against this demon, aye, for demon it had to beâI fought for long hours as it wrapped around me like a cloak, smothering me. Would it absorb me, I thought, until mine was one of those screaming faces Iâd seen under its skin?
âStrength did not matter to the beast. It yielded every time I grasped it, stretched like dough in my hands. Always it covered more of me, always it sucked hungrily at my more solid form. Then, of a sudden, I was inside the beast. It had swallowed me whole. My lungs cried for breath, my skin burned as if Iâd been doused in acid. I could just see by the light that streamed in through its translucent hide. Before me were the livers and hearts and facesâfaces attached to no skulls, faces with no eyes, like living masks. There was another shape inside there, one I had not seen before, just as a man will not see a piece of glass that is under dark water. This was the biggest of the shapes, a thing like a clear egg full of worms. With the last of my strength I grasped it with my hands and started pulling it apart. It was more solid than the rest of the beast, and when I broke it open, it bled. Could I breathe then, I would have laughed, for I knew death favored me still. The beast trembled and shook and spat me out all at once, dripping from my skin to the floor of the cave. It raced away from me, for it knew I was going to slay it. I tracked it all that night, though it moved far faster than a man on that rough terrain. I tracked it up the mountainside, until it came to another cave, which I thought must be its lair.
âThis new cave was far deeper than I expected, however. It proved to be the mouth of a tunnel that led deep into the heart of the mountain. Nor was it any natural cavern. Had I not been so hot for the thingâs destruction, I would have noticed how regular the floor was, how the walls had been carved out of the rock by metal tools. The tunnel went down and down until it came to what looked like a blank wall. There was no light down there, so at the time I could not see that a solid block of stone filled the tunnel, a block cut almost to the exact dimensions of the shaft. I was just in time to watch the thing flow around that block, to ooze through the hair-thin gap between the block and the wall. It nearly got away from me. I managed at the last only to stab at it one more time, and to pin one of its hearts to the floor. It tore itself in half to get away from me, so desperate was it to escape.
âI had not killed it, I am sure of thatâthe part that got away still lives. What remained behind shriveled rapidly, parts of it drying out and turning to dust, other parts melting and soaking into the floor of the tunnel. I put the heart in a sack and brought it down the mountain, to my father, who is called Mörg the Wise. He is a man of great learning, they say, and it was he who told me of demons, for I had never heard the word before. He told me how they are hauled up out of the pit, and how they take forms unseemly to man. He said that if such a thing was haunting the steppes, all of our clan were in great danger. I said I would take a band of men back up to the mountain and slay it, but he shook his head. He had something else in mind.
âIn the eastern land of my birth, no boy becomes a man, not truly, until he hunts and kills an animal of his fatherâs choosing. I had thought this cat, the poor creature I originally tracked, would be the prey that made me a man. Yet my father laughed at the prospect. After all, I had not killed the cat myself, but only seen what did it. He demanded that I track and kill the demon properlyâwith a tool that was made for such work. And that was when he gave to me Dawnbringer, and made me swear all the vows of an Ancient Blade. I will not be allowed to marry, or sire children, or lead men to battle, until this demon is destroyed.
âI do not think my father knew how hard that would prove. Or
The Devil's Trap [In Darkness We Dwell Book 2]