A Shade of Vampire 80 A Veil of Dark - Bella Forrest Page 0,15
gnawed its way through my brain since I’d first learned about his scythe.
“Seeley, I don’t think Zoltan was the first to wield Reaper magic,” I said after a while. “He must’ve inherited this entire operation from his predecessors. The Darklings and the Reaper abductions have been going on for a very long time. I heard one black guard saying they’d been at this for at least three million years, or more.”
Seeley nodded slowly, gazing at the soldiers as they carried chains over to the area where the ghouls had been settled. “I see. It makes sense, since Zoltan is definitely not three million years old. The Darklings are an ancient faction, that much we’re both able to gather. Naturally, the leadership positions would be passed down to the new guard, especially since this planet is plagued by the Black Fever every ten thousand years. The old guard dies out one way or another, and the young ones step in.”
“But still. How did the Darklings find and wield Reaper magic to begin with?”
Neither of us had the answer, but the question still needed to be voiced, if only to remind us of the peril we were both facing—not to mention the rest of my crew and every other innocent creature on Visio.
“I’ll eavesdrop around.” I sighed. “Maybe these bastards can tell us something more.”
“What about your plan with Rudolph?” Seeley asked. “I have to get out of these chains before Zoltan shoves a soul down my throat… or whatever it is he does to turn Reapers into freaking ghouls.”
“I know. He listens to me, so we’ve got that going for us,” I said. “The plan is to make him super obedient toward Zoltan and the black guards as quickly as possible. It’s the only way we’ll get him on a leash, instead of in chains with his peers.”
“Like the elder ghouls I’ve seen Zoltan with.”
“Like the one he set on Rudolph and his team,” I added, feeling a bout of rage blistering through me. Oh, the despicable soul that wretched Aeternae had, to have done such awful things.
It wasn’t just about what Zoltan had done to me or other living creatures. It infuriated me that he and the other Darklings had gotten away with all these ghoul shenanigans for so long. Forcing Reapers to eat souls. Pushing their degraded forms into submission and using them to hurt other Reapers, other agents of Death… it was just awful. A clear disruption of the natural balance between life and death, something so important, so deeply embedded into my own philosophy as a practitioner of the Word.
There was a certain synergy in the universe. A healthy, unstoppable flow of energy that gave and took life, that nurtured and destroyed. It was the foundation of all existence, and messing with it the way the Darklings did… it was just unacceptable.
Since we’d reached Astoria, I’d come to the conclusion that my death paled in comparison to all the other atrocities that these people had committed, and someone needed to put an end to it. Seeley was the only one with enough power and strength—since Death didn’t seem to want to get more involved. I figured we might’ve seen a sign from her, had that been the case.
“I’ll be back,” I said to Seeley, and got up. He was right. It was time to get cracking on our plan. We’d had enough time to adjust to this change of scenery. I had to get him out of here before Zoltan destroyed him like he had Rudolph and the others.
I felt Seeley’s eyes on me as I walked away, something hot and ticklish swelling inside me. A sensation that I couldn’t fully understand, but a sensation I found myself enjoying, nonetheless. It was the effect of his attention on me, and I had missed it since our mission against the Hermessi. He’d stolen glances at me before, some more intense than others. There was something between us, for sure, a peculiar dynamic, and it was one of the main reasons why I didn’t want to move on into the world of the dead. It would’ve meant leaving him, leaving us behind.
Moving past the black guards and a few other civilian-looking Darklings, I made my way between the marble ruins until I reached the ghoul enclosure, now marked with pebbles arranged in the form of a massive rectangle. It was their space, enchanted with death magic, and they couldn’t leave it without a Darkling’s permission.