Spirit's End

The desert stretching across the Immortal Empire's southwestern tip was still and quiet in the moonlight when, without warning, white lines sliced through the air. The quiet shattered as the Immortal Empress's invasion fleet fell through the cuts in the world and crashed into the dunes. At the head of the grounded fleet, soldiers gathered around a boat with a lost prow where, rumor had it, the Empress herself was buried. They found her in a crater of broken wood, her golden armor shattered, but with a groan, she opened her eyes. She ignored her men, tapping the air to open another white line, and stepped through into a world of pure white light.

There, the Shepherdess Benehime lounged in the air, a thief sitting in her lap like a dog. The Empress Nara, who had served as Benehime's favorite for eight hundred years, could manage only a single, coherent word. “Why?” Benehime tilted her head. “He is my favorite,” she said simply. “I thought I'd made that clear.” She had used the Empress and her war as a grand trap, a final gambit to force the thief, Eliton Monpress, to lose the bet he had made eleven years ago and return to her side. Now, with her true favorite home, the Empress had outlived her usefulness. “Good-bye, Empress,” Benehime said, and as she removed her blessing, eight hundred years of age caught up with Nara at once, and she crumbled to dust.

In the still-smoking shell of Osera's throne room, Josef Liechten, the island's new king, listened to old men argue. The war was over, the Empress's fleet vanished along with Eli, but his city was destroyed and his treasury empty. Across the sea, in the Spirit Court's tower in Zarin, Miranda Lyonette learned a different truth. Her sea spirit, Mellinor, had survived the battle, but only by chance. He had been there to witness a great star of the ocean, the Deep Current, vanish from the world, an event that would have thrown the seas into chaos had he not taken its place. Stars, the great spirits who formed the foundation of the world, were disappearing.

Back in the white nothing of the Between, Eli woke to find Benehime watching him with an all-consuming love that made his stomach clench. But the cold dread turned to fury when he realized the burn on his chest, the home of his lava spirit Karon, was gone. “I removed him,” Benehime said, her voice casual. “I can't have such an ugly burn marring my beautiful favorite, can I?” Rage like he had never felt before rose in Eli's throat. “I hate you,” he said, the words roaring out of him. “You're not my Lady, and you never will be.” In her fury, Benehime stripped him of her mark, the sign of her favor that had been inside him so long he couldn't remember life without it. Then she opened a hole beneath his back. “I hope your bounty is everything you dreamed of,” she whispered as he fell through the world and landed at the front gate of the Council of Thrones.

Captured by his mother, the wizard Sara, Eli was thrown into a deep cell, only to find his father, Etmon Banage, already there. But freedom was not long in coming. With the help of Sara's duplicitous agent, Sparrow, Eli escaped and reunited with Josef and Nico, who had come to Zarin to claim Den the Warlord's bounty for the rebuilding of Osera. Their reunion was brief. Eli's lava spirit was still missing, and he knew the only one who could help him find Karon was the Shaper Mountain. The journey would be long, but Nico had a shortcut. She could take them through the shadows, the dark realm of the demon that lived inside her.

The journey was a terror of cold and fear that left Nico drained and exhausted. They emerged in the Awakened Wood near the Shaper Mountain only to find the forest screaming. The trees, their own star now vanished, tore at each other in a mad panic. As Eli tried to hold them back, Benehime's white arms wrapped around him once more, pulling him back into her world. He was gone before he could warn the others. Josef turned from the vanishing portal to see the Lord of Storms descending from a black sky, his lightning sword in hand. The commander had come for Nico. Josef fought with the Heart of War's full strength, even managing to cut the storm itself, but it was not enough. The Lord of Storms tore Nico's demonseed from her chest, and as she collapsed, her body erupted in a pillar of liquid night.

In the Between, Eli learned the terrible truth. Benehime was tired of being Shepherdess. She had been creating a new, smaller world, a paradise made from the stolen stars where she could live with him forever. “Come away with me,” she pleaded. When he refused, she tried to kill him, but Eli had one last gambit. He snatched the Hunter's seed - the weapon she'd used to murder her own brother - and, with the help of the third Power, the Weaver, he escaped again, just as the shell of the world began to crack.

The sky shattered. Black, clawed hands, impossibly large, tore through the cracks, reaching for the screaming world. But there were defenders. Josef swung the Heart of War, cleaving the demonic limbs. Nico, now a winged demon in her own right, tore at them with her claws. The Demon of the Dead Mountain, freed from his prison in the chaos, fought with a predator's fury to protect his new territory. Holding them all back from the ground was a wall of thunderclouds, the Lord of Storms, now bound in an oath to Miranda. But there were too many hands, and the defenders were tiring.

Eli returned to the battlefield and thrust the Hunter's seed into the Lord of Storms, forging a new Hunter from the old storm. The new Power, whiter than snow, went to confront the Shepherdess. But even with the might of a Power, he could not cut her. It was Eli who saw the final move. While the Powers fought, he stole Benehime's paradise sphere and shattered it, freeing the stars. Enraged, the Shepherdess stabbed him through the chest. As Eli fell, the new Hunter seized her, dragging her with him outside the shell of the world, into the endless dark.

In the end, the Weaver repaired the shell. Eli was healed. And Miranda, offered the chance to become the new Shepherdess, refused. Instead, she used the power to give all spirits and all humans a measure of will and sight, creating a new world of equals. In a quiet tavern, Eli Monpress sat with his friends, his family, finally and truly free. He looked at the wanted poster on the wall, his own face smiling back at him, the bounty still far from a million gold. “Think of my bounty!” he said, a familiar, infectious grin spreading over his face. Josef just sighed. “When do we leave?”