Will and I stepped away from the three of them, taking in the futility.

The impossible.

I suddenly remembered the demonic snakes in the swamp, their numbers infinite, energy unyielding. But now I knew the truth.

The serpents hadn't multiplied like single-celled organisms, and I hadn't stumbled into a bottomless nest. They'd been healing themselves. Regenerating again and again. Never truly wounded, and never defeated—not for long, anyway.

It also explained why Belgate had fallen so quickly: these creatures literally couldn't die.

Will's throat bobbed, and we exchanged tense glances. With him and Styx beside me, we were evenly matched, but how could we possibly win against immortal beings?

Then again, maybe we couldn't. Maybe that was why the demons were able to invade in the first place. Maybe we'd lost the war the moment they'd crossed the Rim.

Styx moved first, surprising everyone. She shot after Pulpy in the form of a ten-foot water monster, attempting to envelop him in her body and drown him there. Sort of like a sentient tsunami.

Properly motivated, Will made for Stretch, boasting with a casual sword flourish, like he'd used the weapon for real battles countless times, like he wasn't a rookie.

That left the large one for me.

Honestly, I estimated about three of me fit inside that guy. Just his forehead took up more room than my entire face.

Grunting, Titan surged forward, and I sprinted out of the way, afraid to engage in combat with someone so massive and indestructible. One of his steps was equivalent to about two-and-a-half of mine, but I tried not to focus on that disheartening detail as the beast barreled toward me, removing a colossal scimitar from his back scabbard.

I managed to avoid him for a few more seconds, skirting his advances and luring him into my swimming hole, where he sank several feet into the river and nearly lost his balance. But he was too fast, and I was running out of riverbed.

Before I knew it, he'd caught up with me, and I had no place left to run.

Gnashing my teeth together, I brought my sword up to his falling blade, and I dug my feet into the sand, flinching as steel kissed steel. Merciless, he drove me backward, his cuts too powerful, too heavy, too deep. My hands burned with old images of past contestants and Tournament trials, and I could hardly see straight.

Eventually, my heels hit the riverbank—the sign of a battle lost—and I cursed the Fates. Mustering a final lap of courage, I kicked off the rocks to meet Titan's next strike, determined to make him bleed.

Our collision sent a violent tremor up my arm, and the angle created a bind between us, our swords at an impasse as they slid against one another with equal tension. Titan leaned in over our crossed weapons, making my limbs tremble under his weight, and I used all my strength to keep the scimitar from driving down on top of me.

Reduced to a crouch now, I sank into the river mud, one hand on the hilt and one on the blade. My blunt Tourny sword was the only thing keeping my neck from teeth of sharp steel, and my opponent knew it. He grinned down at his sealed victory, pushing me further into the clay.

I spared a helpless glance at Will, but Stretch claimed his undivided attention. They were both wicked quick on their feet, delivering effective parries and ripostes even in knee-deep water, and I knew any distraction to that blizzard of thrusts and lunges would prove deadly.

I thought about calling for Styx, but she was further upriver and fully absorbed in the task of harassing her opponent. She wouldn't get here in time.

I was on my own.

Titan backed off, granting me a second of momentary relief before he swiped down and snapped my sword three inches above the hilt—a clean and shocking break. His scimitar impaled the wet earth beside my ear, and my petrified gaze traveled over two halves of a useless weapon.

Just like that, he'd left me completely defenseless.

He bent down to yank his sword from the clay, his fat demon hands too close to my face, his wet, grimy fingers clasping the hilt of his weapon. It was a short, essential window, and I had no other choice.

In a final act of desperation, I reached out and closed my bare palms over his.

Immediately, searing pain erupted in my body, and a flash of light engulfed my mind, overwhelming every one of my senses. Faintly, I could hear Titan's guttural roar entangled with a scream that might have been my own, and it burned in my hands and eyes and the metaphysical. But as the light faded, it also severed all ties to reality and the present moment, and I stumbled down a tunnel of white ether.

Within the nothingness, a series of images passed by too quickly to snatch or construe—a montage of fire, war, and carnage. Then a beautiful woman appeared out of the chaos, wearing a gown that blended into the color of my burned retinas. She wore flowers in her auburn hair, and she was laughing at something in the distance, her cheeks rosy, her eyes glistening. She had one of those laughs that made you smile without context, without reason. A belly laugh straight from the heart.

The scene changed, and I was walking away from a tiny brick house, glancing over my shoulder at a group of blurry faces and fuzzy figures. They stood in the yard waving goodbye, a few of them holding young children in their arms. Someone remained off to the side in the shadows, but the images were already fading, and I couldn't see her face.

Still, I wondered if it was the same woman from before.

Despite its simplicity, the clip was emotionally jarring. So much so, it left a throbbing ache in my bones, a despairing longing inside me. And when the memory finally vanished, I'd contracted a terrible hole in my gut, festering with sadness and anguish and regret.

I felt a sharp, foreign tug in my body, as if someone had plucked a rib from my chest, and I slowly opened my eyes.

Titan stared down at me, his giant face just a few inches away, our hands still linked on the scimitar. Shock and fury swam in his pale eyes, along with an emotion I couldn't quite place, and then black fluid filled his scleras, and he fell backwards into the water. Collapsing into the river with a heavy, resounding splash.

I sat motionless in the mud, gaping at where the demon had been moments before, my hands clutching at air.

"Alex?" Will called, and his voice sent me plummeting back to earth.

In the midst of fighting, Will and Styx had paused to stare at me in amazement—then my opponent's enormous corpse floating downriver, a victim to the current.

I stood up, nauseous and disoriented. "I think I knocked him unconscious," I lied. "He'll find his way back."

Stretch narrowed his eyes at me, and my whole body shuddered at his perceptive gaze. But if the demon knew the truth, he didn't reflect on it long. He launched himself at Will again, and I ran to fetch my knife from the riverbank.

I hastily pulled on my gloves to hide the red, pulsing crescents on my palms. To push away the memory of what I'd done. To mask what I was.

Focus, Kingsley.

There's no time for those thoughts right now.

Will needed help. He might have been keeping pace with Stretch, but I knew he had to be losing steam. Meanwhile, Styx continued to chuck fish and pebbles at Pulpy's eyes between bouts of waterboarding. And unfortunately, there was only so much a trout could do to a self-healing monster. 

This wasn't going to work. We couldn't hold them off forever, and I didn't want to resort to my curse again. In fact, I could already feel my energy evaporating; if I attempted that stunt a second time, the demon might not be the only one kissing the rapids.

I glanced at Will and his attempts to chop off Stretch's arms before the demon could grow them back again. Somehow, he'd managed to stay dry and uninjured, but he was covered in black blood and demon guts, and his movements were growing sluggish. As he spun around to evade a river boulder, I noticed my traveling pack slung over his shoulders, and my eyes snapped wide.

"Will. Backpack!"

He ducked, avoiding an ugly slash to the forehead. "Now?"

"Now!" I clapped my hands, signaling for him to toss it over.

He slid the pack off his shoulders so swiftly, he was already back to maiming Stretch by the time I caught it. I quickly unzipped the bag, hoping he'd been too busy torturing his opponent to notice my awestruck expression.

The problem we faced was our inability to kill our opponents, but we didn't need to kill them. We just needed to get away from them long enough to survive this trek.

Smiling, I held up the tangle of rope for Will to see, and his eyes brightened. He nodded at me, agreeing to the plan, and a few seconds later, he drove his sword straight through the demon's chest.

Wasting no time, the two of us rushed to grab Stretch's body, and we dragged the limp demon through the water to the nearest tree. Styx, catching on to our ploy, completed her final drowning event for the evening and sent Pulpy's bludgeoned body downriver for delivery.

"Go!" Will said, and we pinned the groaning demons to the tree bark as Styx dissolved into a cloud of dust and pine needles.

The spirit transformed into a torpedo-like wind, snatching the rope from my hand and sweeping around us in speedy circles, fastening the demons to the tree trunk with multiple knots and hitches. In seconds, our enemies were bound to the edge of the river, spitting up water and fish food.

Stretch writhed in his restraints, struggling to break free, but the rope seemed to tighten around his torso with each movement, mocking his efforts. Retrieving his weapon from the river, I winked at him over my shoulder, and his answering growl made me smile.

I'd been lucky with the rope. I'd packed it in case I needed to rappel down a cliff or something. I never thought I'd use it to apprehend demonic soldiers.

Correction: immortal demonic soldiers.

Will and I backed away from the creatures to speak to each other privately. "Do you think that'll hold them?" I asked.

"Not sure," he admitted. "But if anything, it should buy us some time." He cast me his side-eye. "Smart move, by the way."

I stashed away the compliment and followed him to the other side of the riverbank. I was afraid to ask the question, but I needed to know. "Fudge and Mason?"

"Captured. They were collecting firewood when the demons found them. I heard a scream, but I was too late." He tossed me my clothes, and I flushed when I realized I'd just fought off a group of river demons half-naked. "The party split. A group of them took Fudge and Mason, and the others stayed to hunt us down."

"Where did they take them?"

He tipped his head at the tree line. "They were headed back the way we came, probably have a camp set up a few miles west of here."

A few miles?

I stepped closer, my heart bleeding at the thought of Fudge being held captive by those evil creatures. He didn't deserve a fate that cruel. "Will, we have to go after them."

He looked at me, grim, and that single look conveyed a thousand rational arguments.

I knew the risks, and I knew the boys could have been dead, or worse. But I made a promise to Fudge, and I would not abandon him like this. "We can't just leave them," I pressed. "And I know it's stupid and dangerous, and that we're running out of time, and that Holly is depending on us, but we have to—"

"I know."

My mouth kept moving without words, and I abandoned the speech I'd composed. I really hadn't expected him to agree so easily, especially when it came to saving his infuriating rival.

He stared at me with another inscrutable expression, and I couldn't tell if it was exasperation in his eyes or...respect. "We're wasting daylight, and that demon is still somewhere downriver." His tired eyes flicked over me and away. "Hurry up and get dressed."