Stronger as One (#1, Completed)

58. You will always be in my heart (New)

RILEY 

"Ah, yes. Killing a cambion is no easy task. Are you sure you are ready for it though?" Selene cocked an eyebrow at me, challengingly.

"Thanks for the useful input." I flashed her fake smile in return. "Can you give me something that would actually be handy or are you also going to tell me that you don't know who he can be killed?"

"Easy there, Riley. I see that fire in your eyes," Selene remarked excitedly. "You are a true firecracker- not afraid of the Sun and Mood Goddess or intimidated like many others would have been."

She stretched out her hand and I looked at the empty palm in front of me, wondering what I was meant to be seeing there. Yet, within seconds , a long silver triple-edged dagger appeared out of thin air. It was a magnificent weapon, with the three spiralling cutting edges coming down to an incredibly sharp piercing point.

"I give you the Angel Blade," Selene said with all the theatrics of a showman.

I ran my fingers along the dagger which was crafted superbly.

"It is beautiful." Probably I sounded like a madwoman for admiring a dagger but old habits die hard, I guessed.

"I think she will do just fine with it, Selene," Sol chuckled. "You need to be careful though, Riley- the dagger works in different ways. If you strike a demonic creature with it, you will temporarily paralyse its abilities. If you the stab cambion in the heart, he will become fully human."

"Right, stab him in the heart and then kill him," I nodded. "How hard can that be, right?"

"Well, in the case of Markolf, there is a catch actually," Sol pointed out. I was not sure if she was trying to rain on my parade intentionally but either way, she did- she dampened my mood like a fire doused with a bucket of water.

"Of course there is," I sighed annoyed. "Why would anything be straightforward in this world. So, what is it?"

"He has been stealing the animals of shifters, or rather the animal spirits that live within the shifters, to boost his powers and his strength with their life forces, meaning that they are part of him now. Trapped inside him but still there. You and your mates are destined to stop him, so the only way to release them would be to stab him with the blade dipped in the blood of your triad."

My eyes widened. She couldn't possibly be serious! What was going be next- needing unicorn blood? Actually, I didn't even want to think about that because that would have probably turned out to be a real thing.

Once my shock subsided, the importance of what Sol just told me actually sunk in. "Wait, what do you mean to release them?"

The Sun Goddess raised an eyebrow, pulling an "Are you serious?" expression.

"Oh, come on—I am still a newbie here. You have to spell things out for me, oh great and mighty goddesses," I said with the sweetest smile that I could throw in.

"If you stab Markolf with the blade dipped in your triad's blood," Selene continued, "you will release the animal spirits, meaning that they will be set free."

"So they will return to their shifters?" I gasped.

The devastation I had seen at the dungeon where we rescued Nat was something I wasn't going to forget anytime soon. The shifters who had lost their animals were broken if they had not died during the process already. I couldn't even imagine what they were going through because I never knew what it was like to have an animal, to really be a shifter, but I knew pain when I saw it.

I wondered what it would have been like to get my wolf back, to be able to shift and run free in the forest. It was futile to think about it though- even if we did manage to release those spirits, my wolf was not amongst them.