Arnice lifted the sheathed greatsword from the equipment trunk mounted on the back of the carriage. The smell of dust and hay was in the air; the inn doubtlessly used the carriage-house for emergency stabling when the regular space was full.

"Well, what do you think?" Camilla asked.

Arnice drew the weapon. It slid out easily; whatever Curia functionary was responsible for maintaining the carriage's kit had done their job well. The silver inlays glittered in the wisps of sunlight that filtered into the room.

She spun the blade in her left hand.

"It's been a while since I've wielded one of these. It's actually kind of nostalgic."

"I never got a chance to discuss it with Aluche, but Muveil always said that her Blood Sword felt lighter and more natural to use, even though it had all of the weight of an ordinary weapon its size."

Arnice chuckled.

"Has anyone ever told you that you're relentless?"

"Well, when you get right down to it, that's what a research scientist is: someone who's just so curious about the world that they never stop. A scientific experiment is just a fancy way of asking a question."

"So it's like being a nosy gossip with more education, huh?"

Camilla laughed.

"I'll have to remember that the next time a Research Department staff meeting degenerates into backbiting. Are there scientists in the Night as well?"

"Absolutely! Though there's more magic and less science to it, I think."

"Well, we talk about 'science' as if it's what we study, but that's not true. Actually, it's about the framework for how we learn. A hundred years ago, they called the physical sciences 'natural philosophy' rather than our modern terms for them."

"Yeah, I remember that. Oh, and to answer your question, while I haven't used my own Blood Sword very often since I inherited Jorth, at least not as a sword, I do agree with Muveil. It's made from something that's literally part of me, so it's more like moving my arm than swinging around a hunk of metal. Jorth's more like that than it is a normal sword, too. I think that's because it's alive in a sense. It's got its own spirit that bonds with its chosen wielder's."

"I see."

Arnice spun the sword again, easily caught it, then swept it through a couple of simple cuts.

"You know, part of me is actually hoping that I get a chance to try this out."

"Really?"

"Sure! It's something new and old at the same time, and it'll be good to learn if my skills with a weapon that's not special have kept up."

Camilla shook her head, chuckling.

"Knights…"

"Hey, what's that supposed to mean?"

"Oh, nothing."

Arnice snorted.

"Like you'd be any different if you walked into a new library or something."

"Fair enough. I'd hope we'd all like what we spend our careers dedicated to doing."

Arnice resheathed the blade, then fastened it across her back, getting the harness in place so it was as comfortable as possible. Camilla supposed that was one of the advantages of a Blood Sword; you didn't have to lug them around when they weren't in use. Shouldering her own pack and making sure it wouldn't interfere with her ability to draw her gun, she followed Arnice out into the inn-yard, where the Survey Corps group was waiting.

"Morning!" Glen called, waving. "I hope you folks are ready to exercise your feet."

"The true strength of the Survey Corps," Elsie added. "While you researchers and agents enjoy your carriage rides, our jobs have us walking the whole way."

"The bootmakers of the world thank you," Arnice said, prompting laughter. Alyce did not join in.

"We're already a half-hour behind schedule," she said. "I'm sure Dr. Camilla isn't any happier to be delayed in her business."

"Dr. Camilla is the reason we're running late," Camilla pointed out, "thanks to the two cups of coffee I needed to get moving, so I don't think I have a right to complain."

"You're almost as much of a night owl as I am," Arnice said. though only Camilla got the punchline.

"Every researcher I know is a slow riser," Elsie said. "Is it something in the water?"

"It might as well be. You start with morning classes, which means that if you want lab or library time on your own, the evening is the only time you can get it. And since we wouldn't be researchers if we didn't like learning new things like that, we end up getting lost in our work. If academy classes started mid-afternoon, we'd all become habituated to be up at the crack of dawn instead."

"At least it isn't like the knights, who are expected to be up after dark because that's when the fiends are active and it doesn't help to be snoring away when they come. Right, Alyce?"

Again, Alyce didn't seem particularly happy to be drawn into the banter. Maybe it was that the Survey Corps unit was obviously a standing group who knew each other well and she wasn't yet comfortable with their dynamic, or maybe she was just an introvert by nature, who didn't open up readily with people she didn't have a close relationship with.

Of course, she might also just be humorless and easily annoyed. Not everybody had to have a reason for being unpleasant.

"I think this is the kind of topic we can as easily discuss while we're walking, unless we want to be even more late," she snapped. Glen just sighed.

"Well, I can't say that you're wrong. Let's get on our way."

They started out on the road, but after half an hour they came to a fork where a side track led off to the southeast. It had clearly once been a wider route, but the trees and undergrowth had begun to close in on it, rendering it unsuitable for vehicles.

"This road leads to what used to be the village of Arvoy, before it was abandoned," Camilla said. "My grandfather's tower is outside the village, so this is our direction."

Glen pulled out a map and glanced at it.

"Ours, too." He grinned at her and said, "Looks like you'll get the pleasure of company a little longer."

"More the other way around."

"Elsie, you wound me," the captain responded, theatrically pressing his hand to his chest.

"You'll notice that no one is contradicting me, though."

It took another two hours to make their way along the winding trail. The forest had all but reclaimed its own here, thick-trunked oaks and pines pressing in on all sides. Part of Camilla wondered if there wasn't something unnatural about the extent of the new growth. She mentioned it casually, and was surprised when Glen at once ordered Rafe to make a note of it.

"It's part of the Survey Corps' job," Rafe answered her wordless question, pencil scratching against the heavy paper of his logbook. "We take note of any anomalies in an area that might be of interest to the Curia, whether it's something for agents to fight or researchers to study. The tree growth might be natural—probably, it is, especially in a region like this with good growing weather—but you never know, right? Somebody might care, and they wouldn't even know about it if we didn't write it down."

"I don't like it," Tara put in. "Dr. Camilla's right; there's something creepy about this forest. It's too dark; the trees are so close that even on the path the canopy nearly blocks out the sun. It might as well be twilight."

"That's not just a metaphor," Arnice put in. "Keep your eyes open."

"She's right," Camilla agreed. "Even before the city was caught in the pocket of Eternal Night, the fiends in the area around Eurulm were getting more aggressive, coming out even at twilight instead of waiting for darkness."

There had been any number of theories for that change in fiend behavior suggested by the Curia's researchers, ranging from the simple to the outlandish. Now, of course, Camilla was fairly sure that she knew the truth: the prime cause of the fiends' aggression was the Moon Queen and her followers stirring up rancor against humans. And when Arnice had been run mad by Malvasia, she wasn't able to act as a calming force to counter that influence. So fiends had run wild, daring the borders of the day.

Their worries did not come to pass, for all that the Survey Corps team kept a nervous eye out the whole way until the forest widened out to reveal the village, or at least what was left of it.

Arvoy was as empty and deserted of life as Eurulm itself, but unlike the capital, this ghost town was not eerily intact. While Eurulm sat empty and largely unmarred, as if its entire population had just stepped out for a minute but would be back any time, Arvoy was a ruin. What had once been a neat settlement of half-timbered houses had been violently overrun. At least half of the buildings showed substantial damage, from shattered glass and broken root-tiles to gaping holes and fallen-in walls to being reduced by fire to nothing but a low foundation of broken brick. Where the evacuation of Eurulm had been largely successful and most loss of life confined to the Curia's warriors fighting to hold the line, it was plain that Arvoy hadn't had such protection.

Camilla knew the statistics, of course. Since her grandfather's tower was here, she'd learned of Arvoy's fate at the time. The few knights stationed there to defend it hadn't been nearly enough, and of close to two thousand people, barely a third of them had survived to escape the fallen village.

Even so, seeing the evidence first-hand made her want to scream, to lash out in fury at the absolute fools who were responsible for it all. Researchers who had abandoned their humanity to conduct brutally unethical experiments, while at the same time paying little heed to consequences in their mad pursuit of scientific glory.

The broken, empty windows seemed to stare at her in mute accusation, the weight of it causing Camilla to drift behind as Alyce led the Survey Corps team ahead into the village. For all her anger and contempt at the scientists who had cause the outbreak or the heartless Pope Beatria who had authorized and covered up their actions, hadn't she committed the same sins? Yes, her creations had both survived the transformation to half-demons and retained their own wills, but they'd both suffered for her hubris. Muveil had been wracked with the dark urges of the Blue Blood, making her easy prey for Vallderossa to corrupt into a full demon. And Aluche was now caught in a void of time, fighting an endless battle to stave off the Moon Queen's attempt to spread an eternal night.

Oh, there were degrees of guilt, and Camilla was neither stupid nor self-destructive enough to equate anything she'd done with what had happened at the Beatria Laboratory. But she'd still taken away choices, and caused harm that couldn't easily be repaired, and though she knew that both of her creations had forgiven her, it wasn't so easy for her to forgive herself.

Arnice rested a hand on her shoulder.

"Hey, it's okay."

"Eh?"

"You were thinking, could you have done more to protect people, am I right?"

Camilla nodded.

"You are. I know it's foolish, but seeing this, the Curia's failure, it made me think of my own."

"Uh-huh. I ask myself the same questions. How could I have let Malvasia capture Lilysse? Could I have done a better job of fighting the Moon Queen? If I had held on to my wits, could I have found Lilysse by now and saved Al and Lilia and everyone else from having to go through it all?"

"Arnice…" Camilla didn't quite know what to say. Putting it on some kind of objective scale, Arnice's regrets and worries were far worse than her own. Of course, personal pain and suffering were never in any way abstract or objective.

"I guess all we can ask ourselves is, did we try our best at the time?" the Nightlord continued. "Not did we succeed or fail, but did we do what we thought that we could."

"That sounds like something I said to Aluche."

"Oh?"

"After we found Liliana and were trying to decide on our next step, I told her that I tried to make decisions—moral decisions, I mean, not analytical ones—based on my instincts, so that I have fewer regrets."

"Yeah, I like that way of putting it."

They smiled at one another.

"Thanks, Arnice."

They turned towards the village to catch up with the others, only for the comfortable mood to be shattered at once by a cry of alarm from Rafe. They'd been crossing between the shadows of several close-set husks of buildings, and fiends were slinking from between them, springing at the Survey Corps team. Alyce, who'd been on point, whirled at once, drawing her sword as she charged. Arnice, too, set off racing down the road, so Camilla drifted to the side to clear her firing line.

Rafe had staggered and slipped as he flinched back, and it may have saved his life as the leaping shadow wolf passed over his falling body. Elsie and Glen fired small handguns at the fiends, while Tara had drawn a long knife, almost big enough for a sword, and was taking a defensive stance, ready to react and counter.

That was good strategy for facing a human opponent, but Camilla knew it was the wrong tactic entirely for a human fighting a fiend. She'd been around enough knights to know that the way to defeat a fiend was to strike first and hard. Their relentless speed and aggression meant that normal humans simply couldn't react in time, and even trained knights would have difficulty.

Camilla braced the butt of her rifle against her shoulder, coolly sighted at the shadow wolf, the scope easily letting her pick out every scrap of near-black fur, and fired. The hammer snapped down, and the special triple-loaded cartridge spat three shots with drumbeat cracks. The shells punched into the fiend, knocking it over onto its back, where it started to melt into splatters of the Blue Blood.

Alyce, meanwhile, came to Rafe's aid, tearing into the wolf that had leapt over him with her long knight sword, the great blade nearly cleaving the fiend in two. Shadow wolves were little threat to experienced agents except in large numbers, and Alyce acted like she was intent on proving it, spinning to meet a second fiend and impaling it on a long thrust through the chest. Blue Blood sprayed from the wound, but rather than spattering across Alyce's body, it froze in mid-air, caught by some unseen force, and then was drawn to the Rosier Clock she wore around her throat.

More fiends were crawling from the buildings around the group, though, more of the shadow wolves and then their pack-leader, a massive dire wolf. This fiend stood on its hind legs, at least seven and a half feet tall, its thickly-muscled body covered in dark fur. The monster's head was more truly wolflike than those of the shadow wolves, with elongated muzzle and upright ears, and its huge hands sported saber-like claws. With a savage growl, it charged at the survey team.

Only Arnice got to it first.

The Nightlord had a savage grin on her face as she charged it down. Her sword chopped deeply into its right shoulder, nearly severing the dire wolf's arm. The fiend, though, didn't respond to the pain, didn't buckle or flinch. Instead, it seemed to realize that it had her sword trapped, embedded in its body. It roared, spittle spraying from its fangs, and whipped its left arm around, claws glinting in the light. The fistful of talons would tear into her side.

Arnice snapped up her gauntleted right hand. Claws screeched off the metal as she blocked the wolf's strike, actually thrusting its hand back with a shove of her forearm. She then punched the fiend, her powerful uppercut coming up under its wolf muzzle and snapping its head back.

She took a step back and wrenched her sword free, tearing it loose from flesh and bone with a fresh spray of Blue Blood. The fiend swept its good hand down vertically at her, but Arnice was faster, impaling the thing through the belly. Now the dire wolf buckled, the wound almost certainly mortal, but Arnice didn't trust to chance, instead cutting the blade out of it sideways, severing the fiend's spine as she did.

The pack-master's corpse dropped, the already-corrupting form making a wet, dull thud as it struck the broken cobbles of the village street.

It was a performance, Camilla decided, that had been more suitable for the half-demon Arnice had once been than for a human knight like Alyce. She genuinely was holding back, which was the even more frightening thing.

It was fresh evidence, Camilla thought, of why so many groups, from the Curia to national governments, were pushing to fund and control research into half-demons. What Arnice was doing was similar to what she'd done before becoming the Nightlord, or what Camilla had seen Aluche, Muveil, and Veruschka do. It was a rare human who could marshal even a fraction of the power of one who carried the Blue Blood. The difference between Arnice and Alyce, a trained knight who nonetheless had to work to stave off three of the shadow wolves, cutting one down with a cleaving overhead slash, was significant. The survey team, even with their well-crafted Curia-issue weapons, were even more helpless. Camilla coolly shot down another wolf menacing them, knowing that even one-to-one odds were too much to expect them to face.

The death of the pack-leader, though, seemed to sap the fiends' courage. Whether it was because they were fighting in the daytime and the dire wolf had been driving them, or if they were capable of feeling fear because of the losses they'd taken, the surviving shadow wolves flinched away rather than pressing their attack on the vulnerable members of the group. As Arnice and Alyce charged at them from opposite sides, the fiends turned and bolted, fleeing in both directions off the road, heading towards the darkness and wherever they made their daytime lairs. Camilla gunned down one last fiend as they fled, insuring that it, at least, wouldn't be attacking anyone else in the future.

"Damn it," Arnice cursed as she rammed her sword back into its sheath. "I hate it when enemies get away. I'm always afraid that they're going to come back around for another try."

Remembering the fish-fiend from Eurulm with the unexpectedly mundane name of Joe, Camilla found herself in complete agreement.

"Is anyone hurt?" she called.

"No, I wasn't touched," Alyce said.

"Elsie and I are good," Glen said. "Rafe? Tara?"

"I'm fine," Rafe said, getting back to his feet. He took a couple of steps, testing his weight. "Yeah, it doesn't feel like I twisted anything when I fell. Tara, you?"

"I'm all right. Dr. Camilla shot the only fiends that got near me."

"Glad that we teamed up with the two of you," Glen said. "Getting surprised like that could have gone bad, even with Alyce taking them out." To the knight, he added, "I can see why the Curia wanted you tagging along on this survey with us."

"But this is broad daylight!" Elsie protested. "Since when does the Night come out at midday?"

"The Moon Queen was driving fiends to enhance their aggressive instincts, causing them to come out even in twilight, but that shouldn't be a problem any more."

Arnice looked around the village.

"I don't know, Doctor. Maybe not the Moon Queen herself, but the memories left in this place…"

"Hmm," Camilla thought it over. "I know that demons and fiends are more sensitive to emotions, including the resonance with past events that were particularly traumatic for those involved. That's how so many 'haunted' places get their reputations."

"And these shadows are dark enough to give at least some protection to the fiends, and counter their natural revulsion to the light."

"We'd better get moving, then," Alyce said.

Camilla held up her hand.

"No, I don't think so."

"What?"

"At least, I don't think that Arnice and I should." She took out a watch from one of her coat's numerous pockets. "It's half past two now. The track from here to my grandfather's tower took about an hour and a half to walk, and that was when it was in good condition. I expect it to be nearly overgrown by now, which will just be an invitation to have more fiends attack. Then consider that I have no idea what to expect when we get there, and that I may want to spend several hours on the investigation itself. And on top of that, look."

She pointed up the street, towards the far edge of town. They all saw it, oncoming fog hovering above the treeline, weaving its way forward and wrapping more than one cupola in a misty embrace.

"If the fiends were already aggressive enough to come out before sunset, then that will just make them worse."

Arnice looked at her in surprise.

"Are you sure, Dr. Camilla? I mean, I agree with you about the fiends, but I'm sure that we can handle anything we encounter."

"Exactly!" Alyce stepped in. "We can clearly handle this level of fiend, and we need to get our work done."

"Not like this," Glen said.

"What?"

"Look, Alyce, I trust you that you'll be able to take care of any fiends we run across, but we can't do survey work in the fog. In the town, maybe, but out in the woods? Forget it. There'll be no line of sight, no way to map things."

The young agent looked at them in confusion.

"But your survey work is measuring supernatural forces and influences, isn't it? That shouldn't depend on things like physical visibility?"

"That's what the end results are about, Agent Alyce, but the physical-world measurements and tracking are necessary to establish proper perspective." Now on his own professional ground, much of his easygoing, happy-go-lucky manner from the inn had gone and the character of a team leader was coming through. "Otherwise, it's like making a map that shows a town, a mountain, and two rivers, but doesn't tell you where they are. Which, admittedly, sometimes is our work, but not the job you gave us."

Alyce was obviously unhappy at the delay, but she could tell that she didn't have any counter-argument so she bit down her irritation and gave in, albeit with bad grace.

"All right, then, but what are we supposed to do now?"

"Find a defensible position and make camp," Arnice said. "If the fiends are aggressive enough to attack by day just in the cover of shadows and clouds, then they'd certainly try by night if we're out and exposed."

"That's a good idea," Camilla said. "Let's see if we can find a building that's basically intact. Fiends don't usually come smashing through locked windows and barred doors without something driving them to do it."

Rafe looked around at the broken buildings that surrounded them.

"Let's just hope that lightning doesn't strike twice, then," he grumbled.

It annoyed Camilla that despite having stood against the Moon Queen and her hordes little more than a week ago, the man's words still sent a shiver up her spine.