They bellowed with more spirit than she had herself. She stood straighter; wished she had her feather cloak to die in.

She leaked a little raw potentia into her people, and then took some herself, like a cake of opium. Her eyes glittered and her crest stood erect again.

Good.

She raised both arms. “Come and face me!” she roared at the darkness.

And the darkness came.

It was big—as big as she—and it had the shape of a man, but like the caricature of a man, or a terrible, humorless joke about a man; the muscles oversized, the penis huge and erect, the antlers contorted, the face savage. It was the figure of a man carved by a sculptor who hated men.

To the great Duchess of the West, it was not a figure of terror. It was more like a clown.

“Mine,” she called to her knights.

All around her in the rubble, they stepped back.

She raised her great sword-axe and felt the sharper-than-razor flints along the edge of the massive wood core.

It raised a huge axe. “I am the Son of Ash and no steel or bronze weapon will touch me!” he roared.

Mogon licked her beak in derision.

“I am Mogon Texetererch. I am Duchess of the West, and in my caves no cold can come, and my reach is long. My sister Musquogan was duchess before me, and before her my mother, back and back to a time before your master was an evil egg.” Her sword-axe carved a line of fire in the air. “My shen is of stone. Your life is mine.”

“I am not mortal!” roared the beast-man.

“Dream of hell, Son of Ash,” she said.

Then he threw ops.

She parried, tossing his ball of unformed power off into his own legions of imps with contempt.

“Is this a duel of powers?” she asked. “Or can Ash not face me blow for blow?”

Suddenly she unleashed her true power; the lash of her wave front of terror struck him, and in that moment, his spark of humanity failed him, and he was afraid. Terror lashed him, and he quailed, flinching away from her majesty.

And into his moment of failure she struck, once, and her stone axe burst open his chest, cutting down, smashing ribs and severing muscle and tendon and intestine. It was the culminating blow of all her years of training and combat. It was almost spiritually pure; she delivered it without thought, her mind blank, and he raised no defence, and he fell with a single despairing spasm, his face lost its fixed look of rage, and his spirit vanished.

She raised both arms slowly, taunting the cowering bogglins and the enemy Qwethnethogs.

“That is who I am,” she roared into the darkness.