Night Mist sat watching her mistress and Water Shadow talking in an agitated manner in the corner away from her and the others. Beside Night Mist sat her son, Cotton Tail, who was an acolyte to Water Shadow. To her other side sat Moon Fury, stoic as ever. Her mistress had been in a clear panic, and the second Moon Fury had arrived for his shift had sent her running to go get Water Shadow. Her mistress had given no explanation, but had ordered her to return with the other alicorn instead of going home.

"What do you think is going on, Mom?" Cotton Tail asked her, he had been on duty with Water Shadow when she had come to fetch the alicorn and had been distressed to see Night Mist out of breath from running.

"I can only fear the worst, dear," Night Mist replied back quietly, still watching the two agitated alicorns. "She just woke up in a panic and was nearly incoherent due to how upset she was. The very second Moon Fury walked through the door she had me running to go get you two. I don't think he was even fully through the door, I'm pretty sure I had to shove by him in the doorway."

"She is having you run way too much lately. You should not be wearing yourself out," her son complained. "You're getting older, and my mistress is pretty sure that the Ponymother is itching to find an excuse to get acolytes in that she hoof picked. I don't want to lose you to the Bakery because you've worn yourself out running."

"I wouldn't worry about that right now," she replied. "Based on what my mistress saw earlier today we're going to be facing our final assault from the undead horde soon enough. I think at this point the ponies going to the Bakery might be getting off easier. These are likely our final days no matter what. We're all going to be ripped limb from limb by those abominations soon. Whatever the Ponymother was planning is of no more consequence."

"We've beaten back the horde for centuries, I'm sure that we can still hold out," Cotton Tail replied.

"Not this time," Night Mist said sadly. "Based on what Sunset saw there is no way of holding this back. The necromancer has risen an army of unbelievable size, they'll easily overwhelm us. This is the end, son."

"Maybe not," Water Shadow interjected, startling the mother and son. "Sunset and I have a plan. But we're going to be breaking a lot of rules. If any of you three wish to have no part in this you're welcome to leave now. I'm not sure if the Ponymother will punish you or not for this if you stand aside, you'll almost certainly be punished if you stand with us and are caught. However, if we don't do this every pony will surely be slaves to the necromancer either alive or dead."

"My life belongs to my mistress, I'd have been long dead without her. I'll follow her into anything," Night Mist replied back without hesitation, standing to attention as she did.

"I guess we have little choice but to help, mistress. If this is will keep ponies safe it is our duty anyway," Cotton Tail replied in a low voice, with his head lowered.

"Sounds interesting, I'm at your service as always," Moon Fury replied in the same voice as always, bowing his head slightly.

"Good," Sunset Shimmer said. "Because we're about to do something that will likely be considered treasonous. The necromancer wants Midnight Glow's filly, she is massing that army for the sole purpose of taking it. I've no idea why the necromancer wants the filly, but I have no intention of giving anything that she wants to her; it can only turn out ill for us in the end. We're going to take that filly and make a break away from Ocid. Hopefully the necromancer will follow us."

Sweet Pea sat in her room talking with Midnight. The unicorn was trying to not show how dejected she felt at the moment. The other breeders had come and collected up their fillies as their shifts ended, and now her friend was here to collect the last one; though they had just been hanging out and talking for a while. Her mind couldn't help drifting off to her colt that she had to give up.

Her friend kept talking to her, and Sweet Pea made an attempt to listen. It seemed like it was something important about the undead outside, but if she was honest she couldn't say what was really being discussed. She felt guilty for not really paying attention, but she was too caught up in her own thoughts. She was giving back quick one word responses and nodding along, but her mind was elsewhere.

Was some other breeder who was on milking duty feeding Sweet Pea's little colt right now? Was he sleeping? Did Foal Services treat him well? She knew she shouldn't be thinking about him. She had been told to not think of the foals she bore as hers. They were property of Foal Services. She would get to keep a unicorn filly if she bore one. Until then she was not to get attached to any foal she had. Getting told all of this didn't help one little bit, she wanted her foal, and she resented that it was taken from her.

Sweet Pea had come to realize she loved everything about foals since starting her job. She enjoyed midwifing their mothers, she enjoyed nursing them, she enjoyed foalsitting them. She didn't have her cutie mark before her suit was put on, but she could imagine that under the black plastic now sat a mark saying that caring for foals was her purpose and talent.

"Are you okay, Sweet Pea?" Midnight asked her, bringing Sweet Pea out of her thoughts. Her friend looked at her with concern clearly etched on her face.

"I'm fine. I'm just dealing with withdrawal symptoms still," Sweet Pea answered. It wasn't a complete lie. She longed for some lustwort, and she had a mild headache as well. Part of why she wanted the lustwort was it made her focus on wanting sex instead of letting her mind drift to thinking about how she had to give up her colt. It would be such a relief to just be thinking about how much she wanted some pony to screw her right now. But at the moment that drive wasn't there at all.

It wasn't really a bad thing that the drive wasn't there. In the few months last year when both of them were not pregnant it had been actually been difficult to resist trying to entice Midnight into bed. It would have only taken some steady smoke from her lustwort getting breathed in by Midnight and Sweet Pea could have had her friend for a plaything. She did do exactly that to other mares in that time period. It wasn't just greed for bits that motivated her to do it, it was just the overwhelming need to get screwed. However, that would have felt like a betraying her friend, and Midnight had been a good friend to her; a friend who was more or less asexual though. It had been nice when they were both pregnant and there was no lustwort in her system, and they could just be friends without Sweet Pea thinking of doing such things. It would have been nice now too, if it weren't for her thoughts and drug withdrawal, but Midnight did help with Sweet Pea's mood still.

Midnight had been eager since Dove's birth to learn more about what all the breeders did. Sweet Pea had shared a lot of the same misconceptions before she became one. Yes, they did act as prostitutes, there was no prettying that fact up, but the majority of the time they were pregnant, which took them away from that duty. Sweet Pea now actually felt pride in being a breeder. She knew her friend was concerned about Dove's future, but being a breeder wasn't a bad thing. Sweet Pea was now doing her best to emphasize the wonderful parts of being a breeder to Midnight to try to help calm those fears, and she felt she was making good headway in doing that. Dove could possible be very happy as a breeder when she grew up, especially if pegasi foals she produced ended up being more common births than the unicorn ones Sweet Pea and the others produced. Sweet Pea was secretly jealous of Dove that she might keep many foals when she grew up. Keeping multiple foals would have have been a dream come true.

It was unfair that they should impose a one foal limit on any pony. Foal Services was not fit to raise foals like an actual mother. She should not be just some foal producing machine, she should be able to mother her offspring. The system was unjust to both the foals and the mothers.

She held a hoof over her belly for a moment. What would become of this one? Would it be another foal she would be pressured into giving up as she waited for her unicorn filly? If it did end up being a unicorn filly how would she explain to her daughter, as she got closer to adulthood, that she would be forced to surrender her foals time and time again to Foal Services? Why did they have to do this? Perhaps Midnight knew whatever technical reason the government had for it. There had to be some reasoning, and Midnight as an acolyte likely had a good chance of knowing it.

She was just about to ask her friend about it when there was a knock at the door. The door opened and the two friends were shocked to see Sunset Shimmer quickly enter, followed by Water Shadow, Midnight's fellow acolytes to Sunset, and a final stallion Sweet Pea did not know.

Sunset quickly cast some sort of spell as she entered. When all the ponies got into the room it they were all practically standing on top of one another due to trying to hold so many ponies, two of them very large ones, in one tiny room.

"I've put a sound suppression spell on this room and scrambled the camera feeds. We don't have much time. I fear that Peridot will be coming for Dove soon. I hope she won't, but I'm fairly certain she will," Sunset said quickly.

Sweet Pea watched Midnight stiffen and felt the pang of panic herself.

"She is going to take Dove?" Midnight cried. "Why would she do that? She promised I could keep her. I was going to raise Dove to do just what Peridot wanted. There's no need for her to take her away. She can't..I can't let her take my little filly."

"It isn't about how Dove will be raised. It's because the necromancer is holding the survival of Ocid ransom and the price is your filly. The Mare says she'll not bring her forces down to crush Ocid if we give her Dove by tomorrow morning," Sunset answered back quickly.

"That demon wants Dove?" Midnight said in a fearful voice. The thestral mother gripped Dove tightly to herself, and wrapped her wings around the filly as well. Sweet Pea felt her heart rip open, they couldn't do this to Midnight, Midnight had been promised her foal. Why would they betray that promise now?

"How do you know this? Are you going to steal my friend's filly away from her?" Sweet Pea demanded. Her best friend was terrified and who could blame her? They were threatening to take her filly away, the filly they promised she could keep. It made Sweet Pea burn and grit her teeth in a snarl at them doing this; not only for her friend and her friend's filly, but for what would come next. Would they start just giving any filly born over to the necromancer to placate her? Would they start taking other fillies from mothers? How dare they even consider doing such a thing.

"The Mare of Shadows can apparently enter into dreams, something that until today I did not know she could do," Sunset replied. "She tried to pressure me into giving Dove over to her, and I expect she is going to attempt Peridot next. I'll not do any such thing. I refuse to start sacrificing lives to the Elder Gods to keep their minions at bay. We've enough death as it is, and I'll not stand starting to do that. Peridot on the other hoof almost certainly will if she thinks it'll help Ocid survive. I expect that the monster will be visiting Peridot's dreams even now."

"So we're all going to die if she doesn't get Dove?" Midnight sobbed. It was clearly an impossible choice to have to make.

"I don't think it'll come to that," Sunset answered in a hurried tone. She seemed frustrated that she was having to explain everything instead of them hurrying. "The necromancer seems to have no real desire to actually destroy Ocid, yet anyway. I think that if Dove is no longer in Ocid she'll pursue us instead of attacking. We have to get out of Ocid."

"I know a place that can sustain a few ponies for a while in safety," Water Shadow spoke up. "It was never a place that would have worked for a large population, or one that'll stay safe indefinitely, but it's somewhere to go for now that The Mare of Shadows can't reach us. There we can have effectively years to figure out what to do next. We can't delay though. We need to move now before Peridot can try to stop us."

"Okay" Midnight said with a quivering voice.

"I'm coming too," Sweet Pea announced as she came to the decision. If she left Ocid not only would she stay by her friend's side, she would guarantee that she got to keep this foal.

"You don't need to do that, you're likely safe," Water Shadow replied sternly. "This trip is dangerous and we'll be traveling well outside Ocid's borders to reach it. There's a chance we won't make it. There's no need to put yourself in danger."

"I will not abandon my friend and I'll not have another foal taken from me," Sweet Pea snapped back at the alicorn. She wasn't giving up this opportunity for herself, and she wasn't leaving her friend in her hour of need. They would have to forcibly stop her from coming along.

"Fine, you're going too. We don't have any more time to argue. We need to move now," Sunset growled as she turned back towards the door.

Sweet Pea turned briefly to her sobbing friend before they followed. She wasn't going to see Midnight lose Dove, and she wasn't going to lose another foal to a stranger. They would escape this place and her current unborn foal would be born free from this place.

Peridot was outside of the Dome on the one of the farms and she didn't recall how she had gotten there. For some reason this fact didn't bother her much as she looked around at the ponies laboring in the fields. The sun was shining brightly, there was some clouds in the sky that looked like they might rain soon when they came more fully in. The air was clean and smelled of tilled soil. This was relaxing and peaceful.

She walked through fields filled with corn, tomatoes, carrots, lettuce, and various small berries. Here and there different types of flower beds were planted that provided various edible blooms for her little ponies to eat. The farmers in the fields laughed and talked together happily as they worked the tending the fields and harvested the bounty of their hard work. A few even sang songs as they worked that reminded Peridot of happier days long ago.

Why was she thinking the happy days were long ago? Wasn't this clearly a happy day? She could not recall why she should not think the present should be happy. Of course today was a happy day. She could clearly see her various descendants were happy.

She kept walking the fields. She came upon an apple orchard and with her magic she grabbed an apple down from one of the trees. Such a good looking bright red apple, large and healthy; when was the last time she had eaten such a thing? There were plenty of them here, so why didn't she eat from them more often? She couldn't recall why, it seemed silly she shouldn't eat such fruit. What had she been eating instead all this time? She couldn't recall for some reason.

She continued to eat the delicious fruit and enjoy the day. There were thestrals hovering among the trees picking the fruits, unicorns picking the fruits as well with their magic, and crystal ponies taking baskets of the fruits away to where they could be enjoyed by all. All that was missing were earth ponies bucking the trees, and pegasi bringing small rain clouds to water them. Where were the earth ponies and pegasi? Farming just didn't produce these kinds of results without them. It seemed again that she should know, but it didn't seem very important at that moment. Her ponies were clearly doing well.

Peridot continued walking among the farms and orchards. There weren't just stallions and mares here, there were fillies and colts. They played simple games that foals had played since seemingly the beginning of time. Hide and seek, kicking balls about, tag, racing one another, and getting into general mischief. These were her grandfoals, even the adults were her grandfoals. They were all her family and they were prospering, happy, and safe.

But were they safe? Something tugged at her mind, something important. She paused in her walk and tried to remember. She had to remember what it was that she was forgetting. There was some kind of threat to them all and she couldn't protect them if she couldn't remember.

Peridot looked off in the distance and saw the ends of the fields and orchards. The land went desolate and dry at a clear dividing line. There was something out that way, something that could hurt her ponies. She still couldn't bring to mind what it was though.

She walked towards the desolation with a sinking sense of dread. This place was wrong. She stepped out into arid land beyond and could feel the difference in the soil immediately. This soil wasn't just dry, it was dead, nothing could possibly grow or prosper here. That wasn't the source of the dread though, it was something else. She almost had it, she just had to focus.

Staring down at the ground she could feel the sense of dread intensify further. There were strange rocks embedded in the ground here that didn't look right. She paused at the ground a bit. Were those bones? Why were there bones here? The memory of what was wrong was almost there, and she continued to stare. Then her eyes widened as a single word entered into her mind, undead.

She gasped as she remembered. There was a giant undead army massing to attack Ocid and it would surely destroy every farm and breach the Dome and get inside. Her ponies were in eminent danger. She had to get all these ponies into the Dome now. She had to marshal every single last guard she could and get all her battleships into the air now. The undead army would be here soon. There was no hope they could prevail, but she had to try.

Peridot ran back into the fields and orchards screaming for every pony to run back to the safety of the Dome. Maybe the Dome would somehow hold. Maybe she could get the guard to slay the undead as they made breaches inn the Dome. Re-killing the things as they tried to funnel in. They would come in bottle-necked through the breaches, perhaps that could help her ponies win the day. There had to be something that could be done to win against this.

The ponies in the fields waved happily to her as she urged them to go back to the Dome. What was wrong with them? Didn't they know they were in danger? Why weren't they listening to her? They needed to listen to her or they were doomed.

A great roar went up behind her in the distance. She turned around in terror and saw it, the undead hordes was here and it was coming into the farms. She had to defend these ponies. She had to buy them time to get to the Dome and safety. She raced back to confront the horde herself. She would be quickly overtaken, but every second she bought her ponies could mean life or death to them. She had lived long enough, she was prepared to go down fighting. She was a soldier, this was what her destiny meant.

Her forehooves struck the first undead that made its way into the fields, shattering it. She was a titan of strength, she needed no weapons, she was a weapon. She quickly smashed another undead to bits, and then another, and another still. They would come on her with such numbers soon that she wouldn't be able to fend them off, but for now she would break every one of the necromancer's toys she could.

She took a quick moment to glance around as she pounded one abomination after another into shattered husks and was horrified by what she saw. Her ponies weren't running, they weren't fighting either. They were being attacked and ripped apart by the horde and the ones that were not yet were just going on as they had been as if the attack was not happening. What was wrong with them? Why wouldn't they save themselves? She could see in little patches of ground between the swarming undead the mangled bodies of the farmers and the foals, all sitting in an ever growing lake of blood.

She couldn't save these ponies. She had failed to make them listen to her and flee the danger. She had to make it to the Dome and help defend it. Her armies must be massed now at its walls and defending it. She had to save what she could.

With tears in her eyes she turned around and started running for the Dome wall, destroying undead as she ran. She kept lashing about blindly as she ran, knowing whatever way she struck she would connect her blows against multiple undead. The swarm was everywhere and she was ramming her way through a solid wall of the creatures. Nothing would keep her from reaching the Dome and helping defend there. They could hold it if she got there.

She suddenly slipped and fell in the blood of the fields, landing with her muzzle touching the nearly severed head of a young crystal pony mare. The eyes were missing, and the rest of the body was missing chunks large chunks of flesh. It already hot the smell of rot. On the dead pony's face she could see that the pony was still smiling in death. Peridot jerked away in terror and then vomited in disgust.

Then to her shock and dismay the head turned towards her and looked at her with its empty sockets.

"Why did you let this happen, Ponymother? Didn't you love us? Why didn't you protect us?" The pony questioned her accusingly.

Peridot didn't answer the phantom. She got back to her hooves and began running again. She failed to save that pony, she would not fail to save the others.

The sounds of explosions now caught her ears. She let herself hope a little bit. Those were the sounds of heavy artillery from the Dome, as well the battleships heavy cannons. They were fighting the horde. Which meant that the Dome was not yet breached.

She looked up to try to spot the battleships. Then her heart sank yet again. The ships were firing down but they were being swarmed by flying undead. She could already see two of the ships slowly falling from the sky in what would result fiery crashes. The rest would surely follow soon. There were just too many of the undead in the air attacking them. There were so many undead in the air they blocked out the sun.

When she came in sight of the Dome she almost collapsed from the shock of the sight. The undead swarmed the Dome like ants, they were climbing up the top of one another, making a bridge of their bodies to reach the heavy artillery and destroy it. There were so many pressed up against the Dome, and she could hear some of the metal groaning under the increased weight of millions of bodies pressed upon it in concentrated areas.

The sound of the canons and the artillery went silent as the last of the defenses outside the Dome were overtaken. The sound of the the groaning metal increased as more and more undead piled on it. She could hear them pounding on it and scratching at it. It sounded like millions of sharp objects being dragged across a chalkboard. This sound combined with the groaning of the metal as it took on more weight created a orchestra of painful sounds to her ears.

The Dome began to buckle in places. She could see where the bodies of the undead hordes began to sag lower as the Dome beneath them caved in. It was not just in one place, it was in dozens of not hundreds of places, and this was just what was in her field of vision. The Dome stretched over the entire nation and this same scene was likely being played out on all other sides of it.

She heard the ripping of metal as first one then another spot gave way completely. The Dome was breached, and breached in more places than there was any hope of bottle-necking the undead hordes coming through into the urban areas within. Ocid was falling, and she was powerless to stop it. She had to get inside through one of those breaches and try to get any pony out she could. Perhaps she could get them elsewhere and they could begin again. She could fight through the horde, she could defend just a few where she had failed at defending many.

Making her way through the nearest breach to her, again ramming and smashing undead as she went, she entered into the city areas. There was screaming and wailing as the undead were slaying her ponies. She had to defend at least some of them. She fought her way towards the closest Foal Services center. The foals were defenseless, they needed to be defended.

When she reached the Foal Services center it looked untouched, but the Undead were making their way towards it. She couldn't let them get inside the building. She battled her way towards the door and stood to guard it. The undead pressed against her, trying to bite at her. They were strong but she had the strength to fight alicorns. They were insects to her that needed to be swatted. There was just so many. You could easily crush a single ant, but once the entire ant hill was attacking you were in trouble. This was like a thousand ant hills attacking at once.

She could still hear the screaming around her. Ponies were dying everywhere. She had to hold this position though, she had to defend the foals. It wasn't like any of her forces would listen to her if she tried to rally them. They had no love for her at the best of times, and now the chain of command was in chaos anyway. There was just frightened ponies struggling to survive and she couldn't save them. She had to try to save at least these few foals.

She closed her eyes and kept swinging her powerful forelegs blindly. She didn't need to see what she was doing, the swarm was too thick. All that mattered was that she kept defending with all her might, and that they didn't make it through this door. She was strong, she could hold this one point at least.

The sounds of violence came to a deafening quiet. She opened her eyes and looked about. For as far as her eyes could see were the broken bodies of undead and ponies. Since the undead were all once ponies it would be best just to say the bodies were of all ponies. The stench of decay and rot was suffocating. Where were the living ponies? Where were the rest of the undead?

She turned and went into the Foal Services center that she had been defending. The building was quiet, just like the rest of Ocid. She walked the halls but there was no one there at all it seemed. Her ears were lowered as she walked and her posture continued to slump. Had she been defending an abandoned building?

She found the door for the central cafeteria for the foals and opened it. When she looked inside she dropped to her knees. Inside were the bodies of all the foals, piled everywhere around the room. There was blood everywhere. The entire place stank of already rotting flesh.

The Ponymother buried her face in her forelegs and broke down into uncontrollable sobs. She had failed them, all of them, all the ponies in Ocid were dead. The only pony left was her, and she wished she were dead too.

The sound of hoofsteps broke her from her sobbing and she looked up in a hurry, eager to see another living pony. What greeted her was no living pony, nor any undead. Standing over her was the specter of Flurry Heart looking down on her in judgement.

"I gave you all my power so you could defend the ponies of this land. It seems I made a grave error in who I should have trusted," Flurry Heart said to her as she glared down.

"It was to be expected," came another voice. Peridot jerked her head around to see the source and was confronted by the specter of Icy Moon. "She always fails at protecting other ponies."

"She can't even protect other ponies from themselves," came another voice, which she turned to see came from the shade of her long dead sister Biblo. She flinched back at the sight of this shade. "Look at how much she failed that with me. It's no surprise she couldn't help these ponies defend themselves."

"She can't even fix any of the mistakes she knew she made," came yet another voice, this time from Pearlwort. "She had these ponies killing one another long before the undead came, just like she had me kill my own wife."

"We were fools to let her be in charge," came the voice of Sunset Shimmer. Peridot couldn't help but agree right now. "Ocid would have been better with me leading it, rather than this incompetent thing. Perhaps I was a bigger fool thinking that she could do it and sitting aside."

"Have there ever been more wretched parents than we," came the voice of her mother. "One daughter destroys the Great Tree, but the other lets Ponykind die."

"I served the Elder Gods but I never betrayed ponies at the level you have," came Pinkie Pie's voice. "They're all dead because of you!"

She crawled backwards away from the ghosts in terror, blubbering in sorrow as she went. They were all correct, her entire life was one never ending stream of mistakes.

"Please, I did everything I could. I didn't want this. I tried my best to prevent this," Peridot cried as she cowered. Why couldn't the dead leave her alone?

"Clearly your best isn't worth much now is it?" Twilight Sparkle's ghost declared.

"I know," Peridot answered back. She closed her eyes shut and buried them in her forelegs. "Please just end me. Let me join my descendants."

"I think perhaps you've had enough for the moment," came a new unfamiliar voice. "Things don't have to end like this, it can still be fixed."

Peridot looked up at the source of this new voice and gasped. All the ghosts were gone. Instead, now standing among the bodies of the dead foals, was a creature that looked like a pony, but the features were all off. She had her black fur, and rising from her body like wings were plumes of black smoke and fire. Her eyes were two pits of fire as well. Peridot knew this pony, this was the necromancer herself, the Mare of Shadows.

"Are you here to finish me off now?" Peridot said in a quiet voice, ready for the end. "Go ahead, I've nothing left to live for now."

"Oh no, I've no such intention right now," the Mare laughed.

"Then you're going to try to get me to put one of those belled collars around my neck. Better to just kill me, I won't give up my soul. It's the only thing I have left," Peridot said.

"I'm glad to hear that. It's such a tragedy when a creature agrees to give up its soul. The Elder Gods would make you into a monster. Take that advice from an expert who knows what she is talking about, it isn't a life you want. I've enough monsters to eventually kill anyway, before I get my final reward from my masters," the Mare said with a smile, though there was an odd tone to her voice as she spoke. It could almost be called sad.

"So what do you want from me?" Peridot demanded.

"I want to give you a way out of this happening right now and have it happen far in the future instead. This is just what will happen if I cannot get what I need from you, not what has happened. You still have time to make this right," the necromancer said in an almost sympathetic tone.

"I find that hard to believe. You seem very intent on killing us all, just like you killed every other pony till now," she replied back.

"Make no mistake, I'll eventually kill you all. You cannot stop that, it's an inevitability. I myself only have the choice of when and how, but my contract is very clear you must all die. You must see that it's inevitable now, but there is no reason that day can't come in the far future. I'm patient with my task and can wait. You could buy time for Ocid now; centuries, perhaps millennia. With all of your little ponies living happily under the sun, unmolested by my hordes. The bill will eventually come due and you will all have to perish, but why not buy some more time? I'll need to be compensated for letting you survive for the time being, I have my own needs after all, but I can be very reasonable in my demands. What will it be? Will you have this all come tomorrow or will your little ponies get many long years yet to live in contentment?"

Peridot stared down at the corpses of the foals scattered across the room for a long moment and then turned to meet the demon in the eye. She had made the only decision she could afford to make. Ocid must survive as long as it could.

"What do you want me to do?"