Beneath the Church of Severin's black nave, the Chamber of Dark Meetings was set for ceremony. A long, coffin-dark table ran its length; candelabra wept green wax; the air smelled faintly of ash and winter pears. The winter pears were the Raven's doing. He peeled and chomped on them from the second floor balcony, leaning against a stone column as he listened to the hushed conversations beneath him.

Mother Inquisitor Selene Veyne of the Church sat at the head in robes that made her look like a night tide caught in silk. To her left, Host Isolde of the Symbiote Exorcists sat straight-backed and masked, her pale cloak a stark contrast to the Mother Inquisitor. To the right lounged Cassian Thornebed of House Thornebed, representative one of the Four Great Blood Barons—though representative implied a leash and Cassian never wore one.

While Mother Inquisitor and Host Isolde conversed, the man toyed with a small spider trotting across the back of his knuckles and smiled. The two women were midway through the statutory dance—levies on ether-barges, dispensations for new necropolises and a dispute over whether the northern aqueduct counted as sacred artery or taxable throat—when Cassian tired of the steps.

"... Enough of sums." He let the spider leap to his cuff and spread his hands with courtly boredom. "Boring is boring. A little spider tells me something interesting ran wild down in the southern ward a week ago. Supposedly, you could see that mess of a rampage even from all the way up here, so tell," his gaze drifted to Isolde, "have the Exorcists well and truly abandoned that swamp already?"

Isolde's mask didn't move, but her voice, when it came, was iron under gauze. "We have an Exorcist stationed in the south. The matter was handled."

Cassian laughed. "Handled like a wolf 'handles' a sheepfold—after it eats. The damages looked widespread. Why not send a few more? Surely you don't require all your pairs preening up here in our dear floating city when the rats below are busy being… rats."

Isolde's silence became its own reply.

Mother Inquisitor coughed into a pale fist, a genteel punctuation. "Regarding that rampage, I do have the man responsible for it here today, and he has been terribly patient." Then she turned her head, lifting her eyes to the shadowed balcony. "He is not here to talk about that incident, however. I believe he has something he would like to show all of us."

That was the Raven's cue to crack his neck until the vertebrae clicked into place. He put a boot on the balustrade and vaulted over, coat flowering, and he landed in the middle of their long table with a weightless sound.

Then he stepped off, bowed, and folded at the waist precisely as deep as courtesy demanded and no deeper.

Isolde's distaste was a temperature drop. Mother Inquisitor's lips tightened by a millimeter. Cassian, alone, grinned like he'd been expecting a magician and got something better inside.

"Well, well, well," Cassian drawled, his spider vanishing into his sleeve. "If it isn't the Myrmur Doctor. What brings you to us again?"

"I bring good news," the Raven said pleasantly. "I have made progress on my project, and I am here to update you. If Mother Inquisitor would."

Mother Inquisitor may be old, but to her credit, she rarely wasted breath. She reached beneath the table and pulled a lever long and thick, and the room immediately groaned. Gears woke in the bones of the place, teeth found teeth, and above the ceiling and below the floor, chains began their mile-long hymn.

The chamber trembled and began to descend, like the elevator it could also be used as.

The walls withdrew from stone to glass. The candles guttered but didn't die. They descended through a throat of black rock into a cavern so large the concept of ceiling disappeared, and outside the glass walls on all sides—where the darkness was thickest—there lay a mountain that breathed.

It was difficult to see. That was preferable. The Raven had learned in his youth that illumination made weak men sentimental, and sentiment spoiled experiments. But even in veiled silhouette, the bulk of the thing announced itself: a slumbering giant of muscle and chitin plates and stifled hunger, curled against the cavern floor like a titan sedated.

As Mother Inquisitor, Host Isolde, and Cassian stared out the glass wall and fixed their gazes upon the giant, the Raven lifted his hand at it.

"I have still been feeding it continuously," he said. "Bharncair has been kind to my work lately. In the past year, I have cultivated two Blight-Class Myrmurs in Wraithpier, three in Ironwych, and four in Bleakhearth. After they emerged from their Hosts, I retrieved them alive and fed them to it. Suffice it to say, it has grown by an estimated thirty-one percent since last winter."

Isolde's mask didn't move, and Mother Inquisitor's knuckles went winter-white on the lever, but Cassian rested his chin on one hand and smiled at the monster behind the glass as if admiring a painting.

"And Blightmarch?" Cassian said lazily.

"A regrettable interruption occurred. The Blight-Class I had been cultivating perished before I could extract it."

"Regrettable indeed." Cassian's eyes went back to the shadow outside. "And it is growing nicely. I remember when it was only half that size, all bones and dreams. That was… what? Three years ago? Four?"

"Three," the Raven said. "Three years more, and I estimate it will achieve at least twenty percent additional mass before encountering the limit of its biological design. Its chitin plates can expand no further than that."

Cassian's teeth showed. "Splendid. Measurements are the soul of truth. Yet tell me—" His gaze slid to Host Isolde. "At that size, could not the full force of Exorcists here in Vharnveil simply annihilate it? Two hundred pairs of Exorcists blasting a single giant with toxic blood is not something any Myrmur can just shrug off."

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Isolde inhaled to answer, but the Raven was already speaking. "No," he said plainly. "I would not bring you a giant that dies correctly. What I am cultivating are peculiarities. Designs, not accidents."

To prove his point, he reached into his cloak and withdrew a vial little bigger than a finger, stoppered in gold leaf. He held it up for all to see. Inside writhed a black bug, though its entire body was drenched in so much tar-black sludge that even he could barely see it.

As it banged its head into the glass over and over again, Cassian leaned in, delighted. Mother Inquisitor's eyes sharpened; she wore her suspicion like a shawl. Isolde didn't move at all.

"This little bug is a juvenile of the species you see sleeping outside," he explained. "The resemblance is imperfect—juveniles are allowed to be ugly—and you may be tempted to say it is only a bug. You may be tempted to say size does not equate to power, and I would agree with you, so let us see how she reacts to it. Mother Inquisitor, are we there yet?"

Right on cue, the elevator chamber came to a sudden halt, and they'd stopped in the middle of the giant cavern outside.

They'd also docked right next to a small, metal cage suspended by chains in the middle of the cavern.

As the glass wall slid apart, the Raven hopped off the table and stepped into the cage, every step sending echoes along the iron ribs that held it suspended. The lanterns inside the elevator behind him were the only things giving light, and even that seemed reluctant to follow him into the dark.

Ironic.

Once the light of the city, and now…

At the center of the cage hung the girl, suspended, smothered, and bound by a thousand chains. They wrapped her tight enough that not even a single fingertip could twitch, but still she swayed every so slightly, the chains creaking, as if the cage was just barely keeping her contained.

The Raven adjusted his gloves, then glanced around at the chamber.

"Assist me, Mother Inquisitor," he said. "I am going to remove the blindfold and gag. Prepare the veil."

Mother Inquisitor reached beneath her robes and produced a translucent headveil, crystalline and thin as glass, as she followed him into the cage.

Once he was certain she was ready, he flexed his back, unfurling his wasp wings so he could hover up to the girl's height.

One.

Two.

Three.

The thick metal blindfold scraped as he removed it. The gag followed. Immediately, the girl tried to speak—lips cracking, throat rasping with words that promised to be loud, dangerous, and inconvenient—but Mother Inquisitor immediately floated up alongside him with ghostly butterfly wings, throwing the crystalline veil over her head.

Her voice was silenced instantly. Her facial features dimmed, obscured, until only her eyes burned through the transparent film—and they swirled with a thousand iridescent fractures of light, like someone had shattered a rainbow and set the shards aflame inside her sockets.

Cassian whistled from far behind. "Creepy as ever," he murmured. "Rumors say if she gets even just a glimpse of you, she will see your entire life unravelled from start to finish. Is that true, Raven?"

"It is worse," he replied.

Both Host Isolde and Cassian leaned further away, but fortunately for them, the Raven was already holding up the glass vial in his hand—and all the girl could stare at was the black sludge screeching around inside.

Without warning, the girl started convulsing. Her chains clattered violently, the sound echoing across the cage as she screamed behind her veil.

"What have you done?" she screamed. "Destroy that thing! Destroy it! Do not feed it any further, Benedict! It is the devil in the flesh!"

The Raven smiled.

"I see the city drowned in marrow, the sun strangled by its shadow! Break it, Plagueplain Doctor! You traffic in damnation! Let it die unborn, or else—"

Mother Inquisitor pulled the veil off in one measured motion, and the Raven immediately pressed the blindfold and gag back into place. The girl's screams collapsed back into muffled thrashes and chain-clatter.

He turned smoothly, addressing Host Isolde, Cassian, and Mother Inquisitor as she returned to her seat by the table.

"... You heard her yourself. Even she cannot bear to gaze upon my Myrmurs without crumbling into visions, and that is the measure of their power," he said. "Baron Cassian, you may rest easy—my specially designed Murmurs are peculiar, potent, and more importantly, they are mine to command. That means they are yours to command in the future as well."

Cassian leaned back in his chair, lips curling wide. "Excellent. Keep your crucible burning, then. House Thornebed will continue sponsoring your research so long as such marvels keep writhing out of it."

Mother Inquisitor inclined her head in the pale glow, while Host Isolde's silence weighed heavier than any protest.

The Raven bowed at the waist, thanking all three of them for their time. "That concludes what I wished to demonstrate tonight. I will return once I have made more progress regarding my Myrmur's obedience to human orders, so might I request some time alone in this cage? I would like to gaze upon my giant a little longer."

For such a visceral reaction from the girl, Mother Inquisitor gave him the faintest nod before pulling the lever. Gears groaned, chains rattled, and he watched as the elevator chamber rose from the cavern.

Now he was left in almost perfect darkness, if not for the little lantern hanging on his hip.

The cage swayed, still groaning on its chains. Behind him the girl thrashed again, muffled wails clawing against the iron that bound her. He ignored her, though he supposed she'd be incredibly agitated for the next few weeks, unable to restrain herself.

His eyes, instead, sought the vast cavern beyond the bars.

The giant Myrmur slumbered still, its steady breaths like tides beneath a world of stone.

… What fools they all are.

He twirled the vial in his hand, where his little black bug slammed itself against the glass, still screeching, sludge dripping from its wings.

This tiny one is the real prize, but all they can think about is unleashing that giant Myrmur.

Why else would the Saintess Severin scream upon the sight of this little one, but not upon the giant one?

At this point, nothing and nobody would be able to stop him. For all the connections, backup plans, and Myrmurs he had in his back pocket, the only wild card remaining was the Exorcist Doctor and that 'symbiote elixir' he'd heard only the faintest rumors about.

Supposedly, it was an elixir that could kill a Myrmur without killing its Host. A potentially troublesome elixir that not even the Church knew about yet.

Perhaps he alone needed to take precautions against the boy, but, at the same time…

There is no way.

He stroked the vial with his thumb and let the thought amuse him.

How would the boy ever find his way up here?

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