“Um, Delilah Raye from the mortal realm.” I called out.
“Are you here to claim your heirloom, new soul?” the mist asked.
“New soul?” I uttered, mostly to myself in confusion.
Then, as if in aggravation, the mist thrashed and condensed until it took the form of a ghostly, half-rotted skeleton floating in tattered rags and bound in chains. It had no eyes—just empty dark sockets. Traces of gray skin draped from the sharp angles of its facial bones. Half of its mouth still remained, with thin black lips.
I felt like screaming, but no sound left my lips. For as nightmarish as this creature was, I didn’t get the sense it wanted to hurt me.
The figure whispered in annoyance, “Child of ancient blood, new soul, the child made?... Do you not know what you are …Delilah?”
“Not entirely, no.” I replied, trying to hide my shame.
“Ever since the expansion of life, there have been the same number of souls, cycling through the realms. For eternity, the same number remained. Until you were born…mortal. Did you not find it odd that you didn’t come to the Fae Realm as a newborn? Or that you had all your memories from your previous life? The laws of natural progression don’t apply to you because you should not exist, because you aren’t a cycling soul, you are the child made! The new soul!!” He explained.
I swallowed and forced myself to ask the difficult question that had been keeping me up at night. “Because…of who my father is?”
“Precisely….” The figure whispered. “And who… or what are
you?” I asked.
“My name no longer matters for it is long gone with the erosion of time, but I am a bound soul. My sins in my life were too great that the Guardians refused my progression to the next realm, and I was too wicked to repeat life in this realm. I was sentenced as a slave, chained to this realm for whatever use the Guardians see fit. Mine was protecting this chamber and the Sinceritas Purus-Litas.” He replied.
“The dagger of destiny.” I said under my breath, and that’s when I noticed the remnants of rotted pointed ears.
“Oh, I’m sorry, that sounds very cruel,” I replied with sincerity.
“Now that you are here to collect your father’s dagger, my sentence is complete. I have been waiting eons for you Delilah,wasting and rotting away in the solitary confinement of this blasted volcano…take it please…so that I may return to the cycle and start life anew.” He pleaded.
Just then, a dagger like the one I’d seen on the statue of Eloria in the castle appeared in my hands. Its pommel and hilt were adorned in sapphires. The blade buzzed with an energy that left me in awe. I had never felt such raw power—such condensed magic in a physical form.
But beneath the awe was something else—something unsettlingly intimate. The vibration in the hilt didn’t feel foreign; it felt responsive, like it recognized the blood in my veins. As if it had been waiting for my hand, and no other.
“Thank you, child made, do better with your life than I did mine.” He groaned as he evaporated into nothingness, and that feeling of not being alone was gone. There was nothing around us other than lifeless rock.
Suddenly, the blue magic barrier shielding the cave from the lava began to shorten, allowing a thin slosh of liquid fire to pour in. I gasped and checked our shield—it was still intact. I commanded Zephyros to get us out of here.
Then suddenly the ground shook, and I heard a booming cry muffled by rock. “DELILAH!!!!”
My heart sank.It was Titus. His tone told me it was a warning.He must have been struggling to hold our shield.
I sheathed the dagger at my hip, and we pushed past the gelatinous magic membrane into the lava. Our orb was shrinking.
With a thrust from her strong legs, she gave us the momentum we needed to start our ascent, but going up was a lot harder than going down. The weight of the magma pushed down on our shrinking shield. When we stalled somewhere midway, I commanded Zephyros to flapher wings; the momentum within our orb was enough to keep us moving, if only at a snail’s pace.
Fuck, it’s not fast enough.
“Titus,” I screamed, but there was no answer, how deep we were, I knew there wouldn’t be.
The orb shrank smaller until Zephyros’s wings were damn near pinned. She couldn’t use the momentum to keep us moving upward anymore. We stalled out again.
My heart threatened to break past my ribs and land on the ground with how hard it was beating.
Then, to my horror, gravity took hold and we began tosink.This is it. We would not survive this. We made it down, retrieved the dagger, but could not make it up.
My ears rang, and Zephyros cried.
“I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I really thought we could make it,” I sobbed as I pet her green scales lovingly.
