"Wh-what are you talking about?" Alyce stammered, her defense as perfunctory as a child's when caught with a half-eaten cookie in her mouth.

"Perhaps you forgot the part where I'm the Eurulm District Supervisor, Agent Alyce?" Camilla snapped. "That means that I'm supposed to be copied with all mission assignments that take place in my district, which happens to include this area." She adjusted her monocle, emphasizing the gimlet stare she'd fixed upon Alyce. "I thought it was odd from the first that the Survey Corps was running a mission here that I hadn't heard about, but I wrote it off to the vagaries of bureaucracy; I'm not required to sign off on their activities. But now I know that it wasn't a question of misfiled paperwork or a petty squabble between divisions. You forged the orders to give yourself an excuse to chase Danielle."

"N-no, I—"

Camilla didn't let up, hammering into the girl with a tone as withering as her glare.

"I don't know what you were attached to, but you needed an excuse to leave your duty and come here without being chased. Your superiors would know right away that an agent alone wouldn't be sent without their knowledge or consultation, but a Survey Corps escort job is just routine enough that it wouldn't raise any eyebrows. So you named Glen's team because they were available wherever you happened to be at the time, forged your orders, and dragged them here, entirely for your sake."

Obviously, her threat to take Alyce before the Curia was an empty one; Arnice's presence made the whole question of a public report out of the question and Camilla wouldn't even trust Pope Espheria to handle things sub rosa in a way she'd accept, let alone if it came to the attention of the other two Popes. But Alyce didn't know that, and Camilla was more that willing to use whatever leverage she had to get an explanation of what she and Arnice had been dragged into.

She read stubborn denial on Alyce's face as the girl opened her mouth again, and cut her off before she could even get the first words out.

"You do realize that it's as easy as sending a letter to verify that no such orders were sent, don't you? It's one thing to write a forgery that no one's going to double-check. It's quite another when superior authority starts making specific inquiries. This isn't some casual threat; it'll be easy to show.

"Of course, you don't care about that. You thought, 'I have something more important to do. A little lying, what does that matter?' I understand that. Sometimes, in the field, strict rules and procedures have to be bent in order to defeat fiends and save lives. That's all you think you did, isn't it? I don't know if Danielle was a friend, a mentor, a lover, or some combination of the three to you, but she was in trouble, so of course you found a way to try and help her. You don't even realize what you really did, do you? You have no idea why I'm angry."

"What are you talking about?"

"The fiends that came after us on the road. The fiends that attacked the tower you were supposed to be guarding. The rock golems we fought together. The hieracosphinx. To say nothing of what I'm certain was a pureblood demon." She glanced at Arnice, who confirmed Fornix's status with a nod. "Tell me, Agent Alyce, what chance to you give the Survey Corps team to still be alive now if Arnice and I hadn't been here?"

She hadn't realized it, Camilla confirmed. It hadn't even crossed her mind until now. Shock, horror, and guilt crashed through Alyce's expression, one after another, until it sank in what she'd done.

"Every day of their work, they put their lives on the line, going into dangerous areas to gather vital information. That's the oath they swore as members of the Curia, the sacrifice they make to protect humanity from the fiends, the same oath you and I swore. They never promised to risk their lives for your private, personal mission, without knowing what they'd be going up against or why they were doing it! You're no better than—"

Camilla choked herself off short. What had she been going to say. The Pope? The First Saint? The wound Arnice had left when she'd revealed the truth of the Curia was too new, too fresh in Camilla's mind. Not just she herself, but the entire eight-hundred-year history of the Curia, nothing but manipulation and deception, lives and effort sacrificed without ever knowing why. The modern Popes were no better, with their secret projects and hidden agendas, moving researchers, priestesses, and agents like pawns in some game that never ended, only saw pieces and players fall. Loergwlith tortured and broken, solely for having the good faith to use her prophetic gift to worn of Eurulm's fall, made a scapegoat, a "witch," to conceal Beatria's guilt. Aluche and Liliana, lost now beyond time in an eternal night's dream because Malvasia and Alstromeria were ripped apart for the sake of a worthless lie.

And here was Alyce, doing the same thing, using people just to conceal her own secrets without a thought for their safety, their consent. If Camilla hadn't happened to find that reference in her grandfather's books, if she hadn't chosen that precise day, if Arnice hadn't been willing to come along…

She didn't realize that she'd taken two steps towards the girl with fists clenched until she felt Arnice's hand on her forearm.

Demons, she thought, blinking away hot tears, weren't the only ones who could be carried away by their emotions.

"I…I didn't realize!" Alyce pleased. "I was just thinking about how I could save Danielle! I didn't even think what could have happened to them or even to me. It was just a handy way to take me away from my current assignment and give me an excuse to come to Arvoy and to explain why Danielle wasn't with me if anyone asked."

"I know you didn't. That's why we're still talking. That's why you're going to tell us the entire story, and then we're going to figure out what the three of us are going to do, because your problem has my grandfather's tower at the center of it, and I can't just wish it away while we carry out our business."

"Yes, Dr. Camilla."

"At least with our help, there's a lot better chance at a happy ending," Arnice chimed in.

"Turning optimist on me?"

"I'll have you know I always have been one. Besides, look at Muveil's situation. That turned out all right."

"Somehow."

"Because of the people involved: Muveil herself, Aluche, and yes, you. For a woman with such confidence in her professional expertise, you really don't have a lot of faith in yourself on the human level sometimes."

Camilla arched an eyebrow at her.

"Really, you're telling me this?"

"You're lucky Lilysse isn't here or she'd really be letting you have it. I think that's the habit I have that bugs her more than anything else I do."

There was something, Camilla thought, a little comical about them having this exchange just then. Alyce seemed to feel it, too, or at least found it distracting enough that she was able to shake off the defensive position Camilla had backed her into.

"Before anything else, can you tell me who you are? Or better yet, what you are?"

"I'm Arnice," the Nightlord said with a smirk.

"That really is her name. It's just that she's not named after the so-called 'legendary half-demon,'" Camilla said.

To say that Alyce looked surprised didn't even cover half of it. Overwhelmed or flabbergasted might have been a little closer. It was as if Hercules or King Arthur had shown up in front of her, except that Alyce already knew that Arnice had been a real person instead of a figure of myth.

Arnice, for her part, didn't really seem to appreciate the impact of the moment, but then, she didn't know how her own story had been told and retold, growing from history to legend. Camilla, for her part, had never been quite so overwhelmed by Arnice's heroic legend (especially because she understood even then how the Curia would manipulate facts for the sake of achieving the proper effect), but as a researcher working on creating artificial half-demons she'd found the hard data about Arnice's nature as amazing as any story of her battle prowess.

"I trust," Camilla said, "that I don't need to go into specifics as to how and why Arnice's presence is a secret, not to be discussed with anyone else?"

"My oath on it!"

"You don't need to be that formal. Just be aware that you've gone and blundered across the tail end of the measures that were put into place to stop the spread of Eternal Night in Eurulm and to defeat the Moon Queen." Which, Camilla consoled herself, was not technically a lie. Indeed, she was fairly certain that the Popes would insist that no one know that Curia agents had allied with the Nightlord to resolve that incident. "Which brings me back around to your story, how you found yourself stumbling into our affairs, and deceiving four of your comrades into coming here and facing dangers requiring someone on Arnice's level to defeat."

Alyce flinched at the fresh reminder of her mistake.

"It's like this," she began, then stopped and broke off. Arnice realized the cause of her hesitation before Camilla did.

"If you're worried about the fact that Danielle is a demon now and that Dr. Camilla might want her exterminated, don't. She'd only ever do that if Danielle gave in completely to the worst impulses of the Blue Blood and became a murderous monster—in which case, I suspect she'd rather you give her peace instead of letting her go on as a beast."

"That isn't possible!" Alyce shot back. "Danielle is stronger than anyone I've ever met! She'd never give in to the darkness!"

At least she's consistent, Camilla thought. Regardless of whether it was reality or just emotion, it was the same thing she'd said to Danielle before the fight began. And it might be true. Yes, the majority of humans who became demons had little grasp on their past humanity, but there were certainly exceptions, both those who did not succumb and others who were able to be brought back from the brink, like Muveil and Arnice herself.

"Then you have your answer, don't you?" she said.

"And I'll tell you something else," Arnice added. "Whatever else is happening, you don't want to leave Danielle in Fornix's hands for too long. She's a soul-sucker; her favorite pastime is to savor the sorrow and torment of a suffering human. Watching a knight of the Curia become a demon, seeing her fight with all her strength against the urges of the Blue Blood, losing her grip on sanity hour by hour, day by day, it would be like…like a fine wine for you, or one of Eleanor's Ultimate Chocolates for me, a peerless delicacy."

"I suppose that when the Moon Queen began her activities, it gave Fornix and those like her more opportunity to indulge their habits."

"That's right. The Night isn't really organized like human governments or the Curia; no one really has tight control. And pureblood demons just come back to life after they're killed, so it's not the same as with fiends or with human monsters."

"Come back to life?" Alyce exclaimed.

"Of course. Can you kill the wind or the ocean?" Camilla said. "As an agent, you should know this."

"I…I remember my lessons, but I've never met a demon until now. I didn't really understand what that meant…But if we can't defeat her, how can we save Danielle?"

"We didn't say you can't defeat her," Arnice said. "The First Saint defeated the original Nightlord, and less than a week ago we watched Aluche and Liliana defeat the Moon Queen. We only said that Fornix can't be permanently killed. We just have to be a little more creative about it." She wrapped one hand over her fist and cracked her knuckles. "And believe me, I'm feeling very creative where that one is concerned."

It looked like all three of them had personal reasons for going to Professor Alucard's tower, now. Camilla wished she could ask Arnice if it was just responsibility as the Nightlord to rein in destructive elements or something more that was driving her, but that was impossible in front of Alyce so long as that secret remained hidden. "The Nightlord isn't evil" wasn't the kind of statement one casually explained to a passionate young Knight of the Curia. Though with her loyalty to Danielle, Alyce might be making the first steps towards realizing that the Night wasn't good or evil in and of itself, just like humanity.

Speaking of which…

"We're still waiting for your explanation, Alyce."

She looked from one of them to the other, and her shoulders sagged in defeat.

"All right, but I promise you, Danielle just needs our help! She isn't some kind of monster!"

"And the longer you stall, the less time she has for that to remain the truth."

"Start at the beginning, if it helps," Arnice suggested. "How did you meet?"

Alyce brightened at the suggestion.

"At the Academy of St. Jeanne in Avignon," she said at once. "I was accepted for enrollment at age twelve, and very quickly gravitated towards the knight's path. Um, my family is minor nobility, you see, and we've always been strong supporters of the Curia. They say that one of my ancestors was one of the First Saint's guard on Ruswal Island when she fought the Nightlord!"

Camilla glanced at Arnice. Given what Arnice had revealed about that battle, the truth of that family legend might be very different than what Alyce suspected. It was also pointless to go into that now.

"Danielle is two years older than I am. She took me under her wing almost from the first time that we met. She always said…she always said that she saw something in me that reminded me of her, of her determination to be the best fighter that she could. 'There are some of our classmates who want to be first in the rankings, first in the prize list, but this is wrong. Our goal is to defeat fiends, not score points over each other. A weak soldier who does her utmost can be assigned to a duty that suits her skills, but a strong soldier who is content just being better than her peers is wasting strength that might save lives,' she told me."

Camilla suspected that Danielle would have gotten along well with Muveil.

"She helped mentor and teach me all through my student years, and when she graduated, we still stayed in touch through letters and regular visits whenever she could arrange. We were more than just senior and junior, more than just friends; there was a bond between us, something special. When I graduated as well, Danielle asked if she could be my partner on field assignments, and we worked together for over a year. Until…until…"

Alyce swallowed.

"It was a little over a month ago. Forty-two days. We were given orders to clear out fiends that were haunting the area of a local church. At first everything was fine, but then a huge fiend appeared. The increased attacks that had drawn us in the first place were being caused by the thing—it was a gargoyle type and during the fight it seemed to be giving orders, so it was like it was gathering the lesser fiends into a band or troop."

"That's not at all impossible. Strong fiends very often retain at least some level of intelligence and can plan out their goals beyond basic instinct. Just like demons, they'll sometimes gather lesser fiends as followers."

"We…we managed to defeat the fiends. Danielle was amazing; she took on the gargoyle head-on, standing toe-to-toe with it for long enough that I climbed up on a broken archway behind it and jumped down in a plunging stab that skewered it through the back. Then she stepped in and cut off its head to finish it off. Only…"

Alyce looked down and took a deep breath. Revisiting these memories must have been painful.

"My…my Rosier Clock…I don't know if there was some flaw in its craftsmanship, or if it had gotten damaged during the fight, or we'd just gone too long without having a priestess purify its contents and it had simply absorbed too much. Whatever the reason, it started to crack as the gargoyle's Blood poured into it. I heard the sound, and looked down, could see the tiny fractures starting to snake all over the crystal, the azure light leaking out, but…I couldn't do anything. I was frozen, bewildered, couldn't even coherently make sense of what I was seeing, let alone what I could do. I just…watched it as the cracks spread.

"Then Danielle reached out, grabbed it off my neck, and shoved me away with her other hand so that I went stumbling backwards and fell sprawling.

"She turned, and was just drawing her arm back to throw the Clock away when it…it shattered in her hand. I…oh, God, how she screamed, like the Blood was acid eating into her soul…"

Tears had leaked from beneath her eyelids and were trickling down her cheeks.

"She…she tried to control it. I can't…I can't really understand what it was like for her, but it was obviously awful. Much of the time she was wobbling and shaking; she could barely stand. She was ill in bed in our hotel room when I reported back to the Curia about our successful mission and collected our new orders."

"You didn't tell them about Danielle, I gather."

"What could they do? There's no treatment for the Blue Blood. They'd exterminate her as a demon."

"Actually, it's more likely they'd have taken her into custody and turned her over to the research staff to try and stabilize her as a natural half-demon and then when that likely failed use her as research fodder. Simply killing her would have been a mercy by comparison."

Camilla arched her eyebrow again at Alyce's shock.

"What? I'm angry at you for putting Glen, Elsie, Rafe, and Tara at risk of their lives. I never said that you ought to abandon your friend or follow Curia protocol to the letter as if it was holy writ."

Though I can't deny, I'd have liked to have been there to make first-hand observations of Danielle's transition.

"But go on. I assume the two of you tried to cope as best you could while concealing Danielle's condition?"

"That's right. We received new orders, so I was going to try to accomplish the quest alone, but Danielle insisted on coming along; she didn't think that I could necessarily do it myself. Maybe she was right about it; the job was to clear out a noble's estate that had been possessed by fiends and a number of the creatures were very strong. But Danielle was amazing; her strength was far beyond anything I've ever seen, only…as the battles went on, she started to lose control, to tear the fiends apart with her bare hands—she actually seemed to grow clawed armor over her hands, like your gauntlet looks, Arnice."

"Probably her variant of a Blood Sword," Arnice said.

"At its most basic level, it's an expression of a half-demon or demon's power, their Blue Blood answering their needs. We call them Blood Swords because that's the form it took initially for Arnice, Muveil, and Aluche, probably because all three of them were agents of the Curia, trained in our sword style," Camilla elaborated. While she didn't have Arnice's personal experience, she did have an expert's knowledge, plus direct observation of Muveil and Aluche.

"But Danielle is an agent, too. Wouldn't she use a sword?"

"Not if she wasn't in control of her emotions or her power, Alyce," Arnice told her. "From what you've said and what we saw, she wouldn't have been stable. The urges caused by the Blue Blood were running strong in her, I'm sure. And trying to carry out missions was the worst thing she could have done. The visceral excitement of combat—the anger at the enemy and urge to destroy, the fear for your safety and need to protect you…" She held up her own left hand, looking down at it. "It's not easy to keep a clear head that way. Believe me, I know."

"What's more, in battle, the chance of coming in contact with more Blue Blood is increased. In our half-demon experiments, I had to create systems to manage that. Maintenance is a complex process, and absorbing Blue Blood in uncontrolled fashion just pushes the half-demon closer and closer to full demonhood."

"We didn't know that!" Alyce protested. "We're not researchers or scientists."

They should at least have understood that more Blue Blood would have been bad. That's just basic. And Camilla had a suspicion that, given that it had been Alyce's Rosier Clock that had broken, the one she wore now had originally been Danielle's, left intact because its function had been bypassed in the original accident since Danielle had been holding Alyce's damaged Clock in her hand at the time.

Which would mean that Danielle would have been absorbing more Blue Blood into her body every time she killed a fiend, when she was barely in control of herself to begin with.

While she sympathized with the girls' emotions, there was a strong element of wishful thinking in the whole affair, of clinging to normalcy without accepting that things had permanently changed, that they needed to confront their new reality.

"These circumstances couldn't have gone on for very long," was all she said. "If nothing else, the vampiric urges caused by the body's attempts to process and harmonize with the Blue Blood couldn't be controlled for long, and from what you've said, Danielle would go a long way to keep from attacking innocent people."

Alyce flushed and turned her head away. Her thoughts couldn't have been any plainer if she'd rubbed her neck.

"Oh."

"In…in any case, you're right. We couldn't keep up the pretense much longer. Danielle's body was changing, and she was in near-constant pain. She was…she was starting to talk about…about how the only choice left to her was if she…if I…but I couldn't! I couldn't do that!"

A shudder ran through Alyce.

Camilla didn't know what to say. What was there to say? After Muveil, after Aluche? She'd turned young women, barely more than girls, into half-demons with her own hands. At least with Aluche it had been to save the agent's life, but Muveil had purely been an experiment, the creation of a living weapon against the fiends. She'd decided that living on as a half-demon was better than death for Aluche, but at the Curia's urging had implanted a device in her creation's heart so that she could be killed if she ran out of control. Yet when it had been Muveil, when they'd encountered her, Camilla had urged Aluche to help save her so that Muveil could continue to exist as a full demon. Then she'd helped Muveil find a place with the Lourdes Order, outside the Curia's reach, so she could continue that life.

Hypocrisy! No matter which side one picked as "right," it was nothing but hypocrisy. The plain fact was that Camilla had no claim to any kind of moral high ground. All she did was act on her instincts and emotions in the moment.

More like a demon than a human, really.

Or maybe demons and humans are more alike than we want to think.

And Alyce? Danielle had apparently asked Alyce to kill her before she lost control of herself and hurt someone. It was the same pledge Muveil had asked of Aluche before becoming a half-demon, and which Aluche had herself asked of Ruenheid.

"Is that why she left?" Arnice asked. "She could feel her control over herself slipping, she knew that you couldn't bring yourself to raise your sword against her, and so above all else she wanted to make sure she wouldn't hurt you?"

Alyce bit her lip, then nodded several times, almost frantically, like she couldn't bring herself to put it into words.

"But you went after her, because you couldn't see her throw herself into the darkness alone? To try and help her in some way, even if you didn't really have a plan as to how you'd do it? You just knew that you had to try, because nothing would make the alternative be right, no matter what?"

Camilla knew Arnice wasn't talking about Alyce and Danielle any more, not really, but about her own feelings, how she'd been driven to confront, and eventually become, the Nightlord for Lilysse's sake.

Someday, Camilla hoped that she could meet Lilysse. She must be a remarkable person, to not only inspire that kind of devotion, but to follow her lover into the Night and apparently thrive there as a human.

Alyce, meanwhile, answered Arnice's second question by nodding again, but this time she found her voice afterwards.

"I did. One night Danielle disappeared from our lodging-house, leaving a letter for me. She said all of the things you talked about, how she was scared of losing herself, of becoming one of the things that we fight, but most of all that she was afraid that I might be the one that she hurt.

"But it's my fault, don't you see? She was infected by the Blue Blood because she rescued me from the same fate. I'm the one who should have been turning into a demon. I can't let her go off by herself…and if she should lose control of herself and attack a human, then…then it should be me. Every day I've been alive since then was bought and paid for with her suffering."

"I understand," Camilla said. "You tried to do too much at once, though. You not only followed her, but you were concerned for keeping it secret from the Curia. You were concerned for Danielle, but you didn't stop to think about anyone other than her, and it could have ended up getting not only yourself, but the Survey Corps team killed as well. Even Arnice and I wouldn't necessarily have survived if Arnice hadn't been Arnice instead of an ordinary agent."

"But I didn't know!" Alyce protested. "I've never seen or heard of Fornix until today! If I'd had any idea there was a pureblood demon or a giant fiend here I'd have come on my own and suffered the consequences instead of trying to conceal it. I'd have taken the punishment for disobedience, but Danielle would have been all right."

"And that brings us to the other point. You were well aware of where Danielle was going. You forged the orders and you followed her here, and you found her. Arnice and I heard you talking with her about finding a 'cure' at a 'tower,' by which I have to assume you mean my grandfather's laboratory. I want to know what you've heard and where you heard it, that you think my grandfather might know a way to turn a demon or half-demon back into a human being."