32 An Ethereal City

THE BUILDINGS LOOMED tall and dark, a forest of stone and mortar as far as the eye could see. There were no hills or forest, no mountains, no open plains. Just street after street in deep shadow as the twelve suns rose to scorch Lorn’s soul.

She hid inside the husk of a flat squat building with only four floors, desperate for a way out. He wasn’t far away. She could sense him, feel his presence like a dark storm building over the city. It wasn’t a real city she knew, though dark things dwelt there. She was in the ruins of Astra Dar’s soul, somehow having fallen through the cracks.

Disembodied or not, Lorn was terrified. She knew Lucifer would not give up his hunt. Without her, he could not bind all the souls together and enter the mortal realm. Of course, she had a feeling such an event would destroy the soul fragments, including her. Though she was already dead, she knew this time would mean oblivion.

‘I know you are here,’ came his hypnotic voice, deep and sonorous, sounding like he was right beside her. She jumped every time he spoke, searching for sign of him. Twice already, he’d found her, and twice she’d escaped.

‘I am sorry for this, truly,’ he said, though she still could not see where his voice was coming from. ‘If you will not come willingly, then I must force you anyway I can, even if it means tearing you to pieces. I don’t necessarily need you whole for this to work.’ A growling punctuated his threat. Several growls. The shape of something big passed by in the street outside, bounding like a dog.

It felt like she was holding her breath, waiting for her moment, but she was a soul. Still, the instincts were uncannily similar. It made her want to hang onto the existence she had. Mania had suggested she hung on so tight because a part of her hadn’t died, and if she wanted to, she could live again. She had thought the shraed was either insane or lying. Now, she wasn’t sure.

Her instinct to survive hadn’t changed a whit, and when she judged it just right, she rose and broke into a run. She leapt over crumbling walls, and outside into what passed for an alleyway. Instead of barging into a door, she reminded herself she was dead, and passed through it instead. As though it wasn’t there, or perhaps as though she wasn’t.

Either way, this soul business wasn’t bad. When she leapt high, she’d discovered she could float at a fast speed if she’d built up momentum.

The problem was that the huge dogs hunting her were also fast, and they didn’t obey any rules of the living any more than she did. Worse, they were better at it.

Jaws snapped at the spot she’d been just half a second before, thankfully chewing nothing but air. Not that there was any air.

She leapt and twisted so she ran up a wall at an angle, her feet barely touching the surface. She somersaulted, just as the beast reached her, and flipped over it to land behind it.

The creature was massive and muscular, the essence of night made whole, its eyes vacant sockets and soulless. The teeth held her attention the most, and the shimmer of those jagged weapons reminded her of soul shards. With horror, she realised that was what they must be, designed to wound, capture, or even destroy a shraed, but they’d work just as well on a soul like her. All this in the mere second that it took to take it all in, and she turned to flee again.

Another growl behind her and another to her left, and then her right. The beasts had her cornered, but she knew she could not have outrun them forever. The seconds passed, but the creatures did not move. She wanted to draw her daggers, to fight rather than cower, but she did not reach for them. It would not have mattered, and if there was one thing Lorn had learned in all the young years of her former life, it was to bide her time for the right moment. Then strike.

A dark willowy figure strode into view.

Lucifer.

Tall, clothed in black and silver, he wore a deep hood. There was nothing but inky blackness and a swirl of magic within. He moved in an odd fashion, nothing like a human or anything Lorn had ever known. His limbs flowed, all his movements reminding her of the wind or of water.

‘You have proven yourself, Miss Larthuz, as a strong soul. You have fought me at every turn, evaded me always when I am just within reach, so close I can taste you. I’ve enjoyed the hunt more than you know.’

Within a living person’s heartbeat, he was beside her, touching her hair, the stale breath of oblivion on her neck.

‘I will never stop opposing you, Tartaros.’

‘Ah, but you are supposing that you have a choice in this. I am afraid, my dear Lorn, you are terribly mistaken.’ His breath touched her ear and she felt a deep chill filling her. Then to her horror, she discovered she couldn’t move.

‘Hope is a warping of reality, for the only thing that is real is oblivion. It is the one and final truth. You cling to hope, but it is a fabrication of the mortal mind. A conceit to make yourself feel better.’

A dark weave began to climb her body towards her neck, binding her as though made of ropes. ‘You have heard of oblivion chains,’ he hissed, circling her like a vulture waiting for its meal to die. ‘These are soul chains, and they are far more potent. You will not escape again, Lorn Larthuz. You are mine for the taking.’

She attempted to twist her way free—to remember she was a soul and not a physical being, but nothing worked. She might as well have been a living person, and the chains made of iron, for all the difference it made.

Then she remembered the daggers strapped to her legs. The fingers of her right hand were closest to the hilt of one of them. A hair’s breadth between them, but it might as well have been several feet for all the movement she could get out of her arm.

Lucifer saw her attempting to struggle and he laughed, enjoying her misery. ‘Again, with the hope. Will you never learn? Still, it is such an anticlimactic moment is it not?’ He touched her cheek with an overly long finger, and a nail half as long again, sharpened to a dark point. It scraped her cheek as though she was made of flesh, but then Lucifer wasn’t human or alive.

He turned away, humming to himself, and the dog-like beasts lay down to watch. Seeing them properly, they were like him, manifestations of the Darkness, of Tartaros. What’s more, she realised, they were shraeds, perhaps several dozen to each beast.

But Lorn noticed something else, and smiled.

Lucifer turned and his humming ceased. ‘What are you grinning at?’ He approached her at speed and grabbed her throat, squeezing as though breath was important to her. ‘You should not be smiling! Did you not hear my words about hope? What is wrong with you?’

Lorn could just see over his shoulder, enough to know she wasn’t alone. One of the beasts had two heads, and it was bigger than the others. Also, unlike the others, it had not lain down, but it stood watching with all four eyes fixed on Lucifer.

Cerberus snarled, and then attacked.

‡

The beasts of Lucifer and the prince himself were taken off guard by the unexpected assault, but it wasn’t enough.

Cerberus had lunged for Lucifer, both jaws opening wide to reveal huge dagger-like teeth and a yawning darkness beyond. Its massive bulk should have crushed the prince, but two of his loyal beasts intervened. One placed itself between Lucifer and his assailant, and Cerberus bit into its flank instead. With a shriek, it dissolved into nothing, with a lone shraed managing to escape. The other slammed into the flank of the two-headed gorgon forcing it from its target. Lucifer had vanished and reappeared elsewhere, and by now the other beasts had joined the fray.

Lorn managed to touch the tip of her dagger’s hilt, straining as Lucifer remained distracted. It seemed he had his limits after all, as her fingers managed to gain greater purchase. Her efforts hurt, as the soul chains bit deeper but she fought past the pain, telling herself it wasn’t real. She was a soul, and pain was for the living.

Then she was gripping the hilt. The battle was ferocious and twice she was near flattened by a beast hurled from Cerberus’ twin jaws. She managed to draw the dagger, exposing the hilt, and it severed her bonds. No ordinary blade of course, but a powerful soul-shard because she decided it was. Thanks for the tip, Mania, and the rescue. Both of you.

A shimmer of air and another figure appeared. This one had dark wings and a darker frown. The angel Adal, whom she’d once met, swung a sword far too large to be real. It cut one of Lucifer’s beasts in half, and then decapitated another. Cerberus destroyed the last of them.

The battle ended with Adal, Lorn, Manic and Mania all standing there staring at one another.

‘Where is he?’ hissed Manic, scanning the interior.

‘Gone,’ said his sister. ‘Fled like the coward he is.’

‘Foiled,’ Manic spat.

‘Tricked.’

‘Interrupted,’ finished the male renegade shraed with a black glare for the angel.

Adal’s sword had vanished, as though it had been made of light, and was now hidden behind clouds. There was a bright penumbra surrounding him. His wings fanned and then settled behind him, until they too weren’t there. ‘You are welcome,’ he said with a smile for the infamous duo. ‘It seems I got here just in time. You looked like you were in a difficult spot. Don’t worry, there is no need to thank me.’

Mania snorted, and Manic had the temerity to spit. Then again, angels and shraeds weren’t meant to get along, which is why Lorn found this convergence interesting.

Adal turned his attention to her, glancing at the daggers in her hands. ‘I see your abilities have grown. I am glad, although I was never going to let you depend on just a pair of manifested daggers.’

‘I had it all under control,’ she said without thinking, and the Shadow Twins nodded in approval.

Adal appeared unfazed as he looked at her with fondness. ‘You are a survivor, Lorn, but you are also much more.’

‘I don’t understand what is happening.’ She sheathed her daggers, feeling exhausted although she knew she shouldn’t have felt anything. I’m dead, after all.

As Adal approached her, Manic made a face behind his back, and then began searching about as though Lucifer was hiding somewhere. Mania folded her arms staring at the angel.

Adal took both of Lorn’s hands in his. ‘Wrongs must be righted, but not before the right are wronged. I took too much from Threadfin, more than he had to give, and I have since vowed to put it right. In fact, I cannot remain with you long. This place is trying to reject my presence. Eventually, it will succeed. Besides, the battle for your world’s existence is underway.’

Threadfin? It seemed an age since she’d thought of him, but now his name brought back memories and pain. ‘I’m dead, so what has that war got to do with me?’ she asked, her voice barely a whisper.

‘Everything.’

Mania snorted and Adal turned to face her. ‘You have your fingers in every pie,’ the shraed snapped at him. ‘Angels are meddlesome creatures,’ she added with a glance for Lorn, ‘when they are not outright indifferent. You would do well to be wary of this one, my dear.’

‘I trust him,’ said Lorn before she knew she’d spoken. It was an instinctive reaction, and she realised it was the truth.

‘We do not,’ Manic snapped. ‘On principle.’

‘We like our principles,’ said his sister.

‘And our scruples.’

‘We have an arrangement,’ Adal said, his voice taking on a sterner tone. ‘You would both do well to abide by it. You know the penalty for breaking an agreement with me.’

Mania assumed a hurt look, which Lorn was all too familiar with. ‘Don’t worry, we do not renege on our deals so long as you keep your side of it.’

Lorn couldn’t stand it any longer. ‘What is going on? What deal have you three concocted?’

Adal looked grim. ‘An agreement to end this war, to save what remains of the Spectrum.’ It was a vague answer, which told her next to nothing. Somehow, she suspected any deal made with those two had to have a down side.

Manic looked sly and Mania was smiling. ‘Yes, an agreement, which will see our goal achieved once and for all time.’

‘And that would be ...?’ It need not have been said that Lorn found that notion far from comforting. Any goal those two had couldn’t bode well for everyone else.

Mania’s smile took on a sinister cast. ‘Ah, my dear child, in time you will see. In time, all will be as it should be. For you, and for us.’