He unleashed a slew of white needles. They shredded through the small black body, staggering the Andrac. The Keeper's second volley slammed into it from behind. The tiny silhouette became fuzzy, indistinct. It sank to what had once been its knees. Another wave of ether pounded into the remainder of its torso.
The Andrac vanished.
Dante's eyes darted to all sides. "Does anyone see it?"
The five of them scanned Snake Rock, then the grounds above and below it. A breeze ruffled the yellow grass. Pure darkness, Star-Eaters typically stood out from the daytime like an anti-candle, but Dante's was nowhere to be seen.
"It's vanquished!" Cord bellowed. "Scattered on the winds like foe's ashes!"
Blays burst into laughter. "You could have fit that thing into your pocket. I almost felt bad for it!"
A frown deepened on Dante's face. "Blays. Check the shadows—and be careful."
Blays sobered, drew his swords into a guard, and stepped into the nether. Dante had burned through all but a pebble of his ether, but he kept what little he had left suspended between his fingers. Fifteen seconds later, Blays returned to Snake Rock.
"It's there," Blays said. "And it's alive."
Dante gritted his teeth. "That's what I was afraid of. It's like we're attacking its reflection. I think the only way to kill it is to come at it from within its own world."
"Well, don't look at me. I've got about another minute in there before I'm done for the day."
"Then we'll have to wait until tomorrow. Son of a bitch!"
"What are you crying about? This is a huge deal! Now we can beat Gladdic!"
"We drive his demons back into the shadows," Dante mused, calming. "Then go for him, leaving the Andrac trapped where they can't hurt anyone." He broke into a grin. "I'd call that a successful day. Let's get back to Dog's Paw and hoist a flagon or ten."
Blays sheathed his swords. "We can't just walk away. What if the demon finds its way back?"
"Then there's going to be some very frightened gophers in this valley."
"You created it, you fool. That means you're responsible for whatever it does."
Dante glanced at the others for support, but their expressions were watchful. "We'll stay here for the afternoon, then reassess. In the meantime, let's try to figure out what just happened. Like why it attacked me."
"Do you know nothing of demons?" Cord's forehead wrinkled with confusion. "They hate the sight of living humans. We remind them of the foulness of their nature."
"But I'm the one who created it."
"The gods created us," Blays said. "Think about what we think of them."
Cord chuckled. The Keeper shuffled forward, watching the spot where the battle had taken place. "What does it matter if you can't control it? Don't tell me you intend to wield them as Gladdic does."
"I intend no such thing," Dante said. "But it would be much easier to figure out how to destroy them if I could order them to stand still while we're hacking away."
Blays tugged his lower lip. "Do you think it's even possible to kill them? You can't kill anyone in the Mists. Their souls are immortal. If these traces are the nether's answer to the soul, maybe they can't be killed, either."
"It might be possible to separate a demon back into harmless individual traces. Or to push it into the nethereal equivalent of the Worldsea. Whatever the case, we have four full weeks to figure this out before my monks get here."
Blays checked in on the Andrac again and reported it hadn't left the spot where it had been banished from Snake Rock. While Blays, Dante, and the Keeper remained at the Bloodlake, Cord and Naran headed back to Dog's Paw for provisions and blankets.
During the others' absence, Dante looned Nak and passed along everything they'd gathered from the day: how to find the traces, how few it took to form a demon, and his best understanding of how these things related to the afterworld.
"How remarkable," Nak said. "All these new revelations, you don't find them…upsetting?"
"Why would the truth upset me?"
"Because you preach something different when it's your turn to handle services at Ivars. Then again, you've never been much for tradition, have you?"
"If what I've been preaching is wrong, then it's my gravest responsibility to get it right. What kind of priest would rather save face than souls?"
"Oh my, now that's a wise line. With your recent theological discoveries, were you intending to write a new work? The Cycle of Galand, perhaps?"
"Ha ha," Dante said. "I don't understand half of what's going on here. I'm just trying to get it on the record. If our ancestors had bothered to do that, I wouldn't be in this mess right now."
Naran and Cord returned from Dog's Paw without incident. With the evening looking like it might bring more rain, they strung tarps between the sagebrush and dug a small trench up the slope from their camp site, where it would catch the rain and divert it from their bedrolls. That night, they took turns keeping watch. A lantern burned next to the spot where the Andrac had been banished, ready to illuminate it if it found its way back through.
By the arrival of dawn, however, the demon remained locked in the shadows. Dante had created it in the mortal world, meaning it had been able to interact with physical objects and living people. But once it had been forced back into the netherworld, it appeared to be trapped there. Presumably, the only way for it to get back was for someone to summon it, whether through using the bones, or some other method unknown to Dante.
He went about his morning with a renewed sense of determination. After weeks trying to figure out how to dispatch Gladdic's seemingly immortal bodyguards, they'd found an answer. While there remained work to be done—he wanted to learn how to destroy the demons completely, and there was still the small matter of convincing the outlying towns of Collen that they could and should oust the invaders from the basin—knowing that he could finally stand and face his enemy made him feel capable of tearing down mountains.
Which, technically speaking, he supposed he was.
Naran had had last watch. As the day broke, he got out his journal and began to write. The Keeper woke within a minute of Dante and went off to hike about the hillsides, enjoying every moment of her reprieve from the basements of the Reborn Shrine. It wasn't until Cord got up and began to noisily practice her fighting forms that Blays finally stirred.
After breakfast, and a quick check on the Andrac by Blays, they gathered on Snake Rock.
"Fighting it alone is crazy enough," Dante told Blays. "So don't add any more crazy on top of that. If you're hurt, or you're not able to hurt it, come right back out."
Blays bit his lower lip. "If something happens, you have to tell everyone it was ten feet tall. I can't die fighting a demon that's smaller than most cats."
"I know one way to avoid that: don't get killed."
Blays inhaled, rolled his shoulders, and drew his swords. He disappeared into the shadows. Dante could vaguely feel his presence on the other side. Within moments, Blays was dancing about, limbs whirling. Moments after that, he stopped dashing around and settled down into a single repetitive motion that might have been a chop. After about thirty of these, all activity ceased. Right as Dante began to grow concerned, the chopping motion picked back up.
Keeping part of his attention on the disturbances on the other side of the nether, Dante glanced at the Keeper. "Creatures from the shadows can be summoned here through the bone gates, right?"
She nodded. "That is so."
"Is it possible for someone from our realm to use the bone gates to cross into the shadows?"
"I don't know. You wish to join Blays there?"
"I don't like the idea of him facing the demons alone. Especially when it comes time to put down Gladdic's full-size Andrac."
The old woman lifted a white brow. "I think you don't like the idea of not being able to see what's there."
Dante was saved a response by the reappearance of Blays, who was breathing hard, face traced with sweat.
"I diced it like an onion," Blays said. "But then it flowed back together and took its original shape. Like a very spooky onion."
Naran swore as colorfully as the flowers of the Plagued Islands. "These creatures are harder to kill than Gladdic himself."
Dante twisted his sideburn, giving it a tug. "Ether's the only thing that seems to hurt them here in our world. I wonder if that's what it takes to destroy them in theirs."
Busy staring into the distance, Blays lifted his chin an inch. "Didn't one of the stories say that somebody chopped up the Andrac with their shining sword? Or gleaming blade? Something involving a bright length of steel?"
Dante was about to make a comment about how "shining" was what steel tended to do, then shut his mouth with a click. "You think he used ether."
"Worth a try, isn't it? Smear some light on my swords and let's see what they can do."
Dante had never done such a thing, but after a bit of experimentation and a few words of guidance from the Keeper, he coated Blays' swords in a thin sheen of white light. As long as he concentrated, the light stayed in place.
Blays swept his blades back and forth, the occasional spark sailing away from the metal. "I look like an avenging god. Why haven't we been doing this all along?"
He hopped forward and into the shadows. This time, Dante felt Blays take a single side step, then get straight into the chopping. He stopped after a handful of strikes. After a thirty-second pause, Blays did some more hacking, then waited, then hacked some more.
Blays returned from the shadows, shaking his head. The light on his swords was dimming. "It definitely didn't like that. But it also didn't kill it."
Dante tapped his forehead. "If ether can't kill it, then I'm stumped."
"So is it—I cut off its arms."
"Did you notice anything different this time? Any vulnerabilities?"
"You mean like a beating heart? I thought that looked suspicious. Want me to go back and give it a poke?"
Dante sighed. "There was no beating heart, was there?"
"The ether hurt it much faster. It was slower to heal, too. But it still healed itself eventually." With the last of the ether fading from his blades, Blays blew on them and sheathed them. "Still, it was worth a try. Sometimes you have to empty your entire quiver before you hit the mark, eh?"
Dante nodded glumly. Across from him, Naran and Cord were in the middle of exchanging a long look.
Noticing Dante's attention, Cord stalked across the rock. "You're like the fox who's chased the gopher down its hole. So intent on watching for it to come back you don't notice the rabbit sneaking past your back!"
Dante stared up at her. "I'm waiting to be enlightened."
"Do I need to draw you a picture? You're so focused on killing the demon you're blind to what you should have learned!"
"Trust me," Blays said. "I know exactly what you're talking about. Dante, however, is a bit…stupid. Mind explaining? For his sake, of course?"
Cord gave Naran an exasperated look.
Naran clasped his hands behind his back and stood tall, as if he was lecturing from the deck of his ship. "Whether on land or sea, war is the art of resource preservation. When you attacked the demon here in our world, it seemed to take a great deal of ether to banish it. What if Blays' enhanced swords are more efficient?"
Dante smiled. "Then we'd stand a much better chance of banishing one of Gladdic's much larger monsters. Keeper, how about we finally put these old bones to use?"
She gave him a stare that could have felled an oak. "I may be old, but I've always done my best to help you."
His face reddened. "I mean the bones of the dead. To resummon the little Andrac into our world."
The Keeper blinked her rheumy eyes, then burst into spasms of laughter.
They gathered the Mallish bones half-buried around the shelf of rock. Between the Keeper's knowledge of theory and Dante's remembrance of the patterns Gladdic had used during the brief siege of Collen, he painted the bones with nether and arranged them on the rock into the shape of a hexagon with a bent arm extending from one point. While he was at work on this, the Keeper slicked Blays' swords with ether.
As soon as the last bone was in place, a hand-sized shadow congealed in the center of the pattern. The Andrac turned in a circle, starry eyes blazing in its featureless face. It tipped back its head in a silent scream, exposing the silver flame of its throat, and tottered toward Blays.
It moved much faster than its finger-sized legs should have allowed, but even so, it was no matter for Blays to dance back and swipe his glowing sword through the demon's torso. The legs kept running forward until Blays flicked the tip of his blade again, severing them from each other. After a few deft hacks, the demon lay in a pile of black tatters. These dispersed like drops of blood dribbled into a glass, then vanished from sight.
"That," Blays said, "was much easier."
"The fun part's over," Dante said. "Now there's nothing to do but practice until we can't stand it."
* * *
By their fourth day camped in the Bloodlake, they'd honed the Andrac's banishment into an art.
Bones in place, the tiny demon stepped forth. Always, it went for Blays—it seemed to be angry at him for sending it back to the shadows—and always, Blays cut it to shreds with his glowing swords. A few times, Dante and the Keeper attacked it instead, battering it with ether until it disintegrated to the shadows. But the swords proved so much more effective that it became obvious that wielding raw ether in a battle should only be used as a last resort.
It had reached the point where Dante was tempted to forge a larger demon, or to add more traces to the one he'd already created, and allow them to test their skill against it. Then he remembered the Andrac on the switchback. How its claws had torn through the warriors' flesh, leaving their bodies blackened and crumpled like burned parchment. A full-size demon wasn't like an archer's hay bale. It could fight back. And one misstep could cripple or kill them.
Still, he decided to give it give it some thought on the road. Because while they practiced themselves into expert demon-slayers—or, more accurately, expert demon-banishers—they were also running low on food. Dante was sure that Cord and Naran would have been happy to take another trip back to town. While they'd taken their turns attacking the tiny Andrac with ether-infused swords, they'd had little else to do besides swap stories of life at sea and in the basin. But Dante thought a night in a real bed would be good for the Keeper. And a bath would be good for everyone. So, with the Andrac firmly imprisoned in the shadows behind Snake Rock, the five of them headed back to Dog's Paw.
In a little over an hour, the town's cliffs hung ahead of them. Compared to the last time they'd visited during the rain celebration, the plaza at the base of the town was dead quiet. A handful of people watched them arrive, distant-eyed and lackluster. One of the bow-wielding children they'd seen at the Boggs Twill's farm popped out of a bakery and took off running into the desert.
Inside the inn's foyer, Cord ritually splashed some of her water into the copper bowl there, summoning the proprietor. They rented a room for the night along with the use of the bath located in a cozy room carved out next to the kitchen, where an iron barrel of water was warmed by excess heat from the stoves and pumped through the wall via copper pipe.
The innkeeper warned them they'd only have twenty gallons allotted for bathing. By unanimous decision, the Keeper was granted the first bath. The other four found a table in the common room. They'd barely taken their first sips of sour beer when Boggs burst into the room, face red and sweaty.
He beelined for their table, breathlessly angry. "Where you been?"
"Learning how to rid your land of demons," Dante said. "If you can think of a better use of our time, I'm happy to hear it."
"Two days back, the canals started dropping. Senate sent riders around the basin. It's the same story everywhere they went. Another two days from now, they'll be bone dry."
"They're going dry? Does that happen often?
"
"No more than once a generation. And when it does, it sure as shit isn't in the middle of the rainy season. Nor this fast. It should take weeks for the waters to drop this low, not days."
Judging by the others' expressions, they were of the same mind as Dante. "This isn't natural. It's Gladdic's work."
"What I figured," Boggs said. "What I can't figure is why? None of the towns have invoked the Code of the Wasp. He must have the spies to know the Small Senates would rather eat their own noses than go to war against his demons. So why risk provoking them into a fight?"
Blays flicked his fingernail against the side of his mug. "Have there been any reinforcements from Bressel?"
"None."
"Maybe he's not expecting any. So this is his way of clearing out the basin without putting his soldiers in the field. Cut off the water and wait for everyone to leave."
Cord stood, rattling the table. "We know how to defeat his demons. What are we waiting for? Let's feed his meat to the lentils!"
The curiosity of this saying broke Dante's chain of thought, requiring several seconds of mental mending before he was ready to speak again. "The only demon we know we can defeat is small enough to use our beer mugs as a bathtub. We can't afford to try to liberate Collen until my ethermancers get here."
"You can wait until enough of your friends are here that you're no longer afraid. But this is my homeland. I have no choice."
She stepped away from the table. Dante put himself between her and the door. This was merely a symbolic gesture: if her mind was made up, he couldn't stop her any more than a hedge, no matter how determined, could stop a charging bull.
He planted his feet. "We're not going to wait. We're going to get the water flowing again. As soon as that's done, we're going to lay the groundwork to retake Collen—and we'll need your help."
Cord looked ready to trample her way past him, then drew back to stare down at him from her full height. "Do you swear it?"
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