withholding the truth from us.”
Death sighed deeply, her shoulders slumping as she lowered her gaze for a moment. It felt like forever from where I stood, gripping Thieron tightly. My knuckles were white, skin stretched over bone. I found comfort in knowing that the First Tenners experienced the same frustration I did. Maybe this was the final push that Death needed to tell us everything. I’d known for a while that she’d been holding back. Even during the Hermessi wars, I’d had to drag every word out of her.
“For a long time after I set the First Tenners free, the Spirit Bender stayed close to me,” Death finally said. “I didn’t tell anyone because I cherished those moments more than anything else. He was kind and patient, always by my side, keeping me company while I expanded the Reaper network and watched them all go their own ways. A structure had already developed, and the senior Reapers were very good at their jobs. There was balance in my world, but I was lonely. Spirit understood that, so he kept me company. Out of gratitude, I showed him lesser-known death magic spells.”
“Oh crap. I think I know where this is going,” Dream murmured, hiding her face in her hands. Death shook her head slowly.
“I didn’t know. I think I’ve said this before. I didn’t know he’d turn around and use it against me or any of you,” she said.
“You’ve already told us this. I mean, we’re aware Spirit learned most of his death magic from you,” I replied.
“But you don’t know the extent of the knowledge I gave him. Only Spirit and Unending were granted such access to the very depths of death magic. Unending learned before Spirit… before I… before our argument, followed by her departure. She learned before I even made her siblings, during a time when I’d thought she and I would be enough for this realm. Point is… I took them both back to the primordial layers of my power. I taught them the core elements of my craft, and they were able to use them to create other spells. New seals and rituals. Stuff even I hadn’t thought of.”
“Death magic is made up of building blocks,” Time explained for my sake. “The top of the craft is what you’ve seen for yourself. A cast spell, a seal, a circle to keep us bound, that sort of thing. It all stems from the building blocks, a group of ten words and a hundred sub-words, as we call them. As First Tenners, the closest we ever got to the very core of death magic was in learning about twenty of the sub-words. Think of them as ingredients. If you know them individually, you can mix them around, either by following an established recipe or by forging new spells and seals. The ten words are at the center of it all.”
“And I taught Unending and Spirit five of those words. Which is why Spirit was able to trap me like this, not to mention what he did to his siblings,” Death replied. “And why we’re having such a hard time freeing ourselves from his spells. Spirit used words and sub-words, most of the latter being familiar to the First Tenners, but the recipes are… different. So breaking them is a bit of a guessing game, combined with a lot of strength.”
I gasped. “Hold on, let me see if I’ve got this straight. Death magic is based on ten words and a hundred sub-words.”
“And thousands of sounds,” Time added. “A regular Reaper only knows the sounds and, if he or she is lucky, a few sub-words. The words are normally occult, hidden from our knowledge. Except for Unending and Spirit, it seems.” He shot Death a reprimanding look.
“What exactly are the implications here?” I asked.
Time ran a hand through his curly hair, his galaxy eyes shimmering with a mixture of anger and anxiety. “It means the possibilities are pretty much endless as far as Spirit’s magic is concerned. And solving every seal he’s cast would take longer than we have, considering the turmoil on Visio. We need Unending to wake up and tell us what she knows. She might not be able to free herself if Spirit went the extra mile on her seals, but she would at least know what words and sub-words he used to bind her.”
A weight settled in my stomach as the whole picture came into focus. Death had handed the nuclear codes to her most