Chapter 41: The link

Ash... The battlefield was a mass of destruction, the ground ploughed by the intensity of the clashes that had ravaged the area.

In the gaping crater he had created with the sheer force of his attack, a demon lay, its body twisted by the impact. A massive creature, covered in a broken obsidian carapace, its torso caved in, its fangs clenched in a grimace of pain and rage. He struggled to breathe, his crushed lungs searching in vain for a breath of air that would never come.

A dull growl rose from the back of his throat, a mixture of anger and incomprehension.

His brother...

His brother was dead.

Not all of him. Not yet. He could feel it. But something was eating away at their bond, devouring it, and the tenuous thread that held them together was unravelling inexorably.

Despite the pain, the demon looked up.

And he saw it.

A golden shadow slowly descending into the crater.

It was no longer Foster.

It was something else.