“You sold your soul to a diavolos?” Disappointment marinated Sikras’s words as he tried to find Vessik’s vacant stare. “How could you do that? We were supposed to go wherever the godless heathens went when we died. Dammit, Vessik, now you won’t even know peace in death!”
“Yes, a pity,” Ithusa said with a tone containing nothing remotely close to pity. “And while it’s been great having a human puppet who knows a thing or two about necromancy to bypass divine law, Vessik’s shortcomings have made progress slow. That stutter of his wreaks havoc on the success of his spellcasting, and for every handful of souls whom he resurrects and relinquishes to me, I need to convert over half of them into raw energy that he must absorb to manage spells of this potency. It’s always two steps forward, one step back with us. But withyou... with the Cat’s Eye ... you wouldn’t even need my power. You could slaughter and relinquish an entire kingdom of souls unto me. I would never feel the agony of hunger again.”
“Hypothetically, yes,” Sikras said through grinding teeth. “There’s just one teensy problem with that. You allowed my dear albeit naïve friend here to sell you his soul, and now I want to brutally murder you, so favors are off the table.”
“Allowed him? Darling, he practically begged me. All sweet Vessik wanted was the power to help others, and I’ve given him that. Granted”—she laughed, flipping her large, clawed hand—“I’m the one he’s helping, but that’s neither here nor there, is it?”
As overwhelming as the revelation was, something still wasn’t right. Sikras writhed where he stood, mind grasping for whatever he was missing.
“There’s no escaping the contract,” Ithusa said, “but—”
“Look, lady, I know how contracts work. I’ve got enough of them on my kitchen floor to wallpaper a room.”
“But,” she continued through the interruption, “I will free him from it. You need only take his place.”
Sikras studied Vessik, searching, scouring for any sign of ... anything, really. So, the man sold his soul. Foolish but well intentioned. Classic Vessik. Still, change of ownership did not strip a person of their self, and the blank slate Sikras stared at was anything but the man he knew. Why wasn’t hehimself? Years of coercion? Diavoli could leverage their physical strength against humans to attack them, to hurt them, to intimidate them, yet Vessik showed no scars, no signs of bodily abuse.
And then it struck him.
Magical coercion.
Given that the gods prohibited diavoli to use their magic on mankind without consent, it hadn’t occurred to Sikras as a possibility. But a diavolos did not require consent to manipulate their own property. And whether Vessik liked it or not, when he signed his soul away, he became Ithusa’s property.
Sikras rounded on Ithusa, a muscle twitching beneath his eye. “You’re manipulating his mind.”
“I know what you’re thinking, and no, this violates nothing.” She smirked. “He was of his own mind when he signed his soul away. Anything I did to him after was well within my right.”
Sikras sneered, his focus jumping from one thought to the next. Everything made far more sense now. A mind manipulation spell was so potent, so profane, the magical backlash it promised was crippling if not fatal. But diavoli could consume souls like they were energy, like they were lives; if Ithusa perished, as a half-god, she needed only to eat another soul to find herself alive once more. And with four years’ worth of souls, even considering those she had sacrificed to power Vessik’s abilities, she would still have plenty of chances to pull off a mind manipulation spell.
But, at the end of the day, a spell was a spell. Granted, a half-god of insurmountable power had casted this one, but it was a spell nevertheless. If he couldn’t reverse it, he could at least counter it. Maybe. So long as that was hisonlyfocus.
Helspira could handle the horde. In her, Sikras had every confidence in the world.
With a swipe of his hand, Sikras severed all concentration on his undead. Chin high, shoulders back, fingers positioned, he faced Ithusa and whispered, “Empodio.”
Ithusa hissed when a shimmering translucent dome molded over her. The glassy barrier muffled her voice—perhaps for the best, as it appeared she mouthed some rather colorful phrases while she hurled her body against the rounded walls and clawed at the sides.
Every hammer of her fist against the dome rattled Sikras’s skull. Blood and bone, she was stronger than he had thought. His chest tightened as he forced his gaze toward Vessik, straining, searching for any signs of his old friend. If he had done it right, the dome wouldn’t just contain Ithusa; it would contain the effects of any spells she had casted within the cage as well.
Staggering forward, Vessik dropped his short sword and clutched his head in both hands. He raked his fingers into his scalp and gasped. “Blessed night.” Wheezing, he relinquished his grip, peering through the long brown strands of hair. Of all the emotions he wore—horror, confusion, the weight of disgust—one dominated the others.
Shock.
“Sikras. How are you—?” Mouth agape, he glimpsed Ithusa and shook his head. “Y—You countered her spell.”
“I can’t hold it for long.” Not against a diavolos. Not forever. Gods, it hurt. Like the pressure was ripping his brain into tiny pieces. Through the pain, Sikras forced a shaky grin. “A real shame, given how much we have to catch up on.”
All Vessik could do was shake his head, starting and stopping several half-spoken thoughts, before he finally said, “A counterspell to match a half-god? How? Even with the power of the Cat’s Eye, we were both terrible wizards.”
It would’ve taken far too long to tell Vessik that he had only pretended to misunderstand magic during their apprenticeship. Too long to tell him magic was like a second language that wove through his blood. Too long to tell him he had never wanted to walk any path in which Vessik got left behind and that he would have happily sworn off all magic, all gods, all the world if he had to. If Vessik was to fail, Sikras would fail alongside him, because failure was always less lonely with a friend. And so, with the limited time he had, he summed everything up with two words. “I lied.”
It scarcely seemed as if Vessik processed Sikras’s confession before the weight of his crimes breached the surface of his mind. They appeared to hit him all at once, each new pained expression a manifestation of remembered misery. “Gone gods. The almshouse. Thechildren. I burned all those—those people. Everything I did,” Vessik uttered, crumpling to the ground as tears streamed down his face. “It’s coming back. All those people I sent to their deaths ...”
Sikras bit the inside of his cheek to stifle a cry. Ithusa’s effort to break free of the dome grew more violent by the second. “It’s not your fault,” he managed through clenched teeth.
“It is. I signed away my soul. I just wanted the power to do good with whatever time I had left, I ... I thought even if I wouldn’t find eternal rest in death, I could have the chance to help others while I lived. I thought if you weren’t bound to wait for me in the afterlife for the godless, you could join Imri and Benjamin in their afterlife. I didn’t know she’d—I—I thought I’d still have control over my actions, I never thought—” His voice cracked, horrified eyes shining like glass. Vessik gripped his sides, rocking back and forth. “I just wanted to help. I wanted you to have a good afterlife. I wanted my life to mean something.”
“It meant something to me. Italwaysdid. I can fix this, just—”
