Page 8 of Destined to the Reaper

Heart pounding with a mix of dread and excitement, I cast a protection spell on myself while waiting anxiously for my guest to appear.

But the white glow of the circle suddenly turned red. My jaw dropped, and my shoulders slumped. The relief I should have felt at this additional reprieve before facing the unknown that could totally change the course of my future never came. The depth of the disappointment that descended over me was nearly crushing.

Casting it aside, I spoke the word of power to pause the summon, as per the Weaver’s instructions. The entire circle suddenly started pulsing at a terribly slow pace, although retaining its red glow.

Defeated, I settled down on the grass in front of the circle and began the long wait.

Chapter 3

Pharos

Awave of disgust swelled through me as I stared at Alva, one of Cornelius’s three apprentices. Standing next to the cells containing the live creatures of the necromancer’s menagerie, she was hanging on to the bars, pushing out her ass, and shaking it in a lurid fashion. The menagerie varied from risen—zombie-like beings—to patchworked abominations, and captured mythical creatures held in metal cages reinforced by magic. The less vicious ones lined up the left wall of the room, while the most disturbing were held in an even broader dungeon accessible through a back door hidden by one of the front cells.

Further to the right, past the last cage, a series of deactivated constructs just stood or sat openly on the floor. In sharp contrast, the opposite side of the room was filled with artifacts, body parts, and various other powerful magical items displayed as trophies. Lethal traps and wards protected them from wandering hands.

Why Cornelius chose this setting for one of his recurring sexual escapades always boggled my mind.

Of the three apprentices, Alva was the one most aligned with the necromancer’s twisted kinks. The only thing that topped her ruthlessness and cruelty was her thirst for power. By human standards, Alva qualified as a beautiful woman. With her long and curly, fiery red hair, brown eyes, and heart-shaped face, she drew many appreciative glances. I found her too skinny and overly pale. But it was her foul personality that made her even less attractive to me.

At twenty-eight, Piers, the second apprentice, was a solid eight years younger than Alva, although you would never guess she was well into her thirties. At 6’1, he towered over her by only a few inches. Just like Jasper, he was slender with an androgynous look to him. As with all his apprentices, Cornelius only chose attractive people as they were expected to warm his bed as part of their duties. Brown haired, blue eyed, and olive-skinned, he kept his hair trimmed short with sideburns. His ambition easily rivaled Alva’s. Sadly for him, his respectable arcane powers held him back. Where Alva looked forward to engaging in the type of debauchery Cornelius enjoyed, he just went along with a certain level of indifference. It was but another task on his roster.

While Alva enjoyed sex with anything and anyone—person, monster, and even the undead—Piers technically was only drawn to women, although I increasingly suspected him of being asexual. That didn’t stop him from bending over for Cornelius whenever he so demanded.

Removing his belt, Piers whipped it with non-negligible force against Alva’s wiggling ass. While he had done so with a certain hint of malice, the wretched female only moaned, pushing her ass out further requesting more. Cornelius chuckled with approval before casting a sideways glance at Meri, his third andlast apprentice. She responded with a stiff smile before starting to strip out of her clothes.

I couldn’t decide if I felt more pity or disgust for her. She was the most powerful of the three but also the most spineless. She’d developed an unhealthy obsession for Cornelius. The foolish girl had convinced herself that she was head over heels in love with him. If not for her strong magic, she never would have secured a position with him as her mentor. Meri wasn’t ugly, just not his type. Short, average-looking, and on the plump side, she didn’t check any of the boxes that appealed to him, aside from her undivided loyalty and non-negligible talent that he could exploit.

She hated all those group sex activities he imposed on them at least once a week. Stupidly, she complied to please him and in the hopes he would eventually develop some affection for her and maybe even grant her the ‘privilege’ often bestowed upon Alva to share his bed on certain nights. You’d think after three years, she would have finally gotten a clue that it would never happen. And yet she kept hoping.

I couldn’t fathom how anyone would think debasing themselves like that could get someone to love and respect you. The worst part of it all was that Cornelius enjoyed her pain and humiliation. He cruelly kept dangling the promise of a potential closer bond between them only to get her to consent to increasingly degrading scenarios. He’d never even fucked her once. The only thing he’d ever given her of himself was the honor of swallowing his cock. Otherwise, he would have Piers have his way with her, especially anal, as he knew she hated it with a passion.

But today would be even worse for her.

As soon as she was done stripping, Cornelius gestured with his head at the constructs. Despite her best efforts, Meri failed to hide her crestfallen expression. It wasn’t the first time he had forced her to pleasure some otherworldly being. But thoseconstructs were the worst for her. They were mindless, soulless creations built out of miscellaneous body parts stemming from random living creatures—human or otherwise—and in some cases including mechanical parts. They felt nothing and only came to life under a magical spell.

Heedless of Alva’s moans as Piers continued to whip her, Meri made her way to one of the biggest construct, who began to stir in response to Cornelius’s compulsion. The women would take turns getting plowed by that abomination. While Alva would enjoy it, Meri would fight back tears through it. What killed me about it was that she could say no and knew it too. But she dreaded even more the thought of giving him any reason to cull her out altogether from their little entertainment. Even though he never touched her the way she dreamt of, watching him rutting over Alva or even Piers gave her the illusion she was part of it all.

“I don’t need to witness this bullshit,”I mentally hissed at him.

Cornelius chuckled, his malice seeping into our psychic connection. He knew how much his parties disgusted me. He made them drag on even long after his endless appetites were sated. At first, I thought it was to further torture his apprentices and me. It took me too long to realize he was also charging one of the many talismans he wore—this specific one made of the blood, bones, and hair of a succubus. It greedily fed on sexual energy, serving as a magic amplifier that came in handy when he fought or attempted to subdue elder demons.

“You’re such a prude, Pharos. After a few centuries of abstinence, I would have expected you to be grateful for an opportunity to enjoy the pleasures of the flesh through me,”he telepathically spoke back to me in a mocking tone.

“Nothing you can ever do will ever provide me any form of pleasure, except my freedom,”I snapped.

“You wound me!”he retorted tauntingly.“After all this time, you and I should be more than friends, brothers even. I can never let you go. Relax, and learn to enjoy what delights life has to offer.”

“What you call delights are just foul and abhorrent debaucheries. You’re welcome to indulge in them without me.”

He chuckled some more. We already had that conversation a million times before. Although pointless, rehashing my grievances provided some distraction from the events taking place around us until he tired of me and finally allowed me to fade into the background. Obviously, I wasn’t entirely gone. But it compared to entering some form of hibernation sheltering me from seeing, hearing, or feeling anything, and especially not the sliminess of his soul caging me.

Sadly, he rarely released me until things were in full swing, forcing me to sit through far too much of his twisted games.

The sound of his mental voice poking more fun at me faded in the background when a sudden energy tugged at me. I stiffened, startled by what I initially thought to be some kind of psychic attack against Cornelius. Despite being hosted by him, I wasn’t tied to his nervous system and therefore couldn’t share whatever physical pain he might endure. Granted, some of it could seep through our psychic link, and he even occasionally tried to unload some of it onto me to make his suffering more manageable on the rare occasions an opponent succeeded in getting a hit on him. But I possessed my own powers to block him and even to resist some of his attempts at coercing me into doing certain things.

It then dawned on me that it wasn’t an attack but a summons. What I initially assumed to be a tug was in fact the steady pull of a portal. It even began swirling before my mind’s eye.

What in the nine hells is this? Who could possibly call upon me this way?

---