Fractured Souls by Ava Marie Salinger
45
Morgan drewhis Stark Steel sword from the dead sorcerer’s body and kicked aside the summoning staff from his limp hand.
The war demons pouring out of the portal screamed, their bodies rent in two as the doorway to the Nine Hells started to close. One of them snagged the sorcerer’s foot and dragged him into the black miasma, the man’s leg disappearing down the monster’s throat with wet snaps and crunches.
The cave shook with a violent explosion of shadows.
“Sweet hellfire!” Julia gasped.
Morgan whirled around. He froze, his eyes rounding and his swords sagging limply at his sides.
Something was happening to the floor. Something unreal.
“Is that the Nether?!” Julia mumbled.
Morgan’s heart thumped rapidly in his chest as he stared at the expanding dark fissure in the center of the cave, the answer rising from his very soul core. “Yes!”
His gaze found the white-winged, armored angel by the altar and the man standing opposite him. Morgan grew deadly still, recognition sparking across his mind even as sharp pain drilled into his skull.
That’s not Chester Moran!
* * *
Death!
Cassius blinked. The word danced through his consciousness, faint yet full of power. It was as if something inside him was urging him to remember.
Not something. Cassius’s eyes widened. Someone!
His soul trembled with sweet violence. His true self was trying to make him recall who the enemy was.
Strength filled him anew, draining the weakness that had overcome his flesh and bones. Cassius straightened, his knuckles whitening on his sword and his dulled mind clearing.
He knew what he needed to do.
And so does he!
A mocking sneer twisted the mouth of the man who oozed darkness and terror. “I have always loathed you. You who were bathed in Heaven’s Light by virtue of your birth. You were always so righteous. So kind. So…easy to manipulate.”
Sorrow brought tears to Cassius’s eyes. He blinked, shocked.
The gut-wrenching misery he was experiencing was not coming from his present self but who he had once been. The being who lived deep inside him. The one whose agony was like a blade threatening to rip his soul asunder.
Cassius wiped the wetness from his cheeks, gripped his sword in both hands, and tore it out of Chester’s heart. Loki slid off the blade, his body striking the ground wetly.
The man grunted. A sick grin split his mouth. “Chester is long dead. You can’t kill me—”
A gasp choked his breath.
Cassius scowled and twisted his blade where he’d stabbed the writhing globe of darkness hidden behind Chester Moran’s fading, gray soul core.
The man’s shocked gaze dropped to the sword of shadows that had pierced his back and exited the front of his body at the exact same moment.
“You’ve sure stopped being chatty for an asshole who claims he can’t die!” Morgan growled in the stranger’s ear.
He yanked his blade out and sliced the man’s right hand at the wrist.
The stranger cursed as the Eternity Key fell to the ground. Blackness filled Chester’s eyes. It bloomed across his face and head and raced down his body.
“Get back!”Cassius yelled at Morgan.
He yanked his sword out of Chester’s body and jumped backward, Morgan mimicking his movement opposite.
Chester exploded into thick globules of shadows that dripped into the opening Nether.
Cassius stared. The dark presence he had felt was gone. He frowned. He doubted he’d actually killed Chester’s master.
Tremors rocked the cave as the Nether started to expand.
“We need to get out of here!” Adrianne yelled from across the way.
“It’s too late,” Jasper said grimly where he stood beside her. “This thing is going to swallow the city.”
Cassius startled as Morgan closed the distance to him and hugged him fiercely, lifting him off the ground for a moment.
“Are you okay?” Morgan mumbled.
“Yes.”
Morgan drew back in surprise. “You remember who you are?!”
Cassius nodded. “I do. And I know what I have to do.”
The knowledge had just come to him from his true self. He knew not to question it, however insane the notion sounded in his head.
“Take cover,”Cassius ordered Adrianne and the others.
“Take cover?!” Brianna snapped. The witch had returned to her human form. “Where?!”
She indicated the cave with a wild wave of her hands.
“A shield. The strongest you can muster.” Cassius’s gaze skimmed the terrified humans huddling behind the witch. “There’s no time to get these people out of here.” He looked at Morgan. “You too.”
Morgan scowled. “I’m staying right here with you!”
Cassius narrowed his eyes. “We don’t have time for this.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Morgan stated between gritted teeth.
Cassius blew out an irritated sigh. “Alright. But if a giant piece of rock lands on your head and squashes you, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
He walked over to the middle of the rift tearing across the floor of the cave, took a deep breath, and concentrated. Heat bloomed inside him, filling his body with a power that did not belong in this realm.
Blinding light exploded on the tip of his sword. It pulsed and throbbed as it condensed down to a fine layer that coated the metal, the heat coursing off it warming Cassius’s skin even through his armor.
He stabbed the holy blade into the Nether and twisted it.
Thunder clapped across the cave ahead of a violent detonation of energy. Cassius leaned into the percussive storm even as it sent fracture lines racing across the obsidian floor and up the walls of the cavern. The air throbbed, molecules of darkness expanding briefly before being sucked into the shrinking black fissure that was the Nether.
It took but seconds for the veil to close.
Deafening silence fell in the aftermath.
Cassius released the breath he’d been holding and closed his eyes, his limbs weak with relief. He gasped when Morgan embraced him and took him to the ground.
“What was that?!” Morgan mumbled, rising on an elbow to stare down at him.
“What was what?” Cassius said awkwardly.
His armor had vanished and his Empyreal form was fading fast.
An echo of gratitude danced through him from his true self.
Thank you…
“Did he just close the Nether?” Reuben said dazedly, the shield Adrianne, Bailey, and Brianna had erected fading around their group where they’d been crouching low on the ground.
Jasper scowled and straightened. “I think he did.”
Adrianne opened and closed her mouth. “How?!”
“That’s what I’d like to know,” Brianna said grimly.
They came over just as Morgan rose and pulled Cassius to his feet.
“That was a neat party trick,” Julia told Cassius guardedly.
“Yeah,” Zach grunted. “Let’s not do that again.”
“Okay,” Cassius murmured.
Adrianne looked over sadly to where Loki lay on the floor. “The cat.”
Cassius tucked his dagger back in its sheath and sighed. “I know you’re faking, you damn imp.”
The others stared at him, startled.
Jasper grimaced. “I really think he’s dead. His chest isn’t moving.”
Loki opened a yellow eye and looked at them guiltily.
“He’s not dead?!” Bailey gasped.
“No. I deliberately avoided his soul core when I stabbed him.”
The cat sat up and shook himself out, a ripple racing across his hackles before his fur settled back down. His wounds were already closing.
Cassius narrowed his eyes. I wonder if it’s because of the power of the awakened Eternity Key.
Loki studied them for a moment, twisted around, and promptly ate the artifact where it lay on the floor.
Cassius sucked in air. “Why, you little—! That’s it! No more gourmet salmon for you!”
“Wait,” Adrianne said dully. “You were buying him gourmet salmon?”
Loki licked his paw and meowed innocently.