I told you, the Master said, I always win.
And then even his voice vanished as Nico fell into the dark.
A piercing scream ripped through the air above Izo’s destroyed city, followed by a pulse of fear that sent Miranda to her knees. She gasped for breath, clutching her rings as her spirits began to panic. Gin was on the ground beside her, whimpering, and even Mellinor was shaking. One by one, she got control again, calming her spirits with an iron will. When they were as steady as she could hope to make them, Miranda looked around. She was clearly not the only one who’d been caught off-guard. The League men had stopped in their tracks, and even Slorn was on his feet, staring into the distance. Alric stood beside him, his calm, severe face distorted in a look very close to sheer terror.
“No,” Alric said. “Not now.”
Realizing she would probably regret it, Miranda turned to look as well. There, past the northern edge of the bandit city, something horrible and black was rising above the trees. As she saw it, Miranda felt her spirits start to panic again. She wanted to join them. The thing was like nothing she’d ever seen, awake or asleep. As she watched, two more enormous black things rose beside the first, unfolding in hideous slow motion. After a terrible moment, she realized they were wings. Enormous wings, taller than the trees, reaching up with their hideous clawed talons toward the sky.
The thing jerked, and the scream sounded again, bringing with it a blast of fear even stronger than the first that turned her bones to jelly. When Miranda could move again, she looked frantically for Alric. Whatever that thing was, it was surely a demon. That meant the League could make it stop. But Alric wasn’t there anymore. The spot where he’d been standing seconds before was now empty, save for the telltale glimmer of a cut in the air as it vanished.
“He abandoned us!” Gin howled.
Miranda didn’t think that was the case, but she couldn’t even get the words out. All she could do was hang on as the waves of fear broke over her.
Izo had dropped his hold on Eli when Nico’s transformed arm had ripped through Sezri’s chest, but neither the thief nor the bandit had moved. They just stood there, frozen, unable to look away.
For a few seconds, the two demonseeds stood as close as lovers, and then Nico pushed him away. The thin man fell like a tree. His body shattered when it hit the ground, and he turned to black dust that seemed to vanish even as Eli watched. When it was finished, all that was left of Sezri was a small, black seed, about the size of Eli’s middle finger, that fell to the ground like a stone.
Nico, however, stayed perfectly still. Eli began to fidget. The way she was standing, he couldn’t see her face, but it couldn’t be good. He took a hesitant step forward.
“Nico—”
Nico threw back her head, and a scream like he had never heard blasted through the air. Eli slammed his hands over his ears, but it was no use. The scream went straight to his soul. But worse, far worse, was the wave of fear that followed. For a moment, Eli was drowning in pure, abject terror before he got his mind back under control. Behind him he heard Izo screaming, and then a loud crash as the Bandit King fell, but he didn’t turn to see where or why. His eyes were trapped by what was happening in front of him.
Still screaming, Nico threw out her arms, human and demon claw. The manacles on her wrists were going mad, beating themselves against her skin. With a horrible wrenching of flesh, toothed mouths appeared on Nico’s arms. They gnashed their horrible, spiny teeth and bit deep into the manacles. The metal screamed and shattered, wailing as the demon mouths ate the pieces. The same thing happened to the collar at her neck and the shackles on her ankles.
When the last shred of metal vanished into the hideous mouths, Nico’s coat, which had clung faithfully to her the entire time, tore down the middle. The cloth cried as it ripped, the threads still reaching out for one another even as they snapped, but it wasn’t enough. The coat fell in a shredded pile at Nico’s feet. Without the coat, Eli could see that her skin was now the same horrible black shell as Sted’s, but even as he wrapped his brain around what that meant, the shell began to crack. Liquid black oozed from the lesions, and Nico began to grow.
At that moment, all trace of humanity vanished. Blackness ripped from Nico’s body, forming long, clawed arms reaching out from a shape that was like nothing he’d ever seen. It was long and spindly and full of sharp angles, or that was the impression he got. He couldn’t look at it for very long before the terror overwhelmed his mind. He caught glimpses of eyes in the blackness, great glowing yellow orbs, and not just two. There were hundreds scattered across the unspeakable expanse of the demon’s body. They clustered on the demon’s long head, gathering at the edges of its great, fanged jaw, which opened slowly, dripping black bile as it screamed again. Its black body convulsed as a pair of wings, black as coal and as sharp as knives, burst from its back. The creature stumbled forward at the impact, and the new wings flapped awkwardly, stretching for the sky with clawed talons. Its enormous, clawed feet ripped into the forest floor for balance, tearing up great mounds of roots and stone in the process. These turned to black dust as Eli watched, their souls devoured by the creature’s touch.