by Rachel Aaron
As the snow finally stopped his fall, all Eli felt was relief. He lay still in the freezing dark, so happy to be alive it hurt. No, he was actually hurting, and not from joy. His back ached from the impact, and the weight of the snow above him was crushing his chest. He was buried alive.
At that thought, his body exploded into action. He thrust his feet down and began to swing his arms around, batting madly at the snow. At the same time, he flung open his spirit. That hurt more than anything else. Opening his spirit now was like trying to use torn muscle, but Eli gritted his teeth and kept at it, running a plea through the snow, begging it to move.
For a long time, the snow didn’t even seem to hear him. And then, slowly, it started shuffling. The tiny movements became larger ones as the bank woke up. Eli increased his pleading, and the snow obliged, rolling out of the way to form a tunnel up.
Eli burst out of the snowbank and rolled onto his back, gasping and shivering. He wasn’t sure how long he lay like that, sucking in air and reveling in the pure joy of being alive, but eventually the world began to assert itself again. The first thing he noticed was how dark it was. He stared up at the sky, wondering how long he’d been gone for it to be so late. But the longer Eli looked, the more he began to suspect that it wasn’t actually night at all. The night sky didn’t roil and move like the one above his head. He frowned, squinting up at the blackness just as a wild fork of lightning flashed, lighting the sky up from the inside.
Eli caught his breath, and then he was scrambling to his feet, cursing himself for an idiot for not recognizing it earlier. There was only one force of nature that brought clouds like that, and it didn’t take a genius to guess what the Lord of Storms might be doing up here. He floundered in the loose snow, looking for traction. The moment he found it, Eli opened his spirit as far as he could before the pain stopped him.
Sure enough, he felt the Heart of War blazing like a beacon to the west. Eli turned his feet toward it and started running, holding the Heart’s position in his mind. He didn’t know what he would do when he got there, but whatever it was, Eli hoped against hope that it wouldn’t be too late.
Josef gripped the Heart in his hands, blinking against the sweat that poured into his eyes despite the cold. Behind him, Nico was slumped motionless against the cliff, and ahead of him, standing on the flat ledge like he owned it, was the Lord of Storms.
The tall man looked completely unruffled. No sweat stained his brow, and his breaths, if a storm needed to breathe at all, were so calm Josef couldn’t see them. The Lord of Storms held his sword high before him, his arm steady with no sign of fatigue, and his body was completely uninjured despite the fact that Josef had been sticking him like a pincushion for the last quarter hour.
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Will, swordsman, the Heart’s voice boomed in his head. Concentrate. You have to strike him with—
“I know!” Josef shouted, shifting his fingers on the black sword’s hilt. “I’m trying. I’ve never done this before. ”
Then you’d better learn quickly, the sword said, its voice sharpening. Because I can’t keep you up much longer.
Josef knew that. Even with the Heart’s strength roaring unchecked through his body, he was nearing his limit. How many times had the Lord of Storms’ blade slipped through his guard? Too many, Josef thought with a wince. He hadn’t pulled that third-arm stunt again, thankfully. Probably because, for all his other faults, the Lord of Storms was a warrior. A warrior would consider such tricks beneath him.
It wasn’t like the Lord of Storms needed cheap gimmicks anyway. He was standing firm on the icy stone, waiting for Josef’s next attack and smiling like he was having the time of his life. Considering how the man was always going on about a fight to make him feel alive, he probably was. Josef sneered. Must be fun to swing a sword around when you were an uncuttable bastard.
Stop thinking that, the Heart snapped. Thoughts like that are why you can’t cut him. Focus your mind, forget what you think you know and strike.
Josef tightened his grip and lunged. He came in low this time, the Heart clutched at his side until the last second. The Lord of Storms grinned wide and ran to meet him. He didn’t bother blocking. Instead, he threw all his weight into a swing that would have taken Josef’s arm off had Josef been a hair slower. But Josef wasn’t just Josef anymore. He was a true swordsman now, with the Heart’s strength and centuries of experience flowing through his veins beside his blood. He shifted at the last second, dodging the Lord of Storms’ glowing blade as he swung the Heart down and around to come up with a stabbing thrust straight through the League Commander’s side.
Josef knew he’d failed again as soon as the strike connected. The Heart went through the larger man’s torso without resistance, leaving Josef to stumble forward, a slave to his own momentum. They’d been at this long enough now that the Lord of Storms didn’t even try to take the opening on Josef’s back. He just lowered his sword and turned around to wait for Josef’s next charge.
“I’ve got a little bet going with myself,” he said as Josef plunged the Heart into the ground and leaned on it, panting so hard his lungs ached. “What do you think? Will I kill you first, or will you faint on me?”
Josef didn’t answer. Even if he’d had the breath to waste, there was no point rising to such obvious bait. Instead, he focused on stilling his shaking muscles and clearing his mind as the Heart commanded. It was a near-impossible task. His body was screaming for rest now, and the countless failures made his thoughts twisted and bitter. Josef wanted to beat the Lord of Storms until the man was a cloud-shaped pulp, but he couldn’t, and the frustration was making him wild.
Stop it, the Heart said. You’re not learning from your mistakes. You’re just swinging like an animal.
“I know. ” Josef panted.
No, you don’t, the Heart said. If you knew anything you wouldn’t keep doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome.
Josef had no answer for that, so he focused on pushing himself up for the next charge.
His body stopped moving before he made it to first position.
No, the Heart said. No more. Stop for a moment, Josef Liechten. Stop and think.
Josef slumped against the Heart’s hold. What was there to think about? He couldn’t do this wizard nonsense. He’d lost. The only reason he was still standing was because the Lord of Storms was having too much fun playing with him to end it.
Shut up. The Heart’s voice roared through his mind, drowning out everything else. This is the last blow I’m keeping you up for, swordsman. After this, it’s done. I’m letting you drop. But before that happens, I want you to shut up and think about how best to spend your final strike.
Josef bared his teeth in a snarl and threw his head back. The Heart had locked his legs, but he could still move his upper body, and he used what was left of his strength to look up at the rolling clouds. The Heart was deluding itself. He wasn’t a wizard, wasn’t even a real swordsman, apparently. He was just a man, a man in way over his head. A man who couldn’t save his most important thing.
Josef’s eyes flicked to Nico. She looked so small, pressed back against the ledge. Her coat had wrapped around her completely, hiding her face, but he had the feeling her eyes were open. Shame shot through him. She was watching him fail her. Watching him throw everything he had at the Lord of Storms only to come up short. What a pathetic end this was.
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That line of thought made him feel queasy, so Josef tore himself away from Nico and forced his attention back to the sky, the only safe place left to look. The storm stretched out as far as he could see, a swirling vortex above the Lord of Storms. Lightning forked between the black clouds, lighting them up from the inside just as the Lord of Storms had lit his own body with his sword. The clouds’ curling edges reminded him of the wounds he’d laid on the Lord of Storms before they healed.
The thunderheads moved quickly in the high wind, the same wind that blew the Lord of Storms’ long hair back without touching Josef’s…
Josef jerked as his mind ground to a halt. Of course. He turned to his opponent. The Lord of Storms was standing as before—feet planted, sword arm raised tirelessly, his smile slipping into an expression of bored disappointment. But Josef saw the body for only a moment before he discarded the image the Lord of Storms projected and looked deeper.
He could see nothing special, nothing he hadn’t noticed before, but the more he looked, memorizing every detail of the Lord of Storms’ pale, unmarred skin, his unflushed cheeks, his sweatless brow, his undamaged coat still perfectly settled on his broad shoulders, the deeper the truth settled into Josef’s bones. Of course. How could he have been so blind?
Nature of your race, the Heart said. Are you ready to take the last swing?
“Yes,” Josef whispered, picturing the strike in his mind.
The Heart’s deep laughter filled him like water. A good blow, the sword said as Josef raised it to his shoulder. I am with you, Josef Liechten.
“And I with you, brother,” Josef whispered.
Across the ledge, the Lord of Storms lifted an eyebrow. “If you’re done talking to yourself, I do actually have business to get on wi—”
Josef attacked before he could finish. He didn’t lunge like the times before, didn’t throw himself at the League Commander. Instead, he planted his feet and swung, sweeping the Heart’s blade down in an enormous arc from the top of his shoulder to just above his foot. His arms ached as he moved, but it didn’t matter that they had no more strength to give. This blow had nothing to do with muscles, and it was not aimed at the Lord of Storms.
Josef swung with everything he had. His mind, his body, his desperation, all of him was focused into this one motion, this single arc of the blade. The blow exploded out of him with a boom that echoed across the mountains, and in the sky overhead, directly in a line from the tip of his sword as it traveled down, the thunderheads split open.
It was as though someone had cut the clouds with a knife. The heavy ceiling of black storms split in two, the storm clouds peeling back to reveal a perfectly straight swath of blue sky running from horizon to horizon directly over Josef’s head.
But Josef himself didn’t see this. He was frozen at the end of the blow, lungs thundering, his muscles straining to keep him upright. The pain and exhaustion were little more than a buzz, however. Insignificant background noise against the single thought that filled Josef’s mind.
From the moment he’d committed to the swing, he’d seen only one thing. The image had filled him, pushing out everything else, every doubt, every pain, until there was room for nothing but the truth. He clung to it even now, unable to do anything except hold on as the final echoes of the blow left his body. He had no thoughts, no knowledge, just that one image held like a candle behind his closed eyes.
It was a memory. Not his own, but one from the Heart of War. The same memory the sword had shown him when it had picked up his dying soul and told him to make a choice: walk out of death a swordsman, or not at all. Even as the last of the overwhelming power left him, Josef clung to the cold, clear vision of the mountain rising taller than any other, its sharp, knife-like peak cutting the clouds in two. The Heart’s true self.
Finally, slowly, Josef forced himself to let the image go. He unclamped his mind from the memory as he peeled his white-knuckled fingers from the Heart’s hilt. As the vision faded, the world roared back, and Josef stumbled as the pain and exhaustion crashed back down. He was still standing though, his sword still in his hands, his heart still thudding in his chest, full of life. With these things in mind, Josef pried his eyes open to see if his final blow had been enough.
What he saw rooted him to the icy rock. Across the ledge, the Lord of Storms stood, his pale face contorted in disbelieving horror. Overhead, the storm raged, lightning forking from every cloud, but the storm itself had changed. Directly down its center, the strip of clear, blue sky remained untouched, a cut dividing the thunderheads horizon to horizon. And directly below the cut in the sky, a second cut, just as clean, ran across the Lord of Storms’ chest, dividing him from shoulder to hip, nearly cleaving him in two.
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Josef stared at the wound in disbelief, waiting for it to close as all the others had. But it didn’t. Inside the Lord of Storms’ body, the thunderheads were churning. Lightning blossomed, lighting him up, but no matter how the storm raged, it could not close the gaps, not the one in the sky nor the one in the Lord of Storms himself. Through it all, the Lord of Storms’ eyes never left Josef, but the look in them changed as Josef watched, creeping from shock to raw fury and, buried beneath it, a burning, grudging respect. He saw it for only a moment before the Lord of Storms vanished.
Josef stumbled, looking frantically for his opponent as he fought to raise his sword again. There was no way the Lord of Storms was defeated that easily. Groaning at the effort, Josef wrenched up his sword and spun, letting the Heart guide him toward the electric feel of the Lord of Storms’ presence just as the man reappeared behind him, right in front of Nico.
“No!” Josef screamed, but it was already too late. The Lord of Storms’ hand was shooting forward even as he coalesced from the cloud, his long, white fingers stabbing into Nico’s chest the second they were solid. Her coat’s scream was so loud even Josef heard it, but black fabric couldn’t stop the Lord of Storms. His hand tore through the screaming coat like paper and slammed into Nico’s rib cage, fingers clenching as he found what he sought. Fast as his lightning, the Lord of Storms pulled his arm back, ripping his hand from Nico’s chest and bringing the black thing with it.
Even in his fury, the sight of what the Lord of Storms pulled out of Nico almost sent Josef to his knees. It was black as ink in the Lord of Storms’ bloody grip and shiny as a beetle’s shell. Its surface glittered in the dull light, a thick, black cylinder as long as an infantry short sword and tapered to a wicked point at both ends, and though Josef had never seen one, he knew it at once. It was Nico’s seed, the demonseed itself.
Nico made no sound as her seed was ripped from her, but her eyes were screaming beneath the cowl of her hood as the Lord of Storms stood, holding the seed in front of him. She fell when he let her go, collapsing into a black pile at the base of the small cliff, her white fingers scrabbling in the snow that was quickly turning black as the blood poured from her sundered chest. Almost at once, her movements slowed, and then stopped altogether. The small, pale hands reached out one final time, and then the fingers fell still, lifeless as the rock below them.
After that, Josef saw nothing but red.
With a raw howl of fury, he charged the Lord of Storms, the Heart swinging madly. The Lord of Storms glared over his shoulder at the sound, and Josef screamed louder still, throwing the Heart of War over his head, but the Lord of Storms made no move to defend. Instead, he clutched the demonseed to his chest, his skin smoking wherever it touched the seed’s bloody surface, and vanished in a flash of white.
Josef stopped, boots skidding on the icy rock as he spun to look for where the man would appear next, but the air felt strangely empty. Overhead, the black clouds were dissipating, leaving the afternoon sky clear and empty.
“No!” Josef howled. “Come back you coward! Come back and fight!”
He screamed and screamed until the words faded to gibberish. He screamed until his throat was raw, sword swinging uselessly at the clear sky. His rage was like a river, washing him away, but hard as it held him, he never turned around. Josef was strong enough to rend the sky and cut the Lord of Storms, but he wasn’t strong enough to turn around and see Nico’s lifeless body.
He might have stayed like that forever had the hands not grabbed his shoulders. The grip was firm, but the fingers were gentle. Even so, Josef spun around, Heart flying and teeth bared like an animal. But the sword g
rew heavy as an anvil as he turned, and the hilt tore from his fingers. The Heart fell from his grip, crashing into the icy ground, and Josef fell with it.
He landed on his knees with his head in his hands, but even that was too much. Without the Heart, it was exhaustion that calmed him, and he flopped on his side, lungs gasping. As the red haze of fury faded, Eli’s worried face came into focus a foot above his own.
The thief’s mouth was moving, and from the way his lips shaped, Josef knew Eli was shouting his name. Still, it was some time before the pounding in his ears faded enough to make out anything else.
“What?” he croaked.
“I said, ‘Get up you blasted idiot!’ ” Eli shouted. “You have to do something!”
Josef just stared at him. How could he tell the thief he’d tried to do something and failed. That Nico was dead and it was all his fault. That he hadn’t been strong enough.
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Pain shot through him as Eli grabbed his cheek and pulled hard.
“Whatever you’re thinking, stop it right now,” the thief snapped. “Nico needs you. ”
Josef’s voice shook. “Nico’s dead. ”
Eli cursed and grabbed Josef’s head, wrenching it up. “Does that look dead to you?”
Josef’s fury drained away, the frustrated sorrow and rage giving way to icy dread. At the foot of the ledge where Nico’s body had fallen, all light was gone. In its place, a pillar of liquid night rose to the sky. It swirled and seethed like a living thing, and at its center was Nico.
She floated at the pillar’s heart, naked and tiny, a splinter of pale white in a river of ink. Her eyes were shut tight, but her mouth was open, stretching in a scream Josef could not hear over and over and over while her hands clutched at the empty, black wound that was spreading across her chest.
The second he could move, Josef went for his sword.
“We have to get her down,” he said, grabbing the Heart.
