When Blood Runs Cold - Chapter 255

With less than ten minutes left on the clock, I quickly realise that if I want to get out of this and avoid any number of suspicions, I am going to have to be quick. After all, it is as the soul of death professed: the palace has eyes, I am going to have to be careful.

Hopefully now that the soul has agreed to my terms, it is going to be mildly easier to get everything done and dusted. Panicking a little to spit out my words, I fumble there for a moment under the watchful gaze of the soul, tapping my fingers together as I strive to conjure my next point.

In all honesty, I didn’t exactly have time to prepare some miraculous speech before I rocked up in this ominous forest, so the majority of what I want to say is entirely spontaneous. Luckily I have become quite adept to dealing with offhand situations such as these.

“Right okay,” I affirm hurriedly, clapping my hands together with a nod of understanding. “So, I have some sort of plan given the information I have gathered, if you are willing to follow. Though understandably you might want to do…” I trail off for a moment, swallowing down my nerves. Meeting her eyes once more, I hold the gaze of the frail, pallid soul of death, all at once feeling that horrible bone-chilling cold rattle through my bones. “Well, you might prefer to do more your own thing.”

Slinking down towards me, the soul rests herself against the bark of a tree, picking at her nails with one hand, and scratching the chin of another vaguely animal shaped spirit in the other. I have never seen anyone other than her be able to touch the spirits as she does- as though they have some sort of solidity to them. But I suppose that simply comes with being part dead as she is.

“A vague plan would suffice. Though I am sure I can improvise,” she shrugs simply, continuing to scratch under the little creatures chin. It begins to purr.

Clearing my throat, I all at once realise I have ceased my speech.

“Uh, so, Azrael and his men, along with Asocrates, will be approaching the outer edges of the forest in the next… ten, maybe fifteen minutes? I am going to have to run back to rally them, perhaps try to convince Azrael that Asocrates really isn’t just pulling at straws here. I need you to make yourself… apparent as aforementioned. The way you choose to do that is entirely up to you, so long as nobody dies. Unless you can reasonably kill Azrael, then you have my blessing,” I add with a cheeky smile that hides the hopelessness behind that statement.

It would take more than that to kill Azrael, that much is certain. By now I am sure he would have prepared for every eventuality- including his assassination via the soul of death. A little quiver runs down my spine.

In a strange way, I am almost glad I am a suspect for murder no longer.

Running my fingers through my dishevelled and mussy hair, I give the soul one final pleading look.

“Can I have your word that you will do as you promised?”

A mischievous smile spreads over her features, revealing a sparkling array of narrow, shark like teeth. I gulp. Although she and I may remain allies for the time, that does not wipe away the sheer unsettling nature of her appearance.

“Absolutely, Hybrid Queen,” she assures, rubbing her hands together with an eager anticipation. Wordlessly, a few of the strange, translucent, shining spirits stop to linger around her form, a soundless communication passing through them until at last they zoom off into the blackness, their smoky forms vanishing against the light of the stars. Her white eyes watch them as they go, following their luminescent bodies until all that is left around us is the stifling bitterness of the dark.

Sometimes, with such a dark like this, so black it almost seems solid, I am left half wondering whether someone else might linger in it. A familiar form wandering aimlessly among the trees and the flowers, searching, calling. It is this vision that comforts me when times in the palace become almost unbearable, or when I am left sitting at the desk in my room drawing messages that will never be read in the air with my finger. Sometimes, I think he does, for at the dead of night, I can feel a tug at the bond in my heart as though something, or someone, is searching for what got left behind.

I wonder if he knows how much I want to look for him, too.

Jolting me out of my daze, the soul of death takes a step forward.

“Keep your thoughts together, Hybrid Queen. You have a long journey ahead of you, and most of it isn’t even in this palace,” she affirms, tapping her head once to indicate her point. Ah, I see. Another dream then.

“Besides, how could I not agree to your plan? After all, I did ask you to be the one to decide my fate for me, and so far I am having a grand time with your little scheme. I am never impartial to a good spot of mischief, you have served me well, Hybrid Queen,” she nods with a bow.

“Thank you,” I return, giving her a grateful smile.

Without a second to waste, she turns to the trees, darkness sucking at her form as she ducks under the leafy extensions of branches and the thick luminescence of the glowing mushrooms that tower about her head. But before her form is completely consumed by that inky dark, she turns, her hair moulding like water around her face as she utters in an unnatural tone:

“Ingrid.”

It takes a moment for me to fully register what she has said.

“What?”

She turns slightly further, giving me a small but weak smile.

“That was my name, before the soul chose me. Before I died.”

A cold chill runs through me as I gaze upon her gaunt and lifeless face, the pale whites of her eyes and the strange ethereality she has to her being.

Before I died…

It all makes a lot more sense now.

The way her bones jut at peculiar angles, the feeling and emotions she claims to lack and sense, the peculiar stench of rot and decay and the fading, crumbling transparency of her wings, as though her body is deteriorating beneath her. And while any other might have withered and died under such a strain on the body, this soul still stands as though she is as young and chipper as her age professes her to be. But this is a soul who knew Soren in his dark days, in his days of murder and bloodshed, and before emotion managed to worm its way into his wintry heart.

This soul is hundreds of years old. And yet she looks only twenty.

I always assumed that a person had to be born or alive to be chosen by a soul. But now I realise what a huge oversight that was on my part. The souls choose their host by no logical means, only that they are the most suited candidates to hold such powers- whether that be by their innate strength, or simply their good will and nature. Being alive was never part of the equation. Only being in existence- even if that existence is on the verge of death.

A sour taste trickles into my mouth, the acrid taste of death and the slow rot of decay. How foolish I was to not have seen it before.

The soul of the dead isn’t just a person gifted with the powers of death and being able to communicate with the spirits, control them at a whim. They are dead. Just like the things they control, walking this earth until there is another strong enough to banish them from this eternal hell of suffering. No wonder Ingrid allowed her fate to be put into my hands, she has nothing left that she has not already done herself. She wants someone else to decide it for her. She wants someone to end her suffering, to end this never-ending eternity of death.

Perhaps she even wants to die- properly this time, not just hanging on the tethers of a soul who forces her to linger in the purgatory of death and life for eternity.

When I next look at her, there is a wilful understanding in her eyes that assures me that she knows exactly what I have figured out- and that she is glad that I have.

No wonder Soren and Ingrid were friends for so long- both eternal walkers of a world where the ancient spin of time has become meaningless to them, and the notion of death no longer instils fear into their cold, rhythmless hearts. After all, they are already dead, what do they have to lose?

“He could lose you,” she says softly, retreating once more against the inky void of the shadows that cling around her. “Don’t forget to live for him.”

And then, just like that, she is gone.