“Well,” Wurhi mused, crouched before the lock of Cas’ great double doors. “This is interesting.”

“What is?” Kyembe stood guard in the dark, his weapon at sword-staff length to sweep any foes ascending the stairs. Despite the continued sound of activity below, the two thieves remained unmolested. For now.

“This is a masterpiece,” her green eyes twinkled as she caressed the lock’s metallic surface. “I’ve never seen its like; the trove guardians outdid themselves with this pretty, pretty shiny,” she chuckled quietly. “They’re beautiful. Locks. A wooden bar on a door’s enough for most, but these have their own magic. The simple ones’ve got more moving parts than a whole chariot and their crafters protect their secrets like…like…”

“Like the Cult of Steel guards the secret of steel?”

“Yes, just like that,” she peered at it hungrily. “And this is one of the best, no doubt. No doubt.”

Kyembe gave her a strange look. “Should I burn it?”

“No! No!” Wurhi whispered harshly, drawing a ring of strange bronze tools from her belt. Each was long, narrow, and sported differing numbers of thin protrusions. They’d been polished to perfect sheen, and jingled as she carefully flipped through them. “Keep your hellfire to yourself, you maniac! Kyembe the Spirit Killer battles demons, but Wurhi the Rat battles these,” she selected a tool with many points and inserted it into the keyhole. “With proper weapons.”

Behind her, her companion hmphed in offence.

Clink. Clink.

She twisted the instrument within the fiendish machinery, her tongue pressed between her lips and her eyes narrowed in concentration. “Besides, if you blast a giant, flaming hole in the doors then we can’t close them if the guards get their nerve back,” she muttered. “Which they probably won’t. You slew, what, a quarter of a hundred down there?”

“About that, I think,” Kyembe mused. He sounded as though he were simply discussing the price of wheat. “I was not counting so much.”

“Shiiiit,” she snorted. “I’ll be surprised if they ever sleep again. I’ll be surprised if I ever sleep again!”

“That is why we are going to destroy this demon. So all in Zabyalla finally can!”

She snorted. “Not what I meant-Aaaaah, come on, you stubborn bastard!”

“What?”

“No, no, I was talking to the lock,” she carefully withdrew the tool and put her eye to the keyhole. “You know, I think I’m overcomplicating this,” she muttered. “They’d think that I’d think that I’d need the most fancy lock-pick for the most fancy lock, but the prongs’re all messing with each other, no doubt,” she flipped through the ring again, this time selecting one with only two points. “Let’s try you next.”

She inserted the tool and gave it a couple of wiggles.

Clink. Clink. Clunk!

“Hah! That’s what you did! Clever bastards, but not clever enough!”

“What? What did they do?” Kyembe leaned over curiously.

Wurhi waved him away while she worked. “Don’t worry! Don’t worry! You wouldn’t understand.”

“I am no fool,” the half dark-elf huffed.

She turned and looked at him steadily. “Trust me. You stick with your horrifying magic and your steel and I’ll stick to this business.”

“I’ve picked locks before.”

She smirked. “Not like this you haven’t.”

Clunk! Clunk! Clunk! Click!

“Haha, it’s open!” she cried in triumph, her fists shooting into the air. “Keep trying, you rust licking fools! You’ll never forge one I can’t break!”

“Good job,” Kyembe congratulated her as she stretched, humming to herself and putting her ring of tools away with an affectionate pat.

He stepped up beside her, staring at the doors with a grim look. “Wurhi, when we pass through those doors, I will need you to listen to everything I say. Everything,” he emphasized. “I do not know what sort of fiend lies ahead, but demons wield powers as varied and vile as the endless vermin of the dirt. If you want to live, follow my directions.”

Her triumph immediately withered in her breast.

Right, the demon.

She was about to walk into a confrontation between a hellfire wielding maniac and an actual demon. She eyed the doors like a pig being dragged to the slaughterhouse. Except, this was worse. Pigs didn’t have their souls swallowed at the slaughterhouse.

No, no. Don’t think like that.

Her companion would triumph, and all she would have to do is count the coin when it was over. That and run a dagger through Cas’ face a few times. Maybe more than a few.

“Wurhi?” Kyembe prompted.

“Listen to the mighty demon slayer to stay alive. Got it, got it.”

He regarded her with those red eyes for a few moments. “Right,” he turned, taking a deep, steadying breath and setting his jaw. “Are you ready?”

She swallowed. “No, but let’s get this done before I get my sanity back and jump from a window.”

Bang!

He cracked the butt of his sword-staff on the tiles. “Very well, then. Here we go.”

He pushed the doors open.

The two of them rushed into the room, and Wurhi slammed the door shut behind them, quickly locking it.

Click.

She tried not to dwell on how final that sounded.

Little light greeted them save that of a scattered pair of oil lamps on ceiling chains and a thin line of moonlight that slipped between the heavy curtains over the balcony. The line of pale illumination marked the stone foot of some enormous bed.

Kyembe ignored it.

His eyes were firmly fixed on the far end of the chamber. On some unseen thing. “You are Cas of Zabyalla,” he said to the dark.

There was a startled silence.

Then rich, cruel laughter.

“So, two more arrive,” an urbane baritone mocked. “You have found the sanctum of Cas, future Merchant King of Zabyalla.”

“Future corpse of Zabyalla!” Wurhi shouted, her voice cracking.

She kept trying not to think about how absolutely terrified she was.

Hiss.

A flickering flame came to life on the far side of the room.

The merchant prince sprawled casually on his throne, his eyes shining with mirth. Wurhi’s gaze immediately dropped to the gleaming treasure strewn about his dais. It seemed to extend endlessly into the blackness.

Suddenly, her fear seemed very distant indeed.

“I see I am beset by fools this time,” he looked Wurhi up and down. “And children, judging from the size of you. You must be Wurhi the Rat.”

The little thief gasped. “How do you know that?!” she demanded.

“A bird sang it in my ear,” Cas grinned. “Or rather, a bird’s talon, I suppose.”

“Kashta!” Wurhi snarled. “That loincloth-pissing son of a maggot!”

“Oh dear, how colourful. I merely jest; he had no time to speak of anything before he met his end,” Cas laughed. “I know who you are because you are a woman of reputation, little rat. I had wondered how long it would be before you came skittering into my halls,” his gaze turned to Kyembe next. “And poor Kashta has scarcely grown cold yet I see you have already found a new partner,” he shook his head in mock disdain. “Such fleeting loyalty among thieves.”

The Sengezian did not respond to Cas’ self-amusements, instead stalking toward the man like a prowling leopard. The merchant prince showed no alarm.

Wurhi stuck close to her companion, eyeing their surroundings.

It seemed too dark.

“This one doesn’t speak much, does he?” Cas asked Wurhi gaily. “Some last words would have been appropriate. Oh well,” he shrugged, then raised his sceptre of platinum. “I wouldn’t have remembered them, anyway.”

Violet sapphires seemed to glint in malice.

The black deepened.

Kyembe stiffened in realization. “Wurhi!” he shouted. “Shut your eyes and get away! Now!”

An immensity breathed in the dark. Wurhi made to whirl in alarm.

“Shut your eyes or it’ll kill you!” Kyembe roared. His ring already flared with white light. That got her attention. She slammed her eyes shut and stumbled from Kyembe’s side.

Vhrooosh!

Flame roared behind her. A wave of impossible heat buffeted her back.

“Craaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!” an agonized bellow exploded so loudly that her ears rung.

A chill resounded in her core.

No mortal nor beast could ever have uttered such a foul sound. The voice was so loathsome that she nearly retched from it crawling through her ears.

The scent of burning flesh stung her nose.

“You…you hurt it!” she heard Cas roar in fury over the ringing in her ears. “You filthy jackal! How dare you come into the lion’s den and-”

Filling with blind rage and primal terror, Wurhi screamed and threw her dagger.

Fwip! Fwip! Fwip! Chnk!

“Aaaaaargh!” Cas screamed in pain. “My arm! You foul, wretched little vermin! Enough of this…”

His voice faded, as though it were sinking into water.

Boom. Boom. Boom.

Colossal footsteps shook the stones.

Kyembe’s sandals scuffled across them.

The Sengezian roared something in a language so sharp it seemed to pierce the ear.

A voice that was a thousand buzzing locusts cursed back in kind.

Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!

Tremendous appendages swept through the air and Wurhi smelled drops of foul wetness scattering across the tiles.

Schuuch! Vrooosh!

Steel slid into flesh. Kyembe’s flame roared.

Another inhuman scream, this even louder than the last. Wurhi grabbed her ears in pain.

The fight continued in rushes of limbs, sweeps of blades, the crackle of hellfire and alien curses that scalded the soul. The dampness surrounding her deepened…

Wait, what?

She cracked her eyes open.

Smoke.

No, mist.

Mist swirled about the room.

“Kyembe!” she cried in alarm. Forgetting herself, she turned to the battle.

She wished she had not.

Their forms were mere shadows in the dark and fog, but she could see Kyembe the Spirit Killer with his sword-staff outlined in light and blazing in hellfire.

Before him loomed an elephantine sized abomination.

It moved with sickening agility and held a shape that mocked the natural. Gargantuan, boneless limbs grew one moment and withered the next, all terminating in the claw, fang, horn and pincer of every beast and vermin in the world. Diseased spittle dripped from a hundred fanged maws. Its shining eyes were at once feline, serpentine, raptorial and insectile, and all blazed with an unfathomable, primordial intellect.

Thankfully, they were not fixed upon her.

If they were, Wurhi knew she would be dead for simply looking upon it.

Voom! Hssssss!

Kyembe’s fire popped and flared, illuminating it slightly. Only slightly.

Wurhi shrieked in a way more animal than human.

Images writhed within its form. Images from her nightmares. Gangs of cutpurses multiplied into vast hordes. Rabid, feral cats swollen to mammoth size. A colossal maw yawning in endless hunger.

And faces she recognized.

The faces of everyone who had tried to kill her ever since she was a child.

“No! No! You’re dead!” her despairing wail sought to deny the phantoms. “You’re all dead! Dead! Dead! Dead!”

“Wurhi!” Kyembe’s strained voice cut through her cries. “Wurhi! It is a Lord of Nightmares! It seeks to stop our hearts with our worst fears!”

The white fire streaked through the mist, cutting scale, fur and meat, and sending a gout of hellfire bursting from the wound. The demon screamed and Wurhi cringed away.

“They are like the trick of the dog barks! They are illusion, Wurhi! It draws us into its realm of dreams! Things there are only real if you let your mind surrender to them!” he screamed.

With dawning horror, she realized that despite his words, he sounded terrified.

The mist thickened. A sickly violet light began to grow in all directions.

A thousand locusts droned in mocking laughter.

“You cannot stop the fear, but do not surrender to it!” he screamed.

The burning blade flashed again.

His shadow dove away from a dozen grasping claws and pincers.

“If you do, you will die!” he cried. “If you do! You will-”

Sense fled the world in that moment.

Wurhi screamed.

Stone wrenched from stone.

Walls and ceiling tore away.

Alien stars danced before violet skies in all directions.

Wurhi screamed.