no answer beyond the crack of ice, it hurled its head back and screamed.
‘HOW MANY?’
Kataria was hard pressed to choke back her scream as the creature’s fury raked at her ears. Something tinged its multitude of voices, a gurgling, shrieking squeal that sought to reach inside her head and sink audible talons into her brain. Pain, perhaps, or merely annoyance at having a pair of arrows lodged in its body.
That seemed to aggravate it.
She nocked another arrow and peered around the legs of a frozen frogman who scowled down upon her. The Abysmyth loomed like a tower with a poor foundation, swaying in the impotent breeze that tried to chase the smoke from the beach.
Up to that moment, she hadn’t even thought of trying to kill it.
Her plan had simply been to distract it long enough to dig Lenk out of his hole and drag him off to safety. However, as she stared at the creature, temptation manifested in the beast’s gaping wounds.
This did not seem like the demon she remembered. This was not the unholy terror that had held a shipful of men in terrified awe, not the creature that had pulled an entire harpoon out of its belly, unfazed. This demon, if it could still be called that, seemed weaker, wounded.
Mortal.
It whirled suddenly, swinging a colossal arm. Glass shattered and a thousand shards of what had once been a man, or something close to it, flew across the beach. Kataria, again, had to bite back horror as a fragment of what had been a face bounced twice across the ice, then skidded to a halt at her feet to stare at her with one eye frozen in hate.
Then again . . .
‘Forgive the fury, child.’
Kataria froze instinctively; had the thing spotted her?
She dared a glimpse. The Abysmyth stalked towards her, sweeping its eyes across the blue stillness; the look of a predator with the scent of blood.
With all the casualness of a boy with a stick, it brought its arm down to crush another frogman. It pulled back a webbed fist, dark red splinters embedded in black skin.
‘You fear for my well-being, perhaps,’ it gurgled, ‘and that is good. But your fear is in vain. No wolf’s teeth can harm the Shepherd. Purple longfaces, they tried. They came out of nowhere with their iron,’ it scratched at a green wound, ‘their venom. But they could not stop us.’
Longfaces, venom, the words flashed through her mind. The tracks became clear, the other characters revealed. Absently, the shict wished that the creatures that had tormented this demon had decided to linger.
‘There is nothing to fear.’ The Abysmyth spoke with a poor facade of reassurance. ‘There are simply questions, questions that you must answer for yourself.’
Its head jerked away at the sound of ice cracking and Kataria seized her chance. Her feet were quiet as she slid out from behind the frogman, her pale flesh indiscernible from the gloom - she hoped - as she slipped behind another.
‘Who will remember you when you die, mortal?’ It continued to stalk towards her prior position. ‘Will your Gods take you to their elusive heaven,’ it levelled its gaze upon a frogman, ‘when nothing is left to bury?’
Its roar split the smoke as it charged, smashing frogmen underfoot, sending chunks of ice and sinew flying. With one great sweep of its hand, it crushed the frogman that had hidden Kataria. The creature’s eyes seemed to go wider, were that even possible, at the sight of empty blue earth, and it collapsed to its knees.
‘Why,’ its voices were long, loud and keening, ‘are You making this so hard on me?’
Whether or not the demon was actually capable of sobbing was a matter Kataria would settle later, for at that moment, she saw her opportunity.
As it hunched over, the gaping wound in the Abysmyth’s back split a little further open, the green ichor lining it pulsing slightly. Within the wound, through blackened ribs, she saw it: barely visible in the darkness, but round and swollen like an overripe melon.
The heart.
She drew back her bowstring, took aim. She could feel her pupils dilating as the creature’s heart pounded, growing larger in her vision with each pump of tainted blood until it was as large as a black boulder. The fletching of her arrow tickled at her lips, which twisted into a grin.
‘One,’ the whisper of her voice and her bowstring were united.
The missile shrieked, cutting through the smoke and finding its target with a moist, squishing sound.