I bit back a curse as the eyes along Hawkins opened, looking all about. I put a hand on the piig to my side. I pushed on it and immediately stopped as it felt like my abdomen was being ripped in two. Blood poured out as it moved a fra of an inch.

  Fuck.

  Watch members leveled their muskets. Malstein yelled at them to fire at Hawkins. Guns started discharging, a loose barrage of gunfire as musket balls flew. Hawkins shrieked, springing into a as musket balls punched into flesh. Eyes burst, spraying more milk-white fluid as they ruptured, and limbs twitched as bullets tore holes in them.

  More importantly, it lifted me up.

  I screamed as the pincer raised me, pulling at my torso, ripping the hole wider as Hawkins reared towards the ceiling.

  No time to think about the risks. My hand reflexively grabbed onto the pincer, and I called on Diabolism. Chitin fked under my touch as I poured rot across its surface. Ees fell as parts of it dissolved, and with a sudden snap, I fell back to the ground.

  I nded back first, rubble from the ceiling delivering two blows ay lower back as I hit it. Groaning, I put a hand on my snapped forward leg.

  The Diabolism burned my veins as I forced it into my leg, its tendrils passing through and into the snapped back joint. I didn’t have time to be fragile with this. I directed it to seize snapped bones and tendons and, in a siion, forced them bato pce.

  I screamed as my hoof swung back the other way, crag and snapping. Diabolism sent tendrils into my leg, holding the limb together as I returo my hooves. Eaent was agony.

  It's best not to think about the sequences of putting diabolism through my veins and tendons. I could worry ter. I iurned my attention back to Hawkins.

  I’d long been fotten by the ger, who was trying to hahe forty or so Wat the ballroom. Tendrils emerged swatting at them, legs stabbed and thrust, its pincer was ref as its mandibles closed on a guard, snapping the poor human in half.

  Both halves nded near me, and the entrails nded a sed ter. Okay. I needed a pn. Blindly attag something like this would only get me killed.

  There were always limits to magic. With Diabolism, it was how much you could pull on it before the side effects killed you, either by finally turning on your body or by ing the world around you.

  There had to be limits to this. Hawkins couldernally pull new mass from nowhere. He had to vert magiass or energy. Theoretically, he could have a very deep well, but there weren’t a lot of other options.

  Oppo regees? Rot the flesh till they stopped.

  I couldn’t move very fast, and each step made my leg scream at me. Luckily, I didn’t o move fast. Hawkins focused on a sich member at a time as they fired rifles and revolvers or tried fending off his tendrils with bdes.

  He couldn’t split his focus up. One weakness. My hand still gripped the kh the paralytic as I got within arm’s length of his main body.

  Here’s hoping this felt like a pinpripared to all the other wounds. I pushed my dagger into the skin, slig through it. Clear liquid came out first, followed by the milk-white ichor from before. I carved further, opening up more of it before stig my hand in. It felt slimy, not uting a fish, as I pushed my hand inside.

  That got Hawkin’s attention, his body beginning to move, pulling away from me, but my other hand grabbed onto the edge of the cut. It dragged me along, but as it did, I eled rht into his body.

  Inside him, he felt strange. I couldn’t sculpt, so I instead focused on eling the rot. The flesh inside was reag in a strange way. It was liquifying, turning to mush and then to a liquid that stung my hands as it poured past.

  Hawkins shrieked, rolling around now, and suddenly, I was lying on top as he rolled.

  I kept my hand inside, p the energy through. The skin began to melt, ripping open, and the slurry Diabolism had made of Hawkin’s innards poured out onto me. The stench made me gag, what little food I’d had at the party making its , but I kept my hand inside Hawkins.

  He shrieked, rearing up as he filed about. People were running any way they could through the manor now. Tendrils ed around Wat, strips of white flesh squeezing them till bones cracked and skin burst. Spider legs stabbed, pierg through skulls and pulping heads.

  Some emerged from the flesh near me, half-formed aing. Oried to around my hand, only to slough down onto the ground.

  Filing limbs began to detach, falling out of sockets turo mush. The body beh me began to colpse, skin splitting along more and more lines, fluids and mush p out. The struggles grew more diminutive and less forceful. After a while, my biggest was not falling through the skin into the soup ans and flesh as the creature slowly defted. Eventually, I mao get my hooves ba the ground.

  o me, the husk of the body tio spew ichor and ans, not a single leg still attached. But something was also pushing on the skin from within.

  Something vaguely humanoid and pale white emerged from the skio me. It was tall, mase in build, hairless, and had ures outside of a vague outline of eyes and mouth covered by skin. It took a few stumbling steps, an eyeless face looking about.

  Then a gun fired, and it fell to the ground, trying to scream through his unformed mouth as its knee shattered. Seds passed, and it tio remain shattered and neing.

  I stopped paying attention, grabbing the st of my healing draughts from its hidden pocket. Thank whoever was watg I'd nded on my bastead of face-down or it would have been crushed. Thank them for many things, like somehow not breaking my spine. I dow, paireating as it worked. It would close the hole in my side, but my broken leg beiogether by Diabolism? There's not much it could do on that.

  More Watch swarmed the pale figure, restraining it while Malstein yelled about wanting him alive and not dead. I limped away, making for the stairs. I just wanted somewhere I could sit down and try to lessen the agony traveling through my leg.

  I first grabbed my knife off the ground, holding onto it since my bag was missing. Aedelia had fit several hidden pockets on the dress, but they weren’t that rge. I limped over the staircase where Malstein was anizing the remaining Watch. It looked like maybe a dozen had died to Hawkins.

  “Harrow,” he called out. “I’m not seeing anything immediately diabolic, which shouldn’t be possible.”

  “Everything diabolical is caught ihe corpse,” I muttered, gesturing towards Hawkin’s ed-up humanoid form. “It’ll o be purified, but right now, I think it’s still trying to figure out what to do with him. It’s probably why that got spat out, finally. Flesh tried to fight rot, but rot won in the end. He probably reached his limits and decided to escape before the Diabolism really got its hooks into him.”

  “It looks like you reached yours as well,” Malstein observed.

  “Probably,” I muttered. “Definitely. He’s….a wellspring of life energy? Something like that. I had to smother it. It might not have been involuntary. He might have thought we would be in a stalemate and gave up before I could inflict perma harm. Don’t trust his k regeing, though.”

  Malstein sighed, rubbing one of his tasks as he sidered the ed-up pale humanoid. “What I would give for this to be simple. Trying to tain something of this nature…”

  “The Watch has got to have mages capable ing something,” I said. “Or at least a cell with only oential exit.”

  “The tter is hard to pull depending on who has priority on those resources,” Malstein said. “The sed is more manageable.”

  “Do you want to talk about my using Diabolism again?” I asked.

  “Don’t think it’s my pce to say anything, this time at least,” Malstein said. “Besides, telling you not to do this doesn’t seem to make you stop.”

  I grimaced. I couldn’t deny the point, but the shame from that didn’t cut as deep as it should.

  “Circumstances,” I said, looking at the still-rotting aing corpse. Rot still ate, everyone keeping a healthy distance away from it as it melted and pieces occasionally colpsed in on themselves.

  “I will admit this seems dire enough to warrant it. What about the other diabolism?”

  I looked at my right leg, little spikes of pain going through it as Diabolism wormed around i. Going into veins, holding muscles and tendons in pce.

  “It’s fine,” I said. “Just…I’m pretty sure when I let it go, I’ll pass out, so I’m holding on for a little longer.”

  “Passing out might not be a terrible idea, perhaps,” Malstein said. “You look beat to hell and back.”

  “I certainly feel it, but not quite yet,” I muttered, sliding down to the floor. The siren’s call of rest was there, but I couldn’t just let myself sleep yet.

  “You have a spare sheath I borrow?” I asked. “Just don’t want to stab myself or ah this actally.”

  I held up the poisoned knife, sure to keep it pointed anywhere but at the Watch captain.

  “Poisoned?” Malstein asked.

  “Just a paralytic,” I said. “Thought it would do something, but I think they….altered their nervous system? Something like that.”

  “Well, we might get some answers on that soon,” Malstein said, looking at the prone Hawkins.

  “I’d love to be in a room with him,” I muttered, which got a wary look. “Just to talk. Not to examine et some fleeting moment of catharsis. Where’s the other one?”

  “Other one?” Malstein asked me.

  “A sed one was trying to make it from the third floor to the roof via the ey. They never made it up.”

  Malstein shook his head. “If they were ohird floor…I’ve heard noises, but getting up there to iigate has proven difficult.”

  I frowned. “Lord Montague?” The only person I could think of who could stall the Watch even a little.

  “Ohird floor, along with Lady Karsin, some uests, and guards. He’s refused to let me up there.”

  What was on this third floor that he was willing to turn down potential help to keep it a secret? “There’s been two different attacks inside his manor. Do you really need his permission?”

  Malstein grimaced. “Teically, no. Iy, yes. If I want to have a career at the end of this.”

  “Right,” I muttered, slowly slumping down further. Those pesky realities were getting in the way of a and easy end to all of this. That was ohing closed. Now for another.

  “Voltar and Dawes?” I asked.

  “Vanished. A few people saw them go deeper into the mansion by themselves.”

  I groaned as I leaned against the stair railing. “I….eople so stupid?”

  gers were on the loose, but they had decided to go off alohere better be a damn good reason.

  “I have people looking for them,” Malstein said, finally getting up from beside me. He gestured to a few Watch who began to walk over, muskets shouldered. “You should take the ce for some rest.”

  I sighed, not having a goument. Oh, I could argue that if another Shapeshifter showed up, they’d need me to ha. But my hoof and leg were beiogether by the most spdash methods. And if I held it together too long, it not healing correctly would be the least of my worries.

  Where were es, now that I thought about it? Sure, Malstein might not have the pull t any in, but Lord Montague should have the resources for something.

  “The uests?” I asked.

  “Spread out among the manor. A pain and ones who were on their own are going to be watched carefully, but no indications anyone is in danger.”

  “You’ll wake me up in half an hour?” I asked, pulling myself up with a pained grunt and heading to a bench. “Or if something happens that I should be informed of?”

  “Sure,” he said, gesturing to the two Watch to help me. Eventually, they got me settled into the bench. “And I’ll see if I find someoo look at y. Just rest.”

  I didn’t respond; I just let the diabolism in my leg pull back. Immediately after, sleep cimed me.