Simon stood in the middle of a room filled with corpses.
Blood darkened the front of his clothes and ran in thin lines down the Chaos Blade. A severed hand still clutched the broken half of a communication orb near his feet, while the demon it belonged to lay several metres away with a long opening across his chest.
The other bodies were scattered around the underground shelter.
One had fallen beside the only exit. Another was bent over the edge of a stone table, his head hanging at an angle no living neck could endure. Three more lay close to the circular platform at the centre of the room, where fragments of a black spatial scale continued to release weak silver sparks.
The air smelled of blood, hot metal, and the faint bitterness of poison carried over from Black Horn.
Simon flicked the Chaos Blade once.
Dark blood left its edge and struck the floor.
