Ashera followed Loki’s example and wasted no time leaving the village. The Seventy Seven had betrayed her, burying them would be a waste of her time.

Vesper and Rowan’s corpses were gone, her only defenders. The rest deserved to rot.

A glint of steel caught her eye, a spearpoint half caked in blood. Kicking the body that pinned the spear she considered taking it, deciding quickly she extended her right hand, the one without fingers.

The hell am I doing? I have four fingers and two thumbs. Magic, this eye- or sphere or soul orb, is the only weapon I have! And it requires souls to wield, I need to find a battlefield with dying men- No, dying mages. I’m not getting any power from normal humans. Back to war…

What happens to the souls I put in the sphere?

I’ll kill her, then figure it out.

She packed quickly, only slowing to bandage her wounds and change her clothes, sensing the need to blend in with humans. Bundling her head in bandages she realized that the orb in her socket could see through the cloth, wrapping her head two more times she wanted to smile at the absurdity of her new weapon. So this is how the angels perceived the world, try hiding from me now Geruvah. Asher searched her home, most of her clothes were gone, probably thrown out by Tristan or given away by his new whore. One of Lorelai’s dresses remained, but the thought of keeping anything relating to her made her undead stomach churn. Besides, Vesper was a closer fit for Ashera’s build, simulacra fidelis, so it was Vesper’s clothes she borrowed.

A tumultuous thought entered her mind, she was undead, how was she going to reap souls without drawing the attention of an inquisitor, or worse one of the Seraphim. They wouldn’t waste a moment obliterating her, she might be able to fight an inquisitor if she collected enough souls, but the Seraphim… No matter her excuse they were pure beings, abiding evil was not within their ken. Entering their domains would be impossible.

Fight outside their fortresses, outside the cities. Alone.

It would never work. A single mage against the hordes of hell? It would be easier to slay a river or drown the sun. Whispers rose in her mind, echoes of souls contained within her sphere eye.

Take their souls.

I’ll kill her.

Grow stronger.

Kill Geruvah.

Kill Lorelai.

That’s right, I’m undead. –Defiled–. Pain is a thing I've left behind, as is my chastity… Not even a hellspawned demon would lust after me now. I may pass through their legions as an ally.

Remind me to thank Lorelai for giving me Satan’s hall pass.

Now for the gathering of souls, there were three cities near Ellin Forest, Gerscav, Juyoma, and Nao. Fortified Gerscav was closest, built by the dwarves to trade their forgecraft with the humans who had once inhabited the capital of Dureasu. Distant Nao whose vigil over the Nao and Oathi rivers –from which the continent derived its name– had endured ten thousand years. And finally Juyoma, whose only claim to note was its association with Lamenter’s lake. As a suburb of the capital the city had effectively bled out and died when the Hellgate opened. Farmlands fell barren, seeds refused to propagate in corrupted soil, the forest fell ill, spontaneously igniting until ash perpetually rained in a mist of mild sorrow.

Ashera knew her goal instantly and started walking.

Recalling the words of her enemy, ‘mother has need of your suffering’; Juyoma would be her aim. Death and suffering –a demon’s sustenance– would abound in Juyoma. Nao was too far and could call upon the Keresh Reavers or the city states of the Nao Delta to defend them; it also had one of the Seraphim as its lord. Geruvah would never tempt fate so blatantly, not when there were easier targets far closer.

Though she might stop in Gerscav… Ashera began to run. If she went straight to Juyoma, if she ran through the nights, she might just be able to catch the succubus unawares. An excellent opportunity to ambush Nerus or Balorian.

Wait…

She was forgetting someone. The last member of their mercenary band.

Lorelai had said to leave Ephraim, she needed to find him before the wolves came back. How had he survived the first attack? Was this just one more of Lorelai’s torments? Another game of suffering for her to enjoy?

Ashera moved through the village, fury and fear mingling with peace as she passed Vesper’s home. Two freshly dug graves, marked with rocks, lay outside their home, the final resting place of her final allies. She paused for a moment, leaning down to touch the stones.

Thank you Vesper. You deserved better than a naive friend like me. I pray that Rowan finds you in heaven.

Her face itched, a twitch from tear ducts that held no tears. Ashera couldn’t stand the itch and ran, fleeing towards Ephraim’s farm. For some reason he had decided that the most difficult farm was the right one for him, closest to the blackwood and furthest from the village center. A dozen stumps marked his labor, heralding the effort he had once put into clearing the land, an effort that stopped several months ago. His hammock sat suspended between two trees, weighed down by a vaguely Ephraim shaped weight.

Ephraim!

The lumpy hammock swayed in the wind, he was alive! Ashera wasn’t alone, there was one ally who would hate Lorelai for the village’s doom. Her undead lips cracked into a smile. Around the hammock a dozen trees bore half hearted axe marks, as if someone had hit them a few times then gave up, only to assault the next tree.

Strange. Thought Ashera, reaching Ephraim’s hammock, she looked down at him, expecting to find her little brother safe and sound.

What she found instead made her wish that Ephraim had never been born. Flies and maggots covered his body, writhing alongside black millipedes and red centipedes. His skin was gone, as was most of his muscle. His chest rose a half centimeter, breathing through a tongueless mouth–

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

–Ephraim was alive.

The rest of his face was gone, eyes pecked out, and nasal cartilage rising from a skinless face like a snow covered mountain.

Ashera’s undead body gave no reaction, she wanted to cry or scream, she wished her heart would skip a beat or bleed, yet nothing occurred. She was dead, like Ephraim should be. His state of suspended suffering confirmed what she already knew. Lorelai was a true demon, with all the powers that came with the blessings of Hell.

One of their most profane powers –and thus the mostly widely feared– was the ability to trap a human soul within a body or object, the antithesis of banishing. They enjoyed this power, leveraging it to heighten human suffering to the level of commercial agriculture, trap a soul then torture its body until every nearby demon could feed off the suffering. Just like Ephraim was being eaten alive, ten million bites from venomous insects, yet he still drew breath.

Ephraim had been eaten alive for weeks. Paralyzed, he was nothing more than fuel for Lorelai’s escape. Ashera’s baby brother had been degraded to the level of a battery. Undead Ashera calculated leaving him in that state –Lorelai would know if she tampered with his body, warning her of Ashera’s release– she would feel a sudden loss of power from the village and know death was coming for her.

Let her hear me. I am going to kill you Lorelai, and set anyone who follows you free.

Her dagger appeared in her hand, blade tip aimed at Ephraim’s heart.

I’m sorry, please forgive me for bringing you into this forest. She thought.

The dagger plunged into his chest, piercing his heart with each thrust. She stabbed him again, planning to repeat the coup de grace until Ephraim stopped breathing. Steel severed the Aorta, punctured both lungs and still Ephraim breathed. Mortal weapons were not enough, Ephraim would suffer until a greater bane was brought to bear against his body. Burning him would work, but life in Ellin Forest…

Steal his soul and the demon’s spell will fail. Whispered the orb.

But he is my brother! I can’t trap him in… in whatever you are.

Can’t you hear his screams? Turn him into the weapon that slays Geruvah. It is what he would want. He would feel blessed to join the weapon that slays her.

Ashera shivered, hating everything the sphere in her eye said. She wanted to scream, to rip it from her skull and smash it into dust, she wanted to find another way. However, what she wanted was not what she did.

Placing one hand over Ephraim’s heart she crushed a dozen centipedes, scattering earwigs and millipedes under her hand. They bit her, tasting undead flesh and dying, the other bugs scattered as she called on the Soul Sphere. Show me what you can do with a soul. Mana, raw magical power flowed from Ephraim’s soul up her arm through her heart and into the Sphere, when his reservoir ran dry the sphere caught hold of his soul, aspirating his essence through Ashera’s mana circuits.

The entire process lasted seconds, yet Ashera felt as though she had walked a thousand miles past her morality.

I’ll kill her. Was all she could think as she set off after Lorelai.

Ten feet into the woods she found a second cross.

Blood stained the wood, running from eight holes –as if the wood itself were weeping blood– in the wood half-tainted with blight. This is an old cross, one used over a month ago… The Soul Sphere activated, showing her a vision of the past. Tristan and Jude stood in front of the cross, Geruvah wearing Ashera’s face, between them. Lorelai was present, nailed to the cross, mouth gagged and bound shut, a fire lapping at her feet and up her calves.

The vision blurred, scrolling through days in seconds, Ashera caught glimpses of tortured months with the fire only growing taller as it scarred Lorelai iron brands scalding Lorelai’s delicate skin, flesh melting as Jude pressed the brand into her, smiling as she made Lorelai suffer.

“Just give in Lorelai, come to our side, help Ashera ascend.”

“What happened to you Jude? Your strength used to give me hope, but now… you’re nothing more than a demon’s whore–”

Jude stuffed the red hot rod down Lorelai’s throat, emitting a hissing scream as the woman’s body was obliterated, then repaired with a touch from Geruvah/Ashera. Tristan joined in on the torture, violating Lorelai in unspeakable ways, with Jude enthusiastically adding pain to every torment. Mana flowed from Ephraim’s carcass to Geruvah, fueling the loathsome torture for weeks.

Lorelai endured it all, her filial love for Ashera granting her an unconquerable will to endure. Two months passed, with Geruvah, Tristan, and Jude inventing ever more depraved torments for Lorelai. They captured rats and had them burrow through her lungs, when that failed to sway her they made her swallow the rodents, forcing them to burrow out of her. During the day they enveloped her in flames, Geruvah’s profane healing keeping Lorelai alive.

Watching the Hell her friend had endured broke Ashera’s undead heart. She loved Lorelai, and knew Lorelai loved her in return, but watching her endure drove the unthinkable home. Their love had been as a twin loves their other half, pure, unblemished, constantly reinforced by common interests and desires. Yet the depth of Lorelai’s faith surpassed the deepest oceans and laughed at the shortness of the tallest mountain, rising past Heaven even as her body was dragged into Hell.

In the end, Lorelai defeated Geruvah.

The Soul Sphere showed Lorelai’s death, her soul escaping the flames to heaven, and leaving her body behind for Geruvah to work her evil.

Lorelai’s love cemented Ashera’s heart. Nothing would stop her from returning every one of her torments to Geruvah.

I’ll kill her.

–Days passed–

Ellin forest faded as she ran, sparse trees afflicted with blackwood blight gave way to the ashen heath of the eastern woods that had become known as Baphomet’s Ruin. Nothing grew here, nor did animals disturb the limbo of Gehenna. The land was shunned by all, a memorial to demonic pride, or a testament to how much raw power, hellfire, or magic the blackwood blight could absorb.

The blight might leech living souls, but it could only grow in live wood and the burnt trees around Ashera provided no shelter. They were deader than her innocence. Puffs of ash rose behind her footfalls, whispers of demons slain by High Lord Inquisitor Valerian and his Seraphs before they had returned to Jaflin.

White dust coated her body, superficially bleaching her clothes and hair. If anyone saw her now, they would thing a spurned ghost was haunting the ruined heath. Not that Ashera cared about other’s anymore.

There was no room in her heart for pity. Another day passed, her undead body kept up the pace, leeching power from the death sphere to sustain the endless marathon. All souls generated mana, though few could wield the power and even fewer could produce more than a candling flame a year. A thousand human souls was little more than a trickle of mana, less than Ashera’s own soul generated while she still lived.

And a succubus has more power than any human ever could. I’ll need thousands maybe even tens of thousands of souls.

Ashera felt nothing as she weighed the cost of souls against her desire for vengeance, if it meant Lorelai’s destruction then she would gladly borrow millions of souls. The inquisition would notice her eventually, and when they did they would be compelled to send an Inquisitor, most likely a Seraph with the angel eyes. A gift of heaven that allowed the bearer to see things as they truly were, to find the truth regardless of the illusion or lie. They would know she was undead the second they laid eyes on her.

Gather souls, and we can hide your death. Whispered the Soul Sphere.

How many souls will I need?

That depends on the eyes of the beholder, you were human once, restore your body, mend your fingers and regrow your eye. Then it will be easier to mask the truth.

Regrow your eye, that thought alone almost sent Ashera into a nearby tree. She knew healing magic, but regrowing eyes required finesse she lacked.

It does not need to work, the eye just needs to be intact. Answered the Soul Sphere.

Ashera could guess what it meant, she needed to look as human as possible, each wound, every cut or bruise would be one more deception that needed masking, increasing the illusory costs and creating one more lie for a Seraph to see through.

No time like the present…

Slowing to a walk she focused on her missing pinky, tapping into the power of her soul she channeled magic through herself, muttering the incantation of healing. Power, raw and foreign, scalded her eyesocket, flowing from the sphere into her brain, down her neck, shoulder, arm, forearm, and hand to pool at the nub that had once been her pinky finger. Skin wiggled and extended, dead cells dividing under the motus of akashic energies.

The flow of magic dwindled, the Soul Sphere drained of mana. With her good hand she probed the finger, where there had been half of a knuckle she now had a knuckle and a half.

Ha, all my power for half a finger.

Gather souls… Whispered the Soul Sphere, voice fading as it slipped into the trance of sleep.

Dying really sucks. She should have been able to heal at least her own pinky with her intrinsic powers, but something about undeath had robbed her of them. This wasn’t a second chance, it was starting from nothing.

Strength evacuated from her limbs bringing Ashera to her hands and knees.

What happens when an undead runs out of mana? This can’t be how I die again!

Ash greeted Ashera’s face, cushioning her nosedive into the ruin. There she lay, hours passing by as souls regenerated her Sphere, conscious and dead. Her mind fell into a gray malaise. Without mana her undead body could not propel any part of her, not even her thoughts.

Night fell, young darkness cloaking Ashera’s folly. She rose from the ash covered dirt and continued on her way, cursing her weak body for the loss of time. She needed to get close to the succubus, find her and pick off her allies one by one.