Page 22 of Destined to the Reaper

“Who dares trespass on my domain?” he shouted with a booming voice.

“My name is Cornelius Cromwell. My apprentices and I traveled a long way to come make you an offer you simply cannot refuse.”

The manticore’s eyes widened, and his lips parted, revealing three rows of sharp teeth.

“What could a mere human possibly have to offer me that I might desire?”

“The honor of serving me, of course,” Cornelius said with obnoxious smugness. “I will make you more powerful than you can ever dream of.”

The manticore barked a laugh at such a preposterous statement. Even at his young age, he constituted a significant enough threat to warrant the necromancer coming with his two most powerful apprentices and an army of undead. But even that was no guarantee of success… at least not without me. It infuriated me that my presence was the reason for Cornelius’s cockiness.

But what infuriated me more were the mind games my captor was currently playing with the cub. When dealing with the arcane, one had to be extremely careful about the wording of an agreement. Cornelius wasn’t lying when he promised to make him more powerful than he could ever imagine. What he failed to mention was that to achieve that goal, he would turn him into some kind of abomination and rob him of his free will and maybe even of his sanity.

“I serve no one, human. Butyouwill serveme. I was about to head out to hunt for a snack. How kind of you to deliver yourself to me,” the manticore said in a sickly-sweet voice.

“You misunderstand me, manticore. I wasn’t asking your opinion on the matter. As per my initial statement, I’m here to make you an offer that yousimply cannot refuse,” Corneliusreiterated, this time putting an emphasis on the last three words. “You are young, inexperienced, and clearly clueless. You boast about owning a domain and yet have set up no defenses for it. Word of your presence here is already spreading far and wide. Others will come to hunt and kill you. Serve me and you will get to experience the type of future you never could have imagined.”

Indeed. One of misery, suffering, and hopelessness.

“Let those others come,” the manticore hissed. “Like you, they will die by my hands, and I shall feast on your bones.”

And he undoubtedly would if he could kill Cornelius. Under different circumstances, he would have had a fifty percent chance of success, despite being outnumbered. But by having me tethered to him, the necromancer essentially made himself immortal.

It was his turn to laugh at the manticore. “You wish you could. But I cannot die. The same cannot be said of you, little cub. So here’s your choice. You can serve me willingly, or I can make you. Dead or alive, you’re coming home with me as my servant.”

The anger that descended over the rather handsome features of the manticore echoed the rage his words stirred within me.

“This conversation is over. Now, you die!”

With this, the manticore whipped his tail forward, firing at least twenty of the spines lining it at us. Alva instantly flicked her hands forward well shouting a word of power. A red haze flashed before us just as the darts crashed against the protective shield she had raised with her Blood Magic.

“As you wish!” Cornelius said with malicious glee.

He deliberately made that offer in a fashion obnoxious enough to force the confrontation. The necromancer didn’t just like winning, he loved physically and mentally destroying his opponents in the process. Such petty and cruel tactics onlyrevealed what a small and weak man he truly was that he required crushing others to validate his sense of self-worth.

An excruciating pain shot through me. Despite not having a physical vessel, I felt as if my spine had been torn right off my back when Cornelius invoked my Soul Magic to sever the manticore’s soul from his body, making it easier to control and manipulate the creature.

Such a spell required an insane amount of power. No mortal could achieve it on their own. Even I would struggle to do it, especially on such a high-ranking mage as was a manticore. For a Reaper, only the use of our scythe made such a task easy. It didn’t kill the target, only broke the bond that kept them bound to their mortal vessel.

That manticore’s disbelieving laugh only confirmed what I already knew. The spell had failed in a spectacular fashion. At my full power, my ability channeled through Cornelius’s own impressive skills should have at least partially damaged that link. It barely even made a scratch.

“You foolish human! Did you really think you could bind me like that?” the manticore mocked.

Below the shocked anger that erupted inside the necromancer, I felt the first seed of suspicion taking root. As we had faced far more powerful enemies in the past where he had used a similar tactic, Cornelius instantly knew that this time something was wrong. As much as I loved to interfere with his plans, I could not refuse him the use of my magical abilities. Therefore, this could only mean that something had tampered with my powers.

But the manticore firing another volley of spines at us as he simultaneously breathed down fire had the necromancer rolling out of the path of the inferno and poisoned needles. This time, he was the one to simultaneously cast a blood shield to absorb what he couldn’t have avoided.

Without waiting for his command, Meri set forth her skeletal army. The confusion on the manticore’s face as he flew in circles around us while showering us with flames and darts only confirmed his lack of battle experience. Obviously, it seemed illogical to send walking skeletons towards him when he was flying well out of range from their potential attacks. Despite its tremendous heat, the fire he breathed didn’t destroy the bones. It only melted the flesh and remaining tendons off them.

Exactly what Meri wanted.

While Cornelius continued to block the manticore’s attacks with Blood Magic, Alva created diversions with her nightmares. They didn’t frighten the creature but put him on the defensive, hindering his ability to attack Cornelius. His reddish-brown fur covered a leather skin so thick the sharp claws of the nightmares barely scraped him on the rare occasions they managed to get a swipe in.

On top of their powerful magic, dragon fire, and lethal poison, manticores were also extremely fast both in their attacks and in their flight. It made hitting them with a spell, arrow, or any targeted weapon extremely difficult. You had to try and anticipate where they would be in time and space and fire at that location, hoping you wouldn’t miss—which you usually did.

While Alva was genuinely attempting to strike him—and failing miserably—Cornelius was deliberately shooting his blood arrows wide in between casting protective shields. It was a deliberate strategy to lull the manticore into believing he was dealing with inferior opponents and therefore lower his guard. It also provided Meri with the time needed to set up her trap as her undead army took position in a half-circle around the area the creature was flying in as it rained fire and poisoned darts on us.

Sorrow and anger warred within me in equal measure as Meri used her Bone Magic to make her undead minions take a prone position on the ground, arms and legs tucked below them—for those who possessed such limbs—and their backs rounded towards the sky. Invoking her powerful bone manipulation skills, she began reshaping the bones of their backs, turning them into spikes pointing upward.

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