The Immortal Snail Novels & Stories

“She told me to keep it a secret, even from you. I am still not sure what it is.” His brow wrinkles. “Okay.” “That’s it?” “Yes,” he replies. “That’s it. Do you know what it does?” “No,” I admit. “But Evanora spoke to it as if it was alive. She said once she had it, she could rule the two realms.” “It houses a God that can make a person immortal,” he tells me. “That’s weird. Aren’t we immortal anyway? Why would we need this?” “There is a difference between immortal and a never-ending life. We can be killed, but with this necklace, I think you can’t be harmed,” he continues.

“Learn to live hungry like the rest of us.” Lunaris pressed her palm to the air above Sienna’s heart. “Take what you asked for,” she murmured, and the immortality slid home like a blade into a scabbard that had always waited for it. Sienna’s pupils blew wide and narrowed again. The world stepped back from her, as if to admire the room they had just redecorated. The dock planks did not creak under her feet anymore. They adjusted. “Memory,” Sienna said, unsteady, “leave it.”

She didn’t care much for mortal affairs beyond what her job required her to know. Lisa circled over the building and landed gently on the roof. She wasn’t worried about anyone seeing her; mortals couldn’t see reapers unless the reaper wanted to be seen. There was a glass dome in the center of the roof, made from green, transparent glass. One side of the dome had a giant hole in it, as though something heavy had been thrown through it. Lisa approached the hole and jumped in, tucking her wings to avoid the jagged edges.

The cops would treat this as a crime scene, so he went back to his office to wait and think. His office had always been a place of refuge. No matter what happened in his life, he could always go there, shut out the present, and lose himself in the distant past. He walked over to his bookshelves and lifted up a small fossil. It was only two and a half inches long. An Archimediella shell, white and rounded like a narwhal horn, with whorls overhanging the sutures that wound around the shell from base to tip. It was an ancient, primeval snail shell, yet it was also a thing of beauty, even though it was the kind of fossil one could find almost anywhere in the world.

“I fell asleep!” “You certainly did,” the dragon shifter said. “Hours ago. Luckily, I woke up not long after, due to your snoring, and was able to make sure no one snuck up on us and killed us while we lay here like waiting dogs.” Nya’s eyes widened in horror. “Snoring!” she said. “I don’t snore!” “All of that, and this is what you’re offended about?” he said, chuckling at her. Slate sat down next to her underneath the tree and dug through the backpack. “How about the fact that we might’ve died?”

Hale explains. I cast a sideways glance at him. “Oh, so it has a name?” Adria leans out of the shack, eyeing me keenly. Her dark hair is wound up in numerous braids, a cloak draped over her shoulders, covered in a pattern of bright gold, accenting the black. “You are mortal…This has never happened before,” she marvels. Her lifespan likely far rivals mine, and yet this is the first time she has come across a mortal in immortal lands. That is a terrible sign.