Moira Ashenveil's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

Moira came back to the marsh the next night and found the work stopped before it started. Four new souls stood by the water with open palms, ready. None of them would look at her. When she reached for the nearest, a young man in a wet coat, he flinched and stepped back into the reeds. The others drifted after him. Something behind her was scaring them worse than the door. She turned. The woman by the crypt had not moved, but the air around her had. Thin gray shapes rose from the mud at her feet, half-formed, mouths working without sound. Restless dead. The corrupted woman's closed fists were pulling them up out of the ground like weeds. Moira understood then. Leaving the woman untouched had not kept the woman quiet. It had given her time to spread. "You waited too long." The voice came from a patch of shadow between two stones where no shadow should fit. Small purple lights opened inside it, one after another, until Moira counted more eyes than she wanted to. Umbral Vex. She had heard the name from Vesper once, spoken like a warning. A shadow that saw through every eye at once and could not close any of them. "I can't touch her," Moira said. "She's turned. She'll bite." "Then don't touch her. Cut her." The shadow slid a shape toward Moira's feet. A scythe lay in the mud, thin blade glowing faint white, handle wrapped in worn leather. Moira had never held one. Her work had always been hands, not blades. "I guide," she said. "I don't kill." "She's already dead. Cut the thread. The rest go free." Moira picked up the scythe. It weighed less than she expected. She walked to the crypt. The oil-black spider she had seen the night before scuttled out of her way, its back flashing green and pink in the moon. The woman's head snapped up. Her fists came open, not in surrender, but reaching. The gray shapes reached with her. Moira swung. The blade passed through the woman's chest without sound. The woman folded inward like wet paper and was gone. The gray shapes dropped back into the mud. Behind her, the four ready souls stepped out of the reeds. The young man in the wet coat held out his hand first. Moira took it. She walked him to the dark and came back for the next, and the next, until the bank was empty. Umbral Vex watched from the stones. The scythe stayed in Moira's grip when she tried to set it down. The handle had cooled against her palm and would not let go. "It chose," the shadow said. "It chose." Moira looked at the blade. She was a guide who now carried a weapon, and she did not yet know what that made her.