The mages' footsteps echoed through the hall leading to the Royal Vault.

The entrance never failed to awe Gaspar with its size and splendor. Located deep beneath Saguenay's cathedral, the hall's ceiling reached beyond forty feet tall in the shadows of great blackstone pillars. The light of the hall's hanging torches couldn't completely illuminate the thick darkness ruling this room, and didn't need to; the great metal doors protecting the former royal family's treasury glowed in the dark, the ancient runes carved into them shining like stars in complex patterns the Three Sages and their predecessors had never managed to fully decode. The very air pulsed with magic.

True to his word, Melchior had brought their key: a street urchin called Gendy, barely twelve, unaware of his origins, and whose loyalty they bought with a silver coin. Balthazar also carried their Benefactor's psychic symbiotes in jars to ensure they would receive the proper guidance during the transition… or so they said.

While his allies were ecstatic, Gaspar himself remained on edge. His doubts had only continued to build up over the last day, and his latest meeting with that 'Carmen'—clearly an alias—had only reinforced them. She had come to him earlier, bringing the rest of the texts she had hidden from him; records of an ancient wereling revolt against a slaver civilization of monstrous 'lunarians' whose description matched that of their Benefactor's spawn a little too closely…

That woman… could she have been telling the truth? Gaspar told himself it could have been a sting operation to disturb their plan or sow doubt in his mind, but she had shown such in-depth knowledge of the matter that part of him couldn't exclude what she said. She said I shouldn't wear the circlet and to bring her gift with me for luck's sake…

She also mentioned that princess Victoire had been crowned and that the vault might not even open, but Melchior and the others brushed it off. The Vault's enchantments dated back to the era when the Kings of Valentine began to crown themselves at the cathedral above; unless Victoire managed to follow in her ancestors' footsteps and undergo the rites there, the Vault would likely ignore her claim.

Gaspar glanced at his pocket. The mystery woman had given him a small acorn as a token of good fortune. It looked almost ordinary, if not for the strong magical energies radiating from it.

He knew he shouldn't have brought something like that with him today, but… Gaspar trusted his intuition. It had gotten him out of very tight spots in the past, and he had the nagging feeling his life would depend on the acorn.

"I still believe this is a mistake," Gaspar insisted. "It is not too late to abort."

"Are we seriously having this conversation again?" Melchior complained, his hand firmly on the street urchin's shoulder. "It is far too late to abort."

"Epona might notice us soon," Balthazar added. "She will never let us approach the Vault again once she does. We must act swiftly."

Melchior nodded. "She's not paying attention to us right now, or she would have already interrupted us. She didn't even notice the bombs I set up in the cathedral."

"B-bombs?!" poor Gendy gasped in shock.

"You set bombs up in the cathedral?!" Gaspar choked in outrage. He hadn't been informed of that. "But they're holding a mass as we speak! A blast will–"

"Will create a few martyrs for our cause," Balthazar said with regret. "I have already taken steps to ensure their families are well-compensated."

"But sir, the Goddess will…" Gendy bit his tongue. "She will be mad…"

"Do you want your coin or not, child?" Melchior replied dismissively, causing the child to fall into guilty silence. "I thought so."

Gaspar was aghast at his colleague's plan. "Why didn't you tell me any of this?!"

"So you could have cold feet and blow the whistle?" Melchior pushed Gendy forward toward the door. "I am sick of your constant hesitation, you weathervane. Get in with the program or get lost!"

Gaspar clenched his teeth and hesitated to teleport away to evacuate the people in the cathedral above, but Melchior proved faster. He all but pushed poor Gendy against the Vault's doors, the boy's mere touch causing warmth to radiate from the door. The flow of mana keeping them locked reacted to his presence, checking for the presence of an heir of Valentine.

Then he heard a click.

Gaspar and his allies tensed up when the noise of grinding gears echoed throughout the hall. The lock keeping the Vault's doors sealed shifted while their Benefactor's spawn screeched in happiness inside their jars.

"What am I doing next, sir?" the urchin asked with unease as the doors slowly started to slide open.

"Nothing," Melchior replied, a grin stretching on his lips. "You've done well."

"Behind me, boy," Gaspar ordered the child. He readied his cane-scepter, gathering magic to cast the demon-control spell at the same time as his colleagues. One of them alone should be enough to subsume the Archdemon in theory, but they had no room for chance.

The urchin took the memo and hid behind Gaspar as the Royal Vault's doors slowly slid completely open. The mages cloaked themselves in mana upon facing the darkness, and the two yellow eyes glaring at them from within.

Archon the Vile, Archdemon of Zoramesh, was wide awake.

"Now!" Balthazar shouted.

All three Sages cast a spell at once… but not the same one.

Gaspar attempted to seize control of Archon the same way he had overtaken demons in captivity with his magic during their training exercises, and immediately realized something was wrong. As his will expanded beyond his body in search of a target, it failed to find one. It wasn't that the demon-controlling spell wasn't working; it simply didn't recognize Archon the Vile as a demon. He could see the same shock and surprise on Balthazar's face as his own demon-controlling spell failed.

As for Melchior, he didn't even bother. He simply zapped his own allies with lightning.

Gaspar never went out without his trademark auto-shield spell on, so the lightning bolt his colleague sent him harmlessly bounced off his invisible barrier. Balthazar had no such luck nor preparation. A bolt hit him in the back and flung him across the room.

"Melchior!" Gaspar gasped in shock at the sudden and unexpected betrayal. "What are you doing?!"

"I'm afraid he cannot hear you."

The voice of their Benefactor echoed inside Gaspar's head, deep and serene… with no psychic circlet or brain-symbiote to carry its thoughts.

Then it screeched.

Gaspar sensed a terrible psychic force hit his defensive shield in an attempt to assault his mind, and while his protection dampened most of it, it still struck him with a headache so agonizing that it brought him to his knees. The boy Gendy fell to the ground with a scream, and a wounded Balthazar held his head while doing the same.

Only Melchior showed no hint of suffering from the attack, largely because his mind had already vacated his skull. He stared at his colleagues with the vacant, empty stare of a soulless doll.

Gaspar clenched his teeth and attempted to reach out to Gendy in a last-ditch attempt to teleport them both to safety, but the psychic pressure building up in his skull left him too shaken and confused to cast the proper spell. It took all of his willpower to keep his shield up, and even that small mercy wouldn't last long.

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"What a potent shield spell, to partly block my telepathy," their 'Benefactor' said. "You will make a fine combat organism once reprocessed, Gaspar."

Then Archdemon Archon the Vile crawled out of the Vault.

It was the most dreadful and horrifying creature Gaspar had ever seen: a huge, deformed creature covered in a crustacean's chitinous armor about as tall as a megalorian giant. The lower half of the body belonged to a red centipede longer and thicker than the biggest of serpents; the upper half was partly humanoid, with two great arms ending in pale grey hands each capable of holding a man inside their palms, folded firefly red wings covering the chest, and it had a horned insectoid face that eerily resembled that of a man.

"You…" Gaspar struggled to believe his eyes, and the depth of his own foolishness. "You… our Benefactor?!"

"You were always the wisest among fools, Gaspar. For centuries, I have been trapped in this coffin of stone, unable to touch a mind that wasn't my own… until my allies supplied me with the tools of my release." The Archdemon glanced at Melchior, his telepathic order echoing in Gaspar's head too. "Break the jars."

Melchior moved to execute the order without a word or sound. His body moved on its own at its new master's command, but his mind, if it remained, was now a prisoner of his own flesh.

"What…" Gaspar struggled to even form words. "Have you… done…"

"A simple rewiring of his nervous system," the Archdemon replied calmly. "Melchior has worn my parasites so long I don't even need a direct connection to control him."

His parasites?

Gaspar blinked as he focused on the Archdemon's face closely. His eyes looked up to its horns and–

No. No, not horns.

Antennae.

"Melchior's spell…" Gaspar collapsed as the last of his mental strength began to wane under the creature's psychic assault. "You… no demon…"

"The spell would have worked fine on any one of my combat organisms. I created it as a failsafe in case they ever developed a resistance to our psychic control." The Archdemon's—if such a designation held any water—immense hand pointed at Gaspar's shield and finally dissipated it. "But we can discuss that after I convert yo–"

A massive explosion rocked the Vault's hall, shattering its pillars, illuminating the darkness with light, and sending a wave of dust across the room.

Gaspar was too wracked with pain to look at the source of it, but Archon did turn his head at it and received a volley of arrows in the face for his troubles. Some projectiles detonated in bursts of alchemical fire on impact in great flashes of searing flames.

The Archdemon did not even flinch at the attack–being so big that the arrows might as well have been mosquito bites in comparison–but his surprise lessened the pressure on Gaspar's mind enough for him to glance at his rescuers. A group of wererat and human archers led by a hooded humanoid figure had stepped out of a breach in the wall.

The Free Brotherhood? Here?

"You dare bare your fangs at me, our flawed creations?" Archon waved his hand and extinguished the flames with the mere power of his mind. "I pissed the first of you out of a testing tube!"

The Archdemon turned his psychic powers on his attackers and raised a set of stone pillars with telekinesis. He flung them at the group like spears, killing two men in a single blow and forcing the rest to disperse.

The cowled figure—the infamous Hood himself—tossed away his namesake cloth. His appearance changed in an instant as the illusion magic faded away. The humanoid figure doubled in size into a huge, monstrous fiend with a horned head and fanged visage, reddish-scaled skin, and great black wings spewing fire. So fearsome was his appearance that some of his allies cried out in fear upon seeing him, even as he shielded them from thrown rocks by blasting them with hellfire swirling from his hands.

"You are a combat organism, but not one of mine…" Archon the Vile examined the Hood with alien curiosity. The latter barely reached up to the former's waist, like a child challenging its parent. "You are Melchior's mistake."

"So are you," the Hood replied as he blasted the Archdemon with a torrent of hellfire. Archon unfolded one of his dragonfly wings to protect himself and used them as shields. Although the Hood was barely half its ancestor's size, his flames briefly forced it on the defensive.

Gaspar sensed a hand on his shoulder, and looked behind to see that a wererabbit had appeared out of nowhere.

"Lean onto me, Sir Gaspar!" he said while carrying the boy Gendy on his shoulder. "We need to evacuate!"

"I… teleport us…" Gaspar clenched his teeth as he struggled against the mental exhaustion. Though it no longer hurt, a dark fog confused his scrambled mind. "My colleagues…"

The wererabbit scowled. "I'm afraid they're already lost."

Gaspar winced. The wererabbit was right. Archon had begun to flap his dragonfly wings, each of their movements sending puffs of bloody smoke flying forward. The Hood's forces had retreated behind him for protection, but Gaspar's fellow mages received a full dose for their trouble. Their bodies immediately began to mutate, their skin turning violet, and horns began rising from beneath their hair.

They were transforming into the very thing they hated most: demons.

Moreover, Archon's parasites were crawling straight at Gaspar's group. He could almost feel their hunger for his nerves, their greedy desire to rewrite his brain the way they had enslaved Melchior. What terrifying monsters they had turned out to be…

"Do you have the acorn?" the wererabbit asked with panic in his voice. "Use it now!"

Gaspar grit his teeth, grabbed the acorn in his pocket, and tossed it across the room. Giant roots erupted from it the moment it touched the ground, instantly grabbing and crushing the parasites. They continued to spread across the crumbling Vault's hall even as the wererabbit helped Gaspar and Gendy escape towards the stairs.

What a mess.

The situation had gone to hell.

Wepwawet watched everything through his Champions' eyes, and all of his best-laid plans had gone awry. Their attempt to ambush a weakened Archon and kill him with an overwhelming first strike had failed; not only was the monster at full strength from the start, but he had turned out not to be a demon at all. The demonslaying bows used by the Free Brotherhood—which were supposed to inflict heavy damage to their type—had proved wholly ineffective against their progenitor.

At least Filou had managed to retreat with Gaspar and the boy thanks to the Lady of Broceliande's acorn, but Rapoleon and the Hood were on the back foot. Archon had repelled them with telekinetic projectiles and was now breaking through the ceiling in an attempt to escape. Victoire and Soumis flew circles in the sky high above Saguenay, ready to intervene should the Archdemon manage to reach the surface, but this was far from the best-case scenario.

Wepwawet sensed Epona trying to make contact the moment his Champions entered her Influence's range and opened communications. His classmate's projection appeared, red with fury.

"How dare you?!" Epona clenched her teeth in outrage. "How dare you invade my territory during the truce! Our allies are risking everything against Tiamat as we speak, and you–"

"Your sages betrayed you!" Wepwawet snapped at her. "Archon the Vile is no Archdemon! He's a goddamn lunarian!"

His words took the wind out of Epona's sail. "What are you babbling about?"

"Look through your remaining sage's eyes, and see for yourself!" Wepwawet warned her. His classmate scowled in fury as she did so and finally learned of her subordinates' treachery. "Beelzebub tricked us all! He supplied Archon with parasites to help him escape during the Incursion, and now he'll make his way to your Altar! Send reinforcements to Saguenay immediately!"

"Those fools…" Epona cursed upon catching on to the situation. "I will have their heads for th–"

Explosions rocked the city's cathedral before she could finish her sentence.

Bombs pulverized the building on which Epona's Altar stood, causing it to fall over onto the nearby street and crash onto buildings. Wepwawet winced as he observed the situation through Victoire's and Soumis' eyes from above. His fellow classmate's statue descended upon screaming and shocked civilians, killing dozens as it shattered on impact into a dozen pieces.

Epona's Influence was instantly snuffed out at her Altar's destruction, which nearly cut the connection between them. Only Gaspar's proximity to Filou kept it afloat. Thankfully, her Idol was probably in Valentine's newest capital rather than the old one, and thus safe from harm.

Unfortunately, the explosion had left a path out of the Royal Vault open; one which Archon immediately exploited. The monstrous lunarian emerged from the smoking debris into the nearby temple quarter and immediately flapped his wings at the closest civilians. A flood of toxins spread through the air, contaminating unlucky onlookers or civilians unfortunate enough to be nearby. Screams spread through the city as its citizens began to grow horns and mutate, while Archon quickly crawled towards the mana locus spot on which Epona's Altar used to stand.

Wepwawet finally understood why Elphion's demons were so adept at transforming humans into more of their own; they were not a race, but bioweapons. Their blood had to carry a lunarian mutagenic pathogen of some kind.

This was bad.

"Archon is aiming for the mana leyline your Altar's destruction has left empty," Wepwawet warned Epona. "He must want to claim it for Beelzebub."

"I have lost control of Melchior and Balthazar," Epona warned him with gritted teeth. "Gaspar is my last Champion in the city, and he's no Commander."

In short, she had no way to reclaim the Altar spot and send reinforcements in a quick enough time. Wonderful. Beelzebub had planned this attack well.

"Victoire, intercept Archon before he can reach the mana leyline!" Wepwawet ordered his faithful Champion before turning to Epona. "I have a plan to stop Archon, but it will damage Saguenay."

"Do it," she replied without hesitation. "I have sent my fastest pegasi riders your way, but they won't arrive immediately."

At least she was wise enough to cooperate quickly. Wepwawet focused on Sagesse, who was waiting for orders next to the Lady of Broceliande in the heart of her forest. "We'll proceed with plan C."

"I understand, Your Divine Majesty," Sagesse replied out loud as she turned to the Lady of Broceliande. "Are you ready?"

"Yes." The dryad scowled, her trees' branches shifting in unease. "I already sense Archon's corruption flooding my land. He must be stopped now."

Wepwawet focused his power, and then cast his Miracle with Sagesse and the Lady at the epicenter.

"Growth."

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