Chapter 18 #4
But there would be time for that now. In that moment, floating down from the mountaintop, the only thing that truly mattered was that he was in my arms once again. Everything else would follow.
Clearing the skylight roof of the library, we finished our descent, hovering just above the table in the spell lab.
“Lenny is here?” Tobias asked, pointing to his sister. “Is she awake?”
“Yes. We performed the spell on her first, just to make sure it was going to work.”
He snorted a laugh. “Bastien’s idea, I suppose?”
“The spell for you was disrupted, which is why I had to come get you.”
“By who?”
“We can get to that later.”
He didn’t seem thrilled, but also didn’t press the subject.
Below, his body waited, lifeless as the grave. I released my hold on him, allowing myself to drift down to the floor beside where my body stood. Tobias did the same, falling to the opposite side of the table beside Azrael.
“Give me your hand,” I instructed, reaching out my own as an offer. His skin was cold now, and I worried that something had changed in the time of our descent, but I cast aside those fears to focus on what was before me.
The Source’s warmth thrummed to life under my flesh once more, pressing against the surface as if reaching for Tobias itself. And who could blame it? I’d never felt such longing for anything in my life. His magic was a magnet to me, drawing me closer with unceasing devotion.
“Return now, Tobias Greene, to the vessel that carried you across the Expanse. Return to those who love you.”
A halo of golden light illuminated the edges of Tobias’s body, his mouth opening to speak just as he shimmered out of existence.
“Thank you,” I muttered, resting a hand against my chest as the warmth of the Source pulsed once more before receding. Glancing up from where Tobias’s body lay on the table, I searched for the opening that Bastien had cut into the Ether.
“Imbalance will be the end of your kind.”
The voice stilled me, a figure standing across from me in the space that Tobias had occupied just a moment ago.
They were tall, towering over me by more than a few inches.
Their pale skin had a glistening quality, much like the shine of morning dew as it glides across the petals of a flower, and only a slim margin of it was obscured by the fabric that draped across their chest, billowing like a curtain made of fresh blood.
It matched the tone of their eyes precisely, and when they turned upon me, the weight of their gaze was like a smothering blanket.
“What are you?” I asked, rooted in place by the strange, beautiful figure.
The figure bowed their head, showing a cap of night-black hair slicked low on their scalp. “I am what none can escape, though many try. The end of most things, and the guide to those who linger.”
Death. I’d heard others speak as though they knew the creature—as though it had visited them in the night. Were they whom I addressed now?
“You carry one of my siblings,” Death continued, raising back to their full height. “They must see greatness in you, Cirian Findlay, or else they would not have allowed you to stay my hand.”
“I’m grateful,” I placate, my manners quickly catching up with the situation. “Your Grace. The Source has been most generous to me.”
“What strange names you call us by. My sibling is no more a ‘source’ than the rest of our kind, though I understand why you humans would reduce us to such.”
“Apologies, Your Grace. I did not mean to offend.”
“Lightbringer seems fond of you, human. I wonder how long that favor will last? We Enduring do not always comprehend the fragility of mankind.”
Lightbringer. That was what the Umbral called me down in the Cradle. Was it addressing the entity I carried?
“Either way, I am grateful, Your Grace.”
Death’s gaze fell upon me once more, their expression indeterminate in that moment.
“I would caution you nonetheless. For my siblings have deemed your world ripe for the harvest, and their desire will not be easily quenched. Umbral has arrived first. I can smell the stench of decay on you already. The others will not be far behind.”
Others?
I bowed my head, if only to experience a break from the piercing gaze of Death. “Thank you, Your Grace. A question, if you would permit me?”
“Speak it.”
“Why warn us at all? Do you not share in your siblings’ desire for our world?”
Death smiled at that, the edges of their mouth curling beyond the norm in a mockery of humanity. “All things come to me eventually, Cirian Findlay. I need do nothing but wait. My patience is as eternal as my brethren and I.”
“Then why speak with me at all?”
Death leaned closer, over the body of Tobias on the table, their terrible crimson gaze locking onto me.
“Curiosity. My siblings have each chosen their vessels for the conflict to come, and it will be within those vessels that they will return to me. Now I know what face Lightbringer will wear when they are obliterated.”
Death raised their palm before their pallid lips, exhaling a burst of air that lifted me off my feet, sending me sprawling.
“We will be reunited soon, sibling.”