Page 45 of To Free a Soul (Duskwalker Beginnings #2)

The mist keeps receding, Lindiwe thought, worrying her lips as she walked through the forest of the Veil.

It wasn’t until it was gone that she’d understood that Weldir’s magic had made the shadows of the Veil seem... deeper. Darker. More foreboding, and less haunted in a nightmarish way.

It’s like this everywhere.

No matter where Lindiwe went, no matter what continent or country she flew to, Weldir’s black mist had shrunk. It was thinning, its reach pulling back and fleeing from the hundreds of forests and meadows it’d lightly swept between.

It was slow. Perhaps a centimetre or so a day, but after five years, Lindiwe had noticed its decline. She’d trained herself, after all, to know how far his reach had gone. To know when she’d entered it, when she could greet it.

The souls she carried on her person took longer to ferry to him.

Before long, it would only surround the shimmering portals the Elven god, Rokul, had left behind. That was likely a problem to face in many decades, but this constant withdrawal had her on edge non-stop.

Why was it fading? Why had Weldir disappeared for so long when he’d told her it would be temporarily short?

Something was wrong. This stretch of time wasn’t simply Weldir being a demi-god who had let the hours – years – slip by. He wasn’t merely distracted and had forgotten to respond; this was different.

He was asleep, and instead of his mist thickening and spreading, it was... disintegrating. He was permanently losing power.

And that was the one thing he wouldn’t stand for.

“I can’t keep thinking about this,” Lindiwe muttered firmly while clenching her hands into tight fists. She softened her grip as she raised her right palm and made black mist puff above it. “He has enough that my abilities haven’t faded.”

She just... used them sparingly.

Lindiwe didn’t want to harm him, but she also needed it to survive. To check on their children from afar.

Bringing both hands together with a slap, she then pulled them apart, and glittering black formed between them. A ball of shadows rotated to life before it flattened when she spread her hands further apart.

A disc formed, and all Lindiwe needed to do was think of the face she wanted to see, hold their name in her mind, and they’d come into view. An image of Dymphna brightened the viewing disc, and he was as she’d last checked on him in person – perfectly fine.

He’d been given the name Lurion years ago.

She had no idea of its meaning, only that it was Nyl’kira and given to him by Demons he’d once befriended. Those Demons had died long ago. An accident and hazard of being near Lindiwe’s children, who easily fell into a rage and were unable to distinguish between friend or foe.

He’d not befriended any others since then, afraid of his own strength and bloodlust.

Lindiwe closed her hands, and the viewing disc faded entirely. She’d already checked on her children before coming here, and she wouldn’t waste Weldir’s magic when he may need it most.

There were also more important matters to attend to.

Lindiwe stepped across a groove that had been carved in the ground by a metal spike, and she was careful that her bare feet didn’t kick any dirt into it. She inspected the line of salt within it, finding it adequate.

Then, lifting her gaze to the log cabin home at the very centre of a clearing, she noticed Orpheus waiting for her at the top of his porch stairs.

I hate the colour of blue in his orbs, she thought, approaching him as he sat on his backside with his hands at his sides against the ground to support his position. It’s so much deeper than it’s supposed to be.

What should have been an ethereal sky blue, was now dark like the frightful depths of the oceans she often flew across.

Keeping her distance due to his preference, Lindiwe halted a few metres away from the house. Any closer and she’d be snarled at, even if her presence in his territory was welcomed this day.

“Are you ready?” she asked, cupping her hands near her stomach as uncertainty pulled taut.

“You no know if this will work ,” Orpheus answered, his voice deeply distorted due to being in his monstrous form. “What if only hated?”

Despite his longing to remain near his home, Orpheus had left it on the odd occasion.

Lindiwe had watched solemnly as he’d tried to befriend other humans wandering the surface recently, only to be spotted.

Only to be screamed at and run away from, driving his bloodthirsty instincts to the surface until he rent them to pieces with his claws and fangs.

His humanity had grown, but it’d come at a cost.

His understanding of language had deepened, and he could articulate his thoughts better, but.

.. it meant he puzzled over the final words Katerina had said to him.

He felt them more, believed them, deciphered their true meaning, and he’d been able to look back on their time together with an understanding that he didn’t have before.

“I have already spoken to the village, and they are aware of what will happen. I already have their approval.”

“What if I destroy human?” His wolf skull drifted to the side as he looked around his territory. “Protection stay long time.”

“Then you will wait for it to fade and try again.”

Lindiwe hid her reservations, her uncertainty, and how much she thought this would... fail.

That Orpheus, like all her children, would remain alone forever.

I just need one human... If one could see past what he was and love him for the good he had inside, then wasn’t the possibility worth it? Even if it took a hundred years or half a millennium, if there was just the tiniest thread of hope, wasn’t that worth following?

It would be better than sitting here alone in the dark for the rest of his life. He needed to somehow look to the future, rather than dwell in the past.

Even if he killed and ate each one, they would gift him intelligence he could use to charm the next person.

Her right hand curled into a fist once more. There has to be one person in this forsaken world...

“Follow,” Lindiwe demanded. “That’s all you need to do for now.”

With a snorted huff, Orpheus climbed down the stairs on all fours as she pulled her feathered hood over her head.

When she was in her owl form, she took off west, and he sprinted after her.

Not in rage, but in faith.

She hoped to the spirit of the void that it wasn’t sorely misplaced.

Landing at the forest’s edge near a walled village, Lindiwe allowed her human form to come to the surface. Her curls bounced around her cheeks and shoulders when she pulled her hood back, and they were swept to the side by a light, warm gust.

She waited for Orpheus to catch up, and he followed her scent to greet her. She kept herself still, letting him come as close as he chose, and then reached into her satchel.

“I think it’s best if you use this to block out any potential fear or blood scents,” she told him, holding out her hand.

A cloth saturated in a heavy, clogging perfume tingled her nose. He gingerly pinched it from her palm, held it to his bony nose hole, and sniffed it. Orpheus immediately choked and gave two wheezing sneezes while pulling it away.

“Awful. Bad smell.”

“I know it’s not the most pleasant, but your sense of smell is keener than a human’s. You need to tie it around your nose, and likely inside your mouth to hold it in place.”

Orpheus’ tongue poked forward with a blergh, but he obediently did as he was told. He sneezed a few times, and his blue orbs turned white and started to waver as if they were about to shatter and produce tears. He adjusted to it and began to breathe through his mouth with shuddering pants instead.

“I also have... this for you.” She pulled out neatly folded black material and unravelled it to reveal a cloak. “It might work in your favour to make your appearance initially easier for humans to look upon.”

Orpheus took it and inspected it thoroughly. “Hide?”

Lindiwe hid the worst of her wince, so that it only twitched one cheek. She felt awful that she was having to do this, explain this to him, but it was the truth – and it was best he knew beforehand.

“Your... appearance might be a little frightening. A living being walking around with a skull and horns is abnormal, as is your body. It would be best to shield it, even a little, until you gain the trust of your new human.”

“Yes. Ugly.”

“Not ugly,” Lindiwe rejected darkly, her jaw clenching at the fact that he even knew what that word meant. “Just different.”

Orpheus fumbled with how to put it on, throwing it over his head like a sheet. She couldn’t help her quiet, hidden laugh as she stepped forward to help. Taking it from him, she waved for him to lower his head.

“There’s two holes for your horns. You have to poke them through first.” She slipped them over his impala horns at the same time to show him, and her fingertips tingled at touching the hardness of those bumpy spirals.

I’ve never been able to touch him before. She even sneaked a caress over his cloth-covered wolf skull when she adjusted the fabric. Then she secured the ties around his neck.

Shoving his arms to the side, he pushed the cloak open and brushed his claws over the dark material. Then, before she could direct him to, his form shifted, and black clothing rose to the surface when he became more humanoid.

He knows this is a better look for humans.

Which was a saddening thought to Lindiwe.

He still looked dapper and gentlemanly, albeit a little spooky, like a grim reaper with his cloak. But it did help to hide the more animalistic parts of him. If it wasn’t for his skull, horns, claws, and pawed feet, he could have passed for a very tall human.

“Maybe you should sheath your claws,” Lindiwe suggested, and he promptly complied.

She pulled the cloak in tight over his chest, surprised he was letting her be this close to him, while remaining wary of a lethal strike. Perhaps her actions were foolish, but Lindiwe trusted him.