"Well that's just needlessly fucked up," Saber said, as the Armory, bloodied and battered from their battle through the mine's winding tunnel's, stared in vile shock at what they'd found at the bottom.

The comet made a crater in a field just outside the village. The people gibbered and begged, made a huge fuss over Vice, and garbled nonsense about a mine that eats people. It was easy to locate. It was the only one surrounded by corpses, bloodstains and the leavings of a half-dozen hedge-witch and folk sorcery rituals and totems.

"Demons," Vice muttered with disgust through clenched teeth.

"Demons are real?" Saber asked, looking from Vice to Pitch.

The alchemist gave a reluctant nod and held up a vial. "We'll be wanting this. They won't just assault our bodies."

The Armory killed wet, crawling creatures with too many teeth every step of the way, idiot, locust things that pounced on their own dead and ate the leavings, ignoring the Armory while they fed. If they hadn't been liberally dosed with Pitch's chemicals, they might have all gone mad or fought Powder for the privilege of eating one of her guns. Down one winding tunnel after another, killing creeping horror and hulking beast, they emerged into a low cavern. And there they stopped before a sight that cut through even Pitch's sedatives.

There was a swarm of small demons, smaller even than any they'd faced, and two larger ones, half-grown shuffling around the brood like nursemaids, shoving and herding the squalling, infant spawn around the room in little clumps. They turned their eyeless heads to regard the Armory and hissed at the intruders. But they kept to their charges and did not advance. Beyond them was a pulsing mass of flesh. The room smelled like charnal and ammonia.

"The gate," Pitch said. "I've only ever seen scholars drawings. It looks more like..."

"It looks like a..." Saber said.

"Leave it in your heads, both of you," Dagger said.

Saber shut his mouth with a click.

A gate is a thing of wood or stone, perhaps iron. It's a way home or a symbol of protection. A gate is to be passed through and find safety on the other side, to close behind and shut out the world's threats. Home lies beyond a gate. Safety. It has hinges and doors and sometimes a crossbar.

A gate was not a pulsing sack of veiny, rippling flesh with a sphincter-like opening at one end. It did not squat like a beast in its own filth. A gate should not heave and gasp in the throes of...

The gate spasmed and a small, shrieking eyeless horror oozed from the puckered opening on a wave of viscous fluid to land thrashing and keening in the world.

...birth.

The baby horror had already begun to grow as a nursemaid demon rushed over to gather it close and tend to it.

"This is an abomination," Vice said.

"You know, before today I only thought I knew what that word meant," Saber said.

The gate shuddered, and the gaping, leaking opening sealed itself again as the mass settled with a sigh of what could only be called relief. Extending from it were snarls of fleshy tubes the led to bubbles of meat the size of boulders that hummed and vibrated.

"We have to sever the... boilers," Pitch said. "That's where it's drawing it's power from."

"Boilers?" Dagger asked.

"Can you think of a better word?"

As they watched, one of the nursemaid demons wrenched open one of the connected bubbles like a hatch and stuffed in pieces of dead miner, helmet, apron and all. The gate spasmed and chunked like it was swallowing. The sphincter rippled as it expelled a gasp of foul air.

"I think it just burped," Saber said, covering his mouth.

"See?" Pitch said.

"Boiler works," Dagger muttered.

"How do we close that?" Powder asked.

"Kill it and burn it," Dagger said. "Pitch?"

"White phosphorus. It's too wet to burn with ordinary fire."

"Vice?" Dagger said.

"I can seal the breech it came through. The Vigil will aid me. No god of our world would suffer this thing's existence."

It often unnerved them the way Vice would talk about his dead god as if it wasn't.

They moved forward in a mass and the nursemaid creatures gathered their young charges behind them, shielding the infants behind their bodies as they hissed and roared. Then they turned their maws up toward the ceiling and screamed as one, a piercing whistle of a sound that drilled its way into the Armory's ears and drove into the pocked tunnels that lined the upper reaches of the birthing chamber.

"Cry for help," Dagger noted.

"Yes," Vice said and shook out his shoulders.

"But we slaughtered everything on the way here," Saber said.

A mass was forming beyond the gate, a ripple in the darkness out of reach of the light cast by Pitch's phosporescent paint on their bodies. It wasn't tall, but it stretched across the room as it rippled toward the Armory. It broke across the gate like a wave, and then stepped into the range of the light.

"I thought the miners were all dead?" Saber said.

This wasn't an army of monsters, but men and women. They still wore the heavy canvas and leather aprons and gloves of their trade. Tools still dangled from some of their belts. They walked on stiff legs. Their hands twitched and spasmed. Their eyes were blank and their lips slack and open.

"Zombies?" Dagger said with a snort. "That's a children's story."

As the army of miners formed a human shield around the demon infants and the spasming gate. Behind it the nursemaid demons herded their charges together and furiously fed whatever human slurry they had left into the batteries that powered the gate.

"I don't understand," Powder said, "why aren't they attacking us?"

The human wall swayed in place, their shoulders bumping into each other idiotically.

"Powder, cover me," Pitch said.

"Go," Powder said, siting just over Pitch's shoulder as the alchemist approached the wall, stopping a half dozen feet away and paced it, peering at the humans. Their eyes did not focus on him, they did not turn their heads. He took another step and reached out a hand.

"Pitch!" Dagger yelled.

"It's an experiment," he called back. One of the shambling miners reached out a hand toward Pitch and its chest caved in with a crack as Powder fired. The miner staggered and fell. The others formed in around it, but not before Pitch got a grip on its apron and dragged the corpse and back to the Armory. He rolled the dead miner over, and a wet little something yanked itself free from the miner's skull and skittered back toward the wall where it squealed as it was crushed beneath a boot.

"Well," Pitch said, staring down at a hole in the back of the miner's skull. "Shows a primitive knowledge of human behavior. Protect the herd. But they don't seem to have a handle on the motor functions yet enough to fight. Very interesting."

"Glad you're fascinated," Dagger said.

"Life must be preserved," Vice muttered, looking at the miners.

"Since when?" Dagger asked him.

"Life is sacred, Dagger. There could be believers among them."

"This isn't life, Vice," Pitch said. "This is hunger and anima."

"Pitch," Dagger asked, "will they recover if we get those things off their skulls?"

"Possible. But... I have another idea. Saber, lend me one of your knives. Something with a stout blade."

"Hurry up, Pitch," Dagger said with a glance at the wall. Their shuffling had grown more animated. Their fingers twitched and their heads turned this way and that. One by one, sets of dead, staring eyes were focusing on the Armory. Saber took out something that looked more like a chisel than a fighting knife. Pitch slid it into the hole in the back of the miner's skull and levered open the skull like he was cracking open a walnut. The inside of the miner's skull was empty save for muscousy tendrils connected to the optic nerves and spinal column.

"As I thought, nothing left," Pitch said. "But even if their minds have been eaten, these are all still souls. We can't leave them this way."

Dagger nodded. "Do it."

"Deliverence," Vigil said with a reverent sigh. "I misjudged you, Pitch."

"No, you didn't." Pitch said, "I would have done it without checking."

The alchemist took a squat bottle with a rope loop wrapped around the neck from behind his back and uncorked it. He poured in powder from a pouch and re-sealed it. As the chemicals within mixed, they glowed with a sickly yellow light. Pitch threw it at the wall and one of the miners caught it and held it clutched to their chest.

"Huh," Pitch said. "Well, that really was impressive. They're learning fast."

"Charming," Dagger said. "Powder? Before it learns to throw."

Powder fired. The bottle shattered and the second the chemicals met air they burst into gouts of unhealthy flame that splashed over the miners, consuming half the wall. The miners staggered. The wall broke.

"Move in. Now," Dagger said and lunged forward, swinging her hammer in a mighty arc and felling three of the shambling miners. The Armory moved like farmers threshing a field of grain. The miners flailed, and those not on fire tried feebly to fight back against the Armory, but the compassion the demons had hoped to leverage. The Armory cut and batterd them down to pieces. The tiny creatures that had burrowd into their brains ran in a panic as they dragged their tendril legs free from corpses' skulls. They were stamped beneath bootheels like tavern roaches or else ran into the fire, sizzled and died. The Armory moved to the swarm of infant demons beyond and pulped them against the stone and their nursemaids with them. When the cavern was quiet but for the pulsing, sucking noises of the gate, the Armory stood panting and staring at the obscene thing.

"Vice, start doing whatever it is you do."

Vice knelt and began to mutter. The gate spasmed.

"Sever the boilers," Vice muttered between prayers. Saber and Powder went to each of the fleshy tumors. After he cut though the tendrils connecting them to the gate, she destroyed them with her shotguns. The gate whined from its birthing hole. It wriggled and tried to move, but it was too heavy. Vestigal legs poked and squirmed from under its bulk without effect. When the gate was alone and cut off, Pitch dumped powder from two bags over it. When the chemicals met the wet flesh, they began to smoke. The gate shook and squealed, it made wet kissing sounds with its mouth as if it was gulping and tried to breath around the white-hot conflagration. Dagger came behind them and with large swings of her hammer battered the gate. Power fired her scatterguns again and gain. Saber chopped with big strokes of his cleavers. They worked methodically, artlessly, until it was a lumpy slurry on the dirt, still sizzling in the bite of the phosphorous.

"This is never gonna wash off," Saber said, fruitlessly trying to find something clean to wipe his mouth.

"Vice, what are we looking for?"

But Vice did not answer, his head was bowed and his lips moved. Without the sucking, gurgling noises of the gate, the Armory could hear his repeated phrases, intense and plaintive. Dagger shook her head and sifted the gate's leftover meat with her boot and the spike end of her hammer's handle. She kicked a misshapen bone out of the way and felt along the floor of the mine.

"There's something under here," she said, wiping her hand on her trousers. "Pitch, I need more light."

Pitch produced several lengths of bundled cloth. "Drive your hammer into the floor."

Dagger stood and drove her hammer's spiked handle deep into the ground with a mighty thrust. Pitch wrapped the head with the cloth and then took out flint and tinder. Sparks danced across the reactive cloth and it took fire instantly, blazing with a bright, white light. Dagger took out a knife and probed through the mess.

"Yeah. Symbol. Here. They carved it into the stone. They meant this to last."

"Let me see," Pitch said and bent down near her. "Yes, I see it. But I don't recognize it. This might be more Vice's line than mine."

"Vice!" Dagger yelled over her shoulder.

The monk still did not move.

"Vice!" Dagger yelled.

Vice did not move. He tilted his face up to the ceiling of the cavern, his eyelids closed and the eyeballs behind them flitting back and forth rapidly.

"Hey, Vice, the Vigil's over here with his tits out," Saber shouted.

Vice sighed and bowed his head. He unclasped his hands. "Saber, I am going to punch you in the face."

"You can punch him later," Dagger said.

"Hey!" Saber protested.

"Now, Vice," Dagger continued, "come look at this."

Vice got off his knees and looked over Dagger's shoulder.

"It is a ritual," he said, "this is how they called the gate."

"How does it work?" Pitch asked.

"By belief, Pitch," Vice said.

"Nothing happens just because you believe it," Pitch said.

"Belief is as strong as any science," Vice muttered.

"How were those prayers going?" Pitch muttered.

"I can't reach them," Vice said, his tone anguished and frustrated.

"It's like they told us up there," Pitch said, "this place is partially hidden from them."

Vice gave Pitch a grateful look and straightened his back.

"Could they do it again?" Dagger asked.

"Yes," Vice said. "This symbol weakens the membrane between the worlds and calls to another. In this case, a world where these creatures are plentiful. One they have devoured."

"Who would want something like that?" Dagger asked.

"Somebody who believed the world was better eaten," Vice said.

"Or somebody conducting an experiment," Pitch said.

Dagger grunted. "How do we get rid of it?"

"It's carved into the rock," Pitch said.

"I can try to remove its power, but yes," Vice said. "with the symbol still there it could be reactivated."

"Could just blow it up," Powder said.

"Do it," Dagger muttered.

Pitch grinned at her. "You were sort of bored this job, huh?"

"Not many sight lines in a tunnel," Powder said. "Can you burn some of this off for me so I can see what I'm doing?"

Pitch poured acid from a jar onto the ground and it sizzled as it ate the rest of the gate's meat down to smoke and crystalline dust.

"Why is that making me hungry?" Saber muttered at the smell from the dissolving, quick-burning flesh.

"Because, as usual," Vice said, "you appetites have outstripped your brains."

"It's a gift," Saber said.

Powder produced several slim sticks of dynamite and laid them in the grooves along the ground and played out the fuse behind them as they walked back through the mine. They heard nervous skittering in the darkness, the sound of claw on stone.

"What do we do about the stragglers?" Powder asked, absently sighting on a demon trying to hide behind a rock and hissing at them.

"We closed the gate," Dagger said. "The locals can handle clean up."

At the mouth of the mine, Powder knelt and lit the fuse. It shot back into the tunnel behind them like a wingless firefly.

The Armory stepped squinting out into the sunlight.

"Stop right there," a strange voice commanded and all around them was the sound of swords being drawn and rifle hammers being drawn back like the song of metal crickets. Dagger blinked to adjust her eyes and stared at the half-moon of liveried soldiers blocking any exit from the mining grounds.

"Who're you?" She asked the soldiers.

"The Queen's guard."

"Which queen?"

"Our queen is not a witch!"

"No. I meant..."

"Do you not know where you are?"

"Frequently," Saber answered, fingering the hilt of his sword and looking speculatively at the ring of guns and swords. "We're out. We could just sell this one dear. All those miners back there. They gotta be worth an exit."

"Waita moment, Saber," Dagger said.

"What were you doing down there?" The soldier asked.

"Solving your problem."

"How?"

-=-

Dagger held up a finger. They stood. The soldiers shifted nervously. After several moments nothing happened.

"Powder?" Dagger said.

"Captain, it's a lot of fuse. Just wait."

"You're making us look bad in front of the yokels," Saber said with a giggle.

"Shut up, Saber. Captain, I know my business," Powder said and then addressed the soldiers, "Sorry. Think of it as a dramatic pause. Like in a play."

"What?" The captain of the guard asked.

Then the ground shook and a tempest of dust burst out of the mouth of the mine. The soldiers all flinched and retrained their weapons on the Armory. Dagger looked behind them, waving a hand and coughing in the dust.

"Your mine will need repairs," she said. "but the gate is dead."

"Dead?"

"Closed. Whatever."

"What gate?" The soldier asked again.

"This lot seem easily confused," Pitch muttered.

"Now," Dagger said to the soldiers, "what's this about a queen?"

"Queen Dinar S'ylin Amarenta Qual D'sine, fourteenth of her line, Jewel of The Five Lands and the Light of Heaven requests your presence."

Dagger blinked at the legion of titles.

"How's he remember all that?" Saber muttered to Powder.

"Probably gets shot at dawn if he doesn't," Powder muttered.

"That would motivate me," Saber said.

"Nothing motivates you to remember anybody's name, Saber," Powder said. "That's why you end up in so many duels with angry husbands and wives."

"I always thought it was better if I can't remember their names. So they know it's nothing serious."

"It's not better," Powder said.

"You will come with us," the soldier said, trying again to take command of the situation.

"Why?" Dagger asked.

"The queen has a job for you."

"You should have just said that," Dagger said. "Lead on."

"We have a carriage waiting," the soldier said.

"I changed my mind," Dagger said.

The soldiers shifted nervously.

"You should have mentioned the carriage first," Saber said as Dagger gave a tired sigh.