colors and sounds in the room came into sharp focus. I blinked, confused. Grandfather? What happened to me?
No response.
The cloud of smoke and fire that had dwelled at the back of my mind for years was gone, as if extinguished. My head was empty except for my own thoughts. Had the Eye broken Grandfather?
Gripping his hilt, I shook it, trying to wake him. Grandfather? Where are you?
Still no response.
Maybe Ixis couldn’t speak while I was holding the Eye? I shoved it into a pocket and tried again. Grandfather? Are you here?
Silence.
The sword was just a sword.
Well, I didn’t need Ixis’ help right now anyway. I could look for him later. Taking the Eye back out, I jogged towards my crewmates.
Ash was crouched next to Lauretta’s body with row of blue ink bottles, all set to extract her life essence – but when he drew the first rune on her shoulder, he nearly passed out. He pressed his palms against the floor to steady himself.
All of a sudden, Faith streaked to my side, dropped to her knees, and started drawing a ritual circle around us. “Give me the Eye!” she ordered. “I need it to bind Setarra. We should be safe in here for a little while, but it won’t get us out.”
“Wait, bind Setarra?” Last time I checked, we were not the Church of Ecstasy, and a bound demon was not going to improve any of our lives. “Why are we binding Setarra?”
“So she doesn’t kill us!”
Clutching the Eye, I held it out of her reach. “Why can’t we just talk to her?” Maybe it wasn’t Faith’s forte, but Ash and I were both very good at talking to people. And in fact, I knew someone who was even better at it. “We can have Grandfather talk to her! Grandfather is very persuasive.”
Faith shook her head, exasperated. “You know how I said that demon mousse doesn’t taste very good?”
“You say a lot of things!” I retorted at the exact same time that Ash demanded, “Did you eat her eggs?”
Talking over both of us, Faith declared, “Well, those were her eggs!”
“Ugh! Why would you eat her eggs?” Horrible images flashed before my eyes: Faith beaming a flashlight around an underwater grotto to illuminate dozens of glistening, translucent bulbs stuck to the walls, each with a pulsing black yolk at its heart; Faith plucking them from a matrix of black ooze and transferring them into a sack; Faith storing them in a corner of her kitchen and cracking a few at a time so she could experiment with various dishes. Scrambled eggs, poached eggs, fried eggs, omelets, souffles, mousses….
I nearly gagged. Unexpected sympathy for Setarra rose in me – plus an inkling of why the child whom her cult had dismembered had been a child under Faith’s protection. “Why would you do such a thing?”
Faith laughed, half in frustration and half in disbelief. “I’ll let you figure that out later.”
“But – ” I groped for an excuse, any excuse, that might even partially mitigate what she’d done. “But – Setarra can lay more eggs, right? We can still talk to her!”
A screech rattled the room: Dunvil had managed to free one hand, unpin a brooch from his robes, and rake it across Setarra’s human chest. Her face literally darkening, she coiled one tentacle around his neck and shoulders and a second one around his thighs and began to twist.
“Come over here!” Faith shouted at Ash.
He wobbled over and stood next to me, swaying a little. Faith closed off the circle, dropped the chalk, and leaped to her feet – right as Setarra wrenched Dunvil in half and hurled the pieces across the room.
Then she turned towards us.
“Now, Isha!” Her eyes locked on the demon’s, Faith flapped a hand at me. “Now is the time!”
I yelled past her at Setarra, “Wait! We can talk about this! It doesn’t have to go this way!”
As Faith snatched the Eye from my hands, Setarra replied in a voice as cold as the Void Sea, “I will let you live if you kill the last of the abominations.”
I shook my head hard. “She’s our friend. We can’t kill her.”
“Then you can die together.”
Leaning around Faith’s other side, Ash called, “Or we can all go and all be thorns in the side of the Church!”
“Yes!” I seconded him. “I don’t see why it has to go this way!”
The demon’s face contorted into a very human expression of grief and rage. “Because some things are unforgivable.”
On that last word, the liquid in a holy water basin twisted into a tendril that exploded into ice spikes. All of them shot at Faith. Her ward deflected perhaps half of them, but the rest punched through and impaled her all over one side of her body.
After giving them a cool, appraising glance, she held up the Eye and asked, “Ash, can you help me?”
“Yes, I can.” He didn’t sound enthusiastic, but he did place a hand on the frame and squinch his eyes shut.
A wave of power blasted out of the emerald and split into hundreds of orbs right above Setarra. They crashed down around her like shooting stars, trapping her inside an invisible dome. Howling, she battered at it over and over, trying to bash or slice it to pieces, but failed to make a single dent.
After a moment of slack-jawed gaping, I pulled myself together. “Is it over? Are we done?”
No answer. Ash was too busy sneering at Kristov’s murderer, while Faith was contemplating her old friend and enemy with no expression whatsoever.
“Faith?” I nudged her, making sure not to jostle the Eye.
Her green eyes narrowed, and a hungry smile spread across her face. She shifted the Eye into a position much like Dunvil’s. Then she stepped over her wards.
“It won’t hold forever,” she proclaimed, prowling forward without a backward glance. “But it will hold long enough. Take Edwina and go.”
That stunned me. True, we often left a crewmate at the crime scene – but only in situations that he or she could escape. “We can’t just leave you here!”
Faith was only two feet from Setarra now. She stopped and took up a stance that echoed Dunvil’s. “Blow the stairwell to the lower catacombs after you’re out. Edwina should have enough explosives left.”
I darted after her, but Ash blocked me and caught my arm. “She’ll be fine! She knows what she’s doing – and I don’t think we want to be around for it. Come on!”
If even Ashand That Which Hungers didn’t want to be around for a ritual, then I certainly did not. Protesting but not actually fighting him (because I wasn’t sure that I should or even could stop Faith), I let him tug me out of the room.
Outside, our loyal Tinker was still planted in front of the door, dozens of corpses of Hollows, priests, and priestesses scattered all over the floor in both directions. When she saw us, she sagged with relief and let her gun droop. “You’re back! Can we go now?” Then she registered that we were down one crewmate. “Where’s Miss Karstas? Did she – ? Is she – ?”
“She’s fine,” Ash assured her, forestalling further questions by hustling her down the tunnel. “She’ll find us later. Right now, we need to get out.”
She had no objections there.
The three of us retraced our path through the lower catacombs and jogged up the stairwell, pausing just long enough for her to set a bomb. Then we sprinted through the middle catacombs. Right as we reached the upper level, a muffled boom rocked the tunnel and alarms started blaring everywhere. Groups of Hollows ran past us towards the explosion, but none of them stopped us.
At last, we skidded into a familiar passageway with a familiar pattern of skulls (slightly damaged) on the walls. It was empty except for Faith’s Hollow, which was still standing under the hole in the ceiling and guarding it against looters. At Ash’s command, it boosted us up one at a time into the townhouse cellar, where he managed to convince Faith’s ghost swarm not to eat us. We wiped off all the dust and blood and flung on clean clothes. Then, after one final check, we strolled out the front door, laughing and joking like friends out for an evening on the town.
It wasn’t until I was back in the railcar that I realized that Grandfather was still missing.
----------------------------------------
Faith, too, stayed missing for longer than Ash and I were comfortable with, but we used the time to hide from Inspectors and investigate her background. As we learned, the Mayvins were a minor Imperial City noble family that had moved to Doskvol to achieve greater prominence. Their hopes had seemed justified when young Aradia attended Doskvol Academy (majoring in theology at the College of Immortal Studies) and then shot up through the ranks of the Church. However, the family’s fortunes collapsed when Preceptor Dunvil ordered her to Hollow her boyfriend and she hesitated a tad too long before doing it. He turned on her, and she fled the Sanctorium with a whole pack of Hollows (including her former boyfriend) in tow. While searching for ghostly buyers for these bodies, she met and befriended Nyryx.
As part of her revenge against Dunvil, Faith went into the deathlands, hunted down a demon, and performed the Ascension ritual on herself. Naturally, the demon wasn’t as strong as it would have been had she used the Eye, which explained why she was so much weaker than the other Ascendent. In addition, the ritual didn’t go quite right and left her with a fragmented, unstable soul. Afterwards, her college roommate Madame Keitel (who’d studied in the College of Imperial Science, of all places) took her in. Together, they adapted the Ascension ritual into a memory extraction and bottling process and co-founded the Sensorium, although Faith remained a silent partner for her friend’s safety.
“So that’s why my mother’s crew had so much trouble breaking into the upper nobility!” Ash complained. “Ascension is basically That Which Hungers’ ritual applied to demons!”
“It is?” Recalling how the Church had inherited Hollowing from the cult of the Empty Vessel, I started to wonder just how many of its rites came from other religions.
“Yes,” grumbled Ash. “It converts aspects of a person, including but not limited to physical attributes, into an electroplasmic essence that you can graft onto somebody else. Basically, rich nobles buy it to get whatever benefit they’re looking for. But the upper nobility here all know how to do it already because of the Ascension ritual. And I thought it was just anti-Tycherosi prejudice!”
Even after a long debate, neither of us could decide which explanation was worse.
----------------------------------------
Three days after our final score, Ash was trying to teach the orphans arbitrage and I was heading out to Strathmill Park to read the morning papers when the front door of the orphanage banged open. Into the hallway stalked a tall woman in a grey, high-necked dress and thin-rimmed glasses, with her black hair pinned in a tight bun at the nape of her neck.
“Excuse me, can I help – Faith?”
At my yelp, Ash rushed out of the classroom. “Faith! Faith! Are you all right – ” His voice cut off too.
She barely acknowledged the two of us. Brushing past us, she strode towards the classroom. “The children. Are they all right?”
“Uhhhh, yes?”
Was there any reason they wouldn’t be? Exchanging confused glances, Ash and I trailed after her.
In the doorway, Faith paused to count all the orphans, making sure that we hadn’t misplaced any. “Good, you’re all here,” she proclaimed. “What are you learning today, children?”
“Finance, Miss Karstas…?”
Pursing her lips at the equations scrawled across the blackboard, Faith gave Ash a disapproving glare. “Why are you teaching them arbitrage when they haven’t even mastered basic algebra? It is critical to establish solid foundations before you build on them, otherwise….” And she proceeded to deliver a very governess-y lecture while the orphans gawked.
Since I wasn’t the one teaching them subjects well beyond their ken, I started to back away. “Well, it’s good to have you back, Faith. I’ll just go and, uh – ”
Her voice whipped at me, freezing me in place. “Stay right there, Isha. We need to talk about what classes you’re going to teach.”
“Classes?” I protested weakly. “Teach?”
“Yes. You are a highly educated and reasonably intelligent young woman, are you not?”
“Uhhh….” I was trying to decide whether I should take offense at the “reasonably intelligent” part – or stress my incompetence.
She leveled a stern stare at me. “Then you should share the fruits of your learning with those less fortunate than yourself. Children, do the exercises on pages ten to fifteen of First Lessons in Algebra. You two, come to my office so we can draw up a comprehensive curriculum for every age group.”
Turning on her heel, she marched down the hall in a way that brooked no dissent.
Oh dear.