The missile flies through the air. Surely it's the size of a matchstick, next to Nurgal's titanic frame? Surely it can't have enough force to carry all the way to him? But, maybe it's a trick of perspective... it doesn't look like it. Instead of shrinking into the distance, it grows. It accretes weight, meaning, truth. It becomes too real to ignore. And it screams.

It screams fury, it screams hatred, it screams anguish. It screams in tune with Eamon's heart. It glows, like a candle through black blood, and it grows, like an infection in a wound in the air, and it screams, and it lodges in the fiend's eye with force enough to snap his head back.

He roars.

Towers crumble; the streets split. Molten blood fountains from the ruined socket, along with a single drop of black ichor that freezes on the way down and lands on its own obsidian pedestal amidst the rushing flames and shrieking fiends.

And then the clouds of smoke part, and the moon blocks the sun, and a beam of moonlight strikes like a bolt of lightning -

in an empty field. He's gone.

The ichor cools in his absence. Now it's only fire, raging through half the city. The streets are still crazed with rifts, strewn with rubble and riotous demons. Something is flickering like a strobe, out of the ruins of the Wardstone tower.

But he is gone.

And a boy is falling into the darkness.

He clutches his sister's hand like it's the only thing that exists.

Pietro wasn't having a good day to begin with.

It sounds petty, when you put it like that. My toast burnt, and my little brother was being a brat while I was trying to get my armor on, and, oh, trouble really does come in threes, a demon lord has invaded the city I'm sworn to protect.

That doesn't make it not true, but it makes an embarrassing last thought when one's falling through a hole in the earth. Instead of thinking tragically about his family, or nobly about his sacrifice, or, Hells, wondering what managed to hit the great bastard that hard - he's thinking gods, what a fucking day.

...he's been falling longer than seems reasonable, actually. And... he doesn't hit the ground, just lands softly on both feet.

"What now?" he asks stupidly.

"You're welcome, prick," says his sister, who conjures up a ball of light above her own head.

"Su! Hells, I'm glad to see you - welcome for - did you slow my fall?"

He grapples her in a crushing hug.

"It wasn't the five stone of scrap metal you're wearing," she wheezes dramatically. "Get off me, you beast. Anyway, I saw you falling in and I... well, I wasn't just going to let you."

He unhugs. "Well, thanks. My day's looking up... which might not say much, but trust me, I appreciate it. You didn't see the littles, did you?"

She shakes her head. "...it's a big city," she says, instead of if we find them at all it'll be a miracle, let alone alive.

Pietro hears it anyway, of course.

"I know," he agrees. "Just... we'll keep looking."

She shakes her head again, slower.

"Pietro, the city's on fire and full of demons. I can only hang four proper spells, and you haven't got any yet. We've got no supplies except your lunch, I'm in dancing slippers, and as near as I can tell, we've fallen halfway to the Darklands. We won't keep looking. We're going to try as hard as we can to stay alive."

"Let's see if we can wrap your feet. The slippers aren't going to do you any good."

"That isn't the part of what I said that matters and you know it."

"...it's the part I can help."

He takes a spare tunic out of his pack and starts cutting it to pieces.

Susanna lets out a breath and scrubs her face with the heels of her palms for a few seconds.

Then she crouches to help too. Many hands make light work, and even two more can do something.

When Emilio wakes up for the third time that day, he feels worse than either of the two previous. It's, frankly, very impressive. His lungs burn; he coughs, and then regrets it for how it sets the hole in his chest to screaming at him again.

"Lu?" he rasps.

Lucia's standing over him. She's holding his belt knife.

"Who's asking?"

"What now?" he asks, feeling an uncanny sense of déjà vu.

"Are you my brother? That is, are you being controlled, or are you some demon taking his form, or are you some other demon wearing his body like a coat?

"Whatever kind of demon I am, I'm the kind that gets headaches," he mutters.

Her grip on the knife tightens. "I'm not kidding. I didn't trust that guardsman who gave you that arrow, so I used my fiend-sight spell, and he was a fiend, and you were a fiend too. A worse one."

Emilio shuts his eyes for a second.

"Lu, you're being really brave. And I think that's great. But I want you to think about something for a minute. What kind of demon was the guard?"

"...a dretch, I think. They mess with infantry by setting clouds of gas on them, and their claws-"

"Great. Could you beat a dretch in a fight? Give you the knife, so it's fair."

"No. I mean - no. I don't even have fighting cantrips like Susanna, and the knife wouldn't go through..."