creature stumbled forward at the impact, and the new wings flapped awkwardly, stretching for the sky with clawed talons. Its enormous, clawed feet ripped into the forest floor for balance, tearing up great mounds of roots and stone in the process. These turned to black dust as Eli watched, their souls devoured by the creature’s touch.
Unable to tear his eyes away, Eli would have watched until he too was eaten. But then, just before Nico’s deadly skin reached him, a rough hand grabbed him by the collar and tugged him sideways. Eli felt the strange whooshing sensation that came with traveling through a cut in the world before landing on his face on the ground twenty feet from where he’d been standing. Izo was there too, still staring dumbly into the distance, but that was all Eli could make out before the hand on his collar dragged him up until he was inches from Alric’s enraged face. Even so, it took Eli a few seconds to realize that the vibrations coming from Alric’s frantically moving mouth were words.
“I said you have to do something!” Alric shouted, shaking Eli until the thief saw spots. “The Lord of Storms is missing and I can’t contact the Shepherdess on my own. She’ll listen to you. You have to make her do something or our world will be devoured!”
Eli’s poor brain had a hard time keeping up with that. “What do you mean?”
Alric’s grip on his collar tightened until Eli thought he was going to choke. “Look at it!” the League man shouted, forcing Eli’s head until the thief had no choice but to look where Alric wanted. “This isn’t some errant seed grown out of control. It’s the Daughter of the Dead Mountain!”
The demon was nearly twenty feet tall now. It reached out, dragging its hands along the ground, leaving great, blackened rents in the forest wherever it touched. Its enormous mouth devoured the trees whole, and the air was full of the screams of dying spirits.
“I can’t stop it,” Alric said. “The whole League can’t stop it, not without the Lord of Storms. Even then, he took its head off last time and it still didn’t die.”
“What do you want me to do?” Eli shouted. “The Shepherdess is the guardian of all spirits. If she won’t leave her little white world for this”—he pointed at the demon—“what’s my opinion matter?”
Alric jerked him. “Oh, come off it! You’re her favorite little pet. She’ll do anything you want, even her job.”
Eli started trying to pry Alric’s fingers off his collar. “That’s a low blow,” he muttered. “Even for you.”
Alric’s eyes narrowed. “I do what I have to, favorite. Now, will you do it, or do I have to kill you to get her attention?” He dropped Eli and drew his sword, pressing the ruined edge against Eli’s chest.
Eli swallowed, eyes flicking from sword to swordsman. He did not doubt for a moment that the League man would do it. Alric had never been the idle-threat type. But…
“Forget it,” Eli said, crossing his arms over his chest. “Groveling to Benehime for help is on the same level as dying, so far as I’m concerned. You’ll have to think up a better threat.”
Alric stared at him for a moment, and then he drew his fist back and punched Eli square across the jaw. Eli fell backward, flailing to catch himself, but Alric was there first, grabbing him around the throat.
“Do you think this is a game?” Alric’s fingers pressed tighter on Eli’s windpipe with every word. “Do you have any idea what is at stake?”
“More than you do,” Eli choked out. He wrenched himself from Alric’s grasp, rubbing his bruised throat. “You think the Shepherdess isn’t watching this right now? She could fix everything with a single word, but she won’t. Not while there’s a chance of forcing me to ask for it. That’s what she’s like. It’s all a game to her. She’s trying to corner me, to make me act how she wants me to act. But I’m no one’s dog, Alric. Not hers, and not yours.”
Alric screamed his answer, but the words were lost as the ground began to erupt. Great shards of stone shot from the ground as the great sleeping spirits of the mountains woke and began trying to fight the threat. Eli, Alric, and the still-staring Izo fell as the ground rolled like a bucking bull beneath them. Alric was back on his feet at once, bracing his legs against the moving ground like a sailor on a storm-pitched ship. Eli stood more slowly, gripping a screaming tree for support, watching wide-eyed as the valley began to tear itself apart.
The spirit’s fight was over as soon as it had begun. The demon ate the stone spikes even as they struck home, absorbing the screaming spirits into its growing body until there was nothing left but black dust falling down on the valley like snow. Even so, blind and desperate with panic, the spirits kept attacking. With nothing left to lose, the ground tore itself open beneath the demon’s feet, screaming vengeance as great stone hands reached out to pull it down and crush it beneath the bedrock. The creature stumbled, grabbing hold of the fissure with its long claws. Scenting victory, another fissure opened in the other direction, trying to spoil the demon’s hold. The creature screamed and began kicking with its claws, cracking the fissures and collapsing them in on themselves even as it ate the stone. Eli watched in horrified silence, unable to speak until he saw something horribly familiar on the edge of the collapsing cliff. After everything he’d just seen, it took him a few seconds to realize he was looking at Josef’s unconscious body, still lying where they’d left it when Alric had pulled them to safety.
“Josef!” Eli shouted. But it was too late. The ground collapsed beneath the swordsman, sending him falling into the abyss.
“Josef!”
As Eli screamed Josef’s name, the demon moved. With horrifying speed, it caught the falling swordsman between its claws. The demon climbed out of the collapsing fissure, carrying Josef and the Heart, which Josef still held clutched against his chest, in its palm. When it reached a stretch of unbroken ground, the demon gently laid the swordsman down. It hovered over him a moment, staring at him with its hundreds of yellow, glowing eyes. Then, with a horrible scream, it turned and began to attack the forest more violently than ever.
Eli ran to Josef and pressed his fingers against the swordsman’s neck. He heaved a huge sigh of relief when he felt his friend’s strong, steady heartbeat. Despite what the demon had done to everything else it touched, Josef was unharmed.
“She’s still in there,” he said, looking up at the rampaging demon with a sort of wonder.
His thoughts were interrupted by Alric as the League man yanked him around.
“Now do you get it?” Alric shouted, shaking him. “There’s nothing we can do, humans or spirits, to stop that thing. We need the Shepherdess, and you’re going to get her.” He swung his ruined sword up, the broken gold glinting in the dusty sunlight. “Last chance, favorite. I’m ready to die to do what I have to do, and I have absolutely no qualms about taking you with me. Call her down or die for your pride. Either way, this ends now.”
Eli flinched away, his brain madly trying to think of a way out. But before he could even open his mouth, a deep, deep voice he’d never heard before spoke over the roar.
“Leave him, League man. Even if she does come down, we will suffer for it.”
Alric and Eli both turned. On Josef’s chest, the battered blade of the Heart of War began to glow.
“If you call down the Shepherdess, she will deal with this one as she did the last,” the Heart said. “She will bury it under a mountain, and we will have twice the problems we have now.”
“No,” Alric said. “The Daughter of the Dead Mountain is still not a hundredth the size of the original. All we need is—”
“Demonseeds are shards of the great demon,” the Heart said. “Fractures small enough to escape its prison and move freely through the world. Yet each tiny piece has the same attributes of the whole. Think. The League, the Shepherdess’s arm in this world, can’t even destroy those small seeds, only cut them off from their human hosts and store them in starvation. What, then, can the Shepherdess do with a demon this size except what she did with the original? Mark me, Alric, she will do what she did before. She will seal it beneath a mountain. But this time there is only one remaining mountain spirit strong enough to hold a shard of the demon that large in check, and I very much doubt the Shaper Mountain would be willing to spend the rest of eternity as a sword.”
“Wait,” Eli said. “You mean you…”
“Yes,” the Heart answered. “At the beginning of this world, I willingly gave my body as a prison for the demon. In return, the Shepherdess let me choose my new form. I chose to be a sword. It has been a hard, lonely journey, but I have never regretted my choice. However, I will not let another be forced to it, least of all my brother, who has dedicated his life to guiding his Shapers.”
“Wait,” Eli said. “The Shaper Mountain is your brother?”
“All mountains are my brothers,” the Heart said. “But the Shaper Mountain, Durain, is my twin. We two were birthed from the will of the Creator at the dawn of the world to stand as guard and guide to the lesser mountains. We were the greatest of the Great Spirits of stone, and we can never be replaced. The Shepherdess is not the Creator. She can only guide and order the spirits, not form new ones. When the demon first came, I gave up my
