Ed shook his head, trying to make sense of the se in front of him. He was sitting down on hard ground, and a fbby, gray creature y dead at his feet. It bled bck blood that evaporated into what looked like steam even as it poured out onto the ground.

  “Great One! Ed! you walk?” hissed a familiar voice.

  He blinked, and found the speaker, a familiar-looking imp, standing right behind the body. She wasn’t wearing her usual gray robes, but rather an odd, scaly loincloth and a belt with a few pouches hanging from it.

  “Jori?” What the hells? Ed pushed himself up to his feet and looked around. He was in a stone cell, and the door en. “What happened?”

  “I killed the whisperer!” Jori said, as if that expined everything.

  Ed grunted and patted at his robes, turning around to look for his pipe. Where had it gone? Jori tugged at his robes. “e on. I have a way out. This pce is the worst, do you smell that?!”

  The implications of the situation finally hit Ed as he shook off the st of his demonic jailor’s influence. “You’re bigger! What happened? And how did you get in here?”

  Squinting down at the body, Ed kicked at it, rolling it over. It was naked except for a shoulder belt. A few odds and ends were tucked into it, but he was only ied in his pipe.

  “We won! I killed Nuros’ host with my sorcery – by myself! Afterwards, the Solicitors wao deport me, because of the tract, but then they summoned me back. They wanted me to find you – I brought food!”

  Ed’s stomach growled at the imp’s words, but he ig, pausing as he retrieved his pipe to stare at her. “You… what?” What did she mean they won?

  He shook his head, clearing it. Ohing at a time. “Never mind, tell me ter. How do you expect to get out of here? I don’t imagine we’re going to get very far, running from a Demon King.”

  He peeked out the door. The bck stone corridor outside the cell was empty.

  “I’m very sneaky!” Jori said proudly, pulling what looked like a tiny waterskin off of her belt. “They use these for money here. Usually it’s just little scraps, but I mao get a whole one in there.” She gri him and winked spiratorially. “They’re going to think you broke free, and that you and the guard killed each other!”

  She popped the stopper from the skin and tipped it over. Silver mist poured out, swirling around and into itself oddly for a moment before it unfurled into the vague shape of a man – one missing an arm and the lower part of a leg.

  Ed stared at it for a moment, trying to make sense of it. Had she brought a decoy soul?

  “Jori,” he said with as much patience as he could muster. “That’s not going to work. Mortals leave corpses behind.”

  “Yes, yes,” she said impatiently, tugging on his sleeve as she moved toward the door. “Don’t worry, I fixed it already. I need your help, though!”

  He followed her into the corridripping his pipe tightly in one hand as he did. How had Jori even made it in here without being caught? How bad was the security in this prison?

  Jori led him around the er, and he nearly tripped over the bulky corpse of a demonic guard. The hellhound was rge and probably weighed half again as much as he did. Looking closely, Ed realized that one of its eyes had been pierced through – probably by one of Jori’s cws. How had she gotten the drop on it?

  The imp gestured at him impatiently. “e on, help me get it back to your cell! It’s going treat, just wait.”

  Deg to humor her for now, Ed seized the hound by one of its legs and dragged it back toward the cell. He looked over his shoulder every few seds to make sure nobody was ing, but it looked like the demons really did have terrible security measures. Not even any wards, so far.

  Back ag from the strain, he finally mao haul the thing into the cell with Jori pushing from behind. She was bigger now, but it was still mostly a symbolic effort on her part. There was no ce she could have shifted the dead monster on her ow down to catch his breath for a moment when he was done, feeling weak from the strain, not to mention days without food and too little water. His stomach growled loudly.

  “ht!” Jori said, responding to the sound as if he’d said something. She reached into a pouch at her belt and pulled out some kind of fky-looking pie, which she held out to him.

  “Try it,” Jori urged. “They’re great!”

  Ed accepted the gift meically, staring from it back to Jori. Tentatively, he took a bite. It was filled with potatoes and stewed meat. Pork.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” she said, frowning. “I told you I had food!”

  She had said that, hadn't she? Somehow, Ed hadn’t really believed it. It wasn’t until he actually tasted it that it really hit him. He grihe expression feeling alien on his face. A dry cough escaped his lips, morphing into something that could pass for a chuckle a moment ter. He ughed, first in disbelief and then in pure, blissful relief.

  His people were alive, and he had resupply. An ally, even.

  Hell, he might not die here. Maybe. If they could make it out.

  As he chewed, Jori summoned hellfire into her hand and began spattering it on the walls and the floor, scorg the stones aing small marks into it. Then she began p more down on the floor around the creature’s head, deeply pitting the surface of the stone. Ed had to back up to keep her from setting his boots on fire.

  “Alright, now smash its head!” Jori said, pointing at the hellhound. He could see what she was doing now, and he was cautiously impressed. The demons were supposed to think he’d broken free and killed the whisperer first. Then, when the hellhound came to iigate, he’d defeated it, but burned himself up in the process, probably on the hound’s blood.

  Not b with his focus, Ed flicked a magic missile down onto the hellhound’s corpse, crushing its head like a rotten pumpkin.

  Ed khat hellfire ate through flesh like dry leaves, but it was still a stretch to think he’d mao kill both of these demons and then burnt up without leaving any remains at all. But… with a damaged sht there, and no other expnation, they might swallow it. Besides, the demons here might never have even seen a mortal die before. For a solo rescue-operation, it retty impressive.

  Assuming, of course, that she actually had a way out of here.

  “Not a bad idea.” he ehen, food measure, he blew the cell door off its hinges.

  Jori blinked up at him. “What was that for?”

  “Don’t know if that hellhound could have opehe door by itself,” he expined, scowling down at the bodies. “I hope you have a way for us to get out of this pce . This isn’t going to work if anybody sees us.”

  “Of course I do!" she protested indignantly. "You aren’t going to like it, though.”

  Ed scowled at her. “And why’s that?”

  Jrinned, and for the first time, Ed thought she looked like a real demon.

  ***

  Torvald shifted nervously in his seat and g the others arrayed around the table. They sat in a crowded room in the castle, dominated by a long table, with t Narald at the head and representatives of the other temples pced along it in order of importance.

  They were old men and women for the most part. High priests and padins of renown. Behind the t sat a handful of nobles, including Torvald’s own mother who watched the proceedings with narrowed eyes. She’d tried to talk him out of going this m, and insisted on ing to observe the meeting when she failed. And then there was Torvald, who sat just two seats down from Narald himself, o Hannis of the Temple of Noruk.

  He felt… out of pce, to say the least.

  He’d seen what the Duergar were capable of – he was one of just a few people in this room who had actually fought them. But to hear them seriously discuss the ramifications of the fall of Loamfurth – well, it hit home in a way that nothing else had, so far. What they feared, and what they were trying to address, wasn’t just a war against Besermark by a fn try. They expected the Duergar to attempt to literally gobble up the entire try, and maybe their neighbors as well, just to fuel an eveer war against their own kind in the Depths. And that was assuming that not the entire Duergar Empire was after them.

  It was too big to pte. Like Torvald, most of the priests at the table had kept their mouths shut for most of the meeting, leaving the discussion to the few who had received dire from the gods oter. Even now, Torvald could feel the presence of the goddess as a warmth deep in his chest. She did not speak to him or prompt him to a, but he could feel her attention like a haing on his shoulder.

  It was a strange sensation, but it provided some fort in an otherwise very uling situation.

  Hannis was obviously trying to start a war with the greater Duergar empire while Angjou, the high priestess of Barian, argued for temperahe god of storms had a hot temper, but he was also the god of trade aeo a opposition to Noruk. War was bad for business, after all.

  “If Noruk is calling his priests to the Sacral Peaks, we should join them,” Surin, the high priestess of Eyeli interjected, cutting off airesome statement from Hannis. “Let us all go to the peaks. We need her armies, nor a decration of war to act. The mandate of the Invigition remains collectively ours, even if we haven’t used it in decades. This is what it’s for!”

  The woman sat directly across from Torvald, o Angjou, who grimaced at her words. The four of them sat closest to the t because it was their gods – Noruk, Barian, Eyeli and Ruzinia – who had stepped i time that greater demons were instrumentalized in the mortal world. They had appeared together personally to uhem, tearing down the basis of the st Madurian Emperor’s power in the process.

  A murmur rose around the room as the assembled priests and nobles sidered what they’d just heard. t Narald sat ba his chair, looking thoughtful. Hannis stared at Surin with narrowed eyes, no doubt trying to work out what she to.

  The Invigition, as it was called, was the mandate of their four temples to finish what their gods had started – to excise the threat of power-hungry warlocks and the mohey sought to wield from the mortal world, and to keep them from reemerging again. They had waged a bloody, tury-long war across the entire former empire, but what remaioday was mostly a symbolic anization. The temple priests still preached against the summoning of demons, but no oually still went out to hunt warlocks – that was the Solicitors’ job.

  For the most part, priests today remained iemples, and their padins pursued oals. All of them except the Ruzinians, who tio do what they’d always done – roaming the nd to save those who called Her ill, Torvald doubted that even they had seriously pursued warlocks or demons in a tury, at least.

  “The temples alone ot operate effectively against transgressions of warlocks in the Duergar Empire.” Hannis said finally. “We don’t have the cooperation of their gover – and that means fag their armies, as I've been saying all along!”

  “It will if we don't even try to get their cooperation.” Surin replied emphatically. “We don’t know that the rger Duergar Empire is even aware of this, or that their other vassals would stoop to simir tactics if pressed. I propose that we call a formal cve at the Sacral Peaks to develop a urategy – ohat represents not just Beseri is, but the entire former empire, and that binds us all to act as one acc to our mahat would be you, if it came to war, would it not?”

  Hannis nodded begrudgingly, but Angjou scowled. “You’ll just drag everybody into a war that might not even affect us all! And that’s assuming the kingdoms even agree to it. Hell, even king Renias might see this as a challeo his authority – threatening the ire of the gods to move his armies?! It's barbaric!”

  t Narald waved a hand dismissively. “Unlikely. Besermark is the only try that has already been assaulted, and our third rgest city lies in ruins. Any outside support, be it from the gods or from our sister kingdoms, would likely be wele to his majesty. We are already at war. As the high priestess of Eyeli said, the Invigition was ruly ended, and their mandate remains.”

  The high priestess of Barian subsided, stymied by the ck of support, but then her eyes fell on Torvald.

  “What about the Ruzinians? Are they prepared to support this? I 't picture the pilgrims stopping their work to show up for a cve.”

  Torvald sat up straight as all eyes turo him, and he began to sweat unfortably. He looked past the t to the nobles a his mother’s eyes – there was fear there. She shook her head at him urgently.

  But the answer burned in his heart even as the goddess whispered it in his ear, and he had to give it.

  “The hands of the goddess will always appear where they are needed.”