“What?” Rory exclaimed. Then he was concerned. “No no. I probably messed up the connection somewhere. I said—”

“I heard what you sssaid. I have seen who you are and believe you will be like no other. I will be your partner… if you agree.”

Feelings followed the words that time. Rory hesitated again. His… instinct? Soul maybe?… told him she was being truthful. The connection was just so… intimate. She was confident but scared. Sad but excited.

“You’re sure? This can’t be undone according to my ghost,” Rory sent back. Then he flushed with embarrassment. She probably didn’t have a clue what he had just said. How would she know what a ghost was?

He was about to explain again when humor came through followed by assurance and he heard, “I am. Even more so now. Tell him I agree.”

Rory blinked as he returned to the real world and pulled back his hand. Rubbing his fingers together, he was surprised to find it clean and not the least bit wet or slimy.

He looked at the egg for a few moments.

Was that real? It felt real.

He turned to look at Lucifer and was shocked. He was definitely not well. His glistening black scales were turning gray and dull, his red eyes were darkening, and he was half the size as he had been when he had fought down in the vault.

“Lucifer!” Rory ran the few steps to him and put his hand on the snake’s head, now fully in reach.

Lucifer’s weak voice said, “I am dying and thus passsssing the last of my life to my sssissster as I did to you before her. Make it so you can create a bond, then you must do it. Please hurry. Send your ice into her or she will not fully awaken and my sacrifice would have been for nothing.”

Rory thought that maybe if he was fast enough, Lucifer would have enough life left to heal. He was amazingly strong after all.

Focusing on his Soul Power, Rory brought himself to the golden cloud that was Soul Bond (0/250). Still scared it wouldn’t work, he mentally directed a single vessel to flow into that thin cloud. The cube fell in and dissolved and the cloud flared for a moment like lightning flashed inside. Looking again, he saw it said, Soul Bond (1/250).

It worked! Vessels work!

In excitement and fear, he started shoving all of his vessels at the cloud. It slowly absorbed the energy with flashes and the cloud thickened more and more with each one. Soon it was like a normal cloud in a sky he used to see when he had lived on a world with a blue sky and a glowing sun.

Rory wasn’t even aware when the two hundred fiftieth vessel entered. He only found out because when he attempted to add another it was rejected. Just then the cloud, now an undulating storm of glowing gold, gave off and explosive burst many times brighter than all the others combined. Rory watched, shocked, as it exploded outward leaving a pulsing golden orb in its place.

He felt his commo alert him to an update and he checked it to make sure.

Soul Summary:

Available/Used Vessels (Gathered): 1/0

Available/Used Vessels (Granted): 18/250

| Wielder |

| Construct {Unknown} |

| Soul |

Soul Bond (250/250)

Active Bond (0/1)

Soul Control (0/1)

Seeing that it worked, Rory patted the even more gray and dying Lucifer, hurriedly put both hands onto the egg, and pushed with his mind.

His inscriptions flared to life with the bright blue of ice and the black smoke swirling around inside. He realized the black represented death.

It’s true. It’s all true. Then firming his resolve, he thought, Right. Let's do this.

“Okay, Lucifer, here I go. Hang in there.” Rory tried to sound reassuring, but he heard his own voice shake slightly, both at the revelations and his fear of failure and its consequences. But he put all of that aside, focusing on what he had to do.

Not entire sure of what to do, Rory just closed his eyes, focused on Leilah, and shoved as much of his Soul Power as he could at the thought of her as fast as he could.

Rory felt a very slight burn from his inscriptions but it was nothing compared to what he was used to.

However many seconds or minutes or hours passed and Rory was becoming exhausted. He had no idea how to measure his Soul Power, but he somehow knew it was draining and that he couldn’t keep this up much longer. That slight burn from when he had started had become harsher and he felt his legs begin to shake. He gritted his teeth and pushed through it though, knowing it was Lucifer and Leilah’s only chance. And for some reason, he felt it was his too.

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A few seconds later the burn became painful and he felt his legs fall out from under him. From his knees, Rory opened his eyes and saw through the steam rising from his blazing inscriptions and that the egg his hands were on had gained a very slight blue tint along with the white.

He heard an echoing voice in his mind. It overlapped itself and reverberated through his mind. “You are a good man, Ruari Sheehan. Thank you.” Then Lucifer’s normal voice, barely loud enough to understand, said, “Now.”

An image of a pristine snow-white snake appeared Rory’s his mind.

Without really knowing what he was doing, he focused on his construct and the picture of what he knew was Leilah and mentally sent, “Bond.”

A flood of power entered him and it was filled with emotions of sadness and thoughts of family and loss. He joined in the grief and tears fell down his face as thoughts of Lucifer, both his own and hers, passed through Rory’s mind. But at the same time, the flood of power also carried with it hope and anticipation. It blazed with a belief in the future that overwhelmed Rory with shame as he knew he could never meet such expectations. Just as his doubts were about to overwhelm the other emotions, he felt assurance and affection and a calm acceptance of whatever was to come.

Rory felt himself fall and his hands lost contact with the egg as his vision started to fade out. The burning of his inscriptions dulled along with the glow that dimmed back to gray, releasing the pain to a smolder that also slowly faded. Collapsing onto his back, Rory’s eyes closed to a canopy of glowing leaves.

***

He woke to a constant buzzing on his wrist and memories of loss and love. Rory turned his head and saw the now only inches-long gray body of Lucifer laying next to what remained of a liquidy white egg skin.

Poor Lucifer. I’m sorry I wasn’t strong enough to save you too. Then he blinked. Wait… too?

Then he sat up with a jerk and called out, “Leilah!”

He quickly went into his ghost and what he saw shocked him. Instead of the amorphous cloud from before, were two chakram. But they looked nothing like his old ones of faded and damaged metal. These were unlike any Soul Weapons he had ever seen or heard of.

What he saw were individual circles that interlocked and appeared as snakes biting their own tails. And they were perfectly identical except for one thing: their colors were opposite. One had a snow-white body with black eyes and gave off a feeling of frigid cold. The other had a black-as-space body with white eyes and, as he watched it, he felt that it would lead to an ending, as all things eventually ended.

Shaking free of the emotions, Rory pushed to the Soul tree and saw a glittering white snake wrapped around the golden globe representing Soul Bond.

“Leilah?” he thought at it.

There was no response, but it did look like the snake was alive, if sleeping. Not sure what else to do, but comforted that she at least looked like she was breathing, Rory pushed to the other branch within the Soul tree and saw the cloud he thought was Soul Control (0/1).

Rory knew with absolute confidence he was going to do so eventually, so he summoned a vessel and pressed it at the violet cloud. It flashed, exploded and, as with Soul Bond, a pulsing orb was left. He pushed at the purple orb and saw two more purple clouds beneath it. Looking into them, he saw that one represented Soul Capture (0/5), a technique, while the other, Soul Call (0/5), was yet another branch.

Focusing on Soul Capture (0/5), Rory learned what it was meant for.

Soul Capture {Legendary} 0/5 - A Soul Technique granting a Soul Wielder a miniscule chance to capture the soul form of anything they kill with their Construct. The more myst the technique has absorbed, the more likely it is that capture ability takes place. However, even if fully invested with myst, the chances remain very small. There is no maximum to the number of souls captured.

Huh? What good was capturing souls? Could he store them for later use? And what could he possibly use them for? It actually sounded kind of creepy.

Rory decided to back out and check his summary. That annoying buzzing on his commo was driving him bonkers so he checked it just to make it shut up.

“Shit!” It was from his mother. She had apparently been calling him non-stop for… he checked… three hours?

What time is it? His commo’s clock told him it was after midnight. Bloody hell!

He picked it up and a still image of his mother’s smiling face before it became what it is was now projected in front of him. “Hey mum. I’m-”

“Where the fuck have you been?” Her shrill scream interrupted him and he winced at her slurred words. “You little shit, you left me here without telling me and I ran out of drink! Get your ass home and pick up some more shine on your way. Don’t fuck everything up again like you always do!” Then the projection vanished as she ended the comm as abruptly as she had started it.

He pulled his legs up, laid his arms on them, and then laid his forehead head on those. Rory sighed, a single tear falling from his eye.

A few seconds later he blinked it away and mumbled, “Need to think clearly.”

Rory had to get home with moonshine or she would do something drastic like try to steal some. There was never any money in the apartment. There was no point in putting it there – she’d just blow it the second she found it on her addictions.

So he needed to buy his mother’s swill and he needed fifty pounds to pay off Mycroft.

Letting out a deep breath, he thought to himself, What I really need is a plan.

“Okay.” Rory often found it easier to make plans out loud for whatever reason. “So first, where the hell am I?”

Looking around, Rory confirmed, he was on the edge of a forest of some kind. A forest with trees that had glowing leaves. And held a really really big snake.

Thinking of Lucifer made him sad for a moment, but he pushed it away. “Focus. Where am I?”

Logically speaking, Rory figured it unlikely that Lucifer had dragged him all the way out of the facility and into the woods somewhere on the planet. That thought made him look skyward to see if he saw the familiar constant dark clouds of Queen’s Gate. What he could barely make out between the gaps of the thick canopy was that it was a metallic ceiling far above.

“Alright, that means I’m probably still in the facility. So where?” Rory thought for a few moments more and came to a conclusion. “The snake room! It had an open door, Lucifer was a snake.” Then he nodded to himself and continued this thoughts. “Okay. Assuming I’m right, that means I can get out and get home. I just need to figure out how.”

Rory looked down at himself and said, “Clothes. I definitely need clothes.” He looked around to see if his old ones were around, but, unsurprisingly, found nothing. “Well then, that leaves my school clothes, which are up in Henry’s stash.” He thought about Henry for a moment then shook his head and kept going. “Hopefully I’ll be able to find that on the way out. Until then, I need to get back into that vault room down at the bottom of the shaft. Even empty, those cells should be worth something. But I can’t carry them, which means I need Henry's bag. Whiiiich is back in the room downstairs.” Rory sighed again. “Everything depends on me getting back to that room.” Her was about to stand but then he remembered something. “It’s completely dark out there.” Then he realized, “And I don’t have a light… because that’s back down in the bloody room too.”

He fell onto his back and groaned. What a pain.