As much as everyone needed a break from the events of the Winterhold College labyrinth, a freezing high-altitude mountainside was not the place to do it, no matter how many pyro-infused monoliths or Red Antlers happened to litter the windblown ruins. Without their steadfast stagecoach, abandoned somewhere on the slopes below, there would be no refuge within this ill-omened place. The Seekers’ destination -and the end of their long trek through the inhospitable Frozen Highlands- loomed above them. Midnight Walk or not, the upward path was calling to them, and they could only put off their answer so long.

Even without the stagecoach that he had turned into the team’s mobile base, however, Edward was prepared to forge a path ahead. His implacable ironclad tank would plow through the drifts of snow and flatten the unseen hazards that promised to snag coats and sprain ankles. And if any minor threats poked their heads out just beyond the beaten path, the Seekers’ dreadnaught could count on his inventive new companion to wipe them off the face of Moon Mountain with a jury-rigged bomb. Edward might not receive his fair share of thanks, but Sandalphon knew that the team owed him a great deal for his hard work during this expedition, no doubt far more than they owed her. Any less helpful or solely combat-focused comrades who consigned themselves to merely being along for the ride could progress only because Edward allowed it. The archangel believes that the team’s lives and leadership could be safely entrusted to him, should it come to that.

As he prepared to set off again, his pack tightened and his new, unconventional weapon sharpened, Heismay was displeased to find that the gray-furred brother cats (whose collars, upon further inspection, identified them as Baconator and Whopper) would simply not leave him be. Relentless, dauntless, and shamelessly pushy, they chased him down wherever he retreated in order to rub up against him or attempt to climb him. He attempted to focus on the looted spirits, looking amongst them for a potential Striker. The Stargazer struck him as the most promising candidate, a more cosmic abomination to join the grotesque one he already wielded. Since neither Ace nor Heismay seemed interested, Heismay went ahead and spiritbound the thing, the Stargazer’s binding as unceremonious as its predecessor’s.



Over the course of a few minutes it eventually became clear that Heismay had little choice in the matter of whether or not these felines would accompany him on the treacherous road ahead. At the point where one of them managed to make it on top of his head, Heismay lost patience. He grabbed the young tom by his scruff, pulled him off, and sat him down in the snow next to his brother.

“That’s quite enough,” he told the two gruffly, crossing his wings. “As I told you already, you have no future with me. Are you both truly so eager to die on the long and dangerous journey that lies ahead?” He stared at the cats one after another, his expression severe. Baconator contorted himself to scratch his chin with one footpaw, while Whopper tilted his head in confusion and meowed. After a moment, Heismay let out a grunt of annoyance. “Tch. Fine, fine, very well. If you truly care so little for your safety, then do as you wish. Be warned, however, that I’ll brook no disobedience. In this company, you will be soldiers first and foremost. Am I understood?”

Whopper swatted at Baconator’s scruffy ear, and in a flash Baconator rounded on his brother to tackle him, sending both rolling through the snow.



By the time that Heismay whipped the little hooligans into shape, the rest of the Seekers were ready to move out again. With only a disgruntled head shake at Ace, the eugief and his two new charges fell in with the others on the trail blazed by Edward’s ironclad as it began to rumble upward into the howling, wintry dark. Preferring a less bumpy ride that would agonize her half-petrified body less, Sandalphon rode atop a steed provided by Edward, her own newly-adopted cleric held close for warmth. Although it remained to be seen how effective the felines would be as battle companions, it reassured her to have more than ten combatants present for what promised to be the expedition’s final battle. The archangel struggled to conceive of how things could possibly continue to ramp up after Winterhold, but she imagined that she wouldn’t have to wait long to find out. At the very least, there still seemed to be some semblance of a navigable path leading higher up the mountain, rather than slippery slopes and sheer cliffs. Maybe, after everything they’d been through, the Midnight Walk still led the Seekers onward. Or maybe, as the Soulfisher once told Sectonia, they had lost their way along the Midnight Walk because they were meant to.



Up, up, up they climbed. The wind whipped at their coats and capes, the unyielding stone fought against them, and the bitter cold seeped into their bones. Other than a handful of tough, mealy orange winterberries, the landscape yielded no solace. For Sectonia, this felt rather familiar, oddly reminiscent of the Sandswept Sky’s split mountain and Yellow Team’s grueling ascent. That particular climb, made all the more brutal by a powerful blizzard, had been so cruelly long and arduous that the peak seemed to leech the life itself from the Seekers’ bodies. Moon Mountain did not feel quite so impossible, but something strange about it seemed to turn the climbers’ thoughts back upon themselves, amplifying the doubts and fears that crawled and slithered around the edges of their minds, discreetly gnawing away at their strength. Maybe it was the abundance of shadowy recesses amongst the rocks from which dangers could spring–in which more than one traveler could swear they saw round, unblinking white eyes in their peripheral vision. Maybe it was the way that the stones were shaped, uncannily like faces, frozen in eternal torment. Maybe it was the way the wind died down, from a baleful roar to a mere whistle and whisper, so subtle that the sojourners might just be imagining it. Or maybe it was the way that the darkness closed in on them, making the backdrop beyond Moon Mountain fade away until there was nothing beyond the mountain but a pitch-black void.

Even the rumble and clamor of the ironclad tank eventually faded away. Heismay was dimly aware of it somewhere ahead of him as he continued to walk, his new charges trotting faithfully behind him, but he couldn’t see it anymore. Only the stone shards left behind by its heavy, crushing treads. At some point the person behind him -Blazermate- had fallen far enough behind him that she was nowhere to be seen when the Eugief glanced over his shoulder. Only after a little while spent traveling like this, with an occasional worried look out at the pitch-black void, did it seem to sink in for Heismay that this wasn’t normal.

Something was wrong. In the void beyond the mountain, something was moving. A gigantic, towering, indistinct figure whose nebulousness seemed a rare blessing. Heismay thought he saw enormous, squirming intestines, a glassy eye in its chest, and where its head should be…

”Dad!”

Heismay froze in his tracks, the eldritch giant forgotten as he whipped his head toward the path ahead. An instinctive reply died on his lips as his mouth hung open, suddenly dry. He wrenched off his hood so his long ears could unfurl in order to turn this way and that, trying to identify the sound’s source, but the faded echoes offered no clues.

After a moment, Heismay swallowed. “It can’t be,” he croaked as he checked on the cat brothers, suddenly very glad they were there. They were looking around, confused and alert, with their fur standing on end. “It can’t be…”

He stepped forward, past the corner of a protruding cliff, and made a bizarre discovery. In front of him lay a large alcove recessed into the mountainside, not quite a cave. It was home to a sort of town square, filled with a shadowy throng gathered before the gallows. A dark figure with furry, doglike ears and a tail, hung by the neck, and most of those in the crowd shared similar features. Angry voices, not quite distinguishable, cried out in rage. A handful of official-seeming figures with weapons, bearing either horns or very long, pointed ears, attempted to discourage the crowd from their prominent position atop the gallows platform. Within seconds, though, rioters began to hurl things their way, from rotten fruit and wads of paper to sticks and stones. Heismay’s eyes weren’t on the officials, though, but on the crowd. He hesitated at the edge, trying to peer between tenebrous legs and tails.

”Dad, where are you?”

“No!” Heismay’s heart was pounding. “This isn’t real! Tis some illusion!”

”Dad, I’m scared!”

“Damn it,” Heismay hissed. He looked down to find his cats, tensed up and ready for action. It would have to be enough. “You two, attend me!” He pushed into the shadowy throng. “I’m coming, son!”

Instantly, four members of the crowd rounded on him, throwing him back. They towered above him, all ears and tails and fangs. Heismay couldn’t make out what they were saying, but their voices were mocking. Thuggish. Dismissive.

“Bloody Paripus,” Heismay snarled, drawing his scythe. “Out of my way!”

Somewhere behind this scene, or perhaps ahead of it, Sandalphon fell to the hard, rocky floor with a cry of pain as a huge, taloned, obsidian-black foot crushed the head of her mount. With her pupil an empty circle, the archangel stared up at an immense draconic demon, faceless and horned. Around her, on a circular shelf extending out from the mountainside path, five archangels lay dying. Ramiel, Gabriel, Uriel, Raphael…their forms might be shrouded in darkness, but she could tell who they were. Their contours were unmistakable. As the great demon receded, the five broken, battered bodies began to crawl and drag themselves toward Sandalphon, reaching for her.

”You left us…you killed us…”

“Why did we have to die?”

“You shouldn’t have lived…”

Saranwrap hissed at the shadows as she stood before Sandalphon, her fluffy tail extended as far as it could go. Sandalphon tried to reach out to her cat, her voice pleading. “No…run…I’m dead anyway…save yourself…”

Voices of wrath and despair swelled around her as the archangel fought in vain to stand, her body wracked by agony. The darkness was closing in.