Chapter 35 #2
For a second or two I assumed it was another spirit I’d accidentally summoned, but then a head rose up from the hole, and I gasped. It had only the vague impression of facial features, and there were dark voids where its eyes should be.
I grabbed Bressen’s arm. “Please tell me you see that.”
He followed my point and jolted. “Fucking hells! What is that?”
“Reapers!” Ariel shouted. “Praya, get behind me!”
“What in the three hells is a reaper?” Bressen asked as he drew his sword. Praya and I drew our blades as well.
Cold dread pooled in my stomach as I looked around the field and saw pale, humanoid creatures crawling up out of the ground all around us.
There had to be close to twenty of them.
Their bodies rose up from out of solid earth, but once above the ground, they planted their hands and pushed themselves up the rest of the way.
Some kind of mist or smoke trailed off them as they moved.
I felt something solid grasp my ankle, and I screamed as one of the reapers pulled itself from the ground just at my feet.
I slashed at it with my sword, but the blade slid through it as if nothing was there.
Luckily, this also meant its hand on my ankle became phantasmal as well, and I freed myself from its grasp.
Bressen grabbed my arm and pulled me behind him before he swung at another reaper that was closing in on us.
“What do they want?” Bressen yelled to Ariel, who swung her sword at two other reapers. The sword passed right through them.
“They guard places like cemeteries and battlefields where the bones of many dead lie,” Ariel shouted back.
“They help usher the souls of the dead into the afterworld and then watch over their remains. Gods damn me, I should’ve remembered they’d be in a place like this.
They don’t like that we disturbed the bones. ”
“What can they do to us?” Bressen asked as he swung his sword at an approaching reaper. The thing looked solid enough at first, but just before his sword reached it, its body turned transparent, and the sword passed through it without doing any damage.
“Don’t let them near you!” Ariel shouted. “They can reach inside your chest and stop your heart.”
“What!” Bressen and I shouted together as our attention whipped toward her.
I saw the threat a second too late.
“Ariel! Behind you!” I shouted.
Ariel spun around, but the reaper was on her, and her eyes flew open wide as its hand reached straight through her chest. Her body jerked as the thing seized her heart, and both Praya and I screamed.
Ariel cried out in pain as her sword fell from her grasp. She put her hand on the thing’s chest to push it away, but it wouldn’t budge.
She couldn’t move it, but it was at least corporeal at the moment.
“Praya,” Ariel croaked. “Its head.”
Praya seemed to know exactly what Ariel meant, because she drew back her sword to take a mighty swing.
A strangled scream pried its way up my throat as Praya swung her sword at the back of the reaper’s neck. If the reaper went incorporeal again, Praya’s slash would cut straight across Ariel.
Everything seemed to slow as the blade cut the air. It sliced through the reaper’s neck in one quick pass, sending its head tumbling. Before either head or body could hit the ground, though, the reaper disappeared in a cloud of white smoke.
My eyes were frozen open as Praya didn’t even try to slow the follow through of her swing, but my scream choked off as her blade passed straight through Ariel’s own neck.
I blinked, letting my mind catch up to what I thought I’d just seen. Like the reapers, Ariel’s body had gone suddenly incorporeal, allowing Praya’s blade to pass through her harmlessly.
Bressen and I stared as Ariel let out a ragged breath. Praya threw herself at Ariel, and the taller woman pulled her wife in for a deep kiss.
“Good job,” Ariel said to Praya when she let her go.
I knew both Bressen and I wanted to question what in the three hells we’d just seen, but there was no time. The other reapers were on us, and we both swung our swords wildly at them, if only to keep them from being able to touch us.
“How do we stop them?” I shouted.
“The only way is to cut through them when they’re solid,” Ariel said, “but it’s getting them to stay solid that’s the trick.”
Bressen swore loudly next to me as his sword passed harmlessly through another reaper. They were closing in on us.
I saw movement in my periphery and turned just in time to dodge the swipe of an incoming reaper. A second later, I felt something solid on my shoulder. I was ready to scream again when I realized it was Blink.
The little demoni lurched forward on my shoulder and hissed at the reaper who, amazingly, reared back in fear.
“Bressen! They’re afraid of demoni!” I shouted. “We should call the wrath.”
Bressen met my eyes, and I saw the question there. We?
Amidst everything else, I’d forgotten to tell him I’d called the demoni during my fight with Magdalene.
He didn’t wait for an answer, though. His eyes went red as his wings sprung out from his back. His feet lifted off the ground to hover just above it as black smoke curled around him.
I felt something stir within me as well, as I had with Magdalene, and I was certain my eyes must now be glowing red too.
My body went rigid as my arms lifted at my sides, and I heard the clamor of the demoni through the smoke that rose at my own feet.
On my shoulder, Blink shifted excitedly as his brethren began to emerge from the black smoke.
All around us, the reapers had stopped attacking and were backing away. I felt Bressen next to me, both of us with eyes glowing and arms outstretched as the demoni swarmed around our feet. I felt the power pass between us as if it wasn’t my power or his power, but our power.