The townsfolk had all been knocked over by the shockwave, but they did not leap up and join the fight. Instead, they got slowly to their feet, looking unsure of themselves, and leaving their weapons where they lay on the ground.

Saul saw Brand standing not far off, his hand raised to hold the raptors and the Stone-Earth troll back from the attack, and an expression of excitement and expectation on his face.

Then Saul felt a sense of heat on the skin of his cheeks. He looked up in surprise and saw the sun shining down through the trees. He felt hopeful and suddenly light. The woods, which had, a moment before, been as gloomy as everything else in Jillin and its environs, became suddenly bright and pleasant.

The townsfolk all spoke at once.

“Brand!” Saul called. “See to the wellbeing of the townsfolk. They will be confused and will not know what has happened. Look after them!”

Brand nodded and waved to show that he had heard. Saul’s view of him was cut off by the rising townsfolk, who were crowding forward to speak to Brand as the young man talked to them, reassuring them that everything was all right.

Saul turned to Zorea, who was standing over the prone figure of Graxel with her blade drawn.

“Is he dead?” Saul asked.

She prodded the figure with her foot, then knelt down and placed a finger at his throat. “There’s a pulse,” she said. “He’s still alive.”

“Get back!” Saul shouted, as he saw the mage’s hand twitch and remembered in that moment his own ruse all those years ago, when he’d played dead to get the warlock Tyren near enough to kill him.

The hand twitched out to grab Zorea, but with Saul’s warning, she scooted backward out of reach, then brought her sword down in a great arc to take the hand off at the wrist.

Instead of screaming in pain, Graxel rolled over. Swift as a serpent, he flipped over and moved back, out of the way.

Saul glanced over his shoulder and saw the frightened townsfolk backing away toward the pool. Brand appeared in their midst, then moved up to Saul’s side.

“You lot stay back!” Saul called to the townsfolk. The raptors appeared next to Brand. “Guard them,” Brand said to the raptors. “Make sure no harm comes to them.”

The raptors bowed their heads and darted off. Two moved to each corner of the frightened group nearest Saul and his companions, and took up a guard posture there, while the third proceeded to roam about, patrolling the area.

Graxel charged in an uncanny jerky motion that reminded Saul of a puppet on strings, operated by a puppeteer of none too great skill.

The mage’s back arched, and he flipped back and over on his front again, then up onto his feet as if pulled upward by a jerking rope. A stream of unintelligible words in a strange language ran from his lips as he ran.

Long, thin, many-jointed limbs punched out from the sides of Graxel’s body, each one ending in a three-fingered hand with black nails. Eight of these hideous limbs burst out of the sides of the carcass of Graxel. His head and arms lolled loosed now, as a new head burst up out of the neck. The face of a woman, hideously deformed, with two huge pincers coming out of the place where her mouth should have been.

“What the hell is it?” Brand shouted, the fear in his voice evident, though his face was still determined.

“It’s some kind of spider monster,” Saul said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Jorogumo,” Zorea said quietly. She had moved up beside Saul and spoke softly near him. “Poor Graxel. He has been used by a monster. The Jorogumo is a demon of the ancient world, as old as my Soulstone sword.”

“Never mind all that,” Brand said, as the horror finished its transformation by shaking off the remains of Graxel’s carcass. “How do we kill it?”

“The same way it will try to kill us,” Zorea said. “With fire. Look out!”

The Jorogumo was at last revealed in its complete, hideous form. Thick spines of dark hair, sharp as knives and a footlong at a minimum burst from the skin of the long legs, and a mop of dank, black hair hung from the hideous, half-human head mounted on the narrow shoulders.

The eyes of the creature flashed with alien intelligence. This was not an animal, this was no forest monster or dungeon ghoul. This was a cunning, fast, terrible monster.

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And it had fire magic.

The creature’s long, thin, spider body pulsed behind the monster as it surveyed the scene before it, then with a horribly fast movement it leaped back and opened its mouth wide. There was a hissing noise, and Saul braced for a blast of flame, but instead the creature spasmed as if vomiting and pointed its mouth toward the ground.

A black stream of smoke and flame came out of the monster’s mouth, thickening on the ground and rapidly turning into a group of smaller spiders.

They were smaller than the Jorogumo, but much bigger than any spider had any right to be. And though they were much more like actual spiders, they still had some unsettlingly human features. Their faces were hideous, and above their spider features they had very human eyes, and each had a thick head of long, lank, human hair.

“I hate spiders,” Brand said. Without any fear, he dashed forward and fired his Firebrand spell at the nearest small spider as the monsters swarmed toward him and his friends.

Saul followed up with a Fireball spell, while Zorea held back, looking for an opportunity to duck in close and use her blade.

The Jorogumo scuttled round to the left, sending a blast of fire straight toward Saul. He dove to one side.

On the ground, half trampled in the mud by the Jorogumo, lay the Graxel’s beautiful sword. It glowed still with magic light, and Saul had no doubt that the magic in the blade had nothing to do with Graxel and the Jorogumo. That was a magic blade with its own power, and Saul wanted to get a hold of it.

The only thing stopping him was the enormous fire-spitting spider-woman. Thankfully, the Jorogumo did not seem to be paying any attention to the blade. If Saul could just create a distraction…

Experimentally, he fired a bolt from the Catapult spell. This was the School of Stone, and it fired a big chunk of rock that manifested out of thin air. Saul moved his arm as if tossing a pebble, but instead a massive rock appeared, nearly six feet across, and arched through the air toward the monster.

She turned her head toward Saul, and to his horror as the rock was just about to hit her, it shattered into a million pieces.

The creature’s horrible mouth twisted in an obscene parody of a smile. It hissed at Saul, and he flung himself to his left, back toward Brand and Zorea as the monster fired jet of flame from its mouth.

“Time for a different tactic,” he panted to his friends.

He grunted in pain as he rose to his feet. Brand was tackling the small spiders, who were swarming him and dying one by one to his Firebrand spell. Zorea glanced at Saul and fired her Healing Flame spell at him. Instantly, he felt better.

“We need to focus on fire spells,” he said. “I wish I had a summonable fire monster, but I’ll do the next best thing.”

The next best thing was definitely a Rock Troll with the School of Fire combination. The troll Saul had summoned earlier was still active, hanging back nearer the frightened humans near the pool, where it watched the fight with bated breath.

The new rock troll flickered with flame. Instead of gray stone, the creature was made of molten magma. Drops of flickering, burning slag dripped from the troll as it stomped forward toward the Jorogumo.

The spider-demon shrieked and blasted flames at the fire troll. The flames rolled off the creature, heating the stone red. The troll had to stop and swayed with the impact, but it took no lasting damage.

With a hiss, the Jorogumo backed off a few steps, unsure.

The troll pushed forward. Saul took his chance. With a lighting dash, he leaped forward and grabbed the handle of Graxel’s sword.

Everything slowed down…

The grip of the sword felt right in Saul’s hand, perfectly fitted in the way that even the Gladesword, created by his magic solely for him, did not. How could that be?

He glanced around. It was as if he had activated his Windspeed, though he had not.

All seemed quiet, as if he were suspended in that moment, hanging there with the world waiting for him.

Then the sword melded with him. The power contained within the blade rushed through his hand and up his arm, a questioning power that was entirely unlike anything he had ever experienced before in his life.

The power entered him, it met him, it regarded him with a keen, thoughtful intelligence.

And it liked what it found. He felt that the sword accepted him.

Then the spell broke, and the world around him sped up.

Sounds rolled back into his ears, the hissing, spitting anger of the Jorogumo, the frightened cries of the confused townsfolk, and the skittering and screeching of the spiders as they attacked Brand and Zorea. The lava troll lumbered forward, hands outstretched, forcing the Jorogumo back step by step.

Saul raised his eyes to the spider-demon and smiled.

It hissed fury at him, but it did not dare approach. It darted to the side, out of the way of the lava troll, then lifted its face and opened its jaws wide.

This time, when the jet of flame came from the monster’s ravening jaws, Saul did not flinch or leap out of the way. He held his new sword out and felt a spell within the metal responding to his will.

This was Old World magic, a magic he’d never experienced before, and had never thought he would experience in his life.

This was magic that did not rely on System or channelers—it was magic that responded to his will alone, to the internal power that was part of him.

The spell was a simple one. It was called Lightning Ward, and it did what it said in the name. As the fire from the Jorogomu’s mouth hit the blade, a powerful shield of crackling blue and purple lightning exploded out from the sword, warding off the fire and dispersing it.

A moment later, the creature stopped the attack.

It knew exactly what the sword did. It backed off, a distinctly uncertain look in its glittering, blank black eyes.

Saul felt his battlelust building, but he restrained himself. He did not want to get too close to the monster, even with this new weapon. It had eight legs and he did not want to think what would happen if he got within reach of that mouth.

Instead, he launched a Fireball as the monster. At the same time, the lava troll charged in. Brand fired his Firebrand jet at the creature at the same time.

The combined spells crashed into Jorogumo’s head and body. The lava troll grabbed one of the legs.

This enraged the demon, and it screamed and spun around, whacking the troll with two of its long legs. Though their spells had done some damage, they would need to be used again and again to grind down this creature.

But Saul had other ideas.

It was time for something a bit more special.