My eyes opened reluctantly. I could feel my brain putting itself back together, mending, slowly. It was a start, but I could still feel the places that knowledge had been branded onto my flesh. My senses felt off. The light in here smelled too much like loss.

True wakefulness took longer. By the time I had the capacity to wonder where I was, I had finally managed to pry my eyes open enough to find out. I was in a square room, small and bare, with walls made of cut stone. A metal door with a barred window was the only way outside. When I moved my head, I heard rattling, and when I looked down, I could see shackles clamped around my wrists and throat, chaining me to the wall just behind me.

I saw light flickering through the window, orange like torchlight, but it was otherwise dark in what must have been a dungeon. I couldn't tell whether the moving shadows that slipped past the bars were signs of distant motion, or just my imagination. Even apart from what that vision had done to my head, I did not feel good. I was parched, and weak, and exhausted in every muscle I had. A quick inspection of myself didn't reveal any visible injuries, so at least they hadn't tortured me while I was unconscious.

I heard footsteps approaching, and decided to test the shackles later. I scooted against the wall, sitting still and staring at the door. I tried to reach out in my mind for Grace, but unnervingly, that presence I had always felt brushing up against my mind since the ritual was gone. Not gone, actually, more…fuzzy, indistinct, like I was seeing it from behind frost-covered glass. I couldn't hear her, and I had the sense she couldn't hear me. I had to hope it was a temporary effect from the vision.

The door suddenly slammed open. Archvicar Paul Barbosa stood behind it, only well-restrained annoyance on his face despite the state of the door as he glided in. A man in a wide-brimmed red hat and white robes entered behind him, while a deacon shut the door and stood outside in the hallway. Even though Barbosa clearly demanded my attention, I couldn't help myself from staring at his aide. There was something familiar about his outfit, about the runic symbols that lined his stole and the shape carved into the second pendant that hung beside the luminary cross on his neck. My mind was open now. When I saw the symbol, I knew its meaning this time, as though that lantern-bearer had whispered it in my ear:

P U R G E

"I had expected that you may attempt infiltration, dragon, but never would have considered that you would undertake an action so foul as to plunge yourself into the Mare Nocturn," said Barbosa, his words dripping with venom. The anger that was concealed in his face leached into his voice. "Tell me, did you make that choice out of fear? Desperation? Or sheer foolishness?"

I growled. I couldn't find my voice, not that I was especially interested in answering his barbs anyway.

"Tch," Barbosa sneered. "Pitiful. Perhaps you were reduced to a base beast by its sheer power. The state of mad convulsion my good hunters fond you in would suggest that your mind was shattered. I was hoping that you would be able to at least give us some insight, but if there is nothing to be learned from your mind, then we will need to resort to learning from your body." He snapped his fingers and turned to the man with the pendant. "Julian, prepare a vivisection at once."

"No!" I shouted, instinct reminding me how to talk. "I can speak. Your question was just stupid."

Barbosa raised an eyebrow. "Good. Then do so. How was that question 'stupid'? What could possibly possess a right-minded person to plunge into that shadowed lake?"

"Not knowing what it is?" I said. My words now were fuelled by spite. I didn't have a way out of these chains, but whatever they were planning on doing with me, I planned on being as difficult as possible. "Why would I? It's just water."

Barbosa frowned. "Just…water?" I could hear seething beneath the surface. "No. It is anything but 'just water'. It holds the essence of a god. Now tell me, what is it that you saw?"

I shrugged. "Nothing."

"You lie."

"Why would I lie right now?" I said. I gave him a dead-eyed stare. "I mean, you're the one with the stick here, so to speak, right?"

Barbosa's hands dropped to his side. His fingers hooked in irritation. "I am," he said. "Which is why you must be honest. I am a patient and gracious man, but many things occupy my time since my enthronement. You will answer. I will not be slow to resort to punishment."

It was my turn to sneer. Despite his threat, I had the power here. If he killed me, he lost whatever I knew, and leaving me alive would give the others time to find me. I just had to outlast him. "I can't be any more honest with you," I said. "There wasn't anything under the water."

Barbosa sighed, like he was disappointed. He knocked twice on the door, and the deacon briefly opened it to pass him a thin, circular object concealed under a thick grey cloth, as well as a small glass bottle, before locking the door again.

"Saint Barbosa," said the other man, "this is dangerous territory."

"It is leverage, Julian," said the vicar. "Now. Let us use it."

He flipped the object beneath the cloth upright so that the flat side faced me, and tore away the cloth. Beneath was a metal disk bearing another carving, and like before, I recognised it immediately. The same one that had flanked the "great mind" carving under the well in the windmill village. It meant:

I M P U R I T Y

My mind buzzed when I looked at it, but nothing else seemed to happen immediately. I shook my head, and decided to double down on being an annoyance. "I think your leverage needs work," I muttered with a smug smirk towards Barbosa.

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He sighed once again. "I suppose it would take more effort to dredge up the beast within something that had already succumbed to it," he said. "But no matter. We are prepared for this."

He opened the bottle, pouring the contents out over the metal disk, which caught in the engraved lines of the carving. He flicked his thumb against his finger to spark a tiny flame in his hand, and, being careful not to view the symbol himself, held it down to ignite the carving in purplish fire.

I should have turned away, but its previous inability to harm me had made me careless. As soon as it caught fire, I slammed myself backward against the wall, screaming. I felt like my head had been split open with an axe, like something important in the middle of my brain had been snapped simply by viewing the rune. A voice I hadn't heard in a while sprang to take the wheel of my mind in my disorientation. This man, this thing in front of me. It had hurt me. I needed to hurt it back. I needed to kill it, I needed to feel its blood on my claws, I needed to taste its blood, I needed to feel the warmth as I slashed its throat open and tore its friend in half. I needed to hurt, and hurt, and hurt, and kill, and kill, and KILL.

I lunged forward, but metal held me back. I strained against the chains, snarling and roaring in impotent rage as I thrashed against my bindings again and again, desperately trying to wrench free from the wall to slake my thirst. The one who didn't hold the disk seemed unnerved by my rage, and I relished its look of terror as the only sustenance I could find, bound as I was. I heard a loud pop, and it reminded me of how good it would feel to tear its head from its neck.

The man with the disk swiped his hand over the fire, dousing it, and then—

I was back. I fell to the ground, no longer straining against the chains, but still panting from the effort. My already exhausted muscles couldn't find the strength to hold me up. I squeezed my eyes shut, for fear of seeing the burning rune again. It was back, too. Whatever the carving had broken, it had been binding the Fiend's thoughts from reaching me. Now I heard them clear as day again, perhaps even louder than before. It demanded that I get revenge for what the vicar just did to me. But I couldn't. I was too tired, and far, far too frightened.

"Have I made the point clear enough?" said the vicar. "Whatever blessing gives you the gift of intellect and speech can be undone as easily as I will it. That you recover so quickly is a marvel, yet it serves only to harm your case. If you can return to your senses that easily, then I can enact this punishment as often as I wish without destroying your ability to give me what I want. Do you understand? You will answer me, or you will be trapped within your own body as well as within this cell."

I tried to answer, but all that came out was a growl. The spike of fear that I might have lost my speech forever spurred me to notice the change in my body. I was larger. My wings were back, and my mane was gone. The carving had forced me back into my full dragon form, somehow, alongside releasing the Fiend.

My head felt sick, but I found it in me to try and answer him still, if only to prevent that torture from happening again. The air felt thick, like it was full of static and interference as I sent my thoughts out from my head.

«I didn't see anything that you'll be happy to hear,» I said, now fully telling the truth. «There was…a star over a misty lake. Bright and golden, until some people stabbed their reflections, and it…impaled a bunch of dragons under the water, and then turned into a moon, red as blood.»

I felt silly now, saying all this out loud. It sounded more like the delirious ramblings of a madman than anything coherent, but Barbosa nodded along with my words like they meant anything. Not that I placed a lot of trust in him, but if he understood what I had seen, it must have at least had some importance.

«And then there was a figure holding a lantern, who saved me from the moon.» Barbosa leaned closer, his anger disappearing and replaced with pure interest. «They showed me things. A bunch of people pouring their blood into a lake and then turning into monsters, which they called "rage". Then someone finding the lake after it sank below ground and drinking the water. They turned into a monster, too. They called that "greed". And then…you.»

Barbosa jerked back. "Me?"

«You, and your people,» I continued. I wondered momentarily about making up some lie that he would find more flattering, but I couldn't even think of one if I wanted to. «You captured that monster, and then talked about the lake before leaving. The person with the lantern called that "pride".»

Barbosa's shock turned back into taciturn calm, and he nodded. "I see. Is that all?"

I stopped before mentioning the part about the stone and "harmony". He just gave me an out to not tell him everything. «It is,» I lied. «Doesn't that bother you? I don't know who the lantern person was, but they called you prideful. I thought you'd be angry.»

"Why should I be?" said Barbosa. "What shame is there in just pride?"

I blinked, genuinely dumbfounded at the audacity he had to say that. «What? What do you mean "just pride"?»

Barbosa shook his head, disappointment in his eyes. "I thought you would have been a more skilled interpreter. Yet it seems I must inform you of what you have seen but failed to understand." He raised his arms as though in exultation. "The blood moon…the Lantern-Light of Saint Cèlis has smiled upon me alone. She has crafted my life so that I may open the way for others to hear her glorious song, which echoes through all creation."

He chuckled darkly. "To take in one's position, to have pride in the right gifted to you by the divine…that is no sin. To acknowledge the will of our gods pleases them. To proclaim the bounty of their blessings exalts them. Only those who cling to false pretenses and the words of illusory prophets ought to fear a fall from pride. With my mouth, I declare that the holy Lantern-Light, in all her glory and splendour, has granted me the right of rulership. Of prophethood."

His words were steady and measured, but the look in his eye and the tilt of his smile were manic. Off. I could practically feel the fervour with which he truly believed himself radiating from him. I'd wondered before how much he had fallen for his own message, and how much he was just preaching to manipulate Yorving. Clearly, though, he was steeped in delusion from the start.

"As for you, false dragon," he continued, lowering his arms. "There is no need to fear any longer. Our day of sacrifice approaches, and your blood will surely be most useful in contacting the rosy moon. Rejoice, for though you have lived your days in squalour and committed great blasphemies in your blindness, in death you will burn bright, as a celestial pyre that shall guide your fellows to salvation."

«Don't you preach to me,» I snarled. «I don't know who it really is you're reaching out to, but I know they won't answer the likes of you. And I'll never help you do that, not while I'm still breathing.»

"Your compliance is irrelevant," said Barbosa. "For to die is your destiny. Do be cooperative in the meantime, and allow us to learn something about the impurity you embody before we are rid of you." He beckoned the robed man and stepped backward to the door. "Come, Julian. We have learned all we can. The alchemists must now do their work."

He tossed the plate with the carving, letting it clatter to the ground a few feet away from me, just out of reach with the chains holding me back, before exiting the room with the priest. The deacon went with them, and in the silence that followed I could hear my thoughts—and those of the Fiend—louder than ever before. I tried to reach for Grace again to give me some form of support. But while my broken mind had been pulled back together enough that I felt her again, there was now a barrier. A wall of noise and harsh edges that had sprung up from the Fiend, keeping her away from me. I was alone.

I felt like laying down and crying, if only dragons could. Instead, I closed my eyes, taking a moment to let my emotions run free in my mind, while I watched them dance with the thoughts of the Fiend like a distant storm cloud.

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