Page 59 of To Free a Soul (Duskwalker Beginnings #2)

A time unknown, but an unexpected meeting

Staring out over the horizon of Tenebris, Weldir was satisfied with the state of his realm.

It had taken numerous years with his low, easily diminished mana stores, but it was finally as glorious as it had once been. This took too long. What year did Lindiwe say it is? Nineteen-seventeen? That meant it’d been eighteen years since he’d woken.

The process had taken longer due to the number of newly consumed souls without homes, all of whom had just been floating around in an unconscious state. New towns, new structures, and new terrain had been formed, which delayed this tranquil view.

His mist’s reach on Earth was nowhere near what it had once been. He’d barely made a dent in it, in that regard.

Sitting on the flat area right outside his cave of memories, he could just see the edge of a small lake. Nathair is doing well, despite his changes. Weldir had released the spell on him a few years ago, uncomfortable with the idea of having his offspring in a prolonged sleep state.

He’d also missed the serpent Mavka’s antics, his humour, and good-natured fun. But it hadn’t been a pleasant greeting.

I originally put him to sleep so he couldn’t consume more souls and weaken me when I was already feeble, but... Weldir sighed as he pulled his gaze away from the sobering direction to look at the curved horizon. I didn’t know his mind had been corrupted.

Human memories plagued and tortured him. It was too long. Nathair had been living with those human soul fragments for too many years, and they’d shattered bit by bit, leaving behind pieces he just could not remove, no matter how he tried.

Had I stopped him... had I healed him before they burrowed so deeply, I could have extracted them all. Weldir’s absence had done far more damage than he’d realised, and both his mate and offspring had borne the burden of that.

There was little he could do to change the past. He just tried to help his offspring adjust and deal with the intense slips of lucidity. Currently, Weldir knew he lay awake but dazed, his body contorted, as his orbs shifted colour depending on the context of the fragment that had yanked him under.

I’d hoped to converse with him now, since his humanity has increased exponentially. But Nathair had lost his voice, and when Weldir looked at the shards of glitter, they were the worst around his skull, throat, and chest. All locations that were close to that big maw of his.

Hopefully this is only temporary. If not, they’d have to figure out a new way to communicate. Humans have sign languages that vary from culture and country.

Just as he mused on how and where to start, a voice called out to him. One that was familiar but had never uttered his name.

A flick of his mind brought up a scrying disc, although limited in its view from outside a ward of magic, and a bear-skulled Mavka stood within it.

His strong, meaty arms were folded across his muscular chest, and he tapped a semi-humanoid, pawed foot on the ground.

His red orbs were crimson, and a little darker than their normal hue.

Merikh had the hide to look disgruntled when he called out to Weldir.

He stood inside his red protection ward, wearing a set of black knee-high breeches. A simple, sleeveless brown garment covered his chest and was tied in a way to avoid his back quills.

With another flick of his mind, another disc formed of his mate. Crouched within a river, she was searching for nuggets of gold again, so he could reshape them into the coins she wanted for use as money. It was a rather ingenious idea of hers, and one she’d discovered over a century ago.

She had a funny aversion to stealing from humans.

“Lindiwe,” Weldir called.

“Yes, Weldir?” she answered without missing a beat, pulling a small pebble from the water. She cleaned it of sediment, found a white stone, and then tossed it behind her.

“Merikh has called out to me.”

Her head perked up at that, making one of her double braids slip over her shoulder. “What? Why?”

“I have yet to find out.” He looked between the two discs, then let his eyes linger on Merikh. “Do you wish to be there when I speak with him?”

Her head lifted to the opposite riverbank, and her lips pursed in thought. Her gaze fell, and there was deep, unshakable, and dispirited pain in her eyes.

“No,” she answered in a small voice. “I think it’s best if I don’t.

” She shoved both her hands into the water and began turning over the riverbed’s sediment.

“I’ll only make matters worse. It’s obvious he hates me, so if there’s a potential for you to form a relationship with him, I don’t want to be a hindrance by being there. ”

She has stepped away from all our offspring. Lindiwe wasn’t as involved as she once had been.

None of them liked her presence, and she’d worked out that it had something to do with her magic. Her scent-cloaking spell, the one that protected her from being hunted, was the one they disliked the most.

But he thought it was deeper than that.

She’d been with them through every beginning stage of their lives and pestered them when they wanted to be left alone. She had good intentions. Without her teaching them, they wouldn’t be as knowledgeable about the world or able to have coherent conversations.

But it’d annoyed them.

Lindiwe had also learned that in the twenty-five years she couldn’t travel due to missing her arm, they didn’t actually need her. He’d seen the deflated way her shoulders had fallen, the dejected anguish in her gaze, how she’d looked off into his void as she’d spoken about it.

It’d been a while since she’d visited any of them, and she focused all her time on wandering the world in search of untainted souls for him.

That, and playing their fun little game where her hand went diving into naughty places and he tried catching her doing so.

“Weldir!” Merikh growled it this time, his arms tightening across his broad chest. “Fucking Jabez. He told me saying your name would fucking bring you here. Now I just feel like a dickhead shouting into the Veil.”

“As you wish,” he said to her, before pulling himself from his realm and into his mist within the Veil. “You called?” Weldir greeted, causing his offspring to halt his retreat.

Merikh drifted his bear skull to the side to look over his shoulder. “So it does work?”

“Indeed. A deity’s true name is a link to their conscience. It’s why we don’t often share it with mortals.” It’s why his mother was known as the Gilded Maiden, otherwise she’d be pestered by thousands of Elysian Elves.

Merikh turned around and drifted his scarred snout one way and then the other. The claw marks across his snout were likely due to the altercation he’d had with Jabez years ago when their friendship had ended abruptly, and probably violently.

“Where are you?” Merikh asked, once more folding his arms in a way that could only be described as defensive. “I refuse to talk to the air.”

“I’m on the other side of your ward. I’m incapable of being seen or interacting with this world. This is all you will get.”

That wasn’t true, but complicating it by consuming a soul to the point of destruction was unwarranted.

“I wanted to speak with you, learn who my father creator is. See what you look like, sound like, what your realm looks like and why you hide in it constantly.”

“Hiding is a strong word, and wildly inaccurate. There is little reason for me to be present on Earth when there is nothing I can do on it. I cannot even shake the tree behind me or enter your territory through your ward. I am limited to my mist and where it can reach. What point is there in attempting to interact with a world that can do little more than hear me?”

“Fair enough. I was told your power was limited. Does this mean it’s impossible for me to go to your realm?”

“No,” Weldir stated honestly, but...

In order for me to do that, I will have to create a portal. Weldir already knew he couldn’t pull his offspring to him like he could Lindiwe. He looked down at his hands and collected the physical parts of him to them until both formed – and nothing more. Can I handle such a thing right now?

He closed them and brought his attention back to Merikh. This may be my only opportunity to heal some of the broken bond between him and Lindiwe. By giving him what he sought, would that soften Merikh’s ire towards them?

“Then take me there. I want to know what is within your so-called void.”

“It’s not that simple. I can take you to the outer edge of my realm, but if it’s Tenebris itself you seek, I will have to consume you, and it could kill you. You may become stuck there.”

“So you have no idea? What if you don’t kill me?”

“That is a possibility, but are you sure you would want to risk that?”

Merikh tilted his head and grunted, cupping the end of his snout as his chest expanded and decompressed on measured breaths. “Would you be able to remove me if it appears you are about to consume me?”

“I can try, that is all.” Perhaps I can pull him from me if he’s at risk of completely transcending to the afterworld.

Merikh shrugged, then loosened his folded arms and rested his hands on his narrow hips. “I have very little fear of dying, and I want to see where my creator comes from. Where I am from, in the most abstract sense.”

“You’ve surprised me, Merikh,” Weldir freely admitted.

“One thing I’ve learned at Jabez’s side is that knowledge is power, as much as is fear.” His tail swished, and the tuft of black fur at the end fluttered through a sunbeam. “I want answers, and those answers may help my endeavours.”

“And what endeavours are those?”

Merikh’s orbs reddened at Weldir’s prying, and his silence told him he’d learn nothing of his offspring’s goal.

“If this is really what you request, then I’ll have to confer with Lindiwe before agreeing.”

Merikh parted his fangs and snapped at the air irritably. “What does she have to do with this?”