Zoltan came closer, frowning at the sight of it. I slowly moved back, hoping the ghoul wouldn’t see me just yet. The others were too busy devouring the screaming souls of the Rimians. Just my luck, I thought, to witness both their physical and spiritual deaths.
“Where did this come from?” Zoltan wondered aloud, while the guards watched from a safe distance. The ghoul sat on its hind legs, its beady eyes following its master as he picked up a cane that had been used to torture the Rimians, long before I got here.
He poked my serpentine body with its slim end and gasped when it shifted back into my humanoid form. My heart broke, over and over, as I saw myself for one last time. My eyes closed. My neck bruised, bones pushing against the skin at an unnatural angle. My skin pale. The luster of my copper scales gone, reduced to a faint reddish brown. That was what happened to a Lamia if death caught her in snake form. The body returned to its original form…
“Oh, dear…” Zoltan mumbled. “This isn’t good. This isn’t good at all.” He turned to look at the ghoul. “What the hell did you do?! Where’s her soul? Did you eat it?!”
The creature seemed confused, until the mention of my soul seemed to activate its hunger, nostrils flaring as it turned its deformed head and finally saw me. The horror I’d felt before amplified to the point where every thread of my spirit froze, stiffened by the realization of what would come next.
The ghoul had seen me, now, and it was hungry for my soul. A delicacy for its defected species.
“No… No, you don’t get to treat me like one of those Rimians,” I hissed.
Snarling, the ghoul lunged at me, and I didn’t have the speed to move back before he caught me. His claw came down and struck me hard. It hurt profoundly, in ways I’d never imagined before, as I found myself on the cold, hard floor, pinned and unable to get away.
“No!” I screamed, though Zoltan and the guards couldn’t hear me. I was dead, after all. I’d only be deader, if the ghoul had his way.
“Eat it and let’s get this over with,” Zoltan said. “We have a body to dispose of.”
“Wait, why don’t you let the ghoul eat that, too?” one of the guards asked.
“A disappearing swamp witch who can turn into a snake invites her colleagues poking around. A swamp witch found dead outside the palace will keep them away from the basements. Obviously,” Zoltan replied.
The ghoul’s fangs were huge, its jaw gaping as it came down to eat me. For a moment, I thought this was it. This was my end. This was how I’d go out, without anyone knowing what really happened to me. And it tore me worse than anything the ghoul would do to me…
Something flashed between us. The glint of silvery steel caught my eye.
A scythe’s blade swept through and decapitated the ghoul, instantly turning it into a shapeless mass of glimmering ashes. The other fiends yelped at the sight of Seeley, standing above me.
“What in the living hell…” My voice trailed off. I’d just survived the ultimate death. Powered by that unexpected concept, I scrambled back farther away from Zoltan and the loose pile of ashes that the ghoul had left behind.
Zoltan frowned and quickly whispered a spell. Its words sounded familiar. His eyes lit up as he revealed Seeley to the living. Like me, the Reaper was shocked beyond repair.
“Ah, there you are,” Zoltan said, beaming with delight. “I haven’t seen one of you in a very long time!”
“Seeley…” I managed.
He looked at me, and, for the longest of seconds, time stood still. We knew each other. There had been something between us, a fleeting thought. A distant “what if” that had never come to fruition. I hadn’t seen him since we’d defeated the Hermessi’s ritual, and yet here he was, standing here in his black suit, with his galaxy eyes focused on me, grief twinkling inside.
“Nethissis,” he whispered. “I’m… I’m sorry. I’m too late.”
“What’s going on?” I asked.
He briefly glanced at Zoltan, who seemed confused but immediately realized the ghoul had failed to eat me. “We still have a loose soul, fellas,” Zoltan said.
“I’m not sure,” Seeley replied, looking at me again. “But I need you to get out of here.”
“No, I can’t leave you—”
“Run and don’t look back!” Seeley snapped, raising his weapon.
Despair took over at the sight of another scythe coming out from between the dark blue folds of Zoltan’s coat. Seeley didn’t see it coming, either.
“You’re not the only one with nifty toys,” Zoltan hissed and uttered another string of Reaper magic words.
Seeley reached out and pushed me so hard, I flew back through the narrow corridor, then the door. Ghouls snarled and thumped into it, but they couldn’t get through. They’d been limited to that room, so all they could do was angrily scratch at the black iron, unable to reach me.
My breathing was ragged, fire burning in my chest, as I tried to wrap my head around what had just happened. Seeley had somehow come here, and he’d saved me from a ghoulish death. He’d said he’d been too late, which meant… he knew I was here?
Chains jingled and clanged across the floor inside the round chamber. Shaking like a leaf, I pulled myself closer to the door, listening to the movements inside.
“Put the ghouls back on their leashes,” Zoltan said. “I’ll handle the Reaper.”
“You can’t kill it, can you?” one of the guards asked.
“No, you oaf, but I can make sure he never sees the light of day again,” Zoltan replied.
“Seeley…” I whispered, almost touching the door.
My hand trembled, and I couldn’t even cry. My eyes stung, but tears didn’t come out. All I could do was struggle with the mixture of pain, agony, and helplessness, as I knelt in front of the iron door, coming to terms with every single event that had brought me to this particular moment.
Seeley was inside, somehow captured by Zoltan. The Aeternae had knowledge of Reapers and Death magic. They had dungeons and at least one Reaper scythe. They had ghouls under their control, using them as mindless flesh- and soul-hungry beasts.
And I’d gotten myself stuck right in the middle of it all, with my neck snapped and the life snuffed out of me. How the hell would I get myself out of this predicament?
“What about the Lamia’s soul, sir?” the second guard asked.
“It’s just a soul. It can’t do anything. The veil between the world of the living and that of the dead is abnormally thick here,” Zoltan said. “She won’t be able to break through. It’s part of the reason we’ve been able to do our honorable work for so long.”
