“Just because I’m a god doesn’t mean I’m omniscient. Even my gossip goddess sister doesn’t know everything. If we did, then we would have killed Ariel Selios a long time ago for being a threat to our plans.”
Eric stopped walking. Looking up at the Amoral Armorer, he asked, “Would you really?”
“Absolutely.”
Eric continued walking. “I presume Kallen’s okay with that.”
“It upsets her, of course,” Tasio said, “but she recognizes that it might be necessary. If she can get everything she wants, then I will be the first to applaud her.”
Suddenly, Eric screamed and stabbed the ground with his spear. Then he crouched down next to it. Looking out across the empty wilderness, he muttered, “What the abyss am I doing? I’m not a tracker. I don’t know how to find anyone, and I’m looking for spirits. If I ever find them, they’ll try to kill me. How I am supposed to… arrrgh!”
“I was wondering when he’d return.”
“Who?”
“Your voice of despair,” Tasio said. “You’re been powering through everything lately, it’s like you were Tiza. I knew it was only a matter of time before you ran out of steam.”
“I’m not Tiza, so I don’t go charging ahead while screaming my head off. Nor can I ignore the obvious, like how I’m wandering around in the middle of nowhere by myself!”
“Yes, it is strange,” Tasio said. “If the spirits were hostile enough to attack you, then it wouldn’t matter if I were with you. Even if I declared my intention to protect you, they would throw themselves at you like lemmings.”
Eric’s breath caught in his throat. He stood up straight and looked out onto the horizon.
“It’s not their fault. The ones who cared enough about the damage from the Chaotic Starlight are either gone or after Kallen. It’s all Gruffle.” His grip shifted on his mage spear. “If I kill him, it will stop.”
An exaggerated and overly dramatic shrug answered him. “What did Kallen tell you about killing Wish Reapers?”
“Lord Death’s shit list.”
“Exactly. We have to be clever about this.”
Eric stopped, turned, and pointed a finger at Tasio. “I didn’t ask for your help with this one. I didn’t even put out a general request for help in a moment of weakness.”
“I know,” Tasio said. “I’m doing this of my own free will. Rest assured, I will get Gruffle off your back without pissing off his new boss.”
The trickster god took his leave. Now Eric was truly alone in the field. He kept his mage spear forward and the chaos tip lit because he knew that could change any second now. When the Door of Death opened, as he knew it would, it was in front of him and too far away for any reaper to harm him. Gruffle emerged and waved.
“Hey, Eric. Looking for something?”
Eric stopped and checked for sneak attacks or tricks. “At least you’re not trying another silent kill. You can learn after all.”
“I’ve moved beyond Lesson Four,” the troll reaper said.
“Oh really? What’s Lesson Five?”
“Make enemies into friends.”
With a twist of his hand, Gruffle summoned his scythe. Eric readied himself for a Reaper Cleave, but instead, Gruffle stuck it into the ground. Then he reached within his robe to withdraw a gourd. Unplugging the top, he shook it out and a trio of fire spirits fell out.
“The salamanders that the Fire Sage is looking for. They’re my gift to you as a former fellow in the Dragon’s Lair.”
Eric didn’t move. “You want me to become immortal? You won’t be able to kill me then.”
“I can’t kill you now because of your god and girlfriend. I’d rather see you live long enough for him betray you and her to break up with you.”
“So you’re killing me with kindness?”
“If you want to jump into your funeral pyre, then I want to build it for you. In fact,” he grinned triumphantly, “why don’t we start right now?”
The salamanders stirred and darted towards Eric. He raised his barrier and they shimmered in response. The fire light in Eric’s crystal shimmered in sync with them, and he had just enough time to realize what this meant before they closed the distance. Bypassing his barrier, they dove into his body.
It was agony. The moving fire burned his insides; deeper and deeper through him like acid. He doubled over and then fell over. Steam rose from his body and thawed the ground underneath him. Human groans mingled with grendel whimpers. Gruffle loomed over him.
“The Rite of Fire Ascension starts now.” He kicked Eric. “Thank me, mortal worm, for granting you such an honor.” He threw back his head and laughed. “Whatcha gonna do now, Priestess? Kill the salamanders and Eric will never be immortal!”
Forcing himself to control his breathing, Eric focused. The mana that composed his body and soul and the salamanders was all one and the same. He lifted his right hand and plunged it into himself. There he felt around for the mass of pure fire elemental energy. The sight only pleased Gruffle more.
“How desperate! Frantic struggling to buy a few more seconds of ‘life’ is such a mortal thing to do. You really think you can pull thi—”
Sweating and grunting, Eric’s hand arose from his chest. It pulled the lower half of a salamander with it. Gruffle frowned and grabbed his scythe.
“Oh no, you don’t!”
He raised it high, brought it down, and CLING! a staff caught it at the point where the blade met the shaft. Priestess glared at Gruffle from under her hood. Perrault snarled at him from her side. Eric had already rolled away. Now he dug for the second of the three salamanders.
Gruffle teleported past Priestess for another strike and she matched him perfectly; point for point for point. Gruffle shouted increasingly foul language every time she denied him. She never said a word through the exchange. Now Eric had two salamanders out.
He held them both with one hand and dug a third time. Gruffle clenched his empty fist and shouted words in a harsh and alien language. It made the salamanders sizzle and they thrashed in Eric’s grip. Then one of them exploded.
If Eric had been in his human form, he would have lost the hand. Being as he was a grendel at the moment, it was only somewhat melted. The real damage was indirect. It broke Eric’s concentration and his hand was solid again; his solid flesh and blood hand was inside his solid flesh and blood chest. The explosion of the second did more damage, and such pain that Eric couldn’t regain his focus.
Priestess cried out and ran to him. Ignoring Gruffle in her panic, he slashed her across the back with his scythe. She fell and lay motionless.
Gruffle put his scythe away and withdrew a pair of shears. That strand of golden-brown hair lying outside her hood would be perfect for his task. Unfortunately, Perrault stood over her mistress and growled. Gruffle shrugged and put the shears away.
“On second thought, I don’t need it. My Final Wish is about to come true anyway!”
A rush of spirit power bowled him over. The blue light of Videlicet Mens poured out of Eric’s spirit, and a blood-curdling roar ripped from his throat. His pupils were slits devoid of any intelligence. The only humanity remaining was the survival instinct.
“NEVER DYING! NEVER DYING! NEVER DYING!”
He tore his hand from his chest along with the third salamander. The fire light in his crystal shined and formed a fire cage to contain it. Then the water light shined and doused him with divine water. The contact sounded as painful as the fire itself.
“NEVER DYING! NEVER DYING! NEVER DYING!”
The snow around him disappeared, followed by the ground beneath it. Ten square feet of earth vanished as it was transformed into mana by the monster in the center. Foot after foot and yard after yard, Eric sank as he absorbed the landscape into himself. The pure energy fed his diminished Seed of Chaos as it struggled to heal him.
Just as he retained a reduced shapeshifting ability, he also retained a reduced healing ability. It was less potent than a regeneration spel
l, but it had advantages. Flawlessly healing injuries that he had no idea how to fix was one of them. Twenty-one feet below the surface was how much external energy it needed. At the top, Gruffle clapped sarcastically.
“Yes, yes, very impressive, but you forgot one thing; I’m still here!”
Then his head dropped from his shoulders and rolled across the ground. When the world stopped spinning, he confirmed that Priestess was still face down in the snow. The one who felled him was a warrior riding a funky-looking unicorn.
“I’ll finish him off, Tenderfoot,” Tiza said while dismounting. “You look after Dimwit.”
The unicorn nodded and jumped into the hole.
Wasting no words on trash talk, Tiza chambered her sword again. Runes buzzed along its blade and hilt. A magic circle formed beneath her. With one swing, she cut off the arm holding Gruffle’s scythe. It fell to the ground, twitching. Her third strike cut off his second arm.
“Stop that!” Gruffle’s head protested. “You can’t win a fight against death!”
Tiza cut the reaper’s body in half long ways and the pieces fell to either side. Then she sheathed her sword and unzipped a bag from around her waist. She sprinkled ashes over the reaper’s body and then struck a piece of fire-red stone against a piece of iron. The holy spark created a blaze that reduced the body to ashes. Then she mixed the ashes together and bottled them up. Only then did she say, “Ashes of a reaper.” She looked down on Gruffle. “I know a lot of mad scientists and mage freaks who would pay through the nose for this stuff.”
Gruffle shouted the harsh alien language that made the salamanders explode. Tiza leaned over and cupped a hand to her ear.
“Huh? You’ll have to speak up, Worm Stone. I can’t hear you over the sound of your constant failure.”
Veins bulged in Gruffle’s face and forehead. His lingering mortal mindset made them manifest in his anger. “My body will grow back, and when it does, I will kill you!”
“Judging by your ugly face, you’re threatening me with death. Well, you can’t. Know why? ‘Cause you’re a failure!”
Gruffle’s scythe rattled and levitated. It chambered behind Tiza. “DIE!”
It swung and she ducked. Naturally, she’d seen it with her Third Eye. She dodged the second swing, sidestepped the third, and jumped over the fourth. She closed her physical eyes just to irritate Gruffle further.
“Fire Fossil must be mistaken. You can’t be a reaper. After all, no one sees death coming.” She opened her eyes. “Right?”
Gruffle’s eyes shone with deathly light and he increased the speed of his scythe. After the fourteenth swing, he got it stuck in the ground. Tiza pointed and laughed at him. It took three pulls for him to get it loose, and in that pause, Tiza brought out another device
It was small enough to fit in the palm of her hand, white in color with gold edging, and the words “Hariana Inquires” were etched into the underside. Depressing a button with her thumb triggered a grey beam and she drew a circle on the ground with it. When it was finished, she stepped into the circle. When Gruffle freed his scythe and swung at her again, she stepped out and took her thumb off the device’s button. The grey light cut off and the circle on the ground flashed.
Its light climbed to the sky in the shape of a cylinder and it was one that the scythe found itself unable to leave. No matter how Gruffle commanded it, there was no escape. Tiza took a breath and then, just for fun, she shined the light into Gruffle’s eyes. He blinked and closed them.
“Big Mouth made this one too,” Tiza said, jerking her head in Priestess’ direction. “She thought that if she could trap a reaper, then she could stop everyone from dying. As soon as she finished it, she considered it blasphemous to Lady Chaos and never used it.” She pocketed the device. “I have no such problem.”
Nolien soared out of the hole with Eric clinging weakly to his neck. He trotted to Tiza and knelt so Eric could slide off without hurting himself. Then he stood and returned to human form. He gave Tiza a thumbs-up and she smiled.
“Now what should we do with Worm Stone?” she asked.
“I presume that the Fire Sage would appreciate it if we delivered into his mercy someone who defiled the souls of his fallen clerics,” Nolien said for Gruffle’s benefit instead of truly replying to Tiza. “An immortal cleric such as himself is guaranteed to know how to punish supernatural creatures, even reapers.”
Gruffle glared hatefully at both of them, but there was nothing a reaper of his standing could do against them in his current state. He was left with no choice but to generate an itty-bitty Door of Death and retreat.
Tiza stuck her pointer fingers into her ears to remove holy wax. She tapped her head from both sides to get it all out.
“I’m gonna have hymnals stuck in my head for a week because of this.” She pushed the bulk of it into Nolien’s hands. “See about making me this stuff for the next time.”
Nolien’s hands closed around hers. She felt her temperature rise as blood rushed to her face. Looking up, she saw his admiring expression.
“Not bad, for a mere human.”
“Oh stop,” she protested half-heartedly. “I’m not some tent at a ball that you can flatter.”
“Of course you’re not.” Nolien pulled her close to him. “You’re my partner on a battlefield and I am congratulating you on your flawless victory.”
Eric gagged. If this was how they sounded as a couple, it would take getting used to.
Tiza rolled her eyes. “F-flirt later. We gotta take the burning lizard to Fire Fossil so he’ll stop holding back on Dimwit.”
Nolien reluctantly let go of her hands so he could get down on all fours. In seconds, he was a Heleti Unicorn again. Tiza mounted him and, with the last salamander in tow, he galloped back to Mt. Fiol. Priestess was still unconscious.
Perrault growled at Eric from her side. Eric stared back with grendel eyes. When Priestess finally stirred, both of them dropped their animosity. Instead, Perrault licked her face and Eric sighed in relief. When she sat up, the first thing she did was throw a snowball at Eric.
“You’re making my job harder than it needs to be.” She stood up and then helped him stand up. “Holy sites are festooned with spiritual activity. You make yourself a bigger target! I can hardly round up spirits and send them back to the Veins of Noitearc in a timely fashion if I have to save you in the midst of each batch.”
Eric bowed his head. “I’m sorry for delaying you, but if I’m such a bother, then why not let my stupidity kill me?”
Priestess said nothing. Perrault whined. “Lady Chaos wants you to stay alive,” Priestess said at last.
In a hurt tone of voice, Eric replied, “So you don’t care about me?”
“No! You are an important person to me.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Eric said with a straight face. “I already have a girlfriend, whom I love very much. So you see, Priestess, I cannot accept your feelings. Can we still be friends?”
Stiffly, Priestess said, “Sure.”
Properly dour, Eric continued, “Good. I hope that means you’ll stop stalking me.”
This was the line to startle Priestess. After the shock passed, she tensed up and muttered, “Oh...you...Grrr!” She threw her hood back.
At last, Eric had a clear view of her face. It was Annala, just as he knew it was. She didn’t look any older for her travels, nor did she have any scars, but there was still something about her that was different. It was an otherworldly quality that made her similar to gods.
“Happy now? You’ve finally discovmmpp—”
Eric stepped forward and kissed her. He held his precious maiden possessively tight. Perrault lunged to bite him but found her paws stuck in an earth spell and instead barked at him. Annala didn’t respond and he pulled back worriedly.
“Is something wrong?”
Annala looked away from him. “It’s nothing.”
He gently gripped her chin. “Annala...”
She smacked his hand awa
y. “You can’t call me that! Not me me, because I don’t properly exist in this time and place. Until my work is complete, you have to call me ‘Priestess’!”
Eric stepped away from her. “I’m sorry.”
Perrault wagged her tail at this scene. Eric shot her a mean glance.
Annala sighed. “No, I’m sorry. I haven’t traveled with anyone other than Perrault since I dropped Cinder off at a boarding school, and sometimes I get separated from her for long periods of time. It makes me...rusty.”
She tugged on her left ear with her index finger and thumb. The gesture assured Eric that she was still his Annala despite her words.
“You’re mortal right now and you have a target on your back and I’ve had to save you fifty times so far and—”
“Fifty times?”
Annala stopped tugging. She stopped moving entirely.
“…Ah...Yes. There were some you didn’t notice. Anyway! I don’t want to be all girlfriend-y until you’re safely immortal again. That one time I kissed your corpse was disturbing...”
Eric opened his mouth to ask, thought better of it, and closed his mouth. Then Annala tackled him to the ground and enveloped him in her barrier. A lightning bolt bounced off it and reformed into the shape of a bat. It opened its mouth and let out a roar of thunder. Perrault jumped over them and ate it. The lightning spirit whined piteously as chaotic jaws dissolved it into nothing. Annala helped Eric up and then crouched next to her familiar.
“Good girl!” she cooed while rubbing Perrault’s head and back. “Amazing take down of that nasty spirit!”
The wolf moaned and wagged her tail.
“What work are you doing?” Eric asked. “Maybe I can help.”
Perrault glared at Eric for taking her mistress’ attention away from her again, and in the midst of petting too!
“Don’t worry about it,” Annala said without ceasing her petting. “You need to focus on becoming immortal again.”
“It’s the Chaotic Starlight, isn’t it? You’re cleaning up my mess.”
“Yours and Kallen’s,” Annala said. “She’s in deep too, although not as deep as you.”
Perrault barked her approval of this statement. Eric ignored her.
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