Peter Brett: The Desert Spear

"You're gonna have to be strong and save yourself," he said. " 'Cause that monster's the face of evil, and I ent gonna let it get away."

Her fear fell away at that look, and her eyes hardened. She nodded, and felt the mind demon's sudden start, taking Arlen's meaning the same moment she did. It tried to react, but it was not quick enough as Arlen struck a blow to its head that lit the darkness with magic.

The demon's presence in her mind vanished, leaving Renna stunned and disoriented. She glanced at the mimic, still in her form, and saw it stagger similarly, cut off from its mind.

Tightening her grip on her father's knife, Renna growled and leapt at the creature, putting the blade into its bare midriff. She put her free arm around the demon, pulling it in close as the blackstem wards on her skin activated. Magic shocked through her muscles, filling her with strength as she heaved the knife upward, opening up the creature from navel to collar.

The mimic's body may have looked like her on the outside, but the black, stinking ichor that burst from the wound was nothing from the surface world.

She looked at its face, the same face she had seen a thousand times in the surface of water. Renna was almost brought to tears by the pain and confusion in her own eyes, but then the face snarled like a dog, and its teeth began to elongate as it hissed at her.

Renna twisted as the mimic lunged, turning its own energy against it as Arlen had taught her. She grabbed its thick braid in her free hand as it passed, pulling it up short from its fall and baring its nape. The move gave such power to her pivot and slash that her knife passed through its neck effortlessly.

Just like that, the fight was over. The demon's body fell to the ground lifelessly, and she was left holding her own head by the hair, eyes rolled back and black ichor dripping from the neck. She inhaled, taking what seemed like her first breath in hours.

She looked up, expecting to see the mind demon dead at Arlen's feet, but instead she saw Arlen surrounded by wood demons holding branches in their claws, and the mind demon backing away. The corelings took no notice of her yet, focused solely on Arlen.

Renna looked around, dropping the head to the ground as she snatched up her warded cloak. The mimic had torn the ties at its throat, but the garment was otherwise intact. Sheathing her knife, she flung the cloak around her shoulders, putting up the hood and using both hands to hold it closed from the inside.

She rose carefully, walking toward the battle scene at a slow, even pace to allow the wards their greatest advantage. One of the wood demons struck Arlen across the shoulders as she drew close to him. He cried out and was knocked to the ground, spitting blood. The other demons followed suit, and he rolled desperately to avoid their blows, with only partial success.

She wanted nothing more than to rush to Arlen's aid, but she knew in her heart that he would not want her to. The mind demon stood boldly again, no longer trying to escape. It would be worth more than both their lives, if she could show it the sun. The Painted Man felt his ribs snap as the branch struck him to the ground. He heaved up a foul mix of bile and blood and spit it into the dirt.

Before he could recover, another branch struck him. He rolled to dodge the third, and the fourth, but he could not regain his footing to rise, and the fifth struck him full in the face, tearing skin and popping one of his eyes from its socket to hang from a string of muscle. The sound of the blow echoed in his head, drowning out all else.

With his one good eye, he looked up, seeing several demons swinging branches at once. For a moment he thought it was his time to die, but then his senses returned for a split second and he cursed himself for a fool.

As the branches came down, they struck only mist. The Painted Man slipped from the center of the copse, reforming behind one of the wood demons, his wounds healed instantly. He kicked out one of the demon's legs, grabbing it by the horns as it fell and using its own weight to flip it over and break its neck. He leapt at the next demon, putting his thumbs through its eyes. A third demon swung its branch at him, but again he dematerialized, and it struck only its blind brother. The Painted Man solidified again, stabbing his stiffened fingers through a crevice in the attacking demon's barklike armor and bursting its heart like a popping chestnut.

He had known no mortal weapon could harm him if he saw its approach, but now he realized it was much more than that. Anything short of death or dismemberment could be healed in an instant. The corelings around him had become nothing but flies to swat from his path. They weren't smart enough to dematerialize offensively on their own, and the mind demon would be wary to do it through them, lest it meet his will on that other plane.

He ignored the remaining wood demons, passing through them like a ghost and only solidifying when the path to the coreling prince was clear. He looked at the demon, and a wave of dizziness overcame him. The confidence that had suffused him a moment earlier vanished as he realized he was only just discovering powers the demon had known for thousands of years. It bared its fangs and lifted a talon to draw a ward in the air.

But then the tip of a blade burst from its chest, flaring bright with magic. The dizziness left him as Renna's cloak fell away and he saw her holding the demon around the throat with her free arm while the contact wards along her blade built in power.

The coreling prince shrieked in surprise and pain, and the Painted Man did not hesitate, leaping forward to strike hard blows to keep it off balance. Renna let go her knife, whipping her brook stone necklace around its throat. The wards flared, and the mind demon opened its mouth as if to scream, but no sound came out. Instead, its cranium pulsed, and the resulting thrum struck the Painted Man like a harsh wind, knocking him back.

Renna seemed not to notice the effect, but all through the trees and seemingly for miles around, demons shrieked in agony. A wind demon dropped from the sky, crashing through the branches of a tree to hit the leaf bed, dead. The wood demons that had attacked him likewise collapsed, killed by the demon's psychic scream.

And in that instant, the mind demon fled. The coreling prince had never known fear. Never known pain. It was above such things, tasting them only vicariously through the minds of its drones or its prey-delicacies to be savored.

But there was nothing vicarious about the death of its mimic or the blade in its chest. The choking cord around its throat and the blows that scattered its attempts to assert its power. It screamed, and felt the minds of drones all around burn out from the pain.

The one was distracted for an instant, and the coreling prince took the chance, dematerializing and fleeing for the Core. There it would bond a new mimic and grow strong for the next cycle, when it would return with a host of drones the likes of which the surface had not seen in millennia. Renna shrieked, and the Painted Man whirled back to see the mind demon melt away from her grasp, breaking into mist that fled down a nearby path to the Core.

Instinctively, he followed.

"Arlen, no!" Renna screamed, but it was a distant thing.

The path to the Core was like following a brook upstream in the dark. He could feel the path, but sight had no meaning on the path to the Core. He simply felt the flow of magic stemming from the center of the world and followed back against the current. The Painted Man kept his will focused on the evil taint of the coreling prince ahead of him, and it seemed they raced for miles before he drew close enough to grab at the demon.

He had no hands with which to grab, but he willed his essence to latch on to the demon, and like two men blowing smoke into the same cloud, they mingled and their wills clashed.