End
21 April 2595, in Lucatore
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The swarm moves
The swarm peels out of the village towards the Cloister. Maren drives a fire brigade through Lucatore, fighting the blazes. Nero Vex slips through the gates and finds the chapel master in the Visconti chapel, consumed by the Primer. The corpse bears no stigmata on its chest.
In the Cloister, Anastasia hears Abbacus bark orders:
“To your weapons! Ready the Spitfires! The swarm is coming!”
Thread moves towards Neva’s room again and sits still to listen. From the tower behind her chambers comes the flapping of a thousand butterflies. They spill into the night in every direction. The Spitfires roar awake. Flame lights up the dark and eats the swarm.
Maren finds Verena huddled in a corner of the village. The girl is scared, but untouched. As the Hellvetic tries to move her to safety, the first butterflies appear.
“Let me go, Lady, I need to help my friend Vikal!”
She points at the amber amulet hanging from her neck.
Awakening
A sudden, gut-wrenching blast of sound tears through everyone. Bodies collapse. For minutes, Lucatore lies still. No one but Anastasia has heard this before.
In the village, Maren finds Nero. Together, they run up towards the Cloister with Verena.
From where Anastasia stands, the tower bulges after the sound. A second later, it ruptures, throwing bricks everywhere. By now, some Anabaptists have fallen, eaten by insects or bleeding from burst ears. More fall as bricks scythe through them.
“No, Vikal! No!”
The air thickens. The heat climbs. Thread hears Neva’s body hurled against the door. He and Anastasia enter the room and see Vikal, red-eyed and enraged, staring at his mother’s body. He speaks with a voice that is not a child’s.
“He is coming.”
High-pressure steam screams from fissures in the ground. The oil mills below are overheating.
Deadly terror
On the trail outside the Cloister, Maren sees the massive Psychonaut climbing the rock towards the walls. She shoots the creature’s hand. It slips, hangs from one arm, and answers with a lance of light from its eyes. Maren dodges at the last instant. Only the left side of her armour is scorched. When she lines up a second shot, the Psychonaut is gone.
After Maren’s shot, Vikal falls unconscious. The swarm also seems to have weakened.
A few minutes later, the group regroups. No one knows how to turn the amber amulet into salvation for Vikal. While Anastasia studies the amber, the others guard the windows and door.
Amid the mist of hot steam, Spitfire glare, and swarm-darkness, they see the Psychonaut again. It stands inside the Cloister now. The Anabaptists turn their weapons towards it.
“WOMAN HAS BARGHEST’S SON!”
No one expected the titan to have a voice.
Seed and fire
Anastasia understands. The amber holds the seed of a Fractal Forest. But how can this save Vikal? No one knows. Anastasia makes him swallow it.
Outside, the Psychonaut named Barghest towers over the Anabaptists. Maren keeps shooting. Every shot lands, but the creature does not stop. From a corner, Nero drags a fuel tank from one of the Spitfires and cracks it until it leaks. He sets it atop one of the steam fissures.
Barghest continues to advance. The heat keeps rising. Vikal wakes as a child again.
“Mama!”
He speaks for the first time, and the last. Then he coughs up mucus and blood. The seed cures him. It kills him, too.
BANG!
The fuel tank explodes. The ground collapses, taking Barghest with it. When the creature hits the lower level, its sheer weight collapses it too. Fire rains into the oil mills beneath the Cloister. The oil catches, and an incendiary fire takes over the Cloister.
Barghest is dead.
So is every hope of continuing Altair’s Elysian Oil production.