Chapter 38
Elric went with the witches at first. It was a daunting task to put together a kingdom of people who had been, for the better part of a year or perhaps even longer, dead. There was a lot of praying to do, a lot of figuring to do, and frankly, more than they could manage on their own.
They regrouped first at the castle, gathering supplies that were mostly ropes and shields from the armory.
Gathering up the infected was going to take a lot of time, and even then…
well. The infected were a problem on their own.
Considering how much they liked to gather in groups, the entire coven knew it was going to be difficult to get them one by one to be handled.
“We did it one by one before,” Sybil muttered as they approached the house. “This will just be in reverse.”
Agnes scoffed. “If they don’t rush the door, which you know they are liable to do. If we aren’t careful, we’re going to have an entire horde of them loose again.”
Elric had a feeling this time would be different, though. He couldn’t explain why or where that feeling came from, but he was damn near certain they would be surprised at what they found on the other side of the first door.
Sybil was the bravest of them. She walked up to the front door of the nearest house, and then slowly creaked it open.
They all remained outside, staring into the darkness, wondering when they were going to hear the groans.
The moaning. The scrabbling claws at the windows and doors, but…
there was no sound in that house at all.
He wasn’t going to wait around forever. Elric brushed past Sybil and headed into the home, peering through the darkness of the house to find that nearly everything was covered in dust. The people who had lived here had left handprints in that dust, though.
Some of them were where they had staggered and fallen, other places where their shoulders had brushed past.
And then he came across the first body. It was a young woman who had fallen where she stood, lying across the floor like she was asleep.
Her eyes were sunken and hollow, her cheeks so deep he could see the outline of her teeth through them.
Her fingernails were so shredded that the tips of her fingers were little more than nubs.
Considering he didn’t hear any other noises from inside the house, he lifted her up in his arms and brought her outside.
A few of the coven members gasped at the sight of the young woman, but he laid her down on the cobblestones and placed his hands over her chest. “And now we make a sacrifice,” he said quietly. “Remember the old ways.”
“Shall I go get a chicken?” Elissa asked.
“No. A life goddess wouldn’t want that. What would Jessamine most desire?” He was almost embarrassed to admit he wasn’t sure what that would be. Jessamine wouldn’t want blood or pain, though. He knew that for certain.
Elissa knelt beside the young woman, hovering her hands over her sides before she laid her hands down on the woman’s chest as well. “Jessamine wouldn’t want a sacrifice. She’d want a gift.”
Just like that, Elissa brought out a flower that she’d had tucked behind her ear.
He vaguely remembered her grabbing it off a bush on their way.
Elissa often did odd things like that. He’d come to think of her as quirky and endearing.
But now, seeing that beautiful dandelion lying on the woman’s chest, he knew this was absolutely what Jessamine would want.
“Jessamine,” Elissa said quietly. “The Endless One. I brought you a flower to add to your realm so you can have fields of dandelions and know that we miss you.”
As they watched, the dandelion faded into the woman’s skin, and color bloomed from where it had lain.
Her skin went from pale papery gray to colorful pink with visible blue veins underneath.
It spread all the way to her fingertips, up to her lips, which turned berry red, and to her hair, which become a beautiful coppery color.
Then she opened her eyes, gasped, and came to life as Elric had hoped they would see.
“Where…” The woman blinked a few times, staring up at them in confusion. “Where am I? How did I get here?”
One of the coven members reached for the woman, gently helping her sit up as Elric and Elissa moved away from her. That coven member started to murmur an explanation, awakening memories the woman likely would wish to forget.
“Take her to the castle,” Elric suggested. “There’s more than enough room there, and should be some food left. Let’s get them fed. We’ll work through this street first.”
Something in his heart healed as he watched a witch guide the poor woman toward the castle.
It was his coven that was going to save this kingdom.
His coven that was going to make a difference, and that was…
odd. Normally, people were terrified of witches.
His women were the ones who were burned at the stake and often thought of as strange or evil.
But now? Now this entire kingdom would be healed and pieced back together by witches everyone had spurned for ages.
“Elric?” Sybil’s hand grabbed his elbow, nudging him back toward the house. “Can you get a few more of them? Please?”
He walked back into the house, but this time with Sybil at his side.
Together, they headed into the kitchen, where he was certain there would be more people.
And there were. They were slumped over the counter, some of them lying on the floor, a few that were halfway into the pantry as though they had been seeking out food, even while they were ill.
It broke his heart to see them like this.
They shouldn’t have had to suffer like this, and yet, so many people in this kingdom had.
He paused, his breath coming a little faster. Stuttering a bit as he stared down at a small child and the young man who still reached out his hand for the little one.
“Are you all right?” Sybil asked as she bent down next to the two of them.
“No. I…” He shook his head. “Without Jessamine, I never would have thought to help them. I would have let it keep happening, just as my brother had. I would have seen nothing wrong with this before…”
“People are allowed to change, Elric.”
“I’m not people. I’m a god. My entire purpose is to look after mortals, and I failed them all. Spectacularly.”
She glared at him. And he had no idea what he might have said to make her so angry. He had done everything wrong in his godhood, and he knew that now. She wouldn’t convince him otherwise.
Sybil didn’t argue with that, though. Instead, she said, “You are allowed to grow and change. You are allowed to see that you had done something wrong, and that you aren’t proud of who you once were.
What matters is how you move forward, how you make amends, and what you do to make sure that it never happens again.
So what kind of god do you want to be now, Elric?
What kind of god do you want your people to see? ”
At first, he didn’t know the answer. But the words came out of him, anyway. “One worthy of her.”
“Then don’t let them die.”
Then he could feel them. All the souls that were returning to empty shells. Shells that couldn’t contain them. Shells that had been used, abused, and discarded.
And it all suddenly made sense. Why he had been brought to this point. Why Jessamine was a life goddess and he was god of the dead still. He should have changed into something new, but why would he do that when the world needed him just as he was?
Elric looked into Sybil’s dark gaze, and he knew she had seen it as well.
They needed him to be who he was made to be.
To be the tormenting god of the dead, who was the only one who could force all of these people to stay in their bodies, no matter how painful it was while they waited for the coven to tend to them.
With a small nod, he stepped away from the bodies that littered the floor and focused on all the souls returning to those bodies.
He could feel their pain, their sadness.
He knew without a doubt that they all had some memories of what had happened to them.
Perhaps they wouldn’t once they returned to their mortal flesh, but their souls were wounded.
They would hold on to that fear for a while yet.
He wished he didn’t have to force them to remain as they were.
Some part of him still didn’t like to be the one who made everyone remain in pain.
Elric would become a dark god who would be feared for centuries after this.
The god of the dead who had saved them all, and yet still hurt them in the process.
It took every bit of his concentration to keep all of their souls in their bodies.
As Sybil called in a few more coven members so they could make sacrifices to Jessamine, he wandered out onto the street.
The souls were returning in a great wave that crested over Inverholm.
He watched them rushing in, catching them as they came with the shadows that spread out from his hands and body.
Each one he gently cradled, following them back to their bodies and then holding them in place.
Every ounce of his concentration was needed for this.
He had to focus. He had to keep his mind on every single one of them, and there were thousands.
He’d never created a spell like this in his entire life, but with Jessamine’s magic still flowing through him, as well as his own, his shadows seemed to know what to do.
He could feel it tugging on this form, though.
This body wasn’t entirely capable of this kind of magic, and he risked dissolving just like she had.
But he had to continue. For them. For every single soul in this kingdom who had been harmed by his family.