Page 165 of To Free a Soul
Lindiwe, on the other hand, barely stopped moving. She continued her search, finding one soul along the way, and sucked it into the vial that contained a few already. Only when she couldn’t seem to keep her eyes open any longer, did she find a tree to perch herself on in her owl form, and slept for a few short hours.
Weldir let her be for now. He took the quietness of Austrális’ night to check on his other offspring.
All were well, so he visited Nathair.
“You will have a Mavka companion soon,” Weldir informed him, since he was lucid.
Nathair’s orbs shifted to dark yellow in curiosity, and he signed, “What do you mean?”
“The feline-skulled Mavka’s skull is broken. He’s being stubborn currently, so I’m giving him time to say goodbye to life. But soon he will have no choice, and neither will I.” He turnedhis face up towards Tenebris’ false blue sky and ever-constant sun. “He may need much of our assistance to adjust to his new life here.”
“I’ll do what I can.” Nathair turned his serpent skull towards the meadow-filled horizon. “It’s... lonely here. Another would be welcome, even if it’s due to an unfortunate reason.”
“Agreed. His life will end there, but start here.”
Nathair lifted his hands to sign something, but they twitched with hesitancy. “Are you sure there is nothing you can do?”
“No,” he answered immediately. “I can create life from nothing, but I cannot give back a life that is taken.”
At least... he couldn’t give back a life to a Mavka, who had an existence after death. He was unsure if he could bring back a human. To do so might mean he’d have to bond them to himself, in turn making them a mate. And, considering Lindiwe’s rejection of such a notion, that was a possibility he’d never experiment with.
I wonder if it’s different if I were to bond a human to one of my offspring, though.The question was: why would he ever do so?
When a day must have passed since Leonidas’ unfortunate death, he felt another tug.
He left Nathair’s side and materialised in his darkness to wait. His soul would come eventually, even if Weldir didn’t pull on his family fate tether.
His soul would be asleep, as that had been the case with Nathair’s. When a soul was brought to him, it was always in a state of rest as it waited for him. That was no different for his offspring. It was only when they entered Tenebris, leaving the limbo in between, that they could be awakened.
The minutes passed. At least he thought it may have been minutes. Then an otherworldly yellow glowing spirit came to his void, except... it was only his head.
The string was still taut, yet now it vibrated, causing his mist to pulsate. He conjured a new viewing disc, and what he saw surprised him.
His offspring’s soul was in two pieces. His physical body from the neck down was attached to his broken skull, which had also regained its headless, spiritual body – with the head missing. The world around it had sharpened, and he lay curled up in a ball asleep just outside a frozen forest. A strange rope, shimmering with an enchantment, had been tied around his neck and leashed him to a tree like a pet.
Weldir brought his spectral yellow skull closer and investigated thefilledcrack in it. It was evident that it’d once been broken, that there should be no true life in it, yet he couldn’t pull the two pieces of his spirit skull apart with ease.
Although he didn’t put too much force into it.
Someone has tried to fix it.Well, kind of. Enough to revive him in some sense, but not enough to make him whole.He’s in a state of half life.
“Lindiwe,” Weldir finally called.
Her owl head was quick to rotate forward, and she gave a hoot and lifted her wings to remove some of the snow that had fallen on her. Her black eyes darted around the forest she was in.
“Leonidas is...” He paused in thought. “Hmm... how to explain this? He’s alive, but he’s also dead. Someone has tried to fix his broken skull, and it’s tethering him to life.”
She lifted the arch of a wing to push back her hood, and she morphed into a human. Her backside fell onto the branch so she could sit.
“What does that even mean?” she whined, throwing her hands forward before having to catch herself on the branch so she didn’t fall metres to the ground.
“It means there may be hope for Leonidas after all,” he said, unable to keep the grin that was likely present on his face fromhis voice. “I cannot bring him back to life on my own, but if whoever has tried to save him is willing,theymight be able to.”
She raised a sceptical brow, but the panic in her gaze had softened. “Can you better explain it?” She lifted a hand to rest the side of her face in her palm, with her elbow on her knee when she brought it up. “You always make things so confusing.”
“I will need to go to him.”
Her lips pursed. “But you can’t leave your mist.”
