Spirit’s End

CHAPTER 15

Get back!” Eli shouted, waving frantically at Josef.

The swordsman was already on it. He scooped Nico’s limp body into his arms and dashed for the shelter of the rocky outcropping at the center of the dry creek bed. Her coat curled around his shoulders as he ran, the cloth circling him like a black tide.

That was dangerous, Eli realized. With Nico out, her coat might mistake Josef for a threat. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the luxury of taking that line of thought any further since containing the mess in front of him was taking every ounce of his attention.

He was standing at the edge of Slorn’s dry creek, his spirit roaring open all around him. He’d stretched himself to the edge of his strength, reaching as far as he could see until he felt as thin as a thread, and it still wasn’t enough to hold back the forest’s madness.

Madness was the only word for it. The trees of the Awakened Wood fell on each other like tigers, branches ripping and clawing while roots shot in all directions, breaking everything in their path. They screamed as they tore at each other, their overlapping voices too jumbled to make any sense, but it wasn’t hard to guess what they were saying. They’d said only one word since the madness started: gone. Something was gone, something fundamental, and they were left behind. Open as he was, Eli could feel the grief that fed the tree’s fury, the enormous loss running beneath the anger. What he didn’t understand was why.

“What’s gone?” he screamed, pouring power into the words so they could be heard. “What happened?”

The forest ignored him, or maybe the trees were too far gone to hear even a wizard’s words. They were lost in madness, consumed by it. The only thing stopping them from ripping themselves to bits was Eli’s will. He stood with his boots planted in the sand, slamming himself down on as many trees as he could reach. And it was working, mostly, but he couldn’t keep it up forever.

Sweat poured down his face and plastered his shirt to his back. Holding his will this wide over such a large area was burning his stamina hot and fast, but letting go wasn’t an option. He couldn’t let Slorn’s trees destroy themselves, not while he was watching, and certainly not before he knew what was going on. As his knees started to wobble, Eli thought bitterly how much easier this would be if he still had the Shepherdess’s mark. Her command could have stopped this idiocy the moment it began.

Eli thrust that line of thought away with a snarl. Nothing was worth going back. Nothing. For all he knew, this madness was Benehime’s doing, a ploy to make him miss her power. After the fiasco with Nara, he wouldn’t put any cruelty past her when it came to manipulating him, and that was exactly why Eli could never let her get under his skin again. No bait or barb was going to drag him back to her ever again. So, with a silent apology to the poor, mad trees, Eli dug his heels into the sand and opened his spirit wider, hammering the trees down with everything he had.

It was stupid to give so much, and he would pay bitterly for this later, but Eli couldn’t stop. If this was Benehime’s ploy, then he couldn’t let her win again, and if it wasn’t, well, they were still Slorn’s trees. He’d be a poor friend indeed to let them die just because he wasn’t willing to spend a little time on his back.

Gritting his teeth, Eli kept going as the minutes stretched into eternity. The panic went on and on without end, but he braced his legs and held, pushing the forest with his will until they found a sort of balance. Eli took a strained breath, adjusting himself to the pattern of push and push back. But just as he was settling into the rhythm of the forest’s madness, another complication appeared.

A white line opened at the center of the dry creek bed. That alone was almost shock enough to collapse Eli’s overextended spirit. The League was more bad news than he could handle. But shock became confusion when the figure who stepped through the hole in the air wasn’t a black-coated man with an awakened blade but a middle-aged woman in a long red robe. Though the glittering rings on her hand identified her profession as clearly as if she’d shouted it, Eli’s poor, overworked brain still took several seconds to piece together the obvious question.

Why was a Spiritualist using a League portal?

Sadly, he never got his answer. The woman had emerged not five feet from where Eli was braced in the sand, and she froze when she saw him, just as surprised by his presence as he’d been at hers. She recovered much more quickly than he had, though, her expression of startled recognition shifting to smug triumph in a flash.

“Eli Monpress,” she said, raising her hand, the ruby on her index finger sparking like a firecracker. “Of all the luck.”

Eli cursed and swung his spirit in preparation to block whatever it was the woman was about to launch at him… and realized too late that this was one battle too many.

The moment he took his power away from the trees, the forest overwhelmed him. The trees burst through the line he’d held at the bank, their roots plunging into the dry creek bed with mindless screams. The spindly trunks followed, whipping like snakes. The roar caught both Eli and the Spiritualist by surprise, and they turned together, throwing their spirits open in unison to meet the mad tide of the trees. But it was too little, too late. The Spiritualist vanished beneath an avalanche of splintering wood before Eli could even shout at her to move. He cursed and fell back toward the rocks where Josef and Nico were, thinking that if he could just keep them safe, this whole stupid battle wouldn’t have been for nothing.

Ignoring the throbbing pain of his overextended soul, Eli pulled inward, shaping his will into a bubble around the shelter of the rock. He didn’t need much. He wasn’t trying to stop the trees now, just make a barrier that would force the madness to flow around the three of them. But as he turned to run toward Josef, something hit him hard from the left.

Pain exploded through his head, and he was vaguely aware that the impact had sent him flying. That he was, even now, about to land face-first in the sand. It seemed like a minor concern, though. Everything was a minor concern compared to the flashing lights going off in his head.

He should have told Josef to run, he realized as he slammed into the streambed. How arrogant could he be? Telling the swordsman and Nico to hide by a rock while he tried to hold back an entire forest. It would be funny if it wasn’t so stupid. Eli only hoped his ego didn’t get them all skewered. It would be a crying shame if the greatest thief team in history died to trees.

And with that happy thought in his mind, Eli fell into the dark.

The first thing Nico saw when she opened her eyes was Josef, holding her. The second thing she saw was Eli getting hit over the head by what looked like a walking tree. She was about to dismiss that last bit as a fatigue delusion when she felt Josef’s chest contract.

“Eli!”

The scream made her ears ring, and then she was dropped on the ground as Josef lunged toward the falling thief. She scrambled in the sand, fighting to get her feet beneath her. The haze in her mind grew thinner with every movement, and she realized with a start that the cold mountain air was filled with terrified screams. Her head shot up so fast her neck snapped, searching for the source of the sound as she willed her coat to cover everything but her eyes.

A sound that terrified had to be demon panic. Had she let something slip? The exhaustion of the jumps hung over her like a pall. It wasn’t unthinkable that her control had faltered, but she didn’t feel the demon’s presence nearby. Utterly confused, Nico looked again at the forest, and this time what she saw froze her solid.

The Awakened Wood was thrashing. The trees spirits, usually a calm, green color, were now a sickening burnt yellow. She could smell their terror in the air, bitter and sticky in her nose, but worse than the smell or the color was the way the trees moved.

The tree spirits were writhing in wild undulations no spirit, not even an awakened one, should have been able to achieve. They jerked like seizure victims, moving in crazy, unnatural spasms. It was as though every tree had suddenly been cut off from whatever anchored them and were now shaking themselves to pieces in their struggle not to collapse.

Nico couldn’t explain the sight, couldn’t fathom it within what she’d come to understand as the natural order since she’d first started seeing as spirits saw. One thing, however, was perfectly clear. Josef wasn’t going to get to Eli before the writhing trees crushed him.

Before she could think further, Nico dove into the shadows. She came out in Eli’s own shadow, the one cast below his falling body. Her arms shot out of the ground to wrap around his waist. The second she had him, Nico pulled him down, and they vanished together into the sand just before the trees crashed.

Throwing Eli over her shoulder, Nico stepped out of the shadows again, emerging directly in the path of Josef’s charge. The swordsman had no time to stop. He barreled into them, and Nico let his momentum carry them into the shadow of the thrashing forest itself. The moment she hit the dark, she grabbed the men tight and started to run.

It was harder than she’d expected. Her body felt heavy as a mountain as she struggled forward, and the shadows clung to her like tar. In her exhaustion, even she could feel the fear.

The cold seeped into her bones, turning her legs to jelly until she was tripping over her own feet. But even as she felt the demon closing around her, Nico forced her body into submission. Her will was absolute, and she wrapped it around them like a fiery cloak. The cold fled as she reestablished control, but the fear lingered. Nico ignored it, focusing her will like an arrow on the enormous presence looming in the distance, their end goal, the Shaper Mountain. The ache pounding through her mind told her this was probably her last jump. Clutching Eli and Josef, Nico made it a good one.

She stretched herself through the dark, forcing her body forward. Each step felt like her last, but every time she managed to take another and another until, without warning, she hit the end of her strength.

It was like running face-first into a wall. All at once, the darkness began to tilt and spin. Nico didn’t even know where they were, but it would have to work. With a final, desperate flail, she burst from the darkness into air that felt cold even after the cold of the shadows.

Snow crunched against her knees as she fell, and she was painfully aware of the loss of Eli and Josef’s warmth as her arms gave out. The sky spun into view as she toppled, a dull, cloudy dome marred with sharp, white shapes. Mountains, she realized belatedly. Snowcapped mountains.

Nico eyes fell closed with delicious relief. She’d done it. She’d brought them to the mountains. Victory ran through her, sweet and burning, warding off the biting cold. Her coat was already winding around her, and she felt something else. Arms. Josef’s arms. That thought was sweeter still, and she fell gleefully into a deep, happy sleep.

Josef trampled the snow down, cursing with each stomp. It did no good. The howling wind stole the words from his mouth, denying him even the satisfaction of his own anger. Just another irritation on top of the mountain of things that had gone horribly wrong in the last half hour.

Kicking the ice off his boots, he reached over and gently picked up Nico again. The demon fear rolling off her was stronger than ever now. It bled through the coat, stealing what little warmth he’d managed to keep. Gritting his teeth, Josef ignored it. He cradled Nico to his chest and turned his back to the wind, shielding her as he inched across the flat stretch of ground to the ditch he’d stomped into the deep snow of the mountain slope.

He fell to his knees and laid her down as gently as he could, turning her so her back was against the packed snow. The short wall was a poor windbreak, but it was better than nothing. When he had her arranged to his satisfaction, he stood and went for Eli.

The thief looked worse than Nico. His face was gray as dirty soap, and there was blood running from his temple where the tree had hit him. Josef picked his friend up gently, mindful of his head, and laid him feet to feet with Nico.

When they were both safely out of the wind, Josef straightened up and started looking for something to burn. Fire was vital if they were going to last more than a few hours in this cold. There was precious little fuel here, but Josef had made fires in the high mountains before. He would find something to burn. He would keep those idiots alive, and the moment they woke up he would tear into both of them for being reckless, self-sacrificing bastards and making him worry.

He’d just spotted a likely lump down the slope where a bush could be growing under the snow when he heard a strange scraping sound. Woodsman routine forgotten, Josef spun to face the noise, the Heart of War leaping into his hands. But as he stepped into first position, he froze, eyes going wide. Eli and Nico were lying under the windbreak just as he’d left them, but there was something wrapped around Eli’s chest. Something glowing.

They were bright white and delicate, almost intimate, but so dreadfully out of place that it took Josef a full second to realize the things were arms. A pair of woman’s arms had wrapped around the thief’s chest in a lover’s embrace. The realization hit him like a punch in the gut, and suddenly Josef knew exactly what was about to happen. He’d seen it before, in Osera.

“Eli!”

He lunged as he shouted, moving with the Heart’s supernatural speed. But even that wasn’t fast enough. A split second before his hand caught Eli’s shoulder, the white arms jerked and Eli vanished. Josef crashed into the wall of snow where the thief had been, crushing the left half of the windbreak he’d worked so hard to make. He rolled and scrambled to his knees just in time to see the last of the white line as it faded.

Josef dug his fingers into the hard-packed snow and shouted a fresh string of curses into the wind, but even as he howled in rage, the swordsman in him, the ever calm, ever watchful core he’d nurtured for close to fifteen years, raised a warning.

He fell still instantly. All around him, the daylight was growing dimmer. Josef raised his head. The sky, which had been white with snow clouds when they’d first landed, was now a dark gray, and growing darker. With hours until sunset, Josef didn’t even bother looking west. Instead, he turned south against the wind, and his eyes went wide as he saw the wall of black clouds rolling toward him like an avalanche.

After that, Josef wasted no more time. Shifting the Heart to his right hand, he scooped Nico up with his left and began to climb down. He half ran, half slid down the mountain’s snowy slope, angling sideways along the ledge toward the spot where he’d spotted the bush.

He jumped down a little cliff and pressed Nico’s slumped body into the space between the lee of the stone and the woody shrub that was indeed growing from a crack in the stone. It was so dark now he could barely see what he was doing, so Josef left the task to instinct, trusting his hands as they bound the thick, stubborn branches into Nico’s coat, pinning her upright to the cliff face. When she was as secure as he could make her, Josef turned and took in the battlefield.

The base of the ledge was flatter than the mountain slope, but it was still steep. There was snow on the ground and ice under that. Treacherous footing, but he could find a way to use that. He could use the wind, too. It was blowing hard up the mountain, pushing him back toward the ledge above him. A good position, Josef decided. The wind would help keep him away from the steep drop down the mountain, and the cold would help numb the pain.

Satisfied, Josef stripped off his bag and the leather pouch at his belt. His swords went next. He tossed them, sheaths and all, on the icy stone. The larger blades were followed by his throwing knives and the daggers he kept in his boots and sleeves. Josef stripped off every bit of excess weight, dropping the lot of it at Nico’s feet. Finally, completely unencumbered, he stood and rolled his shoulders, warming and loosening his body as he waited for his enemy to arrive.

He didn’t have to wait long. Thunder crashed overhead, a deep roll that grew to a deafening crack as trunks of lightning flashed in the sky, lighting up the world in a blinding blue-white that banished every other color. The second flash came before the first had finished, and as the lightning spidered across the sky, the man appeared.

The Lord of Storms formed from the air itself. He loomed as the light faded, his shape a dark afterimage on Josef’s blinded eyes. Josef ignored his lost sight and focused everything on his sword. He might be blinded, but the Heart of War followed the Lord of Storms like a compass needle. He could feel the man stepping into position, his boots digging into the icy ground.

“Isn’t this nostalgic?”

The deep voice sent tremors of fear through Josef’s body, and his back seized up in remembered pain. Josef gritted his teeth and fought it down, the pain and the fear, until his body was still again, a weapon waiting for use, just like his sword. Firmly back in control, Josef opened his eyes and glared at the Lord of Storms. “Where’s Eli?”

“I don’t know,” the Lord of Storms said. “And I don’t care. I’m here for her.”

He raised his arm, and as his hand stretched out, the lightning crashed again. But instead of fading, the light condensed into a long, curved, blue-white sword. Its hilt rested against the Lord of Storms’ palm, and its tip pointed behind Josef at where Nico lay against the ledge.

“Move, master of the Heart of War,” the Lord of Storms said, hand closing on the blue-wrapped grip of his blade. “While you still can.”

Josef said nothing and held his ground.

The Lord of Storms’ eyes narrowed to silver slits, shining in the dark. “I’m not here to play, swordsman,” he growled. “I live for a good fight, but today is business only. Move.”

“I’m not playing,” Josef said. “And you’re not taking her. Not while I draw breath.”

“Those terms are acceptable,” the Lord of Storms said. “I have no problem killing you.”

Josef bared his teeth. “I think you will.”

The Lord of Storms laughed, a harsh, cracking sound like lightning ripping through a tree. “Really?” he said, grinning wide. “I must have hit your fool head harder than I thought last time if you’ve forgotten how things ended.”

“I’m not the man you fought then,” Josef said, boots crunching as he ground them farther into the snow. “And I won’t move.”

The Lord of Storms regarded him in silence for several moments, and then his broad shoulders arched in a shrug. “As you wish, swordsman.”

He swung his sword up, and Josef felt a flash of fear as the blue-white blade whistled through the air. Then he forced the pain away, focusing instead on the heavy feel of the Heart in his hand. Just as he had done in Osera, he threw himself into his blade, giving himself over to the Heart and accepting the sword in turn. Their wills met and began to resonate until the Heart was no longer a weight in his hand but a part of his arm. The scarred black metal became an extension of his own heart, his own soul, binding them inextricably together in one purpose: to cut the enemy.

After all—the Heart’s voice was Josef’s own—even lightning can be cut.

“Impossible.”

Josef blinked. He didn’t realize he’d spoken out loud until he heard the Lord of Storms answer. The Lord of Storms grinned at his confusion and flipped his sword around, stabbing the tip through his black coat and into his own chest.

Josef flinched instinctively. From where he stood, it looked like the man had just skewered himself, but the Lord of Storms wasn’t cut. As the blade met his chest, it became lightning. It forked inside him, lighting up his body like a cloud until the Lord of Storms removed it, turning the glowing tip toward Josef’s own chest.

“I am the storm,” he said. “The first and greatest of the Shepherdess’s servants, the star of storms, bound together from the greatest storm spirits by the Lady herself at the dawn of creation. To cut me would be to cut the Shepherdess’s own will.”

Josef raised his chin. “There was another man who told me he couldn’t be cut,” he said defiantly. “I took off his arm.”

The Lord of Storms’ jaw clenched in fury, and the glowing sword shook in his hand, its tip leaving jagged trails in the dark. “I see your arrogance finally matches that of your sword,” he said, his voice as tight as a wire. “Come then, boy. If you’re so eager to die, I will not stop you.”

Josef’s answer was to lift his sword, sliding the enormous blade forward as he set his feet in first position. The Lord of Storms watched him move through slitted eyes, and then he was gone.

It was the same as before, that terrifying speed, the sword that moved like the wind and came from anywhere. But this time, Josef was different. He might not be able to see the Lord of Storms’ movements, but he could feel them through his sword like the Heart’s metal was his own bone. His sword moved without thought, rising to meet the Lord of Storms’ blow before the swing could flicker back into existence.

When the Lord of Storms appeared at Josef’s left, the Heart of War was waiting. The lightning blade struck the Heart’s scarred, black edge with a squeal of metal. The impact nearly sent Josef to his knees, but he forced himself to hold, and then, feet digging into the icy rock, he began to push back. He had one fleeting glimpse of the Lord of Storms’ astonished face before the League Commander vanished in a swirl of cloud. He reappeared instantly on Josef’s right, his glowing sword falling toward Josef’s unguarded thigh.

Even as he saw it, Josef knew there was no time to dodge, and he caught himself saying good-bye to his leg before he remembered what was at stake. The Heart was buzzing in his hands, and Josef had the distinct impression the sword was screaming at him, demanding to be let in. Josef surrendered at once. His body went slack, his fingers relaxed, no longer holding the Heart but being guided by it, his arm following the black blade as it would follow his hand.

What happened next was the fastest thing Josef had ever seen his body do. One moment he was wide open below the Lord of Storms’ swing, the next the Heart was there, an iron wall between him and the glowing blade. Now it was the Lord of Storms who had no time to change course. The swords met with a crash, the blue-white blade pulsing as it ground against the Heart’s black barrier.

Push up.

The command pounded through Josef like a shot of adrenaline, and before he’d even processed the words, his body obeyed. He shot up, bringing both swords with him in a great upward lunge. Caught off balance, the Lord of Storms had no choice but to rise as well. His sword slid along the Heart’s blade, leaving a trail of sparks that faded into forked crackles, but the Heart of War was rolling like an avalanche now. With all of Josef’s weight behind it, the black blade shot upward, throwing off the glowing sword like water before slicing into the Lord of Storms’ neck.

The blow was so fast Josef didn’t even realize what he’d done until he began to fall forward. The stroke’s power flowed through him and vanished, leaving him overextended. He slammed his leg down at once, turning and steadying himself in one motion as he looked back.

Behind him, the Lord of Storms stood frozen, his sword flung out at his side. The blue-white blade was flashing wildly, flickering between steel and lightning, but Josef hardly saw it. His eyes were locked on the Lord of Storms neck, or what was left of it. There, right at the jugular where the Heart of War had passed, flesh gave way to roiling clouds shot through with forked lightning. Above that there was… nothing. The blow had taken his head clean off.

A surge of triumph nearly brought Josef to his knees, but the joy was smothered almost immediately. As soon as he saw what the Heart had done, the clouds on the stump of the Lord of Storms’ neck began to rise and coalesce. They swirled together, forming long, dark hair, pale skin, a long, hard nose, and a pair of silver eyes flashing with smug triumph.

“I warned you,” the Lord of Storms said, his voice warped as his mouth rebuilt itself from the clouds. Josef got one look at the man’s white, white teeth coming together in a smile before his lips re-formed, and then the world exploded into pain.

Josef choked and fell forward, gripping his chest. In front of him, in the space that had been nothing but empty air not a second ago, was a white hole. Through it, the Lord of Storms’ pale hand was gripping the hilt of his sword, the blade of which was shoved through Josef’s ribs.

For one long, breathless moment, Josef could only stare at his blood dripping down the blue-white blade and think how impossible it was. The Lord of Storms was behind him with both arms at his side, sword in hand, and yet that was the Lord of Storms’ hand in front of him, and his sword. Josef was still trying to work his mind around this when he was interrupted by the hateful sound of the Lord of Storms’ laughter.

“You humans really are blind, aren’t you?” the commander said, walking around to grin at Josef with his fully re-formed head. “You knew I wasn’t human. You’ve seen me remake myself, seen me pull swords out of the air, and yet you still expect me to have only two arms just because that’s what your flesh eyes tell you?”

He threw out his arms in a welcoming gesture, his sword hanging lazily from his long fingers. Meanwhile, the third arm twisted through the cut in the air, wrenching the other sword in Josef’s ribs. A fresh wave of pain blackened his vision, and Josef coughed, spitting his blood out on the ground before he choked on it.

Somewhere above him, the Lord of Storms made a tsking sound. “It’s your greatest weakness, you know,” he said. “You’d be a real challenge if you didn’t have to rely on these blind idiots to swing you.”

Lost as he was in the pain, it took Josef several seconds to realize the Lord of Storms was talking to his sword, not to him. That was just as well, though, for it was the Heart who answered.

“It is you who are weak, Lord of Storms.” The Heart’s voice vibrated through him, the words clear as bells, though Josef wasn’t sure if that was thanks to his connection with his sword or the fact that he was racing toward death. Whatever the reason, Josef was glad. The conversation gave him time to process the injury.

The Lord of Storms bared his teeth. “I’m not the one whose champion is leaking into the snow.”

“Your anger is your weakness,” the Heart said. “You were cobbled together by the Shepherdess from other spirits same as the humans you scorn, and yet they are blessed with a measure of her power, while you are nothing but an amalgam, a storm held long past when it should have blown out. You rage on only with the White Lady’s fickle favor, but even the smallest of these ‘blind idiots’ bears more of the Shepherdess’s power than you ever could. You are bound by her will, but my swordsman lives through his own. That is why I chose him, why I’ve always chosen humans, blind though they are. You do not need eyes to cut, only the will to swing.”

“And look where that’s gotten you,” the Lord of Storms scoffed, his voice thick with scorn. “You’re about to lose your wielder again, old mountain. How long will you rust up here, waiting for another?”

“I need no other hand,” the Heart said, its voice as deep as the roots of the world. “We will not fall.”

“Say that when your boy is back on his feet,” the Lord of Storms sneered. He shifted his stance as he spoke, and the third hand reaching through the white slit withdrew, taking the sword with it.

As the blade slid out of Josef’s chest, it also removed the only thing still supporting him. Josef flopped forward, gasping like a landed fish in the dirty slush of sundered snow and his own blood. The Lord of Storms turned away in disgust, walking across the frozen ground toward the cliff where Nico was slumped.

“Don’t you… touch her…”

The Lord of Storms stopped a foot from Nico’s crumpled body and looked over his shoulder. “How do you mean to stop me?”

Baring his bloody teeth in a snarl, Josef forced himself back to his knees, then his feet. His body was numb with cold and blood loss, but the Heart burned like a brand against his palm, flooding him with a strength so large he could barely contain it. There was a strange pressure on his chest, and Josef knew without looking that the Heart was binding the wound, staunching the blood flow. After that, he paid little attention. It didn’t matter anymore. Nothing mattered except the Lord of Storms’ hand hovering over Nico.

If you want to stop him, the Heart spoke in his mind, you’ll have to cut him.

“How?” Josef wasn’t sure if he spoke the question aloud or silently, but the Heart answered all the same.

He is a spirit, same as I am. Same as the mountain beneath us, same as the wind blowing through your hair. The Shepherdess’s will holds him together, but humans are her creatures, and your will is an echo of hers.

Josef looked down at the black blade. It was trembling in his hand. No, that wasn’t right. The blade was still; it was his hand that was shaking. “I don’t know if I have the strength for another cut.”

Muscular strength is meaningless. Your muscles could never have pierced the hull of a palace ship. It was your will to cut that sliced the boards. I will strike the blow, but it is your will that must cut the Shepherdess’s binding.

“I’m not a wizard,” Josef growled.

You don’t have to be, the Heart said, its voice steady and measured. You’re spirit deaf, not spiritless. Will is the birthright of all humans, not just wizards. Just as you learned to listen to me, so you can learn to focus your will. The Lord of Storms’ power is enormous, but he is still nothing more than a storm. He is limited by his nature, but you are freed by yours. Human souls are not determined by size or density, but by will alone. So open your spirit to me, Josef Liechten. If you would save your precious demonseed, then you must throw away the knowledge that the Lord of Storms cannot be cut. Forget what you are not and embrace what you are.

Josef shook his head. “And what is that?”

The Heart’s answer vibrated through his bones. My swordsman.

Josef stared at the Lord of Storms, his breath thundering in his head. Wisps of cloud were curling at the ends of the man’s long black hair, and his eyes flashed like lightning. But as Josef gripped the Heart, he could already see the black blade stabbing through the Lord of Storms’ chest, hitting nothing but air, just like before.

“What if I can’t?” he whispered.

If you could not cut the Lord of Storms, you would not have the strength to lift me, the Heart of War said. Look down, Josef Liechten, and know the truth.

Josef obeyed without thinking, his eyes falling to the black sword in his hand, and the world fell away. It was just like what had happened in Gaol during his first fight with Sted. Josef was floating in the blackness again, and now as then, the image appeared. A mountain taller than any mountain has ever been, its peak cutting the clouds.

Are we one, swordsman?

Josef breathed deep. “Aye.”

Then let’s finish this.

“Aye,” Josef said again, bracing for the lunge. “Together.”

In the next heartbeat, they moved as one.