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Spitfire amazes me! To him, Thanatos’ Tower is a scratching post he must conquer. Whenever he leaps from one crevasse, buttress, or gargoyle, he’s already judged exactly where to land. More than a few times, my body is chucked from side to side, and I’m thankful for my Halo ropes. Considering his body is dark as thunder, my gilded figure is a fire flower with a trail of gold dust echoing behind him like a kite tail.
Fire sizzles through all my nerve endings thanks to adrenaline.
Now and then, Spitfire instinctively scratches the Tower. “Marking your territory, boy?” I murmur in my daemon’s lofty ear. It pricks to my words, and Spitfire lets out an arrogant snarl that resonates into my thighs. “I’ll have to remember that.”
I’ve marked Neo, but Death is the opposite: he’s marked me, I consider the sickle. In some ways, he’s double-marked me. No, my hundred times bitten marks are not from his fangs, but he was there that night, and I gave him the memory through my eyes. If it’s the last thing I’ll do, I will own something of Thanatos’.
Tonight, I will settle for the answer to one question—whether how to defeat this new Scourge of Destruction or how to grant Neo a new heart.
Time passes differently in the Soul Plane. Combined with my hellcat’s mighty thundering body, it doesn’t take Spitfire as long to reach the ground with the Chasm spread out like a mantle of nightmares before us. All one hundred miles of it. Something deep in my soul registers that once we leave the sanctum of Thanatos’ Tower territory, I will be free game for any of the Chasm demons and monsters that roam the Chasm portals into this Soul Plane.
I will take my life, my soul into my own hands.
At first, ice shoots up my spine, but not in the good way as Thanatos does.
Just then, I snap my head to gaze at a twinkle of light on the Chasm horizon. Something resembling a star, but that’s impossible in the Soul Plane, where no sun, moon, or constellations ever shine. So, what is that twinkle? I narrow my eyes, but all I can make out is a tiny glimmer offrost.
Who are you, Thanatos?
Arching my back to tilt my neck and bracing myself, I whisper in Spitfire’s ear, “Take us to that horizon, Spitfire.”
They say some large cat predators can run up to fifty miles per hour. I’m betting mine can double that. My muscles begin to ache and burn after Spitfire bounds away from the Tower, carrying us close to the very edge of the Chasm, where my Halo light sheds from my soul into the darkness below, showering glittery trails to the air. My curls transform into a wild comet shooting behind me.
It doesn’t take long for the demons to come a ‘calling, but Spitfire is faster than all. My stomach flips again and again. Still, I cast flames behind me as a warning, some to flick at the robes of the Fallen, at the ragged wings of the ghouls, at the soul skin of countless demons and demonesses daring to nip at my heels.
In these realms of the dead, the energy in my soul is an atom bomb just aching to explode. But tonight, I don’t want an explosion. I don’t want the mushroom cloud I’d released in Neo’s Court of Bones. I want…slow. I want a challenge. I want romance and rapture, bliss and blessing…euphoria. Serendipity. My heartbeat hammers in my ears at the thought.
On the other side of the Chasm are the most monstrous dual trees I have ever seen. I gasp, tipping my head to gaze at them. Towering and titanic, they soar like skyscrapers while their labyrinth of roots descends into the abyss of the Chasm like drips of great ink. With multitudes of macabre branches coupling into a massive network, no soul could divide them. They block my vision to everything but that twinkle of crystal—a tip of a spire canvassed in the never-ending tremulous depths of the Soul Plane.
These great black trees are the Gates of Death.
Upon reaching the edge of the Chasm, Spitfire slows near the ledge that spans those Death Tree Gates. Frost blossoms grow all over the trees’ pillar-like trunks. Dismounting from my hellcat, I reach a trembling hand to touch one gargantuan tree. Everything around me is a dark heat with noxious vapors spewing from the Chasm of monsters, but these trees are ice to my palms. Far too high and cold for my hellcat.
You think this will stop me, Thanatos?
He’s silent, which I find a little…alarming. Is all this a test? A game to him? Since he’s the one who bit me vs. my blood bond with Neo, I can only imagine he wields more control over this nexus we share. But why can’t I sense him? Nothing in my mind, in our bond, but black ice and an undercurrent of echoes—as if millions of souls wait for me on the other side of these branches. For a moment, an echo of the past warns me in my head:
Run and hide, Elysia.
A chill crawls up my spine, but I pinch my lips, determined. No, I won’t hide. He may hide, he may play his games, and keep his secrets, but I’m here toshine!
So, I climb. My fingers numb almost immediately, and I must warm them with my glow. Just as soon as I find a knot of a handhold, a crystal sprouts beneath my palm, pricking and bleeding my skin. Whimpering from the pain, I slip, I fall, landing hard on my side. This tree is alive…with death—with his essence and power.
Growling, I get to my feet and attack the tree. He has his ice, but I have Goddess fire, so I form gold spikes and stab them into the tree: my Halo picks. Nothing worthy in life can be won without blood, without heart, without soul.
I press on, climbing the building-high trees, picking up my pace because those noxious fumes threaten my soul figure. Countless ghouls clamber around the base of the Tree Gates. Due to their blindness, they are the only creatures that may approach.
Alarmed at first, I cringe, prepared to form a Halo weapon until I realize they cannot fly close to the Gates of Death. No, they teeter near, seduced by my light, by my soul blood, but they don’t approach. Instead, Spitfire is having a field day, leaping up to bat at their wings, crouching and pouncing upon others, sinking his jaws into their flesh to tear at their throats. Ghoul blood splatters his hide.
Invigorated by my hellcat, I toss my curls back with a laugh and shout down at him, “Go back to the Tower, Spitfire. I’ll join you later!”
If I make it past these Gates alive…I almost say but continue climbing. My pace quickens until my body feels lighter than a feather, lighter than starlight. I understand why. This close to the Court O’ Death, where there are no secrets, my soul’s pain haunts me, exposing me, stripping me of hidden motives, masks, or inhibitions. The higher I go, the more my hundred andtwofang marks show. Death’s fang mark from where Thanatos bit me and staked his claim in the Soul Plane lingers on the right side of my throat—laced with a hint of frost. Despite my chemise, I am as naked and unveiled as a peeled fire fruit
Tears become waterfalls on my cheeks when I arrive within the womb of those branches that are a maze. Only momentary gaps of twinkling light. More frost pricks me—icy spindles drawing my soul blood to spill like golden drops. Not even this dark force can stop me. Not when I’ve lived with a hoard of hundred fanged serpents stalking my heart every day. My breath turns to soft, shallow gasps. I treasure the feeling of thisbleeding love.
The twinkling gaps expand. I press on toward the edge of the Gates as the maze of branches begins to clear. My dripping blood slows, my flesh repairing itself, for all this is but a soul dream within a soul dream. My heart only falters when I peer down to find my chemise in tatters, in scraps that barely cover me.
“Sweet little Halo-bearer…doesn’t know we will ensnare her.”
