“Ironic doesn’t even start to describe the situation. The demon had devoured the souls of six men by the time we started hunting for it. Each of them lost to the succubus’s wiles and consumed bit by bit until they were empty husks. Then before we even could close in on the demon, it went for a seventh victim and got more than bargained. See, the succubus tried to feed on a widower next, I guess it wanted a more seasoned soul after all the poor bachelors. Well, that old man still loved his wife, even after ten years without her, he loved her so much when the succubi ‘visited’ him in her form and took a piece of his soul it was poisoned. All that true love went through the demon like a hot knife. By the time we found it the damned thing was a broken wreck begging to be loved or killed, we obliged on the second option.” - Moon Priest Veisser’s report on the ‘Night Visitor of Noya’ incident.

  The group followed the absent smell, trusting Cat-Eye’s nose to guide them. Cole had managed to get his fingers moving, the feeling wasn’t totally back in his left hand, but it was a start. Idly Cole wondered if investing in enchanted gloves to protect against the cold would be a good idea. He could do without getting frostbite every time he used his most powerful ability. Of course, better control over the Cold of Entropy would yield similar results. While he was certainly more adept with his power than he had been. Cole still lacked the fine control he needed to truly call himself a Paladin.

  Around him, the Guards were physically alright but clearly shaken. Hellspawn were more than a little above their steel-price. Still, they had passed through two more caves without incident. The muck and stagnant water of the earlier tunnels giving way to coarse rock. These new caves were jagged hollows in the earth. Not carved by water or hands like previous ones but forged from tremendous destruction. Whatever battles Vindabon had fought in the Bloody Centuries had cracked and shattered the bedrock below the city. Leaving a bizarre and sprawling network of tunnels.

  As the group slipped through one chamber; whose floor was composed of cracked basalt, Alia Cat-Eyes made a noise of defeat. “I owe Darvy a drink,” she said while smearing glowpaste onto a tunnel entrance. “The Warrens are hells of a lot bigger than I thought.”

  Iron-Teeth grunted in agreement. “We are deeper than any of the tunnels I’ve patrolled. The city will need to send entire survey teams down here when we’re done.”

  Frowning, Cole absorbed this information. Were the Vindabon patrols just that poor, or was more going on? Had these cultists found a new section of the Warrens?

  Sucking in a breath, Cole shivered. They were close enough he could smell the Demon. It’s hollow odor, a wisp of something unnatural at the edge of his senses. Cole’s teeth were clenched and his muscles tense at the sensation. The memories he’d gathered seemed to say the Warren-Dwellers had found the Demon instead of summoning it, which made sense. Something like a Demonic summoning would have set off all manner of wards and watch-spells in Vindabon.

  Still, that left the question of the Demon's origin. Maybe if it predated the city's modern defenses it would have gone undetected? Or perhaps Cole was giving the Ten Temples a little too much credit. No spell was perfect; could the magic simply fail to account for things deep below the surface?

  As the group carefully moved down an angular crack in the rock, Cole continued to mull over the possibilities. The most obvious answer was this Demon was a survivor of the Bloody Centuries. Buried down here all that time until someone or something woke it up. Of course, other more… exotic possibilities filled Cole’s nervous mind. Down here in the dark with hundreds of tons of stone pressing in from all sides had the Paladin a little jittery. His mind conjuring up disturbing knowledge. Cole had heard stories of continent-spanning cave systems beneath the surface. The ancient home of the Dwarfs. An entire world hidden away and only accessible through ancient caves that stretched on for kilometers. A realm the Dwarfs called the Depths and spoke of with both awe and fear.

  Could the Demon be a resident of that hidden world? Only now clawing its way up through tons of rock looking for new prey? Called to Vindabon from its chthonic origin by the desire for new victims. An ancient terror now so close to the surface it could taste it. Something Cole would now need to face.

  Shaking his head vigorously, Cole pushed those thoughts away. He always tended to catastrophize when underground. Old fears feeding his imagination and making a stressful situation all that much worse. Looking around the tight stoney confines, Cole couldn’t help but chuckle. Here he was hunting a literal Demon and looking for ways to make the situation MORE disturbing.

  Temir gave Cole an odd look. “Something funny?”

  Cole shrugged and stepped over a fissure in the ground. “I hate being underground. Scares me worse than almost anything. Yet I constantly find myself in tombs, caverns, and worse. The irony is thick enough to cut.”

  Oddly, Temir laughed as well. “I get that. My Pops is a miner out west near Valstem. I did two years in the below before deciding I needed to get out. Hoped to find my fortune in Vindabon. Didn’t find it, but managed to get a good job and some decent friends.”

  The Orcblood punctuated his remark by clapping Fargo on the shoulder. “Even if some of them have an arm's length of iron up their backside.”

  Fargo responded by making a rude gesture, a hard thing to do while holding a spear. Just then, a clatter of stone pulled the group's attention to the darkness around them. Instantly weapons went up, and nervous looks were shared. Cole and Iron-Teeth shone their lights in the direction of the noise. Not far behind them was a rat. Not an unusual sight in the Warrens, except this one was the size of a large dog. A number of open sores covered its patchy pelt, and its eyes had the same milky look of the cultists.

  Opening its mouth, the rat started to speak. A high-pitched voice like a little girl echoed out from its maw. “Why do you want to hurt my family?”

  Cole looked at Iron-teeth, and the Dwarf just gestured for Cole to take the lead. Slowly stepping forward, Cole asked. “Your family?”

  The rat cocked its head to the side and spoke again. Its mouth didn’t move, just opening to let the words fall out. “We are happy down here. My family is safe and together. Why do you want to hurt my family?”

  Slowly, Cole pulled up his Aether Sight to get a peak at this “rats” nature. Carefully like he was pouring water from a troublesome glass, Cole let a few drops of his power bloom. He’d hoped to not go as deep as he had with the newest murder victim, just get a sense of this new threat.

  Instantly a wave of fetid miasma assaulted Cole. The smell of a rotten soul entangled with something unnatural. The rat appeared like a blob of oily tar. Roughly shaped like a rodent but bereft of all the nervous, jittery emotions seen in animals. In its place was naught but hunger and a sickening parody of love. Instead of a tail, the “rat” had a leaking string of thoughts. Snaking away into the dark, leading back to some terrible source.

  Cole had seen enough. In one lightning-quick motion, he leapt at the “rat,” his axe swinging for its head. The thing didn’t even move, simply letting him lop off its skull. As the severed head tumbled down the slight rocky incline, its body started to spasm and thrash. It literally fell apart as it died. Bits of skin and muscle sloughing off. Turning into crusty black ooze as it collapsed. Until nothing but a misshapen skeleton covered in supernatural tar remained.

  At first, Cole was confused by the skeleton. Years of fighting Rattlers and tramping through tombs had given him a good understanding of bones. He’d expected engorged rat bones, not what lay in a pile at his feet. While warped and bent, they didn’t look anything like a rat. In fact, they almost looked like…

  Whirling, Cole found the “rat’s” head. Rolling it with his foot so the face was looking at him. Cole prepared to strike again. The same small voice came from the disembodied head again. “Why do you hate my family? We’ve done nothing wrong; just leave us be!”

  Ignoring the words, Cole split the head in twain. False flesh melted away, revealing a child's splintered but still recognizable skull.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  Squeezing his weapon so tight his numb fingers hurt. Cole felt new wrath rise in him. The Demon needed to die. It needed to burn, and Cole would happily strike the match.

  The Guards looked at the shattered skull, and Temir suddenly started to throw up. Fargo and Cat-Eyes rushed to his side and tried to comfort the large man. Bleary-eyed, Temir looked at the bones and then at Cole. “Did…did you just kill a kid?”

  Picking up half of the skull, Cole whispered a prayer and let the silver light burn the demon’s ichor from the skull. “No, that child was long dead. I just ended the abuse of her remains.” Internally Cole decided to not elaborate on what he suspected had happened. No soul was attached to the bones, and he doubted the Demon would let such a commodity go free. Death had been the least of the poor child's suffering.

  Crushing the bone and letting the powdered remains fall to the ground, Cole took in a deep breath. He could see/smell the “rats” tail/trail slipping around and down the tunnel before them. The immaterial remnant was fast fading, but it told Cole enough. They were close, and the Demon knew they were coming.

  “We need to keep moving; that was an attempt to distract us.” the Paladin said.

  With his right hand, Cole fumbled with his bandolier and pulled out a small vial. Removing the stopper, he downed its contents in one gulp. Wincing slightly, Cole felt the concoction burn his throat. Putting away the vial, Cole felt the drug work its way through his system. A slight warmth expanded out from his gut and into his limbs.

  The stimulant mix he’d taken was a nasty thing. The Alchemist had frantically stressed to Cole it would shred his liver and kidneys if used in the dose requested. Mixing multiple mundane and magical ingredients, the drug, colloquially known as “Caps Last Stand,” would make Cole stronger, faster, more alert, deaden his pain and minimize blood loss. It would even last for three hours or so. A potent tool for a resurrecting immortal.

  Moving past the rat-child’s remains, the group found their next path. One wall of the chamber had shattered, revealing an unnaturally dark interior. Holding up his Silver light, Cole grimaced as the “darkness” slithered away. Revealing a strange chamber of curious make. Hidden in clouds of shadow-spores were strange boney arches and mottled stone. Pushing forward, driving back the thick spores, Cole glanced around the new cave. The walls and floor had a distinctly organic feel. Somehow reminding Cole both of an insect hive and a hollowed-out gourd. Carefully, Cole reached out to the oily black wall and touched it.

  He expected the damp moistness of living or once-living matter but instead was greeted by cold stone. Odd bumps and ridges defined the wall, and Cole thought about a merchant he’d encountered once. The man had been selling bizarre rocks that looked like this cavern. He’d called the stone “Coral,” saying it was the ocean's bones.

  Where coral was brightly hued or sickly white, these walls were pitch black. Drinking in light as much as the shadow-spores filling the chamber. Willing the light to shine brighter, Cole entered the chamber, the Guards watching his flanks. Stepping over the nobby, uneven floor, Cole pushed deeper. Every stride seemed to intensify the darkness, the shadow-spores thick enough to see unaided. The hellspawn mold crowded away from Cole but couldn’t fully escape his power. Every second or so, a faint hiss would become audible as a tendril or cloud of shadow-spore was pushed too close to Cole and ignited. Raining small plumes of ash around the group.

  Temir looked back the way they came and was disturbed to see the darkness had swallowed it completely. “Uh, do we know where we are going?” he asked in a whisper. Afraid to catch the attention of anything lurking in the shadow-spores.

  Cat-Eyes nodded. “Aye, the smell is strong, even here. You all should be able to sniff it out pretty soon. Even with your shoddy noses.”

  There was an air of false bravado in Alia’s words, the stress clearly effecting her. Cole could commiserate with Cat-Eyes. The Demon’s stink was gnawing on his nerves. Some deep-set instinct Isabelle had managed to copy into his flesh on edge from the odor. Telling him something bad was nearby. Something that filled the air and Aether with its presence. He couldn’t imagine how it must feel with the bestial senses Alia possessed.

  Slowly, carefully they crept through the chamber. Blind to everything not within the six meters or so Cole could illuminate. After maybe fifteen minutes, Fargo let out a pained curse and stumbled forward. Temir quickly grabbed him and looked to see what had tripped Fargo. A startled shout erupted from Temir as he pointed at the ground. Fargo had stumbled over a foot. Or at least something that looked like a foot. Bringing his light closer, Cole let it shine on the obstacle.

  A crumpled body lay sprawled on the floor. Deathly thin, the body was partially submerged in the black coral. Leaning down, Cole inspected the corpse. Only for its single uncovered eye to open. Milky white and sunken, the eye still somehow focused on Cole. Cracked dry lips parted, and the soon-to-be-corpse whispered a single rattling word. “Family.”

  Stepping back, Cole looked over to other bumps and shapes in the chamber. They weren’t random, but bits of bodies coated entirely in black coral. Some were human, and most were not. Rats, insects, and other vermin had ossified into an unnatural mass. Each lured here and consumed as the person Fargo tripped over was being. Clenching his jaw, Cole brought his axe down on the trapped Cultist’s spine. “Find peace in the next life.”

  Cat-Eyes shivered at the sight of the emaciated Cultist. So withered and starved she couldn’t even tell the gender. “What’s this about families? Why do they keep talking about families?”

  Cole gently shut the Cultist’s exposed eye and turned to her. “Demons are born of suffering. They feed on it and are molded by it. Each Demon is ‘themed,’ if you will, after a different type of pain. This Demon is probably born of some pain related to family. Losing it, never having it, or something else entirely.”

  Whispering a prayer, Cole put a hand on the withered corpse and tried to free the soul within. Clumps of gray-green soul-stuff puffed out of the corpse in an uncertain stream. Normally a freed soul was like a cloud of silver smoke, billowing free into the Aether and fading into the Beyond. The Cultist in the Black Coral was being eaten mind, body, and soul. Their soul, a shredded sickly thing, matching their desiccated body. Cole hadn’t just euthanized the cultist; he'd cut the Demon’s meal short.

  Creeping through the dark, they found two more Cultists in similar shape. Giving them the mercy of steel, Cole felt disgust and hate bubble in his soul. Family is such a simple but powerful desire. Warped into a lure for easy prey. An utter perversion that Cole would not let stand. The Demon would die permanently.

  To that end, Cole started crafting a weapon. You could destroy a Demon, shred its essence, and cast it back into the Hells. But eventually, the Demon would reform, congealing back into existence, perhaps in a new configuration but still “alive” if such a term could even be applicable in the first place. To truly kill a Demon, you needed to destroy and negate it. The “easiest” way to do this was to hit the Demon with its bane. Concentrated and focused emotions opposite the Demon’s nature.

  This Demon was related to Family or at least some toxic version of it. From what he’d seen, Cole guessed the pain of an abusive or utterly enmeshed family had spawned this Demon. The emotions of a healthy, happy family would be its bane.

  Looking to the Guards, Cole started to prepare his weapon with little tact. “Which of you has the best home life?”

  All four of them looked at Cole like he was crazy, then, after a moment, they pointed at Fargo. Confused, the tall(ish) Dwarf asked, “Me? Why me?”

  Temir shrugged. “You are married with two kids and another on the way. The only time you ever actually open up is to gush about your whelps.”

  Alia added. “Yeah, and the Captain’s married to his job. I can’t seem to keep a girlfriend for more than a month. And Temir has slept with half the eligible women in the fucking district.”

  Smiling despite himself, Cole spoke gently. “Do you love your family?”

  Fargo almost looked insulted by the question, “Of course I do!”

  Nodding, Cole asked, “Do they love you back?”

  Fargo actually laughed. “I hope so. They let me stay in the house at least.”

  Cole gripped onto Fargo then, leaning down, so his eyes met the slit in the Dwarf’s helmet. The silver light of Cole’s amulet washed over them both as the Paladin spoke. “I need you to think about your family, the emotions you feel for them. Your love, your affection, I need you to imagine your kids grown up and happy. Think about them being the best versions of themselves. Imagine the pride and joy you feel for them.”

  Confused, Fargo started to ask, “Wha-?”

  Cole shook him slightly. “Can you do that for me?”

  Uncertain but unwilling to question a Holy Knight, Fargo shut his eyes and focused. An unconscious smile split Fargo’s face. As his mind escaped the horrid moldy lair, and returned to his family. Returning the smile, Cole pulled up his Aether sight and looked at Fargo. Streams of blue-green bubbles danced around the City Watchman. Each bubble holding flickers of happy memories, floating on a breeze born of laughter. Exactly what Cole needed.

  “Good,” he said. “You can stop now, but keep those memories close. When we face the Demon, I’ll need you to bring them up at my signal.”

  Fargo looked confused, so Cole elaborated. “I can use your emotions to hurt the Demon. Much like fire, sunlight and silver can destroy Vampires, those thoughts and feelings can kill the Demon.”

  Swallowing nervously, Fargo nodded. Cole clapped him on the shoulder and kept moving. That should be enough for what Cole had planned. In the previous Demons he’d faced, Cole could either banish them or provide the needed emotions. But Cole’s origin as a vat-grown abomination made his family-themed emotions either warped or utterly absent. While he’d found companionship with Natalie, the emotions that relationship produced would be better used against a Succubus than this ‘Buried Knight.’