Page 163 of To Free a Soul
As expected, they eventually burst through the roaring Demon’s stomach in a spray of blood, intestines, and carnage. They began to eat it entirely as she fought to get to their side, then more Demons came to eat their own kind like cannibalistic nightmares.
Or perhaps she’d never been worried about this, and it was the aftermath. How, once its head was consumed, their offspring began to grow an odd skull – and then worse, roared at her and darted into the forest.
“Weldir! Grab them!”
Perhaps she should’ve left them with him to begin with, but he knew why she hadn’t thought of it. They were with her allthe time, and this had never happened before. There was also another reason, and it was why he couldn’t take them now.
“I cannot,” he answered quietly. “I’ll trap them here.”
“What?” she whispered while chasing after them.
“If I take them now, you won’t get them back until I return.”
That fear was likely why she’d never left them with him in the first place. It’d never been an unfounded worry. He’d disappeared suddenly many times over the course of their bond. Their children were indestructible when little, so why worry too much in battle when they weren’t able to come to harm? The biggest issue was if they were temporarily lost, but she’d be able to find them eventually, or Weldir would.
In another viewing disc, he missed seeing the impact that caused Leonidas to roar, or when Jabez managed to crack his skull. He only witnessed the result, where Leonidas went berserk and turned feral. His movements became too erratic for even Weldir to follow, then he leapt and vaulted from a tree trunk to the ground, zig-zagging through the forest as he encroached on Magnar’s ward.
He was getting closer to safety, but the purple blood dripping from the crack in his skull was stark against the whiteness of bone. In that moment, Weldir didn’t know how to tell his mate that their offspring’s death was imminent.
Maybe not now, or even soon, but his skull was no longer sturdy. Even if he escaped now, it would, in time, break.
He also didn’t wish to distract her as she chased after their infant offspring, while his sight blurred from enfeeblement, pushing his mind under the waves of unconsciousness.
A useless god indeed.
June 19th, 2023
I’m afraid to fall asleep,Lindiwe thought, staring into a small viewing disc of Leonidas.
The winds around her campfire were rough. Sitting in the dismal sunlight, her warming talisman did nothing to protect her from the way it cut across her skin, or how her hair kept passing over her face like it wanted her to breathe it in and choke on it. Her eyelashes bent in awkward directions, causing her to blink rapidly.
Winter had come, and a storm in the southlands made it colder than usual.
As much as she wanted to go inside and close her eyes, she found it difficult to pull her gaze from the crack in Leonidas’ feline skull.
Since the night she’d desperately tried to heal him of the wound to no avail, her pulse had been racing. Her anxiety constantly set her on edge, just waiting for the moment when she tried to call his face to the surface in her scrying spell... only for it to never come.
Almost a month had passed since that day.
A part of her was already mourning the loss of him, and she’d break out in tears at random. A stray thought, a memory of the way he used to play by trying to catch her before she could turn incorporeal. She thought the world would suffer a great loss without his rather sassy attitude in it. Her heart was dying in her chest, and she often sought the sun just to feel anything other than cold, unyielding sadness.
It’s why she’d made a temporary home within the mountains of the north to be closer to Leonidas, just in case. For what? She didn’t know. She had this overwhelming desire for nearness, but it wouldn’t matter. Maybe it was so she could collect the pieces of his skull so no one else could have them.So she could protect them before she inevitably gave them to Weldir for safekeeping.
Such thoughts always made her eyes brim with tears.
As much as she wanted to stare at her son with grief and loss already twisting her heart beyond repair, Lindiwe had to end the spell. She cast it briefly once a day, rotating between each child for just a few minutes, and then ended it once she knew none of them needed her.
But it was that gap, that stretch in time before tomorrow came and she could check them again, that worried her. The nagging desire to give in was like an itch that needed scratching, but doing so would only bloody an already gaping wound.
I can’t use his magic right now.The more she used, the longer it would take for Weldir to return. So she used as little as possible, and relied on her mana stone that had its own source of magic, and her Phantom abilities which were all hers.
She returned to Spiral Haven once a week, taking all the souls she could from there while avoiding Jabez entirely. After the battles they’d endured, things had taken a turn. Although their truce within the village remained, it was rocky and uncertain.
Duskwalkers could no longer enter it, and he’d given her the warning personally when she’d returned to the village to collect souls. Her task was permitted, only because it benefited him and his people.
All that matters is everyone is safe.
Orpheus and Magnar no longer left their protections without each other, choosing to hunt as a pair. Merikh hadn’t returned to the Veil in over a year, but even the surface world had grown more violent. The twins didn’t care; they were together, and therefore, dangerous – not even idiotic, lower Demons would dare attack.
