Page 52 of To Free a Soul (Duskwalker Beginnings #2)

Leyfr’s head reared back, and his spiky, pointed ears shot back. “Cruel?” He waved his clawed hand to the side. “I earnestly think this would be beneficial for you. A way to grow your power, and one day give you true freedom.”

“Freedom you cannot guarantee,” Weldir rebutted. “A way to leave my prism through projection, as I have just learned the ability from you being here, but to a world I cannot touch, scent, or taste. To show me what I cannot have, and likely never will.”

His eyes crinkled when they bowed with sadness. “Weldir... Almethrandra might have such capabilities.”

“Once more, there is no guarantee that she does, or that she will upon her waking, if she ever awakens. I have agreed to your request. Is there anything else I should know, any rules I must abide by?”

“So long as you abide by our morals, and don’t feed upon living beings with an evilness, Almethrandra will always welcome you. You may not see it, but she cries for you in her sleep.”

“I know.”

The memory was so real that when Weldir’s hold on it slipped, it shocked him into alertness. His subconscious twisted and tore apart.

Weakness tried to pull him under, like a human breathing in water and drowning underneath a wave right as their fingers were skimming the surface they’d been reaching for. He perceived the hold on his thoughts, his alertness popping like bubbles.

Until a new face, a much more recent one in the longevity of his life, reflected in a bubble.

Someone beautiful, whose brown eyes had flecks of golden amber, and long, dark, curling lashes. It was just a flicker, but her neck arched back, revealing the long column of brown skin. A breast tipped with a dark nipple arched into view.

Weldir’s mind exploded.

His vision spun one way and then the other.

The pieces of him that usually made up his solid, physical self were spread throughout his consciousness. His mist had expanded, thinning as it drifted and spread out from him. With a clench against his mana, he sucked it all inwards until he righted himself.

When he looked down at his hand, its silhouette warbled and jiggled, then eventually settled.

Before he could register anything else, Weldir knew, with absolute certainty, he was weak. His power had been stolen and siphoned.

Something is wrong.

He immaterialised and transported himself to Tenebris.

Shock struck him as he looked up, down, and then all around at his crumbling realm.

Tenebris was like the inside of a ball, with a sphere of permanent bright-blue sky in the very middle. Meadows, forests, and human cities rolled along the outside, and looped in on themselves.

Fragments had fallen. They hovered inwards towards the sky from every direction, as holes filled with glossy shadows littered everywhere.

The mountains in the distance, the trees, and even the blades of grass beneath him had a transparency to them.

Everything was dulled and see-through, letting darkness shift their colours.

Weldir quickly shot himself backwards to find the humans. They were asleep, but none of them were in motion. They weren’t alive, playing out their fondest memories with those connected to their fate threads. They were lifeless, their eyes hollow and cloudy.

Pressure pulled across his face and the tops of his ears, like their points had tipped back, as he scanned the slanted, breaking horizon. A hollowness filled his mind.

How did this happen? How long have I been asleep?

He waved his hand to reveal his own fate strings, all the different colours threaded with black, representing his own soul. Each colour reflected the base orb hue of each of his offspring, and one multicoloured string represented his mate.

He pulled on the only one that didn’t lead out of Tenebris and yanked himself forward.

All his questions were answered when he reached the other end.

Nathair lay on his back with his tail looped in multiple figure eights. With his fingers rigid, his hands unnaturally locked, his jaw open and pressing against his left shoulder, and his humanoid torso pulled so taut that it arched, he quaked upon the fading ground.

He seized quietly, almost lifelessly. His twitches were so minute that, maybe to a human’s eye, he may have been motionless. But Weldir could see them rippling beneath his black-and-rainbow glistening scales.

He has grown exponentially. Nathair had doubled in length, if not more, in his absence.

Although very few of his skeletal bones had sunk beneath his flesh, more had protruded along his longer and girthier tail.

His waist no longer narrowed in a starving, sickly way, but had thickened with meaty muscle, as had his bulging chest.

His fins had lengthened and currently twitched all down his sides to nearly the tip of his tail.

His usually orange orbs rotated with a kaleidoscope of colours, constantly shifting and never holding one for any length of time.

Lowering to one knee, Weldir waved his hand over his eldest son’s chest to look at his orange soul. Shards of white flaming glass had embedded themselves within his spirit.

They’ve burrowed deep, Weldir thought, turning his palm up and trying to call them out from within him. They weren’t new and shallow, like the last time Weldir had removed the remnants of the deceased souls Nathair had eaten.

While I was asleep, he must have gone into a rage and then rampaged through the nearby village. And the memories from the humans had incapacitated him until he was stuck in an ongoing seizure. No wonder my mana is so low.

He barely had enough to stay conscious.

A deity’s mana was created by the aura that surrounded their soul. The larger their aura, the thicker it was, the more they had to expend. If they ran out of it, they had the potential to go beyond their capabilities and begin using their essence, their very self, for power.

That is also how a god permanently lost an arm, an eye, or worse, extinguished themselves forever.

For Weldir, the second consumption of a soul feasted on his aura like a plague until he ceased using it. He considered it a penance, a punishment for violating another’s soul in immoral and unimaginable ways.

When Nathair consumed souls, the initial shatter of it left behind the human’s memory fragments – little shards of glass that refracted pieces of their life.

Once a soul shattered, it didn’t feast upon his offspring, but the power surrounding it: Weldir.

Nathair had no mana here in Tenebris to offer the souls.

They festered and fizzled with gigantic, yawning mouths, like a whale eating krill.

And a shattered soul gulped and gulped as it tried to put itself back together before slowly evaporating when it couldn’t stabilise itself.

Considering how deep these are, it’s evident it’s been an exceptionally long time... Nathair roared and twisted as the shards began to dislodge. He almost destroyed me.

My mist has receded. I can feel my reach on Earth is minimal. He looked up at his poor realm. Tenebris was close to dissolving. He was surprised he hadn’t woken to screaming.

Some of Rokul’s portals... don’t have my barriers on them. He checked to make sure Jabez’s did, and it was thankfully still in place, but half of the others had disappeared.

His power just hadn’t been able to maintain them.

Lindiwe will have to help me. She would need to fly to all those that were preventing Demons from returning to Nyl’theria, so he could lay down new mist. Once she showed him those locations and he could transport to his mana there, he could conjure new barriers. I must do so in person.

When Nathair gouged into his own neck, shredding his flesh and gills – and coincidentally his soul – apart, Weldir made tendrils form across his huge body. Nathair’s orbs, still shifting between colours, shattered as ethereal tears began to float around his serpent skull.

Weldir placed a hand over the side of Nathair’s brow bone and stroked it comfortingly. “I know it hurts, but I must get them out.”

The more the shards ripped through his soul on their exit, the more Nathair squirmed and fought. He wriggled on the ground, trying everything in his might to escape. He let out a scream that made Weldir pity him, but he couldn’t stop.

At the same time, he tried to heal Nathair’s soul of the damage he’d done to it. His wounds were deep, like skin had grown over splinters of glass that’d burrowed into muscle.

When the largest shards were gone, the flickering rainbow in his orbs slowed, but did not cease.

There must be more. Weldir started over, pulling out smaller shards; those were difficult even for him to see. He repeated the process, removing fragments while healing him at the same time – even at the cost of his low, dwindling mana.

When Nathair stopped quaking, but didn’t wake up, Weldir stopped and pulled his serpent skull to the side by one of his dark, hooked ram horns. He peered into white orbs.

I cannot see them, he thought hopelessly, as he waved his hands over his offspring’s unconscious form.

Deep within Nathair’s body, shards glittered in answer, but they were so tiny that Weldir couldn’t see them properly. He couldn’t even perceive them with his mana. It was like looking for a crystal of sugar in a sea of salt, no matter how much he tried to call them out of Nathair’s body.

“I’m sorry, but this is all I can do,” Weldir told him, placing his fingertips gently on the centre of his bony forehead. “Sleep. You have been awake for long enough.”

Nathair’s orbs blackened, and he went limp.

“I have failed you.” He’d let his offspring be harmed under his care.

Had he not already been deep in slumber when Nathair did this, Weldir may have been able to stop him. Regardless, he wore the blame.

He tipped his head back to look at the fracturing sky. Will Lindiwe be angry?

How many of her years had he missed? How many of their offspring had evolved?

I didn’t see what skull and horns she gave our last offspring.

And he didn’t have enough power – between keeping Tenebris in its current state, but stable, and saving Nathair – to remain awake any longer.

She will have to wait a little longer.