Perhaps Valdis was originally brought to Keeliai for her connection to the death plane - which, if not Keeliai's death plane, would at least be something similar. But that was a moot point now that Malicant was gone.

The scythe, on the other hand, sounded uncomfortably like Serpine's Red Hand, so much so that if Skulduggery still had nerves capable of flinching he might have flinched. Each method, in fact, had parallels in his own universe - the direct contact of the Red Hand, and the larger affect size of Lord Vile's death aura. Skulduggery still remembered what it felt like to wield that death aura, how purely addictive and powerful it was to take someone's soul from them without lifting a finger. He'd never been capable of cherry-picking the way Valdis described. Oh, the aura might have been able to, but Skulduggery himself hadn't had any cause for mercy.

He wanted to be able to sit atop the proverbial high horse and sardonically point out that losing someone important to you wasn't usually grounds for murdering entire civilisations. The problem was that Skulduggery didn't have any ground to stand on, much less a place to put a horse.

"Are there others like you in your universe?" he asked, though he could guess at the answer. "Do they all have such questionable judgement?"