“Do you think the throne is even real?” Eve’s voice echoes off the frozen walls of the cavern as frostbitten stone digs into her knees. “The Barterer? Or how about, the First of Fire and Shadow?” Her mother and father had often told her the stories when she was young - her and her sister, Nisha. Back when it was easier to believe. Back before “We’ll always be there.” turned into the closing of caskets and reading of wills.

  I think it would behoove you to focus on the sacrament, madame. Jacque’s thoughts swirl around her brain in a deliciously smooth accent. “Madame,” he calls her.

  “Don’t worry about the sacrament.” Her breath hangs in the air in front of her. She purses her lips and blows it away. She hates the way it looks like the Miasma that permeates the rest of this place – the Incorporeum. “I’ve done this so many times I could write a book on it. Sage here, blood there, candle-candle burny-burny, done. Short book, but a banger.” Which reminds her - I need to move the sage just…there. That should do it.

  The smell of burnt wood and sulfur worms its way up from the match as she lights the seven candles. She lets them burn for a moment before standing, eyes tearing from the smoke as she scans the cavern around her. Maybe she’ll find it down here some day - the throne, that is. Or maybe she’ll find the Fire and Shadow and really regret coming here. Neither of those are what she’s looking for today.

  “Oleander, can you help with my vision? It’s hard to see the gemstones from here.” She blinks as her vision blurs.

  Better? Or worse? Her lips turn up at his somewhat overplayed joke as her mind bathes in his laughter.

  “Worse, Doctor.” She strains her voice and pretends to beg, “Please, my eyes, won’t you help me?”

  Her eyesight sharpens. Now she can see them, along the far wall. Rubies, strong enough to bind or facilitate the binding of most souls. Not that she knows how to bind souls to the stone – but who needs that when direct binding gives you a head full of noise?

  “Fin’rael, you’re a history buff, aren’t you?”

  Fin’rael’s thoughts are the softest of all her passengers - the souls she’d willfully, and perhaps negligently, bound to her own. At a guess, he had to have been the oldest among them when he’d died.

  “C’mon you know what I mean. Did you ever see anything about them? The –

  Her breath swirls around her. She stares at it quietly. Curiously. A piercing screech fills the air as something splits the world open in front of her.

  The bony appendage of a Shade rakes across her gut before dissolving back into the mist. It feels like a glancing blow, but that does nothing to stop the creeping warmth that slickens her belt, or the pitter patter of warm red that drips onto the crystalline souls beneath her.

  “Fuck. Me.”

  Castigan’s voice resounds across the inside of her skull.

  “Shut up Castigan, you’re distracting me.”

  She clutches at the aching wound, fingers sinking unevenly into the grooves rent into her skin by the creature’s icy claw. Her chest is tight with pain. The sound of quick, heaving breaths mingles with the rattling of the gold chains around her neck. One for her mother. One for her father. “A reminder of their love.”

  A lot of fucking good that’s doing her.

  What the fuck is a Shade doing here? The candles are still burning, wax still wet. Her lips curl into a snarl as the wound pulses with a fresh wave of pain. “Arric,” she calls out into the cavern. A relic of better days when she was younger and the voices were harder to distinguish from her own. “Arric, wake the fuck up.”

  His voice crashing against her consciousness makes her heart slow, just a beat despite the pain. She had learned long ago that the touch of a shade could destroy a soul – unravel the ritual of binding. She was afraid she might have lost him.

  “Stop the bleeding,” her whisper cuts through gritted teeth, “who do I have bound who can deal with this fucking pain?”

  The unbidden voice wavers across Eve’s consciousness. Rose. A pang of guilt rushes through Eve as she presses her fingers deeper into the wound. Of course. Of course the only one who had manifested a power that could alleviate her pain was the nineteen year old who could only do it by feeling it herself.

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  Fucking wonderful.

  “Absolutely not,” Eve mutters. A piercing whine ripples through the air, needling at the back of her skull and ending the conversation. It makes her eardrums ache. The Shade will return soon, it’s no mistake that she’s still alive. She blinks hard as the pain in her gut lances up to her chest. Smoke and sage linger in the air, bringing Eve’s focus to the nearby candles and haphazard ritual site. Why hadn’t the sacrament worked? She’d pricked the same finger as always, said the same words…she even got the candles from the same fucking store.

  Castigan again. What a prick.

  “Commentary, not necessary, thank you.” Her pained words echo across the cavern. “I’m plenty meaty, thank you. Besides, Shades don’t even eat the meat, just the soul.” A thought that brings her little comfort. She grabs the chains around her neck and begins to utter a small prayer to the Incorporeal Throne. It’s a stupid habit. Something her grandmother used to do.

  Castigan’s voice intrudes,

  “Shut the fuck up, Castigan!”

  She drops the chains in the wake of her ruined prayer. Not that it was going to do anything anyway. Her eyes darken momentarily. Of course it’s going for the lights. Enhanced eyes trace the line of wired lighting affixed to the ceiling. Mining crews from SoulStrike or Crystalarity or one of the other five hundred literal soul sucking corporations had set the lights up ages ago. Before the war. Before the military had claimed exclusive rights to the souls held within the crystal of the Incorporeum.

  “The generator,” she whispers, as her eyes find the thickened miasma surrounding the crudely wired power supply. The Shade wants to snuff out the lights. Drown her in darkness. Not a terribly fair way to fight in Eve’s humble opinion.

  The sound of hurried footsteps erases the rhythmic pit-pat of blood as Eve launches herself across the cavern. “Vera, I need speed,” she grunts, “focus on my legs but be prepared to switch to the arms when I get close.” She’s not wrong, Eve could be more polite, but who’s got the fucking time for that?

  “There’s the bastard,” She says, lips curling into a grin as she spots the rematerializing shade. Its black tattered robe is the first thing to reappear amongst the mist. Maybe that’s all they are. Possessed robes. A chuckle escapes her chest.

  “Castigan. Come back. I want flames.”

  The tips of her fingers begin to sweat as heat rushes through adrenaline filled veins. The scent of searing flesh tickles her nose. She lifts a hand to her face as she runs, watching Castigan’s flames lick away at the skin. She’s always loved to watch it. The raw, visceral power of him, knowing that it’s hers to wield, her delicious pain to feel…it stirs something within her. If she had a moment to stop and admire it, she just might.

  Always with the empty threats.

  Her palms are burning, bathing in his rage as she reaches The Shade. It’s already finished materializing by the time she arrives but at least the lights are still on. She swipes a flaming hand at its shrouded head. Her elbow creaks as a hand thuds against the risen pommel of a blade.

  The pain of the flames and the ache of what will likely turn out to be a broken hand, would be overwhelming if it weren’t for Maeve. She works when she wants, Maeve, but she always keeps an eye out for Eve’s hands. She was a seamstress in life so it’s only fitting that her manifested power is nerve blocking of the hands and fingers. She’s a sweet lady. Reminds Eve of her grandmother.

  “Maeve, I need to be able to feel my fingers,” she says aloud. “I’m not willing to sacrifice my dexterity for the relief of numbness.”

  Comes the gentle hand upon her consciousness.

  The roar that rips itself from her chest threatens to tear her in two. Castigan’s flames are nigh unbearable at their current strength, and he’s making them even hotter now that she can feel it. Sadistic bastard. The pain sends a shiver of twisted pleasure through her – but that doesn’t mean he’s not an asshole.

  She reaches for the shade once again, expecting a block. It steps backwards instead, as Eve slips forward on blood from the wound in her stomach. “Arric, what’s going on with the bleeding?”

  “It’s a Shade, he’s quick and playing defensive, what do you want me to do?”

  “Fuck that!” she shouts, ripping a ritual knife from her belt. Castigan is quick, extinguishing his flames at the moment she makes her move so as not to scorch her body. His flames return immediately once she’s clear. At least he can be a team player when life’s on the line. The cool leather of the knife’s handle soothes Eve’s fingers for just a moment as it draws in his heat. The blade comes alive, seething with Castigan’s flames. That should do it. Maybe.

  She hurls the knife towards the center of the Shade’s mass, or, where she thinks it might be. Its own blade descends in an instant, sending a sharp clang echoing through the cavern as her knife clatters to the ground, cold. Soul dust from the cavern floor splays across her feet.

  “Shi –” she tries to make a sound, but a cold force grips her throat. Bony fingers dig deeply into the skin, she can almost feel the soft tissues of her esophagus collapsing underneath their weight. Her eyes shut tight as the piercing screech of a hundred angry, hungry, thirsty souls fills the air.

  She reaches for the crushing claw with Castigan’s flames, threatening to scorch and blind her own eyes. He saves her from it, Castigan, dimming his flame just before the point of impact. He saves her and it’s going to fucking kill her. “Cas–” she chokes as her vision begins to flicker. Maeve. She internalizes the call as her voice fails. Arric? She can’t hear them. She can’t hear any of them. Her consciousness is panicked, unreachable. Her arms fail, sight is gone, her –