If this thing materialized fully, there was no way I’d be able to stop it. So how was I going to stop it? I remembered how I’d done that before, back in Brakith, by blowing up the cauldron, but this pool was too big for such a tactic.
I only had one hope; if Fate was on my side, I would have garnered enough new souls from this evening’s intensive fighting to give me a new skill—one with which I could halt the nightmare that was unfolding in front of me.
“This better fucking work,” I growled as I closed my eyes and transported myself to the black plane.
I sprinted across the smooth black ground, my eyes fixed on the tree. Everything was silent and peaceful here, but I was all too aware that back in the physical realm, shit was getting real very rapidly.
“Come on, fucking be there!” I yelled, my eyes scanning the fog that surrounded the top of the tree.
And there it was, shining out a promise of survival, at least for a few minutes more: a new skill, glowing brightly, hanging from one of the branches high up. I had never scaled this tree as quickly as I did now, jumping up from branch to branch, pulling myself up at a crazed speed. I shuffled closer to the skill and grinned, despite everything, when I saw what it was: multiple corpse explosions. Just what I needed. When I made it there, I snatched it off the branch and dived straight off, hurtling toward the ground. I was back in my body on the physical plane long before I hit the glassy black surface.
By now, the upper half of the Demogorgon’s body had materialized, and I could behold the creature in all of its horrifying glory. Its body was like that of an immensely muscular man in structure, but atop its bull-neck sat a head that was something like a cross between a toad’s and a viper’s, but with long fangs in its mouth, and huge, curved ram’s horns, as well as multiple other horns on the side of its head. All the protrusions were as blood red as the rest of the foul creature.
And as for its size—this thing made even the biggest Frost Giant look like a rat. Even now, when it had half-materialized, its head was almost touching the many corpses hanging from the ceiling.
Hundreds of corpses…hundreds of corpses that would make for a gargantuan explosion when detonated all at once.
“Come into being, my beautiful creature!” my uncle screamed, his face deathly pale from blood loss, but his eyes bright and crazed.
The Demogorgon’s eyes, however, were still closed—for now. I didn’t want this thing to see me—not yet, at least—so I scooped up Lucielle, who was still breathing, albeit weakly, and rushed over to a large pillar and ducked behind it before the creature could see me. That was when it opened its eyes. As if it had just bathed in blood—right, it had—it seemed to have to blink its eyes shut a few times before it could properly open them. And then I saw them: the solid red eyes that immediately found my buttlicker of an uncle.
“Finally!” he cried, “I have brought you into existence! My beauty, my wonderful, amazing beauty! Together, we will conquer the entirety of the world for our master, and—”
The Demogorgon could not leave the pool of blood, seen as its legs had not yet materialized, but it could reach my uncle. It swiveled its waist and picked him up with the thumb and forefinger of its left hand. It held him up in front of its face, studying him like a curious boy might study a grasshopper he had just caught…and then it ripped one of his arms off, as casually as that boy would pull off the grasshopper’s leg. The look of crazed excitement on my uncle’s face quickly became a grimace of agony, and he howled in pain. This was all before his arm was ripped off, and then his whole body was torn in half, laterally. The Demogorgon had started the rip by his collar bone, and torn down through his chest and torso, turning the screams into grotesque songs of ecstatic pain. When it tore through my still-alive, rat-like uncle’s midsection, his intestines and stomach spilled out.
“Oh no you don’t, you ugly red fuck!” I roared, jumping out from behind the pillar. “That asshole’s soul is mine!”
Already, though, the light of life was fading from my uncle’s eyes. I had to take his soul, no matter what. Not even the fucking Demogorgon was going to take that away from me. I whipped Grave Oath out and flung it with unfaltering precision. It spun through the air at speed, and the blade slammed into Rodrick’s eyeball, capturing his soul just before it could have left his body of its own accord.
The Demogorgon tossed my uncle’s torn-up, shriveling corpse aside, and turned to study me. For a few moments we stared at each other, and then I felt it—a sensation similar to what I’d felt before the blood lightning had blasted down from the storm Rodrick had called up. Whatever was coming next, though, I knew would be far stronger than any lightning strike. I remembered mining the memories of the people who
