They wrenched the massive wood doors open, and beyond the hall was lit in soft light.

  No longer refracted through the magnificent painted white glass windows of the cathedrals high steeples, Anki and Axe could see it was not silver at all.

  But shining gold.

  All throughout the cathedral candles burned, hundreds, thousands.

  So many Anki wondered how someone could ever possibly keep the place stocked in enough tallow.

  The building was, besides, a hollow echoing ruin.

  Shattered pews and tattered green banners of some forgotten god swaying in a ghostly breeze.

  A soft dripping echoed.

  Drip. Drip. Drip. Every few seconds.

  Axe moved on ahead, forcing Anki behind him with a shove.

  Grumbling Anki followed closely.

  A soft voice filled the echoing silence, as golden and warm as the light.

  It was singing.

  “Oh where do the flowers bloom, now winters come again, sirrah? Where do the flowers grow, when ash falls instead of rain-“

  Axe eyes grew wide.

  “I know that song…” he whispered, and moved forwards as if entranced.

  We moved to the edge of the long entry hall and towards the mouth of a grand hall of worship.

  A large white stone statue of a woman draped in vines sat at the far end of rows and rows of rotted seating. She was wreathed in a crown of flowers.

  Unmarred, clean marble.

  A young woman sat at the statue's base, cradling a small child in the crook of her arm.

  Anki did not know why, but the sight brought tears to his eyes.

  The little girl cooed in slumber as the woman softly sang to her.

  The woman’s hair was long and shiny black, with bits of twine braided in lengths.

  She had a dusky bronze complexion that seemed a close match to Axe’s own.

  And she was beautiful.

  Starlit silver eyes danced playfully over them as they crept closer. She winked.

  The song stopped.

  Drip. Drip. Drip.

  “Welcome, friends. You come at a good time.” The woman said warmly, as if they were expected.

  Gently rising, she carried the child and disappeared round the back of the statue.

  “The precious angel is just off to sleep. I’ll put the kettle on,” She whispers in a soft sing-song voice.

  Anki and Axe were dumbfounded.

  They stared at one another in confusion before, shrugging, Axe moved to follow her.

  Behind the statue was a small camp.

  Someone dug out the wood boards of the floor in a circle wide enough to build a fire pit for warmth without burning the place down.

  A kettle hung over the flames.

  Twelve poorly constructed cribs and cots covered the floor, all clearly put together from deconstructed pews and scavenged bent nails.

  In nearly all of them, a child slept.

  After the assault in the river, Anki was sure they would be twisted, purple, tentacled nightmares.

  But each child was painfully human, soft, oblivious, squirming in the throes of dreams.

  The woman sat in front of the flames, watching the kettle with an intensity, and an unwavering smile.

  “Who are you? This town should be a grave.” Axe started suddenly.

  The woman didn’t even look his way.

  “Travelers, friend. Just like you. My name is Lyyrida.” The name seemed to strike Axe with obvious force, his eyes squinting hard.

  “We stopped here to get out of the rain also, and, well. We just love it here. The murals. The glass. The goddess…it’s a beautiful grave, if that is what it is.” she cooed to herself, pleasure obvious.

  “So we stayed. It is our home now.” She beamed, a little too hard.

  “Where did all these children come from?” Anki inquired.

  “Hmm? They’re mine of course. All my children.” She began humming softly to herself.

  Anki glanced at the babes, quizzically.

  There were eight children in a range of ages. Some infants, others no older than six. Most had the same gray washed color of the Pacters outside, ‘ash-washed’ Axe had explained.

  None resembled their caretaker in the slightest. This unsettled him deeply.

  Why lie?

  “I see.” Axe said carefully.

  “It’s just you here?”

  “Yes, just me and the children. No guests here in so long. No guests at all.” Lyyrida kept humming, eyes strangely wide and intense, even as the smile never failed or faltered from her lips.

  The kettle was clearly boiling over.

  “You must be happy for the company. We are certainly happy for the ‘hospitality’. I just have one question?”

  “Hm?”

  “What about the Pacters outside?”

  Lyyrida looked over at Axe and smiled with what could only be called “malice.”

  “What about them?” She said sweetly.

  “You’re not as alone here as you say. Are you, ‘Lyyrida’?”

  “Rude guests, are no guests at all. I’m sure you’d agree?” Her eyes narrowed.

  “We saw those demon-stinking filth removed before they could upset the children. Will we need to remove you, friend?”

  The kettle began to rattle against its hook.

  A child whimpered.

  Lyyrida did not blink, silver eyes shining in the firelight.

  Drip. Drip. Drip.

  Axe’s jaw clenched.

  “You know what I’ve just realized?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Your hair is wet.”

  Anki could hardly understand, but Axe and Lyyrida suddenly stood on either side of the raging fire.

  Both acting about ready to kill the other.

  Axe clutched a fire poker.

  Lyyrida merely clutched her hands into fists and surged forth from her seat.

  Boiling, the kettle was the only sound between them.

  Anki swept forward, his arms out.

  “Wait!”

  Both turn, snarling at the boy.

  Eyes wide with murder.

  “She’s not human, Anki! She’s possessed!” Axe cries, seething. Teeth grinding.

  The pit of flames between them seemingly all that are keeping him from bashing the girl’s head in.

  “I am not!” Lyyrida screamed, feral and hot. Children began to stir and cry.

  “She is a demon! And I-” Axe said, taking a step forward as if to move through the flames, healing powers of the sword or no.

  “Kill. Demons. Wherever I find them,” he said this with a twisted grin of his own, all teeth.

  “No! No!” Lyyrida cried, tearing at her face with her fingers as if trying to find something beneath.

  “She killed those men and women because they were trying to get their children back. They threatened her perfect little family, and she butchered them. What, didn’t want to share your playthings demon?”

  Her fingers cut black bleeding streaks across her face as she let out an inhuman wail of agony.

  Children roared in terror all around them.

  Axe and Anki shot back, Axe bringing the poker over his shoulder like a sword ready to swing.

  Lyyrida’s screaming suddenly stopped as if caught by the throat.

  Every child, like puppets on strings silenced and slowly laid back into their beds without word or fuss.

  Lyyrida’s face went slack, emotionless. And her silver eyes no longer danced with light, but with shadow as black as the space between stars.

  “Please. Stop.” A voice colder and deeper than Lyyrida’s said through her lips.

  Distinctly feminine, but not human.

  Axe took a violent step forward, the possessed woman held out a soft warding hand.

  “I do not wish to kill you, hunter. Nor the boy you should have more compassion for. Cease.”

  “Lectures about compassion? From a demon wearing an innocent girl's skin? That’s fucking rich.” Axe snarled.

  “I feel great compassion, hunter!” The demon suddenly snarled hotly. “Great have been my trials and many my sacrifices. My losses and… longings. Innumerable. Still, I know of compassion.”

  Anki could hardly trust his ears. They seemed fuzzy, clogged.

  A demon who knew…loss? Sacrifice? And the most impossible of all…compassion.

  The very notion was a crime against the First Commandment.

  And yet, why had she not attacked them again since the river?

  “You kidnapped Lyyrida! These children, to play out your sick little games and fantasies, parasite! Don’t deny it!”

  The demon stared down at Axe with decided distaste.

  “Do you see games being played here, hunter? I do not.”

  Anki glanced about.

  Despite the ruinous conditions they lived in, the children seemed healthy, fed. And demon magic or no, they slept soundly.

  Happily.

  “It doesn’t look like she’s been hurting them Axe-” He whispered, grasping for words.

  Axe was all fury then, red in the face and sputtering.

  “IT!” He said sharply, “Is a demon! It tricks and confounds and controls! It holds these children’s minds in its grasp as surely as it does Lyyrida’s. It is a slaver at best, not a savior!”

  Axe tried to step forward again but Anki caught his arm.

  “Axe, just wait-“ Only just did the man seem to restrain himself from striking the boy instead.

  “Get off me Anki. Or I swear I’ll-“

  “You’ll what, beat me? Kill me?” Anki spat at the man, his own fury rising.

  Axe’s face froze mid speech.

  His eyes shying downward, heavy with guilt.

  “Just hear her out. If not for me, or yourself, then for the children, Axe.” Anki begged softly. “You think they’ll go untouched if you two kill each other here and now?”

  Axe breathed a moment, and nodding, took a tentative step back.

  Anki stepped forward, brimming with something like an anxious terror.

  The thing behind Lyyrida’s eyes watched him curiously. Like a cat watching a mouse.

  Anki would speak to the demon.

  Anki would break the First Commandment to preserve the Second. As he had broken the Second to preserve the First.

  What laws, what hope of redemption, remained left to him now?

  But Anki wondered if, as Axe said, maybe laws and rules didn’t really apply anymore.

  “Why did you attack us in the river?” He asked.

  “I did not. I sought to bring you here, an injured child wandering alone with an armed wastelander,” she shot a disapproving glance in Axe's direction. “Then, you attacked me with a demon-blade. I merely removing his toy from play,”

  It made sense, in a twisted way. This was her home, after all. And weren’t they the ones trespassing?

  “Fine. Tell us about the children then,” Anki asked flatly.

  “A simple trick.” The demon began, as casually as if reciting it from a textbook. “The little ones could not return to sleep if their tired minds did not wish for it. Long for it. I help their bodies obey their secret longing.”

  “I mean, where did you get them? What are they doing here?” Anki said. Voice hard.

  The creature narrowed its silver eyes at him as if surprised at his gall.

  “I dislike your tone and your questions as much as I dislike your friend’s.”

  “Understand this, demon.” He said with a firmness he did not feel. “We will not leave until we know these children are safe.” He answered, forcing his fearful voice to a flat affect.

  The demon sighed.

  “We found them. They come from the Pact City of Vaarakaemon to the south. Young sacrifices passing through the Sunken City to be fed to their demon lord’s war effort.”

  Anki balked at the implications.

  Humans sacrificing infants to monsters.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  Demons at war. But with who?

  “Lyyrida-” it continued. “She could not watch the children go. They reminded her too much of those that played in her village, so long ago.”

  The demon hung its head, as if remembering a hard day.

  “I took them from their parents, and strung the would-be murderers up to keep others from following.”

  “It’s. Lying.” Axe called out. The demon looked at him, pointedly annoyed.

  “Demons don’t leave warnings. They don’t feel compassion-” he said the word with obvious disbelief, “-And they most certainly don’t ‘rescue children’!”

  “Didn’t one rescue you?” The creature whispered softly.

  Axe’s eyes narrowed.

  Fist clenched white on the poker.

  “Where. is. Nahmaaris.” He said flatly.

  A command, not a question.

  “Close. Very close. We have been…catching up, you see. He has told us much about you, Axe.”

  Axe flinched.

  “Will you return him to us?” Anki asked politely.

  The demon contemplated this for a long time. All the while looking Axe up and down with all the precision of a surgeon.

  “Yes. When you depart.”

  Anki exhaled, tense shoulders finally going slack with relief.

  Axe grumbled, but held the poker less tight thereafter.

  …

  They spoke for some time, Anki and Lyyrida. The demon preferred that name.

  They spoke of their pasts.

  Lyyrida, demon and woman, had found each other three years into the Fall.

  The woman, by then, had been a ruin.

  Demons of all manner of suffering had made her their pet and plaything till her mind was as barren as the wastes.

  The demon had taken her, as it had taken the children, initially, to feed on her longing.

  For home. For family. For sanity.

  But over time, years spent soothing her mental wounds, easing her nightmares, caring for children, she had come to love Lyyrida and the children.

  “I understand Axe’s hatred. What we have done to you all…” Lyyrida shook her head.

  “How did I not see it before? But to live in her skin was to see...everything. And to know. I am evil.” The demon, Lyyrida, held her face in her hands and to Anki’s disbelief, she wept.

  He held out a tentative hand, and placed it reassuringly on the girl’s shoulder.

  “Maybe…maybe even you can be better.”

  “Perhaps, child. I sincerely hope it so.”

  Her voice was cold, inhuman, devoid of the very human emotion so clear in her eyes.

  “Anki. It is dangerous out there, even with Axe at your side. Always dangerous.” She began, wringing her hands nervously.

  “We could keep you safe. Warm. Fed. There would be safety, family, love. If you stayed…” she whispered, as if afraid to utter it.

  “We do not wish you to die, child…you are kind, in a very cruel world.”

  Anki pondered this strange demon, the kindness it offered moved through him like a hot knife.

  “Thank you, Lyyrida. For more than just the hospitality. But I have a family. And they need me, like your family needs you.” He patted her arm once before rising to gather his things.

  She watched him go, sadness in her eyes.

  To Anki’s surprise, Axe moved to speak with Lyyrida.

  Their conversation was hushed and brief. As Axe pulled her aside, far from earshot, his eyes pleaded, voice wavered.

  Lyyrida smiled, sadly.

  When she spoke to him, she offered a comforting hand, trying to take his in hers.

  Axe swatted her away as he stormed off, nostrils flaring.

  Whatever he had wanted, he left disappointed.

  Grabbing Nahmaaris quickly, who now sat waiting and bundled by the entrance, Axe pushed through the great doors, vanishing into the rain.

  Anki waved his goodbyes to Lyyrida and the children hurrying after.

  The small crowd waved back with warm smiles and candlelit eyes, and Anki wondered for the first time if he could stay here. Safe. Warm. Home.

  But he had been right, then and now, his people needed him.

  And time was very short indeed.

  Night stretched long still, but dawn was coming.

  Dawn, and death for Blessed End.

  Anki followed Axe as they gratefully left the Sunken City behind.

  Cresting around the cathedral, they hiked hillside back up again to the blasted hills and ashen earth of the Demon Wastes. Dry at last.

  The crossroad, Axe had said, was a short few miles hike from here. Hours away.

  It was about all he had managed to get the imposing demon hunter to say since their encounter with Lyyrida.

  The girl and the demon who wore her.

  Anki clutched his bundle tightly. The skin-stitched bag cooed softly.

  He checked it every few minutes now, paranoid it would vanish in this last stretch of his journey.

  Axe’s eyes flicked to him as he did.

  Watching him.

  Measuring.

  “Why didn’t you tell Lyyrida about Vaarak? Or the Ragpicker?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just seemed you two were getting real cozy back there, village boy. Told her all about home, your father, your banishment…strange exacting details never came up, no?”

  “She had enough troubles. I just wanted to get Nahmaaris and go. Just drop this Axe.”

  “Hm. Strange.” Axe continued as if he didn’t hear him. “I just would have thought you might have wondered if she knew something.”

  Axe paused and pretended to ponder something, tapping a finger against his scarred chin.

  “Unless it was you who knew something.”

  “What do you mean?” Anki began to sweat.

  “I mean, that you have secrets, kid.” He turned and glared down at the boy.

  “You still haven’t said how you learned about the Ragpicker, have you, village boy?”

  Anki gulped.

  “…Where’d you really get that bag, Anki?”

  “It’s mine!”

  “It isn’t!” Axe grabbed the boy sharply, holding his arms fast in his brutish hands. “I know it isn’t because -” His eyes narrowed.

  “-I gave that bag to my contact, the very last time I saw him.”

  “And I’ve been out here walking with you for hours wondering why you’re here and he’s not?”

  Anki was silent.

  “Hm. I thought so.”

  “You don’t know anything,” he spat.

  “Don’t I?” Axe barked a humorless laugh.

  “Only a few days in the wastes-“ Axe hissed, “-and you’re as bad as the rest of us.”

  His cold eyes dropped to the skin-stitched bag.

  “Little thief.”

  Heat and light fled as a vast shadow passed over the land.

  Axe slammed into him, driving Anki face-first into the ash.

  Sand filled his mouth.

  His ears rang.

  “Agh!” Anki cried. “For the love of all the Commandments, can you please stop throwing me!”

  But Axe was deaf and blind to him, his eyes scanning the boiling red clouds intently.

  Anki followed his gaze.

  Nothing but torn sky and ringing thunder.

  Then, something vast moved inside the clouds.

  A pair of great wings, midnight black with feathers sharp as knives, tore through the storm.

  Many times the size of a man, they cut through the roiling dark like the fins of a nightmarish shark through the surf.

  “Vaarak.” Anki whimpered.

  Axe glared at him.

  “And you know that, how?” Axe snapped. “Your little Commandments teach you that too?”

  Anki hung his head in shame.

  Axe shook his head ruefully.

  “Axe, it's true, I haven’t been completely honest with you both. And I’m sorry. I will explain everything, as soon as this is done, I swear it. But first I need to make it to the Ragpicker.”

  “Do whatever you’re going to do, Anki. We have a demon to kill.”

  Axe drew himself from their hiding place, beginning to draw Nahmaaris from his wrap.

  “Axe! Get down!” Anki begged uselessly.

  Axe held Nahmaaris aloft, his runes burning bright, and swung the ebon greatsword at a nearby crystal pillar.

  The sound was shattering, it reverberated and echoed over land and sky.

  “COME DOWN, BLOODY COWARD!” Axe roared over the thunderous ringing.

  He struck it again, with force enough to crack it. It rang like a god's tuning fork.

  “WE’RE RIGHT HERE, YOU OVERGROWN PIDGEON!”

  A shrieking tore the sky apart as a bolt of crimson lightning blasted across the sky.

  It struck first one crystal tower, then jumped to another, then another, growing and consuming until a circle of crystalline towers about them roared with hellish sparks.

  Axe’s eyes went wide.

  He threw Anki aside just as the lightning coalesced from all directions and struck where the boy had just stood.

  The crystal tower behind them glowed deeply from within.

  The tower screamed as light split the world white.

  Axe vanished in a violent eruption of lightning, shattered crystal, and flung earth.

  The blast tore the air from Anki’s lungs, and he tasted blood.

  Everything was silent, soundless, save for a persistent ringing in his ears. Like a tuning fork.

  Then Anki’s head struck something hard, and his world was in darkness.

  …

  Anki walked until his feet were covered in blisters and his rough leather sandals were caked with blood.

  He had no direction.

  No plan for survival.

  All he had now was his shame.

  Anki scaled down the icy mountain slopes, using ancient trails his ancestors had used to hike the mountain to the holy caves for centuries before demonkind ever came.

  His ears still rang from the proclamation that had decided his fate as he climbed down.

  Anki, Son of Randu, is banished forevermore.

  He repeated the Six Commandments to himself, over and over. Breath white and biting in the chill air.

  But the words felt hollow without familiar cavern walls to contain them.

  Without his father to repeat them, correcting Anki where had remembered something wrong.

  Anki tried to pray, bending down in the blasted ash, tears staining his cheeks.

  There is nothing waiting in his faith with answers.

  No gods.

  Not his father.

  Only shame.

  Night falls too quickly.

  The Demon Wastes are like a desert, Anki learns. Blistering hot during the day, freezing cold at night.

  The sky is starless. Nothing but occasional crimson lightning lights the void of space.

  Anki curls up under a shelf of rock against the cold.

  He cries. Softly, but not for long as something howls in the distance.

  As if in answer.

  He clamps his mouth shut against his sobs. Tears streaking down his face.

  A rustling in the ash beyond the small shelf as something scrapes across stone.

  Anki’s breath catches.

  The scraping grows closer. Closer.

  Anki draws the knife that bled his father, and holds it out in trembling hands.

  A shape pulls itself into the shelf.

  At first in the dark Anki can only see shuffling, withered limbs.

  As it coalesced he could see the figure was wearing what looked like a dead bush as clothing, the long fibers of some plant dried and stitched together in a set of trousers and matching jacket.

  If the man sat perfectly still you’d probably think him a bit of wasteland foliage.

  The man, not demon, wore a round wood mask painted completely white. Two suspicious green eyes watched him through eye-slits.

  The man did not speak to Anki at first.

  He does not ask Anki’s name.

  He pokes him with a long staff in the gut.

  Anki panics and swipes out with the knife.

  The man flicks it aside with a casual brush of the staff, and the weapon skitters off into the dark of the cave.

  The man grabs Anki and drags him from the shelf, squirming and fighting him.

  He strikes the boy once, which quiets him. Setting him down in the ash.

  Slowly, he undoes a small backpack tucked carefully under his clothes. Collected dried branches and bleached white bits of bone are laid out in a circle.

  A small tent pitched is over it against the wind, which he tucks into as he works, scraping steel and flint together he starts a careful smokeless fire.

  Anki watches, too afraid to speak or move.

  The man drags him close enough to the flame to warm.

  Then, quietly, he undoes Anki’s travel pack and begins taking half the boy’s rations.

  Then his waterskin, which he gulps down greedily.

  Anki balks.

  “Hey! That’s my food!”

  The man shrugs.

  “S’mine now.” The man chuckles.

  But he does not leave Anki.

  He takes a small pot from his pack, and placing some of Anki’s food, and a splash of his waterskin in, he quickly whips up a hearty broth.

  He pours Anki a sizable helping into a dirty clay bowl and thrusts it into his hands.

  Anki doesn’t care, he scarfs it down.

  Despite having food all this time, he hasn’t eaten since Blessed End.

  Then the man speaks.

  The wood mask falls to reveal an old man, as old as Thadaleis easily. But where the proctor was small and thin, this man was still broad and strong.

  White clung to his head in a shaggy beard and long unkempt hair that made him look like a bear.

  His green eyes are that of a grandfather’s.

  “I am called Last.” The man began.

  “Because I am the last of my people who live free.”

  His people, the Ghander, were an isolated community not unlike Anki’s own.

  The Ghander fled not into mountains but down so deep into the mines and tunnels they believed the demons could not burrow.

  They were wrong.

  They were not slaughtered when the demons came. That would have been a mercy.

  They were miners. Craftsmen. Strong.

  They were taken to a Pact City.

  To be “bound.”

  To work a demon lord’s forges, his mines, his own sadistic pleasures, until they should die.

  “I escaped by some sick trick of fate. Survived. But I could do nothing to save them. Nothing against Vaarak and his legions. Nothing.” The old man clenched his fists.

  “So I found someone who could.”

  “Who?” An innocuous question, but the answer had changed everything for Anki.

  “It is called ‘The Ragpicker’.”

  That’s when he first heard the story.

  “A creature waits at the crossroads,” Last begins, “Tall. And robed in the lost dreams of others. It appeared one day after the Fall, manifesting where desperation and death was thickest, offering miracles to man. For a price.”

  Anki leaned in closer, enraptured. This was nothing like the stories they told in the End.

  “But it was no savior, no god. For the price the Ragpicker exacted made it little more than another demon itself.” The old man shook his head.

  “Suffering is its food. Sacrifice. And to receive all you desire, one who wants to deal with the Ragpicker must be willing to give away all that they care for most.”

  Anki noticed the old man rested his hand on a strange satchel he hadn’t noticed before, he touched it constantly.

  That’s when Anki realized, the story was no story. Last believed in it, and he meant to make the trade.

  The sum of his people's lives must have been gathered there.

  Wedding bands.

  Children’s carved toys.

  Scraps of letters.

  A cracked idol.

  Hair braids.

  Tokens of meaning.

  “You should keep moving if you want to keep breathing, boy. West. Or North. Don’t go East or South.”

  “Why?”

  Last’s jaw tightened.

  “Demon sign,” he growled.

  He leaned closer to the fire as if even speaking of it required warmth.

  “Drawn in blood and ground crystal by Pact loyalist pissants about two days’ march from here. They carved it into the ash-rock to mark the edge of ‘Vaarak’s territory.’”

  He spat into the dirt.

  “Territory,” he repeated bitterly.

  “The summoning circle still hums. I’ve heard it. The demon lord can see through it. Hear through it. Anything that walks within bowshot of that mark might as well shout its name into his ear.”

  The wind howled low outside the rock shelf.

  “He’ll know right where you are,” Last finished quietly.

  Anki shivered.

  “Where are you going?” Anki asked, his voice smaller now.

  “East.”

  The word hung there.

  “You don’t want to come my way, boy. Nothing but blood that way.”

  East.

  Vaarak.

  The Ragpicker.

  The fire cracked softly between them.

  Two days east.

  Two days from the mountain.

  Two days from Blessed End.

  Anki’s breath slowed.

  The circle Last spoke of — the summoning mark that still hummed with the demon lord’s sight — was drawn two days east of Blessed End mountain.

  If Vaarak was summoned there…

  If Vaarak could see through the circle…

  What about Randu’s circle then?! Could he see that? Did he know where it was?

  If the already demon knew—

  Blessed End could be less than two days from discovery.

  Less than two days from the demon and his legions.

  Less than two days from fire and screaming and the end of everything that had ever mattered to him.

  The proclamation echoed again in his skull.

  Anki, son of Randu, is banished forevermore.

  Banishment.

  Exile.

  He cannot warn them.

  Marek would have seen to it that the gate guard would kill him on sight.

  He cannot go back.

  The Commandments forbid it.

  The Proctor forbid it.

  The mountain would not open for him again.

  He cannot warn them.

  Cannot save them.

  Unless—

  The thought arrived slow.

  Like a thick grub burrowing slowly into the meat of his mind.

  —Unless he reached the Ragpicker first.

  Unless he becomes something worse than the boy they cast out.

  The fire sank lower.

  Last’s breathing grew heavier and even.

  The old man slept, and the skin stitched bag sat between them. Cooing.

  One hairy arm resting protectively over it.

  Anki does not sleep.

  He stares at Last.

  Stares at the skin stitched bag.

  And he considers.

  …

  Anki’s vision swam with color, world exploding back into focus.

  When the ringing in his ears faded-

  Axe was gone.

  An enormous blasted crater sat where they had crouched moments before, shattered crystals smoked and bubbled in the wreckage.

  Anki was thrown clear, and had rolled into a small depression in the rocky cliffside, where he had struck his skull.

  He poked his aching head up over the hole's lip and scanned the hillside.

  Anki could hardly believe his eyes.

  Everywhere the land crawled with demons.

  Some were no larger than children, while others were gargantuan things that would have towered over even Axe.

  Some were like humans made of melted wax, others like the twisted reflections of animals, hellish hounds with faces of maidens, enormous birds with clawed human hands for talons.

  Insects. Reptiles. Vermin.

  They crawled like locusts over the earth to tear him to pieces and for a long moment Anki wondered if this is what Axe had seen, all those years ago.

  A Tide of Teeth.

  Everywhere they appeared, pulling free of hiding places in deep shadows and shallow chasms. Wrenching crystals aside and tearing through the sand in their haste to search, to hunt, to kill.

  More than an ambush.

  A killing field.

  In his and Axe's haste to reach the Ragpicker, they had run directly into Vaarak’s front line.

  The army surged and Anki closed his eyes.

  Then a roar shook the wastes.

  Not demon, not quite.

  Human but wrong.

  And all heads raised and turned to their source.

  Crawling by a single bloody arm was Axe.

  His cloak and armor had been blasted away revealing naked skin that was blistered and scaled red.

  His left arm was gone, and bloody tendon dangled uselessly from the stump.

  He kicked through the sand, and dug into the earth with Nahmaaris in his remaining arm, like a climbing pick, he buried it and hauled himself forward.

  Not away from the demons, but towards them.

  He bared his teeth and screamed, still on his belly,

  “You can try and take my head—my heart, my lungs, my goddamn blood…” Axe levered himself up to one knee, grunting, and laid the sword on the ash beside him.

  “And I will still kill every fucking one of you! With my sword, my hand, my teeth! I will break you! Every demon dies! Every. fucking. one!”

  The horde froze, demons standing uncertainly in their lines.

  Axe waited. Patient as revenge itself.

  A hellish bird’s cry split the thunder.

  The demons shuffled nervously, then one by one began charging the demon hunter, who waited with a smile.

  Axe slipped his remaining leather glove off with his teeth,

  He gripped Nahmaaris tightly.

  “Yes, old friend. A fight at fucking last.” Axe whispered with obvious relish.

  The first line of demons vanished in a spray of red mist as Nahmaaris flashed in a horizontal swing that carved the air in half, spinning Axe about slightly.

  Anki could see the flesh about Axe’s hand and arm had healed—new flesh blooming red before darkening into his usual dusky skin and spreading up his shoulder and back.

  The sword's runes burned bright.

  Axe stood. Holding the blade, one-handed, invitingly in the air.

  “Vengeance...” he said, like an invitation.

  Axe’s face split into a savage grin and he hurled himself without hesitation into the demon hordes faltering front line.

  He struck them first not with the blade but his own body, leaving Nahmaaris dangling in a loose grip.

  He rammed an elbow in the head of one demon and rent its jawbone free, sending the thing sprawling, vomiting blood into the sand.

  He kneed another in the groin so hard it split the beetle-like creature in half, spilling stinking black insect guts all over his singed boots.

  He growled with irritation and barreled through two demons, breaking their grasping arms like twigs.

  He was a boulder, a storm, an unstoppable force.

  Anything got in his way wasn't just killed.

  It was bloody flattened.

  But the demons did try.

  With bladed claws, barbed spines, and serrated teeth they cut, bashed, impaled, burned, and even tried strangling Axe twice to no avail.

  Whatever injury they inflicted never seemed to slow the man.

  Though they were piling up, healing or no. The man’s jigsaw pattern of scars added to by countless fresh wounds.

  A demon ape with limbs like the scything claws of a praying mantis struck at Axe’s forearm, slicing the muscle close to the wrist.

  For a terrible moment Axe froze in terror as his grip on Nahmaaris loosened and slipped for but a moment before he grasped desperately back at the handle.

  A vulture’s cry came from above.

  There he was, Vaarak on midnight wings.

  The demon had a body like a giant’s, manlike but hunched and feathered, standing tall as the tallest crystal tower.

  The wings sprouting from his shoulders beat with the force of a hurricane.

  A vulture's skull stared back at Anki, crimson fires burning in their sockets thick with hate. Crowned in thorns.

  The monstrous bird pointed a taloned claw at Axe as he swept by from above.

  “The sword!” The demonlord hissed.

  “His strength is the sword! Take it from him and kill this hybrid filth!” Vaarak cried.

  Anki hissed in fury.

  The demons pulled back from the writhing melee a moment. Assessing.

  Axe stood surrounded, holding the blade out defensively.

  His grip whitened, drawing Nahmaaris close like a shield.

  Then, the demons laughed as one.

  A great chorus of anticipatory glee. Revenge on the human who cut and bit and bled them.

  They moved, aiming not for Axe, but for Nahmaaris.

  Axe fought like a demon. He swung with blade and flesh and bone and broke and shattered demons by the dozens even as he battered his own body to pieces.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” Axe was losing ground. Fast. Struggling to keep the demons from pressing in too close.

  His single hand trembled.

  “Anki!” He screamed.

  Anki stood, ready to charge into the fray with naught but his little knife in his tight grip.

  “Get out of here, kid!”

  Anki balked.

  “No! I won’t leave you!”

  “Fucking kid, go!” Axe begged.

  “I kill demons, I didn’t get into this business to grow old.”

  Dozens fell as he spoke, a solitary figure standing against the hellish legions that surged.

  “But you have a chance, kid! So just go. Save your home, Anki! It’s the only one you ever get…”

  Not a demon at all then, Anki realized too late.

  Axe was something else entirely.

  He was like Anki.

  Lost.

  Looking for home.

  “Thank you, Axe! Thank you both for everything!” Anki said with tears in his eyes.

  “If you can, do one more thing for me please. One more miracle!”

  “We’re getting a little low on time and favors here, kid!”

  “Just one thing!” Anki screamed.

  “What?!”

  “Kill them all…”

  In the distance, he might have sworn Axe smiled.

  Not the hard, cynical smile Anki had come to know.

  Unguarded.

  Hopeful.

  Axe disappeared under the tide of demons. Anki heard screams as he ran.

  Human. Demon. He couldn’t tell.

  He didn’t turn back to check.

  Ahead of him lie the crossroad.

  A bargain that might save or damn him and all he cared for.

  And a monster they called the Ragpicker…

  …

  End Chapter 4