Damn everything, Bethany would have done the same if she could. She would have hurled herself upon a mountain and driven it into the sea to save Sedrick. Reason still clung to her like an unwelcome stench—eye-watering, obnoxious, suffusing her rage with intrusive restraint.

That was not what she wanted. Call down fire and judgement—oh, let the righteous be spared. As for the wicked, as for the one who wrought havoc without heed for what he had wrought, let him be purged in the blaze, like dross when testing gold.

She steadied her breath; all eyes were upon her. She stood at the head of an army soon to march into war. Her grief would be settled later, lest she grant calamity its wage to pay. Already, whispers of her outburst rippled through the host, questioning her command now that their saviour had arrived. But Havoc was a weapon, not a commander. They still needed her—and she needed this: something to kill, something to hate, something to occupy her thoughts and bar them from returning to failures-mounting-failures, and the loss of her friend.

'Peregrine,' she commanded. Her gaze slanted to the side, catching sight of that unsettling man, with his clown-colours and his penchant for death.

'The path shall soon open,' he intoned, 'as shall the gates of hell.'

Harper recoiled at the edge of Bethany's vision. The priestess belonged to a fearful sect; Bethany had little doubt she would draw back from her own shadow. Still, there was insight in the woman—some flicker of intuition worth heeding. A good commander did not disregard the instincts of her seconds.

But as the thought pressed her tongue to her teeth, Bethany faltered. She had left Harper to die, scared and alone. Even standing this near was like a vice tightening about her gut.

'Listener, what do you hear?' Rexford asked, stealing from Bethany's lips the question she should have voiced.

Harper's breath hitched again, but not from the heart. It was more like she had been asked to recite a lesson she had never learned.

'It's nothing—' Harper stammered, then faltered, tilting her head as if following the tail of a sound. 'Wait, no. The song has changed—drums like laughter, pipes like wind cutting leaves. I don't—I don't know what it means.'

'Because it doesn't mean anything,' Aurelia chimed, her tone like honey drizzled over a festering wound.

'Perhaps not,' Rexford said. 'Still, best be heedful of… drums.'

Murmurs hummed through the throng. Fingers twitched; shoulders jerked. Faces turned to one another, flicked to Bethany, then settled on Havoc—their hope, their saviour, the reason they still believed they could triumph. It brought Bethany's teeth to her lip, but she understood. They had glimpsed the enemy only for moments, yet they had felt their power—Soldier-ranked, overwhelming. Among her host, there were few such soldiers. Not so among the cultists. Her men must have feared they were marching to their deaths.

But with Havoc—with that world-defying might that could strip the Dungeon's protection, the same power he had flaunted in his ostentatious arrival—he brought not only overwhelming strength, but turned their numbers into an advantage.

They should strategise. She could not. Her chin was too high—her eyes too stern. And what good was there in plotting with a bull? Better to set it loose in the temple, let it trample and gore; no hand could steer its horns.

Her shoulders knotted like mismanaged wire; her host refocused, scrutinising her every tangled spool. None were as probing as the Lord-Mayor.

He stood at the head of a formation of his own—nearly ninety fighters, a company comprising the haughty and the frail. Throughout the campaign they had kept to the rear, yet now, nearing the final battle, his glass-blown sheep stood shoulder to shoulder with the tested fighters at the front.

Repellent.

'Is something the matter, Vice-Marshal?' Atticus hissed, just as the walls of the passage quaked and began to draw down.

****

The walls were coming down. The ground trembled beneath Atticus' feet—fitting, as things should be. Mountains ought to shake when proclaiming a giant.

He would be that giant; his name would be uttered with reverence and fear. Children would pray to their parents that he not crush them, and their parents would pray to their gods all the same. Only he would hear them—and let their cries be in vain.

At last! He could have howled—but kept the cry within.

The world would soon burn; he would be remade in the flames. Nothing would stop him—nothing. Not the Enforcer. Not her dogs. Not even Havoc—that stain in his sight.

Calm yourself.

He was daring, not reckless. Ambitious—not the fool. Even with his careful planning, much could yet go astray.

The Listener, for a start—with her drums and her leaves. Perhaps she was wise to the Seeding, divining the roots of the garden buried above, where they now stood below. She might even know of the mulch he had made of the slain Soldier-Spawn, or that even now, he had prepared his men as compost to feed the great tree.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

Then there was Havoc. What could that boy not do? In mere hours since his arrival, his myth had towered into legend—even in the eyes of his own company. Some went so far as to whisper of sedition, scheming to wrangle their way to the Enforcer and seek the boy's favour. They spoke of adoption, of marriage, of alliances to strengthen their lines.

The low nobility Atticus led were fading stars, clutching at the nearest spark to see themselves renewed. Even before Heureux's fall, their Houses had little renown to spare; the greatest among them had not seen a War-Master in their blood for two hundred years. Havoc was potential—an opportunity to graft new strength to dying stock. Yet it mattered little now; their lines had reached their ends.

'Our people are ready, sir,' Fenton whispered into Atticus' ear as the tunnel wall ground down further.

'Excellent. And the veil?'

'It won't survive a sustained attack—' Fenton began.

'Not a problem. They'll be too busy fighting among themselves. And if anything goes wrong…' Atticus slid his gaze across the scarlet sheen of Rexford's armour, then toward the broken man nursing his smokeless pipe. 'We have our two gallant knights to buy us time.'

Fenton nodded, then paused. His dullard lips flapped open like a carp's, unspoken questions pressing at his tongue.

'Go on,' Atticus invited.

'Sir, is it—is it really possible? That through Undoing you can call back the dead, like you promised him?'

Of course not.

'Of course,' Atticus purred. 'Do not mistake my Inheritance for weakness. You know how I excel in the occult. All I lack is the raw power to bend the world—but soon I shall have it. I always make good on my oaths.'

Fenton straightened his spine and tugged his sleeve back into shape. Fitting—he would dress in his finest for a funeral; for the day he would die.

****

Blood coursed down the sides of the altar where Gloria lay—legs open, knees drawn to her waist, only the barest sheet to veil her nakedness. The child writhed within her, thrashing her womb with such force that her stomach rippled and bulged where it struck. She howled her anguish to the rock-covered heavens, jaws locked in a pain-ridden grin.

'Tear it out!' she cried, but the men in robes did not listen. They merely glanced her way before returning to the scrolls in their hands.

A few times the men noticed her. When the child's claws tore through her gut, they were quick to press it back down—but their priority was the ritual. The true ceremony was about to begin.

Incense choked the air; every strangled breath filled her lungs with it. There was no scent to the silver, yet its tarnish fumed acrid and biting. The smoke coiled with the burning herbs, the rotted fruit, the putrid pelts—maggots squirming through the fur partitions that circled the blood-soaked altar.

'Don't forget to breathe, you putrescent whore,' Florentia preened, sweeping aside the crawling furs as she stepped into the enclosure. 'Rare to find you in your natural posture—arse up, legs wide, moaning. Did you enjoy it so much when filling your womb with that bastard?'

'You filthy, cheap, ungrateful sow!' Gloria wailed—to Florentia's rising laughter.

'How scandalous!' Florentia chided. 'Wherever did a lady of such refinement acquire that foul tongue?'

One of the robed men laid a red-gloved hand on the wretch's shoulder, leaning close to whisper in her ear.

'Anointed child of our Master, do not antagonise the vessel at such a precarious time.'

'But it's the perfect time,' Florentia jeered. 'When better to twist the knife than when your quarry's on its knees… a posture she knows all too well.'

'Oh sister, oh sister, let your grievance take flight,' Silas sang as he stepped through the partition. 'Let her rest, leave her be, till comes the final rite.'

Florentia glared at her brother, her mouth drawn tight in that familiar sibling disdain. She held his stare for a while, then sighed and turned toward the exit.

'Are you coming then?' she spat, glancing back at him.

'The walls are falling, god's blood shall flow,' Silas answered as he moved toward her and took her hand in his. 'I cannot take our form alone.'

'A simple "yes" would've done,' Florentia grumbled.

The world trembled. Dust poured from the stone sky; maggots rained from the rotted, slapping the altar with their squirming convulsions. Blood-slick fingers pressed through Gloria's stomach, cerulean crystal-light shimmering across onyx claws.

Flesh and froth flecked from her mouth as she screamed and sat up, glimpsing the siblings' hands unspool like thread. Their merging quickened as they swept aside the furs—joining at the wrist, then the arm, then the shoulder and hip.

Two monsters of the Prelate's making—fused as one as the final battle drew near.

****

Marked not by the hand of any clock, but by the lightning surging through his veins and the thunderous beat of his heart, the time drew near. The great walls that stood like mountains guarding the exit were coming down. Soon he would be let slip to do the only thing he knew—kill until the ground sloshed red.

This was his perfect battlefield: no innocents to spare, no child's cries to stay his hand. Only slaughter waited behind those walls—it was what he wanted, what he needed, what he yearned for most.

Naereah's fingers locked into his, her hand warm beneath his touch. Like a drunkard poised on a cliff's edge, she drew him back from himself, the taste of iron fading from his tongue.

Pridewrought.

His gaze flicked down to the greatsword at his side. The blade was too pernicious—too destructive—for him ever to call his own. It twisted his thoughts toward base bloodshed, stealing from him the very reason he fought.

Or perhaps it was Envy. Or maybe it was Pride. Though, in the back of his mind, he feared it was simply himself—he who had lived a life in a handful of days. He who had struggled for years within the Nightmare Desert, returning soon after: five years in his mind, three days in the world.

Was he twenty, or was he fifteen? Just a boy—or already a man? He could not say. He had grown within the desert—in ability, in resolve, in paranoia, and in distrust. He was a Soldier; most of the Spawn he faced had been Champions, or worse. Those years had been spent in hiding, in fear, and in ambush.

He had been a killer before—now death was in his bones. He bled scarlet violence; he breathed the same into his lungs. That blood would be shed again. He wanted it. He needed it. But it would not be his master.

With a calming breath, he steadied his world. The world listened and steadied in turn. For that moment, the walls had come down.

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