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by Jaymin Eve
“You can stop rambling; I’ve processed the first thing you said. Mind telling me why you snuck into Topia?” Emmy’s tone was dry, almost sarcastic, but there was a hint of hysteria to it.
“Well, technically, I didn’t want to. The Abcurses made me. They wanted me to steal a cup.”
“Who did the cup belong to?”
“Someone called D.O.D.?”
It was too dark to see Emmy’s face, but she was frowning so hard now that I could almost sense it.
“There isn’t a god by that name, Will.”
“Yeah, that’s what Jeffrey said too. Oh, wait … Jeffrey said something about a Sacred Abil and the Trophy of Stavlini, or Stavriti, or Stav … something.”
“Staviti?” The hysteria in Emmy’s voice was definitely becoming prominent now. “The Trophy of Staviti? You stole the Trophy of Staviti?”
I clapped a hand over her mouth, trying to muffle her shriek. “No!” I answered reflexively. “Or yes. Kind of. Maybe. Why?”
She gave a muffled answer, and I realised that I was still holding my hand over her mouth. I pulled away, allowing her to speak again.
“You don’t know who Staviti is, Willa? Seriously? You couldn’t pay attention in class even for that much?”
“I knew it sounded familiar,” I grumbled, feeling defensive. “Is it the god of … um … food or something?”
Emmy groaned, her head making a thudding sound as she knocked it back against the door. “It’s the Creator. The Original Creator. Staviti. And Sacred Abil? He’s the god of Trickery. Definitely not someone you want to be messing with.”
“I didn’t want to mess with any of them.”
“And yet … you stole from the Creator. Tricked the god of Trickery. Stabbed someone. Probably someone important. Probably the god of Vengeance.”
“Do you think they know it was me?”
“Of course not. You’re a dweller from the seventh ring of Minatsol.” Emmy suddenly launched herself onto me, hugging me tightly. “I’m so relieved. You’re alive. You’re … what was happening back there in the dining hall? And why the hell are we in a supply closet?” She drew back from the hug, a hand still on my arm. She shook me slightly, as though she’d be able to dislodge the answers from me by force.
“Rau’s magic. It knocked me out, and then when I woke up, there was this pain …” I touched my chest, rubbing my fingers over the muted thud of pain that was still present, even now, though it was no longer trying to rip me apart. “The further away from the Abcurses I go … the more it hurts me. If I’m touching one of them, I don’t feel it at all.”
“You need to tell them,” she hissed out, panic riding her tone. “Maybe they know—”
“They were there. They saw it happen. I don’t want to tell them about this; it’s enough that they can hear some of my thoughts, and that I have to follow them around during the daylight hours. I don’t want them to find out that I need to be around them for the entire sun-cycle. I don’t even want to be around them all the time. I’m sick of them. I never want to see them again. Except Aros; he smells nice. And Rome, because he’s so strong I’m pretty sure not even Rau can get past him. I don’t need the others. Except Siret. I’m pretty sure he hates me, but he’s really good at catching me like just before I face-plant into something. But the others, I don’t need them. Not at all.” I paused, my brow furrowing, my mouth pursing, and then I quickly blurted, “Except Coen and Yael. Coen is really good at making decisions, and if I leave out Yael he’ll probably hunt me the hell down and haunt me—”
“That’s all of them,” Emmy interrupted smoothly. She didn’t sound panicked anymore. Now she sounded like she was trying not to laugh.
Eleven
After Emmy snuck some food into my closet, she disappeared to finish her chores. Chores which I had no chance of doing, unless one of the Abcurse brothers decided to help me out with them. Instead, I sat in the dark, picking at a plate of normal dweller rock-bread, my chest thumping painfully. When the world grew so quiet that I would have been able to hear a bird squawk from the forest, I knew that night had fallen.
I opened the door a crack, peering out. I looked one way, and then the other.
All clear, Soldier! The stress was reversing my mental development back to the games I used to play with Emmy when I was only seven life-cycles old. I’d had some kind of sick fascination with the Minateur patrols, and I’d pretended to be one of them for a full life-cycle, constantly arresting Emmy for walking too fast, or too slow, or too normally.
Slipping down the corridor was difficult. It felt as though I had left my internal organs back in the closet, but just before the pain became unbearable, I reached the bathing chambers for that floor of dorms. I ran inside and slammed the door behind me, locking it securely. The faint drip of condensation echoed all around me, and steam assaulted my face, driving me back against the door for a moment. My senses were on overload, screaming out against the pain of being so far from the Abcurses. I fought my way past it, pushing off the door and heading into the steam. The wooden boards beneath my feet were damp and warm, sending comforting heat right up to my belly, somewhat easing the way the rock bread was now turning around, threatening to come back up.
I had no idea what to expect from the bathing chamber, since the dweller chambers were in the dungeon, and the water ran cold. Up here, there seemed to be a series of rooms to walk through. A bathing experience. I entered the first room by passing beneath a wooden archway. There were several wooden cubes, all empty. I stared beyond the room, through the next wooden archway. All that was visible was a fine mist, a spray of water that rained softly down from the ceiling. I guessed that the cubes were for the sols’ clothes. I quickly whipped off Rome’s shirt, stuffing it into the cube, and then I lost my boots, using one cube for each boot, because … why the hell not? Next, I tore off Jeffrey’s slave garb, flicking that onto the floor, because I broke into a sol bathing chamber and therefore I was a rebel of the worst kind. Might as well start acting like it. I stepped through the next archway, passing into the fine mist of water. It caressed my skin so softly, dripping condensation over my body.
The water was very lightly scented, almost too lightly to detect. It must have had some kind of magical property, because I could feel it stripping me of dirt and stress. I pulled my hand up before my face, squinting at it in the dim light of a few wall sconces. The grime was running out from beneath my fingernails, dripping right off my hand. I blinked, bending over to check my feet. I was sure I had never been so damn clean in my entire life. I was pretty sure I had been born dirtier than this shower was now making me. Maybe it was taking a layer of skin off. Was that healthy? I had no idea.
Also … I probably needed to re-think that last thing that I just thought, because babies weren’t all that clean right after birth.
I was just beginning to wonder if I should move on when the spray turned off. The next archway was now visible to me, and I stepped toward it, dripping along the ridged, wooden floorboards. The steam assaulted me again, but stronger this time. It crept along my skin, making me break out into an immediate sweat. But it was nice. A nice kind of sweat. Almost like the magical bathing chamber was now cleansing me from the inside. There were a few more wooden cubes stuck along one of the walls, piles of cloth stacked within. I wandered over, grabbing what looked like a hem of fabric and extracting what appeared to be a robe, without sleeves of any kind. I pulled it up over my chest, marvelling at the whisper of cloud-like material. It barely seemed to weigh on my skin at all. It did stick to the sweat, though, forming a second skin around my chest, stomach, and thighs as I wrapped it around, tying it off beneath my arms. It ended around my knees, so I supposed that on the male sols, it would be fairly short. And that was when I realised that I was wearing it wrong. It clearly wasn’t supposed to be tied off at the chest. It was supposed to be tied off at the waist, because male sols didn’t have boobs.
Eh, whatever. Innovation, Soldier! Leader Graham would b
e so proud of me.
I sank down into the wooden bench that ran along the back of the room, my head thumping back against the wall. The steam was making me sleepy. I could almost ignore the pain. It had dulled so much that I barely even noticed it anymore. And it was getting better by the moment. It was almost …
Crap! Take cover, Soldier!
I scrambled up off the bench, but it was too late. Siret spilled into the room, looking wet, clean, and pissed. His clothes were soaked through, his medley gold-black hair was now mostly black, sticking to his head and running rivulets of water over his face.
“Er, hey there, Five,” I muttered.
“Hey, Soldier.”
I jumped to my feet, my face and body heating—no doubt as red as a berry, which he hopefully wouldn’t notice through all the steam. “You’ve been listening to me!”
Siret’s eyes darkened as he took a moment to run them over my body. A really long moment. No doubt the white wrap hid about the same amount as Jeffrey’s outfit. Still, for the same reason as last time, I didn’t cover myself. Part of me sort of felt like I didn’t have to with the Abcurses. They wouldn’t take advantage. They wouldn’t judge me. I wasn’t sure I had ever felt acceptance like that before. Then again, maybe it wasn’t acceptance. Maybe it was apathy.
Siret stepped closer to me. My eyes were glued to the rivulets of water running through his dark hair.
“Why did you come through the bathing rooms in your clothes?” I asked, because the silence was getting uncomfortable.
He still wasn’t saying anything, and I had no idea what I was supposed to do. He reached out then and wrapped his hand around the back of my neck, pulling me closer to his body before pushing me back down on to the seat and settling in next to me.
His hardness pressed along one side of my fairly naked body, and together we remained like that, for a long while. Both of us leaning back against the wooden slats, staring out into the steam room.
His voice was a rumbling whisper when he finally spoke. “I felt your pain. You were hurting before I got here.”
I had actually gotten pretty used to the chest-shredding thing that went on when I wasn’t with them. Of course, now that Siret was touching me, my body was able to relax in a way it couldn’t when I was away from them.
“You felt me?” Why was my voice all breathy and low? What was Siret doing to me right now? This had to be some sort of sol gift, right? His trickery was messing with me.
“I felt you.” He confirmed, his hand raising subconsciously, rubbing against a spot on his chest. “You were hurting and now you’re not. I told the others we couldn’t leave you alone.”
“I’m fine. Well … I mean, I did trip and hurt my leg, and then I was dirty and needed to be clean … you know, the usual stuff.”
I had no idea why I was resistant to telling them about the painful co-dependence Rau had created. Part of me wanted to try and figure out how to fix it before they realised what a thorn-in-the-ass I was.
Vibrations ran along my side and I realised that Siret was laughing. For some reason, this made me smile. I liked Siret’s laugh, and hearing it did things to me. Hot, swirly things. Finally, he stood and hauled me up to my feet. “Come on, Soldier, let’s check out your leg. And make sure you’re clean.”
Sweet gods of Topia.
His voice did that growly thing again. “I heard that, Rocks. I’d prefer it if you didn’t offer any sort of exclamations to those assholes.”
“Why do you hate them?” I asked as he led me from the steamy room. “I still don’t understand how you five even figured out how to get into Topia.” And why weren’t they afraid of Rau? At no point during the entire threat-and-attack thing Rau had going on, did any of the Abcurses show one ounce of concern that he would smite them into dust. Their confidence was pretty amazing. And annoying.
I hadn’t actually expected Siret to answer, but oddly enough, he did spill something. “The gods are not as deserving of worship as you people like to think. They have weaknesses. Fears. They fight and bicker amongst themselves about the stupidest things. Rau doesn’t scare us, he’s powerful of course—all of the Originals are—but he has one big problem. He’s one of the only Original Gods without a Beta and no one really knows why there has never been a sol to step into the role.”
His pause was heavy and I had to ask, “Are you sure you don’t know why?”
Siret glanced down at me, a flash of white teeth shining in my direction. “Personally, I believe that someone is manipulating things so that Chaos doesn’t get out of hand. Rau does enough damage on his own. Of course, having no Beta leaves him weaker and more vulnerable. The only thing ensuring his dominance is the fact that chaos is the natural order of the worlds. His power grows by the simple act of you all living.”
“So if he got a ‘Beta’ then …”
I trailed off as the horror of what the world might look like washed over me.
“Yes, complete and utter destruction of everything you’re used to. He would burn this world to the ground in a bid to gather enough power to take down the other Original Gods.”
“So that’s what he wants? To destroy the other Originals?”
We were back in the first room now; Siret grabbed something from a small shelf before leading me out into the hallway. I shivered slightly as a cool breeze caressed my mostly naked and damp skin, before jumping when the sol draped a warm towel across my shoulders. “You have got to stop walking around naked, Rocks. You’ll catch a cold and die. Dwellers are delicate like that.”
Yeah, right. I’d ended up naked and freezing more times in my life than was even possible to count. It was almost my state of natural being at this point. “So … Rau … end game? Destroy the OGs?”
Siret shook his head at me. “No, his end-game isn’t to destroy the OGs. He wants to take out the big daddy.”
Staviti!
Thank you, Emmy, for making sure that I knew things.
“You know Staviti?” Siret suddenly looked darker and a hell of a lot more menacing than he had two clicks before the conversation had started. “That’s not possible … no dweller has seen him in several hundred life-cycles.”
He was half muttering to himself, but I wasn’t paying that much attention because there was suddenly a mountain in the hallway.
Rome strode up to us and, in a move which completely stunned the crap out of me, dropped to his knees right before me. What the actual freak?
I was about to hyperventilate, or faint, or do something stupidly inappropriate when his hand gently prodded the graze on my leg. “What happened to you, Rocks?” With him on his knees, we were basically at eye-level. His eyes were so green it was hard to stare directly at them. “Did someone hurt you?”
I shook my head frantically. It seemed to be the only movement I was currently capable of. “No, nope, no … no.”
Siret laughed. “You should scribe a book. You’re so good with words.”
I recovered some of myself, enough to be able to turn and glare at him, before turning back to Rome. Only to find he was already on his feet, towering over me again.
“I’m fine,” I said, managing to get those two words out without stuttering or repeating myself. “I should get back to my room.”
I knew it was stupid. I literally couldn’t leave their sides, but the small part of me which had always been alone—independent … a misfit—needed to prove to myself that I could make it without the Abcurses. Like I needed to know when they decided to turf me out like trash, that I’d be okay. Shredded heart and all.
Turning, I stomped off down the hallway, half dreading that someone was going to stop me. I had no idea what I was going to do once I reached the end of the hall. There was no way to jump into the supply closet while they were watching me.
Were they still watching me?
I turned my head as minutely as I could to see behind me. Five figures. Everyone was there for the show this time. Damn them. Since I hadn’t been watching where I was goi
ng, and the agony in my chest was increasing, I missed seeing the small cart which was waiting in the hallway for the morning shift of room-cleaning dwellers to grab it.
I tripped. Of course I did. Right onto my face.
I heard some snorts of laughter from behind, and the distinct sound of Yael saying. “Half a click. Told you … you owe me a hundred tokens.”
It didn’t surprise me that Yael had found a way to turn that into a competition. As I lay there, breathing in the dirty floor smell—some dweller was really letting the team down in this hall. Probably that dweller was me, but whatever—I heard their steps as the five of them closed in on me.
I groaned and lifted my head just enough to thump it back against the floor. It’s going to be impossible to hide this from them any longer. Resigning myself to the fact, I rolled over onto my back. Aros wrapped his golden hands around my biceps and hauled me to my feet.
“What can’t you hide from us any longer?” he asked when I was standing again.
The quiet and semi-darkness of the hall enveloped our group, and I could have been mistaken, but it seemed like the boys were looking a little wary of me, standoffish almost. Which was good. I needed them to be cold because otherwise I got flustered and forgot that they were leagues above me, members of the blessed sol realm.
“Rocks …” Yael prompted. “Don’t make me use my persuasion on you, I’ve been going easy with you but I can make you tell me.”
Oh hell to the no … he did not just say that, right?
My rage must have been clearly reflected across my face because I saw a few of them exchange a nervous glance before they took a step away from me. Not even a sacred sol was immune to the effects of a pissed-off woman. Lifting my finger, I jabbed it right into Yael’s hard chest. It hurt like hell, and he even caught my wince, so I decided to use their own tactics of intimidation against them. I drew myself to my full, miserable height, and pushed myself closer to him.