[Suzerain of Sheol]

Sooooo.... right, physicality. Objective reality. Matter and molecules and... all those dull things. Only a dim mind would stoop to call them chains. Still, a change of state for the unfettered intellect, the immortal spirit...

"Okay, enough of that, brain. Focusing. Why are we here??? It was... it was... oh. Right. The Grail. Right."

Merlin begins pacing around the room she's found herself in, and promptly walks into a shelf. An easy thing to do, inside a lightless janitor closet.

"Well, I never!" she says, blinking a mage-light into existence as she smooths her skirts. "Is this your idea of a joke?" she asks to no one in particular. "I look like a clown and a whore made a very poor decision together! Though, I suppose we are in France... ugh."

She is rather more pleased to notice the litany of Command Seals decorating her entire body. More power is always appreciated.

"Actually... skin me like a saint! I'm one belle dame sans merci!" She immediately claps her hands over her mouth in shock and disgust. "Oh lord, where did that come from?! French? Seriously? Ughhh it tastes like frog vomit. Damn you, clairvoyance! Damn you!!!!!" She shakes her fist impotently at the low ceiling.

"*ahem* What was I doing again? Hmm... new body, new clothes, Command Seal... the Grail! Right, right."

[Suzerain of Sheol]

So. It will be here.

Avignon, for all its holy significance, seemed quaint, isolated by its ancient battlements from the wheelings of the world. Given its ties to the Church, Leila doubted most of the citizens here had even heard of the Mage's Association, let alone the Grail Wars. It certainly lacked in Zürich's metropolitan refinement, and the quarters were close. The College had arranged for her housing on the University grounds, procuring her an entire apartment as her base of operations on Le Roux Saint-Bernard, and on her trip over, the streets had been barely wide enough for two people to walk abreast. The idea of fighting a vicious mage-war here seemed ludicrous. Her Tarterus Tetragrammata alone would devastate the pale, looming buildings flanking every path through the city. With seven Servants unleashed, Leila doubted the city would survive at all.

So be it, she thought as she began to unpack her belongings. In pursuit of the Akasha, we are as Gods to these hapless people. They will die for our sins.

She had brought little with her from her home in Zürich, having already ceded the remainder of her worldly possessions to Johannes. Their last evening together before her departure had been... fraught; as absorbed as she was in her endeavors, Leila could not in sound conscience have kept the truth from her husband. Even now, she was not sure he truly understood. He had not come to see her off, and she did not blame him. For all she truly cared for Johannes, even the purest love was but meaningless noise against the cosmic cogency of the Absolute. It must be abandoned with all her other mortal trammels, or wilt upon the carcass of her failures. Irrelevant.

The thought came to her unbidden, then, of her forgotten family. Perhaps they had deserved more from their daughter, a return on the investment of their marriage. Grandchildren who might have proved less of a dissappointment.

No matter.

Leila opened her phone to the few contacts she possessed, found their number. It would suffice as her final mortal gesture, not that she knew what she would tell them.

Ringing once. Twice. Four times. Nothing. Leila shrugged.

Releasing the tiniest parcel of her internal mana, the Kabbalist called forth her Tetra, wrapping the phone in hundreds of minuscule chains of fire, watching it disintegrate in her hand. A deep breath, and a deeper sigh. She cast aside the ashes.

That left only the gift from the College, wrapped in night-blue velvet. Leila closed the windows to her loft and turned on the archaic interior lights to examine the summoning focus. It was heavy in her hand, angular, and as she quickly discovered, bladed. The knife was old, pitted with deep rust from the filthy blood that had once coated it. It might very well shatter if she attempted to use it for any practical purpose. Nonetheless, it would call forth the Servant with whom she would win the Holy Grail.

Leila wrapped the artifact once more, setting it carefully on the loft's table. She would have to clear enough space to work the ritual, and time was drawing short for the arrival of Ruler which would signal the commencement of the War.

Is this the time for fear? she wondered. For the anticipation of victory? Reflection on all I am about to lose, no matter how this ends? Leila smiled to herself, a small and final indulgence before it all began. She set about to work, inscribing the summoning diagram.

I think not.

[Suzerain of Sheol]

Heinrich had arrived well before the manifestations would begin. His Holiness had seen fit to secure him full use of the defunct Papal apartments adjunct to the Cathédrale de Notre-Dame des Doms, and the Executor had taken the week to inscribe the Sacramental wardings he had been provided across every avenue of approach. The presence of enemy mages on the cathedral grounds would alert Heinrich wherever he was in the city, and the Forbiddings marked across the various entrances would detonate in contact with a magical circuit, if any of his targets were foolish enough to attempt to strike at his base of operations. He would need the defenses, as he intended to leave the titulus of the True Cross within the cloisters of the church, allowing him to move unseen by the scrying eyes of his enemies without its mana-signature to track.

His goal here was simple: locate the other masters, release his Servant upon theirs, and murder the mage while the battle raged. Heinrich did not know whose soul the Sacramental working would call forth from the Throne of Heroes, but he had no doubt that they would achieve their goal together. It did not matter who stood against them; there was not a magus alive whom he could not kill. With the artifacts he had been gifted, Heinrich possessed absolute confidence in the Church's victory. Even if he were forced to engage an enemy Servant, there were Mystic Codes within the Bible of Carcassonne that could match even a Noble Phantasm. He held every conceivable advantage.

It was now time. The sun was setting on the final eve before the dawn of the Holy Grail War, and before sunrise, the shackled souls of seven Heroic Spirits would make the Earth their battleground. Collecting the ingredients required, Heinrich proceeded to the cathedral's basement, every detail of the Sacramental summoning rite engraved in his memory.

Before the next sun set, the blood of mages and heretics would slake the streets of Avignon, and the Holy Grail would be that much closer.

[Gallagher]

"Mousse!" The click of the lock, a clink of dishes, and the clack of heels against wood were the only sounds in the room. "Où es-tu?" Lucienne took delicate steps around her work space, an atrocious plastic tarp covering the floor where the Savonnerie replica had lain, to set a tray of tea and snacks down on the circular table in the corner of the room. Silverplated, she had noted with disdain. Real silver was nowhere to be found, despite the neatly marbled washroom and ample toile de Jouy fabrics all across the suite. As charming as the city of Avignon was, the La Mirande had not reached Lucienne's expectations in the least. The only benefits thusfar were the size of the suite, which was absolutely necessary if she was going to spend more than a single day there, and that the cathedral was a mere three minutes away.

A rustle of cloth led Luci into the bedroom, where a mountain of blankets squirmed, some already halfway onto the floor. She huffed a little laugh as a black nose poked out from one of the folds. "Pardon, am I interrupting?" she asked, pulling a blanket away from her dog's face. A tilt of its head was the only answer. She arched a delicately plucked eyebrow and lifted it from the bed, then turned back to the sitting room, the dog's tail beating against her arm. "I remember giving you a job to do. If you could try to stay focused, s'il te plaît, I'll try not to lose my patience." The dog whined as she set it down on the floor. Lucienne tugged its heavy, patterned sweater off with care, one long ear flipped inside out. It spread its dark wings, wings attached to the thin body by a map of scars stretched over its spine and ribs. "Finish the circle before I've made myself presentable, Mousse. There's a long night ahead."

[Suzerain of Sheol]

There was a call.

Across the void of ages, through the eternity of anguish which he endured, it came: the first word, the first thought to enter his mind in fifteen-hundred years. He heard it, Pelles heard it -- yes, he began to recall himself, as he hung crucified and impaled to the side of the Throne -- and he considered. He considered the word.

Servant.

With the apprehension of its meaning -- like the opening of eyes until then blind -- came the crush of knowledge: implications of all the centuries that had passed upon his exile, the understanding of the magics that could breach the walls of death and pluck his mortified body from the branches of Hell itself, and the terms of the pact.

Pelles understood them all, and he cared not for any of it. There was but one fixation among the cataract of images that poured over his tortured psyche, a sovereign jewel among the dross of magecraft and scientia that pooled around him: the Grail.

And there was nothing else to consider.

With the sigh of one who had forgotten the absence of pain, Pelles tore himself from the Throne, one limb at a time, splintering bone and rending the annealed tissue of centuries from the conceptual nails that pierced his hands and feet. With shattered fingers, he reached to dislodge the spike driven through his mouth, piercing the back of his skull. His grip slid, coated with the leprous ichor that wept from his wounds, but he found his hold and wrenched it free. The Fisher King did not deny his stigmata, but embraced them in the full nobility of the wretched. He would bleed for the wounds of the world, wear the crown of every sin inflicted, breathe in once more bounteous air and exhale utter torment, the desiccation of all vital souls manifest within his flesh. He would live once more.

Pelles saw the grasping hand awaiting him, reaching across every conceivable boundary in an outstretch of True Magic, saw the beckon of the one who would name herself his Master, and with putrescent fingers seized hold with all his strength.

He had but one question for the sorceress, the same question that had echoed from the ramparts of Carbonec all the days of his mortal life:

"Whom does the Grail serve?"

[Salone]

"Thanks love. That'll be all."

Isaac Hemlock gave a warm smile to Aïda, the proprietor of Le Clos du Rempart, the tiny and (from the outside) unremarkable Bed and Breakfast he had chosen to take lodgings in. He had rented out both rooms that the place had contained, citing that he was an enthusiast of privacy and quiet. The outside would have at first said that this would not have been the place for his type, but the small Bed and Breakfast was not all revealed at first glance. The interior was a far cry from the outside, and Isaac was basking in the central patio with a fresh cup of black tea. It had been remodeled over a decade ago, and was designed to give what a tourist might call a 'feel for Middle Eastern charm.' They had certainly tried, at least. Most of the sounds of outside were hidden far away, with the song of birds being the only real noticeable disturbance. If he had been on holiday, this would have been a wonderful retreat. The Papal Palace within walking distance, strolls by the waterside across the street, avenues lined with beautiful art that demanded a tourist to expose himself by taking large amounts of pictures, all would have been a lovely break from his work.

However, Isaac Hemlock was not on holiday, and while he appreciated the comforts around him, sightseeing was to be the least of his goings on here.

Rummaging within a pocket, he produced a weathered and beaten glass vial. Its contents sloshed about, the unmarked bottle offering no indication as to what it held. Isaac could only assume what it was. If the whisperings were true, it was powerful stuff. Important people had fallen to its use by other important people. At least it had been important to someone he had met by chance, nearly four decades ago...

Screaming, so much screaming. Mortar fire from the DLF had nearly destroyed much of the region. Soviet supplied rockets hadn't helped improve the situation. Isaac had been an idiot to stay behind. He was overwhelmed. He had chosen to stay after the British pullout to provide relief effort and medical aid. But this was no time for relief. This was time for survival. To flee To run.

But there were so many who could not.

He was working openly. He was the sole remainder of those who had chosen to stay. Chaos and blood rained around him. Even if he saved those around him, no one would believe them when they said what they had witnessed. He broke his identity here, secrecy be damned if it meant the cost of a life.

Isaac had opened himself up to the Aether, letting raw magic course through his veins. He was working diligently, putting refugees back together. So many broken bodies, so many organs that should not see the light of day, and so little of his precious healing abilities to go around. And all the while, the mortar shelling continued.

"Live you daft git! Live!"

Isaac shouted at the dying figure of a young man. Shrapnel had ripped through his body, tearing open the left ventricle in his heart. The man's chest looked like raw hamburger, and Isaac was quickly trying to sew his magical talents through the fading body, through the damaged heart. It was hard enough to repair a heart in such a state, but reshaping the very tissue and flesh in addition was requiring all of his attention. All of his power. He was drinking in all he could, just to feed it to the body before him. "Just a few more..." He thought.

With a pulse felt through the air between them, Isaac felt the heart beat again. It was weak, but it was there. He had done it. It wasn't a pretty job, but there would be one less corpse today. Out of the many around him, this one would live. He slumped back, physically drained from the ordeal. Mortar fire could take him now, and he doubted he would care much. The magic within him was drained for the moment.

"You have magic. Come...come here."

Isaac heard the strong Omani accent behind the weakened voice. One of the wounded was still conscious. He was elderly, long creases forming mountain like ranges down his face, and his hair had long ago became a dirty grey. He was covered in blood. His eyes were glazed even now. Isaac knew that look. This man was not long for this world.

"I'm sorry mate, I'm all out. Bloke here dried me up. I'm so bloody sorry."

Isaac's voice held defeat. There would have been sadness, if he had the strength for it.

The elderly Omani trembled, hands shaking as he attempted to withdraw something from his pocket. He was able to grasp it, only to let go of it as it was removed. It was a vial of some liquid, chipped and beaten and covered in the man's own blood. It fell to the dirt with little fanfare.

"War is coming to our kind. The Grail approaches Avignon. You will see what I will not. Go there. Take...take this with you. It will bring you power when you need it. Survive and be granted..."

The man choked on his last few words, coughing wildly as blood began to overtake his throat. Isaac watched him die, watched him powerlessly as the man began to depart over the course of what felt like hours. Time always seemed to stretch when he didn't have the power to save someone.

Finally the man expired. Isaac felt it through the air. The last few words tugged at him though. He had to have been delirious. Out of his mind from trauma and shock. But something tickled at Isaac. Meeting this man like this, under these circumstances, read to him like a bad novel. Of course, truth was usually written much worse than fiction.

With the trickle of magical strength he had left within him, he reached out his Mana in to the corpse. The brain was still active, although quickly expiring. There was time.

Isaac poured his mana through the man's mind. It was all there. The war of the Magi, the Grail. The last time it had happened, and when it was to happen again. The practiced ritual for the summoning of a Servant, a proxy of sorts for the wizard who commanded him. The gift of a wish beyond imagination for the lone victor. It was all there. Death was no bar to secrets for Isaac. Especially those that wished to be shared.

He severed the connection, and the elderly man's brain went dark as the barely life giving mana ceased to flow in to it. This was something new to Isaac. But it was too much. Too much all at once. A war so far away meant nothing to him if he couldn't survive the one he was in now.

Mortar shells exploded a mere fifty yards away, pelting him with sand and debris. This was the present. The time for relief was over. With muscles screaming he hoisted himself up, picked up the small bottle from the dead man, and fled. It was all he could do.

Isaac sipped his tea. Nearly forty years. It hadn't really been at the forefront of his thought, but as the time had slipped away it had reminded him late at night, like a bill he had forgotten to pay earlier that day. Always there, but never really pressing until there was nothing left to occupy him. Several times he had nearly tossed the artifact in to the sea, but stopped himself. He had seen a lot of fighting. A lot of war. It had always been pointless. But if the power at the end of this war was real, then he had control over something. Perhaps this was a war he could have the power to end.

The tea brought him back to reality. It was bitter, off. It took him a moment to realize what was wrong with it: no milk. His faced soured to match the flavor of the tea. Tea without milk was so uncivilized, after all.

He stood from his table, leaving the shunned tea behind. The trinket disappeared in to his pocket once again, hidden away like it had been on its original owner. Or at least, the last owner to have it. Isaac hoped he didn't end up the same way. He called out to Aïda, backing away towards the stairs so as not to be caught fleeing from his tea.

"Aïda love, I'm not feeling right. Going to pop upstairs for a bit. Will be down after while."

He retreated upwards to the sounds of her acknowledgement. Within seconds he had climbed the few stairs to the room he had chosen for personal activities. It was small, but it would work. Removing the arrowhead from his pocket, he studied it once again. It had been worn from use, lots of use. It made him anxious to think of who had used it.

"Right. Let's see what poor bastard you might be."

He whispered to no one in particular as he began setting up the summoning ritual. He had kept the memories alive for this just in case. Going through the practiced motions of another person's experiences always felt odd, and this one was no different. With grim determination, Isaac Hemlock took his first steps in to the war for the Grail.

After a few minutes, he nodded in satisfaction to the summoning circle he had laid out. He made a mental note to remove it once this was all over, as he would most likely not get his deposit back on the room. He chuckled, worrying over something so small in the face of something much greater than him. Everything was ready. Now all that was required was the vial.

He unceremoniously twisted and tossed the stopper from the vial across the room. The black liquid shifted, and with a grim determination he knocked the contents back in to his mouth.

The taste was vile. It burned down his throat, and he could feel it quickly eating away at him, attempting to kill him. His mana flowed through both him and the circle, pulling at the spirit of the Servant that would use such a horrid thing while also working his power through his own body. The poison was isolated, refused to allow itself to metabolize. Sequestered away inside his own body, he quietly cheated death as he brought another life in to this world.

[Suzerain of Sheol]

She remembers fire, consuming a calm, Parisian morning even as it devoured her eyes, her flesh, the final sensation of her mortal existence the smell of her own melting skin as it sloughed from brittle bones, before the flames reached her brain. And that had not been the end, oh no. Greater fires, immortal fires, awaited La Voisin as bitter old eyes closed on one world and opened on a new, the insatiable pyre of her unholy master. Sealed within a coffin of stone, packed tight with burning coal, eternity is smoke and pain for the great murderess, the greatest murderess! How many had she slain, gutting them upon the altar, tearing lifeless children from eviscerated wombs? And how many more dead from the bane she peddled: infidel lovers and cuckolds alike, all to glut the diseased passions of those people, her people! Yes, she had killed them with glee, dozens becoming hundreds becoming thousands, oh the terror! Was she not La Voisin? Damnation was a formality for the greatest slayer who had ever lived.

How bizarre, then, how sickening to have her smoldering cairn smashed open above her, invaded by light, disastrous light! The coals suffocated at its touch, leaving her cold and naked beneath its hovering judgment. It felt holy.

And to hear it call to her, her! La Voisin! Oh, the irony! How sick was that lecher God, to bind her to this righteous purpose? She, who had swept across Paris as a plague, turning love to treacherous death wherever she should pass... to frame that now as some sort of Heaven-spawned punishment, making her the instrument of divine castigation... preposterous! Ribald and gross! She was a tool of the Devil, vile, obscene, bane to all mothers, and now to be called upon by Almighty God? Heinous obscenity!

Catherine shrieks within her burnt-out skull as the light wraps about her like chains and hauls her from her charnel seat. And suddenly she is once more in France -- she would know its corrupt air anywhere, it never changes. Home.

Standing before the man who would now function as her Master -- she knows this now, imparted knowledge by the wretched light. Studying him, Catherine cannot but nod in approval at his brazen, suicidal magics. To use his own body as a catalyst... well, he isn't Sathanas Domini, but he might suffice for now.

La Voisin curtsies in proper fashion, in the same motion proffering the Deck to her master. "Draw boldly, monseigneur" she implores him, "But know, every card is Death! We will murder them all!"

Her cackle is cacophonous.

[Suzerain of Sheol]

The circle is prepared, a task of rote precision for her, impossible to get wrong. Woven of divine Words forced to conform into sublime equations, it is a perfection of magecraft, self-reinforcing. Leila carefully places the dagger in the center of the construct, its fetid aura almost palpable in the still air.

Tracing over the scar of foreign magic branded into her hand, Leila uses the Command Seals to ground herself for the ritual. Her voice, normally so reserved in university halls, cries out with authority.

"Heed my words, for I am the speaker of the Truth Ineffable. I set aside all good in the world, and turn my back upon all evil in the world! My will creates the Logos, my soul expresses the Kosmos, I give voice through the Grail and bind you to my purpose! Accursed spirit, rise to my call and let us ascend to the Absolute! I pronounce perfection through the Circle of Godhead! Enter the axis of Time and be bound to my command!"

[Salone]

Falling through blackness, surrounded by the infinite dark of churning ice. The void is broken by light, by bright flashes and cold tables, then returned to the black embrace of the soil, only to be disturbed once again by the dark of sky and fire. The unceremonious pyre burns away what the ice took, the remains scattering across the skies. The world turns, and the ash scatters eternal. Through famine, through prosperity, through tumultuous oceans and the continents between them, the ash bears witness to the struggles of all mankind. To the falls of empires, to the rising of others, to furious atomic desolation of those before. The winds blow the ash across all lands, and throughout the span of one hundred years the ash sees all. And throughout this span of the century, the ash does not rest. Is not allowed to rest, by its own words from when the ash was still dust that walked upon the Earth.

The ash is whirled by wind, and it flurries for a moment before it is pulled along the skies of the world. The continent rolls below it, civilization and its absence running together as it is forced upon the cityscape that is Avignon. The ash is rushed through the streets, through pipes and chimneys, tossed about and dispersed in to nothing.

With eyes that are not eyes, it observes the woman occupying the lone bedroom. With a voice that is not a voice, words formed without a throat, the emptiness speaks in a tone rendered hoarse by river and fire.

"Grigori Rasputin answers the call of the Master."

Cold grips the room at the words spoken with no mouth. Each breath with no lungs spreads small lattices of thin ice across every surface. With no body, The Ash of Rasputin bows to its Master.

[Salone]

Isaac stared for a moment, taking the Servant in before his brain could manufacture a response. He did not expect them to be so...easy on the eyes.

"Right, well. Nice to meet you too. Cards eh? Can't say I was ever great with them. Back in the day, the boys called me 'The Goldmine'. But let's see..."

Isaac's hand fluttered across the deck that was offered before him, feeling along the top of each card as though they would tell him their secrets. He pulled at one, ignoring the mental version of alarm bells in his head before he remembered that a servant tied to the Grail was most likely not offering him a mere pack of dollar store playing cards. In this particular case, his hand was faster than his brain, and old fingers tugged away a card from the rest of its brethren.

"Silly me. It's what I get for being an old fool. Well Voisau- Voisa- Voi-oh confound it, Catherine, what happens now?"

[Suzerain of Sheol]

"A Servant who cannot take physical form... I wonder if there has ever been such a case before?" Leila does not insult the Heroic Spirit by attempting to look in the direction of the voice, instead electing to set about cleaning the scattered ritual supplies.

"The Grail has granted me knowledge of your abilities," she says to empty air. "We will need to formulate a strategy, something unconventional as we cannot engage in open battle like the other contenders. I believe our first order of business will be to establish intelligence on each of our opponents. You are capable of this, yes?"

The numerologist kneels over the now-useless summoning circle, extending her palm with eyes closed. Computed to an infinitesimal thinness, her Tarterus Tetragrammata flashes for an instant of singular fire, a matriced square of flame imposed over the magic circle, incinerating the reagents without touching the floor below.

"I must attend Ruler's summons in the cathedral come morning. We have been forbidden to strike until the meeting closes. Take no overt action until then, though I trust you can handle yourself without direct orders from me. You know your role in this."

[Salone]

The Ash of Rasputin sighs, more for the expulsion of air than actual exasperation. Drawing upon mana from his master, the ash is disturbed as something is forged from the pure aether flowing through the air. Through a bright light, a tall jointed mannequin clothed in the humble black of a monk stands before her. Its visage is of Rasputin himself, although twisted in mockery upon such an uncanny display. With dead eyes it looks down upon its Master. There is no mouth, yet sound issues from wherever the ash may be.

"I am more than capable of such a task. I have my ways. By your morning matters shall be attended to. With your permission, I may lay claim to the lands of Avignon."

[Suzerain of Sheol]

"Oh! Ohoho, monsieur! It seems I was gravely mistaken. We are not forsaken, after all! The Devil lurks even as the shadow to this light of God called the Grail! Behold!"

La Voisin holds out her now empty hand, reaching, and the card levitates free of Isaac's grasp, hovering in the air between them, where it bursts into flame. Burning the fabric of reality itself, the fire spreads into a churning gateway, flames describing utter nothingness at its center.

And in the depths of that nothingness, three pairs of infernal eyes stare back, growing nearer. Nearer, until the shapes of unearthly things can be discerned, prowling toward the gate, sometimes loping on four legs, sometimes striding like kings on two, bodies made of horns and thorns, impossibly-hinged jaws drooling lightning that coruscates in rings down their inhumanly-articulate limbs.

They step through, and they make no sound, merely writhe in mind-bending motions, arraying themselves around their newfound master.

"See! A token of blessing from our Infernal Lord. Each of these fiends is near in strength to a Servant. Such powerful weapons at our disposal!"

And again, the laughter.

[Suzerain of Sheol]

"Very well. Begin your labor, there is much to be done. I am going to rest."

What am I going to tell the cleaning staff when they see that puppet he's created? Far be it from I to question his methods, I suppose...

[Salone]

Isaac gripped at his chest as his body forcibly drained mana in to the Noble Phantasm of La Voisin. The change caught him unaware, and for a brief moment all of his mana was diverted in to her. The diseases he held at bay assaulted him for a brief moment, sending him in to a horrendous coughing fit before he recovered. Cancers and carcinogens expelled themselves from his mouth as the flow of his own mana attempted to stabilize itself. With minimal effort he recovered his body, sealing away the diseases inside of him in their own little tumors in case of another drain. This time had caught him off balance, but it wouldn't happen again.

Coming back to the world before him, Mr. Hemlock took in the...things in front of him. Their impossible physiology baffled him, and all his knowledge on the workings of humans and animals gave him nothing as he studied them.

"Bloody hell, what are those things? Is that what that does? Summons demons? I was expecting more along the lines of the Seven of Diamonds or something, not the...the Three of Devils or what have you. Are they trained? Can you command them?"

Isaac continued to cough a bit, reaching back out as his circuits recovered to steal back the disease he had breathed back in to the world. Rummaging through a bag, he produced a a few candy bars and opened one as he watched La Voisin, giving his body something to process as his mana began to smooth out once again.

[Suzerain of Sheol]

"Oh, but of course they are, mon chéri. Totally obedient to my every whim. They will slaughter on command, and they are frightfully good at it. Shall we unleash them? Hmm?"

Catherine watches her master flounder in the passing death-spasm. "Oh, but look what a mess you made. Not to worry!" At some silent impulse, the nearest of the fiends coils downward, a bulbous, sparking tongue inhaling the ruinous bio-matter.

"And, you should know, mon bonhomme, my Arcana hold many secrets. This is but the first you've seen unveiled. Prepare yourself for wonders, and you shall not be disappointed."