Thunder strobed white through the stained glass windows in the prayer hall, each flash briefly illuminating the crooked face of the Saintess. There was no doubt about it. Gael swore he'd saw her head turning as he skipped down the stairs into the prayer hall, following him whenever he went, but…

Well, he didn't give a shit.

His boots tore through the red carpet as he heaved and groaned, shouldering ten chains as he pulled backwards with all his might. Still, the ten-meter-tall Vile Eater he'd rotated around the altar refused to budge. The machine certainly groaned, and his chains were certainly tightly secured around every section of the cylindrical hunk of metal, but it just wouldn't give an inch.

Come on, you piece of shit!

Get… down… to my level!

Hissing through clenched teeth, he heaved once more, jerking his entire body back—and then something gave.

He wasn't sure what, but the giant Vile Eater toppled towards him, and he leaped out of the way with a yelp as it came down slightly crooked. Thank the Saintess for that. It smashed into three pews to his left with a loud, hollow crash of splintered wood and warped metal. Shards and dust jumped into the air, but honestly, he was just glad he didn't get crushed. He hadn't thought about what he'd do if it came crashing down on the carpet he was standing on.

"Not perfect," he muttered to himself, "but I'm not writing poetry about it."

As he waved the dust in the air away and squinted, his eyes quickly found the center segment of the Vile Eater: the middle part of the cylinder where the grates were still swirling with thin acidic mist being inhaled into the machine. He didn't know what the rest of the machine was for, but he'd bet every coin in his pocket that the middle part was where the half-dead Myrmur laid inside.

Wasting no time, he trudged forward and snatched up his toolbox from the carpet as he did.

His fingers were itching to pull the machine apart.

Dad insisted they go downstairs to prepare the first phase of the administration trials without him, so that was what they did. Gael and Cara went down together, silent as undertakers, and began warming up the lab again. Cara lit the lanterns. Gael wiped off the workbench. They worked separately, quietly, and neither of them spoke—not even when the rain above found its way into the pipes and made them sing.

Water dripped in the corners of the lab, and they were halfway through laying out syringes across the workbench when they first heard it:

A shout.

Both of them froze, eyes dragging up to the ceiling.

There was another shout. Then more. The sound of boots. The next noise made Cara flinch so hard the vial in her hand rattled: it was a single, flat crack, like a bioarcanic pistol being fired. It echoed through the pipes, cutting clean through the lab's hum, and Gael couldn't help but swallow a nervous gulp as more sounds of blades being drawn and rifles being fired rattled down into the lab.

A lot of people were wreaking havoc upstairs in the mansion-clinic, and dad was up there, too.

"Gael," Cara whispered. "We have to—"

She didn't finish. He didn't let her. He caught her wrist before he even knew what he was doing, and he refused to let go, because he knew if he did…

She'd run upstairs.

"Let go!" she hissed. "Dad's fighting—"

"No."

Her eyes widened at the word.

Upstairs, something heavy crashed, followed by more rasps of steel on steel. Then came the sound he hated most in this world: a snarl, low and monstrous, stitched through with the high clang of weapons.

Suddenly, he was eight years old again, lying flat on his stomach in that dinghy old house while a Myrmur clawed out of his mother's back. That snarl. That night full of snarls. The fire was there, the fighting was there, but the snarls were what he remembered.

He heard the same snarls now, above the lab, so he couldn't let Cara run upstairs.

She'd die.

Cara looked at him, felt the shake in his fingers, and stopped trying to pull away. She knew. She understood. For five whole minutes—maybe more, though it felt longer—all they did was listen and stare at the ceiling as the fighting upstairs dragged on. Neither of them breathed much.

And then, silence.

Cara's voice was a whisper barely able to stand.

"... Is it over?"

The answer came in a sound closer than the rest. The door at the far end of the lab slammed open so hard the hinges shrieked, and both of them flinched as dad staggered into the lab—or what was left of him. Cane in one hand, top hat still clinging to his head, his usually dark coat was a blossom of bright red. And from the nape downward, he was coming apart: skin, coat, and muscle all shedding into soft grey ash that scattered across the floor as he moved.

"Dad!" they both shouted, breaking for him.

He didn't make it far before his legs folded. The cane clattered away. He dropped straight into their arms, heavier than either of them could hold, breath rattling against their ears.

"Stop… wasting time," he breathed, and his words were a rasp worn thin by blood. "Begin the first phase. We must figure out the general direction of administration within ten minutes."

"I don't give a shit about the elixir," Gael snapped, trying to haul him upright. "We're getting you on a table—"

"Now." The word cracked like a whip. He grabbed Gael's collar, and his eyes were nothing but command. "Are we doctors or not?"

Gael froze.

"Complete. The. Work."

His gloves were slick with oil. The bronze husk of the Vile Eater was finally split and gutted before him, and the core canister—half a meter long, pitted and rusted—lay across the carpet, the grates still hissing as it continued to drink in the traces of the Vile in the air.

He'd only heard the bioarcanic machine contained a half-dead Myrmur, but he hadn't realized the core canister itself was the Myrmur, torn apart and reconfigured to look like a flesh machine covered by metal plates.

It was noisy with all its hissing and rattling, so he stomped once on the grate. "Shut up."

Surprisingly, it did.

Around him, the floor was a field of scrap: steel plates, stripped levers, spare dials, and everything in between he'd need for free-form bioarcanic engineering. The first thing he reached for, of course, was his book on glyphs. With one leg up on the core canister, he flipped through the pages until his finger caught the twin glyphs he was looking for: 'inhale' and 'exhale'.

He burned the swirl of the glyphs into memory before tossing the book aside.

Kicking up a spare dial into his hand, he hammered it into the canister's flank until the bolts bit home, and then he swapped the hammer for a chisel so he could begin carving the glyphs around the dial.

Sweat slid along his jaw. The snarl of the canister filled the room. His heartbeat counted every strike of the chisel.

Complete the work.

He had to complete the work, and fast.

The curse was eating their father alive. From the nape down, he was unspooling into ash, and he was disintegrating over the floorboards, into the cracks between the tiles. His coat, his skin, the muscle beneath—it was all coming apart like charred paper.

And still, he barked orders.

Gael kept his head low over his own bench, syringe in one hand, notebook in the other, muttering to himself as he took down the reading from the gauges. Cara worked across another workbench, measuring out another thin trickle from the vial into a glass chamber. Neither of them could concentrate. More sounds were starting to pull up above the lab, and—

"Results!" their dad rasped, leaning forward against the bench. The shadows from the lanterns caught in the deep fissures splitting his face.

"Trial one, dose ratio point-four against untreated sample!" Gael shouted quickly, flicking the page with his pen. "Observed response: symbiote spike by three percent, rejection minimal!"

"Trial one, dose ratio point-four in treated sample!" Cara answered without looking up. "Observed response: merging stable for forty-seven seconds before complete elixir collapse!"

Dad gave a short nod, scribbling his own note with a hand that was already losing definition.

"My trial, oral uptake with substrate binding: total rejection, complete elixir collapse in under three seconds," he said. "Conclusion: direct administration through open surgery must be your first attempt."

Then he slumped back against the bench, coughing hard enough to shake the ash from his collar. The pen fell from his hand.

"Dad!" Cara started, her voice breaking.

They were on him in an instant, shoving glassware aside. Gael slid around the bench, boots skidding on tile. Cara dropped to her knees beside him, catching his shoulder as his weight sagged into her. His breathing was thin and hot against both of their faces.

"Use the elixir!" Cara snapped, eyes flashing to Gael. "If it really works, it'll intercept the curse before it can grow any further!"

Gael was already reaching for the vial. The iridescent liquid inside sloshed thickly, and in the same motion, he grabbed a scalpel from the surgical tray on the workbench. His mind raced through the quickest way to open up his dad and get the elixir in before—

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

A hand clamped his wrist.

Another caught Cara's.

"... No," their dad whispered. His voice was barely air. "We've completed phase one of the administration trials. Now, you take that sample with you and run."

Gael scowled. "What?"

"You know how to reproduce the elixir even without any of the notes, so destroy everything in this lab before you go. Burn all the equipment. Leave not a single scrap."

"Why? What's—"

He dug into his coat, pulling out a folded, age-stained sheet, and his fingers trembled as he pressed it into Cara's hands. "This is the deed to an abandoned church in the southern ward. I heard the War God and Saintess Severin used that place as their base back when they were still fighting the Pale Order, but nobody's using it anymore, so I bought the building from the Ladybug. Nobody will think to find you there. Make it your new lab, continue the administration research, and once you're able to kill a Myrmur without killing their Host, you'll know the symbiote elixir works."

Gael opened his mouth to press him again, but another sound from above killed the words: bootsteps pounding, and more snarls curling down the stairs at the front of the lab.

"There's no time." Dad tipped his head slightly forward, nudging towards the back of the lab. "There. At the end. Push through the wall. There's a secret passage that'll take you to the catacombs, and from there, find your way up to the Grand Cleansing Elevator. Be quick with it, and you may still be able to catch the midnight descent into Bharncair."

Cara's eyes glossed. "I'm not leaving you, papa. We go together or we—"

He touched her cheek with a hand already fraying to ash.

"Not even the War God can stop what's coming," he said. "When the black day comes to drown both the upper streets and the gutter slums—when that man decides he's done with his experiments— the only thing that will save this city is the symbiote elixir, so as long as you two have each other, you'll be fine."

Then he shoved them back, sharp enough to make both of them stumble, before tossing two items forward: his top hat and his cane, both of which slid to a halt at Gael's feet.

"... A healthy man has a thousand dreams, and a sick man only has one, but a man in love never dreams alone," he whispered. "You got that, boy?"

Gael didn't know what to say.

So while Cara cried and tried to claw back to their dad, he scrambled to his feet, grabbed her by the wrist, and dragged her to the end of the lab with the symbiote elixir tucked deep inside his coat.

He picked up the top hat and the cane as he did.

It didn't take long for Gael and Cara to disappear through the secret passage at the end of the lab, so once Arvath was sure they'd gone, he dragged himself onto his feet and plopped himself onto the workbench in the center of the lab.

Flames snapped and chewed at the bioarcanic machines all around him. Smoke filled the air. His shoulders sagged where he sat, ash flaking from his back with every breath—they really got him good upstairs with that flask of disintegration—but still, he had enough strength left in him to draw a battered cigarette from inside his coat.

He lit the cigarette on the tongue of a nearby flame, and then he flicked it into his mouth for a deep, long puff.

The front door darkened.

A Raven stepped in, framed by the blaze. The silhouette was Arvath's mirror—top hat and cane—save for the cords. Long, umbilical cord-like leather straps hung from the man's sleeves and coat-hem, dragging and whispering across the floor as he walked. His mask was also of a different material to the one Arvath had given Gael: 'crystallized arsenic', if Arvath recalled correctly. Gael's was 'black rimeleather' of the simplest kind.

As the Raven stopped five paces into the lab, surveying the burning lab around him, Arvath took another long pull of cigarette and spoke.

"Welcome to my hearth, brother," he whispered. "What wind carries carrion to my table?"

The Raven tilted his head. "The disfigured corpse upstairs. Is that—"

"The Lichen Doctor #53, the foremost specialist in the field of 'Symbiotic Bioflora Fusion' who specializes in merging plant tissue with living hosts and creating skin-bound growths that heal, secrete toxins, or adapt to environmental extremes? What about him?"

"You have killed another Plagueplain Doctor?"

Arvath gave a shallow shrug, letting ash drift from his shoulder. "A breach of my own Bloodless Mandate, true, but death is just the final price of everyone who wears the mask. One day, it'll be you up there in the wreckage, too."

"Today must be yours, then." The Raven looked around slowly again, searching for something. "Where is your mask, #72?"

"Lost it," Arvath said casually. "The flames ate it or something."

"Our masks are cursed. You know just as well as I do that they cannot burn." The Raven's emerald eyes glinted behind his lenses. "But I will be frank, I simply cannot care any less about your mask. All I need to know is this: is that elixir you have been nursing still drawing breath here?"

"What elixir?"

"Do not play coy with me, #72. It does not fit you. Where is—"

"I never managed to finish it," Arvath said simply. "You'll not have something that's impossible to create in the first place."

"I have no wish to possess it," the Raven murmured, "only to destroy it. If it has never been alive to begin with, then I have no reason to pursue you to the gates of hell."

"Then fuck off and let me die in peace."

The Raven turned immediately, and for a second, Arvath was simply glad to see the man leaving. After all, nobody in the church ever took his elixir seriously. They told him it couldn't be done—that it was theoretically and scientifically impossible to create—so it only made sense the Ravens they sent to 'check up' on him tonight didn't believe there was any elixir to find, either.

But… he couldn't help but let his inquisitive side take over one last time.

"Why'd you abandon him?" he called out to the Raven. "Why leave him to rot in Bharncair when you could've stood beside him?"

The Raven stilled, back turned. "That is none of your concern—"

"Oh, but I am a doctor with more questions than there are stars in the sky, and you are the hero who fought hand in hand with the Worm God and the Thousand Tongue," Arvath cut in. "The one and only inescapable law of biology dictates that when something is 'killed', something must 'die', so indulge me a little, Myrmur Doctor #3: do you really believe you can violate that law?"

"..."

"She's dead, #3," Arvath said. "I filled up the hole in my heart with a boy. Are you going to fill up yours with a Myrmur?"

"... Farewell, Arvath."

The Myrmur Doctor stepped through the doorway, and then he was gone.

Arvath's laughter came slowly, curling up from his chest before erupting into a raw, broken cackle.

"Bharncair turns in its own grave, old friend. Your turn in the fire will come, and when it does, I only pray that Saintess Severin will grant you mercy."

The ceiling cracked and fell in embers. The walls bowed inward. Arvath stayed where he was, cigarette burning down to the filter, and he laughed until all sound drowned in the collapse.

It didn't take long for the catacombs to spit Gael and Cara out into the streets of Vharnveil.

Rain was a curtain, slanting under the pull of the wind, and storm-lamps flickered through sheets of water as Mortifera Enforcers and civilians alike surged towards the upper quarter—towards the roaring smoke and the slow-burning red halo rising over their mansion-clinic.

Their home collapsed behind them.

They ran against the tide. They ran against the wind. The world was all boot-slap and cold breaths, water flashing white in the lamplight as it sprayed off their heels. Gael's chest ached. His lungs were a furnace. His teeth clenched so hard they hummed in his skull.

He couldn't defend dad. He couldn't stay there in the fire. Rage sat under his ribs like a lodged blade, because how was he different from the eight-year-old him who'd crawled away from the Myrmur, crying and screaming in pain?

Beside him, Cara's sobs cut sharp through the thunder, sniffling between gasps for air. She didn't stop running, though. Wet hair clung to her face, but her shoulders, though trembling, were keeping up as she forced herself to match his pace.

Something cracked in him.

He tilted his head mid-run, staring past the rain—past the tangled rooftops and iron gutters—so he could glare at the Church of Severin, standing like a nail in the center of the City of Splendors. Its spire was black against the storm; could a building as ominous as that really bring forth the miracle all Bharnish had been praying for all these years, all these decades?

No.

And never again.

Never again would he abandon someone. Never again would he watch and not act. He'd make the symbiote elixir work, even if it burned his veins hollow, and he'd do one more thing dad had never told him to do.

Once Gael carved on the last line of the 'exhale' glyph onto the core canister, he brushed the shavings away and turned the entire thing over on the ground. The canister itself snarled as he rolled it. The leather strap he'd hammered into the frame also creaked as he lifted it up and housed it onto his back, wearing the entire canister like a backpack.

His palm found the dial near the bottom of the canister. By default, the 'inhale' glyph would make the core canister continue to inhale toxic mist from the air, but if he were to turn the dial and finish the 'exhale' glyph instead, the canister would release everything it'd inhaled… and he'd let it drink its fill for about four months now. There was enough Vile stored in it to keep a brood of Vile Eaters fat for an entire season—or to smother several entire districts of gangsters in one long, choking night.

The prayer hall around him was still a wreck from his late-night engineering, though, so he let his gaze drift around him for a moment before deciding he'd do the cleaning later.

There were more important things for him to do.

He hummed under his breath as he cinched on his hungry flower gauntlet, picked up his walking cane, clicked on his shrill cicada heel attachments, screwed his night lenses on, and strapped the metal raven canister behind his waist. His top hat was last, brushed free of dust with two flicks of his wrist, and then he tip-toed across the prayer hall towards the front door. He'd rather not wake anyone, even if he probably already did after pulling the Vile Eater down with a tremendous crash.

But he paused as he pushed the front door open.

Outside, the square around the water fountain was crowded with bodies—three dozen of them at least—all cloaked and armed, now strewn in the mud. Groans crawled through the downpour. Blood ran dark over the flooded stones, and limbs bent where limbs shouldn't bend. Thunder roared not too far away.

Hm?

Who the hell are these guys?

He came out at just the right time, though, because the ones who'd beat their asses were still standing around. Fergal and his five goons were sitting and drinking on a mound of groaning bodies. The four giant hellhounds were chewing on a few severed limbs. Evelyn was kicking someone on the ground with her wings fanned out, Liorin was poking the faces of a few men dangling upside down on living metallic vines, while Cara was busy drowning someone in the fountain.

All of them turned around and looked at him awkwardly as he stood in the doorway.

So when he realized they'd kept their fighting as quiet as possible so they wouldn't disturb his 'work', he couldn't help but sigh.

And I'm supposed to be the boss of the clinic?

Still dusting off his top hat, he walked outside and crossed straight to the fountain, grabbing the collar of the man Cara was drowning. The man sputtered immediately, so Gael gave him a hand through a slap on the face, helping him get the water out of his lungs.

"Let me guess," Gael said coolly, "you and your boys are blades for hire. Some faceless man paid you a handsome sum to wipe out everyone in this clinic, no questions asked, and you decided to do it. You have no idea who hired you, so you can't tell me who your employer is. Therefore, the oath they swore back down in the pipes isn't violated."

The man sputtered again through blood and rain, insisting it was true—that they didn't know who paid them, only that the clinic was an easy mark without the Exorcist inside—but there was no fun in listening to a man who knew nothing, so Gael grabbed his head and smashed it into the ground.

That knocked him out.

Gael straightened, scanning the other bodies strewn across the street like discarded dolls.

"Bring them all in, dearest sister," he said. "Patch them up, and then charge them double the usual for making the clinic work in the middle of a stormy night."

Then he turned from Cara and continued strolling down the slick main road, rain spattering off the brim of his hat as he kept on brushing it clean.

A hand caught his shoulder, and he glanced around slowly to find Cara grinning at him.

"We'll hold down the clinic while you're away," she said. "I'd rather you not send any more gangster patients our way, though. Just kill them all?"

He laughed at that and kept walking.

As he did, he reached into his hat, pulled out the lower half of the Raven's mask, and then flipped his hat onto his head.

He had it all now: the three signature trinkets of a Plagueplain Doctor.

Sorry, dad, he thought. This ain't love. I dunno what it is, but…

I'm feeling itchy tonight.

He clicked the lower jawpiece into place with the upper half, and for the first time in his life, his entire face was sealed behind black leather and shadow.

It was actually quite comfortable.

… Fuck the Bloodless Mandate.

I'll make you proud, dad.

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