“Is… is it safe to come out now?” Dimas squeaked. He and Alexei poked their heads out from their hiding spot, behind a furnace’s massive steel bulk.

“You’re still here?” Sadea quipped. “The two of you have guts, if nothing else. But it’s really time to go.”

“Oh, definitely. Just so you know, there are two maintenance shafts, one at the eastern corner of the room, and the other next to the sorting area.” Dimas pointed to each laddered chute in succession.

“Which one will place you farther from the main entrance when you emerge from the building?” Raksha asked.

“The shaft closer to sorting area. Why?”

“Take that one. The corpses are trying to break out from the main entrance. You don’t want to be anywhere near that.”

The necromancers exchanged glances and nodded.

“Understood. Good luck, you two,” Dimas said. Alexei was already shuffling away.

Raksha looked at the collapsed doorway and grunted. “Looks like you’ll have to do that lightning thing again if we’re going out that way.”

“Acquired a taste for it, I see.” Sadea grinned. “If you ask me nicely, I wouldn’t mind giving you a ride every now and then.”

Shaking his head, Raksha moved to sheathe Steelbreaker. As he did so, he withdrew his aegis from its blade.

Sadea’s eyes went wide. “Wait! If your aegis holds my lightning in place then—“

A crackling cobalt bolt burst from Steelbreaker’s tip. It tore through a steel block festooned with levers and valves beside a furnace, turning it into a lump of molten slag, before striking the far side of the chamber wall and bouncing back.

Sadea thrust out her staff. The lightning bolt swerved to its tip and flowed down its length, like water running down a drain. It dissipated into nothingness before it reached her fingers.

“Goddamn it!” Raksha barked. “What the hell was that?”

“Simple cause and effect, you idiot!” Sadea snapped. “The lightning was traveling. You held it in place. Then you stopped holding it. What did you think was going to happen?”

“That it’d disappear?”

“I cannot even begin to imagine how stupid someone must be to think like that!”

“Yeah? You—“

“What have you done?” Alexei screeched. “This was the control panel for the furnaces!”

Dimas checked a gauge on a furnace. “The furnaces had been set to a steady burn, but this one’s now blazing at maximum capacity, maybe thanks to an electrical overload. I’m going to guess all the others are the same, too. They’re going to melt down within the hour, and this entire mortuary will go up in flames!”

“Can you stop that? Turn the furnaces off or something?” Raksha asked.

“Not without the control panel!” Alexei cried, wringing his hands. The necromancer had long past stepped over the edge of panic. Dimas, in contrast, had a thoughtful look on his face.

“If you shut off the gas main, the furnaces will have nothing to burn,” he said. “But if you don’t do that quickly enough…”

“It’s not going to make a difference. Got it.” Raksha sheathed Steelbreaker and cracked his knuckles. “Where’s the gas main?”

“We don’t have time for more detours!” Sadea jabbed him in the side with her elbow. “We have to kill the demon, right now.”

“We can’t do that if we’re all burned to a crisp.”

“Head to the initial intake chamber. That’s where the central office is, too. You can find the control valve for the gas main there,” Dimas said.

“Isn’t that where we’re headed, anyway?”

“That’s right.” The sorceress sighed, her shoulders slumping in exhaustion. “And we can’t just leave and hope the demon burns in the meltdown, even if all the corpses do. Powerful ethereal entities like that can only be slain by spiritual weapons, like my lightning or your blade, if it’s wrapped in your aegis. We can’t risk it getting loose, especially now that it’s got a physical host.”

“So what you’re saying is that we must kill it ourselves.” Raksha picked Sadea up by the waist, tucked her under his arm, and began walking to the collapsed doorway, ignoring her indignant squawks. He nodded over his shoulder at the necromancers. “You’d better go, now.”

Wordlessly, they complied.

**

“I do not squawk!” Sadea snapped.

“Eh,” Raksha replied.

As the two began another round of insults and barbs, Leona sighed and massaged her throbbing temples with her thumbs. She’d not slept for nearly a week now, relying on her neural augmentations and caffeine to keep her awake. Dealing with a pair of bickering idiots was the last thing she needed.

“Ha! You just took responsibility for burning the place down!” Sadea crowed.

“Me? Your lightning started the meltdown!”

“Your stupidity finished it!”

Leona drew her pistol.

Raksha and Sadea fell silent.

Leona’s optical augmentations noted the minute muscular twitches in Raksha’s frame and the subtle changes in the ectoplasmic particle cloud hovering perpetually over Sadea’s head.

The two had reacted to the promise of violence with an immediate readiness to inflict the same. Her tactical implants sketched their intentions. If Leona aimed her pistol at either of them, Raksha would take her head off with his fist while Sadea burned a hole through her heart.

Or they would try to, at least.

Somehow, despite their differences and demeanor, the two had developed a natural combat affinity with one another. And they were aware of it, too, even if just on a subconscious level. This made them perfect tools for what Leona had in mind.

She just had to secure their obedience. And to do that, she needed leverage over them. Fortunately for her, the two were moronically doling it out by the cartload.

Leona placed her pistol on the desk, making sure that the martial scientist and the sorceress could see that the safety was on. She then pretended to scribble something in her notes. Raksha and Sadea’s eyes followed the scrawl of her pen.

“You were able to defeat Lan Feng because your aegis is anathema to sorcery,” she said, after letting the two stew in silence for several more moments. “While Sadea’s lightning was able to overcome the might of Distant Moon, a blade of mythic power from pre-Hegemonic times.”

“Possibly only because it was corrupted by heretical, unsanctioned necromantic energies,” Sadea pointed out. “That sword was so potently enchanted it made my skin tingle just being in the same room with it. Uh, Great Lady.”

“And the two of you broke it, depriving the Hegemony of a priceless artifact.”

“The sword was corrupt beyond salvation! Wielding it would be heresy!” the sorceress protested.

“Only a priest can decide if something is heretical,” Leona barked. “Not a pair of miscreants who have destroyed both State and Church property!”

“But…”

“Enough. You mentioned demonic possession. I presume chief Erban was the host for the ethereal entity?”

“Yes, Great Lady.” Sadea bowed her head. “By the time we found him, he’d become the host for a powerful demon that radiates unsanctioned necromantic energy.”

“It also mentioned one of those fruit things from the Tree of Hearts, so the demon must have come from that, just like the monster with three heads did. Maybe it just burst out from the fruit,” Raksha ventured.

“That’s not right, you idiot. Weren’t you paying attention to what it said?” Sadea replied.

“A mortuary facility is heavily warded by protective sigils that render its walls impregnable by ethereal entities,” Stefka chimed in from her corner of the chamber. “How could a demon, even a powerful one, get inside?”

“The only logical explanation unfolds thus: both Raksha and Sadea are correct, in a way,” Leona said. “The fruit from the Tree of Hearts somehow gave the ethereal entity access to the mortuary’s interior.”

“Correct, Great Lady, and I know exactly how.”

Leona turned to Sadea. “Explain.”