With a coy little grin, Eli obeyed.
Josef, Slorn, and the man Slorn called father moved Nico’s bone metal box to the middle of the white room. The enormous hall was perfectly circular, and there was some fussing on the part of the two Shapers about getting the box exactly at the center. Once it was there, Slorn raised his hand. A white slit in the air opened in answer, and Eli blinked in surprise. On the other side of the hole was Slorn’s workshop. It looked just as Eli remembered it, everything neatly shelved and labeled. Slorn stepped through the portal, coming back almost immediately with a long length of shining chain looped between his hands.
It must have weighed a ton. The metal was as thick as Eli’s thumb, and the links themselves were as long as his palm, but Slorn moved the chain easily, spreading it out between his arms like common rope. He spoke quietly to the others, and then he, Josef, and the old Shaper lifted Nico’s bone metal box. As soon as it was off the ground, Slorn began wrapping the chain around it.
He wrapped the box ten times, five across the width and another five going lengthwise before attaching the final link to the first. The glittering metal snapped open at his touch with reverent obedience, sealing itself again so perfectly Eli wouldn’t have believed the work had been done without the aid of a forge if he hadn’t just seen it for himself.
“There,” Slorn said, wiping the back of his neck with his hands. “That should do it. Lower her down.”
Eli moved in for a closer look. He loved Slorn’s toys. “What was that?”
“Extra precaution,” Slorn answered. “It’s an awakened alloy of my own design, stronger than steel and stubborn as stone. It’s not inedible like bone metal, but it’s close. This way, if the bone metal cracks, the containment will hopefully stay shut long enough for us to do something.”
Eli felt the blood drain out of his face. Slorn’s voice was as serious as the grave. “This isn’t like before, is it?” he said quietly.
Slorn closed his eyes. “No.”
Josef’s shoulders went tense. “What do you mean?”
“He means she’s not coming back from this,” Eli said. “It’s finally gone too far.”
“Eli,” Josef growled, but Slorn’s voice stopped him.
“It’s not a matter of going too far,” the Shaper said. “If your fight with the Lord of Storms hadn’t been so close to the Shaper Mountain, the world would be a very different place right now. Possibly not at all.”
Josef bared his teeth. “What do you mean, bear?”
“We watched your fight,” Slorn said, unflinching. “The girl you call Nico has another name here. The Shapers call her Daughter of the Dead Mountain, and if the Lord of Storms hadn’t finished her, they meant to.”
Josef’s face turned murderous, and the old man beside Slorn drew himself up. “It would be our right,” he said. “Almost three years ago, that creature led the demon’s assault on the Shapers. She slaughtered the Teacher’s mountains, eating them like sheep as she carved a path from the Dead Mountain to our very slopes. Had the League of Storms not stopped her, she would have attacked the Shaper Mountain itself. She is our enemy, but worse, she was our child.”
The old man stopped a moment, and when he continued, his voice was softer. “Before the demon took her, the girl was one of our own daughters. A child of the mountain, precious to us and to the Teacher. Killing the monster she became would not just be vengeance for those she killed, but vengeance for the girl she had been, our daughter whose soul was eaten by the demon and replaced with his black seed.”
“Nico’s bounty,” Josef said, his voice dangerously strained. “That was you?”
“It was,” the old man said. “I am Ferdinand Slorn, Guildmaster of the Shapers. I gave the order then just as I would have given it now. Had the Lord of Storms fallen, we would have come forward to kill the demonseed ourselves. But then, things changed.”
“The seed was ripped out,” Slorn said, picking up the story. “But Nico didn’t die.”
“Of course she didn’t die,” Josef snapped. “She’s a survivor.”
“No, swordsman,” Slorn said, shaking his head. “A demonseed’s host dies the moment the seed is removed. Always. That’s why a demonseed is a death sentence. Even if the seed is small, the moment it is implanted, the seed’s life becomes tangled with the host spirit. Removing the seed kills the soul and destroys the host body. This is a universal truth. Or so we thought.”
Josef folded his arms over his chest. “Nico proved you wrong.”
“Nico is no longer a demonseed,” Slorn said. “If she were, she would have died the second the seed left her body. But the seed is gone and her soul still lives. Actually, I’d say she’s more powerful now without the seed than she was when I saw her at Izo’s camp.”
Eli winced, remembering the enormous black monster with its hideous yellow eyes, the black mouth roaring as it devoured the forest. He glanced at the bone metal box on the floor between them. He didn’t want to see something more powerful than that.
Slorn took a long breath. “The truth, swordsman, is that we didn’t decide not to kill Nico out of kindness or respect to you or her. We can’t kill her. It’s my belief that she is no longer a demonseed inside a human host but a fully fledged demon in her own right. She is the very thing we have feared for so long, the thing the Demon of the Dead Mountain has been striving to create since his imprisonment began. And with this demon as with the other, none of us, not the Shapers nor the Teacher nor the League nor the Shepherdess herself, has the power to destroy her. Not without striking so hard we break the world in the process. The best we can hope for now is to contain her as we contained her father.”
“So you’re just going to keep her in that box forever?” Josef shouted. “Not a chance! I won’t allow it.”
“You don’t get a choice,” Slorn said. “This is larger than us now, Josef Liechten. The thing in that box isn’t Nico anymore but a predator capable of devouring everything we call reality. It is by pure good fortune that we had a vessel capable of containing her ready before that happened. Letting her out is simply not possible. We’re lucky we got her in.”
“She’s not a monster!” Josef roared, grabbing Slorn by his collar. “And she’s still in there. Nico doesn’t lose to anything!”
Slorn didn’t answer, nor did he pull out of Josef’s grasp. He simply stood there, brown bear eyes staring into Josef’s until, at last, the swordsman let go. “I’m not giving up,” Josef said, sitting down on the white stone beside the chain-swaddled box.
Eli, Slorn, and the Guildmaster exchanged a look and stepped back, moving quietly to the far end of the white room, giving Josef his space.
“I want to say he’ll come around,” Eli said, scrubbing his hands through his hair in frustration. “But I don’t think he will. I don’t know that I will. After everything she’s been through, all the fights she won, I can’t believe Nico’s lost now.”
“I don’t know what her future holds,” Slorn said. “Something like this has never happened before. But I do know we cannot afford to take chances, not with things as bad as they are.”
“There at least we agree,” Eli said. “All this aside, though, I’m very glad you appeared, Slorn. I have some news I need to tell someone, and I think you’re the best choice by far, but first”—Eli folded his arms and gave the Shaper a piercing look—“how did you get the ability to cut the veil? Did the Lord of Storms finally convince you to join his club, or does everyone get those now? Because I swear I saw a Spiritualist use one just before everything went south.”
“I don’t know about the Spiritualists,” Slorn said. “But to answer your question, no, I’m not in service of the Shepherdess, League or otherwise. Other than the ability to move through the veil, I am the same as I was last we met. That power was granted me only recently by the Master of the Veil himself in order to make the bitter work we’re about to embark on a little easier.”
“Wait,” Eli said, holding up his hands. “Wait, wait, wait. What work? And Master of the Veil? I know I’ve been out of the loop for a while, but what are you talking about? Who’s the Master of the Veil?”
I am.
Eli jumped a foot in the air. The voice rang through his head just like the Shepherdess’s, but where hers was a woman’s cold soprano, this was a steady tenor. Beside him, Slorn and the old Guildmaster were lowering their heads in reverence. Eli followed their eyes and found himself face to face with an old man.
He was as tall as Josef, but frail with age, his limbs thin and bony. Even so, his shoulders were straight, his hands steady, and his white skin was as luminous and unblemished as Benehime’s. His hair was white, too, as was
