Nightmare gasped. "They made a statue in his likeness. If you think Death will be pissed about my sister and me, wait till she hears that the Time Master allowed himself to be worshipped by a bunch of mortals!"
"Now that I look back, our dream munchies are nothing compared to his effigy. We might get a slap on the wrist, at best," Dream added.
"He's their god?" I managed, leaning forward to check the symbols engraved into the statue's square, solid base. I moved my fingers across each letter, understanding the text along the way. "Yes, he is. The Lord of Time, they call him."
Dream and Nightmare circled the statue, their scythes out and glowing intermittently as they moved. They looked like shadows, mere wisps that hovered across the floors, moving graciously and enacting a series of spells designed to connect them to the Time Master.
"Any sign of him, beyond what you've been sensing?" I asked.
The statue text was pretty specific in terms of the locals' mythology. One day, the Lord of Time was said to have stepped down from the heavens, using his power to stop entire wars and bring peace to the nations of Astram. The people of Astram considered him to be a liberator of sorts.
Walking away from the statue, I checked the temple's interior walls next. Bas-reliefs covered the upper half, while more writings were carved into the bottom half.
"He was here recently enough," Nightmare said.
"Another Reaper attacked him. Hurt him deeply. One of ours," Dream concluded, giving me a worried look.
It didn't take long for me to put two and two together. "You mean to tell me the Spirit Bender is behind Time's disappearance, too?"
"Does it not make sense?" Nightmare murmured, picking up a broken gemstone from the floor, where it had been wedged between two of the base's stones. He frowned, cautiously sniffing it. "This was his. It fell from his watch."
"His watch," I repeated, hoping he'd clarify his statement.
"His accoutrement, shall we call it?" Dream said. "They call him the Time Master, Kelara. Naturally, a tool of time measurement is his favorite accessory. A pocket watch, to be specific, with the lid made of rare blue gold and covered in precious, unique gemstones. See?" She pointed to the sculpture's pocket watch. "That, right there. It's a real thing. He spent eons foraging through the darkest corners of the universe in search of the perfect stones for it."
"And this is one of them. Well, it was. No longer, clearly," Nightmare said.
The temple texts spoke of the Time Master having spent a considerable amount of time on Astram. It irked me that he'd taken such liberties, against every single rule that Death had set for us on the matter.
"He wasn't just worshipped here. He lived on Astram for centuries. They brought him offerings. They sought his council. He made and broke empires during that time. It's so illegal," I mumbled.
"That aside, would you like to know what happened to him and where he went?" Nightmare replied dryly, one eyebrow raised in contempt.
"It's what we came all the way here for," I said, trying to set aside my dismay regarding the First Tenners' behavior. It was disrespectful to Death, their maker, the way they'd been behaving. The First Ten were nothing like the rest of us, indeed. They were spoiled little children who did whatever they wanted, thinking there would be no consequences whatsoever, while we toiled and struggled to stay within the lines, fearful of disturbing the balance between the living and the dead.
We needed to bring law and order back, but we couldn't until all the First Tenners were reunited, and until the Spirit Bender was punished for his atrocious deeds.
Nightmare pressed the chipped gemstone against his scythe's blade, repeating the tracking spell he'd learned from the Soul Crusher hours earlier. "Well, I'm a quick learner," he said upon noticing my befuddled expression. "And we finally have something physical of Time. This puts us ahead of the game."
"He left it on purpose. You know that, right?" Dream replied, staring at him. He nodded. "The Spirit Bender came for him. His motive… I'm not sure, but I'm willing to bet it's Death and Hermessi related, still. The Time Master probably told him to go screw himself."
"A fight ensued. Time was injured. Perhaps Spirit took him," Nightmare continued.
Two priests crossed the room, their hands hidden in their long sleeves and their heads covered in golden wreaths. They did not see or hear us, but I could almost feel the hairs on their arms raising. They did sense us. For a moment, the two stopped by the statue, gazing up at their Lord of Time.
"Do you think he's ever coming back?" one of them asked.
The elder priest shrugged. "I don't know. But our people must be made to believe that he will return, someday. By the time it becomes clear that he won't, all those who last saw him for themselves will be dead and buried. Including you and me."
"I still don't understand what happened," the younger priest said, clearly disappointed.
"None of us do, but our faith must continue. It has kept peace within our kingdom. It must not be allowed to die."
They walked out of the temple and down the steps. Soon they were out of sight, while I had another piece added to the mystery puzzle involving the Time Master's disappearance. The people here knew nothing about it. One day, their Lord of Time had simply… disappeared.
Nightmare's blade glimmered red for a moment, reacting to the gemstone infusion. Its hum became audible, sending shivers down my spine. "We've got our next destination," he said.
I joined him and Dream as we walked out of the temple, space bending to our collective will. We jumped off the stone steps and through a massive wormhole made of blackness and wandering stars. Swirls of pink-and-yellow stardust flashed around us. Solar storms burst in bright explosions, until our feet touched ground again and another planet took shape from below.
As we breathed out, simultaneously, we found ourselves on a small but ravaged planet. Dream scoffed, shaking her head with sheer disgust. "We're in the Mirinin constellation," she said. "Still in the Earthly Dimension."
"Where's that?" I asked.
"It doesn't matter. No one would come here willingly," she replied.
No wonder, I thought, as I took in our surroundings. The planet was dead, nothing but red rocks and dust beneath a foggy crimson sky. Daylight barely breached through, and the wind blew with raging strength across the stone and sand.
City ruins poked out from beneath. A fractured tower here. A cracked dome there. Objects of civilization were scattered everywhere, with millions of bones between them, forgotten by everything and everyone. Nothing lived here anymore. Not even insects or animals of any kind. No trees or patches of water. It was empty. Defunct. Lifeless. And it broke my heart to think that innocent creatures had met their end here as a species.
"What happened here?" I asked, trying to cope with the ghost of an unprecedented disaster. The air was thick and smelly, making my nose crinkle. I caught traces of molten tar and acid fumes. Fortunately, I wasn't alive anymore to die all over again just from breathing it all in.
"Doom," Dream replied.
When my sideways glance made it clear that I needed more to go on, Nightmare stepped in. "An asteroid. It's the very last place where we saw several of our First Ten brothers and sisters, including Time and Spirit."
"There is no oxygen left here, is there?" I asked, realizing what it was about this place that made me feel so heavy on the inside. Since we didn't belong to the living anymore, we couldn't drown or suffocate or suffer from any kind of poison, but we retained our sense of smell, and we were able to identify whether air was breathable or not.
"There is nothing left here," Nightmare replied. "There's barely any gravity. All that you see here has been preserved for millions of years due to a combination of toxic fumes. Whatever that asteroid was carrying, it spread and took over this entire rock."
I looked at him. "And you two were here."
"Along with Spirit, Time, and Unending," Dream said. "We'd managed to reach out to one another. We were looking to organize a reuni
on of sorts. Back then, the people here were still alive, and one of them had been tracking the skies. He'd spent years warning the others that something awful was coming from the sky. Guess he was right."
Figures moved through the distant mist ahead. "I thought you said they all died."
"Of course, why?" Nightmare replied, then followed my gaze and frowned. "That's not right…"
Within seconds, we had already crossed several miles of barren desert. We reached what had once been an oasis, the water dried up and replaced with yellow dust. Broken foundations emerged from the red sand here and there, but that wasn't the most intriguing part. The figures we'd seen were not living creatures. They were spirits, and, judging by their pale and downtrodden appearance, they seemed to have been wandering around for ages.
"No one's reaped them," I said.
They moved in herds, dozens at a time, with no direction or purpose.
"He's here," Dream gasped. "I can feel him!"
"The Time Master?" I asked, nervously glancing around.
"Yes. He's here. He's definitely here," she replied.
Nightmare sighed, glancing down at his scythe. The blade glowed red, much like the gemstone he'd used to track the Time Master here. "It took us to the right place, then. But where is he?"
One of the ghosts looked right at me. He stilled, and I felt my heart skip a beat, before it contracted with what I could only describe as raw uneasiness. He could see me, and it didn't look as though he had friendly intentions. In fact, he seemed angry. We were trespassing.
"Why weren't these people reaped?" I asked, hoping Dream and Nightmare had a good answer. They didn't.
"I'm not sure," Dream said. "For a calamity of such proportions, there should've been hundreds of Reapers dispatched. Yet I see no trace of them. I can only feel Time, and he's in so much pain…"
I frowned. "What about your telepathic connection?"
"We've both been trying to reach him over the past couple of minutes," Nightmare replied. "He's not answering. Like I said, something is off here."
And it probably had the Spirit Bender's involvement written all over it. The spirits screamed—their pitches high and scratchy, like banshees from the depths of the most savage dreams. They ran toward us. Masses of abandoned spirits, snarling and clawing as they surrounded us.
"Hold on," Nightmare said. He stepped forward as the circle of spirits closed around us. Fear coursed through me, and I couldn't understand why. These were dead people. We were Reapers. What was there to worry about? "What happened to you?" he asked one of them.
The spirit wailed and slashed out. Her claws cut through Nightmare's tunic. He winced from pain. He’d gotten slightly hurt.
"Holy crap," I croaked. "How… How is that possible?!"
Drawing my scythe, I knew now that there was a fight coming. But I couldn't process how it had come to pass, in the first place. Spirits couldn't hurt us… so how had they managed to cut Nightmare?
"Oh, snap," he said, moving back to us. "Sis, we've got a problem."
"I see it now," Dream replied, worriedly glancing around as the spirits got closer, hungry for something that they didn't even know they wanted. These weren't mere ghosts. They could hurt Reapers, and they were supposed to have been so rare that their collective presence here boggled our minds. "These are specters."
"How can this be?" I whispered, breaking into a cold sweat. "We've yet to ascertain how specters are made, to begin with. I have never come across one myself, but I've heard stories from other Reapers."
"Ah. I should apologize on behalf of the First Ten, then," Dream replied. "We kind of made them."
"What?!"
I stared at her, feeling my eyes bulging with disbelief. I knew of Reapers who'd come across specters, many years ago. Legends among us had hinted at the specters being rare spirits who'd been left on their own for too long. Not all ghosts could turn into them. We'd always assumed it depended on what type of creature they'd been prior to dying. Some souls simply carried more power than others.
Specters were so scarce that we didn't even have enough data to compile an accurate profile. They couldn't be pinned down or talked to. All they knew was violence, until they were kissed by the Reaper's blade. Only then could they move on. Theirs was a tale of tragedy. Therefore, how did the First Ten fit into this?
"You need to explain," I said, waving my scythe out to keep an angry specter away for a few more seconds. The rest of them were getting restless, a tad too eager to slice through us.
"Specters are the only ghosts that can wound a Reaper," Dream replied. "Their spirit essence is powerful enough to—"
"I know that! Get to the part where you made them!" I snapped.
Nightmare cut one of the specters down, and it vanished in a flash of sparks. The scythe of a Reaper meant the end. In our case, that meant a boatload of Reaping, for there were hundreds gathered around us, and more coming in from all directions. This was unprecedented.
"A specter does not form on its own. We discovered this a long time ago," Dream said. "A Reaper can put something of their own inside a spirit. A thread of garment. A little gemstone. Even a strand of hair. The ghost absorbs it. Without reaping, it all just festers until it devolves into a specter."
"So the First Ten are responsible for specters…" I repeated, trying to wrap my head around the concept, to understand the reasoning behind it.
The twins nodded. "We used them to play around sometimes. We didn't share the information with the other Reapers, though. We didn't want anyone else trying it," Nightmare said.
"As if that's a good excuse!" I replied. "Hold on, so… the specters my fellow Reapers came across belonged to one or more of you?!"
They nodded again, looking like children I'd just caught stealing from the cookie jar. This simply reinforced my already negative opinion about the First Ten as a unit.
"We can't really control them," Dream said. "Most of the time, we just let them loose to piss another First Tenner off. Sometimes, the specters got away before we could reap them. They're abnormally agile."
"You are insane!" I shouted.
"Yeah, I know, we're not perfect, Miss Judgy!" Nightmare replied. "But we've got a problem here! There are too many of them! I think the Spirit Bender made them to keep us from getting to Time Master!"
Holy smokes.
As the bigger picture cleared, the entire chain of events leading up to this point began to sound like a carefully thought-out plan which the Spirit Bender had been working on for a very long time.
He'd helped Brendel steal Thieron, for sure. He'd definitely helped her bypass GASP on a few crucial matters, and he'd even assisted with her healing after Taeral had first cut her down with an incomplete Thieron.
To make matters worse, Spirit had also messed with Death—it was the only explanation that stood for her disappearance. To this point, we knew he'd had something to do with the Time Master, as well.
In conclusion, as the spirits jumped us, and we had no chance but to slash away at them all with our scythes, I realized that the Spirit Bender had been keeping his fingers in many pies, masterfully setting the scene and pulling the right strings… as if he'd anticipated that some of us might catch on and realize he had something to do with all this.
Needless to say, I had no intention of being stopped here. An army of Spirit Bender's specters wouldn't stop me. All they were meant to do was hurt us and keep us busy for long enough for the ritual to be completed.
Neither I, nor Dream and Nightmare were willing to let that happen. That treacherous son of a bitch had done enough harm already. It was our turn now, and it was his wheel of deceit and spun lies that needed to be broken.
Taeral
Kelara told Seeley through their telepathic connection that they were getting closer to the Time Master, and that the Spirit Bender had had something to do with his disappearance, as well. Seeley was worried that they had specters to deal with—many more than he'd thought even existed—but Kelara had reass
ured him that they had a handle on it.
"It just involves a ton of reaping," Seeley said.
We'd gone through Strava's pink waters first. Upon entering the white space, Phantom had whispered one of her spells, revealing thousands of tiny slits that glimmered pink. They were all openings to other worlds, normally hidden from our sight. She'd explained that, with Death gone, she'd had zero regard left for rules regarding interference in the plane of the living, hence her decision to show us the white space like we'd never seen it before.
Soul's tracking spell for Death had made the scythe glow brighter when pointed at one particular planet, and he'd used his hands to widen the entry point. He really could bend space to his will, as if it had been made of clay. We'd come out on a planet called Hydris, though none of us knew much about it, other than the fact that it was part of the In-Between's lesser-known and much older solar systems.
We'd been here for hours, following Soul as he let his scythe lead the way, picking up Death's trail. But we had yet to find anything—not to mention his maker. She was nowhere in sight, and neither was the Spirit Bender.
The news from Kelara had come like a slap in my face, reminding me that Spirit's web stretched farther than we'd originally thought. Learning about specters and their origin had come as a startling bonus, even for Seeley, who'd had no clue about their origins. Then again, we hadn't even known they existed.
"Weren't those spirits from Mortis specters, too?" Amelia asked.
This was the fifth hour we'd spent trekking through foreign purple-and-blue jungles in one of the weirdest worlds I'd ever come across. I'd suggested teleporting, but Soul had insisted that his spell was far too sensitive for that. This needed to be done on foot, to my dismay.
"Not really, no," Seeley replied. "They couldn't hurt Reapers. They could only hurt the living. That was just a trick Death employed to keep any curious entrepreneur at bay. But I think the difference between them and the specters could be considered minimal."
A Shade of Vampire 77: A Fate of Time Page 9
