Sofia DeMuer dipped into a low defensive stance as her opponent pulled away from the contact to regather himself. The baroness?s breathing came in almost even strides still while the series of intense exchanges had left her opponent?s chest heaving and his mop of copper brown locks damp with sweat under the sweltering summer sun. Silence settled over the small crowd gathered in the impressive grounds behind the DeMuer New Haven estate. Three agents, nursing bloodied lips, sore ribs, and bruised egos after failing to impress the Baroness in a one-on-one setting, sat or crouched at the forefront of the ring of bodies.

Every eye carefully watched the delicate, brutal exchange between the pair. As the top among this SPI class in hand-to-hand combat, Mathieu Tremblay had the best chance at making the team. For although this was to be a primarily diplomatic mission to convince the warlords of New Brittany that it was time to abandon their world for the hope of Saint Aldwin, the Baroness seemed unusually determined to bring warriors.

Mathieu blocked out the nerves that nipped at his heels when Sophie?s pale blue eyes scrutinized him in narrow contemplation. Confidence had never been an issue in his career but under the weight of her glare, he felt lacking, unworthy of his calling. Then with a speed that she clearly had not expected from him, a long arm reached out and caught her shoulder with a closed fist before she had time to avoid. The blow caused her body to twist and he pressed forward, refusing to give in to his anxiety by not seizing the advantage.

A spin brought him towards her, closing the distance that she was trying to create. His knee lifted with the movement and a foot drove outward in a side kick. A last minute twist to the side kept Sophie from receiving the full weight of the impact but the glancing blow to her abdomen was enough to knock her breath from her. Gasping quickly to fill her lungs, she planted her feet, knowing that Mathieu was moving in for the kill.

Despite Mathieu?s unbroken combination of brutal attacks and the set of previous matches with the three agents to come before Mathieu, Sophie still held a quickness advantage. A punch was thrown in but she crouched beneath it, lifting her body up as it passed to find them nearly chest to chest. Her hands lifted to grip his t-shirt with one hand at his shoulder and the other reaching around his body. His extra fifty pounds of nearly pure muscle pushed back but her movement was quick and far too fluid for him to mount a counter in time. She drove Mathieu?s upper body forward and, using her hip as a leverage point, he fell to his back hard in the green grassy field.

The hot summer sun that he was looking up into nearly blinded him completely from the heel that came careening down towards his throat. At the last minute, Sophie?s sneaker came to a stop, just before it smashed into his larynx. Her point had been proven. She had won.

?Is this the best you have?? She called to Captain Morvan, slowly backing away from Mathieu as he continued to lie prone more from the weight of his failure than from his injuries.

Those blue eyes landed on the young SPI agent as he pushed himself into a sitting position. ?Nous sommes tous morts,? she stated in a low, even tone. We are all dead. Somehow the admonishment felt even weightier in his native language. This had been Mathieu?s chance. This had been his opportunity to serve his people by returning to New Brittany, by helping bring back the refugees before more of his people died.

Sophie could read all of that on the man?s face. His heartache, his despair. But she turned away before guilt could settle in for her comment. Pushing her way through the crowd, she headed for the hill where a man in a suit, his jacket tossed over his arm, stood waiting for her to finish.

?Baroness,? a familiar voice called behind her.

But Sophie did not turn to meet the eyes she knew were following her. Seamus wouldn?t be avoided forever. He wouldn?t be pleased with her behavior and when they were alone he?d make sure she knew. But in this setting, she was the Baroness and he was her knight so she kept putting distance between herself and him and the rest of the group. ?Find better, Captain,? she called over her shoulder.

Although her throat ached for water and her ribs burned with the blow from Mathieu?s heel but she was determined not to show either to the man waiting for her. Once the conversation was over she could head inside to soothe both. Saint Aldwin Councillor Olivier Boucher gave a polite nod and a grim smile as she reached him. Despite the unbearable weather, both of them seemed at home. Raised in the American Southeast, the humid afternoon wasn't out of the norm for Sophie but the Councillor, a famed Newbreton hockey player years before, must have ice water pumping through his veins. Not a hair on his full head of greying hair was out of place and there were no signs of sweat dampening his freshly pressed shirt.

?Are you convinced that I have recovered enough to be a part of the mission into New Brittany, Councillor??

His knowing eyes narrowed in on her and briefly she felt a spike of the very same uneasiness that her gaze had created within Mathieu moments before. ?Of course, Baroness.?

He cleared his throat uneasily, shifting his suit jacket so it was draped over the opposite arm. There was clearly something he did not wish to discuss, something that the Council had sent him here to discuss. ?It would make some on the Council feel more confident if you and the Baron would consider securing the line before you begin down this path.?

Her bottom jaw hardened but she kept her tone even. ?I do not understand your comment.?

?An heir, Baroness. I am referring to an heir.?

A bitter laugh was pulled free from her as her eyes swept towards the group now beginning to pair off for another round of sparring under the watchful eye of Seamus. A heavy air of defeat hung over them and it was one that Sophie herself hadn?t been able to escape in weeks. ?No. Why would I ever subject a child to this life??

?Sophie, my dear,? Olivier?s voice dipped to an intimate tone, pleading with her common sense. She felt his much warmer blue eyes on her. His were the color of the summer sky, hers more resembled glacial ice. ?Let me tell them that you will consider their advice. You must understand why they are concerned. You have to see why there is so much anxiety in Saint Aldwin over the line of succession. The Baron has no heir.?

There was no response but the hard lines of her expression eased to sadness as her eyes lingered on the young SPI agents sparring in the summer heat. Olivier could tell by the lingering silence between them that his words were sinking in through the layers of pain and worry that the young woman was still trapped in. Time. She needed time but she would work her way through them. How much time did they have, though?

He let her free of the weight of his gaze and let his attention sweep back towards the young man Sophie had just sparred. One of Mathieu?s arms swung up to block the incoming punch that had been thrown at him by another combatant with renewed desire. The harsh critique hadn?t destroyed him. It had served to make him want to prove himself even more.

?The young man is quite good,? Olivier stated in a low tone.

Sophie gave a small, unwilling nod. ?He is.?

?And he is a Tremblay. His great-uncle is one of the warlords that you will be meeting with. They are a well-respected family.? They watched Mathieu carefully as he used the momentum of the man attacking him to twist his arm back behind him by the wrist until his opponent patted Mathieu?s leg desperately in a sign of forfeit.

Her blue eyes swept back to Olivier and a touch of a warm smile lightened her features. ?Are you trying to tell me something, Councillor??

?Me? Advise you, Baroness? Never,? he teased lightly.

Her laugh in response was low so as not to escape the pair of them. She reached out to tap his arm as she turned for the house, tipping her chin towards it for him. ?You must come inside. Alain will want to see you. I promise I will limit his questions about your playing days to a half an hour.?

The musically teasing notes in her voice were a welcome relief to Olivier?s ears. It was a hint that despite the Indra attack, despite yet another anniversary of Sonja?s death passing, the she still had the same nerve she had shown rescuing refugees from the war torn Icecrest and the same fight that it had taken to stand in Ja?ir greatly outnumbered and demand the Prince of Dalibad?s surrender.

With a smooth smile, he turned to follow. ?Of course, Sofia.?

"You know? This Lord Fantoche guy doesn't seem half bad." Seamus kept his voice to a whisper, but there was no stopping his words reaching the entire team as it echoed down the narrow tunnel. "I mean, for a murderous warlord. Just doesn't seem like the kind of fellow to give you a Glasgow grin. Bring chips to a cookout, maybe. Handy with torture?" He grimaced. "I guess people can surprise you..."

Fantoche and his faction were rumored to hold court in an underground bunker left over from the civil war, and from the look of this tunnel the rumors were true. They descended slick concrete steps past flickering lights and an edgy guard every few landings. There were passageways off to either side, most of them packed with unmarked crates.

The faction was also rumored to have the biggest supply stockpile in the city, and unless they were cornering the market on empty crates, this rumor appeared true, too.

Confident enough that the preliminary meetings had been productive and without incident, their assault rifles had been left at the base camp they had set up. But they weren't completely unarmed. Sophie allowed the inside of her wrist to brush against the butt of the pistol holstered on her hip for reassurance after the grim statement. She drew in a breath, releasing it slowly and evenly as she matched his stride.

"Nothing in this place is as clear cut as it initially seems," she murmured beneath her breath.

"It's a war zone," Seamus offered with his own version of a Gallic shrug. They reached the bottom of the long passage, intersecting a long hallway with two heavy doors facing them. The knight turned his head to the left, peering at what looked like a makeshift infirmary down the hall when one of the doors creaked open. The guard kept one hand on the assault rifle at his hip, but didn't point it at them. No need for that now. "Christianna Louboutin? Lord Faroche will see you now." He nodded his head to the dimly lit chamber beyond the doors, with a long wooden table and comfortable (though now shabby) chairs left over from this place's days as a military bunker.

A flicker of a smile reached Sophie's lips as she was addressed by her code name. Alain had insisted she use one and with as sadly clueless as the Newbretons were to the name 'Louboutin', Sophie could not resist. The smile was immediately tamed back into a thin tight line, addressing the guard with a brisk nod as she followed Mathieu Trembley into the charmber.

A man stood facing the wall with his hands clasped behind his back; it was not until the entire team was inside the room that it became apparent this was not Lord Faroche. Two guards stepped into the doorway, blocking the way out and levelling automatic weapons at the team.

"You are not Newbreton, Miss Louboutin," the man began in a low rumble of a voice. "You know our customs and our dialects very well... as if you studied them. I think you have."

Mathieu Trembley wasted little time making sure his form blocked that of his baroness but Sophie took a step forward. A hand land on an arm of Mathieu's in a silent order for him to keep his hand away from his gun. Rounding the large Newbreton, her pale blue eyes found the stranger to sweep over him carefully. "I am offering help. Help with no strings attached. Are your people truly in the position to scoff at such help merely because it comes from someone outside of your culture?"

"My people are in the frying pan, as they say, but I will not send them into the fire..." His head turned slowly as she circled, revealing the edge of a hard face and graying dark hair. As she approached, Seamus moved quickly and quietly from the other side. This was clearly a trap, and this man could be their only leverage out of this place. Boots barely touched the ground as he launched himself at the stranger. It was the perfect strike, and it had worked countless times before.

It did not work this time. Seamus' sword and pistol clattered to the floor, his arm twisted in a cruel pin and a knife pressed to his throat from behind, hard enough to break the skin and begin a trickle of blood down his neck. "I will hear an honest and immediate answer to my questions or this man will die. Your name - your real name!" he barked.

It happened too quickly to stop. One moment Seamus was at her side and the next he was mere milimeters from death. Her hand lifted, palm out, to the team gathered behind her. Nobody move. The tension behind her was thick but she ignored it along with the blood speckling her knight's neck. Instead her eyes focused in on the stranger.

"Sofia Rhovnik DeMuer."

She surprised him, and it was almost enough for Seamus to reverse his fortunes. Almost. The stranger tightened the pressure on his arm. "Liar. You stole that name. How did you come by it? Speak!"

"I certainly did not steal the name," she fired back, a flash of heat stoked not by the question but by the increased pressure on the pinned knight. No, she did not steal names. Perhaps borrow them for use as a code name but never stole. "I was born a Rhovnik. I married a DeMuer."

"Oh?" His eyes narrowed; Seamus grunted as the steel bit deeper into his skin. "Which one?"

Her own hand tightened, fingers stretching out in desire for a weapon but she kept her hands outstretched at her sides, away from the gun at her hip. "Alain."

The stranger grit his teeth, relaxing the blade - by degrees - away from Seamus' neck. "What kind of tattoo does he have on his left hand?"

Relief eased the tension in her shoulders by the same degree that the blade was relaxed. Yet, the relief didn't find its way to her voice. It remained stern, brisk, haughty even. "My husband has no tattoo on his left hand. The seal is on his right."

The stranger lifted his chin, making some final judgment... then withdrew the blade, stepping back from Seamus before the knight could retaliate. A question began to form on his lips, and quickly died as another forced its way through: "How is he? Is he well?" Stern features twisted into a rather different kind of frown, though he seemed to be searching her face just as closely as before.

Her eyes flicked briefly towards Seamus, imploring him to remain still. By tone alone, it would seem Sophie was blind to the fact that she was in no position to make demands. "I won't answer anymore questions while there are guns pointed at the backs of my team."

He paused. "Of course... How rude of me." All he had to do was glance their way, and the guards lowered their weapons. "This is hardly the welcome you deserve from me." The stranger took slow steps toward Sophie, ignoring the others behind her, even as Seamus tensed. "I am Charles DeMuer... your father-in-law. Please..."

His head tipped to one side as he looked at her with weary blue eyes, and he extended his hand for hers. "Tell me about my son."

September 3
SPI HQ, WestEnd, RhyDin

8:00 a.m.

Many of SPI's field agents and investigators kept irregular hours, but like most businesses this was headquarter's busiest time of day: a steady stream of employees pushed in through the glass doors, some lining up for coffee at the little cafe in the lobby while the rest went straight to their desks.

Soon over one hundred monitors had flickered to life, poring over information from Lashkar, New Brittany, and the trickle of WestEnd murders the Watch couldn't handle.

Luca had known what had happened to them. It was the thought she'd fallen into a drugged sleep with the night before, promising herself that in the morning she'd be strong enough to ask again and want the answer. But when she'd woken, he'd gone back to the barracks and Colt had taken his post again on the couch, an exhausted sentinel.

It was a testimony to how worn he'd been lately that she was able to creep past him and out the door without waking him. She hadn't even really been sure of where she was going until she'd pulled up in Colton's jeep in front of the building in WestEnd. But here she was now, pouring into the office with the rest of the crew: Alain De Muer's odd little file clerk.

The ?Bossman? wasn't in this morning, in spite of everything. Most of SPI didn't kiss and tell, but those with high enough clearance could glean that something had happened at the Newbreton gate late last night.

Deep in the Vaults, a single tendril of power emanated not from Indra himself, but from a place he had been when he wore the face of Reynard Sainte-Just. It appeared to be an ordinary bowling ball, all that was left of a cleverly disguised high-yield explosive device. The foreign intelligence service responsible for defusing it did not want the public to know they had been aware of the danger, but they still wanted to retain it for future study, hence its presence in SPI's Vaults.

Indra's intricate spellwork wormed its way through the Vaults' wards, quietly replacing them with dummy barriers and climbing its way up, level after level, toward the lobby.

His 'secretary' knew Harper and had a good idea of what she was to SPI, but she was still tight-lipped despite the look of sympathy Harper got when she made the attempt.. She knew... And if she knew... the wheels were slow turning in Annie-Love's blond head this morning. She managed a tight smile, her chest constricted with the effort to breathe.

"Thanks, Elle. I'll... I have a couple of files to pick up and I'll take off, I guess. Let him know I stopped by."

8:05 a.m.

As SPI settled into its tasks and Harper continued on her mission, the gradual replacement of wards stretched into the lobby. In the right light a sensitive person could make out Abyssal runes etching themselves into the door frame one stroke at a time, though all that most people saw was a soft red glow. The cafe's barista tipped her head along with a few others and asked anyone within earshot, "Can anybody read that?"

She took the stairs down the single flight to the lobby, weaving her way against the flow of traffic. A few people stood in clusters in the atrium, staring now at the front-facing wall where the doors were.

"What?" She asked one slack-jawed man holding a cup of coffee.

Deep in the Vaults, alone in a cell in the dark, Indra - still stubbornly wearing a blood-eyed mockery of the face of Alain DeMuer - cracked a smile. "Hello, father. I'll be there soon."

8:06 a.m.

Five levels up, the front doors exploded. Several bodies were hurled out into the street and over the cafe bar as every inch of glass shattered, with brick, mortar and steel joining the mushrooming cloud of debris. But this was the smallest explosion, the first of many.

Underground, within the weakened wards, larger explosions sounded off, driving deep cracks into the building's foundations. As the dust settled, it revealed two flickering masses of red light: one in the ruined entrance to the lobby, the other in the stacks in the third sub-basement. Pitch black shapes stepped out of them, clawed and fanged with predatory eyes, the Architect's lowest minions from the planes of the Abyss.

The lights flickered out and returned, dim and red. An emergency recording broadcast over speakers across the building, while a mass message was sent out to the e-mails and phones of every employee on record, notifying them of the emergency.

SPI was ready to fall.

"Out! Get everyone out!" She shook the man, pushing him toward the hole in the front, knocking the coffee out of his hands and pointing toward the exit as a roil of smoke crawled down the main stairwell in advance of another shockwave. A second plume rose to meet it, and in the smoke and unnatural glow were ... shapes.

Harper sprinted in the opposite direction, toward the staircase that wound down toward the vaults and the cells below.

8:07 a.m.

The bird dog was on the hunt. If Colt had been awake, he wouldn't have let her leave the house. His hands were shoved in his pockets as he cut his way through all modes of Monday morning rush hour traffic. Harper's destination was obvious and her reason for this trip was only slightly less so obvious.

His phone buzzed, shaking him from his pit of silent berating. Slowing his pace only slightly, he checked the message. For the second time in so many days, the words he read caused blood to pound in his ears. His phone was shoved back into his pocket, roughly and immediately he broke into a run, ignoring the odd looks and curses from pedestrians and vendors in his way.

Colt's eyes glanced over the old jeep of his that Harper had been using. She was here. Smoke was crawling out of the front entrance along with a mass of people flooding out of the building. They slowed his movement towards it. This was the moment that they had trained for. This was also Sophie's gift to him. It was a chance to right what happened before. Sonja died without him at her side but Annie-Love would live. This would be his moment to prove he was worthy, to prove he would die to make things right.

But there were too many scents, too many energy wakes. He couldn't pick her out of the crowd. He pushed forward towards the entrance. "Have you seen Harper?" The question was poised over and over to familiar faces, to unfamiliar faces. With every passing second and with every foot he moved forward, it grew more desperate.

8:09 a.m.

This was the reason for the drills, the PT, the hand-to-hand and the relentless drive to teach herself, Colt and now Ben. A chance for them all to survive. This was why. She didn't let herself think Zakharias' voice a steady presence in her head, drove her forward as it had through so many grueling afternoons in the practice yards. People screamed. The earth shook. It was all remote, somehow. She kept moving. He couldn't escape.

Demons were leaving the building through the ruined lobby: one was out in the street tearing into a hapless passerby with claws and fangs. It ignored the shrill of a Watch whistle, up to the moment a few well-placed rifle shots destroyed what passed for its vital organs. The others turned their attention on the Watch officers, rushing them as they drew sabers and prepared to fight.

Inside was worse. Already SPI employees were leaving through the emergency exits, but many were still trapped in the lobby, the stacks or the lower levels, cut off from any way out by debris or by the Architect's minions. Another explosion went off on the second floor, scattering the remains of a wall and an entire office out into the street as a new portal to the Abyss opened.

She tripped at one point, losing her footing on a smear of something wet on the stairs and sliding down a half-flight on her arse. A demon rushed at her coming the opposite direction and it was a slow-motion ballet of leap and slide. She threw herself back to flatten against the steps as it went over her and the stream of bullets from her handgun lit the air between them and cut its vital organs to shreds and a spatter of foul blood to mark it's passing on the cracking walls.

Stepping into the inky darkness of the lobby was other worldly. Gone was the light of day. Smoke hung heavy, making an untainted breath of air difficult to find.

8:12 a.m.

Another step forward and vicious claws sliced through Colt's t-shirt and into the flesh of his back, throwing him into a wall. Screams were all around but through the haze of darkness and smoke he couldn't find any living beings to associate with them. A flash of a dark being zipped close by at an inhumane speed and then there was another scream. His foot slipped in a pool of blood too large to be his own as he tried to scramble to his feet.

The motion was noted by one of the demons and it descended upon him. With the same training and precision that Annie-Love had unknowingly demonstrated several floors below, Colt pulled his gun and fired several rounds. Head shots. The demon dropped in a heap on the floor.

8:14 a.m.

She pushed ahead in a press across that particular landing where a portal throbbed along the back wall and spilled out atrocities ... it felt like forever, an eternity of blood and pain and despair. Something large rammed into her, pushed her back against the railing where the wall opened around a turn for five or six steps and sent her over it. She tucked in and rolled hard down the rest of the flight to the next landing.

Something else made a boom underground, but this wasn't a new explosion. It was the foundation. A new round of screams barely had a chance to carry before a whole section of the sub-levels collapsed, and the floors above cracked and heaved. It was already impossible for Harper to go back the way she came.

The emergency lights in the stairwells flickered, moments from failing. She forced herself up and on in a marionette's dance of running and falling toward the door she knew wasn't far.

---------------

"Daniels!" The voice was guttural and otherworldly, a symptom of Zoe LaRocca's vampiric form. Her face and fangs were smeared with black blood as she heaved another demon away from her. "The ground-level exit's collapsed! We've got to fight our way out!" She waved an arm at the ruined entrance, where dark shapes still emerged from the flickering portal. Already the woman was dragging an unconscious analyst by his arms.

The walls of the lobby quivered and dry wall fell to the floor but the walls remained standing. At least for now. This structure didn't have long. As his eyes found Zoe LaRocca, he was hard pressed to say which was more frightening -- the vampire covered in the stomach turning stench of that black blood or the demon bearing down on her right. His weapon was pointed at the demon, squeezing off just enough rounds to cause it to collapse with a screeching scream.

"Go! I'm not leaving without Harper!"

Zoe let out a loud snarl of frustration. She hadn't known Harper was in here, too. ?No time ? It?s too late! Get yourself out!?

"Not without Harper!"

"Then go get the princess and get her the **** out of here!" There was another roar as she pulled the analyst up onto her shoulders and barreled out of the building.

A corpse at his feet still had a gun holstered on his hip. The dead agent never even had a chance to pull it. Colt dipped down into the shadows, pulling the weapon free of its holster, and then he disappeared into them fully. There had to be another way down through the guts of the building into the underbelly and there was no way he was leaving until he found it.

8:15 a.m.

Dully, she noted the klaxon wailing of the emergency sirens as she shouldered her way through the door into the cell block level of the sub-basements. The ceiling lamps continued to flicker, bouncing off of the concrete walls and coupling with the strobing flashes from the warning lights by the stairwell door. She limped through the haze and flash, covered in ash and dust and blood like something out of a silent horror film.

Indra was there. While the world was falling down around his ears, the demon waited expectantly in his cell, leaning forward slightly on his bench with his hands on his knees, smiling straight ahead at the bulletproof glass window on his door. When Annie-Love Harper arrived in the cell block, his head turned slowly to follow her progress on the other side of the wall.

---------------

Tucked in the back of the building far away from the understated architecture and shiny passenger elevators sat a battered old freight elevator with, hopefully, an elevator shaft that would take him all the way to the bottom. Both guns were tucked into the waistband of his jeans and his fingers gripped down tight on either door. With a groan of effort, he put all his years of strength and conditioning training to work byt throwing everything he had into pulling them apart. The doors ground and growled their complaint but they budged. Slowly. Steadily. Until an opening as wide as his shoulders had been created.

A glance upward showed the freight elevator to be several floors above. Cables extended downward into the basement levels below past the levels that collapsed.

Relief flooded Colt as a way down presented itself. But the feeling was short lived. A dark figure hurled forward, launching itself at him like a tackler. If it had been on the playing field, he would have had to admire the demon's form. But there was no time. Before he knew it, there was no ground beneath his feet and they were flying into the darker recesses of the open elevator shaft.

8:16 a.m.

"I know you can hear me," she rasped as she advanced on the demon's cell with a throat scoured by acrid, sulfuric smoke and her own shouts. She held the pistol up, her elbows tucked in close, cautious in spite of it all, here at the end of all things.

"I've always heard you, Annie-Love," Indra crooned in her boss' voice. He was stalking toward the door, yearning for a closer look at her before she died. "Every last prayer. Why... do you believe there is a God who listens to your desperate pleas like a cosmic voyeur?"

"Because I've been in His presence," she told him the truth she could never admit to anyone else like her very survival depended upon it, as she crept along the corridor toward his cell. "I've heard the angels singing in His courts. I've talked to angels. I hear the voices of his saints. Why do you believe you can possibly win this?"

The face twisted into rage and he slammed himself against the door; he was about to answer her when he heard something. His master's words. It was time to leave. When his eyes returned to Harper on the other side of the glass, he wore the face of her dad. Bill. "Because we've been working hard at this, Annie-Love. Everything's happening according to plan. It won't be long now."

And then, without fanfare, he vanished.

---------------

The demon howling angrily at him, they fell. And fell. Bones crunched as the demon clinging to him hit something on the wall and broke away. It slowed Colt's momentum enough that he was able to grab at a cable of the elevator shaft and catch it. A second hand reached for it and found cutting safety as well, sneakers scrambling against the wall until at least one found a bracket. It was just a little edge but it gave him the stability he needed.

A breath was drawn in and then released as the walls of the elevator shaft shook with the instability of the entire building. Every survival drive he had urged him out of it but instead he climbed down.

8:18 a.m.

Lie. It was a lie. It wasn't her father and it confirmed every suspicion she'd had about what happened in the span of a few arrogant words. She threw her arms rigid, her fingers squeezing and squeezing until she'd emptied the clip into the glass, into nothing.

Colt had emerged from the elevator shaft and into the belly of the building in time to see Bill. Drywall clung to his clothes, smoke still choked his lungs, and dried blood caused his t-shirt to stick to his back. He watched in silence as Harper fired round after round into the now empty cell. Only when she was done could he find his voice.

"They had faith in you. In us. They loved you. They were proud of you. And they said that would never change."

Defeat was as choking as the smoke. He'd escaped. She was numb with the realization. "It was all for nothing. None of it mattered."

The words from Julia's letter tumbled around in his head, mixing with Harper's defeat. Everything falls. "We've got to get out."

8:19 a.m.

The speakers crackled; it was the boss' voice again. " -- 21J. Repeat, anyone trapped on the sublevels make your way to the Arcanex by the sub-level five cell block, security code 6621J. Anyone trapped on -- " The lights flickered and the voice cut out as each of the speakers shorted with a shower of sparks.

The building was groaning. It was as much sensation as sound, vibrating up through the soles of their feet. The speakers shorted, the lights flickered ominously. Crashes and cracklings and booms of noise reverberated overhead. A beam over Harper's head shook itself free with a great rattling crack. But with Julia's words bouncing around inside his head somehow it was expected. He reached forward, clamping his hand down around Harper's wrist and drawing her forward into him against the wall with his opposite hand reaching up to cocoon the back of her head from the debris that was thrown up into the air.

With his ears still ringing from the noise of the explosion of the falling beam, he coughed out a question. "What did he say? The Arcanex? We're not far, right?"

She was caught in the grip of a hacking cough that stole her breath for the answer, but she flapped her arm, pointing with the barrel of her empty gun down the hall.

"We're not stopping." Were they his words or Julia's? He wasn't even sure anymore. The hand on her wrist kept its tight hold while the other fell to the wall to help with his bearings. Tugging her to follow him, he began picking a path through the worst of the debris towards the hallway.

It was within sight, a small circular chamber with an arcane iron trapdoor bolted into the floor. A man was already up against the far wall, curled up into a fetal ball and screaming at the top of his lungs. He, like everyone else still trapped in this building, knew what was coming.

The whole building groaned again, followed by what sounded like a train wreck heading their way. The upper stories were collapsing.

When is it okay to let go? she'd asked Bishop, once upon a not-so-long time ago. You already know the answer to that or you wouldn't be asking, he'd replied. He was right; she did. Never. Not while there was still another possibility. And Colt was there. It wasn't so easy to let go when someone else was along for that ride.

"Run!" she rasped hoarsely.

8:20 a.m.

Everything went black.

-----------
(Adapted from live play with the wonderful players of Colt Daniels and Alain DeMuer)

Thursday Sept. 6th - The Barony of St. Aldwin, South of Teobern ? Thirty minutes to sunset

The volunteers had been moving the camp all day, as far from the Newbreton gateway as possible. The shelters were barely within sight now, a cluster of dark shapes on the horizon as the sun sank over the hills. It was a hot and muggy day, though the dark clouds approaching from the north promised relief. "Is Gira ready?" Alain glanced back at John, then to the activity down below, the long line of refugees stretching away from the tunnels beneath the ruins. "Now's a good time to get that portal open if we can."

The man lounging in the wheelchair with a pair of binoculars at his eyes lowered them when Alain said the name, revealing what were probably going to be perpetually bloodshot eyes. "Morana's best Nexial engineer is just waiting on our go. And he's right," John turned his head and spoke to Tomas Andrews, his nominal second-in-command, "now's the time for it. Let Brett know." Tomas nodded and stepped away, speaking into a communit. John uncrossed his ankles and stood, taking a step forward until he was level again. "How are the numbers?" he asked Alain, gesturing with the binoculars at the lines of people moving with aching slowness below into tunnels under the ruins. They were evacuees that Alain?s own wife was trying to get to safety in time through rift borders. Time was something they?d run out of.

"Twenty-two hundred," Alain said. His eyes ticked to one side but his head didn't turn when the medevac portal to John's 'field hospital' at Gira Pharmaceuticals crackled to life. "Earth-New Brittany and Drasill are within a tenth of a degree of perfect alignment now," he muttered over his phone, checking the numbers and flipping it shut. "So, between now and ten minutes from now. Cigarette?" He was already fishing one out for himself.

"I'm good, thanks." Which was one of the bigger lies John had ever told, but it was true enough to pass muster. Instead of the cigarette, his thumb ran over the hilt of the plain iron knife in a sheath at his side?the knife capable of killing gods and demons alike, that he and Morana had recovered from a DeMuer retainer?s tomb on Lashkar. Somewhere behind him Daniel Malloy, Morana's chief of security, was pacing and talking into another communit. That was distant, unreal. John lifted the binoculars to his eyes again and gave the ruins and the hillsides surrounding them another pass.

Alain lit the cigarette and checked the ammunition in his Makarov pistol. He took care removing the bullets, checking them and replacing them in the clip. He was sliding the last bullet into place when he stopped, lifting his eyes suddenly. Something made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end, and he caught a faint whiff of... what? Ozone and a waft of a heavy tropical breeze. "Commander, join your team at the gatehouse. Eyes on that column." The one-eyed knight nearby nodded to his Baron and moved with surprising speed considering the limp he'd shown all day. "Frank, drop what you're doing. Overwatch with the 'gardeners,' west tower." He let the cigarette tumble from his lips and ground it out with his heel.

Malloy stepped up beside John, whose shoulders were stiffening against the same faint drift of unholiness that promised a hell of a lot more to come, the first shifting of the tide of a vast ocean. "Everyone's in place. The Shrikes are on the ground in your bottleneck," his eyes slid toward Alain without ever reaching him, "to the north. Most of the Icecrest mercs are ringing the ruins." He pointed to the tumbled stones on the hill below their position. "We have the rest running patrols and ready to intercept."

Sunset

The sun slipped the rest of the way over the horizon as the clouds advanced, and in spite of it all, Alain smiled. "Seramanc." It wasn't an order. They'd been poised for this moment all along. Dark, misty shapes raced silently across the moors. They slipped into combat swift and deadly, ripping into the demons and the brainwashed citizens of Lashkar with claws and fangs.

One of the vampires appeared in the command center but his arms were lowered, hands clasped as he bowed. "Milord baron, gentlemen. They have opened a rift within the Five Points Gate. Arcebel and the others are delayed."

Druj' looked up and smiled to herself. "It's time." With that calm statement, she walked off the little knoll she'd been sharing with Indra and Sarva, and through a portal that hadn't been open a split-second before. This new portal split and tore Reality in the heart of the ruins overlooking the battlefield. She looked back to make sure Sarva and Indra were following while every nerve in her constructed body flared with burning, searing pain. John was nearby and probably Alain (and Alain's angelic rider) as well. Their presence was a marvelous excuse. Druj' called up her Deception and pulled a look of dismay onto her face. "I can't hold the Lashkar recruits anymore?" While she said it, she released her hold on the civilian minds. The shouts of battle were suddenly filled with an even higher-pitched clamor of shrill screams and panic.

A fierce joy burned on Indra?s face as he followed his siblings through into the mad dance. The first sharp, cold drops began to fall from the leading edge of the storm, the wind chasing them in even as the dismayed cries of the press-ganged soldiers waking on the battlefield raised a chorus.

You believe in redemption and miracles, Morana had said to John, once. He remembered it as the tenor of the battle shifted and a familiar burn singed his skin. She was down there in the ruins, close. He didn't call out. Didn't go running down the f*cking hill. Just kept relaying orders to Malloy, coordinated with Alain, occasionally put his finger to the Chey-Tac?s trigger and took something big and black and ugly out of the fight. A few raindrops sizzled along his shoulder.

Alain tightened his fingers around the hilt of the sword. Behind him the vampire and a knight began to approach, but he jerked his head toward the medevac portal. It had suddenly become hugely vulnerable. But Alain didn't move any further?Lilinbane remained sheathed.

"My children, my darling children...how proud I am." A fourth being stepped through the portal after the three, Indra, Sarva and Druj'. "Come," he said, opening a hand for one of Sarva's and gesturing for the others to follow. "This way. I know you'd like to see them before it ends."

The poor civilians from Lashkar whose minds Druj' had seized woke from a dream and found themselves in the middle of a battlefield, holding guns and fighting alongside demons. Some of them turned their guns on the demons, some of them screamed and threw down their weapons to try to run away or toward the shelter of the people fighting the demons. Chaos spiked on the battlefield. Druj''s eyes went wide when she heard Marius behind her, but they were crimson and delighted again when she turned. "You came!" Of course she followed; the Architect was there to oversee the end of everything.

"Father!" Indra exclaimed with the same triumphant devotion he'd felt when his prison door had opened. Hailstones fell from the sky to an opening salvo of thunder. Confusion was a wildfire on any battlefield, and Indra knew it well. This?this one savored strongly of that particularly tasty spice. And now Marius was among them and their plans were coming to fruition. He wanted to cavort.

At the medevac portal, mad violet light shimmered over Brett's face, reflections from the space between worlds arcing and spooling just overhead. "Getting hot," he commented to no one in particular, and typed faster.

Jackie muttered, "No sh*t, Sherlock," as she popped off another three rounds and then reloaded her rifle. The medics were going back and forth through the portal in a steady stream now, running out with empty hands and coming back dragging wounded in trails of blood and screams.

New screams echoed up the hill into the ruins, these from the tunnels below them. Another rift had opened, in amongst the refugees. "Roland!" Zakharias shouted, who roared an affirmative. Roland and the Bretland Rangers stayed, attempting to contain the rift immediately outside; Zakharias and the other knights with him charged underground to fence in the new rift at point-blank range.

Five minutes until moonrise

Marius finally returned his gaze to the fray, though he hardly had to turn at all to do so: he had the body of a lion and a golden eagle's wings, and he looked out on the world with four faces of ancient kings. "Hm," he rumbled again.

Alain felt blood, tasted it in the corner of his mouth. He went to wipe it away, when he saw his hand... apparently covered in it, up to his elbows, dripping in an absurd stream. He looked over his shoulder; saw his shadow twenty feet tall looming over him, black wings extended. Then he blinked over the chapel, at the changing shapes of the beings within, the unnatural horrors, John phasing through form after form... "I can't work like this," Alain decided. He drew his pistol, took aim at what appeared to be Indra's knee and pulled the trigger.

"Sh*t," Brett muttered as the portal wavered. He threw his metaphorical back into the effort of steadying it down again, keeping the medics and their wounded charges headed up and down the ramp from being blasted out of existence by the backlash.

Indra shrieked as the bullet tore through bone and cartilage, sinew and flesh. Shrieked and fell forward in a long caricature of a human form and a million faces, and dropped the knife. It clattered dully on the stone floor. Iron and granite. From the floor the demon snarled and spat, aiming his barbs at Alain. "You can't save them. You couldn't save any of them. Shall I tell you what it was like, when the building came down?"

"Four," Alain answered simply as he climbed to his feet. To his knowledge, he had saved four. He still needed a moment to get his bearings. There wasn't blood all over his arms anymore, but the blood dripping down his face, that was real.

Reality snapped back into place, True Forms hidden behind the shields that fragile minds constructed, drowned in lies. Druj' was still shielding her eyes away from the flare of the knife, hiding them behind an uplifted arm. Sarva was snarling imprecations at John from behind the shelter of the altar stone. A jackal-headed man became John again, holding a long blade?Alain's, Lilinbane?in his right hand.

Indra's eyes flared, his head whipping toward the far wall and in the battlefield beyond the husk of the chapel. The civilians from Lashkar turned again on their saviors, seized by his power, chaos erupting at every quarter.

Tomas had taken up a defensive position at the portal, assisting his sister Jackie and her team. Malloy shifted from point to point, relaying instructions of his own and catching glimpses of the insanity within the crumbling walls of the chapel. Jackie's rifle was overheating; she could feel the metal barrel getting close to burning against her cheek when she aimed, fired, reloaded. Aimed, fired, reloaded. One of the civilians being evacuated turned on the medics abruptly, and she spun to use the butt of the rifle like a club to beat him away from the people who'd been trying to help him.

Marius appeared human again, and could not care less. Another being might have felt nostalgia for his earliest form, but such beings felt strongly about reality and what it contained; the Architect had no such affection. By staying so still, being so apparently inattentive, he had spent the last several minutes largely ignored, and now it was time to capitalize on this. As the screams rose beyond the walls Marius stepped forward and scooped the knife from the ground. It would end him, turning this knife on himself... to taste oblivion at last, that tempted him... but not enough. "Indra, Sarva," he said, and gestured to Alain and John with his other hand.

Sweet little Sarva pounced forward at the command, her poison-green eyes alight and her laughter high and childish as she skittered for Alain. The gun went off three times as he danced away from her; she came too close and his hand went down to his boot, came up with the trench knife in a swift upward slash to keep her back.

Something f*cking weird was going on in John's head, as he held Alain?s sword. Like someone was standing at his right shoulder, tapping insistently at his arm, speaking muffled and garbled nonsense into his ear. He ignored it and swung the flat of the angelic blade at the side of Indra's head. The daeva hadn't made it back to his feet yet when the flat of that bedamned blessed blade knocked him back to the stone, dark blood trickling from his temple.

"What," Marius said as the energy changed. Gone were the arcs, gone was the lightning, all replaced by a golden glow that grew steadily from the ground in the center of the chapel. "What," he hissed, as eight hundred years of meticulous plans switched gears to reverse.

Blue flashed to gold in Morana's eyes in that last split-second of life that she shared with Alain, and her mouth curved up into a smile. The grip he had on her shoulder didn't keep her from falling straight down, but what hit the ground wasn't a body at all. It was a shimmer of gold dust and green that landed on the puddle of her blood, that cracked and drove straight down through the granite and down further through the earth, down and down to reach bedrock?then back up in a burst of wild growth, a sapling that sprouted and broke the rocks of the chapel as its roots crawled out, as its branches swelled and burst into radiant emerald leaves despite the hail.

Marius was out of John's reach for another step, and another. But Sarva was close, darting in to try to protect her structural father. John added her blood to the blade when he swung the sword in a flat sweep that separated her head from her body. Behind him glory bloomed, and he staggered when the birth of the Tree washed over him and the burn of Morana?s presence winked out. Clenching his teeth over a wail that was never going to stop if it got out, he lunged at Marius.

"What?" Indra echoed, pivoting to follow the curving path of the Hound, hobbling strides growing longer and longer and the power building and building. He snapped a snaking cord of it at John, alarm raising a klaxon in his skull.

Alain heard Indra speak. He'd made a promise to protect John?and this bastard had kissed Sophie, never mind trying to kill her. He squeezed off three rapid shots at Indra's torso to throw off his aim and turn him away from John. The bolt went wide in a flare that scored a black line around the crumbling stone walls before Indra was left facing Alain, weaving on his feet and staring in disbelief at the blossom of blood on the front of his shirt from the exit wounds.

Then he barked a laugh and looked up, donning Alain's face for old time's sake as he met the man's eyes with a mocking twist of a smile. "She tasted fantastic, Sofia?" He didn't get another word out. Alain took the shot, dead center of the forehead. The body fell straight down, his knees giving way first, before toppling to the ground, all illusions gone.

Marius reeled at the deaths of his minions; at the sudden peeling away of his powers that he'd poured into what should have been the destruction of another seven worlds. He staggered away from John and from the blinding light, stumbled away from the chapel until his foot caught on a root snarling out of the ground. He twisted and fell back onto his hands before the Hound of God, staring up at him with pure malice.

John reversed his grip on the sword, taking it in one hand whole and the other bleeding, and stabbed it downward into the Architect's chest.

There were no bursts of light, no great releases of power from this creature because he had already expended it all, only the inexorable embrace of oblivion he yearned for. His face twisted into a final snarl as his flesh desiccated before John's eyes. His arms collapsed under his own weight, and when he hit the stone floor he scattered into dust. The last of the demonic minions went with him, vanishing off the battlefield in dust or fire. The very, very confused mind-controlled citizens of Lashkar?the ones who were left?went back to screaming and panicking.

"Holy sh*t," Brett breathed. The portal flickered; thank the gods no one was in transit when it happened. He stared at the blossoming light, and then started flipping switches and entering new commands. The Nexial space abruptly and completely stabilized, locking onto the aetherial energies of the Tree.

Jackie lowered her weapon when her target vanished before she could pull the trigger again and stared as demons flared like torches before they popped out of existence, one after another. She leaned against her rifle, tried to get back her breath, and then asked, "What the f*ck just happened?"

Alain lowered his pistol. He looked over his shoulder at the Tree that already appeared decades older than it should have. Then he lifted his eyes to the sky, squinting at the change. Then he looked at John. Goddamnit.

John was lucky he didn't snap Alain's sword in half when he hit the floor of the chapel with it, ending up on his hands and knees beside it, dust swirling into his eyes as his numb disbelief began to erode. "No," he said to the stone. "It was supposed to be me," he coughed out, and got to his feet. It took him two tries before he made it. Something was wrong with his back.

Alain looked up at the Tree again, and then out at the battlefield. He could still hear the people from Lashkar screaming. Somewhere down in the tunnels, or out in the field, was his wife. "Easy," he said to John, because he couldn't think of anything else to say, looping his arm around his back to help him walk. No, there was one thing to say, and it was possible Alain wouldn't get another chance. It was possible John wouldn't let him. "She wanted me to tell you something."

John turned, shrugging off Alain's arm, and looked at the Tree for the first time. Alain let the man shrug him off, taking a step back. "She said you were right, after all."

The Hound couldn't think about what Alain was saying right then. Right then, it was as meaningless as the screams of the Lashkari outside, the chorus of Morana's betrayal of her creator. The Tree was closer than he'd expected, weirdly. Fifteen feet away, growing up out of the chapel ruins. She'd been that close to him when she died. And she was dead. He'd felt the snuffing-out of that familiar burn, and felt the Tree's birth replace it. He'd always felt that thread of goodness in her, always.

He stared at it. It provided nothing helpful at all but its presence, radiating power and life and a solid anchor to the newborn Heart of a World; the breeze from the dying storm rustled its leaves. Closing the distance between himself and the Tree, he flattened his palms against the trunk. Then he fisted his hands and started pounding them into the trunk as if he could force it to open and spit her out again. The bark scraped his hands, the branches shivered under the impacts of the blows, and the same giddy sense of presence and power he'd felt once before resonated through the Tree he was pounding.

Alain watched quietly as John threw his rage at the Tree. He took another step back and ducked his head to pull a cigarette, light it. Someone screamed again. He walked away, flagging down a knight racing toward him. "Boris. Tell me about the casualties...and find Sophie. I want to see my wife."

Malloy was gone, trying to calm the chaos and funnel the Lashkari into an area of the battlefield where they could be contained and calmed down. Jackie sucked in a breath, and then another, and slung her rifle over her back. "Let's start getting the rest of the wounded through." The world hadn't ended. Life had to keep moving.

Brett was finally able to sit back, flex his fingers, and look around. "Did we do it?"

"Yeah," Jackie said, as she started walking away from the portal Brett had kept alive. "I think we did."