In Red Rune Canyon Read Online Free PDF

him.
    Kagur stepped out into the open. “Stop!” she snapped.
    The demon hissed and lurched around. Kagur looked straight into its crimson eyes, as though she’d learned nothing from their previous encounter, and felt the power the Abyssal creature had raised to corrupt Eovath stab at her instead. With a surge of triumph, she jerked the looking glass up in front of her face.
    Nothing happened.
    She was still struggling to make sense of that fact when clawed hands grabbed the mirror frame and ripped it from her grasp. Manifestly unharmed by what she’d imagined to be a masterful ploy, the demon spun the mirror behind it and released it to float.
    “That’s mine!” the creature snarled, and lashed out at her with its claws.
    Kagur dodged aside and whipped out her longsword. When the demon snatched for her again, she cut at its scaly forearm.
    She connected solidly, and her blade should have sliced deep and left the limb dangling maimed and useless. But as she pulled the weapon back, she saw it had only nicked the demon. The fiend laughed at her consternation.
    Maybe her father had been mistaken. Maybe there were some things that could hurt her and which she couldn’t hurt back—at least, not enough to matter.
    No! There had to be a way, and she was going to find it.
    But it was difficult even to think in the midst of this combat. The demon was strong and tricky, and pressed her relentlessly. In addition to contending with its claw slashes, she had to remember to avoid its gaze, and to stay alert for the slithering, thickening sensation that meant it was trying to seize hold of her with magic.
    Even so, she managed to wound it two more times. But those gashes were nearly as shallow as the first, and they stopped bleeding in a matter of moments.
    She retreated, and her back foot fetched up against a wall. The demon lunged, claws raking downward, and she wrenched herself out of the way—but not quite far enough. A sting of pain and a spreading wetness told her that the fiend’s talons had cut her across the shoulder blade.
    She didn’t think the slashes were deep, but couldn’t stop fighting to check. She could only come back on guard in the increasingly forlorn hope of finally cutting deep enough for it to do some good.
    Or perhaps not. She belatedly realized that not all the noise in the cavern came from her battle with the demon. Still chained to the table, Eovath was throwing himself against his bonds again and again in an effort to break free.
    A glance was enough to tell her that his efforts were still unavailing. But maybe she could change that.
    She faked a sidestep to the demon’s right, then charged forward on its left, the trick carrying her past the fiend’s talons. It still slapped her with a beat of its wing, but not hard enough to knock her off her feet. She raised her sword high, leaped into the air, and cut at the face at the top of the restraining rack with all her strength.
    The metal visage split, and the glinting gray mouth screamed. The lengths of chain whipped and flailed.
    At Kagur’s back, the demon gave a screeching hiss, and she spun around to face it once again.
    It attacked as savagely as before, nearly rending her twice in as many seconds. Then a huge battleaxe whirled at its flank. As she’d hoped, hurting the chain-thing had enabled Eovath to free himself and recover his weapon, and now he was joining the fight.
    The demon dodged, and a blow meant to smash into its torso merely tore a wing instead. Worse, Kagur judged that despite her brother’s might, the resulting rip was smaller than it should have been—like the gashes cut by her sword, they somehow weren’t enough to truly hurt the demon, and would probably heal in a matter of moments. It might be that even she and Eovath fighting together couldn’t dispatch the demon in their usual fashion.
    But maybe there was a different way to kill it.
    Kagur waited for a moment when Eovath attacked hard and obliged the demon to focus on