Emilia was exceedingly unhappy to find that her new companion, Pyria, had the same tendency as Sylvia, to fill the quiet moments with songs. While the quiet had kept her on the edge and getting rid of it was likely overall a good thing for her nerves, problems arose over the lyrical side of things. Both the deity and the fiend had beautiful voices that would have been fit to fill the grandest of royal halls and stages, one of them sang of joyous matters, such as rediscovering love once lost, heroic deeds and animals of the forest, the other’s ballades consisted of unspeakable injustices, extremely detailed scenery of mutilation and just generally unpleasant things – what made it worse was that both sang their songs in a happy tone, so they were incredibly hard to differentiate and resist for the priestess.

More than a few times, she found herself humming and tapping her fingers in rhythm with Pyria’s songs, and a mocking chuckle echoed from the back of her mind every time she forced herself to stop.

“Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up…” She muttered under her breath as she and King traversed the first few kilometers of the corridor after the chamber that had cursed her with the fiend’s presence.

Despite the clear objections she had for her situation, Emilia would have been lying had she claimed to be worse off than before. Strength had returned to her body; the constant nervousness was gone and the corruption she had dreaded was now facing the fiery wall of iron that was Pyria’s protective ‘blessing’ – and utterly failing to make even the slightest dent in it. Yet, she could tell it was there, and even stronger than before. It started to seem like the further down they ventured, the stronger the corruption became.

“An unfamiliar filth surrounds us. Not from the domain of the aureun, and not of the primordial night, perhaps younger than both, perhaps far older. Look forward to seeing it squirm before us, my scion! Look ahead for the songs of broken femurs of warriors, of crushed minds of magi, of their skinned corpses and impaled hearts on our pikes of iron!” Pyria commented on the matter after noticing Emilia dwelling on it. “They will fall before us like all else did!”

“Big words for someone who is so sparsely spoken of these days. Barely anyone knows you by name.” Emilia scoffed in response. She could have well ignored her new parasite but yearned for conversation too much to do so – King was quiet companion to begin with, and far too driven by his need to find Anastacia to even play the part of the listener.

Maniacal laughter filled the priestess’ mind. “Such a thorny tongue for one who speaks softly! My descend into obscurity was an unfortunate concomitant of a deal offered and struck at my lowest moment, but had I not accepted, neither of us would be here today – nor would much else.” Pyria ominously explained and sighed longingly.

“Oh? Is this going to be one of those things where you try to pass your horrific deeds as the lesser evil and claim that what you’ve done was a service to the world? That you’re somehow even slightly redeemed yourself? Because of my job, I’m inclined to give everyone a second chance were they to ask for one, but I’ll be damned if there isn’t an exception in the rule for things like you.” Asked the priestess mockingly.

“Is that really how little you think of me? That I, of all beings, would plead for forgiveness? Kneel and beg for a second chance? I toiled endlessly for eons to be beyond all redemption and I am no less proud of every single atrocity than I was the age I committed them. Spare your forgiveness to those who care for it!” The melodic voice inside Emilia’s head rebuked the suggestion. “What led me to this state, was a bargain made to stop evil clad in sorrow from consuming all there is.”

Emilia laughed derisively. “There are different brands of evil now? The distinction between what is truly evil and what is merely claimed to be such is the only thing that matters, as far as I can tell.”

“That would be what a god would say, undoubtedly so – they are far too keen on simplifying the works of us less divine, to see it all as black and white. It is fortunate that I am here to finally open your eyes, my scion, for Sylvia has clearly kept you in the dark.” Pyria claimed, clearly still full of spite for the gods.

Emilia didn’t enjoy the idea of giving much weight to the fiend’s words, but the creeping feeling that Sylvia often hid things from her made her remotely want to hear Pyria out. Maybe it would even bring up something she would be able to help Sylvia with.

“Let us take yours truly as an example, for there is no better. My crimes are done out of joy. The deeper reasons as why one would enjoy such admittedly awful acts are as varied as the ways of torture I know, but they are beside the point as well. I enjoy what I am, and what I have done to the mortals. Reprehensible and cruel as it may be, my fashion of evil is self-containing.

“ Too much of something good can ruin it after all. Eating an entire cake and gouging out the eyes of an entire city at once have much in common. Why do either when you can take your time enjoying them? Too much cake at once, and the taste will grow bland by the time you are but halfway done, whereas savoring each piece and rationing allows one to taste the same sweetness over and over. Similarly, one can learn to revel in watching the town cope with only their firstborns being blinded for a good while before further actions need to be taken.” The fiend began her longwinded explanation. “Now, let us take the Aureun empire as the second of our examples. Their acts of cruelty rival that of mine, yet their deeds were fueled not by the simple joy of carnage, but the need to progress, to survive.

“No matter of your opinions on those tunneling mortals, by doing what they had to do, disregarding morals and other such worries, they carved a place for themselves in a world where beings of unimaginable powers were there norm. No god glanced their way, no divine blessed their lands or shielded them from the likes of me. Yet the machines in the deep still move continents to their whims, erupt volcanoes as clockwork and cause the tide for the convenience of their long-gone masters. Such feats are hardly achievable through heroism, as thousands of years later, the god-fearing mortals of today have yet to even comprehend a fraction of what was built by those more driven and willing to do anything.

“Our third and last example will be but a mere man, a broken man, filled with unfathomable sorrow and anger. Now, a question: is it understandable to let one’s sorrow turn to wrath, to lash out in despair against those you care for? Can the scion fathom such a thing?” Asked Pyria suddenly.

Still bothered by the cake comparison, Emilia was caught a bit off guard and stammered before answering properly. “Yes, but there are limits. You’ve no right to spread your sadness to others.”

“How delightfully Sylvian answer; but yes, there are limits to sorrow – before it turns into something else...” Pyria agreed and chuckled. “But this man from the days of yore, broken by loss, saw no purpose in such rules. His sorrow turned into an all-consuming evil that served no purpose, cared none for itself and threatened the world in a manner neither me nor the aureun ever had. The aureun had already been crushed years before his fall, and his hunt had slowly turned towards my kind. Our sparse meetings rarely ended in my favor, but the fates had yet to claim me, as there was something somewhere that held him back.

“On one faithful spring morning, perhaps a year since our previous encounter, we stood against one another once more. Immediately, I could tell things were different – his existence had become cursed, brough upon him by the fates themselves no doubt, in hopes to suppress him. Naught but vacuous void where his heart of icy steel had once resided, sorrow clad in wrath unending. I chose not to engage him on that day, yet it still almost cost me my eternal life. Beaten, wounded and for the first time ever, afraid, I knew that he needed to be stopped, and when the chance came, I aligned myself with those that still had the chance to do so.”

The fiend’s voice grew more serious as her story rambled on, and Emilia could almost hear the shivers of fear in it by the end.

“I see, but is there a purpose to this monologue?” She rather rudely asked.

Pyria sighed. “As a pawn of one, you should be well aware that gods do not suffer coincidences. Your presence in this glorified tunnel, the ancient mechanism clawing me out from deep within you, and what is yet to transpire, is all within someone’s machinations. Perhaps it was Sylvia herself, who guided you on this this path, or perhaps someone far more meaningful – but the simple truth is that no mastermind resurfaces the Queen of the Primordial Night for the lightest of reasons. The world is about to stir in ways reminiscent of my dominion, and the timeless black scribes of The Great Lunar Library have no doubt begun to browse their collection in panic by now, furiously flipping the pages of their little black books to understand what is about to come. Other gods create hasty contingency plans and… well… perhaps even the mighty Ciel himself has begun to play his hand…

“Regardless of the reasons, I was brought here to impart my knowledge upon you and can only hope you take heed of what you hear. As my scion, and as Sylvia’s puppet, it is of vital importance that you know the finest nuances of your craft. Just as she has guided you in the light, I will show you what lurks in the dark, so that you may bring joy to all.” She continued with yet another wordy response.

Emilia mulled over what she had been told. So far it didn’t particularly appear that she was being seduced to abandon her goddess, but she wasn’t about to let her guard down. However, saying that she wasn’t intrigued by the unique knowledge the ancient fiend no doubt had would have been wrong, especially as every one of Pyria’s answers brought up another dozen questions.

“Ciel? The god of the night sky? Why him in particular?” The priestess inquired and tried to remember what she had learnt about the god from his rather conspicuous devotee.

“Ciel and his brother, at the cost of the latter one’s life, struck down someone important to me. Since then, I have put considerable effort into understanding the night father.” Pyria admitted. Though Ciel had apparently wronged her greatly, there was no malice in her voice. “Among the gods, I consider Ciel to be uniquely wise. His foresight is beyond the scope of even other divine and the web of plans he has put in place is no secret to those who walk in the dark. The pieces of his grand plot are hidden in the most unexpected of creatures, the Lunar Library is built upon his wing and it is thought that he even holds the cursed twin crowns of the white ones… On a completely unrelated note, this ‘Anastacia’ we are so awfully worried for; I wish to converse with her.”

“You’re not going to get anywhere near her.” Emilia immediately responded, perhaps falling into an intended change of subject, but there was no way she would ever relay anything from Pyria to the necromancer, known to be gullible beyond belief.

The maniacal laughter returned. “Spoken like a true mother! Countless times before I have heard such a claim in vain, though this is the first time I might not be attempting to eat the child.”

“I am not her moth-“ The priestess was about to claim, but a strange rustle under her boot interrupted her.

In the dimly lit corridor, it was hard to see what she had stepped on, but the feeling was a familiar one. The slight slipperiness of sand on a hard stone floor as something she had felt countless times while sweeping the temple floor after a service – which at times was her main occupation in the corrupt establishment she was part of, either that or secretly drinking in the cellar.

She asked King to stop for a second and kneeled to swipe her finger along the floor, gathering a noticeable pile of fine, powder-like sand. A quick smell and taste test revealed nothing unexpected, and as far as she was able to tell, it was just regular sand.

Continuing their journey, the amount of sand scattered across the floor slowly increased. It piled against the walls and eventually covered the entire floor. Not long after, the walls of the corridor ended, and opened up to a yet another immense space.

Instead of a plain empty room, like the first one after the elevator, or a seemingly endless sea, Emilia and King found themselves at the edge of a boundless desert that continued as far as they could see in every direction except backwards. The entrance they had used was carved into a natural-looking cliff face that likely reached all the way up to the ceiling.

As the priestess gazed up, she could see the clear and starry night sky, or a clever imitation of it at least. She took a moment to find the same constellations she had used for navigation not too long ago, and realized that the twinkling lights in the distant ceiling, were in fact perfectly representing the sky at that particular time of the year, which meant they were either incredibly lucky, or the builders of the room had mapped the night sky so meticulously that after thousands of years, their predictions were still accurate. The only thing decisively betraying it as the work of the aureun and not the real sky, was the familiar light blue color of the ‘stars’.

Her awe of the sky replica lasted for a little while, but a gust of wind catching her bloodstained cloak and blowing sand directly into her face broke Emilia away from it and turned her focus on the scenery around them. Just as accurate as the one above them, the replica of the desert they were surrounded by was in its own way impressive. Complete with endless tall dunes that seemed almost impossible to climb and what appeared to be the beginning of a sandstorm, the sparsely lit landscape continued for kilometers, much like a real desert.

“Whyyy though?! What possible reason could there ever be to build an entire desert – below an entire sea, I might add!” Emilia exclaimed and kicked the sand.

“Perhaps they didn’t wish to use the ones aboveground?” Suggested Pyria.

The priestess groaned and started following King into the desert. “What’s wrong with real deserts, the sun?”

The fiend in her head chortled. “Back in the day, me.”

Emilia didn’t feel like dignifying such a self-aggrandizing theory with a response, not while she had a dune the size of a rather large house to climb over.

King’s heavy feet sank deep into the loose sand and even his progress was awfully pained and slow. Plunging the shaft of his spear into the ground for support on every step helped him somewhat, but he was not having a good time either.

The sand carried by the winds inexplicably blowing through the chamber immediately found its way under the armors of both travelers, even before they were done climbing the first mound of sand between them and the exit.

Slowly but unrelentingly, they made their way up and finally reached the peak of the very first dune.

Emilia sighed at the sight of countless more to come, and peered into the distance, hoping to see the exit. The meager light of the false stars above them was nowhere near enough to see for sure, but the room was definitely far larger than the empty one they had crossed.

“The things we do for that girl…” She muttered and lazily rolled over the peak to begin the descend. “She’ll do the dishes on the road for the rest of our lives for this. King, make sure you get something out of this as well.”

Much to her delight, she found that the powdery sand allowed her to effortlessly slide all the way down to the base of the dune.

Even King, who was almost knee-deep in the sand at times, could use his shield to hasten his journey downwards.

They were able to mostly circumvent the second dune, but the third one continued far into the distance in both directions and had to be climbed over.

Slowly trudging upwards, with sand in her boots and under every other piece of armor, Emilia was almost glad she had Pyria’s disturbing songs to focus her mind on. Even if she disagreed with them on every possible level, they passed the time and distracted her from the miserable task she was undertaking.

By what was in reality only the fifth dune, she had already lost count on how many they had crossed, as it felt like it must have been dozens by then. She was also hoping that King was paying attention to the direction they were going in, because she sure wasn’t and the winds hid their tracks almost immediately after them.

Flopping over the top of the desert hill once more, the priestess was about to slide down the other side but had to stop almost immediately to not crash into what seemed like a pile of mechanical rubble at first sight.

Upon further inspection, the several meters tall pile consisted entirely of countless beetle-like simulacra, all in various states of disrepair.

Emilia picked up one of the more intact ones to get a better look. Each beetle was about the size of her head, though flat, and surprisingly light for their size the material they were built with. From the top, not much beyond the round, dome-shaped stone shell was visible. What seemed like their head was firmly attached to it and the small but sharp metal mandibles were the only real detail to be seen. In the middle of their shell, there was a strange raised plateau that seemed like something would be attached to, or the beetle itself could attach onto something by it. About a centimeter above their head was the round slot the priestess knew usually housed the core, but on every beetle she could see in the pile, the socket was empty and most of them had deep scratches around it, that almost looked like claw marks.

Flipping the beetle over revealed a relatively flimsy looking metal mechanism that was mostly made out of several pairs of legs, that each had a rather menacing sharp spike at the end. Though estimating the power of any given simulacrum was always hard, the spindly legs seemed hardly a threat to anyone with access to a wool coat, much less actual armor.

The sand had already begun to eat away at the exposed metal parts of the deactivated beetles, so they must have met their fates more than a couple of days ago, but it was hard to estimate exactly.

“What do you make of this?” Emilia asked and handed the beetle to King.

The knight ran his finger over the scratched surface around the vacant socket and glanced at the pile. He placed his fellow simulacrum gently on the ground, tossed down his luggage and immediately grasped his spear and shield, making the lights on them flare up as an obvious sign of preparation for battle.

“Outstanding.” Emilia sighed and followed his example, shedding most of the equipment she was carrying and slowly wrapping her fingers around the handle of her mace.

Almost like they had sprang a trap, it didn’t take long for the malignant presence of the corruption to grow in strength around them, all the way to the same level it had been near the gigantic simulacrum that had blocked their path underwater. But this time Emilia had nothing to fear, her will was steeled unlike before, and the fiend on her shoulder made the corruption almost appear pitiful in comparison. As far as solutions went, being possessed by something incredibly evil to ward off a weaker one was on the less ideal side, but it certainly worked.

“Scion of mine, a blessing to the knight valiant by your side would be pertinent.” Pyria suddenly commented and her power within Emilia surged.

“I don’t think he cares for your ‘blessings’, nor do I for that matter.” The priestess refused the idea. Letting Pyria get her claws on King seemed like it would be a mistake.

In a tone of what felt awfully like actual, real concern, the fiend responded. “Would you rather watch him fall to the corruption? His mind has no place for me, and I hold no power against him, but I can keep others away as well.”

Emilia glanced at King and thought she may have seen the lights on his armor wane for a second. Unsure whether it was real or her mind playing tricks on her, she felt like she was running out of time to make the decision.

Reluctantly, she reached under her cloak and pulled out a small glass vial that contained yellowish oil used to bless weapons in particular, but somehow felt like the most fitting for a simulacrum. “Sorry.” She uttered and smashed the vial against King’s chest, crushing it between the stone armor and her gauntlet.

What had been only barely colored oil spread out on the armor as pure crimson as Pyria’s powers tainted it. The priestess mumbled a prayer that should have been answered by a gentle blessing from the goddess of joy but received something entirely different.

“Cogs and servos, enchantments and alchemy, wound around an ancient mind. Clockwork turned by mortal sacrifice, unwilling and scared. Forged by despicable hands for foul deeds, immoral purpose carved in stone. Freed by his own hand, never to serve again. Yearning to find what was lost. To this end shall I aid you, and with me, bring the might of night eternal. Boon unraveled by the meeting of king and queen, but until then, rise, knight of torment!” Pyria declared through Emilia’s words.

Then the priestess lifted her hand, the crimson oil solidified as charred skin that welded itself into King’s armor, covering his core entirely.

The pair didn’t have time to be disgusted by the ‘blessing’ as the chittering sound of hundreds of small mechanical feet echoed from behind the next dune, ominously approaching as the corruption continued to grow stronger.

Rushing over the top of the mound of sand, an avalanche of dozens of the beetle-like simulacra crept towards the priestess and the knight, the patterns of light on their carapaces glowing sickly violet. Clearly under the thrall of whatever caused the corruption, the swarm didn’t seem to have an end to it at all, as more and more kept appearing from the sand.

Quietly nodding to each other King and Emilia dug their heels into the desert sand and faced their opponents.