The boar screamed.

  Not the squeal of a pig, nor the thin panic of a cornered animal. This was rage with lungs behind it, a sound that scraped the stone and made the runes feel, for a moment, like they were vibrating in sympathy.

  Its mate y on its side a few paces away, belly split open where Seraphine's lightning had punched through. The body twitched once and then went still, thick blood steaming faintly in the cool air.

  The living boar stood over it and swelled.

  I watched the change happen in real time, and my mind refused it for a heartbeat. Its shoulders lifted. Its neck thickened. Muscle rolled under bristled hide in a way that looked wrong, as if something inside it had decided the old shape was insufficient.

  Its tusks scraped stone when it lowered its head.

  Rocher moved before anyone else could.

  He did not draw his sword. He'd stopped bothering to after the third time his bde had skittered off a hide like it was striking cquered wood. Instead he ran straight at the boar with his hands open, posture low, like he was about to take a charging man at the waist.

  "Rocher," I said, sharp.

  He did not look.

  The boar unched itself forward with a jolt that sent dust spilling from a cracked archway above us. With a speed that should have been impossible at that size.

  Rocher met it.

  His hands cmped down on the tusks at the base, fingers digging into the ridged bone. The impact drove him back two steps. His boots skidded on gravel. For a second he held, arms shaking, shoulders locked.

  Then he twisted.

  I saw what he was trying to do: wrench the head sideways, throw the neck into a bind, use the animal's own momentum to break it.

  It would have worked on something smaller. On a man. On a beast with a neck that did not look like a siege engine.

  The boar surged again. Rocher braced, but he could not generate enough leverage. The ground under his right foot crumbled slightly. The angle colpsed.

  The boar ripped its head up and to the side.

  Rocher went with it.

  He was thrown clean off his feet, lifted and flung like he weighed nothing. His body hit a broken section of wall and went through a veil of loose stones with a crack that made my stomach drop. Rubble followed him down in a rush.

  The boar stamped, snorting, then swung its head, searching.

  It saw me.

  It saw Lumiere beside me, staff in hand, mantle drawn tight, face pale. For a fraction of a second, I felt the stupid, primitive part of my body go cold.

  I stepped in front of her without thinking.

  "Lumiere. Behind me."

  Her grip tightened on her staff, but she moved, shifting so that I blocked her from the beast's line of sight.

  The boar's hooves dug into the stone. It lowered its head.

  It was going to charge.

  I set my weight. My mind raced through what I had on me, what I could do. My short sword. The crossbow strap biting my shoulder. The bombs I refused to waste here. There was no time to cast anything useful. No room to maneuver.

  The air shimmered.

  Subtle, like heat haze. It ran through the space in front of the boar, threading itself over its face and tusks.

  The boar's eyes changed.

  The brown went to red so fast it looked like a ntern had been lit behind them. The pupils narrowed. The animal's breath hitched, and then it turned its head.

  Toward Evelyn.

  She stood a short distance away, half-crouched, her Mask on. Even from here I could see the faint glow pulsing along the seams where the leather met the embroidered teeth. The jaguar mouth stitched over the lower half of her face looked like it was grinning, the threads fshing red and green.

  Evelyn lifted two fingers in a zy wave, like she was greeting an acquaintance across a tavern.

  The boar screamed again and charged her instead.

  "Evelyn!" Lumiere called with sharp arm.

  The boar was a wall of bristle and muscle bearing down, tusks angled to gore.

  But Evelyn stood her ground, not moving until the st second. At the instant it should have hit her, she vanished.

  One heartbeat she was there. The next she was empty air.

  The boar overran the spot, confused for a fraction, hooves scrabbling.

  A bolt of lightning punched through its side.

  The sound was not thunder so much as a sharp crack, like something being split apart. The boar jerked, legs colpsing unevenly. Its massive body hit the ground with a wet, heavy impact, and then it y still, twitching.

  Seraphine lowered her hand slowly.

  The air around her still smelled faintly of ozone. Pulseweaver hummed with a low, satisfied note, the light within it dimming as if it had just exhaled.

  She jogged up to us, eyes flicking over Lumiere and me.

  "Are you alright?" she asked.

  Lumiere nodded once, controlled.

  I barely heard them.

  My gaze was already on the rubble where Rocher had nded.

  "I'm fine," I said, but it was automatic, spoken without thought. My feet were moving before the sentence finished.

  The area where he had hit was a shallow colpse, stones piled like a crude cairn. Dust hung in the air. I slid down the slope of broken rock, boots skidding, and spotted him immediately.

  He was lying on his back amid the debris, fingers knit over his stomach, staring up at the darkness above as if he was trying to count cracks in the ceiling.

  His chest rose and fell evenly.

  Relief hit me so fast it made my hands shake.

  "Rocher," I said. "Anything bruised? Anything broken?"

  He blinked once, slowly, then turned his head toward me.

  "Just my ego," he said.

  I let out a breath that sounded too much like a ugh. I dropped to a knee beside him and ran my eyes over him anyway. Dirt in his hair. A scrape at his cheekbone. His left shoulder rolled slightly like it was sore, but he didn't favor it.

  "That's good," I said, clinical on purpose. "You got hit pretty hard."

  "I noticed." He pushed himself up, testing his weight. He winced once, barely, and then straightened.

  Above us, Evelyn reappeared on a ledge as if she had been there the whole time, leaning with one hip against a column. She looked bored.

  Seraphine called something to her, annoyed. Evelyn lifted a hand again in that same casual gesture, as if the whole thing had been a minor inconvenience.

  Rocher dusted grit from his vest and looked at his sword lying a few feet away where it had been knocked loose from its scabbard. He did not reach for it.

  "The monsters here are too big," he said, and there was no compint in his voice, only assessment. "And their hides too tough. When I strike, it does nothing but gnce. So I try to grapple, and..." He looked at the rubble around us, then back up at me. "You can see how that turns out."

  "It'll work," I said automatically, then paused. I forced myself to be honest. "But you'll need to draw on your magic. Let it augment your strength."

  He exhaled through his nose, then nodded once, like he was accepting that without argument.

  "Maybe we can borrow some weapons from Phymera?" he asked. "Of First Men make. Since they listen and learn... maybe they'd bite deeper than my sword."

  I shook my head.

  "Phymera is dangling them over us as a reward," I said. "She won't hand them over unless we do what she wants."

  Rocher's jaw tightened.

  "And even if she did," I continued, "they need time to adjust. They wouldn't be of help immediately. Not in the way you need right now."

  He stared at the ground for a second, and I watched disappointment cross his face, quick and unguarded, before he smoothed it away.

  Then he nodded again.

  "Then I'll keep trying," he said simply.

  He picked up his sword at st, not because he believed in it, but because leaving it behind felt like surrender.

  Evelyn dropped from her ledge and nded beside us without a sound. She yawned, stretched her arms overhead, and rolled her shoulders as if she had been sitting in a chair too long.

  "Should we head back?" she asked. "It's been a long day."

  Her tone was zy. Her eyes were not. They flicked over Rocher, over me, over the broken stones, and then out toward the corridor we had come from.

  I looked back the way we would have to go. The City stretched beyond, dimly lit as it always was. It would be here tomorrow as well.

  "Yes," I said. "Let's go back. Eat and rest. And then we'll do it all over again."

  We hauled ourselves up out of the rubble and made our way back toward Khaz-Vorrim.

  By the time we reached the chamber, the controlled molten pool still hovered in its bowl, steady, contained. Phymera stood near it, hands behind her back, watching it like it was a hearth she could never approach.

  Rocher and Evelyn dragged the boar carcass in with minimal ceremony. The meat would not go to waste. We could not afford that. We were close to out of rations, and with Halbrecht's shadow looming over her, Lumiere couldn't easily go up for more.

  When supper came, it was dried boar meat warmed over the Forge's ambient heat, tough and salty and better than it had any right to be.

  Seraphine had made a face when I first suggested it.

  'It should be fine,' I had said. 'We've taken the antidote as prophyxis. And boars are social animals. They groom one another and keep fungal growth mostly in check. It won't be like it was with the lizards.'

  Seraphine had still lifted her orb and fired it in a slow sweep over the meat and the air around it, cleansing demonic miasma with an efficiency that bordered on spite.

  'There,' she had said. 'Now it is fine.'

  As usual, Phymera joined us, though she did not eat. She sat at the edge of our circle, watching the way we tore at the food.

  After a while, she spoke.

  "How is it that you all got here?" she asked, conversational. "Just curious."

  Rocher gnced up from his food.

  "There's some kind of freight elevator," he said between bites. He swallowed. "A ptform. It brought us down."

  Phymera frowned.

  "Freight elevator?" she said. "I do not recall such a thing."

  "It floats," Rocher added. "A circur ptform. With runes. It sits in an open shaft and moves when you... well, I haven't the faintest idea how it works."

  Phymera stared at him for a beat, then ughed.

  It was a clear sound, sharp with genuine amusement.

  "That is no freight elevator," she said.

  Evelyn looked up, mid-chew.

  Phymera leaned forward slightly, as if sharing gossip.

  "That is an execution site," she said, still amused. "The First Men used to take their most heinous criminals up and throw them over the side of the mountain."

  Lumiere gasped audibly.

  Seraphine's brows shot up.

  Evelyn swallowed and then said, dry as dust, "You should see what they've done with the outside of it. It looks downright holy now."

  Phymera's smile widened.

  But my eyes narrowed. I stared at her across the fireless heat of the Forge.

  "Why are you asking this all of a sudden?" I said.

  Phymera's gaze turned slowly toward mine.

  "Because," she said, "while you were out, another group came through."

  For a second, no one spoke.

  Then Rocher's posture changed, subtle but immediate, like a bde being drawn without sound. Evelyn's expression hardened, the humor draining out of it.

  My mouth went dry.

  "Who?" I asked.

  Phymera did not answer right away.

  She shifted.

  It started in her face first. Ptes sliding. Seams adjusting. Geometry rearranging.

  In the space of a breath, the woman across from us became a man.

  Neatly kept hair. A clean, controlled face. Armor yered over vestments, as if he wanted both sanctity and protection on his body at once. The cut of the cloth was unmistakably Church. The bearing was unmistakably authority.

  Bishop Halbrecht.

  I felt Lumiere go perfectly still beside me, like someone had frozen her in pce.

  Phymera smiled with Halbrecht's mouth.

  "Ah, you recognize him," she said, in a voice that was not his but wore his shape easily. "He did seem to think he was very important."

  Not so important that he would send someone else, I thought.

  Rocher's grip tightened on the pommel of his sword.

  Lumiere said not a word.

  Her fingers drew slowly into her palms. Knuckles whitening.