The Homunculus Knight

Chapter 53: Webs and Chains

“Fire, water, earth air and mind are the five prime elements that influence the Aether. This differs from precious metals and crystals; which just react to the Aether instead of altering it. But outside the prime five are other substances with lesser but still important resonance. Salt purifies and protects, disrupting the unnatural. Blood is power and connection, both of which are key concepts. Music, yes music, is the ultimate unifier and focuses minds like nothing else. Ash… ash is loss and truth, bitter truth.” - Witch Rochia of Magyuviv to her apprentices.

Yara had never before had much interest in learning magic; it had always been the purview of her betters. Now, as she tried desperately to keep her eyes on all her responsibilities, the thrall wished she knew some sensory cantrips to help. Paramount of these responsibilities was keeping Natalie safe; but considering a werebeast had a dagger in her heart, and a traitorous priestess was working icy spells upon her, Yara wasn’t doing that good of a job. Holding the dagger still stained with Cole’s blood, Yara watched Mina work, ready to drive the oddly shiny blade into the traitor’s skull at any sign of subversion. She’d picked up the thin knife, thinking it silver-dipped, but it's odd weight and luster was giving Yara doubts. But considering it had killed Cole… well it should still work for her purposes.

The Paladin was the second of Yara’s concerns. While she still felt a small spark of bitterness related to her former master’s demise; Yara couldn’t deny how important he was to her mistresses, or forget that he’d given his blood to save her. That Cole was some sort of immortal monster didn’t bother Yara; long years of service to Dietrich had carved away much of her capacity to be shocked or alarmed by the unnatural. The fact she seemed to be alone in her acceptance of his nature was what kept Yara glancing back at the slowly resurrecting Paladin. Both the werewolf and angelblood kept one eye upon Cole, a cautious tension to them Yara knew all too well. He frightened the pair, and even Mina seemed disturbed despite her God vouching for him. Yara’s trained talent in catastrophizing kept insisting if Cole or Natalie didn’t wake up soon then their saviors would become their destroyers.

Lastly, Yara felt this strange need to keep part of her over-taxed attention on Kit. Both his forearms had been badly crushed by one of the vampires. Requiring Deborah to weave chains of gilded runes that now wrapped around Kit’s already swollen flesh. It had been just one of the potent healing spells the Seraphblood placed upon the badly injured members of the group before the mess with Mina and Natalie took center stage. Judging by what Deborah had said, she’d put Kit, Alia, and Nokin into a deep magical sleep to help heal them and buy time for more potent spells to be cast. Even now, the Serahblood conjured up streams of gilded light that flowed over the injured while waiting for Mina to do her work.

The temperature within the tower had steadily dropped with every second since Mina started, forcing Deborah to summon up miniature suns to keep her patients warm. Patches of frost grew along the stone, stretching out from Natalie’s prone body, only stopping where the magical warmth held domain. This deep cold and the fact Grettir wasn’t struggling as much with the knife seemed like good signs to Yara. But that didn’t mean events couldn’t take a dreadful turn at any moment. In fact, she was expecting Mina to suddenly do something horrible, right at the worst possible time. Yara had no faith in the gods, in fact, she felt mainly suspicion and shame when it came to them. She’d not take Master Time’s word that Mina was free of whatever ensorcellment caused all this.

Movement from Cole pulled Yara’s attention from the priestess; it was a faint twitch, but enough for her nervous senses to notice. Squatted down as she was behind and to Mina’s left, Yara was closest to Cole and seemed to be the only one to see the twitch. Slowly shifting herself so she could keep both Mina and Cole better in her sights; Yara watched and waited. Just when she wondered if her exhausted mind imagined the movement, it repeated. Cole’s arm spasmed and as it did, things fell off it. Eyes widening, Yara gently reached out and grabbed Cole’s hand. He was still dead, Yara had moved enough corpses to tell that instantly. But dead as he was, Cole still bled. Fresh blood dripped from patches of damaged skin where burned tissue crumbled away. Holding his hand up, Yara realized bits of stone were embedded in Cole’s palm, only now being pushed out of his skin by new growth. As red stained Yara’s own fingers, she felt for Cole’s pulse and frowned upon not finding even a hint of one.

The hand twitched again, this time with Yara holding it. Nearly dropping the damaged limb, Yara shivered in disgust; an extremely rare thing for her. She’d thought the spasms had been signs of life returning, and in a way it was… The muscles and bones of Cole’s hand were horribly damaged and now worked to realign themselves. Yara could vaguely see the movements of tissue beneath the burned skin as part found their proper configuration. Slowly setting Cole’s hand on his lap; Yara eyed the Paladin with a little more caution. Magic that warped flesh was never good, especially when you couldn’t tell the source.

Before those thoughts could properly settle in Yara’s mind Mina slumped to the side. Moving towards the priestess, mind surging with panic; Yara tried to grab onto her but was stopped by the incredible cold radiating off Mina. Half-laying on her side, Mina’s hands were still pressed onto the stigma, but her breaths were shallow and frosted. Swallowing down a nervous lump, Yara held the dagger out ready to drive it into the priestess’s throat. A warm soft hand gripped Yara’s wrist, and she realized Deborah had come next to her, moving so fast she’d not even noticed.

“Don’t. Priestess Mina is fighting the corruption, I can see the battle in the Aether.” the Seraphblood said, her golden eyes boring into Yara’s being. Slowly releasing the knife, Yara let it clatter to the floor, and Deborah’s grip softened. Pulling herself free, Yara recoiled from the angel woman and looked back at Natalie. The black lines on her skin were still present, but the stigma glowed painfully bright, visible even beneath Mina’s hands. Grettir was covered in thick fur, the knife still pressed into Natalie’s heart by half-frozen hands. Yara could now see Mina’s face and how her eyes were rolled back into her skull while a silent scream escaped pale lips.

Frost swirled about Mina, in slow but unending eddies of mist and ice. The priestess was calling upon great power and Yara’s teeth started to chatter, even with the warm glow of Deborah beside her. Glancing at the Serahblood, Yara asked. “What do we do?”

Deborah’s unnaturally perfect features formed a deep frown. “Pray.”

Mina fought against the all-powerful current drawing her deeper into Natalie’s soul. Straining against the arcane tendrils entrapping her, Mina tried and failed to break free. With the help of Master Time’s boon, Mina slowed her descent into darkness but couldn’t stop it. She was in too deep, and had been rattled by her enemy’s fell words. But the burning feather gifted Mina was appropriately buying her time, which she spent trying to understand what attacked her. As a priestess and rest-bringer, Mina’s training had focused on the dead and the undead; but that didn’t mean she wasn’t aware of the Tenth Temple's other responsibilities. Time Priests fought against more than just unliving perversions. Destroying demons and cults belonging to Fell Gods was another holy task; particularly those anathema to Master Time. Be they cultists of bitter winter, mad prophets shaping bleak futures, demons of decay or… worshippers of grief.

Sparks of intuition fed on the kindling of connected facts and Mina’s understanding grew. A demon of grief, or something similar, was infesting Natalie’s soul; nesting in the parts of her essence marked by loss. The demon had embedded itself in the spiritual wounds it felt most at home in, stopping Mina from healing them. Now that Mina had isolated and attacked it; the demon was trying to pull her into its ‘lair’ of infected soul-stuff. Caught in the demon's hungry tendrils, Mina was burning through the power Master Time gifted at a terrible rate and it seemed unlikely she could outlast her foe. Instead of struggling against the web she was caught in, Mina needed to try something else.

Carefully, Mina let the power cloaking her dim, turning it from a blazing torch to a guttering candle. Working slowly, Mina did her best to pantomime weakness and exhaustion; hoping to trick the demon with a display of flagging strength. Considering Master Time’s boon was the main reason Mina hadn’t collapsed from exhaustion, her pretense was remarkably accurate.

Tendrils of hungry darkness pulled Mina deeper, wrapping her up like a bug in spider silk. Claustrophobia crept at the edge of the Priestess’s awareness, old wounds from the cellar threatening to tear open in face of this new horror. Muttering mantras of focus and sanity to herself, Mina surrendered to the enemy without while resisting the enemy within. Alien hunger and perverse intent swirled about Minas as her mind was pulled into the infected wound, into the demon’s lair. Drowning in darkness, Mina fought against her rising panic. She was so close; to lose her nerve now would not only ruin the best opportunity to save Natalie, but perhaps doom Mina as well.

Clutching at the now unburning feather with her mind’s eye, Mina focused on the token and the faith it represented. Examining the dark pinion, she ignored the whispers in the dark, the noises and movements coming from all around her. Here in the belly of the beast, Mina refused to acknowledge what she thought she saw and heard. That wasn’t her brother crying out for help, or her father screaming in pain; she didn’t catch glimpses of Morri crumpled on the ground or smell Alia’s blood. Focus never wavering from the feather, Mina felt herself strangely comforted by the probing attacks wearing her loved one’s faces. Her training to resist psychic assaults was working on the demon’s whispers, even if it had been useless in face of the geas.

Buoyed slightly, Mina let a thought lash out into the dark, filling it with all the contempt she could muster. “Well, you wanted me, demon? Here I am!”

The darkness vibrated, coming alive with a dreadful proclamation. “Come and see!”

All around Mina, the demon's lair changed, the hinted to shapes coming into focus. Light did not shine in the purest black, instead the darkness itself shifted, becoming a gradient of flavors. Here in the domain of magic and souls, darkness could be more than mere absence; it could be an antithesis, providing its own spectrum of un-illumination.

In the shifting hues of shadow, Mina sensed her surroundings. Great interlinking webs of sticky quintessence the shade of darkness found within deep caverns filled a space large as cities and small as thimbles. The webs were stretched over and through a void that tasted of grief and smelled like ash. Each apex of the web, where myriad strands fused into great anchor lines, was bound to a gash in the void, where pungent memories dripped into miasmic clouds. Wrapped up in her family cellar’s flavor of black, Mina was trapped, witness to the nest hidden in Natalie’s soul, and the monster that built it.

At the webs center, squatting among the disparate threads, was a grotesque parody of both arachnid and woman. Eight multi-jointed human arms clutched crude harvest sickles in their hands, using them like a dockworker's hook to dangle from thick threads. Suspended between the limbs was an abdomen bloated with troubled pregnancy, and from its neck stuck a human head, spun about so it could sink its over-sized fangs into a squirming bundle trapped in the web. Eight eyes looked up from the monster’s meal, each shining like a dead star, and gazed upon Mina.

Like a grotesque harp the web vibrated, speaking for the demon. “Come and see! Come and see my offering and my blessing!”

Liquid pain extruded from the woman-spider’s abdomen, congealing into webbing that its back two arms weaved into the nest's growing structure. Here in the heart of Natalie’s grief, this horror was drinking her essence, using it to grow stronger and keep the spiritual wounds open. The monster was killing Natalie, breaking her mind bit by bit, and leaving paths for the Alukah to arise. Mina had bought time by rebuilding the stigma and repairing the worst of the damage; but as long as this parasite dwelled within Natalie, the young vampire queen would never heal.

Faced with the unclean spirit before her, the Priestess of Death felt the flame of understanding grow larger and with it came dreadful shadows of fear. She’d thought her foe a mere demon, but as her mind still shuddered with the parasite’s un-words, Mina wasn’t so certain anymore. Seeking confirmation for her burgeoning theory; she gazed upon the monster’s face. Mina watched the mask change, flickering between painfully familiar features. Her mother, her aunt, members of the Temple who helped raise her.

Keeping the pain those faces evoked under control, Mina took in the full mockery of motherhood the woman-spider embodied. Bits of old lessons on older enemies danced in the priestess’s mind as she became increasingly certain of what she faced. A mere demon would break under a saint-marked Seraphblood’s power; and yet this task hadn’t fallen to Deborah. Instead of using the obvious agent, Master Time had gifted Mina with power, an act that would certainly upset the Gates Beyond. If this was a simple demon, then Deborah would have driven it out, leaving Mina to slowly rebuild the stigma with her existing strength. Instead, a fiery boon was given and with it a dangerous task. One that Mina now understood in its full complexity and terror.

Meeting the eight eyes of the woman-spider, Mina repeated bits of a lecture half-forgotten. “No one grieves like mothers and no one is grieved like mothers. The loss associated with motherhood is the oldest and most potent. Many, many demons spawn from that pain; but all are pale shadows of their own mother and mistress. The Reaper of Sorrows has many forms, but her most horrible are perversions of motherhood.”

Finally dislodging her fangs from the squirming bundle at the lair’s heart, the Reaper answered. “You see! Now wait, dear child of my heart’s hatred. I can taste your grief, of how you ache for those lost. Soon, once my work is done here, I will share my gift with you. Until then, take my blessing, and feel the thread that binds you to those loved and lost.”

The darkness trapping Mina grew teeth and sank them into her. Wrapped up in fell threads, Mina thrashed as bitter venom filled her soul. In this place of magic and memory the toxin didn’t clot veins or kill nerves but found bits of the priestess kindred to itself and dragged them to the surface of consciousness. Flashes of screams and sobs assailed Mina as hooked barbs plunged into her soul, bringing old grief and fresh fears to the forefront of her mind.

Mina remembered the sounds her brother made when the ghouls devoured him. How the air smelled when she stood in her village’s ruins. She imagined the Temple Hermitage and how her heart would break to see Morri join the Anchorites. Loss and the fear of loss flowed through Mina, eroding her mind with every moment. Caught in a spider’s web, she was subject to its dreadful kiss, her very essence putrefying for later consumption. Except… there was another factor at work. All this grief, all this pain; it was by now familiar to Mina. In the tower, then in the cellar, Mina had faced her demons. She’d already been broken by her own hand, and in light of that, even a God’s cruelty felt lacking.

Clutching the feather that danced in her mind, Mina let it burn. Silver fire erupted along the pinions' length and it cascaded out from Mina, scouring away the venom and her bindings. Leaving her free and furious with all the might her God could give. Around Mina, bits of web started to smoke and peel apart; the woven effluvium of grief burning in the face of its anathema. Cold, pure light flowed from Mina as she became a new star within her friend’s soul. Wings of frost bloomed from Mina and in her hands a sword of polished ice materialized.

Meeting the eight eyes of the Reaper; seeing the outrage and shock there; Mina proclaimed with a trumpet blast of will. “You said I must wait, as if time would be your friend. But we both know that couldn’t be farther from the truth.”

Slashing out with the winter-white blade in her hand, Mina tore through parts of the web, cutting strands and letting them burn/freeze. “Reaper of Sorrows! Fell Goddess! Usurper! Corrupter! Monster! In the name of my God and all he is; I cast you out! You are banished from my friend, and condemn it to the perdition you so deserve!”

The festering wound where Priestess and Fell Goddess faced each other shuddered as opposing powers clashed. Burning feather upon her brow, Mina drank in the situation and from it came new wisdom. This nest, cut in the space between Natalie’s losses, was key to the Reaper’s infection and consumption of her. It was also not particularly stable, being a spider web anchored in different thought clusters across Natalie’s soul. Here the Reaper was at her most powerful and most vulnerable. If Mina could cut those anchor lines and keep burning the web, then whatever piece of itself the Reaper had infected Natalie with would be banished; but that wouldn’t be easy. Even empowered as Mina was, she faced a dark deity’s shard; one capable of attacking with traumas both past and potential.

That thought helped stoke Mina’s growing understanding, and she knew why this task had fallen to her. “The ending, no matter how sad, is only part of the story... You can call upon the pain and fear of loss; but that's just a distorted sliver of the totality. Time is more, its beginnings, endings, and everything in between. Sunlight, fire and femininity aren’t what can break your hold on Natalie; telling the full story will.”

In response, tendrils of animated darkness that was both webbing and ash lashed out at Mina, seeking to ensnare her. Again, the Reaper attacked with Mina’s own grief, each of its threads woven from the memories sampled before Mina ignited her power. Sword at the ready, Mina deflected each and every one; not through strength of arms, but strength of selfhood. A whipping strike composed of her mother’s dying gurgles was knocked away by a goodnight kiss. Her brother’s frantic attempts to stop her screaming became a gentle hug. The onyx black of an Anchorite fell away from Morri’s face as he told Mina how proud he was.

Blade flashing, Mina tore at the webs, injecting memories of the first time Natalie made her laugh into the growing fire. Parrying the tears she shed at her grandfather’s funeral with his smile; Mina struck at an anchor composed of a snarling corpse wolf and a screaming mother; severing it with Natalie’s shared stories about life among the Werefolk. Ducking beneath the hundred graves dug for her village using a harvest festival dance, the priestess stabbed the last time Natalie saw her hometown with memories of the pair of them exploring a Vindabonian market.

All around Mina, the web trembled and shook. Once taut sections of woven grief now flapping in a breeze of laughter as the Reaper’s nest collapsed. A shriek like a mother finding a cradle death split the ash-dark void and Mina braced as the Fell Goddess attacked. Leaping from sorrow to sorrow; bladed legs flashing, the Reaper smashed into Mina bringing with it a tidal-wave of pain. Mina answered the goddess’s scream with her own; feeling the deep hollowness of grief being carved into her essence. Dull edges cut at Mina, trying to peel open old wounds and bring with them the terrible truth of loss. Fighting against the intrusion, Mina drove her sword into the Reaper; its edge sharp with a funeral feast’s somber celebration. Squealing like the first hog Mina had butchered; the Goddess retreated, leaking clumps of half-digested soul-stuff from a gaping wound.

Out from the ragged wound, more woman-spider limbs grew as the Reaper’s form mutated, becoming less coherent and more horrible. Flesh shifted like wax, and features both matronly and monstrous, mixed in the goddess’s changing body. Ragged hands grabbed sections of tattered webbing; sculpting marionettes into familiar shapes. A simulacrum of Alia hung before Mina, her face a mask of shock, painted red with blood shed by treachery. From crimson lips came a slurred question and plea that Mina’s brain had heard but not processed. “M-M-Mina?”

The pain of betrayal and confusion filled Alia’s voice; lancing out towards Mina in a heart-cracking blow. Flinching from the sight and the shame it evoked, Mina failed to parry the coming strike. Her shield, made from a first kiss, cracked under the Reaper’s blow and the jagged edge of Alia’s words pierced the priestess’s soul. Fear and pain spraying from the wound like blood. Another of the Reaper’s questing arms lashed out, grabbing some of the spilled emotions and shaping them into three cruel javelins. Forged from grief for what was and fear of what might be lost, the metaphysical pila punched through Mina’s armor. Desperately, the priestess tried to summon happy memories of Alia, but each became poisoned by what had transpired. With every failed evocation of romance and affection, Mina merely helped the javelins sink deeper, their points growing sharper with every mutilated memory.

The Reaper grabbed onto the spears impaling Mina, bringing its twisted head close to the priestess. “Do you see now? In the end, all that remains are sorrows, and by embracing them is all that can be done. Everything ends, everything dies, and only the grief remains. That is the truth, that is me and that is the only true companion one can hope for.”

Buried in pain; trying to keep the burning feather lit and her mind intact; Mina whimpered and reached out with her shaking hand. As she groped vainly for her weapon, the Reaper smiled. “Hush… there is no point in struggling. Your efforts were mighty, but wasted. Your armor is broken, and the power gifted to you gutters. Your sword is gone, do not waste time resisting the truth.”

Mina smiled then, her hands closing around the hilt she searched for. “I have other companions, better ones than you.”

Outside the wound in Natalie’s soul, back in the Mundane side of reality, Mina gripped the dagger Grettir was keeping in her friend’s heart and pulled. At first, it didn’t move, and Mina could distantly feel the werewolf struggling against her efforts. But then another hand joined Mina’s and Grettir let go. Even as her soul was impaled by spears of grief, Mina pulled the dagger free from Natalie.

A sudden unmistakable shift happened inside the wound and eight eyes widened in shock as the Reaper realized what just happened. Tears flowing down her face, but still smiling, Mina said. “My magic has been healing her this whole time; and I’ve been keeping you distracted. Natalie should be recovered enough to know friend from foe.”

Elsewhere, the bundle of threads the Reaper had been feeding upon started to tear; ripping open as the dreaming vampire awoke.

The temple bell of Glockmire cut through the sounds of screams and groans. Natalie, Iona and Wilhelm ran down a sidestreet, trying to avoid the hungry dead. Hand firmly gripping his daughter’s wrist, Wilhelm kept saying. “Almost there, almost there Nattie.”

Just a stride ahead of them, Iona ran, holding the lantern up for her family to follow. Face set in a grim mask, Natalie’s mother kept moving, guiding them through the crooked Glockmire streets and towards sanctuary. As Iona turned down another path, Natalie’s heart dropped as the light of the lantern flickered and a scream cut through the night. Wilhelm and Natalie rounded the alley corner and saw a monster holding Iona in clawed hands. Rotting lupine jaws snapped forward and closed on soft flesh, blood sprayed and Iona’s scream died; replaced by her daughter and husband’s own wail of horror.

Wilhelm pulled his daughter away from the shredded meat that had once been his wife and the pair now stood in the Silly Goat. Letting go of Natalie, Wilhelm ran towards the door where a balding man who never blinked drove his forearm right through the innkeeper’s gut. Screaming, Natalie fell to her knees, trying to staunch the bleeding, but as Wilhelm breathed his last she leaned over him, hunger consuming her mind. Now her fangs sunk into Cole’s broken body and Natalie drank down his life, physical ecstasy warring with psychic agony.

Again and again, the world shifted around Natalie, pulling her from scenes of loss to scenes of grief. Moments of sorrow melted into each other in an ever repeating, ever mixing parade of misery. Natalie’s only respite was those rare moments when the visions would dim and she’d fall into a half-slumber that never lasted. Her mind danced between nightmares and unconsciousness in a macabre waltz. Every cycle of memory, more of Natalie, drifted away, her mind dissolving like spun sugar in a tempest. At the edge of her fading psyche, Natalie caught bits of what she should know. Of a spider’s words and the kiss of winter. But they were just strands of silk dancing just beyond her reach.

For the dozenth or dozen dozenth time, Natalie was in the black cell beneath Castle Glockmire; grieving her humanity and the man she loved when things changed. Old stone cracked with a sound of thunder and Natalie could only stare as the cell wall split open. A tiny but growing crevice formed in the rock and light shone in from it. Eyes wide, feeling the illusion dissipate, Natalie stumbled towards the crack. Reaching it, she stared into the silver light and felt reality spin once again.

But this time, she wasn’t hauled into another tragedy; this time she stood among red lilies. Gazing across the field, and its mix of snow and bloody bell flowers, Natalie tried to grasp at her thoughts but they refused to come easily. Too much of her had been peeled away, too much bled from countless wounds. Still, compelled by some instinct or intuition, Natalie looked in the direction where a willow once stood. In the frozen tree’s place was a gouge cutting into the ground. Walking slowly, Natalie moved toward the gouge, trepidation growing in her murky mind.

Standing on the pit's edge, Natalie made a noise of disgust at what she saw. Instead of torn earth and displaced soil, the gouge was of ripped flesh and dripping black blood. But that was only part of the foulness. Growing in the open wound was a spider web stretching between open veins and tubules. Painted with frost, the web was damaged, part of it hanging loose. Sparks of silver and motes of ash danced in the web, clashing like warring insects. Falling to her knees, Natalie stared at the battle, her mind trying to touch a conclusion just beyond reach.

Closer now, she could see the webs center, the bloated spider sitting among broken threads, a bird clutched in its limbs. Frowning, Natalie reached out and swatted at the spider, trying to free the young crow it had caught. Claws she didn’t remember having slashed the spider, and it recoiled, letting the crow go. Sudden vertigo pulled on Natalie and she tumbled into the web.

Blinking away her dizziness, Natalie floated in darkness, illuminated only by burning web strands and the silver star next to her. Perspective and size had changed; now Natalie was within the web and seeing its true size. Drinking in the colossal spider lair, Natalie reached out and touched a thread of webbing. It melted at her touch, dissolving into flickers of selfhood that she eagerly drank down. Eyes fluttering, Natalie felt a little bit of herself return. Finally, focusing on the silver star, she recognized it. Mina was wounded, spears sticking through her, and bits of soul-stuff leaking from metaphorical wounds. Looking at her friend, Natalie smiled, happy to see the priestess.

Exhausted and battle-worn, Mina took a moment to return the smile. Gesturing with the icy sword she carried, Mina pointed towards the web’s center where a malformed mix of woman and spider waited. “I need your help; the Reaper is weakened but so am I.”

More fragments of memory and awareness snagged on Natalie’s mind. She wasn’t whole, but intact enough to understand Mina’s purpose. This spider was an enemy, it was why Natalie had suffered. A cruel snarl formed on the vampire’s face and she drifted towards the Reaper, uncaring of the threads she touched. Instead of sticking to her, the strands of soul-silk dissolved into Natalie, bringing with them more flashes of what had been done. Reaching out, Natalie grabbed a large knot of webbing and pulled. With a sound like cracking bones, the weaved silk fell apart bringing with them more truth and more rage. Drinking in the bits of her pain the Reaper had stolen and repurposed into this web, Natalie felt words bubble up and like a whip crack; the message cut through the Reaper’s lair.

“How dare you.”

At the edges of the gouge where web met wound droplets of black blood dripped from opened veins, flowing along soul-silk and traveling towards Natalie. As the first spatters of inky ichor reached Natalie, the web shook as its anchors came under attack. Obsidian blood flowed in and around Natalie, mixing with the dissolving threads. Again, the whip words lashed out, this time sharper and crueler.

“HOW DARE YOU!”

Natalie was healing; the wounds Wolfgang and the Reaper cut into her were shutting. But healing didn’t mean healed. Enough of the girl from Glockmire was intact to be awake, and enough of her was broken for the Alukah’s power to slip through the cracks. Nearby, Mina shied away from the growing storm of black fury and bloody hunger that was Natalie. The silver light of a burning feather suddenly seemed dim in face of the rising darkness.

Clenching her hands into fists, Natalie felt a strange unity of purpose fill her. So often her humanity and nature were at war; a constant struggle she barely won with significant help. Now, in light of the Reaper’s transgressions, both facets of her were in agreement. She’d channeled her hunger before, and learned to dance on the edge between monster and mortal but this was different. A deeper, more terrible drive than the vampire instincts Natalie normally battled was awake. Annoch the Binder was dead, but his blood carried flickers of his will. Before, Natalie had always repressed these echoes, ignoring their calls to dominate and claim others as property. But now, another facet of Annoch was coming to the forefront, the prideful fury of a ruler whose domain was attacked. This arrogant rage found a mirror in Natalie’s wrath. Her mind and soul had been violated; her personal kingdom sacked by a miserable parasite. That would not, could not be allowed.

Black blood and spider silk mixed in Natalie’s tight grip, forming into the universal symbol of ownership, punishment, and cruelty. A long chain slithered down from Natalie’s hand, its obsidian links glistening in Mina’s fire. The Reaper and her minions had sought to break Natalie, to ruin her mind and rouse the Alukah. They’d not succeeded, nor had they failed. Natalie was damaged, and into those cracks some of what had once slumbered now flowed.

With a terrible shriek, Natalie lashed out with the chain, cutting through the web and striking the Reaper’s manifestation. A great rent opened in the spider’s body and the piece of a goddess quailed in face of the Alukah’s wrath. Again, the chain struck like a furious viper, severing a multi-jointed limb. From the iron whip’s tip, nine smaller lengths of chain blossomed, turning its end into a hungry scourge. As Natalie tore into the Reaper, more chains grew from the swirling black blood surrounding her. Like a consuming cancer, the new chains spread along the dying web, subsuming it bit by bit. Nearby, Mina struggled to ward off the questing chains as they circled about her like hungry wolves.

By now, four of the Reaper’s legs were torn free and half-digested soul-stuff leaked from a dozen lacerations. Still screaming her fury, Natalie closed in on the fragment of dark divinity that had tortured her so. Uncaring of Mina’s desperate attempts to avoid the chains, the Alukah prepared to feed. All around the lair, the chain cancer consumed the web, spreading out and reaching the anchors at wound edge. The mindscape groaned as the chains pulled on the gouge’s edge, working to seal this final and most terrible wound while Natalie punished its maker.

Limbless and wrapped in biting chains that burrowed through it, the Reaper hung helpless, spider turned fly. Finally, Natalie’s scream subsided and in a voice not quite her own, she asked. “If I devour the souls of vampires I consume, then what will happen if I drink you?”

Natalie’s mouth widened impossibly and her fangs became monstrous sabers eager to tear open the Reaper. But before she could strike, a familiar taste tickled Natalie’s tongue. Warm and wonderful blood danced down her throat, telling her much about its origin. Fresh, and potent, the ichor coursed with strange crisp power while lacking a few key elements she knew should be present.

As hot blood flowed into Natalie, she shivered with alien cold. All around the Reaper’s lair, chains stopped their grim work and Mina looked about, soul leaking relief. Tasting the blood, and the request that came with it, Natalie opened her mind to its owner. Smiling despite herself, Natalie whispered a name. “Cole.”

Into the wound fell a meteor of icy fire. Reaper, Alukah and Priestess all looked up as the Paladin descended. The first time Natalie pulled Cole into her mind she’d seen the truth of his pain. How he appeared as mutilated flesh and thrashing limbs before she calmed him. Now she saw the truth of his power. A great statue of polished steel arrived in the wound, its nude form marked by thousands of scratches and dents that bled silver fire. Staring up at the shining face of her love; Natalie felt more and more of the imperious fury that gripped her fall away.

Reaching out with a hand cloaked in argent light, the Paladin spoke, his voice soft as falling snow, loud as clashing glaciers. “I’m here. I’ll always be here.”

Taking his hand, Natalie looked back at Mina who floated nearby, spectral wings and armor cloaking her. Seeing the now slumbering chains near her friend, Natalie said. “I’m sorry.”

A slightly panicked laugh escaped the priestess. “I…I should be saying that.”

Wincing as memories of Mina’s ‘betrayal’ danced in her mind, Natalie turned her focus and asked Cole. “Why are you here?”

Looking at the broken Reaper, Cole replied. “I resurrected a few moments ago. The situation wasn’t… good. The power Mina channeled was coming close to freezing everyone to death; and Grettir wouldn’t let her remove the dagger in you. I pulled the knife free and mitigated the worst of the cold. After that, I could see the Alukah rising within you, and Mina’s suffering. I didn’t know what to do, but Yara said when the Rabisu first attacked, her blood helped you. So I tried that and then accepted your invitation.”

Joining him in examining the broken god-shard, Natalie said. “Not the Rabisu, but the Reaper. Thank you for stopping me from eating her… I don’t know what would have happened.”

Cole just shrugged, his massive steel shoulders sending a shower of sparks flying. As the Paladin digested this disturbing news, Mina said. “This isn’t over. We need to drive the Reaper out. Otherwise, it might rebuild itself inside you.”

Nodding, Natalie felt a spike of disgust at her parasite and with a thought tightened the chains binding it. Flinching slightly at this, Mina continued. “Nothing of it can remain; we must cut the cancer out entirely.”

Focusing on the nest of chains all around them, Natalie pulled on the converted web. Anchors tore and what had once been the Reaper’s lair now closed in around its ruined form. Like a monumental ball of yarn, Natalie wove the chains around the Reaper, sealing it within a sphere of overlapping chains. When every thread and every link was part of the mass, Mina raised her hands and the feather upon her brow flared into a silver sun. White light poured from her into the chain ball, burning the ashen darkness within. Natalie could feel the webbing she’d subsumed and repurposed melting away. Like a forge scouring away impurities, the argent fire destroyed the Reaper’s taint letting cleansed soul-stuff flow out from the chain ball. Streams of Natalie’s essence dripped from the Reaper’s prison and found the wound’s edges, repairing them like plaster upon a wall.

A curse escaped Mina as her light guttered. “Fixed-stars! Cole, I need your help. We need to finish destroying the Reaper’s shard and cleaning what it infected.”

Nodding, Cole reached out with his hands and the chain ball shrunk to fit between the Paladin’s fingers. Squeezing it between his hands, Cole began to pray; a saint-speech dirge Natalie recognized from too many funerals. As he did, the fire burning away the Reaper shifted, shapes appearing in it. In the dancing flames, Natalie saw an open grave covered in myriad tokens, and heard other voices join Cole’s hymn. A lump formed in her throat as she understood what memory Cole had called up to finish purging the Reaper; her father’s funeral.

As the hymn faded and the fire dimmed, Cole said. “Grief is natural, grief is good, grief exists only where love once was. But grief is not everything. It plays a role, but is not the story’s truth. Loss is but part of life, and must be put in the place it belongs.”

Opening his hands, Cole revealed a sphere of pearlescent soul-stuff. Like a raindrop and falling star, the sphere splashed into the healing wound, expanding to fill the gouge left by a fell god. A shaky breath escaped Natalie as more and more of her returned. The Reaper’s two seeds and whatever Wolfgang did had torn her open. But with Mina and now Cole’s help, the damage was being repaired. It might take some time but she would be whole again. Looking at the priestess and paladin assigned to watch over her; Natalie smiled. Yes, it would take time, but he was on her side.