Chapter 102: Rescue

Mara screamed Rook’s name as the Pale Abomination’s jaws closed around him. His body disappeared between the overlapping rows of teeth, leaving only part of his coat caught outside the creature’s mouth. The dark fabric stretched, tore, and vanished when the jaws tightened again.

The crunch that followed carried across the ruined square. Mara lunged forward, but a Reaper caught her around the waist before she completed the first step. He pulled her against his chest and locked both arms around her, lifting her feet from the ground when she tried to run.

"Let me go! He’s still alive in there!"

"It’s too late," the Reaper said, tightening his grip as she drove an elbow into his ribs. "You’ll only get yourself killed if you go after him now."

Mara twisted, kicked, and tried to bite the hand crossing her shoulder, but he was far stronger. Her heels scraped uselessly across the stone while the Pale Abomination raised its head.

Its throat expanded, and another wet crack came from inside its body. Mara stopped struggling for half a breath when she recognized the sound.

She could hear Rook’s bones breaking.

That should have meant little inside the Underworld. Reapers died and eventually returned as long as enough remembered flesh remained to rebuild them. What the Pale Abomination did to the souls it swallowed was something else entirely.

It consumed the memories holding them together.

Mara stared at the creature’s throat and imagined Rook trapped inside, crushed between its teeth and dragged into a darkness crowded with the lives already imprisoned within it. His remaining memories would be torn from him piece by piece until there was nothing left capable of returning.

She thought of the man who found her beneath the broken Soul Beacon and complained through every mile while carrying her to safety. Fought creatures he could never Cull, and crossed the Silent Sea because she refused to abandon the hope of reaching Yama.

Rook had warned her to remain behind him. She ignored that warning, and now he was being consumed in front of her.

Heat spread across Mara’s face as tears gathered in her eyes. The battle blurred until the struggling Abominations became pale and black shapes moving through the ruined square.

"You’re throwing your life away," the Reaper holding her said. "He saved you, so don’t make that worthless by dying after him."

Mara answered by driving the back of her head into his face. He grunted but refused to release her.

The feline Abomination roared and struck the Pale creature from above, driving its entire body into the ground. The ruined street collapsed beneath them as broken stone jumped around the impact and the shock traveled through every Reaper in the square.

The man holding Mara lost his footing. His grip loosened for an instant, giving her enough room to tear one arm free, twist beneath the other, and shove herself away before he recovered.

"Mara, stop! You can’t reach him!"

She did not look back.

The Manager saw her leave the defensive line. One hand remained pressed against the street as she raised walls around the shelters and closed side roads against the Abominations pouring through the ceiling.

"Come back!" the Manager shouted. "That is an order, Mara!"

Mara ran faster.

An Abomination dropped from a rooftop and landed directly in her path. The anchor-wielding Reaper intercepted it, driving the lower point of her weapon through its chest and hurling the body into a wall.

"Mara, wait for us! You won’t survive beneath those two alone!"

Mara pulled the dagger from her belt and continued forward. The weapon was too short to reach the core from outside the Pale creature’s body, and its ordinary blade could never pierce the thick plates across its back, much less the layers of remembered flesh beneath them.

Her Death Imprint did not care how much material stood in its path.

Mara forced the ability into the blade. Its edge blurred as the metal became strangely thin, flickering between the solid dagger in her hand and something that existed only along the line she intended to cut.

The Pale Abomination struggled beneath the feline’s weight. Its hooked limbs raked across the black creature’s sides, opening wounds and tearing clumps of dark fur free.

Mara reached them before either creature noticed her approach. She stepped onto one of the Pale Abomination’s folded limbs, ran across the joint, and jumped. Her free hand caught the edge of a damaged plate, allowing her to drag herself onto its back.

The creature felt her weight immediately and rolled beneath her. Mara drove the dagger down before the movement could throw her loose.

The blade entered the pale armor without slowing. Her Death Imprint carried it through every layer beneath the surface: plate, flesh, bone, and the compressed memories woven throughout the creature’s body.

Mara closed both hands around the hilt and ran the dagger along its back. A gash opened behind the blade, beginning near the shoulder and continuing halfway down the creature’s body. The armor separated cleanly before splitting beneath the strain of its movements, while the flesh and bone beneath divided along the same line to reveal a mass of darkness filled with distorted faces.

The Pale Abomination howled. Its scream passed through every building in the Seventy-Second and shook dust from the cavern roof.

Its limbs hammered against the ground without direction as the entire body twisted beneath the pain. Several Reapers were thrown from their feet, while the lesser Abominations near the ceiling recoiled from the sound and clung to the walls.

Nothing the gathered Reapers had done produced such a reaction. They had shattered limbs, burned away flesh, and torn entire sections from its body, while the feline wounded it more deeply than Mara could hope to manage.

Her Death Imprint created a different kind of pain.

The dagger made the creature experience every divided layer at once. Agony spread through the memories composing its body, and hundreds of trapped voices screamed alongside it.

Mara lost her grip when the Pale Abomination rolled. She began sliding from its back, but the feline lunged forward before the Pale creature could turn upon her.

Black claws entered the gash she had created. The feline pulled in opposite directions and forced the Abomination’s upper body backward. Its front limbs rose from the street as the black creature rolled it onto one side, exposing the softer plates beneath its abdomen.

Mara struck the ground and rolled beneath both creatures. The opening rested directly above her.

She pushed herself onto one knee and plunged the dagger into the Pale Abomination’s belly. The blade passed through without resistance, and Mara dragged it upward with both hands.

The cut began below the stomach and climbed through the center of the body. Plates divided as the flesh beneath opened from abdomen to throat, creating a wound large enough for the memories inside to spill across the street.

Human hands reached from the darkness. Some clawed at the stones, while others seized the edges of the wound and attempted to pull the creature closed around itself.

One hand looked different.

The remains of a dark sleeve covered its wrist. Its fingers had been crushed until the broken bones bent around one another, and parts of the skin had dissolved beneath the Pale Abomination’s digestive memories, leaving the flesh translucent.

The hand moved.

Mara seized it with both of hers. "Rook! Hold on to me. I’m pulling you out."

The broken fingers closed weakly around her wrist.

She planted one boot against the Pale Abomination’s lower body and pulled. At first, nothing emerged because Rook remained tangled inside the mass of memories. Human arms clung to him beneath the flesh, dragging him deeper while Mara fought to wrench him free.

She kept one hand around his wrist and used the other to activate her Death Imprint through the dagger. The remaining tissue divided as she cut alongside the wound.

Rook’s shoulder emerged.

Mara dropped the dagger, seized him with both hands, and pulled until his body slid from the creature in pieces that still happened to be connected. Most of his coat had dissolved, one leg bent in two places, and the other still carried the twisted ankle from his earlier injury. His left arm hung from the shoulder by stretched flesh, while his ribs had collapsed inward and blood covered the upper half of his face.

Rook drew a breath. The sound escaped as a thin, wet gasp that almost made Mara release him in shock.

His remaining eye opened without focusing. It wandered for a moment before settling somewhere near her face.

"You," he rasped. Blood ran from the corner of his mouth as he attempted to breathe again. "Still a terrible listener."

For a brief second, she smiled. As long as he can be snarky, he’s still the same Rook.

Mara tightened her grip around him. "Save whatever breath you have left. You can complain after I get you away from here."