Miranda hunched over, gasping for breath. For once, Nico and Eli were right down on the floor with her, coughing and choking as the black steam burned their lungs. Eyes watering, Miranda looked up in time to see the thick, acidic clouds swirling off Karon’s molten fist as the lava spirit prepared to swing again.
“Wait!” Miranda choked out, but the lava spirit didn’t hear her. His fist slammed into the slick mound that had been Gregorn, but the blob barely flinched. Instead, it sucked in the blow, sending tarry tendrils up Karon’s glowing arm, trapping the spirits together. Black steam churned around them as the spirits screamed together. Karon struggled against Gregorn’s grip, but the more he fought, the tighter the black tar adhered. Finally, with a great, rumbling cry, the lava giant opened his enormous mouth and breathed a column of white-hot fire over both of them. The blob shrieked and pulled away, showering acid that immediately evaporated in the shimmering heat. A fresh wave of black steam surged across the room, covering everything in a stinging, inky cloud.
“You have to stop him!” Miranda wheezed in the direction she’d last seen Eli. “If he keeps evaporating the liquid like that, we’re going to suffocate before he can make a dent!”
Somewhere in the black clouds, Eli coughed a few words, and the roaring of Karon’s fires stopped. Almost instantly, the clouds began to clear. Wiping her eyes furiously, Miranda squinted up to see Karon frozen in midswing. Eli coughed again, and the lava spirit nodded. Karon brandished his smoking fist one last time at the black blob and vanished in a great puff of ash, which blew back to Eli.
“What are you doing?” Miranda shouted, struggling to her feet as Eli closed his shirt over the reemerging burn. “I didn’t mean get rid of him entirely!”
“Can’t have it both ways!” Eli shouted back. “Watch out!”
Denied its target, the acid blob screamed louder than ever, sending a rain of black sludge showering down. Miranda, Eli, and Nico ducked as the fist-sized globs struck the wall behind them, and sank deep in the dissolving rock.
“He’ll melt the palace into slag at this rate!” Eli shouted over the spirit’s wail.
“We have to do something!” Miranda cried.
“You tell me!” Eli cowered as more acid spattered around them. “I’m out of good ideas!”
“I’d take a bad one, at this point!”
Still screaming madly, the mound of sludge shivered from base to tip. Suddenly, with a sickening, liquid snap, a torrent of black water began to pour out of its base. It was as if a dam inside the sludge had burst, sending a river of foamy, black liquid roaring across the floor straight toward them. It happened so quickly, Miranda couldn’t do anything except watch in horror as the wave rushed at her. Only when the black tide washed over the piles of discarded treasure, dissolving the carved mahogany and precious metals in the time it took to catch her breath, did Miranda’s instincts gain the upper hand on her fear. She spun around and dashed for the far wall, her feet skidding across the marble. As soon as she was close enough, she launched herself at the wall, and her grasping fingers caught the edge of a decorative niche. She hauled herself up, tossing over the stone bust of some Mellinorian king or other to make room, and pressed her body as far back into the crevice as she would fit. Eli followed her lead, climbing into the alcove next to hers.
“Nico,” he shouted, “there’s a shelf a bit higher up you could jump to.”
But Nico didn’t answer. Miranda peered over the lip of his hiding place. Several feet below, the girl was standing at the base of the wall, stoically watching the black tide as it rushed toward her.
“Nico,” Eli said more urgently, leaning out of his crevice and thrusting out his arm. “Take my hand!”
“Josef told me to protect you,” Nico said, not even looking at him.
“Don’t be an-” He gasped and ducked as a black wave crashed against the wall, sending burning spray up the walls around them. Miranda turned away in horror as the black surge covered Nico’s lower body, and waited for the scream.
But there was no scream, not even a pained gasp. Miranda turned back. Nico was standing in inky liquid up to her knees. Smoke rose in white plumes where the acid touched her, yet her posture was as calm as ever. She might have been wading in a warm river for all the attention she paid the black water eating at her legs.
At the center of the room, the black blob quivered, and the tide of black sludge receded with a sucking hiss. Miranda watched in spellbound horror as the girl’s legs came back into view, bracing for the worst. However, while Nico’s trousers, boots, and the hem of her coat were completely dissolved where the acid had submerged them, her pale skin was untouched, as were the heavy silver manacles she wore on her ankles.
Gregorn screamed in angry confusion as Nico took a step forward, her bare, uninjured feet moving through the sludge of the dissolved treasure in quick, light steps. As she walked, a soft, dry sound cut through the spirit’s wailing. It sounded like dust blowing through grass, and it took Miranda a few seconds to realize that Nico was laughing. The girl hopped clear of the treasure detritus and stood before the screaming sludge spirit, tilting her head back so she could see all of him at once. When she spoke, her voice was full of that horrible, dry dust laughter.
“You think you can beat us with that?”
The black sludge froze in midshriek and hung there, quivering. Nico watched for a moment, and then she raised one bony hand to her throat, and the temperature in the room plummetted.
In one smooth motion, Nico tossed her coat to the ground. Without its bulk to hide her, she was skeletally thin. Her threadbare shirt was sleeveless, and her bony arms hung like cracked branches from a crooked trunk. Her silver manacles glowed with their own light, casting weird shadows across the acid-etched floor as she reached up to take off her hat.
“Nico…” Eli’s voice held a warning, but if the girl heard him, she ignored it. “That stupid girl,” he whispered.
Miranda didn’t have to ask what he meant. Without the coat to hide her, the girl’s aura was inescapable. Predatory menace rolled off her in waves, stirring Miranda’s deepest instincts to run, to get out. But she could not move. Deep, irrational, primordial fear had turned the air to glue, snaring her soul like a rabbit under a wolf’s paw. She could do nothing except cower in her alcove and watch, gasping in the acidic air and waiting for the threat to kill her or pass by. For the first time, she understood why all spirits fear a demonseed, and why Gin had been so adamant about killing the girl, no matter how small or controlled she seemed.
“Can’t you stop her?” Miranda whispered through gritted teeth.
“Only Josef can stop her when she gets like this.” Eli was pressed so far back in his alcove Miranda couldn’t see him anymore. “You might want to get down,” he whispered.
Nico stretched her arms out, flexing her shoulders. One by one, the thick manacles at her wrists, ankles, and neck popped open with a hard, metallic snap. Each time, the silver clung to her for a moment, screaming angrily, but even fully awakened metal can’t fight gravity. The manacles hit the floor with a crash, cursing Nico all the way down. As soon as she was free of their touch, the small girl’s posture changed completely.
The Nico who stood at the center of the circle of cast-off clothes and silver restraints was an entirely different creature than the Nico who had entered the throne room with them. Her thinness was no longer awkward, but deadly and cutting, like garrote wire. Her movements were languid as she dropped lazily into a stance, her newly freed hands flourished in front of her.
With a thin smile Nico stared up at the enormous sludge. Then the dim moonlight seemed to bend around her, and she vanished.
The sludge roared as shadows, blacker than any simple darkness, streaked across its surface, appearing and vanishing in an instant, like black heat lightning. It was nauseating to watch, but Miranda could no more look away than she could sprout wings and escape. Everywhere the shadow touched, a large section of acidic sludge vanished. It wasn’t that it got knocked away, or that the creature was pulling it back. Where the darkness landed, that piece of the blob was simply gone. Within a few seconds, the acid spirit looked like a mouse-nibbled biscuit, and the fear in the room was suffocating. The stones were screaming, the unlit lamps were screaming, the gold-plated decorations, the remaining contents of the treasury, the glass windows, the air itself,
Gregorn’s sludge was about half the size it had been. It lay at the far end of the room, whimpering pathetically, but still protecting the dais as it had been commanded to do. Nico, on the other hand, looked healthier than Miranda had ever seen her. Her pale skin was flushed and glowing. Her body was no longer skeletal, but strong
