In that estate Spring would have found him wandering upon the Anvil Plain, alone and without purpose. Since then his boulders had been replaced, one by one, with chunks of adamant shaped to their purposes: long ones in the limbs, clusters of lumps at joints. Instead of earth, what held him together now was chaos, flowing and surging between the stone bones as they moved. Prim thought for some reason of watching Edda knead dough in her kitchen, how her strong hands made the soft stuff surge out from beneath them and escape through the spaces between her fingers. The chaos did something like that as the Chasmian’s adamant skeleton pushed it this way and that. Whenever it seemed it was about to escape and dissipate, it would turn back inward, proving that it was under the power of an animating soul.

Another thing said of hill-giants was that they didn’t have discernible heads—at least, not the kind that swiveled on necks and had faces on them. But this Chasmian had ordered itself differently. Above the shoulders, a never-ending avalanche of smaller chunks of adamant was turning itself inside out, driven by an inner core of turbulent aura that could only be glimpsed through ephemeral gaps opening and closing between the storm of black stone. Stared at closely, this looked a little like a whorl of dry leaves caught in a pocket of wind, save that the wind was a soul and the leaves were chunks of primordial rock. But if one tore one’s gaze from it—which required some willpower—and looked at it sidelong, in the overall scheme of the Chasmian’s form it answered to the posture and movements of a head.

Which meant that it could turn this way and that, and look at things. During its first moments on the Anvil Plain, it looked mostly at the ruins of the works where it had once toiled. But then its attention—as well as Prim’s—was drawn to a brilliant light that had exposed itself.

Burr had drawn his sword.

The Chasmian saw it, and knew it. Something in the way it moved made it clear that it recognized the weapon; feared it; and hated it. El’s angels must have used such things to drive the Chasmian, as Beedles drove beasts with sticks and whips.

“Burr, no!” Prim called. She was already on her way down to him. As she descended she cut across the path that Edda was soon to tread with measured steps toward the Fastness. Burr’s plan was clear: he would draw the Chasmian back toward the bridge, distracting its gaze and leaving the way clear for the rest of the party to cut behind it and get to the Fastness.

“Stay well back, Princess!” Burr shouted to her. Indeed she had slowed as she got nearer to him, for the brilliance of the sword made it difficult for her to see the path ahead, and the footing was difficult. “This is a task for me.”