Page 26 of To Trap a Soul

She and Weldir had quickly learned he could bring her soul to wherever he pleased within his mist bordering the Veil on Earth.

Her heart squeezed in anxiety at remembering how each time she’d died and returned to the ‘safety’ of his realm, she had to restart her journey.

To die. Only to be brought back to full health, as if it was nothing but a horrible nightmare flickering behind her closed eyelids. But each time she knew it was, when she floated in haunting darkness and then was pushed back to light – right next to the canyon where her life had turned to hell.

Where she’d fled from rabid, mindless horrors by willingly slipping off the edge and screaming the entire fall to her death.

Perhaps it was because she was human, but learning to control her newfound ability to turn incorporeal hadn’t been second nature to her. She hadn’t even known she could will herself to change. It was only after the third time she died, eaten by the very monsters she’d sought to escape, that she began using it as an evasive tool.

Then again, the mind didn’t think rationally when one was being chased by predators – and becoming an entirely new being was hard to conceptualise.

Lindi was human. She doubted she’d ever let go of that sentiment, despite the fact that she was now something other. She’d known then, as much as she did now, that she needed to swiftly adapt to the adversity of her new life – one she hadstupidlychosen.

When she first returned to Earth, Weldir’s theory that she would have a physical form was immediately proven right – as that was the form she’d been given. It’d taken trial and error to figure out how to change to incorporeal at will – and it was pure will. The change was as easy as taking her next breath, so long as she remembered toactuallydo it.

Once she remembered this newfound ability, crossing the desert had been easy. There had been no hunger to contend with, even when she was physical. The heat had left her, as hadthe chill, both lost to the nothingness of her intangible body. The sun didn’t scald her, didn’t blister her face, and sweat stopped soaking her skin and dirtied dress.

The monsters stopped chasing the only prey they could smell within hundreds of kilometres when there was nothing to scent.

There was freedom in that security, that safety. To no longer exist except for her own sense of self.

A sense of self she feared losing, but had already been turning away from.

Six years had passed since then, and she could feel her mind, her heart, her verywillchanging. Then again, never in her imaginings did she think she’d ever witness the things she had or do the impossible things she’d done.

Or take the vile actions she had.

It feels like forever ago,she thought, as she looked down into the hot wine she drank from. She held the wooden mug with both hands, letting its blissful heat tingle through her fingertips and palms, as she inspected her own features in the reflection of the yellowy liquid.

It was her face; it hadn’t aged a day. Yet the solemn expression that stared back felt out of place – as it always did.

She missed the carefree, high-spirited, sheltered girl she’d been. Or, rather, she missed the life that had gifted such a blissfully naïve expression, and the people who had warmed her eyes and lifted the corners of her lips.

Lindi missed her home.

I think I’ll always miss them.Her parents, Allira and Nico, had been good, humble people. They hadn’t deserved to meet their ends the way they did.

She hadn’t deserved any of this, either.

Because after that long and arduoushoveringwalk across the plains and then forests of Austrális, there had been nothing to return to except more pain.

What had taken three days on horseback had taken Lindidaysto cross, and it hadn’t been in the right direction. After reaching civilisation, she’d then had to trek east towards Rivenspire. She’d spent most of it in the back of a horse-pulled cart with her legs dangling off the edge, thankful to rest her tired mind more than her feet.

It had taken everything within her heart for Lindi to not confess the truth about Daekura, worried her companions would deem her insane. Not everyone believed in these devils, and she understood that more people would have to see them before they’d stop being deemed as silly stories to frighten children.

Even in her walks across the desert, she’d only met four – two of which had come a long way to find her by tracking her scent. One even looked... similar to the first one that had been at the cliff that fateful day she’d married a god.

She couldn’t believe how wrong she’d been, and how quickly she’d dismissed the rumours to be falsehoods.

Before Weldir had sent her back to Earth from his realm, Tenebris, he’d told her the truth. There was a portal connected to another world, some kind of Elvish world – not that she knew what an Elf was – and the Daekura were venturing through it. He, apparently, couldn’t stop them – although his tone had hinted that may not be entirely true.

He was a fickle god when it came to his answers about himself or the Elvish, or even the Daekura.

Regardless... more were coming.

Every day, a handful of those creepy, snarling devils emerged from that portal, ready and hungry for blood. Weldir believed that human blood was particularly delicious to them due to how they reacted to the Elvish in the past. Before long, the rare one or two that managed to pass over the desert, likely hiding in the shadows of large boulders, canyons, or rocky mountains, would increase.

Soon, no one would be able to deny their existence.

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