Stand alone, true to your foundations of wax and the strength of your wick as a single candle. Stand alone as a solitary and proud flame. Stand alone with as the shadows dance around you. Stand alone until the mad darkness of this world finally consumes you.

  Or give yourself to our blaze. Subsume yourself to the bonfires that will burn forever. Find the glory of being a single orange whisker of flame in the inferno that will scorch the universe.

  The decision, none shall ever make for you. We ask for you and we offer ourselves.

  - Part of the Imperial Vows.

  Baalka flicked her tongue angrily as she walked around the underground laboratory in the most northern reaches of Norsk. The closest village was more than a week’s march south. Only a single railway led up to here, the massive steel gate, more than two inches thick, could only be opened by direct authorization from within. The main entrance opened up into a warehouse or a hangar that housed supplies instead of planes. Crates of supplies, cages teeming with mice and rats were arranged onto one wall. Then an airlock which spilled out into a corridor of white plastic that obscured the steel exoskeleton which covered the entirety of Endpoint.

  A corridor, outfitted with mechanical turrets hanging from the ceiling that scanned for the authorization cards which hung off everyone’s necks. It split into two directions. Right for the living quarters of the scientists, their amenities, their kitchen, their gymnasium and small resting rooms, all enclosed behind their own airlocks. Left was deeper in, down a winding staircase, then another, then another. More airlocks separated the floor, with vents that could be shut in an emergency and then melted to ensure they remain airtight. With bright white lights built into the ceiling that illuminated the entire bunker to make it seem like a cleanly bastion.

  There were no other floors, no rooms for supplies, no elevator that had mechanical points of failure. Nothing save a staircase, fifteen steps down, turn right, fifteen steps down, turn right, ad infinitum, interspersed with safety barriers that could be remotely activated or with manual triggers on them. Even the enclosed phone lines would have great barriers of metal slammed through them in the event of even an attempted breakout.

  And down at the bottom, at what felt like the bottom of the world, where the air was always kept cool and fresh, the corridor opened up again. More automatic turrets, more airlocks. Another junction, with three routes this time. Left, for temporary residences and quarantines. Right, for holding cells of prisoners and crates of mice. And forward, towards the bunker’s end, where a Goddess stood dressed in a white coat that fell down to her knees as she watched her creation through a panel of glass, scientists, biologists, chemists and engineers by her side taking notes and recording everything.

  Endpoint.

  The furthest Imperial province north where a Divine and her team worked on putting the final piece of punctuation in the history book of Tartarus. A full stop. Nothing less would suffice.

  Baalka clicked her tongue as she looked from her creation to the recording equipment. The carcass of a mice had already been ripped open, a single drop of the concoction enclosed behind several layers of bullet proof glass. TS-4G18V was written in black pen on the bottle: Testing Solution, Fourth Generation, Eighteenth Variant. It would receive a name once it was finished. The mouse’s carcass was sprouting mushrooms that devoured its flesh and constantly breathed a hazy mist of grey into the room. Baalka had not bothered to splice the genealogy that would bring colour into this.

  “Martin.” Baalka said to the Norsk man, an award-winner of some achievement she cared little for, but the bureaucracy respected. “Report on the initial outbreak.”

  Martin immediately moved his mouse and the before him changed as the fans on his computer started to spin up and whir. The rest of the room stayed in silence as they kept own running their own analysis. Now though, Martin did not even need to speak, her turned the monitor to Baalka and hovered his mouse of the data. “We have this surge of body heat here.” He said. “That I assume is the fever kicking.”

  Assume was a good call. At this point, even Baalka did not really know what was happening within the mouse the mouse when it was poisoned. The disease moved too quickly, it pierced through flesh and spread out through the bloodstream, whether the spike of heat was caused by a failed attempt at the mouse’s immune system of fighting the illness, or simply a property of the illness itself was unsure. The liquid was made for the Tartarian atmosphere, it emanated its own heat. “We need to test it in heat then.” Baalka said as she looked back to the mushrooms. At this point, the mouse’s carcass had become a mist, the floor around had turned grey, as if someone had decided to butter it with spores.

  Around the mouse, various artefacts brought from the various engagements with Tartarus were strewn about the ground. The storerooms where filled with the mundanities: their blades brought in from underground, their corpses, kept refrigerated so that they could be analysed, their bricks, taken from the fortress on the Archdemon’s back but most of all was a pile of ash which had been collected by magicians. Both ash which had sent, and then ash which was pulled from the air and stuffed into airtight crates as to avoid contamination. The latter had base magical properties although by the time it was brought here, the magic had faded.

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  “Status report.” Baalka said to her whole room.

  One by one, the reports came. Tiny cameras and internal devices worked on gathering microscopic data. Leonard was the first to report, he had the easiest job. “No change in the blade.” He spoke quickly and efficiently. “It is coating the surface and spreading but there is not change or fragmentation of the material. Nothing.”

  The rest of the reports did not even need to be read then. This was a failure. They were crafting a disease that could be survived just because the demons could establish airlocks. Kassandora had given the basic requirements before she left for the underground with Kavaa. It had to infect flesh. It had to infect stone. It had to infect ash. It had to spread through the air. It needed to resist flames. It needed to bury into metal and penetrate armour.

  It was not enough to simply hit them back with an illness that would buy any time. If Tartarus managed to survive extermination, then their population would be reduced to manageable levels that Kassandora could handle through the army alone.

  “Micheal.” Baalka said. He was a Allian, brought in from Camford. Supposedly a professor of geology there, although Baalka cared little for titles. He was watching the stone infect the rock.

  “I have minor cracking in the rock. It’s spreading, but it’s not moving quickly.”

  “Mmh.” Baalka said. The third generation of diseases had ended when they made this advancement. Micheal’s devices had to be monitored, Baalka had never manipulated diseases to shut an extent. There wasn’t a single gene that should allow it, but the combination of everything she had stuffed into those cells had somehow given birth to this thing that managed to feast on certain stones.

  “What sections? Do we know?” Baalka asked.

  “I can’t tell.” Micheal replied, there was no point using titles here. Everyone was an expert in something, everyone deserved some credit. Baalka had little respect for their achievements, no matter how grand they were. She didn’t care if they didn’t respect her Godhood in return. “We would have to decontaminate and analyse but it seems to be going deeper than before.”

  “Good.” At least they hadn’t made a step back this time. Or maybe they did and this stone was just rich with calcium. Sometimes they thought they hit gold when they just hit a material similar enough as bone. All traces of the mouse were gone at this point, all that remained was an ugly grey mass of mushrooms that were rapidly dying. Then it was Zachary’s turn. “Ash report.” Baalka said.

  “We’re still going strong and steady.” That had been the easiest to solve. The ash was volcanic, it was rich, it could be used as fertilizer. The ground, Baalka already knew how to infect. Mycelium would grow, simply adapted to burrow through ash rather than the dirt. It was a simple adaptation. Honestly, she would say that would be enough.

  Kassandora had argued it was not though. Dad had backed Baalka’s sister up. Tartarus was not being given a show of force, the time for had was two wars ago. Baalka gave the next step of the testing. “Burn it.”

  “Heating up the room.” James replied. Another Allian, not from Camford though. This was some doctor who had apparently been talented and practiced the art in spite of Clerics simply making the field redundant. The metal blade began to heat glow red as the temperature in the testing chamber rose. It was faster at first, fifty degrees was easy. The illness managed to hold to three quarters of water’s boiling point this time. Leonard was spotted first.

  “I have visual retreat on the blade.” Baalka nodded and checked the temperature. Eighty degrees. Then it would have probably started breaking down in the seventies. She just stood there, eyes cold as Zachary backed Leonard up.

  “Same on the ash.” It was a nightmare to work with. The disease was too dangerous to monitor in real time. They wouldn’t risk bringing it out of the laboratory for fine measures, nor was Baalka exactly sure what part of the concoction gave it strength at this point. She preferred cooking up simple things which were easy and predictable, not this amalgamation of more than a hundred splices of different traits. The attempts at including a kill switch lowered the temperature it could withstand, she wasn’t even going to risk giving it a colour.

  So they stood and stared as fires burst out in the room and then died as their fuel-sources burned out. They could oven it to one-fifty degrees, and then they would be done. Tartarian flames could easily wipe it away. It was simply not good enough. Baalka needed to investigate the cells in a live body and the only way to give it a live body would be with Kavaa here.

  And Kavaa was off on adventure somewhere. “Baalka…” Andrei spoke up. He was in charge of communication with the surface although the true was purpose of his job was simply to give warning if they managed to create a monster that was beginning to breach containment. He would give a signal and the airlocks would be shut off in an instant. He trailed off, he clicked along on the screen as if unsure of what he was looking at. “We have a new hire I think.”

  “Who?” She asked on instinct, a basic sense of politeness to respond to a statement issued to her. She bent at the hip, to descend almost half her usual height. Andrei rolled away on his chair to give her space. He had indeed been correct. They did have a new hire.

  It should have been Kavaa. It was not Kavaa. Baalka had requested for Kavaa. And it was not her. For a moment, she took a deep breath and closed her eyes. To think that dad had not given her something, this was unlike him. She must have done something wrong then.

  Freeing him.

  That was it. It had to be it. She had attempted to poison the Godstone back then although the rock was impossible to break. There wasn’t even the faintest hint of a crack, not even where the different panels had been joined, where her diseases could penetrate and tear various minerals from the material. If she had access to Theosius, then maybe he could have given her the original manufacturing process…

  But she had not gone to try and beat it out of Theosius, had she?

  No.

  Nor had she attempted to get revenge on the Pantheon. That had been too grand a threat. She could have culled the Orders at least. But no. Baalka took a deep breath. She had done a half-measure. She got a half-measure in return. That was a twisted form of justice, but it was justice nonetheless. Arascus was a fair man.

  But still.

  Why her of all people? A Goddess not particularly tall, and not particularly useful for what she could imagine. Tartarus had no wood. Tartarus had no nature supposedly, at least they didn’t use nature in their tools. And this little Goddess was jealous too. She had never liked the fact that Baalka could make a mockery of flora through her diseases.

  It was fair. But still though. Why her?

  Why Iniri?