I was forced away from Nissikul by a tide of bodies as everyone tried to fight or escape at the same time. I knew what had happened and it made me sick. Last night, when Joanna and I had been attacked, we had been lucky. We had destroyed our attacker. So many others in the village had not been so lucky. Our search had been pointless- the victims had already been lost long before we had scoured the village. And now Nissikul- I screamed my defiance into the press of bodies and began trying to bull my way through to where my sister had fallen. It was no use. The cavern we had chosen for the muster had just become an abattoir. Already my nose was thick with the stench of blood and viscera. Above it all, a horrifying shriek rose, a sound like nothing I had ever heard before. Old retired rangers had described it to me before in their tales around the campfires, but I had never thought that I would hear it in the flesh. It was the call of the Eater King. But it couldn’t be. It couldn’t be that- we had slain that monster fifty full cycles ago, long before I was born. Right? Right?

There was a sound like localized thunder, and bodies shattered into the air over the crowd, only to come spraying down in pieces all around us. I screamed. Everyone else screamed. We were all one gigantic, screaming entity, trapped in a hell of our making. We were all going to die. But no, no I wasn't going to die standing here and screaming. Joanna could take care of herself. I had to find my sister. I had to find Nissikul.

There was another blast of terrific noise, and more bodies rained down in pieces on the panicking, struggling crowd. It was coming towards me. With some effort, I forced several terrified, blood-smeared bodies out of my way and moved in the direction of the disturbance. What are you doing? A voice screamed in my head. Maybe it was Palamun; maybe it was the last shreds of my common sense. Either way, the answer was the same. I was moving towards danger. It was what a ranger did, and what a champion did. I was moving towards danger, and I was going to find my sister. You are going to die. Maybe so. I seized a frenzied, dead-eyed priest by the throat and broke his neck in my hands. Expecting the follow-up, I drove my fist into his chest just as his ribs sprang apart like a trap, and I crushed the Eater-Spawn against the ruined corpse. The remnants of the flesh puppet fell around me and were trampled by the crowd.

A third blast of thunder and shower of gore. Closer. I could almost make out the source of the noise- I saw him. He stood grinning amidst the screaming and dying, at the end of a red-smeared path made from pulverized Erinye. It was Joanna’s spirit, Barbas. He was no longer an indistinct image over a crude body. I knew this demon to be the real thing. The genuine article. As I took a step towards him, I saw the source of the noise. It was a smaller version of the same gauss rifle that Joanna had mounted on her tower and used to kill a burug in a single shot. Barbas met my eyes, his manic smile widening further at the sight of me, and he leveled the gun at my chest.

Nissikul came shrieking out of the crowd to the demon’s right, her face in bloody tatters, and her cheek torn open to the bone. She had summoned a replacement arm of witch-ice, though her plate was still forming around her. Catching Barbas by surprise, she swung her black hammer into his chest with all of her might. He reeled and pulled the trigger. The shot missed me and turned five of the struggling warriors beside me into a cyclone of meat and blood. I lunged straight towards Barbas, my path mercifully clear, and I stepped up onto the upper rail of the great weapon, driving my clawed boots into his chest in a double-kick that sent me sprawling backwards. I turned the motion into a somersault and kept my feet as the blood-drenched monster reeled. Nissikul hit him with her hammer again. This time, she had had her feet beneath her, and the glowing head of her hammer sent Barbas hurtling from his feet, throwing him two or three spear casts through the roiling crowd.

“Nissikul!” I crossed to her side in a rush. “Are you alright? Tell me you’re alright!” My sister only glared at me with her empty black eyes, a growl bubbling up from her chest and sending blood spraying out from the ruin of her face. No, no she was not alright. She was in a great deal of pain, and she was very angry. The armor finished closing around her, the featureless black helm sealing about her bloody face. She nodded to me, and we both turned towards where Barbas had fallen.

The demon clambered to his feet, the smile gone from his face. He had been wearing strange garments: a shirt, a coat, and trousers with a single strip of cloth tied around his neck. Now the cloth was burned and torn, and I could see the body beneath. Where Nissi’s lightning had burned him, dark skin peeled away and revealed hard metal muscle. I swallowed hard. It was not going to be easy to take this thing down. Even as that thought crossed my mind, I was unslinging my bow from its place on my back and fitting an arrow to the braided metal string. Nissi charged, static electricity gathering around her in a halo, and without stopping to think about it I fired an arrow over her shoulder at Barbas’ eye.

The demon snapped his hand up in a blur and caught the arrow between his fingers. As Nissikul came in, swinging her hammer for his head, he seized her shoulder- the false one, and twisted, stabbing my arrow through her armor as if it hadn't been there and burying it in her gut. She screamed, but even with an arrow in her gut, she was still fighting, and so was I. I advanced, firing arrow after arrow at Barbas with all of the terrifying force of my metal bow. At the same time, Nissikul let her false arm break away from her body, robbing the demon of his grip. Barbas managed to deflect two of my arrows, but the third transfixed his hand and hit him dead in the eye. Before he could regain the initiative, Nissi whirled, as deftly as if she hadn't just been stabbed in her stomach, and struck Barbas backhand with her hammer. He crashed to the ground in a corona of expanding electricity.

I rushed him, knowing that if we didn't keep him down, we might not get another chance to ground him. I dropped my bow. I was too close to use it. The axes at my waist were too light to even bother a monster like Barbas. It was time for the hammer. I unslung it as I leaped in for the kill, swinging the weapon one around my head and bringing it down in a thunderous blow intended to shatter his spine.

Someone hit me from the side, with such force that my armor was pulverized and I felt at least one of my ribs break. I crashed to the ground, my hammer skidding from my fingers. Through the pain, I looked up to see Thukkar stomping past me with a flat, dead-eyed expression on his weathered face. No. The broken haft of a great hammer dropped from his grip, and as he moved toward the fallen Barbas, he snatched up a discarded spear and casually swung it with deceptively lazy motion into the side of Nissikul's head. Her helm burst, and she fell heavily, her armor shattering all around her and leaving her lying naked and bloody amidst the carnage. Her eyes stared sightlessly at me, and I prayed to any powers that could hear me that she was just unconscious. Satisfied that the demon wasn't about to die, the dead glare of Thukkar swiveled back to focus on me, and he marched woodenly over to me, brandishing his spear to thrust it into my throat.

Barbas stepped up behind the dead ranger, roaring, “I said that one was mine!” He plunged his hand straight through Thukkar’s back as easily as I might have torn through a rotten rag and he tore out the wriggling Eater Spawn from where it had been hiding. With a negligent motion, he crushed the spawn and threw it aside, letting Thukkar’s ruined body tumble, broken, to the ground.

Barbas crouched beside me, that insane grin stretching his lips once more. His expression was only made more horrifying by the fact that half of the flesh of his face had been burned away, leaving only the articulated metal skull beneath. “Hello, savage. I wonder what will happen if I tear your heart out? Do you think a god will come scurrying out?”