“Come on, now, Rosegrew, get a hold of yourself.”

  Dicken Rosegrew could never understand the flippancy of his superior, Alderman Denmir, in the midst of demon attacks. While Dicken hyperventilated and paced, Denmir scoffed and fretted about political matters. Dicken thought of his family home in the heart of the city, and the terror of screeching demons leaving blood and guts in their wake, while the Alderman only ever muttered about funding, elections, and “public perception.” Dicken always thought the public perceived the nightly threat to their existence quite clearly.

  The cathedral bells still tolled over the continuing soft flourishes of the great pipe organ that stretched through the grand structure like thick ivy on one of the trees in the city park. Dicken looked over the balcony at the whispering, panicking huddled masses that so crowded the lower level of the huge church that the pews seemed nonexistent. He strained to listen over the din of pipe organ and sacred chanting and praying and crying and whispering for the words of the Bishop, who preached through every night to keep spirits up, so that none of the city’s many inhabitants huddled in the cathedral would lose heart.

  Finally, Dicken could hear the words of a sermon, but he frowned. He strained to find the pulpit the priest was preaching from, finally finding it sticking out of an anthill of worshipers. It was not the Bishop who was preaching.

  “Where could he be?” he wondered aloud.

  “Oh, who, Rosegrew?” scoffed Denmir. He was leaning back irreverently in his balcony seat, enjoying the privilege afforded to them as city officials.

  “Bishop Clevinz, Alderman.”

  “Isn’t he prattling about hope and courage like always?”

  “No, sir, it’s one of the other priests.”

  Denmir’s brow furrowed, and a moment after, he rose wordlessly, starting for the door off the balcony. Dicken, ever the hapless aid, followed after him. For once, the fat politician was in a hurry.

  “Alderman, what is it?”

  “He’s mad, that priest,” Denmir huffed.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I told him! Not while I run this city!”

  “Sir, I don’t understand what—”

  “I told him! He’ll kill us all!”

  “The Bishop will kill us all, Alderman?”

  “No, Rosegrew,” Denmir puffed. “Not the priest. His mad dog.”

  Dicken didn’t understand, but he hurried after his huffing, puffing superior down stairways leading past the main floor of the cathedral into the catacombs beneath it.

  “These tunnels always unnerved me as a child,” Dicken murmured, regretting that the Alderman would likely mock him for saying it. But Denmir surprised him.

  “They unnerve me now,” he muttered. “But that’s because I know what’s down here is worse than creepy-crawlies and things that go bump in the night.”

  Dicken’s blood chilled as they came to a great door. It was highly ornate, with swirling gold and silver patterns on it and its frame. That was typical of old hinged doors, but this one slid on hydraulics. What could be behind such a door? Denmir pounded on it, shouting for the Bishop, then finally tried hitting the control panel beside it. With a foreboding hiss, the doors slid open, revealing yet another flight of steps going down. The alderman and his increasingly frightened deputy descended them, slowly now.

  The steps opened into a grand room, decorated with a peculiar mix of technological parts, medical supplies, and ceremonial religious items. Dicken struggled to take in the hodgepodge, baffled at what this room could possibly contain. It almost looked like it was just for storage. How foolish it would have been to be scared of it!

  But then, Dicken saw the far side of the room, toward which Denmir was chugging. He wasn’t sure what he was looking at, but he got the sense there was something to the Alderman’s fears.

  Against the wall was a large clear tube, big enough to fit three people huddled together and stack three more on their shoulders, filled with a translucent golden liquid that almost seemed to glow, providing the only light to the room besides simple wax candles. Floating inside it was what looked like a man, or what had once been a man, minus appendages and showing extensive wounds to what was left. Wires and tubes were connected to him—or it—and the mask that covered his mouth, nose, eyes, and ears.

  The smell of incense began to overpower the smell of chemicals and motor oil, and then Dicken saw Bishop Clevinz standing before the tube, arms outstretched as if blessing its inhabitant, chanting softly.

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  “Clevinz!” Denmir bellowed.

  The priest stopped and turned. “Alderman.” He turned back and continued his chanting, then fell silent again and lowered his hands, turning around fully.

  “I told you!” Denmir roared.

  “And I have chosen to ignore you,” Bishop Clevinz replied. “Do you know what the word ‘cathedral’ means, Alderman?” As the politician stared dumbly, the clergyman turned to Dicken. “Or you, Mr…?”

  “Um...Rosegrew, Your Eminence. Dicken Rosegrew. I’m the Alderman’s deputy. I do administration and such.”

  “Ah.” The Bishop nodded serenely. He was neither scrawny like Dicken nor fat like Denmir, but he was also not quite so fit as the younger priests or the City Guards. He was old, but one could hardly tell whether he was ancient or had been middle-aged not so long ago.

  “Cathedral, Your Eminence...it means ‘seat,’ yes?” Dicken asked after an awkward pause. “As in the seat of a bishop.”

  “Indeed,” Bishop Clevinz agreed, nodding again. He had seemed slightly hunched, but now that he stood straight, he was taller than both of the city officers. “This church is my seat, and thus my domain, Alderman. We may step into one another’s domains for the sake of our shared people, but I do not make your decisions and you do not make mine. Have you not been listening to the transmissions this evening?”

  “From the Guard, Bishop?” Dicken asked as Denmir spluttered.

  “From the Guard, Mr. Rosegrew. The shield node on the West Gate is down, and a Captain Lochlan, who was commended for valor only a week ago, has repeatedly called for reinforcements. I haven’t heard any be dispatched, and yet he remains holed up in the gatehouse, which is likely soon to be overrun by the influx of demons, and therefore, the West Gate will soon fall, and before sunrise, the whole city. I have no interest in allowing such a thing to happen, and if I must set a sorry excuse for a statesman—”—with a pointed glance at Denmir—“—ill at ease to do so, I have no regret of it.” The Bishop was now speaking with a clear, authoritative voice that rang with power.

  “He’ll...he’ll kill us all,” Denmir choked out.

  “The man in the tube?” Dicken asked.

  “That is no mere man,” the Bishop replied. “You seem an educated man, Mr. Rosegrew. You know of the Knights Slayer?”

  “Yes, Your Eminence, an order of knights formed by the Church to defend cities and parishes from demon attacks, twenty years ago, not long after they started. Their heroism is legendary. But...I had heard they were all dead.”

  “It’s his fault! He’s a mad dog!” Denmir was pointing not to Clevinz but the man floating in the tube, who now seemed awake, looking between his visitors. His stare made Dicken uneasy.

  “Who is he?” he finally asked.

  “He is the last of the Knights Slayer,” Bishop Clevinz explained calmly, striding to a control panel. “And also the greatest of their number. He survived the fall of his order, though not as what he once was. Nonetheless, under the authority I, as Bishop, have over his order, I have been preparing him to return, and by God’s grace, on this worst of nights, he is ready. I fully expect he will be capable of fulfilling what I call on him to do, despite his limitations.”

  He clicked buttons on the panel as he talked, and suddenly, mechanical arms began attaching pieces of machinery around the floating body as tubes were disconnected. Robotic limbs, an immense suit of powered armor...the air hissing from the parts as they clicked together released flurries of bubbles in the glowing golden fluid, which now began to drain from the tube. The armor looked exactly like what Dicken had seen in a stained glass window depicting one of the Knights Slayer: grand and imposing and knightly, but with the decorative horns on the helmet—said to be a mockery of the devil the first Slayer had killed—it struck fear in the heart.

  With the tube empty, it slowly hissed open, sliding into the floor. The holy warrior now stood on his own in his immense armor, the visor in his helmet alive with blue light. He had likely been a large man in his own right, but he stood over seven feet tall now.

  Denmir had stumbled back in terror, but Dicken stood transfixed, and Clevinz approached calmly.

  “They say once, even the demons feared him,” he murmured to Dicken as the metallic titan began to flex his arms. “Though he says that it’s a misunderstanding from a nickname his comrades gave him. ‘Tearer of Demons’—as in, the one who tears them to pieces. People thought it was ‘Terror,’ like horror.”

  “Ah.” Dicken nodded uneasily as the helmet turned to stare at him. He watched in awe as the steel giant took two steps forward and knelt before the bishop, who raised his hand in blessing. Suddenly, he spoke.

  “Grace to you, Your Eminence.” The voice was deep and echoed from inside the machinery of the armor. Though it was in fact aided by the technology within—the man could hardly speak without it—it sounded so natural that it shocked the two city officials.

  “Grace to you,” the bishop answered. “Rise, Sir Dagus.” The lumbering Slayer stood.

  “I—I—he’s not authorized to operate on the walls!” Denmir spat. “That’s the one authority I have, and I won’t let him—”

  “You are a fool,” Dagus said. The words were simple, a matter of fact. Dicken almost laughed. They had been said with such truth and confidence, completely without effort.

  Denmir stared wordlessly as Dagus took up an immense shield with an odd protrusion at the top, a core of magical energy glowing at the center of it.

  “I will go,” the knight continued, “if the Bishop permits me to disregard the city’s officials. Come sunrise, there will be no demons left alive to retreat.”

  Dicken watched the bishop stare thoughtfully. His heart pounded in his chest. He had an inexplicable hope that this living echo of the past could do what he said, and a boyish enthusiasm at seeing a true hero of old cut down the hellish monsters. His heart sank when the bishop answered.

  “I will not so infringe on the Alderman’s authority…” But then Dicken’s heart begin to stir. “...without a concession.”

  “Concession?” Denmir repeated incredulously.

  “I give permission to Sir Dagus to disregard your authority, but I will send a city official with him to ensure he acts in a manner you find satisfactory, Alderman.”

  Dicken could barely contain the malicious glee that came to him, thinking of the admittedly hated fat politician plodding after the lumbering knight in the thick of battle.

  “Mr. Rosegrew,” the Bishop said, “this will be a fine education for you. I hope you will have a good report for your superior.”

  Dicken stood dumb now for a moment, then finally squeaked out, “Me?” He swore to God at that moment he would never laugh at another’s misfortune as long as he lived.