The demon was now "bleeding" from dozens of wounds, nether swirling about it in a dark fog. But its steps didn't appear hampered in the slightest. And the first cuts it had suffered were already knitting shut. As Dante neared, the Andrac crouched and swept its claw in an arc around its legs. Its claws sliced a woman in half. Its palm crashed into another man. His legs snapped like timbers, but in small consolation, no part of his body went dark.
The Andrac's foot came down ten feet from Dante. He ran forward, wheeling his sword and slamming it into the demon's foot. Nether burst free like silent steam. Typically, the shadows were odorless, but these carried the tang of worms crushed beneath clean iron.
Claws whisked over the field, sending bodies flying. Soldiers jumped to hack at the demon's fingers. It lifted its foot and stomped on a soldier, paving stones cracking under its heel. Dante cut through the back of its ankle, but any hope of crippling the creature faded as it stepped again, trampling another man flat.
Dante glanced at Blays to ask if they had any chance. The stretched, pained look on Blays' face was answer enough. Claws hissed downward. Dante was thrust into their shadow. He tossed himself to the stones, the wind of the claws passing over his back.
He pushed himself to his feet. Already, twenty bodies scattered the grounds, half blackened with the taint of the demon's claws, the others merely crushed. Soldiers darted between legs and ducked beneath claws, chopping at anything they could reach. The Andrac scooped up the closest man, tipped back its head, and bit the soldier in half. It tossed the hips and legs aside like the green sprig of a carrot.
The Colleners with un-ethered weapons had started to flee. Several with glowing swords were standing back, sweaty hair plastered to their temples as they examined the Andrac for signs of damage.
Cord stepped back, too. Her face was sheened with sweat and the blood of a cut on her left eyebrow. "Despair defeats more men than steel. It bleeds—and it will die!"
She leveled her wheel and dashed toward the demon. Spying her, it swung its foot forward like the ram of a siege engine. Cord juked to the side, but the Andrac moved with terrible speed, the outer edge of its foot clipping her ribs. With an audible snap of bone, Cord flew fifteen feet back and to the side, landing in a motionless heap.
A woman raced to her side, skidding in the dust. A man gawked at her. "She's dead. And what did she expect? Fighting a demon?"
Without another word, the man broke into a dead run toward the buildings across the square. As if that were their cue, the survivors disengaged, following in the man's wake. The Star-Eater tipped back its head and gave its crackling, windy scream. In moments, Dante, Blays, and Naran were the only ones within thirty feet of the beast, with the Keeper standing back.
"Ah," Blays said. "Run?"
Before Dante could agree, the Andrac lumbered forward. Dante prepared to open the ground beneath himself, but the monster's eyes were locked on the scores of soldiers who were still retreating into the city beyond. It bounded past.
Dante swerved toward Cord, kneeling beside her. Blood leaked from scrapes on her face and hands. Her eyes were closed. Dante put his fingers to her neck. A pulse beat softly.
"She's alive." Dante drew on the shadows and sank them into Cord's skin, sending them to her broken ribs and gouged organs. Beneath the layers of blood and dust, the damage melted away.
She groaned, hand spasming. Her eyes fluttered open. "Did we win?"
"Not exactly." Across the square, the Andrac hammered its fist into the corner of a building, spraying bricks into the street. Dante reached out a hand. "Are you strong enough to stand?"
Cord snorted and pushed herself to her feet. No sooner was she standing than she swayed, clamping Dante's shoulder for support. "What..?"
"We weren't enough. Come on." Before any new threats could climb up from the switchbacks, Dante led her and the others to the buildings to the east.
Screams carried from the north. Often, the Andrac's chest and head were visible above the rooftops. More than once, a body tumbled through the air before disappearing into the row houses.
"Keeper," Dante said. "How much ether do you have left to command?"
"Little," she croaked.
"Same here." They drew alongside a row of shuttered shops. As the buildings' shadows crossed over them, a heaviness settled on Dante's shoulders. "Cord, we can't beat this thing. What do you want to do?"
"To do." Cord blinked slowly; he guessed her mind was still fuzzed. "If we try to fight, we'll be slaughtered. But if we flee to one of the towns, it's only a matter of time before Gladdic comes for us there. What can we do?"
Blays examined the sword in his right hand. "At the risk of offending your pride with a pragmatic idea, you could leave the basin."
The Keeper widened her stance. "And if we depart our homes for now, will Narashtovik help us retake them?"
"I can't promise that," Dante said.
"Then we can't leave. Without Collen, what are the Colleners?"
"Alive," Cord said. Teeth bared in anguish, she pressed her fist against her brow. "Where will we go?"
Dante gestured north. "There's plenty of empty land around Narashtovik. We still have housing in the city, too. There's no need to die here."
The Keeper shot him a poisonous glance, then turned on Cord. "You can't contemplate this. We have never left our homeland. Leaving means turning our backs on what our ancestors have spent a thousand years fighting for."
"I thought the fight itself was what mattered," Cord murmured. "The noblest act of all. But I've never had to look out for anyone but myself. Now that I speak for so many people, I wonder how noble it is to commit them to die."
"Nobler than to let the Mallish take our home as their own!"
In the distance, the Andrac gave another gusty, crackling bellow. Cord pointed in the sound's direction. "Do you know how to kill that thing?"
The Keeper went silent.
"Then if we stay, it kills us. And our culture with us. But if we leave?" Cord grinned. It wasn't happy, nor wry, but the grin of a warrior who'd battled through a night she thought would never end and now looks out on the dawn. "We take our culture with us. And we, and it, live on." She gave Dante a nod. "We evacuate the city."
"We'll buy you as much time as we can," he said. "But that's going to be a lot less time than you'd like."
"Then I'd better quit wasting it." She grinned again and took off at a jog.
Dante sighed through his nose, searching the rooftops for the Andrac. "I can't believe I've signed us up to fight that thing again."
"I made no such vow," the Keeper said. "Nor to leave. The only vow I'm bound to is the one to keep my people's history safe. I will return to the Reborn Shrine." She turned and tottered down the road to the east.
Dante laughed humorlessly. "When the Mallish make this city theirs, who's going to send food down to you? If you stay in the shrine, a month from now, you'll be dead. And your lore will die with you."
The Keeper turned halfway, her washed-out blue eye as cold as chips of ice. "What other choice do I have?"
"Escape today. And come back here with me tomorrow night. I'll open a tunnel to your library. We'll get out as many books as we can. Your apprentices, too."
"Why would you do this? Because you care for Collen that much?"
"No," he said. "Because I care for history. And knowledge. With access to the struggles of those who came before us, we can stride beyond where they had to stop. Their wisdom is more valuable than a mountain of gold. When we lose our past, our future gets that much further away."
The old woman's shoulders sagged. "You make it sound so easy to break my vows. But that doesn't make them any less broken."
Men barked orders near the cliff's edge. Dante thought he heard Gladdic's voice. "All they'll think they have to do is hold onto the road while the Andrac does its work. Let's slow it down long enough for Cord to evacuate as many people as she can."
The Keeper closed her eyes and nodded. He led them north. Often, the
buildings were packed too tight to see the demon, but the sound of shattering masonry was a dead giveaway for its location. The screams were another. Garbage and waste strewed the streets. Most of the refuse looked at least a week old, the product of an occupation that cared nothing for the city. A few stray cats poked through the leavings, scampering from sight as soon as they saw Dante.
Within a few blocks, fresh rubble lay heavy in the streets. Bodies studded the broken bricks. Most of the dead were unremarkably crushed, but many showed the blackened wounds of the Andrac. Holes gaped in the faces of buildings, which dribbled pebbles into the road, threatening to collapse. Dante moved as fast as he could across the uneven sprawl.
The demon roared again, the sound unnatural and ghastly. Three blocks north, its head and shoulders stood above the rooftops. Dante took them to the east, stopping at the corner of a pottery shop.
Two blocks away, the Andrac smashed its fist through the roof of a building, sending chunks of gray bricks racketing through the street. Like a bear scooping out a honeycomb, it reached inside the exposed room and grabbed two men. They wailed as the creature lifted them to its mouth and chewed, letting the pieces tumble carelessly to the road forty feet below its churning jaws. For all the damage Cord's soldiers had inflicted on it during the initial battle, it appeared completely unscathed.
Hand on the corner of the potter's shop, Dante stared dumbly at the demon. "How did we think we were going to do this again?"
"Oh, did we have a plan?" Blays whispered. "I assumed we'd made yet another promise we couldn't possibly keep."
With the demon's back turned, a young woman crept from a doorway and jogged toward the corner to the west. She moved in almost perfect silence, but the demon whirled, closed on her, and clenched her in its fist. It lifted its arm and bashed her head and torso through a roof, smearing blood across the broken tiles.
"Well," Naran said stonily. "I don't recommend we fight it."
The Andrac dropped the remains of the woman's body and moved on. Dante swore softly. When things got rough, his first instinct was always to hurl as much nether at the problem as he could safely summon. Usually, that was enough.
At other times, though, the best magic was the subtlest.
He called to the nether, feeding it with a cut on his right elbow he'd suffered in their first encounter, and directed it into the least-destroyed bodies he could see. Four corpses hauled themselves to their feet like bloody marionettes. He sent them running in opposite directions as fast as their mangled legs could manage. At a clatter of stone, the Andrac spun. It leaped on the first of the zombies, tearing it in half.
Dante ordered its legs to dash away while the torso clawed its way through the debris. The Andrac pounced on the legs, gnawed them to pieces, and did the same to the torso. Running down and slaughtering the remaining three zombies wasted a good minute of the demon's time.
When the street was motionless again, the titan threw back its head and bellowed in triumph. It stalked up to the next block. Dante followed. There, it tore open several buildings, laying waste to those who tried to hide. Unable to help them, Dante consoled himself with the thought that their deaths would grant time for others to escape.
Again, he lifted the bodies up into undeath. The Andrac spent little time dispatching them. But when it turned around to advance up the street, it found itself facing a solid brick wall—an image Dante had summoned while the demon was distracted. The Andrac cocked its head, then glanced down the street, considering an alternate route. Rejecting the idea of detouring, it waded into the side of one of the row houses it had already torn into and smashed its way clear to the other side.
"Not all that bright, is it?" Dante murmured.
Blays shrugged. "When you're that big, you don't have to be smart."
Dante advanced northward, keeping even with the demon. His control of the nether remained tight, but at his current pace, he'd exhaust himself in less than an hour. Cord would need more time than that. As the Andrac ripped its claws into another building, Dante sent the nether to the middle of the street and shaped it into the figure of a young man.
He hadn't been practicing his illusions in some time and the work was far from his best. The figure was recognizably humanoid, however—two legs, two arms, a head, some smudges that more or less resembled a face—and this was enough to send the Andrac running toward it. As the demon neared, Dante sent the figure dashing right through the creature's towering legs.
The Andrac spun to give chase. Dante moved the young man inside a doorway, obligating the demon to tear into the facade. Dust billowed in choking clouds as it clawed enormous handfuls of bricks across the street. When the building was nothing but rubble, Dante sent the illusion skipping away to the west.
The demon lashed at it. Dante made the image fling itself prone, but from his vantage, the claws clearly passed through the young man's back. Oblivious, the Andrac chased on. The illusion swerved inside another three-story home. Dutifully, the demon began to clobber this one to shards as well.
"A neat trick," Naran said. "How many times do you suppose the beast will continue to fall for it?"
"This Star-Eater seems more foolish than the others." Dante shifted against the wall of the tavern they were hiding behind. "Probably because it's so young. But they're capable of learning. We've bought Cord half an hour, but if we want to give her the chance to clear the city, we're going to need to come up with a lot more ideas."
Down the street, the demon completed the demolition of the house. This time, it anticipated the young man's sprint for new cover, grabbing him up. Only the illusion squirted free and ran on.
The Andrac straightened, regarding the retreating figure. The demon's limbs stilled. After a long moment, it turned its head and looked directly at the corner Dante peeked from behind.
Dante jerked from sight. "It knows."
Its footsteps thundered down the road, shattering the paving setts.
"Spread out and run!" Dante brought the nether to his hands. "Regroup at Cord's well."
Before any of them could argue, he ran into the street. Already, the demon was within a stride and a half. Dante thrust his right hand forward. A flock of shadows swarmed the demon's head, condensing around it into a shadowsphere. The creature gave one of its crackling shouts, but this one was higher-pitched—confusion and outrage.
It ran on, wheeling its arms for balance. Dante took a quick look behind him. He couldn't see where Blays had gone. Having given the Keeper his arm, Naran was cutting to the east, long legs churning. Blinded, the Andrac tripped past Dante, colliding into the four-story tenement across the street. The demon tumbled to the ground in an avalanche of bricks. The building came down with it, spilling over Naran and the Keeper.
Dante's wordless shout was drowned out by the clamor of the tenement's collapse. Half-buried, the Andrac writhed, clawing for purchase. Dante took off at a dead run to the north. His mind was numb, but he kept the ball of darkness locked firmly around the demon's head.
At the next intersection, he swung east, skidding on the flat, rectangular stones. He was halfway to the next block when he heard the Andrac thump to its feet and unleash an airy bellow.
After another block, he veered back to the north. The demon's feet boomed behind him. Closer with each step. It was still blind; could it hear him? Detect him through some unknown sense? Yet it hadn't seemed to be able to sense that his illusions weren't flesh—or to detect him until it had learned the figure was an illusion. Then it had come straight for him. As if following a path.
Or the tendril of nether connecting him to his illusion.
He dropped the shadowsphere. The demon's steps halted. Dante ran on, zagging between the north and the east. After a few moments, claws scraped on stone. Brick crashed to the street. At an intersection, he glimpsed the demon laying waste to another row house.
Five minutes later, with his lungs burning, Dante drifted to a stop. The streets around him were as silent as fresh snow. To the s
outh, the Andrac was still pounding away on the cityscape, drawing screams from everyone it exposed, but it was at least half a mile away.
He leaned against a shuttered woodworker's shop. Fear and despair threatened to drown his heart. Had Blays made it out? Or had he fallen, too? Dante didn't think so—Blays had more tricks than a brothel—but it had happened so fast.
The only thing to do was to head to the well and wait. While he was still catching his breath, footsteps approached at a jog. Dante took the nether in hand, shaping it into a killing blade.
Blays rounded the corner, noting him at once. Breathing hard, the blond man gave a short nod. "Shadowalked out. Followed you."
"Naran and the Keeper," Dante said. "The building fell on them."
"A better death than the Colleners are getting."
Dante glanced up at the sky. The sun was still climbing, warming the morning. "It's been less than an hour since Cord left. She can't have had time to save more than a fraction of the city."
"Do you want to go back? Run the Andrac around some more?"
"Won't work. It figured out what I was doing. If I try again, it'll trace the nether right back to me."
"I could try this time," Blays said. "Maybe things will be different in the netherworld."
"How so? Are you planning to grow ten times as tall? Or bring your sword to life, teach it to fight on its own, and grow it ten times as tall? We had a small army against the Andrac and we still failed. If we try to fight or distract it again, we'll die. And I'm not dying today. Not for these people."
"What's that look for? I don't want to go back there any more than you do."
"Is that so? Sometimes I think you'd sacrifice yourself for an elderly milk cow if it looked at you sadly enough."
Blays ran his hand down his face. Dust stuck to the sweat and blood dewing his skin. "I would have died for the norren. I might have for the Kandeans. But this place…"
"I know. It's different."
They gazed at each other. The words didn't need to be spoken. Dante didn't know if he could speak them. Led by Gladdic, the Mallish were attempting to commit a heinous crime. There was no forgiving it, no justifying it; everyone with the glimmer of a soul would condemn it out of hand, recognize it at once as blasphemy against life.
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