CHAPTER EIGHT

 

 

“Is that really you?” I forced the words through my dry, chapped throat. “Or is my brain fried?”

“It’s me, Jarek.” Valynn burrowed her face in my chest, which elicited a squawk of pain on my part, but it was worth it to hold her again. Tears rolled from her cheek and onto mine, blazing a path as they dribbled down my neck. “I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”

“It’s alright,” I said, running fingers through her hair. “But maybe next time warn me about the Arch-Bishop.”

Valynn leaned back and stared up at me with waterlogged eyes. The effects of the day had taken a heavy toll on her.

“I figured it was… obvious.”

“How is something like that obvious?” It was my turn to act surprised. “I’m still not even sure why somebody would steal from the Vault of Souls in the first place.”

“Immortality,” she said with a slight hiccup of awe.

“That’s what the spiritual plane is for,” I pointed out. “Why would Mard and Armast risk all that for immortality here? What’s so great about the physical world?”

“There’s a corruption spreading across the other side. It’s tearing through the souls of our ancestors, feeding off their strength, and using their strength to bridge the gap and jump across realms.”

“That’s impossible.” I placed a tingling hand on Valynn’s shoulder. “The Old Ones have complete administrative control over the spirit realm.”

“No, Jarek. You don’t understand.” Valynn put an icy hand atop mine and helped me to my feet. My legs still burned, but the muscles didn’t give out so that was progress. “The Old Ones are responsible for the slaughter.”

That claim was too monstrous to comprehend. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“It’s true. They’ve surpassed the spirit realm’s capacity,” she said urgently and fairly convincingly. “They’ve lived so long that their memories are distorting, turning back in on themselves in a recursive nightmare. Living forever has caused them to go insane.”

“How’s coming back to the physical realm supposed to solve that?”

“Don’t know. I never said their logic made sense. You can’t argue with crazy people.”

“I’ll say,” I said, trying my luck at standing without Valynn’s assistance. There was a wobble followed by a three-heartbeat spell where I legitimately feared falling again. Somehow my body remained upright. “How do you know all this by the way?”

“Rance told me. I didn’t believe him, either. At first. But he sent me there, to the spirit realm, and I saw for myself.” The lines in Valynn’s face slackened, making her appear much older with a depth of sadness that hurt to see. “It’s horrible, Jay. You can’t imagine the suffering. It’s eternal; worse than non-existence even.”

“Don’t say that.” I furrowed my brow, hoping it conveyed the appropriate amount of shock.

She shook her head as though trying to dislodge a memory stuck in the grooves of her gray matter. “We can’t allow the corrupted Old Ones to make the jump back here. They have to stop them.”

“And how are we supposed to do that?” I asked. “You’re a glorified personal assistant and I’m a Daydreamer. The only place I’m a hero is in my own thoughts. We’re not the people for this job, Val.”

She leaned in close, her breath a dry heat upon my face. It felt foreign somehow. Perhaps her trip to the other side had changed her somehow. In the dim light it took a squint to make out the details of her face. Through the darkness I traced her cheekbone with a finger. The face was the same, but the muscles beneath were flexed in ways that seemed all wrong when she pulled her lips back to frown. They shouldn’t have curled quite so much. Shouldn’t have looked so much like a snarl.

“There’s only one way to stop the Old Ones; we must trim down the remaining souls. Limit their size and potential energy,” Valynn said, interrupting my study of her face.

I was now thankful for the darkness, glad she wouldn’t see my trembling hands. “Think about what you’re saying. We have loved ones over there, waiting for us. Your parents, your sister Caroline. You’ll never see them again. They’ll be gone, forever.”

“You don’t think I know that?” She pulled away quickly. “I don’t want this, Jarek. I don’t want this at all, but it has to be done.”

I rubbed a finger against the patch of stubble that had grown across my cheek since that morning. Part of it could almost make sense. Eternity was a long time to exist, I could imagine boredom becoming a very real problem.

But everything about this felt wrong. Perhaps my selfish desire to be immortal clouded my perspective. I’d like to believe my motives were slightly altruistic, but not wanting to see my loved ones discorporate into oblivion had self-serving undertones.

There also remained the not so insignificant issue of how such a thing could be possible. Manipulating the soul matrix interface from this side of existence shouldn’t be possible.

“The public should be notified,” I said, retaining the belief that this wasn’t a decision to be made by a handful of people. “Mard should make an announcement. There needs to be a vote.”

“That will take weeks; we don’t have that kind of time. Anyways there’s no guarantee they’d make the right decision. That’s why we must make it for them, to protect the people from themselves.”

That was wrong, all of it. From what she said, to how she said it, Valynn sounded nothing like herself. Mard had thoroughly brainwashed her into throwing away everything she’d ever sworn to protect.

It wasn’t the woman I knew. Nor the one I loved.

“I can’t be part of this,” I said.

Undeterred, she gestured to the pit. “Come to spirit realm and let me show you.”

I instinctively stepped away from the gigantic hole in the ground. “That’s not a place for the living, or a mortal. Two things I most definitely am, and would like to continue to be, for the foreseeable future.”

“Death is only temporary. I can separate your soul from your body just long enough to make the trip to the other side. It doesn’t hurt, I promise.” Soul separation seemed precisely like the sort of thing that would hurt, a lot—but Valynn was speaking faster now, her hands a blur of animation she used to punctuate her words. “It’s disorienting, not having a body to hold you down, but you’ll adapt quickly. Come and I’ll show you. Do it for me.”

There was nothing I’d rather do less, but the woman I loved tugged on my jacket sleeve, and for her…

Well, for her, I’d do anything.