Memories of the Reaper

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Derek Grey hadn't known what to expect but what he saw wasn't it.

A large creature lumbered out of the cave, gripping the rocks in its clawed feet, as it forced its way out. Its face sprouted tusks, and its eyes bugged from its head, six of them. There was one mouth, but it was a voracious hole, with several rows of teeth like a shark. It moved on six legs, like a Komodo dragon but more imposing. Its body was a mismatch of colors and sizes, some legs looking sturdier than others—the two inner ones looking they had been grafted on. The creature shrieked, its voice making the ground vibrate. It extricated itself from the cave entrance, took a wobbly step forward, and fell dead without a scratch on its body.

Derek felt his body restrict in fear. "What the hell is that thing?"

"Another voider," Kendra whispered. "We're lucky it couldn't survive here, otherwise the fight would have gotten nasty."

"What do you mean?" Derek asked, still staring at the monster.

"Very few voiders aside from the celestial spirits and the Xa'gara are able to survive outside of the Void. Imagine sea creatures in the deepest depths of the oceans. Their bodies were created to thrive in crushing pressure, but if they ever come to the surface, they will die from the lack of pressure. It's like that." Kendra whispered, also shaken but not as much as the middling. She walked away, ending the conversation. Derek followed, still worried about the creature even after Reynold stabbed his trishul through its head, ensuring its demise.

"Burn it," Reynold whispered, pulling his weapon from its corpse.

Bryce came forward immediately and began blasting the body, turning it to cinders. Even the blood boiled, thickening until it became nothing more than stains on the stone. Victor quickly had the grass form over the burned area. If Derek hadn't known better, he wouldn't have known that anything had happened there.

Yet, the fact remained that it had happened—it shook Derek to his core. If things like that can exist. What else can?

The middling didn't want to find out.

Reynold grabbed his trishul. "We need to make sure that nothing else can come out of there. We must keep moving."

The six reapers, five gryphons, and the middling all walked inside of the cave. At first, they could only walk three abreast, but the cave opened wide enough where they could all stand in a row. They stared defiantly at what lay before them.

The shadow gate.

It was lifeless, devoid of everything, like a porthole into space except there were no stars. It was a giant puddle of oil without the glint of a rainbow, and it remained in place on the far wall without dripping downward to the floor.

There was something else, too.

Unlike the cold that ran through his veins, the chill of this portal went down to his very core. It was so dark and lifeless that when he looked into its depth, Derek felt himself being mentally pulled into the abyss, as if it were some black hole for all thought and order.

A place where chaos reigned.

The gryphons, normally fearless, glanced at the shadow gate with unease, their bodies low to the ground. The reapers reactions were subdued, less audible from the exhaustive energy spent fighting through the night. Bryce was swearing under his breath. Kendra merely stared. Kai and Hazel commented to each other in low voices, but their words were lost in the depths of the gate. Derek only felt numb.

"I should have known," Reynold said to them in a low whisper. "I was too proud. I hadn't believed that even Seraph would be able to strike our camp so easily—I should have known."