Chapter 54: Truth Serum
In the dream, the black truth serum burns down Angel's throat, a trail of acid and ice. Marjorie's crimson nails dig into her granddaughter's chin, holding her face up to the cold light of the throne room. ‘Now darling,’ the ancient witch purrs as the liquid forces Angel’s soul-wavelength to manifest violently, a silver light tearing at her seams, ‘let's see what other delicious secrets you've been hiding from your dear grandmother.’
The dream fractured into voices, drifting in and out of sleep’s porous walls.
“…a thousand times worse than what you went through.” Headmaster Death’s voice, calm and heavy, cut through the fog. “You both consumed souls gradually, over decades. She did it all in one go. No one has ever done that before and lived. Only a Kishin can do that.”
A low whistle. Silas. “The girl’s got a stomach, I’ll give her that.”
“Don’t call her ‘the girl,’” Kilson’s voice, strained and sharp. “She’s my… she’s…”
“She’s a Death Scythe,” the Headmaster finished, tone final. “Her body is rewriting itself. It will take time to adjust.”
There was a soft rustle of bandages. Angel recognized the sound of the nurse who wore the mummified wraps. She cleared her throat gently. “Now, there’s another important matter…”
The silence in the room grew thick, expectant.
“I think it’s best if I speak to you outside, Headmaster.”
The shuffle of footsteps as they exited the room. The door clicked shut, muffling their retreating voices.
The moment it closed, Kilson’s voice lashed out, low and venomous. “What did you do to her?”
“Kilson,” Silas warned, a tired edge to his voice.
“No. You were supposed to be her professor. You were supposed to keep your distance. Now look at her. Look what she had to become to save herself from your… your mess.”
Crow’s voice, when it came, was a scrape of gravel, weary and defensive. “I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t ask her to… to do any of that.”
“But you didn’t stop it, either. You let her get close. You let her in. And now her soul is…” Kilson’s words broke off, choked by a father’s helpless rage.
Angel wanted to speak, to tell them to stop, but her body was a lead weight, her tongue glued to the roof of her mouth. She floated in the dark, listening.
The door opened again. Quieter footsteps. Headmaster Death had returned. The room fell into a brittle, waiting quiet.
Later, a different energy burst in—rapid footsteps, hushed arguing. The nurse’s voice, fussing. “One at a time, please! She needs rest, not a circus.”
Amber’s voice, pitched with a fear she was trying to mask with bravado. “I’m going first. She’s my sister.”
Angel felt Amber’s small, warm hand slip into hers. She heard her younger sister’s breath hitch. “Hey, Lina,” Amber whispered, the nickname a fragile lifeline. “You look like shit. You gotta wake up, okay? We need to… I need to tell you about this dumb form Leo messed up…”
Angel could feel everyone’s intense stares burning into her closed eyelids—Crow’s anxious guilt, Kilson’s smothered panic, Silas’s analytical coolness. She felt so tired, a fatigue sunk deep into her marrow. She reached out with a tendril of her soul, not to anyone in the room, but to the one presence that felt like a harbor in a storm. She grazed the edges of Crow’s soul, a gentle brush against the familiar, grinding static.
His response was immediate, a wave of warmth so profound it felt like kindness itself, a blanket of unwavering love and fierce protection that enveloped her aching spirit. It didn’t erase the fatigue, but it anchored her.
She opened her eyes.
The room was dim, lit by a single sanitized light. She saw Crow first, leaning against the far wall, his arms crossed, silver eyes fixed on her. Kilson was seated in a chair, head in his hands. Silas stood near the door, a white-haired sentinel.
Amber’s face swam into view above her, blurry without her glasses. “Lina?”
Angel pushed herself up on her elbows. A mistake. The world tilted violently. She sat up fully, swinging her legs over the side of the medical cot.
Everyone freaked out.
“Whoa, whoa, easy!” Kilson was on his feet, hands out as if to catch her.
“Angel, lay back down.” Crow’s voice was tense, his posture rigid.
“I said one at a time!” the nurse scolded from the doorway, but her admonishment was drowned out.
Angel blinked, her vision clearing. Amber was gone. In her place, leaning against the doorframe with her arms crossed, was Alyce Kingston. The short, red-haired scythe had a scowl plastered on her freckled face, but her blue eyes were wide with concern.
“What’s the big idea, sitting up like that?” Alyce snapped. “You trying to puke on your own shoes?”
“I feel fine,” Angel said, and it was mostly true. The deep, soul-level exhaustion was there, but her body felt… charged. Humming. Like a live wire wrapped in too-tight skin. She stood up.
A collective gasp. Crow took a step forward. Kilson made an aborted move to stop her.
“See?” Angel said, rolling her shoulders. A crackle of silver energy, visible only to their meister-trained eyes, sparked at her fingertips. “I’m fine. Just… jittery.”
The nurse sighed, a sound of profound professional exasperation. “If you’re determined to be vertical, at least get some energy out. Go for a walk. A slow walk.”
Angel didn’t need to be told twice. The walls of the infirmary felt like they were closing in, the worry from the others a palpable pressure. She needed air. She needed space.
She headed out of the room, past Alyce who muttered, “Weirdo,” but fell into step beside her anyway. Crow and Kilson began arguing again behind her, Silas’s low voice trying to insert reason. Angel tuned them out.
The corridors of the Death Academy were quiet at this hour, the polished stone floors gleaming under eternal torchlight. Her footsteps echoed. Alyce’s matched hers, a silent, grudging escort.
The humming under Angel’s skin grew more persistent, an itch in her veins. It was the souls, she realized. A thousand of them, compacted inside her, restless. They needed release. They needed to move.
She found herself descending a narrow staircase into the lower training levels, where the air grew cooler and smelled of damp earth and ozone. Alyce followed, her suspicion giving way to curiosity.
“Where are we going?”
“Evening job,” Angel said, her voice echoing off the stone.
She pushed open a heavy, reinforced door into one of the smaller, private combat arenas. It was a circular pit of scarred sand, surrounded by observation balconies shrouded in shadow.
In the center of the pit, a practice dummy made of enchanted straw and reinforced leather stood waiting.
Angel walked towards it, the humming inside her building to a buzz. She didn’t think. She just reached inside herself, to that new, terrifying well of power.
Her body dissolved into a flash of silver light. It wasn’t the gentle transformation she’d seen Kilson perform. It was a violent, instantaneous shifting. One moment she was a woman, the next, she was the weapon.
The double scythe that landed in the sand was breathtaking. The haft was black bone, etched with silver filigree that pulsed with a soft light. The blade was a crescent of solidified soul-energy, shimmering like a fragment of moonlight. It thrummed with a power that made the air vibrate. The form a lot more intimidating than her old form.
Alyce whistled, low and impressed. “Damn.”
Angel, existing now as the weapon’s consciousness, felt a wild, reckless joy. She willed herself to move.
The scythe flew across the arena, a blur of silver. It struck the dummy, not with a physical thwack, but with a silent concussion of force. The enchanted target didn’t just tear; it vaporized in a shower of golden sparks and dissipating soul-residue.
Again and again she flew, a dancer of devastating light, carving arcs through the air, shredding dummy after dummy that the arena’s magic provided. Each strike burned off a fraction of the seething energy inside her. Each movement felt more natural, more hers.
She was burning it off, the excess, the shock, the horror of what she’d done. She was making it useful.
Finally, after reducing a tenth dummy to glittering dust, she reformed. She stumbled as her feet hit the sand, human again, breathing hard. Sweat plastered her orange curls to her temples. But the awful, buzzing fullness was gone, replaced by a clean, weary ache.
Alyce was sitting on the edge of the pit, legs dangling. She tossed a water bottle down. Angel caught it.
“Not bad,” Alyce said, her voice lacking its usual bite. “For a bioengineering nerd who just ate a witch for breakfast.”
Angel cracked a smile, unscrewing the cap. “Lunch, actually.”
She drank deeply, the water cool and perfect. She looked at her hands. No more silver light. Just skin, still smudged with the faint, stubborn traces of Marjorie’s dried blood.
She had a lot to process. A lot to answer for. But for now, in this quiet, sandy arena with only a temperamental, blue-flamed scythe for company, she felt, for the first time since the throne room, like herself again. A terrifying new version of herself, but herself nonetheless.
The scythe was quiet inside her, satisfied. The souls were calm.
For now.