The building they settled on was a squat stone watchtower near the eastern end of the village. The mortared blocks were scarred by the marks of battle: claw-scrapes, fire, and something caustic, testifying to the relentless attempts of fiends to breach its defenses. The weathering of the various marks suggested to Camilla that they were made at the same general time of the village's destruction, which was no surprise. The heavy oak door, bound in iron, was still intact, though more than one of the casement windows on the second floor looked broken, either torn off their hinges or the latticed frame reduced to a twisted knot of metal.

It was a harsh reminder that no building by itself could hold off the forces of Night. No, at least, when the fiends came in numbers, driven by something more than simple instinct.

Defeating the Moon Queen had only been a beginning.

Not surprisingly, given the solid walls and roof and the lack of any windows on the ground floor, there were more fiends inside the tower. The small doorways and confined space, though, left them at Arnice and Alyce's mercy, and the two swordswomen had none to offer. The second floor was more of the same; two shadows pounced from the upper landing as Arnice led the way up the stairs and she impaled one in mid-drop, grabbed the other by the scruff of the neck in her gauntleted right hand, and smashed it up against the wall. Camilla had switched her gun from rifle to shotgun for use in these close quarters, and blasted the stunned monster into a spray of Blue Blood.

A barred trapdoor blocked the way to the roof. Alyce climbed up, unbarred it, and looked out. Unsurprisingly, nothing was there, since it was open to the sky and sun.

"That was amazing," Elsie marveled. "Even for knights, you three cut those shadows down like they were nothing worse than rats."

"Dr. Camilla and I have fought a lot of them," Arnice said. "They're just about the weakest fiend; really, surprise is their biggest threat."

"Even a knight-in-training should be able to defeat a shadow one-on-one," Alyce agreed, "let alone a full-fledged agent."

Glen sighed.

"And thus we are reminded just how limited we ordinary folk are by comparison."

"It's not really the same thing, though," Arnice suggested. "The Survey Corps are more researchers than fighters."

"What about her?" Glen countered, jerking a thumb in Camilla's direction. "She's a researcher. Heck, she's a top-tier genius researcher, not some glorified lab assistant that has lots of time to work on her combat and spiritual training, but she's nearly as good as an agent."

"Most of my weapons and techniques I designed myself," Camilla said. "I don't use spiritual energy except in the way it's drawn from objects. Unfortunately, most of it is still in the prototype stage and even the more refined items are too complex, high-maintenance, or expensive to produce to be issued as basic field equipment. My gun, for example, is only starting to be issued to knight units operating as soldiers. A squad posted to protect a village like this might get one."

"Damn, so you get around the whole problem by inventing the stuff you need?"

"In the main. I actually do agree with you, though. The combat training and gear provided to Survey Corps members isn't up to the standard that your work requires, and that isn't fair given what the Curia asks you to do."

That wasn't only based upon the fight they'd just had and the survey team's performance. During the Azure Moon incident with the Moon Queen, a good half of the fiend-slaying orders she and Aluche had been given by the Curia had come from the Survey Corps after their operatives had gotten in over their heads.

As a matter of fact, when Camilla had been working with Muveil as her first half-demon, Muveil had told her how the Survey Corps' inability to handle difficult situations was a running joke among some of the knights. Muveil being her class-president self, she'd upbraided those who denigrated the Corps for behavior unworthy of a Knight of the Curia towards a comrade, but that didn't change the perception.

Or, if she was being honest, the fact. The Survey Corps was undertrained and underequipped for field work, and Alyce's presence was the only thing that made this mission at all justifiable.

"I'm glad that somebody appreciates it, at least."

"I still wish we could get moving on this," Alyce grumbled. "The fiends we fought so far aren't outside the expectation for this kind of mission."

"The fiends, no; the daytime, yes," Glen shot back. "That isn't normal."

"I am curious," Camilla agreed. She wondered if she'd find answers at her grandfather's tower. While there wasn't any direct reason to assume a connection, she had a strong distrust of coincidences, particularly when there was already a superficial link in place. "Hopefully, when the weather allows you to get to work, you'll be able to find something to help explain it."

"That's the truth. If fiends start coming out in daytime, it'll make everybody's lives a lot worse. When you add that to the weirdness going on in Eurulm…"

"That was the Moon Queen, though," Arnice said. "For that matter, so was the aggression we'd been seeing from fiends."

"But she's gone now, so something else must be causing this," Camilla answered.

Arnice grinned at her, the reaction making her involuntarily flash a glimpse of fang that thankfully she hid before anyone else saw it.

"You want to stick around and investigate, don't you, Doctor?"

"Curiosity is my besetting sin," Camilla said. "Unfortunately, we already have one mission, and I know I won't have time to spend prowling around looking into a major second issue, not before you need to head off on your next mission."

"Eh, how's that?" Elsie put in.

"Dr. Camilla borrowed me away from my other responsibilities, as a kind of favor," Arnice said.

"Unfortunately, it's not a permanent assignment; she has far too much to handle on her own."

"Well, you'll just have to hope we in the Survey Corps can deliver the data you need."

"Even if she learns it from the autopsy," Tara said. Unlike her comrades, who were alternately businesslike or joking, she sounded morose and dejected, maybe even bitter. She was the youngest of the group, not counting Alyce, and she was right at that age where bitter reality starts to knock youthful enthusiasm from a person's heart, yet maturity hadn't started to grant perspective and rebuild the hope and truth the original illusions had been built around.

Listen to me, sounding like an old woman, Camilla thought. Since when do I qualify as everybody's aunt?

She wondered how Arnice felt. By now, the Nightlord was old enough to be the great-great-grandmother of everyone in the room, when one added in the years she'd ran feral before the Church had found her (indeed, some interpretations of Arnice's history suggested that she'd transformed to a half-demon in the original rain of Blue Blood, though Camilla had her doubts), but the ranks of her subjects were full of eternal, pureblood demons who had endured for countless centuries. Though as Malvasia showed, a demon's heart did not grow tired and weary in the way a human's often did with age, but burned with the reckless passion of youth no matter how much time passed. It was a curious thought, and it made Camilla wonder if demons had inspired the myths and stories of "eternal youth" that so many cultures had told long before the First Saint battled the Nightlord.

The chain of thought rattling through Camilla's mind made no difference to the others, though. "We have a mission to accomplish," Alyce snapped at Tara. "This work is important; you should be taking it seriously."

"And so we come full circle," Arnice murmured, sotto voce.

"I take my death very seriously."

"More seriously than your job, at least!" Clenching her fists at her side, Alyce seemed on the verge of saying more, but she snapped her mouth shut on whatever she was about to say. Instead, she spun towards the stairs leading to the roof of the watchtower.

"I'll stand the first watch," she said, "since the daylight scares you so much."

With that parting shot she stalked upstairs, letting the trapdoor drop into place with a bang.

Glen looked over at Arnice and quirked an eyebrow at her.

"Were we ever that young?"

"I think it's a stage that we all go through, at least if we have the passion to care about things."

"Why does that sound like a backhanded insult?" Camilla put in.

"I guess we'd have to ask someone who knew you back in your school days, Doctor," Glen said. "They could be quite a font of stories."

"Indeed, it'd be fun to learn what the cool, collected Dr. Camilla got passionate and hotheaded about," Arnice said, chuckling, "unless you're claiming there wasn't anything you were emotional over?"

Elsie chuckled too.

"Ahh, claiming to be insulted over the idea that you lacked passion, but really just implying that there weren't any embarrassing stories about you to be hunted down?"

Camilla smiled.

"Well, you'll have to wonder, won't you? Though I have to say, I at least appreciate that you didn't suggest that you'd have to roust my classmates out of the crowds of their grandchildren."

"That's not courtesy," Rafe laughed. "You forget, Doctor, that we just got to see you shoot!"

"A very scientific approach. I approve," she said. And that worked, she thought with some satisfaction. Camilla had hoped to turn it around, so that they weren't thinking about their annoyance with Alyce but instead had a chance to relax and let the tension drain a bit. It would have been uncomfortable indeed if Alyce came back down for dinner and found that her companions had had two hours to stew in their resentment of her rudeness.

I've changed, she realized. The Camilla Alucard of several months ago wouldn't have thought about those kind of concerns, but her experiences in pursuing the Moon Queen and the solution to the riddle of the Azure Moon had altered that. It was true that Aluche had been the emotional center of their little group, as well as their leader on the field of battle, but it was Camilla who managed them, supervised matters, handled logistics, and in general had been in overall command.

It was a surprising knack to find in herself at her age, considering how many years she'd spent with a closed laboratory door between herself and anyone who might interfere with her research, but there it was nevertheless. Is this how Loer felt, she wondered, when she gathered the Lourdes Order around herself?

And it was indeed a calmer Alyce who descended from the tower roof when called for dinner. She didn't apologize for her harsh words, but she showed no sign of being ready to renew the argument. Perhaps time to think had given her perspective on the pointlessness of it. And the Survey Corps team, for their parts, looked to have put it behind them.

Alyce even surprised them all by volunteering to take charge of the cooking.

"Now that's a surprise," Elsie said. "Most knights that I know barely know more than it takes to prepare the most basic camp rations."

"Like you're one to talk," Rafe said. "Let me give you a hand, Alyce; there's a lot of mouths here and these greedy-guts only know what to do with food after it's been served. Unless Dr. Camilla or Arnice…?"

Camilla shook her head.

"Not me. When left to my own devices I tend to treat food a more a question of efficiency—getting the necessary fuel into my body while wasting as little time as possible."

"A three-minute egg woman, then?" Glen suggested, and after her nod added, "Someone after my own heart."

"At least it's edible," Arnice said. "My Lilysse has worked on her cupcake recipe for years now, and she's almost got them to the point where they don't immediately poison you."

Camilla laughed. There was just something funny about the idea of the Nightlord's consort being diligently helpless in the kitchen.

"She does make really good chocolate tea, though," Arnice added, perhaps not wanting to run down her lover's reputation entirely.

"Chocolate tea?" Tara asked. "How does that even work?"

Demons and chocolate, Camilla thought, remembering not only Arnice, but Aluche, and Muveil, and Christophorus, and all the stories Eleanor had told about fiends' appreciation of her chocolate. Though Aluche had apparently been just as much of a chocolate fanatic as a human, so perhaps she didn't count.

"Surprisingly well," Arnice said, "though even I was hesitant at first." She paused and chuckled, "Though my impressions weren't helped by the fact that I ended up wearing the first attempt. I think Lloyd and the Professor thought I'd gotten off lucky."

The Professor? Camilla thought. That must have happened on Ruswal Island, when my grandfather had been there with her.

"She sounds kind of like our captain, here," Tara said. "Elsie and I can't compare to Rafe, but Glen always has to take it one step further. Either it's half-raw on the inside, or he makes certain the food's well-done by accidentally dropping it into the fire."

"We don't let him take his turn cooking any more," Elsie added. "For our own self-preservation."

"I prefer to think of it as concentrating my skills in the areas where I can be the most useful."

Alyce chuckled.

"You sound like Danielle, always saying how she was doing her duty as a knight by not making us try to go into combat weakened by the aftereffects from her cooking."

"Leadership involves making the difficult choices," Glen opined sagely. Elsie bounced a pair of rolled up socks from her pack off the side of his head.

"More like the lazy choices," she snorted. "This Danielle was your captain, Alyce?"

Alyce shook her head.

"My senior at the Academy, and my partner on field missions as a full agent."

Her hand tightened around the handle of the pot she was getting out, and her lips grew tightly pinched.

Arnice dropped a hand onto her shoulder.

"I miss Lilysse, too. It's hard being in the field, away from the people we want to be beside."

"Yeah. Yeah, it is." A moment later, Alyce added, "Thank you."

Arnice didn't reply, but gave her shoulder a squeeze before letting go.

Camilla wondered what the relationship had been between Alyce and her senior, whether it was just friendship and admiration or something more, but either way she thought it was kind of Arnice to compare their situations even though they weren't actually all that comparable. The enforced separation from one's life partner of decades carried out by kidnap and torture was hardly the same as missing a friend, even a lover, while out on a mission.

But then again, it was an axiom that no one could ever truly know another's pain. What seemed a minor annoyance to an outsider might be the source of deep suffering, while something that would anguish Camilla might mean nothing to Alyce. Everyone's heart was, in the end, unique.

She pushed herself to her feet, vaguely disquieted by what felt like an unspoken insult she'd offered the agent.

"Even though it's dinnertime, someone should still be on watch," she said. "Since I'm not going to be much use here, I'll do it and we can work out a proper schedule later."

"I'll bring your supper up," Arnice said.

"Thanks."

Camilla ascended the stairs and closed the trapdoor behind her. The watchtower's battlements were chipped and broken in places, offering yet more testimony as to how fierce Arvoy's fall had been, but were mostly intact. Of course, many fiends, spawned from birds or winged insects, could freely fly, rendering such defenses little more than ornamentation. The cloud-streaked sky was the rich, dark blue of twilight, and the silver slice of the moon had come out, joined by Venus, the evening star, and a scattered handful of true stars.

Night was the time of fiends, of demons, and yet Camilla was finding its fall almost comforting. Perhaps it was the long weeks in the sunless city of Eurulm, habituating her to the nighttime. Or maybe something more prosaic, the fact that she'd spent so much of her life, day and night, under the illumination of the harsh, artificial light of laboratories so that sun and moon were all one and the same.

It put her in mind of something Vallderossa had said when beaten in the Eclipse Palace. Humans spoke of the World Without Night because the nighttime had been wrenched away from them by the fiends, half of the clock denied them. But from a demon's perspective, that same phrase meant something very different—something that made much more sense to Camilla now in the wake of Arnice's revelation about the First Saint's original purpose. Freed from the artificial balance the Pope had kept them to, humans were winning the war. And where fiends were beaten back, humans brought candles and lanterns, gas-lights and electricity, and they drove out the darkness itself with artificial light, until even by midnight a city's alleys and boulevards were cloaked in day's semblance and "night" only a measure of the hour.

Humans feared the threat of Eternal Night, be that threat false or real, but perhaps the night-dwellers feared as much the promise of eternal day.

It was something to think about, and Camilla couldn't help but be put in mind of her grandfather, who'd dedicated so much time and effort to the study of fiends, not merely as foes to be defeated, but as creatures that inhabited the world and interacted with their environment in their own unique ways. Eleanor, too; the girl's dream of bringing about peace in the world through her chocolate was almost laughable in its innocence, and yet wasn't finding a way to bridge those gaps in communication and understanding the only way forward for humans and demons alike, at least if they wanted to avoid more bloodshed and tragedy?

What would you think of all this, Grandfather?

For the first time in years, Camilla felt the ache of missing him. She missed his presence, his cantankerous manner and eccentric views, his raw enthusiasm for knowledge, his relentless encouragement for her own desire to learn, to discover.

She wondered what he'd make of her choices. Would he respect her work or scorn it? Would he see her desire to work within the Curia to change it as admirable, or pointless?

But then again, I don't allow the living to pass judgment on my choices, so why should I grant that privilege to the dead?

Ironically enough, she knew that was a sentiment that the Professor would have heartily approved.

The trapdoor hinges creaked behind Camilla. She turned to see Arnice emerge from below, two steaming bowls in her hands and a packet of hard-baked waybiscuit in the crook of her arm.

"Hey, Doctor. Did you need something to drink?"

"My water flask is in one of my coat pockets, not my pack, so no thank you."

"Okay. Mind if I join you?"

"Not at all."

Arnice shut the trapdoor.

"When I was up here before, I set up a field around the tower, a kind of barrier that would warn me if a fiend got too close, so it's all right if we relax. Though it's not like I can tell the others that, and besides, I figured that you wanted a little time to think."

She handed a bowl to Camilla; it was filled with a thick stew that smelled delicious, with a fragrant hint of spices.

"You're perceptive. I suppose that's a necessary skill to be a good leader."

"Eh heh heh." Arnice gave an embarrassed little chuckle and rubbed the back of her neck. "It's not like it's anything special, just stuff I've kind of picked up by accident if anything."

The posture, expression, and tone of voice all seemed exactly like Aluche, and Camilla said so.

"I guess that's not too surprising," Arnice said. "She really reminds me of me a lot, when I was younger. Less selfish than I was, though. I kind of had to learn to care for people from Lilysse outwards, not the other way around."

"Because of how you were when the Curia took you in?"

Arnice nodded.

"I guess you've read some of the files they kept on me, on my background, if they let you experiment with my blood samples in your half-demon research."

Camilla nodded back.

"They said you were almost feral back then, that you'd conquered the fiendish urge to prey on humans through sheer will, instead protecting people by killing fiends, but that lack of human contact was eroding your sense of self."

"I suppose that's not wrong, though it's kind of unnerving to know that it's all written down like that for just anyone to pick up and read."

"I'm sorry."

Arnice shook her head.

"Don't be. It's not your fault, and you didn't even know that I was out there to have my privacy invaded. To you, I was just, well, a piece of history." She chuckled, then added, "Besides, it's not like you Alucards wouldn't ask for more right to my face!"

It made Camilla laugh.

"Well, you know what they say. No one ever made new breakthroughs by being timid."

A spoon had been stuck in the bowl of stew. She took the handle and scooped herself a first mouthful.

"Oh, this is good. Alyce and Rafe should be proud of themselves, especially since most of the ingredients are travel rations."

"Is it? I'm glad."

"Muveil always said, after she became a half-demon, that most food didn't taste very good to her. I suppose it's since a demon's body isn't meant to consume the same kinds of nutrition or in the same way. Though chocolate seems to be a universal constant."

"That's the truth."

They sat down together against the battlements and began to eat, one with more enthusiasm than the other.

"So what were you thinking about, if you don't mind saying?" Arnice asked.

"Oh, a number of things. The differences between people, and how they shared feelings even though the things that caused those emotions could be different, because of our individual lives and experiences, and from that on to shared communication and the hope to understand each other, both between humans and across the line between humans and demons."

Camilla dipped a wafer of biscuit into the stew, letting it absorb the broth to soften it. For as long as there had been hardtack, there had been jokes about firing it out of cannons and eating the ammunition instead.

"It's a hard question. This whole business with Malvasia could have been avoided if people were a little better at bridging that gap. And don't think that it's just your side that was to blame. There were plenty of demons who saw Malvasia and Alstromeria's romance as a travesty as well. They were just quieter about it, since Malvasia is one of the most powerful of us, but when she was consumed by despair they flocked to her side and were happy to feed her hatred of humans with poisoned words."

"I suspect that we were still worse than you were. After all, a certain amount of prejudice almost seems to be a natural thing, the animal's inherent caution of the 'outsider' that we need to learn to overcome with our intellect. But from what you told me, the Curia has been feeding the idea of fiends and demons as intractable monsters for centuries solely to support Ludegert's purpose of uniting humankind against a common enemy. When you look at what the Curia did to Alstromeria's story, manipulating and outright lying about the facts to achieve the effect they wanted, it's easy to see the impact they have."

She leaned back and sighed.

"It's so much easier to find divisions between people than things to bring them together. Human, demon, fiend, that's all the same."

Arnice laughed at that.

"What's so funny?"

"You just said that one of the things that unites us is our ability to seek out excuses to divide us."

Camilla thought over what she'd just said.

"I did, didn't I?"

"Is that the kind of logic it takes a genius to understand, or is it just an Alucard family trait?"

"Hmm," she replied, grinning at herself, "it really does sound like my grandfather's kind of thing, doesn't it?"

"Definitely, at least judging from the short time I knew him."

"It's too bad you couldn't have kept up your relationship. I know he'd never have been put off by the fact that you became a full demon in the end."

"I know—he'd just have been twice as insistent on getting to examine my body once I became the Nightlord!"

"Probably a good reason to stay away. Though you never let him do it as a half-demon, so the opportunity to gain valuable data on the effects of the transition was lost."

"If that was significant, I'm surprised you haven't asked Muveil. You must have all kinds of data on her half-demon state from when she was your initial subject."

"Of course; I've already asked her. The only thing that held me back at first was my own guilt over transforming her into a half-demon in the first place, taking away her humanity and putting her into a situation where she could end up as she is."

"Muveil would never blame you for that," Arnice said. "If anything, she'd be grateful for the chance to gain more strength to fight against fiends. And the only person she'd blame for her fall would be herself, for not resisting Vallderossa any longer. Which to my mind is as silly as blaming you, but I know the type."

"You're right, on both counts. Aluche and Veruschka helped her come to terms with her own situation, from what she told me."

"So you made up with her, then?"

Camilla nodded.

"We did. So, of course I asked her right away if I could properly examine her, to see what changes the demonic transformation had caused and how they related back to her previous half-demon state. It's a unique chance to study the Blue Blood's transformative properties across two separate but progressive controlled states."

"Scary!" Arnice gave a shudder of mock terror. "You Alucards are a special breed."

"Well, Grandfather was my first real teacher, so it's not surprising I should take after him."

"You miss him, huh?"

Camilla shrugged.

"I think it's the mission. I mean, I'm going to his tower, to look into his research—and research was the thing that he and I shared, our bond. So it's bringing back a lot of memories that I hadn't really thought about for a while. But yeah, I do miss him."

Arnice pushed herself to her feet.

"He'd be proud of you, you know."

"Thanks."

"Are you coming down?"

Camilla shook her head.

"I think I'd rather be by myself for a bit longer. You can tell the others that I'll go ahead and take the first watch shift."

"All right. To bad I can't just take the whole night and let the rest of you get a decent night's sleep. I don't sleep very well in the nighttime, anyway."

"If nothing else, I'm sure that you won't have a lot of people fighting you over the after-midnight hours."

"There's that. Oh, and I know what I said earlier about the ward I put up, but…keep your eyes open anyway, all right?"

"Of course."

"Good. Maybe it's just from too long fighting the Moon Queen, but I don't like the feel of this place, especially when you're up here alone. I don't know if it's the lingering emotions from the village's destruction or something else, but I'm glad that I don't have Alyce's job, that you're as good in combat as any human agent."

"That's the most ominous thing I've heard you say since I've met you."

"Hey, I have to live up to my title sometimes."