Get off me. Calaf continued to scratch at the Brand.

  For untold generations, this very mark had been inherited by Calaf’s family. Any children, too, would bear the mark. Any sons would inherit the Brand—Shackle, whatever—on the left arm just below the wrist. Daughters with an unbranded mother would likewise inherit their Branded father’s mark.

  To possess the Brand was to be blessed with the Menu and its Interface. The Interface Brand made man strong—allowed man to transcend the boundaries of mortal strength and agility to become a holy force even demons dare cross. This church edict had been drilled into Calaf’s mind since his time in the Riverglen orphanages.

  Only, the Brand was a shackle binding man to the Interface. A concoction of demons meant to fetter victims to its rigid and uncompromising system. Such was its original purpose.

  Free of the demonic regime, the Interface could be harnessed to achieve great things. Strength, Agility, and Endurance could be boosted beyond the capabilities of mortal man. It was the experience baubles that had made Roland and Mia’s rebellion possible. Allowed the old heroes to close an insurmountable level delta and overpower their demonic gaolers. Were it not for those, none would ever have heard of the holy priestesses’ name. It was a mere whiff of the use of these experience-boosting baubles that had brought heretic hunters down upon disparate bands of level-spoofers and reformists. The baubles were a threat to church power as they were a threat to the demons four hundred years ago.

  The first floor was mostly cleansed of potential sources of rot. The basements were far larger and harder to search with the manpower on hand. With an impenetrable cube-shaped barrier of gold smothering the bottom half of the Battletower there was nowhere to go. Church reinforcements that were supposed to arrive at the tower in the morning brought both relief to the beleaguered Battlemages but apprehension to Jelena and Calaf’s group.

  With Calaf out of ink, he began to speak out the rot-blessed memories. Zilara stayed with him, holding the bisected Gospel of Aldia in her Inventory. The holy child’s twinbrand eyes made it hard for Calaf to look at her for more than a quick glance. He could make out the Brand’s tell-tale fork and twisted interlocking prong pattern. It looked very much like the links of a chain in this light.

  “After.” Calaf swallowed. “After the mass branding, the heroes did not flee. That templar demon wandered off to commit some fresh atrocity. The piper demons were still far too high-level to dare face, but they did not need to slay every demon on the open field in single combat.”

  Status cleansing spells sobered Gustavo up. The team thief led a squad of Battlemages with specialized sound-masking spells into the makeshift prison camp. Roland was with them. But it was neither the Paladin nor the Thief whose eyes Calaf was borrowing to experience this ancient scene.

  “Who is it?” Calaf asked thrice, pacing about. “Who?”

  “I’m writing all this down in what’s left of the tome’s description,” said the holy child. “Should help us determine our next move, no?”

  Calaf nodded solemnly. She was asking him to continue without saying it. The Squire focused his thoughts and continued…

  Knight Roland severed a simple chain with his blade. Piper Demon hunting parties seldom used locks, for their quarries were unable to even try to escape.

  “Flee,” Roland said with a whispered hiss. “Everyone, flee.”

  The freeborn who’d been their campmates mere hours before stood and sat in neat rows, staring into nothingness. Their eyes were milky. In this state, they would remain until assigned a gaol or purchased by a human overseer.

  “I have seen this,” said Cleric Mia. “Many brought to the prison spire were like this when first brought in.”

  “Can they be awoken from this spell?”

  “Loud noises, if the fall did not help,” Mia said.

  Roland vigorously shook the nearest Branded until they were roused from slumber. One by one, the remaining prisoners snapped out of it. They looked about, confused. There was no time for them to take stock of their new fates as Brand-slaves or how they arrived in these cages.

  “Flee. Flee in all directions,” Roland ordered. “They cannot capture us all.”

  The heroes continued their jailbreak. By the time they broke the chains to the last cave, most of the entranced new brand-slaves awoke from the din.

  Newly of the Interface, the sleepwakers had given up their equipment into the Inventory, then traded it to a wandering demon supervisor around the camp. They were unarmed, and level one. They’d stand no chance in a battle, and so they fled in all directions.

  “We will hold them off!” Roland enhanced his sword with lightning, a Battletower-derived spell.

  Mia ran up to Roland, casting defensive blessings.

  Gustavo prepped some smoke bombs, also from the Battletower.

  And across the camp, an alarm had been tripped. Four flying bat-winged fiends wafted onto the scene.

  Demon Sentry #1, now level 42, wielded a Mithril Bashing Club +2, snarled viciously. It had processed the results of its last bout with Roland, and arrived with reinforcements:

  This soothsayer cast a heal on Demon Sentry #1, though he was already topped up.

  This spell-catalyst rapier was a rare human-sized weapon in the hands of a hulking demon.

  Behind this trio, shadows on the dunes stirred.

  Sentry Demon #1’s primary lesson from its previous fights was that group combat was more efficient. The demon’s new party stared the old heroes down. Roland held his sword aloft and his shield up, then charged.

  “After a pitched battle in which Roland lodged his blade deep into Demon Sentry #1 and forced it to retreat once more, the party continued north with a much-diminished following.” Calaf held a hand to his head. These rogue memories sent an icepick migraine running between his temples.

  Zilara was there, transcribing this testimony from scratch.

  “So, what happened to those three new demons?” she asked. “Calling in a party when outnumbered. That’s pretty spiffy. Almost like it can think. Like it can hold a grudge.”

  “Dead. Slain during the battle, at great cost to the heroes’ allies. Only then did the Demon Sentry retreat.” Calaf sighed.

  This Demon Sentry #1 appeared often in the hidden gospels. There was no word of a similar figure in the official church histories. Just throngs of demons and their master, the Demon King. Pondering this unnamed sentry’s role fell by the wayside, however, as a more pressing question remained:

  Whose vision was Calaf viewing this history through? It was not Roland. Mia appeared in and out as a separate entity, as did Gustavo. The rot said these memories were part of its chorus. This also meant it had the collected memories of untold generations of dead at its disposal. Calaf shuddered at the implications.

  “The heroes nearly died before reaching the central oases of the Firefield deserts.” Calaf knew this part from church school, and it mostly matched the official history. “They were saved by wandering, unbranded desert tribes. Their nomadic lifestyle allowed them to live beneath the demon army’s notice. The nomads and the old heroes went their separate ways, though not before recovering and training some of their retinue in the ways of the Interface. Still, this was no fledgling army like what they’d had marching into the desert.

  The route from there was clear.

  “Fort Duran,” Calaf said. “The next gospel will be at Fort Duran.”

  “Goin’ full circle,” Zilara said with her characteristic drawl. “Of course it’s at the next dungeon.”

  The next morning, the highest ranking Battlemage left and retrieved the damaged gospel and used it to tune a basement archway to a familiar sight: the Riverglen city square.

  At first, Calaf doubted that any force from the first among the towns could be useful in such a situation. But then the troops marched through the archway into the Battletower.

  Arbitral Auxiliaries, all around level sixty or so. Paladins or Squires just a trip to the fort away from ranking up. A few clerics, too. Classes capable of casting Flaming Sword of Faith, and therefore of beating back the rot. There were even a few church-affiliated Battlemages and Crimson mages among the ranks. The better to light the beacons atop the tower every night.

  The Brand on Calaf’s left arm continued to itch. He’d scratched the surrounding skin red overnight, but the dark twisting mark remained. It was embedded deep into the flesh ever since Calaf was born. To remove it would require severing multiple tendons on his spear arm. Or to remove the limb entirely. Still, he scratched.

  Off. Get off me.

  If these junior arbiters had been aware of the true nature of the brand, would they have still gone on the pilgrimage? Still joined the church’s new standing army? How many were willing converts versus legacy branded born into the church? And what did the big four main arbiteres think of this? It remained questionable whether the church higher-ups were even aware of the demonic origins of their holy Brands.

  Enough soldiers arrived to patrol the Battletower interior room by room. Indeed, arbiters now outnumbered Battlemages, a fact the church was likely aware of and had planned for.

  Calaf and company gave these junior arbiters a wide berth, the better to avoid potential confrontation. A commander stepped in through the portal last, however, and spied the Squire immediately.

  “Hey, I know you!”

  Rather than start a fight, though, this figure was…

  “You there. Been a while!” Unprompted, Gorman reached out and hugged Calaf. “Charlotte said you were missing.”

  “So I’ve heard.” Calaf managed.

  Days without proper, uninterrupted sleep were getting to him.

  “Don’t worry about it. She’s… been sending everyone she can looking around for you. Spending a lot of time in the crypts too. Not sure why, but she wants the town guards to send her all sorts of strange curios.”

  “Is… that so?”

  Calaf grimaced. This was the last conversation he ever wanted to have.

  “I won’t tell her you’re here,” Gorman promised. “Still, she wants me to report back about this… pest control mission. The briefings were sparse.”

  “We were just leaving,” Zilara chimed in.

  If Gorman recognized the holy child from the wanted posters, he did not mention it. Zilara and Enkidu wisely kept their distance with some mothballed boxes of mage curios between them and the former sewer guard.

  Calaf told Gorman what he could about the rot. He prayed Gorman did not take the mission lightly.

  “Glad we met up again when we did. So, dealing with some kind of fungal infection here?” Gorman cast his rapier alight. “Worry not. These boys are trained by yours truly. We’ll have this cleaned out in a jiff.”

  When the last of the junior arbiters filed out of the portal room, Jelena once more emerged from her hiding place. The posse approached a Battlemage with the holy book, the one in charge of the portal.

  “Hey there.” Jelena dropped him some gold pieces. “Open up a door to Fort Duran, will you? We’re blowin’ this rot stand.”

  The scholar wouldn’t say no to more gold. With the Interface and the Holy Relic, he opened up the portal. A familiar wooded field outside the fort beckoned.

  “This’ll take a good two weeks of the trip,” Zilara said .

  “Better than stopping by Plains Junction again,” Jelena nodded. “We’re almost out of dire-horse stables to steal from.”

  Calaf had only his shield with him, his spear having been destroyed by Baldr during the long night prior. There would be plenty of opportunities to acquire another in the signature dungeon of the Paladin.

  The crew stepped out of the dusty confines of the Battletower basement and into the eternally cool and crisp fall of Autumn’s Redoubt.