“She’s alone…” I whispered. I no longer understood anything.
Spirit whirled around, not at all surprised to see her. “It took you forever.”
“I didn’t think you’d be foolish enough to use that spell,” Death said. She glanced at the other Reapers with a look of grief and concern.
“It wasn’t even the first time,” Spirit replied. “Remember Oxalis?”
Death looked surprised. “You used Finalis Finum Finium on Oxalis?”
“I did. And you know why I did it, so let’s not get into the details here, okay? Not now. Not after everything we’ve both done to have our way.” Spirit sighed. “About five hundred thousand souls have just been sent into the afterlife. Well, the first stage of the afterlife, anyway. You and I… we’ve seen beyond the veil.”
Death raised a hand to silence him. “You’ve done enough.”
“Guess it’ll be a bureaucratic nightmare for our colleagues on the other side.” Spirit chuckled. “But I reckon they’ve dealt with much worse.”
“Stop it,” Death warned him.
“Or what? You’ll obliterate me? Do it already,” Spirit snarled. “Just make it end! Put me out of my misery! It’s the only thing I have ever wanted from the moment you put this scythe in my hand and asked me to serve you, you selfish harpy!”
“Where… where’s Unending? Taeral?” I heard myself ask, though I wasn’t really sure I felt my lips move as I uttered the words. I’d gone numb.
“We’ll get to that in a second,” Death replied, giving me a faint nod of acknowledgment. “I need to sort this out first, since—”
“Where were you?!” I shouted, rage taking over. “Where the hell were you?!”
Death motioned for me to be quiet, and that was it. I couldn’t speak anymore. It was as if she’d stolen my voice. I tried to say something, but barely a huff came out. It only served to amplify my anger, as I hadn’t yet accepted the tragedy that Spirit had just brought upon us. “I told you, I’ll get to that in a second,” she said, turning her focus to Spirit. “You. You’ve been a handful from the moment I made you.”
“Shove it! I was the perfect Reaper!” he replied, pointing his scythe at her. She brought Thieron up to mirror his gesture, her blade lit up white, and his vanished into thin air. It rendered him speechless. I doubted he’d ever been without his weapon.
“You won’t be needing that where you’re going,” she said, while Thieron’s glow persisted. I noticed the faint sparks that his scythe had left behind. They floated in the air for a little while before getting absorbed into her blade. That had to be his power going back to its original source.
“Come on, destroy me already,” Spirit muttered. “You’ve already taken everything I had.”
The remaining Reapers were silent, breathlessly watching the scene unfold. The gravitas of her presence rendered them all mute—Nethissis included. The poor girl couldn’t look away, the horror still imprinted on her features.
“Yes, Spirit, you were a model Reaper indeed, but I could always sense your dissent. Your displeasure at being here. Of doing such honorable work,” Death said.
“What honor is there in letting people die in agony like you wanted me to do with Oxalis?”
“You are agents of death! You don’t get to decide how someone dies. That belongs to the universe. Not you!” Death replied, her voice booming. “That is the one thing you’ve never truly grasped. You cannot have control over everything. Some things are simply… out of your hands. Everyone else understood. All the other Reapers have fallen in line.”
Spirit chuckled bitterly. “First, you should’ve thought of that before you gave me the power to control anything—let alone control spirits, you reckless fool. And second, not all of them fell in line. I mean, hello? Unending, anyone? Where is she, by the way? I thought she’d be around to laugh in my face.”
“She’s here. You just can’t see her,” Death replied. “This isn’t about her, though. It was never about Unending. It was always about you screwing me over just so you could prove that I don’t have control over you.” She paused, and Spirit shot her a cold grin. “I knew that from the moment I made you. I didn’t expect to have control over you. I expected obedience and loyalty. I need Reapers to be around for as long as I want them to be. For as long as I need them. I don’t have to explain why. You either accept my will like the others do, or you don’t.”
“Well, we all know how that one turned out.” Spirit sighed.
“I would’ve accepted a lot of things from you, my darling. I’ve watched you leave this world before, and it hurt me deeply. I didn’t have to show it, but you were missed.”
Somehow, her words seemed to pluck at his undead heart strings. His gaze softened slightly. “And now you’re here to destroy me again.”
“Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“Ah, no. Unfortunately, it’s what I got,” he replied. “You see, after I was brought back by the Darklings, after I was told what happened with the Hermessi rebellion, I realized I had little chance to really make things bad for you. I guess you could say I learned to accept that,” Spirit added, trying not to smile. “However, I had another way of messing with you. My plan was to leave Unending here, broken beyond repair, trapped, and to keep you under your seals for as long as possible afterward. But these mongrels got in my way.”
He pointed at Thayen and me, then at the remaining Reapers. Death followed his gaze, and Thieron lit up again. Time, Soul, Widow, Morning, and Phantom were paralyzed. They could still hear her—I could see it in their eyes—but they couldn’t move. The decay that had taken over Phantom and Morning stopped, as well. I figured it was Death’s way of pressing the pause button while she worked things out with Spirit.
“Then what were you going to do?” she asked Spirit.
He stifled a grin. “I found a way in.”
“Excuse me?”
“I found a way into the afterlife. A while back, actually. Not long before I made this copy of myself,” he said. “I assume the original me kept in touch with her after my first breach beyond. And she was more than willing to help. She understood what it’s like to be forced to be something you don’t want to be.”
Death’s expression shifted to something dark and more than a little terrifying. “Stop talking right now,” she said. “Whatever your plans were, they’re over. And if you think you’re ever crossing over to the other side, you’ve got another thing coming.”
That seemed to wipe the humor from his face.
“I have the power of death,” she said. “I may not decide how people die, but I am the effect that leads them beyond life. From there on, if I wish, I can even change the soul’s path.”
“You wouldn’t…” Spirit mumbled. He seemed to know what she was talking about, but the others looked confused.
“For all the crimes you’ve committed, for your refusal to accept your fate, for rising against your maker, for rising against your brothers and sisters, and for killing everyone here before their time—Spirit Bender, for these unspeakable acts of malice, I sentence you to the nothingness.”
Suddenly, his expression shifted into one of pure horror. “No. No!”
Death raised her scythe once more, and Spirit, in his ultimate desperation, tried to make a run for it. I blinked, and she appeared behind him. She cut Spirit down with Thieron, and the wound split across his back in a brilliance of glowing colors.
“No!” he cried out, and the wound expanded until it covered him whole. For seconds, he shone like a diamond in the sunlight, pinks and blues and violets and greens dancing through him.
“Into the nothingness with you!” Death shouted.
And the Spirit Bender was gone. Vanished into thin air, leaving nothing but delicate shimmers in his wake. Nothing but heartache and misery, as he’d killed my sister, my friends, and so many other innocents. I couldn’t even say anything. I couldn’t even allow myself to feel the relief of seeing the Spirit Bender out of this world once
and for all.
Tristan
Silence settled like a blanket over Roano. The stillness of all the bodies shook me to the core. Everywhere I looked, I saw someone I knew. Someone I’d lost. Death let a deep sigh roll out of her chest before walking over to Widow, Soul, and Time.
“What are you going to do about this?” Nethissis asked, shaking like a leaf. “I’m dead. All my friends are dead and have been forced to move on. How… how do we fix this?”
“Please be patient, Nethissis. As bad as it may seem now, this… this had to happen,” Death replied, then pressed Thieron’s blade against each of the controlled Reapers’ foreheads. One by one, they regained their freedom and ability to speak.
“This is seriously messed up,” Widow said, touching his gimp mask. “You really messed up.”
Death gave him a cold glare, and he didn’t say another word. Time and Soul were equally quiet. Kelara was on her knees, her ghoulish hunger buried under mountains of shock and grief as she, too, tried to process the world she’d returned to. Since she was still a Reaper, and even in her current state, Kelara had found her way back to Roano. Space was merely an inconvenience for her kind, something she could tread in minutes, rather than hours or days like the living. Soul kept her close, hand firmly clasping one shoulder to keep her from trying to come after Nethissis again. I wasn’t sure Kelara had any strength left after everything that had just happened.
Sidyan and Seeley had already learned to keep their mouths shut. I was astonished by their obedience and restraint. It didn’t make any sense, but I couldn’t do anything. Death had paralyzed me.
She glanced over to Kelara and offered a sympathetic half-smile. “Hang in there, darling. I’ll be with you soon. Here… this should make it better,” she said, and Thieron’s blade glowed a pale green. Instantly, Kelara exhaled sharply, seemingly relaxed.
“What did you do?” Soul asked.
“A brief spiritual relaxation spell,” Death replied. “Kelara’s condition is bad, but not as bad as Morning and Phantom’s. I’m prioritizing as I see fit.” She turned to look at the disintegrating Reapers. “Now, you two… oh, my darlings.” Death gently kneeled beside Morning and Phantom. Parts of them were missing, black dust settled on the ground. Moving Thieron above their bodies as it glowed, she began to heal them from the curse that Time had been forced to put on them. She gave me a sideways glance. “This is a soul rot,” she explained. “It’s a terrible curse that no Reaper should ever cast. I’m afraid that by teaching my children even some of the words, I gave them the ingredients for all sorts of terrible things.”
“I am so sorry.” Time sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I couldn’t stop myself.”
“I know,” she replied. “But even so. What were you thinking when you conceived the spell in the first place? You know what? Don’t tell me. You told me about it, and I didn’t do a thing to stop you. I only told you it would be awful. I’ll take responsibility for this.”
Flakes of light fell from Thieron’s blade, replenishing Morning and Phantom’s physical forms. Within minutes, they were as good as new. They got up, and the other First Tenners huddled around them. Dream, Nightmare, Time, Soul, Widow, Night, Morning, Phantom… they hugged each other, murmuring words of affection and asking for forgiveness. At least they were back together. The rest of us were not.
“This isn’t right,” Thayen mumbled, moving closer to me. Tears streaked down his face, mixing with dust and dirt and dried blood. I had a feeling most of it was mine, from the pummeling I’d gotten from Spirit during our mountaintop faceoff.
“It isn’t,” Death said as she stood up. Unending and Taeral appeared beside her. Both were devastated but quiet. Unending saw me and nearly fell apart, but one look from Death and she held herself up with what poise she had left. “But like I said, it had to happen. I allowed it to happen because I wanted to see how far Spirit would go. Do not ask me why. It is not something I am willing to share with you,” Death added. “For what it’s worth, Taeral and Unending did try to stop me, but… I cannot be stopped.”
“You sound an awful lot like Spirit when you say that,” Nethissis whispered.
“I know. He took after me in some ways,” Death replied. “Listen, I’m not here to ask for forgiveness, nor to make amends of any kind. Spirit disrupted the universe, and I wish to fix it. But before I do that, I want my Reapers—my first, in particular—to understand that in certain respects, they are powerless, and that will never change. All they can do is accept it, no matter how much it hurts. That’s what life is about, as well. You, the living, should know that better than anyone. You change what you can, but what you cannot, well… you adapt to it. That’s what the Spirit Bender never understood. That is what Unending and her siblings didn’t fully grasp, either, until now. Consider this a lesson. A stark reminder that you can’t always have what you want. That things don’t always work out in your favor. And the next time a tragedy occurs despite all your efforts to prevent it, maybe you’ll remember that the only thing you can do is keep pressing forward. Move on. Accept this harrowing or unpleasant change. Because that’s how the universe works. You are given a chance to live. You are given conditions. You are presented with a few unexpected challenges. And your life is what you make of it.”
She paused to look at me, a faint smile resting on her lips.
“You are not gods. You are not powers of the universe. You are bright spots that I sincerely appreciate, but you cannot bend the universe to your will. I needed you to see it for yourselves. To stare this loss in the face and understand that it can happen, whether you expect it or not. Whether you want it or not,” she added. “And that is where I will end this conversation. There will be no more talking about it. No questions. No reproach. I don’t care what you think of me or of what I allowed to happen.”
Moments passed, and none of us could think of anything to say. Not that I could even utter a word, anyway. However, deep down, I had to admit Death’s words had hit me hard. Everything we’d had was courtesy of the universe. Magic couldn’t fix everything. No matter how well we planned something, the universe could still find a way to throw us a curveball, whether by itself or with a little help from the likes of Death or the Spirit Bender or the Hermessi. The universe could still find a way to remind us that we were mere specks in the greater scheme of things.
Perhaps I’d internalize this eventually. For now, all I could think about was Esme and the people we’d lost. Thayen was on point. This wasn’t right. It was unnatural. It went against the universe itself, so how could I accept something like this?
“Anyway, what you’re about to see is for your eyes only,” Death continued. “I’m going to have to do something I haven’t done in a very, very long time, and certainly not with an audience. I could erase your memories once it’s finished, but I think you’ll benefit from seeing this. Tell no one. If you do, I will know, and you won’t appreciate the repercussions.”
The Reapers all nodded, while Nethissis and Thayen were just frowning and quiet. Death moved to the center of the broken red circle and drove Thieron’s blade into the ground. The earth shook slightly as she whispered a series of words I didn’t understand. Winds rose and whirled around us, causing dust to scratch my face and enter my mouth before I shut it.
Lumi and Kailani’s bodies glowed brighter than before, and the light began to seep from them like incandescent lava. The droplets moved chaotically across the dirt for a while, then merged with one another until a blob was created. It rippled as it made its way toward Thieron. As soon as it made contact with its blade, the liquid light began to change.
It grew into a figure. It didn’t have a face or eyes, but it had arms and legs and a head. On its back was a simple black circle with a dot in the middle. This entity was foreign and familiar all at once. I tried to understand what was happening, but it was Nethissis who cleared things up without even realizing it. “The Word,” she let slip, not believing her eyes. “It’s… it’s the
Word…”
The light figure eventually morphed into a person—an inverted version of Death. A beautiful man with dark skin and white hair. His eyes were diamonds, and his lips were shimmering, too. He wore an iridescent cloak that flowed down his slender body, and I was overwhelmed by his beauty and the power that he exuded.
“This is but one manifestation of the Word, but yes,” Death said, and looked at him. “Hello, brother. It’s been a while.”
“A little over a year, let’s say,” the Word replied, his voice smooth, like honey. I could certainly see the appeal of serving an entity like him, though he, too, had made it both easy and insanely difficult for his disciples to navigate the universe. In that sense, the Word and Death were very much alike. “I see you have your weapon back. It was about time.”
“You know why it took so long.” Death sighed. “And you also know it wasn’t easy for me to reach out, but look around. I need you.”
The Word took a moment to analyze the situation. He frowned when his gaze settled on Lumi and Kailani. “They’re in suspended animation. After what happened with Nethissis, I didn’t want to lose another swamp witch. When Spirit uttered his fatal spell, I allowed Lumi and Kailani to slip into this state. Unfortunately, I could not do the same for everyone else. It’s not my place to save the world.”
“So, what, you made an exception?” Nethissis managed, utterly befuddled.
“We’re connected. You, me, Lumi, Kailani, the other swamp witches. Our connection bypasses the rules of the universe,” the Word replied. “But let’s save that conversation for later. I can see why my sister had to summon me.” He looked at Death. “You really let this happen.”
“I suppose you heard why,” she said.
He nodded. “I’m everywhere, always.” Before Nethissis could open her mouth to probably ask why he didn’t intervene more, the Word raised a finger to silence her. “See? This is why Death did this. So you would all understand that it’s not our duty to save you, to always get you out of trouble, to always fix things. It doesn’t work like that. The little benevolence that we show… it must be appreciated and cherished, not demanded as if it’s somehow deserved. It isn’t.”
A Shade of Vampire 86: A Break of Seals Page 19