Jasper bolted upright in his bed. His heart was pounding as he threw the covers of him, and hopped down. The soft, plush carpet felt good against his bare feet as he walked over to the wall and fumbled for the light switch.

What? His hand paused mid-air, and he glanced around the dimly light room, sweat beading on his brow. This…this can’t be real. Tentatively, he flipped the switch and winced as the room was flooded with light. This was his apartment back home. The plush beige carpet, the sage, green quilt, the firm yet soft memory foam pillows that Corsythia so sorely lacked.

It couldn’t be real. His mind immediately turned to the night hag that had attacked him when he first arrived in Corsythia. Am I being attacked by something like that again? But how? He glanced down at the floor, marveling again at how real it all seemed, when his eyes caught on something peaking out of his sleeve. Pulling the arm back on his PJs, he froze as he saw the pale imprint of a small, childlike hand wrapped around his wrist. The gallû. Everything flooded back to him.

Is this afterlife, then? He glanced around his bedroom. Kasi had said that the gallû’s touch was death, but this was certainly a far cry better than the dismal city of dust or the bitter cold of Kasdael’s void. Although…

His pulse picked up as he jogged over to the drawn curtains. He fumbled with the strings, dropping the curtains lower before managing to yank them up. His room should have had a pleasant, if unsurprising view of the city, and, perhaps, depending on the time and weather, a decent view of sunset.

Instead, rows of slightly uneven mud bricks stretched from floor to ceiling. Jasper ran out of the room, down his hall, and out into the small living room, and flung the door open. More bricks awaited him. Crap.

His pulse thundered in his ears as he turned away and his mind raced. Did I die?

“There’s no need to be afraid.”

It’s a general rule of thumb that if someone tells you there’s no reason to be afraid, you should probably be afraid, and Jasper nearly jumped out of his skin as an unfamiliar voice echoed behind him. Spinning around, he saw an unfamiliar man slouched on his couch.

The man seemed slightly taller than most, but was otherwise unremarkable. Tussled brown hair fell around a face that might have been described as handsome if it wasn’t for the man’s slightly bent nose and a scar that ran down the left side of his cheek. His clothes were casual, jeans and a burgundy t-shirt advertising a drink Jasper had never heard of. As Jasper met the man’s eyes, he could tell they were unremarkable too, the same, slightly muddy brown that millions if not billions shared-

He physically staggered backwards as the force of the man’s gaze swept over him, piercing and probing his every thought. Okay, so maybe so not unremarkable after all. He immediately diverted his eyes, and the man grimaced.

“So weak,” he muttered to himself.

“Who are you? And where am I?” Jasper slowly walked over to one of the armchairs flanking the couch, carefully avoiding making eye contact with the stranger, and settled in.

The man’s disappointment seemed to deepen. “Those are not the questions you should be asking.”

“O-kay…” Jasper tamped down on his irritation. He had no idea who the man was, but there was no point in pissing him off. “Then what are the questions I should be asking?” He continued.

Jasper’s heart quailed as the man’s weighty gaze fell on him again, but he kept his composure and slowly, steadily, he raised his eyes to meet the man’s.

A ghost of a smile flickered across the stranger’s lips, disappearing as soon as it had come. “Perhaps there something to you after all,” he muttered beneath his breath, “but you’re not ready. Still,” he paused for a second, “you did manage to curry favor with a maratānu, so…” The man rose from the couch and, with his head nearly scraping against the ceiling, walked over to Jasper. The man’s hand closed around the white handprint on Jasper’s wrist. “I suppose I should honor that.”

A tingling sensation ran down his arm, and his vision began to blur. His body fell limply back against the chair and the last thing Jasper saw before passing out was the man walk straight through the wall.

----------------------------------------

For the second time that day, Jasper bolted upright. He blinked rapidly as his eyes struggled to adjust to the bright light blaring down on him.

“Good, you weren’t out too long,” a husky voice greeted him. Squinting slightly, he gazed up at Barbartu. Her pointed ears had once again been replaced by black horns and her tanned skin had turned a dark red. Glancing around, he saw he was lying on a couch in a small, rustic room. Bright sunlight streamed in from the window, lighting up the coach and rough wooden walls, while the bulk of the room was occupied by a bed. As he sat up, he caught a glimpse of a blond head with small antlers peeking up above the comforter and a mop of curly brown hair.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“They’re sleeping it off. Ya’ll have had a rough few days,” she said with a smirk as she plopped down on the couch beside him.

Jasper stared at the room with squinted eyes, not entirely able to trust his eyes. “This is real, right? It’s not another illusion?” he asked with a touch of suspicion.

“It’s real,” she promised.

“Then how the hell did we get here?” His brow wrinkled. “The last I remember, the gallû touched me.” He glanced down at his arm, where the red skin around his wrist was marred by a band of milky white. “I thought you died if they touched you.”

“You usually do. Gallû are some of the most dangerous undead you will ever encounter. They are cruel, capricious, and ever hungry for sustenance.”

“And you thought it was a good idea to have me summon one of them?”

Barbartu shrugged. “Like everything, Jasper, there are always exceptions. When I found myself trapped over here, I quickly discovered that only some of my magic worked properly. My illusions fortunately survived unscathed, but many of my summoning spells just wouldn’t work. You properly noticed how many entries were scratched out.”

Jasper nodded, remembering the red x’s scattered throughout the grimoire.

“For some reason,” she continued, “The ritual to summon gallû was one of the few that continued to work properly. I can’t be certain, but I suspect that this particular gallû must have once been someone like you, someone with a connection to both our world and this. That would explain why I can successfully summon her when so many other rituals have failed. But in any case, I found her to be, if still rather dangerous, far more reliable than your average gallû. In all the decades I’ve summoned her, she’s never tried to hurt me and, as far as I know, she never tried to hurt you either. It was a risk,” she shrugged, “but it seemed one worth taking.”

“Pretty big risk, but,” he glanced around the room, “I’m guessing it paid off. What happened after I, well, passed out?”

“After the gallû ‘blessed’ you, she helped me kill the Mwyranni. Her touch wasn’t instant death for the accursed thing, but he couldn’t survive the two of us.”

“And the ones that the Sidhe was fighting? The nizirtū that were waiting for us on the other side?”

“Sidhe were always good at killing Mwyranni, and this one was no exception. He slew at least four of the dead gods, and then we retreated. As for the nizirtū,” her lips twisted into a wry smile, “After they saw him kill their gods, they scampered back into their dark cubby holes like the cowardly rats they are. They didn’t even try to attack us.”

“What about the cultists?” Jasper asked, remembering the brethren whom the nizirtū had captured and left as an offering to appease their gods.

“We left them,” she replied matter of factly.

“Isn’t that kind of cruel,” Jasper asked.

“Cruel?” She raised an eyebrow. “The brethren regularly committed ritual human sacrifice, Jasper. Do you think they should receive parole and a cushy office job?”

“Obviously not, but…” Jasper trailed off. In truth, he wasn’t quite sure how he felt about the issue. There was no doubt in his mind that the cultists deserved to die but it was hard to think of their fate - either starving to death or being fed upon by any dead gods that might remain - without a pang of pity. It was a grisly end that was hard to wish on even a truly terrible person.

Deciding, he didn’t want to argue about it, he shrugged his shoulders. “Eh, never mind. So what happened then? I assume you and the Sidhe carried us out?” He glanced over at the bed where Ihra and Tsia slept. “Did the others make it? Annatta and Nēs̆u?”

“For the time being, I left your Djinn friend in the temple of Selene. The priests there are doing the best they can to help her, but…” she hesitated.

“What’s wrong with her,” Jasper asked.

“They’ve healed the wounds on her body, Jasper, but it seems the cult experimented on her. Apparently, someone attempted to steal parts of her soul without consuming it entirely. It will be some time before she recovers, and she’ll likely never be the same again.”

“And as for the warrior…well, he didn’t make it out of the pit. It seems he sacrificed everything, his skills, his levels, even his class to Vāya to save Tsia’s life. And without those, he was a man long past his expiration date. The Moon-kissed boy survived though, seemingly much to his own surprise,” she added.

As Jasper listened to the news, guilt mixed with anger. He’d guessed Nēs̆u hadn’t survived and, in truth, he wasn’t too broken up about the prickly warrior’s demise. But Annatta hadn’t deserved to suffer like that. She was only there because of him and now, for the second time, she’d been hurt.

“Most of this is your fault, you know,” he said. “Annette’s suffering, Nēs̆u’s death, it wouldn't have happened if not for you.”

“If Yas̆gah’s plans had come to fruition, the death toll would have been in the millions,” Barbartu replied coldly. “Her dream of ascension involved the sacrifice of every living being to fuel her rise, all for the sake of some glorious ‘rebirth.’ And even if she had failed in her attempts to ascend, the brotherhood has still sacrificed thousands over the years - the vast majority of them people like you, stolen from their own worlds. I realize my schemes caused some harm to your friends, but they were for the great good.”

“That’s easy to say when it's others that pay the cost,” he replied darkly.

“Don’t speak to me of sacrifice,” she snapped back. “You’ve been here what? A year, maybe two? I have been trapped in this godforsaken realm for the better of a century. I have suffered far more than you ever have and likely ever will.”

“You’ve been here a hundred years? How old are you?”

Barbartu snorted. “Really? That’s what you focused on? How old I am?” The mood lightened a bit as she cracked a smile. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you it’s rude to ask a lady’s age? Although,” she continued, “I’m not sure that really applies when you’re functionally immortal. Honestly, I couldn’t tell you how old I am even if I wanted to; I simply didn’t know.”

Jasper cocked an eyebrow. “You’re telling me you're immortal?" he asked skeptically. "Not even the elves are that long-lived. What the hell are you?”

Barbartu grimaced, and a trace of embarrassment flickered across her face. “I am a…Lamas̆tu,” she finally confessed.