The souls of the villagers materialized.Most adopted the forms they knew in life.The essences, those which adopted faces with more quickness than others, seemed confused or anticipatory.
Saer staggered to a knee.Never before had he expended so much heated energy without taking any of the fire back.Neyu’s absorbed strength had made him overconfident.
The first of the souls found its voice, a young woman who’d been in her twenties with red hair woven into a thick braid, and green eyes.“Lord Saer, how do we…?”
He inhaled, intending to speak, but his words caught.He could take them all to the Hells.Lucifer would love him again.They could start over.All would be well.
Intending to lift his eyes to the mob of souls, Saer’s gaze caught, instead, on the wet piles of ashes off to his side and in front of him.The rain washed her away.Neyu’s remnants trickled through the wet grass, and he followed that trail to his fingertips.
Her loss hit him anew, and with it came a sickened fury.
“I release you.”The rasping words crawled through his constricted throat.
The glow of the first soul in front of him intensified, and Saer curled his hand into a fist, around the dirt and scant ash.A joyous cry, then surprised laughter echoed Ruki’s spirit from before.Inhaling, Saer forced his throat to relax, screaming into the rainy dawn,“I release all of you!”
His entire body trembled, gooseflesh prickling on his pale skin as the cacophony of elated voices rose and melded with one another.The hilltop illuminated with cloudy daybreak, incomparable to the blinding white of thousands of souls floating, expanding, returning to that which created them with relief and absolution.They sang, a beautiful chorus of the saved dead as they dissipated.Saer tilted his head skyward to bear witness, eyes narrowed at the brightness.
When the last spirit’s light disappeared, Saer exhaled and hung his head.Neyu’s ashes had all but dispersed.
The emptiness in his heart, the enormity of the path he’d just taken, even Ruki’s cessation of existing any longer—it all collapsed upon his shoulders, heavier than any weighted burden.
With no one left to bear witness, Saer wept.
23
Saerremainedonthehilltop for hours, surrounded by the still, quiet dead.Men and women.Young and old.
Butchers and leather workers and fishermen and gardeners.
Fathers and mothers and grandparents and children.
Tens of thousands of lives he’d taken without thought or discrepancy, all in the name of the fallen angel who commanded him to destroy his beloved.The thought churned something in him, a discomfort which had everything to do with the implications and nothing to do with Neyu’s demise.
In the end, her death outweighed all else.
He waited for Lucifer to come for him, either to end his miserable existence or to take it all back.To rewind Neyu’s unmaking or show that she’d only returned to the Hells.She couldn’t be gone.
No one came.No fallen angel possessed his body.No otherDaemoenicappeared.
Wind.The crashing of waves against the nearby cliff faces.The high-pitched, musical tweeting of warblers.Quiet sizzling of immeasurable tears from the corners of Saer’s eyes, trailing down his nose as he knelt, curled over with his arms clutching his middle, otherwise unmoving.
Get up.
What comes next?
I can’t go back.
She can’t be gone.
I won’t go back.
Lucifer would discover his discarding of the souls promised and come for him, possess him.Or send his kin after him to be dragged back to the Hells.Punishment was imminent.
Yet, Saer couldn’t imagine a greater punishment than the one already invoked.
There’s nothing else to lose.
The fallen angel could possess him at any moment, just as It possessed Errshek.
