Ike let out a guttural sigh, pushing a table from one side of the room to the other. He had to slide it carefully so nothing on top came crashing down or spilled, making another mess he had to clean up in the ritual room. Every second he spent here already made him sick. Any more, and he would seriously consider leaving Nerinai to kill her own damn nemesis demons.

“That’s fine, Guardian.” Nerinai’s voice had a different type of bite than before. Flat, bordering on murderous.

With a fully cleared section of the floor open now, Ike set himself against the table and sucked in a few exhausted breaths. Of the few things Nerinai did explain, Ike got that they were setting up a ritual. A summons for the thing that killed Yanell.

Instead of running through the Palace like some idiots they’d bring the demon right to them. Had he an ounce of energy to his name and wasn’t rubbing his eyes every five minutes to keep them from staying shut he’d have thought it a brilliant idea.

Their time was running short, but Nerinai still wanted to stop for vengeance. They could have moved right on to the gate and finished what they set out to do. Ike found himself feeling oddly in the right place with what they were doing. Maybe he was just getting used to following the Raveness, maybe seeing a mangled corpse made him antsy to hurt something, or maybe Ike didn’t have the answers inside of him yet. Any time he tried to sit back and really think about the things in his life that mattered, he just ended up with a headache.

Moving helped clear that up. He shut up the questions in his head and knelt down on the ground next to Nerinai.

Four jars of different colors sat by her leg, and she had a fifth in her hand. By the other leg Ike could just barely see an open book with a large ritual diagram drawn in five different colors. Without asking, he grabbed one of the jars and a brush from the nearest table and scooted over to a different part of the floor to start drawing out the symbol.

About two strokes into the symbol, he heard, “What do you think you’re doing?” and sheepishly looked up.

“Trying to help.”

She stared him down over a jar of paint for a moment, then ducked her head back down to focus. Ike took a little sigh of relief then did the same.

They worked in concert. If Ike was honest with himself, everything ended up so much better than he thought it would. Most of what he did boiled down to copying Nerinai’s flawless replication of the book's diagram, but each symbol that came out right gave him peace of mind. When they finished one ring of symbols, they’d start the next, shifting around the stone ground avoiding brushing up against one another.

When the silence and occasional slick of paint on stone got too much, Ike started talking.

“So you’re certain this works? The ritual won’t pick up any other demon in the building right?”

“Absolutely certain.” She finished another symbol and skidded over so just her back was facing him. “In the center you write the name of the victim and a… message, for the demon who killed them. Something to goad them. As long as the beast is still within ten miles, which I’m sure it is, it will come.”

Ike nodded. Not that she noticed.

Suddenly they fell back into a quiet work routine again, but this time Ike felt like he was supposed to keep talking. Nerinai certainly didn’t, but once he opened his mouth he couldn’t keep it shut without something threatening to push itself out of him.

“So… Marcus and Isibeil. They’re kind of interesting, right? I mean, sure we had a reason to go down there and break the seal, but not them. They said something about studying the place, but studying what? There’s just a bunch of old statues down there.”

“Old things are attractive to those without substance in their present. Brother Marcus just happens to be fond of wasting time. And he owed me.”

Ike grinned. “That kind of reminds me of someone I knew, a muckraker. Every time we did sanitation shifts together, he’d point to some of the older parts of the city and try explaining what they were for. Someone turned a wagon wheel into a decoration. That old temple left crumbling because it’d be an affront to, well, you.”

He couldn’t remember that muckraker's name, but he’d remember him everytime he went down some of the older parts of Cadeloch. Even in a place with so little space to waste, there were places that nobody bothered to fix.

Nerinai didn’t reply that time, so he tried something else.

“Has anyone ever, you know, said you have nice hair?”

She stopped painting, and slowly turned back to look at him. “Has anyone ever said… that I have nice hair?”

“Yeah. I mean, just, you know, yeah. It’s nice. Good color. Shiny. Don’t always-” He cut himself off with a sharp inhale, cheeks burning as he set himself entirely into painting symbols. One stroke-two stroke-three stroke- ignore saying something stupid- four strokes.

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To his immediate and overbearing surprise, she laughed. Of course it was small and held back, but it was the first time he’d ever heard her laugh at something. Of course that something had to be him.

“No, Ike, I don’t think anybody’s ever said my hair looks nice. At least not to my face. Thank you, though.”

“Yeah. No problem?”

“Of course not. I’ll admit, it’s a bit of an odd time for compliments, don’t you think?”

Ike shrugged. “Maybe.” What he wanted to say was, or maybe it’s the only time. By now though, he was fully committed to keeping her mood high. Even if she wasn’t being drowned by responsibility, he’d kill to hear that laugh again.

He finished the last symbol of his ring and leaned back, pushing himself up onto the balls of his feet. All things considered, it didn’t look too bad. The last few symbols were rushed, and the paint a little splotched, but it’d probably work. The last piece was for Nerinai to do, writing the names in the middle of the floor.

“Guardian, I need some material to burn for the ritual. Find me something?”

“Sure,” he said, and jumped up to go rooting through drawers and shelves. Little bird bones, twigs that hurt to smell, a pair of neatly carved stones. Buried behind those oddities and a dozen others Ike found a canvas pouch of something green with a flammable warning on the side. Then he found a bottle of oil with a sparker on the tip and brought everything back to Nerinai.

She spread the green stuff over a ring of the black paint. “Spark weed,” she called it. “There used to be whole fields of it in the northern parts of the continent.”

“What kind of plant gets called ‘spark weed’?”

“The kind that relies on natural fires to replicate and spread itself. Should you find yourself stuck in a field of spark weed, you were liable to burn to death within moments of a strike. They tried to use the plant against the blight, and it even worked for a little while.”

“Until?”

Nerinai stepped out of the circle and handed the pouch back to Ike. “Until the blight made itself moist to adapt, at which point nothing worked.”

That sent a shiver down Ike’s back. He shouldn’t have been surprised, but as far as he could remember the blight was always the same. Muddy ground and pulpy white veins. To think that it managed to change itself so drastically made him wonder how long it’d be until black ichor couldn’t hold it back.

Nerinai didn’t light the line. She knelt down next to it- without her cloak so it wouldn’t mess the paint- and held the lighter in her hand. Ike knelt down next to her and rubbed his hands inside of one another, waiting for her to make up her mind.

“Do you think we’re doing the right thing?” she finally asked, turning away from the diagram and to him.

“A little late to be doubting that. But- yes.” He’d seen a lot of people die without so much as a second thought. Giving Yanell a bit of justice, even though she’d never be able to feel it, felt good. Even if the only person here who would benefit was Nerinai herself. “The sooner we get through this, the sooner we get to sleep.”

“Sleep?”

His eyes fell flat. “There is no way in this world we’re going directly from killing demons to closing the gate.”

He could see the arguments boiling in her eyes, but they gave way to the exhaustion that both of them were feeling. No matter how much of a rush they were in, heading face first into danger on no sleep and no food for days would just end up with the both of them unrightfully dead.

“Fine. Six hours of sleep and a meal, then right back to work. Got it?”

Ike gave her a salute and she sighed.

“As for my question… my apologies. Sometimes it’s difficult to know if every decision is even my own. Especially since coming to the Black Palace. Every day I’ve- I’ve…” She cursed softly under her breath. Ike didn’t know what he could say to cure indecision, so he just risked putting his hand on her shoulder in what he assumed was a calming gesture.

Nerinai stared straight ahead at the ritual. Once her breathing chilled, Ike stepped back, and she lit the fire. As per the name, little sparks and cinders shot up with a burst of flame around the symbols and words of the ritual. Instead of fizzling out, that fire grew and burned with a whistling. It rose highest next to Nerinai, and she held out her arm to feed it a stream of black ichor from her palm. The fire went from a pale orange to burning blood red, then darkened until it was black and eventually gone.

Ike felt for the shovel on his back. Right. No shovel. There was still the knife from Isibeil on his hip, so he pulled that out of his belt and stepped up to the ritual again.

Nothing happened for a minute. The fire sizzled out to a cool warmth bubbling on the ground, the paint squirming with ichor and the symbols began to twitch but nothing appeared in the middle. Ike started wondering whether their plan was working when the name written in the middle burned away to smoke, and on top of it appeared a demon.

The creatures was shaped something like a flat spider with spikes in it’s back.. Gray skin riddled with bleed patches and scars wrapped around its bony body. The head of the beast was missing the top half of a skull, leaving just a bottom jaw wrapped in skin.

Even without a mouth, it screamed.

Ike didn’t give it a chance to run. He leapt over the simmering ring of the ritual and at the demon, knife in hand. He slammed the blade all the way up to the rim of his hand between the ribs and shoved it back on the ground.

The thing had arms somewhere between dangly and muscular. Each of them reached and ripped at Ike while he twisted the knife inside.

Grunting and whispering cries, from whatever hole they were coming out of, the demon continued to squirm on the ground after every attempt to throw off its assailant failed. Once there was a moment of reluctance Ike ripped the knife out and jammed it through the sternum again. Brown, bubbling ichor spilled out over his hands but he didn’t let up.

Nerinai appeared in front of him. She watched for a moment, kicking away one of its reaching arms, then leaned down over its half skull. Ike grabbed it’s throat to keep it down so she couldn’t suffer a headbutt from the world's ugliest mute.

“Pathetic,” she whispered. “Not even hell will keep you safe from me, beast. Burn.”

She placed her palm over the top of its head and let the magic do its work. In the proper power of a shaman, her magic rippled through the skin of demons and incinerated every piece of its body until there was nothing left but a shriveled corpse underneath Ike’s knee.

He yanked out the knife- breaking off pieces of ashen corpse with it- and stepped back.

“Hungry?” asked Nerinai.

“Starving.”