Reaper Eternally: Reaper Fairytale Book 3 by Qatarina Wanders

Author:Qatarina Wanders [Wanders, Qatarina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wandering Words Media
Published: 2023-07-29T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

Angelica

The tar pit that had formed where the Double of Grim was slain is emitting a faint light. It’s strange, because the light has no color, but it’s not white, either. It’s a sort of brightness that I have never seen before. It arcs up, first formless, and then curving to take the shape of a large oval above the tar. The bottom part of the light is attached to the ichor.

Darkness slides up the light in thin tendrils, almost like veins through a body. I reach out, grabbing onto the sleeve of Grim’s robe. “What’s going on?”

“I have no idea,” he admits, with a shake of his head.

The black lines push up, until they have filled up the bottom third of the oval. I realize they aren’t veins, they’re roots. They flatten out, forming a distinct line, almost like the ground. In spots, the tendrils push up through the ‘ground’ and take the shape of figures.

It’s a bit like looking at a set of paper dolls, or a shadow-puppet play. The darkness takes on the form of a tall man with a long coat, and a thin mustache. I don’t really know how so many details can take shape, when it’s just colorless bright and darkest black, but I can see every detail of the man’s shirt, from the buttons to the pattern, and I can see the crows' feet in the corners of his eyes.

“That’s…” Grim’s brow bones pinch down. He looks pained for a moment, his free hand coming up to press against the side of his skull. Phalanges curl hard against smooth bone.

“You recognize him?” I ask, surprised.

Grim seems to be just as baffled at his own ability to do so, stating, almost breathless and a little pained, “That’s Alistair. That’s—I think that might have been my father.”

“It’s your memories,” I gasp, looking back at the oval. A second shape has taken form—two of them really. The first is a large oak tree, at the edge of a forest, and the second, an old woman with gnarled hands and a hooded cloak. Her nose is crooked and her eyes are bright.

The man is walking toward her, marching almost.

I ask, “Do you know who that woman is?”

There’s a very long pause before Grim responds, “I think that might be Fate.”

Mnemosyne’s voice fills the cave quite suddenly, echoing in from all directions.

Alistair thought that he could be,

Better than the rest.

Able to see Fate was he,

So he put that vision to the test.

He set a trap,

He set a snare.

And with a snap,

Fate was there.

The man walks over to Fate. The blackness twists, and the old woman is hauled up into the low-hanging branches of the old oak tree by one foot, as though in a hunter’s snare. She shakes a hand at Alistair, almost comically, but there is no humor built inside of the action. Fate turns and looks, not at Alistair’s shadow form, but straight at us.

Straight at Grim.

I clutch at his robes even more tightly than before, as though that might stop this, whatever it is, from happening.

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