Oathbreaker: A Dark Fantasy Web Serial-Chapter 17Arc 7: : Fetter

The entire time Melmoth had been monologuing, I’d quietly shaped an Art. However, the beast-thing charged so fast and bellowed with such volume that I almost lost my concentration and died right there.

It came on like a siege boulder of burnt flesh and flailing chains, its curling horns lowered to gore me. Each step made stone break and the walls shudder, and I knew instinctively that wasn’t just the result of the creature’s natural mass. Its power blazed from it, a supernatural pressure, like the very stone and earth around us recoiled from it in revulsion.

I thrust my left hand out and a shield of amber fire erupted in front of me. I expected the aureshield to take the shape of an abstract leaf, tall and elegant like reflective glass under a warm sun.

Instead, the phantasm manifested as an almost shapeless thing with a gaping maw in the front, briefly taking on the image of a wailing skull just before the devil struck it. The barrier exploded with a shrieking noise, sending me flying back in a cascade of white-gold flames.

I struck a table, breaking it, then rolled into a rack against the back wall of the forge. Chains and pieces of a half-finished set of armor rained down on me, but my own armor protected me from injury. Disoriented, I got to my feet mostly on instinct.

That instinct saved my life for the second time in mere moments. The explosion had caused the monster to recoil briefly, but hadn’t knocked it back like it had to me. It stomped forward, pale golden fire licking across its shoulders. It snorted out a plume of hot steam and raised one hulking arm. Cinderous fire flashed in its four-fingered hand, and a flanged mace of rusted, reddish-black iron appeared in it.

The fucking thing can use sorcery, I thought even as I brought my axe up to parry its blow. The mace came down like a thunderbolt, the infernal sigils cut into the monster’s arm glowing red hot from an inner fire. It struck, and the impact went through my bones like an earthquake. My axe nearly went flying out of my hands. I held onto my weapon, my lifeline, with a death grip even as I stumbled to one side from the force of impact.

“Alken!” Delphine cried out. I tried to tell her to stay back, but the effort to simply stay alive another second stole the breath from my lungs. The hellspawn had no no grace, just a monstrous strength and bestial ferocity as it swung again and again.

I couldn’t parry those blows. They would break my weapon or my bones. I dodged where I could, but the monster was backing me into the corner where I couldn’t maneuver. It stank of stale sweat and burnt flesh and rot, and its one good eye seemed to hold a sadistic glee as it grunted with effort.

Strong as Karog. Not as skilled, but nearly as fast. No time to shape another Art.

What had just happened? My own magic had come out deformed, backfired on me.

No time to figure it out. I focused on the enemy in front of me. The creature let out a bellowing roar and brought its arm up for a mighty swing.

That left its naked, bloated stomach wide open. I bared my teeth and took my axe in both hands, lunging forward to gut the damned thing.

A trap. Its other hand flashed, sigils blazing to life on its tormented flesh. The nails hammered into its wrist glowed red hot, adding to the stink in the air. Another mace appeared in its second hand and it swung upward, catching me in the side.

My armor crumpled. Something inside me broke, and a red detonation of pain exploded through my chest. I gasped, lost in a moment of breathlessness and seizing muscles. I crashed into another worktable, breaking it.

Delphine shouting something again, but I didn’t catch the words through the sickening liquid sensation in my body. Melmoth laughed and clapped from the doorway. The bastard was enjoying the show.

“This is the mighty Alken Hewer? Oh, what a disappointment!”

The ground shuddered as the monster stomped forward, each step of its iron hooves making my teeth clench and the chains hanging from the ceiling rattle. Its own manacles made a sour song to herald its advance.

“Keep him alive,” Melmoth said in a bored tone. “We have questions. Break his legs and arms, that should be enough.”

The beast-thing clashed its maces together, producing a flash of red sparks. It did it again. Another two steps and it would be close enough to finish the job.

Before it took those lasts steps, I pulled my hand out of the shadows along the wall and lifted my crossbow.

It had been made from the blood-soaked and cursed wood of my axe, and shared the same dubious property that allowed me to store it in Catrin’s vampire paths. It emerged fully assembled and loaded with a gold-tipped bolt strengthened by Lisette’s diligent ministrations.

I raised it and fired. The string snapped forward with an almost musical sound, the dart streaking through the air like an amber thunderbolt. I’d been worried the shadow world might strip off the Art painstakingly woven into the weapon, but it seemed to be intact. The bolt hit the fiend with a blinding flash of light. It shrieked in pain, the sound oddly high pitched for such a huge beast, as its shoulder crawled with banefire.

Blessed gold is demon’s bane, so sayeth the wise. The monster reeled back, dropping one of its maces to furiously bat at the bright flames cooking its infernal flesh. The Hell-forged weapon melted into hot sludge where it fell, a temporary construct.

I didn’t give it a chance to recover. Setting my crossbow on the ground to free both hands, I dashed forward and struck low, chopping my axe into the relatively thin part of the hellspawn’s leg just above one hoof. Even where it was thin, however, the tendons were impossibly tough. My blade only sunk in halfway.

I cursed and tore my weapon free as the beast roared in anger and lashed out with its remaining weapon. I dodged it, the air turning scalding hot against my face as the heated bludgeon arced inches past my cheek. I struck at the damaged leg with a metal shoe, and to my satisfaction the bone snapped.

With a piteous, almost dog-like whine, the huge creature collapsed to one knee. I lifted my axe over my head in a lumberjack’s pose, and with a savage roar of my own brought it down onto the dense tendons of the beast’s neck. freewebnøvel.coɱ

It took me five swings to behead it, and each one felt like striking into the trunk of a very old, very tough tree. But I burned with auratic fire and with fury, and finally the monster slumped forward as its huge, horned skull tumbled to the floor.

I stared at my work, sucking in deep lungfuls of stale air despite the caustic reek. The creature didn’t burst into flames or melt like its weapon — it had a physical body, roughly made though it might have been. It would probably rot quickly. Its like always did.

I caught my breath and turned to face Melmoth. Delphine’s face was bloodless as she stared at the dead monster, but the crowfriar only looked mildly impressed.

“Well done,” he said. “But what about the others?”

A familiar bellow echoed through the halls. There were more.

Their handler could call them off. I took a step towards Melmoth, opening my mouth to speak an auratically enhanced command to make him freeze. But he wasn’t a fool, and with a darkening expression he stepped back into the shadows and sunk into them, vanishing.

“Damn it!” I retrieved my crossbow and started towards the door. Delphine moved to follow me.

“Renuart—” She started to say.

“I know. He’s a skilled warrior, they won’t take him easy. But we need to hurry. If they find the mirror…”

I cut myself off. The stress of battle made me act and speak without thinking, and our enemy might still be eavesdropping. I quickened my pace. “What was that thing?” I asked. Pain throbbed through my side, but I ignored it. No time to tend to my injury.

Delphine struggled to keep up with me. Her reply came out strained. “I think it was a fetterfiend — one of Hell’s torturers. It can’t be one of the Zosite. They have strict rules about acting in the mortal world.”

She didn’t sound certain. I hoped she was right. I didn’t want to imagine how bad things would get if the masters of Hell were here in the flesh. And yet, I’d felt the presence of the Zosite before. They were colder and crueler than the Onsolain, but didn’t feel too different to my magical senses. That had been how Vicar hid his true nature from me when we’d first met.

That sick beast back in the forge, though… It also carried a familiar stench. If Vicar was still alive and free, I would make him explain.

I heard more sounds from ahead as we navigated the halls, echoes of some kind of monstrous confrontation. The air, previously cold, prickled hot against my skin. Sweat formed beneath my armor. A lowing sound filled the complex, followed by something eerily like the growl of fire.

“I don’t think all of that is from ahead of us,” Delphine gasped.

“No. These things are operating like a pack, surrounding us.”

“The minotaur in the labyrinth,” the doctor mused. “But they’re cheating. In that story there was only one.”

“Now we know why there weren’t priorguard watching this place. They didn’t want any interference for when they loosed these things.”

I stopped, and Delphine nearly crashed into me. I listened to the sounds echoing through the underground complex as a grim picture formed in my imagination. I turned and lifted my ornate crossbow. “Do you know how to use this?” I asked.

Delphine strapped her lantern to her belt and took the weapon. It was deceptively heavy for its size, and she needed two hands to hold it comfortably. “Just aim and pull the trigger, right?”

“Just don’t shoot me, and don’t drop it.” I took my axe in both hands and faced forward again, my muscles tensing as the noises grew steadily louder. “Only shoot if you know you’ll hit. It won’t kill one of these things, not unless you get its brain or its heart, but it will distract them long enough for me to finish the job.”

They might not have hearts, or they could have multiple, but I needed the frightened scholar to have some morale or she’d be useless. She said nothing, but kept pace with me as I advanced.

My magic warned me of the next fetterfiend mere seconds before it appeared. It stepped out from a side passage ahead of us. Where the first had been broad and fleshy, this one was tall and thin. It had a nest of curling horns and sparse, dirty white fur, bones straining against emaciated skin. Its arms dangled nearly to the ground, much longer than its legs, and both were weighed down with manacles. The legs were like the first creature, double jointed, with hooves shoed in iron. A single huge nail stuck through its chest connected the bonds on its wrists and ankles with a system of chains, forming a sort of harness.

It stopped at the end of the hall and turned almost languidly to stare at us. Its elongated face was a nightmare, rotted, the bone beneath visible. One of its own horns had grown into its skull.

It leered silently as it turned and began to stride forward. Taller than the one I’d killed, it had to hunch to avoid dragging its horns on the ceiling. It chittered, more like some exotic bird or giant insect than the goat-thing it resembled. Chains rattled with every step.

That same sound of clinking metal echoed again, this one from back the way we came.

“Alken,” Delphine whispered in a choked voice. “They’re behind us.”

“I know.”

“What do we do?”

“Do you know any spells?”

“I’m a philosopher, not a magus.” She almost sounded offended.

I grunted, keeping my eyes on the monster in front of us while listening for whatever approached from behind. I lifted my arm and winced. At least one of my ribs might have been fractured, and my dented breastplate pressed uncomfortably into the spot.

Something strange had happened with my magic before. It’d acted wrong for months, but nothing that extreme. I felt wary of using another Art, but what choice did I have? These things were dangerous.

I stepped forward, gathering my will in preparation to use the Eardeking’s Lance. This narrow corridor and such a large target were an ideal circumstance for the technique. Before I did, however, a howl ripped through the hallway from behind us. The second beast had appeared too fast.

I turned, roaring for Delphine to get down. She did, dropping into a crouch even as I channeled the same power I’d been about to shape into one Art into a different one. My axe flickered with pale flames and I threw it, the weapon tumbling end over end as it glowed more brightly with every rotation. The flames were sporadic, almost like a misfiring rocket rather than the warm, pure glow it should have been.

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The one ambushing us from behind looked smaller than the other two, perhaps the runt of the litter. Fat, bald, and hornless, it nonetheless held more mass than any human and came barreling down the narrow hallway on all fours at a loping sprint, running on its knuckles like the animal it partly resembled. It screamed at me, high and piercing.

My axe slammed into its shoulder — I’d been off my aim — and it tumbled into a roll as fire engulfed it. It would keep burning as long as the axe remained buried in it, and I doubted these things liked the touch of holy aura. I turned to the first one—

Which had moved impossibly fast, shifting from its weird ungainly stride into a lunging sprint in the brief moment I’d taken my eyes off it. A bident appeared in its hand in a flash of hellfire. It stabbed at me.

My crossbow twanged. From a kneeling position, Delphine shot the fetterfiend in the stomach. It let out a grunt, its voice deep and hollow like I heard it underwater. I dodged the barbed pitchfork and cracked a gauntleted fist into the side of its owner’s rotting skull.

“—Queen of the Heights and of the Depths,” Delphine chanted, “Golden Lady, She who giveth blood and who taketh it, Saint of Saints, I beseech thee aid thy daughter and thy son. Be the light that shines in the dark. Be the hand that holds the scepter. Be the fire in my heart. Thou art the voice that guides the faithful through strife, through ruin, through the forests and the fangs—”

I felt the prayer resonate inside my soul. It was a tangible thing, like a fresh log cast on a cooling fire in a cold night. New strength surged in my limbs, a feverish energy like I’d just emerged fresh from a good sleep to a new, bright day.

But part of me knew that sense of well-being had a darker side. It was my magic that felt rejuvenated, my Oath that hummed in response to Delphine’s voice. The inner will tried to wrench my thoughts into the same rhythm, and with a near reflexive effort I resisted. My mind was my own, and I wouldn’t let the Alder manipulate it any more readily than ghosts or demonic spirits.

But even as I shied away from that sense of rapture, I channeled my newfound vigor into the blunt application of violence.

I stepped forward, sabaton clanging against dungeon stone, and slammed my steel fist into the hell-thing again. I kept advancing, kept punching, ignoring the broken bits of bones and acid blood that flew with every strike. Golden fire wreathed my hands, and I burned the monster even as I broke it. My glamour sloughed off as my magic surged, so my battered vagrant’s armor became the black steel I’d begun wearing in Garihelm, my studded pauldron growing a curling decorative horn, filigree crawling over the breastplate like creeper vines.

Finally, with a brassy groan, the monster collapsed in a heap beneath me. There wasn’t much left of its head, and I’d done severe damage to its shoulders and chest as well. It smoked, filling the air with an acrid stench.

I stood there a minute, heaving like a beast, before turning to face Delphine. She stared at me wide eyed. Shorn of my disguise, I must have been a sight. My smoking gauntlets were curled into fists, my eyes burned a molten gold, and gore spattered my ornate black armor.

I looked past her to the other hellspawn. It had tried to pry my axe out, but the branch of living oak grew into it, drinking the creature’s blood. It looked shrunken, burnt, like a piece of meat left on a grill too long.

I stepped past the shaken doctor and retrieved my axe. I had to break some of the roots that’d grown into the dead creature, but soon had my weapon back in hand. That done, I turned to face Delphine.

“You’re a cleric.” My voice had a slight echo from using my powers.

Delphine stood, making a visible effort to calm herself and readopt her previous poise. “Not for a very long time, but you don’t really forget how to pray. Aura responds to our will, it doesn’t make me holy.”

There was a note of bitterness there, one I found familiar. I nodded. “Let’s get moving.”

Delphine nodded, her expression oddly calm, then she vomited messily. I waited for her to finish. She wretched for a short time, wiped her mouth with one sleeve, then nodded again. “After you, Ser Knight.”

We navigated back to Lias’s study, hearing voices as we approached. I slowed my pace to listen.

“What has gotten into you, old fool?” Melmoth’s voice, hard with anger and something else — confusion, maybe. “Ever since that fiasco with the Carreon scion, you have been fading. Now apostasy!? What madness is this?”

“Already weaving your narrative?” Vicar’s cold laugh echoed from the open door of the study. “Is that what you plan to tell our masters once the time comes to explain this drama?”

“Do not fear. You will have the opportunity to explain all of it to them yourself.”

Something crashed. I quickened my step and moved into the room just as the shattered remains of a research table went rolling against one wall. The air held a burnt smell, along with a crackling sense of energy. There was fresh blood in a stripe along the floor.

Near the entrance to the secret chamber, two devils faced off. Vicar held Renuart Kross’s weathered sword in his hand. The other crowfriar was unarmed.

They weren’t alone. There were two more of the fetterfiends prowling at the periphery of the scene, and the already decaying remains of a third who’d been slain. When they saw me and Delphine the creatures let out angry snorts and turned to face us.

Melmoth saw us and cursed. “I know what you’re planning!” He spat at Vicar. “You want to retrieve the Zoscian before we do, use it to crawl back into the Tribunal’s good graces. Is that why you allowed the magus to take it? In some bid to reverse your fall from grace?”

“Believe as you will,” Vicar drawled. “You are not my match, Melmoth, and you are much less the Headsman’s. You have lost! Retreat, or you will lose your vessel.”

The crowfriar looked torn, glancing between me and Vicar even as I watched the two hellspawn, waiting for them to charge. They seemed to be waiting for a command.

“I have already alerted the rest of the order,” Melmoth finally said. His voice became somber, taking on a tinge of regret. “It is over for you, teacher. You made a good play, but it will not work. We have the Penitents and all the resources of the Inquisition on Lias Hexer’s trail, while you are still scrabbling for leftovers.”

He spoke to the two fiends. “Kill them.”

Both of them howled and charged. They were both huge, horned, covered in iron bonds fused to their burnt flesh and pounding forward on cloven hooves.

Delphine fired my crossbow, putting a bolt through the nearest devil’s neck. At the same time, Vicar lunged at Melmoth. Both crowfriar’s turned liquid as they clashed, their forms shifting into miasmic shadows before settling into the shapes of enormous, fire spitting hellhounds. They snapped and snarled as they fought, the room growing instantly warmer.

The fetterfiend Delphine shot stumbled, scrabbling at its neck to try and dislodge the anathema lodged in its throat. The second surged forward in a thundering charge. I moved eagerly enough to meet it. In this, my powers and I were in full agreement. Something damned stood before us, and it needed to be smote.

I used no complicated technique, still uncertain if it would fumble again. The brute brought up a maul, a hefty bludgeon with spiked chains wrapped around the cinderblock head. It didn’t catch me by surprise this time. I sidestepped its swing, letting the maul crack into the floor. I swiped my axe across its naked midsection, splitting the iron links of its chain harness and spilling its smoking, stinking guts in a waterfall of gore.

The beast barely seemed to notice. It halted its momentum after another several steps and turned, its innards hanging down its waist like a bloody loincloth. The pain mostly seemed to enrage it.

But I’d expected it to be stubborn about dying, and I hadn’t stopped moving. The one Delphine shot couldn’t get the bolt out of its neck. It gave up as I dashed forward and tried to slap me away with a flail. I ducked the spiked head, letting it pass over my skull close enough to rustle my hair.

My hand shot out, grabbing the bit of wood sticking out of the monster’s neck. I used it as a lever, getting behind the beast and twisting its head sharply to one side. It bucked, fighting me, but I managed to lodge my axe into its shoulder and force it down.

The first monster charged, lowering its horns to gore me, but I got its companion between us. Like a squire breaking in his first war chimera, I wrenched its head up and used it as a shield, letting the other hellspawn slam into its stomach so it gored its own comrade.

Baring my teeth in a furious snarl of effort, I ripped my axe free and turned it, so the wedge on the head’s back faced forward. Pain throbbed through my side as I lifted my arm, but I ignored it.

No matter how otherworldly, how supernatural, no being can do much without a physical body. Whatever these creatures were, they’d been woven vessels of scorched meat and sinew, and that meant I could hurt them.

Faen Orgis’s sacred alloy slammed down into the back of the maul-wielder’s skull, punching a hole into its brain. It slumped, instantly dead, with the other still impaled on its horns. The surviving creature tried to swing its flail again, but I was able to easily step back and dodge it.

The last monster died with my axe splitting its horned skull from behind. Putrid brain matter and oily blood splattered in every direction, and it slumped over its brother so the two formed a heap, embracing in death.

Taking a moment to catch my breath, I turned to the remaining threat and paused as I watched the two fiend-wolves wrestle. I couldn’t tell which one was Vicar.

“Renuart!” Delphine cried out. “He’s alone.” She was trying to reload the crossbow.

Which was when the third crowfriar emerged from the shadows behind her and put a blade to her throat.

This new one was a tall, skeletally thin figure. I thought female, but it was hard to tell. She had a bald, pallid head and gaunt features, not a single hair visible on either scalp or brow. Her robes more resembled a funeral shawl, the material deeply black and thin. She wrenched one of Delphine’s arms behind her back, forcing the doctor to drop the crossbow, and pressed a small, black knife under her chin.

The devil monk caught my eye and tutted like a schoolteacher. “Don’t try anything, boy. This blade is made of basalt from the Great Sheol. One scratch, and the doctor will die screaming.”

The hellhounds parted with mirroring snarls, pausing their fight at the new development. One of them, who I realized must be Vicar — he had more scars and looked older, somehow — let loose a ripping growl before speaking in that uncanny voice he used in this form.

“Krile,” Vicar said. “I should have known you would crawl out of the dark.”

The gaunt, hairless woman’s smile was a ghastly thing, thin and humorless. Her voice sounded like dry parchment and the final low hum of a dying fire. “We were all called to Osheim for the final rites, Vicar. You know this. I admit, I did not expect your incompetence to go so far. Losing our fragment of the Lord’s Canon?”

She sounded almost shocked, in a muted sort of way. “I am surprised by you, teacher. You were once the best of us.”

“I am the best of you,” Vicar hissed. “None of you can defeat me in a fair fight.”

I noted then that Melmoth, even in the guise of an enormous infernal wolf, looked exhausted. He bled molten blood from several injuries and panted, leathery tongue lolling. Vicar looked hardly winded.

“We do not need to,” Krile said. She turned to me then and tilted her head. “Headsman. We have no quarrel with you. Let us take this apostate into custody and we shall look the other way. Aid us in recovering what was stolen, and you shall find us steady friends.”

“Right.” I smiled thinly. “Devils are the steadiest friends, I’m sure.”

“We only seek to do as we have always done,” Krile said in a reasonable tone. “To punish sinners, to subdue the Great Adversary, and to bring order where there is lawless waste. We have been cautious of the Choir, for we do not wish to be their enemy. You would represent your masters well by heeding me.”

I narrowed my eyes. She’d held my gaze without so much as blinking. “Prove it. Let the doctor go.”

She did. With confident, careful movements, the crowfriar took her blade of basalt away from Delphine’s skin and stepped back. She kept her hands loose and limp. Delphine stumbled forward, glanced back as she rubbed at her neck, then threw me a cautious glance. I nodded, and she scurried to get behind me.

“Do not listen to them.” Vicar put himself between me and Melmoth. The other hellhound snarled at him.

“We do not lie,” Krile said. “We cannot. It is the Law of Zos, which is holy to us.”

“You can certainly bend the truth,” I said. “You can mislead and misinform. Vicar pretended to be a warrior of the Church when I met him.”

“Mortals are always frightened of what they do not understand,” Krile said. “We wear fair faces so that the truth of our words is not lost in your disgust.”

She passed bony fingers over her face, almost as though covering her eyes to hide tears, and when they dropped her skin was peeled back, hind teeth exposed, one eye melting into a cavernous socket. Weeping, pus-filled wounds from horrible burns mottled her scalp and cheek, the damaged tissue vanishing down the collar of her robes. “But if you value honesty so, then I shall give you this truth; Lias Hexer, your former comrade and betrayer, intends to use the Zoscian. We know his scheme. Has my errant mentor not told you?”

Krile gestured with nails that’d become yellow claws toward Vicar, who glared hatefully at her but did not interrupt.

I glanced at my untrustworthy ally. “He said he didn’t know what Lias planned. You did just tell me your order isn’t capable of lying.”

“Perhaps he does not know for certain,” Krile agreed. “But he can guess well enough. Indeed, we are quite confident we know exactly what Hexer plans, and I cannot imagine Vicar of all of us to not have reached the same conclusion.”

“Stop gloating and spit it out,” Delphine snapped. “What are you talking about, witch?”

“Let us take him and agree to aid us in our efforts. Make an oath of it, and I will tell you all.” Krile looked at me as she said this.

I studied her a long moment, considering. I’d expected Vicar to withhold information, even to betray me. I had my own task, and perhaps the most efficient way to track Lias down was to cooperate with the Monks of Hell. It would spare me another enemy and put me a step ahead. I suspected the Choir might even applaud the decision. They were engaged in some sort of cautious diplomacy with their fell counterparts from what I’d gathered, though I wasn’t sure where my killing Horace Laudner fit into it.

I did not stop him when I had the chance.

Vicar had saved my life. He’d also saved Lias’s life, for reasons I couldn’t yet fathom. Conniving as he might be, perhaps even evil, he had a strange sort of honor. Not all of Renuart Kross had been a lie.

You’re a fool, I told myself.

True. But, as many a wise man has said, better the devil you know.

“You will not take him,” I told Krile. “Vicar is under my protection until I’ve got this mess sorted out. I’m making it official, as Headsman. Try to take him, and you will be obstructing me in my lawfully appointed task. The Choir has decreed I find Lias Hexer.”

Krile’s eyes widened. “Is that so?”

We all stood there a long moment in a tense stand off. Krile toyed with her evil knife, Melmoth panted, and Vicar paced with a predatory impatience. Delphine muttered something under her breath behind me. Another prayer, perhaps.

Finally, with a shrug, Krile turned to the door. “Very well. You understand there will be consequences for this?”

“Take it up with the Choir,” I told her.

Krile nodded slowly. “We shall… and next time we meet, I shall bring twice the number of fetterfiends. You trifle with a power whose reach you cannot comprehend, Alken Hewer. You will understand that before long.”

With that she left, sinking into the shadows and vanishing like a ghost. Melmoth left less gracefully, prowling into a corner before whatever road the crowfriars used swallowed him. Vicar let out a beast’s snort, then returned to his pilgrim shape and spat out a curse in the language of Hell so vile it caused Delphine to flinch and one of the upturned tables to crack and rot.

“We are out of time,” Vicar told me in a dark voice. “Krile is not one to be trifled with, and if she is here then that means the rest of the Credo is not far. That recluse only deigns to appear when all of us gather.”

“Did you get anything out of the mirror?” I asked him.

“A bit. Lias was conducting some kind of test in that room, summoning and binding spirits so he could question them.”

“A common tactic for the Magi,” Delphine said. “It’s how they gain much of their knowledge.”

Vicar nodded. “We cannot remain here. We’ll have to take the accursed thing with us.”

“And put it where?” Delphine’s voice dripped with sarcasm, though the tension in her words was a palpable thing. “Store it in my bedroom? If your fellows or the Inquisition attacks again, then I’m afraid my house is a poor fortress.”

I considered the problem for a minute while Delphine and Vicar bickered. My eyes went down to the ornate black steel encasing my forearm, now divested of glamour. When I came to my solution, my heavy sigh drew both the devil and doctor’s attention. I met their angry gazes with a defeated smile.

“The crowfriars have to operate in the shadows. That puts them at a disadvantage, because it isn’t true for me anymore. I’ll get us a fortress.”

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