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FOUR

Let me tell you, boy

A tale of down below.

Where the days are hard

And the beds are stone.

I’ll tell you the tale

Of when time had split.

And the fires of hell

Were our only light.

Ephraim (-54 to 47)

“Down Below,” published Year 40.

I — In the sky, crossing the threshold

Grahtzildahn, second layer of Pandemonium

The dreamlike threshold separating the unceasing storms of the Vale Betwixt shimmered with the furnace heat of Grahtzildahn. The nearer they drew, the sorcerous wall appeared more like an illusion than something material. The barrier danced, milky tendrils jittering through translucent skin like living fibers of an onion stalk. As Montauk slowly ascended the wall’s height, preparing for a steep dive to pierce its membrane, Kateryna began to feel wisps of hot wind cutting across her face and hands.

Kateryna held fast to the saddle horn with one hand, brandishing the Sun Spear of Dawn with the other as Seth clutched to her waist. Her stomach lurched as Montauk withdrew her wings and plunged into the barrier.

Like flies stuck in amber, their velocity was extinguished by the grasping tendrils, coated with sticky, sorcerous bile. Oily fingers clasped Montauk’s legs, holding her fast. Searching hands fondled Kateryna, creeping up her shins, then her thighs. She clenched her abdomen, her hamstrings, locking herself into the saddle against the wall’s festering will.

Seth slid back, pulled away. Kateryna released the saddle horn, catching his wrist. His face contorted, reflected pain, but his scream was inaudible. She gasped for air—but the space inside the wall was naught but void. Montauk pawed helplessly for freedom, her massive heart pounding, starving for oxygen.

Thump, thump. Thump, thump.

Kateryna struggled against the weight of worlds to lift Dawn’s spear. The iron tip cut slowly through the malaise—then, ignited with radiant flame. The tendrils shriveled from the blinding light. A hole burned into the wall’s viscous skin, allowing scorched air to fill the space, exploding with holy flame around Montauk.

The griffin bucked and flapped her great wings. Back in open air, the torrid updrafts carried them to the freedom of the skies over Grahtzildahn. They had crossed the threshold between hells. The stench of moldering earth of the Screaming Fields fled for that of blackened plains beyond—sulfur and smoldering hair; the tepid humidity of the Vale Betwixt evaporated for the arid furnace that was Grahtzildahn.

Kateryna’s vision wavered, collapsing around the periphery.

“Rest now, young ones,” Montauk said. “You need time to acclimate to this place. I will find us shelter.”

Thank you, Montauk… Kateryna thought as sleep claimed her.

* * *

Beneath the surface of the badlands

Grahtzildahn, second layer of Pandemonium

Kateryna woke, bundled between Seth and Montauk. It was dark, and the stagnant air was cool and musty. Bulbous stalagmites depended from the ceiling, denticulate ripples running along their lengths. Some had reached all the way to the ground, forming knobby pillars.

Off in the distance, she heard a gentle drip falling into a larger body of water.

Her mouth was dry, her lips splitting at the seams, her body drenched with clinging sweat. She rose, stripping off everything she wore, save for her boots and small clothes. Arms raised to touch the rough stone ceiling above, she stretched out the lingering pain that came with a perilous journey.

She looked down at Seth, yet consumed by a fitful sleep, choking on bile with every belabored breath. Dark blemishes scored the surface of his skin. Kateryna knew they would soon burst into the token black boils, weeping fetid pus, inviting further infection, marking the final stages of Morgana’s pestilence.

Kneeling, she nudged him awake. Seth was slow to emerge from his stupor, his eyes opening before rolling back again. Finally, he was overtaken by a coughing fit. Kateryna lifted him upright, pounding his back and holding his hand as he vomited blood and bile.

“Kat…” He panted, breathless. “Where are we?”

“I don’t know—underground. There’s water further down, but I don’t want to go alone.”

“I can’t…” His eyes returned to his rancid spew, seeping into the parched rock of the cave floor. “It won’t be long, now. We both know how this ends.”

“Nonsense.” Kateryna picked up her satchel, reached inside. Her fingers glanced across the cold glass. “Open wide.”

“Why? I’d rather not play doctor—”

Too exhausted to explain, Kateryna pulled out one of the three vials Ibrahim had given her. Pulling off the cork, she grabbed a handful of Seth’s sandy hair, forced his head back, and dumped the bright elixir down his gullet. She watched in awe as the inflamed sores lining his throat calmed, then receded to mere bumps.

Seth doubled over, coughing again, but soon quieted as the elixir did its work. He breathed deep and laughed. “Gods in hell! That’s… I feel—I don’t know! I can’t remember the last time I’ve felt healthy.”

“It’s temporary. It suppresses the symptoms, but the disease lives on.” She took a pull of a second flash.” I have only one more dose, so we’ll need to keep moving as soon as Montauk has recovered. Do you have a weapon?”

Seth looked down at his moccasins. “I don’t…”

“Seth!”

“What?”

“How have you survived?”

“Ain’t like I’d have a chance in combat, anyway!” Seth sighed. “Besides, if it weren’t for the riders, I wouldn’t have made it.”

Derrida saved him? The Dread Angel’s grip must be weakening across the board… Not just with me and Cain.

Montauk opened her eyes as they spoke. The griffin rose and stretched, arching her back. Her voice flowed within Kateryna’s consciousness as a gentle breeze. “Check my saddle, young one. Cain always stows a sidearm.”

Seth stared at Kateryna. She nodded. Seth approached Montauk and sifted through her saddlebags. He drew a silver flanged mace.

“Least I’ll get to hit something, before I die again…”

Fortunately, there was nothing awaiting them further down the cave, only soothing, cool air—a rarity, to be sure, as Kateryna already knew from her seconds of consciousness in the dry heat of the surface.

They came upon a narrow passage; they could freely move their arms and upper bodies, but two shelves closed in at waist height, and all they could do was sidle along. Progress through the tortuous path was slow and painful, as fingers of jagged rock clawed at their flesh. The dripping knell had risen from a tinkling to a clangorous din, and after a half hour, they at last emerged from the gantlet into a cavern, finding an underground spring resting at its center.

The spring was the size of a large bathtub, like the one Kateryna’s mother once enjoyed in her first life. A stalactite the size of a pinky finger was the source of the drippage, supplying the spring’s reservoir, one drop at a time, over the course of eons.

Seth ambled past her and buried his face in the pool. He only came up for air once he had drunk enough to satiate the thirst of the entirety of Monrovia.

“I’ve never known such bliss,” Seth said, collapsing on his back. “I could stay here forever.”

It was a tempting prospect. They might have been able to manage it, too, subsisting on cave mushrooms and rat meat. But the pestilence had already fixed a time and date for their impending doom. Or, before that, some hellish beast might wander in for a drink.

If not one death, then another.

Kateryna knelt beside him, drank from her cupped hands. The water was warm and mineral-rich. A bit acrid, stale. But it was water. Clean, clear water. She assumed such blessings dissolved long ago.

“Seth?” Kateryna ventured. A vision lingered in her mind’s eye; a memory of standing on those golden hills; her back turned away from home, a ring in her palm.

“Yeah?”

“Do you remember… what I did to you?”

At first, his expression was questioning, oblivious. Then, understanding spread across his face, soon replaced by a flash of pain settling into grim acceptance.

“I do, now.” He shook his head. “I haven’t thought about that in ages.”

“Neither have I. I’ve only just remembered.”

“It’s this place, isn’t it?”

“The fog… it was her doing.” Kateryna swung about, looked Seth in the eyes; they were sallow, bloodshot. He only nodded, his glare cold as the stone walls surrounding them. “I’m so sorry, Seth.” She began to sob, “I’m so…”

He scoffed, flung a dismissive hand. “That’s far away now. Long in the past.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“No…” He sighed. “It isn’t.”

“Did you…” She looked away, unable to look him in the eye, for what she next needed to ask. “Did you do it—because of me?”

Memories danced across his features, behind his tortured eyes. Before her, Seth relived a lifetime of trauma and pain, from which death should have long since freed his weary soul.

Seth heaved, tears streaming down his battered cheeks. “Kat… You were everything to me. And then you—”

“I did.”

“Why?” He shook his head repeatedly. “Why, Kat? Did you not love me?”

“Of course I did—”

“Then why did you leave?” Seth shouted, his knuckles white as he gripped the shaft of Cain’s mace.

“I didn’t know…” Kateryna stammered, tears obscuring her vision, stealing her breath. “I just—”

“You just what?” He rose, dropping the mace clattering upon the hard ground. “Please, tell me why you left!”

“I loved—still love you,” she said, as memories of her old life flooded back into her mind. “But I knew… I was afraid I wasn’t the woman you needed by your side. I’m so…”

“Kat,” Seth said, his heaving chest deflating as the breath of anger seeped from lungs punctured by disease, and a heart riven by grief. “Did you think I wanted you to change?”

She stared at him. Never had Kateryna bothered to ask herself that question, only presumed what others might have thought of her—of them. The Valentine aristocracy was an orthodox bunch, full of gossips and self-styled judges of what is good and proper. She had always existed on the fringes of those circles for the way she looked, for the way she acted… for who she was. A Wystran, a scoundrel, a ruffian, a fisher, a baker, a ranger, a sailor. In other words—not a real woman.

Her lower lip quivered. She was torn open, her innards splayed out in front of him. Has it been so simple, this whole time?

“I don’t know.”

Seth enfolded her in his warm embrace. He had become so thin and frail, he nearly crumpled beneath her strength as she returned the gesture.

Kateryna buried her face in the space between his shoulder and his neck, her hot tears cutting a path through the grime coating his copper flesh.

Words have power. Kateryna knew this. The power to maim, to wound—but rarely to mend. So, they held each other in silence for what felt like years. Perhaps years had indeed passed around them. She kissed him on the cheek. He looked into her eyes, taking in her entire being, and kissed her lips, just as he had all those summers ago in the golden wheat fields, on the borders between their fathers’ holdings, their castles standing vigil at their backs.

They undressed, beholding each other as they were: beaten, bruised, blemished with blackened boils that beat in time with their broken hearts. The filth of hell clung to them. They had languished in it for so long.

And why?

For the sin of being born human.

Gods save the proud.

Immersed in the warm water of the spring—a miracle in its own right, in a place where miracles stilled in the womb—they held each other for fear of losing the precious memories they had only just reclaimed.

The waters lapped gently between Kateryna’s breasts, pooled in Seth’s dense chest hair. Staring into each other’s eyes, never once looking away, she wrapped her legs around his waist, and together they swayed, washing away years of detritus.

And so much pain.

* * *

In the sky, approaching the Burning City

Grahtzildahn, second layer of Pandemonium

Arid winds buffeted Kateryna’s face; infinitesimal particulates opened invisible abrasions over every inch of her exposed skin. Below, the land was red, iron-rich dirt covering the craggy, boundless expanse. Towers of lavender flames ruptured the landscape, geysers fueled by boiling springs, much hotter than the one they had found deep beneath the surface.

She saw the Great Stair in the distance. It climbed from the horizon to the hard ceiling, leagues high. A jagged cityscape surrounded it, a shimmering mirage refracting scintillant torchlight in all directions. Brass walls surrounded leaning spires of blackened stone, climbing impossible slopes as if the city were one of the great mountains overlooking Valencia, filling its belly in preparation to erupt its vengeance upon the flat plains beyond.

The Burning City…

There was lurid beauty to the spectacle, despite the sinister reality of Pandemonium. Is it our nature that coerces us into seeing the good within a structure built with evil intent? Or does there remain a glimmer of hope, even in the most downtrodden reaches of existence?

A shrieking din assaulted her ears. Seth groaned, clutching his head. Montauk whinnied and began a rapid descent. Men shouted below. Red and brown figures scrambled on the ground, their armor glittering from the flaming geysers surrounding them. A deep horn bellowed from the city, signaling the emergence of a great winged reptilian creature from its nest in the ceiling above.

“Duck!” Kateryna yelled as she pressed herself into the griffin’s mane.

A swarm of arrows launched from the masses below. Montauk spun, flourishing her wings, batting away the whistling shafts. Kateryna lifted the Sun Spear of Dawn overhead, unsure what good it would do, but trusting in the Oracle’s promise.

May you light my way!

The wyrm screeched over their heads, swooped low, and twisted in the air before appearing in front of them to block Montauk’s flight. The beast was gaunt, clearly starving. Its ruby scales clicked and popped, as if skittering insects commanded its movements, rather than blood and sinew.

An orb of light burst from the Sun Spear, suffusing furnace heat with divine warmth. The wyrm shriveled back, screeching as it fell behind Montauk. The weapon’s shaft vibrated in her hand with vigor—with life. Kateryna was no longer so alone, so forgotten; someone watched on from above, lending a helping hand. There might be hope yet.

Still—the path to the Great Stair remained fraught with many perils.

“Worry not, young one,” Montauk whispered. “I’ve lived long. I’ve lived well. I will deliver you no matter the cost!”

Another shriek shook the ceiling above, the very air, shattering Dawn’s protective light, shards of morning raining death on the hapless foot soldiers below. The wyrm’s shadow passed over them, an infernal gust nearly blowing Kateryna and Seth off Montauk’s back. The wyrm, once a great dragon of old, yearning to reclaim its superiority over the skies, twisted around and matched Montauk’s speed.

Kateryna reversed her grip on the spear, raised it above her shoulder, and poised to throw. She thanked the gods for Cain’s insistence that she learn how to use such a weapon, despite the outrage of his aristocratic colleagues. The spear grew hot, the tip glowing bright orange.

The wyrm furled its great wings, diving in again to block Montauk’s path, molten rage boiling within its rubrous maw.

Kateryna hurled the Sun Spear of Dawn, which turned to a bolt of lightning as it arced from her hand. The bolt tore a gaping wound in the thin membrane of the wyrm's wing, and it plummeted, screaming to the fields below, where its weight exploded into the ground, destroying the ranks of soldiers pursuing them.

The Burning City drew near. Brass rooftops glinted in Kateryna’s periphery. Blackened stone structures leaned wearily upon molten bases, warped and withered under centuries of infernal heat uncounted. The people damned to live in the streets screamed and panicked at the sight of Montauk, a black mass of wings, completely alien to them in the fiery realm of the Demon King Grahtz.

“I’ve taken you as far as I can, young one.”

We’re nearly there! Don’t give up, Montauk!

A mechanical crack thundered from a tower set within the palace’s outer wall. Something slammed into Montauk, knocking her from the air and careening towards the wall. Kateryna’s heart lurched as she realized what Montauk had meant.

No!

In the instant before impact, Kateryna held out her hand in vain hopes the Sun Spear might reappear, or that she might cast some ancient eldritch spell that would save them—but she had thrown the spear, and she was out of options.

“Hold tight…” Montauk’s labored thoughts trudged into her mind. “I will protect you!” The great griffin crashed through the parapet, bringing down slabs of shattered stone as they burst into the courtyard, flattening scattering servants and bystanders who fled too late.

Kateryna coiled her fingers in Montauk’s feathered mane, hugging her tight as she thrashed about. Montauk’s flight skidded to a final halt, and Kateryna felt the griffin’s powerful heart cease to beat.

Thump, thump. Thump…

II —From the collected journals of a mad wizard

When next I dreamt of Pandemonium, I was caught in the grasping tar of the Wall of Souls between Grahtzildahn and the Vale Betwixt. My influence was suspended, entirely stunted, a lingering side-effect of having witnessed the beautiful aspect of Dusk.

You must understand, dear reader, that the gods are complex in their physical manifestations. Their presence on Earth—or in Hell, beneath the Earth’s crust—is not indicative of truth. Rather, such beings undergo a process of visuospatial translation to be interpreted by the mortal eye, bound by the limitations of the material world.

A fragment of Morgana existed within Cain, her chosen champion in life and in death. Dusk, which is how I will refer to this fragmented aspect hence, is an echo of her previous incarnation as the benevolent shepherd of lost souls into the Great Beyond. This is to say, her power—Cain’s power—is overwhelming, especially within the proximity of her corrupted whole.

My observers—jailors, in truth—grew displeased with my prolonged impotence. At first, they accused me of withholding my prophetic visions out of spite. My dear friend, Headmaster Pascal Doon, knew better. He understood that I yearned above all else to witness myth in the making. He understood the gravity of the strange happenings unfolding beneath our feet.

It was four more days of rigorous nothing before my observers lost interest in my flaccid sorcery, and finally granted me a night of much needed privacy. That same night, my friend appeared in my quarters—my cell—with a bedroll in hand. “I will dream with you,” Pascal Doon said. “It’s clear this situation is growing beyond our collective ken. Should anything untoward come to pass, I am with you.”

I had no words in reply to this magnanimous gesture. Surely, my friend saw the significance it had on me as I shed a single tear from my obsolescent eye.

“Shall we begin?” he asked at length.

“Like old times, eh?”

Pascal Doon chuckled. “This time, we aren’t searching for maidens bathing in rivers.”

“No. Instead, we search for goddesses with the power to rend lost souls asunder.”

“True enough, friend. True enough.”

The headmaster laid out his bedroll, and together we chanted our incantations to summon sleep, to conjure a dream. My eyes fluttered shut. Through our combined powers, when I opened them again, I was standing inside the court of the Demon King Grahtz.

* * *

I stood at attention on a polished marble floor of diamond-shaped tiles, refracting swirls of cream in black tea, suffused with the warm glow of the hanging braziers above. I took in a measured breath—about six seconds to fill all three of my lungs with piquant air—and prepared myself to face my lord.

Today held particular significance for me—I was to be named a legionnaire of the Reborn Legion, sworn to defend my city from those hellish invaders seeking to destroy our hard-fought order. Each lost soul in the generous Lord Grahtz’s court dreams of being the subject of this ceremony, of the cool steel of his sword to be placed gently on their shoulders.

He called my name—my old name. I marched down the aisle to the throne and kneeled before the lord.

The Great Lord Grahtz had ruled the Burning City of Grahtzildahn, against all odds, for ten thousand years, protecting the Great Stair from the fell beasts yearning to feast upon the mortal flesh above. I was fortunate to awaken under the good lord’s care, within those glorious walls, of all places. My comrades had told me tales of their previous lives in the deeper layers of Pandemonium. The officer who trained me, who groomed me for the station I was about to attain, told me that she had existed as a sack of living flesh for nearly five hundred years before she found a ledge high enough to end her misery. She woke in Grahtzildahn, reborn.

Indeed, I was fortunate in myriad ways—I had lived only on the first layer, suspended above the Congealed Sea for a mere half century. When first I awoke in my new form, metallic and inorganic, I was deeply disturbed. This is normal for the souls captured by the lord’s recruiters; it takes time for the natural soul to acclimate to the confines of a cold, unfeeling body. Though my shell was at first empty, I trained and honed my skills, and over time flesh grew within; an organism to nurture my soul, as my shell protects it.

Today, I woke with a beating heart, and so Lord Grahtz sent his summons. I would be inducted before the entirety of my community, my family.

My lord sat leisurely upon his throne, smiling down unto me. He was like us once, a lost soul. But it was his self-sacrifice that made our glorious rebirth as his soldiers possible. As I kneeled, he laid his blade clinking serenely on my right shoulder, then my left.

“Rise, my son,” said the lord, his voice a cerulean waterfall wetting the sharp edges of the court. “You have proven thyself worthy. You have grown… and thus, you will live.”

“Thank you…” I croaked, unable to conjure more worthy words fit for my divine benefactor. For the first time, I looked up from my toes—sabatons forged in the shape of toes—and beheld his visage. The face of the Great Lord Grahtz, eternal ruler of the Burning City of Grahtzildahn, is a grotesque sight for those who do not understand him. To craft his legion, he first had to learn, to suffer, through many trials and many more errors. His own flesh, mottled and mutated, overgrew the armor he had forged for himself before his ascension. Now, he is bound to his throne, tormented with constant agonies so that my kind may live.

“Once a boy, cursed to remain so for all eternity,” said the good lord, “you have been remade into a man, forged of silver, brass, and obsidian. You are now whole—I name you Invictus, for your unwavering courage!”

“I am your humble servant, my lord.”

A glimmer of a grin danced across his twisted countenance. He had opened his mouth to speak when the throne room’s doors crashed open behind me, and a frenzied legionnaire sprinted toward the throne.

“What is the meaning of this interruption?” Grahtz snarled.

“The walls are breached, my lord!” the intruder cried.

“Breached? Impossible!”

“The Dread Angel attacks, sire! A dark creature of her brood was flying for the Stair, but we shot it down. We’ve captured its riders.”

Lord Grahtz’s fury cooled to simmering contemplation, then flashed to concern. “Invictus!”

“Yes, lord?”

“Take the Dread Angel’s riders into the Pit. Learn what they’re after. This is your first command, as one of my Reborn.”

“It shall be done.”

* * *

We woke with a start. I was drenched in sweat, and my dear draconian friend would have been, too, if he possessed the glands. It is a well-known limitation of oneiromancy that one must first visit in the waking world the places he wishes to surveil before he can dream of them. I had scoured Morgana’s realm, spent years of my life among the sickly people of Monrovia. And I tell you, dear reader, that I have never set one foot onto the arid plains of Grahtzildahn, nor into the limits of the Burning City.

“Headmaster…” I panted and took a deep pull from the cup on my bedside table. “Did you take us into the second layer?”

Pascal Doon sighed wearily as he rose and began to pace. “I did not. In all my eons, I have yet to gather the gumption to traverse the underworld. You are uniquely tenacious in that way, my friend.”

“What does it mean, to inhabit such a creature against our combined wills?”

“It means that we must return to sleep, post haste! I see now that your obsession is warranted. We witness uncanny events.”

Comforted by the much-needed validation from my closest, oldest friend, I eased back into my cot, desiring the comfort of my silken mattress back in my quarters. I took three deep breaths, then chanted my incantation anew. Pascal Doon joined, and soon, the room spun around us, fading from reality.

III — A conversation, somewhere far away.

Are you beginning to catch those fleeting memories, flashing like torch bugs in the back of your mind? Yes—I can see that you are. You’ve seen it all: a life, a death, and everything in between.

Shall I continue?

Good. Time is short, and there is one more story you must hear before you embark on this final journey…

You had spent decades of your life warring in the name of Valencia against the Kaza’dur. I need not remind you of their menace, of their ruthless sapping of our sweet world, stealing all it has to give. You fought bravely in a dozen battles, reclaimed the southern outlands, and established the borders we appreciate today. But the Kaza’duran influence—now, Idraani culture—was potent, contagious.

Invaders or no, the snakes assimilated the people beneath them.

The thirst for greatness, for conquest—in business and war, besides—was insatiable. High King Laszlo Balderas hungered to make his own mark upon the world.

By royal decree, yourself, Syr Gabriel, Dame Citha, and Syr Derrida left your homes, leading a host of one hundred thousand soldiers to brave the sands. The faith of your comrades waned with the changing times; they were not in conversation with the Goddess as you were. Dusk remained a gentle presence in your mind. Yet you had no way of knowing that her presence was unravelling from the fabric of your heart, a dark influence slowly erasing her.

Three years it took to cross the Endless Sands.

You lost countless soldiers to starvation, heat stroke, and the venom of scorpions and serpents alike. So too, enemy lances—the Kaza’dur were beastly foes, hiding beneath the sands, ambushing your caravans at every crossing. They killed brutally, indiscriminately, the wounded and refugees; men, women, children, and elders—blood was blood, and nothing to them tasted better than human blood.

Still, you marched ever onward through their unearthly domain to make right a world off kilter. The soldiers stayed close, never straying far from their trains. When men ambled off in search of privacy to release a long stream of brown piss, the snakes emerged, swallowing them whole, or breaking their minds to use against your forces as thoughtless drones.

And yet you arrived at the gates of Idraan, the city of another world. Three years’ march, and sixty thousand souls lost.

“No matter!” you had said to Derrida one night. “Dusk will shepherd them home.”

By the seventh month of the siege, you had lost another ten thousand.

On a mound of your fallen warriors, you stood alone against a serpentine hellion—a brute of a Kaza’dur, nigh twice your height and five times your weight. By the fading light of glorious dusk, you battered the monstrous fiend as blood and sweat flowed like rivers down your face and your arms. The beast lashed out with one of many hands, clamped down on your shoulder with fanged, venomous fingers, and pulled, tearing away your shield arm.

It mattered not—you thrust your holy longsword through the beast’s eyes, slaying it in an instant.

Splayed, bleeding out atop a macabre dune, then washed crimson by the lifeblood weeping from your countless slain followers, a prayer rolled off your lips. Who could blame you for calling upon the Goddess? Certainly, I’d have done the same in your stead.

An angel appeared standing over you, an avatar of Dusk’s will, made manifest. Oh, how the goddess loved you, Cain! She swept you up in her arms and took you into the barren skies, her wings a lone ebon cloud. For the first time since the Arrival, the desert was watered. Her sorrow rained upon the desolate sands as the Goddess wept for you.

Dying in her embrace, she asked you a simple question. “My love, will you allow me to save you?”

“My love…” You groaned. Your final thoughts fled to your poor Anastasia, wasting away throughout your prolonged—soon, permanent—absence; then to your daughter, languishing in matters of court without the guidance and advocacy of her father, and to your unborn son, stilled in the womb… a special pain, one you never learned to heal from. Oh, how you wished you’d have done it all differently!

For fear of never seeing your family again, you gave yourself to the Goddess in the sky, over Idraan.

“Renew your vow, dear Arthur,” the Goddess said. “Repeat those words I desire so....”

“I… will,” you rasped, your life’s blood nearly spent. “…never stop… loving.” With your last breath, you swore: “I devote myself… body and soul.”

Thus, you were forever bound. The Goddess embraced your soul, weaving it with her own, claiming you for eternity. As your souls coalesced, so too did mind and body so intimately intertwine. Your own skin mottled and morphed; you and Dusk descended from the heavens as one.

Reborn, you took on the aspect of Dusk Incarnate. With divine wrath, you assaulted and systematically dismantled the Kaza’duran facilities inside their alien city. With cold, unfeeling hands, you swept your blade in flaming arcs, reaping the souls of any unfortunate enough to live within the walls. Dusk—you—delivered holy revenge upon the snakes of Idraan, and even upon the people they had bound in chains. For the slaves of the Kaza’dur were tainted, infected, and their corruption, their weakness, could not be allowed to spread.

You claimed Idraan for humanity, driving the invaders to near extinction within the dark of a single night, known now as The Night of Tears. You traded your very soul so that some might live, taking everything from others in the process.

How cruel, then, that all of it was for naught.

You returned home to Undton, to your family—but you had changed. Your men carried you, a husk of your former self, a shell harboring power mortals are not designed to contain. How did you persist so long, carrying all that weight? Yes, I see the pain fluttering across your face. Is this the first time you’ve relived those last few strides of your life, those precious final months, given to you in exchange for your soul—and those of everyone else?

Morgana’s pestilence was what brought your keep to ruin. Traders unwittingly carried it from your holdings to Daizeton, and beyond. It spread across the Valentine outlands and ravages the living to this day. Ever evolving, the plague proliferated, and neither borders nor seas could contain it. The Goddess Corrupted had left her mark upon your body, and your frail, mortal frame was not sufficient to quell the chthonic power festering within you.

You had become pestilence; it seeped out your very pores, poisoning the world around you. When finally you died… a mere season after Dusk—Morgana—saved you, your poison bloomed, enveloping countless souls within its black embrace.

Do you remember the night before you died?

Anastasia was in the beginning stages of the illness, ignorant of the destruction awaiting you all come sunrise. Sitting by your side, she was as withered and frail as you had become. She folded your hand in hers, always so soft and tender. Part of you resented her for that—your hands had always been hard and cruel; hers had only nurtured life, while you had only extinguished it.

“My love…” she whispered, unable to look into your sallow eyes. “What are we to do now?”

Your head lolled towards her. Anastasia was naught but an amorphous blur; the pestilence had taken your sight—as it had mine. “How is Kat? I wish… to see her.”

“She’s gone, Cain. You know that.”

“Oh…” You pondered this. Yes, you had known. Anastasia had written you before the siege. “Where has she gone?”

Tears welled in her eyes. “I don’t know.”

You sighed—no, you groaned, years of your life were expelled with your breath as your body deflated, shrinking before your wife’s very eyes. “I only ever wanted the best for you two…”

“And all I’ve ever wanted was you. This is the price I pay for falling in love with a hero.”

Your wife was so beautiful. Her skin seemed to glow in the dim, flickering candlelight, her azure eyes sparkling with the gentle sway of the flame. You remembered the waltz you two shared at Vidoq’s galla on the night you met, all those years ago.

You smiled. “It’s what you get for marrying an orphan with no name… Look at all we have now…”

Anastasia shook her head. “I’ve always preferred the nameless orphan boy. He’d never leave me to wither in this forsaken castle, grown wretched, all alone for years.” She breathed deep, belabored by her failing lungs. “No… only Syr Arthur the Hero did that.”

You sat up, suddenly enraged.

“What was I to do?” The only answer to your question was a fit of gurgling coughs, painting your handkerchief red. “I wrote… all I could.”

She rose, exhausted by the excuses she had heard time and time again. Those well-intentioned lies you told to ease her pain—and yours. But lies are lies, my dear friend, regardless of your intent.

Anastasia showed you her back, unable to bear looking at you any longer. You watched her pronounced shoulders tense, corded with sinew, and none of the soft padding a Lady of her station ought to have protecting her from famine.

“Cain...” She clenched her fist.

“Stasia?”

“Your heart was never mine, was it?”

Your wife departed before you could protest. Not that you had the breath to do so, coughing the way you were, as your throat closed. You did not wake the following morning… nor did anyone else.

IV —The Pit

Grahtzildahn, second layer of Pandemonium

Within the frigid depths of the Burning City, Kateryna shivered in a dark and lonely cell. Her stomach growled, roiling in protest to the viscous slop served in a rusty bowl at regular intervals. Even with the meals, she starved. As she grew hungrier, her shivering worsened, further progressing her malnourishment. Accompanying the bitter chills and dizzying fever was the persistent diarrhea—as if her body simply refused to digest the putrid rations.

Muffled conversations slogged through the humid corridors. Guards spoke in unintelligible tongues, their hollow voices emanating from their breast plates, rather than their helms. Kateryna had only caught a glimpse of the metal soldiers patrolling the dungeon.

The crash into the city had been too chaotic… and still her heart burned with grief.

When the metal soldiers had encircled her and Seth, she could not even stand. Collapsed over Montauk, Kateryna wept, her callused hand resting atop the griffin’s slowing heart. Though surrounded, the soldiers had not interfered, as if awaiting her out of some twisted sense of honor. Perhaps they reveled silently in their victory, in her pain. It was only after Montauk’s heartbeat had ceased that she felt hot, steel hands lay upon her, binding her with hot, iron cuffs.

How long have I been imprisoned here?

Time is meaningless in Pandemonium. Days pass in seconds, and seconds prolong into hours. There was no way to know.

Hunger came and went. Diarrhea came and went. Sleep eluded her mostly, its timid approach oft interrupted by the hollow clamor and heavy footfalls of roving metal soldiers. Since waking last from a rare, fitful bout of slumber, Kateryna’s chest ached, the shredded sacks of her lungs filling steadily with blood and mucus. Head ponderous, thoughts swimming, she could hardly recall where she was, where she was headed. In some ways, the hellish prison she found herself in was not so horrible. At least she was fed, and she enjoyed the feel of solid ground. For a tormented soul, lesser torments began to seem like paradise.

Kateryna doubled over, vomiting into the rusty chamber pot. Her knees buckled at the acrid stench, at the bitter taste the spew left on her tongue. She fell, curling into a ball on the frigid stone floor that stole all warmth from her.

Bright vistas of green craggy mountains flashed behind her eyelids. A dot of light zipped from corner to corner of her periphery, leading her from one image to the next.

So gorgeous…

She had made it as far as the coastal city of Ionia before she heard the news. Standing on a glassy beach, caressed by the gentle push of the wind, under the rustling sway of date palms, Kateryna heard a crier shouting on the pier, proclaiming that Don Arthur Cain of Undton had finally defeated the Kaza’dur. And that he had done so in a single night, razing the sandstone walls of the Otherworldly City, with only the strength of his sword arm. More than half of his forces had perished in the campaign, but humanity stood triumphant before those serpentine horrors.

Why did I go back?

Whether ’twas some misguided hope she might have a father again, or her shirked obligation to her mother, she was not sure. In the end, it mattered not. Perhaps she was afraid the snakes would retaliate and level her home as her father had theirs—but that was not at all what Kateryna had found upon her return.

Desolation. Ruin. Bodies strewn about the yards. Servants, soldiers, and serfs alike littered the grounds, skin charred with black boils, their bellies bloated with noxious gases—some having already burst in the summer heat. The sight was horrifying. The smell was worse—the acetous malodor of rot and bile, and also that of unremittent sorrow.

She had asked herself then, and she wondered now, how does one smell sorrow?

Ignorant that she had been marked by Death for simply entering the keep, Kateryna ventured deeper inside in search of her mother. It did not take long to find her… Oh gods, how have I forgotten? Was the fog a mercy, after all, Dread Angel? Have you spared us unknowable pain by withholding these memories?

Within her parents’ bedchamber was Mother Death’s greatest rendition, a masterwork of suffering, a sculpture of bone and flesh. Cain’s body sat upright against the wall, Anastasia suspended in his arms. An armature had blossomed from his neck, vines of pulsing crimson that overtook the chamber, creeping up and along the walls and bursting out the windows, wilding the very seat of civilization.

So grotesque, so undeniably gorgeous—and unfit for mortal eyes.

Kateryna did not remember how long she had lingered there, absorbing the lurid beauty splayed out before her. She could not tear her eyes from the mutilated forms of her parents, but was sure she could feel the serpentine fingers of the vines begin to coil around her ankles, her wrists, her throat…

A memory of forsaken love flashed through her mind, expelling the creeping miasma suffocating her, and Kateryna fled. And then I found you, my love…

When she reached the gates of Daizeton, the nightman brought her before Lord Derrida Aslor. The gaunt man could not bring himself to look Kateryna in the eyes, nor did he have the courage to speak. Instead, he made a curt gesture, ordering his chaplain to escort her to the cemetery.

She had fallen to her knees before a newly filled grave.

“Such pain, my dear Kateryna,” said a man’s voice, somewhere in the dark. “Fret not. I understand you.”

“What?” Kateryna sat upright on the floor. “Who’s speaking?”

“You are in my care now, child. In my home.”

“Grahtz…” she whispered, and shivers marched along the trace of her spine—as if simply uttering his name were enough to progress her festering pestilence.

“Tell me, Kateryna…” The walls reverberated with his exhalations. “Why did Morgana send you here?”

His voice seemed to emanate from below, boiling up from the fathomless depths of the pit itself, though she heard him as if he stood beside her… But Kateryna was alone, freezing beneath the heat of the Burning City.

“Morgana did not send me—I must ascend the Great Stair.”

A great guffaw bellowed through the corridors of the cell block, gusting through the wrought iron bars trapping her, knocking her to the ground. The Demon King Grahtz laughed, and the walls buckled and quivered under the weight of his mirth. The floor shook as steam hissed between the cracks in the cold flags. Kateryna’s fever pitched, and her world spun. She groped for the satchel Ibrahim had bestowed her, but like the Sun Spear of Dawn, it was gone.

“My dear girl!” cried Lord Grahtz. “Understand, what you ask is impossible. Do you not know why I have erected this city?”

Kateryna clenched her teeth as her head boiled. She gripped her forearms, her nails breaking skin as her stomach rolled, clenching as if a stone was tumbling through her intestines. “You protect the Stair… and thus the mortal world from the damned.”

All at once, her symptoms cooled as the temperature dropped from feverish heat to a nauseating chill. The cell sighed, as if in deep contemplation.

“Lord Grahtz, I beseech you. Permit my passage. I am charged by Dawn to carry out this task.”

“Oh, my dear girl,” cooed the soothing voice of the Demon King. “I am aware of your errand. For you are in my house, and I see the dreams of all who rest their heads on my pillows. I cannot allow you to complete your quest, though I wish I could. Truly, I yearn to grant us both what we desire. But if I allow you to ascend, my city, and the world above, will fall.”

“My charge has nothing to do with—”

“Silence!” The ground tilted; what was flat became vertical, and Kateryna slid down the wall-once-floor, landing hard on her shoulder. “Do not dare rebut me, child! In this realm, I am God!”

Searing pain wracked Kateryna’s body, loosening her bowels and voiding her stomach all at once. The assault emptied her of everything until only the acidic taste of bile lingered in the back of her throat, chunks of food lodged in her sinuses. Coughing, spitting, she took in a tremulous breath, her eyes hot with tears and ruptured blood vessels.

“Apologize!”

She shook her head, her brains sloshing like seawater in her skull.

“Apologize, child!” The Demon King’s roar pulverized whatever shred of will that yet remained to her.

“Forgive me…” Kateryna stammered, the mere act of speaking causing unbearable pain, like needles pressing into her eyes. “Forgive me, my lord.”

The room then became perfectly temperate, the air still. All discomfort fled her at once. A torch ignited in the corner of the room, illuminating a simple bed dressed in plain covers. She scrambled to it like a rat abandoning a sinking ship. Kateryna had not even seen a proper bed since before she died.

“I am not a vindictive benefactor…” Grahtz’s voice was like a warm fire in the heart of winter. “But I am not to be trifled with. You will come to learn, dear Kateryna, that I am superior to the Dusk and the Dawn—even to that of the High Noon. I am the furnace fueling the summer, the fire that cleanses the waking world of the vermin seeking to escape their just damnation.”

“You must know, Lord Grahtz,” Kateryna said before taking a ragged breath. “That neither I, nor my people, deserve this fate. We were taken by Morgana’s pestilence—a cosmic wrong, never answered for.” The words flowed from her mouth with ease, yet Kateryna did not know whence they came. Now that they had been spoken, however, the explanation rang true to her ears. The keep, the blossoms, the rains… “Please, reconsider the status of my soul in your court.”

“Yes, child. I know what happened. I know that your soul was not destined for Pandemonium… but since the Dread Angel first sat upon her unholy throne, few who have entered Pandemonium’s gates belong.” Grahtz paused, his consideration palpable. “Yes, dear Kateryna, I will assist you—with one stipulation.”

Do not jump into his arms. A devil always speaks slant.

“I would hear your conditions.”

“Allow Morgana’s pestilence to take you. Then, join my legion. Join your fellows from Monrovia, so carelessly discarded in her fury by the Dread Angel. Your body will be impenetrable, your will infallible, your strength inexorable! When you wake with a beating heart, you will be reborn in my sight and named anew. Then, and only then, will I permit you to ascend my Great Stair and fulfill your destiny.”

Kateryna froze, staring at the wall for minutes, hours, years… How many of her kin had been taken by the Demon King? And was this fate truly the best they could hope for? She breathed deep, the compacted mucus in her lungs vibrating her chest cavity, and she earnestly considered the Demon King’s offer.

At last, and only once she was sure of her decision, Kateryna answered: “I cannot accept your terms, my lord, gracious though they are.”

The Demon King of Grahtzildahn let out a forlorn sigh, his gentle warmth withdrawing from Kateryna, leaving her to languish in encroaching cold for all eternity. “Then it is here you must remain, child.”

In the hellish depths of the Pit of Grahtzildahn, Kateryna Cain of Undton was sentenced to an eternity of isolation, spent in darkness, for her divine charge was too dangerous for the good Demon King to allow her to continue unsupervised.

Kateryna sat in her bed, the one comfort granted to her in countless lifetimes of suffering. She contemplated her many misfortunes, her numerous losses, and her failure to live up to the legacy placed upon her shoulders as the noble daughter of an orphan, turned knight, turned hero. She took in one more ragged breath, inhaling the stench of her disease and her inevitable death and subsequent reincarnation as a lowly, tortured soul.

Yet, despite her grim acceptance of a black fate, she felt a new warmth envelop her against the cold. Not the overbearing pall of the Demon King, nor the disinterested surveillance of the Dread Angel, but a mother’s voice, calling her child home. Kateryna closed her eyes and saw the rolling golden fields of her home—not as they were, but as they are.

Kateryna’s bare feet embedded themselves in cool dirt. Earthworms emerged from their shallow haunts, wriggling between her toes. Taking in a smooth breath of sweet, living air, Kateryna gazed out at the horizon, where the skeleton frames were being built by the new denizens of Undton. The trees sang their gentle song, and sprouting scallions danced throughout every inch of the fields around her. The morning’s warmth poured over her.

Reaching out, Kateryna’s hand closed on something solid. Opening her eyes, back in the dank cell beneath Hell and Earth, she again held the Sun Spear of Dawn, its winged tip glowing red hot with the light of the Mourning Sun.

May it light my way, when I need it most….

V — From the collected journals of a mad wizard

When next I dreamt, I once again inhabited the mind of Invictus, the newly ordained legionnaire of the Reborn Crusade. The Reborn come from all layers of Pandemonium, and many from the Abyss itself, yet something about him rang familiar—Invictus’s soul reeked of moldering wood and sickly sea water—and thus he was accessible to me in ways the others of his kind were not, uniquely open to my observations.

Yes, I had met him before. We had both lived in Monrovia and shared an experience that linked us. I settled easily into his perspective, as if he had invited me to wear his plates like my own suit of armor.

I felt Pascal Doon’s presence with me, and I wondered if Invictus had somehow invited us both. Unlikely it is, dear reader, that a master wizard and an elder dragon fill one’s mind unnoticed.

* * *

I came to know how the dungeons of the good lord’s palace had received their namesake. Only once had I been down to the Pit, before I gained my eyes. Even with this otherworldly sight bestowed upon me, I could see little aside from what the faint glow of guttering torchlight revealed: a spiral of cellblocks and corridors embedded within the walls surrounding the Great Stair, which centered the dungeons, plunging from the foundations of the palace and down into the abyss.

In life, I was taught about the eight layers of Pandemonium—each one uniquely tailored for different manners of sinners. The priests of my homeland did not know about the Vale Betwixt, which has retroactively become the first since the beginning of the Dread Angel’s reign. So too, were they ignorant of the countless folds of Abyss sprawling like so many festering roots in endless soil.

Hell is only the beginning. Abyss descends farther than even my wise lord can see. This is why my duty is essential—my duty is everything.

So many of the lost and damned attempt the climb, to break free of their eternal judgment. Fools… Treading the Stair is a perilous venture. The smooth obsidian is slick, and one could easily slip and fall through the hole bored through the Earth’s crust and into unfathomable depths. Most do not make it here. But those unfortunate few who do, trade but one prison for another. For none may walk the Stair and suffer not the wrath of Lord Grahtz. Yet the good lord is merciful and recognizes strength. Through his gift, even the lost may be found and the damned reborn. All they must do is serve…

I had escorted the Dread Angel’s riders, a man and a woman, to their cells as commanded. Once within the cool interior of the Pit, after leaving the woman to her fate, I took the man to his own solitary cell, which was to become his eternal prison. His fear was palpable; I could smell his weakness like the excrement seething from every tortured orifice of his plague-wracked body. Surely, I had known him once. We had both lived beneath the Dread Angel’s surveillance, and we both knew the bitter taste of her disease. Yet, I chose the road to righteousness, and he, the wicked path to damnation. For that, I could not forgive him, no matter our shared origin, nor would I pity him his ill fate.

“You are scum,” I said, sealing him away forever. “How dare you be so arrogant as to think you could invade our great city?”

I assumed the man would utter some vile nonsense, shout obscenities—it is what I would expect from a delinquent of the Dread Angel’s court—but he said nothing. I did not look at him, nor could I see his expression even if I had, but I felt his contemplative gaze on me just the same.

His insolent restraint enraged me further.

“Have you nothing to say? Is your soul so depraved that you would accept your fate in silence?”

The bars rang as the prisoner wrapped his dirty fingers around them. “Who are you?”

Such an inane question. An insult. Surely, he was losing his mind.

“I am Invictus, sworn legionnaire of the Reborn Crusade. I am your captor.”

“No,” the man said at length. “That can’t be.”

“Silence, swine!”

“Who are you?” the man asked again before he was consumed by a coughing fit. “Before this…” he struggled to breathe. “What was your living name? Grant me this one kindness…”

The man’s stubborn insistence disturbed me. It was not his words, but the earnest quality to his tone—the familiarity of his voice. I wondered how I heard that voice echoing in the annals of my past, of another time, another life, nigh lost to memory.

I turned around. My intention was to enter his cell and beat him into silence, to split skin and break bone under the hammer of my fists, to purge his corrupted flesh of the weakness that ailed him and in so doing, with each blow, purge that which remained of my own. But my newly grown heart skipped a beat as I looked into his eyes, and saw my brother’s terror as he took in my monstrous form.

* * *

For days we slept, dreaming of Pandemonium.

After the first night in the observation chamber, we returned to my quarters where again I enjoyed the comfort of my own bed. The headmaster ordered pot after pot of scalding chamomile tea and an entire cask of sleeping powder. I conjured for him a fine guest bed befitting a man of his station. In my retirement, my bank accounts were no longer as abundant as they once were, but the expense was well worth the secrets we worked to descry. Besides, there has never been an invoice I failed to forward to the Citadel’s bursars for reimbursement.

Between dreams, we convened in my study, analyzing and interpreting all that we had witnessed, notating as much as we dared remember. Oft we all forget our dreams within mere minutes of waking, and this is no less true for oneiromancers. Details are fleeting, and pesky—it takes much fortitude to hang onto them long enough to prepare paper and quill and ensnare them on the page.

The following events were viewed remotely, over the course of several weeks, between mid-April to early-May of the one-hundred-and-thirtieth year after Arrival. I have worked tirelessly to present a narrative composed of my own experiences, compiled with those of Headmaster Pascal Doon.

* * *

Standing on a ridge, I gazed down into the bluffs and saw the smoky silhouette of the Burning City in the distance, centered by what looked like an ebon needle threading the horizon: the Great Stair. We were close, within a day’s walk or an hour’s flight on Krakow’s back. Arthur’s injuries were such that they forced us to remain grounded, damned to an exhausting march over the plains of Grahtzildahn.

Luckily, we had evaded all resistance—with a few close calls.

I stared at the black line splitting the landscape and cursed myself for faltering in my convictions. Command was in my grasp, and indefinite pleasure, unknowable ecstasy… but my heart, beating in the dirt somewhere so very far from me, ached more than my loins. And so, I renewed my oath to Dusk and resolved to shepherd her Chosen to his destiny.

And what of my destiny? What of Citha’s?

We had left Citha behind as she had requested. Odds were that she had been devoured by the horde encountered in the Screaming Fields. More likely, she now led a horde of her own. I wondered when I might hear tell of a new commander subjugating the other hellish lords, bending them to her will, and destroying the fools who dared to resist.

Arthur finally made it up the ridge, my Krakow slithering behind him. Arthur’s face was gaunt, his hair gray and falling out in clumps. Yet the web of veins in his neck and face pulsed with vigor. The Goddess within him had awakened, seeming to take as much as she had given.

In life, I had always written off the tale that Dusk had possessed Cain, capturing the Kaza’duran city in a single night. I wouldn’t know. On the Night of Tears, I was indulging in a brothel at a trading post, one hundred leagues away, that I had all too eagerly volunteered to hold while my companions marched on.

Seeing him—seeing her—the calamity that followed our unlikely victory in the Sands now made disturbing sense. For the first time, I now knew those tales to be true. For countless years, that truth was obscured from me. I felt safe then, in my ignorance, satisfied with my lowly position of power under Morgana’s heel.

No longer.

“I cannot abide this heat another day,” I said, staring at the blackened armature of the Burning City. “I’ve already marched three years across one desert with you, Arthur. Tell me you’re well enough to ride.”

My friend stood tall, despite the weight he carried. He breathed deep, and even in the full light of day, I felt the blistering waves emanating from him. Ever more, he looked like a corpse, but embodied incomprehensible greatness. Be he zealous fanatic or unwavering demigod?

Tightening his fist around the hilt of his sword, he said: “Yes—but we fly not to the gates.”

I sighed. “Then how do you presume to enter the blasted city?”

“There is a cave mouth on the outskirts of the city, outside the walls, that leads underground,” Krakow spoke into our minds. “We will enter through the Pit.”

I swung about, gaping at my mount. “How in Hell do you know that?”

“Another form… I had been sentenced to eternity in the Pit. I can only attribute my freedom to chance. A Reborn had gone berserk, driven mad by endless servitude, and beaten me to a bloody pulp. Our once-mistress plucked my soul from the ether, weaved for me this avian body, and bound me to you.”

“And why, my most formidable companion, have you withheld this information from me?”

“I’ve told you this tale, Syr Derrida, many times. You do not listen.”

I watched a lizard chase a scurrying field mouse between craggy rocks at our feet. Blackened roots crept through the cracks in the arid soil, withered in the furnace heat of the plains. Say what you will of the administrators of Pandemonium—at least the Demon King maintained order, an ecosystem within his realm. All Morgana had done with her near infinite power—was build a bloody sewer.

“Our children have likely been captured,” Arthur said. “I will not allow my daughter this fate. I have forgotten her too many times… I will not do so again.”

A waterwheel churned in my guts, transmuting my organs to sludge. But I did not protest. I was so sick of being a coward.

* * *

Armed with the radiance of Dawn, Kateryna sawed at the iron bars enclosing her cell with the incandescent blade of the Sun Spear. The sycamore haft was warm. Just holding it invigorated her atrophied muscles. The Mourning Sun fueled Kateryna, and in turn, her own will fueled the spear. Kateryna shined a glorious solar, the physical embodiment of Great Mother Birth. Unlike her dark mirror, Dawn had bestowed a mighty gift unto her Chosen. Within minutes, Kateryna freed herself from her eternal prison, and by sheer luck, not a soul tarried in the corridor to stop her.

Pulled by unconscious certainty, Kateryna approached the open ledge, her bare toes hovering over bottomless depths. She looked up, beheld the Great Stair in all its foreboding grandeur. A single spiral column, hewn from a shaft of obsidian, was all that stretched between Life and Death, between the waking world and the Abyss.

Further along the corridor, Kateryna heard tortured souls screaming, begging for sweet release that would never come, then the ascending sequential footsteps of the patrolling legionnaires. Guilt poked its ugly head at the back of her mind. In life, she had abandoned Seth just as her father abandoned her—yet Seth had not survived the heartbreak. Now, with the unknown fate of her mother resting on her shoulders, Kateryna was confronted by an impossible decision.

“I’m sorry…” she whispered into the isolating darkness of the descending corridor. “Our happiness was never accounted for.”

With the strength of Dawn, the Mourning Goddess, Kateryna lept from the ledge, soaring above the infinite void, landing painfully on her chest against the sharp edge of the Stair. Using the Sun Spear for leverage, she hauled herself onto the slick, obsidian steps.

“I promise,” she said between labored breaths. “I will set things right.”

* * *

“How in the fuck is it so cold down here?” I groaned, shivering—bloody shivering—within the fiery depths of Grahtzildahn. “How much longer, Krakow?”

“We are drawing near, Syr Derrida.”

Arthur’s strides were long, and I took two steps for every one of his. The paradox of his continued existence was striking. Even in the wan glow of my lantern, I saw sinkholes darkening his features, the shape of his skull so pronounced I hardly recognized him. He was a shell, barely withholding the boundless power of the goddess.

I understood none of it—I just wanted it all over with.

“And what will you do then, my most contemplative master?”

Get out of my head, you bloody bird. We’ve discussed this.

“There’s nowhere to go. We’ve betrayed the mistress.”

In an ideal world, I would have little need for a mistress going forward. But those were just hopes, and I had no clue how to maintain my newfound sovereignty in the days to come. Perhaps I might return, fall to my knees, and beg for mercy. My plans, such as they were, came and went with every step I took in those wretched tunnels, dashed and rewritten every time I remembered the gentle sway of Morgana’s divine bosom beneath her silks.

Arthur cleared his throat; something in his chest rattled as he took his next breath. He was a walking bag of bones. I might have been tired, and damned frustrated, but I had already followed that man to Hell and back—in every sense of the phrase—and I was not keen on the notion of his demise.

At least… for as long as I could reasonably accompany him. I love the man—but I’m not setting foot on that bloody staircase again. I shivered at the thought; the horrors I had experienced on my singular, solitary descent into Sloth.

“We’re here,” Arthur said, his deathly timbre reverberating through the stone surrounding us.

“Welcome to the Pit, Syr Derrida.”

“Let’s keep our stay short, shall we?” I said, fondling the hilt of my ruined smallsword.

We emerged from the tunnel into a wide chamber, torches lining the walls and running in unending spirals in every direction. Despite the torchlight, we were consumed by viscous black. I had expected a greeting party of armed interlopers, but there was nothing save for the stench of shit and piss, the wretched cries of the damned, the cracking of whips, and the whir of chthonic machinery.

Arthur muttered incomprehensibly under his breath, his voice suddenly feminine—the voice of Dusk. I blinked, and now I saw clearly the desolation of the Pit; the stained floors and jagged walls, the all-too-narrow ledge, and a glorified manhole that must have led to an altogether more unpleasant doom.

Yet, still, there was no patrol to be seen.

“He is expecting our arrival,” said Dusk through the withering mouth of my friend. “He feels me—and I feel him.”

“Erotic.”

Arthur grabbed both my shoulders, his manic, dark eyes trained on mine. In his own voice, he said: “We free our children, then confront Grahtz.”

“You’ve lost your fucking mind!”

“Do you think he will simply allow us to walk out of here? The Demon King must perish if we are to survive.”

I shook my head, shrinking from his grasp. “You can’t be serious… This is mad!”

“Flee if you want, Derrida,” Arthur said, tossing me aside before striding up the corridor. “Either way, I will do what I must. I didn’t expect your help, anyhow.”

Krakow padded silently behind him, leaving me blustering alone. I watched Arthur’s back for a time, considered turning around. Once he stepped from my sight, everything again went black. I cursed under my breath and ran after him.

* * *

For the first time, my new heart ached—the heart I had grown, I had earned. I knew my prisoner spoke true. He was my brother, and he had travelled an immeasurable distance to find me, only to be repaid with unending peril. In every way, I was torn. Loyalties divided, memories fragmented, my body and soul were at war.

“Say your name…” Seth collapsed to his knees, tears streaming down his face. “You must remember!”

“I am Invictus…” I insisted, as if my voice were not ruled by my heart. Something died inside of me as I watched my brother’s expression fall. “So too, was I once your brother. I remember now… My name was Isshiah Aslor, of Daizeton. I perished of the Dread Angel’s plague soon after you took your own life… Why did you, brother?”

I watched Seth’s stubbled jaw quiver; his eyes widened with sorrow. “I did not think—”

“No, you did not. You thought only of yourself, of your own sorrow.”

“I left you alone,” he said, breathing heavily, “but I have come far, and this time, I will not leave you.”

“After I was slain by Morgana’s herald,” I said, all warmth fleeing from my tempered enclosure, “I was brought here, where I have lived and toiled for nearly thirty years. I am Invictus. Whether you meant for it or no, I have lived on my own, and I have found my calling.”

“Thirty years…” My brother’s tears ceased, his countenance ambivalent. The catharsis of learning the truth is oft accompanied by the emptiness of the mystery’s absence. Moments passed before he spoke again. I have no way of knowing how long we stood in silence. Perhaps a year, perhaps but a minute.

“Isshiah… please. If not me, then free Kateryna. She must ascend the Stair. What’s at stake is so much bigger than us! You’ve lived beneath Morgana’s scrutiny, witnessed her folly as I have. Something has been amiss for longer than either of us have existed—but Kateryna can fix it!”

“What is wrong, brother? Tell me that. Then venture to explain how a lone, mortal woman would repair it? You speak nonsense! You’ve been driven mad by your perilous, foolish journey to save me, Invictus, who never needed saving!”

“I’m… no—”

“You are naive to believe anything that woman told you. Do you not remember the knife she thrust into your very soul?”

Seth nodded meekly. “Of course I do.”

“And yet you deign to tell me that she holds some magic key that will right some amorphous, cosmic wrong? You are my brother, Seth Aslor, our souls cannot lie, but the good Lord Grahtz is my liege! He alone has saved me from eternal torment. He alone engineered my superior body! Inside this armor, I have cultivated new innards, a heart wholly my own. How dare you demand I betray these gifts!”

“Stand down, son.”

Startled, I swung about, ready to draw my blade. I stayed my hand when my eyes settled on a man I had not seen since my short years in the waking world. My lord father, Syr Derrida Aslor, somehow stood before me. Trailing close behind was another of the Dread Angel’s beasts, and her Chosen, the very same who had slashed my throat.

I knelt as any good legionnaire should, a mix of instinct and convoluted rehearsal from the blending of my previous lives. “Father…”

He placed his warm hand upon my shoulder, beckoning me to rise, then swept me up in an embrace. Half my height and horribly thin, it was a strange, disproportionate gesture—yet it had healed a wound that, until then, had been hidden from me.

“Will you free your brother?”

I shook my head. “The good lord—”

“The Demon King will be dead before I leave this place,” said Morgana’s herald, the master of the raven that had assaulted the palace. His face was gaunt, his skin without color, as if he were becoming dust before my eyes. “Aid us or die—with him.”

“Go along with their plan, my Reborn,” whispered the good lord inside my mind. “This confrontation is unavoidable. I would have you by my side when it comes to pass.”

Slowly, I rose and willed Seth’s cell open. Together, in silent solidarity, I led that motley crew to the block where Kateryna Cain was held. I knew the good lord had plans for her, and as we came upon the melted bars of her empty cell, it seemed my liege had been hard at work.

My brother fell to his knees. My father placed a reverent hand upon his shoulder. “Can’t say I’m surprised, given how she did’ya last time.”

“It’s not that.” Seth wiped his nose with his forearm, black with grime. “I never thought we would escape this place. I’m a sorry fool for thinking she’d need my help.”

“Come,” the Chosen said, striding up the corridor. “Time is short. We must forge a distraction, so her ascent may go unnoticed.”

With that, we ran through the twisting corridors and cell blocks of the Pit. A pit of my own had opened in my heart, as my companions were unshakeable in their resolve to murder the good lord—and already I knew which side I would choose when swords were drawn. In every way possible, I was torn.

* * *

For the second time, the Goddess’s power destroyed Cain from the inside out. Though his chthonic form could better withstand the currents of divine energy pulsing through his veins, time was short. With not a moment to waste, Cain strode ahead of his companions, leading them through the empty halls of the Demon King’s palace.

Dusk had warned Cain what lay ahead—the Demon King had withdrawn his entire legion so he could flaunt his power for all to witness. Cain knew Grahtz meant to put an end to Dusk, for his own survival depended on the Goddess’s final fall.

Thus, the Demon King had to die. There was no alternative. Cain had to descend the Stair. He had to help Kateryna… had to help Stasia. To succeed in his divine mission, every piece must be in place; else the entire foundation whereupon fate rests would crumble. Else, his lifetime of wrongs would go unanswered, unrepented.

Thus the Demon King must perish—this was Cain’s conviction.

“This is it, eh?” Derrida said as they passed into the entry hall of the ground floor and came upon the massive double doors, forged of solid brass. “I don’t think we get in unless he wants us to…”

“He’s expecting us.” Cain pointed to the Reborn, once Derrida’s younger son. “Open it. Now.”

Invictus hesitated but did as he was bid. Pressing his gauntleted hands, filled with mottled flesh and chemically formed bones, against the door, Invictus pushed. They swung open with a resounding clamor.

Cain looked back over his shoulder, his eyes sharp as cold steel. “The Reborn does not serve you. He was your boy, once. But Grahtz’s hold on his creations outweighs bonds of blood.”

“Aye…” Derrida watched as Invictus crossed the threshold, his lips pale, drawn tight. “Thanks for the tip. What do we do now?”

“Succeed.”

Derrida swallowed. “Simple enough.”

As the party entered the throne room, an entire legion of Reborn shifted to stand at attention, their stiff movements ringing out like a gong on a mountaintop. All fell silent as Cain led his reluctant procession into battle against a godlike entity in his own demesne.

“The Dread Angel returns to my court at last!” cried the Demon King atop his throne, from which he could not rise. He raised his flabby arms, festering folds hanging from a malformed and malnourished skeleton. “If only I had more time to prepare, I would have—”

The Demon King ceased his vile litany, for he found a flaming longsword had pierced his flaccid throat. “Argh—no…” he gurgled in protest, but the deed was done. In an instant, faster than anyone could perceive, Cain had taken the form of Dusk and, with the blinding speed of a scorned warrior goddess, ended the eons-long reign of Lord Grahtz, Demon King of Grahtzildahn, with a single thrust.

Grahtz groaned and faded from reality; his soul dispersed into the ether, to be gathered and made anew. So too did Dusk fade, towering over the masterless legion, shrinking back to inhabit Cain’s degenerating body, as he strode back out the doors whence he came. His errand—and truly, that was all Grahtz was to him—was finished.

Yet so much more remained to be done.

* * *

I fell to my knees, my will snuffed out in an instant. My fellow Reborn stared listlessly at the Herald—without the direction of our liege, we were powerless to avenge his memory. My father was the one to intercept Morgana’s Chosen, the assassin of kings.

“I can go no further, Arthur!”

The Chosen stopped. Without looking back, he said: “You’ve come far enough, my friend. Claim your spoils.”

I watched an idea blossom in my father’s eyes, a smirk spreading across his narrow face. He flicked his head towards the now-empty throne. His foul griffin, wearing the aspect of the bald eagle native to my homeland, surged with a flurry of wings to envelop Lord Grahtz’s seat. Then, Lord Derrida Aslor ascended, sitting upon the throne of Grahtzildahn.

In an instant, my will had been dashed to smithereens. In another, I was restored—torn no longer.

* * *

Pascal Doon and I snapped awake the moment Syr Derrida sat upon Grahtz’s throne. We exchanged glances, unsure if what we had witnessed was indeed true. A resounding pulse shook the walls, bringing down paintings and framed maps tumbling to the floor. Phrygia remained in the clouds for the eleven days of the academic week, where we were safe from seismic phenomena—and though an earthquake could never reach us, the city shook, buffeted by rippling forces shaking reality itself.

“This is unprecedented,” said Pascal Doon the Lavender.

“Quite.”

“We must intervene. This cannot continue without our intercession.”

“The balance must be restored,” I declared, flinging open the glass door to my balcony, exposed to naught but open sky, “lest all our souls be damned.”

My dear friend followed me outside. We stood together for a time, him staring out to the horizon, which was no doubt beyond beautiful in the late afternoon, and I, taking my last whiff of fresh, salty air, listening to the distant waves of the Black Sea below.

“You’ve not yet visited Pandemonium, have you, headmaster?”

Pascal Doon snorted. “You know I haven’t.”

“We’ll be sure to catch the sights on the way home.”

With that, I let the air take hold of me as I leapt from my balcony. Embraced by billowing winds, I cursed under my breath as I realized I had again, in my haste, forgotten to dress. Not a second more had passed before I heard the great swooping of dragon’s wings and felt hard scales embedding themselves into my bare ass. Pascal Doon the Lavender, one of the seven living elder dragons, let out a mighty roar. Chanting, I conjured a new set of travelling robes and opened before us a dimensional rift leading to Dysmorphia—the ninth layer of Pandemonium.