I had thought that bearing the weight of the rocks after they fell would be the hard part, but the impacts were worse than I imagined. It wasn't just boulders that made up the walls, it was shards of piping, broken glass from shattered windows, nails, and metal bars. I felt as many things slash into my back as pummel it. The pain was agonising, but I soon went numb after the third bit of rubble hit my back hard enough that I was afraid it might have broken. My wings suffered the most. I somehow found the strength to keep holding them firmly out even as they were cut and battered. I felt something pop in my right wing's wrist, then my left wing's elbow, and then there was a series of snapping feelings in my digits. So many sharp pains wracked my body that it felt like someone had driven metal rivets into every one of my joints.

But then it was over. The rumbling of crumbling stone gradually died down, and the pummelling stopped. I opened my eyes to make sure that the woman and child had stayed safe underneath me, but we must have been completely buried in debris, because there wasn't even enough light for me to see in the little hollow I had created. I could feel it all on top of me, my body only propped up by leaning against the rocks in front of me. At least I could hear them both breathing, so they were alive.

I could barely breathe myself. I could feel the pressure the weight put on my spine, and it made it feel like my vertebrae were being separated one by one. I definitely couldn't move enough to start digging our way out, not without dropping the rubble on top of the humans. I just had to hope that the others found us before I was crushed or we suffocated. I wished I had had the speed to get out of the building. This was torture.

A small voice spoke in the darkness. "Is the dragon okay?" I heard it say. It must have been the girl. She sounded shaky and scared, but she wasn't hyperventilating in panic anymore.

«I'm alright,» I said, trying to keep the strain out of my voice to put on a brave face for the kid.

"Thank you," she said.

That was all it took for my regrets to evaporate all at once. Somehow it had taken this long for me to fully process that the people we worked to help had as much life as us. It had been easy to think of the city abstractly, with casualties of the vicar's actions and the Scourge raging below as just numbers, as blood in such quantities that it was difficult to truly fathom the cost. But there was no way that distant thinking could hold up here.

This girl had come to church in the morning. She might be an orphan now, if her caretakers had been infected by the carving or killed by the fiends. She might have a school that she attended, and friends who would have missed her if she had died.

But she hadn't. That was our duty. Against the pain, I could feel my heart swelling with happiness and pride at having saved lives. It felt triumphant. I couldn't help myself but to think of Grace. How she had spoken, all this time, about wanting to help people, and do more than just keep herself alive. I finally understood why.

I would have cried if I'd had the ability. The combination of pain, the stress of the fight, the panic, the epiphany I just had, and all the emotions that had built up since I'd woken up in the dungeon was overwhelming. All that came out, though were shaky breaths, laden with every feeling I had in my head.

«Grace?» I tentatively said, relying on the bond since I doubted normal dragonspeech would reach her from here. «Are you and Arthur okay?»

«I'm here,» she said. «I'm okay. Arthur's hurt, but that transformation he went through back there, made him tougher, I think.» I heard the crackling sound of rocks rolling over rocks somewhere not too far away. «Are you okay? Where are you?»

«I was near the door,» I explained. «I'm here with two humans. Civilians. They're alive, but they're hurt, too.» I debated telling the truth about my own injuries, but she could probably sense my pain over the bond anyway. «I think my wings are broken in multiple places, and my tail might be too. I've got a bad concussion, and I probably snapped at least one rib. My back hurts too, but I don't think it's broken.» I paused, twisting my head to try and see if there was any light coming from above. There were several holes in the debris that looked grey from a little bit of sunlight peeking through. We couldn't be buried that deep, but it was still enough for the stones I held up to weigh several hundred pounds, at least. «I can't get us out on my own. I won't be able to fly back, either.»

«I'm hurrying,» said Grace. «Just hold on a little longer.»

I stayed perfectly still, honing my focus on my breathing rather than the pain in my head and my wings. Now that the impacts had stopped, the pain was growing more and more intense. My wings were definitely broken, if not shattered completely. My legs were hurt too, just not as badly. It was too dark to see any spots in my vision, but I could tell by the wooziness I felt that I was close to passing out.

Just have to hold on long enough to get back to the castle, I told myself. Then rest.

I heard rocks shuffling above me, and then not long later, a beam of light shone down to illuminate me and and the two civilians beneath me. I could see now that the older woman was holding the girl close, trying to stanch the bleeding from her leg with her shirt and bare hands. The girl was on the verge of unconsciousness. She needed a real doctor, as soon as possible.

The rocks above my head moved out of the way, and the force I had been using to keep my head up carried it through the hole and out of the rubble pile, into the grey sunlight of late afternoon. I looked around, trying to assess the damage and spot anyone else that might have been injured.

The cathedral was gone. Nothing had survived, not even a skeleton of buttresses and other tough structural components. It had been utterly reduced to the field of broken stones that now surrounded me, which caved in towards the centre, like it had been carried into a sinkhole. Thankfully, the building seemed to have collapsed inward rather than falling to the side, so the gardens around the cathedral were barely damaged, and the crowd that had gathered outside the front door were fine, apart from a few cuts from bits of gravel or glass launched out of the collapse.

Grace and Arthur were both clearing the boulders above us, shifting them one at a time and tossing them into the pit. Arthur's injuries were obvious. He was covered in cracked scales that had spattered blood across his back and flank. His tail was crooked at the middle, broken, and one of his new horns had snapped off near the base and was oozing more blood. He'd surely live, but I was worried about his blood loss. And the fact that he was still transformed like he had been as a demon. His face was hard and focussed as he kept moving debris.

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Grace….

…She was fine. Physically. I had allowed myself a faint bit of futile hope that what I had seen when her Lock broke was the invention of my exhaustion-addled mind. And while I supposed there was still some chance that my head was hurt enough to keep that illusion alive, I had to admit to myself that I had been living on false hope.

She had horns. Brown horns with a silvery sheen that rose from her temples and swept back over her hair before rising to sharp tips at the back of her head. I felt sick. Whatever guilt I had had before about possibly being a source of infection with the Scourge for the flight was much worse now. If I had only waited for them to arrive in the sewer…or if I had retreated when I heard pursuers…or if I had just been able to find a way out of the cathedral before she got there, or even thought to tell her to stay away once the disk was in play.

"Saints, I'm so glad you're alive," she whispered as the hole was widened enough to move the rocks pinning my wings down. "You scared me to death when you ran away from us."

I glanced down at the people below me. «I had a duty to uphold,» I whispered back.

Grace leaned forward to see the survivors. "Oh, Pits, she's really injured. Can you help her up?"

I bent down to help the girl up, then the woman, before carefully and painfully climbing out myself. The rubble filled in the cavity I had made as soon as I was out, leaving the remains of the cathedral an almost-uniform pile of debris. My wings hung limp at my side, and I was walking with shuffling, precarious steps. But I was walking.

The woman picked up the girl once she was out and hurried into the crowd. "Is there a doctor here!?" she shouted. When there was no response, she shook her head and handed the girl to an older man with a bushy beard, the one holding the makeshift stretcher. "Take her to Kyrie's. Now."

The man nodded and took off, moving as fast as he could without jostling the girl. The woman dusted her hands off and turned to face the crowd. Everyone held silent for several moments. I knew we needed to get going before the guards got here, but I could tell that these people were going to want some answers. Mumbling gossip started up first, before someone finally shouted out, "What happened to the cathedral!?"

Before I could even formulate a response, someone else called back, "They brought it down! The one place safe from the Scourge!"

The mumbles turned to mutters, then growls, then shouts. The noise was too much, a sharp needle in each ear that only got sharper the longer they talked.

"Everyone quiet!" the woman demanded. Whether she had a position of rank or simply a commanding presence was still unclear, but the shouting stopped at her word. "The dragoons didn't destroy the cathedral. It was fiends. Saint-Archvicar Barbosa betrayed us." She turned to me, her face stern. "What happened in there?" she said more quietly.

I put a foot up on a higher boulder to try and take a more resolute stance despite my injuries. «Archvicar Barbosa can turn people into fiends,» I said simply.

The uproar started again until the woman stomped her foot. "Quiet, now!" she shouted. "Let's hear this out!"

I held my breath for a second waiting for the noise to die down. «He used fiend blood and a special glyph to turn most of the people in the cathedral into fiends. It was their blood that destroyed the place.» I decided against telling them that I didn't know why that had happened. They needed a strong face right now more than every little detail of what went on.

«Everything that has troubled you for months now, it's all Barbosa's doing,» I continued. It was a little bit of a reach, but what I needed right now was to stir these people to action. The woman leading the others in breaking down the door, the mob that had attacked the cleric in the carriage in the Parapets before, it was clear that the people of this city had the means to fight back against the tyranny that was tightening its grip here. They just needed the motivation, and a reason to unite.

«His runes can spread the Scourge. He harvests fiends for their blood, which he makes into tonic to make chasseurs that serve him. He is the one who corrupted the Pure Serpent, using forbidden magic and tainted blood, all to fabricate a reason to kill the burgomaster and take control of your city!»

I could feel the energy in the air rising, but I wasn't done yet. «The vicar comes from a village that had corrupted its own spirits, and which worships him like a god. He thinks he's a prophet, putting himself at the side of Gideon and Cèlis. Right now, he is preparing a ritual that will destroy the entire city. One he needed full control to attempt.»

The murmurs rose up again as people questioned each other about what I was saying, whether they believed me, and whether or not the vicar could possibly be doing anything good if he collapsed the cathedral. "Where's Barbosa, now's the cathedral's gone?" one yelled.

«I don't know,» I said.

"So what do we do?" another cried. "What can we do?"

«Even if the vicar's in hiding, he still needs his servants around to do his work!» I said. «He works through his subordinates in the church, and through the chasseurs, which he uses to get rid of people distasteful to him. Don't help them! If you want to act, then act by protecting each other. Don't aid the people that want your neighbours dead. Spread the word that the vicar is corrupt, and make sure this knowledge gets as far as it can. The ritual he's plotting requires sacrifice. Don't give it to him willingly!»

I heard a few "ayes" rise from the crowd, which no one moved to correct. I was glad they were listening without pushback. The destruction of such an important place as the cathedral probably had them in shock, enough so that they were willing to believe something just as shocking. As some of them started to shuffle off, I finally let myself sag and acknowledge how hurt I was. I glanced down and saw the woman that had helped save the girl and break down the doors still standing at the foot of the rubble pile, her arms crossed.

"Thank you for your help," she said. Despite the notion of gratitude in her words, they sounded severe. "Why'd you help us? I thought all you knights do is burn down villages and…well, help people like Barbosa."

I stepped down from the rock I used as a stand. «I swore an oath,» I said. «I…was given a second chance at life. I had lived a long time without hope before that, and I think, I think I want to make sure other people don't have to live like that. Make sure they get the chance to live life that I never got.»

She seemed satisfied with that answer, and turned away. I held out a hand. «Wait. I never got your name.»

She stopped and glanced back. "Millicent," she said. "Why?"

«It wasn't just me that helped save people,» I said. «You did good work, too.» I gestured to Grace and Arthur behind me. «There's only nine of us to keep this whole city and all of Yorvingshire safe. It's our responsibility, but there's only so much the few of us can do. If you want to help keep your people safe and free…I don't know, I think you'd make a good leader.»

Millicent raised an eyebrow. "Are you trying to recruit me? I don't have it in me to be a knight."

«Hah, oh saints no,» I said with a small chuckle. «But you don't have to be a knight to help others. Just, maybe if you want to organise people around here, it seems like they'd listen to you. Even small things, like organising watches for fiends or making sure everyone gets enough food and clean water. When we're done handling the vicar, this city'll still need people running it, what with the burgomaster gone and all, and that'd be a lot easier if they had people like you helping to get things moving. That's all.»

Her expression softened, and she nodded. "…I'll think about it," she said. "Thank you, dragoon."

When she walked away, the rest of the crowd began to disperse as well. I let out a long sigh. Grace put a hand on my shoulder. Behind me, I heard Arthur break into a fit of painful-sounding coughs.

«Can we go home now?» he asked softly.

«We should,» I said. «It'll be a long walk.»

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