The summoning took three seconds. Four at the most. He had held his breath during and exhaled easily after. He stood with six dark shapes to his left and six to his right. He chose big men. Tall men. Men who would stand beside him and intimidate. Men who would lend menace to his message. He opened his eyes and stepped forward to face the pale orc.
She had moved right in front of him. She gripped his shoulders with her hands. Strong hands. Her yellow-green eyes were wide. Her mouth was alive and moving in the moonlight, tusks gleaming.
“You fool!” she hissed. Her breath smelled of rotten meat. “Put them away. Quickly. It is not their time. They are yours to protect.”
As a child, Sorrows would wander into the fields and lie in the long grass while his father worked. During one such outing, he spotted a grasshopper chewing at leaves. He watched it, fascinated at the way its mouth changed from something solid and simple into a shifting, churning collection of tiny arms and teeth, tearing at its food. The grasshopper would pause, and the arms would disappear, the mouth would seem round and solid. The grasshopper would resume feeding, and the mouth would break apart again.
He had thought of the grasshopper years later when he met his first Seph. He thought of it again as the pale orc gripped his shoulders. She had moved within arm’s reach of Sorrows. She had been urgent. She had been frightened. And in that moment of raw emotion, she had slipped. And lines had shone in the skin around her mouth. And those lines had broken into slender tentacles, like the mouth of a grasshopper but a hundredfold more complex. And beneath the complexity, her gums and teeth remained solid and unmoving. As though the tentacles formed a loose shell over the bones and tissue beneath. Some might dismiss it as a trick of the eyes, but Sorrows could see well enough in moonlight. And he had seen enough Seph to know what they looked like.
“Get back, Seph,” Sorrows said, and shoved the pale figure. It looked at him a moment, eyes fixed, orc lips reformed and pursed.
“Put them away,” the Seph said. “They deserve better than to be used in some parlor trick, Hollow Man. You place them in danger.”
The sword flashed faster than the snap of a bowstring. A line of notched steel, silver in the moonlight, connecting Sorrows to Seph. Hand to throat.
“I told you not to call me that,” Sorrows said. “Why are you here?”
“I’m here because Ashra sent me to find you after you banished her,” the Seph said, leaning away from the blade. “She worries about you.”
Ashra, Sorrows thought. Another problem. One he had dealt with countless times in the past. One that always found a way of returning.
“I don’t need her concern,” Sorrows said. “I need her to stay banished. I’m tired of seeing whatever hideous form she cobbles together. You Seph are all the same: stolen skin, borrowed time, and bad breath.”
“If she stayed away, who would give you your pretty weapons? Those precious souls you keep on a chain?”
“I’ll find another way. I never asked for her help. As a general rule, I don’t ask Seph for anything.”
The Seph looked past Sorrows. “Yet, you keep the bow and the soul within it. You’ve had it for some time now. Longer than any of Ashra’s previous gifts.”
“They weren’t gifts. They held trapped souls. And what does it matter how long I’ve had the bow?”
“Perhaps it doesn’t matter at all. Perhaps it does. Perhaps she knows what you like, Hollow Man.”
“She can burn in all hells,” Sorrows said. The conversation was wandering. He pressed his blade hard against the Seph’s gray flesh. “How are you doing this? How are you in an orc?”
The Seph inhabit the void left behind when a soul leaves a body. Something to do with the gods-touch and planar beings. Sorrows had been told about it once by a Seph as he drove a dagger into the heart of its host. Orcs, despite their white beads, had no soul. The same could be said of all mortal species, save one. Without a soul void, a Seph couldn’t inhabit a body. Or so Sorrows thought.
“Through no small effort, I assure you,” the Seph replied. “This body has little time left, but before I find another, I bring a message.”
Sorrows had his own message to worry about. The second orc had found his feet again. He was searching the moonlit grass for his blade. He still moved slowly, with one hand on his head and the other held out for balance. He was too groggy to notice the dark silhouettes standing around him. He would never remember a story about orc-eating humans. Too complicated.
“Hey, handsome,” Sorrows called out, looking past the Seph.
The second orc turned to the noise. Yellow-green eyes blinking. Brow furrowing. He looked angry. As though his head hurt where some guy had hit him with a sword.
“You know about the Seph?” Sorrows asked.
“What are you playing at, Hollow Man?” the Seph asked. “I need to tell you—”
The orc nodded, and Sorrows wasted no time. He pulled the big orc’s blade down, one-handed,
