“What are you doing?” Xemris demanded, catching Yveda the Fluid’s wrist before she poured the mixture into the crucible.

  The elder demon gave her a toothy, unfriendly smile. “These reagents are extremely caustic. Bump me again if you’re tired of having ten fingers.”

  Xemris didn’t let go. “That mix isn’t the right color. What are you doing?”

  Slowly but inexorably the smiling Yveda pulled her arm from Xemris’s clawed fingers. With the Mythic in her true form, Xemris had no hope of restraining her by physical force. “Live in this outer realm for a while and you learn some things,” Yveda said. “And none of us has done that more than me.”

  As much as it clashed against Xemris’s soul to do anything with a card made by the Defilers other than feed it to the Netherwell, her orders had been explicit. “We will do this the way the Primarch wishes.”

  “I am doing what your Daddy dearest wishes,” the smug, hateful demon replied, ever smiling, ever superior, ever untouchable. “I just know a better way to go about it than the rest of you. Let’s face it, extracting card shards isn’t exactly something we get a lot of practice doing back home.” She waggled the diamond-edged card between the fingers of her free hand. “Let’s not waste time, shall we?”

  Xemris imagined raking her talons across Yveda’s smirking lips until cards fled and flesh tore. If only she had more strength, more experience… Something about this one rubbed her wrong. She didn’t even smell like a demon anymore. She’d gone squirrelly and tricksy in her centuries outside the Unyielding Court. Xemris wanted to oppose every word she said simply because she was the one saying it.

  “There must be a better place to do this,” she said.

  “Can’t beat the view,” Yveda laughed, gesturing toward the massive open-air section of the throne room that overlooked the city behind the empty, ornate chair. “And with Legendaries, it’s best to do the breaking at the very seat of their power. In this case, the phrase is quite literal.” The massive bronze bowl of the crucible sat on the cushion of the Sun King’s throne itself. The elder demon bowed so deeply it could only be mockery, the tips of her sweeping horns passing within an inch of her nose. “May I proceed, Xemris the Daughter?”

  The spines along Xemris’s backbone and down her long tail bristled. The woman made an insult of her very name! What other demon of her stature had no title other than The Daughter? Who else in the Unyielding Court had fewer than three proper kills and thus still carried the name Xemris? The others all made it a mark of distinction, of second-hand respect for the Primarch. But on this Yveda’s lips, her name sounded like derision. Xemris would have torn out her throat right then and there had she not been entirely sure that it was her own throat that would end up gushing blood should she choose to fight this one. You are my hand in that world, her father had said. Let not your pride overrule my chosen goal.

  Two could play the mockery game. She let her gaze move past the elder demon and she clicked her claws as one might to signal the lowliest servant. “At my command. Begin.”

  She had the briefest moment’s pleasure at seeing Yveda’s lips tighten, but the crafty creature was far too smart to make it worse by protesting. Instead, she carefully poured the glass flask of alchemical fluids into the basin, careful not to splash. She muttered arcane words as she did so, using some language Xemris had never heard before. Much as she hated to admit it, this Yveda was the best choice for this task. No one else among demonkind knew as much of the Twins’ work as she did. All those decades had been purposefully spent, ostensibly all in the service of the Primarch.

  The liquid within the bowl frothed and churned, growing in volume until it filled the bowl to within an inch of the brim. Yveda the Fluid looked about the throne room and clicked her tongue, a very human expression of dissatisfaction. “The others should be here. Was this not the entire point of our alliance?”

  “The lich plays with her toys and her prisoners,” Xemris said. “I think that one only came along for the abilities she could steal, and the Sun King was never on that list.”

  “I’m happy to keep her share of the shards, then,” Yveda muttered.

  “Feel free to try,” she responded. She would very much enjoy watching this Yveda come to grips with the lich. Either way that contest went, it would remove a thorn in her side. “As for Targu’Thal, he continues to refuse to enter the city. Too much Order all around, he says, and he keeps his Orc warriors from helping to subdue the fighting inside the city.”

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  “Give them a week and they’ll scatter to the wind,” Yveda said, “whether he gets his shards or not. This could work in my favor.”

  “The Primarch’s favor,” Xemris said, voice harsh.

  Again came that oily smile. “Since I live to serve, they are one and the same.” She snapped her fingers, beckoning to Xemris. She kept her talons filed down to something very near to human standards. Still razor sharp, but not quite like an honest demon. “You’ll have to do. Come help.”

  There was no good reason to refuse, much as she hated obeying. She stomped into place in front of the crucible, holding one corner of the Legendary card as Yveda held the other. Power radiated from the card. How much raw magic had the Twin Defilers Stasis and Flux stolen from this realm and bottled up in this one object? The entire realm was an offense to justice. Soon. Patience. Breaking down a card, even a Legendary, wasn’t the same as lessening those two monsters’ death grip on reality, but the time was coming.

  “Ye who watch and weigh the outcomes, bless this breakage with your favor. The man lost. The strong prevailed. Give us the full measure of his strength. So be it.” The short incantation done, Yveda moved to drop the card into the crucible.

  Rigid with shock, Xemris was barely able to let go at the proper moment, much less voice any approval for the prayer. The shimmering card slid into the liquid with a faint hiss, bobbling back to the surface amid the miniature sea of cerulean blue. Tiny bubbles slowly formed and broke around the edge of the card.

  “You dare pray to the Defilers?” Xemris whispered, aghast. “In front of the Primarch’s own daughter?”

  Yveda shrugged, unconcerned. “You want to break the game, you have to learn to play it first. Ask Daddy – he’ll tell you. You should get outside the Court a little more.”

  “He would never condone such an action!” she barked. Her talons were digging into the flesh of her palms. Had this trickster betrayed her own kind entirely?

  “We’re stuck in this palace until Hesty’s card is broken down and we can split up the shards with our idiot allies,” the elder demon said, leaning against the arm of the throne. “These damned humans will kick and fight every inch of the way, and I don’t want to be here a day longer than necessary. If we did this the normal way, that card would take six months to break. Now, I’ve made the alchemical bath as strong as it can possibly be using the arts and expertise of no less than five different races, but if a quick prayer to the ones who made the card will speed the process even a hair, then yes, I’ll do it, and you can clutch your heartstrings to your content. I get results, pretty princess, and I break whatever rules I have to. Get used to that, or we’re going to come claw to claw real quick.”

  There was nothing Xemris would have liked more, but she knew her capabilities, and while she had great power of her own, it did not match this Yveda’s. Something the woman had said caught her attention, though. “How long will it take, then?”

  “A few weeks, I think. Depends on how much of the Twins’ favor I was able to garner by killing this fool.” She gestured to the card in the caustic bath, sounding almost fond.

  Weeks stuck in this odious demon’s presence, not to mention suffering the company of Felstrife and her coterie of vampires. Xemris stiffened her spine. Things would change once Father arrived. “I will check on the progress twice daily.”

  “If you want,” Yveda said, sounding bored. “Don’t burn your fingers. I’ll pop in now and then. Don’t touch the bowl until I say so.”

  “It would be wise to treat me with more respect,” Xemris hissed, her anger flaring.

  “It would be wise to deserve it,” Yveda said, turning her back and walking away. “See you when I see you, Xemris the Daughter.”

  Xemris gripped the upright back of the throne in impotent rage, the gilded wood splintering under her fingers. One day, she promised herself. One day I will kill her.

  She strode across the room, long tail swishing, and entered the side sitting room she had claimed for her chambers upon their arrival. She had professed to want to keep an eye on the progress of the card breakdown, and that was certainly true, but there were other reasons as well. When Yveda the Fluid had first been setting up her tools out in the throne room an hour before, Xemris had come to this room and secretly sunk a homing stone from the Nether Realm into the wall behind a tapestry of the Sun King facing an army of leonids by himself. The homing stone had sunk into the granite like a fang into flesh, and now when she swept the tapestry aside, she saw that tendrils of purple had invaded the stone of the castle all around the bit of Nether rock.

  Nodding in approval, she took another homing stone from her pouch and sank it into the wall precisely thirteen thumb-lengths from the first. Summoning a Nether source, she fed the energy into the stone, speeding the growth process. With one hand on each homing stone and Nether coursing through each, the spread of the purple tendrils hastened. Within fifteen minutes of concentrated effort, the longest tendrils of Nether infection from each stone reached each other, connecting like intertwining roots. A subtle hum sounded in her ears, and using all seven of the Nether she now had summoned, she pushed all her essence into that hairline crack in this realm’s fabric.

  “Honored Primarch,” she said, “it has begun.”

  “Tell me,” came a faint whisper from the line of Nether energy.

  In concise terms she outlined the outcome of the battle for Treledyne and the fall of the Sun King. Fighting still reigned in the city, but the palace was theirs. They had the King’s soul card in custody and had begun the breakdown. “I do not trust Yveda the Fluid,” she concluded. “She says the King had no other cards in his Mind Home, but he had to have taken a hundred damage or more in that fight. I think she’s lying.”

  “Wise to assume it,” came the whisper. “Watch her. Do not tell her that we speak.”

  “She will expect it,” Xemris warned.

  “Let her,” came the soft response. “She cannot know that I have finally learned how to create a portal that can sustain my passage at will. How long, daughter?”

  “Each stone is harder to place than the last,” she said. “Two weeks. Perhaps a day longer, to be safe.”

  “Move quickly,” the whisper said. “Our enemies will certainly be doing the same.”

  “I will, Father,” she assured him. She longed to say so much more, to protest that she could do this without him… but such things were not said to the Primarch.

  She let the connection fade and the tapestry fall into place. Once the Nether roots were strong enough she would be able to place more homing stones at orthogonal angles in the dimensions of this space, eventually creating enough Nether resonance to allow for the passage of the Father of all demonkind to pass into this realm. Then Yveda would bow. No, she would cower.

  And then the real work would begin.