Aurelia Eramisaptor felt no revulsion at spending her solitary nights in that room at the end of the second-floor corridor.

  Though the cold was unbearable because of the recently extinguished fireplace, though the only source of light was the pale widows outside, and though every corner was teeming with arachnions, she didn't mind.

  She didn't dislike it.

  She didn't hate it, and lately she hated many things. Sleeping within those four old walls and surrounded by dust-covered furniture wasn't one of them.

  From an outsider's perspective, perhaps it was an odd position for the second most politically powerful person in End-World. A mighty lady like her should have quarters befitting her category, bathed in the luxuries that imperial lords had inherited from royal administrations five hundred years ago.

  But as she had told an unwelcome and evil-smelling visitor hours earlier, Aurelia had no intention of inhabiting that grand residence in the heart of the Castle.

  She didn't want to live in the safest place in the entire Dominion in terms of location and structural defenses, capable of withstanding a miniature siege if necessary. Living there would mean dwelling in a gigantic, ostentatious bunker. A place enveloped in gold, jewels, and exquisite centuries-old crafts that only exorbitant amounts of soul-jewels could buy; luxuries that would only serve to remind her, every second of her existence, that she had no one with whom to share the benefits of her position.

  “…not even a lover.”

  Her thought came with the unquestionable understanding that with each passing year, male presence in the Empire dwindled.

  Due to a declining birth rate and Nekromian-favored ratio of three to one towards female gender; due to dozens of deaths a day on the Frontier, the main battlefield in the eternal war against the Shadow Realm; from famine and poverty that only seemed to know how to grow.

  Aurelia had absolutely no interest in her own gender, and her reputation as a temperamental and cold woman frightened away the few men who were around her. Men who already had families, and often, more than one wife and children. Men who would never notice her, regardless of her social standing.

  “…”

  The thought left her heart emptier than the room she now occupied, as she laid trapped beneath a metallic contraption that obeyed the metaphysical rules of technomancy.

  She was alone and she was going to die alone. Waiting for her own misery to transform her into a [Virgin of Sorrow], and for the Demoness in Pain to notice her and reap her soul shrouded in self-deception.

  Sigh.

  With no way to keep those intrusive thoughts at bay, Aurelia kept staring at the ceiling as an almost futile distraction. Specifically at the cobwebs and the movement of their creators, hoping to catch some unsuspecting insects. In all those hours she had been in the same position, the arachnions had never stopped with their stalking tasks. Constant vigilance, an admirable survival trait.

  “They’ll wait for prey as long as it takes, even if the wait ends up killing them… Such a vile existence, so like our own,” she thought, unable to censor the intrusive thought that managed to seep through so many layers of tediousness and anguish. “Waiting and waiting for the Shadow Queen to stop massacring us every single fucking day. Waiting for something to fall from the sky and raze Merzul until not even its ruins remain.”

  Mixing sarcasm with her deepest desires was a habit for the She-Dragoon of End-World, who fully accepted her mundane limitations in facing beings of a scale that surpassed the mortal coil.

  She knew she would never set foot in Merzul. Neither she nor her army: if she wanted mass suicide, she preferred it to be behind the walls of Entrana and by her own means.

  Better to let the fools who believed in wishes and promises to go and die in those lands abandoned by the Gods.

  “Idiots like Severus Malak Drakan, Astoria fucking Silverthorn… And that damn Stranger.”

  Thinking of Tristessa Irandell made Aurelia want to clutch the wound in her chest and do anything to ease the throbbing pain. It was so deep that she felt that infernal burning reach all the way to her vertebrae, as if the metal phantom's sword of that entity known as the Dullahan had penetrated beyond the first few inches of her chest.

  “F-Fucking Irandell…!” she growled, the image of that detestable girl sitting by that very same bed, mocking her and saying she was going to fulfill her dream, so vividly etched in her mind that she could relive every detail. “How much lower can I sink…?”

  “If you move like that, it will hurt even more, my dear Aurelia.”

  The presence of the sudden visitor, as unwelcome as Tristessa Irandell, opening and closing the door behind him made Aurelia groan in frustration.

  “I’ve had enough of that Stranger and her vainglory for one day, and now you…?!”

  “Shhhh.”

  Jonas Youngblood demanded silence from his adopted daughter, bringing the index finger of his right hand to his lips and making his cloak flutter at the side of his arm. Meanwhile, with his thaumaturgical cane firmly gripped in the other, he conjured dozens of non-elemental glyphs across the walls, ceiling, and floor.

  “Keep your tongue to the roof of your mouth if you don’t want to get into trouble.”

  “The only way I’ll get into trouble is if trouble comes to me. And damn, you are one abyss of a problem, Jonas,” she hissed, irritated by the mere presence of that man dressed in a black suit and tie. Seeing the symbol of the white skull and the black shield embroidered on his cloak, she felt its ancient grandeur trying to intimidate her right from the get go. “What do you want?”

  “Can’t I come to see you and wish you a speedy recovery, my child?” the smiling, nostalgic elder asked in return, going toward her while taking a view of the room. “It’s a little cleaner and warmer than the last time I was here.”

  “And how long ago was that? Four hours? You’re insufferable.”

  “Amuse this old man, will you?” Now seated in the chair by the bed and without taking his eyes off Aurelia, Jonas used gravity and fire thaumaturgy at the same time to make the fireplace a source of renewed light and warmth. “That healing device over you is the only one of its kind in all of Entrana, you know? Bringing technomancy tools to the south is always risky; we wouldn’t want it to fall into the hands of Moebius’s minions and get reverse engineered. We took a huge risk with the telecommunications equipment in the operation to save the Mercer-Archeos.”

  “You didn’t seem too concerned back then,” she retorted coldly, as the machine began a new healing cycle over her body. Starting from the right side of her face, broken and swollen. “All you wanted was to see Daiana Mercer-Archeos and her witches die.”

  “And you don’t?” Jonas sighed and rested both hands on the top of his cane. “Do you remember the witches’ last appearance, before our operation?”

  What followed that question was a brutal, drawn-out silence. Doom lingered in that stillness, synchronized with the gloom of the crystal-less room, kept at bay only by the fire in the fireplace.

  Even Aurelia struggled to answer, given the sheer volume of anger she felt coursing through her veins, rushing to her head and forcing her to bite her lip hard.

  “You’re Gods-damn right I remember the massacre of Engelsong Village… How could I forget? We both went there in person to collect the dismembered and skinned bodies of its inhabitants,” she demanded, clenching her fists so tightly that even the bruised, inflamed areas turned white. “But what infuriates me the most…”

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  “It’s the children’s absence. After so many days of searching… We never found them,” the Advisor finished, lowering his gaze as if his eyelids suddenly weighed a ton.

  The ghost of the Coven’s evil haunted him.

  “You mean we will never find them,” she corrected him with a hateful glare. There was no need to remind him that, since the Coven began operating centuries ago, they had never recovered their kidnapping victims.

  Perhaps that was what filled Aurelia with the most hatred, the phantasm light that streamed through the window from the courtyard making her look like a fallen angel, wounded and vengeful: she cursed the witches’ impunity; the freedom they had to operate and leave death and eternal suffering in their wake. Regardless of the measures the local government took to protect the citizens, regardless of the patterns or trends seen in their random attacks.

  The Coven was always one step ahead, guided by the malevolent eye of their Lord.

  “I sense you’re much angrier with me than usual, my child.” Jonas snapped her out of her brief, bitter meditation on her desperate urge to have a certain Priestess of the Black Eye before and rip her head off with her bare hands.

  “Oh! I wonder why?” she asked with hateful sarcasm. “Is it because you undermined my authority like never before by aiding Irandell? Is it because you supported the girl and her group of jesters in the fight where they humiliated me and left me in this deplorable state? Or is it because dozens of good soldiers died because of your stupid operation, and I can’t even pay them any respects while I’m stuck in this bed?”

  “Deaths I can never forgive myself for. I said I’d deal with the consequences, didn’t I?” Jonas asked, nodding to both himself and her. “I will visit every family of every soldier who died and ask for forgiveness. In return, surely, I will receive nothing but verbal abuse or violence, which is more than understandable. But you know what, Aurelia?”

  “…?”

  “I’d do it again.”

  The seriousness with which the Advisor confessed his well-defined mindset, far from further enraging Aurelia, made her burst out laughing.

  “You’re insane, old man. That damn seductive girl has you in her clutches…just like I’m now in hers,” the She-Dragoon muttered, laughing to keep from crying out of frustration that was chocking her from within. “I never heard anyone say to my face that they could fulfill my dreams, and she… The temptation! How can someone resist such attack?!”

  “You can’t,” he answered with a dangerous calmness in his deep voice. “We are too deep in the dark, seeking the tiniest speck of light and trying to keep it in our sights. When she said those words… There was nothing you could do. It’s a part of the human nature to fight for survival, and Tristessa Irandell offered you a chance no one else was going to give you.”

  “You have that much faith in that Stranger? Believe me, I’ll make her worthy of your faith when I get out of this damned bed and…”

  Suddenly, the avatar of the Shield of Ill-Omen stood up, dropping his cane and not caring at all about it. There was no longer any sadness or pain in his aged gaze, tired and with dark circles under his eyes: those red eyes seemed like a doorway to a dark and new world, full of nightmares that only a thaumaturge like him could conjure.

  “I think I warned you to watch your tongue.” Jonas took two steps forward and got as closest to the bed as he could. He stared down at the downcast sovereign, his disappointment transcending their professional relationship. “Listen to me, Aurelia. I love you like the daughter I never could and never will have. I would give my life for you, have no doubt about it.”

  “…!”

  The She-Dragoon watched in stunned disbelief as the veteran man used his bare hand to perform thaumaturgy on her. The silent spell he cast deactivated the healing machine; the metal plate that traveled over every millimeter of the wound on her chest stopped glowing, its glyphs de-energized by his will.

  “W-what are you doing…?” she demanded to know, beginning to feel short of breath. That was the previous and fleeting stage before the analgesic effect wore off, leaving the pain to take center stage. “Agh…!”

  Jonas didn’t even allow her to focus on the agony pounding at the doors of her mind, trying to rip out her neurons one by one. No, the Advisor leaned down and placed his hands on her cheeks, wanting to force her to look him in the eyes.

  “I love you like a daughter… But I won’t let you ruin this opportunity,” he warned her. Showing her what he was capable of to ensure Aurelia wasn’t a threat to Tristessa. “I won’t allow you to make your typical selfish decisions disguised as blind justice.”

  “W-what?! But I…! AAAAGH!” Without adrenaline, without the fervor of battle, Aurelia had no defenses to ignore the pain like a berserker. Still recovering, even the slightest breeze would hurt if her wounds hadn’t finished healing. Without magic, that gash below her breasts was a gateway to hell. “Jonas! T-The machine!”

  “For you, for me, and for all those fortunate enough to witness the palaver in the Hall of the Bereft Throne, Tristessa Irandell is a girl with certain aptitudes one might suspect of finding in a Stranger, right? A suspicion, without solid, unquestionable proof,” the man began, still holding her, undeterred by her loud grunts and moans of pain. “There are grounds to believe she is a Stranger, and the only way to confirm it beyond a shadow of a doubt is to thoroughly interrogate her in the Imperial Capital.”

  “J-Jonas, please…!”

  “By protocol, only a high-ranking official of the Imperial government can escort a suspected Stranger to Mortalis from anywhere in the Empire. Unfortunately, neither you nor I can afford to make that journey now: your ongoing recovery and me managing your Dominion make that option impossible. Perhaps days, perhaps months, will pass before I can escort Miss Irandell to Mortalis myself.”

  Jonas smiled kindly at the woman who writhed, sweating and suffering. Her cries didn't escape the room; no one was going to come in to help her stop that pain except for the man who held her head still so she couldn't tear her pained gaze away.

  “Did you understand everything I just said, Aurelia?”

  “Yes, I understood!”

  “I'm not convinced. Did you understand that you can't go around accusing people of being Strangers without irrefutable proof, Lady Eramisaptor?”

  “YES, I UNDERSTAND!” she shrieked at the top of her lungs. “PLEASE, THE MACHINE…!”

  With a flick of his hand, Jonas reactivated the magic powering the techno-magical contraption. The glyph-carved moving plate glowed like a star lost in the void and began to move, guided by the machine’ s iron arm. The healing aura reached Aurelia’s grave wound, and its effect spread beyond it, traveling through every cell of her body until not a single corner remained uninfused with regenerative magic.

  This caused Aurelia to release a long sigh of relief, no longer feeling like her brain was being stabbed by a maniac emanating from the center of her open chest.

  “Ah…ah…h-how dare you…torture me like this?” she asked, so shocked that her anger faded into the background for a while. It was the psychological attack of betrayal, something she would never have expected from the Advisor. He, who had cared for her since her parents perished in a raid on the Evil Dream. “Is this how far you’re willing to go?!”

  Tears streamed down the man’s copper-colored cheeks, aware of the gravity of what he had done.

  “Another sin I’ll never forgive myself for…” Jonas turned and retrieved his cane. He glanced sideways at his adopted daughter, revealing the honesty of his unwavering feelings. “I have preached constant vigilance against the shadow that falls upon us for many years. To save humanity from its twilight of perpetual darkness, I am prepared to do whatever is necessary.”

  “…”

  “Rest, Aurelia.”

  Knowing that the woman with black and blue hair would not speak to him again, the Advisor, now the temporary ruler of End-World, left the room. Letting the skull behind the shield on his cape stare at Aurelia and remind her that the future was going to be bleak if humanity did not unite.

  Leaving Aurelia to shed tears in silence. Too proud not to let even one of the countless sobs that had built up in her throat dare to escape. She wasn't going to give anyone the satisfaction of hearing her whimper like a little girl… Something she had never done at that age, preferring to bear the weight of her responsibilities and create a legacy that would ensure no other woman suffered the same fate as her parents.

  Now all that bottled-up pain was about to burst, after so many years of censorship and repression. She could no longer bear the tension; what each of her failures managing End-World meant, and, with the appearance of Tristessa Irandell, her physical and mental weakness made her unable to resist the temptation of a Stranger.

  “May the gods curse you, Tristessa Irandell…” she was forced to mutter between her parched lips, seconds before someone knocked on the door. “Get out, whoever you are!”

  “Your maids told me you didn’t eat dinner, milady.”

  Cursing the Stranger led Aurelia to curse her own luck upon hearing the voice of another man as unbearable as Jonas.

  “I don’t want to receive anyone, Casimir! Go away!” she shouted at him, still knowing that the gunslinger was going to do as he pleased. “And I won’t pay you a single soul-jewel for your past services! Nobody asked you to look after me!”

  “Come on, don’t be like that, lady. While my allies and I celebrate kicking your ass, you’re suffering here all alone,” she heard him explain from the other side of the door. “I can’t rest easy knowing…”

  “Fine, just shut up and come in!”

  With that submissive invitation, Aurelia watched the gunslinger, who was covering half his face with a handkerchief, enter the room. He left his hat on the coat rack but stood near the entrance, shy and holding a package wrapped in newspaper.

  “I brought a cheese and meat sandwich,” Auron Casimir explained, noticing that the She-Dragoon was eyeing what he had in hands, which exuded a warm aroma that was a mixture of everything he and his allies had eaten that night.

  “What are you waiting for, then? Cut it into little pieces and feed it to me! I still can’t move my arms!”

  That furious reaction from the violet-eyed woman, her face split between a swollen, bandaged ruin and skin flushed red with rage, only made Auron smile wider.

  “As you wish, Lady Eramisaptor.”

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  Devil of Gluttony