Chapter 3 #2
Bile rose to my throat, and I froze as the mist blocked them from view.
I started as a loud bang echoed from behind.
I spun on my heel and reeled to find a short woman.
She stood, looking blindly around her, before she knelt to the ground and pounded her fist against it.
The resulting bang reverberated through my chest.
“They do that sometimes.”
I jumped, my heart lurching at the sound of the slippery, unholy voice.
Tynan.
Memories slammed into me. I whipped around to face the God of Death, staggering in the mucky sand. My shield snapped into place. Visions of my final moments in the Realm of Vael flooded me.
Kellan. I was here for Kellan.
“Where is he?” I demanded.
Tynan shrugged before looking back in the direction I’d come from.
“A twenty-eight-year-old pirate from the Islands of Votruvia…” Tynan mused, scratching his chin as if he had facial hair. “I’d guess he has several more days in there.”
“Days? How long was I in there?”
Tynan turned toward me and cocked his head. “Time works differently here. But you were in for a few weeks, by my standards.”
Weeks. I’d sinned enough in my short lifetime to have earned weeks of nonstop retribution. And Lord Astraeus…
“Imagine the sentence dealt for your elven friends.” Tynan raised his black brows and his three-pronged tongue tasted the air.
Oh gods. The elves would endure months of this at their deaths. Bile rose to my throat.
“I see you questioning it. But did Dark King Daimos not deserve years of hell? What of King Saros? Mortals shall reap what they sow, and the Abyss knows all.”
My throat bobbed as I turned and stared at the dead wandering through the land.
“And then they just stay here? Do they find their families? Their friends that have died before them?”
My stomach twisted as I scanned the roaming dead. I turned back to face Tynan and flinched as he slithered as close as my shield would allow, his face inches from mine. The shadows in his eyes rolled over one another as he scanned my face and narrowed his brows.
“Are you asking if they find happiness here?” His head jerked in an unnatural movement as he tipped it and surveyed me.
“I’m asking if they find peace.”
Tynan blinked, as if he hadn’t considered that as an option. The God of Death swept away from me, putting distance between us. “Of course they don’t. Peace, happiness… Those are products of life. We are Death, Lyvia.”
My chest constricted as his words settled in, and my mind shot to my list… The growing list of names whose deaths were on my hands, and I scanned the dead, looking desperately for any of them—for my father, Oslo, Bear, Morwyn, Eira, Xenelpha, and the thousands I’d killed.
I had sentenced them to this fate. To the Hell forged by the psychotic Embodied hovering nearby and then doomed to wander in this desolate place with no hope of finding peace.
Were my parents here? They’d sacrificed everything for me, using the power they kept hidden from Dark King Daimos to change my form…
A weight settled in my chest. What had I believed death to be? A dark escape from the terrors and pain brought on by mortal life? A freeing of my own existence, surrounded by light and warmth and love? Or perhaps simply the feeling of love…
I scanned the growing crowd and the creatures they attracted. The large, winged creatures swooped through the hovering clouds. The dead cowered as they neared. Long, scaled reptilian creatures used their short legs to move about the groups, hissing and snapping as they went.
My idea of death had been simple. It had been relief… Peace. Far from the torment displayed in front of me.
Disgust turned my stomach as Tynan’s snaking tongue tasted the air.
“You are Death,” I answered him finally. “But you’ve declared yourself more than Death… You’re judge and jury, bestowing their sentences on sins based on your moral compass, yet you hold yourself to none. You think this is freedom? You think you’re protecting them?”
Anger squashed the fear that had taken root upon my arrival at the gate.
The devastation, pain, and wreckage had plundered my soul upon facing my hell.
A hell that I thought I’d deserved at one point…
And yet a small part of me seemed to blink awake in the realization that perhaps, in some of those moments, I had deserved grace.
Had deserved forgiveness. If not from the people themselves, but from myself…
My powers reacted to the thought, their hands joining in solidarity, and the love that allowed them to work together flared in my chest.
Tynan narrowed his gaze before darkness exploded in my vision. My shield was just fast enough, and the lines of power bucked against it as his face appeared inches from my own.
“You do not know the power of a soul,” he snapped.
“The power of life.” He gestured to the dead.
“You think this cruel? The alternative is sending these souls to Sintarrak. The mind thief, who revels in torment. They’ll feed his power, and their minds will be trapped in his own, bearing witness to every great act of evil.
The dead may be lost in this realm, but they would scream inside his mind. ”
My stomach turned over itself. I had to get Kellan out of here. I had to get my family, my friends, the dead out of here. We had to defeat the Embodied. And then I had to destroy the monster hovering before me.
“And what do you deserve after a millennium of sins?” I dared the question, my hands bunching into fists.
“I am not mortal, my dear,” he replied, as if it were an answer. His smile stretched too far across his face, and he retreated a few feet. “But you are. And your time is running short.”
Blood drained from my face.
“What do you mean?”
Tynan nodded to my arms, and I frowned. My tan, olive skin had lightened by several shades, the tips of my fingers nearing the gray of the dead moving about us.
“Death takes what it will.”
I turned back to the fog. I had to get to Kellan.
“Listen carefully,” Tynan continued, “the Vael Lacrima opens at the gathering of the eight. When the eight powers of the Embodied come together. Sintarrak is already in your world, and he fears only one thing: Death.”
My mind flipped. How had all eight powers gathered together when we still didn’t know where the Celestyn Bone was?
“How do we close it?”
Tynan’s smile faltered, and his brows knit together. “You don’t.”
How could I trust anything this creature told me?
“I will allow you to leave,” he continued, his darkness unwinding his humanoid form and surrounding my shield in a cage of death. “And you will kill Sintarrak. Then you will return to this realm and free me. An empire of worlds awaits us.”
I was going to throw up.
Tynan’s voice surrounded me in a hiss. “The power of the soul is the strongest force in these realms. You’ll need souls.
And you’ll need to protect your mind. A shield is not enough.
You’ll need a fortress. Locate the Starlings’ lock and key in the Arx.
You’ll find answers when new life waters ancient hide. ”
“What is the—”
“Time is ticking,” Tynan cut in, and his black shadows siphoned back into his humanoid form as he tapped his wrist.
I glanced down once more at my hands. The grayish hue had spread down my fingers, and my pulse banged against my neck.
“A word of advice,” Tynan whispered, his shadows disassembling and reforming as he hovered over my head. “When you feel those threads begin to fade, it’s time for you to go. Whether you find the pirate lord or not.”
Tynan’s shadows disappeared, and the weight of the surrounding fog swarmed, stealing my direction. Fuck. How was I going to find him?
My senses tingled as the fog grew in oppressing thickness, and I closed my eyes.
Honor pressed against the outside of my ankle, and the dagger warmed against my leathers in its holster.
My eyes snapped open, and the golden gem at its center glowed as a question formed in my mind.
Why had I kept the dagger Cyril used to slit my throat?
As I gripped the hilt, an urgent tug swarmed my chest, stealing the air from me.
I twisted, my boots sliding in the muck as I sprinted through the fog and let the tug drag me through the mist. It was familiar.
It was that same tug I’d felt in the Living Library in Lotrennia before Fabia’s Fables had appeared.
The tug was warm and happy. It was dangerous, yet I was safe.
It glowed like that silver thread I’d seen in the Waters of Ascendiel.
I let it lead me. My thighs burned after minutes of running until finally I broke through the land cloud and skidded to a stop before the Abyss. My stomach flipped, and anxiety clawed at my chest. I had to go back in.
I hesitated a mere moment before Tiberius’s consciousness flared in my mind, strength and encouragement surging through our bond. He was with me. His body had gone, but somehow, he stayed with me.
I grabbed hold of that strength before sucking in a deep breath and diving back into hell.