Demon-Killing Sword

5.2 Coat

The jotun shifted and yanked at his hair, grunting with displeasure. The ugly demon grunted back and rolled over. Between them, the colts shifted. The girl whined, but settled down with a pat from her father. And then the family was still again, quiet breathing the only sound.

Muninn waited another dozen heartbeats before she moved. Before her was the food, the leftover meat from earlier. The whole carcass had been put by the fire, whole, then gnawed at by the whole family, if the many-sized bite marks were any indication. It was raw in parts and charred in others, but between the two, she could scrape up more than enough meat to fill her belly. Muninn tucked the sword into her belt and got to work.

She stuffed her mouth full, picking handfuls of meat to gobble down all at once. The bird tasted gamy, like chicken, but stronger. The deer had an even stronger flavor and was tough, its meat dense and sinewy. Rather than focus on the flavor, she focused on swallowing as much as she could at once. She tore up the meat with her hands when it was too hard to chew. It didn't matter if the venison was tough if she could gulp the bits down in one swallow.

Only when her stomach was tight and full did she stop. She sized up the remaining meat and drew her sword. It had only been sitting out a few hours, and in the chill air that hung around the jotun, at that. If she cut a slice or two, set up a fire a little ways into the woods and set it smoking, she'd have dinner for tomorrow, too. Muninn hefted the Demon-Killing Sword. It somehow felt sacrilegious to use the sword as a carving knife, but desperate times called for desperate measures. It might only have an inch of blade, but it had a blade.

A thunderous blast cut through the night. Muninn startled and whirled to face it. What was that? It wasn't storming outside a second ago.

The sleeping demons shifted. One of the colts sat up and looked around. Her eyes glowed a faint ice-blue, lending her face an ethereal aura. Muninn stood completely still. Don't look. Don't notice me. The colt blinked sleepily and yawned. Her eyes passed over Muninn. With lazy motions, she began to settle back down. Her eyes closed. Muninn breathed out. Carefully, she started shuffling back the way she'd came. Time to get out of here.

Another blast resounded, this one loud enough to rattle the den. Twigs fell from the ceiling, pelting Muninn and the demons. The colt startled upright, eyes flashing in the dark, and met Muninn's eyes.

Time stretched. Both of them stared at each other, startled into silence. Ever so slowly, Muninn raised her finger to her mouth.

The colt screamed.

Muninn bolted for the exit. She leaped over the jotun a second before he sat up. He reached out for her. Ice blasted her ankle. Fingers scraped her heel. She high-stepped away, even as the chill set into her skin.

The ugly demon reared up in her vision, hair a wild mane. Muninn flinched back as she hissed at her, baring crooked teeth. Underfoot, the colts growled and scurried to their mother, a flash of teeth and bright-blue eyes.

The jotun reached for her again. She ducked his hand, and her back prickled with the chill as his arm swung past. Again, he reached out, this time with both hands. Muninn put on a spurt of speed, but he was too close. His arms closed in around her, inescapable.

Then his head bumped against the ceiling. The jotun staggered back, and Muninn surged ahead. Out into the night. She sucked in a breath of fresh air and turned toward the hills. Time to get out of here!

Why does the air taste like fireworks?

She glanced back at the town as another boom rattled the air, shaking sticks from the den. The jotun was right behind her, but at the sound, he, too, turned toward it. Bright light sparked for a moment, bright as the sun, and then it settled down to a low, warm light, familiar from late nights and meals and her mother's scorched hands before she finally hid the pokers far out of sight, where her mother couldn't stick them in the fire for hours before she remembered and tried to remove them barehanded.

Fire.

She stared, forgetting the chase. Another explosion rattled the air, sharp and loud as death. Acrid smoke clouded the air. Motion from behind startled her into a leap, but when she turned, the family of demons were racing away from her. No, not away from me. Away from the explosions.

Demons fled from the smoke, blurred shadows that became arms and legs and tails and muzzles as they approached. Muninn walked against the crowd, into the smoke, not away. If there's fireworks, there's an alchemist. Humans didn't have magic, but they had something as powerful: science. The miasma-mad demons couldn't have created these bombs. Someone else had. Someone human.

The demons thinned as the smoke thickened. Muninn coughed and raised her shirt to cover her mouth, but pressed on. What other sane person was mad enough to wander the wastelands?

A shadow loomed before her, cast huge as another explosion went off behind it. As she moved forward, it resolved into a human shape, head, arms, torso, legs. White flickered through the smoke, a glint of something shiny on their face and a bulky lump on their hip. Muninn narrowed her eyes. They were human, right?

The wind gusted, blowing the smoke away, and before her stood a boy her age. Where she was dark, he was pale. From his fluffy hair to his long, frayed coat, he was white, white everywhere the wilds hadn't stained him with dirt. The lump on his hip was a bag, stuffed to the bursting with round shapes she could only assume were bombs. Across his chest, a bandolier of various orbs and tubes looped the bag over his shoulder. The glint on his face came from a pair of goggles, glass lenses opaque in the dark and swirling smoke.

She stared at him, and he stared at her. He reached for a bomb; she raised the sword. Time was pulled taut, lengthened to a crawl. There was nothing in the world but the two of them, the rest of it devoured by smoke.