It was by far the most glorious and terrible creature Bitterlich had ever seen, and Rebecca clung to its head like a reef kraken gripping an oyster, her arms wrapped around its snout. It rolled and thrashed, but could not dislodge her. Rebecca had grabbed it just below its great gemlike eyes, her fingers digging into its scales as if they were made of clay.

Even as Bitterlich came to grips with Rebecca’s predicament, the brilliant colors of its scales ran up her arms, while her pale freckled tones flowed through it like ink in water. Her eyes turned to gemstones. Her arms sank into the creature all the way up to her elbows.

Bitterlich could not have been more shocked if he’d been hit by lightning. Rebecca was a Seelenjäger. An untrained, uninitiated Seelenjäger, and this was her first kill. She had no training, no idea what she was doing, no inkling of what she needed to do or the horrific consequences of failure. At worst, the wyrm might kill her: overpower her soul, absorb her skills and her intelligence to become a Seelenfresser, a soul eater. Or she might conquer the creature but fail to annex its shape and end up a nonviable grotesquery with not enough lungs and her heart on the outside.

Around and around girl and wyrm spun in an absurd parody of a ballroom dance.

Djordji drew sword and main gauche. “I goes for the eye.”

“No,” Bitterlich said. “Don’t hurt it.” Any wound it took, Rebecca would also receive.

“Get it off me!” Rebecca screamed. She squirmed like a hooked fish. She must not panic, but the boundary where Rebecca ended and the wyrm began was blurred beyond distinction. They were drowning in each other.

Bitterlich bolted to her side, grabbed her by the shoulders. The wyrm thrashed. Its razor-sharp spines sliced through his sleeve and into his arm.

“Help,” Rebecca gasped, tears welling from her eyes and mixing with the blood on her face. “Help me.” Most of her body was dissolved in the creature’s greater mass.

“I’m here,” he said. Drawing on years of theatrical calm, he purred, “You’re going to be fine, look.” From his own Seelengewölbe he produced the card he’d taken as part of her thieving practice.

The card arrested her attention even in the midst of her struggles. Her distraction stilled the wyrm, if only for a moment. Bitterlich smacked the card down on the kraken’s body, and made it disappear again. He couldn’t actually push the card into the beast, but perhaps the illusion would be enough.

“Reach for it,” he wheezed. “Reach for the buzzing heat. It should feel like silk made of nettles, smooth and stinging.”

Rebecca yearned forward and gasped. “It burns.”

The wyrm shuddered and flailed ever more violently as she seized its Seelen.

“Pull it,” he urged. “Pluck that nettle like you were picking a pocket.”