Herakles used every weapon in his arsenal. The blades. The sword. Even his claws. I cast magic and teleported myself around the frozen lake, helping my friends wherever I could. If there was a specter creeping up on Eva, I'd be the first there to knock it back. It wasn't our bodies that the spirits were responding to, I quickly realized. It was the steel in our weapons.
I'd gotten myself cut and scratched by these creatures already, but, since they were basically ghosts, kicking and punching had done nothing. The swords, however, those worked!
"Use your blades!" I shouted. "Use your steel! It hurts them!"
In an instant, the balance in this fight changed. We slashed and cut through the specter mess, even as they continued to pile up on us. Raphael's fire helped a lot, as well—not necessarily because it hurt the spirits. It didn't. But it distracted them long enough for us to move in and cut more of them down.
The Reapers got busy thinning the herd. Their scythes transformed every specter they touched into bursts of golden sparks. Kelara, Dream, and Nightmare had clearly done this before. They moved like shadows, vanishing and reappearing around the frosted battlefield. Seeley, Widow, Soul, and Phantom were hard at work, as well. Casting bits of Reaper magic between their hits, they managed to distract entire clusters before cutting them down.
I couldn't see the Time Master anywhere, and the ghouls were missing, too. I'd expected them to show up by now. Reappearing next to Amelia, I quickly analyzed our current odds against Spirit's specter hordes.
"Where the hell are the ghouls?" I asked.
"Damned if I know," Amelia breathed and took down another spirit. She wasn't a Reaper, but the scythe in her hands still caused damage to the ghostly mass. A Reaper always pitched in to finish the job—either Soul, Kelara, or Seeley, for the most part. We were spread thin against too many enemies.
Taeral took on Spirit with everything he had, swinging Thieron expertly while dodging the Reaper's blade. Soul had already advised him not to get cut. We knew that it was how the Spirit Bender controlled his ghosts. All he had to do was cut you once, and you were his. Of course, that usually applied to the dead, but the Soul Crusher had been specifically clear that it did the same to the living, as well.
"You selfish piece of trash!" Taeral shouted and dodged Spirit's scythe. He brought Thieron upward fast, missing the Reaper by only a few inches. It was enough to make Spirit look worried. It became obvious then that he did not want to get hit with Thieron. Chances were it would lead to his permanent death, the irreversible kind. "You've put all the living in mortal danger because you're angry at your mom! Do you not realize how foolish you are?!"
The Spirit Bender chuckled and darted toward Taeral. The prince managed to move out of his way, but the Reaper quickly swerved and came after him again. "Your mind is too small to understand how insignificant you all are. You're mere blips in the fabric of the universe, mine to use however I please! You can't even fathom what it's like to exist like me, for millions of years, unable to escape or move on!"
"Why does your existence matter more than ours?" Taeral asked. He vanished just before Spirit cut through him. The Reaper's reflexes were sharp. Taeral reappeared behind him, but Spirit's scythe was already out to meet Thieron. The blades clashed with a gut-wrenching shriek, the impact causing a tremor across the frozen lake.
"Everything and everyone is disposable to me, as long as it hurts Death," Spirit hissed. "I may not be able to kill her, but I can make her existence miserable, as miserable as she's made mine!"
I moved back from their fight, worried Spirit might spot me. To my left, a couple of specters jumped Varga, their claws and fangs tearing through his leather suit and pale skin. They drew blood, which splotched down on the white ice like scarlet roses. I zapped myself behind him, grabbed his wrist, and teleported him several yards away from his attackers.
"Thanks, Riza," he said and quickly dove back into battle, as more spirits came at him. I released a flurry of phosphorescent sparks, dazzling the specters long enough for Soul and Widow to intervene and start clearing them out.
Looking back at Taeral and Spirit, I worried our guy might end up getting hurt. The Reaper made him run and dodge and move a lot, never tiring. But Taeral's energy was running low, his swings increasingly sluggish. The teleporting didn't help. I, too, felt exhaustion climbing its way back to the top of my consciousness, but at least I wasn't at risk of getting cut with Spirit's blade, then hit by his manipulative powers.
"I never wanted to be a Reaper!" Spirit snarled. "I never asked for this! All I wanted was to die, as I was meant to die! She wouldn't let me move on. I begged her. For millennia, I begged her, but she wouldn't listen."
"So what? You're punishing us all because Death didn't let you die?!" Taeral retorted. They'd both paused for a short moment, while Taeral got his breath back and Spirit quickly surveyed the battlefield and smirked. The odds had yet to flip in our favor, but, if we kept going, we still had a chance at fighting the specters off completely. We, the living, did the fighting, while the Reapers came through and reaped the crap out of these violent and bloodthirsty spirits.
"You're merely collateral damage," Spirit replied. "If you want anyone to blame, look to Death. This is on her. It's all on her."
"Coward," I blurted, drawing his attention. "You can't even take responsibility for your actions."
He grinned, but there was darkness in those galaxy eyes, the kind that predicted terrible things to come. "I suppose you're still wondering where your ghoul friends went, little Miss Know-It-All?"
Around me, the fighting continued. Vicious and ruthless, bloody and painful. Scythes glimmered in the light. Specters snarled and clawed and bit through everything they could get their hands on. The living struggled to keep up and not get torn to shreds. There wasn't enough time to do anything more, as the planet's hum became louder, the glow intensifying from within and threatening to blind us completely.
"I've got wards all over the place," the Spirit Bender added, his chest swelling with pride. "You thought I didn't know about the ghouls? I have eyes everywhere, you worthless creature. My magic sprawls across dimensions. Little bits and pieces left in my wake. Alarms. Whispers. Dead eyes that I can see through. I was ready before you even showed up!"
Dread clutched my throat, its grip tightening as I realized our ghoul allies would not be able to help us this time around. We were still fighting a losing battle, despite our emotional jumps from the pits of misery. Over and over, we'd climbed out of that darkness, clinging to a single thread of hope, only to get kicked back down. This time, it was the Spirit Bender's turn to crush our resistance.
But was this our end? Our true end?
Or did the rope go on for a little while longer?
Part of me was virtually incapable of letting go. As long as I still had breath left in me, I could do something. The Spirit Bender vanished for a split second, and I knew he was coming for me, so I teleported myself beside Taeral, instead.
Spirit reappeared where I'd stood, his scythe glimmering, thirsty for my life. Gripping my sword, I pointed its sharp end at him, while Taeral smirked. The Time Master was missing for a reason. I knew that now.
"We're not done here," I said, as the battle raged on. "We're not the kind to just give up so easily, especially when our foe turns out to be just a toddler Reaper throwing a tantrum."
The Spirit Bender turned to face us, his expression skewed by anger.
"Then you shall die here, while the entire universe burns," he replied.
For some reason, I found it hard to believe him. Even with one foot already in the hole, none of us could give up. Maybe that would eventually save us.
Taeral
The Spirit Bender's motives didn't make any sense. Perhaps to him they did, but to every other living being in the world, they did not justify this level of hatred and damage against people who had done nothing to him.
I caught glimpses of Death beneath the ice. There was no way of getting any closer to her, though. I'd tried, more than once, and Spirit had pushed back every time. The worst part was that I had to be careful about his scythe. One cut was all it took for me to become his slave, much like the thousands of spirits he'd hoarded here, on Aledras. We all knew that a First Tenner’s powers could affect the spirits and bodies of the living, too, and not just those of the dead—and our experiences with Soul, Widow, and Phantom had more than proven it. This was one of the reasons why they were so important to Death in the first place.
Not all of the spirits were from here, I noticed. In fact, most of them seemed foreign, in different shapes and sizes, ranging from gargantuan figures with bulky arms and legs, to little folk with pixie-like wings and long claws. His methods had yet to fully come to light, but I had to assume he'd gathered them from wherever he'd visited. He'd used bits of Reaper objects to amplify them into specters, and he'd bent them all to his will, forcing them to do his bidding.
There were too many. Without the ghouls, we couldn't clear out enough of them to give us an edge against the Spirit Bender. The more the Reapers cut down, the more came from behind, twice as eager and determined to take us all out. I hadn’t had the chance to deal with any of them myself, as I'd focused my efforts on the Reaper who'd brought them all together. From the looks of it, Spirit wanted to keep me to himself, as the specters seemed to avoid me.
"You think you're better than me?!" Spirit said and bolted toward me.
I zapped myself to the side, knowing he'd have his back guarded. I'd spent minutes trying to study and understand his movements. Without Brendel's elemental force, he didn't seem capable of blocking my teleportation abilities, which I found odd.
"I don't think I'm better than anyone," I replied. "I just think you shouldn't punish billions of innocent people simply because you hate your maker."
