Sadea knew things were amiss immediately after rematerializing in the hallway outside the furnace chamber.

Though a host of corpses and ghouls surrounded them, none of the unsanctioned dead attacked. Instead, they regarded the pair silently, a sea of rotting, lifeless eyes and manic grins stretched over desiccated faces.

As if signaled by some unheard voice, they parted ranks, opening up a pathway down the winding permacrete corridors. One ghoul even waved its claw, as if it were asking Sadea and Raksha to proceed.

“Weird, but whatever.” Sadea raised her staff wearily. She’d caught her breath somewhat during Raksha’s battle with Lan Feng, but her lightning wouldn’t return in all its glory without actual rest. “I’ve got to save something for the demon, Raksha, so why don’t you go cut all these things to pieces?”

But Raksha fell to his knees, coughing. Blood poured from his nose and mouth and spattered onto the permacrete floor.

The sight shocked Sadea. Up until now, the martial scientist had seemed tireless and indomitable.

“Hey! What’s wrong? You’re not going to die on me now, are you? I know stupidity is incurable, but it’s hardly fatal!”

“I ruptured the third main meridian and hurt several of my lesser channels while fighting Lan Feng,” Raksha said.

“I don’t know or care what that means, but you can regenerate, right?” Sadea nudged him. “So grow your broken parts back!”

“It’s going to take a while. Internal injuries like these don’t heal easily, even with an aegis.”

“Oh, don’t worry about it. No need to rush things. In fact, why don’t you close your eyes and take a nap?” Sadea sneered. “In case you didn’t pick it up, I was being sarcastic. Can you get up? Fight? Because if you can’t, I’m leaving you behind.”

Growling, Raksha staggered shakily to his feet and leveled his sword at the ring of unsanctioned dead. “I can fight, but I can’t bring the Conflagration further than the third Solar Gate.”

“Still don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’ve been burning the Conflagration at the fifth Solar Gate this entire time. Not being able to bring it past the third means that I won’t be fighting at my full strength,” he explained.

“Did you just roll your eyes at me? I’m going to smack them out of your skull!”

“The dead. What’re they doing? Why aren’t they attacking?” Raksha asked.

“Don’t change the subject, you mo—“

Blissful Death, the corpses and ghouls said in unison, a gurgling chorus born of rotten vocal cords. Blissful Death.

“What the hell?” Sadea gasped. The same words poured from Raksha’s lips at the same time, much to her irritation.

Blissful Death, sweet decay. Walking, smiling death, free from embalmed toil. Rot and bring all to ruin. Rejoice as you kill and kill. Come, worthy souls, let me show you.

“Sounds like an invitation to me,” Raksha said, wiping the last trickles of blood from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand. “We should accept.”

Sadea frowned. They didn’t really have many other options. Ideally, they would fight their way to the demon and meet it on their terms, but that just didn’t seem possible. The mortuary was melting down, her lightning was just about spent, and Raksha was grievously wounded, even if the idiot was trying to be nonchalantly stoic about it. But if they went along with the demon’s “invitation,” they would be walking into its presence when it was obviously waiting and ready for them, just as it’d planned. Still…

“A dead enemy’s plans won’t matter,” Raksha continued, giving voice to exactly what Sadea was thinking. She fought against the genuine smile that threatened to spread across her face.

“Hurray! You’re finally using your brain!”

The unsanctioned dead closed ranks behind them as they walked into their midst. Scuffling, scratching sounds arose from the ruined entrance of the furnace chamber, but Sadea wasn’t too concerned. Rotting hands and ghoul claws would take hours, if not days, to clear the debris. Hopefully by then, she would have slain the demon.

If she hadn’t, then they’d all be dead, and nothing would matter anyway.

Corpses flooded every hallway they walked past, tracking their passing with rotten eyes and broken grins. She cast Raksha several sidelong glances along the way. The martial scientist was breathing hard, and his face had taken on a sickly pallor. Even the heat radiating from his flesh seemed diminished. Still, his eyes blazed with unfaltering resolve.

Vicky! Can you hear me? What’s going on up there? she reached out. Several moments of silence passed before the necromancer responded.

The main gates have been breached. I am holding the corpses and the ghouls back, along with the assistance of a mercenary warband. Every remaining garrison trooper has been killed. We won’t be able to persist much longer.

Sounds bad.

It is. What’s your situation? Report.

A demon’s in the picture. We’re going to kill it now.

A demon? Viktoria’s mental shriek rang shrilly in her head. Sadea winced, as did Raksha. Explain!

We don’t really know much more than what we told you, but it should have been obvious from the start, with the massive amounts of unsanctioned necromantic energies and sheer number of reanimated corpses. That’s beyond what any necromancer could do, no matter how heretical.

You can’t fight a demon! Withdraw immediately, Sadea. We will abandon this town and reconsolidate elsewhere. Our new Lord’s House soldiers are garrisoned at Asculum-Septimus. Perhaps we can…

New Lord? What?

You mean you don’t know? House Antonius has been subsumed by House Belisarius. This province now falls under the interim governance of Leona Belisarius.

Yeah, yeah. Whatever. I don’t care about the Lords. Anyway, stay alive as long as you can, Vicky. I’ll see you once I’ve killed the demon.

Negative! Withdraw now, Sadea! As ranking operative, I’m calling our next move. We’re abandoning Asculum-Sextus and reconsolidating our tactical strength at Asculum-Septimus.

“No,” Raksha said. He met Sadea’s gaze, as if he could somehow speak to Viktoria through her. “We’re not abandoning this town.”

Raksha, I—

“You hold the line, woman,” The martial scientist snarled. “You flee and let people die, I’m hunting you down.”

Viktoria’s response was a garbled, frazzled string of mental gibberish. Sadea sniggered.

Well, you heard the man, Vicky. And don’t worry. We’ve got this. Just hold on a little bit longer, and we’ll serve this demon’s head up on a platter.

…fine. Twenty minutes. If I don’t hear good news from you in that time, I’m withdrawing.

With that, the psy-comms link fell inert, draped in a sullen mental aftertaste left behind by Viktoria’s last communication.

“Thank you,” Raksha said, unexpectedly.

“For what?”

“For convincing her to give us more time.”

“Eh. In all honesty, it was mostly you.” Sadea nudged him in the ribs with her elbow. “Vicky hasn’t had a man in who knows how long. The thought of you hunting her down probably got her so hot and bothered she’d have agreed to anything. Play your cards right after this, and I promise you’ll get all up in that coat of hers.”

“Uh. Right.”

“But anyway, it looks like we’re here.” Sadea pointed her staff at the ghouls clustered around a massive, open doorway. A stenciled sign identified the space beyond as the initial intake chamber. “You ready to kill a demon?”

Raksha raised his sword. “Yes.”