Spear Mother: A Tale of the Fourth World by Brandon M. Lindsay

  * * *

  As soon as Sandrena felt the mists kiss her face, she released herself into them.

  Using the power the Lady had spoken of, Motherspear had brought her home, to the lands of her clan, the Mist Clan. Here, unlike anywhere else in any world, the mists granted her strength.

  Here, she had power.

  She could finish the task given to her by the Lady. She could put an end to this god of Aberrations.

  He would die this day.

  She rushed along, quick as the wind, her misty form curling around the stones and plants and creatures that inhabited her land. Each familiar touch imbued her with additional strength, additional purpose. She would not be turned aside.

  For the first time ever, Sandrena felt like she could achieve something.

  She could sense her soulbound sword, aching to materialize when she did, aching, as she did, to inflict woe upon her enemy.

  Through the mists that ran through her and all around her, she felt the earth shudder.

  He was coming closer.

  Good.

  Then she sensed him, looming like a shadow in her vision as he ever did. But this time she was not afraid. Even her anger had vanished.

  Now she was eager to meet him.

  Like a bolt of lightning, she shot towards him.

  Arm materialized, and then sword, for the first quick slash of his dark flesh.

  Perhaps it felt like a feather falling on a mountain. But with enough feathers, one could start an avalanche.

  She slashed endlessly, relentlessly, arm and sword materializing and dispersing into mist as quickly as thought. The god's flesh was as hard as a tortoise shell, and thicker than Sandrena could fathom, but each strike got her a little closer to piercing.

  The god, furious now, raised his massive foot and brought it smashing down.

  Sandrena briefly materialized her throat and lungs so that she could laugh at him. Then she renewed her assault.

  The god was learning what the armies of the other clans had learned in millennia past: march into the mists, prepare to die.

  A cut of her soulbound sword finally found the god's inner flesh beyond its hardened shell. The god christened the ground with his black blood.

  Sandrena sensed them then, what felt like shadows, racing through the mists.

  But they weren't the shadows that haunted her in memories.

  They were her people, come to help.

  Every Mistclansman for two hundred miles would have sensed the god's presence rippling through the mists.

  No longer was it her sword alone, but a dozen swords, then a hundred, grinding into hardened flesh, slowly devouring the god from the bottom up like a pool of acid.

  And the god was helpless to do anything about it.

  He toppled to a knee, crushing an acre of trees clinging to the bottom of a mountain's slope, the chains extending from his back flailing about him futilely. Once a hole had been made, the mists began to creep into him, bringing along with them the swords of Sandrena's people, burrowing into his insides like insects. He would be destroyed from within.

  Then two yellow lights like suns appeared above, staring at the world with malice and hate.

  A scream of dissonance blasted the mists away from him, carrying Sandrena and everyone with them.

  She hadn't been prepared for that. She had thought her vengeance was assured, that the god was finally defenseless, as she so often had been. But his shrieking kept the mist away, and with it, any danger to himself.

  Sandrena allowed herself to materialize, naked, as her clothes had been left behind by the ancient keep. She stared at the god.

  Closing her eyes, she began to sing their song once more. As she had discovered it was meant to be sung.

  The dissonance faltered and died. With the advent of her and Laura's song, the mists began to slowly drift back towards the vulnerable god.

  But Sandrena could see that they would be unnecessary. The god's flesh was cracking, black blood glistening along the splits. Whatever gave his body form was slowly folding.

  Then came the avalanche.

  The god collapsed into a massive pile of carapace and viscera, tumbling down the mountainside, wiping out trails and trees as if they were spiderwebs, to lie in a gory heap at the mountain's bottom.

  The god was dead. What remained was inert. Defeated.

  Gone.

  Sandrena fell to her knees, smiling.

  Two misty forms congealed into flesh. "Sandrena," said one.

  "Hello, Father." She glanced at that one, then the other. "Mother."

  "Are you finally back? Are you finally home?"

  Sandrena rose unsteadily to her feet. "Go on ahead. I will be soon."

  She dispersed into mist once more.