Thief of Souls

"Drink."

She looked at the fragile-looking teacup in front of her. Its sides were of a pristine glossy white in contrast to the flicks of black and red magpies on its side. A good omen despite its more ominous contents.

She turned it, marveling at its unending depths, the black glittering substance within shifting with every shake of her leg, rippling out with every tap on the table made by the impatient Poisoner.

It was all too much, the dread building up in her thrumming, a deep set sensation in her, doubt manifesting in rolling waves of sickness. Could this dark tea really could do as the Poisoner said? Could she really risk her life and drink it? She knew it was truly a dangerous idea. But the thought had been like poison in her mind for weeks, no matter how hard she had tried to suck it out. It was not for no reason, despite what her obstinate father might think, that she was going to drink the Poisoner's brew. Being here now, in the Poisoners shop, meant she had run out of any other options. No one sought the powers of a Poisoner for benign reasons. No one drank the Poisoner's tea without paying a price.

Desperation breeds recklessness. It was a war proverb she was quite familiar with considering Alis had quoted it at her rather often. And yet she couldn't heed its obvious warning.

She saw her eyes in the tea, dark and glittering. When was the last time she had seen her own brown eyes reflected in anything? The truth was, not for a while. Only she had continued to follow the rites of old, covering the mirrors, stubbornly wearing the black garbs everywhere she went. Because even if she was determined not to let him pass into the next world, the routine of the tradition had felt good. It had allowed her to put her focus into anything other than her pain. It had allowed her to feel numb. No one else had followed the rites. He had no family and he was not particularly well known so it was understandable but disheartening all the same. Grief had made her ugly to look at, isolating her from the people in the harem, the courtiers within the palace. But she did mind it. She had felt alone for most of her life despite being born in a place in which she had hundreds of half-siblings. His flute melodies were a comfort she hummed to herself in her room, so gentle and sweet like him, they floated through her ears, sifting through the memories she had of him even now in this dark abode. Which were admittedly little.

So few. They were fading, faster and faster each day, funneling like dripping water in a cracked bowl. The crack always became larger, spiderwebbing out, the loss of water doing so at a faster rate. Eventually, she would have none, slivers perhaps peeking through at times in dreams and lucid nights at twelve am. But practically none. None that mattered. His memory would suffer, and everyone would forget in time. Even her.

She could not bear it. The pain of his not-death. The silence when she read him his favorite poems and stories. The dullness of his eyes. She could not stand knowing him and at the same time not. That while he was gone from this plane of life, she was stuck here without him to ease her pains. She sniffed wiping her red-rimmed eyes switch her sleeves.

"The gods... they won't realize my deception?" She whispered the question as if the gods she spoke of would hear and strike her down. She asked it knowing the answer already. But it was more a reassurance than a question. The god's wrath... The stories of them were legendary. One did not simply draw their divine attention, so short their attentiveness for humankind, but when they did, there were stories of how severely that person suffered. Once had, their wrath could not be acquitted so easily.

She was just one girl. Not particularly able of mind or body. She had her courage, which had rarely aided her in the mortal realm. In the face of the gods, she was nothing. Their might and glory alone would eviscerate her. She could not risk drawing their attention.

The poisoner smiled, the edges of a festering black staining the white of their teeth, a mark of all the poisons they had tested on themself.

"You can trust my concoctions." Their hood fluttered and it was all Siori could do not to try looking up its edges where the Poisoner's eyes should be.

The price to use magic was steep. This Poisoner must be relatively young if it was only their eyes missing. Every year they had to renew their vow with an offering. Some women in the harem often used Poisoners for their various talents. And Siori had seen those same Poisoners on their deathbeds, missing ears, fingers, and limbs. The gods were not generally generous beings. They were vicious, self-righteous. Perhaps they even took some kind of sick pleasure in the macabre offering, entertained by the lengths mortals would go through just for a hint of something Beyond. To pledge yourself to one to use magic, you had to make a sacrifice of equal weight. You had to lose yourself first.

The eyes of a god were dangerous for any being.

The Poisoner's head shot up like a hare's ever-watchful ears, staring straight at the small door from which Siori had had to crawl through to meet them.

"Drink the tea. Or don't. But you must choose." Their voice was like sliding snakeskin and in that moment where their black cloak shifted, Siori had seen the beginnings of the edges of the Poisoner's withering eye socket.

They must've sensed something she could not. She strained her own ears though she knew it was no use. She did not have magic coursing through her; she did not have a heightened sense of hearing. But she trusted the senses of the Poisoner.

Siori picked up the blade gleaming darkly next to the cup, her eyes roving over the cup as the black liquid within swirled like a dark cascading ribbon, swallowing the small candlelight in the bare space. It was just now she realized, how the magpies on the side of the cup seemed to fly in the flickering flame.

She did not look at the thirsty blade as she slashed it across the surface of her palm, a bloody fissure erupting from within and out and leaking crimson which she held, fisted, over the cup.

Her ears pricked as they finally heard the sound of a struggle outside. This bar was the Poisoner's domain, but even their men outside wouldn't be able to hold back Siori's father's soldiers, let alone her rash brother.

Cylis. She loved him dearly. Of course, she did, more than anyone else in her family. He was the only true sibling she had among the other children of the harem. Now a soldier while she had stayed behind, left to the complexities of both the harem and her callous mother. But he was a fool if he thought Siori could simply stay behind those walls and allow Alis to be swallowed up by the shadowy Underworld unjustly.

It had not been his time. She would fix this mistake, this mistake of him being in a halfway-between limbo. She would retrieve his soul or she would die trying.

"Help me," she whispered to the cup, gripping it fiercely like a lifeline, a simple wish considering the expanse of her mission. She watched her blood mingle with the darkness and a golden sound rang out in the room as her blood spun, expanding till it turned the tea a dark maroon.

"Drink," The Poisoner urged now standing, the knife Siori had used to cut her hand somehow in their grasp, still bright with her blood.

Siori did not pray to the gods as she licked her lips, preparing for the iron taste of the tea. She put her pale lips to the draught. Steam now rose from it, enticing and smelling of something citrus and sweet. And something much darker.

She took her first honeyed sip and was surprised by the thickness and sweet taste of it. What had seemed slick as oil before now tasted thick and sticky.

Her second was longer and as she was about to take her third and last. But just then, the small door burst open, and like an infestation of spiders, soldiers in silver and blue crawled in, Cylis at the head, his sword drawn.

"Siori," his eyes widened his voice turned hoarse as he beheld his younger sister, her baggy eyes, her reddened nose, her bloodless lips that held droplets of the tea the Poisoner had brewed.

And the cup which held the last of it.

"Don't do this Siori," he pleaded, his voice so soft. The kind of tender he only reserved for her and his younger half-siblings. It stroked at her and the defenses she had built up in the past few weeks, her attempt to hide her emotions from the world. She had to bow her head, her ebony hair a curtain to hide her shame behind.

"I'm sorry brother." And she was. Truly she was sorry. Sorry that she was risking her life. That the fact of her absence would hurt him if not anybody else. That she might not be strong enough to rescue her friend from the fiery courts of the Spirit Realm.

But she was not sorry enough to not try.

"I need to do this."

She slammed back the rest of the poisoned tea and coughed as she clutched at her throat as things like bubbling tar rose, climbing, clawing desperately out of her. In the corner of her quickly blackening vision, she could see her brother push the Poisoner away and pick her up. She wanted to laugh at how small she felt in his arms. How small she had gotten over the last two weeks.

"Siori you stupid girl." He whispered and she could feel his touch like a light wonderful breeze as he pressed away her sweat soaked hair. He said something like, "I saw the books on your table, " and it sounded muffled, as if she was drowning in something past and foreign. In the tea, its density and darkness overtaking her in gentle folds. She realized even through the fog of her brain, that she must've left the old tomes strewn haphazardly on her desk, their dusty pages revealing her plan to him.

"Even Viestas could not help you now."

She managed a tear-stained smile, the pain of the tea wrenching through her body. "D-don't want his help. Keep his b-body safe. Ple...please?"

She did not get the relief upon hearing her brother's reply however, for she was already drowning, spiraling down, down, down into the cold glittering dark of the poison tea.