Even though she was expecting it, she nearly fell over. Fear rolled over the world like a sticky fog, and the spirits, already worn to breaking by the earlier panics, began to howl anew. Miranda wanted to howl with them, but she forced the fear away, clamping down on her own terror as well as her spirits’, and though every instinct she had was screaming at her to run and hide, she held her ground and raised her eyes.
Where the sky had broken was a hole filled with the deepest black she had ever seen. It was like looking into the opposite of light, and Miranda had the feeling that even if she were to take the sun itself and shine it through, it still wouldn’t be enough light to show her what was on the other side. That would actually be fine with her. Miranda didn’t want to know what lived in such darkness. Unfortunately, her ignorance was short lived. For one long second, the black hole hung empty in the sky, its edges vibrating with the strange screaming, and then, a clawed hand shot through the opening and plunged toward the mountains.
It was enormous. Truly enormous and utterly black, its great fingers opening to grasp as it plummeted. On and on and on it reached until the arm was as long as a mountain range, its claws each as large as a city. But long as it was, the arm was so thin compared to its length that it turned Miranda’s stomach. Thin and sickly, the arm fell down through the air until, at last, the enormous clawed fingers dug into one of the distant mountain peaks. A new scream drowned out all the others when it connected. A scream of triumph and endless, mad hunger as the hand tore the mountain from its roots and began lifting it back toward the broken sky.
Even this far away, even with all the other sounds, Miranda felt the mountain’s scream in her bones. The stone sobbed with impotent fury, gripping the ground even as the claws tore it away. It kept screaming even as the claws dragged it into the air, crying and begging for help. The cries shot through her like arrows, but Miranda could do nothing except watch, horrified and helpless, as the hand pulled the mountain up toward the dark.
And then, in a flash, everything changed again.
Miranda felt the blow before she saw it, a great iron wave of power that knocked her into the snow. It swelled and vanished in the space of a second, and the enormous hand split in two.
The demon’s scream doubled, the alien sound twisting from triumph to enraged pain as the arm jerked back. But it was too late. The cut was razor straight across the back of the monstrous black palm. The beetle-shiny flesh peeled away in a line as three claws fell free and began to plummet, taking the mountain with them. The severed demon flesh dissolved like smoke as it fell, and by the time the mountain crashed back into the ground, there was no trace of the severed claws at all save for the long, burned imprints of the demon’s hand on the mountain’s slope.
Miranda stared a second longer and then turned her wide eyes to Josef as he lowered the Heart of War. She could still feel the enormous power rolling out of him like heat off a bonfire, but the swordsman’s stance was even and calm as he watched the enormous arm writhe and slither back up toward the splintered sky.
“You always did have a flare for the barbaric,” the Demon of the Dead Mountain said, his handsome face broken by a sharp-toothed smile.
Nico snarled at the comment, but Josef just set the Heart point first into the snow at his feet. “Any time you feel like holding up your end, feel free.”
The Demon of the Dead Mountain began to laugh, a two-toned cackle with that missing harmonic that made Miranda’s skin crawl, and the more he laughed, the less human his face became. His cheeks split as his teeth lengthened, the white crowns fading to jagged, black points. His clothes stretched and changed as his body grew. He doubled in size, and then doubled again, and with every inch he grew, the fear that crawled over the world thickened.
It took forever, and yet it was finished sooner than Miranda would have thought. One minute the demon had stood before her looking too much like a young Banage to trust; the next all she saw was the monster. It towered over them, so large and so terrifying she couldn’t see the whole of it at once.
Unlike the thing outside of Izo’s, this demon was no mad, stumbling horror. Nor was it like the hand in the sky, all thin desperation and hunger. This was a monster in its prime, cold and compact and radiating predatory menace. Its arms were triple-jointed as Den’s had been after the change, and the creature balanced delicately on them as it rocked back on sturdy legs braced by nine-foot claws that dug into the screaming ground. Its head was a long, hard muzzle covered in a glossy black shell and filled with row after row of jagged black teeth. On top, three enormous, golden eyes narrowed in anticipation as its six-clawed fingers tapped against its snout.
When the demon had finished growing, its yellow eyes roved down and focused on Josef. The swordsman glared back without flinching. The demon smiled at his bravado, showing its thousands of teeth, and moved its gaze to Nico. Unlike Josef, she shrank under the unblinking stare, and the demon’s smile grew wider.
“Well, then, daughter.” The horrible mouth didn’t even move as it hissed the words. “Show the good people what you’ve made of yourself.”
Josef started to raise his sword but stopped when Nico’s hand landed on his arm. She shook her head and said something Miranda couldn’t hear over the screaming. Josef’s face tightened, but in the end he nodded. Only then did Nico begin to change.
Her change wasn’t like the other demon’s. There was no stretching, no horrible bending of her human form. She simply vanished into a column of shadow, her body washed away beneath a torrent of liquid black.
Pain shot through Miranda’s chest, and she looked to see the Lord of Storms straining against their bond, his teeth clenched as the shadows around Nico grew solid. Like the Demon of the Dead Mountain, her skin was glossy and black. Unlike him, however, her form was almost human.
She stood on clawed feet that reminded Miranda of a raven’s. Unlike the other demon with his four legs and curled, stout body, Nico’s two-legged form was straight and tall, her long torso hidden beneath a cloud of swirling shadows that shifted and spun in the memory of her coat. Her shoulders were sharp and narrow beneath the flowing shadow, and her arms, while still proportionally too long and clawed, had only one joint at the elbow.
Her head, however, was totally different. It sat on her shoulders like a mask, a great, horned carapace with two narrow, angled eyes glowing like golden lanterns above a narrow, jackal-like snout filled with even, razor- sharp black teeth.
“My, how fancy,” the Demon of the Dead Mountain said, his horrible voice thick with laughter. “You can’t do anything normally, can you?”
Nico didn’t answer. She simply looked up as the darkness around her began to spread. It rose and solidified, forming four enormous, swirling wings that blacked out the sky. The Lord of Storms sucked in a breath as she rose with one, slow flap and began to climb toward the hole in the sky. “Daughter of the Dead Mountain.”
He spoke the name with such fury that Miranda didn’t dare ask him how he knew the thing that Nico had become. Instead, she focused on the cracked sky where the wounded arm was still thrashing. By this point, other clawed fingers were working their way in, worming past the squirming arm of the injured demon to pry at the sky in an attempt to break the hole wider.
Josef gave a shout and swung his sword again. The blow shot past Nico and sliced the end off one of the newcomer’s claws. The creature’s scream was lost in the roar, and the new hand vanished only to be instantly replaced by another. Josef frowned and glared at the Demon of the Dead Mountain. The demon smiled back wide enough to show every one of his uncountable black teeth and then, almost lazily, stretched his long, stocky body and jumped after Nico.
Miranda was trying to decide if she should cheer or cry at that when a loud snap cut through the screams. Her head shot up so fast she almost broke her neck, and she cried out in alarm. A second crack was sprouting from a small branch of the first one, spidering across the crumpled dome of the sky directly over their heads. Almost as soon as the crack formed, the sky broke, and two more hands just as large as the first burst through.
They shot screaming toward the ground, one of them coming straight for Miranda’s head. It happened so fast, she didn’t even think to move out of the way. She just stood there staring as the hand came down to squash her like a bug. She was imagining how the black claws would rip through her when something strong and painful clamped on to her arm and jerked her around.
Despite that she was on Gin’s back and he was standing on the ground, the Lord of Storms towered over her, his hand like a vise on her arm. “Time to honor your part of our bargain, woman,” he said, his voice fading into thunder as the wind began to pick up.
Miranda didn’t have to ask what he meant. She could already feel her link with him tightening as he began to pull, draining her through their bond. His hand vanished from her arm, turning into cloud as she watched. The rest of him followed, and the sky filled with enormous thunderheads lit up with bolt after bolt of branching, tree-
