Chapter Fourteen
Burning, writhing, agony, and pain
What more does a reaper yearn
With Grim gone, where would I go
But to the countryside, for there was insanity to learn
The Matron watched the boat fight against the wind as the men had abandoned the single sail and swapped to oars. It was filled almost to capacity from her count with twenty-five souls. She frowned, they left with twenty-three in the vanguard, which meant they either lost a soldier or they lost a prisoner. As it was, they were running twelve hours late, coming in during the graying dawn amidst the wind-driven morning.
She had been worried for hours now and then just before they were sighted in the predawn light, an explosion ripped out of the city. She paced furiously back and forth in the frozen mud of the shore, watching the single-masted boat make its way through the whitecaps of Dim Lake. A half hour later, the waterlogged, tired rowers put their oars down as the bow of the boat made landfall and six soldiers ran a gangplank to it from a fisherman dock, they would save this boat. It was the only one they had left on the entire lake, and it would be next fall at the earliest before they would have any more.
The Sergeant Major walked down the gangplank slowly. His head was hung low, and his dark beard coated in ice. He saluted his Matron with a half-hearted thump on his heart and then sank to his knees in the mud.
She paled, “What is it, Wallace.”
” The explosion, the Temple.” He sobbed with puffs of steam coming out with each breath.
“The Grim,” she swayed back and forth, her heart beat furiously in her chest, “NO!”
The wail came out in a very primitive fashion as the tears of fear and sorrow streamed down her face. Her husband would cease to be in just two days; there would be no rebirth for the souls they killed in that inferno last night. Everything would be in Chaos, and the enemy had won out finally. She felt a comforting hand on her shoulder and reached up and held the warm hand of her immortal husband. He cuddled her red hair against his broad chest and shushed her, soothing her pain.
“What is all this sobbing and crying that I hear over here. Wallace, to your feet Master Sergeant. You’re a man, for Order’s sake. Act like the commander you are.” He rebuked the stout Master Sergeant who rose sullenly to his feet weary and then the Grim turned to his wife. “Now tell me why all this sorrow?”
“The Temple was destroyed in that clap of thunder that came from the city before dawn,” she sobbed, “There is no way… no way.” She couldn’t say it. Her chest locked up in fear. She could not bring it out, to say it would make the nightmare a reality.
Isobelle had walked up behind her as she talked and now, the young blonde Second hugged her from behind. For the first time that she could remember, the Arms-Master’s daughter was crying. She hugged her strong arms fiercely, letting Isobelle’s chain dig into her chin to let her know this was indeed the waking realm.
“My beautiful wives, this was prophesied long ago. I knew that I was to disappear, but the prophecy does say disappear not perish. A wife, who was a reaper sacrament named Lucy, has pointed out if it meant to say dead or perish it would. It also does say I will be back and the ones who will help is here.” He reassured them.
“But what about what Order told you?”
“Oh, I will disappear after the third day for I have no soul, but there is someone here that has never been here before. A seed of mine that has not strived against me for the throne to the Underworld.” He turned to look at Damon.
Damon looked puzzled at his father, but Grim turned his attention back on the group worriedly, turning his head back and forth.
“What is it, husband?” Jen asked.
“Where’s the disciple, the blonde one?” Grim looked back and forth over the landing party.
Jen turned to Wallace with wide eyes, realizing her nephew was missing from the group, “Yes Wallace, were is Faldo?”
“I am sorry Matron,” The Master Sergeant said with a heavy sigh, “he is dead.”
Rascus walked over the smoking ruins of what once had been the Great City of the Lake. Here and there a building still had part of its roof, with charred remains still glowing red with fingers of smoke reaching up but for the most part. Tharpe had been razed to the ground by her own Guard. There was soot covered blackened husk of bodies that lay everywhere, with souls that begged to be reaped. There would be no reaping here, not for a few months at the minimum.
The Temple, just as the night sky had started to lighten and the sickle moon set, had imploded on itself. With the concussion it made, Rascus had expected to find a vast crater occupying the spot where it stood and the granite blocks flung in all direction. Instead, the Temple had been drawn in on itself to one place, the Portal to the Underworld was buried deep beneath a pile of neatly stacked cobblestone.
Rascus had been sent with other reapers, to walk across the lake on a mission of great import. The man that Grim had needed rescued was missing, and he required any reapers in the area to be in that city looking for him. Rascus rather liked the easy-going Faldo and was eager to search him out. The blonde haired bravado had befriended Damon before Rascus had been marked for death by the Grim himself. The big man would go anywhere and do anything for Damon. Faldo had disappeared into the floor of the Inn of the Second Home, trying to kill the leader of the Resistance. If he was dead, so was all the hope for Order in the universe. The war accidentally sparked on the night that second man was created, would be lost before it indeed began.
Rascus came down the debris strode street to what was left of the Inn, and he shook his skeletal head, if anyone were in that building it would be someone he could communicate to but nothing alive. He found a spot in the wall and launched his skeletal frame over it with ease and landing hip deep in black ash. Off to the side, he saw five skeletons and their cursing souls were all curiously naked. The soul kept its appearance that it had at the time of death but not the manner of death. It seems these were caught in an inopportune time.
Rascus chuckled, Oh by The Grim! What a fight he had missed. Amused, Rascus walked up and nudged the first charred skeleton with his foot to get its attention. The man’s soul looked up at him, with anger in its eyes.
“You down there I say,” Rascus asked in a casual raspy tone, “Did you happen to see a big, blonde haired guy before you were killed last night? I hear he is quite fantastic with a sword. He was in the company of a little man with a throwing knife and a Giant. Does that ring a bell?”
“Go suck yourself reaper!” The soul seethed, in a tortured voice.
Rascus threw back his head in a laugh that sounded like a cold winters wind through trees, “I’ll take that as I am in the right place.” He went to walk off and leave the skeleton-soul combination, and the soul cried out.
“Stop you can’t just leave me here. Take me.” The angry, nude man whimpered, his tone going from a harsh crack to a frightened plea as the reaper turned his back.
“Nope, no can do. I am on a very strict mission from the Grim and you did tell me, how did you say, to suck off. Or something to that nature.--” Rascus dismissed it with a casual wave of a bone hand, “--No, I do believe I will just leave you to be gnawed on by some wildlife for a few months till they happen to get the Temple back up. Have a good day.” Rascus hummed a bawdy tavern song as he walked off. With the damnable portal down, when he got far enough away from the Grim, he could tell the souls what he felt. Damn it felt good, now if he could just do something about the demon’s cursed loyalty feeling to Order.
He came by a female soul laying some distance from the men within the Temple. He slowly knelt to one knee beside her. He cocked his head in amusement as he looked down at the face of his own family.
“Well, my Lady Thewar. Your Father is taking a rest in the Underworld as we speak.” He said reaching down to move a piece of timber off the skeleton slowly. It wasn’t exactly hurting the soul, but he knew from experience in the Underworld, they longed to feel comfortable. He cared for this one; she was his niece on his brother’s side. Though she did not know it, he and his brother were both bastard sons of the Duke of Bruenor. Dravor, the Lady’s father, had pursued commerce and wished the tie between his outlaw brother be kept a secret, despite his deep affections.
“So, he has not had his rebirth,” Thewar sighed in resignation, “Maybe I will see him then, again.”
“I carried his soul myself and stood with him during Judgement my Lady,” Rascus said with unusual gentleness in his voice, “His soul is old indeed, dating to first-man. He will be there for some time it seems. Now do me a kindness, I do believe you are associated with one who was here last night. Faldo, son of Victor. We must know if he survived or if he perished.”
The lady looked up at the reaper from her skeleton on the ashen gray stone, and shook her head slowly, “No one has come out of these ruins of my father’s Inn that I have seen reaper but what should I know.” She whimpered, ” With that smoldering timber you pulled off of me obstructing my view, I barely knew the sun had risen. But I saw him go into the flames. He fell through the floors and into the Jakes. Even if the inferno that took the city did not get him, then falling from three stories surely would have.”
“Thank you,” Rascus said, “I would reap you now, but someone has done something horrific to the Tem—“
“Sedrick,” she said shortly.
“Do what?” stuttered the reaper confused.
“Sedrick said he was given a spell and the layout for the Temple. He sensed the Grim had arrived and received instruction from the Council of Sorcerers. They have been calling the shots for six months.” She explained, making a cold feeling run through Rascus’s bare spine, “He said he had a plan to rid us of the Grim once and for all.”
“Thank you again. We are indebted to you it seems. I will tell a Necromancer where you are to tend to your remains with respect until I can escort you personally to your father when the Portal is restored, my Lady.” He said gently patting her bony hand.
“Thank you reaper.”
“Call me Rascus.” He told her standing up to move across the cluttered space to a massive hole in the floor. The jakes from the upper stories would have all tumbled into here, a deep stone-lined pit with a steel ladder in it, to allow for periodic cleaning. If Faldo did survive the fall, Rascus thought as he walked around the hole and looked at the top of the ladder smiling inwardly. They were in for a very aromatic surprise.
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