Protis reached me before anyone could intervene. My Soulborne stood over me, powerful, muscled, intelligent. The broken portal’s effects, as I had predicted, would interfere with control of my lesser creations I’d safely quartered away from any conflict, but Protis, infused with its own complex mind and capacity for independence? It withstood the barrage of Soul magic without any visible effect. Its hand extended, offering the Artifact it had sought out as we’d entered the room, one of Sorcery tangible as a blazing light to the Soul-sensitive perceptions of the Soulborne.

  I took the small chest and lowered it to the floor. Gently, carefully, I opened the lid and peered inside. Sitting upon a time-worn, yet still luxurious padding of silk, were two engraved ivory arm rings with bronze edging, each about as thick as two fingers. Encircling them, of similar material and design, was a diadem. All three had precise carvings not entirely dissimilar to that which I had prepared in the ground for the ambush against the inquisitors. They were tools for Sorcerous expansion, Soul access, and they reeked of power and Death. I picked up the arm rings and felt their potential course through me, that sick swamp water replaced by that of melted glaciers and sharp awareness. I put them on without another moment’s hesitation, then the diadem.

  The room, already thick with Sorcery, exploded in an onslaught of stimuli, each detail thrust into my skull and burrowed into the meat of my mind along with the hating, overpowering strength of the Dead. My Corruption-wrought flesh strained against my will, stretching to meet this external force, this usurping power. I held on with gritted teeth and narrowed eyes, flaring red as a fire is fed oil. Spittle sprayed from between my bared teeth, muscles taught, contracting tight in horrid effort, in impossible defiance.

  Voices beyond. Outside.

  I pushed through the initial hurdle, though more was surely to come, and looked back at the others.

  The thing that held Emalia was still, observant. Perhaps hoping for my failure, perhaps simply in wonder of such blunder. Sovina crouched protectively over her, saber ever-ready. Oskar still had the priestess pinned though with little attention to her, for he was watching me with the kind of look a child gives a predator that had strayed too close to the village in the night, lean with hunger. The other two kept their distance and seemed to be waiting for Oskar’s command, faces taught in concentration against the portal’s influence.

  “Do you want her cleansed?” I hissed out, words like sputtering smoke.

  Sovina met my stare. A courageous thing in itself. “Is this a threat?”

  “No.” I stood on wobbly feet, then righted myself. “I can help her. But you will have to trust me.” The possessed Emalia began thrashing again, forcing Oskar to return his focus to holding her still. “I want to destroy the intruding Spirit inside her.”

  Sovina opened her mouth in protest, then closed in, considering. “We’re not your enemy.”

  “I know.”

  Her eyes went down to the creature that seemed so distant from her Column-sworn sister and gave a nod. “Very well. Do what you must, Daecinus.”

  I would not become the monster. I would not devolve into reckless violence and hatred. Years of that had taught me enough already that such a path was not meant for me. I was meant for more. And so, with the power of these scavenged Artifacts, I approached Emalia and stood over her animalistic thrashings, my red-flaring eyes tearing through the mortal illusions with Soulsight. The world, green and sick, became monochromatic, and the woman’s Soul emerged visible and clear as any physical object. But it was not alone. Something else wrapped around it. If only I had looked. If only I had the power to see what lies inside! I thought with a sword-sharp scowl at my own failings. Regardless, Emalia’s Soul was held by another, strangled, coiled within this interloper’s clutches. This third party was not just one but many, with an unclear separation of the various entities that reminded me of a pit of snakes, their forms entangled such that they appeared one in the same.

  I knelt down, wincing against the onslaught of the chamber, fearing its power, yet needing it all the same, and reached out with the touch of Sorcery, tentative at first, testing and probing, then assertive. Before me, a serpent’s strangling. It would not be possible to cut the thing from her, not as entangled as it was out of need, but I could do something else. While unaccustomed to such things, yet fueled well enough to succeed, I pulled this outside entity—which fought so desperately, so violently I feared it might kill her Soul—and sequestered it. An isolating, restraining position that would hopefully choke it out in enough time without another Soul to eat.

  But it was stubborn. Hungry. Even pulled apart, it was still attached to her as a source of sustenance. I chewed at my lips, staring at the malignant entity. The overtaker, the consumer. My plan would work, but Emalia would be weakened near death. I reached forth again, trying to pull it apart further, harboring some hopes of separation, but as I tugged, Emalia screamed. Quickly, I released and she also stopped her cries. Forceful separation will mean death. It needs her. I tried from a different angle without any luck. Not her. It needs someone.

  And already, my sequestering was slipping. The entity was pulling in her Soul again, beginning to wrap its sick tendrils tighter. How long before it would take more than temporary control? How long before it absorbed her?

  And in a place such as this, it was too great a risk. My plan was simply too imperfect a solution. Too temporary in resolution.

  She deserved better.

  “If I turn,” I said to Protis, “kill me.”

  Before anyone could stop me, I reached inside and offered a piece of myself to the hungry Souls. As I expected, they acquiesced. The last thing I felt before I blacked out was the sensation of something sliding into my flesh like a knife into the brain, a child into the womb, intestines stuffed back in place.

  And then I was gone.

  …

  Emalia gasped, sitting up. Her head thumped with each angry pulse, light flared and burned her eyes, and even her skin prickled with the cold like they were in the mountains again, freezing to death amongst the snow and ice. She stared around the room, fighting through the pain.

  Oskar was above her, holding her down. He squinted in her face and let go, squatting back. Nifont and another were close by, also on edge. Sovina leaned down and pulled her into a tight hug before she could even read her companion’s expression for a sign of what she should be feeling.

  “I thought you were lost,” she said, voice cracking. “I thought you were gone forever.”

  Emalia blinked, and the pieces of her recent memory became more tangible, more contextually sensible. She went to speak, but her voice was not with her, so it came out rasping and unintelligible. Her throat stung. So she simply hugged Sovina back, holding her tight, afraid of letting go for she might be alone again, trapped in darkness as her body moved and mouth said words that were not hers. Could it truly be? she thought during that all-too-brief moment of reprieve. Could my visions, my orders… Was it all a lie by some wayward Souls? Her stomach felt empty and small, tight with pain, sick with monumental loss. She clung to Sovina. Fingers splayed and dug to feel as much of her as possible, to meld with the real, with the sane, the comforting. There, she was safe, and the truth of her loss was not so severe. So… all-damning.

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  But finally, Sovina pulled back, and Emalia had to hold down a cry at the loss. “We need to help Daecinus,” she said.

  Emalia looked over and saw him through her tear-blurry eyes. He was on the ground, seemingly unconscious. Protis loomed over him, still as an ancient statue that might just come to life in sudden ferocity. “What happened?” she rasped out, feeling like she’d swallowed sand, wincing.

  “I don’t know,” Sovina admitted. “He said he was helping, then just went unconscious.”

  “Doing some Sorcery, he was.” Oskar nodded back to the entrance. “Maybe we should get him out of here? Have Feia take a look.”

  “No,” Protis said.

  “No?”

  “Daecinus requires the Souls.”

  “Fine then.” Oskar sighed. “We don’t move him. But this place is getting to me.” He rubbed his head to emphasize the point, and Emalia could not blame him.

  Even with her control back, she felt like something was pushing against her skull, drying to worm inside. That’s when it struck her, and she sat upright as she might after a night of reading that had led to an epiphany. “He has it.” She could scarcely say more. She gestured to herself, then Daecinus with rapid, waving movements.

  Sovina was the first to understand, then the others, eyes and mouths widening in a dreadful realization.

  “Fuck.” Oskar looked to Protis. “So that’s what he said to you about turning?”

  The creature did not reply but simply kept watching its creator with vigilant intent.

  She was about to suggest the others leave so she could stay with him and Protis when shouts boomed in from outside. Sovina stood and moved between her and the entrance as Oskar nodded the warrior beside Nifont to go check. Miras, was it? He jogged outside to the hall, so oddly distant from the room, and reappeared a moment later, ducking in over the strewn rubble.

  “We got Corpses!” Miras shouted.

  “How many?” Oskar asked.

  “A fucking lot! The men holding the tunnel abandoned the position—too many of the fuckers."

  “Son of a whore.” Oskar cast one last glance to Daecinus and then her. “If he dies, we’re fucked here. But if he becomes possessed by your Soul friend… Well, just don’t let that happen.” He nodded to Nifont and the two of them joined the others outside.

  “Go,” Emalia whispered to Sovina.

  “I won’t leave you here. It’s dangerous.” She glanced at Daecinus and Protis.

  “Trust me. Him.” She put a hand on her companion’s arm, then slid it down to hold her hand, squeezing it with as much confidence and strength as she could muster. Holding her hand, however, she didn’t feel like she had to fake it. Putting on the brave face felt… natural. “Go help.”

  Sovina closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “If you feel yourself losing control, leave.” She stood hesitantly, facing ahead, then after a moment she turned back and met Emalia’s eyes. Their hands were still intertwined. “I… I’m happy I didn’t lose you.”

  Emalia felt her chest tighten. What was that feeling? Her skin tingled where their touch met. She squeezed Sovina’s hand and tugged on it, pulling her close. And before she could rationalize and consider and persuade herself to stop, she leaned up and kissed her. It was brief, their lips dry and cracked, and both breathless. Emalia’s stomach swirled and her lungs filled with thin, head-fuzzying air as she pulled back, eyes stuck to the ground before she pried them up, making herself look Sovina in the eye. She was afraid of what she might see there: horror, disgust, hate. But her companion’s face was painted with surprise, a frozen sort of shock that slowly melted into a smile that could warm any heart.

  “I’m sorry,” Emalia whispered.

  “Don’t be.” Sovina paused there, breathing heavy, eyes flickering up and down, but then a shout filtered in of the Dead arriving and she stood, pulling back with a grimace. “I need to go.”

  “Be safe.”

  She nodded, blinking, shaking her head, turning to face the entrance, setting her shoulders and regripping her Column blade. She strode forward to the entrance and glanced back at the last second. “Protis, let nothing happen to her.”

  The creature, silent and still, did not even look up to her, but they’d be fools not to think it heard and understood all. When Sovina left to join the fight in the hall, Emalia felt something in her wither and tighten in the squeezing pain of loss. She will be fine. It’s nothing they have not handled before, she reminded herself, finding her dagger strewn about on the floor and holding it tight. She looked over to Daecinus and crawled closer. When she got within arm’s length, Protis grunted with the sound of a stone set down within some great structural foundation.

  She stopped and looked up to it. “I will try and help him if it comes to it.”

  It gave another grunt of what she hoped was understanding.

  So she paused there, blade ready, carefully observing the man the color of marble, tall and aristocratic, with strange new arm rings like that of an old warrior and a diadem of similar make. She sat there, trying not to think of what was lost, of what was gained, just the task ahead, of helping him as he’d helped her, however she could.

  …

  Oskar’s leg was bouncing something fierce. His gut felt unsteady and twisty too. But standing with the others, back to the broken portal room, that old surge of fear and panic was held at bay long enough to keep his feet planted and weapon ready. There’d be no running today.

  For better or for worse, he stood along with his men, facing the darkness. The few he’d posted at the bottom stairs were at the flank of the wall, gasping with hands on their knees, staring at the shadowed hall with fear. He wished they weren’t so open about their terror. Wasn’t good for morale. Regardless, Oskar had his line march forward, so they were about halfway down the long hall, offering enough room to retreat if the pressure built. Behind them, Feia stood with shoulders hunched and arms wide, fingers twisted like claws. She’d been demanding details on Daecinus when he joined the wall, and the few words offered to her weren’t exactly comforting ones. And yet she remained outside. At least whatever worry she had didn’t outweigh the ancient Sorcerer’s warnings.

  The floor shook. Moans of the Dead rising like the tide. He took a deep breath and rolled his shoulder a few more times, twisted his lower back. The hall was short, so Nifont was behind him with a bow. The telltale sign of the stave creaking under taught pressure with a strong draw. Stanilo to his left, Miras to his right.

  “Some damn day,” he muttered, cracking his neck.

  “We hold till Daecinus is up?” Stanilo asked, not seeming concerned or worried as any normal might be, just curious.

  “Aye. That’s the hope at least.”

  He grunted and nodded.

  “Here they come!” Waker shouted, his voice cracking.

  Oskar couldn’t see them yet, but they were getting louder. Loud enough it meant they were close. “Ready yourselves, boys.”

  Suddenly, Sovina was joining in the shield wall. There wasn’t much space, but a bowman gladly ceded their spot to prepare an arrow from behind. Oskar looked over and met her gaze from across the shield wall. She nodded and looked forward. Given all that’d happened, he didn’t know how to feel about the woman, but anyone willing to join him with blade in hand against a wave of Dead deserved good enough favor, he figured. Just wish we had the bloody Soulborne for this. But they were nowhere to be seen, Protis aside. The men said the two near the entrance had loped off down the hall. Maybe they’re in the rooms, waiting to ambush?

  Hard to say without eyes on the scary fucks. Either way, they were on their own for now.

  The groans and stamping feet became louder now. Nifont’s arrow shot past, disappearing into the darkness. A moment later, Oskar made out their forms—a big mass of them, all charging in that loped, awkward shuffle of Shamblers after fresh meat.

  “Steady now!” he shouted. “We’ve fought more than this. Worse odds too!”

  A jumble of cheers, mostly just screamed threats at the Dead.

  “Got a nice narrow hall! Make the rotting fucks pay for every step!”

  Another cheer, firmer, in unison, mean and determined. He scrunched up his face and shouted out hateful, blood-pumping nonsense. The kind of noise you hear in animals ripping at eachother’s throats. The others echoed. Oskar’s vision swam in a haze, the details fuzzy, yet so clear and vibrant. Immediate. He roared again. Something about killing. Even Stanilo was shouting. Another few arrows loosed. The wall of Shamblers. Dead, stinking, decaying flesh. Open mouths and broken teeth. Hands outstretched. Leg bouncing, bouncing.

  This was it. The final battle. This was the end.

  “Voiya!” he screamed, then swung his sword and hacked into the wall of Dead.