He grabs the wrist of a woman reaching out for him, and grins at her. My intentions are not kind, his eyes say, you will suffer, his grip says, and I will enjoy it, say his teeth. But his voice addresses them all. "You want free of your bonds? I am no one's savior. But I have use for you. A thief stands atop this train, gloating. Bring me her head, and the undamaged goods she has stolen, and I will see you freed to Heaven or Earth, at your wish." A lie, of course. He calls up the thread of his estate and stitches it into the souls around him, and if there was any soul present that did not belong in Hell, they were changed such that they were nearly demons themselves.
-Vlad (Finding Our Self #6)
Just as the hand reaches out, however, there is a sudden surge from below, billions of horrible, hideous, cruel ghosts pour out of the train, they swarm over it, throw their wailing bodies against it. They charge into the engine room and tear the Fiends operating it apart, leaving thick gray blood all about the room. The chimney ceases to emit smog, and with a lurch, the ghost train begins to fall Hellward, the lightning tracks shattering underneath it.
The souls have other concerns, however, the concerns of their new master, their wails split the skull as though a nail were driven into it through each ear, and their hands, cold as nothing, hot as the flames of Hell, reach for Isha.
It is the moment that Isha has been waiting for. She stands between the two waiting… waiting… now!
She ducks aside, swings Anguish out, and the Estate strings itself out like a whip, long and faster than light. It strikes the horde of ghosts once, then she flings it back round to strike the Strategist, right in the chest.
In that instant, the ghosts feel no more pain. They are still cruel, hideous, relentless things, but the power of their pain is gone, the fiery torment ripped out of them, leaving them lost and cold.
Still, they do as bid, and as the train hurtles down, down, down to the root below, towards those black fires, their cold hands rip through Isha, and she howls in pain, but this sound is almost lost in the silence of the ghosts, the absence of wails.
Jordarac, too, makes a howl of pain, but strikes his own hand not at his dreaded Estate, but at his own heart, destroying the suffering that Isha took from the ghosts and put into him. He doesn't purge all of it from him, but enough to remove the suffering, he stands, glaring angrily.
- HG, Isha, Jordarac (Finding OUr Self #7)