The Desert Spear

and it did not let go its grip. The Painted Man had exhaled sharply with the blow, and now found he could not draw a new breath.
    With the last bit of air in his lungs, the Painted Man emitted a shrill whistle, and Twilight Dancer tossed his mighty head, yanking the lead away from Renna and charging in, horns lowered. They tore through the demon’s shoulder in a blast of ichor and magic, and it shrieked in agony, finally relaxing its grip. The Painted Man rolled away, gasping for breath.
    The coreling melted away from Twilight Dancer’s horns and grew again, its armor shifting and changing color as it became a rock demon. It swiped a backhand blow at the stallion, never taking its eyes off the Painted Man.
    Even without its barding and saddlebags, Twilight Dancer weighed nearly a ton, but the powerful demon still sent the horse flying. He struck a tall tree, and the Painted Man could not tell if the resulting crack was the tree’s trunk or his horse’s spine.
    “Dancer!” the Painted Man screamed, tearing the robe from his body and launching himself at the demon. Renna ran to see to the horse.
    The Painted Man’s blows rocked the coreling back, and it gave ground freely under the assault, but the wound Twilight Dancer’s horns inflicted was already healed, and the Painted Man’s punches and kicks seemed to have no lasting effect. Its flesh pulsed around the scorched impact points, healing them instantly.
    He knocked the demon down on one arm, but it dug its great talons into the ground, throwing an enormous clump of dirt and wet leaves at him. The Painted Man had no chance to dodge, and was struck full-on. He recovered his feet quickly, brushing the filth from him, but he knew his wards were weakened where it clung to him, if they still worked at all.
    But he was no more injured than the coreling, and there was no way he was going to let this powerful demon get away. They circled again, baring their teeth and growling. One of the demon’s arms became half a dozen tentacles, each ten feet long and ending in a sharp horn.
    “Night, what part of the Core did
you
come from?” the Painted Man asked. The mimic gave no answer, lashing out with the new limbs.
    The Painted Man dodged to the side, rolling and coming up at a run to get inside the demon’s reach. There was a gap in the armor plates at its armpit, and he drove his stiffened fingers, painted with piercing wards, into the crevice, trying to reach some vital part that might cause lasting damage.
    The coreling screamed and twisted, and its flesh dissolved around his hand. It was only then, when he was in contact with the demon as it changed, that he realized what it was doing. It was dematerializing and reforming, the same way he did, or any coreling for that matter. This demon could simply reform in different ways. A thousand possibilities opened to the Painted Man at the realization, too many to even consider. He brushed the epiphany aside like an irritating fly and focused on his adversary, striking again.
    In the split second when the demon was in transition, the Painted Man dematerialized as well, intermingling with it slightly to keep it from solidifying. The demon still felt solid to him, but Renna’s scream sounded as if she were a mile away. He knew how it must seem to her, both of them fading away, ghostlike, but there was nothing for it.
    He ’d fought another demon this way once before, and knew that in this state strength and wards were meaningless. It was
will
that was power here, and the Painted Man knew his will was greater than any demon’s.
    He locked on to the mimic demon’s very molecules, keeping them scattered and immaterial, shepherded by his will. He sensed the creature ’s sudden fear, and returned it with his anger and rage, dominating its will the way a parent would a disobedient toddler.
    But just as he felt the mimic’s will breaking, another will touched him, this one a thousand times stronger.

    The coreling prince clung to a high treetop above the battle, but its mind rode behind the eyes of the mimic, giving its servant commands through the battle.
    Against any other foe, the kill would have been swift, for the mind demon could simply have read its opponent’s thoughts, countering attacks before they were even made. But the thoughts of the human mind were warded, so the demon was blind to his plans. The mimic would still have prevailed, but then the human did something even the mind demon could never have