But just behind the angel’s brilliant white form, I saw the balancer pawing a pair of flaming hooves at Warcry’s head. Warcry blocked the first, but the edge of the kick tore a bloody gouge down the side of his face. The second flaming hoof carved through the air toward his throat.
Kest battered away at the balancer’s opposite side, but the hoof was still coming down. Rali raced toward Warcry, trying to throw himself in the way, but he wasn’t fast enough. The balancer would tear Warcry’s neck open before Rali could get there.
I couldn’t see any other choices. I altered my target. With a shove that sucked all the air out of my lungs, I threw the infinitely black ball of Sudden Death at the balancer.
Except it all happened so fast that some of my brain was still thinking about hitting the angel of death with it. Sudden Death clipped the angel as it passed, then slammed into the balancer.
She screamed like she was being tortured to death.
The balancer roared, but the rib-shaking sound cut short. Its green scaled skin ripped and shredded. Its body imploded, crumpling up like a hot soda can in liquid nitrogen, and it disappeared into the void inside its own throat. The hoof that’d been about to split Warcry’s throat open folded inward and vanished.
I felt the balancer’s void trying to pull me in. My sneakers slid in the muck, and I started to slide through the water toward it. That black hole was taking everything, even the heat from the water. The boiling stopped as gallons of swamp were sucked in.
Rali and Warcry both shouted as the force dragged them off their feet, but Kest grabbed them with one arm of her boat armor and grounded her huge metal legs, leaning back to anchor the three of them.
Then the void swallowed itself.
My ears popped as the pull suddenly disappeared. I threw out another dose of Dead Reckoning and spun around, searching for the angel of death.
She was gone.
Immortal Weapon
I DID ANOTHER CIRCLE just to make sure the angel of death was really gone, pouring Miasma into my Ki-sight. No sign of her, but her shining scythe was lying at the bottom of the bog. I reached in with my still-working arm and fished the scythe out. It was freakishly long and heavy enough that I had to hit the strength reinforcement just to lift it.
As I picked it up out of the water, the flesh disappeared from my arm, leaving behind nothing but bones all the way from the hand wrapped around its haft to my shoulder. I did a quick check of my other hand. There was still skin and meat on that side.
A soft hum vibrated through my bone arm like a low-level electrical current. The scythe had been white when the angel of death wielded it, but as I watched, blackness spread from the little bones in my fingers outward, until the whole weapon was jet black. It shrank down in my fist until the handle was a foot taller than me and the blade was only as long as my arm.
Death Cultivator has found an immortal weapon, Hungry Ghost croaked in my head.
What does it do? I asked.
Cut.
I blinked. Dude, was that sarcasm?
“What the piss was that, fatso?” Warcry rounded on Rali. “Don’t you ever try a sacrifice play like that again, or I’ll knock your face out the backa your head!”
Rali let out a frazzled chuckle.
“Apologies, great and self-sufficient Warcry Thompson,” he said. He put his hands together and bowed over them. The move looked ridiculous while they were being held up by mech armor made of crushed fan boat. “I don’t know what I must have been thinking protecting a friend.”
Warcry thumped his chest with a burning fist. “If any of us is going to take damage, it oughta be me. Got it?”
“Don’t worry.” Kest let them both drop into the water and took a few screeching steps away. The balancer had really done a number on her impromptu armor, crushing it so much around the shoulders and arms that it would’ve taken the jaws of life to get her out without Metal Spirit. Red-orange light flared from the inside. “I won’t let Rali try to save your life again.”
Rali grinned, flicking his wet hair out of his face. “I love that you think you can stop me.”
Kest ignored him, climbing out of the melting armor.
“Well, our boat’s trashed,” she said, letting the last of it disappear under the water.
“So weld it back together.” Warcry swiped at the gash down the side of his face, flinging blood off his fingertips into the water. “Ain’t that what metal heads are for?”
“I can’t. It was aluminum. After the scorching that creature’s Star Core Spirit gave it, it’s too brittle to do anything with. Even if I could, all the hoses and electrical components from the engine are ashes now.”
“Come here, Warcry,” Rali said, Warm Heart Spirit collecting in his hands. “Let’s fix that head wound before it gets infected.”
Warcry turned to face Rali, but caught sight of me over the big guy’s shoulder. His eyes almost popped out of his skull.
“Where did you get that, grav?”
“The angel must’ve dropped it when I winged her with Sudden Death.”
Rali and Kest turned my way. Their mouths dropped open at the sight of my fleshless arm holding the angel of death’s scythe.
“Hake,” Kest said. “Tell me you looked at that with Ki-sight before you picked it up.”
“Right,” I said. “About that...”
“Drop it!” she snapped.
I opened my hand, but the scythe didn’t drop. It liquefied and surrounded my bare arm bones, then started crawling across my skeleton and up into my shoulder. I screamed as it tore through my muscles and disappeared into my body, spreading out over my bones. As it passed, it popped my sliced collarbone back together with a
