24. Syrus
Syrus
The Morphos is a raging cauldron, the water churning and frothing as shadowy tentacles push figures to the surface.
I land hard on the shore, sand flying out underneath my boots. The keepers are gathered around the bodies that have already reached the lake edge, and I stride over, moving them aside to get a better look. And when I do, I say a little prayer to the darkness.
I’m looking down at a skeletally thin demon. It’s as if the lake hasn’t finished putting all the flesh on her yet. Bones and organs bunch beneath her stretched, papery skin, looking like they’d burst through at any moment if she wasn’t so terribly, tragically still.
They’re rising too early.
The woman is already dead, as are two others beside her. One has an arm fused to his side, a half-formed limb that never got the chance to fully evolve.
“They collapsed as soon as they reached the shore,” one of the keepers says, her voice tight like she’s holding back a sob.
“There’s more!” Yealey sprints toward us, having hurried down from the castle, with Leah following close behind. I turn to look where the head keeper is pointing, toward the other figures wading through the water to the shore.
A tall demon is climbing from the Morphos twenty yards down from where we stand.
This one has an acceptable amount of meat on his bones, but his coal-colored skin has only formed in patches, with large sections of his body exposed, revealing the raw, greenish flesh underneath.
His shoulders bead with blood as he steps out onto the damp sand and slowly twists his half-flayed neck in our direction.
He fixes his bright, yellow eyes on us and charges.
An animal roar rips from his throat as he hurtles forward, arms outstretched, his sharp claws curling at the ends of his bloody fingers.
“Get back,” I order the keepers marching forward to meet the enraged demon before he can attack.
“Stop,” I shout, but I’m not surprised when he doesn’t react. In this wild, feral state, I doubt it’d even be possible to talk him down. He’s likely driven crazy with pain and a mind that’s not yet fully formed.
I aim my first blow where I hope it will do the least damage, striking him with my fist in the center of his chest hard enough to send him stumbling back.
But this demon is unnaturally strong. He doesn’t go down—he only screams again, this sound even more furious than the last, and lunges toward me.
I grab hold of his throat, lifting him and slamming him against the sand.
But he continues to fight, claws ripping at my arms as he writhes under my grip.
What little skin he has starts to slough from his body.
Blood is glistening across most of the exposed flesh now, pooling in the grooves of his tortured body.
He’s not going to give up, and he’s not going to survive either. Not like this.
With a heavy heart, I call on my shadows. They crawl across the sand and engulf the demon, smothering his face and invading his airways. He twitches, fighting to breathe, and then his arms grow sluggish before dropping limply to the ground.
“I’m sorry, my friend,” I say, turning toward the shouts and screams rising behind me.
Quill’s patrol has arrived now, fetched on my orders, and they’re fighting the stronger, more aggressive demons rising from the lake, all while the keepers try to revive those who are collapsing as soon as they reach dry land.
I already know in my heart that their attempts will fail. We cannot save the souls the Morphos hasn’t finished breathing life into any more than we could breathe life into them ourselves.
So I protect the Malicites I can save—my guards and the keepers—slinging my shadows past flailing fists and slashing blades, smothering the misshapen mireborn to at least give them a quick death.
But there are so many—I struggle to keep up.
Quill cuts down a demon with a horn erupting from his cheekbone who’s trying to maul one of the keepers.
One of his patrol guts a fresh mireborn as he lunges to sink his fangs into her neck, his jaw gaping disturbingly wide, not yet fully attached to his skull.
A set of growls tells me Triya is here, and I catch a flash of black fur amid the fray as she pounces on one of the feral demons, one head purring with satisfaction as another closes around his throat.
And beyond her is Leah. She has the knife meant for the Strata missions in her hand, dripping with green blood. A demon towers over her, his wings a tangle of misshapen skin and sinew. As I watch, she dances out of the reach of his sharp claws.
The training has worked. She’s confident and quick, darting forward and slicing at his legs before kicking them out from under him.
He hits the ground hard, and she takes the opportunity to leap onto his back, pinning him down with her thighs as she lifts the knife, the tip directly pointed at the base of his neck.
But then she hesitates.
I see it on her face, the moment she freezes—refusing to kill and yet not knowing how else to stop him. My heart stutters in my chest as the demon bucks her off, flipping himself over and lunging for her throat.
No! The word thunders in my mind, propelling me forward.
I don’t think I’ve ever moved faster, closing the distance between us in an instant, my sword lifted high.
I pour shadow down the blade as I lodge it in the demon’s back.
The darkness engulfs him, invading his lungs, and he twitches, his body failing him.
Leah scrambles out from under him, pale but still breathing, and watches as I withdraw my blade. I know then that I can’t stop until I’ve removed every threat from the Morphos’s blood-soaked shore.
Leah
I thought I’d seen some grim sights on the plains, things that will always haunt my dreams. But watching those demons emerge from the lake, their minds gone and their bodies hideously broken, will probably stay with me longer.
One by one, they die. Either they’re cut down, or smothered with shadow, or come to some other violent end.
Although it doesn’t feel like cruelty—it feels like mercy.
Because there’s something uniquely terrible about the way even the aggressive mireborn, the ones who seemed strong when they first reached the shore, eventually start to fall of their own accord.
They stagger to the ground, misshapen limbs twitching and mouths frothing, their glazed eyes reflecting the ourani burning in the sky.
It’s kind of what I always thought selling your soul to Infernum would be like—torture, hell.
These people—these once-humans—make a deal, and what they get in return is a second death, one full of pain and confusion, taken far away from any loved ones who could hold them and whisper gentle words to them as they pass.
It’s fates like theirs that vindicate all the terrible stories I’ve heard about the demon realm, the tales that built a lifetime of distrust around the soul snares and their contracts, their predatory tricks and manipulations.
Now Syrus moves between them with the keepers, tending to them, sometimes offering a tendril of shadow to give them a quicker, gentler death.
I watch him with one demon, a woman with a raw expanse of flesh where one eye should be, shuddering against the sand.
He kneels beside her as she dies, a hand on the top of her head, muttering words I don’t need to hear to know they’re full of comfort.
When she at last goes still and the light fades from her eyes, he glances up, sensing me watching—and for a beat, lets the mask of cool competence drop. I see the anguish on his face, his shoulders hunching, gaze dulled by a deep sadness.
This life was thrust upon him, and yet he tries to protect those in his charge so sincerely, so dutifully. It hurts him when he cannot do that duty.
I believe that, but is it enough to prove me wrong about all of it? To trust that everything the soul snares do is harmless, just a natural part of the balance between realms?
Is it enough to trust the demon who rules over them?
I don’t know, and standing on that shore, I’m starting to feel as lost as the souls who never make it to the Morphos.