The Desert Spear

mouth as if to scream, but no sound came out. Instead, its cranium pulsed, and the resulting thrum struck the Painted Man like a harsh wind, knocking him back.
    Renna seemed not to notice the effect, but all through the trees and seemingly for miles around, demons shrieked in agony. A wind demon dropped from the sky, crashing through the branches of a tree to hit the leaf bed, dead. The wood demons that had attacked him likewise collapsed, killed by the demon’s psychic scream.
    And in that instant, the mind demon fled.

    The coreling prince had never known fear. Never known pain. It was above such things, tasting them only vicariously through the minds of its drones or its prey—delicacies to be savored.
    But there was nothing vicarious about the death of its mimic or the blade in its chest. The choking cord around its throat and the blows that scattered its attempts to assert its power. It screamed, and felt the minds of drones all around burn out from the pain.
    The one was distracted for an instant, and the coreling prince took the chance, dematerializing and fleeing for the Core. There it would bond a new mimic and grow strong for the next cycle, when it would return with a host of drones the likes of which the surface had not seen in millennia.

    Renna shrieked, and the Painted Man whirled back to see the mind demon melt away from her grasp, breaking into mist that fled down a nearby path to the Core.
    Instinctively, he followed.
    “Arlen, no!” Renna screamed, but it was a distant thing.
    The path to the Core was like following a brook upstream in the dark. He could feel the path, but sight had no meaning on the path to the Core. He simply felt the flow of magic stemming from the center of the world and followed back against the current. The Painted Man kept his will focused on the evil taint of the coreling prince ahead of him, and it seemed they raced for miles before he drew close enough to grab at the demon.
    He had no hands with which to grab, but he willed his essence to latch on to the demon, and like two men blowing smoke into the same cloud, they mingled and their wills clashed.
    The Painted Man had expected the demon’s will to have weakened, but it was no less potent now, and they clawed through each other’s minds, jabbing fingers into any delicate crevice they could find. The coreling prince laid bare all his life’s failures, mocking him with the fate he had abandoned Renna to, or brought upon the Rizonans. Teasing him with images of Jardir forcing himself upon poor innocent Leesha.
    It was almost too much, but in his pain he lashed out, cracking through the mind demon’s own defenses. He saw in that moment a glimpse of the Core, a place of eternal darkness, but lit with magic’s glow more brightly than the desert wastes.
    Instantly the demon’s will retreated, ceasing its attack to protect its own thoughts. The Painted Man sensed the advantage and pressed his assault. The coreling prince shrieked in his mind as he learned of the Hive.
    The Painted Man might have won then, if not for the horror of the sight. The corelings that came to the surface to hunt were but the barest fraction of what the Core could spew forth. Millions of demons. Billions. For the first time since he had found the wards of old, he despaired that they could ever be defeated.
    The mind demon’s will roared over him, and their struggle fell to a more basic level, the simple will to survive. But here the Painted Man held the advantage, for he had no fear of death, and did not look over his shoulder as it approached them both.
    The demon did, and in that instant its will broke, and the Painted Man absorbed its magic into his own essence, leaving a burnt remain he threw from the path to the Core to scatter away forever.
    Alone on the path, the Painted Man could finally hear the true call of the Core, and it was beautiful. There was power there. Power not evil in itself. Like fire, it was beyond good or evil. It was simply power, and it beckoned him like a teat to a hungry infant. He reached for it, ready to taste.
    But then another call reached him.
    “Arlen!” The voice was a distant echo that reverberated down the path.
    “Arlen Bales, you come back to me!”
    Arlen Bales. A name he hadn’t used in years. Arlen Bales had died out on the Krasian Desert. The voice was calling a ghost. He turned back to the Core, ready to embrace it.
    “Don’t you leave me again, Arlen Bales!”
    Renna. He ’d left her in dire