REAPERS - Book Two: The Hunger and the Sickness

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No matter how fertile her imagination Dimia could never have guessed what Halo was doing at the moment her wish went skyward in his favor. Nor could she have known how much he truly needed that prayer. At Rattanak's behest the wayward Reaper waged battle against an ancient hobgoblin monk who lived alone in the remote wastes, exiled by the Justicars who'd pronounced his interpretations of Xul's Word as blasphemous and self-serving. Halo, at the command of his disembodied puppet-master, had dispatched a number of magi and mystics in their zigzag journey thus far but this mad pariah they now faced was the greatest challenge they had yet reckoned with. The sandman fought with two rune-engraved staves which he held in hands that were themselves glyphed and twinned to the enchanted rods. Sword rang against stave. The sandmaster controlled the sands themselves with those humming sticks. He flung the artifacts forward to send up great fans of silt in attempts push Halo back and raked the bronze poles together to drive gusts of blinding grit into the Reaper's eyes. The exile spun the poles to incite the countless particulates into biting cyclones and drove them into the sand to open yawning sinkholes under Halo's feet. The Reaper succumbed to the harsh onslaught. Darkness. The sun veiled by a rush of heavy sand. The grit entered Halo's mouth, his eyes. He considered submission and death, the peace it would bring. Perhaps it was best that the Reaper stay buried and the cursed sword along with him. But of course the sandmaster could unearth the blade for himself using those telekinetic rods, and perhaps find ways to put the Justicar's sword to even more odious purpose. Beyond that, Halo still felt the unwavering call in his heart of those he loved. Mulia. His daughters. His teammates, his friends. All out there, surely worried to madness about his fate.

He had not the strength to defeat this grandmage alone. But he was not alone. The emperor in the sword would lend him strength if he would accept it and the price affixed. Halo choked on the silt. It burned to breathe. The sand weighed like a mountain, an anvil crushing his chest. He accepted the dead hobgoblin king's bargain and let his defenses fall and took in Rattanak's tainted power. Halo heard his own possessed lips speak stolen words of energy that gave his runed body a surge of new and unholy might. The Reaper rose from the earth and spit the sand from his lungs and resumed his clash with the ancient sandmaster.

— • —

A wisp of smoke rose above the old tomb. Jinx's heart sank at the sight and then winced with pain in reminder of the modifications done to the organ by Wral's diabolical surgeons. He stifled his shame as a Reaper for allowing himself to be followed and ambushed like this. He had seen no sign of followers or watchers and taken steps of precaution, including the purchase of this very crypt. He kept his movements erratic, changing times and routes often. His new masters were masters indeed. They hid well and they knew much. Were they watching him even now? He looked at the black birds in the cemetery trees. Were they studying him through those beady eyes? Through the blank stares of the statues? Sorcery gave its users many ways with which to see. The skin on Jinx's chest was still raw from the arcane surgery that the Inquisitor's doctors had performed on him. His keepers claimed they could trace his location through their workings alone. And so they needed no eyes at all. The rune man chafed at the thought of being under the heel of Wral and his afterlings. Perhaps Jinx should at least be grateful he still had his life at all after being discovered as a practitioner. Or at least his hands and tongue... for now. But what kind of existence was this, as a slave and traitor?

The mausoleum had been broken into, surely by the Inquisitors while Jinx was under their scalpels and needles. The Reaper smelled the burning as he drew closer to the gutted crypt. He stepped inside with his lantern and a dagger raised. Everything within the vault had been either taken or burned. Soot coated the stone walls and sarcophagi and there were heaps of ash on the floor. The corpses he'd experimented on were crisped and contorted, all black dust and bones. The tome was gone. Had the necronomicon been burned to ashes? Or taken by his new dominators?