Eventually, he wound down, and his mind cleared. It was time to think. Half a second into thinking, he tried to summon a weapon from his limnthal—and failed. Contrary to what some believed, the limnthal wasn’t a pocket dimension. If it had been, it might have worked. The enchantment was actually a sophisticated link to another full dimension. Whoever had designed it had found a way to link to a place that required virtually no power to connect to. Unfortunately, that link was blocked just the same as teleportation and gates. “Fuck!”

  Internally, he debated fruitlessly attacking the magical walls of his cage, but decided against it. There was no point in wasting his strength. He despaired his lost access to the limnthal. It contained hundreds of useless things, from potions to weapons to food, but there were two things inside that might have saved him: two swords he had kept with the spell he and Selene had come up with. The same spell that had saved him against Madrok.

  He hadn’t come to Hell without planning for a lot of contingencies, but those two bespelled blades had been his trump cards. He might or might not have been enough to take on any one demon-lord by himself, but the spell of mass destruction on those swords could take out any number of powerful foes if they were in the wrong place when it went off.

  It had been his idea and Selene’s impeccable design, and it had been created for a similar purpose, when he’d thought he was facing an unbeatable demon-lord the year before. Will knew the spell, so he didn’t even necessarily need the two swords in his limnthal. He could cast it anew—if he had a sword to put it on.

  “But no, my balls were so goddamn big I had to walk down here without a single weapon on my belt. A badass wizard too powerful to need a sword. I can get anything I need from the magical hole in my head!”

  The spell had an interesting design, for it exploited the danger involved in moving solid matter back and forth between the ethereal plane. The user had to have a hand on the hilt for it to work. When activated, the final foot of the sword’s blade would be shifted into the ethereal, whereupon it would then be shoved into something. That could be your opponent, ideally, but anything in their general vicinity was nearly as good, so long as that thing wasn’t also present in the ethereal plane. The blade had to pass into empty space on the ethereal side of things. The second activation occurred when the user released the hilt and the magic reversed.

  The wielder would be transferred to the ethereal plane, and the ethereal piece of the sword returned to the plane it had been on previously, where it would appear inside of whatever it had been thrust into. Two physical objects couldn’t occupy the same place. For reasons no one completely understood, the result was an explosion beyond all expectations. When Will had used it against Madrok, it had turned the demon-lord into a flat layer of jelly at the bottom of a small crater. The fae and trolls nearby had had their bones shattered from the concussive force of the explosion.

  Looking around, Will wondered if it would be enough to break the unbelievably powerful force-sphere. He doubted it, but the circle that defined the magic holding him was engraved on the stone floor. The force effect itself passed through the stone below and it was just as strong there as everywhere else, but if something sent a considerable shockwave through the stone inside the sphere, it might be enough to cause damage to the circle and its magical symbols.

  Will knew the spell, but he hadn’t designed it. Selene and Janice had done the technical work. He only knew the specifications for its use, and they’d been very clear, it was meant to be cast on a sword or hammer. He’d memorized the rune construct, but he had no idea how to modify it to be used on something else without a considerable amount of study. For a moment, he thought about taking off his belt and laying it flat on the floor. If I pretend it’s a sword, would that work?

  He knew better. His wife was a damned perfectionist as well as a genius. She’d been the one who put in the safeguards he hadn’t thought of, and he knew for a fact she would have also been precise in her specification of what it could be placed upon. Frustrated and angry, he almost wanted to cry. Selene’s well-meaning caution was going to be the death of him.

  Around him, the Lords of Hell watched and talked idly to one another, laughing at his predicament.

  Chapter 43

  It was probably too late. The twenty-four-hour mark had to be close, and with it Will’s expiration. Emory and Sammy had almost certainly tried to create the gate already, and assuming his cousin had found the inner resolve to succeed, they’d failed anyway. They might have tried several more times after, only to lose hope as each failure compounded on the prior ones. Will had almost resigned himself to his own death, but imagining the guilt Sammy would feel drove him half mad with frustration. She’d spend the rest of her life blaming herself.

  Emory probably would too, but that didn’t bother him nearly as much.

  Nalarin took a moment to share some delightful information. “In case you don’t already know, the death from a blood-oath is exquisitely painful. The blood in your veins slowly begins to boil, but not everywhere. It starts in the extremities and spreads slowly, bringing unbelievable pain as you burn to death from the inside out.”

  “Thank you,” said Will, before adding a supremely clever insult. “Bitch.” I’m going to die, and that’s the best I can come up with. Arrogan would be so disappointed in me.

  Think! That thought came with Laina’s distinctive voice attached. Will rolled his eyes. As if it was that easy, but even as he thought it, something came to him. I might not know the spell well enough to figure out where to modify it for the object it can be used on, but I know how it’s specified, he realized.

  Actually, that was a little optimistic. He knew the methods that could be used. It could be based on size and shape, or materials the object was made of, or both. Will thought Selene would have probably just used size and shape. If she had included materials, it would make the spell unnecessarily complicated. Sure, the blade was almost certainly steel, but what if the hilt had an ivory handle, or was leather wrapped? What if it was wooden? The quillons might be brass, bronze, or steel. A hammer presented even more possibilities. To be fair, the shape could be similarly complicated, but Will already had plenty of examples of shapes that worked, because he and Selene had used it on swords and war hammers in the past.

  It had to be shape. And he knew the exact shape of several swords and hammers that definitely worked, such as the swords stored in his limnthal currently. “All I need is something shaped like one of them,” he muttered. Glancing at the intensely powerful shield around him, he changed his mind. The power of the blast was directly related to the amount of mass that wound up coexisting in the same place. A sword was the safest version, since the blast was smaller. That’s why they’d used a war hammer against Madrok. “I need a hammer,” said Will. “A big one.”

  Sadly, he had nothing to work with, other than the stone beneath his feet. Most of his attack spells would do little to stone. Light-darts and fire-bolts would do next to nothing to smooth stone. Similarly, his wind-wall would do little. He could probably set up a resonance and shatter the whole thing, but that seemed too extreme. Plus, he had no idea if there was anything below. It was possible the floor might fall away, and he could discover himself still trapped in a rubble-filled force-sphere hanging over an abyss.

  The obvious choice was his old favorite, a force-lance. Will began blasting the floor repeatedly, sending cracks in every direction and filling the air with sharp shards whenever a portion shattered and broke. He needed a big piece, something as large the hammer he envisioned. He needed a stone at least three feet in length. The other dimensions didn’t matter as much.

  A male voice accosted him, laughing. “Go deep enough and you’ll just find the bottom half of the spell imprisoning you.”

  Will ignored the speaker. He’d found his rock. It was much too large, but he had an idea for whittling it down. If he’d had an earth elemental, it would have been simple, of course. Or if he’d had a talent for shaping stone, or if he just knew some stonecutting or stone-shaping spells. Will had none of that.

  Clapping his hands together. he created a sound barrier, but not around himself. He kept it small and located it over a smooth, unbroken portion of the floor, then he decreased the size until it was no larger than an ale mug. He tuned the frequency and intensity until he felt it would be perfect for its job—as a stone grinder.

  Then he tried to lift his chosen rock and nearly ruined his back. “Shit, that’s heavy!” Working more carefully, he straddled it and lifted more slowly, trying to use his legs more and his back less. After several minutes of work, he managed to get it out of the ruined section and onto the smooth stone floor. Then he slid it over to his makeshift magical grinder.

  Things went well after that, though as he got close to the end, he had a frightening moment when a large piece of stone cracked and flaked away from the part meant to become the handle. If his weapon broke before it was ready, he’d have to start over. It was likely far too late for Emory and Sammy to save him, but he at least wanted a chance to teach the smug bastards watching him one final lesson.

  Taking care, he made his grinder smaller and ratcheted up the frequency so that it could remove smaller more delicate pieces of stone. His hammer came roughly into shape, and when he finished, he felt a faint sense of pride. The head was almost a foot across, much larger than a war hammer. If it had had a longer haft, it would have been considered a war maul, and an oversized one at that. Will hoped it would fit within the spell’s requirements, but if not, he could trim it down to a more modest size. Lifting his crude maul by the stone haft, he showed it to the demon-lords observing him. “I’m going to kill you with this, you sons of bitches.”

  It was a fair warning, and if they’d been brave enough, they might have stopped him. But they had little to fear behind their flawless wall of force. Holding out his left hand, Will crafted the spell once again, then placed it on the weapon. Satisfaction filled him as the spell settled into place without trouble. Smiling maniacally, he reversed his grip, activated the spell, and drove the massive stone head into the ground.

  “Eat shit, hellspawn!” Will released the haft and was transported into Hell’s ethereal plane. He was still surrounded by a force-sphere, of course, since force spells always existed in both the plane they were cast in and the parallel ethereal plane, but it winked out a moment later while he was still adjusting his vision to see into the plane he had left.

  The result was far greater than he had hoped, and he felt sad he hadn’t been able to watch. Most of the pit’s floor was gone—just gone. The circle, the runes, the demon-lords, everything had been blown away, creating a vast, sloping wall of rubble, rocks, and powdered stone against the walls. Will laughed until he was sick.

  Eventually, the spell ran its course, and Will returned to Hell’s main plane. He’d already used the underwater breathing spell to save himself from the dust-choked air. It would take some time for everything to settle. On his return, he fell a significant distance; the crater was over fifty feet deep, but he was prepared for that. A force-travel-disk caught him midfall, and though it was too high to operate properly, it slowed his descent until it could maintain its position ten feet above the new ‘floor.’

  Will took a moment to consider what he saw. Even considering the larger weapon he’d used, the extent of the damage didn’t make sense. It was almost as impressive as what had happened in Myrsta when he’d sabotaged the demon-steel turyn converter and caused it to explode.

  He made a quick pass around the interior of the blast crater, then skimmed up the sloping sides until he reached the piles of detritus that circled his masterpiece of destruction. Demon-lords had regenerative powers that exceeded even those of trolls, although they operated in a fashion similar to vampires, meaning they didn’t duplicate themselves if split into pieces. They also couldn’t replace parts that were completely annihilated.

  Will wanted to make sure he had done a good job. “Attention to detail, that’s what leads to success,” he muttered to himself. He searched for pieces and parts, taking time to thoroughly incinerate anything that looked remotely like flesh, blood, or bone. There wasn’t much to find. The vast energy released by the explosion had done a very thorough job, but he did find a few pieces of demons here and there.

  One exception was Nalarin herself. He found a large portion of her head, but her body was gone.

  Understanding came to him then. His spell had broken the floor and ruined the circle. Once the force-sphere had vanished the explosion had slammed into the demon-lords with all the force he’d hoped for, and it had been enough to overwhelm her armor. Rather than retain its shape, becoming ever stronger, the demon-steel had gone straight to complete destruction.

  Nalarin had been the one to escort him, and the paranoid fiend had worn a complete suit of demon-steel armor. She’d been covered from head to toe, but she had removed the helm while they were gloating at him. The end result was interesting, and not what he might have expected. The demon-steel explosion had been even greater than the one produced by his spell, and although it had thoroughly annihilated her body, it had also shielded her head partially from the first explosion. Her head had probably come off a split second before the armor detonated, and it had been thrown far enough that it partially survived the larger blast.

  Her head was against one wall, partially buried. One side was missing, but the part that remained had partially healed, restoring a single eye, which swiveled to stare hatefully at him. He picked it up and whispered in her one good ear, “I told you you couldn’t afford me, but I was flattered nonetheless.” Dropping it to the floor, he used the same spell he’d used to clear away ice and snow to slowly roast it until nothing remained but ash and the vile smell of burned flesh.

  Surveying the destruction, Will felt a sense of pride. He might be about to die, but he’d done a good day’s work, and he’d hardly even had to exert himself. “Usually by this point I’m broken and mangled all to hell,” he snickered. “This time, I got twelve demon-lords at once with hardly a scratch on me.” It was a shame he had to die, but at least he’d gotten something worth the price.

  The twenty-four-hour mark had to be nearly upon him, but he still had time to say goodbye. Finding a clear spot, he settled down cross-legged and slipped out of his body. He couldn’t teleport from Hell, but he could see his loved ones. Selene would be upset, but he was too selfish to give up a last chance to see her.

  She was behind a barrier, as usual. Biting back his disappointment, Will went to check on Sammy before the others. She would be the one most affected, blaming herself. He hoped Evie would be with her. The Cath Bawlg could see him, and might share his last message so she wouldn’t blame herself.

  His cousin appeared before him, still on the stone platform where the ley-line nexus was. She was kneeling with her head down, red hair concealing her face while her body shook. Broken by the sight of her grief, Will tried to comfort her, but as always, his hand passed through her shoulder. Sammy cried on, forlorn, while Emory stood close by, distressed at his inability to help.

  Both of them looked exhausted. How many times did they try? he wondered.

  I’ve lost count, said Evie, walking up to stare at the empty place where his spirit was. It’s a wonder they didn’t kill themselves. They would still be trying if the man hadn’t finally made her stop.

  Sorry I didn’t make it back, he told the cat, but she was already changing, shifting into her grotesque and nightmarish humanoid form.

  I will tell them to try again, she responded.

  They’re too tired! But it was too late. Evie first terrified them, then managed to explain what she had seen, using rough words and crude grammar. Will couldn’t help but notice her form was no longer quite as ugly as the last time. The Cath Bawlg had apparently been studying humans over the intervening days.

  Sammy stared at an empty spot close to where he was. She had red, swollen eyes, and her cheeks were marred by red, blotchy patches. She was not the sort who became more beautiful when crying. Far from it. “Just wait, we’re going to get you,” she said firmly.

  He wanted to watch, but if he stayed, the gate would open only a few feet from its starting point, so Will returned to his body. Then he cast another travel disk spell and went to the center of the room. The crater made it impossible for him to get high enough to be exactly where Nalarin had designated, but there was no time to do anything else. He hoped it would be close enough.

  Minutes passed, until he was sure they had failed, and then the air began to shimmer in front of him. Slowly, it grew, until he could see them through an opening barely large enough for his body to pass. The edges wavered, a sign of instability. Will leapt from his travel disk before it could collapse in on itself and landed on the stone platform inside the ritual circle.

  Seeing him emerge, Emory collapsed. The massive flows of turyn snapped back as he lost consciousness, slamming into Sammy before she could release her own grasp of the ley line’s power. For a moment, she looked like a blazing fire, her fiery hair standing on end while she stared back at her cousin. Smoke rose from her shoulders, and then her knees began to fold as blood began dripping from eyes, ears, and nose. She fell almost silently, the only sound that of her skull when it bounded solidly against the stone platform.

  A hoarse scream tore free from Will’s throat as he scrambled across the stone to get to her side. “No! No, no, no! Please, Mother, help me!” He called for the goddess, knowing she was real. He’d seen her once before, but no one answered his cry. Checking Sammy’s throat, he found no pulse, so he put his head against her chest. Still nothing.