Chapter 7
Ruki’s soul fell silent on the journey back to the surface.
Snow covered the brumous forest where the pair appeared—all save the space immediately surrounding his feet, burnt away by Hellsfire. The moment Saer drew his first icy breath, he released the hold he’d kept on Ruki’s spirit.
Ruki’s face carried a mixture of human emotions. Aghast. Tormented. Betrayed.
Just a little ghost.
Saer ignored the spirit and the feelings it evoked, concentrating instead on shifting his frame into the human shell his master had crafted.
“Why, Saer?” The spirit’s voice dripped with unfathomable sorrow at the end of Saer’s transformation, and even had the human likeness to crack at the end.
It’s not the boy.
Saer avoided the soul’s gaze and pushed his palm below his ribs where something writhed—an uncomfortable, internal clawing. It seethed upward, invading his mind and heart. An infection after his time with humanity, surely. He’d pretended too much. He needed to remember his place in Lucifer’s army.
The hardened lump of emotions in his throat went down with a stubborn swallow.
Distant voices caught his attention, blending with the sounds of feet crunching through the forest flora. The blaze from his return had drawn their attention.
“Saer!” Ruki’s form reached for his arm. Its cool energy passed through him, and Pride paused, then met the soul with a considering gaze. He brushed his hand along the spirit’s face.
Ruki’s essence shivered at the caress.
“You gave yourself willingly to me so I may touch you,” Saer said. “Not the other way around, Little Ghost.” Saer understood the heaviness of the words as he spoke, though Ruki’s face pinched with confusion.
Voices drew closer, and Saer turned away from the spirit, even as it called to him, “Old friend, release me. Please!”
He blinked hard and gave a single, cursory shake of the head before calling out in the language of Ruki’s tribe, “Here, family! I’ve returned! Find me here!”
The tribesmen hollered in response and followed the sound of Saer’s voice.
Shock and disbelief crossed the villagers’ expressions when they beheld Saer.
Some remembered him and claimed his return a miracle.
Others recalled the night of the storm, the fire which he’d strode into, and kept their distance.
A general attitude of unease met his return, though none could—or would—voice why. One of the hunters threw a skin over him to cover his nakedness and escorted him back to their village to meet with the chief.
Ruki’s soul, its face twisted in agony, could only follow.
No matter how much it screamed, none other than Saer heard the spirit. Face set as neutral as he could muster, he forced himself to ignore the young soul’s cries.
It had been a quarter year since the great storm—or so he’d been told during the trek back to the village. Fall had begun its slide into winter.
How long had he spent in Hell? He’d waited hours for Lucifer to finish crafting Errshek, but without a sun’s light to mark the passage of time from night to day, he couldn’t quantify.
Regardless, Asheda appeared far older than the reported quarter-year should have granted him.
The chief stared at Saer from across the expansive hut with sunken eyes.
Saer took in the newness of the shelter, the crafted gifts, paintings, and skins given to Asheda by his people.
A muscle in his cheek feathered now and again, for Ruki’s spirit was more desperate than ever to be heard.
This time, however, it screamed and tried to clutch at the chief.
Why did that threaten to steal his breath?
Get what our maker needs. Get back to Neyu.
“What trickery is this?” Asheda’s voice cracked through the tense silence.
Saer turned to the leader, feigning confusion.
“I watched you die.” Asheda stared, as if willing the image before him to crumble. “The fire took everything. We scattered your ashes among the trees. How do you stand here?”
Saer didn’t trust himself to speak. He stood beneath the other man’s scrutiny, spine not as straight as it’d been before carrying the weight of Ruki’s spirit through the realms.
Asheda rose—slow and heavy, as though lifting the burden of old grief with him.
Though his frame still carried the strength of a hunter, pain lingered at the corners of his mouth and in the deep shadows beneath his eyes.
“I let you into our home.” His voice trembled.
“My son befriended you. My wife cooked beside you.”
In the wake of Saer’s silence, Asheda’s tone hardened. “You will answer me.”
Saer held his tongue, attention caught between the growing edge in Asheda’s voice and the ghost of Ruki’s cries still echoing in some memory not his own.
Asheda stepped forward, voice thickening. “Will you say nothing?”
Saer licked his lips, willing his resolve to hold.
“We fed you. We clothed you. My family loved you.”
Love. The edges of Saer’s eyes tightened.
“And when you walked into the fire, we wept for you. We honored you.” Asheda’s voice fractured.
Saer’s continued stoicism unleashed something primal in Asheda. He clenched his fists in violence and roared, “What do you want from me?”
Saer took in a slow breath. What did he want?
How could he make this feeling inside stop?
He held up a shuddering hand and let it feel the air, the warmth surrounding Asheda’s body. “I came back because I know the fate that has befallen your family.”
Ruki’s spirit sprang between the two of them with renewed vigor, eyes glinting. “Yes, Saer, tell him!”
Saer ignored the desperate call, picturing Neyu in his mind. He must have been so close—so close—to seeing her before Lucifer ordered him back to the surface. Would he be here for years again? Years of drenching himself in whatever this feeling was?
No.
Asheda unleashed an angry cry and whirled around, showing Saer his back. “Why have you returned?” he asked again.
Saer paused and assessed the chief. Ruki had always been Asheda’s opposite, taking after his mother more than his father. Slower to anger. Quicker to trust and laugh. Ready to share a smile and a story.
The echo of his desperate promise to Lucifer replayed in his mind. I’ll find you a spirit which feels opposite to this one. I won’t disappoint you, I swear it!
What if Asheda was the key? To putting him back in Lucifer’s good graces, to seeing his Neyu again…
But, Ruki’s death had done something to him. Would Asheda’s do the same?
Was it worth it?
To get back before more years passed, the obvious answer screamed through his veins.
“For you,” Saer answered, just above a whisper.
The leader’s body tensed, but didn’t turn. “I’ll go nowhere with you.”
Years. It had been years since seeing Neyu! Saer approached, keeping his voice low even as it was fueled by desperation. “Not even if you were able to see your eldest son again? What about your wife? The baby you never knew?”
“Saer!” Ruki’s tone buzzed, though Saer’s eyes remained locked on the chief’s back.
“They’re gone forever.” Asheda’s strong voice trembled at the end of his words.
Saer set his jaw, then spun towards the soul. “Spirit of Ruki, tell your father you’re here.”
The soul’s eyes widened, shifting to Asheda. “Father, I am here. Hear me, please!”
The chief whipped around to face Saer. “You dare?”
Something flared. Saer shifted to his heat sense, then quick as a blink to his soul-sight in an effort to delineate what he picked up on.
It was that third element. The thing he’d gleaned from humans, now and again, but never labeled.
Familiar, but not visible. Warm, like an invisible sun’s light kissing his skin.
Mine, Saer thought, unbidden. At last, he started to see, and his heart sped.
Saer gestured to Asheda’s right side. “Your son calls you. Will you not answer?”
“I hear nothing! Don’t play me for a fool!” Again, the flare of a particular something—warm and almost touchable. He knew it.
He’d been made from it.
The figure of Ruki fell to its knees, arms wound tight around itself as pitiful sounds escaped it, ripping through Saer.
“I took your Ruki away, and now I’ve brought him back to you so you may have final words.” He stared into the leader’s baleful eyes, forcing manipulative truths from his lips before he could question them. “You can’t see him now. You can’t speak to one another. But that may be changed.”
The chief’s lips thinned, pain lancing through his eyes. “What was I going to name my second child?” The way he posed the question, Asheda must have known Saer wouldn’t be able to answer it. But Saer knew that confidence. Conceit.
Self-assurance.
Arrogance.
Pride.
That sense of warmth and familiarity extended from the tribe’s leader. Saer sensed Asheda’s pride.
Mine.
From Saer’s first day, he’d been aware of what his master created him from—what he represented. It hadn’t been taught, but rather built in. He had names for all his instincts, now.
Heat sense.
Soul sense.
Sin sense. Which meant the other Daemoenica…
“Scuna.”
Pulled out of his thoughts, Saer blinked at the curled spirit. “What did you say, Little Ghost?”
Asheda watched with intense eyes, warm pride wafting from him in droves.
Ruki’s figure whimpered. “Scuna, if it was a girl. Gaugii, to honor one of the elders passed, if it was a boy.”
Saer ran his tongue over his teeth. This was his chance to gain Asheda’s trust, to regain Lucifer’s favor, to see Neyu.
Why did it hurt?
He gritted his teeth, pushed past the unease, and shared the information with the chief.
Asheda stumbled back. “Ruki?”
The chief’s pride dissipated. But when Saer shifted once more to view Asheda’s soul, a renewed brilliance flared at the realization of his son’s presence—one that outshone Ruki’s in a way Saer hadn’t expected.
Instinct clawed at him. This was what his maker needed! He knew, even if he didn’t understand why.
Asheda swallowed. His gaze broke, his defenses gone. “No one knew. Only Ruki and Donanni.” The tribe’s leader shuddered. “They were all I had.”
Saer waited while Asheda licked his trembling lips.
“I—what is it I must do?”
The question spurred Ruki’s spirit out of its reverie, understanding Saer’s intentions at last. “Saer, no!”
He inhaled.
“Father!”
I don’t have a choice.
“All you must do, Asheda”—Saer extended a hand to the chief—“is swear to me that your spirit will follow me on the day you die.”
Ruki’s essence couldn’t speak past the sobbing.
Asheda stared at the offered hand. “And you’ll show me my boy? My wife and my baby?”
I can’t.
“I will.”
Great, vaporous tears coated Ruki’s face, disappearing as they fell, turning to nothing. “He lies, Father. He’s lying…”
I am. The thought burrowed deep, excruciating.
Asheda hesitated as though he could hear his son’s voice.
Just on the cusp.
Everything Saer worked for, every soul that slid without meaning through his corporeal fingers, every word spoken in crippling disappointment from his maker, every moment away from his perfect counterpart, every grievous wound he suffered in body and mind from the one he devoted himself to—it all rushed into his throat.
Drowning in the seas of his own threatening incompetence, Saer lashed out for the breath of air he needed with desperate instinct.
With pride.
Metaphysically, Saer drew on that aspect he knew so well, ripping it to the forefront. Like calling to like, Saer pulled on Asheda’s own pride, forcing the chief to feel the sin with howling intensity, bringing what was already present to the surface.
Ruki’s father stood straighter. A haughtiness not unknown, but uncommon with its intensity, dug itself in the set of Asheda’s mouth and jaw. Conceit.
Self-assurance.
Arrogance.
Pride.
“The day that I die…” Asheda spoke with newfound confidence. “My spirit flies with you.” He took Saer’s hand.
“No, Father, no!”
“Prepare yourself, Chief Asheda Fireswallower.” Saer exhaled. “You die today.”
Digging his strong fingers further into the back of the leader’s palm, Saer dropped his human guise. He ignited the entire structure in flames, their roar devouring Asheda’s horrified screams.