Page 160 of Season Warriors & Wolves

What didn’t?

“Careful now,” Kilian said, tendrils of darkness and shadows climbing up the walls.

Visha’s fingers glowed red as she plunged them inside the tattoo space, through the man’s skin and pulled out holding something in her hand. A small black larva that stunk so bad it made me gag. My Crafter’s eyes were wide. “We were wrong. So wrong.”

I put a hand over my nose and mouth. “The hells is that?”

Visha turned to Nia. “Get my grimoire.”

Nia got to her feet and sprinted to return with the massive book. The pages parted in half and began flicking through rapidly until they stopped on an almost blank page towards the end. A dark illustration of the small creature was drawn on the old, stained beige paper. Along with a short paragraph written in Borsich beside it.

Visha’s eyes brimmed with tears. “What…what has she done?”

Kilian straightened, his body tense. “Kill it.”

My witch shook her head, and I was beyond confused when tears poured out of her eyes. “So much pain.”

“I know, Visha, but you have to kill it or I will. We both know which is best.”

I clutched his arm. “Kil, what is it?”

“A seedling. The soul of a stillborn. No memory, no experience of life, no emotion. An unformed soul. Innocent. Extremely easy to control. Easy to feed emotion and tie strings around.”

Nia collapsed to the ground, eyes wide. “This is madness. She was planting these inside people?”

Kilian held me close, rubbing a hand over his eyes. “Souls are difficult to keep under submission. Not these souls. These are obedient, pliable. Empty.”

Penelope rushed in along with Oryn and Atlas, the latter remained at the doorstep when he saw the scene set before his eyes.

The older Crafter took the small creature from Visha’s hands and laid it on the floor, a violet craft halo illuminating under it before it vanished into dust. He turned to me. “You said the blue gyre worked on Skadi?”

“Yes, she said she was getting better.”

“We’ll tell her to double the dose. The flower might be neutralising the effect, but it won’t kill the seedling without ingesting silver which would probably kill her eventually.” The old Crafter scratched a shaky hand to his brow and then looked up at Nia. “You think you could concoct something for me? I’ll draw up everything about the seedling. Crafters are of no use against it. Death and more death do not go hand in hand. We need something that can poison the seedling and then kill it without killing the carrier.”

Nia nodded, pulling a vial from Visha’s table and collecting some blood from the Isjordians. “I can try. We might need to keep the other to test if I can manage to create something.”

“No,” Oryn said. “These two are gone. Dead shells. The seedling had the entire control. We need to test someone who is still in their human form.”

“What about Skadi?” I asked. “But I couldn’t feel her heartbeat either. None of theirs. Are they all dead?”

Oryn grabbed a scalpel close by, tearing right across one of the dead Isjordian’s chest. The heart under the rib cage was entirely surrounded by black roots. “The seedling feeds from the heart. If Skadi is still conscient, that means the heart is not infested. Once the seedling dies, the heart will return to pump for the body again. I’m afraid not many will be as lucky. The woman is a prime Verglaser, ancient as time and just as powerful. I suspect that made her the perfect first try. It would also make her our perfect first try at solving this.”

Penelope dropped to the floor. “We’ll never be able to save them.”

Save. “I didn’t know we were trying to save anyone. This is good news to us. Let’s hope they will eventually fall off and die like rotten fruit.”

“Is it?” she asked. “My mother said she knows some of the boys and girls who got turned. They used to go to school with me. I don’t want them to die, Snow.”

“It’s war, little carrot. You should see how many boys and girls like them I’m going to have to force to get up and fight soon.”

Chapter thirty-two

Black Pawn to D6

Caiden

Nia had not come out of her old quarters for days, not even to eat or drink or shower. Little did she know, stinking and starving did not really do much in the terms of world saving. Tired of thinking of the eventually, I barged in, breaking the lock.