her living eye I could see nothing but a desperate, empty hunger, a void within her soul that could never be filled.
Before that light, even the ancient terror of the Titan hesitated.
“Begone, Titan,” Butters said. His voice was quiet, mellow, resonant. It wasn’t a human voice at all. Though the volume never lifted, it could be heard over the battle, over the thunder, over the crackle and roar of fires. “These souls are not for you. Begone to the depths of your hatred and rage. There is no world for you here any longer.”
Ethniu’s face became a thundercloud, her lips twisting into a snarl of pure hate. “Do you dare give me orders, you lapdog, you traitor, you coward.”
“Ethniu,” murmured that voice, and the depth of compassion in it was like a deep, quiet sea. “I only offer vision, that you may avoid suffering.”
“You’re no more powerful than your instrument now.” Ethniu spat toward Butters, and the spittle actually began eating a hole in the ground, it was so virulent. “You chose the side of the insects. Be crushed with them.”
She straightened, whirled the spear as if it had been a reed, and smashed at Butters with a bolt of lightning that sounded like some enormous, angrily buzzing waterfall.
Butters screamed, in his dirty, tired, terrified, normal human voice, barely audible.
He lifted the Sword, and again I understood, on an instinctual level, that the blade of the Sword of Faith, though made of immaterial light, was for this purpose far more solid, more unbreakable, more real than it had ever been when made of steel. Had the Sword been lifted in this purpose before, mere molecular structure would have been shattered by the forces brought to bear upon it—but now, unpolluted by the material world, the true power of the blade could be brought to bear, and in that bar of silver-white light was a galaxy of subtle color, of immovable power, of something so pure and steady and fixed that the universe itself had been built upon its foundation, and in the background my addled brain could hear the faint echoes of a Voice saying, Let there be light.
The mortal man holding that blade met the Titan’s fury.
And he would not be moved.
Like a rock in the sea he stood, as a tide of power crashed against him. The light could have struck anyone too near it blind through its sheer intensity. The heat ripped and tore the earth around him, rendering the ground down to bare earth in a furious flood of energetic violence. For the space of seven slow heartbeats, Butters stood before that tide, gripping the Sword, and the light and fury and shadow and flying debris formed a shape in the air behind him, of a tall, indistinct form that folded graceful wings around him like an eagle protecting her young from the rain.
Then, like even the most terrible, hungry tide, that power passed.
And an utter silence fell.
Untouched in the center of a circle of destruction stood the Knight of Faith, shining in the white light of Fidelacchius, and that fire had done nothing but leave him untarnished and clean, dirt and grime and impurity burned away while he was left untouched, his white cloak stirred by the heat rising from the ground around him, his dark eyes glittering with determination behind his goofy sports goggles.
Ethniu only stared.
“You know what?” Butters said, and in the center of what looked like the end of the world, his merely human voice sounded, not epic, not mighty, not bold—not even scared or angry. He merely sounded . . . normal. Human.
And if there was anything in the universe more defiant of the world the Titan was creating than that, I couldn’t have imagined what it might be.
Butters nodded thoughtfully and said, “I believe you aren’t as tough as you think you are.”
Ethniu’s lips peeled back in a contemptuous smile. “Behold your champions, the young gods, the forces of your world, lying helpless upon the ground, mortal.”
Butters looked around and nodded. And then he said, “You know who’s come out ahead of every one of these guys at one time or another?” he said, and jerked his chin over his shoulder toward me. “Harry Dresden. You haven’t killed him yet.” Butters lifted the Sword again and his voice hardened. “And as long as I’m standing here, you aren’t going to.”
The Titan’s eyes narrowed in sheer hatred. “Little. Man. Do you think you can stop me alone?”
“It’s not about me,” Butters