"—ctor, wake up."
Camilla was not ordinarily an early riser. Her natural rhythms were to stay up late and rise late; when that pace was broken by the need to start her day early she tended to be groggy and slow and in need of coffee. But in this case the darkness around her and the urgency in Arnice's tone brought on a surge of adrenaline that had her fully up and aware at once.
"What is it?" she said, instinctively keeping her voice low to match Arnice's.
"Fiends."
The Nightlord had been squatting alongside her. Camilla took the hand that had been on her shoulder, shaking her awake, and let Arnice help pull her to her feet when she stood.
"Alyce?" Camilla asked as she picked up her gun. Arnice just shrugged, which was not a good sign.
It had to be early enough to still be Alyce's watch, Camilla reasoned. Otherwise, Arnice would have just awakened the entire group. The only reason for only getting Camilla up would be that Arnice's demon barrier had been tripped and she couldn't let that pass in good conscience, but needed an excuse for what was happening.
The two of them crept up the stairs. Arnice opened the trapdoor slowly, to keep the hinges from creaking.
Nothing.
The rooftop was completely bare. There wasn't any sign of Alyce, nor of any fiends, not even corpses or spilled Blue Blood.
"What happened here? And where did you sense those fiends from?"
"To the east. I felt something break the line about a minute and a half ago. It was something strong, too, enough to break the ward, not just set it off."
Camilla raised her gun and stepped over to that side, looking out. The fog had fully cleared, and the trees below were moon-drenched. The forest looked pristine, much cleaner than the broken shell of the village to the other side of the tower.
"I don't see anything now. Can you tell if it's still there or—ack!"
Arnice yanked her back by the shoulder of her coat a second before a green-feathered harpy burst up from straight below under the crenelations.
"Blast it!" Camilla yelped, firing from the hip and exploding the left wing of the fiend. "Did these things grab Alyce?"
The wounded harpy went plummeting to the ground, futilely flapping its remaining wing in a desperate attempt to stay aloft, but things had been the correct word and other harpies, with a gold-crested precept leading their flock, were soaring up over the battlements as the first one fell. They swooped and dove at the two women, slashing out with their taloned feet. Arnice blocked one swipe with her armored gauntlet, then hacked the fiend down with two strokes of her knight sword, while Camilla shot a second, so the threat was down to two plus the leader almost at once.
It didn't make sense that this would be it. Certainly, Alyce was no match for the Nightlord in battle and Camilla would have named herself as the girl's superior as well, but even so Alyce should have been able to sound an alarm at the very least. She'd been on watch duty; there should have been signs if she'd been attacked.
A fiend dove at Camilla from behind, but she'd been keeping track of their positions and turned in time to see it and twist out of its way so that its talons only scored the shoulder of her coat. She snatched a vial of red fluid from her belt and flipped it into the air, then shattered it with a gunshot. The impact triggered a reaction, and a stunning blast buffeted the fiends. Wasting no time, Arnice grabbed her sword in both hands and chopped out, cleaving the precept's head from its body in a single blow. That left just two, and the two women made short work of them.
"What's going on up there?" someone called from below. The voice was groggy with sleep, but the worry and fear were still plain.
"Fiends!" Camilla called. "And Alyce is missing."
"There's more of them coming," Arnice interrupted, pointing down over the battlements. Sure enough, more fiends were crawling out of the woods, including the tangled vines and stems of dryads, the inky darkness of shadows, and the small ground-skimming forms of black and queen bees. There were at least two dozen of them all told.
"We have to keep them out of the tower," Camilla said. "You and I can handle these, but the numbers alone would be too much for the survey team."
"Got it," Arnice said, then in the next minute vaulted over the battlement and dropped forty feet to the ground below. Camilla was well aware of the enhanced abilities of her body—any of the half-demons could have easily performed the same feat—but it was still impressive to see Arnice so casually ignore human limitations, to drop like a stone, flex her knees on impact, and immediately take off running at the cluster of fiends.
"Try to pretend you're human" is a little harder than it sounds, apparently.
"Bloody hell," Camilla muttered under her breath, then ran for the trapdoor, pulling it shut behind her and slamming the bar into place.
"Where's Arnice?" Glen asked. The four of them were all awake, weapons in hand. Gunshots tended to make for a good alarm clock.
"She took the fast way down."
"Wait, what?"
"I'm going to go back her up, and then see if we can figure out what happened to Alyce. Barricade the door after me, and don't go out of her unless we tell you. If fiends get in here you'll need to use windows and stairways as chokepoints and combine your firepower to take them down."
"You don't need to tell us twice. Good luck, Doctor."
"I really hope that I don't need it, but thanks."
He followed her downstairs, and she was glad to hear that he'd obeyed orders when the bar and bolts slammed into place behind her. Unfortunately, that left Camilla on the wrong side of the barricade, but that was what it was. Arnice was already engaged with the fiends, hewing away as they closed in around her, so there was no time to wait; Camilla sniped down a bee that had been circling the fringes, looking for a chance to burn Arnice down with its fiery stinger.
But where was Alyce?
Her disappearance and the fiend attacks were likely connected, but it didn't make sense that she hadn't raised the alarm, or that there hadn't been any sign of a struggle. It was just barely possible that a flying fiend might have swooped in and carried her off like a hawk striking a field mouse, but a trained Curia agent on her guard should never fall prey to something like that. And she certainly hadn't descended through the tower; she might have been able to creep past Camilla and the Survey Team members, but Arnice hadn't even been asleep, had she?
It was a mystery, but one that would have to wait until they dealt with their immediate problems. Even so, Camilla supposed that she could be forgiven letting her mind wander; the battle smoothly fell into well-established patterns. Arnice's abilities and combat style were so similar to Aluche's that she easily took on that role, with Camilla providing the same kind of backup and supporting fire. Fiends fell like reaped wheat, dropping in twos and threes, especially since without any witnesses Arnice was cheating: she still swung the heavy knight sword in her left hand, but there was a long dagger in her right whose fantastical hooks and flanges marked it as a Blood Sword. The way it easily sliced through fiendish flesh while even the blessed steel of the sword had to cleave it by force confirmed the impression.
Still, there were hiccups; Arnice and Camilla had each fought with Aluche but not extensively alongside each other, and didn't always know what the other would do. Two wolf fiends—not shadows like before, but true wolves like the Servan Scharf, standing as high at the shoulder as the women did but on four paws, bounded from the forest and leapt at the moment Arnice cut two dryads out of their path.
Arnice and Camilla each reacted like the seasoned fighters that they were, picking their target and striking before the fiends could complete their leap. Arnice's sword impaled her fiend through its massive chest up to the hilt, while she rammed her dagger into the monster's side, striking through its ribcage to the heart. Camilla's shots, meanwhile, were perfectly aimed and reduced her target's head to a blue ruin.
The problem was, they'd both gone after the same fiend. Without prior coordination they'd each gone to their dominant side, only unlike Aluche, Camilla and Arnice were both left-handed. The uninjured wolf hit Arnice like a runaway train, its jaws crunching shut around her upper right arm, tearing open flesh while gouging into bone, even as its body weight slammed Arnice to the ground. Electricity exploded in the beast's mouth, and Arnice cried out in pain as her body convulsed, blue sparks playing across her form.
"Arnice!"
Camilla fired, hitting the wolf in the rear hip; she'd been afraid to shoot any farther forward on its body for fear that the bullets would punch through and hit Arnice. Her right hand, meanwhile, plucked a small phial full of yellow-tinted powder from a loop inside her coat lining, and tossed it towards Arnice, thumb flicking the cork out as she threw it. The power showered woman and fiend alike, and the crackling sparks vanished, the demonic electricity cleansed from Arnice's aura.
Free to move again, the Nightlord slammed both feet into the fiend, knocking it end-over-end off her to land a good six feet away. She'd let go of the sword, and the dagger shimmered out of existence as an ornate gun took shape in her left hand, its barrel surrounded by three fin-like shields like flower petals. A searing bolt of energy blasted from the barrel, and the wolf-fiend exploded in a shower of Blue Blood. Arnice raised her mouth to the sky and roared, fangs glistening white, and the Blue Blood swirled around her, flying to her body and soaking into her, and before Camilla's eyes the savage wound on her arm knit itself together, so that in seconds there was no trace she'd been hurt.
Almost idly, she swung the odd shooter to her left and gunned down the last fiend, a stray bee, with another searing bolt, before releasing her control over the Blood Sword and reabsorbing it into her body. She picked up the physical sword again as she got to her feet.
"I'm sorry," Camilla said, but Arnice brushed it off with a wave of her gauntlet.
"No harm done, and it's not like we've had any chance to work these things out."
"We should have, though. From now on, I'll take the one on the right. It'll be easier for me to adjust my aim at range."
"Fair enough. Nice work with that cure, by the way. I wouldn't have been able to move easily, if at all, without it. Your own work?"
"That's right. Most fiendish elemental attacks don't actually conjure physical fire or electricity, but rather invoke the spiritual concept of the element, so when it strikes a living target it infects their spiritual essence, their 'aura' or even their 'soul' to produce further effects that don't quite match what the physical reality would be. But that also means that we can invoke alchemical means to create a cure."
"Doctor, I am a demon and I didn't understand most of that."
"That's all right; all anyone on the combat end of things needs to know is that it works."
Arnice laughed once, as Camilla had hoped she would.
"So, do you have any idea which way Alyce went?"
"No, and there's another problem, too. With fiends out and roaming the area, I don't want to run off and leave the tower for too long. We can't go prowling around all night looking for Alyce while leaving the survey team vulnerable."
"I can't argue with you, Doctor. There's too much fiend activity around here for them; it's a good thing they were assigned an escort."
"Except the escort is missing, and you and I are stuck filling in for her. And we don't know if she went off chasing something, or if she was taken."
Arnice gave her a surprised look.
"You sound angry."
"I am angry." She broke open her gun's breech, removed the spent shells, and fed in fresh ammo. "And I don't know if I ought to be angry at Alyce for being irresponsible or at the fiends for attacking her, and the uncertainty just makes me more upset!"
She snapped the gun shut, ready to fire.
"I could look for her by myself," Arnice offered. "That way you could watch the tower."
Camilla shook her head.
"No, that's not acceptable."
"Why?"
"While I trust you on your own in a hazardous situation as much as anyone, for obvious reasons, you're still not back at your full strength. And this isn't your problem, it's mine. You're here backing me up as a favor, plus we joined with these Curia officers because I'm one of them. I'm not going to send you off into unknown danger for my sake."
"Technically, any problem with demons or fiends is related to me, Camilla, and friends don't have to come up with excuses to help one another out." She flashed the scientist a quirky smile. "Lilysse finally managed to hammer that one through my head after a couple of decades, and vice versa."
"It's always easier to extend help than to ask for it," Camilla agreed, "at least for a certain kind of person—the kind that makes you want to help them. But this isn't one of those cases, Arnice."
"Stubborn Alucards."
"It's the family motto," Camilla quipped, then added more seriously, "Is there anything you can do to search the area remotely with your power?"
"Hmm…not directly, but maybe I could—"
She was interrupted by a titanic roar, a bellow of rage and fury barely contained, that echoed through the trees and rang out over them.
"Or we could just follow that."
"Keep an eye out for smaller fiends on the way," Camilla warned. "That thing sounds huge."
"And if it's anywhere near as big as it sounds, we might just have found out why the fiends around here are coming out in the daytime." Arnice grinned, fangs on display. "And just maybe it'll be something I can really let loose against!"
Camilla sighed.
"Knights," she muttered. "I swear, Arnice, sometimes you're worse than Muveil."
"Of course I am. She's still just a fledgling demon, after all!" Arnice laughed, then spun and launched herself through the woods, lightly running at a speed that Camilla could only keep pace with at a dead sprint.
Reckless! Every bit as hot-headed as Aluche, but harder to work with in the field because Aluche at least looked to Camilla for direction in terms of general matters while the Nightlord was used to being fully in charge.
It was, Camilla thought, a miracle that she didn't stumble over some protruding root as she followed in Arnice's wake. Their route took them east and north on a path that was probably just an old animal trail, and leaves slapped against her face or plucked at her hair and sleeves when she didn't dodge fast enough. There was a slight rise in the ground as well, that she felt in her calves, and even though Camilla was in excellent physical condition she was glad that they covered no more than three hundred yards before they burst into a clearing, one made into a series of terraces by jagged boulders that seemed to thrust themselves out of the ground like a monster's teeth.
And atop the highest terrace, stood the thing that had made the terrible roar.
It could have been nothing else. Fifteen feet tall at the shoulder, it stood on leonine paws but with the square-built, massively-muscled barrel of a bull. Its head resembled that of a raptor, with a razor-sharp iron beak, but no raptor ever had such a row of jagged, rust-stained fangs or a segmented tongue like a length of anchor chain, ending in a four-pronged claw hook. A monstrous fiend, animate and inanimate matter merged into a single life, a single hate-filled purpose.
That hate was stoked even further, eyes alight with blue balefire, from the coils of living flame that clung to it. These fires seemed not to burn, neither the beast nor the scrubby grass, but wrapped around limbs and body, even to one great ram's-horn cresting its head, and anchored it firmly in place.
The monster roared again, its fury echoing off the massive tree-trunks ringing the clearing.
"Run, Alyce! I can't hold this thing much longer!"
The giant fiend was such a dominating presence that it was easy by comparison to miss the clearing's other inhabitants. Alyce was indeed one of them, her back to Camilla and Arnice, her sword clenched defiantly in both hands but still looking like nothing but a brave toy before the fiend.
The second person, the one who'd spoken, was between Alyce and the creature, standing as if she'd been facing Alyce but half-turned at the waist towards the fiend. Her right hand was upraised, an orb of fire the same color as the binding chains burning in her cupped palm and illuminating a form clad in blued-steel plate so ornately flanged and with gaps in so many places to let moonlight-pale skin show through that it was more properly called a costume rather than armor. Hair a deep, dark crimson, almost purple like ancient wine by torchlight tumbled in a wavy riot over her shoulders and down her back.
A demon! There was no mistaking her for anything else, and the look of anguished strain on her face bore out her earlier words.
"I can't just leave you," Alyce protested.
"You have to! You can't fight this thing!"
"Neither can you! If you use the power of the Blue Blood, you'll just fall further into darkness!"
The demon clenched her empty left hand into a fist.
"What does that matter now? It's too late for me, anyhow."
"Don't say that, Danielle! You've come all this way…You can't give up right at the end!"
Danielle? That certainly explained Alyce's anguish, if the demon was actually her senior that she'd talked about at dinner. Camilla glanced at Arnice, and saw the understanding she'd expected to find in the Nightlord's expression.
"Do you think this is the first fiend I've had to face since I left you? They're drawn to me now, to this…this thing I've become." The giant fiend thrashed fiercely, and the chains flickered, light from the fiery orb Danielle held leaking out through her fingers. "Just…go away, Alyce, and forget me, before it's too late!"
"No!" shouted Alyce, and Camilla had to admire her dedication, even while the knight was literally trembling at the presence of the huge monster. "I'll beat this thing, and then we're going to that tower to find that cure!"
"Alyce, there isn't any cure. It's just a fantasy, a story drummed up by the desperate and the damned. And even if it was true, it's too late. Look at me, Alyce. There's nothing human about me!"
Whether responding to the emotion in Danielle's words or just its own desire to be free, the fiend let out another titanic roar and surged against its bonds. Danielle's knees buckled, and she stumbled forward a couple of steps as she fought to keep her balance.
Arnice started forward, doubtless wanting to get ready to attack the enormous fiend before it broke loose, but Camilla held out her hand. She wanted to hear more about this "cure," and the two women had a better chance of saying something revealing on their own—particularly Danielle, who showed no signs of being willing to wait around to be questioned once Alyce was safe.
"I don't believe that—and neither do you, or you wouldn't be here."
"You weren't supposed to follow me. You have your own life now, and you need to live it."
"Then why did you tell me where you were going?"
"I didn't want you to worry if I just vanished in the night! I told you right in the letter that you weren't supposed to follow me."
"Did you think I would just leave you?"
"You have to! If you keep following me, you're just going to end up dead, or worse, like this." Danielle waved her hand up and down her body, indicating her inhuman state. "I can't…I could never live with myself if that happened."
Camilla glanced at Arnice. They both understood, more than Alyce could know, perhaps more than Danielle herself did, what that meant. Despair had turned the Moon Queen into a monster, had driven Arnice mad until she was offered hope in its place. Emotion defined a demon, and for one already on the edge of submitting to the Blue Blood's darker impulses…
Arnice was right. There was no more time to wait. They needed to intervene now to help defeat the fiend, and they could sort out the rest of it later.
Only, before they took so much as a step, they were interrupted.
"Ahahahahahahahahaha!"
The laughter pealed out, echoing from the trees, nearly as loud as the fiend's roars had been. It played like a leitmotif, heralding the arrival of a newcomer to the stage, as reality pulled itself open, the very air dividing like a door into a black shadow, and out emerged a demon.
Her hair was sea-foam green, long and gossamer-straight, and it flowed down across her body, merging with the diaphanous wrapper of the same color that clung to her figure. She had no legs; from beneath her skirt protruded a half-dozen thick green tentacles like a plant's roots or an octopus's arms. She hovered in the air in the center of the triangle formed by Alyce, Danielle, and the fiend, a look of supreme, arrogant cruelty on her face.
"Fornix!" Arnice hissed, rage suddenly consuming her expression.
"Ahhh," Fornix caroled, her tone hovering on the edge of being a cry of ecstasy, "what a delightful tableau! My little hieracosphinx has outdone itself tonight. Two beautiful, shining souls corrupted by utmost despair and loss! Two hearts about to break beneath death and mourning!"
She raised her hand towards Danielle, and a searing blue-white bolt blasted the red-haired demon off her feet, tiny flakes of ice glinting in the moonlight in the wake of its passage. The binding chains vanished at once; the great fiend arched its back, dug its talons into the earth, and roared its triumph to the sky.
"No…" Danielle murmured weakly. "Alyce…"
"Consider this a trial to overcome, little human," Fornix sang. "You're a proud Knight of the Curia, aren't you? Lay this fiend to rest, like a true hero, and come to the tower to save your maiden." She drifted towards Danielle, and three of her thick tendrils wrapped around her, scooping the fallen demon up in her grip. "Or die here, and know that your death will consume the last of the humanity in her soul. Ahahah—"
Camilla chose that moment to shoot the hieracosphinx in the side of the head with an explosive shell. The detonation, fiery chemicals blasting into the fiend's body on the spiritual as well as physical level, operating on some of the same principles as her cures, snapped the enormous beast's head to one side, stopping the thing's nascent charge before it could begin and cutting off Fornix's triumphant laughter.
She could have a bit of a theatrical streak, if she allowed herself to indulge.
Fornix barely had time to react to the moment, though, because Arnice had cast aside her knight sword. What was clenched in her left hand now was the black latticework hilt of the Demon Sword Jorth, and its blade extended and lashed across the dozens of yards between Arnice and Fornix like a living thing, a razor-edged whip that sought her out and slashed across her chest, cutting cloth and hair and drawing Blue Blood in a thin line below her shoulder.
"Augh!"
"What the—?" Alyce cried, still trying to catch up with the rapidly-moving series of events.
"I'd suggest not cackling about your victory before you learn what you're up against," Camilla said even as she extracted the spent shell from her gun's secondary magazine and fed in another explosive. Ordinary ammunition would only cause minor injuries to the giant fiend at best, and trying to plink it to death by a thousand punctures wasn't a good strategy.
"How dare you!?" Fornix shrieked. "This is my game, my challenge for these girls. You were not invited!"
She clasped her arms across her chest as if hugging herself in shock and pure frustration, her nails digging into the skin over her elbows, but in the next moment it was proved otherwise. With a scream, Fornix ripped her arms apart, flinging them wide, and as she did her claws tore two long furrows in her forearms, spraying her Blue Blood outward but in coiling streams that splattered the rock terraces below her.
Rock terraces that began to move and come alive, Fornix's Blue Blood giving birth to fiends. Seven or eight feet tall, they pulled themselves free, cracks in the gray stone forming as limbs gained definition, crude statues of gray stone tottering forward, waving club-like arms.
Rock golems, Camilla thought. Definitely not small fry.
"Damn it, Fornix!" Arnice shouted, but the demon was already beyond hearing. She reached behind her and tore open another gap into darkness with a swipe of her claws and drifted back through it, Danielle still in her grip as she vanished.
Leaving Alyce facing the hieracosphinx alone on the other side of the living army of rock.