Damaged Gods by K.C. Cross, J.A. Huss

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE - PELL

“Hello?” I call out to the dark emptiness.

Where the hell am I? And what happened to the sanctuary?

“Tomas?” I call. “Hey! Can you hear me? Pie?”

I don’t know how long I stand here doing nothing but listening, but I think it’s a while. Because something has changed. There is a sudden blankness to me. Like… like I’m about to be erased.

I have heard caretakers complain about the gray over the centuries. When they step outside without that ring, that’s always the wake-up call. It’s the one thing I can count on to wipe away their disbelief and force them to pay attention to my rules and expectations.

But I am unable to walk through the gates without my caretaker, so I have never experienced it myself. Even if I had, it would not matter now. Because this is not gray, this is black.

It is the absence of everything.

“Why am I here?” I yell.

I do not expect an answer, nor do I get one. But if those damned gods are going to abandon me here in this new hellish purgatory, then questions are all I have left.

“Who is in charge? What do you want?” My voice is loud and booming and my words bounce back. Like there are walls somewhere in the distance.

And they stop.

And there is just… nothing.

I let out a long sigh, ready for this curse to be over. So done with this bullshit life. What is the fucking point of living when you’re just a toy to them? Nothing more than entertainment. Just a fucking joke.

But something happens to my breath when I sigh. It glows a little. Lighting up the space around me.

And then I’m back in the dungeon with Tomas, holding that torch above my head, thinking, This is not how light works.

Light rules dark. Light needs only to exist to banish darkness. The dark has no such power over light.

Except when it’s not really darkness, but something else altogether.

I am in the something else.

“Tomas?” I call again. Only this time, it comes out in a small, hesitant whisper.

And again, with my breath comes the light.

Am I the dragon?

I breathe harder, but it does not get brighter. No fire comes out of me, even though I am, like Tomas, made of fire. So I am not a dragon.

I am just me.

The worthless Pell.

Joke of jokes.

The entertainment.

But just as I think those words, I catch a whisper in the dark. “Pell?” the whisper asks. Just a few letters on the wind. And I am alert again.

“Pie!” I yell as loud as I can. “Pie!” I call her name over and over as I stumble forward into the blackness. Because that whisper belonged to her. “Pie!”

She does not answer me back.

She’s going to die here. She’s going to die here and I will be stuck in the cursed dark for all eternity.

No. “Think! Think! She’s here! You’re here! How do you find her?”

I don’t know.

I’m a formidable enough monster in the real world. But I’m not in the real world. I’m in the magic of Saint Mark’s. And my magic is very limited. I can slam doors. I can freeze the caretaker. I can put my claim on them with a breath. I can chop off a horn and collect the blood and make a magic dragon scale.

I’ve done all that and I’m still here.

So what more can I do?

I sigh again. And again, the breath comes out as a tiny bit of light.

Light rules dark.

I am fire.

Fire is light.

I am light.

And I know what to do.

I bend down, feeling on the ground beneath my feet for the horn I know is there. I grab it, hold it up in front of me like a torch.

At first, it does nothing. I can’t even see it. But I breathe. I make just enough wind to blow the light inside me onto the horn and the blood glows. I send another breath of encouragement and it glows again. Brighter this time. Little flecks of potential fire appear.

One more breath and the tiny embers catch and sputter into life.

I have a torch.

And I walk forward into the dark emptiness calling her name.

Because she is the moth and I am the flame.

And if she can’t come to me, I will go to her.