The job today is simple: barricade certain streets, which seem to be favored by the demonic forces, and strengthen defenses along others. Much depends on the crusaders’ ability to move through the ruined city. The great chasm in the center of Kenabres is only part of the problem. This, to ease their advance once they are finally ready to take on the Gray Garrison.

But more specifically, in their case, they are setting traps.

“Here?” Woljif asks. He gestures at a building surrounded by dead hedges and wrought iron fencing. “Picture it: Trap goes off, boom, flames light up all those fancy shrubs, suddenly we have a great big wall of fire and heated metal! Sound good?”

Nereo nods. “Do it.”

Woljif smiles, then hurries toward the gates to get started. The traps are basic, really. A simple fire scroll, a proximity glyph, and an alchemically treated flask to contain the magic. Pack it up with a glamour to make it invisible and the whole street could be in flames before their enemies know what’s happened.

As Nereo watches him, he realizes they’re standing by the city courthouse. He shakes his head with a snort.

“Burn it down, Woljif,” he shouts with an encouraging wave.

Cheerful, the thief waves back. One trap down. Not bad. Nereo reaches for his own pack of supplies, and sets about crafting the next one.

“One at each post,” Woljif says, moving down the line.

“No,” Nereo muses, scanning their surroundings. “We don’t have enough to place more than three here.”

“But the flame wall,” Woljif says with a pout.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t we have a few other spots to hit?”

Woljif scoffs, his nimble fingers sealing the flask, then tugging a folded up map from his pack in a smooth motion. Turning to Nereo, he points at the spots marked for trapping.

“You’re not from here, so I’ll tell ya. There was a plague in this quarter a year ago. The city burned down those blocks. No one’s goin’ down that way, not even demons. The soldiers Irabeth put in charge of this operation might’ve known that if they didn’t spend all their time guardin’ some noble’s estate, or the bank, or whatever.” He shrugs, a lazy roll of his shoulders.. “Besides, I’m thinkin’ we set all the traps here, we finish early… maybe we scope out some houses.”

Nereo simply raises his brow. “You want to rush the job so you can case the neighborhood before we head back?”

“Call me an optimist,” Woljif says, as he folds up the map and slides it into his pack with a grin. “Either we die tomorrow and this is all for nothin’, or we don’t die, the city rebuilds, and I go back to doin’ what I do best. Imagine how happy the good people of Kenabres will be when I reunite them with their beloved possessions!”

“Ah,” Nereo intones with a smile. “So this is out of some charitable impulse?”

“Well sure,” Woljif says. “Things matter, Nereo. Why else would the nobles spend so much time hoardin’ ‘em? Think of all the heirlooms thought lost… yet miraculously recovered. Wedding bands and gifts are better than memories—they’re proof of them! So many priceless things the demons took when they sacked the city. And as the good guys,” he concludes with an exaggerated bow, trap in hand, “we were only too happy to retrieve these stolen items.”

“What about your stolen heirloom?” Nereo asks, and he extends one sharp claw to poke Woljif through his doublet, where the moon pendant sits, over his collarbone.

“That’s… not the same at all,” Woljif huffs. He turns his attention to the next trap. But, Nereo notes with a smirk, his demeanor has deflated somewhat, and there’s a bit of color to his cheeks.

Together they finish setting the traps, one at each post, despite Nereo’s misgivings. Woljif peeks up at him as he ties off the final one.

“Well,” Nereo says, his thoughts once more brimming with dancing corpses and lively skeletons.

An empty city of death, at the whims of a thief and a necromancer? They really should head back to the Defender’s Heart instead! But the smile that slowly lights up Woljif’s face seals it.

“Shall we, chief?”

“Lead the way.”

~

The house Woljif brings him to is old and well-maintained, fresh harling on the exterior, and every window adorned with stained glass motifs that catch the red light. Woljif is downright giddy as he leads him to the back entrance, through a garden that has been trampled into dust.

“Do you know how long I’ve been dyin’ to get into one of these?” he asks, and claps his hands together a few times for good measure. He looks slightly manic. Nereo smiles and nods encouragingly.

All the while he scans their surroundings.

There are dead bodies in that home. And that one. It gives him a comforting feeling, like walking down a calm street late at night and seeing lights in every window.

His sense of death—where did it come from?

Did he learn it growing up as an undertaker’s apprentice? Or was it innate, a mark of his Abyssal heritage? Or a gift from Pharasma? He can’t remember a time without it, but in his past as a necromancer and a graverobber it was undoubtedly helpful, as it is helpful now. Fortunately, it seems there aren’t any bodies in the home they’re breaking into.

Finally the door swings open, complaining on rusty hinges. Woljif steps through with a satisfied laugh, his tail flicking excitedly like a cat’s.

“Are you always this restrained?” Nereo asks aridly, ducking under the doorway after him.

“What can I say? I’m a man who enjoys his work.”

With a flourish, Woljif pivots on one foot and splays himself out against an ornate wall hanging. He grabs a handful of expensive fabric and holds it to his chest. “Look at this! Tapestries on every wall. That’s how you know it’s gonna be good.”

There is a heavy smell of dust in the air. Nereo wonders whether anyone has cleaned the tapestries lining the rooms. Perhaps whoever lived here abandoned the home when plague was reported in the area. Wealthy people had options others didn’t; they could’ve easily packed up the staff and moved everyone to another estate, leaving the house untouched, to trap the damp and mildew over the years. It is a stark contrast to the tidy exterior of the home.

The first level consists of the kitchen, dining room, a couple of plain bedrooms, a parlor, a mudroom facing the garden, and a foyer with a stairwell carving a curved path to the second story. Nothing seems to grab Woljif’s interest, not down here, anyway.

The stairs creak as they make their way up, each tinny wail causing Nereo to cringe. White carpets thick with dust cushion their advance, but for some reason Nereo feels they ought to be as quiet as possible.

On the second level they find more extravagant bedrooms, a library, and an office, and it is here that Woljif begins to ply his craft.

He tugs a folded bundle of leather from within his jacket, and lays it out upon the musty desk. As Woljif sorts through his equipment—an assortment of lockpicks, blank keys, and empty molds—Nereo peruses the contents of the office. There are a number of taxidermy pieces that catch his eye. Poorly done, but charming, very much like himself.

“I thought there would be more stealing involved,” Nereo says pointedly, kneeling to join Woljif beside the desk after a few minutes.

“Sure! We’ll get to that soon.”

“We?” Nereo chuckles. “Is there a mouse in your pocket? When did I agree to help?”

“Well you didn’t come along just to stand there an’ look pretty, did ya?” Woljif laughs, too. Then he abruptly clears his throat, and returns his focus to his instruments.

It strikes Nereo that Woljif is acting kind of funny. But he is used to making people uncomfortable, and therefore not in the habit of reading others too closely.

“Tell me what you are doing?” Nereo prompts after a beat, eager to change the subject.

“I’m uh… makin’ copies of all the keys to the house, startin’ with the office, ‘cause the office is where the owner’s most important things are kept,” Woljif explains. “You use blank keys made of a nice, soft metal. You place the key—like so,” he says, adjusting his angle to accommodate Nereo when he leans in to look more closely. “And you wiggle the key around in there, sort of tappin’ on it a certain way… the pins will leave marks on the metal, and then you can file it into shape. Just like that, you got yourself a copy of the key.”

“Can I try?”

“Oh, now you want to be my accomplice?” Woljif teases warmly. “Heh. Take a blank and try makin’ one for the office door. There’s a safe down here I want to copy, too, then the other rooms.”

In the span it takes Woljif to copy the desk and the safe keys, Nereo has partway figured out the knack of it. When Woljif goes to check on him he presents him with a decent enough attempt.

Woljif holds the small piece of metal up to the light, and peers at it with his golden eyes. “Hey, not too shabby. Keep it up and soon you’ll be thievin’ with the best of ‘em.”

Nereo watches as he places the key in a small pouch with the rest. Then, with a flick of the wrist, and a burst of blue magic, the keys are gone. Nereo knows enough to recognize it as a teleportation spell. He lets out a whistle.

“Where’d you send them?”

“I have a safe stash outside the city,” Woljif says carefully. “Sorry, I don’t feel like tellin’ ya more.”

Nereo shrugs. “Fair enough. It was an interesting exercise, Woljif. Thank you for showing me.”

Woljif blinks at him, as Nereo turns away to rummage through more of the room.

“Wait, really? Just like that? It’s fine?”

“It’s fine. Why wouldn’t it be?” Nereo asks, drawing a line of dust on the surface of a fine mirror. It is pocket-sized, with delicate pearls set into the filigree.

“Well… if you were, say, one of the Family… one of my fellow ‘thieflings’, you know,” Woljif says slowly, “I might expect you to say, buzz off, I made this copy myself, or demand to know where my stash is, or maybe insist on a fifty-fifty cut of what we steal, or… well, you’re bigger’n me, to be honest, you could easily force me to give you eighty-twenty, or…”

“What?” Nereo makes a face. Nevermind the ‘bigger than me’ comment—he is tall, that is obvious to anyone—but the idea that he’d make this a point of contention at all strikes him as a little unfair, and he rounds on Woljif with a frown. “I don’t expect a cut of anything, Woljif. Even if I did, why would I give you a hard time over it?”

“Well, I-” Woljif seems taken aback. His tail is once again flicking points through the air. “I dunno. Maybe it’s what I’d do.”

“Really?” Nereo takes a step towards him, crouching until they’re eye level. “Would you?”

Now Woljif is truly on the spot. Color creeps into his cheeks, but he stands his ground and, with some apparent effort, looks Nereo in the eye. “I dunno! Maybe! I mean, why’d you agree to come help, if you didn’t want any of the goods?”

“Why’d you let me use your stuff if you were worried I’d try to hustle you?”

Woljif swallows. “I wasn’t, I was—damn, can we forget I said anything please?”

It’s a matter that is left pending, perhaps for the best, as a sound from downstairs reaches them. Woljif freezes, then his gaze drops to the floor.

They hear a deep, heavy, dragging sound. Something big is moving around downstairs.

“Looks like we’re not alone,” Nereo says, straightening to full height. As he listens, he notes the sounds are steady and unhurried. Whatever it is, it came into the house after they did. And yet, he doubts their presence has gone unnoticed.

“We can sneak out the window,” he begins to say, before Woljif cuts him off.

“Like hell! I haven’t lifted anything!”

“We’ve pushed our luck enough as it is, don’t you think?”

“I don’t think,” Woljif snaps. “I just act! Let’s at least check it out first. Could be the wind. Could be a cat. Could be nothing!”

A second later there is a hollow thud as a flaming arrow strikes the exterior window frame to the office. So much for nothing.

Exchanging glances with the other tiefling, Nereo creeps up to the window and uses the hand mirror to discreetly scan the street outside. He catches only a glimpse, but a glimpse is enough. What he sees in the mirror’s reflection chills him.

Another arrow hits the wall outside, and bounces off the building. These archers have poor aim, but their numbers pose enough of a danger, if even just one out of a dozen hits their target.

“Brimoraks,” he says with a grimace. “We can’t go out there. We’ll have to fight our way downstairs.”

“I’d rather avoid a fight, if at all possible.”

“I’m open to ideas.”

“Glad to hear it, chief,” Woljif quips. “It’s always good to be open-minded.” Without further discussion, he blinks out of sight, conjuring a quick invisibility spell. His voice drops to a whisper, sounding close to Nereo’s ear.

“Sorry, I can only cloak one person at a time. Keep quiet and wait for my signal! Then, run for the door we came in through.”

“Woljif! That’s not an idea!” Nereo hisses, grasping for empty air.

But then the door to the hallway swings open and the thief is simply gone.

~

Nereo crouches as low as his stature allows, and waits by the door. As he waits, more arrows ping off the exterior of the house. He can’t imagine what Woljif is doing, or what signal he means to give, but as the minutes tick by and the scent of smoke fills the room, he finds it harder and harder to stay put.

The next arrow makes it through the window, and embeds itself in one of the stuffed animal heads hanging on the wall.

“Oh, great,” Nereo seethes, as the pathetic-looking lion, clearly created by someone who’s never seen one, catches fire. Outside, the band of Brimoraks lets out a triumphant cry. He hears them head down the street, jabbering in delight.

He then wonders, briefly, whether Woljif might have just left him.

But the thought stings, so he pushes it out of his mind.

Time to go. He unsheathes his dagger. Its weight is unfamiliar in his hand, but his hand is steady as he sneaks out of the room, straining to hear something, anything, from downstairs. As he approaches the stairwell, a commotion erupts across the house—something shatters, followed by a sound like a small explosion. Is that the signal?

Nereo makes a run for it. He leaps down the steps, taking two or three at a time, and reaches the back door in seconds, bursting out into the garden. From out here he can see a column of dark smoke rising into the sky. That will surely attract attention from anyone nearby, demon or otherwise. But Woljif is nowhere to be seen.

“Woljif!” he shouts. “Enough with the spell! Where are you? What’d you do?”

Seconds tick by without an answer. And the fire is spreading through the house.

Nereo bites back a curse. He runs back in. Stealth be damned. The fire will reach the first level soon.

Storming through the hallways, he searches for the other tiefling, room by room. It doesn’t take long before he hears something other than his own hurried steps. The commotion seems to be coming from the opposite side of the house, which makes sense if it was Woljif’s intention to create a diversion clearing a way to the garden.

“Woljif! WOLJIF! Can you hear me?”

“Here! I’m here!”

The voice is coming from the parlor—what’s left of it, anyway—where Woljif is still under his invisibility spell. The source of his troubles is clear. He has been covered in a fine grey powder, so he has taken on a strange appearance, like a phantom of ash, dust, and leather. And he is doing his very best to dodge the powerful swings of a demon unlike any Nereo has seen yet.

It has horns, and an upright bipedal form, and large, leathery wings. It reeks of rotting corpses—Nereo would know—and its claws leave marks with every attempt it makes to pin Woljif down. It’s big. Bigger’n him, certainly, and large enough to block the entrance to the room.

Nereo’s lip curls. Something about it is especially repulsive to him, so he feels angry, rather than afraid. He rips one of the tapestries off the wall and aims a gut-bruising kick to the demon, which emits an ear-splitting scream.

“Pick on something your own size,” Nereo spits, and he rushes the winded demon. It only works because Woljif claps a spray of colorful magic into its face, blinding it. With that opening, Nereo grabs it by the horns, using the tapestry to protect himself from their sharp points. He yanks the demon down, forcing it to its knees—he doesn’t expect to be hit by Woljif’s panicked form, crawling over the demon’s back and trying to push past him.

“Run!” Woljif says. “Run, run, run! It’s a Nabasu, it’ll kill you with one look!”

He and Woljif tumble backwards. Nereo’s elbow smacks into the wall, Woljif’s horn pokes him on the nose, and for a moment they are entangled.

It’s all the time the demon needs. Nereo watches with a frustrated growl as the Nabasu lifts Woljif off of him, its gore-encrusted claws easily encircling his waist. It shocks Woljif to the point that he loses his grasp on the invisibility spell, and he pops back into view, utterly defeated. The expression on his face says enough.

With no other option remaining, Nereo stumbles to his feet and calls on a power he hasn’t used in years.

He isn’t sure whether his necromancy will function the same on a demon, but he assumes the Nabasu has a heart, and a ribcage housing it. That assumption proves correct.

Nereo crushes the demon’s organs using its own powerful musculature as the vice. It convulses, wings suddenly splaying outward. Its grip on Woljif tightens, its death throes knocking Nereo back. And as the demon falls, its weight is enough to break through the flooring. Woljif falls with it, into the basement.

“Shit!” Nereo gasps. For a desperate moment, he considers jumping down after him, but he can barely see through the smoke, can only ignore the encroaching flames so much longer. Briefly, he wonders whether this is to become both of their coffin. Are they to become two more corpses in a city of many?

But somewhere in the back of his head he realizes. Somewhere in his gut he feels it when it happens: there is already a corpse in the house!

Nereo jumps at the opportunity, seizing control of the freshly perished Nabasu.

It is strangely thrilling to feel his magic suffuse a fresh corpse once again. Death is like a warm home to him. But the demon is like nothing he’s ever controlled before. As his magic fits into it like a glove, layers of death and damnation occlude his senses. It’s a good thing he’s an experienced necromancer. His power is keen enough to even peer through the Nabasu’s fading vision, breathe through its stinking maw…

Where the basement is dark and damp. Where the injuries on his body twist him into an unnatural shape. Nereo stands, unsteadily, like a child. He isn’t used to the weight of wings on his back.

There is something in his grip, squirming. He cranes his neck to see.

A tiefling with noon-color eyes stares at him. He looks at him like a mouse knowing there is no recourse once it is in the grasp of a cat. Then, he begins to shake.

“I… I’m alive… how am I… how…?” Woljif whispers.

With a pang of guilt, Nereo shuts his eyes. What follows next from Woljif’s mouth shocks him.

“Nereo? Is… is that you in there?”

Nobody has ever perceived him like this.

It nearly frightens him right out of the husk of the Nabasus’ body. But he holds fast, maintaining his grip on the spell. He has to hurry.

With great care, he lifts Woljif high over his head…

Woljif grabs his hand like a lifeline. Nereo easily pulls him back onto ground level, and all but drags him out of the house, not letting go once. Not even when they reach the street, and flee from the burning house, away from the band of Brimoraks. How do you know when to stop running, when the apocalypse is everywhere?

Finally they duck into a dark alleyway, where they both struggle to catch their breath.

Nereo drops to his knees.

The magic he used today was powerful. Now that the adrenaline is fading, fatigue rushes in, making him feel light-headed and faint. In all his experience, necromancy has this effect. A thrill to the senses while using it, but a total crash afterwards. He feels utterly drained. His heart might never slow down.

Woljif has collapsed beside him. Curled up on his side, the thief draws in big gulps of air. His face is pale and sweaty, and who knows how long passes before he speaks.

“Damn, chief,” he pants, ever eloquent. “That was a close one. Holy crap. Ouch.”

Nereo squints at him, barely lifting his head. A hell of an understatement. But at least he seems well, and that is what is most important.

Despite Nereo’s pressing concern, it is Woljif who scoots close and fixes him with a worried, almost fearful, look. “You alright?”

He grimaces. “I will be.”

“Are you… hurt?”

“Scuffed. Tired. You?”

“Scuffed and tired,” Woljif echoes. He tilts his head, regarding him with a curious expression. But it is not the disdain or the fear Nereo might have expected.

“That… was necromancy, wasn’t it?”

Nereo nods, seeing no point in lying, nor having the energy for it.

Woljif remains quiet for a long moment.

“Thank you,” he says at last. “You saved my life.”

“Of course,” Nereo says simply. “Don’t mention it.”

Woljif shakes his head, puzzling over something unspoken. Nereo thinks he must still be reeling from what he has experienced. As he well should. Now that he’s considering the day’s events himself, Nereo feels suddenly exposed.

“Woljif?” Nereo prompts after a moment.

“Hm?”

“Could this… stay between us?” He grimaces. “My magic.”

“Oh.” He seems, for a moment, confused, then shakes his head as if dispelling some other notion. “Oh! Of course! I mean, you’re keepin’ one of my secrets, too. It’s only fair.”

Nereo sighs, relieved. “Thank you,” he whispers.

“Heh. Guess now we both got dirt on each other, huh?” Woljif asks after a moment. There’s a smile on his face as he says it. “Just wish we could’ve gotten somethin’ shiny out of it for our trouble.”

Nereo laughs. It’s such a silly thing to say. He reaches into his pocket, hands Woljif the mirror.

“Chief!” Woljif gasps, his eyes going very wide. “You didn’t!”

“I did.”

“It’s a beaut!” Woljif cackles, holding the mirror up in triumph. “It looks like pure platinum! And the pearls? Oh! After this is all over we’ll get a tidy sum from this little trinket alone! Haahahah! You scoundrel! Looks like we’ll make a dishonest man of you yet!”