Page 33 of Destined to the Reaper

However, my relief at having the threat so swiftly wiped out gave way to another wave of worry as the eyes inside the skulls dangling from her hair grew back. The malicious grin that stretched her lips, despite her anger still visible, sent a chill down my spine.

“It is a long way out of the crypt, Reaper. That excuse will only last so long before your reserves are fully replenished. AndI have plenty of friends wanting to play with your pet!” Grizelle said in an evil sing-song voice.

My insides twisted upon hearing her speak the exact fear gnawing at me.

“Don’t you have a battlefield to scavenge?” Pharos replied in a glacial tone.

His voice was already a lot clearer and his body a lot more defined, but still resembling that of someone a little emaciated.

“Of course,” she retorted in an indulgent tone. “And I will… once I’ve eaten your pet for stealing my endless feast.”

I half tuned them out and glanced around the room and out the wide hallway beyond the still open doors of the chamber. During the brief time I held all of Pharos, I’d been able to locate the potential threats and tools at my disposal. My mind raced as I strategized on the battle that awaited me.

Thanks to Pharos feeding off the Skarachs that came out of the alcoves, most of my blood darts remained intact by the wards. I knew far more Skarachs remained inside their lairs, ready to come after me as soon as their mistress gave them the signal. I wanted to believe my companion would devour them as well to finish healing himself. Although he was still regenerating, the pace had significantly reduced now that he had nothing else in range to feed from. Therefore, I summoned my blood darts back to me and returned them to the pouch hanging on my belt.

Even as she continued to provoke Pharos, Grizelle gave me a triumphant smile. The foul demon probably assumed I’d grown overconfident. Her face took on a taunting expression as the freshly regrown eyes in her skull hair also scurried out towards the dark depths of the alcoves on both sides of the room.

I dismissed her again. My wards would help hold off the creatures long enough for me to make a dash towards the exit. But as they were extremely fast and could spit that wretched phlegm with a poisonous and acidic coating, I needed somethingto further stall and ideally destroy them. Had there been fewer of them, I could have used my Bone or Blood Magic to take control of their skeleton or organs to achieve that goal.

Extending my senses down the hallway, I assessed the countless bones and partial skeletons beyond. Most were inert and with extremely low magic remaining. I discreetly cast a series of spells, reshaping some of the loose bones into spikes, and assembling the partial skeletons into walking constructs so that they could run interference to cover my retreat.

Unfortunately, there was no way for me to hide from the Keres what I was up to. Surprisingly, she didn’t attempt to sabotage it. I could only presume it was part of the restrictions she fell under. With dark magic, you could almost always find a workaround by playing on technicalities. Although she was the one summoning the abominations that would hunt me down, there was no law preventing a sorcerer from awakening their pets. Even though Grizelle knew they would attack me, so long as she wasn’t giving them the order to do so, she didn’t break her covenant. It wasn’ther faultthat fiendish creatures naturally displayed predatory behavior.

However, a powerful blast of energy rippled through the room to propagate outwards and throughout the crypt. My stomach dropped as another wave of fear rose within me. Grizelle had sent out a call, like a silent horn blast, for all to hear. In seconds, malevolent energy surged all around us. The bloody pool bubbled, and fleshy mutants started crawling out of it, their twisted hands clawing at the edges of the island to hoist themselves onto it. Simultaneously, even more Skarachs crawled out of the countless openings in the walls.

Like the first time, Death Magic radiated out of Pharos, wiping out all the visible creatures. His entire body almost appeared to glow as his regeneration once more went into overdrive.

By the Gods, he was breathtaking!

Pharos looked nothing like the bone knight I had feared. Yes, he possessed some exposed bones around his eyes, and a few ribs on his upper chest and sides. But they didn’t look like the result of a decaying corpse. They blended harmoniously with the flawless skin around it, giving him a fierce yet elegant look. His lips were plump and sensuous, made to be kissed and devoured. His Roman nose gave him an air of nobility. And the three bone spikes jutting out of his chin, their rounded tips making them smooth, added to his otherworldly beauty. The hood attached to his pauldrons lay flat against his back, leaving his luscious, shoulder-length, wavy black hair streaked with silver to softly frame his fascinating features.

He suddenly sat up from his lying position. With a single flap of his majestic black, feathery wings, he hopped off the altar, hovering for a couple of seconds above the floor before landing next to me. He towered over me by a good head. But his mere presence, seeing Pharos whole with insane magic radiating from him, made me feel both fragile and protected.

He waved his hand towards the head of the altar, and the summoning circle I had created vanished. I flinched inwardly realizing I would have completely forgotten about it. Who knew how someone else might have used it against him in the future?

“Let’s go!” Pharos ordered before running off the island.

The sensuous rumbling of his voice sent a delicious shiver down my spine. Without a word, I followed in his wake. Unfazed, Grizelle summoned more of her mutants and Skarachs. My initial excitement at seeing my companion effortlessly devour them even as they came out of their respective lairs vanished moments later when only a third of the latest wave of abominations turned into ashes.

The others kept coming at us… Or rather, at me. While my wards held off the Skarachs as I had hoped, the mutants werecrawling onto the island and crossing the bridge to give chase. My only blessing in their case was that they were shambling, deformed things not really meant to walk, but more to swim or crawl. None of them looked alike. They seemed to be the result of random fleshy parts fusing together with the occasional misplaced bone here and there. I suspected they had formed out of the remains of sacrificed creatures and people discarded in the pool.

“Time to play!” Grizelle shouted before bursting into a diabolical—if not maniacal—laugh.

She flew overhead past us and blasted her silent summons again. She disappeared into the next room, and a long, rumbling groan resonated loudly in my ears. It seemed to come from everywhere at once, inside the large hallway we were now running through, from the sacrificial chamber we’d just left, and even ahead towards the lowest level of the stairs maze. It was as if the entire crypt had stirred to life and was expressing its discontent to have thus been disturbed.

My blood turned to ice as the dark silhouettes of dozens of Skarach appeared in the distance, rushing from the stairs maze towards the hallway we were crossing. Without slowing down, I grabbed a handful of blood darts from my pouch, brought them to my lips to whisper an incantation, then threw them at the incoming swarm with all my strength. As if drawn by a magnet, each dart headed straight for its individual mark and buried itself deep into their flesh. I repeated the gesture twice before having to summon a blood shield to block the stream of phlegm the closest Skarach spat at me.

With some of them crawling on the wall, others on the ceiling, and even more rushing straight at me, I couldn’t face them all at once. Pharos dashed forward, deliberately placing himself in the path of the swarm to force them into a deliberate or accidental attack against him.

I felt the congealed darts spreading inside my targets, granting me the hold I needed. I fisted my hands and violently spread my arms as if to fling something sideways while uttering a word of power. Nine Skarachs screeched as they were sent crashing against the side walls. With another spell, I snapped the bones of their articulations, forcing them into a crawl. I repeated the process with another group of creatures infused with my blood darts.

But as too many of them now invaded the room, not to mention the abominations closing in on us from behind, I summoned a blood shield around me and then launched the bone spikes I had set up around the room. They shot out in every direction, some flying wide, but most impaling themselves into the monsters’ flesh. Their deafening screeches filled the room. Many of them fell or lost their footing. The most unfortunate ones knocked into Pharos, who happily dispatched them. The others scrambled to get back on their feet, giving me a small amount of breathing room to raise the bone constructs I had briefly assembled. They stumbled about mindlessly, clawing, stabbing, and biting the Skarachs.

In the mayhem that ensued, Pharos and I burst out of the hallway into the wide-open space of the stairs maze. My heart sank as I watched Grizelle flying around, the thick tentacles of her hair flowing around her nightmarish face. But gone were the skulls at their tips. To my horror, I spotted a few of them running at dizzying speed on crab-like legs that had protruded from the side of the skulls. They were racing towards what I had mistakenly assumed to be random bone piles. But they were the bodies of Bone Fiends.

I felt petrified as a first head jumped onto the jutting part protruding at the end of a Bone Fiend’s spine. It immediately came to life, its skeletal body filling up with an odd layer of thinskin while vicious bone spikes grew on its back. They would be able to fire those like arrows over an insane distance.

They were located on some of the lower and upper platforms of the maze, making sure there would be no way for me to avoid them. But more Skarachs continued to pour out of the alcoves along the walls of the maze. Seeing some of them straightening on two legs instead felt even more terrifying than when they crawled like spiders. They were a frightening sight to behold, with their impossibly long and spindly limbs raised menacingly like so many demonic swords ready to stab and impale.

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