ARC 7: CHAPTER 30: HEXER'S TALE

For a terrifying minute, I thought we’d been saved from the servants of Hell just to drown.

I could see nothing, hear nothing but the roar of water and my own pounding heart. All sensation became a rushing, burbling, cascading nightmare of motion. My lungs ached. I hadn’t managed to take a breath before going under, and I could feel the edges of my vision hazing.

Don’t breathe don’t breathe don’t breathe—

And just when I knew I’d take a breath, I emerged from the water. No, that isn’t how I’d describe it — I was spat out like a piece of meat from a gorged throat, tumbling across a rough surface along with a wheat silo’s worth of water, dead bees, and some silty substance ripped out of the cavern we’d just left.

I lay there for a moment, too stunned to move and gasping like a dying fish. I tried to get up, vomited up foul tasting liquid, then spent a minute coughing. My armor and cape were soaked, and my hair clung to my scalp.

“Hm,” a voice said. “You’ll want to get that dried out. Such a waste of good work, letting all that steel rust.”

I lifted my head and saw a pair of avian feet flattened against rotted floorboards. Above them lay the tattered hem of badly worn skirts, and above that… impossibly green eyes with golden slivers shining at their cores.

“Urddha.” I got a knee under me and managed to lift myself into a crouch. “What the hell did you do to my axe?”

“Isn’t it obvious? And it’s not yours, it’s mine. Well, mine and the Choir’s, but I’m the one who planted the tree. It was a simple matter to link it to my hut.”

“Your hut?” I glanced around, and realized we were indeed inside some kind of small house or cottage. It looked very much like the classical witch’s den, dimly lit, with shelves full of a strange assortment of items. There was a fireplace, but it hadn’t been lit in a long time. Most of the light came from waxy candles spread by the dozen around the home’s interior, which did little more than give definition to the darkness. It reminded me of the inside of a cathedral. And like an altar inside that fane, a huge cauldron sat in the center of the space. Something bubbled ominously inside of it. More light came out of that, and it had a venomous tint.

I heard more coughs and splutters nearby. Donnelly and Delphine were here too. I stood shakily to my feet, the fingers of my right hand flexing for a weapon. I’d lost hold of my sword in the water, and my axe…

It was in Urddha’s hand. She stood more than eight feet tall, a giant inside the confines of the room, and the branch seemed little more than a wand in her hand.

I found my sword lying on the soaked floor just as the other two were getting to their feet. The dark room clarified in my vision as my eyes adjusted, though I still seemed to be having trouble seeing in the dark. I fixed my gaze on Lias, who took a moment to take stock of his situation before turning his attention to me. He kept pointedly silent.

Urddha glanced between us and let out a low chuckle. “Oh, this is good! Very good.”

I didn’t understand why she’d save both of us… all three of us. I helped Delphine to her feet. She muttered a wan thanks, then stared wide eyed at the Onsolain.

“Is that…” She began.

“It is. Doctor Roch, I’d like to introduce you to Urddha Curseweaver, Saint of Witches and esteemed member of the Choir of Heavensreach.”

Delphine’s face drained of color. “Oh. Um…”

She didn’t seem to know what to do. Urddha snorted and said, “Oh, don’t do anything droll like praying or falling to your knees, girl. I know your faith is testy at the best of times, and it would demean us both. Though, if you wish to become one of mine…” She revealed green fangs in a predatory grin.

Delphine impressed me by finding some poise, becoming the steely scholar I’d first met some days before. “Many might call me a witch, my lady, but my path is my own. I venerate the God-Queen and Her Saints, but I will not become one of your priestesses.”

Urddha waved a dismissive hand. “Not all have the stomach for the rituals required to weave proper curses these days. Alas.” The angel — honorary angel, or whatever she was — turned her gleaming eyes to me. “So, the sulfurous dog betrayed you. We expected it, of course, but you have to admit he picked his moment well.”

“I knew he’d try to take the scroll,” I admitted, “but I didn’t know he’d have all the crowfriars on standby. I guess…”

I hesitated, and Urddha nodded. “You thought he had truly become the rogue. It was easier to sympathize with him, thinking he was alone in the world… but Orkael does not loosen its claws on any asset, not without taking flesh for it.”

“I did consider that he might have been playing me,” I said, “but I thought I needed him.” I cursed. “I did need him. It was Delphine who figured half this puzzle out, and he introduced us.”

“Yes…” Urddha studied the shaken woman closely. “A twist of fate, this, for a servant of the Great Sheol to place you and another survivor of Seydis on the same path. That is not coincidence, I think, but whose hand…”

“Oh, please.” Lias wobbled a bit on his feet and still looked near dead, but his eyes, the real and false one, were hard as they fixed on the Onsolain. “You know whose hand it was. Fate and prophecy are just your kind tampering with our lives to create a narrative that pleases you.”

“Lias Hexer, in the flesh. Your name has cropped up often of late.” Urddha turned to face the wizard, who squared his shoulders even as the hunched form of the Saint Immortal towered over him. She studied him for a long while. Lias refused to back down, keeping his eyes fixed on Urddha’s face even past the point where I knew it must have hurt. His face was bloodless, his shoulders slumped, but he did not avert his gaze.

Finally, Urddha sniffed and leaned back. “Wizards. Always so sure of themselves, and so quick to cast judgment. Even now, you seek to prove a point.”

“Prove a point?” Lias let out a short, manic bark of laughter. “You sent a man who is like a brother to me to kill me! You think I have any respect left to give to you, starspawn?”

Urddha’s quiet voice had a deadly weight to it. “Careful what you call me, boy. You do not know as much as you think you do.”

“And we are not brothers,” I said quietly. Lias flinched, and some of the defiance went out of him. I couldn’t bring myself to be sympathetic, not after everything he’d done. Instead I addressed the Onsolain. “What now? You took us from that place, but the Credo Ferrum has the Zoscian again. I failed.”

Urddha turned to regard me. “Failed? No, this matter has not yet reached its most ruinous point. You survived, and you have brought Lias Hexer before me. I shall consider that success for now.”

“Brought him?” I tilted my head, confused. “You did order me to execute him.”

“Oh. I did, didn’t I?” Urddha used a gangrene-colored nail to scratch at the side of her head, dislodging something foul from her warted skin. “Right… well then. Go ahead.” She stepped back and nodded. “Have it done.”

I blinked, taken aback. “I… what? Now? After all that?”

“Yes. Why do you think I saved him from the cave with you? Better his sentence be carried out by us than we let the servants of Zos have him. This will be kinder.”

I still had my sword in hand. Lias watched me, his jaw set and his damp black hair clinging to his face. He wouldn’t fight back, I knew. We had him trapped, and he was powerless.

I’m missing things. This doesn’t all add up. I thought it even as I stepped forward. Lias was still human, and not above fearing death. He took a step back as his good eye flicked to the sword. The ruby eye remained on me, gleaming like bloody fire in the dim room. Urddha watched the scene intently, not interfering.

“Alken…” Delphine’s voice made me pause. She said nothing else, but I could feel her anxiety.

“Don’t interfere,” I said.

“We came for answers,” Delphine told me insistently. “If you kill him, it changes nothing. It stops nothing. We need to know what Vicar and his brethren are doing, why all of this happened in the first place.”

I closed my eyes a moment. Damn it, but she was right. Even still… the more I delayed this, the harder it got. He hadn’t hesitated to try and kill me back at Rose Malin, why did I still…

Something nagged at the back of my mind. What had Urddha said to me in the cathedral? It seemed very important now. You have the ear of gods, boy, and hold an imperishable flame within you. Many members of the Choir see you as a disposable tool, but some of us feel that is a misuse of your role. This is your history, too. Remember it.

Lias sighed in exasperation. “Just get it done, Hewer, before I bleed out. I’d rather die by your hand than go to Hell limply.”

Think, I ordered myself. Are you a tool, an assassin, or are you the Headsman of Seydis? You took that axe to avenge what happened there, to stop it from happening again. But you’ve been trimming weeds while that mad lion has been squatting in Seydis’s carcass.

Urddha was still watching me with her gold-slivered eyes. She’d kept Chamael from listening when she gave me the order. Why? She’d hidden herself inside Faen Orgis and then used it in the moment I was about to kill Lias to stop me. If she hadn’t done that, he’d already be dead.

“This is a test,” I said aloud. “There’s a scheme here.”

Urddha’s smile slowly widened. “Yet the order has been given. He must die.”

I gave a slow nod. “But there are rituals involved. The Headsman is not a butcher who kills on demand. There are concessions offered to the convicted.”

Lias grit his teeth. “I need no concessions!”

“Shut up.” I rested the crusader sword on my shoulder. “You’ll get them anyway. I’ve been studying this past year. Garihelm’s libraries are very well stocked. There are texts on the Doomsmen, mostly elven writings. I believe one of the first things a soul given the Headsman’s Doom is offered is a chance at confession.”

Lias cursed softly, bowing his head, and the Saint of Curses began to laugh.

And so Lias told us his story.

He started back a ways. Years back, when the Accord was still drying ink on parchment and the lords who’d hewed to Markham Forger were still trying to chart a way forward in the wake of the most devastating war in centuries. Rosanna was newly wed to a newly crowned emperor, and Lias made an advisor to this confederation’s high council.

But he knew the peace couldn’t last, that there were powers beyond mere men who’d started the war, and that for anything to truly change there needed to be more extreme action.

So Lias traveled. Using means known to the Magi, he went north into the isles beyond Cymrinor, and then west into Bantes and the wider continent. He’d consulted with alchemists, sages, inventors, and mad prophets. He’d witnessed first hand the great renaissance of invention and art that was sweeping across eastern Edaea, and the dark powers lurking behind that fair curtain. He saw how little the Onsolain seemed to care for the wider world, keeping behind their bulwark of stormy seas and high precipices to guard their Queen’s chosen people while the rest of the world changed.

“You know the Church of Urn is widespread across Edaea?” Lias told me and Delphine. His wounds had been tended to, his maimed hand wrapped and some concoction Delphine had mixed under the Hagmother’s direction in his hand. The walls creaked around us, the floorboards shifting and bucking like a ship at sea. Urddha’s hut was moving. Beneath us, something enormous strode across the Wend, carrying the Saint’s abode on its back.

Delphine nodded. “I knew this. I spent a couple years in Bantes myself after the war, studying in their universities. The Aureates, as they call our missionaries over there still, are not always well liked or welcome in Edaea’s realms, but they do have converts.”

“Bantes and its sister republics still remember when we occupied them and spread our God’s love through the sword,” Lias said with a thin smile. “The blessings we enjoy from the Onsolain, those that give us fair weather and bountiful crops, that protect us from all manner of evils, are not so widespread in the continent. They suffer far worse from famine and plague, and while they have surpassed us in many ways when it comes to invention, we are leagues ahead of them in the Auratic Arts. Aureate missionaries horde this skill over there and are considered miracle workers at best, scheming sorcerers at worst. They are constantly in conflict with the crowfriars. Edaean poets call it the War of Ash and Amber, and it has gone on for centuries.”

He noted my troubled face. “The world is much larger than us, Alken. You knew this.”

“…I guess I’m just surprised there’s so much of us over there. I didn’t think that would be the case, with the Riven Order in place for so many centuries.”

“The Riven Order was mostly to keep the Zosite out, not us in. We have gone through periods of isolation, true, but what I encouraged Markham to do wasn’t without precedent.”

He continued his narrative. His travels had taken him far, stalled frequently by the need to transpose himself back to the subcontinent and tend to the affairs of the Accord. He’d gone further west, ranging north and south in a meandering journey, seeking something that could change the course of Urn’s stagnant history.

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“At times, I fancied I was looking for God.” Lias’s smile was self mocking. “Or for signs left by Her, perhaps. She was in Edaea longer than in Urn, and many there still venerate Her. What if She went back to them?”

“Many would consider that blasphemy,” Delphine noted without judgement.

Lias shrugged. “I found nothing of God, though I found plenty of devils.”

He’d gone deep into the west, into lands still fallen under the shadow of the Cambion’s empire. He came so near that he saw the rotting mountains of Antriss, though he encountered demons there and was forced to turn back.

“I went north then, into the deserts of Old Mediir. I sought answers from the ancients. There is so much wisdom in the Old Kingdoms, so much lost during the Ruin. I mostly just found ghosts and silence.”

He’d wandered the haunted waters of Fallen Oroion, walked the coasts of the Sea of Fangs, even ranged into the deep, cold deserts of the Fane Lands in the deepest south of the world. A journey of lifetimes, taken in pieces over a handful of years thanks to his talents as a wizard.

“You spent all that time searching,” Delphine said. “And you weren’t even sure exactly what you were looking for?”

“Oh, I found answers.” Lias’s green eye twinkled. “Or, perhaps I should say I found peace with my own answers?”

“And what were those?” I asked.

“That this world has been ruined by the petty rivalries of gods. I traveled across thousands of miles, I saw the corpses of fallen empires, witnessed undead giants wandering across stretches of land that could have fed tens of thousands, and so much of it was… empty. They have pushed us east, or corralled us into insular pockets of civilization full of people completely unaware of what lies outside their woods. I found an entire country of people who were still fighting the Cambion deep in the west, believing that any year the God-Queen would return with reinforcements. We left them behind during the Exodus, and they have no idea. Every generation wages a war the rest of us quit centuries ago. They don’t even know their god returned to Heaven and probably isn’t coming back. Who would want to come back to this?”

“Their god?” Delphine asked. “Have you abandoned even that, Master Lias?”

Lias splayed out his remaining fingers. “If she even was a god. The elves and the angels will tell us so, but what if she was just one of them? Or some poor mortal girl they made into a prophet? We can’t know, and all the roads to Onsolem are closed, so we can’t even confirm whether it exists.”

“It does,” Urddha muttered. She toiled over her cauldron, having remained silent through the conversation until then. “Of that at least, the three of you can be assured. Our universe has a center. Ihave seen it.”

That quieted all of us for a time, even the wizard.

“How did you get involved with the Credo?” I asked in a quiet voice, encouraging Lias to continue his tale.

He first made contact with one of the Missionaries of Orkael on the Marches of Urn, the same dreary coastlands where Catrin had been born. He met a quiet traveler in a roadside inn, one who seemed to know far too much about the wizard’s travels and identity. They got to talking, and Lias was put in contact with others.

“I knew what he was that first night,” Lias admitted. “I wasted little time signing my first pact.”

I shook my head, quietly horrified. “Why?”

“A scheme was hatching. My greatest scheme, I suppose you could say, one that required everything of me. My inhibitions, my scruples, my flesh, my very soul… I sacrificed all of it for the attainment of this goal.”

He paused and glanced at the divinity in the room. Urddha waved dismissive claws. “I have already guessed your plot, Magi. Continue! This is a confession before representatives of the Choir, not a friendly chat.”

So he continued. “I knew of the crowfriars, the agents of the Iron Tribunal, and I knew of their sacred artifact. It is one of the great mysteries of the occult world, spoken of in the same breaths that alchemists use to refer to Philospher Stones and the recipe to create dragons. I had enough evidence to verify its existence, and if what it was capable of could be believed… I believed I had my means to enact my plan. But I needed to gain access to it first, and that required me to give more, to offer more, to promise more. I also needed to make sure I did not fall into a trap and end up being taken by my new allies before I’d accomplished anything. The trick, I found, was to sign as many contracts as possible. The Zosite are very particular, and if the language used to claim a soul is not exacting, it can create… delays.”

Urddha chuckled. “You sly snake. You played their own game against them.”

Lias tipped his head in acknowledgement, hesitated as he caught my eye, then began to roll his sleeves up. Delphine gasped. I had to hide my own reaction, my disgust, though I wasn’t fully successful. My jaw clenched at the sight.

His arms were a ruin. There were scars, and wounds that hadn’t made that transition yet. Some had been made by blades, others by hot iron, but each formed a complex sigil. What little flesh wasn’t covered looked raw, and some openly bled. They made me feel sick to look at them, like I was suddenly coming down with the early stage of a sickness. I had to blink, my vision fuzzing at the edges. Delphine’s face paled and she lifted a hand to her mouth.

“How can you stand to wear those on your skin?” I asked in horror.

Lias rolled his sleeves back down, sparing us a longer look at the blasphemous marks. “Willpower, mostly, and they’re not just on my skin. My bones were marked too. It’s not unlike what the Alder Table did to you, Al.”

He explained in as few words as he could. Essentially, by signing a truly copious number of contracts with different crowfriars — apparently there were many missions, many Vicars, all in conflict to fill their quotas of souls — he made it more difficult for the forces of Hell to control him. Ironically, by giving himself so thoroughly to the devils, he made it more difficult for them to enact their will on him. An odd loophole, one that required an immense amount of pain and care.

“You know much of what came next. I encouraged the lifting of the trade ban between Edaea and Urn, and worked to silence dissenting voices to western influence. I helped subvert the Priory, kept Rosanna and Markham from seeing the whole picture. I earned more favor from the Zosite, who are… largely distant in their influence. The crowfriars enact their will, but contact with the Iron Tribunal is scarce and often vague. All the lords of Hell knew was that I was becoming a great asset, and the voices of those agents who distrusted me were drowned out by their complex rivalries with one another. Everyone wanted a pact with the renegade Magi who had the ear of Urn’s rulers!”

Lias spread his arms out, displaying himself, then winced as he pulled his injuries and calmed his theatrics. “But I gave my most intimate promises to Vicar and his mission. He was the one dispatched to Urn once the Riven Order was broken, and we worked very closely with one another.”

I almost asked him if he’d known about the ploy with the Carreons, but decided better of it. There was enough to unravel without adding more resentment into the mix. “And all of this was to what great purpose?” I asked. “You helped monsters infiltrate our homeland and gave them every aid in corrupting us. What greater good could that possibly be in aid of?”

“I needed access to the Zoscian,” Lias said. “It was always to that end. I needed access to it, and I needed the right conditions to use it. It’s not just a lever that can be pulled, there are rituals and circumstances required.”

“You had it,” I said. “You had it for weeks.”

“I stole it in a moment of desperation,” Lias told me. “And it was useless to me, because only a crowfriar can actually open it. It was open, for a brief time, but…”

“What happened?” I asked him. “What made you flee?”

After our encounter in Rose Malin, Lias had fled Garihelm along with Vicar, Oraise, and many of the Priory’s leaders. There’d been a restructuring. Originally, Horace Laudner had been expected to sign his name to the Volumen of Zos and give the Priory over to the service of the dark angels of Hell. When Lias had done it, it both cemented his position in their service and set him back. He had more scrutiny on him, and had to work to bring the priors under control. It hadn’t been easy, and in the end he passed over the position of Grand Prior in favor of one of the organization’s own, a compromise to appease the priests and give him breathing room.

There was one last step to embedding the Zosite into Urn, to fully returning their influence into the world. They hadn’t been able to do it for most of a millennia, not since the God-Queen banished them and disavowed their missionaries. Even for all their influence in Edaea, they hadn’t been able to do it. But they tried with the Priory. A ritual, one that Lias had interrupted.

“They want to return,” Lias said. “This is the land chosen by the Heir of Heaven as a refuge and a fortress. There is power here, ancient power and seals yet unbroken. Reynard tried to break those seals by targeting Seydis, but even he didn’t have the means to complete his work. The Zosite do. They are angry that their share of souls are being denied to them. There are ancient laws laid down that promise them certain concessions, so long as they do their duty and guard the Abyss.”

I snorted. “But they’re doing a piss job at that. The demons overran Heaven, for fuck’s sake. They’re practically crawling over our world like locusts.”

Lias nodded. “And they believe that it is because the Choir has failed, that humanity has been left too much to its own devices and that the rest of the Celestial Kingdom has fallen to anarchy. The Zosite blame the state of existence and this entire cosmic conflict on us. On mortals. There is so much I could tell you about the cosmos, Alken.”

“I heard that from a vampire in Garihelm. I think… let’s focus on the here and now, shall we?”

“I will do my best. In brief, the war for Heaven still rages across the firmament. I may sound the iconoclast, but I do believe there are gods and angels, and those who dwell here are but a small part of their number. I have seen the evidence. With Onsolem lost, Orkael is now the single most powerful of all the Realms Immortal, and it desires to spread itself, to become the master of everything.”

I shivered. “That’s a terrifying thought.”

“Yes! Imagine it; a new Creation, with pitiless angels of ice and iron as its rulers. You are right about us, we are infested with the Adversary, and the angels of Hell want to cleanse us. They want to break open our underworld and sort out all our dead based on what they consider to be sin and virtue. They outnumber the Choir, so they will force them to bend the knee or throw them into pits. They will organize all our people into slaves and soldiers and wage a new war on the darkness in the far west. They will remake our world in Hell’s image, and they will punish us. They hate us, Alken. They hate us so much, perhaps even more than they hate the agrüdai.”

I canted my head to one side. “And… you put them closer to their goal.”

Lias’s face darkened. “This has been happening for a long time, Alken. Whatever the God-Queen did to guard this world against intrusion from the rest of Creation, it is weakening. Ager Roth’s presence here proves that. I did not trust the Choir to protect us, not when half of them are pining for those walls to come down as much as whatever’s on the outside wants to get in.”

Urddha mumbled something, but didn’t interrupt. Lias continued without missing a beat.

“But the power that rules Orkael is not a wrathful god, it is not a fallible will. It is a machine. The Iron Tribunal heeds it, they abide its laws, but they do not write them. No crowfriar or infernal angel can add new laws to the Zoscian. No…” Lias smiled darkly. “Only mortals can do that.”

Delphine’s eyes widened. Whatever point the wizard was approaching, she got it.

“But they write those contracts,” I argued.

“Yes! The crowfriars were once mortals, and they can add new text to their volumens, but only when a living mortal embeds their name into the flesh of Zos does anything actually change. An ancient loophole Hell crafted to get around Onsolem’s laws, ironically. What I needed was a new law that suited my purpose, an opportunity to sign it, and then the chance to embed that law into Hell’s infrastructure.”

He stood then, placing his hand on the back of his chair as though to steady himself. He hesitated, his manner becoming pensive.

“I had it, or so I thought, but the devils got one over on me. My intention was to turn Orkael’s power into a new safeguard for us. With the proper wording, I could make interference from the Onsolain in our fates illegal and punishable. They have too many loopholes in their own rules. You prove that.”

I frowned. “How so?”

“Think about it. The Onsolain aren’t allowed to kill mortals. They also can’t make us do anything, such as taking command of our bodies or overriding our memories. You think they aren’t capable? They don’t do it because they’re not allowed by laws that were inscribed into reality itself when the universe was still young. But they can influence our will, use cheap tricks like illusions and dreams to change our thoughts, and they can use foolish, well meaning knights to kill people for them.”

He raised his eyebrows significantly. I said nothing, though I felt a new kernel of discomfort grow in my chest. Those words mirrored many of my own unspoken thoughts.

“That was one part of it, to put more restrictions on the gods. I could prevent the Zosite from entering this world, banish their missionaries once and for all, and give us access to some of their resources. Think of it! Clerics who can call up devils without paying their souls for it. We could win the war against the Gorelion in a year.”

“…It’s a dark thought, and seems rife with problems.”

“I did not dream of a perfect world. There would be complications, but my hope was that I could put humanity on a stronger footing.” Lias sighed. “But I became too arrogant. The crowfriars knew I had grown too free of their influence, and that I plotted something. So they changed the terms on me.”

“How so?” Delphine asked.

“The new Grand Prior. He was a plant from Edaea, a preoster from a small country to the north of Bantes who’d been converted by the Credo long ago. The plan was to wait for the Rite of Transposition, a ritual where a pacted mortal of great influence would put their name on Zos’s flesh and invite Its disciples into this world. During this ritual, the Zoscian is returned to its original body, making the new law permanent and forming a direct link between Hell and the mortal plane. The door isn’t open long, but it would allow a fair few of the Zosite to pass over. Enough to challenge the Choir for dominance. That was the very ritual I interrupted by stealing the volumen before the Credo’s dupe could sign it.”

“Their dupe?” I asked. “The new Grand Prior?”

Lias shook his head. “It could have been him, but they wanted to accomplish more. Someone of greater influence, whose actions would make the devils seem like gifts from Heaven, thus making it easier for the people of Urn to accept them as such. It would make their war with the Choir quite brief, in the grand scheme.”

I realized immediately who it must be. “The Cardinal in Baille Os. He’s organizing the crusade. If he did this…”

Lias nodded. “He almost did. I stopped it.” He sighed. “Now they have their key again, and I’m afraid my hasty counter play has come undone.”

“Why would the Cardinal do that?” Delphine asked. “Was he tricked?”

“In part,” Lias said. “The Cardinal is… he is dead. He is one of the Dead Saints, in fact, exhumed to lead the faithful against the demons of Seydis. A cadaver prophet, if you like. But the Credo Ferrum interfered with the process to raise him, and now he is afflicted with visions of fire and devastation. They have made him believe that only be calling up the devils of Hell can this evil be defeated.”

I realized more, the pieces of this drama clicking into place so fast it left me breathless. “The attack on Heavensreach… that was the fucking Zosite, too. They wanted to make the Choir panic and feel vulnerable, so they wouldn’t interfere in time.”

Lias nodded. “And to make the Dark Lord of Elfgrave think them weak, so he’d feel confident in making a play. The Credo are also responsible for letting the Gorelion know that the Zoscian was in play, so he would attack preemptively and drive the Crusade to even greater desperation. When the Zosite arrive, it will look like salvation.”

“My God…” Delphine swore. “I can’t believe I was part of all of this.”

“You didn’t know anything, Miss Roch. Don’t fret over it too much.”

It was a splash of ice water, to know that this catastrophe had almost happened hundreds of miles from where I’d been, over and done with while I’d been in the capital and completely unaware.

I closed my eyes as I realized something else. “Shit. That’s my fault. I brought Vicar to you.”

Lias shrugged. “You didn’t know any of this.”

“I could have!” My voice came out harsh with sudden anger. “You could have told me any of this, damn it. Maybe I could have…”

“What? Helped me commit high heresy against every law of the Choir? Help me damn myself and become the very monster you’ve sworn to fight? I am the worst of all heretics, Al. I have covered my very bones with blasphemies against your God, and I have done terrible things.”

Delphine spoke into the ensuing silence between us. “What was your original plan, before they tried to cut you out with the Cardinal?”

Lias placed a gloved hand to his chest. “My plan was to let that door open, but under controlled circumstances — it would cause some harm, but I needed access to the main body so I could put myself there.”

“…Yourself?” I didn’t understand.

But Delphine did. “My God… you poor man. That would damn you for all eternity.”

Lias smiled. Pale and thin, he looked very much like the living dead then. “I am already damned. I signed my soul to Hell, and whatever else happens that cannot change anymore. But I thought the sacrifice worth it… I fancied it noble, even, but I never pretended not to be arrogant.”

“Wait.” I took a step forward. “Explain it to me, Li. What are you talking about?”

But Delphine answered for the wizard. “All those sigils carved into his body… that’s the Script of Zos. He’s turned himself into a Zoscian. He wanted to fuse himself with the Heart of Hell itself, and change everything.”

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