CHAPTER 2

-

I

-

“After that, I headed straight back to my hometown and holed up in the old mountain I’d known since childhood. Seeing that thing, I never wanted to wander around any other mountains ever again. As a huntsman, it scared me to death. Years later, when I heard that the skeletons of giants who’d lived thousands of years ago had been found on that same mountain and that they’d looked so fresh the villagers had been spooked enough to blow the whole cave up, I was beyond caring. If it was that gigantic beast, maybe I’d actually been wandering around that mountain thousands of years in the past that day, but that didn’t matter either. See, by the time I’d got back home, I was an old man in a young man’s body. And there’s the answer to your question.”

The party leader had listened intently to the tale, and he’d only gone about ten paces after this last confession before he asked, “If you’re such a coward, why’d you want to sign on with this survey party?”

“Hell, I wanted to give it one last try. I figured maybe those cracks had closed up. Once you get old, you’re not afraid of so many things anymore,” the old man laughed softly.

Waiting until that laughter had faded, the leader said, “I guess I should tell you my story, too.”

-

This was a good thirty years ago, when I was fifteen. As you know, my whole family’s got diving in their blood. According to my great-grandfather, one of my ancestors got a water sprite to teach him how to breathe underwater, but I don’t know about that. In our family, when you turn fifteen, you have to head off on your own and hone your skills at catching fish. My father did it, and so did my brothers, though two of my three brothers never came back.

I went to a cluster of lakes in the western part of the northern Frontier. There are nearly two hundred lakes and swamps there, and various legends hang over them like a miasma. Stories like how every year, on a certain day of a certain month, there’s an enormous mouth that appears in the center of the lake and drinks it dry. Or how if you go out into a particular swamp in a boat on a moonlit night, you can look down into the water and see all the villagers who died there pouring each other drinks. Or the tale about how if the water gets even a little bit polluted, from that day forward, the houses by the shore will get pushed into the lake one by one by a water phantom. They’re all little more than tall tales and silly legends.

The only one I believed came from the swampy region to the southeast—a little lake covering less than four square miles. In spite of its small size, it reached depths of more than three hundred feet, and it was also said to contain the ruins of an ancient shrine. According to local tradition, far beneath the bottom of the lake—down near the earth’s core—ancient gods were imprisoned, but it was said that shifts in the crust had brought them up.

On a clear day, I went out in a boat and peered down into the water. And I saw stuff. There were broken columns and the remains of what looked to be buildings—and a beautiful woman lying in a glass box set in the center of the ruins.

Hell, fish are pretty much the same everywhere. Once you’ve got the knack, you can spear them all day long, whether they’re vicious or not. When it came to honing my own skills, I figured I’d practice taking fish in a special environment. I posted a note on the edge of town saying I’d not only catch the fish in the lake ten at a time, but I’d also bring that sleeping beauty from the glass case up to the surface. I knew they’d be able to use the name and address I’d written on the message to send word back to my family, if necessary. Three days later, with folks from the village watching, I paddled my boat out to where I’d spotted the ruins and the woman and dove into the water. People from the village regarded the temple and the beautiful woman with a mixture of reverence, curiosity, and fear; and since the last of those was the strongest, I’d heard from the village children that up to that point everyone had just left them alone. So I had a hunch things might not go well for me when I went through with my plan.

Around three hundred feet down, the fish attacked. No matter how many times I saw them, they always gave me the creeps. And every time they got near me, I wondered if maybe they weren’t fish at all. From way off I could see the big fifteen-foot suckers closing in on me, all the while gnashing rakelike teeth, and with harder-than-steel scales glittering with light from the surface. You wouldn’t believe how clear the water was. I threw down with eight of them with no more than my knife and spear. Got hurt doing it, too. See how I’m missing the middle finger on my left hand? But once there was blood in the water, those stupid fish couldn’t tell friend from foe. They started gobbling each other up. Zipping between them, I stabbed them through their hearts, which just made them see more blood. Inside of fifteen minutes I’d taken care of all eight of them.

The rest would be easy—or so I thought. Just dive down to six hundred feet, grab the woman in the glass under one arm, and head back to the surface. Not surprisingly, once I was down past six hundred feet, the water pressure had my head ringing, and I started going through my remaining oxygen a lot faster. Not worrying about that, I went over to that glass casket and tried to smash it with my knife, but it didn’t work. See, it was no ordinary glass. Meaning I had no choice but to go with my last resort.

I had plastic explosive in my pants pocket—common enough stuff for taking care of especially large fish or for blowing a hole through ice blocking the surface of the frozen sea. As I packed it little by little along the place where the glass met the stone base, I stared at the woman in adoration. Her gleaming blond hair swayed like waves, and the breast of her white dress was decorated with a purple rose. Her eye shadow and lipstick were the same color. Such a beauty—there couldn’t have been anyone like her on earth. Enchanted by the shape of her shut eyelids, trembling at the dainty lines of her nose, I didn’t even realize that I’d gone through nearly all my air. My breath caught in my throat. I had less than five minutes of air remaining.

Though I was reluctant to leave the sleeper, I swam a good sixty feet away and pressed the detonator. Black smoke and sparks shot through the water, disappearing instantly. It looked like I hadn’t even put a scratch in the glass. I thought that couldn’t be right as I swam back over, putting my hand on the glass to try to open it. It opened from the inside.

The beautiful woman soon lay in the water—and then she suddenly grabbed my left wrist. The loathsome sensation of being crushed in the grip of a thousand snakes rolled all the way down to my balls. In that moment, I knew her for the Noble she was. As I struggled to free myself, the eyes she turned toward me were already open. Even now they haunt me. That hellish gaze invades my dreams. Had I met her eyes a second longer, I’m sure I’d have lost my mind.

I think it must’ve been the work of God that, without thinking, I swung at her with my other hand, still holding the spear. She covered her left eye, and from between what had to be the finest pair of hands on earth a stream of bright blood flowed. The next thing I knew, I was headed for the surface faster than I’d ever gone in my whole life. The woman must’ve given chase, because the thread of blood right beside me twisted and turned as it rose. If I’d looked back, it probably would’ve been the end of me. I felt something cold and hard brush the tips of my toes, and I have no doubt it was her fingers.

Once I’d gone a little higher I lost consciousness, and when I came around again, I found myself in the village hospital. As for the woman—a boater saw her turn around underwater the second I crawled back into my own boat. Apparently the water got cloudy with blood, and he soon lost sight of her.

The day I was discharged, I headed home. It was another three years before I started catching fish again. Even now, my mind sometimes wanders, and I expect a beauty with one bad eye to appear out of the watery blackness. So you probably understand my reason for coming out here. It’s the same as yours, old-timer.

-

Night called once again on the silvery world of fog. Exhausted to the core of their beings, the pair lay down on the metallic ground and closed their eyes, swallowed in an instant by the pitch-black abyss.

On rising, both spotted the blue lights at the same time. They counted ten of them burning blearily in the depths of the fog. They weren’t very large, but that might’ve been due to their distance—in which case, the lights must have been quite powerful.

“What in blazes is that?” the leader said, pulling his spear gun closer.

The old huntsman put a finger to his lips.

“Make like a stone,” he ordered softly, lying down. That meant they were not to move, no matter what happened. People on the Frontier could even stop their breathing.

Fortunately, the lights drew no closer, and after drifting for a while they vanished in the same direction the pair was headed.

“We must be close, eh?”

“Let’s move.”

Although fatigue had pooled like sludge in the marrow of their bones, the pair started off again as if it didn’t bother them. The scenery was so monotonous their psyches were driven toward madness, but they swiftly returned to normal.

In less than ten minutes, the fog cleared, and a bizarre tableau emblazoned itself on the pair’s retinas. They guessed it was about six miles to the spot where countless blue lights flashed. The lights illuminated the outlines of buildings of various shapes. As their minds processed the number and size of those structures, the leader and the huntsman looked at each other.

“It’s like the freaking Capital.”

“No, it’s bigger.”

On hearing this reply from the aged huntsman, the leader turned a frightened expression toward his compatriot and said, “We’re talking about an eight-inch-wide meteorite here. How the hell does that turn into the Capital?”

“Oh, a Noble could manage it,” the old man replied. “And if it were a different kind of Noble, it’d be even easier for ’im. Is that where it fell?”

Checking his map and the observations from the Capital, the leader nodded.

“Let’s go.”

-

Presently the imposing structures towered before the pair. Their most daunting aspect wasn’t the way their height challenged the heavens or the way their mass seemed to surpass that of a mountain chain. It was their shape. The long sides towered into the indigo void and out of sight, forming equilateral triangles; even the short ones seemed to be more than three miles long. But when the men took a step closer and looked up, the walls took on what were most definitely their true shapes—rows of rectangular buildings fifteen hundred feet tall, a thousand feet wide, and more than three thousand feet long. Then they were gone in the blink of an eye. It was more than a magic trick of the slightly drifting mist. It seemed from the strange way the light was being refracted that the area was being distorted four-dimensionally.

Beneath the pair’s feet, great staircases spiraled down into the earth, broad highways disappeared into spaces between buildings that even a single person couldn’t squeeze through, and massive columns that looked to be more than three hundred feet in diameter broke off after fifty or sixty feet. Yet for all this, the pair’s eyes found nothing incongruous about their enormousness.

Balls of blue light drifted around the travelers, a number of them passing within inches of their bodies, and then they disappeared. As they advanced through the titanic metropolis that disregarded three-dimensional dynamics, the men—numbed by so many marvels—finally noticed that something was amiss. Their bodies itched all over. Apparently they’d been scratching at themselves for some time without realizing it, and on glancing down, they found their skin broken open, but despite the fact that the flesh below had been exposed, not a drop of blood ran out.

“What the hell is this?” the leader said, chilled.

“This Capital is overflowing with energy. Our bodies are getting attuned to it. If we press on like this, we might end up turning into something else entirely.”

Staring at the old huntsman intently, the leader asked, “You mean to say if we turn back now, we won’t change into anything?”

“Hell, I don’t know.”

“In that case, let’s keep going.”

A white glow lit the faces of the pair: lightning that had fallen from space. It was then swallowed by something beyond the cluster of enormous buildings, forming a blinding dome of light. There had to be something back there. After all, that was where the tiny star had fallen, where a colossal metropolis had been created, and from where the vast expanse of silvery terrain had spread.

-

II

-

As the pair pressed forward, their bodies underwent changes. Their skin flaked off like thin bits of paper dancing in the breeze, and the flesh that was left exposed became flecked with silver. By the time the two men reached the point of impact, they were no more than living corpses with a scant amount of flesh and innards left clinging to their bones.

Each of the blue lights that had massed there must have been easily fifty yards in diameter. Naturally, the pair couldn’t see beyond the mountainous chain they formed.

“What’s that?” the leader asked, his voice no longer a voice at all.

“I don’t know,” the huntsman responded in the same tone. The two of them were conversing with an unprecedented clarity.

The old man continued, “It’s probably a mass of energy. It’s filled with the life force of all our guys—the ones they killed.”

“With this much collected life force—what in the world do you think they’re trying to do?” The leader’s tone was soft. Shifts in emotion no longer existed for the two men.

“I don’t know. But even if everything in the area got wiped out when that meteorite fell, there couldn’t have been that many living things out here. That energy is not from Earth.”

“Then it—along with the meteorite—came from space?”

“No doubt about it. Either that, or it might’ve been whipped up inside that building.”

The old man’s words made the leader turn around. He was a bare skeleton. Having turned transparent, his bones allowed the other man to see through him to the expanse of silver and the building in the distance. Lightning made a stark connection between the heavens and the earth, but in reverse—from the ground up to the heavens. The pair of skeletons looked up to see the mountainous chain of lights rising into the air. They were soon swallowed by the darkness, disappearing into space devoid of even a single star.

The leader heard the huntsman mutter, “There’s a light.”

A few seconds later, the glow that formed in the blackness had spread its growing light, bleaching the heavens white. The silvery terrain reflected it, causing the pair of skeletons to dissolve into its shine. And then the sky was robbed of its light in an instant. The light converged into a single streak that came down to earth but created no new dome of light. The streak was swallowed up by a small, black depression on the ground. It was the very spot where the meteor had fallen and where all this had begun.

The leader looked up into the sky to his left, the bones in his neck creaking all the while. A red point of light was approaching. A dimensional missile, launched from an unknown location, carved a hole three miles wide in the air five hundred yards above the target point. The silvery terrain and colossal buildings rose up as if they were papier-mâché miniatures about to be devoured by the hole. It seemed someone knew what the meteorite was and intended to get rid of it. In the hands of the Nobility, time-space circuits could be altered to eliminate space and fuse it back together again in ten seconds flat. This was time enough to make the entire northern Frontier disappear.

However, the insane climb stopped abruptly. A heartbeat later, all the rubble that hung in the air rained down upon the earth . . . and then it was sucked up. By that little black depression.

“The hole!” the old huntsman heard the leader scream. He sounded a million miles away. “It’s been turned inside out!”

The dimensional hole that had opened in space had begun to extend a black pathway, stretching into a threadlike tendril that connected it to the depression in the ground. As the pathway was absorbed, the hole was drawn down and pulled narrower until it became a single streak that was swallowed by the earth. How much energy had it taken to tear that hole in space?

Once it was gone, stillness lay over the depression that had swallowed it and the rest of the world. Lightning flashed in the distance. No one could say how much time had passed before a black form rose from the same spot. It was clearly a human head, followed by a neck. His golden hair fell in gentle waves that swayed around his ears and his nape. His shoulders emerged, then his chest. His pectorals were thick and powerful; they had to be part of an impressive physique. Put a sword in either hand, and he could probably hold his own against thousands of soldiers and horses. The boundary between his upper and lower body was held by a tight waist and sculpted abdominal muscles. From the hips down to the thighs he was the pinnacle of savage grace. If he were to kick off the ground, he could soar up to the very heavens; and if he were to step onto the crests of the waves, he’d undoubtedly be able to race across the sea itself. Such spirit, such bearing, such grace—he’d make anyone want to arm him with sword and spear and bow, give him a million troops, and send him off to war.

His eyelids gradually opened. His eyes were crimson. They seemed to cry, Give me power! Do so, and I’ll create mountains of corpses and rivers of blood as I exterminate every living creature on this world!

The man howled. The heavens and earth rumbled. Lightning struck down at him. The wind groaned. Not even bothering to brush the golden locks out of his eyes, the man cried out a phrase. Repeating it time and again, he swung his right hand around. It was like a gesture someone might make while delivering a speech.

Perhaps the longsword that suddenly appeared in his fist was the reward for those gestures. A straight blade over three feet long and eight inches wide, it had the luster of black steel.

“This is the enchanted sword Glencalibur. Nothing can withstand its edge. Sacred Ancestor, I have returned after five millennia. And from this moment forward, Nobles and humans alike will fear the night. I swear it on the name of the Ultimate Noble driven off to the stars along with my entire domain by none other than the Sacred Ancestor—as sure as my name is Lawrence Valcua, third master of the house of Valcua.”

The world melted into white—it was a massive bolt of lightning. In its stark luster, the naked man raised the enchanted sword Glencalibur high and smiled most impressively.

“First I have some respects to pay to the humans and Nobles who helped the Sacred Ancestor banish me to space. And now I’m off!”

The last thing he said was lost to the thunder. Lightning flashed incessantly, and both the words and the form of the “Ultimate Noble,” Lawrence Valcua, melded starkly with the white light that seemed to last an eternity.

A pitch-black vehicle raced across the plains, leaving grass and whitish steam swirling in its wake. With eight great wheels—four on each side—the massive frame of the fifty-foot-long and fifteen-foot-high horseless carriage was driven by the huffing of its steam turbine. Black curtains were now drawn across its windows all day—or while there was daylight, which spoke most eloquently about the nature of its occupant. Even without seeing the golden crest flanked on either side by proud lions with fangs bared, it was clear that this car belonged to Count Braujou.

After nine or ten days on the move since he’d left his castle in the southern Frontier, he was now in an agricultural region near the center of the western Frontier. What was it that he searched for day and night without respite? This same question concerned the mounted figure that looked down from the crest of a hill at the speeding black vehicle and its trail of white smoke. It was D.

“My, but we’re in a hurry. You’d think his kid was under the gun,” a hoarse voice said with amusement from the left hand D had wrapped around the reins.

“Where’s he going?” D asked. It must have been a painful ordeal for him, a dhampir, to be out in the sunlight, but there wasn’t a hint of anguish to his handsome features as they glowed like a corona around the moon.

“If you mean what towns lie up ahead, there’s Shilgoddum, Warhalla, Somui—nothing special about any of them. All characterless hick villages. However,” the hoarse voice said, pausing for a breath, “there’s something that concerns me more than that. Why’d you stay your blade? You always slay your opponents. I can’t imagine why you’ve turned your back on that principle this time. You’re not the kind of softy he could dissuade with a tender little tale. You know, the way that pissant from the Capital stopped his bellyaching and froze with one sharp look from you must have been the funniest thing I’ve ever seen. Oof!”

D had given a sudden kick to his steed’s abdomen. The cyborg horse, which had been equally tireless in its pursuit of the vehicle, once again galloped up the hill with terrific force.

About ten minutes later, the unmistakable roar of flowing water up ahead could be heard.

“Wow! I’ll be damned. I knew the damage caused by that meteorite extended all the way here, but not that it’d made a whole new river.”

Rather than a river, it would’ve been closer to the truth to describe it as an expanse of madly churning water. From what they could see at the top of the hill, it had to be at least six hundred feet wide at the narrowest point. And there was no sign of a bridge.

“Well, looks like we’ll have to detour until we can find a shallow spot or a bridge. It’s not like Braujou’s ride could—what in the world?”

Not slowing in the least, the long black vehicle had gone to the water’s edge and then plunged into the torrent without ever stopping.

“Damn! You mean to tell me that thing’s got a submarine mode?” the hoarse voice exclaimed in disbelief.

Gazing calmly at the violent flow, the gorgeous young man in black soon saw the vehicle burst from the water near the opposite bank, flames licking from its rocket boosters as it hit the shore and raced inland. He wheeled his horse around, saying, “There’s a place to cross to the west.”

Though the crossing was too far away to be discerned with the naked eye, the young man saw it with no trouble.

“Well, if you knew where the landing was, why didn’t you say so sooner? Or better yet, why didn’t you go there? You’re just letting him get more of a lead on you!”

Completely ignoring the din from his left hand, D galloped down the hill and into a dark forest of colossal trees. Racing over and around the snaking roots as if he were on flat ground, he reached the ferry landing in about ten minutes. Count Braujou’s vehicle had been traveling across the plains to avoid meeting travelers, but the highway ran straight to a hastily improvised crossing point. The road had already been there; it was the passage that had been fashioned on short notice.

In front of the dangerous and disturbing bridge—which was just a collection of ropes strung across the river—seven or eight travelers had gathered. Oddly enough, all of them had their backs to the bridge and the violent torrent as they stared at a massive blue oak that towered by the side of the road. Each and every one of them looked appalled. D rode to a spot where he could see what they were looking at before halting his steed.

“What’s this?” the hoarse voice said, conveying a surprise that was all too real.

Pinned against the trunk of the blue oak and drawing the eyes of curious travelers was a partially decayed corpse, its head hung low as if dejected by the way it had been left on exhibit. The corpse was no stranger to D.

“General Gaskell,” the hoarse voice said in a strangely soft tone.

One had to wonder who could’ve done such a thing to the only Noble who’d crossed swords with D and still managed to flee upon defeat—a fiend beyond compare.

A sort of white thread wound about the body and the tree trunk, and around the heart of the deceased the clothing had been stained with black blood, dried in a bizarre pattern. However, any human who knew about the vital points of the Nobility would’ve cocked her head and wondered if that was really the cause of death. The brutally crushed head’s right eye dangled over the chest by its optic nerve, the lips and nose had been turned inside out, and every last tooth was missing. A dry substance that appeared to be brains spilled from the ears, and the ends of broken ribs jutted out in all directions through the chest and sides. The whole body gave the impression of having been compacted; and on closer inspection, it became clear this was because after being torn out, the shattered limbs had been forced back into place and secured there. Gaskell hadn’t merely been killed. He’d been butchered in the most brutal manner imaginable.

“The great, indestructible general . . . It must’ve taken an army to do this. Hell, even thousands of average warriors or lesser Nobility couldn’t have destroyed someone like him . . . What kind of freak, with what kind of power, could do this?”

“He was dropped,” D stated plainly.

“Dropped?” the hoarse voice inquired, its brow surely wrinkled. “You mean to tell me someone dropped this immortal Noble from above, and then finished him off while he was still reeling? He could’ve been dropped three thousand feet and he still would’ve completely recovered from the impact in two seconds.”

“How about from thirty thousand feet?”

“What?”

“How about one hundred sixty thousand feet?”

“First thirty thousand, now one hundred sixty thousand—damn, you don’t mean to tell me he got dropped from the stratosphere? Now I get it. Even the great General Gaskell would be ripped limb from limb by that, and it’d probably take him days to recover. But who could do something like that? From the look of him, he’s been dead a good two days. What happened two days ago?”

By this point the curious people had apparently wearied of the thing that, upon closer inspection, was revealed to be just a corpse, and they’d all turned around. Those who were relatively unencumbered had started across the rope bridge.

D walked over to the tattered corpse. Naturally, the callous young man wasn’t moved to bury him. However, as the lone figure gazed quietly up at his former enemy, his expression revealed more than just remorse for the deceased. After gazing at him for several seconds, he did something strange. He called out, “Gaskell.”

It wasn’t an emotional outpouring. He was just speaking to him.

And the corpse answered, “Is that you, D?”

-

III

-

A lone traveler had come back to look for something he’d dropped, but when he saw the two of them he must’ve known dangerous business was afoot, because he forgot all about what he was looking for and hurried back toward the bridge.

“Who did this to you?” D inquired in a disinterested manner of the man who’d died two days earlier. The great general was indeed dead—he’d been destroyed. If not, he’d never have remained there in such horrible shape. Despite that fact, his parched and split lips moved.

“S-S-Speeny . . .”

“Just who’s that?” the hoarse voice inquired.

“D . . . you must go . . . to the home of the Dyalhis family . . . Valcua . . . will come after them . . .”

“Dyalhis? Who the heck are they?”

“On the northern edge . . . of the village of Somui . . . Help them . . . though it probably won’t do any good . . . He has seven servants . . . and it only took one of them . . . to destroy me.”

“So, what’s your connection to these Dyalhis folks anyway? Hey!” the hoarse voice said, as his question was drowned out by D’s voice.

“Do you know Count Braujou?”

The crushed head seemed to nod.

“When Valcua was driven into space . . . five thousand years ago . . . on the Sacred Ancestor’s orders . . . it was by him . . . and me . . . and Duchess Miranda . . . And at that time . . . we had help . . . from a certain human . . . Valcua made a declaration . . . Said he’d come back . . . and take vengeance . . . on us all . . . And we believed him . . . So we took an oath . . . When Valcua came back to Earth . . . we swore we’d protect Dyalhis’s descendants . . . On learning that Valcua had returned . . . I headed as fast as I could . . . to where Dyalhis’s descendants were . . . And look what became of me . . . D . . . Go . . . Go to them . . .”

General Gaskell may have intended to ask him to protect the descendants or to destroy Valcua, but he spoke no more, and something no eye could detect fled his body.

“Holy!” a voice called out in the distance. It belonged to one of the travelers from earlier, who’d been watching the whole affair with trepidation. Not only had he been terrified by the sight of a talking corpse, but on seeing the head and limbs suddenly drop off and the body vanish into the air like some kind of mist or haze, the traveler had collapsed on the spot.

“So, he survived for two days after his death?” the hoarse voice muttered. It sounded impressed. “Looks like he was pretty worried about Dyalhis’s descendants. I’m warning you here and now: don’t get any funny ideas, D.”

D turned his gaze to the flowing water. “Count Braujou will also be there.”

“Hmm,” the hoarse voice said, and then it sighed with woe. “Once the sun goes down, that Speeny character will be on the move, too. Let’s go.”

The black horse and rider broke into a gallop that left the wind swirling in their wake. Easily bounding over the heads of travelers who turned to look when they heard the echoing hoofbeats, they landed spectacularly at one end of the rope that swayed in the slight breeze. Considering that the bridge was nothing more than five ropes zigzagging back and forth with eight-inch gaps between them, this was a display of ungodly equestrian skill. A number of people who were just finishing the crossing lost their footing, barely managing to catch hold of the rope handrails and cursing D as a damned fool. But the young man in black rode across the precarious bridge at full speed, the hem of his coat fluttering in the wind.

Crossing half the six hundred feet in the blink of an eye, he heard a woman’s voice ring in his ears.

“You who spoke with Gaskell—who spoke with a corpse—I would have your name.”

D galloped on as if he hadn’t heard the youthful voice, so like the peals of a golden bell.

“The only people who can converse with corpses are Nobles. But that’s not what you are. You’re neither Noble nor human. That means you have no place in this world. You should die here and now!”

The bridge dipped down. In a heartbeat, D was in the water. Churning its legs desperately, his horse was swept along by the mighty torrent. The only thing that allowed D to remain on its back was his skillful mastery of the reins, which kept his mount pointed in the right direction. For every ten feet they were pulled, they moved three feet closer to the opposite shore.

The cyborg horse tilted backward. Looking behind him, D caught sight of a pair of pale hands stretching from the muddy water. The right one was holding his horse by the tail, while the left reached for its haunches. In the blink of an eye, it ripped the tail free. The hide over the mount’s haunches peeled off, some meat still attached to it. Metal-alloy bones were laid bare, and torn cables made contact with the muddy water, sending sparks shooting out. A hand slipped into the opening. When it grabbed hold of the colored wires that acted as the animal’s nerves, D’s blade flashed into action. He struck at the hand, but it felt like slicing through water. Without a single mark on it, the woman’s hand tore out the wires. Sparks flew more colorfully and violently than ever. The cyborg horse shuddered.

The white hands sank smoothly back into the water. At precisely the same moment, a pale woman stood up about fifteen feet ahead of the Hunter. With golden hair that hung down to her waist and a tight white dress that suited her elegant beauty, the woman stood atop the madly flowing water. All but the head of the cyborg horse had already vanished beneath the surface as the beast was pushed along with D still on its back. The woman on top of the water followed D at the same speed. Her left eye was covered.

“You’re not frightened, are you?” the woman said, her voice quivering with malice and surprise. “Those who live outside the water fear it. I should like to hold a great man like you tight against my bosom, but it would seem you pose a serious impediment to our aims. Though I don’t believe you are one of the other two Nobles whom Gaskell was left to await, I shall take it upon myself to dispose of you. Your handsome face and fine form shall sink into the muddy water. And as soon as my work is done, I shall find you and seal you away for all time in a crystal-clear lake.”

“We’ll see about that,” a hoarse voice snickered, but it was unclear whether or not the water witch noticed.

“Your name—I should like to have it. I am known as Lucienne.”

“D.”

The pale beauty’s one good eye snapped open wide. “You’re D? But of course. I knew you must be from the very moment I saw you. Ah, and yet I still couldn’t understand. You were far more beautiful than I’d imagined. I’ve heard about you hundreds, if not thousands, of times. Heard about the dhampir of a beauty rarely seen in this world, with a strength that makes both gods and demons grow pale.”

The water witch—Lucienne—quivered with rapture.

“This is a pleasure, D. I’m so glad to meet you—so glad to kill you. I’ll fill those exquisite lungs and stomach of yours with mud and let you rest forever beneath the water.”

Her body sank seductively into the depths. With her lovely face alone breaking the surface, the woman twisted her lips into a wanton grin and glided straight toward D.

How would D respond? The uselessness of his blade had already been made clear.

When the distance between the two had closed to just six feet, Lucienne leaped up. As she broke the surface, the hem of her dress melded with the water, drawing a long ocher trail behind her. Her face glowed with the surpassing bliss of one seeking their love’s embrace, but then there was another flash of light, and her expression warped into one of intense pain. A silvery gleam passed through her from the top of her head down, and her body split lengthwise. Loosing a scream that defied description, Lucienne broke apart in midair, forming innumerable droplets that rained back down on the muddy torrent.

As D allowed himself to be pushed along by the water that was now up to his chest, the left hand he had wrapped around the reins snickered with amusement. “She underestimated you. Lousy little water monster.”

“I cut her, but she got away.”

The laughter stopped.

“Oh. Then we’d better come up with another way to deal with her.”

“I’ve got to cross this river first.”

“Of course. If you don’t hurry up, there’s a good chance you’ll miss out on the reward money for ol’ Braujou. Heck, it’s probably already too late.”

D squeezed the reins. Half-dead, his horse gave a single whinny, and then began feebly paddling through the water once more with all its remaining strength.-

THOSE WHO DWELL IN THE DEMON’S SPHERE