Mage Slayer: Book Four of the Empress Saga

CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

Deebee thought she should've been a little more tolerant, but there were few powers in Hell or the Ethereum she could imagine stopping her from grousing. It might've been due to the tumultuous cocktail of hormones that accompanied nesting, but Deebee was feeling especially irritable at the moment. Of all the situations that could blunder into her evening, this one had to rate the most problematic.

"A demon god, indeed," she muttered as her claws worked through a series of somatics over Shaia's egg. She'd already seen to the girls. "Of all the... Blustering annoying, is what it is. As if all this wasn't too much already, now we have the god of death himself joining the line of fools we have to kill. Can you even kill Death? You have any idea of how much time I'm going to have to spend in my library to find an answer to that idiotic riddle?"

Behind her, leaning his shoulder against the wall at the mouth of the rookery, Varn made a sound hanging between a sigh and a groan.

Deebee finished up her ward. It was an especially complex weaving of spellcraft, meant to regulate temperature in her absence. Deebee wouldn't trust a spell to do a mother's job for an extended period, but it should serve well-enough for an hour or so. Deebee doubted it would take longer than that to assist Varn to the healers of the legion.

Once her somatics went still, she turned from her nest to find Varn staring at the eggs. His single, remaining eye had an odd cast to it. Not quite vacant. Closer to solemn.

"They deserve better than a dying world," Varn murmured.

"Oh hush that nonsense," Deebee scolded. She crossed the rookery to him on all fours. "I have it from the finest expert on the subject I know of. No glooming and dooming around the sick or expectant mothers."

Varn frowned as his enormous head turned to face her. "Have you not heard what I've said, my Storyteller? The Lord of Bones is one of the old masters. He has made his move to claim the web of Fate from Kumo. All is lost."

Deebee came to stop in front of him. Her granduncle was so ancient, so blustering huge in his age, that even in her truest form, the top of her head didn't reach his chest. The Librarian could carry a crew of a hundred if he wanted.

"Lost?" Deebee asked. "Well then, in that case, I suppose we all ought throw ourselves to the ground right now and be done with it. Will you smash my eggs, or shall I?"

"Do not make light of this, child," Varn warned. "All you prove is that you have no comprehension of what we face."

"I don't need to comprehend," Deebee snapped, and perhaps it was more petulant than she wanted. "I just need to face it. Clearly, that's something you've never been able to do."

Varn pushed off from the wall to stand on his own power. "You do not know of what you speak," he growled. "When did you become so naive? You make a grand show of having no fear, but that has always been the most powerful weapon in the demons' arsenal. They have long taken advantage of their prey's ignorance."

Deebee's claws dug furrows into the stone. Her voice went cold. "No fear?"

This doddering, old coot...

Deebee rose up on her hind legs and jabbed a claw to the center of Varn's chest. She stretched her neck out as far as she could, but it still only managed to make it halfway to his head. Even so, she invaded his personal space as much as she was able.

"You listen to me, Librarian, and you'll hear me this time. I've been afraid... all... my... life! And if you think for one moment that it was ever for my own well-being, you couldn't be more blind if I poked you in that eye.