Page 46 of The Endless One

“I don’t know.” And that was endlessly frustrating. Had his siblings felt this way when they were gods, or was he the only one so lacking? Elric knelt by Jessamine’s convulsing form, taking one of her stiff hands in his and holding on to it tightly. This was their only connection, and he hoped that through whatever was happening, she could still feel him holding on to her.

“Elric… I don’t even think she’s here with us.”

Staring into her eyes, he could agree that was the truth. Blood now coated those lovely dark orbs, turning them one dark color, which made his stomach churn. She shouldn’t ever have to endure something like this.

But then he realized the blood in her eyes was slowly turning black. Like his magic was leaking out of her again.

Or perhaps something else entirely.

“Sybil,” he murmured. “You remember what happened to the last gravesingers?”

“Of course I do. They sacrificed themselves so you would remain trapped. But you kept all their souls. I remember the others finding out that their souls had never crossed over. You were… You trapped them all in that realm of yours.” Sybil swallowed. “What are you trying to say?”

“Their souls are part of what makes up my realm. Their hands dragged me down into the darkness more times than I could count, and they were the ones that held me there.” He stared down into Jessamine’s eyes, black tears leaving lines down her cheeks. “I fear they may be trying to do the same to her.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.” Nails biting into his palms, he looked at Sybil and tried to impress upon her the importance of what he was about to say. “I’m going to get her back. But neither of us will be here, in our bodies. I need you to watch over us, Sybil. Can you do that?”

She dropped to her knees beside him and held her hands over both Jessamine and his. “With my life, Deathless One. Your bodies will be here for you to return to.”

“That is hard to believe, considering where we are.” He nodded. “But I believe you, Sybil. Not because you have always been a devout follower of my coven, but because I consider you a friend.”

The determined expression on her face didn’t budge. She gave him a firm nod and then tangled their fingers together.

He allowed his conscious mind to return to the land in between. The purgatory where all souls had to wander before they would eventually see a light. If he let them. Elric had spent far too many centuries tormenting souls who had ended up here to believe that everyone and everything eventually found the light. He knew how hard it was for them, and he knew that Jessamine couldn’t have gone that far yet.

Her soul might have wandered from her body, but that did not mean she had died.

He stepped into the darkness, watching the gray light dance over the ripples his footsteps caused. Pretty. Magic could not replicate the dark ripples that were so black no light could penetrate them.

But unlike many of the times he’d stepped into this kingdom, there were no hands grabbing at his ankles. No gravesinger souls who wanted to remind him of all the evil deeds he had done and just how much he deserved to be punished for them.

“You locked them up,” he reminded himself as he strode into the darkness. “You chained them to the darkness and, therefore, they cannot find you.”

Another voice whispered in his mind that souls could not be chained. He had done the impossible to them, and only because he thought himself above all those who came through this place.

He might be a god, but even he could not control human souls forever.

Elric knew he would find her with the other gravesingers. A knowledge deep in his gut pushed him toward where he had locked away the others of her kind, certain that they had summoned her to their side. The black leaking from her eyes, the way his magic had exited her body, and the golden light that had coiled around her—it wasn’t all a coincidence.

The gravesingers were meddling from beyond the grave. Now, he needed to remind them why that was such a bad idea, and why he had locked them up to begin with.

He found them right where he had bound them all. Chained to the bottom of the darkness, the water lapping at their hands and feet. But they weren’t exactly the same as they had been. In the distant past where he had ensured they would remain quiet and stop trying to control him, they were just shadows of themselves. Smudges of darkness that had no features, no faces, barely even recognizable as who they used to be.

Now, he could tell there were details burned back into their forms. Some of them had faces now. Features that he vividly remembered as they were stabbing into him with their athames and all the other implements they used to cause him pain. He recognized one of them in particular. She’d been ruthless in her cruelty, understanding far too well that pain meant she got more power from him.

Others had the impression of hair now. Delicate strands that had once captivated him because he knew that they were soft, and soft things had never been given to him. He’d always wanted to touch those strands, even knowing that these witches were going to hurt him.

Somehow, they had loosened their chains as well. A few of them had freed their hands, some of them a leg. They had all turned toward something in the center of their clustered shadows, and already Elric knew who that was.

The gravesingers bent over Jessamine’s still form, black sludge leaking out of their mouths and dripping down onto her body. There wasn’t much left of her that was visible as they slowly and forcefully sank her into the darkness that had bound them for centuries.

Wading into them, he slapped at their hands the moment they reached for him, too. They would love to drag him down into those depths. To drown him in memories so they could do whatever they were doing to her without someone else bothering them.

He conjured a blade in his hand and hacked at them. They hissed out screeches that made his ears ache, but he didn’t care. There were thirty of them, but they were chained.

“You are bound to me,” he snarled. “Bound and broken and bleeding, just as you made me for centuries. I did not give you permission to touch her, and so I will take her back from you.”