I cringed, imagining a mouth and throat full of glass slivers.
Unu caught the look and saluted me with the half-bottle, then started chewing. Not a pleasant sound. Either this dude was willing to go the extra mile to look tough or he had some sort of Spirit immunity to broken glass.
I stood up and dusted off the knees of my pants. “Think there’ll be another ambush waiting for us at camp?”
“I hope not.” Valthorpe frowned. “I guess we should go in prepared, anyway.”
“Way ahead of you.” Smoky slipped on a pair of those Technol sunglasses from the loot pile and hooked the sling from one of their machine guns over his shoulder.
My heart rate jumped up a couple beats when the lenses locked on me, but the targeting app didn’t appear.
The jackal grunted. “Pieces of junk must sync with the universal implant or something.” He chucked the glasses back onto the pile. “Screw ’em. I’m keeping this, though.” He patted the machine gun. “Where’d that extra ammo go?”
Off to the north side of the path, Valthorpe made a hole in the soft black dirt, his Topsoil Spirit flaring. Unu lined it with a tarp, then Warcry and I loaded in all the Technol guns, gadgets, and loot. Even if the stuff hadn’t been tagged with some kind of lo-jack, packing it all to the encampment would’ve been a hassle with the mewler dead. We already had plenty of supplies to carry. The plan was to cache the valuables there until we were headed back to town.
When the loot was safely hidden away in the ground, Valthorpe made a second, bigger hole for me to drag Butcher into.
The shark’s grave was considerably deeper than the loot cache. It seemed disrespectful to just pitch him over the edge, so I climbed down and pulled Butcher in. His legs still thumped down, but at least it was a little more dignified than a flop.
“What about the Technols?” I asked as I hiked myself back out of the grave.
“Animals’ll take care of ’em,” Unu muttered, digging some white crystals out of his ear with a pinkie.
Valthorpe’s Spirit flared muddy green, and the pile of displaced earth next to the grave spilled back into place. Butcher’s broken body disappeared under the dark, wet blanket.
I shifted feet and stared at the Technol corpses. Leaving them where they’d dropped wasn’t right. It felt unfinished. But nobody was digging a hole for these guys.
After a second, I grabbed the closest Technol by the boots and dragged him off the south side of the path. The artifact team and Warcry shot me some sideways looks, but didn’t say anything. One by one, I lined the dead guys up and straightened them out.
It was closer, but not quite enough. In the bit of flickering lantern light that made it through the brush, they looked almost agitated. Impatient. Like their souls were waiting for some kind of final goodbye or signal they could go.
I checked over my shoulder to make sure the others weren’t within earshot. Through the brush I could see them finishing up with the supplies. They were talking amongst themselves, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying.
I turned back to the bodies, put my hands together like Rali always did, and bowed.
“It’s over, guys,” I said in a low voice. “Sorry it ended this way. I hope your afterlife goes better.”
The wind picked up, rustling the vegetation and chilling the sweat on my skin. It sounded like whispering.
One of the dead guys’ hands fell open. A glowing purple marble welled out of the palm and dropped onto the jungle floor. Memories of the chaos creatures from the Shut-ins flashed through my head.
The marble rolled over to me. I had just enough time to take a step back before a ghostly purple image of one of the gunners rose out of it. He stood nose-to-nose with me, all his tech gone, eye sockets empty.
His head shifted as he looked me up and down with the black holes in his head.
“I’ve killed better meat roaches than you, and I’ve killed worse.” His voice echoed distant and airy, and his mouth didn’t move along with the words. “But you didn’t have to send us on. You could’ve left us here to become vengeful wraiths.”
Sedrick Nameless’s scowling face flashed through my head, smeared in swamp mud and stained by the muck of the bogs around Heartchamber 2.
“I didn’t realize that was what happened to left-behind bodies,” I said.
“The ones whose consciousnesses are trapped on this plane.” The gunner shrugged, then held out a purple stone slip. “You were honorable in your victory, Death cultivator. For that, we grant you Wrathblade. It will fight at your side and do your bidding.”
“Thanks.” I took the book, feeling the bumps of the raised script against my fingertips. “Not to be rude, but what’s the catch?”
The last technique I’d learned from a purple jade book had been Sudden Death. The attack could kill any enemy it was aimed at, mortal or immortal, but it was powered by life energy, so every time you used it, Sudden Death stole years off the end of your life. It only stood to reason that Wrathblade would have a cost, too.
“You don’t get to know the price until it’s already being paid,” the ghost said. “Use it wisely.”
The wind changed direction, and the gunner faded to nothingness.
The lantern light was still flickering through the underbrush, but the line of dead guys didn’t look as agitated anymore.
I thumbed the title script on the purple stone slip, then touched it to my forehead.
The technique for summoning Wrathblade poured into my brain along with information about it—but not much. Wrathblade was an ancient sentient weapon forged of an unknown, unbreakable material by a great Death cultivator. It bent to the will of whoever summoned it, fighting alongside you as if
