After a while, he was strong enough to roll onto his side and sit up. Dizziness threatened to flatten him anew, but he lowered his head between his legs, braced himself with his hands, and waited for the feeling to pass. When it did, he lurched to his knees, dropped back to his hands, and began to crawl. Streaks of blood from his wounds marked his slow passage, and shards of fire traced the deep furrows the demon’s claws had left on his body. The hallway and exhibit areas were silent and empty of life, and he worked his solitary way across the polished stone with only the sound of his breathing for company.

He had been a fool, he told himself over and over again. He had misjudged badly, been overconfident of what he could accomplish when he would have been better served by being more cautious. He should have listened to Stef. He should have trusted his instincts. He should have remembered the lessons of his time in service to the Word.

Twice he slipped in pools of his own excretions and went down. His arms and hands were wet from blood and sweat, and every movement he made trying to cross the museum floor racked his body with pain.

Damn you, Simon, he swore silently, resolutely, a litany meant to empower. Damn you to hell.

When he reached the staff, he rose again to his knees and wiped his bloodstained palms on his pants. Then he took the staff firmly in his hands and levered himself back to his feet.

He stood there for a moment, swaying unsteadily. When the dizziness passed, he moved to an empty bench in the center of the hall, seated himself, slipped off the greatcoat, then the tattered shirt, and used the shirt to bind his ribs and chest in a mostly successful effort to slow the flow of his blood. He sat staring into space after that, trying to gather his strength. He didn’t think anything was broken, but he had lost a lot of blood. He could not continue without help, and the only help he could count on now would have to come from within.

Hard-eyed and ashen-faced, he leaned forward on the bench, wrapped in the tatters of his shirt, his upper torso mostly bare and red-streaked with his blood. He straightened with an effort and tightened his grip on the staff, his abandoned choices swirling around him like wraiths, his decision of what he must do fully embraced. He no longer cared about consequences or dreams. He could barely bring himself to think on the future beyond this night. What he knew was that he had been driven to his knees by something so foul and repulsive he could not bear another day of life if he did not bring an end to it.

So he called forth the magic of the staff, called it with a certainty that surprised him, called it with full acceptance of what it meant to do so. He renounced himself and what he had become. He renounced his stand of the past year and took up anew the mantle he had shed. He declared himself a Knight of the Word, begged for the right to become so once more, if only for this single night, if only for this solitary purpose. He armored himself in his vow to become the thing he had tried so hard to disclaim, accepting as truth the admonitions of Owain Glyndwr and O’olish Amaneh. He bowed in acknowledgment to the cautions of the Lady as delivered by Nest Freemark and her friends, giving himself over once more to the promises he had made fifteen years earlier when he had taken up the cause of the Word and entered into His service.