Rachel Aaron - Spirit’s End

The breath fled from her lungs. There, running along the warped and crumpling sky, was a crack. It ran up from the eastern horizon, weaving back and forth in wide jags before finally thinning to nothing just beyond what had been the sky’s zenith. The crack sparkled in the sunlight, its edges gleaming white.

For several seconds the world was silent. The wind didn’t blow, the snow didn’t stir, even the spirit panic seemed to have stopped. Everything was staring at the crack in the sky. And then, with another booming crack, a second fracture split off from the first.

This one grew as Miranda watched, running across the distended sky like lightning toward the western horizon. It stopped just at the edge of the afternoon sun, the tail end of the crack splitting the top of the yellow orb. As the sun cracked, its light skewed, and that was when Miranda began to panic in earnest.

Even though the Weaver and the Shaper Mountain had warned her, even though she knew this was coming, there was something about seeing the world lit from that new, unnatural angle that her mind simply could not wrap itself around. All she could do was raise her shaking hand, catching the broken sunlight with her rings, and wonder if there was a sun at all. Was anything real, or was the world she’d taken for granted her whole life little more than a painted backdrop?

She didn’t realize she was screaming until the Lord of Storms’ hand wrapped around her neck. She heard Gin’s snarl far in the distance, but the ghosthound was drowned out by the thunder that was suddenly pounding through her head. The Lord of Storms lifted her by the throat and leaned in until his pale face and waving black hair were all she could see. The rage behind his flashing eyes overwhelmed her, but when he spoke, the words were low and controlled.

“If you fall apart on me now, Spiritualist, I will take everything you have to give until you die,” he whispered. “Do you understand?”

There was no hatred in the threat, no malice. It was simply a promise to do what must be done, and the calm reality of it snapped Miranda’s jarred mind back into place. She swallowed against his grip and nodded. The Lord of Storms nodded as well and dropped her onto Gin’s back. She scrambled, nearly falling, but Gin’s nose nudged her into place.

“Never do that again,” he snarled once she was seated.

“I do what I need to, pup,” the Lord of Storms said, looking back at the sky. “See you don’t get in my way.”

Gin snapped at the Lord of Storms’ leg before Miranda could stop him. But the hound’s teeth slid harmlessly through his body as his leg dissolved into storms. The dog growled and went for another snap, but Miranda grabbed his ear.

“Let it be,” she commanded. “Now’s not the time.”

Gin bared his teeth one last time, and then turned back to the sky. They were all looking up now, the demons, the humans, everyone. Josef had drawn the Heart, Miranda noticed out of the corner of her eye. What he meant to do with it, she had no idea. Compared to the crack in the sky, even the Heart’s enormous blade looked small and useless. They all did. She bit her lip as the sky began to whine under the pressure. Even if Eli was successful, even if a new Hunter was born, how were they ever to stop this?

“Stand firm,” the Lord of Storms commanded. “Here they come.”

Miranda tangled her fingers in Gin’s shifting fur as the crack splintered and then splintered again, shooting across the sky like branches from a tree. The new cracks spread in long lines, carving the bulging sky into a network of shards until the blue was almost gray from the strain. With each crack, the groaning, glass-on-glass sound of the sky grinding against itself grew worse. And then, just when Miranda was sure she could bear the creaking no longer, the sky shattered.

After the cracks, the actual break was startlingly quiet. At the place where the three largest cracks met, the sky simply fell apart. The blue shards rained down, dissolving to nothing before they hit the ground with a soft sigh. The sound that came next, however, Miranda knew she would never be able to forget no matter how desperately she tried.

As the sky broke, a scream burst into the world. It wasn’t a spirit’s scream, or a human sound, or even the cry of an animal in pain. It wasn’t like anything Miranda had ever heard. The sound was strangely empty, like a chord missing its key note. It was almost like the dissonance of Nico’s voice, but a million times more. And then the fear hit Miranda like a punch in the gut.

Even though she was expecting it, she nearly fell over. Fear rolled over the world like a sticky fog, and the spirits, already worn to breaking by the earlier panics, began to howl anew. Miranda wanted to howl with them, but she forced the fear away, clamping down on her own terror as well as her spirits’, and though every instinct she had was screaming at her to run and hide, she held her ground and raised her eyes.

Where the sky had broken was a hole filled with the deepest black she had ever seen. It was like looking into the opposite of light, and Miranda had the feeling that even if she were to take the sun itself and shine it through, it still wouldn’t be enough light to show her what was on the other side. That would actually be fine with her. Miranda didn’t want to know what lived in such darkness. Unfortunately, her ignorance was short lived. For one long second, the black hole hung empty in the sky, its edges vibrating with the strange screaming, and then, a clawed hand shot through the opening and plunged toward the mountains.

It was enormous. Truly enormous and utterly black, its great fingers opening to grasp as it plummeted. On and on and on it reached until the arm was as long as a mountain range, its claws each as large as a city. But long as it was, the arm was so thin compared to its length that it turned Miranda’s stomach. Thin and sickly, the arm fell down through the air until, at last, the enormous clawed fingers dug into one of the distant mountain peaks. A new scream drowned out all the others when it connected. A scream of triumph and endless, mad hunger as the hand tore the mountain from its roots and began lifting it back toward the broken sky.

Even this far away, even with all the other sounds, Miranda felt the mountain’s scream in her bones. The stone sobbed with impotent fury, gripping the ground even as the claws tore it away. It kept screaming even as the claws dragged it into the air, crying and begging for help. The cries shot through her like arrows, but Miranda could do nothing except watch, horrified and helpless, as the hand pulled the mountain up toward the dark.

And then, in a flash, everything changed again.

Miranda felt the blow before she saw it, a great iron wave of power that knocked her into the snow. It swelled and vanished in the space of a second, and the enormous hand split in two.

The demon’s scream doubled, the alien sound twisting from triumph to enraged pain as the arm jerked back. But it was too late. The cut was razor straight across the back of the monstrous black palm. The beetle-shiny flesh peeled away in a line as three claws fell free and began to plummet, taking the mountain with them. The severed demon flesh dissolved like smoke as it fell, and by the time the mountain crashed back into the ground, there was no trace of the severed claws at all save for the long, burned imprints of the demon’s hand on the mountain’s slope.

Miranda stared a second longer and then turned her wide eyes to Josef as he lowered the Heart of War. She could still feel the enormous power rolling out of him like heat off a bonfire, but the swordsman’s stance was even and calm as he watched the enormous arm writhe and slither back up toward the splintered sky.