Now they were hollowed versions of him, their bodies gaunt and stretched thin. Their movements were disjointed and unnatural as they staggered forward in uneven steps. Their eyes were empty, completely devoid of thought, of will, of anything that suggested they were still…themselves.
A sick, crawling realization settled in my stomach as I watched them.
“What are they…?” I breathed, the words barely leaving me.
The man smiled then, not in amusement, not even in cruelty, but in something far worse, with something that suggested this was nothing more than routine to him.
“Fuel.”
That word… Goddess, it was so cold… so unfeeling. As if any life that wasn’t his own meant nothing. Something he proved when he lifted his hand, and one of the creatures froze mid-step. Its body jerked violently before being dragged forward by an invisible force. Its limbs were stiff and unresponsive as it was pulled toward him.
It didn’t even scream.
As for the evil bastard who was now pulling its strings, he didn’t even look at him as he lifted one hand. His fingers curled slightly as though he were testing the weight of something unseen, and the ground beneath us responded instantly.
I felt it before I saw it, the subtle tremor beneath my feet. The way the ash shifted, cracked, and then split entirely as the first jagged column of stone tore upward between us. I staggered back at the same time Bo did the same, bringing us closer together, trapped in the middle of chaos.
But it didn’t stop there.
More followed, erupting from the earth in violent succession, twisting and rising into towering, uneven spires that enclosed us on every side. Each formed something that could only be described as a cage, though nothing about it felt clean or structured.
These weren’t walls.
They were Hell’s teeth.
Blackened stone fused with veins of that same sick violet glow I had seen beneath Iridessa’s skin, pulsing faintly. As though whatever had taken hold of her had followed us here, threading itself through the very ground we now stood on.
As for the zombie goblin, he was using and stripping him of what looked like his very life source, and he didn’t fight.
That was what made it worse.
Because whatever it was that remained inside it had already given up.
Its body collapsed inward as it reached its limit. The life draining from it in seconds, its flesh shriveling, sinking against bone until it became nothing more than a hollow shell that crumbled into ash at his feet.
Bo made a pained sound beside me, like he had felt it himself, and when I glanced at him, I saw it, the way his expression tightened. The way something like horror flickered behind his eyes before he forced it down.
The bastard exhaled slowly, as though he had just taken in something deeply satisfying, and the cage around us solidifiedfurther. The jagged stone locked into place with a final, suffocating certainty.
“Do not worry,” he said lightly, his attention shifting at last. His gaze settled on me through the small gaps in the rock and in a way that made my skin prickle,
“I have already ensured your Enforcer will follow.”
My pulse stuttered as I uttered a desperate,
“No.”
“Oh, he will come for you, I have no doubt about that,” he continued, that same calm certainty threading through his voice.
“Exactly where I want him.”
And then, just as easily as he had appeared, he turned and walked away. The creatures followed after him in slow, obedient movements, leaving us alone in a silence that felt heavier than anything that had come before it.
I turned to Bo immediately, the question already burning its way out of me.
“Who the hell was that?” I asked, and this time the word hell felt far more literal than I would have liked.
He dragged a hand over his mainly bald head, pacing like he needed the movement just to stay grounded. Before finally coming to a stop in front of me. Then he looked out toward where the bastard had disappeared, his jaw tightening as he answered.
