Bernt cursed loudly. Was Torvald alive? He was still glowing – that had to t for something, right?

  It wasn’t just the light shed by the thousands of floral vihat grew around the cavern that had dimmed, but also that ing off of the white fmes that still flickered from many of the dead. Bernt had lost t of just how many he’d cast, but he could seheir mana – his mana.

  To Jori’s eyes, though, the cavern bzed with light. A glowing mist filled the room, spinning in a vortex around the spot where the glowing stone had been. They were on the periphery of it, but he could se as she drew in some of the power.

  They were souls. Hundreds of them, maybe thousands. Not the fragmentary residues that Jori had been drawing from corpses, but actual, entire souls. And they were being drawn into the Duergar leader who was now standing on the ground, o the cart. The cart itself was missing a wheel and y awkwardly on the ground, broken. There was no sign of the stone.

  “Nuros!” Jori hissed as if it were a curse, unsciously digging her cws into Bernt’s shoulder.

  With a colossal boom, rubble exploded outward and down from above the Beseri soldiers, cutting a swath through the duergar lihis was followed by a barrage of fireballs that further pouhe effect. As impressive as it looked, though, Arice’s war mages couldhe battle then and there. While they cut a gap into their formation, most of the Duergar forces were protected by their own mages. Within moments, the tide of gray dwarves had ged dire, engaging the enemy at their rear.

  “Go get ‘em!” Dayle roared, punctuating the statement with a spell that sent a head-sized rock flying into the remaining forces in front of them – those too close to turn their backs on the Underkeepers. The stone was deflected off of an enemy force barrier, but bou an oblique angle so that it still tore a soldier messily in half before exploding with a loud crack behind their lines, catg several from behind with flying bits of stone.

  The Underkeepers advanced on their demoralized foes. Bernt, though, was worried. He tried to keep an eye on the duergar general. He was actually a demon, or a dossessed by a demon, or a duergar prince who’d turned into the worst sort of warlock. It wasn’t clear, but it also didn’t matter right now. That demon was trying to make a feast for itself from the souls of Halfbridge’s dead.

  Within a mihe duergar were pushed back toward the ter of the room. Despite this setbauros did nothing to intervene, aher did the group of guards and warlocks around him. The enormous dark vortex of souls just spun faster and faster, p down into the dwarf’s mouth like water into a drain. Most of it was already gone.

  He had to try something. Bernt backed up a step and cast a banefire at the general, but he was too far away. The spell disied before it reached him. sidering the problem, he sighted on Nuros once more and visualized the spellform for a fireball. Then he held out his right hand and cast it. The white fireball maed just as it had so many times during his ret practice sessions, but this time he’d meant for it to e out like this.

  The fming missile shot toward his target, drawing eyes as it arced gracefully over the mass of soldiers. One of Nuros’ guards, a stout duergar woman, saw it and raised her staff, but she was too te. The white fire struuros square in his armored chest.

  The fire fred brighter, feeding on the entments yered over the breastpte, and the dwarf screamed with rage.

  He pulled at his armor, bending it like paper as he tore it off of his body and threw it to the ground.

  He roared so loudly that the cavern shook, and then turoward the oning Beseri army. Bernt had hit his target, but he hadn’t mao burn the demon-possessed general at all. The breastpte was destroyed, but the armor had still dos job.

  Shit. Bernt cursed and raised his wand to try banefire again but was interrupted by inhuman, hollow-sounding wails and screams that echoed through the cavern. Bck shadows erupted out from the demonic dwarf general in a tide, roiling through his own ranks and into the Beseri army that ushing back his forces.

  High-pitched screams of terror and pain joihose created by the demon’s spell. The noise grew louder, closer, a realized that the shadows were still moving, sweeping around through the Beseri army’s ranks toward them. Bernt’s mind raced, trying to think of something, anything he could do here, and his eyes fell on a flickering white fme that burned merrily just a few steps away.

  Seizing on the idea, Bernt swept his gaze along the battlefield taking in all of the fires he’d made. Some were ner than the fme of a torch, while others – those that had struck mages – still burned like rge, white campfires. They would shriually – there was only so much mana around for them to burn – but it would be enough for this. It had to be. It wasn’t really that plicated. They were all his spells, his fire.

  Raising his pyromancer’s wand in his left hand, he cast a trol fme trip and seized the fire – all of it at once. He tried to shape the fmes, but it was too slow, his trol wasn’t good enough with this much fire. Desperately, he raised his right hand and cast another spell – the widest heat barrier he could manage, nearly fifteen strides. Then he pushed the fire all in one dire, directly toward it. The fmes spshed against it, finally c into a curved wall of nearly translut white fire that pletely covered the Underkeepers’ left fnk. It wasn’t a proper fire shield, and it took a lot of tration to hold so muergy in such a haphazard way, but he didn’t have to wait long.

  The fiery psma fred as the perpetual fme fed on the ining demon lord's spell, the gre sht that it interrupted the fighting, f both the Duergar and the Underkeepers to turn away and shield their eyes.

  Jori hissed, jumping off Bernt’s shoulder and scrambled up the wall behind him. She’d e to the same clusion that Bernt had – someone o do something now, or they were going to die.

  Bernt didn’t fully uand what Jori po do, but the impressio from her was more than enough to arm him. She was going to get herself killed! He sidered trying to call her back, and opened his mouth to shout after her, but then closed it again. She was right. There wasn’t time for anything else, and they were all going to die anyway at this rate.

  ***

  Jori scrambled across the ceiling among glowing vines, watg as a tide of bck shadows burned up i’s wall of white fire.

  That would show him!

  But she k wouldn’t be enough. A demon lord could cast spells like that all day. Somebody had to do something. Torvald had the right idea, but he was still lying on the ground across the cavern, almost all the way to the tuhat led up to the crafter’s quarter. Besides, she was somebody, too, and there was a lot to work with here.

  Inhaling deeply, Jori drew iasty essehat swirled through the cavern. The mist o her took on a silvery sheen as she drew it in, p into her with a pure, icy fvor. It was almost like she couldn’t even feel just how thirsty she’d been until she tasted the water of life, but now that the souls were at her lips, she was ravenous.

  She drew the power in, slowly at first, but then faster and faster.

  The mist spun around, thinning a bit as she drew it in. After just a few seds, though, her iopped. She felt the pressure mount inside her veins, just as she had in the dungeon, though much more clearly. There were no blockages to clear this time. No, the power running through her was just more than was meant to fit. That was fine. She wasn’t totally clueless about what was happening this time, and she had her own ideas about how she wao grardless.

  Seizing what she could of the souls around her, she pulled them into herself, trying to find that all-important breaking point.

  She wasn’t like Bernt or the old fire wizard. She didn’t know what the veins were supposed to look like when it was done. But that didn’t matter. She wasn’t a human, and she wasn’t a mortal, born helpless and without even the most basistincts. Jori knew what she was – what all of her kind and those of her pne were. Some fed on the souls of the dead, while others drank the blood of other demons, and still others bathed in the burning hellfire that ran through the nd in rivers. Souls, blood, and fire.

  Feeling something give inside her, Jori trated on what she wanted as a horrible burniion w its way through her body. Soon her skin began to feel stretched and her head itched as her hrew out and curled backward.

  Nuros was a shade – an incorporeal thing. Nothing like her. He sat ihat squishy dwarf like a worm in an apple. He was a master of the soul, and he could cast some pretty scary spells, but how carefully would something like that sider its own safety?

  Jori had realized something when she’d fought her first two possessed warlocks. The demons that possessed those dwarves had to sacrifiething to get direct trol of their summoners like that. They hadn’t brought a body. Instead, they had to share their host’s. A demon from the third hell, like the one she’d fought in the pza he Uy gate, would naturally ehat its host was well-equipped to fight, with fire and with regeion to restore it when it was ihe one from the first hell wasn’t well-suited to fighting at all, though. It could incapacitate people, sure, but it ractically useless in every ard.

  Shades didn’t have real bodies, and from what Jori could tell they didn’t fight physically, either. Sure, the demon was vastly more powerful than she was, and she couldn’t possibly scratch it if it was here in its true form… but it wasn’t. Would it remember to protect its host properly? Could it, even if it wao?

  She was going to find out.

  ***

  Ber Jori ge as his wall of fire tio absorb the demon lord’s attack. She was in a lot of pain, but the mixed sense of satisfa, thirst aermination made it clear that this was something she was doing to herself. Jori had scrambled in closer toward the ter of the cavern to get better access to what remained of the souls that Nuros was ing. The Solicitors would e for her when all this was done. If they lived that long.

  It was tht to see with his own eyes, but he caught a glimpse as Jori opened her eyes and looked at what he’d dohe screaming shadows didn’t disappear instantly when they hit his awkwardly shaped wall of white fme. Instead, they boiled in the fmes, catg fire and whirling in a tight circle as they burned up. It gave the wall a striking roiling effect, and he feared what might happen if he extinguished the fire before they were fully destroyed.

  As it was, though, the fmes kept growing, feeding on the powerful spell and baking his skin from ten paces away. Thinking quickly, Bernt worked to raise another heat barrier on the near side of the wall of fire, trusting the Underkeepers around him to keep him safe from the duergar. It took nearly another minute before the white fire finally calmed.

  Finally daring to look, Bernt realized that the fmes had reached the cavern ceiling and were busily dev the vihat lit the underground space. At this rate, the fmes wouldn’t just overheat the cavern, they’d wipe out their lighting as well. Instead of holding it in py longer, Bernt drew the fmes down and then pushed them outward and away from himself, bathing the massed duergar soldiers in a torrent of white fire.

  ***

  Jori shifted, ging her grip on the vines and rough stone of the cavern ceiling, and nearly fell as her foot slipped. She was heavier, and her limbs and hands had grown, making her pririps awkward and small. She caught herself and readjusted.

  Her reas felt smoother and more sure than before. It was as if her body just knew what to do. It felt great.

  Determined not to waste any time, she ghosted forward, doing her best to stay out of sight from below until she hung directly above general Nuros. He had stopped attag again, resuming his work of abs the souls that still orbited around him in the cavern. The demon lord must have maintained his trol over them even while ung his attack. Souls didn’t just stay put in the world without their bodies.

  The enemy general’s guards were an assortment of powerful demons, robed warlocks and duergar wearing armor that was very different from the other soldiers’. Some of them were casting spells toward the caverrance, where Jori could see new Beseri soldiers p in alongside mortals who didn’t wear a uniform – adventurers, most likely. They were moving more cautiously than before, probably intimidated by all the dead uniformed bodies in front of them.

  Most of Nuros’ guards, though, were looking toward the Underkeepers. They’d see strike their master with fire, and were o for further attacks. As she watched, one of them sent a bolt of shadow toward the defenders, but it ged dire partway there and strue of their own. Just the’s wall of white fire colpsed and poured down into the duergar forces like a river of death.

  Nobody was looking up.

  Folding her wings in tightly, Jori let go of the ceiling and plummeted straight down like a stone. As she fell, she poured hellfire out in front of her, aiming as best she could for the demon lord.

  Flinging the viscous fire as hard as she could, she extended her cws and shifted her wings slightly to adjust her fall. The duergar general attered with hellfire a split-sed before she came down directly behind him, bringing her cwed hands down on his head and shoulders.

  A her right hand caught in the fabric of his cloak and tore free with a horrible wreng sensation, and she felt a horrible poppiion in her left leg as she nded. Her left hand gnced off his helmet with no effect at all. Jori snarled in pain and stumbled. Whatever had broken in her leg was already healing, but she couldn’t move it right and nearly fell.

  A gaued hand caught her by one ear and hauled her up painfully. Jori stared up iy bck eyes set into an old, white-bearded face. Her hellfire had marred his helmet, but whatever entments were on it had protected him from the worst of the attack. There were deep burns on one shoulder, but it wasn’t enough. The demon was in trol, and it simply ighe pain. Maybe it couldn’t eve.

  “Clever.” it said in an odd, peing voice that seemed to echo in her mind. “But foolish. A little cockroaibbling at the crumbs. You should remember your pce. Seek out my servant Zijeregh when I have freed you from your bond. I may have a–”

  The remaining cws of Jori’s left hand sank into the skin of the possessed dwarf’s unprotected chest, finally giving her what she needed – a taste of the host’s blood. And just like that, she could feel it, c through the mortal’s body. More specifically, she could feel the tiny bits of the mortal’s essehat it carried, the very soul residues that she’d first drawn from to fuel her first metamorphosis. They carried with them the pain and disfort that the dwarf felt, his exhaustion and the pleasure he’d felt unleashing the power of an almost-greater demon on his enemies.

  It was a heady sensation, and for the first time, she reized it for what it was, even as the dwarf’s grip tightehreatening to crush her in his unnaturally powerful grip.

  It was fuel.

  Making a fist with her left hand, she ig.