Death Lord Arcanist [Chapter 15] - Also PINS!

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The Frith Chronicles PINS have dropped! If you'd like one, please let me know! I need to mail them out to everyone who is interested (also, posters!)

Shami

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

NOW ALLIES

I awoke with a sore shoulder, my thoughts fuzzy. After I blinked, I awkwardly sat up and glanced around, quite familiar with my location.

It was a dream. No—a nightmare. The landscape was an infinite expanse of black rocks, each shiny wet and glistening under the twinkle of a starry night. There was no sun or moon, yet I could see, a fact that reminded me dream logic was capable of anything.

One of my arms was held upward. With my free hand, I ran my fingers through my black hair. I was sitting next to a structure in this dreamscape—a cage made of stone, where some of the bars were cracked, and a few even missing. The shabby prison had exactly one occupant, and he was sitting on the floor, his back against the bars, his head hung.

It was Death Lord Deimos.

His soul fragment had been trapped in the realm of my dreams ever since Professor Helmith used her true form ethereal whelk magic to confine him to this place.

My arm was above my head, his arm also up, his clawed fingers in my flesh. We had been intertwined for a while now… This irritated me.

With shaky legs, I stood.

Deimos’s hand slipped off my arm, but blood remained. Not my blood—his. It was on my arm, at the bottom of his prison, outside and around the cage. Was he injured? I stumbled backward, trying to take everything in. I rubbed my arm, the phantom pain of his fingers still impaling my flesh.

Deimos didn’t look well.

“Hello?” I asked. My voice echoed around the nothingness.

As I rubbed my face clear of any sweat, the click of boots on stone caught my attention. Zahn walked around the stone cage, coming into view, his gaze fixated on the cracked bars.

“What have you done?” he asked.

Before I could answer, his mimic-turned-soul-catcher scuttled over the top of the prison. Its wooden legs clicked along the black stone, its bizarre hands grasping at the tops of the bars, attempting to pry them open, but that had little to no effect.

A cold chill ran through me. I hated those soul catchers—especially since they could harm someone physically, even in the dreamscape. I closed my eyes and searched for the soul catcher’s thread of magic, but when I tugged on it, nothing happened. Twain didn’t transform. Was it because he was so tired? We had given it our all to escape the abyssal hells…

I opened my eyes and took a controlled breath.

“I didn’t do that,” I said. “Professor Helmith did.”

Zahn clicked his tongue in disapproval. “I know Rylee was responsible. I can sense the ethereal whelk magic all throughout this, and I was informed ages ago you carried a small fraction of Deimos’s power.” He gazed his fingertips over the cage. “That’s not what I’m talking about. What happened here? Why is the magic weaker? Why isn’t Deimos answering me?”

My thoughts immediately went to the troubles brewing in the abyssal hells. I had left Deimos and Nini behind…

“He’s busy,” I said, my voice breathless. I shook my head. “Deimos was fighting Death Lord Kallikore and his elder phoenix dragon. I think, whenever he can’t focus on his astral projection, the fragment of his soul slumbers—if that makes sense.”

Zahn yanked his hand away from the cage. When he turned to me, he met my gaze with an icy glare. “You were there? In the hells?”

I nodded once.

“And Deimos… was in trouble?”

“The other Death Lords were out to get him. Naiad attacked, and then Kallikore.” I snapped my fingers as I remembered something. “He said that the other Death Lords could sense he was in the first abyss.”

Zahn’s gaze fell to the wet rocks beneath his feet. He glowered at the ground for a long minute, his stare as intense as ever. Then he glanced over at the unconscious form of Deimos locked away in the prison.

“He should’ve escaped to the realm of the living…” Zahn whispered. “You’ve ruined everything with your meddling.”

“Me? I wasn’t the one who asked to be stalked by a dream monster.” I motioned to the soul catcher. “I didn’t want any part of this—but now that I’m here, I’m going to set things right.”

“Feh.”

With deliberate steps, I walked over to the cage. “It’s true. I helped Deimos fight Naiad, and I’ve seen firsthand how bad things are in the abyssal hells. I told Deimos I would help. Ask him yourself.”

We both turned to face Deimos. He didn’t move. If anything, he didn’t even look like he was breathing—he was more corpse than man, with his blood still seeping out around his prison. Again, I rubbed my arm where he had held me. It felt strange, like his blood had crept into my skin.

I nervously chuckled as I turned back to Zahn. “Well, ask him when he’s feeling a little better.”

“There won’t be any getting better.” Zahn sarcastically empathized the last words. “Thing have only ever gotten progressively worse. Now look at what you’ve done.” He glanced up at the soul catcher. “Let’s get this over with.”

With my teeth gritted, I glanced up. The freakish spider marionette reached its knife-claws toward my face. I stumbled backward, but the creature pursued. On instinct, I grabbed Vivigöl. Even in this dream, the weapon was with me, one with my being or perhaps my subconscious. The instant I touched the golden weapon, it transformed into a trident with a click-click-click, the abyssal coral taking shape with rigid movements.

The soul catcher’s face mask seemed incapable of movement. It didn’t open its mouth, or even change its neutral expression. However, it flinched back, which told me a lot. This mimic monster didn’t like my new toy.

With Deimos’s skill, I stabbed at the soul catcher, hoping to impale its disgusting mask face. The monster dodged aside—it was much faster in the dreamscape. Just like in all my nightmares, it scuttled with frightening haste, moving off the cage and then around me in a matter of a split second.

I swung a wide arc and the sharp tines of the trident struck the soul catcher in one of its eight spider limbs. The monster screamed, somehow, even if its mouth didn’t open, as the leg splintered like pure wood.

“Twice!” Zahn shouted. “Stop messing around.”

The soul catcher growled. Then it used four of its seven remaining arms to attack. The knife-claws lashed out toward me, and while I had no idea how I would block four strikes at once, Deimos had the skill to handle such a predicament.

I expertly twirled the trident, knocking away three of the hands and catching the fourth with the trident’s tines, damaging the soul catcher more.

The beast—Twice was his name?—scuttled away.

Then the environment shifted. The wet rocks melted into quicksand, and I sank into the ground all the way to my knees. It had all happened so fast, and when I thrashed about to free myself, it was impossible. All of my struggling movements only made it worse.

The soul catcher lunged. Three of its claws went for me. I managed to knock away two, but the third sliced the side of my neck, my chin, and my cheek, the pain damn near blinding.

The monster had cut deep. Even in this dream, the sensation of hot blood disturbed me.

I shifted Vivigöl into a chain whip and cracked the tip of the weapon across the face mask. A gouge practically formed across the spider’s face, splitting the neutral expression right from one eye hole to the other.

“Zahn,” Deimos said from the cage, his voice practically a growl.

The monster stopped attacking. Zahn whirled on his heel to face the cage.

“Brother?” Zahn asked. “Are you awake?”

“Leave the boy alone,” was all Deimos managed to choke out.

Had he sensed the pain when I injured? How else would he have known to focus on his soul fragment at this moment?

“I can free you.” Zahn placed both his hands on the cracked bar. “Using the soul catcher magic, I can isolate your soul from the boy’s. It’ll only take a moment.”

“And then what?”

Deimos remained in the cage, sitting on the ground. When he took a deep breath, it seemed to irritate him.

“Once the soul catcher releases me, my fragment will return to the hells. Leave it with the boy. I can see more of the living realm—and Gray is an ally.”

Zahn exhaled as he shook his head. “The child will say anything to free himself. He’s deceptive. You can’t trust a word he mutters.”

“He fixed a portion of the Wraithborne Orchard. Helped me fight Naiad. Respected the rules of the abyssal hells… If his words are false, he’ll regret them. But for now, he has done as he said. Leave him.”

This didn’t seem to sit well with Zahn. He gripped the bars of the cage, his posture tense.

When I glanced over at the soul catcher, I realized it was just waiting there, poised to attack again, but obviously waiting for the command.

“If your fragment can be trapped here in the boy’s dreams, I can find a way to transfer you to another vessel,” Zahn said, his tone desperate. “Please—let me remove you from this place.”

“The risk is too great. Focus your efforts elsewhere. I need to rest at the Requiem Throne, but then I need to find a way out of the abyssal hells.”

“But perhaps I can take your soul fragment. Wouldn’t that be preferrable? Deimos?”

But Deimos didn’t answer. His head fell, and he returned to an almost stiff and still state.

The quicksand around my legs shifted. After a grunt, I lifted my leg and stepped out of the trap. With a huff, I brushed myself off and even tucked Vivigöl back around my neck and shoulders. It transformed into some sort of jewelry, ready and waiting for violence, if I needed it.

When Zahn turned back around, he wore a smile that looked like he had fished out of the back of a dirty drawer.

“Well.” That was all he said.

Well.

I half-shrugged. “See? I told you. Deimos and I are good friends.”

“You are not good friends,” Zahn hissed, his anger as intense as his gaze. But he quickly brushed back his hair and settled back into a calm demeanor. “You will wait here while I prepare things. I believe—with your assistance—I can get Deimos out of the abyssal hells if we use the Specter Sands, rather than the Wraithborne Orchard.”

“What are the Specter Sands?” I asked.

Zahn took a deep breath, muttered something to himself, and then continued his monotone speech. “From the Wraithborne Orchard, souls are given new lives as plants. From the Specter Sands, souls are given new lives as minerals.”

I caught my breath. “Y-You like glowstones?”

Deimos had said that all magic was made of souls, basically. So glowstones—the little rocks that were always lit—were actually shining because of soul fragments inside of them?

Zahn nodded, one of his eyebrows raised. “Ah. My brother must’ve informed you. Good. Saves me the time of explaining.”

“You brought all those magical plants because you were using them as a gateway?” I thought back to the shimmering pumpkin we had all burst out of. “And now you’re going to use magical rocks to get Deimos? Somehow?” I wasn’t entirely sure how Zahn was planning any of this, but I was starting to understand his methodology.

“Something like that.” Zahn motioned for his eldrin. The soul catcher scuttled over, and Zahn gently looked over the monster’s injuries. “But you just need to sit put. I’ll handle everything.”

“Wait, if souls are made into plants within the Wraithborne Orchard, and they’re made into minerals in the Specter Sands, or into insects in the Silkshade Grove… Where do they go to be people?”

Did people get reincarnated back into people?

Did that happen?

Zahn glanced over, irritation creeping into his expression. “Souls in the Lament Valley are used to make the bodies of mystical creatures. If a soul is to return to a human body, it must go through one of the Death Lord. Because you must understand—all the souls in the abyssal hells aren’t whole. All the parts of your life you’re proud of move on. It’s only your regrets, resentments, and losses that are sent to the abyssal hells for another chance at life—a Death Lord will either find you unworthy, or send you back for another round.”

“Right…”

I wasn’t entirely sure how it all worked, but it was starting to make since. The souls in the first abyss were waiting to be reborn as various things—minerals, plants, insects, other magical creatures—and the souls deeper in the hells were either going to oblivion, or given an even greater chance.

I rubbed my chin as I mulled it over.

Part of me wondered…

Where my mother had gone.

Deimos had said she was no longer in the abyssal hells. Where had she gone? It was a foolish question, because there was probably no way to know, but I was curious.

Zahn turned and started walking across the slick surface of the black stone. His eldrin followed after him, walking with injured limbs. I held out a hand.

“Wait.”

Zahn turned.

I motioned to our surroundings. “What’s going on? Why not just end this dream?”

“My brother needs time,” Zahn drawled, completely uninterested. “So you can take a nap in the meantime. Once he’s done recovering, then I’ll attempt to summon him again. Until then, goodbye, Gray Lexly.”

He waved his hand, and the dream melted away, leaving me floating in a dark void.

That no-good lunatic.

As soon as Twain was ready, I’d just bust myself out of this trap he thought he had me in.