Chapter 530: Vile

Chapter 530: Vile

Noah’s eyes cracked open, his consciousness back inside his own body. Soft vines curled beneath him and pressed against his back. Moxie must have moved him into her bed while they’d been using the Mind Meld potion.

Pushing himself upright, Noah glanced over at Lee. She laid beside him, still midway through shaking off the last of the potion’s effects. She yawned and stretched her arms out like a cat, discreetly craning her neck to the side and taking a bite out of the bed before quickly turning her head back to its resting position.

His eyes narrowed slightly. Lee had won every single game they’d played. It hadn’t even been close. He’d had to remind her the rules once or twice, but she seemed to miraculously keep pulling out the exact cards she needed.

She’d also somehow pulled the exact same winning card about eight times in a row. Given that said card should have still been in the discard pile after the first time, that was quite the accomplishment.

Note to self. Don’t play cards in Lee’s mindspace. She cheats. I should definitely try to convince Jalen to bet something big and then take her on, though. Could be a great way to get some free stuff once we get back to the mortal plane.

“How’d it go?” Moxie asked from where she sat at her desk, her chair rocked back on two legs. “Did you figure it out? Is it my turn?”

“We’re working on it.” Lee sat up and slipped out of bed. “I’m better at cards than Noah is.”

Moxie looked from Lee to Noah with a confused frown. “What? Cards?”

“Later,” Noah said. “Let me fill you in. Another Mind Meld, please. The sooner we handle this, the better. I don’t want to get caught with our pants down if some prick shows up looking for revenge. I think we should still be good on time, but it doesn’t hurt to move quickly.”

“I’ll keep watch,” Lee volunteered. Her eyes drifted over to the bed and her tongue ran along her lips.

“Thanks, Lee. And if you eat the entire bed, I’m going to be pissed. Control yourself.” Moxie procured a Mind Meld potion and downed half of it before tossing the rest to Noah and flopping down beside him.

“I’ll only eat a little,” Lee promised. “Your vines taste good.”

“Thank you,” Moxie said dryly.

Noah downed the potion and laid back down, welcoming the darkness that swallowed him whole.

***

The conversation in Moxie’s Mind Space didn’t take long. Noah went over everything that he’d discovered from studying Igris’ soul and the discussion he’d had with Lee. Their attention then turned to exactly how Lee — or anyone other than Noah, for that matter — could actually go about creating a Fragment of Self.

Forming a Rune was already difficult enough. As far as they knew, the knowledge didn’t even exist in Arbitage. But now they needed to do more than just form a rune. They had to form one while finding an inciting energy that somehow represented the individual person working on it.

There was a chance that some form of energy could always work as a universal catalyst for a Fragment of Self, but their discussion didn’t yield any potential results for it. Noah’s discoveries were a promising step, but they just didn’t have the tools to use it quite yet.

It soon became apparent that they weren’t going to make much more progress purely through theorizing. Both Noah and Moxie were completely stumped as to potential forms of energy. The best bet they managed to come up with was making a ludicrous amount of copies of his Fragment of Self, then destroying all of them.

There was a chance that would create enough energy to saturate an area with so much power that it could be used as the inciting energy, similar to how all of Noah’s deaths had given him enough death and rebirth energy to create the Fragment of Renewal.

And therein lay her problem.

Spider had been beautiful. Death heralded his footsteps and passed behind him like an ocean current. His canvas was so immense that Axil couldn’t so much as begin to comprehend where it began and ended.

She had been completely unable to act in its presence. To make any moves to interfere with such a work of art was to spit upon her own face. She had to witness it firsthand. And so she had observed with rapt attention as Spider slaughtered Igris. Her gaze had followed Spider as he slipped out into the streets.

The woman that he’d come with had long since left after cleaning out the house. A woman whose canvas normally wouldn’t have drawn Axil’s attention. It was short and poignant, but nothing of true note — right up until they were together. Their designs fit together with such beautiful synchrony that she had not even noticed the droplet of saliva rolling down the side of her lips and along her face until it had reached her chin.

Axil sat in silence. She could not bring herself to do more than watch and remember. Not yet. Such a sight had to be savored. The sooner she acted, the sooner it would be over. An internal war raged within Axil, but eventually, she rose.

Shouts echoed through the air as demons finally realized that Igris had been slain. It seemed not many had mourned his loss, but Axil could not have cared less about him. This was about more than a rune.

Butterflies danced in Axil’s stomach and she wrapped her arms around herself as she let out a shuddering sigh, a tremor racing through her entire body as she rose to her feet.

This was a test. It had to be.

She had been ordered to retrieve the rune, but nobody had said how it had to be done. She could not help herself. She had to feel the glorious sensation that Igris had. To witness the beauty of such a canvas up—

A presence prickled at the back of Axil’s mind. She turned. An armored demon stood behind her, two curved blades in his hands and a snarl on his lips. His canvas was plain. Worthless. Disgusting.

“Don’t move,” the demon snarled. “What are you doing here with that creepy expression on your face? Do you have something to do with Lord Igris’ death?

“It was exhilarating to witness,” Axil breathed. “A thousand times greater than any pleasure you could have ever experienced. He was turned into beautiful, beautiful brush strokes.”

“What the fuck?” the demon’s weapons lifted. His chest filled with air as he prepared to call for help.

Axil shifted. The space between her and the demon vanished. Her lips pressed against his. The demon’s eyes shot wide open in surprise. He screamed, but it was too late.

It was not a kiss.

Her jaw unhinged. The demon tried to pull back. It did nothing. He was nowhere near strong or fast enough to escape. Axil’s teeth clenched down, carving through flesh and crushing his skull with a muted, splintering crunch. His cry for help was lost as she inhaled, ripping the soul from his body and grinding it to pieces within her own. The taste of death swam across her tongue and poured down her throat, joined by chunks of flesh and bone.

She released the demon, but nothing hit the ground. His body disintegrated, specks of black dust swirling through the air of the damned plains and joining the churning smoke far above.

Axil’s features screwed up in disgust.

“Vile,” she whispered, but her expression shifted as she looked in the direction that Spider and his companion had departed in. She had to determine what it was that Lord Sievan truly wished her to learn. To witness the beauty of their canvas again — and, if she was truly, truly blessed, to watch their beautiful, beautiful paintings complete as their life passed from this world and into the next.