Often referred to as bone hounds, the Lammathens possessed bodies that resembled the skeleton of a bear, withthe legs of a greyhound, and the main horn of a rhinoceros at the tip of their flat faces. Bone plates at the side of their necks and backs gave the impression they once intended to grow fins there but stopped in the early stages. It also made it impossible to ride them like mounts. They didn’t have any skin. Instead, a translucent, but sturdy film coated the handful of muscles and tendons that kept the skeletal frame together. It also allowed us to see a single organ in the chest cavity—a glowing, pulsating heart.
I hurled a barrage of fire bolts and kinetic blasts at the monsters to hold them back so that the women could escape. My jaw dropped when, moments later, the creatures froze as if time had stopped. I jerked my head around to glance over my shoulder, and my heart skipped a beat when I witnessed the doppelganger holding both women by the hair. He bit each of them in turn, thankfully for only a few seconds. I realized then that he was scanning their thoughts.
A wave of panic surged within me at the prospect of what he might find. If they displeased him, would he kill them? There was no question I didn’t possess the power to defeat him, whatever he was. But in the split second it took for all these musings to flash through my mind, he appeared to reach the conclusion that they were of no use to him. He shoved them away with a similar dismissiveness to the one he had displayed with me, although his face twisted into something akin to contempt.
The temporary paralysis he had seemingly imposed upon them vanished, and the two women resumed their escape. My stomach twisted as he ripped out Arisa’s heart and devoured it the same way he had done with Riku.
As freaked out as his behavior made me feel, I needed to close these portals and then destroy the creatures while he still had them immobilized. Trying to silence the thought of what hemight do to me if I remained here against his command, I cast a series of spells to close the portals. In seconds, a burning pain spread from my shoulder—whence the Oni’s hair had stabbed me—to the rest of my chest.
Casting was speeding up the poison.
I should stop, but I had a sworn duty to protect the realm from the evil of the netherworld. The throbbing pain gradually increased. Soon, I started feeling a little wobbly on my legs and light-headed. But with the portals having now shrunk from their two-meter circumference to barely the size of a plate, I was too close to completing my task to quit now.
A blast of light nearly had me jumping out of my skin. Simultaneously, popping sounds resonated throughout the room. My mind froze when I realized it was the hearts of the Lammathens exploding in reaction to the type of lightning the doppelganger had cast upon them. In perfect sync, the nightmarish creatures collapsed on the floor. Almost in a trance, I absentmindedly finished the incantation that sealed the portals.
Feeling faint, I turned to walk away, hoping unrealistically that my terrifying companion wouldn’t notice. Naturally, I found him staring at me with something akin to pure malice that liquefied my innards. He slowly prowled towards me, blocking my path. Eyes locked with mine, he slowly licked the blood from Arisa’s heart off his fingers. There was something both sensual and evil about it, like a promise of divine bliss and unspeakable agony.
I backed away only to have him stalk forward.
“I will leave now,” I said, flinching inwardly at the lack of confidence audible in my voice. “Thanks for your help freeing the women and dispatching the monsters.”
He raised an eyebrow, and his mouth widened exposing even more of his terrifying teeth.
“Too late, Inquisitor. I gave you a chance to leave, but now the poison coursing through your veins has spread too far. You shouldn’t have cast those spells,” he said in a soft voice with an equal mix of mockery and malice.
“I had to close the portals to prevent more abominations from pouring into our realm,” I said defensively while pressing a palm to my chest to appease the burning pain intensifying there.
He made a disdainful sound. “This place is already cursed.”
“That’s not a reason to unleash more demons in this area and especially not to leave so many gateways open for other unspeakable creatures to find their way here!” I exclaimed with outrage.
He slowly chuckled. Under different circumstances, and had his face not been so terrifying, I might have found the rumbling sound rather sexy.
“So righteous and selfless,” he replied tauntingly.
My tongue burned with the need to serve him with a smart comeback, but a sharp pain cut through my chest, making me gasp. I began casting a healing spell to dampen the pain and slow the progression of the poison until I could get to a cure, but I froze within seconds, paralyzed.
“I saidstop casting!” the doppelganger snapped, anger burning in his reptilian red eyes.
A wave of fear swelled within me as his features and body—the roman skirt he wore included—started melting like wax under intense heat. His height and width expanded, literally doubling in size as he grew a massive pair of wings. His head stretched into something resembling a beak while a fluffy white with blue gradient fur grew all over his body. Despite being unable to move my hands or body, my jaw dropped in disbelief as I gazed upon the Gharlakan he had morphed into.
To my shock, he picked me up with surprising care, carrying me in his arms like a bride as he marched out ofthe crematorium, leaving all the corpses of both the Onis and Lammathens behind. Helpless to do anything about it, I quelled my natural instinct to cleanse the scene of an intervention not to draw more vermin. Considering this place was clearly used often for kabbalistic rituals, leaving those remains behind wasn’t a great idea. Even dead, and even with a certain level of decay, their bones, organs, and various other elements of their bodies—such as claws and hair—could be used as potent reagents in a number of rituals.
Despite how slimy everything felt in the Duskwallow Graveyard, stepping outside of the building almost felt like being hit by fresh air. It was the evil and malice contained within the room that made it even more suffocating. My companion—or should I say captor?—took flight in the opposite direction from the Inquisitor Sanctum.
To my pleasant surprise, despite still being paralyzed, he hadn’t deprived me of the ability to speak.
“Where are you taking me?” I asked, concerned by how difficult forming words had become due to the effects of the poison progressing through me.
“Home,” he replied in a non-committal fashion, his disembodied voice resonating inside my mind telepathically as the creature clearly couldn’t speak with that beak.
“Home?” I echoed, worry seeping into my voice. “But—”
My words dissolved into a hiss as a sharp pain sliced through my chest again.
“Hush, woman,” he said in a stern and yet unexpectedly soft fashion. “Sleep.”
The command acted like a switch. Just like that, darkness swallowed me.
