Page 84 of To Free a Soul
“All he has to do is hurry up and come back.”
The constant silence worried her. Weldir hadn’t slept for this long in over a century. A few weeks to a handful of months – that’s all she usually had to wait. In the past, she’d done it joyfully. Now, though?
One thought kept coming to mind.
I’m... horny.She didn’t even have the will to blush right then. It was true, and he’d told her she could have it whenever she wanted.
So where the fuck was he to give her that? Hmm? Why, right when she was prepared to reach out to him for it, for mind-bending, spirit-altering bliss, was hemissing?
She didn’t think she’d even be mad at him if his voice just suddenly popped into her mind right then. She’d gift this child their fox skull and antlers, and then jump Weldir’s shadowy, non-existent bones so quickly he’d no doubt be unprepared for a clawing Lindiwe.
This long wait was gruelling. No... it was rude, and torturous!
I also don’t like how much I... miss him.
His presence in her mind, the sound of his husky voice. The way that if she really needed to, she could turn to him for comfort or strange advice.
How she missed the weightlessness and emptiness of his realm.
Because it was safe.
Because...hewas there.
October 3rd, 1839
The silence continued.
September 27th, 1840
And continued.
April 7th, 1841
Until Lindiwe stopped calling out, expecting a response.
February 3rd, 1842
The mist keeps receding,Lindiwe thought, worrying her lips as she walked through the forest of the Veil.
It wasn’t until it was gone that she’d understood that Weldir’s magic had made the shadows of the Veil seem... deeper. Darker. More foreboding, and less haunted in a nightmarish way.
It’s like this everywhere.
No matter where Lindiwe went, no matter what continent or country she flew to, Weldir’s black mist had shrunk. It was thinning, its reach pulling back and fleeing from the hundreds of forests and meadows it’d lightly swept between.
It was slow. Perhaps a centimetre or so a day, but after five years, Lindiwe had noticed its decline. She’d trained herself, after all, to know how far his reach had gone. To know when she’d entered it, when she could greet it.
The souls she carried on her person took longer to ferry to him.
Before long, it would only surround the shimmering portals the Elven god, Rökul, had left behind. That was likely a problemto face in many decades, but this constant withdrawal had her on edge non-stop.
Why was it fading? Why had Weldir disappeared for so long when he’d told her it would be temporarily short?
Something was wrong. This stretch of time wasn’t simply Weldir being a demi-god who had let the hours – years – slip by. He wasn’t merely distracted and had forgotten to respond; this was different.
He was asleep, and instead of his mist thickening and spreading, it was... disintegrating. He was permanentlylosingpower.
And that was the one thing he wouldn’t stand for.
