The great gates of Nerim, capital of the Shumad Empire, remained stubbornly closed. They’d been that way for a week now, and Six Wicked Strings had spent many hours contemplating the reliefs carved into their massive façades. How many artisans had it taken to create them? How many painstaking days spent bent over hammer and chisel to perfect the curve of this princeling’s cheek or capture the detail in the royal sword’s hilt? He plucked a little tune on his sitar and hummed a melody. 

“I’d like to get from ‘carven’ to ‘craven,’ in the verse,” Six said to his guest, “but I can’t quite work out the wordplay.”

To her credit, the Shumadi envoy kept her expression neutral. “I’m no poet, sadly.”

They sat beneath a silken canopy as the afternoon waned, sipping wine and nibbling delicate pastries provided by chefs both mortal and demonic. Six noted how nimbly she avoided the more... creative dishes without actually recoiling from them. It might have been any genteel diplomatic visit, were they not positioned at the head of a hellish army poised to storm those magnificent gates.

Not long now, thought Six, though he maintained his unhurried manner. “Anyone can be a poet. Close your eyes. Tell me what you sense around you.”

Her lips twitched as she complied. Was it a smile or a grimace? Six didn’t know. “Your bangles jangle when you lift your glass. I hear soldiers moving, demons and men alike. The setting sun is warm on my face, and when the breeze comes, the smell of the sea offers reprieve from that of sweat and horseflesh and… ichor.”

“See? You could make something from that.” Six glanced toward the gates and strummed as he recited:

The envoy frowned as a thrill ran through the troops. She opened her eyes. Six, standing now, helped her to her feet and turned her gently toward Nerim. He felt the gasp leave her, though the cheering army drowned out the sound.

Dark patches appeared at the tops of the walls, oozing down and eating away at the stone. Other rifts appeared like blooms of rot as the metodies dissolved the walls from the inside.

“Run,” said Six to the envoy. “I don’t care which way.”

The army surged toward the gates, Six leading the charge. Shumadi troops attempted to defend the breaches, but for every gap they filled with archers, another metody’s acid ate through somewhere else. Six set his sights on the gatehouse. Cracks spidered out from his every step as he charged. 

Some large fool planted himself in Six’s path. The soldier’s teeth flew as Six’s blow landed, but he’d have no time to miss them. Six barely broke stride as the man fell, stooping only to heft him by the ankles and swing him into the gatehouse’s foundation. Wood and stone groaned as the wall buckled. Above, Shumadi defenders screamed. Six cast the soldier’s corpse aside and set about tearing down the gatehouse stone by stone.

A month ago, Nehramus Cast-Down-the-Heavens slipped into the palace district’s prison, where the emperor and his allies sent those who spoke against them. Here, too, were petty thieves whose spoils were nowhere near as lucrative as the ill-gotten gains of the royal family. Nehramus spent the morning in the kitchens, helping to prepare the prisoners’ meager bread and broth. She carried food to their cells, and whispered intently to their inhabitants. When she left, they stood a little straighter. The guards did not notice how their charges now clenched their fists in determination.

Three weeks ago, Nehramus wandered the wharf district, where laborers gathered after long days at work. She drank among them, listened to the complaints they issued in hushed, furious tones when they thought no one else could hear. Sometimes she joined their tables. Sometimes, she spoke from the shadows while individuals trudged home. To all, she spoke of revolution.

Two weeks ago, Nehramus stood among the cultists of Isay Fallenbough. They were squeezed shoulder to shoulder in a cramped basement, eager to hear the goddess’s priests speak of relief from strife and the coming end of days. When the time came and the crowd settled, it was Nehramus who addressed them. She’d never met Isay, but the cultists heard the goddess’s voice ringing from Nehramus’ lips, and when she left, they were alight with holy purpose.

One week ago, Nehramus spent her days and nights among the slaves. She pushed millstones alongside them, scrubbed floors with them in royal palaces, mucked out stalls with them in the stables, and always, always spoke of what was to come.

Last night, the demons did her bidding. Metodies dripped acid into prison locks. Firmin slipped extruded needles to laborers and slaves. Frog-tongued jucati sent the downtrodden dreams of a bloody sunset.

Today, anticipation filled the air, though the royals paid it no notice — they were too focused on the danger outside the walls. But now, oh, now, as Six Wicked Strings led his army past the gates, the danger from within made itself known. Nehramus smiled from her vantage atop a tower, listening to the cries of horror spread throughout Nerim as prisoners broke free and slaves strangled their masters. 

The council room — not a room at all, but a grand hall whose soaring ceiling was painted like the summer sky — echoed with the overlapping chatter from Shumad’s royal advisors. The king sat at the head of the room, projecting an air of calm amid the storm of his panicking councilors. 

Each advisor’s proposal was met with a wave of argument: logistical hurdles, lack of personnel, an attack plan based on streets the enemy had already claimed. The advisors were all some cousin or another, and King Sulaq needed to weigh how their plans might position them after this rebellion was over, should he choose their particular path. Every few minutes, the gilded doors opened and a runner entered bearing news of the fighting outside. It caused a small break in the din, for which the placid king was thankful.

This time, though, the woman who strode into the council room was no beleaguered page. Her arrival was accompanied by the moans of guards dying outside, and a sharp scream that dwindled to a final, wet gurgle. Demons flowed in on her heels, sealing the doors. A pair of blood apes stood at attention in a mockery of the guards they’d just murdered.

“I know you,” said the king. That troubled him more than the demons at the doors. The last he’d seen her, she’d been wearing the robes of a royal clerk with her eyes downcast. Now, Ajad wore robes of the finest hellsilk. Her dark gaze pinned him to his seat.

“Traitor,” he whispered. “Saboteur.”

As though those words could cut her anymore. “You’re the true saboteur. You and your council.” Her gesture encompassed the herd of advisors, their assistants, the pages at the ready. “How many dozens gathered, when at most you’ll heed the words of, what, three? You waste time coddling your cousins and courting their favor. You’ve surrounded yourself with sycophants.” She stepped toward the tables laden with sumptuous dishes and wines better suited to a royal gala than a war council. “Every misery that befalls this city stems from your wastefulness and inefficiency. Perhaps you’d have had a chance, were you a better ruler. There’s no safety here — climb to the roof and look out on your city’s shattered walls. You’ve built an empire on excess, and forgot that it only stands because the people you rule allow it.”

The room shook as something massive collapsed nearby. Ajad smiled as a thrill of panic passed through the councilors.

“I’ll allow it no more. We’ll build something better in its place. Perhaps I’ll let you live to see it.” This was a lie. The king would be lucky if he survived the night.

He seemed to think he would. “This city isn’t the entirety of my empire. I’ve called in the armada, and soon the ships will arrive, with thousands of reinforcements. They don’t fear you, or your demons, or anything your army can throw at them.”

Ajad plucked an abandoned glass of wine from a table and drank. “I suppose we’ll see about that.”

Behind the Sunrise Pandemonium, the wreckage of Shumad’s fleet littered the harbor. Sails burned against the darkening sky; the reflection of flames on the water lit the way for the occasional sailor swimming toward the shattered docks. Marvelous Cinnabar had given no orders to pursue them — they’d die soon enough to Six’s army or Nehramus’s revolutionaries.

But victory wasn’t yet theirs. A dark line had appeared on the horizon, growing and spreading until it blotted out the last of the setting sun: reinforcements. Cinnabar himself had led the attack on the flagship and been at the head of the boarding party. For a moment, the ships that had come to Shumad’s rescue were limned in gold. Cinnabar and the captain were shadows locked in battle at the helm.

Cinnabar was losing. 

“Ah,” said Lintha Haquen Atash, lowering the spyglass. “That’s bad.” Atash had only been with the crew a few weeks, long enough to prove himself in raids, though today had marked his first large battle. Cinnabar had ordered him to remain on the Pandemonium to get patched up. Atash had taken a nasty slash to his side — he looked forward to the eventual scar — but he wasn’t done fighting. “We should ready a crew to help.”

Kiera the Scourge laughed and slapped his back, eliciting a grunt from the youth. “Don’t piss your fancy new britches,” she said. She tugged the tail of the bright blue sash he’d tied on as a belt. “Not unless the rest of us look scared.”

“Soon it’ll be too late!” Atash started toward the boats, but Kiera caught his arm.

“Wait,” she said. “Watch.”

Aboard the enemy flagship, Marvellous Cinnabar was, indeed, losing the fight. Badly.

The ship’s captain — a Dragon-Blooded veteran of dozens of naval campaigns, slayer of sea-monsters and Lintha pirates — hefted his daiklave for another swing. He’d been on the offensive from the moment Cinnabar had vaulted over the rails, separating the Nadir from his pirates and driving him toward the helm. Cinnabar’s long-tailed coat hung in tatters, its fabric heavy with blood. The unlit cigarette dangling stubbornly from his lips was crimson-stained. His right eye was swollen shut.

Still, he smiled as he backed into the railing, grinned as the black jade blade opened a gash in his chest. He laughed as the force of the blow broke the rail behind him and sent him tumbling overboard. He was still laughing as the sea swallowed him up.

For a moment, all was quiet. Then the water’s surface roiled and foamed, setting the flagship rocking as though they were in the midst of a storm.

A hulking figure rose from beneath the waves, towering higher than the ship’s main mast. Muscles bulged on its half-dozen arms. Jewels studded its leathery skin. The creature — Cinnabar — turned back to face the Pandemonium’s distant crew and let forth a roar from its jagged-toothed maw. The crew’s roar echoed back carrying over the waves. 

Knowing this signaled his end, the Dragon-Blooded captain set his jaw and readied his blade. The sea-devil turned its attention back to the now-doomed fleet and roared once more. 

The demons cavorted down the halls of the palace’s east wing, stepping gracefully on spindly, many-jointed legs. Swift Hart Qu followed behind at a dignified pace. He was giving them a chance to enter the royals’ suites and disgorge their sleeping gas before he followed them inside. He wasn’t susceptible to the gas anymore, but he didn’t care for its cloying scent, like the choking plague-pollen that filled the air when Hegra’s storms whipped through the brass forest of Hrotsvitha. That, and he wanted to be sure it had time to work thoroughly.

One room to the next: follow the demons, wait at the door, step inside, cut the sleeping royals’ throats, repeat. Tomorrow, his hand would ache from so many slashes of his knife.

As they waited at the threshold of the next chamber, Qu sighed. “I suppose it’s for the best, but Six owes me dearly for this.”

His companion — a wasp-headed demon — buzzed its question.

“He’d enjoy this immensely. He’d make too much of a game of it, or he’d make so much noise composing lyrics that half of them would know something was amiss and we’d spend the night chasing down those who fled… I have no love for any of them, but his way would be so inefficient. We have too much work to do for him to waste time like that. Do you know how sprawling the Shumadi royal line is?”

The demon shook its head.

“It’s not a family tree, it’s a forest.” Ajad had tried explaining the line of succession to Qu once. He was no dullard in such matters, but even he left that session with no clearer understanding and a massive headache.

The other demons clambered back into the hallway, their work in this room done. Qu waited a moment longer, then swept inside. It was a child’s room, strewn about with books and toys. 

The princeling it belonged to stood at the foot of the bed, rubbing his eyes, most certainly not asleep.

This happened, sometimes, a person proving resistant to the gas. Or, in this ten-year-old’s case, entirely immune.

“I’m sorry,” said Qu. “You were supposed to be sleeping.” He signaled to the wasp demon, who issued a soft, droning buzz. Qu took that sound and wrapped it around the boy like a blanket, multiplying it, making a lullaby of it, dampening the child’s fear. For a moment, he considered letting this one go. Send him out of the palace to live among the urchins, or throw him in a cart leaving the city. But he knew better. In ten years, the boy might come back with an army. The princeling’s eyes drooped shut. Qu raised his blade.

The Circle gathered atop the palace roof as sunrise tinged the sky. Six had liberated a crate of wine from the palace’s cellars, and was offering everyone a glass for the price of a kiss. Such was the usually somber Nehramus’s delight at their success that she agreed to pay it and delivered a chaste peck on the corner of Six’s mouth. Ajad had pen to paper already, sifting through status reports and lists of those unaccounted for, though even she paused her work to watch the light spread across their new domain. Cinnabar cut a striking figure against the dawn, peering out over the city through a gaudy spyglass. Qu watched them all, his co-conspirators, fellow victors, and soon very likely his sometime opponents as they strove to build their new empire. He couldn’t help but notice how their gazes all fell in different directions.

Let's Begin...

Scatterfang is an archipelago of jagged isles and reefs of debris, lashed together by a net of stormwind and sizzling blue static. It is home to Svarna, once the greatest warrior-soul of Hegra. Mutiliated in the Divine Revolution, he languishes now in a fugue of melancholy and delusion. Three of his souls — kind-faced Acad, many-winged Valna, and patient-minded Remenkye — tend to him, especially when his tantrums reshape the isles in a kaleidoscope of geometric impossibilities — for Svarna is the Puppeteer of Angles, and the sword called Space is just another weapon in his rheumy-eyed frenzies. These fits have grown all the worse in recent years, and his soul-custodians are desperate to see their progenitor made whole. 

To this end, the island welcomes demons of all circles with knowledge of healing arts; without the First Circle prodigies who form the Collegium of the Seven-Sided Square, Svarna would be in far worse shape today. Though none have yet cured him, their toilsome and inventive treatments have given him a measure of respite (and resulted in many interesting alchemical discoveries). Serfs sometimes come and prostrate themselves before the Collegium and the Svarna’s soul-pantheon to beg for tutelage; those of promise find their request granted at the cost of eternal indenture. 

While Acad and Valna oversee the affairs of healing, Remenkye attends to the island’s other industry. In the cyclopean Smeltry of Sorrows, she oversees legions of demonic glaziers in putting to use the rain of crystallized melancholy that accompanies Svarna’s darkest moods. From this, they craft treasures — singing-blades, sorrow-revealing mirrors, and flutes whose notes are so mournful that Malfean theater troupes have gone to war for them. These are the coin by which Scatterfang pays for its security while its Unquestionable languishes in fever, but Remenkye knows that if Svarna were to be made whole, the industry — and her leverage over her soft-hearted siblings — would be undone in a single stroke. 

Scatterfang — or at least Acad and Valna — would prostrate themselves before an Infernal healer who could restore their progenitor to health. Fearful that such an interloper may discover how she has adulterated many of Svarna’s remedies, Remenkye has undermined their every effort, assassinating couriers before they can deliver her siblings’ entreaties.