Page 139 of To Free a Soul
I won’t be able to help him while he’s like this.
“W-Weldir?” Her form wavered. She didn’t need to be human right then to sense her own panic, fear, and worry. “Are you able to make a portal here if I bring some of your mist?”
“No. I don’t have enough mana to sustain it right now.”
Her eyes bowed in distress. “Please?”
“If I do, I have no idea how much damage it will do, and how long I’ll slumber as a result.”
“Please?” she begged. “There’s a barrier, and I doubt I’ll be able to get him out of the castle before he’s recaptured.”
Jabez would just teleport him back here if he got his hands on him. And in a tight environment that he knew better than a crazed Duskwalker desperately searching for an out, even if it was right before him, every minute they took to flee would only ensure his recapture.
“You know there is another option.”
“I can’t!” she yelled. “Please.Pleasedon’t make me do it.”
“You’re sacrificing my ability to help in the future over your emotions. If another of our offspring requires immediate help, you may be too far to give it. Is your guilt worth that?”
He was right. She knew he was right.
That didn’t stop the tears that instantly welled when she turned physical. It didn’t assuage her anguish and disgust, nor soothe the frantic pace of her heart. It didn’t make her feel any better as she clamped her injured arm to her abdomen for support and threw her left hand forward.
Thick shadowy tentacles snapped around Leonidas’ body. He fought them, and his distressed snarls only gouged into her chest further. He was so strong that his arms constantly pushed his chest up as he writhed to be freed.
His right arm came out from under him and his chest slammed against the ground.
“I’m sorry,” Lindiwe cried, summoning a blade into her trembling, uninjured hand. “I’m so sorry.”
Leonidas’ beastly roar shook the very foundations of who she was. His feline tail curled, and his fur lifted in aversion when she stepped closer while crying.
“I’m so sorry!” She screamed it this time as she brought the blade down just behind the base of his skull.
Leonidas let out a heart-rending squeal, and she answered it with a shuddering cry. She wasn’t strong enough to do this in one swing, and she had to bring her blade up again and steady her hand so she could hit the same spot. She hated that he kept moving until she cut through his spine. His orbs bled to white. What should have been a fatal wound meant nothing to a Duskwalker.
“Why?”he whispered, the betrayal in it evident.
She shook her head, unable to answer while biting her lips hard enough to draw blood as she brought her blade down one last time. In an explosion of glittering sand, his body turned into a giant cloud and disappeared.
All that remained was his head. His beautiful feline skull and sandy ram horns.
Her blade disappeared as she grabbed his horn with one hand and lifted his weighty skull. When she turned incorporeal, it came with her – it wasn’t something she could do when their bodies still existed.
They had to be temporarily dead for her to bring them tothisside of life and death.
She carried it tightly and narrowly evaded being discovered as she fled the castle. Each second weighed on her conscience painfully, and she struggled to maintain her form under the heaviness of her emotional anguish.
She made it outside into the dark of night and sprinted with the remains of her stolen prisoner. She went as far as she could; the castle was far away and hidden behind the canopy of leaves before she finally gave in. Thrown from her Phantom form, Lindiwe collapsed to her knees and held Leonidas’ skull tightly, hugging it to her chest with all her might.
“Why?!” she yelled, as hot tears dripped from her jaw and splattered against the dirt. “I never wanted to do that!”
She never wanted to harm her own son – only to save him. No mother should have to do such a thing, have their child’s blood splatter against her hands and feet, staining her dress, her very mind, as she hacked their fucking head off.
The unfairness of it was unbearably cruel.
On her knees, she cried against his big head. Her shoulders heaved, and she hiccupped, struggling to catch her breath through her sobs.
Why him?Why was Leonidas taken? Why did any of her children have to suffer at the hands of that evil vixen and her brutal guard dog?
