With a flick, Faith popped the lid of a spirit bottle and ordered, “Cricket, possess that Hollow.”

A blue glow streaked into the guard, which froze with its hand still poised to ring the bell. The clapper creaked as it swung uselessly.

Meanwhile, Ash tackled another guard, letting his momentum carry both of them into a wall. Brittle yellow skulls exploded into shards that showered onto the floor, echoing throughout the tunnel. The Hollow’s face didn’t change as it twisted to a side and grappled Ash right back.

At the same time, I whipped out Grandfather, lunged forward, and skewered the last Hollow through the heart. Its vacant stare never wavered, but dark red blood (what a relief, that its blood was still red!) welled up to stain its jacket, and it swayed in place before toppling over. I snatched its sword before it could clatter on stone, right as Ash finally got a good grip on his Hollow’s horns and bashed its head against the wall. It sagged to the floor. He staggered back, torn by what he’d just done to a fellow (former) Tycherosi.

Through all of this, poor Edwina had been trying to mash herself into a nearby door while Faith surveyed the interior décor and compared it to her memories. Over her shoulder, she praised me, “Ooh, let that cold-heartedness flow through you.”

“They’re already dead,” I growled, stooping to wipe Grandfather clean on the Hollow’s sleeve. “I’m just finishing the job.”

In response, she charged her lightning hook and electrocuted the one Ash knocked out.

Edwina squeaked. Ash almost flinched.

With a humorless smile for both of them, Faith attuned at her Hollow until she overrode its programming. “Stand here and guard this hole,” she commanded.

At once, it marched to a spot under our hole and snapped to attention. Faith removed the clapper from its bell.

“Cricket, out.”

A fuzzy blue aura started to rise out of the Hollow, then flattened against it, clinging to its skin. “Ooooh,” whined the little ghost. “But it’s a body! And it’s full of life force….”

“I. Don’t. Care,” Faith told her, enunciating each word. “There will be more delicious bodies later.”

Reluctantly, Cricket lifted all the way out of the guard and re-formed beside Faith. While the ghost kept watch, a white-faced Edwina opened our packs and passed out the Hollow uniforms that Arilyn had provided. We threw them on and checked one another’s appearances.

“Should we disguise ourselves as Tycherosi?” Faith asked no one in particular. “Maybe I can borrow your cat ears, Ash.”

His expression was a mixture of amusement and outrage. “Faith, this is not the time!”

With a smirk, she turned to me, making sure I didn’t feel left out of her mockery. “I think Isha should lead us. She’s so talented at acting like a Hollow.”

Sometimes, the better part of valor was disregard. Calling up a mental map of the catacombs, I turned on my heel and stalked off.

The catacombs had started life, so to speak, as quarries under Doskvol, and that history was still reflected in their layout. They consisted of a series of narrow tunnels that ran more or less at right angles, with columns of unexcavated mineral left here and there to support the ceiling. Although they were ancient, the Church had renovated them over the years to plane smooth the floors, install electroplasmic lights on the ceilings, carve out niches for the ashes of leading citizens, and adorn the walls with human bones in geometric patterns. At uneven intervals, short, tight doorways led into storerooms, bookrooms, and bedrooms for the ecstasies of the flesh. As we marched through the upper and middle catacombs, we kept passing patrols of two to three Hollows each. Not all of them were Tycherosi – but a disturbing percentage were.

Ash seethed.

At last, we approached a corner marked by a crude mosaic of an empty vessel, the symbol of the cult that had preceded the Church and provided inspiration for its Hollowing rituals. According to both Arilyn’s map and Faith’s memory, the stairs to the lower catacombs lay around this corner.

Right at that moment, a middle-aged priest stepped out of a bookroom. He ducked his head so he wouldn’t bang it on the lintel, heaved the door shut behind him – and then caught sight of us. He started to open his mouth.

Ash leaped forward, slammed the priest’s head against the doorframe, caught his limp body, and dumped it back in the room. “Nothing useful in his pockets,” he reported, sounding like attacking a mere priest couldn’t sate his hunger to avenge his countrymen.

Tiptoeing forward and peering around the corner, we saw another short, tight door guarded by six Hollows. Two held bells, and the other four short, stabbing swords.

Pulling his head back, Ash whispered, “Do we get rid of them with a distraction? Or do we try to walk on through?”

“Can we pretend that we were sent to the lower catacombs?” I whispered back. “Since a lot of Hollows have been redeployed there anyway.”

“This could get very messy very fast – ” Ash began.

“They’re just Hollows,” Faith shrugged and, before we could stop her, strode for the door.

In unison, the four armed Hollows raised their swords and stepped forward to block her.

Faith jerked to a stop like an electroplasmic toy soldier. “We were given instructions to replace your faulty bells,” she droned.

Since that didn’t violate their programming, they made no move as she swapped the other two Hollows’ bells for clapper-less ones she’d brought. Once she finished, all six of their heads swiveled around, and six pairs of vacant eyes stared in our direction, waiting for us to leave.

“Return to your positions,” Faith commanded, still in that monotone. “I am joining you on guard duty.”

The Hollows immediately spread out into a line again, with three on either side of the door. She fell in at one end. None of them noticed her thumb a switch on her lightning hook.

“There might be people on the other side of that door,” Ash muttered at me and Edwina. Stepping forward to draw the Hollows’ attention, he swung another clapper-less bell and announced, “My bell is not functioning. We will have to test all of yours as well. Come this way.”

He marched down the passageway and, as one, the guards pivoted ninety degrees and followed.

As soon as their backs were turned, Faith swung her lightning hook around and shot a crackling arc of electroplasmic energy all the way down the line. The three Hollows closest to her spasmed, sizzled, and crumpled, still smoking. As the one just ahead of them spun, I ran it through.

Meanwhile, Ash wavered between his lightning hook and his dagger, then leaped onto a non-Tycherosian Hollow from behind and slashed its throat. Jumping back, he hurled a vial of Silence Potion to the floor. Glass shattered, dark blue oil splattered – and then all the sound in the area cut out.

Faith’s lips moved in an order to Cricket, “Possess the last Hollow.”

The little ghost was only too happy to obey. She inserted herself into the body and cocked its head to the side, waiting.

“Nice work, everyone,” Ash mouthed.

Leaving the other five Hollows where they lay, we spiraled down a cramped, dark stairwell towards the final level.

As soon as I stepped into the lower catacombs, an arcane weight pressed down on my shoulders. Unlike the upper and middle levels, the lower catacombs retained an ancient, almost unfinished air, with rough-hewn walls and floors that looked exactly as the miners had left them, centuries and a Cataclysm ago. On the edges of my vision, bluish runes like wallpaper patterns flickered over the stone, although every time I looked straight at them, there was nothing there.

“They’re sigils for controlling things,” Edwina mumbled, and tried to stay as far away from the walls as she could.

As in the upper and middle catacombs, we passed storeroom after storeroom, except that here, all of them were heavily warded because they contained bottled ghosts and minor demons held in stasis. The sense of arcane weight grew and prickled all over my skin until I couldn’t tell how much of it was me, and how much was Grandfather, who was very alert and very present at the back of my head. The Hollow patrols were denser, but here our larger group blended in, and Faith led us forward with confidence.

All of a sudden, she stopped and pointed at a door. It looked like every other door in the lower catacombs. “There are three supernatural presences in that room,” she murmured. “One of them is Dunvil. Another is Setarra.”

At the name, Ash’s face hardened and I clenched my jaw. We exchanged a grim nod, vowing to avenge the child whom Setarra’s cult had sacrificed.

Faith, on the other hand, felt no such attachment to orphans she wasn’t training to infiltrate the Church, and she continued matter-of-factly, “I don’t recognize the third. It’s Ascendent, though.” She perked up. “Aww, did Lauretta finally Ascend? Well, we’ll find out soon enough!”

“That is not good news in the slightest,” Ash grumbled, which about summed up my and Edwina’s opinions. “I propose we open with our explosive option.”

With a wink, Faith led us back down the tunnel to another nondescript door and motioned for us to huddle around it. The sounds of muffled footsteps drifted through it.

“A reliquarium?” mouthed Ash, attuning.

Faith didn’t bother to answer.

“Can we pretend that Dunvil sent us for the eye?” I whispered, recalling that she’d asked us to keep a lookout for a petrified eye set in bronze.

“Highly unlikely that a priest or priestess would entrust it to a Hollow,” she answered. “However, approaching them as a guard is a fine idea. Isha, I leave this to your excellent impersonation.” As a measure of her focus, though, her mockery lacked its usual bite.

Well, I wasn’t going to quibble with that. Pulling myself up stiffly and letting my eyes go vacant, I marched into the room.

The reliquarium was packed with an overwhelming variety of artifacts. Some looked like bits of bone, human and otherwise, that had been adorned with gold and gems. Others resembled fossils plucked straight from the deathlands. Still others were probably human creations entirely – goblets and rings and pendants and coronets.

On the far side of the room, a priestess in her sixties was bustling around, selecting incense from different shelves and collecting it on a table. At my approach, she whirled. “What – ” she began.

I pounced.

Like the priest in Djera Maha’s reading room, this priestess was more of a lover than a fighter. She tried to jump back, tripped over her own robes, and flailed, knocking a crystal bottle off the table. I caught it before it could shatter, then pinned her to the floor and covered her mouth with my hand.

At this point, Faith and Ash rushed in, leaving Edwina to guard the door. Faith set up her sound-deadening device, scanning the shelves and noting certain empty spots as she did so. When her eyes finally came to rest on the priestess, they lit up.

At the same time, the priestess’ own eyes widened.

“Well, well, well, it’s been a while, Corille!” Faith greeted her cheerfully. “Let’s see, where were we the last time we chatted…. Oh, how did that term paper go?”

I removed my hand warily, ready to clap it back over the priestess’ mouth if she screamed, but she only glared at Faith.

Who sucked in a sharp breath and recoiled. “Ouch! Ouch! Those venomous eyes!”

“Whatever you’re here to do, it won’t work,” her old classmate pronounced.

Ash barked out a short, derisive laugh.

“What am I trying to do?” Faith asked, feigning philosophical puzzlement. “What do you think I’m trying to do?” She padded around the reliquarium, picking up and examining artifacts that looked like they’d be particularly painful. She set them on the table within easy reach, then loomed over Corille and inquired, “Now, where did the Eye of Kotar go? What have you been using it for lately?”

“If you think I’m going to tell an acolyte who failed the Preceptor’s loyalty test – ” Corille blustered.

Faith’s pleasant smile never faltered, but her eyes went hard, as if the priestess had jabbed an open wound. She leaned in much too close for comfort, until Corille cringed back. “How’s that acolyte doing – the one who was your best friend? The one who was crazy about her boyfriend?” Faith prattled, sounding like she just wanted to catch up on gossip about their cohort. “Tell me, did Dunvil end up ordering her to Hollow him?”

Corille actually flinched.

Faith smiled the coldest smile I’d ever seen. “I didn’t think so. Now, where were we? Oh, right! The Eye of Kotar, which presumably Dunvil has on him. So what other defenses does he have? What have you been helping him do?” Almost absentmindedly, she picked up a miniature gilded mace and fiddled with it until its spikes whirled and glowed.

Luckily for us, Corille was even less of a spy than she was a fighter, and she broke almost at once. “He’s in the Ascension chamber,” she babbled. “He has a dozen senior priests and priestesses with him, he’s using the Eye of Kotar for Ascension, he’s been planning this for a time, he set this in motion right after Elder Rowan died, I’ve been helping him prepare, he sent me for more incense – ” Here she broke off, hope flickering across her features. “I should have returned by now,” she warned.

Faith looked unimpressed. “Is that so.”

Meanwhile, Ash had been drifting around the reliquarium, attuning at artifacts and grabbing ones that seemed electroplasmically active. “I think Dunvil’s trying to absorb the powers of a second demon,” he remarked as he pocketed a bottle of motes of Our Blood Spilled in Glory. Although Faith tracked his movements, she didn’t stop him.

“You think he’s trying to kill Setarra – or you think Setarra is helping him?” I asked. That was the one demon I trusted even less than I did Ixis.

“I think he’s trying to grind up Setarra and devour her powers, and she is enslaved by the Eye,” Ash replied, stuffing a handful of demonic lures into his pack.

“So if we can break his control, she’ll wreak havoc.”

“This is all a guess, but yes. Of course, she’s just as likely to kill us as them – but hopefully she starts with them.”

That, I could live with.

Turning back to Corille, Faith asked, “How much incense are you supposed to bring back?”

After a defiant, futile stare, the priestess shifted her gaze towards the bundle on the table.

It happened to be the same size as the bomb Edwina had prepared.

Faith clucked. “I usually have a thing for not causing collateral damage, but all the senior priests and priestesses here are involved in demonic rituals.” She shrugged. “Well, Corille, I guess we have a friend who’s going to live with you for a little while. Take care of her.”

At her signal, Cricket lifted out of the Hollow and floated towards the priestess.

“And then we’re going to kill you,” Ash specified, leaning across the table and staring Corille in the eyes. “Just so there’s no ambiguity here. But before you die, you’ll serve a very useful purpose.”

The woman’s hatred was palpable.

“Hmmm,” he chuckled, “sadly, I’m not a demon so I can’t soak up that hate, but I’m sure we can introduce you to people who are and can. You serve them, in fact.”

Her lips flattened into a line and her chin jutted out, but she had no response.

Shaping herself into an awl, Cricket started to bore her way into Corille’s chest while the priestess stiffened her resolve and resisted with all her strength. “It’s – hard – she – keeps pushing – me – out,” the ghost panted. Faith wound up having to assist, but in the end, Cricket had full control of the body. She bent and unbent its elbows and knees, testing the joints and seeming to compare them to the Hollow’s. “Ready!” she reported.

Ash opened the door and beckoned to Edwina, who crept in and froze at the sight of the shelves. “Give her the bomb,” he ordered.

Darting glances at the artifacts as if she expected them to attack at any second, Edwina obeyed.

“Leave the body right before it explodes,” Faith instructed, and Corille’s head nodded.

From a safe distance, we watched her glide into the Ascension ritual chamber. The door slammed shut.

A brief silence – and then an explosion rocked the catacombs, deafening us and nearly knocking us off our feet. As soon as we caught our balance, we sprinted down the tunnel, yelling back at Edwina, “Stay outside and cover our backs!”

“Will do!” she called as we skittered through the door.

The Ascension ritual chamber must have been beautiful once. It formed a perfect circle, with reliefs on the ceiling, tapestries on the walls, and a gilded starburst mosaic on the floor, all serving to focus attention on the center of the space. But now the reliefs were jagged, the tapestries torn, and the mosaic simply gone in the half of the room by the door. Bloody corpses of priests and priestesses lay scattered everywhere – some of them literally so – plus the body of one raggedy Charhallow Tycherosi.

In the center of the room stood three figures, all of whom looked a little worse for the wear, but not significantly so. The one closest to us was a slender, chestnut-haired young woman who didn’t resemble Faith much, except for the hard determination in her eyes. Even as I watched, Lauretta Mayvin summoned hundreds of foot-long daggers out of thin air and formed them into a swarm that hovered around her head and shoulders, their gleaming tips all pointed at us.

Behind her, writhing inside a ritual circle similar to the ritual circles that Faith liked to draw, was a demon. It had a human woman’s head and torso – clad in red, I noted distantly – that melted into a mass of thick, oozing, gelatinous, black tentacles with giant suckers lined with blades. The tentacles pressed up against an invisible barrier, pulsing and throbbing and squelching as the suckers stuck and unstuck almost compulsively. Setarra didn’t spare a glance for us.

I followed her gaze to the last figure in the Ascension ritual chamber: a dignified old man in white silk robes, now dusty and blood splattered, who held a green gem that stared out of its bronze frame like a fierce eye. Preceptor Dunvil was chanting raw, razor-sharp words that tore at my mind.

Breaking off, he pivoted slowly and inspected us from head to toe, one at a time, without the slightest hint of surprise. “Aradia Mayvin,” he stated, and his tone held no apprehension – only distaste.

Faith beamed. “It looks like some of your Church members have been dis-membered! I always warned you against buying ritual materials from the lowest bidder!” she scolded. “Would you say that you are incensed at how it turned out?”

Dunvil raised an eyebrow, more in irritation than anything else. “Lauretta. Kill them.”