The plane flew east, and the sun fled the world. The cabin was plunged into a cool darkness as the gloaming hour dominated the sky. Other passengers snapped the shutters over their windows closed as they settled in to sleep, but I kept my window open. I watched the midnight clouds float below like meandering ships in the night. 

Being in first class, we were provided with a large complimentary dinner of roasted chicken and pilaf rice. I didn't touch mine—but Darius ate both our plates, and the stewardess retrieved him a second dish without complaint. She also handed me a soda when I asked for one. I held the cold can between my hands, contemplating the slick sheen of condensation on the tinny metal.

I wonder if this is how Amoroth travels, I thought. Then I remembered that, though Amoroth was stupidly wealthy, she was also a Sin. Sins typically traveled through the Realm.

I rolled my eyes and set the soda aside.

When he was finally sated, the demon relaxed into his seat, his head reclined on the padded headrest. His eyelids fluttered closed, but Darius continued to narrate his tale in a low voice audible to my ears alone.

Darius and his brethren had, in fact, worn togas and strappy sandals. They were worshiped as gods by the late Romans, and togas had been a status symbol with the wealthy and elite. Darius had gone by the name Mithras, a god popular amongst the Roman army. Balthier had been Mars, a god of war. 

They had resided within their great temples, accepting worship and sacrifices from their legions of followers. Though in the temples they enjoyed decadent lives in which their peculiarities were revered, Darius told me they had only been able to stay in residence for brief snatches of times.

"The Absolians were relentless in those days," he growled, splaying his hands atop his knees. "If the barest whisper of our presence reached their ears, they sent out their vanguard—the Wandergard—to eradicate us. Conspicuous actions on the part of any Sin or mage or witch brings the Wandergard into Terrestria. We all suffer for it."

Drowsy, I leaned my head upon his shoulder. Darius didn't seem to notice. "I imagine being worshiped by humans was considered conspicuous."

He snorted. "Indeed. You see, the Absolians—and, by extension, the Wandergard—believe Terrestria is under their jurisdiction and thus in their care. They police the realm fiercely whenever they can be bothered to leave Absolia."

I recalled Saule Ozlin, the witch priestess in Verweald, saying something similar about the mages. The Blue Fire Syndicate thought Terrestria was under their thumb as well.

"So, we could only stay in the temples for brief periods of time. A few months, a year at most. The energy of an Absolian is so egregious we could all feel it as soon as one of those winged vigilantes entered the city. We would scatter into the winds, not unlike cockroaches in the light of a torch." Darius's voice was laced with bitterness. I heard his teeth click together as his jaw tightened.

"I'm surprised the Sins didn't challenge them," I muttered. "Allowing Absolians to control your lives seems outside of your characters."

I felt Darius nod. "We challenged them. Once. The results were not in our favor—but that is another story, for another time.

"In Rome, we did protest the Absolian incursions, though not in a direct manner. We encouraged the Roman ideal of pax deorum. Do you know what that is?"

"Yes, actually. It means 'peace of the gods.' The Romans sought to appease their gods with proper sacrifices and, in return, their deities protected the people and the cities." I grimaced. "That does sound like something the Sins would think of encouraging."

Again, Darius nodded. I felt his jaw brush against my hair. "Yes. We pushed for the Romans to give us sanctuary. The Absolians, in turn, encouraged the rise of Christianity. The Christians told the Romans we were false idols—demons. The fighting between the two philosophies went on for decades, though you know the eventual results."

Yes, I did know. The Roman Empire adopted Christianity at the behest of its emperor Constantine. The Sins lost their passive-aggressive war against the Absolians.

Darius exhaled, the breath quiet but heavy with the mingled emotions of loss and anger. "Not a particularly joyous time in our history. It marked the beginning of our...fall. We went from deities to demons in a matter of years. Nevertheless, ancient Rome was when I first learned of it."

I stirred, raising my head to see the Sin's face. Darius was staring as he waited for my inevitable question. "What do you mean by 'it?'"

His lashes flickered as unknown thoughts moved through the Sin's dark, hooded eyes. "I mean the weapon. The one I've been searching for these past few days."

My lips parted in surprise. "Is that what you've been doing? Searching for a...weapon? A weapon for what?"

"For Balthier, obviously." He shrugged as though he was shedding a burdensome weight from his shoulders. "The third-born Sin of Lust, Zhen Fan, told me of it once. He traveled north with the Romans. Many of the areas he traversed were little more than snow-packed valleys and iced dales—featureless, cold lands. 

"Zhen was a clever man. He came across something in the barren tundra, something...unearthly. He was clever enough to not tell any of us exactly what or where it was, but he did tell me the place repelled humans. The Romans wouldn't enter the area. Only Zhen remained.

"For many years, I thought little of Zhen's wild tale. Even after his death, I only considered what the Sin had said when I came across a soldier's diary detailing the very event Zhen had recounted. The soldier stated that something...evil resided in there. Something unnatural. The man was a soldier, as I said, and was un-Christian. Upon his death, he left all his belongings to his patron god." Darius smirked. "To Mithras, that is. Including his poorly written journal.

"I don't know if what they found was evil, or unnatural. Evil is a question of morality, not existence. I do know, however, that when the Absolians fell, they were pitched from the white cliffs of Absolia with whatever they had on their persons—including their weapons. The majority of those weapons fell into the Pit and remain in the Baal's possession. Some found their way into the Dreaming Isle, or the Vale.

"I believe one weapon, just one, managed to land in Terrestria."

I eyed Darius with incredulity, sitting up from my slouched position. A weapon capable of killing Balthier? It sounded farfetched, even to me. "You're gambling your survival on a myth, you know."

Darius scowled. "Says the woman who sold her soul to a creature she was certain was a myth. A myth she then shot in the chest."

Furious color burned my cheeks as I crossed my arm, grumbling, "I won't apologize for that."

"I didn't ask for your apology, girl."

Calling me girl instead of my given name was an indication of the Sin's soured mood. Darius took advantage of first class's ample leg room by stretching himself out, allowing his lids to lower over the endless dark of his eyes. "Sleep, Sara. We'll be there soon enough."

I sighed as I watched Darius for a moment longer, then shifted my gaze to the uncovered window. The stars were visible at this altitude, as was the thinnest whisper of sunlight still clinging to the western horizon. The plane would race eastward and meet the sun again long before it shone over Verweald or America's western seaboard. It would be nearly noon by the time we reached London.

It would be the shortest night I had ever experienced, and yet it felt like one of the longest. Uncertainty and doubt pirouetted through my thoughts until I was dizzy with the motion. I shut my eyes and prayed sleep would overtake me.

The sky was overcome with dreary thunderclouds when our flight landed at LCY in the early afternoon. The Sin and I were the first off the flight, the both of us exhausted by the long journey and a fleeting night's rest. Darius resorted to brief, painful hops through the Realm to transport us past the baffling lines of international security straight to an unpopulated alley some number of blocks away from the crowded terminal.

The brackish scent of the river was headier with the low overhead of portent clouds. The Sin took me by the elbow and led us from the alleyway to a stretch of curb, where he managed to hail a taxi. He told the driver to take us to the station, where we waited for nearly another hour before boarding a westbound train for Bristol.

I had always wanted to see London, but before I could appreciate the fact that I was actually in the English city, it was already dwindling behind the speeding train and was lost when the tracks turned.

Darius and I didn't leave the station once we arrived in Bristol. We rushed to board another, smaller train about to dispatch southward for Exeter. We had to run to catch the blasted thing, Darius nearly shoving uncooperative Englishmen headfirst onto the tracks in our haste. The Sin almost throttled the ticket inspector when he tried to kick us off.

The train stopped an hour and a half later. When we boarded yet another train in Exeter, this one rather small and headed southwest, Darius promised we would be at our destination soon.

The hour grew later. What sparse bits of sunshine we managed to enjoy were soon lost to the eaves of night, and the rain finally fell from the clouds. It lashed at the train's opaque windows, chattering upon the metal roof. The tidy countryside gave way to the wilder, unkempt moorland.

The train came to a shuddering halt an hour outside of Exeter. The Sin and I disembarked at a station that was little more than a crumbling brick platform and a bowed awning in the middle of nowhere. We barely had the time to step though the squeaking doors before the train was rolling again, leaving us behind.

"Where...?" I asked, rotating in place. We were surrounded by green, murky flatlands on all sides. The horizon was consumed by bands of bulbous fogbanks, but the occasional tor inched upward from the mire. There were a few trees spotting the landscape, all of them wretched and drooping under the pressure of the misty air. It was early September, but the temperature was only a dozen or so degrees above freezing. "...are we?"

"Close," Darius said, throwing the bag in my direction. I caught it, but the duffel's unexpected weight upset my footing and I tipped off the platform. I landed in the mud, breathless and cursing as pain lanced through my wounded side.

"Dammit, you ass—!"

The Sin leaned over the platform's edge with his hands shoved into his jacket's pockets, his wayfarers firmly in place. "You'll have to manage the last leg of the trip on your own."

What? "You're joking," I said, stumbling upright with the heavy bag dragging from one hand. Darius had packed his books inside with my clothes. I suspected those books had something to do with his research into Zhen Fan's questionable story. 

"No, I am not joking. You're about to walk through a ward created to keep Sins out, idiot. I cannot cross."

A trill of unease slid through my bones. "But what about—?" 

The demon grinned, displaying a disturbing line of sharp, white teeth. "What about me? There is an entrance—a hidden entrance—I may use. I cannot show it to you, nor take you through it, so you must continue on your own." His brow rose over the dark line of the glasses. "Unless you're afraid of...?" He extended his arms to encompass the untempered wilderness surrounding us—the vast, dewy stretch of nobody and nothingness. "This?"

I grimaced. I was not afraid.

"Fine!" I snapped, hefting the bag upward with both hands. "Fine! I can get there on my own!" I spun on my heel—and very nearly landed on my backside for a second time—and started down the road. It was more a path than anything. The weedy lane was comprised of mud, bits of pebbly granite, and two furrows where it appeared wagon wheels had carved deep ruts.

"Sara...."

"What?" I demanded, turning again to see Darius still lingering on the platform, framed by the awning's precarious supports. The Sin tossed a lazy gesture in the opposite direction.

"That way."

Huffing, I ignored the irritating creature and changed course. Darius watched me go with a bemused expression on his face. "I will see you in the manor, Sara. You cannot miss it."

Manor? This is the first I'm hearing about a manor.

I glanced behind myself, lips pursed in question. The Sin was gone.

I was soon dripping with rainwater and covered in mud from foot to knee. The bag became more burdensome as I walked, pulling upon my tired arms and sore shoulders until I thought I may be forced to leave the damn thing behind. Night was the barest breath away from consuming the marshland and delving me into its pitch-filled depths. There were no lights in the mire. Only distant, hair-raising snaps of branches and soughing rivers.

"Tell me to go walk through a bog in the middle of the night, will he?" I quietly griped between stilted exhalations. "No directions. No information. I'll tell him where to go! He can go straight to—!"

The baying of wolves drew my words short.

"Hell!" I breathed, staring into the foggy, indistinct marsh as I tried to decipher where the sound was coming from. Behind me, perhaps? Ahead? "Hell and brimstone!"

I rushed onward, the sodden bag bouncing against my leg as my feet squelched through the mud. I could admit I was afraid now. I was in a strange place with no true idea of where I was going, being stalked by wolves while on the run from a murderous, eldritch monster keen on my soul.

Had I not been a stubborn, irascible woman, I would have sat down in the muck and given up right then and there.

When Darius had refused to complete our contract last week, a part of me had been relieved. Thankful, even. I did not want to die. Having the Sin of Pride delay my end was a gift I hadn't expected but was inordinately grateful for. I cherished every passing hour, knowing I lived only by the grace of Darius's sudden, unprecedented desire to kill the Sin of Envy once and for all.

Another part of my mind, though, whispered that his beneficence was for naught. I was dying. The wound in my side was killing me faster and faster with every passing day. Darius sought a mythical weapon to destroy a creature who could easily crush both of us. There was little hope for success.

That negative, cynical voice gained prominence in the miserable cold of the rain.

I shook my head, refusing such dreary inclinations purchase in my thoughts. No, I told myself. I believe in Darius. If anyone can end that beast, it's Pride.

I ran headlong into a wall.

"Ow!" I yelled as I slapped a hand over my throbbing nose. Startled tears welled and slipped from my lashes, but I squinted through the accumulating moisture to see what I had hit.

It wasn't a wall. At least, not any wall I had ever seen before. It rose into the mist in a single, seamless line. It was almost wholly transparent, as gossamer as butterfly wings but undeniably present. Iridescent swirls moved within the thin sheet, painting intricate, dizzying designs in thin air.

The ward, my mind provided as my mouth popped open in silent exclamation. The ward Darius told me of. He also told me I could walk through it, so what did I run into...?

Tentative, I stretched my hand out, pressing my fingers into the ward's face. They passed through it, though it felt as if I was shoving my way into a jar of viscous jam. The feeling didn't dissipate until my elbow was through the ward.

"Ugh." Resigned to my fate, I stepped forward.

I was not expecting the physical and mental effort it took to enter the unknown Sin's ward. Darius had said anyone but a Sin or an Absolian could pass through without a problem, but I was inclined to believe he had been deliberately vague. Getting inside was anything but easy.

The ward released me with a sudden pop. I yelped—but found a post to steady myself against before I could hit the ground.

I froze. I looked first at my hand balanced upon the metal pole, then upward. The convenient post was half the support of an iron gate. Overhead, the words "Crow's End" were written in rusted, jagged letters. A path I had neglected to see branched from the main road, leading deeper into the yawning morass beyond the crooked gateway.

I bit the inside of my cheek as I considered the new lane. It was the first indication of civilization I had seen since the train station, and its proximity to the ward couldn't be coincidental. Where else could this road possibly be leading me? If anything, perhaps I could find directions.

I took the lane, ducking under the gate as I went.

Shapes emerged in the dim as walked—solitary blurs standing in the thick bracken like quiet sentinels. My grip on the duffel bag tightened when I saw the broken form of an angelic statue and realized the shapes were tombstones. The lane bisected a graveyard.

I cursed the Sin of Pride a thousand times over. The wolves howled, nearer then before.

A darker form loomed at the head of the path. Higher and higher it arched into the gathered mist, ending somewhere beyond my line of sight. Soft, wavering lights appeared in the form's body. They shone like watching eyes as I followed their sinister allure farther into the mire. Ungainly willow trees tarried at the roadside, filled with clicking and crooning ravens.

The mud and grit below my shoes became gravel. Sharper lines and angles became clearer in the structure's façade. A plodding breeze crossed the marsh and tugged strands of the fog free of the land. The narrow lane ended at the stone steps of a lithic, bizarre building.

There was no sense of order to the monstrous place—no defining architecture or style to it. It hovered upon the moors like a crooked, hooded specter with strange, atavistic rooflines and shuttered windows. A tangible aura of timeless decay emanated from the brown shingles papering the walls. Corinthian pillars buttressed the porch, and there were no grounds to speak of, only an acre of pitted bogs, swaying willows, and a distant hedge.

The ravens cried in the trees, and bullfrogs croaked from the underbrush. Fireflies danced upon the roving mists. Thunder echoed over the horizon as I beheld the terrifying visage of Crow's End.

I swallowed my fear. I mounted the smooth, weathered steps, crossed the porch, and knocked upon the door.