Rocher leapt.

  One instant he was part of the line, boots striking in rhythm with a hundred others; the next he was ahead of them, limbs lit with gold, the air tearing past his face as he drove himself toward the center of the ruined courtyard.

  Cire had said time would feel normal for him.

  It turned out she wasn't entirely correct.

  Perhaps it was the speed with which he approached it. Or perhaps it was the danger that was heightening his senses.

  He couldn't know for sure. He wasn't clever like Cire or Seraphine.

  All he had was the strange certainty that his thoughts were moving faster than his body.

  The disconnect threw off his coordination and bance.

  Every motion felt deliberate. The rhythm that normally lived below thought rose to the surface, intrusive and insistent. If he did not attend to it, he was afraid he might stumble.

  He forced air into his lungs. Forced his foot down where the stone should be. Forced his arms to move in the pattern of the charge.

  Like remembering how to walk while running.

  Cire was right about one thing, though.

  The old Demon Lord didn't know what hit him.

  Rocher's sword came down in a two-handed arc, gold light trailing the bde. The impact rang through his arms. Resistance gave way.

  The creature's arm parted at the elbow.

  Bck blood spilled from the severed limb, thick and tar-dark. It struck the stone and steamed, a bitter, metallic stink rising with the vapor.

  The cw that had been buried in Danzig's abdomen spasmed once, then fell away.

  The Demon Lord screamed.

  The sound did not resemble any throat-born cry. It tore at the air, a wet tearing shriek yered with something older and deeper that seemed to vibrate in the bones rather than the ear.

  Rocher wrenched his bde free just as the creature's remaining arm came across in a savage horizontal ssh. He brought his sword up by instinct. The impact jarred his shoulders and drove him back half a step.

  Something moved in the edge of his vision.

  He twisted.

  A bded tail whipped toward him, its edge fshing red and bck. He tore himself backward, the bde slicing past his abdomen so close he felt the cold of it through cloth and mail.

  He created distance, boots scraping broken stone.

  Behind him, he could hear Danzig colpsing with a wet gasp.

  Rocher couldn't afford to spare him a second gnce.

  The Demon Lord was recovering.

  Already the flesh at the stump writhed, bck muscle knitting and swelling, wet threads pulling themselves into shape.

  It brought to memory something Cire had said earlier about the differences between Demon Lords—if the current one ruled through craft and deception, this one had nearly brought the ancient world to its knees through sheer tenacity.

  Rocher lunged before the limb could reform.

  Both hands closed on the hilt. He drove forward with all the strength he could force into his arms.

  The bde cut only air.

  The creature pivoted with impossible agility. Its remaining hand snapped toward him in a hooked strike. Rocher dropped his shoulder and ducked beneath it, feeling the rush of dispced air brush his hair.

  He nded hard.

  The tail came again, scything low toward his legs.

  He swung blindly, steel meeting chitin with a shriek that jarred his teeth. The impact deflected the bde a hair's breadth from his thigh.

  In an instant, he understood.

  They were no match for it.

  The tail moved faster than the eye could track. Faster than any normal man could react. The padins closing behind him would be cut apart before they understood the motion.

  If they reached it at all.

  Rocher exhaled slowly and stepped forward again.

  He couldn't win, but he could buy them some measure of survival.

  The Demon Lord struck again. He met it in a storm of steel and gold light, bde ringing against cw, sparks skittering. The tail shed, striking from below, from behind, from angles that seemed impossible.

  He swung.

  The tail shot upward.

  Pain exploded through his side as the bde smmed into his ribs. The impact drove the breath from his lungs, but the edge failed to penetrate. Gold light fred where it struck.

  Rocher gritted his teeth.

  He had deliberately left the gap beneath his guard. Reinforced his ribs with a sheath of magic and turned his torso just enough to invite the strike.

  The barbed length of the tail wedged beneath his left arm, pinned against his side. He cmped down, muscles screaming, trapping the writhing appendage.

  The creature shrieked.

  Rocher shifted everything he had left into his sword arm.

  Light fred blindingly bright.

  He swung.

  The bde bit through the tail in a spray of bck ichor. The severed length convulsed in his grip before falling away.

  The Demon Lord's scream rose into a pitch that seemed to shear the air itself.

  Its remaining arm came down.

  Rocher brought his sword up in time, but could not muster enough magic. The force of the blow hurled him backward. He struck the stone hard enough to drive the air from his lungs and skidded across broken fgstones before coming to rest.

  For a moment he could not move.

  He tried to rise. His body refused.

  Fatigue crashed into him all at once, as though the strength animating his limbs had been withdrawn without warning. His side throbbed where the tail had struck. Every breath burned.

  He pushed onto one elbow, then colpsed back, one arm clutched to his ribs.

  The world tilted.

  Through the darkening corners of his vision, he could make out a shape beside him.

  Danzig.

  The old hero y on his side, eyes closed, chest rising in shallow pulls. Blood—his own, red and human—soaked the shattered stone beneath him.

  Rocher let his head fall back against the ground.

  "That makes two of us," he rasped.

  Boots thundered past him.

  Evelyn and the padins reached the Demon Lord in a rush of steel and shouted prayer, their charge colliding with the wounded creature in a storm of motion.

  For a heartbeat, Rocher let his eyes close.

  "No," he muttered.

  He forced them open again.

  "For me, it's not over yet."

  We ran, our footfalls echoed in a tight, hollow rhythm.

  The tunnel sloped downward in a steady grade, its stone worn smooth by long erosion. Channels carved into the floor suggested something once flowed here—water or waste. Now it y bone dry, dust gathered in shallow ridges along the grooves.

  I risked a gnce back.

  The chamber hiding the previous anchor was long gone, swallowed by distance and turns.

  In its pce was Sir Veyne, following at an unhurried pace that easily navigated every sharp corner and sudden drop we had taken. He hadn't faltered once. He moved like a man certain he would arrive.

  I jerked my head forward.

  "Stop!"

  Seraphine halted so abruptly Phymera nearly collided with her back. I slid to a stop at her shoulder and felt the air change instantly.

  The tunnel ended here.

  Beyond it, space opened into darkness.

  I edged forward and looked down, holding out my Holy Light.

  The drop fell away into a vast arterial passage below, easily ten stories down, the far wall swallowed by shadow. A broad tunnel ran perpendicur beneath us, its stone worn smooth by centuries of unseen traffic.

  A main conduit.

  "This is the shortcut," I said. "If we drop into the main tunnel here, there should be a maintenance door on the east wall. That will take us directly to the next anchor."

  Seraphine kept her distance from the edge. She studied the drop with the calcuting stillness.

  "The only question is how to get down," she said, tapping her chin.

  "Phymera," she asked without turning, "do you know the forms of any winged creatures?"

  "Only one," Phymera replied.

  Her shape changed at once.

  Shoulders split and widened. Arms lengthened, bones telescoping with a soft mechanical shift. Fingers divided and extended into narrow struts, and a dark membrane drew taut between them, stretching from elongated digits to hip and leg in a single, seamless pne.

  Where Lumiere had stood, a compact, angur bat-form crouched at the lip of the tunnel, wings held half-spread in silent tension.

  Seraphine's eyes sharpened, already measuring span and load.

  "Wonderful," she said. "Phymera can simply carry us down."

  "I'm afraid not," I said.

  Both of them looked at me.

  "She isn't hollow like a bat. She's made of metal and ttice. At this size, her mass greatly outpaces her wings' surface area."

  Phymera quietly folded back into Lumiere's form. "It's true. I've never quite gotten flight to work. Not that I've ever had cause to."

  Seraphine frowned. "Then what are we supposed to do?"

  I drew a breath. "You studied levitation at the Tower, right?"

  Her head snapped toward me.

  "I saw it once," I continued, "when I walked your memories in the Forest Guardian's trial. If you use it, you can break our fall long enough to nd safely."

  "No." She shook her head at once. "There's a reason it's called Levitate and not Break-Fall."

  Phymera looked between both us, silent.

  "The spell requires line of sight," Seraphine continued. "It only works on one target at a time, and the timing must be exact. If I stop someone instantly, they'll experience force equivalent to hitting the ground. The deceleration must occur over a distance."

  She gestured toward the drop.

  "Me getting down there is one thing," she said. "But Levitate's activation range is only five paces. There isn't enough time at the bottom for me to slow you. You'd be moving too fast."

  "It will work," I said, hearing the urgency in my own voice, "if we simply jump together, in a tight group. You can cast Levitate on us midair. Without a chant holding you back, you can cycle through us quickly enough to soften all our ndings."

  Seraphine's mouth tightened. She looked at the drop again, calcuting angles and descent time.

  "If I cast too early, we still hit the ground hard enough to break bones," she mumbled to herself. "Too te and..."

  She grimaced, as if remembering something.

  "When you imagined this working," she said carefully, "were you pnning for three of us... or four?"

  Seraphine gnced past me.

  I turned.

  Sir Veyne stood at the tunnel's curve, a short distance away.

  "Only three," I admitted, frowning.

  Her gaze sharpened.

  "But my calcutions should have enough leeway to support a fourth," I said quickly. "As a failsafe, we can have Sir Veyne go first. He'll help catch anyone you can't slow in time."

  I looked toward him.

  "We can trust you with that, right?" I said. "We're all working toward the same goal here. And you seem pretty sure on your feet."

  Silence gathered between us.

  Finally Veyne spoke.

  "It may be possible," he said hesitantly. "But you are asking a great deal of trust from me as well."

  His voice carried no accusation, only statement.

  "By jumping first, I pce myself in your hands," he continued. "You could just as easily let me fall to my death."

  I blinked. It was the most I'd ever heard him talk.

  Seraphine snapped behind me.

  "First or st doesn't matter," she said. "I could simply choose not to break your fall and kill you that way."

  He hesitated. "But—"

  "Make no mistake," she said, her grip tightening around Pulseweaver. "If I wanted you dead, I have more creative ways of doing so."

  His mouth worked.

  "We've wasted enough time," she huffed. "Either do as Cire says, or don't bother coming at all."

  Veyne stared, then nodded slowly.

  We aligned at the edge without further debate.

  The drop yawned below us, swallowing the light. Air rose from it in a slow, cool draft that smelled faintly of stone and mineral damp. I could not see the floor clearly—only the suggestion of a darker band where the main conduit cut across the void.

  Seraphine took the center position.

  Phymera stepped to my left. Sir Veyne moved past us without ceremony and positioned himself at the lip of the fall. He did not look back.

  Seraphine flexed her fingers once.

  "Three," she said.

  We stepped into empty air.