Page 30 of To Trap a Soul

“You picked a bad night to walk these streets,” another one of them stated – not that she cared in the least.

Each of them had different features, ranging from blonde to brunette, bronze to pale, tall to short. Whether they were handsome or ugly was beneath her notice, as Lindi didn’t care when she was about to end their breaths.

Releasing the magic tentacle from earlier, the man likely dead now, she threw her right arm forward. It reappeared near her feet and shot forward to wrap around the head of the occultist on the far right. Not quite where she wanted to grab, but she yanked him anyway so he would head-butt the ground.

At the same time, drawing her own dagger of darkness, Lindi sprinted forward. The hood of her cloak slipped back to rest around her shoulders, allowing her long brown locks to flip behind her. With the shroud of a heavy black mist spreading out from her to hide what was about to happen from the eyes of possible onlookers, she held her dragger firm. She lunged the tip forward at the middle man’s throat and narrowly missed him when he stepped back in surprise.

The man on the left swiped his blade sideways through the air, and Lindi lifted her forearm to create a magical barrier made of glittering black sand. The blade slammed against it, bending his wrist back, and he let out a pained grunt. Taking the advantage presented while he was distracted, Lindi shoved her dagger hilt deep into the left man’s gut.

He spit out a rasp of pained shock, and she let go of the hilt so she could duck when the middle man’s fist rushed through the air. Her magical dagger trickled sand as it lost its solidness now that she was no longer holding it, and it glittered to the ground before disappearing completely.

Using her left hand, while still crouched, she created another barrier and swiped it to the side to smash against his ankles. With a quiet yell, he fell to his side and his body thuddedhard against the ground, causing her to wince at the noise she couldn’t hide with her mist. Extending her right hand, she conjured a shadowy tentacle to wrap around his body and slap across his mouth to quieten any of his yells as she ignored him for the time being.

With him trapped against the ground, there was little he could do.

The man who’d escaped her initial stabbing attempt skulked around, brandishing his knife while calculating her movements to strike. She sprung to her feet, grabbed his fist so it was tight around his blade’s hilt, and shoved it upwards. Proving just how much strength and skill she’d acquired in the last few years, she overpowered him and lodged his blade into his own throat. His entire body stiffened. In a matter of seconds, with blood pooling around the blade and rapidly escaping him, his knees buckled inwards before he dropped to the ground.

Devoid of emotion at the loss of this disgusting human’s life, she didn’t spare him a second glance as she moved her cold gaze elsewhere. She was barely even huffing, as if the exertion from such swift movements was insignificant.

Lindi turned to the final man, and she took in the fear in his eyes. A light, hot gust of wind blew around her form, lifting her hair and cloak to the left as she took a step closer. He shook his head, screaming against the tentacle pressing down upon his lips, and wriggled in his confinements – like how she’d wriggled to the edge of the Veil to fall off it...willingly.

He wasfrightened.How dare he be! How many victims had begged and pleaded while they were dragged across the wasteland of the desert? How many women had given him that very wide-eyed, tearful stare as they were pushed off a cliff or gutted to becomeDemonfood – as the occultists called them.

He wanted mercy from her, when he would have never given it.

So Lindi straddled his torso, held his gaze with a determined fierceness, and made another magical blade form.

He managed to get the tentacle off his lips so he could spit just one word: “Witch!”

Lindi stabbed her blade into his ruined heart, halting any other foul word that could come from him. Then she proceeded to slam it down multiple times until she left a gaping hole in his chest. She twisted it and let a deranged grin lift into her lips, disappointed that he was so dead he could no longer witness its beauty.

Then, once she was done meting out justice, she hopped off him.

Her heart felt both lighter and heavier. The satisfaction of their deaths twirled with the necessity of having to kill them in the first place.

“Their actions caused your demise,” she muttered as a reminder, before she cut his coin purse from his belt. She did the same to the two other dead men nearby.

She didn’t savour their deaths. Instead, she looked around at the empty street.I have to move quickly in case someone comes.

The black mist would only make the area feel haunted, but a drunken fool might wander through it, thinking the booze was playing tricks on his eyes.

Using three thick tentacles, she wrapped them around their legs or arms and took each man to the alley where the first lay dead. She hid their corpses and evaporated the mist except for in the narrow space. Then she used magic she wasn’t particularly fond of.

Making sure there was nothing but stone around them, Lindi set their bodies alight with a black fire. She didn’t need much, just a candlestick’s size flame, but it quickly spread out to devour them. No smoke was produced, as if the very fire ate the air around it, and it left nothing in its wake.

No skin, no bones, and even the stone beneath them began to melt into liquid. Much like her barriers, she used black sand to snuff out the fire before it could spread across the cobblestones and set the houses next to the alley alight. If that happened, the fire would spread so quickly that she’d struggle to put it out and it would feed on the entire town.

She’d already witnessed its devastation before and considered it the evilest ability she had in Weldir’s arsenal.

She also refused to do it on a living person, as they could spread it. Lindi feared... she’d be unable to control it before she set fire to the entire world. A wildfire that no water could put out.

I’m thankful he is unable to use such magic on Earth,she thought with an emptiness as she looked at the melted stone – the only evidence that she or the occultists had been there.

Because he lacked a physical form on Earth, Weldir’s magic was incapable of being tangible there. Not even Lindi could wield it in her incorporeal form, and had to be human and solid to do so.

“I’ve told you doing that destroys their souls,”Weldir’s deep and unfairly husky voice whispered in her ear.

No. It wasn’t her ear. It wasdeeperthan that, like it was calling from the centre of her very being, in the recesses of her mind, quiet but strong enough she couldn’t shake it.

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