Free Monster War by Dean Lorey

other girl uses her prowess as a Banisher to protect them from you. This is how they will defeat you: beauty, friendship, skill…Raise your weapon, boy. Strike! Kill them all!
    Violet held out her hand. “Help me up, Charlie.”
    He looked down at her and the dark cloud that had taken over his brain suddenly lifted, revealing the truth of who she was.
    “I’m sorry, Violet,” he said. “I…I don’t know what came over me.” He reached down and pulled her to her feet.
    She smiled warmly. “It’s OK. You did great. Amazing actually. You fought it off. I don’t know if I could have.”
    STRIKE! the voice screamed in his mind. KILL HER!
    This was no longer the soft, gentle sound of the beautiful creature that Charlie had seen rise up on shimmering wings. This voice was as jagged as shattered glass and as final as a hammer blow on a coffin nail. This was a voice of command - and it had every intention of being obeyed.
    KILL HER! SHE’S WINNING!
    Charlie turned round and, for the first time, saw the creature for what it truly was.
    A Chasm Wyrm. Ancient. Evil. Deadly.
    KILL HER! that horrible voice shrieked. NOW!
    Charlie raised his rapier. “I think I’ll kill you instead.”
    Even the Smith seemed shocked by what happened next. It looked as if Charlie… twitched . The movement was so subtle that it almost didn’t look like he had moved at all, but that was only because Charlie had thrown his rapier faster than the human eye could see. The blazing, blue sword rocketed through the air like a javelin and drove right through the terrible Wyrm’s left eye and into its brain. The creature shrieked and went limp, dropping to the stone bridge, which shattered under its weight. Charlie ran to the edge of the cliff and watched as the lifeless monster disappeared into the blackness of the chasm below. When it was gone, he breathed a sigh of relief and turned to the Smith.
    “OK. I passed the test and lost my rapier in the process. Looks like I need a new sword. I’d be happy to take the Sword of Sacrifice as a replacement.”
    “I IMAGINE you would,” the Smith croaked. “But we have barely even BEGUN the test. You have only proven yourself to be a BANISHER, boy. To be a Double-Threat,you must also prove that you are - crooooak! - a NETHERMANCER!”
    Suddenly, the huge bullfrog opened its mouth and flicked out its long, pink tongue, slamming Charlie in the chest with the fleshy bulb at the end. He pinwheeled backwards towards the chasm, grabbing wildly for something to hang on to - but there was nothing to grab.
    “Charlie!” Theodore screamed as he watched his best friend tumble, head over heels, into the yawning abyss.
    Pinch’s body burned with an inner fire.
    More than an hour had passed before he began to feel the effects of sipping the blood of the Queen of Nightmares. He didn’t know what to expect really - had no idea what drinking her blood would do to him. He knew only that he had spent his entire life feeling small and weak when what he really desired was power - raw and towering. The kind of dominance that the Named possessed before the Queen destroyed them.
    But that wasn’t the whole truth, was it? She had destroyed them, yes, but she had also created them to begin with.
    Just as she was re creating Pinch.
    It started as a tickle. He could feel it in his hands andfeet, a sort of prickly feeling. Soon it spread throughout his body before flaring into a dull ache. The ache turned warm, and then hot, and then became an excruciating roar, a blazing turbine, as if his entire body were being melted from the inside so that it could be reformed into something new.
    There, in the very heart of the nautilus shell, the man named Pinch - who had recently regained his power by becoming a boy - was mutating. Once again, he was being transformed and, this time, he would not seek the approval of other humans.
    This time, he would make them scream with fear.
    “It’s happening,” the Queen of Nightmares said as