Her arm and leg were suddenly free and she pulled them back, healing them, but before she could fly for the gaps between the teeth, the tongue moved beneath her and she cursed as she slid down the convulsing throat. She plunged into darkness and cold, and everything she grabbed for was wet and slimy and moving. The walls of its gullet constricted, but she stopped herself before they trapped her, spun in place and then flew upwards. Ricocheting around in its throat, she flew back towards the light, and a moment later she burst from its mouth. She kept flying till she was at the other end of the room, then turned.

Darquesse was annoyed, frustrated, and dripping with mucous. Saliva matted her hair. Her clothes had two bloody holes torn through them. She wanted to go somewhere, grab a shower and dip her head into a bucket of potpourri in an attempt to rid herself of the smell.

But if she left, this Gnarl would go hunting and it’d eventually find Skulduggery and the others.

“So what?” she muttered.

There it was again – that infection of decency. Let the Gnarl kill them. What the hell did she care? They had been trying to kill her, after all. The only reason they were nice to her now was because they thought she was Valkyrie. If they knew the truth, the last thing she’d see would be Stephanie pointing the Sceptre at her.

Nope, the smart thing to do was to fly down to that little tunnel and follow it all the way out.

But when she looked at the Gnarl, she knew she couldn’t leave. She couldn’t let this thing beat her.

She flew at it, twisting to avoid the tusks. She landed on its back, punched downwards, not making the slightest dent on its hide. The tail swished at her, but she was already flying out of range. She didn’t understand this. The Gnarl was impervious to magic, sure. But shrugging off energy blasts was one thing – Darquesse could get her head round that, even if she didn’t understand how it worked yet. Shrugging off magic-augmented strength, though? Ignoring pure, physical strength, just because it was magical?

She flew to the rock wall, punched it, grabbed a rock the size of her head before it fell. She threw it at the Gnarl. It hit between its scales like a bullet. The Gnarl screeched in anger and pain.

Darquesse hovered over it. It could be hurt, then, just not by anything magical.