The tunnel wormed its way down through the earth. It smelled of damp stone and mildew, and a mist exuding its own cold light hung at ankle length. It flowed over the ground like a river, and felt cold as ice through my armor.

Casimir was right behind me. He'd produced a lantern of a strange design, with silver vines worked onto its cage and a light that seemed no warmer than the shadows it chased away.

"The way is shut," he said in his eerie hiss.

I stared at the strange tunnel. "We're where I think we are?"

"Near enough, but we are still closer to the surface."

The dead man nodded down the tunnel and started to walk. I followed him. Not far down, in a wider cavern with the evidence of rotted masonry on the walls, the mercenaries Falstaff lent me waited. Sans sat cross legged on the ground, mumbling an incessant chant in a language that felt like cold slime in the air. A sorcerer's cant, I suspected, and an old one. Eilidh was there, seated on an outcrop of rock with a lantern next to her. She comforted Maryanne, scorched and upset, who was holding Flora's head in her lap and sobbing quietly over it.

Lucienne wasn't there. Neither were the three who'd delivered me on the raft into the city. They'd probably escaped another way. I still didn't know which of them had sold us out and nearly gotten Delphine killed in that ambush.

Perhaps that would have been better.

Sans ended his chant, though it took a moment longer for him to come back to himself. His eyes were rolled up into his skull, showing only veiny white, but they settled back into place and fixed on me. "What in every hell happened up there?" He asked without preamble.

Eilidh shrugged. "All kinds of hell, as it turns out. You waited long enough."

"This magic is dangerous," Sans shot back. "I explained the theory already, didn't I? Where's the other one, that doctor?"

Everyone looked at me, including Eilidh. She looked uncertain what to say.

"Lost to us," I said. Without elaborating I addressed the necromancer directly. "Are you certain that the way is closed behind us?"

Sans scowled. "Yes, but that doesn't mean we're safe. I told you how dangerous this is, didn't you—"

"Then let's get moving, before the Underworld takes notice of us."

I hadn't gone into Baille Os without an escape plan, not wanting a repeat of Vinhithe. After Sans explained the concept of a Cthonian Nail, the necromantic technique he'd compared to how the Credo Ferrum intended to use their ritual, I'd asked him if it could be done in reverse. Rather than punching a hole into the Land of the Dead for the dead to escape into the surface world, could we instead go down?

He'd said it was possible, but likely to get us killed more horribly than if we'd remained and fought it out with the Zosite. I'd told him to be ready to extract us right out of the cathedral. He'd grumbled, but agreed after Eilidh and Flora spoke to him.

I glanced at what was left of the eldest of the three vampires who'd accompanied us. Maryanne had closed Flora's eyes and adjusted her hair, so if I ignored the fact there wasn't anything from the neck down she might have just been asleep.

I tried to find some measure of regret, of grief, but felt nothing in that moment. I was numb, in shock perhaps, and I hadn't really known her besides. The thought that there was one less monster in the world drifted through my mind.

Maryanne's crying was starting to get on my nerves. It took an effort not to be cruel in the moment, to lash out at something.

Failure. You fucking failure. You didn't accomplish anything today. Delphine has the Zoscian.

Shyora has it. She's back.

Maryanne suddenly ceased her sniffling and looked up. "You're wounded." Her eyes fixed on the spot where I'd been gored by a fetterfiend. Some of its tusk was still in me.

"I'll live," I said. The pain was good. It kept me focused, kept me from feeling much else. I'd get my armor off and see to the wound when I wasn't surrounded by dubious allies who might take advantage of my weakness.

"Something lurks near," Casimir hissed.

I turned the way Eilidh and I had come. "Damn it, Sans, you said the way was closed."

"It is." The necromancer stood and muttered under his breath. "I sense it too. It's not coming from behind us. Probably from one of the other crypts, they riddle this whole area, and there are plenty of ways in."

"I thought we were in the Underworld?" Maryanne asked. She glanced down at Flora and brushed some locks of hair from the dead woman's face. "Oh, I didn't want to bring her here. She. was always afraid of when they'd drag her down into the dark, but I didn't want to leave her back there either."

Casimir reached out and squeezed the vampire's shoulder with skeletal fingers. Maryanne smiled at the wight and wiped her tears away. The undead swordsman spoke in his echoing whisper. "We are not in Draubard. The line is fluid and wide, and we are in the places between."

I ignored their chatter and walked further into the cavern. As Casimir said, we weren't actually in Draubard but in that vague place between the surface world and the realm of the dead that lay beneath it. Caverns, catacombs, buried vaults, a labyrinth of decay that lay between the world above and the one below.

I knew there were monsters in this place too. We'd kept the old afterlives at bay for centuries, but built our own facsimile of them in the interim.

The living weren't welcome in these roads. It was dangerous skirting so close, but I'd taken the risk anyway.

"Where are you going?" Eilidh asked when I didn't stop. "Give us a minute, why don't you? Maryanne is hurt, and we're all… shaken."

"Rest then," I said. "I won't be far."

I needed a minute myself. I needed space, or I'd end up losing control in front of them. I walked deeper into the tunnels, past sections of stonework so blended with the dirt and natural rock it was hard to tell most of it apart.

This is the world the dead dwell in, I thought, staring at that moldering decay. Catrin and the other vampires are treated like freaks and criminals because they won't stay down here with all the other ghosts and wights.

And because they eat people.

I walked a long ways. I had to, because I knew sound would carry down there. I walked until the churning sensation in my chest became too much, and only then did I stop.

I still held the sword Urddha gave me. My sword, reforged to feel like my original, made for me even before the axe. It felt like the same sword I'd used to… when she had…

I took it in both hands and swung it with all my strength, shattering it against the cavern wall. Shards flew everywhere. One grazed the corner of my right eye and left a gash just below my temple.

I stood there for several minutes, breathing hard. The marks on the left side of my face had stopped bleeding some time before, but the fresh one formed a new streak on the opposite side. The pain from the other injuries I'd taken that day beat through my muscles in time with my heartbeats.

Regret came quick and hard. I stared at the broken weapon, feeling numb, then slumped against the cavern wall and let the sword clatter to the floor. My fist hit the rock once, then again. The third was half hearted. I let my head fall against the cold stone and wallowed in the pain for some time.

Only when I felt something watching me did I raise my head again. I pushed away from the wall and looked into the darkness, focusing my will on my eyes to increase my ability to see through it.

Some power fought against me. The Alder felt weaker here. It wasn't welcome.

Instead I picked up the broken sword, summoned flame, and held it up like a torch. A growl rippled out of the dark in reaction to the light, followed by two flickers of orange flame. Two eyes like hot coals burned in the depths of the cave. I knew who approached before he'd even stepped forward.

"Vicar."

The crowfriar had survived, if barely. When he stumbled out of the shadows, the extent of his injuries shocked me. He was still in his hellhound form, and he'd been brutalized. He favored one leg, limping forward painfully with each step. His right eye was just a blind smudge of burnt flesh and blisters. Multiple wounds on his ribs dripped blood like magma onto the rocky floor of the cavern, each sizzling as they landed. Ribbons of acrid fumes were coming off his body, like he was melting away right in front of me.

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"Alken." The huge wolf's voice rumbled in the tunnel's narrow confines. "I did not know if I would find you again."

"I thought you might be dead," I said. Would he make one last effort to kill me, claim some small victory from this mutual disaster?

I felt more than ready for another fight.

He didn't answer immediately, and when he spoke his voice was calm. "I will be soon. The abgrüdai found me after our duel. They gave me these wounds."

"Plan to try taking me back to Hell with you?" I asked.

He studied me thoughtfully. "What happened in the crypt?"

I closed my eyes against the barrage of fresh memory. I watched Delphine sign the contract again, the flower fashioned of corpses opening, the demon's ghostly eyes glaring at me with so much hate.

"Delphine betrayed me." I hesitated a moment longer before adding in a rasp. "Shyora is back."

Vicar stared at me hard for a long time. I heard the others enter the tunnel behind me. They were watching and listening, but I ignored them.

I started with a sudden realization. "You knew. You knew she was planning this."

Vicar's lupine head dipped down wearily. "I suspected the possibility, but thought her too rational to do such a thing. Still, the chance was why I did not allow you to take the volumen back at Lias's sanctum, why I encouraged you to be rid of her. You have taken steps to purge the succubus's influence from yourself, and had innate resistances besides. Delphine has held that parasite in her thoughts all this time, and she is only mortal."

I didn't miss the implication that I wasn't, but had no interest in the devil's games just then. "You think she was influenced? Controlled?"

"She is trained to resist such things, as a cenobite." Vicar shook his head in a very human gesture. "But she exposed herself to the demon all that time ago, allowed it to touch her soul. We can rule nothing out."

"She owned her own choices." I glared at him. "You said nothing."

"I never intended to let her touch the thing." The wolf's voice became admonishing. "And I owed you nothing, Alken Hewer. We were always enemies. And yet, I admit that even I did not expect the Adversary to make use of Delphine Roch. That the Credo was compromised, that I suspected, but had no surety. I had hoped that when the Tribunal arrived, they would root out the corruption themselves… but I begin to see just how far this heresy reaches."

Heresy. Such a word for it. I understood what he implied about his own actions. He'd believed I wouldn't be able to stop him and the rest of the Credo. I wouldn't have been to, if not for the Keeper, if not for Dis Myrddin and the Cardinal's betrayals. Vicar had delayed me aptly with the guardians he'd set and then with his own strength. Even up to the very end, he'd outmatched me in brain if not in brawn.

But in the end he'd kept his suspicions and his plots to himself, even from his own comrades, and that had taken its due.

"Deceived." I tightened my grip on the sword, but not in readiness for battle. The implication had finally started to settle on me. "You said we were all deceived, but you weren't just talking about Dis, were you? You believe that the Tribunal itself might have had something to do with this."

Vicar started to speak, but was interrupted when his legs gave out. He fell heavily to the rocky floor of the cavern and shuddered.

"He's dying," Eilidh said.

Vicar fixed his remaining eye on me. The burning light in it looked feverish in the dark tunnel. His voice became labored, low, but held a strength of focus. "To even suggest it is heretical. I have dedicated most of a thousand years to being Vicar of the Credo Ferrum's ninety-seventh mission. For eight centuries I have remained on this rock, this decaying world, and I have done their will. I have given them my eternity, my very soul, and believed that even in all their terrible cruelty, they remained pure to their mission."

His fiery eye wavered in the cavern's darkness like it were a candle about to flicker out. "I thought it was all for a higher purpose." He focused on me again. "You and I are both fools. The Zosite are no more infallible than your Choir, and none of this could have been accomplished without help from the other side."

I frowned. The others had started to gather close behind me to listen, but I remained fixated on the dying crowfriar. "What do you mean?"

"The Tribunal is not made up of fools. We give mortals the chance to make Zos act, but we know how stupid you can be, how short sighted. There are safeguards in place, ones even the Zoscians, those scraps of our god's flesh, cannot overcome with a mere sentence and a signature."

He lifted his head and snarled his next words. "Shyora's spirit could not have escaped her gaol unless it was opened. Someone in Hell abetted her escape."

The implications of that made me reel. "Who would do such a thing? Why?"

"I cannot say who," Vicar said. "As for why… to say the politics of Orkael are complex would be a gross simplification. It might have been to the advantage of some faction to see Pernicious Shyora released into this land at this time, or perhaps the Courts of Hell have been infiltrated. The Abyss is near, and by no means tamed. You have seen how difficult it is to distinguish devil from demon, I am sure. It is as true for them as for you. Both sides are very old and have come to know one another, even in their mutual antipathy."

I started to speak again, but realized that Vicar had begun to heave, his ribs rising and falling in great labored breaths.

Eilidh spoke from right behind me. "He doesn't have long. I can… feel him going."

"Zos is calling me back," Vicar said in a quiet voice. "The bones of this body are crafted of Orkaelin iron, which tether my soul to Hell. I will be punished for my failures. My days as Vicar are done, and I doubt I'll ever see a living sun again. Perhaps in an eon the Zosite will find some use for me, but I shall suffer until then. I will not remain myself."

He looked at me again. "Or…"

I tilted my head. "Or?"

"You are surrounded by enemies and deceit," the devil told me. "It is clear to me that you do not understand the ways of Hell. And why would you? We have worked for centuries to obscure these truths from you. But in order to find the root of this… evil, then you may need my knowledge. My help."

"You want me to save you," I said in understanding.

He didn't answer. His eye closed and he spent some time breathing.

"Having a devil in your debt could be useful," Sans said, speaking up for the first time since Vicar had appeared. "Dangerous, though. They tend to always get the upper hand in their bargains."

"They also usually have the advantage to begin with," I said. "This is desperation on his part."

"True," Sans agreed. "Still. Not sure I'd trust him in your position."

"He was trying to kill us all day," Maryanne hissed angrily. "He's as much at fault for what happened to Flora as anyone. Let him burn, I say."

Eilidh remained silent, as did Casimir. The choice, I knew, was mine.

It would be dangerous to agree. Dangerous and blasphemous. But what did that even mean to me anymore? Could I afford to lose this chance, this resource?

It would be one less thing to worry about, to be rid of Vicar once and for all. He'd cause me enough trouble. Yet…

He was also right. This was too big for me. The corruption went deep. I remembered seeing Ager Roth's mirthful eyes in Kale Stour's face. How many more leaders were the abgrüdai using as mouthpieces? And there was still the remnants of the Credo to worry about, and Delphine, and now this potential new threat lurking beyond the very fabric of my reality.

Too much. I was drowning. I couldn't fight a war alone, and that's what this was — war. It didn't have two sides, good and evil, it wasn't between two nations or a cabal of rebellious lords backed by a mad wizard. This went beyond, into eternity.

How had Saint Perseus been corrupted? Draubard was supposed to have safeguards against that, and if even the Courts of Hell could be compromised, then why not a lesser sheol?

"You want to make a pact?" I asked the dying crowfriar.

Vicar's eye flared. "Yes."

I shook my head. "I can't heal."

I knew, instinctively, that what I'd done with the Alder Table hadn't given me that power back. I'd taken strength from it, but it wasn't a gentle or protective power anymore. It'd been too tarnished, was too angry.

"I already told you," Vicar said in a voice that'd fallen to a whisper. "My bones bind my spirit to Hell." He showed me his teeth. "I will need to be free of them."

I knelt at the huge wolf's side. Even so close to death, he gave off heat like a hot stove. I lifted up the broken sword. Its shattering had left a particularly sharp edge, if not a clean one.

"My first lesson about the ways of Orkael," Vicar said in an increasingly strained voice. "Never make any deal with a devil without a contract."

I hesitated. "I don't have a fragment of Zos. How—"

"You will need to carve it into my flesh," Vicar interrupted. "It will not compel the engines of Hell, but it will bind me."

I'd have to take his word for it. Devils can't lie, or so every devil seemed intent on telling me.

"This is diabolism and necromancy," Sans warned me. He didn't seem particularly disturbed, though his voice had a pensive edge. "Are you sure, Ser Knight? Your Choir won't look kindly on this."

He was right, of course, but my days as a paladin were long done. I was the Headsman, and intended to walk dark paths to safeguard the realm. The Choir could take what it paid for.

"You can lead us out of the city?" I asked Sans without looking away.

"Yes," the necromancer said. "The dead can guide me, if I ask them the right way."

"How far can you get us from the city? There will be Credo and Aureate crusaders hunting for us. Osheim lost its king today, and a demon is walking around in his corpse. We also probably collapsed half of Urn's oldest cathedral. People will want answers, and I don't have time to be held up here."

North. I needed to go north.

"It'll be a long road," Sans said. "The Underworld isn't exactly a straight path. Could be days before you see the sun again."

I could go a while without sunlight.

"What are you plotting?" Vicar asked me.

I ignored him, though he was right to see a scheme forming behind my eyes. I needed to go north. There were answers in the north. The thought kept circling back on itself. It was an easier thing to focus on than what had happened inside that crypt.

I ran my thumb along the face of the sword, considering my options. Rosanna would be leaving Garihelm in the spring, and her path would go right through Osheim. Did the Emperor's city even know what was happening here? How long would it take for news to reach them, and what would be said? Was my lance still in Mirrebel? How would I explain all of this to them?

Lias was still with Urddha. She or another messenger would contact me sooner rather than later. Would he still be alive by then? He'd seemed so close to death.

Something told me he would endure, even if it took intervention from the very gods he hated. I wouldn't get off easy with Lias Hexer. He'd been given the Headsman's Doom, and one way or another we would have to face that fact, to pay the cost of our choices. He'd only earned a stay of execution with his confession, not absolution from it.

But before any of that, I had work to do right in front of me. Ugly work.

"This is going to hurt," I warned Vicar.

The devil's red eye didn't even blink. "Yes. Do exactly as I say."

With that, I began to cut.

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