Curled, razor-sharp horns rose from the top of the monster’s head. Even before he stepped into the sun, my whole body went cold. I knew those horns.

It was Mahishasura, the demon king.

6

I took a step back, my throat thick with fear.

Mahishasura was twice my size. Those wicked horns curled up from the sides of a buffalo’s head, and he had a plate of armor over his wide, hard chest. His huge human arms and animal legs were covered in thick, bristly black fur. Two hooves thudded ominously on the cobblestones as he stepped closer. There was a sword strapped to his back. Amber eyes gleamed in a bull’s face, nostrils flared, and sharp teeth flashed.

My knees felt unsteady. This was not a bad dream, or a sketch in a book, or even a minor Asura. This was the king of demons.

For once in my life, not a single inconsequential worry popped into my head. I wasn’t thinking about the fact that the nail on my left hand’s index finger was just a bit longer than all my other nails, or about the dirt gathering between my toes, or about how annoying the single cracked cobblestone in the otherwise unblemished street was.

I wasn’t thinking about anything at all. There was no room for it; there was no room for anything but that monstrous face and the gleam of those long, terrible claws.

“Look at the way my people run from me,” Mahishasura said, his voice low and deep. He chuckled. “Why do they flee? Don’t they know I am a kind, benevolent king?”

“We are not your people,” Lej hissed.

Mahishasura ignored him. Those cruel amber eyes focused on me. “Such a small girl,” he said. “To think that you made this world, and hold the keys to my way out of it, and yet you cannot even look me in the eye without trembling.”

I tried to speak, but my mouth was dry and terror had driven words right out of my brain. I wasn’t even sure I knew what words were.

“Of course, I should thank you, Kiki Kallira,” he went on in that horrible, deep voice that sounded like it was always just on the cusp of a roar. “If it wasn’t for you and your desperation to escape your own mind, I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t be so very close to taking back my rightful place in the real world.”

My face burned. With just a handful of words, he had made me feel weak, cowardly, and small. Because he was right, wasn’t he? My art, my need to escape from my own stupid brain, had given him a way back.

“I know why you’re here,” Mahishasura went on. His eyes flicked past me to Ashwini, whose sword was clenched in both hands and whose head kept snapping back and forth between him and the two Asuras behind us. “I know why she fetched you from the real world. An admirable attempt to defeat me, but it was all for nothing. You must realize I cannot let you break the gandaberunda’s golden eye and banish me once more?”