The Bailiff clambered to his feet behind the Spirit creature fight. He didn’t have a scratch on him. He made a big show of picking up his bowler hat, dusting it off, and setting it back on his head.
While my Corpses chomped through the Bailiff’s ghost ape, I hit Moldering Bones. I couldn’t touch the Bailiff, but I could destroy his connection to the Martial Devil.
Moldering Bones scoured the totem with thousands of years in mere seconds. Time and age rotted the bit of leathery ape skin. Bloodstained sand and yellowed fangs spilled from the broken totem onto the trampled grass, then disintegrated into dust and blew away.
The totem was all that reined in the Martial Devil, tying the ghost ape to the Bailiff and forcing it to protect him. Without that leash keeping it in check, the Martial Devil’s wild aggression could turn on the Bailiff as easily as it did his enemies.
When the last of the totem was gone, what was left of the ghost ape—ragged bits and pieces of body with gaping knife-shredded bite marks torn in it—reared up on its feet and beat the remnants of its chest with its only remaining fist. The Martial Devil spun around and stormed toward the Bailiff, one of my Corpses still clinging to the ghost ape’s shoulder by its black-veined hands and teeth.
The Bailiff chuckled as his Martial Devil’s enormous fist whiffed harmlessly through his head and chest. The ape lashed out with massive fangs, trying unsuccessfully to bite the Bailiff in half. While it whaled ineffectively on him, my Corpse ate through the ghost ape’s back, finished off its chest, then gnawed through the last of its head.
The Martial Devil was gone.
“Hot dog, Smart Boy, am I ever glad you brought me this fancy bracelet!” the Bailiff crowed, rocking on his heels. “I run up a pretty steep tab with that monkey over the years. Them Martial Devils are hard enough to keep under your thumb, but the second they get off their chain... Well, without you, this could’ve been one ugly ending for yours truly.”
I dropped Death Metal and reached for the invisible hilt of Wrathblade.
Metal hissed as the uchigatana slid out of the empty air at my hip. Its spectral purple glow filled the clearing, pushing back the gray light of dawn.
Why me? asked the first whisper. I never did anything to anyone. I wasn’t even old enough to do anything.
That was the only coherent voice I heard before a thunder of accusations from the dead in and around the Technol camp crashed down on me. I collapsed under their weight, landing on my hands and knees. They were all whispering at once, hundreds of voices running together and crashing against each other until my head felt like an engine revving at top speed with no oil or coolant. My skull was going to crack like an overheated engine block and spill my brains all over the grass.
“Not yet.” I had to hold it together until the Bailiff was dead. He had to pay for murdering Kest.
“Cut off his bracelet arm!” I yelled at Wrathblade. At least I thought I yelled it. It was hard to tell through the skull-splitting whispers.
“I never did meet a man with a more ironical nickname than yours, Smart Boy.” The Bailiff sounded like he was having the time of his life. “If you can’t kill me outright, blunt force trauma can’t dent me, and the Martial Devil couldn’t tear me apart, then what on this lovely green planet makes you think a fancy sword can cut me? Looky here.”
I managed to focus on the world outside my head long enough to see Wrathblade hacking at his outstretched arm, trying to chop through the wrist with the Heartblood Crown. The glowing spectral blade bounced off like the Bailiff was made of steel.
The whispering tried to pull me down into the abyss again, but the Bailiff’s voice brought me back.
“Immortal.” He enunciated the word slowly, brush teeth flashing with every syllable. “Fire, flood, pestilence—this bracelet’s job is to protect its master from every injury, illness, and death you can imagine, and even more you can’t. But you’re welcome to keep on trying.”
He couldn’t stop running his mouth for one second. He was having too much fun jerking me around, watching me warp under the pressure, but he didn’t realize his endless taunting was the only thing anchoring me to reality.
“What else you got in the bag, Smart Boy? Best make it good.”
I got to my feet, a smile twisting my face as I sheathed Wrathblade. The whispering cut off immediately.
“One last trick,” I told him. “Just for brush-toothed, web-fingered immortal psychos. It might even kill us both, who knows?”
His beady eyes sparkled. “I like the sound of it already.”
I reached my hands back to my chest like I was scooping out my heart. A crackling ball of Sudden Death formed in my grasp, solid, brilliant, and black as the void, and I knew that was it. All the life energy I had left, however many years remained in this life.
Right then, it felt like a small price to pay.
“Come on, Smart Boy,” the Bailiff said, his face shining with sadistic glee. “Roll them bones!”
I took a step and started to shove Sudden Death at him.
Thunder crashed behind me, lit with a silver bolt of lightning that shook the air and rattled the trees around the clearing.
“Not yet, Hake.”
Her voice stopped me cold.
Kest stepped up beside me, radiating a cloud of silver Metal Spirit purer and brighter than any I’d ever seen her use before. Black Selken blood soaked her shirt and dried in spatters on her face. Her long hair was
