Page 60 of Destined to the Reaper

At the same time he blocked Pharos’s scythe with his sword, Azrael flicked his right wrist, sending Cornelius flying back. The necromancer slammed his back hard against the wall located a couple of meters behind him. The air rushed out of him from the impact. He would have face-planted as gravity worked its magic. But Alderan closed his fist before him, turning it as if in a gesture to turn a key. Cornelius shrieked as the bones in his joints snapped open like grappling hooks, nailing him to the wall, arms and legs spread like the Vitruvian man.

I watched in complete shock as the Bone Demon Lord Alderan tore off four of the bone spikes protruding from his own forearms and threw them like daggers at Cornelius. Each one found its mark, perfectly embedding themselves one in each of his shoulders and the other two in the fleshy part of his thighs, providing further support so that he wouldn’t slide down the wall.

I swallowed hard, my eyes flicking towards the Weaver. Nine hells, she was terrifying. Not in a monstrous way, but because of the sheer power and rage exuding from her. When I first met her, I had thought how ageless she looked, although clearly an older female, despite her mostly smooth and flawless skin.

Right now, her age was even more undefinable. At a first glance, she looked barely twenty-five. Her slightly tanned skin seemed surrounded by a soft glow, as did her insanely long silver white hair. In her witch hut, her hair somewhat gave the impression it was that color due to the graying that came with age. Here, it was clearly just the pristine ivory of her unusual color and flowing loosely behind her, freed of the previous single braid it had been plaited into. Her normally purple eyes seemed filled with lightning as she all but bared her teeth at him. Gone was the long, medieval-looking golden dress with a thick fur collar she had worn in her cabin. Right now, she reminded me of the Goddess Athena in her dark leather short Roman skirt and leather breastplate.

“You… you can’t!” Cornelius cried out, his voice strained by the excruciating pain of being crucified against the wall. “The… the covenant—”

His words were abruptly cut short when Azrael made a grabbing gesture. My blood turned to ice as he quite literally tore Cornelius’s soul right out of his body. It looked like a luminous silhouette of the necromancer. To my shock, it withered, its light fading into dark smoke, and his soul appearing deflated and shriveled. It only took seconds, filled with the disembodied screams of Cornelius. With the same nonchalance, Azrael tossed the necromancer’s ‘soul’ back into his impaled corporal vessel.

Although Cornelius took a ragged breath as soon as he reintegrated his body, I could feel that there was no true life left in him. I couldn’t even describe what he had become. He was dead and yet not.

His eyes remaining locked on the necromancer with a mix of hatred and something else I couldn’t define, Pharos approached me. He blindly reached for my hand and drew me against him in a protective fashion.

“You can’t do this!” Cornelius shouted. “You cannot intervene in mortal affairs!”

“We absolutely can, you worm,” Cliona hissed, taking a few steps closer to the altar. “My Pharos ended your thread moments ago. Azrael merely ensured you’re no longer alive by human rules. Now,weget to play. You never should have harmed my children!”

“What?!” Cornelius sputtered, terror mixing with the pain wrecking him.

“You wanted to be immortal?” Azrael asked, his booming voice almost sounding like crackling Thunder. “I have granted you that wish. Nothing and no one can ever end your life… such as it is now. You also wanted endless regeneration. Consider that wish also granted. Trust me, you will regret ever coveting what wasn’t yours.”

With that, four-inch-long claws protruded out of Azrael’s fingertips before he stabbed them into the fool’s heart. My hair stood on end from the powerful blast of magic that radiated from the Angel. Cornelius emitted an ear-splitting scream as a red glow began to pulse in his chest.

As soon as Azrael yanked his hand out, Cliona pulled out a few strands of her hair and whipped them towards the necromancer. She released them, and they split into five-inch-long needles as they flew like a volley of arrows at her target.

“This is for my Asheron,” the Weaver said as the hair stabbed into his skin.

They immediately bent into hook shapes, pulling on the skin stretching it impossibly until it began to tear. But regeneration kicking in sent it into an endless loop.

“And this is for my Pharos,” she continued while tossing an additional few strands of hair.

These did not split but embedded themselves inside his body like worms digging their way in. A shudder coursed through me as I could see the strands circling slowly around inside him, piercing organs along the way like a snake looking for a way out. I didn’t need to alter my vision or invoke magic to know the regeneration was healing the damage right after it was caused.

This torture could last for eternity, and he would never die from it.

Not that he has any true life left that could be ended to grant him mercy.

Alderan came to stand in front of Cornelius. I had seen bone demons in various illustrations, including some of his. But nothing could have prepared me for how imposing and intimidating one of them would be in the flesh—one of the most powerful at that. Alderan was a Prince of Hell, the son of Astaroth, the Duke of Hell himself.

Well over seven feet tall, massive, broad-shouldered, and with muscles for days, Alderan was a beast of a male. Small bone scales were scattered all over his grayish skin. A few bone spikes—some rounded, others recurved—lined the sides of his arms. A long black skirt made it impossible to get a good glimpse of his legs. Six heavy horns sat on his head like a crown amidst the undisciplined wavy locks of his below-the-shoulder-length black hair. Bone ridges and scales adorned his forehead, and more small, rounded bone spikes lined the sides of his neck, growing high around the curve of his shoulders. I suspected that, in battle, they would extrude into vicious spikes that could inflict grievous damage to anyone attempting to grab him. More spikes covered the length of his exoskeletal spine, which extended into an impressive bone tail with a sharp, dagger-like tip.

My brother Jasper had told me what he’d found out about Asheron’s story. A little over three centuries ago, Cornelius had tricked him to harness his power on behalf of a powerful patron. The ritual had failed, turning Asheron into a Wraith instead, cursed to wander the Earth in endless pain and rage, spreading death and misery on his path. A young healer from Willow Grove, harassed by Cornelius, had managed to free Asheron from the madness controlling him, and dealt a major blow to the necromancer.

But never in a million years would I have guessed the Wraith was the offspring of the Weaver with a Prince of Hell.

“And this is for damning my son,” Alderan said, his rumbling voice so deep I could have sworn the ground vibrated beneath my feet.

He didn’t make a single gesture, and yet I felt the type of powerful Bone Magic I never would have thought possible. In a blink, every single one of Cornelius’s bones snapped. With his legs broken, leaving only the demon bones in his shoulders nailing him to the wall as main support, he immediately began to suffocate.

“You were a talented necromancer,” Alderan said with contempt in his voice. “You could have achieved greatness and been long lived. But your ambition had no measure. How dare you covet the powers of the gods? How dare you enslave one of our children for your own advancement? Did you really think we would allow it to go on? Well now, you shall reap what you sowed. You only lasted this long because my Cliona wanted her son Pharos freed first. Otherwise, I would have destroyed you centuries ago. You should have refused Isabella’s request to help her enslave my son. But fear not, I will give her your regards while she continues to suffer in my playground.”

I didn’t know how much of his words Cornelius understood. An endless flow of screams and moans of agony tumbled outof him in between unintelligible pleading words, sobs, and strangled gasps for air. I watched the whole scene with morbid fascination as his wounds continuously attempted to heal and his bones to mend only for the damage to be inflicted again in an endless infernal loop.

This truly was hell.

“Five hundred years you have enslaved my Pharos, and you cursed my Asheron to three-hundred and fifty years of madness on top of robbing him of his angelic purity. For those offenses, you shall remain like this for the next eight hundred and fifty years. Only then will Death decide whether to grant you mercy,” the Weaver said with malicious glee. “But if I have any say in the matter, you shall receive the same mercy you would have shown my sons and the Ferryman, had you gotten your way.”

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