Chapter 111: Reaper I
Nathan took the second step forward.
The scythe in both hands. The shaft resting on his right shoulder with the blade curved upward and back. The posture his body had assumed without conscious instruction, as if the scythe itself brought the technical knowledge of how to hold it and how to move it.
Yorel-alpha retreated another step.
The creature’s torso staggered slightly with the movement. Yorel’s human body mounted on the back adjusted its balance by pulling the red threads. The alpha’s two deformed arms rose to chest height in an instinctive defensive position.
And Yorel human, from the back, shouted through the five jaws.
"Walk away, Hunter. You still can."
Nathan didn’t respond.
He just walked.
Five meters distance. Four. Three.
Yorel tried to attack first. He launched the alpha’s right arm in a descending horizontal arc, the deformed claws seeking Nathan’s shoulder.
Nathan raised the scythe.
With an upward vertical movement.
The curved blade intercepted the arm at the elbow line.
And cut.
The arm separated from the elbow downward with a resistance Nathan felt like cutting raw meat with a well-sharpened knife. Without difficulty. Without notable friction. The arm hit the ground with a wet impact. The creature’s black blood, mixed with the red threads Yorel had inserted into the tissues, spilled from the elbow stump.
Yorel screamed.
Not because of the alpha’s arm. Because of the connection.
The red threads he’d inserted into the arm were direct extensions of his own nervous system adapted by Draken’s magic. Cutting the arm was cutting the threads. And cutting the threads was like cutting his own nerves without anesthesia.
Nathan processed it upon seeing the reaction.
*Alright.*
*The threads are part of him. Not just tools. Cutting them hurts.*
*Good.*
Nathan kept advancing.
Yorel-alpha retreated with more urgency. He raised the remaining left arm in a descending hammer blow aimed at Nathan’s head.
Nathan spun the scythe in a lateral arc.
The blade intercepted the arm at the shoulder line.
It cut.
The entire arm separated from the alpha’s torso. It fell to the ground with the same wet sound. The internal red threads sprouted from the shoulder stump and waved in the air briefly before retracting toward Yorel’s body mounted on the back.
Yorel screamed again.
Louder.
His own human blood beginning to mix with the alpha’s black blood at the point where his body was coupled to the creature’s.
Nathan kept advancing.
With his cynical smile calibrated to the mode he used when he’d decided an enemy was going to die within the next few minutes and there was no reason to prolong the process beyond what was strictly necessary for technical execution.
"Yorel."
Yorel-alpha, now without arms, with only the alpha’s destroyed legs still functional for balance, with Yorel human frantically pulling threads to keep the configuration operational, responded with a voice that was already trembling.
"Wait."
"No."
Nathan raised the scythe.
With both hands.
Above his head.
And brought it down in a vertical arc directly into the alpha’s torso.
The curved blade entered through the creature’s right shoulder. It pierced the pectoral. It cut through the alpha’s ribs one by one with minimal resistance—the resistance flesh and bone could offer against a weapon that amplified the cut with an x3 multiplier. It exited below the sternum. And the alpha’s torso split open longitudinally, exposing the internal organs: a large heart blackened by previous death, collapsed lungs, a digestive system with the tree’s meat half-digested.
And at the bottom of the open torso, mounted on the back with the red threads now hanging exposed to the air, Yorel human.
With the alpha’s legs still functional, bearing the combined weight.
With his face now visible through the cut that had opened the creature’s chest from Yorel’s side.
With his red eyes dimming slightly from shock.
And with the understanding—late but complete—that there was no longer any way to stop what Nathan was doing.
---
Nathan withdrew the scythe.
The alpha’s blood dripped from the dull green blade.
Yorel tried one last thing.
He extended both hands forward from his position on the creature’s back. And from his fingertips, he produced ten red threads that shot toward Nathan with the speed of aimed arrows.
Nathan saw them coming.
With Soul Sense confirming each one’s trajectory.
He took a lateral step.
The threads passed where he’d been.
One grazed his left arm. Nathan felt the physical contact as a sharp itch, as if the thread had tried to penetrate his skin to find tendons to anchor to. Nathan moved his arm. The thread released when it found no immediate anchor.
The other nine retracted to Yorel’s hands.
Yorel screamed with frustration.
With his voice now completely human, because the alpha’s five jaws had stopped coordinating with the torso’s cut.
"Nathan!"
Nathan looked at him.
With calibrated calm.
"Yorel."
"I offer you my surrender! You can take me to Greywall! The guild will pay you well for a living Draken practitioner! Selene will know! I’m worth more alive than dead!"
Nathan processed it.
*Alright.*
*Last card.*
*Strategic surrender.*
*And he’s probably somewhat right. A living Draken practitioner is probably valuable to Selene for the information she can extract.*
*But.*
Nathan looked around the clearing.
The twenty fallen puppets. The six residents from the end of Liaraen’s fight. The dismembered alpha creature. And on the southern edge, among the trees, the small mental refuge Nathan had from the conversation with Yorel the day before. Where Yorel had played the horror of discovering his neighbors were infected. Where he’d played the strategic advice for combat. Where he’d played the gratitude for protection.
And where he’d planned, minute by minute, how he was going to kill Nathan as soon as the alpha fell.
Nathan processed it.
And with his calm voice calibrated to the mode he used only for decisions he considered definitive.
"Yorel. I’m going to explain why not."
"Nathan."
"Listen. One. You planned this for twenty years. With Draken’s doctrine. With the patience of a craftsman. With the deliberate infection of twenty people, including children who grew up infected from before they could consent. Two. You still have the active Seal. If I take you to Greywall alive, Selene is going to have to decide what to do with you. And Selene, though competent, can underestimate a Draken practitioner with tendon puppetry refined for decades. You can escape. You can kill Selene. You can resume the plan with other hosts. And three. The settlement residents who might still have internal consciousness trapped under your threads deserve the certainty that they will never be your puppets again. If I take you alive, that certainty doesn’t exist."
Yorel looked at him from inside the alpha’s open torso.
With his red eyes dimming further.
With a voice that was now breaking.
"Nathan. Please."
"No."
Nathan raised the scythe.
With both hands.
Above his right shoulder in the descending cut position.
Yorel tried to speak one last time.
"Nathan. Draken will know."
"Let him."
Nathan brought the scythe down.
In a descending vertical arc that started at Yorel human’s right shoulder, crossed the neck line, and exited through the left side of the torso.
Yorel’s body split into two unequal parts.
The head and right shoulder fell forward off the alpha’s back.
The rest of the body—the lower part with the destroyed torso—remained trapped in the red threads still connecting to the creature’s internal tissues.
Human blood burst from the cut with the force of a heart pumping for the last time.
Yorel didn’t scream.
Because the cut had passed through his trachea and vocal cords before he could process the impact.
He only emitted a wet sound.
And fell.
Dead.