Nyx’s hands blazed with light, wielding more power than they’d anticipated. Despite everything, they found themselves grinning from ear to ear.

Who dared challenge the lord of this castle?

A battle was raging all around them, but it was one of those movie-lackey battles where every individual was guaranteed to be orders of magnitude weaker than the main character and the team tactics were garbage. Certainly after the soul-consuming they’d done in the dungeon, Nyx could take a whole number of them on easy. And they were glad to!

H-hey, that demijellyfish just ran right past them for some reason.

And so did another one—wait, they were way more interested in stealing shit than in dethroning the lord!

Now Nyx was starting to feel crushed.

No wonder the battle felt so ineffectual to them! Mostly the rogues were darting past, slicking around, and cartwheeling over the ostensible master of the castle, snatching whatever spoils yet remained. One arachnid even lugged out planks of flaky-paint, ordinary wood.

At least that made it all the easier to pick thieves off at will. Nyx spotted a fetus making off with their donkey, shouted “hey!” and loosed a cannon-force beam of light from one palm. It didn’t hit the fetus crook or even the donkey. It tore Darling in half, only Nyx didn’t see that part.

“Damn. Whatever,” said Nyx, and before the fetus could fire a sense-distorting sonic beam, Nyx launched a bullseye beam with their other hand. The fetus was obliterated in smoke and guts.

Agi was nearby, bobbing in the air, trying to keep people’s hands off a valuable messenger crow. He’d picked up the Hellrazor for self-defense, which he wielded like luggage. “Good showmanship,” he noted.

Nyx groaned, distracted.

With a cough, he asked, “Shall I—”

“Just get the servants.”

“And your things?”

Nyx didn’t reply for a while, just squinted at the collapsing second-floor balcony and the constant outward movement of fine porcelain.

“If you see that pixie I got, grab it,” they said, voice on the verge of sarcasm.

“There must be a way to—ah—save the greenhouse,” Agi remarked, dodging a thrown spear mid-sentence.

“If the donkey is gone, the room is too. Leave it,” said Nyx. Seconds later, a demijelly ran past with a basket of tomatoes.

Agi did a quick aerial bow, then fluttered away into shadows.

Nyx couldn’t let themself focus on the destruction of what had been their home throughout the most tumultuous time of their life. When Agi left, they turned away and shook their head, as if physically flinging the thoughts aside. No, they had to focus on the action. Adrenaline. Get yourself safe, and the ones you care about. Stab whatever’s stabbing you—they backhanded a vicious gnome with a still-blazing knuckle.

Maybe it was for the best that this place was going down...maybe the new castle would be better, grander, more befitting a demon’s-demon—

What shook them out of that thought was a sound they’d never heard before: a strangled scream, a fright-scream, from Agi.

Nyx looked up. The threat was clear: a black smudge in the otherwise-rainbow crowd.

They took a tentative step forward and craned their neck, but their struggle for a better view was interrupted by a brazen rock imp trying to snatch their breastplate clean off. “Hey, there’s an entire person here!” they barked, kicking the critter awkwardly in the neck. It crumbled, and the imp let go.

With a sigh, Nyx shapeshifted into a facsimile of their sitting-around-the-house clothes. Just needed to change enough to get a hurrying crowd to go from noticing them vaguely to not at all. They ran toward the smudge.

As it turned out, that smudge was the first one here who’d been happy to see them. It was battle-crazed happiness, but if anything, that made it better.

He heaved with spirit and heat, which seeped from lava pores between the cracks of a black carapace. A combination insect and dragon from the hottest parts of Hellfloes, his dot eyes glowed white with the slightest hint of orange mist, and his smile extended literally from earstalk to pointed earstalk. Bipedal, he hunched forward, ready to wrestle.

In his hands was a strange black knot that sucked the color from its surroundings. The knot was Agi’s shadow, caught and twisted. Agi’s escape had bumped into a shadow user who was far stronger.

Nyx showed up. He immediately breathed, “Bring it on.”

“I’m Lord Nyx.”

“Don’t care.”

“It’s my domain. You can at least make it formal for my sake.”

He looked around, wisps of flame escaping from his neck, and laughed. “Charblaine,” he said.

“And put the knot away, if you really mean it.”

No way did Nyx feel as flippant about that shadow knot as they let on. That shape didn’t just have Agi in it, it could’ve held their servants too—not to mention it was carrying Ethel. Agi had never failed as personal living luggage until this moment, and Nyx’s insides were squirming with worry. Yet the best way to get them back wouldn’t be to scream that worry. That’d only let Charblaine know how desperate they really were...and tell him he could hold this carrot over their head.

Charblaine tossed the knot over his shoulder. It rolled to the ground, then seeped in, immobile. The thinning crowd of thieves washed over it.

Good. Step one—getting it out of his hands—was complete. But getting past him...