Jori dove off of the outcropping over the steep river valley, letting the searing updraft carry her up high over the burning river. Flying was great!

  She’d always hated scampering over the sharp rocks that covered the ndscape here as a spawnling. It was slow, unfortable and dangerous. Ambush predators like fiends liked to hide in cracks to snatch young imps as they passed. By trast, watg the gray and bdscape pass by underh her felt indescribably liberating.

  Too bad she couldn’t really enjoy it. She was in a race against time.

  It was hard to tell time precisely, here in the hells, but she thought it must have been at least a week since she’d set out to fihe pouch was small enough to strap to her back without interfering with her wings, but she k was much bigger on the i was like Bernt’s bag, except this one was full of tasty food for the Great Mage. That, and some spicy jerky and s for her. The jerky wasn’t really the right kind, but they’d tried. It was good enough.

  She banked right to follow the course of the river and found a vast pin stretg out in front of her. In the distance, high walls rose from the bck, stony ground—Varadon. The hellfire river termihere, flowing into the enormous structure and disappearing.

  The ey… wriggled. Jori shuddered in disgust. That was just wrong. This was supposed to be where Varamemnon lived. She guessed that those were his limbs. His servants would be iy, or somewhere nearby.

  This was where things would beore dangerous. She would o find out where exactly Ed was, and that meant asking questions. Jori had ried to infiltrate a demon city before. She was very sneaky pared to mortals, sure, but would that work here? She had her doubts.

  Fortunately, Ed was not a sneaky person. A piece of the wall, just left of her approach, was missing. A massive web of cracks radiated out from the damaged se and the entire area was covered in rubble. The stub of a gigantitacle waved bad forth crazily nearby, healed, but obviously no longer whole.

  Behind the hole y a path of destru, cut indiscrimihrough a bination of stone and oddly anic structures—likely grown from the alien flesh of Varamemnon himself, if Jori didn’t miss her guess.

  The imp knew intellectually that this, the third hell, was her home, in a sense. She came from a pce like this, and this enormous monster was the sort of thing she herself could transform into one day – assuming that she somehow lost her mind and all sense of good taste along the way, anyway. She would never uand why someone would root themselves into the ground like this. And why all the tentacles? Ick!

  Well. At least she knew where to start looking. Now she just had to hope they hadn’t killed him already.

  ***

  “I ’t figure out what this means for my architecture.” Bernt said, rubbing at his fa frustration. “If I just go ahead with the iure as normal, it might not fuse into an augmentation. Oher hand, maybe it will, and my entire mawork will fuse into my body like the perpetual fme did. Or maybe it’ll work perfectly and I’m just overreag. What am I supposed to do?”

  Pollock leaned ba his chair and scratched at his beard, mulling it over.

  Bernt had decided to work on his development and growiation as a wizard. After all, he’d e up with a way to fix spiritual damage—even if no one was using it. That, and he’d developed banefire. Unlike his other tribution, the Duergar invasion had made his banefire spell very relevant to the defense of the realm. Mages all over the try were learning it, and if he’d uood Iria right, there was a bureaucratic process underway now to add it to the standard repertoire of military pyromancers.

  That meant that quite a few mages might reize his name now, but it wouldn’t trao anything like influence or power unless he could build on that notoriety. Lots of wizards ied useful spells. Unfortunately, though, most didn’t grow into iial or powerful figures. For Bernt, power had always been part of the goal—a great adventurer had to be powerful. But, it had felt a lot more abstratil now. Now, he needed it, and not just the direct, fming kind of power. Unfortunately, wheried to work out his steps, he’d run into a wall almost immediately.

  How could he pn for his iure if he had no way to predict what would happen? He had an architecture to work from, but no guarahat it would work. The st material – a magical tar produced by firing and distilling Illurian salt-water cedar – didn’t feel right anymore. He didn’t need his fmes to be more roof or to burn hotter. If anything, he should be looking for something more patible – but what was patible with a sorcerous iure? It was intensely frustrating.

  In the past, he might have spent weeks or months speg and trying to work out ways to test his mawork to find an answer. Of course, he might still have to do that, but he’d learhat sometimes, it was better to ask someoh more experience first.

  “I don’t think yoing to actally fuse the rest of your mawork.” Pollock finally said, shaking his head. “That was a result of treating your els with your hellfire derivative, no other part of your mawork was affected, and it’s not as though they’re disected from each other. If it were going to spread to your other els, it would have done so immediately.”

  “Alright,” Bernt nodded slowly. “That makes sense. But what if I ’t get the three iures to fuse?”

  Pollock shrugged lightly and smiled, a glint in his eye. “If it doesn’t work, you just get another normal iure to make three that fuse into an augmentation! From there, I suppose you would o try to expand your sorcerous iure if you want to bee an archwizard.”

  Bernt frowned skeptically. “Wouldn’t that make all my non-fire spells weaker, though? Retively speaking, I mean. I worked out how to cast a few normal trips with my right hand a few days ago, but it’s extremely slow, and I have to close off practically all of that part of my mawork to do it. It reduces the amount of mana I el.”

  “Well, yes, retively speaking, I suppose.” Pollock ceded. “But think about it! Sorcerers are supposed to grow their maworks to form new abilities. You wouldn’t o find materials to io your soul. That might deprive you of the reinf effect of a traditional iure, but you also wouldn’t o worry about patibility! Your spirit is naturally going to be patible with itself. Just sider what that means!”

  That… had not occurred to Bernt. He cocked his head to the side. “Wait. You’re saying that I wouldn't get stuck? If I don’t have patibility issues, then I won’t have to stop growing.”

  “Yes! That’s what I’m saying." Pollock gave him a pained smile. “Most of us stall like that." He poio his sleeve, which was circled by the braided pattern that marked him as a magister and two simple stripes behind it. "I had to stop at five. Reag magister as a wizard is an achievement—it’s why we actually use the title. Archwizards are very rare. You might be weaker than a normal archmage or archwizard, and probably a little less flexible. But you’d be pletely unique.”

  “And it would validate my hellfire derivative as a viable treatment for mawork damage.” Bernt added thoughtfully. “But the best case would still be if I get the augmentation to form normally, with the sorcerous iure. It should make it mubsp;easier to use, si would sider the other iures a part of itself. The spellforms would almost certainly e out a lot er, even if I still have to manipute the iure manually like I’m doing now.”

  “Maybe,” Pollock allowed. “But I doubt it will work.” He rubbed at his face. “I suppose you could improve your ces a bit, maybe. If you find some kind e-material... something that is ily reted to sorcery somehohoenix feather, or something else that’s very spiritually stable and highly patible with fire.”

  Phoenix feathers were not the sort of thing a no-at Underkeeper—or even your average archmage—could get their hands on. But it was a lot more information than he’d had when he came i rose and thahe wizard for his help.

  He’d o visit Haln at the library soon. Maybe his old cssmate would have more resources about different pyromancer materials. He wished he could ght now, but he o get to work. His shift was starting in a half-hour.

  ***

  “Hey! There’s not enough food down here! You ’t expect people to behave with no work and on ay stomach. The t o send supplies down or find work to get them out of here and earning some money.”

  The middle aged woman had e out of one of the rough, unfinished units in the new “Refugee Quarter”—the massive new neighborhood built by Kustov and Janus in the days before the battle. She was looking at him expetly, as if she held him personally responsible for the situation here, and expected him to solve it immediately.

  “Yes, ma’am, we’re aware of the problem,” Bernt replied as patiently as he could manage. “Our priority is still just keeping everybody out of the cold.”

  “Well, tell the t that people down here are hungry! They’re starting to get into fights and stealing from the rich folks on the pza.”

  Bernt swallowed down his irritation. He was supposed to be on his way right now to “look into” exactly su i at an address on the "pza", as they called the rge square cavern at the ter of the new neighborhood. The homes set into the walls of the space were ideal for use as shops and crafting spaces. Many of the city’s crafters—mostly the non-dwarves who didn’t settle in the Crafters’ Quarter—had moved in here.

  Not that he was going to actually do anything. They didn’t have the time or the mao worry about petty theft. He was just here to offer people a sense of order.

  “Yes ma’am, I’ll put it in my report. I’m sure the t will take care of it as soon as he .”

  Bernt hated doing patrols here. The inhabitants were an odd mix ees from the Lower Distrid the Crafters’ District. Rather, they went to great pains not to mix. While they’d all lost their homes, their circumstances were very different overall. Crafters usually had savings at the bank—moo buy food, to fix up their new quarters and to buy the tools and supplies they o get back to work and move on with their lives.

  The se of the Lower District that had burned down—the neighborhood he docks, where Bernt had lived before moving here—wasn’t like that. They were mostly borers, and not always of the most reputable variety. They’d e down here with nothing to their name, and they had o go. It was te autumn, and there wasn’t as much paid work to be had as there might have been a month or two earlier. The fields outside the city were bare and river traffic had already slowed.

  Now, they’d moved into the peripheral tunnels of the refugee quarter, and the situation was getting worse as people ran out of food. They really would o do something soon—but that was above Bernt’s pay grade. That was the gover’s job, or maybe they’d end up thrusting it on Fiora.

  Disentangling himself from the pushy woma made his way dowreet and did his best to ighe unfriendly stares of hungry-looking men and women.

  Within a minute, he was walking into the rge new cavern—nearly half as big as the Uy Market. Bernt homed in on the address he’d been given and made his way across. It was a rge unit, with a brand new wooden door and a sign that read “Faln’s Fabrics.” He could hear a voice ranting oher side of the door.

  “What were they thinking, letting those filthy dock rats in where people are trying to rebuild their lives?! And now they want to send us Underkeepers to keep the peabsp;Underkeepers! Where is the City Guard in all this? Bad enough that they let an enemy army overrun half the city. What did the t think was going to happehey outsourced the defense of the city to sewer workers! I mean, holy, who does that?”

  Taking a deep breath, Ber out and knocked. It was going to be a long day.