Page 60 of To Free a Soul (Duskwalker Beginnings #2)

“I will return shortly.” Weldir retreated to his realm so he could speak privately with his mate. “Merikh has requested that he be brought to my realm.”

He conjured up her viewing disc as he spoke and found her kneeling next to the riverbed with small chunks of mud-covered gold. While she cleaned them in the water, her lips pulled tight. “If that’s what he wants. But can you do it?”

“Yes, however...” Weldir paused, hesitant about his next words. “It would require the use of a portal, or two.”

She stopped and lifted her head. “But that would mean...”

“Yes. It is likely I will have to sleep in order to regain what I have lost. I know I don’t have much power to spare, but this has the potential to open an avenue for you.”

She brought her hands together to fiddle with the nugget she’d been cleaning and looked down at it. With her hair tied back, it allowed him to watch anxiety cut across her features.

“What if you don’t come back for a long time again... or at all?” she murmured quietly.

“I can block Nathair from going beyond a border I set, and this would only be temporary. I’ll attempt to lessen the damage so as to not be absent for too long. Possibly a few months.”

“You said that last time.”

“I don’t have to do this,” he offered.

Her thumbnail picked at a particularly sharp ridge. “No. Do it. Thank you for asking me, but you’re right.”

He returned to Merikh and then tried something new. I know my mana and mist cannot pass through their wards... But could he ? To test this, he floated forward and unexpectedly passed through Merikh’s dome. So it’s only my mana? What he was now was a fragment and a projection of his soul.

“Lindiwe is now aware.”

Merikh grunted at his voice and how it had gone from in front of him to his side. He leaned forward, as if the proximity might help him see Weldir, which it wouldn’t.

Weldir opened his mouth and shoved his hand and then arm into it until he knew his fist was within Tenebris. He called a soul at random to his fingers and pulled until it passed through his fangs.

Merikh’s orbs morphed from red to dark yellow, and he tilted his head at it floating above Weldir’s hand.

Surprised, he asked, “You can see it?”

“Yes,” Merikh responded gruffly. “Why is it white?”

“All souls that are deceased are white. They lack their normal, healthy colouring, completely sapped of life.”

Using his thumb claws, Weldir tore it in two and called a portal to form out of the chaotic energy that burst to life. He then quickly ushered Merikh through.

The moment he joined the bear-skulled Mavka in his darkness, he decided to close it. Keeping a portal open drained his mana fast, and he’d prefer to safely calculate the loss of two souls, rather than the potential unknown of Merikh’s time here with just one.

“This is your realm?” he asked, waving his arms and kicking his legs in the unfamiliar weightlessness. “It’s empty.”

“It is.”

Merikh stopped moving and looked directly at him now that he could be seen. The dark yellow in his orbs deepened, and he drifted his snout down and then back up.

“You really are a being of shadows.”

Weldir opened his arms and shrugged.

“I am what I am.” He shrank Merikh, whose head reared back at Weldir growing. “I cannot touch your physical body, but I can touch your soul. Like I said, I will have to swallow you.”

Merikh belted out a yell when Weldir picked his soul up by the nape of his neck and lifted him.

“Wait, fuck.” He pushed at the air in panic. “Won’t that hurt? I’m covered in fucking quills!”

“I don’t feel pain.”

Opening his maw, although doubtful that Merikh could tell with how little there was to truly see of him, he placed his most aggravating and arrogant offspring upon his tongue. He swallowed him whole, and the Mavka roared the whole way down.

Once Merikh was past the point of no return and had fallen into the vast space of his stomach, Weldir yanked on their soul tethers.

He came to Merikh’s side as he fell, legs kicking as the ground rushed closer.

Weldir observed his body to make sure his life force wasn’t being eaten at the same time.

He’d made sure he had a good hold of Merikh’s soul tether in preparation, but there was no need.

“Shit!” Merikh shouted, before he stopped mid-fall barely a few centimetres from the ground. Weldir softly let him down, and Merikh bounced to his feet and spun around until he found him. With claws at the ready, he swiped to grab Weldir’s throat while shouting, “You gave me no warning!”

He grabbed air, then looked down at his palm. Then he swiped the claws of both hands through Weldir and his mist, and his growls grew infuriated.

Weldir watched with abject boredom, waiting for him to get whatever fury out of his system.

Something became apparent when Merikh tried to strike at his face. Weldir threw up his arm so Merikh would stop. He shifted closer to his hand and noticed tiny pinpricks of red had formed at the ends of his claws.

“You’re dying,” he stated. “It’s slow, but I’m consuming your soul. You’re transcending over to my afterworld.”

Merikh looked at his claw tips. “It’s red?”

“Yes. Your orb colour reflects your soul, and it encompasses your entire body.”

This brought on a list of questions. Is it him or the size of his soul that is slowing the process? Does that mean I can bring Lindiwe here? He’d like her to see Tenebris.

No. I don’t want to risk completely killing her, as she’s human.

“How long will it take?” Merikh huffed out.

“I’m unsure.”

“This is your realm?” Merikh lowered his hands to look around. “It still looks so dark and haunted.”

“Haunted?” Weldir surveyed their surroundings, and the bright sunshine that cascaded over everything. “What is it you see?”

“White mist and low light, like we’re in a spooky, cold forest.”

“Hmm. Interesting. It appears you can’t see Tenebris at its full capability, as you aren’t dead. It’s actually a world that would reflect Earth, if it were perpetually day all the time and remained untouched by Demons.”

Merikh grunted. “You tried to create a haven? Of death ?” He dropped his head to the side with a sigh. “That is all I wanted to know, and I’d rather leave before I’m permanently stuck here.”

Weldir considered telling him that his sibling was here, but he knew the answer almost immediately. Nathair cannot respond right now, and I don’t think it will do Merikh any favours to learn that he’s technically alive here, and suffering.

That could deepen his guilt and loathing.

One day he will learn of it, but not now.

“This time, should I give you warning?” Weldir stated with the mildest hint of humour.

Merikh refused to pull his sight from the world. “Actually, before I go, I have one final question.” His fingers twitched, and then he rubbed the pad of his thumb against his claw tips. “How does a Mavka die? What is our weakness?”

“Depends on what you wish to do with that information,” Weldir answered plainly.

Merikh tilted his head to the side, but didn’t stop pointing his snout towards the horizon.

“I understand now why she didn’t tell me.

I likely would have told Jabez, and he would’ve used that information against Orpheus, or even myself.

” His orbs flickered with blue, and he grunted before they flared with red in a rather unnatural way, as if he focused on the stabilisation of his emotions.

“I deserve to know. The feline-skulled Mavka has grown interested in my presence, and it annoys me. He’s so fucking curious, and he will not let me be, and I am.

..” Merikh regarded his deadly claws again, his fingers shaking, before curling them into fists.

“I’m angry. All the time. I don’t want to be the reason another of our kind dies. ”

His orbs morphed to orange, and they held that colour. Actually, they deepened the longer they were here.

“Your skulls aren’t as indestructible as you believe,” Weldir eventually answered. “It may take overwhelming strength, perhaps only that of another Mavka, but if broken... that is the end.”

His voice was small, low, and it didn’t match his usually boisterous and confident personality when he asked, “He’s here, isn’t he?”

“Yes.”

Merikh grunted and turned to him. “I’m done. Take me back to Earth.”

“You don’t wish to see him?” Weldir asked, truly curious.

His orbs flickered between blue and orange, highlighting the way guilt and sadness warred inside him. “No.”

Weldir didn’t try to convince him otherwise, nor press him further as to why. He took his offspring from Tenebris as he’d asked.

I was right not to tell him of Nathair’s condition. If this was how Merikh felt – that he could have empathy for his own siblings – then knowing that Nathair was suffering would only deepen his hurt.

It’s not his fault. They didn’t know.