It was his last word. His jaw split with the syllable, falling away into gray-orange fire. The flame had eaten away his face before either Zelen or Branwyn could act, and moved quickly to devour the rest of his frame.
Even if water would have worked, Zelen had none. All he could do was bear witness as his brother became sickly radiance, all vestiges of human form melting away into a conflagration that never touched the rock.
It streamed away, instead, into the room beyond.
And the creature there snarled louder.
* * *
Branwyn hadn’t heard the roar before. She knew it meant nothing good and hastily turned to face the ritual chamber. A moment’s sight gave her the impression of a large room with niches cut in the walls. Skulls looked out of them in most cases. Three still had skin attached.
The floor was crumbling in the center. Stones fell away into an expanding rift. As Branwyn watched, trying to figure out what the next step was, a hand the size of her chest reached out of the hole and grabbed onto the edge. She knew those spindly, many-knuckled fingers, studded with gray-orange eyes. Not long ago, she’d felt their grip.
She’d almost thought they’d get out alive.
Branwyn laughed while she charged into the room. It was a waste of air, tactically speaking, but she couldn’t stop. They’d come so close to getting away. She was only flesh, with Yathana still at least minutes away from consciousness and likely hours from full power. She faced a greater demon, one that had nearly killed her when she’d been in metal form.
She whipped Yathana down and across. The sword sliced cleanly through three of the seven fingers, which twitched like dying worms while the demon’s blood painted glowing rime on the stones. The other four strained, but held. As Branwyn raised Yathana again, she saw another hand grip the rift’s edge.
Zelen was there then, and stabbed with several quick, precise jabs into the eyes dotting the hand. The grip wavered. The demon roared. Nobody was there to keep it silent now, just as nobody was there to restrain it.
Still it held on to the hole’s edge. The top of a head, hairless, gray, and lumpy, rose from the pit. It was larger now. Branwyn wasn’t sure that the room would hold it.
As had been the case in the hallway, size wasn’t always an advantage.
“Don’t look at its face,” she reminded Zelen.
She struck again, rending the demon’s strange flesh. Glutinous blood oozed from the wound, but this time she’d hit closer to what passed for its wrist, and her strength didn’t suffice to take it off.
“Back,” she said, trying to give the impression of fear.
Zelen, bless him, didn’t argue. He retreated as she did, barely more than a shift in weight. Branwyn was coiling herself, tensing her muscles. If the demon had any reason or perception, it might assume it had the advantage.
Or it might just see prey.
Either way worked for her.
She watched it rise from the abyss below Verengir. First came the vast tumorous expanse of forehead, then the half-circle of eyes, various sizes and all blazing with Gizath’s power. Below them, the wide triangular maw began to emerge.
That was all she dared to look at. It was all she needed to see.
And there was no point asking the gods to give her strength: they’d given her all they would when she’d been thirteen.
Branwyn shut her eyes and sprang forward.
The demon’s substance gave way before Yathana’s point. Backed by the full weight of Branwyn’s body, every sinew launched toward her goal, the sword sank hilt deep. Cold jelly brushed against Branwyn’s knuckles, and she heard, with great satisfaction, a gurgling scream.
The demon started to fall.
The force of Branwyn’s charge didn’t lend itself to reversal. She scrambled backwards, desperate to pull Yathana free before the vast weight on the other end of the blade could break her.
She yanked, overbalanced, and teetered on the edge of the rift, sword free but feet unsteady, even her reflexes failing her at the end. Gulfs yawned below her. Branwyn knew that they weren’t empty. She knew that she was going to fall.
Zelen tugged her backwards, his breath hot in her ear. “Careful! That place is even worse than this house, hard as that is to imagine.”
“Thank you,” said Branwyn. She couldn’t let herself rest against him, much as she would’ve liked to, but snapped her eyes open and shook the demon’s gore off Yathana. “We should move back more.”
“Why—oh.” A few more stones had fallen into the hole in the world, eaten away by the power there. “Silly me. I’d assumed it would close when the demon died.”
