Chapter 18 #4
The Oracle’s maniacal laughter filled the dungeon as more of his energy flowed into her. The look on her face was almost blissful as the tremendous power he possessed transferred into every cell of her body.
In a last desperate effort, Elliot spoke a word of power that reverberated against the rope.
To my shock, it appeared to nick it before that casting attempt backfired against him.
Although it hadn’t broken the magic rope keeping Demetra bound over the pit, it had weakened it.
But Elliot was too busy writhing on the floor in agony to be able to assess the damage he had caused—or rather how minimal it had been.
I gestured to Lyall with my chin, and he immediately understood, landing a short distance from the mess that Elliot had become.
“You! What did you do to me?!” Elliot demanded between two painful moans.
“I just gave you a taste of what you’ve been doing to others,” I said smugly with a hint of cruelty.
“It is time for you to give back instead of taking. All the power, life force, and magic you have stolen from countless victims will now be hers. And your magic circle? It will continue to regenerate you even as it wrecks you.”
He shouted as more of his skin was pulled taut and melted into the magic circle like an overstretched elastic.
“Why?!” he ground painfully through his teeth. “Why reward her? She tried to kill you!”
“Am I rewarding her?” I asked tauntingly.
Right on cue, Demetra’s almost orgasmic moans shifted into a startled gasp. Her skin began to glow as if a powerful light was pulsating underneath. It seemed to thin, becoming almost translucent as a serious air of discomfort descended over her features.
“There is such a thing as acquiring too much, too fast. Greed isn’t a sin for nothing,” I told him with contempt before facing the Oracle.
“See, Mother? You should have left well enough alone. All these years, you relentlessly hunted me. Destroying my youth wasn’t enough.
You had to destroy my life and even my soul? ”
Demetra screamed as stretch marks appeared all over her body as magical energy continued to wither Elliot while filling her to bursting. She thrashed against the magical ropes restraining her as every part of her continued to swell.
“Was it worth it?” I continued, years of hatred, fear, and despair bubbling to the surface.
“All this for what? Power? Well, have it all! All the trauma, pain, and nightmares I’ve endured because of you have only made me stronger.
So this is my gift to you. More power than you could ever handle.
May it burn that dark soul of yours and all that you ever were. ”
She screamed even more loudly as blood started dripping out of her eyes, ears, mouth, and nose. More trickled down from some of the stretch marks that started to rip open.
“We wiped out your cult,” I said with cruelty. “Now, we’re wiping you out. You should have stayed dead the first time. He shouldn’t have saved you the second time. But as we say, the third time is the charm.”
Lyall’s arms slipping around my waist from behind startled me.
I jerked my head around to look at him over my shoulder, bracing for his potential air of horror and disgust for my behavior.
Relief washed over me when I saw him looking instead at both of my victims with a feral grin.
His arm tightened possessively around me, and he rubbed his cheek against mine while staring at Elliot with an evil expression.
I couldn’t even feel bad about finding it sexy as fuck.
He suddenly looked up, drawing my attention. My eyes widened when I spotted Haroth standing a few meters away from us on the opposite side from Elliot. Despite sticking to his skeletal face, his emotions were easily readable. And right now, he looked quite amused.
To my shame, I felt a little bummed out that my enemies would be getting off so soon. My jaw dropped when Elliot also noticed him. That further confirmed that his time had come. Reapers and Grims never revealed their presence until a soul was ready to be harvested.
“Reaper! Free me!” Elliot exclaimed, his voice tortured.
Haroth tilted his head to the side and examined him as if he was a strange creature, before shrugging.
“I’m not in the mood yet, and my scythe needs a bit of cleaning,” Haroth replied nonchalantly.
He whipped out his scythe—a single blade on the long staff made of bone instead of the two blades linked by a bone chain that Pharos used. He then started picking at non-existent dirt around the base of the blade.
I snorted, and Lyall chuckled.
“Keep doing what you’re doing,” he said to Elliot. “I’ll get back to you shortly. Anyway, in your stead, I wouldn’t be in too much of a hurry to embark on your next journey. I assure you that where you’re headed is going to be far less enjoyable than whatever this is.”
He then glanced in my direction and grinned with a mischievous expression. I raised an inquisitive eyebrow, curious as to what would come out of his irreverent mouth.
“That’s a rather creative approach, little sister… I like it. I look forward to admiring more of your future work,” he added teasingly.
I burst out laughing, the tension I didn’t even realize had been stiffening my spine fading away. Yes, I was a bit of a freak with a newfound streak of sadism. But being fully accepted by my adoptive family further healed the wound and insecurities that plagued me.
The Oracle’s endless stream of screams suddenly shifted in pitch, reclaiming our attention just in time to see her plummeting towards the pit. The magic rope, weakened by Elliot’s earlier attack, had finally snapped under Demetra’s constant thrashing.
“And away she goes,” Haroth said wistfully as she vanished into the dark depths up the pit.
Horrible clicking, crunching, and slurping sounds reached us from below as she screamed even louder before going quiet. In the end, the surviving Gerus got their meal after all.
“Don’t go anywhere, my friend. I’ll come back for you soon enough,” the Grim Reaper said tauntingly to Elliot before walking towards the edge of the pit. “And one villain to reap!”
With that, he dove into the whole, flying down like a Wraith to go harvest the dreadful woman who had made my life a living hell.
As soon as he vanished, Lyall released me from his embrace and flew up towards the remaining women dangling from the ropes.
I unraveled the magic keeping them bound, and he carefully brought them back near the exit at the base of the staircase.
He then went up the ledges to bring back the three Templars, still unconscious.
A quick examination revealed how Elliot had managed to disable them so quickly.
It wasn’t his touch that had knocked them out, but a powerful sleeping and paralysis spell etched on a vellum.
A simple incantation sufficed for me to free Paulus from its clutches.
As Elliot had claimed we would be replacement for the women we’d taken away, I suspected we would find the same type of vellum or an equivalent sigil on the rescued clerics.
I was halfway through freeing Martha when footsteps resonated up the stairs. My wards went off again, indicating our allies had finally broken through and found their way back in.
This time, it was the joint forces of the other two Templars who had gotten locked out previously and Prefect Ewan along with his Inquisitors. Considering the deplorable state Elliot now found himself in, his magic had likely sufficiently weakened to allow our allies to unravel it.
“Nine Hells!” Ewan exclaimed, horrified as he gazed upon Elliot. “What have you done to him?!”
“I merely reversed his leeching spell,” I said with a shrug. “Everything else, he did to himself.”
“Then end him!” Ewan said in a self-evident fashion, seeming shocked—if not outraged—that I hadn’t already done so.
“No,” Lyall said in a tone that brooked no argument. “He is now the Grim Reaper’s problem.”
“But—”
“No buts,” I interjected, interrupting the Prefect. “When he’s ready, the Grim will reap him in his own time, as he stated moments before you arrived.”
The Templars and Inquisitors recoiled upon hearing that comment. Visibly uneasy, their eyes flicked this way and that around the room, looking for signs of his presence.
“You saw him and spoke to him?” Paulus asked, his voice hesitant.
I nodded. “We both did.”
He swallowed hard and warily assessed me. I gave him an indulgent smile.
“All is well, Grand Master,” I said with the appropriate level of deference in the presence of Ewan’s team. “He wasn’t here for me. My life’s thread is in no danger in the foreseeable future.”
My heart swelled with love when his shoulders relaxed with obvious relief.
That man truly loved me as a daughter. I didn’t know how much I would be able to reveal to him about the new family I had entered into.
But I hoped that, even as the path ahead of me veered in a completely different direction from his, our bond would never be severed.
“I’m glad to hear it. But what about the Oracle?” he asked, glancing at the now empty ropes still dangling from the ceiling.
“She ended up as Geru food at the bottom of that pit,” Lyall said with a shit-eating grin. “Good luck recovering her remains, if that was your intention.”
I had to bite the inside of my cheeks so as not to chuckle.
But all amusement faded the minute I felt the weight of Conrad’s stare.
He had just been reanimated by one of the inquisitors.
After examining the still screaming Elliot with something akin to arousal, he shifted his attention back to me.
The assessing look he gave me, despite his face remaining unreadable, seriously gave me the creeps.
In that instant, he was undoubtedly thinking maybe he would want to work with me so that he could indulge in his baser instincts.
The fool didn’t understand that I would only reserve this type of brutal punishment for true monsters, not concoct false accusations against an innocent just to sate my twisted urges.
Thankfully, Paulus turned to Ewan to wrap up this mission.
“Go home, Prefect. Tend to your people. We will expect weekly reports about their progress and recovery,” he ordered.
“Yes, Grand Master,” Ewan replied with the appropriate level of deference before hesitantly looking at me. “Thank you for everything you have done in rescuing my clerics, Sis… ter.”
His awkward hesitation in calling me Sister, as would have been normal if not for my formal title, should have hurt.
But I had made my peace with the fact that I was no longer a part of this Order.
Even though no official declaration had been made to that effect, anyone could see that I was something else now.
Something they didn’t understand. And people always feared the unknown.
“It was my duty, Prefect Ewan. I wish you and your Sanctum more peaceful days ahead,” I replied politely.
He gave me a stiff nod, mumbled his farewells to the others and left with his inquisitors carrying the remaining women, the others having already been brought back safely to the sanctum before we got locked in here.
“We must talk,” Paulus said in a gentle tone.
I nodded even as I gave him a sad smile. “We will. Soon.”
To my shock, he returned my smile and caressed my cheek in a paternal fashion.
He had never been the type for physical displays of affection, least of all in public.
My chest constricted with the realization that this was a form of farewell.
Although there were countless ways for us to keep in contact, if only through messages, our days of going on missions together, training, or fighting side by side were effectively over.
He dropped his hand, turned around, and walked away.
The other Templars followed him quietly, Martha pausing to glance at me with a sad smile that I also interpreted as a farewell.
While she’d also had quite a few reservations where I was concerned, she always treated me kindly out of the blind loyalty she had for Paulus.
If not for the darkness lurking inside me, I believed she and I might have grown very close.
As soon as they exited the dungeon, Haroth reappeared in the room—or at least made himself visible. The brat was casually sitting at the edge of the pit, admiring Elliot in the throes of agony with a bemused expression.
“He may not agree with it right now, but I’m actually doing him a favor by delaying,” Haroth deadpanned. “But you two love birds can go. I’ll keep watch over him until I take him on a trip.”
Lyall snorted and I shook my head at the Grim Reaper. He was seriously growing on me. My mate drew me into his embrace, and I melted against him.
“Time to go home, my love.”
“Take us away,” I replied, tightening my arms around him.
And away we went.