nightshades. They screamed and curled into the corner like halved worms.
The twins were also spinning their Beams. The light seared the world, and nightshades screamed. Once caught in the light, they could not escape. They sizzled, trapped, weeping and begging for mercy in beastly grunts. Kyrie swung his Beam like swinging a club, tossing the nightshades aside.
"Don't bother killing them now!" he shouted over the roaring Beams and dying nightshades. "Knock them aside. We must reach Benedictus and Lacrimosa. They're behind those doors. They need us."
He began plowing forward, step by step, knocking nightshades aside. They screamed and fizzed and shrivelled up around him.
"Agnus Dei, beside me!" he shouted. "Gloriae, watch my back."
He could barely hear himself, but the twins seemed to hear him. Agnus Dei stood to his left, Gloriae to his right; both swung their Beams forward and backwards. They formed a sun, casting light to all sides. His golden skull trembled so violently, Kyrie clung with all his strength. For every step, he battled a dozen nightshades. Their screams and smoke filled the hall.
It seemed ages, but finally Kyrie reached the doors.
"Stars, please," he prayed as he kicked the doors open. "Let Benedictus and Lacrimosa still live."
The Beams drenched the hall beyond the doors. Agnus Dei and Gloriae behind him, he stepped through.
Kyrie's belly went cold.
The room was a mess. The columns were smashed, a wall was knocked down, the tiles on the floor were cracked. Blood covered the floor.
"Where are they?" Agnus Dei shouted. The Beams still rattled and hummed. The nightshades crowded at the doorway behind, but Gloriae held them back with her Beam.
Kyrie stared. There was a stain of blood below a cracked column. Lacrimosa's bluebell pendant lay there, its chain torn. Kyrie lifted it.
"Lacrimosa was hurt here," he whispered.
He moved down the hall. By another stain of blood, he found black scales and a fallen dagger. Kyrie could hardly breathe. The horror pulsed through him, spinning his head.
"Benedictus was hurt here. This is his dagger."
He looked up at the sisters. Both stood with Beams in hands, holding back the nightshades. Both stared at him with wide eyes.
"Are they dead?" Agnus Dei whispered. Her voice trembled, and tears filled her eyes.
Kyrie looked at bloodied footprints. They led from the hall out the doors, into the city.
"Those are Irae's prints," Kyrie said. "They're too large to be Lacrimosa's, and Benedictus has flat boots; these are heeled." A nightshade swooped through the window, and Kyrie tossed it aside, searing it with his Beam. He spoke with a quivering voice. "Dies Irae hurt them. He took them from here."
"Where?" Agnus Dei demanded. "Where did he take them? Are they dead?" She trembled. Nightshades screeched and fell around her.
Gloriae tightened her jaw and began marching toward the palace doors. Nightshades fell and sizzled around her. She looked over her shoulder.
"Follow me," she said. "I know Dies Irae. I know where he took them."
She left the palace and ran down the shattered streets between dead men and griffins. Nightshades covered the skies, howling under the Beams.
Kyrie and Agnus Dei ran behind her, waving their Beams at the walls of attacking nightshades, clearing a way between them.
"Where?" Kyrie demanded, boots sloshing through griffin blood.
Gloriae looked at him, her eyes blank. Her face was pale.
"To his amphitheatre," she said. "He's putting them on trial."
LACRIMOSA
"Court is in session," screeched the voice.
But no, she thought. This was no voice. It was whistling steam, and steel scratching against steel, and demon screams—an inhuman cacophony that formed words. She convulsed at the sound. Lacrimosa tried to open her eyes, but darkness tugged her. Where was she?
"All hail Judge Irae!" spoke the voice, impossibly high pitched, a voice that could shatter glass. A thousand screeches answered the words, a sound like a thousand slaughtered boars.
Lacrimosa felt something clammy wrap around her. She felt herself lifted overground, and she moaned. Her head pounded. Her eyelids fluttered, and she finally managed to open her eyes.
She gasped.
Above her floated a figure from nightmares. It was Dies Irae, but more monstrous than she'd ever seen him. Nightshades wreathed him, holding him ten feet above her. He wore a judge's black robes and a wig of white, squirming snakes. He held a circle of jagged metal, Osanna's wheel of justice, its spikes cutting his hand. Storm clouds thundered above him.
"The trial of weredragons begins!" he cried, that sound like steam and metal leaving his mouth. The veins of his face pulsed, as if insects tunnelled through them. Pus and blood dripped