Destined to the Reaper (The Shadow Realms #2)

Chapter 6

Pharos

O ne day. One entire fucking day of travel to reach the wretched Ashire Wilds. Of all the ways to ruin my plans, Cornelius couldn’t have done a better job. On top of riding a carriage for hours into the next town, we’d spent over twelve hours on a boat before getting on yet another carriage. And still, we hadn’t reached our destination.

This had not been in the cards at all. But of course, one of Cornelius’s countless contacts reached out to him about a manticore sighting in that untamed region. This couldn’t have happened at a worse moment. With Hermes’s failure to acquire the bones and organs he wanted, the necromancer wouldn’t miss this opportunity of securing it for himself.

I had no idea what he intended to do with it. While Cornelius had kept secrets from me over the centuries, he had never been so thoroughly tight-lipped about a project. I knew him enough to guess it was something I would find so abhorrent I might try to sabotage it. I hadn’t worried about it knowing that either I would find an opportunity to do just that at some point, or he would be clever and devious enough to ensure I couldn’t meddle with it. Either way, trying to guess what it entailed would have merely been a waste of time.

One of my principal worries lay in the fact that we were miles away from home… from my bride. Much too far for me to warn her of my absence, and especially much too far for me to attempt to teleport to her using our bond. Not only did I doubt I possessed enough power to project myself across such a great distance, but there would be no way I could achieve such a feat without Cornelius noticing.

The second source of concern—and in this instance the main one—was the fact that for such a hunt, Cornelius would undoubtedly make extensive use of my powers. The mostly quiet schedule he originally had focused on pursuing further experiments at home with new spells and constructs, would have allowed me to complete the process of partial transfer without drawing too much attention to myself. But the hunt was a different matter altogether.

Not for the first time, I berated myself for the foolish impatience that prompted me to teleport to Kali last night instead of waiting for her to open the portal. On top of burning a great deal of energy, I had further weakened myself by sharing more of my soul with her. Feeding off her energy didn’t come remotely close to replenishing what I had lost.

During an epic battle, I would fizzle out quickly. Then, Cornelius would know something was amiss.

The whole journey through the field of tall grass that would eventually lead us to the rocky outcropping in the distance where the manticore was rumored to reside, I prayed that the creature would see us coming and escape. Beyond the fact that I feared exposure, I truly didn’t want one of those too-rare mythical beings getting destroyed over some dreadful and selfish scheme the necromancer had concocted.

Sadly, the spying ravens the necromancer sent scouting ahead found their target. Through their eyes, Cornelius surveyed the area and set the plan to capture or kill the creature.

We made slow progress towards the rocky area where the manticore had carved its nest. Alva—who was adept at Terror and Dread Magic—summoned a few nightmares to terrorize the wildlife roaming the tall grass of the valley leading up to the manticore’s lair. They were mindless, shadowy figures that would track down anything with a heartbeat and inflict superficial wounds to terrify and torment their prey. As they fed from their terror, Alva would siphon part of that energy to boost her own magic.

At the height of their fright, Cornelius would use my Death Aura to instantly slay the creatures. On bigger beasts—especially mammals—he would first cast a low-level necrosis on them to increase their pain and distress, further amplifying the benefits Alva gained from her Dread Magic. As dozens of creatures died, Meri raised their skeletons and set them to follow.

It cut me to the core to have my powers thus desecrated, used for gratuitous and violent murders. Before being captured, I never used my divine gifts in such an unconscionable way. I could count on one hand the number of times I had used necrosis. In all other cases, I kept my death aura either to protect myself and others or in an act of mercy like to grant peace to those only moments from dying in the slow agony of a plague, drowning, or suffocating.

As was his wont, Cornelius exclusively drew on my powers to perform these tasks. Finding less and less creatures to build his undead army, he kept expanding the radius of my death aura, which drained me exponentially. He always used my powers first to save his for the ultimate battle. In his narcissism, he wanted to give himself the illusion that he held all the credit for the final victory.

This time, that shameless tactic played in my favor. By the time he deemed his army large enough, I was running on fumes. A short while longer and I would have been completely depleted.

While Alva and Meri had been riding on their Dread Horses so that they could scout the nearby areas for prey, Cornelius had remained inside the comfort of our carriage driven by Jasper. With the manticore’s lair but a short distance ahead, he finally disembarked and mounted his own Dread Horse, which had been attached to the carriage.

After ordering Jasper to stay there, he led the way with at least two hundred risen creatures of various sizes in tow.

A loud screech greeted our approach as we closed in the distance with the dark rock formation that seemed to rise out of nowhere in the middle of the valley. Judging by the powerful aura that emanated from that general direction, I could feel the presence of some sort of magic well. It would explain why the creature would have selected this area to settle in. That arcane surge could also have been the cause of the terrain swelling upward into that small rocky hill, like a lava eruption would have done to form a volcano.

A shower of darts raining down a few meters in front of us stopped us dead in our tracks. With a flapping sound, the manticore came to hover a short distance ahead. Intelligent blue eyes peered at us from his human face. Judging by the size of his lion’s body, the length of his scorpion tail, and the span of his bat wings, I judged him to be about five-years-old, which would equate to around thirty years for a human.

He menacingly waved his tail covered in the same venomous spines that had fallen before us. The manticore could shoot them like a porcupine’s quills to paralyze or kill his victims. Despite having shot at least two dozen of them, new spines were already growing back to replace the ones he just used.

“Who dares trespass on my domain?” he shouted with a booming voice.

“My name is Cornelius Cromwell. My apprentices and I traveled a long way to come make you an offer you simply cannot refuse.”

The manticore’s eyes widened, and his lips parted, revealing three rows of sharp teeth.

“What could a mere human possibly have to offer me that I might desire?”

“The honor of serving me, of course,” Cornelius said with obnoxious smugness. “I will make you more powerful than you can ever dream of.”

The manticore barked a laugh at such a preposterous statement. Even at his young age, he constituted a significant enough threat to warrant the necromancer coming with his two most powerful apprentices and an army of undead. But even that was no guarantee of success… at least not without me. It infuriated me that my presence was the reason for Cornelius’s cockiness.

But what infuriated me more were the mind games my captor was currently playing with the cub. When dealing with the arcane, one had to be extremely careful about the wording of an agreement. Cornelius wasn’t lying when he promised to make him more powerful than he could ever imagine. What he failed to mention was that to achieve that goal, he would turn him into some kind of abomination and rob him of his free will and maybe even of his sanity.

“I serve no one, human. But you will serve me . I was about to head out to hunt for a snack. How kind of you to deliver yourself to me,” the manticore said in a sickly-sweet voice.

“You misunderstand me, manticore. I wasn’t asking your opinion on the matter. As per my initial statement, I’m here to make you an offer that you simply cannot refuse ,” Cornelius reiterated, this time putting an emphasis on the last three words. “You are young, inexperienced, and clearly clueless. You boast about owning a domain and yet have set up no defenses for it. Word of your presence here is already spreading far and wide. Others will come to hunt and kill you. Serve me and you will get to experience the type of future you never could have imagined.”

Indeed. One of misery, suffering, and hopelessness.

“Let those others come,” the manticore hissed. “Like you, they will die by my hands, and I shall feast on your bones.”

And he undoubtedly would if he could kill Cornelius. Under different circumstances, he would have had a fifty percent chance of success, despite being outnumbered. But by having me tethered to him, the necromancer essentially made himself immortal.

It was his turn to laugh at the manticore. “You wish you could. But I cannot die. The same cannot be said of you, little cub. So here’s your choice. You can serve me willingly, or I can make you. Dead or alive, you’re coming home with me as my servant.”

The anger that descended over the rather handsome features of the manticore echoed the rage his words stirred within me.

“This conversation is over. Now, you die!”

With this, the manticore whipped his tail forward, firing at least twenty of the spines lining it at us. Alva instantly flicked her hands forward well shouting a word of power. A red haze flashed before us just as the darts crashed against the protective shield she had raised with her Blood Magic.

“As you wish!” Cornelius said with malicious glee.

He deliberately made that offer in a fashion obnoxious enough to force the confrontation. The necromancer didn’t just like winning, he loved physically and mentally destroying his opponents in the process. Such petty and cruel tactics only revealed what a small and weak man he truly was that he required crushing others to validate his sense of self-worth.

An excruciating pain shot through me. Despite not having a physical vessel, I felt as if my spine had been torn right off my back when Cornelius invoked my Soul Magic to sever the manticore’s soul from his body, making it easier to control and manipulate the creature.

Such a spell required an insane amount of power. No mortal could achieve it on their own. Even I would struggle to do it, especially on such a high-ranking mage as was a manticore. For a Reaper, only the use of our scythe made such a task easy. It didn’t kill the target, only broke the bond that kept them bound to their mortal vessel.

That manticore’s disbelieving laugh only confirmed what I already knew. The spell had failed in a spectacular fashion. At my full power, my ability channeled through Cornelius’s own impressive skills should have at least partially damaged that link. It barely even made a scratch.

“You foolish human! Did you really think you could bind me like that?” the manticore mocked.

Below the shocked anger that erupted inside the necromancer, I felt the first seed of suspicion taking root. As we had faced far more powerful enemies in the past where he had used a similar tactic, Cornelius instantly knew that this time something was wrong. As much as I loved to interfere with his plans, I could not refuse him the use of my magical abilities. Therefore, this could only mean that something had tampered with my powers.

But the manticore firing another volley of spines at us as he simultaneously breathed down fire had the necromancer rolling out of the path of the inferno and poisoned needles. This time, he was the one to simultaneously cast a blood shield to absorb what he couldn’t have avoided.

Without waiting for his command, Meri set forth her skeletal army. The confusion on the manticore’s face as he flew in circles around us while showering us with flames and darts only confirmed his lack of battle experience. Obviously, it seemed illogical to send walking skeletons towards him when he was flying well out of range from their potential attacks. Despite its tremendous heat, the fire he breathed didn’t destroy the bones. It only melted the flesh and remaining tendons off them.

Exactly what Meri wanted.

While Cornelius continued to block the manticore’s attacks with Blood Magic, Alva created diversions with her nightmares. They didn’t frighten the creature but put him on the defensive, hindering his ability to attack Cornelius. His reddish-brown fur covered a leather skin so thick the sharp claws of the nightmares barely scraped him on the rare occasions they managed to get a swipe in.

On top of their powerful magic, dragon fire, and lethal poison, manticores were also extremely fast both in their attacks and in their flight. It made hitting them with a spell, arrow, or any targeted weapon extremely difficult. You had to try and anticipate where they would be in time and space and fire at that location, hoping you wouldn’t miss—which you usually did.

While Alva was genuinely attempting to strike him—and failing miserably—Cornelius was deliberately shooting his blood arrows wide in between casting protective shields. It was a deliberate strategy to lull the manticore into believing he was dealing with inferior opponents and therefore lower his guard. It also provided Meri with the time needed to set up her trap as her undead army took position in a half-circle around the area the creature was flying in as it rained fire and poisoned darts on us.

Sorrow and anger warred within me in equal measure as Meri used her Bone Magic to make her undead minions take a prone position on the ground, arms and legs tucked below them —for those who possessed such limbs—and their backs rounded towards the sky. Invoking her powerful bone manipulation skills, she began reshaping the bones of their backs, turning them into spikes pointing upward.

Once again revealing his inexperience and cluelessness, the manticore failed to see the trap rapidly closing around him. In a reckless display of bravado, the foolish cub dove down breathing a steady stream of fire at the risen creatures, burning what flesh remained on their bones, shattering a few of them with a brutal swipe of his wing, and even picking one up in a fly by. As he soared back into the skies he made a show of biting a thick limb from his catch, effortlessly crushing the bones between the three vicious rows of teeth in his unnaturally large mouth in his otherwise handsome human face.

Seizing this moment of distraction, Cornelius siphoned a large chunk of the magic reserves Alva gathered earlier from the creatures she terrorized and combined it with my Soul Magic abilities to attempt once again to sever the manticore’s link to his body. Alva faltered from the sudden loss a split second before the effects of his greed struck me as well.

This time, the same excruciating sharp pain tore me asunder, and I felt myself going faint as a strange tingling similar to a person about to lose consciousness spread through me. The world darkened around me. As I had no eyes of my own, I saw and experienced the environment through all of Cornelius’s senses. That the strain on me had been so violent to temporarily separate that connection terrified me.

“Why the fuck are you so weak?!” Cornelius mentally hissed when the attack miserably failed again.

Feeling dazed, I didn’t know by what sorcery I managed to gather my thoughts enough to blurt out what I hoped he would deem a plausible enough explanation.

“You’re attacking a manticore, not some weak human. He’s near his magic well and wisely keeps flying along strong ley lines. You wasted a lot of my energy by casting my death aura over a ridiculously wide radius,” I explained. “The three of you will tire before he does. You cannot take his soul.”

“But YOU could!” Cornelius countered before rolling out of the way of another volley of poisoned darts.

“His life thread is not severed yet,” I argued. “There is still a chance he will survive this encounter. Therefore, no, I cannot harvest his soul for you—not that I would have.”

“Fine, have it your way. I don’t need him alive. It would have been nice, but all I truly need are his bones for my little project. I’ll be sure to remember how you made things harder once it’s completed,” Cornelius mentally replied in an ominous fashion. “For now, let’s use one of your favorite abilities.”

The malicious way he laughed upon speaking those last words chilled me. While I genuinely could not have helped him kill the manticore before Fate deemed his time had come, shame filled me for once again making the situation worse for someone in the necromancer’s crosshairs. After all this time, I knew better than to allow my stupid mouth to provoke him, considering how thin skinned he was. He always needed to put me back in my place by hurting others in my name and doing so with my powers.

Despite how drained I’d become, I still possessed enough power for Cornelius to use my death aura in a targeted fashion. By channeling it through his own magic and aiming at a specific target instead of using it over a wide radius, it required a lot less fuel to have a potent impact. In this instance, the death strike he used against the manticore acted on him like a savage blow.

The cub faltered, his flight pattern becoming erratic as he drunkenly tried to recover. Alva’s nightmares swooped in, clawing him from all sides. With a series of powerful blows and through savagely whipping his tail, the manticore fought the weaker creatures back. Just when it looked like he would prevail, Cornelius hit him again with a second death strike. This time, the cub emitted a pained roar and blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.

Simultaneously, Meri set off her trap.

With a single vocal command, the prone skeletons she had lined in the half circle around the manticore’s domain burst into action. The sharpened bones she had reshaped on their backs shot into the air with the power of a crossbow bolt. Still destabilized by the debilitating pain of the death strike, he failed to dodge the incoming bone spikes. Despite his valiant efforts, several of them found their mark. He shrieked as a few of them embedded themselves in his sides, legs, and left shoulder. A couple more tore through his bat wings.

Enraged, the manticore did what it should have done from the start and dashed towards Cornelius. In his lack of experience and the arrogance of youth, he made a show of his power, threatening and taunting instead of going for the kill. By dragging out the fight for entertainment, he had given the enemy the upper hand.

Having expected that reaction, Cornelius threw half a dozen blood darts at the charging creature. I couldn’t tell whether they reached their target or not as the manticore breathed a long and steady stream of fire at us. For a split second, I thought he had succeeded in breaking through my host’s blood shield until the flames hit the invisible wall before us. It didn’t stop us from feeling the intense heat.

My spirit soared when the shield began to falter under the sustained fiery assault and as the manticore closed in on us. Between the fire and force of the impact, the shield would collapse, and the beast would be able to tear Cornelius limb from limb. Granted, my regeneration powers would keep him from dying, but it would not spare him from the intense agony of having his body torn to shreds. As I wouldn’t share in that pain, I prayed for that moment to come.

It didn’t.

I heard the heart-wrenching scream of the young manticore half a beat before I saw multiple volleys of bone spikes tearing through the sky. The wall of fire faded just as a loud thud resonated barely a couple of meters in front of us.

Grievously wounded with at least two dozen spikes protruding from his body at different angles, the cub had crashed onto the ground and was scrambling to get back on his paws. Like vultures, Meri and Alva closed in on the creature, hands waving as binding incantations flowed freely out of their mouths.

A cruel chuckle escaped the necromancer as he smugly strolled towards his fallen opponent. With an impressive determination laced with desperation, the manticore attempted to flee. Even with his severe injuries, he still managed to fly away at an impressive speed while clumsily yanking some of the bone spikes out of his body. However, his escape was short-lived. With a powerful spell combining Flesh and Bone Magic, Cornelius took over control of the manticore’s wings, paralyzing them.

The poor creature went into a freefall, crashing heavily once again. It knocked the wind out of him. His painful groans mixed with his wet and whistling breathing, hinting at pierced lungs.

He never had a chance to get back up.

His attempt at flicking his tail, both to fire his poisoned spines at his tormentors and to attempt to sting them with the vicious needle at the tip, was quickly thwarted. Pulling on the skull pommel of his walking stick, Cornelius revealed the vicious blade hidden within. With one swift swipe, he used it as a sword to chop off the tail.

Working swiftly and efficiently, Meri and Alva shackled the cub to the ground. Where Alva merely used her Blood Magic to weave arcane threads around his limbs, Meri revealed the darker side that lurked deep within the lovesick naive girl she usually portrayed herself to be.

Without blinking, she yanked two of the bone spikes embedded in his side then coldly stabbed them in his front paws. With a swift incantation, she once more used bone manipulation for the bones to reshape themselves into some form of grappling hook that nailed his limbs to the ground. Oblivious to his agonized screams, she repeated the process with his back paws.

Refusing to accept what was now clearly inevitable, the manticore tried to escape again—even at the risk of tearing his limbs off—with a vain attempt at flapping his wings again. Sadly for him, Cornelius was maintaining his paralysis on them. Not wanting to continue to expend that energy, the necromancer subjected those magnificent wings to the same dreadful fate his tail had met.

“You should have served me, you fool,” Cornelius said tauntingly as he circled around the mangled creature to stand by his head. “Now, you’re going to die, slowly and painfully. And I’m going to enjoy hearing your agony during every second of it. You see my pretty little Alva over there?” Cornelius asked, gesturing with his head at his apprentice. “She’s extremely adept at Flesh and Blood Magic. Her specialty is harvesting organs while keeping the host alive so that they retain even more of their magic properties. And you, my little friend, are a treasure trove of magic ripe for the reaping.”

He gestured for Alva to proceed. The eagerness with which she retrieved the necessary paraphernalia from the saddle of her horse was beyond repulsive. She was as cruel as her Master. Meri, her face devoid of emotion, began drawing a few runes on the manticore’s body while muttering some incantations both to stifle his own magic and to keep him alive well-beyond what nature intended once Alva got to work on him.

Cornelius chuckled with shameless cruelty upon hearing me mentally cursing him. I wanted to spare the cub from the prolonged agony they were about to subject him to. But his life thread still had too long remaining on it for me to intervene. And weakened as I was, the powers I could use would only add to the torture he would endure. If I still had a body, I could have at least ended his pain, if not his life.

As Alva started slicing his chest open, the manticore didn’t scream, but locked eyes with Cornelius. To my shock, I realized he wasn’t looking at the necromancer, but directly at me.

“Release me, Reaper!” he shouted in a pained voice. “Grant me peace!”

Cornelius burst out laughing, mocking both him and me. Despite his prior request to rip out the manticore’s soul for him, my host knew better the limitations that constrained me. However, the baffled look Alva and Meri cast in turn towards their master and their victim reiterated the fact that Cornelius was doing an excellent job of fooling them into believing the tremendous powers he possessed actually came from him instead of the demigod he had enslaved.

They had no idea I lurked within him.

Annoyed by their inquisitive looks, he snapped at them to resume their task. The next five minutes devolved into a gruesome spectacle of pure evil as they painstakingly started removing the least vital organs from the creature, taking their sweet time to wrap them in spells as they placed them in the special containers Alva had brought so that they wouldn’t decay or lose the potent magic that emanated from them.

To add insult to injury, Cornelius used my regeneration powers to help sustain the cub who was quickly failing from the sadistic abuse inflicted upon him. Too focused on my guilt and sorrow, further compounded by the heart-wrenching sound of his screams, I didn’t hear this subtle but unmistakable ripping sound of the brief tearing of the Veil from a traveler teleporting through it.

And then I felt the beloved familiar energy.

Haroth!!

“Reaper! You’re much too early!” Cornelius snarled upon seeing the impressive silhouette of my brother standing two meters ahead.

The two apprentices once more started, looking in confusion at the empty space where their master was looking. Meri was the first to realize what was happening and altered her vision to be able to see the Reaper. Alva followed suit moments later. As regular mortals, their necromantic powers were the only thing that allowed them to get some sort of glimpse. But to them, he would merely look like a vague, robed figure. Thanks to me, Cornelius would see my brother in his full glory.

A powerful ache, sense of loss, and longing crushed me as I took in his dark robe and gleaming scythe. The familiar sound of his chains clanking as he closed the distance with us further exacerbated the sharp pain of all that had been taken from me. Below his hood, his eyes glowed red—testifying to his fury and illuminating the sharp angles of his skeletal face.

It hurt even more that part of his rage was actually aimed at me.

Obviously, Haroth understood that I had not chosen this fate, and that I couldn’t help how my powers were being abused. That didn’t lessen his resentment. By allowing myself to be captured, I had caused endless suffering that never should have existed as Cornelius never would have had the power required to inflict it to begin with.

And yet, beneath that anger, my brother felt a great deal of pity for me.

“My apprentices and I plan to play with him for a while longer. I’m sure you can find plenty of other dying souls to keep you occupied for an hour or so. We should be done by then,” Cornelius said with an arrogance that made me want to tear him to shreds.

“I think not,” Haroth replied with a voice cold enough to freeze an erupting volcano.

“His thread has not ended!” the necromancer hissed with disbelief.

“It is close enough. Unlike Pharos, I am a Grim, not an Angel of Death. As I am not bound by the same constraints, I say he’s done.”

“NO!” Cornelius shouted.

But it was too late. With a swift swipe of his scythe, Haroth killed the manticore. At a glance, it looked as if he had attempted to behead him. While the two girls only saw a blur, Cornelius and I clearly saw the blade sever the soul’s link to the body before yanking it out.

It was a luminous glow that spread through the few bone knots at the base of the scythe. Like many Grims, Haroth carried the souls of the fallen in that fashion as he did not care to interact with them during their journey to the other side. I literally walked them, their souls retaining the ethereal silhouette of the physical person they had been before their passing as I ease them into their new journey ahead.

Yielding once more to his volatile temper, Cornelius foolishly took a threatening step towards my brother. “You fucking—!”

“Do not threaten or insult me, human. Then again, maybe you should carry on and give me a good reason to put you out of your misery,” Haroth said, waving his scythe in a less-than-subtle fashion.

Cornelius laughed while looking at the Reaper with an incredulous expression. “Seriously?! I can’t die, you idiot!”

My brother tilted his head to the side, the bones of his skeletal face shifting to reveal a terrifying toothy grin. He normally had a very pleasant smile, but this time, he was deliberately using one of his Grim appearances for a more dramatic effect.

“You want to bet? I’d be happy to teach you the error of your ways.”

“You wouldn’t dare!” Cornelius said, this time, a hint of worry seeping into his voice.

He almost added that Haroth wouldn’t want to risk killing his own brother, but he caught himself at the last minute before casting an annoyed glance at the women. He angrily gestured for them to move away and grant him privacy.

“Why are you sending away your females?” Haroth asked loud enough so that they would hear him. “Are you afraid they will find out the secret of your power? That they will learn you truly are a weak necromancer leeching off the Reaper you have ensnared?”

The women gasped, their heads jerking between their master and the Reaper.

“Leave!” Cornelius shouted at his apprentices, his face twisted with fury.

They didn’t have to be told twice. They all but ran back to their Dread Horses that patiently waited a good fifty meters away.

“But to answer your unspoken question,” Haroth continued mockingly, “yes, I would kill my brother. Considering the foul way in which you are using him,” he added waving at the mangled remains of the manticore, “killing you both would be me showing him mercy. So you go ahead and threaten me again, Necromancer. And then you’ll find out whether I can or would kill you both.”

Seething with rage, Cornelius clenched his teeth but wisely kept silent. Like the manticore had done earlier, Haroth locked eyes with my host, but he was looking directly at me. An odd thrill coursed through me when his consciousness brushed against mine. But the brief wave of joy that contact brought me quickly turned into dread when my brother frowned. I didn’t need him to speak to know he had realized what was happening with me.

Please don’t give me away!

I couldn’t speak with him, only pray that he wouldn’t drop any hint that might further raise Cornelius’s suspicions.

To my utter relief, my brother turned on his heel without another word. The air blurred around him, and the discrete ripping sound resonated half a beat before he vanished.

With an endless series of the foulest curses I had ever heard, Cornelius ordered the women to come back and swiftly complete the task. With the manticore dead, the necromancer was forced to expand even more of my regeneration abilities to maintain as much of the magic properties of the creature’s organs. By the time the gruesome task was completed, I was utterly drained.

And Cornelius knew it.

At this point, there was no denying that he suspected something was amiss. I could only pray that he didn’t understand yet what it was and what to do about it. Kali needed to transfer me into my own vessel in all haste.

To my dismay, instead of embarking right away on the long journey back home, Cornelius spent the next day plundering the manticore’s lair and studying his magic well. The worst part of it all was that the great distance once again prevented me from warning Kali of my current predicament. I would have given anything to be able to contact her. Considering my current state, I couldn’t have given her more of myself, but feeding from her would have greatly improved my situation.

My only blessing through it all was that Cornelius didn’t draw on my magic during the remainder of our stay here nor when we finally set back on the way home on the third day. This proved the most terrifying and distressing seventy-two hours of the past few centuries.

Cornelius had now completely blocked his thoughts from me. That he would totally keep me in the dark confirmed that he was either on to me or up to something terrible. Whatever he was planning, I had no doubt he would set it in motion the moment we got home.

As I faded in the background, begging for my energy to replenish quickly, I prayed to all the Gods and powers that be that Kali didn’t give up on me thinking I had reneged on our agreement.