“Josef!” Eli shouted. But it was too late. The ground collapsed beneath the swordsman, sending him falling into the abyss.
“Josef! ”
As Eli screamed Josef’s name, the demon moved. With horrifying speed, it caught the falling swordsman between its claws. The demon climbed out of the collapsing fissure, carrying Josef and the Heart, which Josef still held clutched against his chest, in its palm. When it reached a stretch of unbroken ground, the demon gently laid the swordsman down. It hovered over him a moment, staring at him with its hundreds of yellow, glowing eyes. Then, with a horrible scream, it turned and began to attack the forest more violently than ever.
Eli ran to Josef and pressed his fingers against the swordsman’s neck. He heaved a huge sigh of relief when he felt his friend’s strong, steady heartbeat. Despite what the demon had done to everything else it touched, Josef was unharmed.
“She’s still in there,” he said, looking up at the rampaging demon with a sort of wonder.
His thoughts were interrupted by Alric as the League man yanked him around.
“Now do you get it?” Alric shouted, shaking him. “There’s nothing we can do, humans or spirits, to stop that thing. We need the Shepherdess, and you’re going to get her.” He swung his ruined sword up, the broken gold glinting in the dusty sunlight. “Last chance, favorite. I’m ready to die to do what I have to do, and I have absolutely no qualms about taking you with me. Call her down or die for your pride. Either way, this ends now.”
Eli flinched away, his brain madly trying to think of a way out. But before he could even open his mouth, a deep, deep voice he’d never heard before spoke over the roar.
“Leave him, League man. Even if she does come down, we will suffer for it.”
Alric and Eli both turned. On Josef’s chest, the battered blade of the Heart of War began to glow.
“If you call down the Shepherdess, she will deal with this one as she did the last,” the Heart said. “She will bury it under a mountain, and we will have twice the problems we have now.”
“No,” Alric said. “The Daughter of the Dead Mountain is still not a hundredth the size of the original. All we need is—”
“Demonseeds are shards of the great demon,” the Heart said. “Fractures small enough to escape its prison and move freely through the world. Yet each tiny piece has the same attributes of the whole. Think. The League, the Shepherdess’s arm in this world, can’t even destroy those small seeds, only cut them off from their human hosts and store them in starvation. What, then, can the Shepherdess do with a demon this size except what she did with the original? Mark me, Alric, she will do what she did before. She will seal it beneath a mountain. But this time there is only one remaining mountain spirit strong enough to hold a shard of the demon that large in check, and I very much doubt the Shaper Mountain would be willing to spend the rest of eternity as a sword.”
“Wait,” Eli said. “You mean you … ”
“Yes,” the Heart answered. “At the beginning of this world, I willingly gave my body as a prison for the demon. In return, the Shepherdess let me choose my new form. I chose to be a sword. It has been a hard, lonely journey, but I have never regretted my choice. However, I will not let another be forced to it, least of all my brother, who has dedicated his life to guiding his Shapers.”
“Wait,” Eli said. “The Shaper Mountain is your brother?”
“All mountains are my brothers,” the Heart said. “But the Shaper Mountain, Durain, is my twin. We two were birthed from the will of the Creator at the dawn of the world to stand as guard and guide to the lesser mountains. We were the greatest of the Great Spirits of stone, and we can never be replaced. The Shepherdess is not the Creator. She can only guide and order the spirits, not form new ones. When the demon first came, I gave up my body to serve as a prison because I knew my brother would watch in my stead. But now, history repeats itself. My brother is the only mountain strong enough to hold the creature Nico has become. If you call the Shepherdess down now, she will have no choice but to use the only tool she has left, and the last of the great mountains will be gone.”
“That’s a fine sentiment,” Alric said through gritted teeth. “But we have no choice. I cannot sit here and watch that thing eat the world.”
“But we do have a choice,” the Heart said. “The thief saw it himself. Inside that monster is one of our own.”
“The girl is gone,” Alric said. “Don’t kid yourself. Human spirits are the first consumed on awakening.”