The place was called Azalton, a nowhere town full of nobody people. The Daimoniac doubted it was even marked on the map. It had no walls, nor was sheltered by trees or natural defences. The buildings were made of wood. Where the town’s limits ended, they simply stopped. Dust and sand piled high against them, and desert winds blew through the stoneless streets, kicking up grit into the squint-eyed inhabitants’ faces. He had visited some small villages in Yarruk during his time in the army, especially in Northeld, but nowhere quite so remote or forsaken as this. In fairness, nowhere was truly “remote” in Yarruk. The island was too small, barely 300 miles across at its widest point. Walk far enough and eventually you would encounter civilisation.

  But Aurelia was different. The Engines were not merely an ingenuity but a necessity. He saw that now, despite how much he hated them. Without the Engines, Aurelia would be virtually impossible to traverse save by the most iron-willed and well-prepared travellers, which, to be fair, the original Yarulian pioneers had been.

  He walked slowly into town. On its outskirts, he found deep pits dug in the ground. Beneath the sand was a layer of soft stone, similar in huge to the huge monoliths he had seen on his flight in, and it seemed they in turn gave way to layers of other stone. And Daimonic remains…

  It was nighttime still, and he would have missed the pits if not for his enhanced vision and for the clear skies overhead. The stars and planets shone brightly enough to cast Azalton in a ghostly luminescence, With the buildings all of wood, and the windows darkly gaping, it looked like a spectral town, a mirage conjured by some Sumyrian that would swallow a foolhardy adventurer whole. He shook his head, trying to dislodge such fanciful thoughts. His childhood had been strangely close at hand these last few days, as though the presence of the Daimon had stirred the sediment of his mind, unearthing forgotten things in the riverbed.

  He entered the town proper. There was no-one out, though he heard the faint sounds of chatter and drinking nearby. Gryll’s blood still dried upon his clothes, but thankfully, the doublet was dark, and thus the stains were hidden to a degree. But one building stood illuminated: a House. As he drew nearer he saw its faded signage which depicted an image of a blood red felidae, roaring defiantly. Underneath, gold lettering read “THE RED LION HOUSE”.

  The Warden could not help but smile. He saw something of himself in the image of the crimson cat. And he was hungry, so very hungry. But I must be cautious. I do not yet know the extent of my power. Clearly, he had acquired beyond mortal strength, but it also seemed that significant exertion cost him life-force which had to be replaced by feeding. If he were to overextend himself, he might become vulnerable.

  Candles and oil lamps flickered within the House. He walked up to the door and pushed it open.

  The House was dreary but, he had to admit, homely. The boards and tables were all lit with a warm, orange-yellow light. A simple bar stood on the right-hand side, manned by a surly looking bartender with a moustache that could have daunted a walrus. There were perhaps ten patrons, mostly in groups of two or three, huddled around their ales and wines, drinking solemnly.

  At one table, a woman with flaming red hair, wearing a vermillion dress that clung to her hourglass form, sat alone. Conspicuous as daylight. The Warden was no fool. His suspicions were immediately aroused. And yet, at the same time, her could not help but be drawn towards her. He sensed something, a tingling energy. It was like… familiarity.

  She did not look like Iliyet in the slightest. Iliyet had always been a slim girl, would have grown up to be a slim woman, and her hair was rather mousy and plain. But the way this red woman looked at him—with the intensity of one scrutinising a particularly difficult poem—was Iliyet’s.

  The Warden sauntered up to the bar. There was a row of three stools there, so he took one and ordered a beer, placing eight Relics on the table to cover the cost and offer a small tip. This was one of the few Aurelian customs of which he was aware.

  The barman nodded and began pouring from a keg. If he was surprised by The Warden’s thick, Yarulian accent, or by his wealthy clothes, or by his sudden appearance in a town whose population must have numbered in the hundreds, he gave no sign. Perhaps travellers were often passing through due to the Engine lines? Perhaps this was a regular stopping off point on the journey west? It would explain how the House could keep afloat, for there was only so much custom one could milk from a small town like this.

  The Warden waited. He had little intention or desire to drink the beer set before him. He was waiting for one of the barflies to leave. He would then follow, find some dark place, and do the deed. His stomach churned. His teeth felt as though they were wriggling in his gums. His nerve-endings felt as though they had been set on fire. The blood flowing through his veins seemed not as blood but some kind of acid. When he craved now, he craved with his whole body, his whole being.

  “May I?”

  He turned, shocked to find the Red Woman stood next to him. She slid casually onto the stool by his side, smiling at him.

  “Might I buy you another drink?” she purred.

  He looked down and found that he had finished his beer, without tasting it, without finding any sustenance in it whatsoever. He looked back at her. Saw her dark eyes on him. Her flaming hair—like a mane fire. In another life, he might have written a poem about her. She was a beauty worthy of song. Though he suspected, now, that she was no flower.

  “Is it an Aurelian custom for women to approach men?” he grunted.

  She laughed.

  “Not that I am aware. But you looked, lonely…”

  The Warden glanced around. The other patrons in the pub were purposefully avoiding his gaze, avoiding looking at the two of them altogether. Clearly, then, this was a routine. He was a mark.

  He laughed, then. A thunderous, boisterous laugh that issued from the cavernous depths of his new-formed self. It rang about the hollow Shell of his soul. It reverberated upon some deeper plane of spirit. He could not know it, but in that moment, he sounded eerily like Jubal.

  “Forgive me,” he said, seeing the wounded look upon her face. “But you know not the absurdity of your proposition. Leave an old man in peace if you know what is good for you.”

  The woman’s smile had returned. Then she leaned in close, whispering into his ear.

  “I know more than you think. I know… what you are.”

  He felt the Daimonic tendrils in his shoulder blades stirring restlessly, eager. He could see her bare throat, the way it pulsed and moved as she formed the words, the way the veins stood out as she tilted her head slightly. The blood flowing through her, he thought. I can almost smell it. So powerful, so rich… She was wearing perfume, but it was nothing compared to the scent of power running through her. Alarm bells rang.

  She withdrew.

  “Is that so?” he said, and the coldness in his voice seemed to drain the room of life. Suddenly, the other patrons were looking at him. The bartender, who’d been carefully pretending to polish a tankard, paused and glanced up.

  The woman glanced around.

  “I think we should have this conversation more privately, don’t you?” she was all sweetness. She extended a hand. “My name is Jyn, by the way.”

  He stood, ignoring her greeting. Her request for a private audience only made his life easier. So what if the barflies thought he was going to sleep with a whore? The world of men, of society, of laws mattered nothing to him, anymore. For forty years he had been its custodian, only to be cast aside. Now, he served something greater, a greater law, a greater power.

  “Lead the way, Jyn,” he said.

  She smiled again, stood, and forcibly took his hand. She led him through the bar and towards the stairs. Hungry eyes watched him ascend, the old wooden boards creaking with his footfalls.

  On the next floor, there were a handful of rooms. She led him to a door, unlocked with a key she kept between her breasts, and opened it. He stepped within. She closed the door behind them.

  There was a window, whose shutters were closed. A small bedside table sported an oil lamp, a little pewter tin sealed tightly, and several glass vials that appeared to have once housed wine. The bed had a brass frame and was quite large. The walls were painted red. I am in the mouth of the lion now, he thought.

  Something about the vials gave him pause. The feeling of familiarity had returned, more strongly than before. His senses—sharpened to the point of agony—were now reaching in every direction, searching for the source of alarm. His instincts screamed danger, and yet his eyes told him that he was about to have his meal.

  He turned. Jyn was throwing back one of the same vials, evidently one she had secreted on her person, this one filled with red liquid. Was she an alcoholic?

  The Warden smirked.

  “Am I so ugly that you must drink to make love? Well, let me assuage your fear. I have no desire to bed you. I will make it quick.”

  The tendrils unfurled, slithering out from the wounds in his back. It felt good to release them, like stretching a disused limb. This body constrains me. I yearn to be free, free, free! He was a plant, growing too large for the pot that contained it. Soon, he must spread his roots in deeper soil…

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  The woman did not scream not baulk with terror. She threw aside the empty vial and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

  “I told you: I know what you are. I am most curious how you did it. There have been myths of your kind, but never any proof. I know some who made the attempt and failed. So, I’ll ask again: how did you do it?”

  The Daimoniac stood dumbfounded. His mind raced with possibilities. But at last it was the Daimon within him that screamed the answer. She is a Daimomancer! A desecrator! Kill her! Kill her now!

  She saw the realisation flashing across his face, saw his eyes dart to the vial and back again. Not wine, but Daimonsblood. Pure Daimonsblood. She has invoked. She has summoned…

  Her luscious mouth curled into a sadistic grin. Her hand shot forth and as it did so the skin and bone began to re-arrange. Flesh sizzled, sloughed off. Bone came to the surface, hardening into serrated enamel. It happened in a blink, but now the woman’s arm was a sword, nearly five feet long, all of hardened marrow. She swung it at him with incredible speed and power. His reactions kicked in—but he was not fast enough. The blade sliced his right hand off at the wrist. He screamed as the pain blossomed. Blood sprayed the walls, dying them a new shade of red. He stumbled backward. Jyn laughed.

  “I shall look forward to discovering your secret the good old fashioned way: dissection!”

  She leapt at him again. The blade swung. This time, he was more prepared—but still off-balance. Though he avoided having his throat sliced open, she cut a gash across his face that split his nose asunder and rent his features in two. He choked on his own blood. He was half-blinded. He felt as though his face would fall off, sliding off his skull like wetted parchment. His wrist, all ragged flesh and exposed veins, pumped blood at a frightening rate. He felt his power draining out of him. No, no! The Daimon hissed. Fight! Fight!

  The Warden gritted his teeth. This was not the first time he had fought with only one hand. He brought the tentacles into his mental control, and lashed out at her. She leapt back from their hideous biting, like a dancer. Oh, she was so sweet, so light, so gorgeous.

  So deadly.

  But at last, he had broken her chain of attacks. He pressed his advantage, raising his own hand and channeling the Daimonic powers within him in the same way he had seen her done. Rather than a sword, he willed bone shards to form within his palm—the pain nothing next to the agony in his other hand and face—and fired them out in a spray of bloody shrapnel.

  This time, she hissed in annoyance, raising her sword to deflect the hail of boneshards. A few found their mark, shredding her arms and shoulders, but striking nothing vital.

  She grimaced.

  “Have you not read the Odes of Lileth, Daimoniac?

  ‘But one thing can be held as true:

  in both the realms of mortal man and god,

  the woman is the deadlier of the two.”

  “You talk too much,” the Warden snarled. He ran forward, the two eel-tendrils snapping at Jyn. She dodged the first. Her sword met the second. He felt a deeper agony than any he had ever known as her blade cut through the re-made flesh, severing the tendril. It squelched as it struck the ground and twitched like a beached fish, ichor geysering from its severed trunk.

  Nauseous, he wretched. He felt half of his world go dark as though an eye had been plucked from his socket. His senses were a tumult of punishing abysses, warping, overlapping, assaulting. He staggered. He was screaming but could not hear himself scream, for his world was such noise, all was one awful silence.

  No, no, no! The Daimonic shrieked. You lose all, risk all! Escape! Run!

  Running was not an option. She had lured him into this room purposefully as a trap. She came at him again with the sword. He caught her hand as she made the downward stroke, arresting her wrist with his single, good hand.

  She snarled into his face.

  “The Daimonic gift should not have been given to one as weak as you,” she cried. “Female Daimomancers are always more powerful than the male. We are better receptacles for power.”

  He realised she was not merely boasting, but speaking to the Daimon she knew resided within him, trying to tempt it to change host. Terror went through him like a storm through a gutter town. If this was her power using merely long-dead blood and bone-dust, then what would she become if she possessed the living element he had swallowed and bonded with? He felt the Daimon restless within him. Its power was spent, draining out of his grievous wounds. Perhaps it would be tempted, perhaps it would…

  He gritted his teeth. He drew his head back and snapped it with colossal force into her face.

  Jyn screamed and staggered back. Her nose had been flattened. Blood coated her face, red as her hair and dress.

  The Warden did not relent. He stepped forward again.

  Jyn let out a war-cry and drove her sword-hand clean-through his belly. He choked, vomited blood. He gripped her wrist, pulled her closer. Her eyes widened in terror then.

  “You think you could bear this burden?” he screamed, blood running freely from his lips. “You have not the will!”

  He slammed his head again into her face. The hard dome of his forehead pulped the flesh of her face, cracked the skull beneath. Woozily she swayed, her mouth working around words her brain could not fathom.

  “The will… the will is everything,” the Warden roared.

  He slammed his head again into her face. And again.

  “P-please…” she sputtered. Begging now. They all begged in the end.

  “Your powers are nothing!” he hissed. “I AM LIFE ITSELF!”

  He smashed his skull a final time into hers, destroying what had once been a remarkable work of Nature’s artistry. Her head snapped back. Both her skull had caved in and her neck had broken from the force of the blow. His own face was a wreckage too, his skull ringing with the impact.

  She went limp, slumping to the floor. The bone-sword melted, slipping from his stomach, turning to a reeking sludge that hissed and sizzled on the ground, eating through the floorboards. Her ordinary hand remained in the weapon’s place, covered in what resembled vicious burns.

  Blood flowed from his stomach, mixing with the grisly soup on the floor. Jyn lay still in the pool of gore and dying Daimonic matter. He swayed. He could barely see.

  Feed! Feed now! We are almost done!

  He knelt. His remaining tendril shot forth, latching to her throat. He felt the sweetness of her flowing into him, pain ebbing away as though he were deep in his cups. The blood was still just fresh enough, just alive enough. The hunger returned tenfold. He drank greedily.

  His wrist began to seal, his stomach wound to close itself.

  And then it was over.

  Half-finished.

  He growled as the pain returned. His wrist spurted blood. He was leaking from the weird wound in his back, the severed tendril unable to close itself. His guts, he knew, had been cut to ribbons, crushed. He could not survive long like this.

  Not enough! the Daimon screamed. She was not enough!

  The damage had been too great. He needed more. But where to find more? He was not strong enough to fight all the patrons of the inn at once. They had not looked particularly like fighters, but nor had they looked like pushovers. A few could probably handle themselves. And one or two would undoubtedly be able to escape and get help. He used the bed to help him get to his feet. The room… search the room…

  He opened the drawers of the beside table and found only musty copies of The Book of Beltanus—a common addition to Houses. The vials, that might once have contained Daimonsblood, were empty. He searched her shrivelled, dessicated corpse—drained of every drop of blood—and found only a coin-purse.

  I have to escape… escape…

  He went to the door. Then he paused. If they saw him like this, questions would be asked. Help might be called. They would find the dead woman and he would have to explain. Would they believe he had killed her in self-defence? Unlikely, given that she clearly moonlighted as a whore. Or perhaps that’d merely been her way of securing victims for her Daimomancy experiments.

  His mind was a whirligig. Pain lanced through every atom of his being. He could hardly stand.

  There is only one way. One way… The Daimon was trying to speak to him, reason with him, but the damage had separated them, made them two entities within a single body rather than the unified organism, symbiotically benefiting one another. He wished he could silence the voice, but he knew if he retreated to his Shell now, he would likely never emerge. He would go down into the deep, dark silence and never return.

  The window! Now! The window! I will guide you! Hurry!

  He staggered over to the window, opened the shutters. He stared out at the night sky and the ground below. It seemed a long way down, where he knew before this encounter he might have leapt it without harm.

  Jump!

  He threw himself forward. There was no elegance nor strength to it. He hit the ground like a sack of flour. Ribs shattered. One of his legs cracked in four places. He stifled the scream.

  No doubt the patrons of the inn had probably assumed the noises from upstairs were the noises of two people making violent, ugly love. But a scream heard in the night would tell a different story.

  He tried to rise but could not.

  Crawl!

  He stretched forward with his one good hand. He dug his fingers into the filthy earth. The Daimon aided him, extending his nails, making them into hard talons. He could grip the ground like this. Could pull himself…

  He dragged himself, following the Daimon’s command. Every foot he gained was torture. He could not help but think of all the people he had broken on the rack, with the whip, and in the fire. He burned there now. This was pain on a new level. Even the Tunnel Hunter attack was nothing compared to this. He should be dead, but the Daimonic power within sustained him. He had become capable of suffering an ordinary man should never know.

  Drag. Drag. Drag.

  Inch by inch.

  He had reached the outskirts now. He’d left a red trail in his wake. He would have been found in moments, during the day. But it seemed no one ventured out in this backwater town at night.

  In the distance, the red stones loomed.

  Crawl!

  He crawled.

  Like a bug. Like a snail.

  Everything was growing dark.