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You again.

You dare!

Unnatural.

Nyxspawn. The worst.

“Yes, I dare,” I said, my voice echoing, reverberating through the walls as it resounded right here and in the realm of Hades at the same time. “It’s my birthright, and you know it. Lest you wish me to leave the portal open, you will allow me to take her back.”

The guardians whispered amongst themselves in old forgotten tongues that I had always understood.

Eat him!

We can’t. He’s not here.

When he dies, we eat him.

Well, he’s seventy-percent immortal. That could take a while.

Send the furies!

They’re too busy with billionaires.

Cerberus, then. He can eat the body; we eat the soul!

Cerbie can’t world travel.

I say we let him take her. She’s a bore, anyway. Stinks of the Fields of Asphodel.

She didn’t even have coin.

This was starting to get my way. “I have coins, you know,” I mentioned. “And before I bring her back to you, I can fill her pockets with a square dozen.”

They dropped the ancient Greek.

…A dozen coins?

You’re bringing her back?

I always liked Nyxspawns!

I grasped for the soul with my red threads of power before the guardians could change their minds, and pulled her back.

Fuck. I brought my hand to my nose, unsurprised to see it stained black with my blood.

Reanimating the body was a piece of cake in comparison to world surfing with my soul while leaving my body behind. Armed with her soul between my hands, I forced tendrils of life which had no desire to leave me right back into her body, the shimmery, immaterial substance slowly entering her nostrils and eyes as her cold, pale body warmed up.

Ms. Pebbles inhaled so deep it ended in an otherworldly scream.

Finally.

“Welcome back,” I said gently.

She was confused, and terrified. No doubt, the sight of me right now was no comfort, between the blood under my nose and the dark magic still gathered around me.

“I—what was—” She shivered. “So cold. Empty. I was waiting.”

And I was getting bored.