Flutic lay before Harald, under siege, mostly dark, but spread out like a vast tapestry of blocks and the occasional glimmering scale-light. Above, the moon sailed free of ragged wisps of cloud to bathe the great mountainside of the cathedral rooftop in silver, showing dark rents where the demonic battle had torn through tiles and rafters. Sythraxa’s corpse lay alongside him, shrunken now to her normal form, black ichor draining from the neck stump to paint the tiles with an oily sheen.

  Harald pursed his lips as he considered the crown in his hands. It had to be cursed. Yet it also had to possess terrible power if Sythraxa had been willing to abandon her Handmaidens so as to safeguard it. Eclavistra’s ploy in Flutic had revolved around this Artifact. Yet for a terrifying moment there, Harald’s own demonic essence had responded to Sythraxa’s command, and thus, through the Handmaiden, to Eclavistra herself.

  Did he dare toy with this Artifact? Wouldn’t it be wiser to hand it over to the dwarves, to allow Forge Father Thangrim to dispose of it?

  The crown gleamed with a liquid sheen as he turned it about, the black opals like abyssal eyes.

  Wisdom bade him hand it over.

  Hunger urged him to simply take a look. A description couldn’t harm him. And he should know what the crown was capable of before turning it over to the dwarves, shouldn’t he?

  Harald laughed. For a moment his sense of self buckled, and then he exhaled sharply and put the heel of his palm to his brow. He felt giddy, feverish, unnerved. The Demoniac Body had been a radical departure from his sense of self. It had shaken him more than he’d realized. For a brief while he’d felt unstoppable, had been thrown bodily into massive stone blocks and it had been the wall that had crumpled.

  Not him.

  He sat up, rubbed at his face, and with the Aureate Master still amplifying his Ego, brought his reeling sense of identity under control.

  He was fine. He had this.

  So he reached out to Eclavistra’s crown, and summoned its description.

  THE CROWN OF THE ETERNAL COURT

  Quality: Legendary

  Special Ability: Investiture of the Court

  Activation: While worn, any person of consequence who yields to the bearer's sovereign authority—through oath, submission, or capitulation—is bound as Courtier, and falls under the sway of the monarch. The more Courtiers bound, the brighter the bearer’s Thrones burn. Passive siphon of Courtier vitality proportional to depth of submission. Court synergy scales with Courtier count.

  +1 Presence per Courtier

  Limitation: The crown demands tribute proportional to the bearer's power. If the Court is insufficient, the crown feeds on the bearer—consuming levels, powers, and progression at an accelerating rate until equilibrium is reached or the bearer is emptied, and the Crown becomes an Endowment.

  Harald reread the description several times, then lead back onto the broken tiles. He felt… disappointed. A Twilight Crown knock-off in truth. A means to bind the Houses to Vic, and thus gain control over the political situation.

  Strange. Harald had assumed Eclavistra was after something more. What could gaining a handful of mortal thralls in Flutic do for her position in the Celestial War? It wasn’t as if Silenthros or Vorakhar or any of the other major demons cared for humanity as anything but a potential source of demon-kin.

  A presence manifested just behind him, and Harald spun to see Exeros padding silently down the tiles to where he sat sunken in this tiled pit. The moonlight gilded the angel’s wix wings, which splayed out like static plummage, but cast his face in shadow, so that their piercing stare seemed to emante from dark hollows. Gaunt, horribly child-like, wearing a threadbare rags of indeterminate dark color and with a weathered walking stick in hand, the white-haired Seraph stopped by Harald’s side and stared morosely down at the Crown.

  Exeros extended his scarred and filthy hand. “May I?”

  Huh. Harald couldn’t think of any reason not to, so he handed the black crown up.

  The child frowned at the Artifact. Turned it back and forth, his brow furrowed, and then snorted in amusement. “Typical.”

  “How so?”

  Exeros trained his gaze on Harald once more, and it felt like being scrutinized by a war-torn battlefield. “Demons always obscure the most important aspects of their Artifacts. This drips with Eclavistra’s dreams and hopes. It’s a lure. A gob of honey in the center of her wished for web.”

  Harald shifted, interested once more, and pleasantly surprised that the Seraph was willing to converse. “That’s what I don’t understand. Why does she want mortal influence?”

  “She doesn’t.” Exeros raised the Crown. “Observe.” And he exhaled, his breath suddenly ghostly as if the temperature had plummeted to freezing. The cloud of his breath glowed slightly, and where it passed over the crown, it caused a four strands to appear, each emanating from an opal and extending out into the night before disappearing.

  “Whoa,” said Harald. “What are those?”

  “Conduits. The crown is Eclavistra’s creation. She is a creature of seduction, beauty, and cruelty. Of sovereignty through consumption. She rules by making others part of her, so that they can’t distinguish between their own interests and her own.”

  “Sure,” said Harald. “It’s how she’s manipulated Vic.”

  Exeros plucked at a strand that was already fading. It vibrated, and Harald felt the sound in his bones and teeth more than with his ears. “More. This allows the bearer to create a web of souls bound to the bearer. Bound willingly or not. The bearer gains real power. Enhanced Thrones, supernatural authority, the capacity to project sovereign will over Flutic. And each Courtier would in turn be fed by their own subjects. The threads would extend throughout the city, creating a great web connecting every will to the crown.”

  “Oh,” said Harald. “So Vic would have ruled over every member of each House, not just their heads?”

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  “Vic would have ruled in name only.” Exeros turned the crown about, his disdain for the Artifact obvious. “These threads carry the Court’s power back to Eclavistra. In time, it would infect every organization, every person of consequence in the city, creating a living lattice of souls. And all that power would flow into the demon queen. And these threads…” Again he plucked a nearly invisible one. “Function both ways. She could send power to any subject, possibly take over their minds and bodies, or simply peer out through their eyes. In time, Flutic would have become an extension of herself. But mostly it would have become a tremendous source of power.”

  “Damn,” whispered Harald. “That’s… you’ve got to give it to her. That’s insidious.”

  “In theory.” Exeros tossed the crown up and caught it carelessly, as if it were a child’s hoop. “Her tools were weak and insufficient to the design. Now the crown lies in your power. What will you do with it?”

  “What else does it say? That Limitation—the crown can become an Endowment? I’ve never heard of that before.”

  “Hmm.” Exeros focused on the Artifact once more. “To make this Artifact, she had to imbue it with tremendous hunger. Enough to devour an entire metropolis. If the bearer refuses to create a Court, then the hunger must still feed. But…” Exeros’s eyes abruptly began to glow. From dull brown they incandesced and grew so bright that Harald hissed and turned away sharply, the burning orbs leaving searing afterimages in his sight. Blinking, he glanced back through his upraised hand, but the Seraph’s eyes were already dimming.

  “Curious.” The Seraph turned the Crown about once more. “Each depth opens to yet another. This is cunningly wrought. But Eclavistra didn’t anticipate it being examined by one such as myself. The stronger the bearer, the greater the Crown’s hunger, and the larger the Court must be to satisfy it. If you refuse the Crown its court, it feeds on the bearer, yes—but the Crown is the absorbed into the bearer’s Cosmos, where it becomes a Throne fed by Eclavistra’s own power. A weakness in its design. The two-way nature of the conduit can be turned against her.”

  Harald’s eyes widened. “The Crown would feed from her? So if I absorbed it, I’d gain a new Throne and weaken her at the same time?”

  Exeros tongued the inside of his cheek as he considered. “You would be greatly reduced. The Crown would consume your levels, your stats, your powers. Who knows how weak it would leave you.”

  “But it wouldn’t drain my Thrones?”

  “I… don’t think so.”

  “So I’d have five Thrones. With the possibility of one day having… eight?” The very notion felt heretical, went against every teaching of the Mother Church.

  Exeros’ smile was contemptuous. “You humans. You are weather vanes set before a storm whose winds only blow toward power.”

  “With five Thrones and my new understanding of my class, I wouldn’t be at a disadvantage for long.” Harald stared out at nothing. “I’d have to work hard—and fast—but I could recoup lost ground quickly. And then, when I return to Level 10, I’d be…”

  “You would possibly be her plaything,” said Exeros. “Eclavistra created this Artifact. I am no stranger to demonic toys. This stinks of an ambush. Yes, the details were hidden. But the Investiture Without Court—the act of taking the Crown as an endowment—is too neatly designed. The conduit goes both ways, which means that while you would gain a Throne from her, there is no telling what she would gain from you.”

  “Right, right.” Harald bit his lower lip and nodded distractedly. “More demon influence. Though I’ve already got the one Demon Seed. Can a mortal carry two?”

  “No.” Exeros’ amusement was bleak. “The greater of the two Seeds consumes the other.”

  “And Vorakhra is definitely more powerful than Eclavistra. Huh.”

  “Here.” Exeros tossed the Crown into Harald’s lap. “Try it.”

  “Try it?” Harald took up the Artifact gingerly. “You want me to…?”

  The Seraph smiled, revealing perfect white teeth. “You are so close to the edge. A little more demonic influence is all it should take to have you cross my red line, and then I can destroy you and be done with this charade.”

  “Oh!” Harald grinned back at the Seraph. “I see. Got it. So you won’t stop me. That was my last concern.”

  Exeros raised a pale brow. “You will Invest Without Court?”

  “I…” Harald considered the crown again. Thought of his being forced to kneel before Sythraxa. She’d found purchase over his demonic essence because he’d been suffused in power stolen from the Handmaidens. Once he burned that off, he’d be free of Eclavistra’s direct influence. Then again, the demon queen might not need it if he carried her Throne within his soul.

  Harald closed his eyes.

  Sam wouldn’t want him to absorb the Crown. But Sam wanted him to remain whole, healthy, himself. Whereas he wanted to win the Celestial War.

  Why?

  For a moment he couldn’t think of the answer. He felt the cold wind whip about him, and it felt like he’d asked the question of the abyss itself.

  He needed power. He needed to help the angels. He had to defend the Fallen Angel and Flutic from the demons.

  Because…?

  Then a memory returned to him.

  Young Harald, arm in a cast, reading about Gustav the Just. His wan mother sitting next to him on the swing bench in Darrowdelve Manor’s garden. Her fond, amused look, and how bright and fierce he’d felt, how righteous and brave as she teased him about wanting to be great.

  His words came back to him, and for some reason they brought tears to his eyes: I want to be stronger than Gustav. Stronger even than the Queencutter. I want to be so strong that one day, if the world needs it, I’ll be there, ready to save it. I’ll… I’ll say, ‘It’s all right. Don’t worry. I’m here.’ And then I’ll… I’ll do whatever I need to do to protect everyone.

  “Whatever I need to do,” he whispered, the memory of his mother, long dead, brought an old dull pain back into his heart, and he felt his throat close up. He bowed his head, old grief fighting through his hardened soul like spring shoots through hoarfrost, and felt again the rightness of his creed, his mission, the course of his life.

  Harald inhaled deeply. “I—”

  But when he looked back up, Exeros was gone, reverted to his burning mote that had floated away as if disinterested.

  No matter.

  Harald considered the crown.

  It could be his damnation.

  But then again, he was already damned.

  It could be the source of far greater power. A whole new Throne. A means to weaken Eclavistra. A means that harmonized with his own inherent nature, with his class: Insatioable Void.

  Bemused, he summoned its description once more.

  Insatiable Void: You are the aching heart of ambition, the howling hunger that yearns to consume the world. A child of darkness, you will always seek the light, but will destroy all that you pursue.

  Harald smiled. “Too apt.” And it was. The Crown was potential. And he needed all the power in the Fallen Angel if he was to contest the demons on their own turf. As it was, he’d already proved himself a mortal prodigy. He’d bested Thracos, had fought Sythraxa and torn off her head. Alabenthos thought him worthy of being wielded as a tool.

  But.

  It wasn’t enough. He was walking the same path countless demon and angel-kin had before him. Talented, bright, focused, talented people who’d sought to make a difference.

  And had the Celestial War changed because of their efforts, their sacrifices? No. Even his father, the infamous Darius Darrowdelve, had apparently bent knee to Vorakhar and become just another tool in the war.

  A war that the angels were losing.

  Harald could see it now. He’d continue to rise in Levels, continue to gather Artifacts and Servitors, and become a—what? Lieutenant to the angels? Another Seraphina in their war?

  It wasn’t enough.

  He needed to be more.

  He needed to be of consequence.

  He needed to change the very nature of the war’s calculus.

  He could never be content with just rising a few more levels. The depths of power he’d glimpsed were staggering.

  And time was running out.

  Harald ran his fingers over the crown. What use his sacrifices if he remained an unremarkable prodigy in a line of invested humans who used their blood and sweat to lubricate the wheels of war? Would anyone even remember his contributions in a dozen years?

  No.

  If he wanted to make a categorical difference, then he needed to take risks nobody else would countenance. He needed to give himself the chance of breaking through all the limits.

  Harald pursed his lips and gazed wistfully out over the city. His fate wasn’t to be at peace and to live like others. Not if he wanted to be their bulwark against the dark. And he didn’t need anyone else to understand. Sam, Nessa, Kársek—he didn’t need them to understand him.

  They just needed to accept that he made these decisions for them.

  Harald sighed.

  How ironic, that after reaching the latest pinnacle of power—the Demoniac Body—he felt his weakest?

  After all, hadn’t his father gained the very same power some fifteen, twenty years ago? And how had that changed anything?

  No.

  This peak was false. There were always greater heights to reach, but he was doomed to always be struggling in the foothills while the demons and angels fought upon the peaks.

  If he wanted to make a difference, then he could no longer climb toward the heights on foot.

  He had to fly.

  Harald blew out his cheeks. “All right, Eclavistra. If this is your ploy, I’m in. Let’s see who comes out on top.”

  Harald released his connection to the Aetherlight Circlet and absorbed the Crown of the Eternal Court.