The Devils

The devils continue their journey toward Venice with the pilgrims known as the “Blessed Company.” They are joined by Bishop Apollonia of Acci, a high-ranking cleric reputed for her piety and rumors of impending sainthood. She questions Jakob about his past, but he’s saved from scrutiny by Alex, who comes up with fabricated backstories for each member of their party: she’s a thief seeking redemption, Balthazar is a repentant merchant, Rikard is a reformed drinker, Vigga is a converted former Viking, and Brother Diaz is the priest, there to keep them in check. The bishop accepts her explanation and praises Brother Diaz’s “divine mission” to save their souls. She invites him to give a reading during the pilgrimage’s midday prayers, and the others mockingly comment on Diaz’s infatuation with the bishop.

The group gathers around a campfire. While they eat their stew, Brother Diaz explains most pilgrims aim to reach Cyprus, hoping to glimpse the Holy Land, which is now controlled by elves. When Alex questions whether the elves are as bad as the stories say, Jakob tells her that when he fought in the Second Crusade, the elves turned a cathedral in Acre into a literal slaughterhouse for humans.

The pilgrimage reaches a shrine along the route. Balthazar talks to Baron Rikard—although he hasn’t given up on breaking the pope’s binding, he reluctantly admits he underestimated its power. He explains he needs the proper magical tools to do so and resents being without them. Baron Rikard questions whether magic and religion are so different from each other. When Balthazar insists magic is real and powerful, the vampire reminds him that so is the binding.

Alex prepares a simple meal of bread and cheese in the woods as a gesture of kindness for Sunny. Sunny appears from nowhere, startling Alex, and they share a quiet, somewhat awkward meal. Alex thinks she’s annoying Sunny and goes to leave, but the elf tells her to stay. Alex asks Sunny if she ever gets lonely. Sunny replies she has no one to miss, and Alex half-jokingly suggests herself.

Vigga and Alex go to the river to get water. Vigga veers between joking with Alex, reflecting on fragmented pieces of memory, and bursts of aggression. At the riverbank, Vigga is momentarily overwhelmed by her emotions, triggered by seeing the tattoos on her hands that mark her as dangerous. She loses herself in anger and confusion and nearly turns on Alex before regaining control.

Vigga then tells Alex that she likes her. She tells Alex that if she ever says to run, Alex needs to listen, because while the pope’s magical binding restrains Vigga, it won’t stop the wolf. Vigga is then distracted by a man changing a wagon wheel and considers pursuing him out of an impulsive desire for sex. Alex stops her, only for Vigga to jump fully clothed into the river while the forgotten bucket floats away.

As the devils arrive at Venice’s outskirts, Brother Diaz writes an excited letter to his mother about Bishop Apollonia and his spiritual journey. Alex joins him, and he offers to teach her to write, starting by showing her the letter “A.” Jakob, Vigga, and Balthazar arrive, lamenting that Vigga has once again caused a scandal with indecent behavior among the pilgrims.

They are interrupted by Bishop Apollonia, who says that she intends to claim the reward offered for Alex by her cousin, Duke Constans of Troy. She’s backed by her guards and the crowd of onlookers. Before a fight breaks out, Baron Rikard ascends the bishop’s mobile pulpit and uses his vampiric powers to mesmerize the crowd, making them forget about the group entirely. While the bishop and her mob are momentarily pacified, the group flees toward Venice.

In Venice, the devils go to a repurposed Venetian monastery that serves as a hideout and bakery for a crime lord named Frigo. Sunny moves unseen alongside them, watching everything while remaining out of sight.

Inside, Frigo and his granddaughter assess them. He then offers them a deal: In exchange for safe passage to Troy, they must retrieve a white box with a star on its lid from a cursed house once owned by an illusionist. The house is said to be deadly, and those who enter don’t return. Balthazar demands equipment, and Frigo assures them he can provide anything they need. Jakob agrees to the mission on behalf of the devils.

The group navigates the half-submerged heart of Venice in a pole-driven boat. As they drift through the flooded city, Balthazar comments on how its collapse began when a critical dam burst decades ago, submerging much of the city and leaving it in partial ruin.

They arrive at their temporary base: an apartment across from the cursed building. When they examine their target from their balcony, Balthazar confirms the presence of several enchantments, though he can’t tell much else from outside. He demands special magical supplies to conduct the necessary rituals, including the corpses of a pair of recently deceased twins. Jakob prepares to enter the house with most of the party, while Alex, Brother Diaz, and Baron Rikard stay behind. Before leaving, Jakob gives Alex a knife and shows her how to use it.

Balthazar sets up his magical workspace in their temporary apartment, preparing for the ritual to penetrate the illusionist’s cursed house and secretly break the pope’s binding as well. Baron Rikard, meanwhile, gives Alex instruction in posture and poise, working her through a mock-princess routine. Alex responds well, impressing the others with her performance as a dignified lady. Jakob, Vigga, and Baptiste return with the corpses for Balthazar.

When Jakob, Baptiste, and Sunny arrive at the illusionist’s house, they immediately realize there’s no door. Sunny uses the enchanted severed head of one of the twins, given to them by Balthazar, to communicate with him. He confirms that the building is protected by illusion magic and remotely performs the ritual to reveal the hidden door.

Inside, they find a decaying dining room with uneaten food and the corpses of two people who appear to have stabbed each other. The group chooses a direction, but after walking through the corridor, they find themselves back in the same room. They realize they are trapped in a magical loop. They speak with Balthazar through the head again, and Balthazar asks them to look for writing. Vigga notices runes on the wall, but no one can read them.

Back in the apartment, Balthazar proceeds with his ritual, ostensibly to help those in the house but in reality, designed to break the pope’s binding on him. As he channels magical energy, he feels his power return to him.

Those in the enchanted house continue to wander the halls, which shift around them. Vigga slips into a vivid hallucination of her mother braiding her hair, then her branding as a dangerous werewolf. Sunny attempts to explore the house’s upper levels, only to realize everyone else has vanished. She stumbles into a bright, lively party where no one acknowledges her, and she realizes she’s invisible. Jakob reenters the cursed dining room, which shifts into a battlefield, and finds himself speaking with dead companions from his past.

Back at their base, Balthazar continues his dual magical rituals: one to maintain his appearance of helping the group, and the other to secretly break the papal binding. Despite his worsening physical symptoms and magical instability, he presses on. Brother Diaz, Alex, and Rikard grow increasingly uneasy as the head he’s using to communicate with the others babbles nonsense.

Balthazar’s magical rituals spiral out of control as his spell creates a storm of magical energy. When Alex realizes what he’s doing, she tries to get Brother Diaz to stop him, but Balthazar chokes him with a spell, nearly killing the priest. Balthazar then badly burns his wrist while trying to remove the binding. After Rikard refuses to help her, Alex punches Balthazar, halting the ritual. She and Diaz then order him to help the others trapped in the house.

Inside the illusion, Vigga attacks her inner wolf for ruining her life. Meanwhile, Jakob meets a younger version of himself, the grandmaster of the Order, who challenges him to a duel for abandoning the cause. As Balthazar finally breaks the illusion, Vigga and Jakob realize they were fighting each other. They find the white box they were looking for in the ruins of the dining room.

The group delivers the mysterious box to Frigo. After the others leave, Frigo calls out to Sunny, who watched from the shadows. When she reveals herself, Frigo’s granddaughter is startled to see an elf, but he’s intrigued. He offers Sunny a job after the business in Troy inevitably goes wrong. She tries to say she’s content where she is, but he says that she’s lonely. When she asks how he knows, he says everyone is.

The crew enjoys a brief sense of calm as their ship nears Troy. Alex practices her writing under Brother Diaz’s supervision. Below decks, Balthazar wallows in self-pity and seasickness until Baptiste arrives to change the bandages on his wrist. He thanks her, but a ballista bolt crashes through the deck before he can do anything else.

A Trojan warship attacks, firing more bolts at them. Jakob sets a fire to give them smoke cover, but it’s too late: The warship uses its hawk-headed ram to strike the ship, and it begins to sink. From the warship, a man calls over to introduce himself as Duke Constans, third son of Eudoxia, and demands that Alex be handed over to him. Despite being heavily outmatched, Jakob refuses to surrender. Just then, a fish-woman in a soaked military uniform climbs aboard their ship.

As the half-sea-creature boarding party attacks the sinking ship, Sunny helps Alex escape into the rigging. Brother Diaz is saved by Vigga, who tears through the attackers using improvised weapons. Below decks, Balthazar and Baptiste escape the flooding hold. On the way, however, they run into a sorcerer who can control minds. He places a control spell on Baptiste, forcing her to turn against Balthazar. On deck, Jakob kills the fish-woman, only to be confronted by Duke Constans when he leaps aboard. Constans proposes a duel, and Jakob agrees.

Alex and Sunny reach the upper yard, pursued by crab-men. While trying to keep one of them from attacking Alex, Sunny accidentally dislodges a whale oil lantern, sending it tumbling toward the deck below.

Brother Diaz narrowly avoids being set on fire after the lantern explodes on deck. He bumps into Vigga, who holds off the attackers. Alex clings to the mast high above. Sunny urges her to cross the spar toward the enemy warship, but Alex is paralyzed with fear.

Below deck, Balthazar fights Baptiste. He distracts her by animating the corpse of a drowned cabin boy, then removes the needle the sorcerer used to control her from her forehead. However, the sorcerer then hits him with a control needle as well.

Jakob duels with Duke Constans on the burning deck. Though Jakob holds his ground, Constans controls the fight as the superior swordsman.

Vigga is shot in the shoulder with an arrow. When Brother Diaz removes it, he convinces her she must use her wolf form to survive. Once transformed, Vigga tears through the enemy soldiers first on their sinking ship, then on the enemy galley.

After the control needle is implanted in Balthazar’s forehead, he and the sorcerer fight for dominance over his mind. Baptiste stabs the sorcerer, killing him and freeing Balthazar. As the two recover in the rising floodwater, they realize their escape route is submerged.

Jakob grows weaker, bleeding from numerous wounds. Though he recognizes he can’t win, he keeps fighting the Duke to buy time for the others to escape. Overhead, Alex jumps from the mast to the galley, where the Vigga-Wolf continues to rampage. She tears the soldiers apart, as well as the ship itself, damaging the mast. When Brother Diaz tries to calm her down, she turns on him, and he jumps into the sea to escape. When the mast breaks, Alex falls with it into the water.

Constans stabs Jakob in the back, only to be impaled on the blade as well. The sea finally claims the burning ship, and Jakob and Constans are swept away.