The ghoul clicked his fangs and whispered something else, prompting Kelara to look at me and Lumi. She seemed doubtful.
"What is he saying?"
"Herbert here has been doing his homework on a wide array of things, it seems. Including swamp witchcraft," Kelara replied. "He says your witches can use ghouls to power up the interplanetary spell. They are essentially souls, albeit decayed ones. Raw energy that can be used instead of serium batteries, which you obviously lack for a potentially long interplanetary trip. He says you need lightning speed if you're to get to Death before it's too late."
"Oh," Lumi said, both eyebrows arched in surprise. "So how much more speed are we talking about here?"
Kelara sighed. "A lot. There's at least a dozen ghouls who've already consented to this."
"It will destroy them," Lumi said. "Actual souls used as fuel for a swamp witch spell… It's intense. Destructive. Nothing like using a serium battery."
"They're willing to do it. After all the specters they've eaten just to help us get to Time, they know Death will have some harsh punishments to share," Kelara replied. "Granted, most are hopeful it won't end that way for them, but, you know, desperate times, yadda, yadda."
Seeley showed the pebble to Time. "Do you know what this says?"
"No," the Time Master said, shaking his head. "I don't think she left it behind as a message, but rather as a means to track her."
"Death's actions are never random. These words mean something," Seeley insisted. "I remember some of the language, but it's ancient stuff. I need time to figure it out, and it's time I don't have."
The Time Master took the pebble and turned it over several times. "Lumi needs it to power up the hybrid spell's target," he said. "I'll keep the words in mind, though, and see if I can help."
He handed the pebble over to Lumi, who was already drawing up the interplanetary spell pentagram, using the last of our swamp witch magic paraphernalia. Nethissis helped, limping as she positioned the herbs and minerals in all their assigned spots across the design.
"How are you feeling, brother?" Widow asked the Time Master, while the rest of us got our bearings and prepared for what could very well be our last journey across space, the clock ticking incessantly in the back of my head like a sour reminder.
"Humiliated. Infuriated. Afraid," Time replied. "The Spirit Bender got incredibly far with his scheme, and none of us took his bitterness toward Death seriously. I fear we are all responsible for this sequence of events."
"That's nonsense!" Soul blurted. "First of all, Phantom, Widow, and I were too busy existing inside Thieron to have had any involvement in the matter—"
"Hey! Not a good start!" Dream warned him.
Soul chuckled and moved his attention back to Time. "Second, Spirit is a scheming and duplicitous lowlife, okay? He fooled everyone, including Death. He's had a lot of time to cook up the perfect plan. He observed everything, down to the last detail, before he took any kind of action. You couldn't have possibly predicted he'd do something so utterly stupid and disgusting."
"In a sense, he's been our true enemy from the very beginning. Brendel was just a weapon he used," I said.
Lumi glanced at Kelara. "The spell is ready. We need the volunteer ghouls to take their positions." Looking at the rest of us, she nodded. "It's time."
It was a weird situation we'd gotten ourselves into. On the cusp of the ritual's finale, the Hermessi were no longer a threat to our mission, probably thinking we'd never make it in time to stop them. The thought horrified me. And yet, I'd managed to find a silver lining in this unexpected alliance with the ghouls. Most of us had never even seen one before this whole Hermessi debacle.
We moved inside the interplanetary spell's central circle. All of us, including the Reapers. Herbert whispered something to Kelara, then growled at the ghouls to join us. To my surprise, the creatures managed to thin themselves into mere wisps, defying the laws of physics. The five ghouls that had already settled in certain points of the spell's drawing were at full size, though, and I could tell from the grim looks on their faces that they were genuinely scared about what would come next.
"Kelara, perhaps you could put them to sleep, at least," Lumi said. "The ghouls don't need to be awake for their sacrifice, and I have no such power over the dead, myself."
Kelara agreed and spoke to the ghouls on Lumi's behalf. Four of them nodded, allowing her to put them to sleep. The fifth, however, a big and burly specimen with unnaturally long arms, shook his head, his whispery language sending shivers down my spine.
"He says he'll look his ending in the face. It cannot be worse than the agony he's experienced for the past two hundred years since he abandoned his Reaper post and became… well, this," Kelara replied.
I understood then that not all ghouls were alike. Many were primal and cruel, yes, and they'd made notable enemies against GASP's founders before. Not this particular batch, but still, most of the ones here looked as murdery as the ones Derek and Sofia had dealt with. But some, like Herbert, did not like their condition. While a few had learned to live with it, others were perfectly fine with dying in this war, either by battle, by Reaper execution, or by sacrificing themselves as energy sources for our travel spell.
Things were not black and white for the ghouls, just as they were not black and white for the Reapers. Life, in all its forms and dimensions, was a multitude of gray shades through which we all had to navigate.
In order to do that, though, we needed to find the Spirit Bender and Death. The former had to be stopped, no matter the cost, and the latter was to be released, so there would be life left beyond today.
Amelia
The spell bubble was enormous, compared to the ones we'd traveled in before. We had a small army of ghouls with us, and, despite the goosebumps their presence gave me, I also carried a sense of relief with me. There weren't many things that could hurt an old Reaper like the Spirit Bender—not to mention his specters. We were bound to run into both in our quest to save Death. Summoning Reapers was understandably a time-consuming and difficult task, so the ghouls had come in at the right time.
I suspected the universe itself might've played a hand in this. I'd always considered it to be an entity of its own, too big and cosmic to bother with life on an individual level, too bogged down in primordial rules to intervene directly. But strings could still be pulled, and pieces knocked over across the chessboard, enough to set things in motion and bring us closer to our objective.
Of course, this was no guarantee we'd win. There were only a few fae left for the Hermessi to influence. Hopefully, the tracking magic would lead us to the right place, and the swamp witches would use all the power they had to move our spell bubble beyond the speed of light.
Our crew sat on the faux floor at the front, with a full view of space as it opened up before us. Trillions of stars and planets were sprinkled across the endless, black canvas. Asteroid fields and streams of colorful stardust. Swirling galaxies and rogue comets.
Behind us, the Reapers stood next to each other, fearlessly gazing ahead. The ghouls were clearly not accustomed to this method of travel, fidgeting and murmuring among themselves with nervous twitches. There was no turning back now, though. We were already halfway across the Earthly Dimension, with no idea where Death's pebble was taking us.
I leaned against Raphael's shoulder, thankful to still have him with me. For a while, no one said anything. There wasn't much left to speak about. We were headed toward the lion's den, in a sense, and we had no idea what would be waiting for us.
Herbert was in pretty bad shape, but he was determined to see this through to the end. Varga, now back at full strength and holding Eva in his arms for comfort, couldn't take his eyes off the ghoul.
"What's up?" I asked him.
"I wonder what he's thinking," Varga said. "This can't have been easy for him. He's taking this whole crew of ghouls he's gathered straight back to Death. I mean, she's not like us. She might not care about their good deeds, especially if they're balanced against their previous actions—including their decision to abandon Reaperhood and eat souls for a living."
"Maybe he's tired. Maybe they're all tired and hoping there's a better way," I replied. "Look at us. We're out here, going out of our way to find a better end for ourselves. We're driven by something deep within us, this idea that how things are is not how they're supposed to be."
Herbert looked at Varga and whispered something, prompting the sentry to gasp. "Holy hell! I can understand him!" he blurted.
"Of course you can understand him." Seeley chuckled. "You're a sentry. A byproduct of ghouls. Didn't Harper's experience teach you anything?"
