They took a path around the clearing that held the plane’s wreckage, moving a little south of it. The forest ended ahead, not in more trees, but in a wall of broken, leaning redwood trunks. They picked their way through the splintered wood.

  On the other side, the world was just gone. In its place was the corpse of a giant.

  It was an inconceivable thing the size of several buildings. Its body looked like a praying mantis carved from oily, metallic chitin. A nest of thick, metallic tentacles sprouted from its back. It looked like a mantis, an octopus, and a tank had a baby—one that was impossibly large. Its corpse was a landscape. Its beheaded head lay apart from the body, a hollow carapace the size of a small house. Several of its giant scythe-limbs were snapped. Its chest was a caved-in crater. Ancient redwoods, which had until then seemed unbreakable to anything but magic, were crushed into pulp and scattered like matchsticks. The ground was torn into deep, raw gouges. Something had beaten this thing to death and torn its head clean off.

  Everyone stopped.

  Harris was the first to speak, his voice flat. “What could have done this?”

  Theo pointed a shaky finger. “Look. The head. It’s… hollowed out. Eaten from the inside. And the cracks in the chitin… they’re weathered. This didn’t happen yesterday.”

  Jamie stared up at the vast, dead shape. His face was pale, his usual energy completely absent. His jaw was ajar, almost permanently so. “What… what the hell.”

  Corbin and Evans had their hands on their weapons, their eyes scanning the shattered horizon for movement.

  He reached out with his senses. The soul was long gone. A soul like that would have been prime material. The death energy clinging to the corpse was a thin, faded film. It was nowhere near the amount something that size should have left behind. It had died a long time ago—days, months, maybe years before their plane ever crashed here. David pulled the faint energy in anyway. It settled in his bones like a fine, cold anchor, grounding him.

  David looked at the colossal corpse. His primary thought was practical. Jackpot. The soul that must have been in there. The carapace. He wondered what kind of monstrous demon he could have made from pieces of that. The idea was a vast, impossible desire. One can only dream, he mused. His next thought was more immediate. I really don’t want to meet whatever did this.

  “Let’s keep moving,” David said. His voice was low. They turned from the giant and picked their way back into the intact trees.

  They collected water from the same stream and set up a small, very temporary camp. A few of the others scouted the immediate area in a small group while the rest stayed behind. Rhea took watch.

  David trained with the elite hobgoblin swordsman and Cinder.

  David was the only one of the three who could regenerate. Because of that, it wasn’t a three-way fight. It was the two of them attacking him, and David trying to disable them without inflicting wounds he had no concrete way to heal.

  He didn’t use the portals he could summon anywhere within the ten-foot range of his magic field. He didn’t use his demonbone spear. Instead, he held his regular, mundane spear in his left hand. In his right, he wielded the cold-imbuing enchanted censer.

  The hobgoblin came in first, low and fast, its sword a greenish blur. Cinder flanked him, her greatsword a heavier threat that was somehow just as quick. David sidestepped the hobgoblin’s thrust and slammed the censer down into the dirt between them. Ice erupted across the ground in a jagged, cracked sheet, shards bursting upward and outward. Both attackers had to jump back to avoid it.

  It was awkward at first. His strength—amplified by the constant circulation of demonic energy through his body—let him muscle through the clumsiness. He focused on using the spear for most of the work, keeping it forward, thrusting and parrying the hobgoblin’s blade, using the shaft to check Cinder’s advances and keep her greatsword from coming fully into play. He kept the censer back, swinging it only occasionally. He wasn’t trying to hit them. He was trying to keep them off balance, to make them wary of another sudden eruption of ice and second-guess their footing.

  He felt like he was mimicking those old martial arts movies—the ones where the master could pick up a broom, a teapot, or anything at hand and wield it like a legendary weapon. In theory, his corrupted, evil Battle Sense should have made it work flawlessly. But the skill was too twisted to use fully against allies. It wanted maximum pain, injury, suffering, and death. David just wanted to improve. He used it sparingly, only to avoid attacks rather than dictate his own.

  In all honesty, he felt dumb. Awkward. Like a martial swordswoman who had also decided to fight while swinging a giant wrecking ball. But he was getting the hang of it—the weight, the timing, how the two weapons interfered with and complemented each other.

  He’d have to figure out a way to strap the weapons to his body so he could switch between them at will, without it turning into a whole production.

  David faced the hobgoblin and Cinder. The hobgoblin was the most skilled. It didn’t have his strength or Cinder’s raw power, but it knew how to fight in a way David didn’t. It used stances, feints, and controlled the space between them. It threw a dagger at his knee to make him move.

  Just fighting it taught him things. Feinting was important. Being unpredictable was important. The hobgoblin never pulled its arm back for a swing. Its stance let it attack from wherever it was standing. No wind-up.

  Everyone else looks like they’re pitching a baseball, David thought. You pull back to hit. This thing just… stabs. It’s like the sword is already moving.

  He watched the stances. For his upper body, the hobgoblin held the sword vertical, close to its chest. For his legs, it shifted to a low, horizontal guard. Then it started mixing them up. Low guard for a high thrust. High guard for a low cut. Without the battle sense buzzing in his skull, showing him the start of each movement a fraction of a second before it happened, the hobgoblin would have put a hole in him five times already. Its feints were a real problem. They looked exactly like the real attacks until the last possible millisecond.

  “Switch,” David said, his voice flat. He tossed his mundane spear to the hobgoblin. It caught the shaft, examined the point, and gave a short, guttural nod, instantly settling into a new stance with his spear, one David’s eyes followed closely. David took the hobgoblin’s sword. It felt lighter, balanced wrong.

  He tried to copy the stance. He stood there, holding the sword close, feet positioned like he’d seen. He felt like a kid playing statue. Cinder, seeing an opening, blurred forward. Her fist, wrapped in a brief flash of dark red energy, shot toward his ribs. He tried to thrust from the stance. His body automatically started to pull back first. He got the thrust out late, awkwardly, mostly hitting her forearm as her punch thudded into his side. A rib cracked. He felt it grate, then start to itch and knit.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  This is like trying to write with your other hand, he thought. You know what it’s supposed to look like. Your hand just won’t do it.

  He kept at it. Thrust, parry, step. The battle sense guided his movements, correcting the worst of the clumsiness, forcing his muscles to learn a new language. It was less thinking and more trying not to drown. He started to see the economy in it. No wasted motion. Every shift of the feet, every angle of the blade, was part of the next attack. It wasn’t dancing. It was wiring a bomb.

  While his body fumbled with the sword, part of his mind watched Cinder. He had Energy Affinity active, and his demonic aspect let him see the flow of power in her. It was different.

  He circulated demonic energy constantly, a loop of vicious current moving through his veins and channels, spilling into the ten-foot field around him. He controlled it directly, dominating it, holding it on a tight leash.

  Cinder circulated energy too. But she didn’t hold the leash. She opened gates. She let the raw, wild power run through her dead veins freely, and instead of controlling the energy, she controlled the pathways. When she swung her fist, he saw a torrent of dark fire surge from her entire body into her arm and shoulder just before impact. The power concentrated, erupted, and faded. When she needed speed, the energy flooded her legs in a sudden burst, and she moved faster than her muscles alone could ever manage. Even when she blocked, energy snapped into her forearm, making it hit harder.

  It was more potent. More raw. She was using closer to ninety percent of the energy’s potential force in that instant. David was using maybe fifty, spreading his control thin over the whole system. Her way was like focusing all the water pressure in a hose into one second-long jet. His was like letting it spray from a thousand tiny holes.

  He tried to copy that, too. In the middle of a parry, he yanked the circulating energy from his entire network and tried to shove it all into his sword arm.

  It was a mistake. His background circulation, which had become as natural as breathing, stuttered and collapsed. The energy, suddenly unpinned from its rhythm, flared wildly. His parry went from controlled to a spasming, over-powered slap that sent Cinder’s next strike wide but left his entire right side burning with unstable power. He lost his stance. The hobgoblin, seeing the opening, flicked its spear out and tapped him neatly over the heart. A killing blow, in a real fight.

  David stepped back, letting the sword point drop. His rib was healed. The burn in his channels was fading. He looked at the hobgoblin, then at Cinder, who stood waiting, her head tilted.

  He’d seen two paths to getting stronger. One was a fighting style that made every movement a threat. The other was a way to pump pure, undiluted force into a single action. And trying to learn both at once made him feel like he’d never held a weapon in his life.

  “Switch.”

  The hobgoblin threw the spear. David threw the sword. Each caught the other’s weapon with a slap.

  No pain, no gain, he thought. What a stupid fucking saying. He raised the spear again, settling back into the awkward, tight stance. “Again.”

  Corbin and Evans hunted a pack of wargs and a massive adult warg by themselves. The adult was so large Rhea’s telekinesis, Jamie’s ice, and David’s undead demon, Cinder, had to use their combined strength to carry it. Corbin was getting better with his halberd. David had surmised that Corbin’s whole thing was accuracy. Whatever secret skill he was hiding, it made him always hit an impossible bullseye. With guns it made him impossible to counter, but bullets were a fading resource. Judging by how little effort he exerted compared to everyone else, Corbin’s primary stat was probably strength, too. Pinpoint impossible accuracy, and strength. With that halberd of his, it turned Corbin into a problem.

  I bet he could probably chop grains from a handful of rice if you threw it at him, David thought. David wondered how many grains Corbin could actually cut; five? six? twenty? He hoped they would encounter rice throwing nightmares from the abyss so he could observe. Corbin’s bullseye accuracy was another skill that David wished he had. He wondered how he could create such an effect with demonic energy.

  David could summon bolts of dark maroon fire anywhere within the ten-foot radius of his magic field. The problem was the build-up. He had to build and condense each fireball first, gathering the energy and condensing it into a searing sphere—a brief process that took a second or two. That was long enough for his sword-wielding enemy to shift its stance or for the brutal demoness to sense the gathering heat and move. A direct hit would have scorched through them, vaporizing meat, but they were both too fast. They felt the heat coming and never let it hit. He kept doing it. He needed to speed up the creation, but it was a useful distraction. Making them hesitate was great motivation.

  From the side, Jamie had been watching while chewing on a strip of dried meat. “Looking almost cool, Dave,” he called out. “Only took, like, a billion near-death experiences.”

  David turned, hefted the cold censer, and flicked his wrist. Two shards of ice flung in Jamie’s direction, all blocked with a smug grin from the teen. “That’s two.” David’s wrist twitched. A final shard of ice snapped off the center and smacked Jamie in the forehead with a solid thock.

  “Hey!”

  Ha. Review, that shithead, David thought. He turned back to face the hobgoblin and his demon, Cinder.

  Later, as the group started setting up to butcher the haul, Corbin limped over to him. He had that look people get when they’re about to suggest something clever they’re proud of. Evans stood a few paces off, watching the tree line.

  “David. Need to talk,” Corbin said, nodding toward a spot away from the others.

  David followed. “What’s up?”

  “Your… converted pets. The hobgoblin. How does it work?” Corbin’s eyes were sharp, assessing. “Does it have a range limit?”

  Huh? What does he want? David kept his face neutral. “It’s a connection. It works.”

  “I was thinking,” Corbin said, lowering his voice. “We’re reacting blind. We don’t know where the ogre is. We don’t know the movements of those Marked legion soldiers. What if you captured another one? Not for combat. You send it back. It sees what they see. We get reconnaissance.”

  Theo, who was nearby trying to sharpen a stick with a stone, looked over. His eyes got wide. “A spy? You could send a spy goblin into their camp?” His voice was quick, eager.

  David had been thinking the same thing since the raid on the clearing. He looked at Corbin’s expectant face, then at Theo’s excited one.

  He wasn’t a mule. He didn’t do their bidding.

  It was a great idea. Also a great way to make sure they don’t ask me to do it with something valuable.

  “Wish I could,” David said. The lie came out flat, effortless. “The connection’s strong up close, but it’s not a satellite link. Push it too far out and the link severs. Thing goes feral.” He shrugged, a small gesture of genuine-seeming frustration. “Would’ve done it already if it worked.”

  “Understood,” Corbin said, his eyes lingering on David’s for a second before he nodded and turned away. “Had to ask.”

  “Yeah,” David said. “It was a good thought.”

  As Corbin walked back, David considered the lie. The soul connection had no distance limit he could detect; it was a constant, faint pressure in the back of his thoughts, like a persistent, permanent stream. Letting them think otherwise was better. Safer.

  Theo’s hopeful expression faded.

  What a great idea, David thought after they left. But a hobgoblin soldier is a terrible spy. It sticks out.

  An imp, he thought. That was the real answer. The little bastards were everywhere, like flies. They didn’t seem to swear allegiance to any faction, just flitted around chaos. A single, unremarkable imp, enthralled, could flutter into enemy camps, perch in the shadows, anywhere. A literal fly on the wall.

  He just needed to find a useful one to enthrall. A spy he could send to search for the Ogre, or better yet, into the Marked legion.

  The group hauled the massive carcass back to the wreckage site. David fueled the cooking fire, letting demonic energy twist into the kindling until the pyre became a conflagration, consuming the warg flesh. The smell was thick and gamey, mixed with the ozone-tang of his magic.

  Standing back, watching the flames, David observed the others. Harris directed the butchering with quiet efficiency. Henderson worked with a grim, focused determination. Jamie was talking, his hands moving, trying to coax a reaction from Rhea, who just stared into the middle distance. Corbin and Evans stood watch, their postures tired but wire-tight. A short time in hell had changed them. It had sandblasted the civilian softness away, leaving behind a harder shape that might not die in the next five minutes.

  They were making strides.

  But this was a hell dimension, a dungeon that wanted to consume gods. A dungeon that wanted them to be its fuel. This was an Impossible place, a zero-percent survival rate slot machine that turned giant abominations into headless corpses and landscape features.

  He wasn’t leaving the place a bad review. Not being killed was preferable. Living to see another day was acceptable.

  David couldn’t help but feel like this was the dead air on a radio before the emergency broadcast tone. The stillness before an earthquake. It was the flat, metallic taste in the mouth before a seizure.

  He checked his weapons. Whatever was coming, he’d be prepared.