Zodiac Academy 8.5: Beyond The Veil

I stood by the edge of the river I had seen from the depths of Mordra’s cavern, looking into the rushing water as it hurtled past, the screams of those it carried breaking through the air, time and again.

Hands clawed at the steep banks, limbs flailed in the tumultuous rush of water and hate-filled eyes glared up at me whenever they saw me standing vigil over their descent towards oblivion.

Downriver the Harrowed Gate stood, the darkness bleeding from the space beyond them like a stain that touched the golden light of The Veil. I wondered what suffering went on in there, what penance was demanded of those who found themselves within its barbed walls upon death. Would it be enough? Would the suffering awaiting my father there ever amount to enough to meet the cost of his malice and ambition?

I plucked a stone from the bank and tossed it into the rushing water, a foul hiss billowing up from it as it sank into the depths.

Could Mordra see me? Was my shadow cast above her hovel? Did she know the depths of my devotion to my cause?

As I stood there, my skin still alive with the echo of Roxy’s touch, the scent of her clinging to me and life whispering my name like a taunting caress, I felt the beginnings of fear creeping in.

The Nymphs had offered her hope, but that was such a fickle, dangerous thing. And for my wife, it was precisely the motivation I knew she needed to push her into action. She wouldn’t stop now. And though every part of me yearned to find my way back to her, the vow she had made upon the stars blazing through my soul too, I still feared what price she might pay, what sacrifices she might make in the name of seeing this done.

Roxanya Vega wouldn’t take no for an answer when she set her mind on something she wanted, and the stars themselves should be trembling at the thought of her wrath turning their way.

“The Hydra bellows tomorrow,” Radcliff called, drawing my attention to him where he loitered in the trees, keeping his distance from the careering waters before me.

A soul shrieked in defiance of his fate as he was swept past me.

“I visited the Heirs,” I muttered, lost in my own thoughts. I spent every spare moment watching my loved ones from the privacy of my room in the Eternal Palace, staying as close to the living as I could while trying to focus on the efforts we were all making here too. “They’re determined. The plans they’re making seem solid-”

“Lionel’s shifted fate,” Radcliff interrupted gravely, the gravel in his tone forcing my gaze away from the water and back to him once more.

“What?” I demanded, stepping away from the bank, small stones cascading down into the water and hissing faintly as I stalked towards my murdered uncle. “Don’t speak in riddles, spell it out to me.”

Radcliff raised his chin as we came face to face, his spine straightening as he seemed to assess my height in comparison to his, his chest puffing out too.

“Merissa visited with Gabriel. He thrashes in the Royal Seer’s Chamber, his brow furrowed with the destruction of his prophecy. He set your queen and the others on a path that is now destined to end in bloodshed.”

“Where are they?” I barked, panic leaping through my chest as his garbled explanation came together within my mind. The prophecy Gabriel had given Roxy had set them on a path toward The Palace of Souls tonight. If fate had changed, then they could be walking into a trap, an ambush, anything, but clearly none of it was good.

“They’re in their rooms, trying to get a message across the divide, hoping to warn-”

I broke into a sprint, not waiting for him to finish, charging back through the trees and running straight towards the only bit of open air here in the forest.

I called on the power of my Dragon as I ran, summoning it to the edges of my flesh, commanding it to shift with me and not part from my skin.

I wasn’t sure if it was listening, a defiant roar rumbling through my chest as I took a running leap straight from the edge of the riverbank and sailed through the air above the rushing water.

Screams echoed up to me from below, arms lunging for me, hands grasping, the desperate, raging souls hungry to add more suffering to their own as I began to fall.

But the love I felt for the people now heading towards an ill fate in life wouldn’t be denied. With an enormous roar, the golden Dragon within me burst free, my wings snapping out, fire blazing from my jaws.

The hazy sky beckoned me upward and I raced for it, wheeling toward the Eternal Palace, the windows along its side shifting and changing at the whims of those within, adjusting to the needs of the dead.

I didn’t know which window belonged to Hail and Merissa, but the palace would provide what I needed.

I flew straight for it, flying fast and true, my wings beating hard as the closest window began to expand, opening wider and wider, becoming an archway large enough for a fully grown Dragon to sail right through.

I shifted as I passed within the building, the gathered souls who already stood within the dead royals’ chambers all whirling toward me in surprise as I dropped to my feet, running several steps to counter the speed of my arrival.

The fine clothes and golden cloak tumbled across my flesh as I returned to my Fae form, and I glanced down at them in surprise.

“Makes a difference from having to stand around with my cock out,” I muttered, taking in the strangeness of finding myself fully clothed without any effort at all.

“The Veil provides.” Azriel nodded.

“Thank the stars,” Hail added in an undertone.

“Yes, thank the heavens that you didn’t have to see it and suffer the crippling inferiority complex brought on by the comparison,” I quipped, strolling towards my mother who drew me into her arms with a fearful gasp.

“If you would like proof that no such thing is the case-” Hail began but Merissa waved him off.

“You can enjoy a dick comparison with your son-in-law later, Hail,” Merissa snapped. “We need to try and shift Roxanya and the others from this path.”

Hail grunted, his lips twitching with what I could have sworn was amusement and I pushed out of my mother’s arms, moving to stand around a stone table which had appeared in the centre of the room, twisting smoke rolling over it. Azriel, Clara, Hail, Merissa, Hamish, and my mom already held a spot surrounding it and I elbowed the former king along so that I could look too.

“What is this?” I demanded, trying to make sense of the way the smoke shifted from place to place, revealing a mountain peak here, a tall spire there.

“It’s a map of destiny,” Azriel said.

“I thought they were a legend?”

“One that only seems to be real in death,” Azriel agreed, sweeping a hand across a corner of the map, wafting the smoke away from a floating island that had been carved free of the land.

“We’re going to attempt several approaches,” Merissa explained. “We want to try and push them from this path. But failing that, maybe we can do something that will distract Lionel and move him towards another fate. So far as we can tell he doesn’t actually know they’re coming, but he has made plans which will send any who enter The Palace of Souls tonight towards a bloodstained destiny.”

“Has anyone tried to warn Roxy or the others?” I barked, my attention fixed on R.U.M.P. castle while Azriel began clearing the smoke which covered other parts of the map.

“Warn them how?” Hail hissed. “We can’t speak with them, can’t even write them a note or do anything of consequence.”

“Hail and I have deep connections to The Palace of Souls,” Merissa explained. “We plan to head there and delve into the magic contained within the walls themselves, open pathways, hopefully steer them away from danger wherever we can while Azriel and Clara will attempt to rile the Nymphs who are stationed at the edge of the palace grounds.”

“Rile them?” I questioned.

“I have a theory that I may be able to agitate the shadows with my inner power,” Azriel replied. “Perhaps enough to set them off, start a fight…I don’t know if it will work or if there’s any chance of creating enough chaos to draw the Dragon King’s attention but-”

“He’s no king,” I snarled. “Neither of those plans seem likely to change the course of fate enough to protect Roxy or the others from harm.”

“I’m going to go to Lionel and see if I can discover more of his plans,” Mom said softly. “Perhaps he will divulge something that can be of use.”

“He grieves you?” I asked her, surprised that the monster who had sired me cared about her death at all after being the one to have caused it. I had felt the tug of his grief on my soul a few times as he thought of me, but the pull had been full of anger, and I knew he only really grieved what he wished he’d been able to mould me into. He was furious that I hadn’t become the willing pawn he’d tried to craft me to become.

“He…” Mom glanced at Hamish who took her hand and squeezed softly. “He sometimes thinks of me when he is torturing his prisoners. He selects women who remind him of me and punishes them for how easily I escaped him, hating that I stole away into death rather than let him capture and punish me the way he had wished to.”

Rage tore through me so potently that I almost shifted, my grip tightening on the edge of the table so hard that it was a wonder the thing didn’t crack.

“You need to head to Roxanya. See if you can contact her – if any of us stands a chance then it is you,” Hail commanded and for once I didn’t balk at the order.

“Already gone,” I replied, my wife’s grief dancing across my flesh like soft fingertips. She’d been aching for me ever since leaving that clearing with the Nymphs, her heart torn open and bloody again.

I’d been avoiding her like the coward I was, my guilt over the pain I was causing her keeping me away. But it was little more than a thought to give in to her now.

The rest of the dead and the Eternal Palace faded away around me, my soul seeking hers out in the dark until I found myself in her chambers in R.U.M.P. castle.

It was dark in her room. The Book of Ether plus the four ancient tomes on the Elements were strewn across the bed and floor while she sat in the middle of the huge four-poster, her knees drawn up to her chest, hair falling forward to shield her face.

The only light came from the fire which was close to dying out in the hearth, its sound and her near silent sobs all there was in the space.

I moved to sit beside her, the bed not shifting as my weight joined hers, nothing in the mortal realm reacting to my presence, but as I wound my arm around her, she leaned into me, her head coming to rest between my collar bone and jaw, my fingers passing through her hair.

“Sometimes I think I feel you,” she breathed to the silent room, her tears stalling, a rattling breath drawn into her lungs. “It’s like you’re just there, in the next room, about to walk in and ruin my life all over again. I wish you were. Or maybe I wish I’d never met you at all so I wouldn’t have had to feel what it was to lose you.”

“You haven’t lost me,” I replied firmly, focusing on the point of contact between us, pressing all that I was into the sensation of her flesh next to mine, my fingers in her hair, willing her to feel it, to feel me and know I would never truly leave her.

Roxy’s head fell forward and she began to cry again, my presence as irrelevant as a gnat caught in a hurricane.

I growled, frustration burying its way into me as I fought to make her feel me, hear me, see me. But it was no good. Nothing I did made the slightest difference.

I threw my fist into the pillow in frustration, but I hit something hard beneath it, Roxy’s Atlas tumbling free, her music app opening, illuminating brightly in the dim room. I blinked at it, shocked that I’d managed to affect it at all and quickly reached for it again, the songs scrolling beneath my touch, one name after another appearing, the device feeling my influence.

I glanced at the woman I’d pledged my soul to, seeing the way she was breaking in the dark and knowing exactly what she needed to bring her back out of it.

Roxanya Vega wasn’t built to wallow and cower. At the depths of her fire-drenched soul, she was a warrior through and through. And she needed to get her heart back into the fight.

Cinderella’s Dead by Emeline started up the moment I hit play and Roxy sucked in a sharp breath, whirling around to look at her Atlas in surprise, letting the words wrap themselves tight around her. Maybe she had forgotten she was a bad bitch like the song suggested, but now it was time for her to remember. Fate might have shifted but fuck that. This woman had chosen her own fate more than once before and I knew she wouldn’t be guided by the stars alone.

I moved around her as the tears slowly dried on her cheeks, her jaw tightening as she listened to the song, her walls building back up, armour strapping itself tight around her fractured heart.

The Book of Ether was open to a page on breaking curses, none of it looking particularly helpful from my brief glance at the words. The curse which hung over her family was no petty hex. But the book seemed to call to me, whispering words of protection, of old ways for her to guard herself against death.

I reached for the book and flipped the pages. Roxy whipped around at the sound of them flicking over one by one, illustrations and text flashing by too fast to take any real note of until I jarred to a halt and slapped the page I’d been hunting for open hard enough to make the mattress bounce beneath it.

Roxy looked right at me then and for half a second I thought she could truly see me, but as she peered through me her eyes unfocused, I let my attention fall back to the book.

To Bind Oneself To Life

It is possible to cling to life beyond the point of otherwise natural demise through the use of soul bartering. A cursed soul who is bound to an eternity of torment can be lured to the edge of The Veil and trapped within the confines of a pure tigers eye crystal. The stone selected must be of highest quality and yet small enough to be housed beneath the flesh to the subject wishing to skirt death when needed.

First, a soul must be summoned by burning dill and lavender within the centre of a pentagram and speaking the power words listed at the foot of these instructions. Necromancy of this kind comes at a blood cost which can be paid by the sacrifice of a willing or unwilling subject. Or at a personal cost in the form of childhood memories which must be offered up in their entirety when claiming the soul from the confines of the Harrowed Gate.

It should be noted that reaching into death to claim such a soul is perilous indeed, the chances of failure increasing depending on how far the necromancer has to delve within The Veil to secure it. Further details of the incantations needed to capture the soul and bind it to the crystal are on the following page.

With the soul trapped within the crystal, it can be activated by using the word Vivere and calling on the ether, but this can only be done once the crystal has been driven beneath the flesh of the one wishing to claim its power.

The crystal will then keep death at bay by fooling The Veil itself, using the trapped soul as a barrier to hide the caster from the call of the beyond.

Note: this will not work in cases of decapitation, full dismemberment, or removal of the heart.

It should also be noted that the soul trapped within the crystal will perish once the power of the crystal has been used, the cost of wielding it their eternal existence.

One look at Roxy’s face told me that she had no objection whatsoever to taking the risks involved with using that magic and I growled, leaving her there to continue reading, knowing already that she was planning to enact this spell. Which meant I needed to get a soul ready for her to claim. I was all in favour of her using ether to her advantage, but there was no denying the danger involved in it too, so anything I could do to ease that would need to be my highest priority.

I returned to the Eternal Palace, blinking as my eyes adjusted to the golden glow which never left this place and finding only Hail standing beside the map of destiny.

“Well?” he demanded, and I narrowed my eyes at his tone, but he knew far more about this place than I could hope to have learned in my short time here, so I gave him his answer.

“Roxy needs a soul,” I told him. “To trap in a tigers eye crystal as part of a spell she learned from the Book of Ether. It will help her swerve death if it comes calling.”

“So she continues to tread the path of dark magic?” he muttered, a note of fear and pride to his voice.

“The soul will perish eternally once the magic trapping it is broken,” I added, not bothering to give the concern in his gaze my attention. She was on this path now and there was no turning her from it, so I was choosing to aid her instead.

“You mean to claim one from beyond the Harrowed Gate?” Hail asked, stepping towards me, his cloak making the golden haze in the room shift.

“I assumed that was better than using a soul who had earned their way here,” I agreed. “But the spell requires it to be from there anyway. So can you tell me how to do such a thing?”

“Not easily,” he replied, sweeping past me so closely that his intention was clearly to make me move aside, but I simply set my feet and let his shoulder crash into mine, jerking him to face me, the two of us snarling at one another.

“You want to have this out with me?” I asked him in a low tone. “Right now? When she needs me to focus on this magic she’s set on creating?”

Hail released a slow breath, his gaze matching with mine, violence dancing in the air. This was where we collided, but also where we held the most in common. Our love for his daughter was more powerful than any rivalry or pettiness which might have been between us, and we both knew it.

“I wasn’t only referred to as the Savage King for the atrocities your father encouraged me into,” he said. “And there was a damn good reason why Lionel never even thought to attempt fighting me one on one.”

I stepped to him, my Dragon prowling beneath my skin, hungry for blood, though I pushed it back, ignoring the urge to give in to the temptation of the fight.

“I have no interest in fighting you, relic,” I growled. “Because right now, my wife needs me and I made an oath to be her creature, to love and protect her into death and beyond. If you can help me then please do. If not, don’t get in my way because the only thing that would cause me to waste time on warring with you in this moment would be that. But I assume we can agree that nothing matters more than helping her right now.”

Hail eyed me for a long moment then grinned like a beast, clapping a hand on my shoulder.

“I can see why she picked you in the end, even if you had proven yourself to be a son of a bitch,” he said, his grip tight, smile as savage as his reputation. “When it comes down to it, you’d burn the entire fucking world to ash for a single smile from her lips, wouldn’t you?”

“Is there a problem with that?” I asked, uncertain if it was meant as a compliment or not.

Hail snorted. “I think heroes are supposed to put the good of all before their own selfishness. But you are selfish when it comes to her, utterly, unerringly selfish. She’s the one and only thing you won’t ever question, the one thing you put above all else. If the world had to end to see her safe, you’d light the fuse that blew it from existence.”

“Damn right I would,” I agreed, no element of doubt in my tone. “Besides, a hero is never going to be what it takes to bring my father down. He moulded me into a villain and so that’s what I am. For her. For him. Damnation isn’t good enough for that piece of shit. And heroics aren’t good enough for her. So hand me the fuse, oh Savage King, because I’m ready to burn it all.”

Hail grinned at me, no falseness to it, his grip on my shoulder turning to a push as he moved me towards the door, and I let him guide me along with him.

“Let’s go get your queen a soul to destroy then, shall we?”

The door opened before us, letting us out onto the road which led up to the main entrance of the Eternal Palace, bypassing the halls entirely as if anticipating our need for urgency. The golden haze hanging around us was like balmy sunlight but the moment I looked for the Harrowed Gate and the lands of torment beyond, I spotted it lurking in the distance, a dark stain on this place of serenity.

“We can summon souls to the gates,” Hail told me as we started up a quick pace along the stone road. “But only those who wronged us in life. If you wish to drag one of them through then the stronger your hatred for them, the more power you’ll be able to claim over them here. It’s part of their torment, to suffer whatever fate those who they hurt in life desire. Do you have anyone who you can think of who deserves total annihilation?”

I pursed my lips, thinking of my father and wishing that fate upon him before forcing my mind to shift to people I hated who were actually dead, and likely to have been damned and tossed into the river upon their arrival here.

“I’m sure a bunch of my uncles, cousins and the like were killed in the battle. All of them deserve a place in there and I hate them all plenty too,” I said.

“Uncles on your mother’s side?” Hail asked and I shrugged.

“My father’s inner circle were always referred to as if they were blood relatives of ours. Some of them were actually cousins, second cousins or other distant relations, my mother’s family were included too once she married in and secured their ties to him. But most of them held no blood with us.”

“Lionel likes to spread the Acrux name like butter dripping across all who come close enough to touch it,” Hail scoffed. “As if applying such a thing means anything at all in the face of true power. My parents only managed to carry one child to full term – me. After their death I was the only Vega left, but there was no part of me which wished to start tracking down old family relations and calling them Vega just to up the numbers. A name with power like ours shouldn’t just be handed out at will. It is earned.”

I glanced at him, noting the way he’d called the name ours and wondering if he’d intended to include me in that statement or not. I was a Vega now after all.

“Have I earned it then?” I asked, unwilling to let that comment pass.

Hail paused, his eyes rolling over me from head to toe, lips pursing. “I suppose we’ll see.”

I snorted dismissively, like his approval meant nothing to me. But maybe it did. Just a little. Maybe I wanted to be able to return to my wife and tell her that her father didn’t despise the choice she’d made when picking me.

I pushed away the pointless thoughts, focusing instead on my destination while letting my mind drift to Roxy so I could see how far she had gotten in her preparations for the spell. She was on the roof of R.U.M.P. castle, drawing the pentagram on the floor, a perfect tigers eye crystal sitting ready beside her.

A growl spilled through my teeth as my mind snapped back into the folds of death and Hail arched an eyebrow at me.

“She’s using another piece of my treasure,” I grumbled, trying to push off the irritation I felt over her stealing from my hoard in favour of the thought of how it would help her, but it was fucking annoying. “I mean, surely there’s plenty of other crystals she could have found. It’s not like tigers eye is all that rare and all those rebels are desperate to please her, so I’m sure if she’d just bothered to ask them for one someone would have offered.”

“I once stole a medallion straight off of Lionel’s neck and tossed it in the lake at Zodiac Academy,” Hail commented. “Never thought I’d see anyone throw such a bitch fit again in my lifetime, but it looks like you might be hoping to claim that title.”

“Fuck off,” I muttered, scowling at the enormous gates as we made it into their shadow. “That crystal is mine and she should know better.”

Hail laughed and I resisted the urge to punch him in favour of looking to the wraith-like creature clad in black robes that moved to stand before the gates, barring the way onward.

Screams and pleas for mercy slipped between the iron bars where the darkness thickened beyond it. The creature didn’t react to them, hooded eyes falling on me, a blue fire igniting in its irises. Its face was illuminated beneath the hood, slits in place of a nose, a mouth sewn shut, no ears and scars painted through those empty eye sockets which held nothing but those blue flames. It reminded me of the Nymphs that had bartered with Roxy for the information on the Damned Forest, but where they had held an ethereal beauty, this creature was nothing but horror wrapped in flesh.

“Who do you seek?” Its voice sounded within my skull, and I fought the urge to flinch from it, a feeling like fingernails scraping against the inside of my head accompanying its words.

“I need a soul to cast to ash,” I replied, uncertain whether this gatekeeper would allow such a thing, but somehow knowing that lies would get me nowhere here. “One deserving of it.”

The creature cocked its head at me, curious, but not refusing.

“Such a fate can only be given to one deserving of it. One who has wronged you endlessly. One whose fate you have earned the right to decide in payment for all they did to you in life.”

I frowned, my shoulders dropping as I considered the creature’s words. “The man who deserves that fate from me still lives.”

“There is another.” The creature’s gruesome lips curved upward as it lifted a hand and beckoned a soul from the shadows.

A figure approached, something about them familiar but before I could get a clear look at them, memories sprung up around me. Not memories of my own; these were seen through the eyes of a man who had long been an unwelcome presence in my life.

Jenkins smiled to himself as he let himself into my room, shuffling over to my desk which was littered with toys and half scribbled drawings. To one side of the room, the start of my very first Dragon treasure hoard lay. A collection of jewels and coins I’d earned either by impressing my father or had gotten as gifts at the elaborate sixth birthday party I’d been thrown the week before.

“I remember this,” I growled, somehow knowing what he was going to do before he even did it, fury building in me as I watched that son of a bitch slip a gold coin from my Father’s hoard in amongst my own.

The memory moved on and I was still watching Jenkins, his heart thumping excitedly, hands slick with perspiration and a sick thrill burning through him as my father found the coin and punched me so hard, he knocked me out.

All I could remember of that day were the screams of accusation and the blinding pain of that strike, followed by darkness. I’d never dared raise the subject of the coin with my father after I’d been healed and awoke in my bed, but I had assumed he’d been the one to place it there as some kind of test. Seeing the truth now, understanding the way Jenkins had set me up sent a trickle of bile rising in my throat. I’d been a fucking kid. What kind of sick bastard would get off on watching my father punish me like that?

More memories passed me by, times when I’d been accused of things I hadn’t done, or times when my father had discovered secrets I’d been keeping from him. The first time Caleb had bitten me, my father had broken every single one of my ribs and I’d never known how he’d found out about it. Jenkins had been the one to tell him.

He’d hunted through every single bit of information the press published on me daily, reading everything from the Celestial Times to personal blogs, scouring the Faebook pages of people I went to school or the Academy with, hunting out any and every story which could be twisted against me or show me up. Then he’d gotten into the habit of laying them out for my father with his breakfast each morning, explaining how nothing I did ever passed him by and so many of the times I’d woken up to one of my father’s brutal lessons.

There were countless memories of Jenkins either orchestrating or simply enjoying the treatment I suffered at my father’s hands and smoke slipped between my teeth as I bore witness to more than enough evidence to damn that piece of shit.

Hail shifted at my side, clearly seeing these memories too and I caught his eye, warning him not to pity me with a single firm look. But no such thing entered his gaze, instead, a fiery hatred for my father’s butler entered his eyes. He wanted vengeance for all Jenkins had done, I could see it plain and clear, and for a fleeting moment I imagined what it might have been like to know Hail Vega as Roxanya’s father. He had not been given nearly long enough with his children, and it felt strange to be on the receiving end of his protectiveness when he’d had few opportunities to bestow it on those he truly cared for.

“Do you wish to claim this soul?” the creature offered, tossing him to the floor at my feet.

I snarled as I reached for Jenkins, taking hold of his collar, and yanking the asshole right up off the ground to look into my eyes.

“Oh, Jenkins, how did I almost forget about your pathetic excuse for an existence?” I asked, enjoying the fear that flashed in his eyes as he tried to fight his way free of me. But whatever magic had captured his soul stopped him from laying a hand on me while I was able to hold him tight and keep him exactly where I wanted him.

“Wait,” Jenkins rasped, but none of us were listening.

“Reap justice from his unhallowed soul.” The creature faded to nothing before us, and I turned to Hail with a savage smile.

“Let’s go help Roxy cheat death.”

Hail followed me as I headed to her, pushing against The Veil, a rooftop appearing around us where she stood in the centre of a pentagram following the words of the spell, drawing on the ether and turning her eyes towards death as she prepared to reach out for a soul to use in her dark magic.

“Please, there’s been a mistake. I never did anything,” Jenkins spluttered, the lies spilling from him making smoke pour through my teeth. But as my fist raised to silence him, Hail’s got there first, knocking him flat on his back between us with a scream.

“I know worms like you. I have left one kicking in the living realm with a scar torn through his eye as a reminder of how easily I might have killed him once. I deeply regret leaving his heart beating, but I shall not regret tethering you to my daughter’s dark power. I will let her harness you, break you, use up what little worth your soul has, then you shall be cast into nothing.”

“I will never look back upon my memories of you, Jenkins,” I said darkly. “None shall remember you. I shall score your name from the living world when I return to it, but first I shall score it from death.”

“No – please – wait!” Jenkins screamed as Hail and I took hold of him, sharing a wicked smile.

The tigers eye crystal sat at the tip of the pentagram and as Roxy called on a soul to house in it, and Hail gripped Jenkins by his other arm and the two of us forced his screaming, pleading, pathetic soul inside it. The power snapped shut around him, securing his fate once and for all. And as I turned from him with my wife’s father at my side, the two of us grinned like savages.