You shouldn’t have.

Akamori stared at the sealed bulkhead, doing his best to both breath through his mouth and his nose and neither at the same time. The air was rancid and foul and there was just no avoiding it. He gave his escort an uncertain glance. Whatever it was they were waiting for sure was taking its sweet time. That was the thing about prophecies and destiny that he hated the most.

The lack of accuracy. Or maybe punctuality was the issue here. Was he too early? Or was it running behind? He never knew with these things. The best he could manage was hanging on as things went from calm to shit storm in nothing flat.

For the first time in ever, on cue, the door groaned and cracked open before revealing a stunned-looking hatchling. The light spilling in from behind it was dim, but still enough to blind him. Squinting while his eyes adjusted, he realized this was the hatchling from Eryn. The pair of his team had been hunting and unsuccessful in stopping. Worse, she was holding the Captain and Amara’s enchanted tome. Rosie? Ross? Rozzzzz something.

Thanaton swished up, cutting the air, and the hatchlings hand off at the wrist so swiftly that Rozien actually started falling before the book caught itself magically. Akamori snatched it out of the air.

“For me? You shouldn’t have.” He said with venom in his voice.

The weaver hatchling shrieked in pain, clutching the wounded stump. Akamori spun, kicking her square in the jaw and hurling her across the hangar area. Tua, the warrior hatchling, grinned and readied for a fight. Eager anticipation in her eyes. She had an impressive set of armor but lacked a helmet.

“HUMAN! I’ve been waiting for this moment. I will enjoy devouring every morsel of sinew from your bones!”

“You should really invest in a helmet. It would keep folks from having to see that ugly mug of yours.” Akamori retorted.

He darting out of the corridor and into the greater hangar area, finally realizing he’d been inside the ship the Captain sent Amara looking for. Tua’s blade sliced an arc through the air in front of his face, missing the bridge of his nose by a hair. His own blade swished up to meet Tua’s. Sparks flying from the clash.

The two warriors traded several blows as each felt the other out. Tua then grinned at Akamori, the look of a cat playing with a mouse. Tua’s tail jerked him out of position and hurled towards the deck. He slammed into the murky black goo and slid into a cargo container. He saw Nathan down, still fighting the soul paralysis.

She raced in to spear him to the deck, but pulled up short at the last moment when he slashed the air. A vicious looking red ethereal scythe bisected the air in front of her. It missed her by bare milimeters. Tua bared her teeth at Akamori as he got himself upright and glared at her.

“ Show her what we really are. ” Frank said in a low growl next to Akamori.

Thanaton thrummed eagerly in his hand. Akamori burned up some of his AP to accrue the charge to his other gauges and triggered his Reaper transformation early. The eruption of void magic boiled away the black goo around him. An ethereal shrieking noise rippled out at the edge of the hearing. Was the blood sentient?

His eyes locked with Tua who balked at the baleful red glow coming from his eyes. Then she grinned eagerly at the challenge. “Show me power void tainted, warrior.”

“My name.” He said in two voices. His own, and Frank’s in perfect unison. “Is Akamori. And I am a Reaper.” Deep down, he felt the soul of Bahumet stir in agitation and excitement against the wards that held him back. Black crystal grew along Thanaton’s blade, turning the long nodachi spell blade into a long scythe of void crystal.

Tua looked on with genuine interest, “Hooo.” she crooned with interest. “I’ve never met a being who fully merged with a voidsent. You merged with a soul echo? An interesting pact indeed. Your bonding clearly wasn’t a chance occurrence. Father would have many questions for you, and will get his answers when I’ve beaten you into submission.”

Akamori gave Thanaton an experimental twirl. The menacing scythe left a carved a shadow in reality that hurt to look at. Tua surged forward, her sword skillfully probing Akamori’s defenses. The cloak clad reaper casually blocked and parried her attempts as he studied her form and took her measure. He could feel Frank’s contempt to Tua for what amounted to seeing an inferior swordsman riding on her physical prowess and some cheap magical trinkets.

Their weapons banged against each other again and again. However, as they fought, Tua continually frustrated Akamori’s attempts to end the bout. Either by guile or skill. Every time he thought he was about to close the match, Tua turned the situation to her advantage. It was like she was playing a long game of Darstrix and he wasn’t able to box her in.

Eventually, his Aether and Soul gauges depleted, his Reaper transformation reverted, and he returned to his human form. Frank’s ethereal form ejected from his body, growling in frustration as Tua shattered the void glass of Thanaton’s scythe with a wicked blow, spun, and then rammed her blade into Akamori’s stomach. He coughed, blood splattering Tua’s armor as the female hatchling grinned down at him. Her fetid breath almost making him gag, his stomach muscles twisted around her blade and white hot pain reverberated through his body like a struck bell.

“You put up a good effort but you are ultimately still just prey.” Tua said in a hushed voice just above a whisper. She wrapped a massive arm around his shoulders, pulling into her deathly embrace. He really missed his own armor. Hell, even having potions about now would be nice. In that instance he felt something ripple through his memory. Hravesvalgyr’s words.

To face what comes next, you must embody that which makes air. Agile, adaptive, powerful. To conquer your enemy, you must become air.

They banged through his mind with all the subtlety of a cannon. Become air. Ok. He could do that. He hoped.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

With the last of his magic, he channeled the aether through his money. Disentangling himself from his phsyical shell and transforming into a formless cloud. It was white at first, but the void tainting his soul darkened the air, turning it into a storm. Tua snapped her jaws as she grasped at the massless cloud feebly. The clouds continued to darken until they crackled. A peel of thunder rumbled across the deck, and then the storm erupted into lavender bolts of lightning that latched onto Tua.

The female hatchling shrieked and clawed, desperately trying to rid herself of the living void lightning. Scales boiled and singed as the living energy carved furrows into her armor and flesh alike, seeking purchase, but her physical resilience was strong. Not strong enough to protect her from what came next, though. The lightning, sensing the futility of trying to burrow through her armored surface, sought natural openings and poured into her mouth, her nose, ears, and eyes. Boiling away all the soft tissue and filling the air with the acrid stench of burned meat.

Her body seized and spasmed as the void lightning raced throughout her body. Cooking her from the inside out. Passing through her breast, he could sense the soul of Tua, and deep within the recesses of the body, a malnourished soul, bound up in so many wards. The natural soul of the body, he thought. As Tua’s body expired, and it ejected her soul from the body, the wards containing the smaller soul broke down. It fluttered free, echoing a muted thanks for setting it free back to the cycle.

Now only twitching occasionally, Tua’s body lunged as the void lightning erupted from her mouth, reforming into Akamori who stood revitalized and steaming hot. He called Thanaton to his hand, flicked the blade clean and re-sheathed it. Rozien flew free of his blue and gold trimmed tunic.

“My thanks for the rescue. That was rather close for a moment. I thought she’d killed you.” Rozien said.

He shrugged. “Yeah, got a little closer than I’d like.” He glanced around for the other one but didn’t see her. She must have fled, most likely. A stifled groan issued from Yasiin and someone in brown leather clothes. Akamori trotted over, with Rozien following him. He got everyone back on their feet slowly. Amara scooped Rozien up out of the air and hugged the enchanted tome.

“I’m so glad you’re ok. I was afraid they’d bound you or something.”

“Those two amateurs? Nah. Too weak. Their father maybe. So. We found the ship. In what smells like a sewer.”

“Yeah.” Akamori said. Thalara’s words still haunting him. He wasn’t sure he wanted to bring up what it was yet. They had enough problems. He didn’t want to add to them just yet. “We should get the ship back to the captain.”

“She’ll need it.” Rozien said glumly.

“What happened?” Akamori asked.

“As is now apparent, the Sauridius attacked the crew seeking myself for the Theferris. In a rare twist, they spared. But I suspect that will not remain for long. We should return with haste.”

Amara studied Akamori for a moment and nodded approvingly. “You’ve grown stronger. Your father would be quite proud.”

They all hustled to head back in side pausing briefly at Thalara who whimpered on the deck, the black slime slowly reclaiming her.

“We have to stop this and clear some of it out.”

“I can do that.” Rozien said.

“Yeah? How?” Amara asked.

“I have several spells stored. And I can also store anymore given to me. I also have my own AP. Lots of it. Watch.”

Rozien spoke a soft incantation, and a sphere of fire billowed out, burning away all the surrounding slime. Thalara screamed in pain, as if being separated from the blood caused her actual injury. Then the survivor fell silent, fallen into unconsciousness. Amara cast a sleep ward on her.

“For good measure.” She said. The others nodded, agreeing with her.

“Maybe the healers on Eryn can cleanse her. At least this way she won’t hurt anyone or herself.”

The trek to the ship’s control center took a little longer than normal on account of Rozien’s burning sphere spell. They burned a path straight to it. Again, Akamori missed having armor to protect his ole factory senses. He glanced down at his arm at the black bracer. Blue and white runes glowed softly. The complexity was so deep he couldn’t make heads or tails of it.

“Something on your mind?” Amara asked as they strode within the protective photosphere of the portable sun that Rozien created.

He waved the bracer to her casually. “Yeah, this black armor stuff that Kusinaki gave me. When I touched Anazi’s mind, she bound it.” After the words left his mouth, he blinked. Mentally he’d said Hravesvalgyr’s true name, and yet, it came out as Anazi. Some kind of compulsion spell to alter the truth?

Amara frowned, admiring the rune work on the wards. “She must not have liked it to have warded it so heavily. I don’t even think a ritual run by demigods or true gods would undo that.”

“Great,” Akamori muttered. “That’ll at least give Kusinaki something to chew on.”

Finally, the last of the bridge revealed itself. Without the black goop covering everything, they could see the pearl white deck plating. The polished gold accenting. The refined artistic feel to it all gave the ship more of a religious college vibe than a warship. He arched a brow, glancing around at the heraldry.

“Are we sure this is the ship?”

“Quite sure.” The guy in the brown coat finally spoke up.

Akamori pointed to him uncertainly. “And you are?”

“Nathan. Professor Nathan Ford. I’m a magical archeologist and professor from the Brotherhood of Man.”

None of those were words that Akamori expected strung together in a sentence, leaving him only able to nod in response. “Well, alright then. Let’s see what we can figure out.”

‎