Months ago, when Ana had first been talking to Kaira, Tor, and Omda about Delving, before Ana was even entirely sure that she wanted to give it a try, she’d asked if demons could possess a living person the way they could with animals. Omda’s answer had quite possibly been the longest string of words she’d ever heard out of the laconic man, before or since. “If you think someone’s been possessed,” he’d said. “You run, and you pray. And you tell the captains, so they can decide if we need to evacuate the Splinter.”

  It took a massively powerful spirit to supplant a person’s soul in their living body. A spirit so powerful that a low-ambient Splinter like theirs should be of no interest to it. And when a living person was possessed, the spirit gained the use of all their System features. Abilities, Attributes, Skills, Enhancements, and Perks. Everything. Horrifyingly, this led many, Touanne and Mistress Drisa included, to believe that the person’s soul remained in their body, enthralled to the possessing spirit. System features were thought to be imprinted on the soul, after all.

  The result was a demon powerful enough that its very presence might force the Splinter’s inhabitants to abandon their home, despite everything they’d suffered, invested, and sacrificed.

  When Ana Inspected the possessed man running toward them at beyond breakneck speed, his Threat Level was Apocalyptic. That meant that the monster bearing down on them, which had once been a friendly young man who’d been quick to laugh and reliable in the line of battle, was equivalent to a Level 40 combat Classer at minimum. Based on what she’d been told, Ana suspected that it only wasn’t higher because that was as high as the scale went.

  All this passed through Ana’s mind in the time it took Rayni to scream “RUN!” And as she saw the massively powerful demon coming, the fluid speed of it, she knew two things.

  One: they had to get out of there.

  “Run! Everyone, run!” Ana commanded, putting every shred of authority she could possibly muster into the words. Half of them were already on their way. For them, if the sight of the possessed demon hadn’t been enough, Rayni’s panicked scream was. For the rest, Ana adding her voice broke any hesitation. Only Messy held back when Ana stood her ground, shedding her pack, and even she did as she’d been told when she saw the pleading in Ana’s eyes.

  Ana didn’t move because, two: Ana was the only one who might outrun the demon. The others stood no chance. And that meant that Ana had to delay it.

  Could she defeat it? She didn’t know. She’d done well enough against Marlon Summerland, the Ascender, but for all his power he’d been human, with human weaknesses, and had been suffering from severe mana depletion. Even then, Ana would have lost in the end if not for Messy’s intervention. Now? Demons didn’t tire. Their only real weakness lay in their relentless, unthinking aggression. And while Ana would have loved some support, she couldn’t risk the demon suddenly turning on one of the others and getting a lucky blow in. Especially not with the longsword that Rill had been rather skilled with, and which the demon still carried. The immense strength of a revenant put into a punch was devastating enough; put that behind the edge of a blade, and Ana simply couldn’t afford to have anyone nearby who was slower and less able to evade an attack than she was. She was concerned enough about her chances as it was.

  There was something she could do to improve those chances, though. She would have liked to do this with her friends standing by, excited to congratulate her when her label changed, but life was full of disappointments. What was one more, in the grand scheme of things?

  With only moments to spare, Ana ate 20,000 Experience Points worth of Crystals, including her precious Ascendant. She’d really wanted to sell the huge Growth Crystal. It was worth upwards of forty gold coins, money she would need once she left the Splinter. But you could only enjoy money if you were alive to spend it, so down the hatch it went.

  She allowed herself a heartbeat to enjoy the familiar sensation of becoming stronger, healthier, sharper, just more in every way. Then she checked her notifications, and when she skimmed the description of her new Ability, she uttered two triumphant words before the demon was on her.

  “That’ll do!”

  Every nerve in Ana’s body came alight as the demon reached her and her bonuses activated. The demon barely slowed. Rill’s longsword whistled through the air in a diagonal upward stroke. It was an excellent stroke, really: too close to leap back, too far to surge forward; too low to duck, too high for most people to leap over.

  Ana did none of these. She stood her ground, forced mana into her buckler, and met steel with steel. She’d only rarely used her buckler to deflect a weapon swung at her in anger, but thankfully hard-won instinct and sheer Attributes made up for her lack of experience, the engraved surface of her shield deflecting the blow that should have bisected her from waist to armpit and leading it up and over her as she leaned back slightly. At the same time she snapped a straight kick at the demon’s hip, using its own forward momentum to add force to the impact of her attack.

  It worked… in a way. Her deflection worked, and her kick hit, but it didn’t have the effect she was hoping for. The demon’s momentum was simply too great. Not only did her kick fail to shatter its pelvis, but as the demon continued forward it pushed on her leg, sending her back foot plowing through leaf cover and soft earth of the forest floor. And even as the demon drove her backward it reversed the direction of its blade, which now came blurring toward her neck.

  Ana again deflected it. This time it was less graceful and far more hurried; she practically punched the blade back, her one Shields Perk helping her somewhat against the demon’s own monstrous strength.

  She’d barely had time to reflect on just how literally on the back foot she was when the demon attacked again, hacking at her arm and side. This time her deflection was a near thing, almost panicked. It couldn’t go on like this, she realized. She needed to take some kind of initiative, and for that she needed a moment to think. She needed some space.

  Luckily, Ana had just the Ability for that. She manifested her wings, launching herself back, up, and away from the demon, whose blade hissed through the air, narrowly missing her trailing leg.

  From her new vantage point just below the canopy of the surrounding trees, Ana looked down. The damn thing leapt at her, but couldn’t get quite high enough. So far so good. Ana had a moment to breathe.

  First things first. With the demon right in her face Ana hadn’t had the wherewithal to deal with her Advancement Points. Now she opened her Summary. Time froze as she was greeted by an old, familiar notification—one of the first she’d ever seen.

  She also had an Ascension Point, but she’d rather not use that if she could avoid it.

  There was a lot she could do with 21 Points. She could get two Steps in her Strength Multiplier, but it unfortunately wasn’t close enough to 75 for a third Perk yet. However, Dexterity, Perception, Acuity, Willpower, and Connection were all within reach of 50 and another Perk. Of those, Acuity and Connection were the ones with the most immediate usefulness; Acuity to help her keep up with the demon’s blistering quickness, and Connection for the increase to the efficacy of her Ironskin Shaping. And it just so happened that she only needed 20 Points to get both over that threshold.

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  How could she refuse?

  Those were both good Enhancements, Ana told herself. They would both come in useful in the future. Warrior’s Intuition would help her avoid surprise attacks, something that no one could possibly be unhappy with. And how often had she silently bitched to herself about how much it sucked to have other people’s emotions intrude on her, with no way to block them out? She had no idea, but with Eye of the Storm she had a way, and from the way it was worded it was completely under her control. Hell, it might even have worked against the Ascender’s enforced calm and order, and the gods only knew how useful that might be in the future!

  No, she was definitely glad for both Enhancements. She had to tell herself that to keep the disappointment at bay, because she really could have used something with some more direct, in-combat application right about then.

  At least she had the minor increases to her Attributes. Every little bit… she thought, then dropped the subject from her mind.

  She couldn’t afford to waste any more time on it, because the demon, after making one jump to determine that it couldn’t reach her, had turned the moment it hit the ground and begun tearing after the others. It had moved fast as it approached them; now it practically exploded forward, and the amount of dirt spraying behind it suggested that its speed was limited far more by its limited grip on the ground than its physical ability.

  The others in Ana’s Party didn’t stand a chance. Their head start meant nothing. It would catch up in seconds.

  For the first time in a while, Ana actually had to push herself hard to catch up with something. Rill had been a fit guy and a melee combat Classer, and whatever the spirit possessing him had done to his body had enhanced that enormously. It was to the point where Ana had the uncomfortable feeling that, if not for her wings, the demon would have caught up with Deni, who was lagging behind the others slightly, well before Ana caught it. Then it would be among them. It would be carnage.

  But for the next three minutes and change Ana did have her wings, and with the way they clawed through the air, she was limited only by her Strength and her control. With a crack of displaced air she set after the demon, determined not to let it get anywhere close to her Party.

  The demon got close enough to Deni that it reached out in anticipation. Then suddenly, somehow sensing Ana coming up behind it, it whirled.

  The move should have been impossible, but Ana was no stranger to pulling impossible moves herself. Without breaking stride the demon pushed off, launching itself five feet into the air and slashing Rill’s sword in a sideways arc so forceful that it spun itself around its axis. Its timing was near perfect, and with the absolute clarity that comes when your life hangs by a thread, Ana saw the malice, not madness, in the demon’s eyes as the last few inches of the longsword sliced for her throat. And Ana knew why a possessed sapient was considered such an existential threat to the inhabitants of a Splinter.

  This demon didn’t only have Rill’s Abilities and Skills and everything else. It was fully, and malevolently, intelligent.

  The realization passed as Ana twisted, punching the blade back with her buckler. Even without any grounding at all the demon had managed a strong enough slash that Ana had to compensate with her wings to keep herself from spinning and exposing herself to some new, impossible follow-up attack.

  The demon didn’t attempt a new slash. As its leap brought it back to the ground, it thrust. Landing with perfect balance, booted feet digging in to stop and reverse its momentum, the demon brought its blade into a straight line with Ana and drove it toward her groin.

  It just had to be one of my most attentive students, Ana cursed silently as she punched down with her buckler, simultaneously curling her back up so that her body was more than horizontal with the ground. Rill always had paid attention when Ana described where to cut to sever the major veins and arteries—including the femoral artery, which the demon’s thrust had been aimed for. She’d need to be damned careful. She’d never fought an armed opponent anywhere near as skilled as Rill had been, and all the practice and training in the world couldn’t replace the real thing. Combine that with the frankly terrifying physical ability and rudimentary anatomical knowledge of this demon, and there was no doubt in Ana’s mind that it was far more dangerous than Summerland the Ascender had been.

  This might be a fight that she couldn’t win. But I don’t need to win, she reminded herself. I just need to not lose. I just need to survive and buy everyone time.

  That didn’t mean that she wouldn’t try.

  While the demon had practically stopped, Ana’s momentum carried her forward. In the moment after her buckler struck the demon’s blade, she lashed out for its neck with her axe.

  The demon didn’t even try to dodge. It caught the axe. With the bit of the axe an inch from its neck, its right hand snapped up and grabbed the haft of the weapon mid-swing. It allowed itself to fall backward, driven by Ana’s momentum transferred through the weapon. And as it did, still with that monstrous grin that had never left its face, cruel, ice-blue eyes staring into Ana’s own, it hacked upward with its sword.

  Ana was forced to practically flip over mid-air to block the attack. She was left with her feet on the ground, facing back the way she’d come—not the worst thing, since now she was between the demon and her fleeing party. Then she had to block again as the demon hacked at her a second time, all power, no finesse, as it practically glided to its feet from where it lay. Once up it hacked again, and again, and again, and each time Ana was just barely fast enough to interpose her buckler between her flesh and the steel trying to cleave it.

  After the fifth attack, the seventh that Ana had stopped in only a few seconds, she wondered how the hell the sword hadn’t broken yet. Rill hadn’t had any kind of aptitude, nor any skill at all with magic. She’d asked, and he’d answered freely. His sword hadn’t been Engraved, and even if it had been most people, she’d been told, preferred Engravings to make their weapons more lethal, not just more durable. So with all the force that the demon could put into its strikes, and the equally massive force with which Ana blocked with her own, super-durable shield, how hadn’t the finely made but utterly mundane steel sword shattered into a dozen pieces yet?

  She didn’t have much time to wonder, because after that fifth wild hack, just as they got into a rhythm, the demon changed things up. Instead of another hack the demon yanked on the weapon that linked the two of them, so hard that Ana was pulled off her feet. At the same time it surged forward, and Ana could see every one of its multitude of sharp teeth as its grin opened impossibly wide, even for a themion. Hell, at the angle it was coming at her, she could see down its throat.

  It was going to bite her. Her face. The damn thing was going to bite her face, and Ana’s silent tirade at herself for letting her opponent set a rhythm cut off as something very close to panic surged within her. It was going to bite her and tear into her flesh, just like the damn changelings before she almost got crushed into the mud, only this time it wasn’t just an ear, it was her whole damn face, and she…

  With a scream that was equal part rage and terror, Ana punched her buckler into the demon’s mouth. With only a foot of space between them it wasn’t a very good punch; at that range she should have headbutted it, really, but the idea of bringing her face closer to all those teeth made that feeling that she refused to call panic surge again, so the buckler it was. And the punch did its job. It snapped the demon’s head to the side and stunned it just long enough for Ana to get free. She adjusted her grip on her weapon so that her hand was almost touching the demon’s and then, flapping her wings so that she could put both boots on the thing’s stomach, she wrenched and pushed off.

  The demon was immensely strong, but so was Ana, especially while in contact with her opponent. And Ana had Unbreakable Grip; the demon didn’t, which became apparent by the way its hand opened after its shoulder separated with a dull pop. The sudden lack of resistance launched Ana backward a dozen feet before she righted herself, her feet digging shallow furrows in the leaves and soil as she planted her feet.

  It was the sound of quick, shallow gasping that made Ana realize that she was dangerously close to hyperventilating. Had she been that badly shaken? She hadn’t even been hurt! The demon still hadn’t so much as scratched her! Goddess, she thought, if not for Fearless I would have been paralyzed with terror. I’d be dead, or worse.

  The demon, its cheek and lip split but otherwise no worse for wear, resumed its sadistic grin. With a roll of its shoulders, it popped its separated joint back into place. And then it attacked.

  and read 8 chapters ahead of both Splinter Angel and Draka! You also get to read anything else I’m trying out — which is how Splinter Angel got started.

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