Page 59 of Destined to the Reaper

In the back, the two female apprentices increased the intensity of their incantations. Simultaneously, Piers grew in size and mass, easily reaching a height of four meters, with his tentacles extending nearly three times that length. I couldn’t give a name to what he had become. The beast slithered on the ground like a squid but possessed a humanoid upper torso. The head—which also had smaller tentacles as hair—had a mix of canine and reptilian to it, with half a dozen glowing red eyes and endless rows of dagger teeth filling its oversized mouth. Unlike a squid, no suction cups lined the tentacles of its lower body. Instead, spiked scales covered it with vicious hooked claws at the tips.

The beast attacked again. I flew out of the way and immediately blasted it with my necrosis on top of casting my death aura at it. Piers screeched as the end of his tentacles began to wither before they could reach either my mate or me. However, he faded back to his shadowy form, instantly shedding the necrosis.

Although I still couldn’t enter the circle, Kali was making impressive progress wrecking it. She cleverly realized that combining necrosis to her Blood Magic acted like a virus that chipped away at the circle, unraveling it even faster. I only needed to keep her safe while she performed that task. I flew around the area directly in front of her, using my powers todestroy any tentacle rushing in our direction, slicing through others with my scythe, and forcing Piers to vanish into smoke with my death aura.

To my delight, the creature was quickly faltering as Alva and Meri struggled to counter my attacks. It was clear that they were the puppet masters fueling whatever monster they had turned Piers into. But for all their powers, they didn’t know Death Magic or how to counter it.

The tide was turning in our favor, and soon I would be able to go tear them to shreds.

Focused on pushing back the beast and protecting my woman, I didn’t notice that Piers was shooting his tentacles at a much shorter distance than before. In order to cut them off with my scythes, I needed to move forward. By the time I realized what was happening, I’d already crossed into the magic circle.

Before I could dash back out of it, Cornelius slapped his hand on the spinal bone of my scythe and shouted a word of power.

A debilitating pain ripped through my spine and tore at my soul. It was as if I had traveled back in time to that dreadful day in the crypt when I accidentally killed that human. I felt myself plummeting towards the ground from where I’d been flying in front of Kali. I tried to recover before I would crash, but three of the beast’s tentacles speared right through me—two in my chest, and one in my right thigh.

I cried out as Piers yanked me like with a roped harpoon towards his gigantic mouth.

“PHAROS!” Kali screamed.

Through the haze of agony tearing me apart, I instinctively swiped my scythe at the creature. Half a beat before it would have connected with the side of his mouth, Piers turned back into smoke in an evasive maneuver. As he faded, so did the tentacles impaling me. I felt the short distance to the ground and landed heavily onto the hard stones paving it. My breath rushedout of me, and the gaping wounds left by the tentacles bled heavily.

Spilling my own blood inside a sacrificial circle was the last thing I needed.

As I tried to fly away while invoking my regeneration, what felt like a hundred giant needles speared me again from every side, as the beast materialized again but this time with much smaller tentacles. I shouted in agony, realizing he was going to put me through an endless cycle of pain to break me while he stole my powers. However, before I could cast another death aura or necrosis, Cornelius slammed the bone on my scythe lying on the altar before him again.

This time, I felt my spine shattering. My head spun, and I struggled to keep my eyes from rolling to the back of my head as another round of needles stabbed through me, piercing flesh and organs. Through blurred vision, I saw a flurry of red streaks flashing by. Only once I heard Meri scream did I realize that the red streaks had been blood darts launched by my woman. Dark spots of necrosis spread around the entry points of each dart that had found its mark on Meri. She clawed at herself while stumbling back.

Without her magic feeding it, the beast faltered, freeing me. I drained as much of the creature’s life force as I could to regenerate before it turned into shadows. But just as Cornelius was going to wreck me again by bashing my scythe, another flurry of blood darts forced him to cast a protective spell to parry my mate’s attack. It was the tiny opening I needed. Fighting through the pain, I threw my ghostly scythe at the necromancer. He barely managed to dodge and once more tried to smash my weapon only to be thwarted but another volley of darts.

I charged forward even as my ghostly scythe was returning to me. With a flick of my wrist, I redirected it towards Alva while casting my death aura to wither any new tentacles or needlesPiers might want to shoot at me. But my ghostly scythe sliced through Alva from the back, cutting her in half. Her torso fell to the ground before her lower body did, her face frozen in a shocked expression.

Piers screeched as the last of his handlers perished and turned back into his solid form. Without hesitation, my Kali cast a far more potent blood necrosis on him than I thought her capable of. The beast began to rot from the inside out at a terrifying rate. Under different circumstances, I would have wanted to admire the macabre spectacle. But I had more important matters to handle.

The panicked and terrified expression on Cornelius’s face as he watched me flying at dizzying speed towards him was literally orgasmic. He attempted to cast an offensive spell against me, but my death strike shattered his blood shield and made him stumble back.

Behind me, I could hear my mate running towards us. As I closed the distance with my nemesis, I felt a wave of magic fly past me and strike the blood on the altar surrounding my weapon. It instantly levitated and flew towards me. I said a quiet thank you to my mate as I caught it mid-air and swung it so that the blade would cut Cornelius in half from the top of his head down to his chest.

Half a second before my true scythe would connect with his skull, a glowing sword appeared in front of me, blocking might blow. Then a powerful blast of magic sent me flying a few meters back. Shock and anger surged through me at this deception.

I prepared to retaliate against that treacherous foe but froze in place when I realized who had intervened.

“Father!” I breathed out.

Chapter 16

Kali

The victorious shout vibrating in my chest died in my throat when a shining blade just appeared out of thin air, preventing Pharos from slaying the thrice damned son of a bitch who had made our lives a living hell. Before I could fully comprehend what had caused it, I immediately began casting an offensive spell to blast the intruder, only to freeze in complete and utter shock.

My jaw dropped as the Weaver, the divine Angel of Death Azrael himself, and the High Hell Lord Alderan appeared around the altar. Standing quite a few meters behind his father, near the edge of what remained of the circle, Haroth was staring at Cornelius with a savage grin that should have terrified me. My brain briefly registered that—this time—Haroth actually had proper flesh under his skin instead of his previous skeletal appearance. By rights, I shouldn’t have been able to guess the identity of the stunning male he was now embodying with a complexion the color of desert sand. But at a visceral level, I recognized him… felt him in my bones.

However, the scene unraveling before me reclaimed my attention.

“Father!” Pharos whispered in disbelief.

But his sire didn’t respond.

Saying he was stunning couldn’t begin to do him justice. He towered over his son by at least a good head, and his wings looked almost too massive for him to carry. And yet they hung gracefully and effortlessly, partially open behind him. They were pristine white, the same color as the skirt hanging from the golden belt around his waist. Like Pharos, he wore pauldrons, bracers, and an adorned belt, but his were of the shiniest gold encrusted with precious gems. A white hood, the same luxurious fabric as his skirt partially hid his face. Despite the shadow it cast, the white glow of his eyes illuminated his features enough for me to see the noble nose, full lips, and square jaw of my man’s sire. A few strands of black hair peeked around the edges of his hood.

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