«Are you absolutely sure you're okay?»

Grace shrugged, rolling her eyes. "That's the fifth time you've asked. I am. We heal fast, remember?"

«I remember,» I said. «I'm just…worried about how this is going to go. Given last time.»

We were making our way through the streets of the Old Quarter. In an effort not to get lost, the whole flight had taken almost the exact same route down towards the church as we had last time. It had been a few hours since the meeting with the spirit and Mother Latighern, and Emrys now carried several long pieces of vellum that bore a number of interlinked glyphs, as well as a generous supply of blood to burn.

"We know what we're up against this time," said Grace. "We have the upper hand."

I wasn't so sure the upper hand was good enough. All it would take was one mistake, and we could have a much worse injury than what Grace had suffered last night. My worry haunted me like a ghost as we walked down the wet, rainy streets. It felt far too cold now at the end of summer. Everywhere beneath the cliffs of Yorving had a stronger chill than anywhere on top of them, with banks of icy fog rolling down and cascading from the rocks like massive slow-motion waterfalls. The mist that obscured the air drew my attention to everything that I couldn't see that might be lurking in the fog, and every little noise that might be nothing or another fiend preparing to lunge at us.

The plaza where the church was was somehow even more foreboding now than last time. The bad memories of last night and the burning pain of poison seemed to seep up from the cracks in the cobblestones like a foul miasma. The claw traps that had failed to trigger before were gone, and another body had been added to the row of pillories.

«Alright,» I said as my two passengers climbed down. «Let's not waste any time. Emrys, we're starting with the music box.»

He nodded and led the way into the church, settling next to the basement door while the rest of the flight took up positions in the large hall. He set his glyphs aside for now, grabbing the music box from one of my bags and putting it right next to the door. It took a knock to rouse the fiends inside, who immediately began to snarl and scratch furiously at the other side.

«Brand, stay on the stairs in case this doesn't work,» I ordered. «Emrys, be ready with the glyphs.»

Emrys opened the box and wound it up before retreating back to his rolls of vellum while Brand took up her place. Fire had seemed to work well against them last night, and as much as I wished I could contribute my own flames, Brand was by far our best fire-breather. If the plan fell apart, the door was a choke point that the fiends wouldn't be able to cross without getting burned.

The chiming lullaby rang out from the tiny box on the steps. All of us held our breaths in silent trepidation as we waited to see if it would have any effect. The lullaby ran its course, and Emrys moved to wind it again. Rosalie sighed.

"I don't think it's—"

«Shh,» I hissed. «Listen.»

The scratching and snarling behind the door had ceased. All that there was now was a single low growl. Emrys glanced at me for confirmation, and I gave him a nod. He unrolled the glyph scrolls, draping them down from the stone floor to hand over the door as he retrieved a small, pristine porcelain bottle. Once it was unstoppered, fine red blood that contrasted strongly with the white outer shell of the bottle poured out freely, pooling on one simplistic glyph at the end of the vellum. All it took was a few sparks from firesteel to ignite, and scarlet flames ran through the ritual glyphs. The opposing glyphs on the door glowed red, and slowly began to crack like a piece of stone being chiseled away.

With a crumbling sound, the last of the glyphs on the door disintegrated, and the flames on the scrolls began to scorch the vellum, and Emrys quickly pulled them into a corner and stamped out the flames as they began to transition from the red of blood flame to the orange of ordinary, nonmagical fire.

"The seal is no more," he said. "Now's the time."

Brand went first, and I walked close behind as she gently pushed the door open. The interior of the basement was pitch black in the darkness of the evening rainstorm, but our vision was sufficient to make out the fiends, clustered in a corner away from the door. Their shining white eyes kept glancing between Brand and the music box as the largest one kept growling at us.

«They're grouped up,» I murmured to Brand. «Do it.»

Brand took a deep breath, and her throat glowed with orange light. I had to turn away before she exhaled. Despite the danger the monsters still posed, I couldn't watch. There wasn't any way for me to avoid hearing, though. The whoosh of flames spraying out over the room prompted the response of screams. They weren't animalistic yelps or howls at all. They sounded just like the screams I knew people, humans, made when they were burned alive. There was harsh scratching as claws scrabbled on stone, desperate for escape, then loud bangs as the desperation grew. Then only the crackling of fire, until Brand stopped exhaling.

She snorted in what sounded like amusement before she stepped forward into the room that was now shrouded and blackened with smoke and char. I finally turned my head back to see the corpses stacked partially on top of each other in the corner. The smell of burned flesh made me feel sick, and the mangled, twisted skeletons still holding onto scraps of skin didn't make me feel any better.

"It sounds like fire was effective," Ingo said from the top of the steps.

«Yeah,» I said, my mental voice somehow cracking. «It is.»

"Note for the future, then," said Emrys. "I know an alchemical recipe that might make your weapons a little more effective than they were before."

Brand cleared herself out of the basement once she was sure it was empty, letting me and Grace in behind her, with Griffin pushing their way into the small space once we had made enough room. Apart from the corpses, it was mostly empty save for piles of dead insects that lined the walls, and a chest in the corner opposite from where the fiends had cowered, far enough away to have been missed by the flames. Grace carefully avoided the hot spots on the floor as she walked over to open it.

I wasn't entirely sure what I was expecting would be inside. Before, I had fully expected the basement to be entirely empty except for the fiends locked in here, but perhaps Latighern would have left some meat for them to eat during the days when they can't come out, or maybe some kind of offering in the hopes that her saints would watch over them or cure them or something.

But what Grace actually pulled out of the chest was a stuffed doll. It was damaged and partly eaten by whatever insects had found their way in here, but it was still recognisable as a simple depiction of a lady in minister's vestments. Then came a metal spinning top, then a tin soldier, and finally a small wooden rocking horse.

"Toys…" she said under her breath.

«Children's toys,» I added.

The silent tension in the room held for a moment, and in it, I could practically hear Griffin's mind putting the pieces together. «What if…» they said slowly, like they weren't sure they wanted to even pose their question. «What if…they were….»

«I don't think they were actual children,» I cut in. I didn't have a lot to base that assertion on, but t was better than thinking too much about the alternative. «The rooms in Latighern's home didn't look like children's rooms. I'm guessing that they were adults by the time the Scourge took them, and…I don't know, maybe Latighern thought that their minds declined enough that children's toys would keep them occupied.»

«What if you're wrong?» Griffin fretted. «I don't think…we can't just….» Their breaths grew quicker and shallower.

«Even if I'm wrong, it doesn't matter what they were,» I said. «What they're doing now is eating people. Whoever they were is gone. This is the best we can do for them.»

«You don't know that!» Griffin shouted, their speech getting increasingly frantic. «The music calmed them down! What if—we could just, I don't know, maybe we can get them to…to just sit still until we can find a cure or something….»

They trailed off into fretful hyperventilating. I was about to tell them to get out of the church and maybe go back to the castle if they weren't okay with doing this when Grace moved forward, putting a hand on their shoulder.

"Breathe," she said.

«I feel like we just committed a murder,» Griffin muttered.

Grace glanced at me with a worried frown on her face. "Killing isn't easy," she said. "It's good that you don't lose that feeling. But we still need to do it sometimes to keep innocent people safe." She jerked her head towards the door, and I started making my way out, gently ushering for Griffin to follow behind. "Come on. The air down here is bad. Not that the streets here are much better, but it's a lot closer to fresh than this."

Griffin nodded, wiping an imaginary tear from their eye as they walked back out into the open ruins of the church. They glanced up at the sky that was finally beginning to clear away the rain. «I'm going to go for a flight,» they whispered.

Ingo shook his head from where he stood leaned against one of the crumbling pillars of the church. "Can't do that," he said. "We need to help set up the ambush."

Griffin spread their wings. «I wasn't asking,» they murmured. «I'll be back. I just…want to be alone for a little while.»

Ingo didn't seem to register that they weren't listening to his orders until the wave of wind rushed through the church. He ran for where Griffin had just been moments ago, impotently grasping at air as Griffin flew up and out of the Old Quarter. "Shit! Griffin!" He shot a hard glare at where the basement door was. "What the hell happened down there?"

"We found out that the fiends might have been kids before they got cursed," Grace explained, watching as Griffin disappeared into the clouds. "It…stressed them out. I think they'll be back soon. They just need some time to cool off."

"Damn it," Ingo growled. "They'd better be. We can't afford not to have the whole team here if something goes wrong again." He tapped his club against the ground in irritation. "I need to have a talk with them when this is done. Both times we've actually had to kill things, they've gotten upset. I'm not going to stand having a partner that can't get the job done like this." He went for the basement, picking his way down the steps to the open door. "We should pull the corpses out. If we're going to use them to distract Latighern, they need to be out in the open, where Grace will have a clear shot."

I nodded and followed behind. The bodies were already light from a lack of flesh, but after being burned, they were even lighter. The bones had remained intact and attached enough that we were able to carry them out without them falling apart, setting them down in front of the entryway arch of the church. It was a grisly display, hopefully one that would make Latighern pause for long enough that we'd be able to kill her from our perch rather than get into another drawn out, bloody fight.

It was already dark, and it was quickly becoming darker. We didn't have much time to wait for Griffin to return, so we went ahead and found our hiding spots, this time much more coordinated so that we could see each other for hand signals. Most of the team took shelter within the shells of nearby abandoned buildings, while Grace and I took a balcony that hung from one with a clear view of the church's archway.

«Okay,» I said silently as we settled in to wait, «we're sure we're only dealing with one person this time. Since there's…nine of us, don't everyone close in at once, or we'll just get in each other's way. Wait for a moment to strike, or attack with your guns. Be ready to fight, even if we're hoping against one.»

I heard a series of mental acknowledgements from the other dragons. The minutes started to crawl by. With the rain ceased, the fog that had taken its place obscured much of the road leading out of this little plaza, so I relied on my ears more than my eyes to know what was coming. I heard a few splashes from the river, and a lot of scratching noises that could have been rats or particularly large insects running up and down the streets or climbing through the walls of abandoned and damaged buildings. The gunshots started soon after the sun was fully gone, just like last night, and again I wondered what it was those bullets were aimed at.

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The flap of wings heralded Griffin's return less than an hour after the trap was laid. They didn't say a word, just landed next to Ingo and crouched down in waiting with the rest of us. I could see the tension still lingering on their face, but decided that conversation could wait until we were done. They probably wouldn't be participating in any potential fight, anyway.

The hour turned into another, and then another. I could feel the muscles in my wings growing restless as I kept them folded tight against my body where Grace and I waited atop a nearby balcony. But soon, the monotony was broken by a familiar scraping sound, dragging steadily down the road. The other dragons' ears flicked up, and eyes started glancing towards our perch, waiting for the signal.

«She's here,» I warned Grace. «Get your gun ready.»

Grace propped herself up on one knee, pulling her rifle into her arms. She didn't take aim yet. The glint of the metal would be a dead giveaway of our presence. She just watched as Latighern emerged from the fog, her cleaver dragging behind her. This time, she wasn't carrying a corpse. This time, our failure hadn't resulted in any more deaths. This time. As long as we didn't miss this chance.

Latighern seemed on edge as soon as she reached the plaza. From our vantage point, I couldn't see her eyes beneath her hat, but from the way she slowed, glancing about at where we had all leaped from last night, she was definitely now wary of traps. She sniffed and scowled.

"That scent again…" I heard her murmur under her breath. "Still smells of dragons here." She shook her head, evidently putting that thought aside as she proceeded towards the church. "Children, I regretfully have no meat for you tonight, so we will have to…make…do…."

She took one more uncertain step forward as she reached the edge of the entryway arch. The chain handle of the cleaver fell from her hand as she stared ahead, wordlessly taking in the sight of the bodies.

«She stopped,» I hissed to Grace. «Now!»

Grace nodded and brought the gun up, resting the barrel on the splintered top of the balcony as she took careful aim. Her hand clenched, her finger slowly starting to pull back on the trigger—

«Wait!» A mental shout came from below as Griffin jumped out of their hiding spot and ran forward. Latighern stiffened upon hearing Griffin's voice. She turned her head, looking over her shoulder. I could see tears falling from her chin. She backed up further into the church, towards the bodies, taking the cleaver loosely in hand once again.

«Griffin!» I seethed. I tapped Grace on the back with my tail. «Shoot now!»

«I can't!» Grace responded mentally. «She's backed up, I don't have line of sight anymore, unless you think an arm shot would be lethal.»

Damn it! I roared in my head. If anyone gets hurt, I'm going to kill them! I felt the tendrils of rage reaching their way into my mind, and clenched my hand against the broken balcony railing, readying myself to pounce if anything went wrong.

«Please, Mother Latighern, listen to me,» said Griffin, getting far closer to the murderer than I would have liked.

"You…" Latighern said, her voice barely keeping its cohesion. "You killed…."

«I didn't kill anyone,» said Griffin. «But your family, they were already dead. They died a while ago. There wasn't anything left of them here.» They took a sharp breath, and another step forward. «I…I know what it's like to lose family. I've lost my family, too. I don't think that…they would have liked to be trapped in their own heads like they were. I don't think that now, they would want you to lose yourself on their behalf.» Another step closer. «I'm sure you have friends. Kyrie spoke very well of you. I think that they would want you to come back, and be there for the people who are still alive, like you used to—»

They were cut off as Latighern suddenly lurched forward, her hand outstretched. I thought she would use her cleaver, but she let the chain fall away again as she raised her hand in a claw-like shape. She slashed down, her fingers somehow punching through Griffin's scales, and drawing five lines of blood as she dragged her hand across their chest. Griffin stumbled back, gasping in pain as blood splashed across the soaked cobblestones.

"Barbosa, you lying BASTARD!" Latighern roared. "They're dead, and all I have to show for it is their killer's…." She stared down at her hands, drenched in red. "Blood," she whispered. Her eyes grew wide. Her teeth clenched as laboured breaths seethed through them. A growl came from her throat, swiftly growing in volume as her shoulders began to shake and her hands clenched around the fresh, warm blood.

"What in the unholy Pits…" Grace whispered in shock.

«Shit, she's cursed too,» I realised. «Fire now, we've got to keep Griffin safe!»

Grace finally pulled the trigger, aiming for the minister's arm, but the shot vanished into a shower of blood as Latighern's form suddenly twisted out of shape. Scales cut through the skin of her face and arms, making tiny incisions that bled profusely as she threw her arms back in rapturous rage. Her bones burst outward, popping through the skin before her muscles bulged to cover them back up. Her jaws broke through the human façade of her face as they lengthened and grew sharp fangs. Her torso stretched upwards as her spine extended in increments, forcing her into a hunched position as a long, bony tail snaked behind her, its tip a wicked sickle blade that mirrored the sickle claws that grew from her lengthened fingers.

Griffin stared, mouth agape as the fiend that had been Mother Latighern howled a cry of mournful anger and lunged towards them. Griffin hastily backpedalled, holding one hand over the bleeding wound on their chest, but they were far too slow. The fiend reached out, her claws inches away from striking Griffin again when a blast of orange fire erupted from the dead brush beside the graveyard, washing over the fiend's side. Brand jumped out from her hiding spot, moving between the fiend and Griffin as she let out a warning growl. I jumped down from the balcony too, readying my axe, shortly followed by Arthur.

With the dragons moving to encircle the fiend, the humans fired a volley. The bullets pierced the monster's hide from all directions, but they didn't seem to do much more than make her angrier as she screeched in pain, wildly thrashing all of her limbs. Brand shielded herself from the flailing clawed hands, while Arthur ducked under the sweeping tail before turning and grabbing it between his teeth. The fiend tried to twist around to slash at him in retribution, but as it turned, I pulled my axe into its lengthened form, rearing up for a ferocious spin. The blade caught the fiend's legs, and I felt the crack of metal against bone through the haft. The momentum carried me around to bash my newly-reformed tail into her chest, wrenching her tail from Arthur's grip with long trails of blood as she toppled backwards. I felt a small pinch as some of the needles that nested within my scales came loose with the attack, lodging themselves in the fiend's hide.

She quickly righted herself, stumbling a few steps away while she furiously scratched at her chest, clawing strips of skin free until the needles were dislodged. When they came loose, trails of blackened blood came with them. They must have been venomous. Had I…somehow absorbed the poison of the flayed fiends with the Key?

The fiend didn't give me long to wonder before she recklessly charged forward again, leaping through the air in a vicious pounce. Another hail of gunfire came down, breaking bones and spraying blood while Brand tried to ward her off with another blast of flame. She was past caring about that, though, even as her flesh sizzled and charred black where the flames touched it. She landed not with a slash from her claws, but with a headbutt, cracking her skull against mine even as I tried to scoot backwards away from her. My head rang with pain, and I stumbled long enough for the fiend's hands to come down and tear upwards, catching the scales of my flank to slash my flank. The force carried me off my feet, and I landed hard on my side, trying desperately to catch my breath.

The fiend looked like she was going to go for a mortal bite on my throat, but Arthur pounced, landing on her back and biting and clawing at her face. The fiend thrashed with a howl, frantically slashing at her back until her claws caught one of Arthur's wings, tearing a small incision in it as she used the leverage to hurl him off her back, slamming him into the wall of the church.

Keeping up her momentum, she whipped around. A bullet had broken her tail, causing the end to hang loose, but the pain didn't seem to slow the fiend down. The blade of the tail hooked the scales on Brand's collar, yanking downward forcefully to draw a jagged line of blood around her throat. Brand clawed at the tail in vengeance as the fiend pulled it back. Her growls stopped as she took a few steps back and coughed, spitting up a splatter of blood.

«Brand!» Griffin's mental wail was full of anguish and…rage. It almost had an echo-like quality to it. I forced myself to my feet, beating my hand against my chest in an attempt to restart my lungs faster, eyes frantically darting around trying to find where Griffin had slunk off to. The emotion in their voice was halfway familiar, just enough that I knew their Fiend was involved, and this was possibly the worst time for them to lose control.

But when I found them, they didn't seem to have lost it, at least not yet. They ran forward from the edge of the cobblestones, their face twisted up in anger, but their eyes still gleaming with purpose. Their throat glowed, but it wasn't quite the normal deep violet-maroon colour of their fire. It was brighter, without any red. Lines appeared beneath their scales, their veins lighting up with a bright blue colour as they arched their neck back and opened their mouth. A bolt of white lightning shot forth, echoing with the crack of thunder. It struck the fiend in the chest with enough force to knock them a few feet back.

Griffin didn't stop charging, and slammed their shoulder into the fiend, tossing her down onto her side. She scrabbled her claws against the stone trying to get up, but Griffin landed on her shoulder, pinning her down. The gill-like slits on their neck flexed and glowed with that purplish-white of electricity as sparks danced from within them. As the glow built up again in their throat, they wrapped their hands around the fiend's shoulders, picking her up and slamming her head against the stones again and again, until bones cracked and broke, and a shard of her skull went flying. Once her struggling had slowed, Griffin leaned forward, putting all their weight on her shoulders as they let out a continuous stream of lightning directly into the fiend's face, throwing harsh, twitching shadows all across the yard. The fiend convulsed under the flow of lightning until she seized up into a tight, unmoving ball, and Griffin finally let her go. Her remains twitched and shuddered as Griffin got down on the ground again, breathing hard.

The light of their veins faded, and they stumbled, all the tension fleeing from them. Brand took a few hesitant steps towards them, her face hardened, before Arthur ran in front of her, putting his wing around Griffin's shoulders.

«Griffin, what was that?» he shouted frantically. «Are you okay? Did…is it still you in there?»

"It's them," Ingo assured him as he stepped across the charred, blood-soaked battlefield and fiddling with the sling on his club. "I can feel it." He sounded impressed.

Griffin stood, shakily pushing Arthur's wing aside as they shook like they were trying to dry themself off. They nervously glanced between everyone else, who had gradually emerged from their hiding places to gather around Griffin and the corpse.

«She's dead,» said Griffin. Their voice was ragged and emotional. «Do we need to go to Kyrie's again, or can we go home? I want to go home.»

I craned my neck around to look at the body. It was still shivering from the lightning still caught in it, but it was clearly well and truly deceased. I gave the other dragons a few careful glances, checking their wounds, but thankfully it seemed like all of the slashes were relatively shallow. The cut across Brand's throat was the worst, and while I guessed it hurt like hell, it wasn't lethal, not with a bandage to staunch the bleeding and a vial of tonic to start the healing process.

«Give me a second to bandage people up, and then we can go home,» I said. Griffin nodded and hung their head, waiting, as I applied bandages to everyone who'd gotten hurt. The plaza was palpably silent. A few times people made to ask questions, but I shushed them. It could wait until we were back somewhere safe.

Bandages applied, we saddled up and took off for the equally silent flight back home, leaving the bodies where they had fallen. I doubted the Old Quarter had anyone who would bury them, especially given how the church was abandoned, but I also doubted there was anywhere they really could be buried, and I didn't want to take them out of the city in case they brought their plague with them.

The air between us was morose until we landed in the empty courtyard. The humans got off, but stood where the were, each of them looking to Griffin expectantly. Griffin shuffled in place, and I decided to give them a little push.

«That was you breaking a Lock, wasn't it?» I asked, already knowing the answer. Also, knowing how I had broken Locks, I understood Brand's nervous wariness.

«I think so,» they mumbled.

Brand spoke, and Yura translated. "Where did that come from? You haven't fought like that before. And I've never seen a dragon with lightning breath."

Griffin let out an awkward, nervous laugh. «Uh, yeah. It…well, it sort of came from…the Fiend, I think.»

Brand narrowed her eyes.

«It was strange,» Griffin continued. «When I saw that thing hurting all of you, I felt angry, but it was a…different kind of anger. I felt like I had a responsibility to keep you safe, and I was failing. To stop it from hurting you. I hated it for how it was making me a failure. It felt like every time it slashed you, it was insulting me. Personally.» They paused, scrunching their face up in thought, as though it was difficult to remember the next part. «The Fiend wanted it hurt as revenge. I wanted it hurt so that I could protect you. So…we sort of worked together, I guess. You know, stars align, interests aligned too. And that's when I felt a click. Like you said, like a Lock. And then instead of fire, it was lightning. And we killed it.»

Ingo seemed just as off-put as Brand. "And how does your Fiend feel now?"

«I don't know,» said Griffin. «It's not being very loud. It felt like it went back into the background once the fight was over.» They took a long, deep breath. «It felt…really good. Being that synchronous.»

Brand spat a phrase full of fury and sadness, before turning and marching into the main hall. "What did she say, Yura?" asked Ingo as the door slammed behind her.

Yura scratched his chin, biting his lip nervously before he finally answered. "She said that if you become a demon, Griffin, she'll make sure she kills you before you hurt anyone." He shook his head. "I'll talk to her. I, for one, think whatever you did was surely good. It helped us, and seems to have helped you. I'm not personally experienced in all this Fiend business, but—"

«No, she's right,» Griffin cut him off. «If I keep doing that, I might become a danger. I'll try to hold it back next time. Sorry.» They shuffled towards the house, disappearing inside with Yura and Ingo right behind them.

I sighed as I watched them go. I…was confused, to say the least. Doing what they had done, I would have expected my own mind to be compromised, but they seemed fine. For now. I recalled what Grace had said about not fighting the Fiend, and had to rub my temple. Latighern had probably given me a mild concussion with how hard she hit me, and thinking was making my head hurt.

We had done our job, and earned some rest. I'd have time to ponder Griffin's experience over the coming days. For now, all I wanted after two late nights full of fighting and pain, was to sleep.

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