Chapter 3 #2
“Your… brother,” Ivy repeated, wiping her sweaty hair from her face. “Is it the one who took a sacrifice centuries ago and made her a god?”
Vale held back a rare laugh. Mortals lived such short lives that these stories got distorted over mere centuries.
“Ruby was never a sacrifice,” he said. “And she made herself a god.”
He moved to step into the pool.
“Wait!” Ivy cried. “Take me with you.”
She stepped toward the edge of the pool, near the crack in the ground. He caught her arm, moving her away.
“Go back to your nest,” he said, and frowned. “My nest.”
“But I’m sick! I don’t know what’s happening to me. And I don’t…” Ivy grimaced, as if revealing something she was deeply ashamed of. “I don’t want to be alone.”
For a moment, Vale was almost regretful that he had to leave.
But he was not about to let her into his brother’s void—what if she accidentally poisoned that void, too?
If it was not a dissolving ring or some other mysterious object, then it was her body itself.
Likely another plot from her uncle, binding his niece to corrupt any void she entered.
“I will only be a moment,” Vale said. “Go back to your—my—the nest. The way is clear.”
He motioned toward the path that the void had cleared for them. But when he stepped into the silver pool, Ivy was still staring mournfully down at him, stinking of panic and lust, a distracting line of sweat dripping between her heaving breasts.
Vale emerged into the wanderer’s void with a grateful gasp of fresh air.
No fear clouding it, no desire conjured from the heatbloom.
Just the familiar earthy scent of his eldest brother’s void, which also hosted a shadowy forest. Just without all the “interesting additions,” as his brother called them.
It looked positively empty compared to the cramped jungle of Vale’s own void.
A surprised voice sounded behind him. “Vale! What brings you here?”
Vale turned. His brother's wife, Ruby, strode through the trees, her dark dress trailing behind her.
“Ruby,” Vale said. “I must speak to my brother.”
“He’s guiding a sprite out of the void,” Ruby said, her hair shining in the sunlight that did not exist for many centuries before she made the wanderer’s void her home. “I’m sure he’ll be here as soon as he senses you.”
Slate, the oldest of all known Skullstalkers, appeared beside his wife in a cascade of shadows.
He wore age well, only the barest signs tracing his skull mask and thinning his claws.
He wore a simple loincloth, as most Skullstalkers did, though his was now embroidered on one side with his wife’s spiraling blue embellishments.
“Vale,” Slate said, surprised. “You smell… concerned.”
His tone was pointed. He could smell the lust on him, Vale realized with a stab of annoyance. Some of it was even his own.
“I was summoned into the mortal realm,” Vale said, deciding not to explain that part just yet. “They offered me a mortal in exchange for fodder for their war. But when I brought the mortal into my void, it began showing signs of corruption. Do you know how to fix this?”
“I do not,” Slate said slowly. “I have never heard of such a thing. You think the mortal is involved?”
“I do. But…” Vale growled. “My void has… taken a liking to her.”
“A liking,” Ruby repeated, her eyes glinting with god-light. “And here I thought even your void has barely taken a liking to you in the last few centuries! What’s so special about her?”
“Nothing,” he said hastily. “I only mean that she must have a good heart if my void likes her.”
“But that does not mean she did not do something unknowingly,” Slate said.
Vale nodded. “It may be a plot contrived by the other mortals.”
“You could return and kill them,” Slate suggested.
Ruby gave her husband a disapproving look. Slate noticed it and sighed.
“You could ask them,” he amended. “And then kill them if they mean to harm your void.”
Ruby patted Slate’s arm and turned back to Vale. “Whatever the problem is, I’m glad you are not alone anymore.”
Vale frowned. Ruby made it sound like this was a lasting arrangement.
“She is a mortal,” he said. “She will die soon enough. Sooner than the light-motes, even.”
The memory of his light-mote assistants made his heart throb. He had not thought of them so often in centuries, their sweet light and friendly song. Memories of better times, back when the void and he were one. Back when he was not constantly busy keeping it content, losing more ground every day.
“She doesn’t have to die,” Ruby said brightly. “I’m still around, aren’t I?”
“Because you are a god,” Vale said, confused.
“That didn’t give me as many years as my dear husband.” Ruby ran a fond hand over her husband’s claws as he wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “You have a brother in the Anderfel mountains, in the mortal realm. He has a spell that can link your lifelines together.”
“I will consider that,” Vale lied. He hardly knew this mortal; he was not about to bind them together for the rest of his life. “I must go. I will seek out the mortals who gave her to me and demand answers. If it is a mortal spell, it will not be too difficult to figure out.”
He began to close his eyes and concentrate on his own void. But before he let it pull him under, he paused.
“We have a plant in my void,” he began. “The heatbloom. Have you heard of it?”
“The mating plant?” Slate’s gaze dropped to the spots of pollen on Vale’s usually spotless robe. Then he chuckled, a noise so rare Vale had not recognized it the first time he heard it from his brother’s fanged mouth. “Of course I have.”
“Do you know how it affects mortals?”
“The same way it affects any creature, I would imagine.”
Vale growled again, the sound rising in the silent forest. “This is different. She said she was connected to something.”
“Her desires,” Ruby guessed.
“No. I think… I think it may have been my void. But that is impossible.”
“Why?”
“It would not reach out to her,” Vale argued. “It barely reaches out to me, the one who has cared for it for millennia. Why would it connect with a mortal after mere minutes?”
Ruby and Slate traded a look. Slate’s tail flicked. Ruby flicked her hand back at him, a silent conversation that Vale did not understand.
“You should return,” Slate said. “Your mortal needs you.”
“She is not my mortal,” Vale replied.
“Still,” Ruby said, oddly sweet. “Do let us know how she is. And you may want to visit your Anderfel brother first.”
“If I am to go to the mortal realm, it will be to confront the mortals who provoked this situation,” Vale said. “Not to extend my new assistant’s life.”
“He does not only extend her life,” Ruby said, her dark hair swelling with magic as she got more excited. “He can also help with the… size problem.”
Vale said nothing. His mind filled with images of the small, plump human waiting for him back in his void.
Her flushed cheeks and needy words, which would surely be needier as the heatbloom sank into her blood.
Help with the size problem? How, by causing him to shrink?
That seemed like the only way he could mate with her.
“You need not worry,” Slate assured him. “Neither of you will be changed. Not permanently.”
“And it will not hurt,” Ruby added.
Vale shifted uncomfortably, glad for his long robes.
They hid the stirring happening underneath.
He had not seriously considered mating her, even as the pollen took hold.
He still hoped that it would resolve itself some other way, or that she would suffer in silence.
But if she was truly beloved by the void—no matter how nonsensical it was—then he owed it to her, did he not?
Even if she was just an assistant who the void ignored, as it largely ignored him.
She did not deserve the agony that set in if the pollen was ignored.
“Do let us know how it goes,” Ruby said again, smiling far too excitedly.
Vale nodded. Then he closed his eyes, concentrating on his void.
It pulled him home in an instant.
The silver pool felt… off. The water stuck to him for a moment before sliding away, as all filth did in his void.
Well, Vale thought grudgingly. Almost everything.
He wiped fruitlessly at the pollen stains on his robe and then examined the evidence of the pool’s corruption. The crack next to the pool was bigger, carving jagged white lines into the dark ground.
Vale would visit the mortal realm again, he decided. They could not have gone far. He would track them down and then demand answers.
But before he could close his eyes again, something landed on his arm.
He looked down. There was a corpsefrog clinging to his robe, watching him with calm, glowing eyes.
“Hello,” said Vale suspiciously. “What do you want?”
The corpsefrog let out a low, broken cry. Then it leapt onto a nearby rib-tree, which bowed under its weight. As Vale was puzzling how a tiny corpsefrog could cause such a thing, a surge of bone-trees and bushes parted to show the way back to his nest, including the tree the frog was sitting on.
Vale sighed. “You would have me go to her?”
There was no reply. Not even the corpsefrog, who was still watching him with those big, glowing eyes, one of which was half-rotted.
“I should return to the mortal realm,” Vale said. “Surely that is more important. You are hurting.”
Still no reply. Not even a gust of wind. But just as Vale was about to instruct the pool to take him to the mortal realm, a faint moan echoed through the branches.
Vale stopped. The sound should not have affected him.
The desire came anyway, pulsing through him in a way he had not known in an age.
The strange thing was, it did not feel like the pollen was affecting him.
He was not overheated or dazed. But it must have been the pollen, for why else would he find himself so drawn to the mortal’s desperate moans?
Vale stepped out of the pool and started down the path the void had cleared for him. The mortal’s moans became louder with every step, as if she could sense him coming. But when he arrived at his nest, Ivy’s eyes were clenched shut, oblivious to his presence.
Her white dress had been pulled up. Her hand was underneath it, rubbing between her legs. Her expression was pained, as he hoped it would not be. But, apparently, the heatbloom worked in the usual way for mortals, too.
The scent of her desire was so thick that Vale was lightheaded with it. He forced his voice to stay neutral as he asked, “Have you made yourself come?”
Ivy jolted. Her hand stopped, her eyes flashing open, and Vale was once again entranced by the bright, familiar green.
“What?” Ivy managed. A shudder wracked her frame, and Ivy whined weakly. Her hand moved under her dress once more, only to forcefully stop as she stared up at him.
Vale stepped closer, breathing through his mouth so he would not be affected by the overwhelming scent of her desire. “Have you?”
“Yes,” Ivy whispered, her cheeks red with more than lust. He could smell her embarrassment, but her desire was so huge it was difficult to notice.
“Then clearly it is not enough,” Vale decided. “I will assist.”