"At the risk of repeating myself, your mind is simply too small to understand."
Raising Thieron, I let its energy surge through me. It was desperate to cut Spirit down. I could feel it in my bones. "Or maybe yours is too empty to accept reason," I shot back.
He came at me again, and I vanished once more, reappearing closer to Death, for the first time. She spoke beneath the water. I could see her lips moving, but I couldn't hear her. This was my chance. I brought Thieron down against the ice, hoping it might at least help break the Silence seal.
Spirit rammed into me, knocking the air out of my lungs. We wound up sliding across the ice and into a skirmish of specters. In their madness and desperation, they jumped us, cutting and screaming their heads off. I swung Thieron outward, slashing at several specters at once. To my astonishment, they burst into golden sparks.
"What the…" Spirit was shocked as he pulled back and waved the others away.
Kelara swooped in, almost out of nowhere, and tried to take him down. He swatted her like a fly, and she fell, quickly tackled by multiple specters at once. Her screams of agony tore through my heart.
I rushed past the Spirit Bender and used Thieron against Kelara's specter fiends, causing more swirls of golden sparks to explode. Seconds later, I helped her up. She was as surprised as Spirit. "Tae, you can reap them," she said. "Even though you're not a Reaper yet… with Thieron, you can reap them!"
"I'm not done with you yet!" Spirit snarled, and I turned around to face him, while Kelara got busy with more of the incoming specters.
Blocking his scythe with Thieron, I kicked him in the gut and pushed him away. "You've committed so many crimes against the universe, it's downright ridiculous!" I said. "Whatever happens to my world or the others, I promise I won't let you get away with this!"
And I meant it, too. There were maybe minutes left on the cosmic clock, as Aledras grew brighter and more intense with every moment that passed. I knew we didn't have much longer. But even so, I couldn't let the Spirit Bender live to see another day, for everything that he'd done. Justice was needed, now more than ever.
"It'll all be over soon, and you'll be too busy sobbing to bother with me," the Spirit Bender replied, a smirk testing his lips. The certainty in his voice had faded, though. Was his resolve coming down, at last? Had I made him doubt himself, perhaps?
I moved to hit him again before he had another chance to attack, when a crackling sound brought me to a sudden halt. His eyes widened, his mouth drawn into a thin, small line. He knew something I didn't, and it didn't please him at all. On the contrary, it made his jaw clench with rage.
"The wards," Kelara shouted from the side. "Someone broke the ghoul wards!"
As if summoned by the mere mention of their names, hundreds of the former Reapers converged on the swollen crowd of specters. They jumped in and started eating every spirit they came across, while Seeley and the others did their fair share of reaping on the side.
I did feel sorry for these spirits. They hadn’t chosen to be a part of this. They deserved an afterlife, but until Death gave verbal consent to the Word's assistance, our powers were limited. We couldn't do anything other than reap them or let the ghouls eat them. Lumi and Nethissis glowed like light bulbs as they moved and cast protective magic shields to help some of our crew, but there wasn't much else they could do.
Taking the Spirit Bender down was proving to be a lot more complicated than I'd originally anticipated. Granted, I'd thought Brendel was my greatest foe, until she fell. Boy, had I been wrong.
But with the wards broken, the ghouls were unhinged and relentless. The crowd began to thin, and Spirit made his way back to Death. His worried glance darted across the battlefield, and I knew I needed to break him, one way or another.
"You're not invincible," I said. "The odds no longer favor you. Maybe this is the universe telling you something. You should take notice before it's too late."
The Spirit Bender scoffed. "You tart. It's already too late. I've spent centuries figuring out the right Thousand Seals to put Death under. Do you think she'll show forgiveness if I let her out now? Ha! Besides, I'm not one to get discouraged easily. Look around you, Taeral. Aledras is about to explode. Its blast will be so powerful, it will amp up the fae sanctuaries and it'll burn everything in its wake. I win."
"You know what? I've had enough of this insane crap," I declared.
Moving toward him again, I noticed Seeley and Kelara moving in closer. They'd come to some kind of agreement, judging by their conspiratorial looks. They were up to something. Spirit was too busy eyeing me to notice them, and I figured it might work out to our advantage.
Roaring, I charged him at full speed, my boots barely touching the ice. Upon reaching him, he vanished and reappeared behind me. I then zapped myself away just as his scythe came in from the right. Behind him, Seeley and Kelara materialized. They both attacked him, though Seeley was far more brutal in his offensive.
I watched for a moment, then teleported right in front of the Spirit Bender and brought Thieron down on him. His eyes bulged with sheer horror. Kelara moved away from him, hand behind her back, and vanished. Before Thieron could touch him, Spirit disappeared, as well. I didn't take it as a disappointment, though.
Seeley gave me a brief nod and moved to take down more specters, while the ghouls did most of the hard work, gorging on all the souls they could eat. Even Herbert was hard at it, despite his charred skin and slow movements. There was anger in him, and it needed channeling—so munching on spirits must've seemed like a good outlet.
The Spirit Bender was nowhere to be seen, and I didn't like that. I rushed over to Death and tried to break the ice again. A distant boom erupted in the distance, somewhere to the north. It was swiftly followed by a bright white light, stronger than Aledras's current incandescence. It spread outward like the biggest, most powerful atom bomb ever created.
I was breathless. I doubted even I would survive what was coming, regardless of Death's touch. Everything disintegrated in the light's path. The horizon shimmered and vanished, swallowed by whiteness. The trees and the cities disintegrated, blown to smithereens, utterly obliterated. Destruction was finally upon us, and we were staring right at it.
"Oh, no…" I heard Amelia gasp, somewhere to my left.
"It's too late," Herakles managed.
This is it. The ritual is coming.
The end of days we'd all dreaded and fought so hard against was unleashed.
I was so entranced by the horror unfolding before my very eyes that I lost track of the Spirit Bender. His scythe cut into my back, and I cried out in pain. Frozen on the spot, I felt my self-control slipping away from me.
My soul was under his dominion now.
Taeral
"Your spirit is mine," he whispered in my ear.
My worst nightmare had come true. We'd lost everything. Our worlds would soon be torched. Our families gone, turned to ashes and dust. Our lives destroyed. Our civilizations forgotten. All because the Spirit Bender had a bone to pick with Death, and Brendel had a ritual to uphold. Such foolishness.
The taste of defeat lingered bitterly on the tip of my tongue as I slowly turned my head to look around. In the sea of white, I saw Varga and Eva, their heads covered but their eyes wide and filled with dread. Amelia's hand shaking as she tried to hold the scythe. Raphael, still and speechless. Riza and Herakles standing back to back, unable to utter a single word, their gazes fixed on me. Lumi and Nethissis's expressions were impossible to read, as they were possessed by the Word, but I knew the entity had nothing left to say.
Kabbah was astonished and heartbroken, glowing green with rage through Fallon's body. Kelara stood motionless as a shadow slipped past her. Seeley, Soul, Widow, Phantom, Dream, and Nightmare were all dismayed, their starry eyes coated with… tears. They were all breaking down as the light continued to cover the lands, headed our way with its unstoppable wave of destruction. The ghouls and the specters had stopped, too. No one could move anymore.
Beneath the ice, close to my feet, I saw Death.
She gave me a soft smile, and it didn't make a lick of sense. The Spirit Bender had just cut me, and the entire universe was about to fall apart. What the hell was she so giddy about?!
"Now, stand back and watch," Spirit said, amusement dripping from his voice. "Watch as it all comes down, before Death's own eyes!"
