Ravenous (Taint of the Gods #1)

6. RIEKA

6

RIEKA

T iny was dead.

He was dead. Taren was to be a slave, and Kris was gods knows where with that Bloodhound.

Private acquisition he had called her, as though she were a piece of art to be bought and sold.

I was to blame. Had I not agreed to that stupid drinking game—with him—and instead encouraged Kris to sleep early, we’d be on our passage through The White right now, and Taren would still be home safe in Keltjar.

They should have never trusted me.

I’m a monster. All I do is hurt people.

My mother.

My brother.

Tiny.

I unfurled my fist.

The grey fur remained unblemished. Soft and clean. Somehow, even in that state, I’d managed to keep the blood splatter from marring the grey as they had ripped me from him.

Why hadn’t he listened to me? If he had just done as I’d asked, he’d be alive.

Then you’d be the rotting corpse, hanging from a rope in the forest.

But he’d be alive.

Shifting my weight on the train compartment floor where they had secured me, the metal of the wall cold even through my coat, I reached around for the end of my plait. The leather string fell away with ease, the long white strands falling loose over my shoulder.

The shackle chain provided just enough range of movement to wind the string around the wad of fur, securing it with a knot my father had taught me. The discomfort it exerted on my wrist was a grain of sand compared to the crushing avalanche of pain in my chest. The pipe-weed pouch still tucked in my coat pocket would be the perfect place to secure it. Opening the magnetic clasp, I placed inside the only piece of my brother the world had sought to grant me and let the clasp close with a snap.

Had I managed to hold onto Kris’ tribal colours, I would have stored that inside too. But I’d lost it somewhere between getting captured and tearing the slavers apart.

Opposite me, a woman yanked on her shackles, the third time since we had awoken in the train compartment. The slavers, because that was what they were, had deposited me here after the Charmer had knocked me unconscious.

I had expected to wake in the City of the Dead, my soul devoured by Veliah because the gods had deemed it unworthy of residing in the God Sphere with the devoted ones.

I was not to become a star in the heavens.

No. I, Rieka Nicora, was exactly where I deserved to be. On the floor of an empty cargo train compartment, shackled like the monster I was. Fear had been my greeting when I’d awoken on the train, its savoury scent causing whatever vestiges of the monster that had emerged in the slave camp to rumble in satisfaction.

The whimpers of a woman had caused all sense of reality to come crashing down, and the scent of blood, caked to my skin like dried dough rid me of any semblance of denial I could have clung to.

I might have deserved to be a prisoner for my crimes, but I doubted the others shackled on the walls around me did. The young woman opposite me looked barely nineteen and so thin, a jolt from the train would likely have her bones breaking if she collided with the wall.

There were eight of us spread out at equal intervals, two women to our right and four men to our left. My senses told me they were Blessed too.

The compartment had only one door. An unwelcome sign.

The woman opposite shifted to her knees, placing her hands on the wall, eyes closing upon contact with the steel.

“Do you feel something?” the man to her left asked. She ignored him.

I watched her for several seconds before a scent drew my focus to the far end of the train.

One of the men had his hands clasped around his shackles and where he gripped them, the chain grew red hot. Molten metal dripped through his fingers and pooled at his feet until the chain fell away from the man, striking the wall like a gong, his hands left blackened but uninjured.

He was a Kindling. Though not the one that piece of shit Bloodhound had sold to the slavers.

The man opposite pleaded for the same to be done to his chain, but the Kindling ignored him, instead choosing to search his pockets for something. He pulled out a piece of flint, his face expressing his relief.

Tiny detested Kindlings. Ever since he’d snuck up on one’s campfire to pinch a pheasant they’d hunted. He’d been caught, a whip of flame from the campfire blasted at him by the Kindling. He’d had a bald patch on his back leg for the last five years.

The avalanche in my chest finally made land. The realisation that any thought of him would not be met with one of his spectrals caused my throat to tighten, the sting of unshed tears clawing at it. I fisted my coat, the fabric clenched so tightly my knuckles turned white.

A low hum began to fill the compartment.

I let it distract me. The woman, still kneeling had paused her searching of the wall three feet above where her chain was fastened. The area around her hand began to emit a blue glow, and for a split second, I doubt anyone else saw, minute crackles of blue lightning shot out.

She was a Spark.

A Kindling, a Brute, and a Spark. There’s a joke in there somewhere. Something about a bar?

There was a loud pop.

All the shackles clicked open.

“Thank you,” said one of the other captives to the Spark as they rubbed at their wrist. Judging from her expression, I doubted freeing everyone was her intention.

The man opposite the Kindling walked over to the doorless compartment wall, hands searching it like the Spark had, eventually pressing his ear to it. “Does anyone know why they put us here?”

I watched the Spark as her attention turned from the captives. She was gazing around, searching for something, her eyes darting left and right. She bore the same shaved head as those women from the camp. The skin around her neck shone like an old scar, right where one of those collars might rest from years of wear.

A bell chimed and the Spark flinched, her fear spiking.

Whilst the others all searched for the source of the bell, the Spark only had eyes for the doorless wall.

She knows something.

There was a crackle followed by a female voice that was far too cheerful under the circumstances. “Five seconds until Registration Commences. Five.”

The Spark’s heart rate spiked again. She moved to the centre of the compartment but remained focused on the wall, the slightest quivering to her hands the only visible indication of her fear.

“Four.” The entire back wall of the carriage slid up to reveal another room in the compartment. Eight figures approached the opening but stopped short of entering. I stood, hesitant that I could not smell the newcomers and caught sight of a glimmer in the opening before the figures.

There was a glass panel dividing the compartment.

“Three.”

The Kindling backed away from the glass when he realised what I had. The other passengers were carrying weapons. One a sword, another an arm-mounted crossbow and someone was looping a whip around their hand.

“Gods!” someone exclaimed in terror.

I made a move to back away but noticed that the Spark hadn’t. She was still waiting, still watching so I kept myself in line with her. Her chest heaved, panic perfuming the space around her, yet she did not flee. She only had eyes for those other passengers.

Whatever was about to happen, she was expecting it.

“Two.” Slowly, the Spark turned around, facing her back to the glass panel. Much to my surprise, she glanced at me. Her eyes locked on mine.

“One.” I heard a click.

The glass panel lifted at the same time three others slammed down, dividing the compartment into four glass cells. The scent of blood enveloped the air as one of the female captives screamed to my right. One panel had landed right on top of the woman between us, slicing her clean in half.

At the back of the carriage, the armed passengers had moved into the first cell, where one of them had impaled the male captive.

We were being hunted.

The third woman, sealed in the end cell, frantically searched for a handle to the compartment door, a sigh escaping when her hand slipped into a hidden panel.

The Spark watched her intensely.

Relief washed over the woman’s face when her arm slid in further. Even in the chaos of the moment, she was able to concentrate, a hundred expressions crossing her features.

The sound was quick, like a butcher’s cleaver. The woman didn’t even jump. A slow scream crawled up her throat as she withdrew her arm in abject horror. Half of it was missing.

The door swung open at the same moment I heard another click and the glass panels lifted. The Spark bolted through the open door, leaving the woman on the floor, the artery in her arm gushing her life’s blood. The two male passengers thundered up beside me, stopping just inches in front of where the panel once again slammed down.

White-hot heat thickened the air, scorching it, and making my eyes water.

The cell behind me was engulfed in flame. The Kindling, had ignited it. I waited for the glass to shatter, for the flames to sear into my skin and scar my bones black. But it remained steadfast. As if it was designed for this exact purpose.

When the fire was out, the Kindling was the only one left standing in his cell, five burnt husks at his feet. I didn’t need to scent them to know the surviving Hunters were angry.

I heard the click once more and moved without waiting, the panel lifting as I approached it. The Kindling’s scream bounced off the glass at the same moment an arrow embedded itself in the injured woman’s eye, pinning her to the wall. I passed through the carriage doorway and into pitch darkness just as her heart stopped, the sound of three Hunter’s footsteps behind me suddenly muted as the glass panels closed again.

The slope of the floor was immediately apparent—to me. The two surviving male passengers unable to stop their motion of force like myself, continued forward until they crashed into the other end. Familiar with the dark, my eyes adjusted. We stood in another carriage, this one devoid of any exit.

The air here was stagnant with cleaning chemicals, the scent of blood barely discernible beneath it. But enough to know death occurred here often. I needed to find the Spark. She knew what was going on. My best chance for survival was her. But she wasn’t on the ground with the two male captives. Instead, I found her twenty feet up, climbing the wall. And a few feet to her left was the door.

The sound of feet scuffing metal told me the Hunters had finally emerged into the carriage.

I ran to the wall, unsettled by their meandering pace into the sloping compartment.

“Climb,” I told the two men, one of which had already gauged what I had. There were slits in the surface of the wall, some deep, some protruding—hand holds that we could climb to reach the door. So, I climbed. Up and left or up and right, whichever movement got me closer to escape.

Light filled the carriage like the dawn sneaking into a cave. The Spark had reached the door. I risked a look down before the light vanished. The Hunter who stood below me flicked their hand up and within seconds I felt his whip wrap around my ankle. He yanked down. Wrenched from the wall, I fell, the air pushed from my lungs as I collided with the hard steel floor. It took everything in me not to panic.

“The air will return.” I heard my father’s voice. “If you are winded, don’t panic, the air will return. Think of what comes next. If you fall, get back up. If you’re being attacked, find a weapon.”

The Hunter’s feet on the carriage floor quickened my heart rate. With my lungs burning, desperately trying to get air, I reached down to my boot’s hidden sheath to grasp Etrina’s hilt. My scalp screamed as his hands pulled at my hair, ripping it at the root as he yanked me back.

I swung up and slammed my dagger into his neck.

The Hunter gurgled, blood oozing from his mouth.

Like fresh rain, his blood splattered my face when I pulled Etrina from his throat, the black handle glistening where the crimson had kissed it.

I didn't need to see him die to know he would. Etrina may have failed her former owner, but she had never failed me.

Jumping to my feet, and with no Hunter approaching, I returned to climbing the wall, the ascent only getting easier when air finally passed through my lungs with ease.

Someone grunted to my left.

In the darkness, I saw one of the male Blessed, face-to-face with another Hunter, a knife buried in the former’s gut. A look of excitement filled the Hunter’s face until the Blessed reared their head back and impaled a pair of long, sharp fangs into the Hunter’s neck. Both of their grips went slack, and they fell fifteen feet to the ground where the sound of a skull cracking ricocheted off the walls. Moments later two heartbeats were gone.

Light filled the carriage once more and I looked up to find a figure pass through the doorway, followed by a second before the light was once again snuffed out.

I was alone. I contemplated staying here in the dark, but something told me that I wouldn’t stay alone for very long.

With Etrina back in my boot, I climbed the last few meters until I found a release button. The door popped open with a mechanical whirring, and I hefted myself up and inside.

There must be some type of compartment seal between each carriage. Magnetics perhaps. Whatever it was, it screwed with my senses. I only knew up was up because my feet were on solid ground. Pushing through the space until my ears popped, I found myself standing in a regular train carriage. At least by my estimation. Trains were nothing but monuments to the past in Deos, viewed from behind a window.

Leather cushioned chairs lined each side in neat rows, with luggage racks overhead and an aisle down the middle. And at the centre of it were two people in the midst of a brawl. The Hunter and the last surviving male Blessed. Beyond them, her nose very obviously broken, was the Spark. She was reciting something as she climbed over a chair towards another wall with no door.

Her mumblings sounded like Old Kenar, Kensillan numbers maybe.

Something snapped.

Eyes now on the Hunter, I saw the Blessed he’d been fighting go limp and fall to the floor, his neck snapped. The Hunter turned his attention to the Spark, slowly stepping over the dead body.

“Leave her alone!” I shouted.

Great idea, make yourself the target instead!

The Hunter turned, his gaze hungry even for a human, and he grinned, obliging my stupid request.

Over his shoulder, the Spark scuttled down onto the floor, shifting to lie on her back, her feet raised up the wall.

My stomach flipped as the compartment somersaulted sideways, the floor rolling beneath me. The cold steel of a chair crashed into my ribs, the grunt of the Hunter as he collided with the wall was an echo of my own cries. I attempted to regain my footing, but the carriage lurched sideways again and I rolled down the wall, colliding with the underside of the luggage rack.

The Spark moved fast, rushing towards the luggage rack, perching atop it like a cat until she had her fingers gripping the underside.

The Hunter, now spotting the Spark, attempted to crawl towards her now that the carriage was stationary. He didn’t make it three feet before a jet of blue lightning shot from her outstretched hand, a black scorch mark marring the wall where he had just been.

The carriage shifted again. I barely had enough time to realise the direction had changed, the carriage rotating vertically instead of rolling. My chin landed with a snap on the underside of the luggage rack just as I managed to grasp it, the hard mesh cutting into my fingers. My shoulders screamed where the muscles had been violently used to stop me from falling down the length of the train, my reflexes the only reason it was the Hunter and not myself screaming in agony from the bottom of the carriage.

Above me, the Spark, having climbed the length of the rack, was hanging from the door handle, strain etched into the lines of her pale face.

Pushing off the rack, bracing myself so the pressure was on my feet and not my hands, I climbed the eight feet of rack, the sound of the Hunter climbing enough of an incentive to move.

I pulled myself into a standing position on the end. There was nothing for me to grab onto. The Spark hung from the only handle.

The carriage lurched, so I jumped—

A hand caught mine. I glanced up, surprised to see the Spark.

The carriage flipped another 180 degrees, and I swung violently into the roof of the carriage, but the Spark never let go of my hand. When the carriage came to a stop, the two of us now on the bottom of the carriage, she pulled me to my feet. We were now standing on the door.

There was a series of clicks that caused the hairs on my arms to rise. My stomach lurched half a second before the door snapped open under us. As I fell, I caught sight of the last Hunter. He hung limp between two rows of chairs, his neck bent at the wrong angle.

We landed with a resounding thud, the noise echoing off the walls like a steel drum. Dampness saturated the back of my head. I touched there, hoping the numbness I felt wasn’t a giant crack in my skull. Instead of blood, I found water.

We were lying in a puddle of water. Above us, the door snapped shut.

The floor began to vibrate, the room rumbling as if a stampede of bison were approaching. The sound was coming from a large hole in the wall in front of me, the stampede growing louder with each second. I had barely risen to my feet when water erupted from the mouth of the hole.

“Help me!” the Spark cried out in Prean. She stood, holding on to a lever in the wall opposite the river mouth, a round doorway beside her. On its right was another lever.

I tried to run but the fast-rising water level made it difficult, so by the time I reached the lever my clothes were thoroughly soaked through. To add to my frustration, the lever wouldn’t budge no matter which way or how hard I yanked on it.

“Do you know how it works?” I asked the Spark, realising she'd stopped touching her lever.

“We have to wait.” She nodded towards a point on the floor that was underwater.

“You knew what was going to happen didn’t you?” I shouted, the rushing water drowning out our voices.

“They make us watch.”

“Who?” I shouted louder.

“The Naven—the masters. They make us watch.”

That’s sadistic . I asked her why instead.

“The Core wills it,” she shouted back, almost insulted I couldn’t comprehend her words.

The Core. She was speaking of the gods of the Republic. The same gods who, five centuries ago, had declared all Blessed in Kensilla were to be rounded up and executed. The Spark wasn’t the only one to mention The Core. The weasel-faced slaver had mentioned them too, when he greeted the Bloodhounds.

So the slavers were Kensillan, which meant that was where Taren had been taken, and maybe where Kris was too. I could work with that. If I lived through this.

“Why do we have to wait?” I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted an answer.

“It is a pressure plate. The water must fill the entire room before we can pull the levers.” Now it made sense. Why she had saved me. She couldn’t do it alone. If I had been killed by the Hunter or died falling, she would most definitely have drowned.

Under the same circumstances, were I her and aware of just how dire my situation was, I’d probably have done the same thing.

The anticipation was worse than the water itself. The frigid temperature, the chattering of my teeth. I was likely to die of the waiting before water ever filled my lungs. By the time it reached my shoulders, I estimated ten minutes had passed and another five before we’d had to paddle to the surface, our heads skimming the roof.

“Remember,” the Spark said before we took our final breath. “Pull out then push down.”

The water slipped up over our heads, all sound muffled by the water as it was impacted by the rushing torrent. I heard the plate release and dove down, using my hands to pull me along the wall to the lever. I was a good swimmer but even as a Wolf-Blessed Brute, my eyesight was godsdamned useless underwater. I was forced to trust my hands.

Finding the leaver, I braced myself against the wall like I had the luggage rack and pulled. It released with a jolt and I pulled for what felt like an eternity until it was parallel to the floor. With my heart beating loudly in my ears and the pressure from the lack of air building in my head, I did as she had said. I spun in the water and pushed the lever down until it was flush with the wall.

A muffled mechanical noise reverberated within the water like the motor of an engine. A bright light emerged on the opposite wall and I swam for it, though I had little hope I’d make it before my eyeballs imploded in my skull.

Cold metal kissed my cheek. The ridged iron of a steel plate floor beneath my hands oddly comforting. Icy air lashed my face as I desperately tried to breathe.

I’d passed through another of those magnetic shields, one which kept the water at bay. Pity it hadn’t taken the dampness of my clothes with it.

Gods!

The pouch.

I searched my coat for the pipe-weed pouch, snapping it open the moment it was in my hands. Tiny’s fur was perfectly dry. Untouched by the events I’d just undertaken. Relief washed over me like a warm blanket and I returned the pouch to my pocket.

Only then, when I’d calmed down did I notice the scent that had been slowly filling the new compartment. The scent of dread, an acute smell that left a thick layer at the back of your throat. Fatty like oil.

“I thought the decision would be easy.” The Spark’s voice was meek. Far from the strength she had displayed earlier.

She stood on the edge of a large opening in the carriage wall, where a door should have been. The world beyond flashed by. Blurs of green and the scent of pine were the only giveaway to the forest beyond.

She stared blankly at it, body drenched in water, the scent of salt in the air the only indication of the tears she shed. In her hand, the steel glittering in the moonlight was a curved blade. A weapon she had not had a few minutes ago.

I rose to my feet carefully, trying not to spook her. “Come away from the edge, you don’t want to do that.”

Her gaze fell over her shoulder as her grip on the weapon’s handle tightened. “I don’t want to do that either.” Along the opposite wall, as if on display, were weapons. Daggers and chains, swords and several weapons I’d only ever seen depicted in books were mounted on racks.

Our captors wanted us to fight each other.

“Then we don’t.” I took another step towards her. She returned her attention to the world outside, entirely nonchalant about the confidently unarmed Brute approaching her.

The Spark breathed out a giant sigh. “I betrayed my Naven for love and my love betrayed me for The Core. I thought I couldn’t live without him. But it’s them I cannot live without. Perhaps Nyar will accept my soul as sacrifice in atonement.” Before I could reach her, the slave girl closed her eyes and jumped, her weapon bouncing on the train’s edge before following her out the door.

I didn’t even hear her body break as it met the world below.

Nothing shocked me much anymore. So to feel that sensation return like an old friend surprising you with an unexpected visit—suffice it to say the ripeness of the emotion was not one I welcomed.

“She did you a favour.”

I crouched low and withdrew Etrina, turning her on the owner of the voice.

A man appeared out of the corner of the compartment, a sword in his hand. I didn’t have to look to know blood coated the blade. Behind him, lying face down on the floor, their shirt crimson was a body lacking a pulse.

The man kept his weapon in his hand as we began to circle the space, behind him an identical door to the one I had crawled through.

Tall and lanky, the man looked barely capable of lifting that sword over his head, let alone being capable of crossing the distance before I ran him through with Etrina.

I scented nothing negative from the man, no desire to harm me. But it meant nothing in the scale of things.

“Always shield against an unknown opponent,” Papa’s voice said. “ A Spindle could just as well strangle you with your own shirt than a Brute tear out your throat.”

“Congratulations on passing registration.”

The woman on the speaker startled him, causing him to drop his sword, a resounding clash of metal on metal filling the space. His eyes widened when he realised he’d allowed his shock to disarm him. I relaxed my stance, letting Etrina drop to my side. If he made no move to attack, I would not harm him.

“Please take your citizen ID,” that woman announced in a sing-song voice.

A panel in the floor opened and something mechanical rose out of the floor. A round circular platform, and atop it, as if it were a display stand for a trophy or work of art, sat two metallic rings.

The man approached it, curious. I was more hesitant, for I recognised the items.

Collars, identical to the ones I had seen on the slave women in the camp.

“I’m not putting that on,” I shouted up at the voice, not keen to add a second scar to my neck. “You hear me. I do not consent to being a slave.”

“Slave?” The man looked positively confused.

The voice returned. “Consent is not required. Please take your citizen ID or you will be forced to disembark the train.”

“Forced. She doesn’t mean…”

I looked at the man, at his drenched and bruised state. His knuckles were white from squeezing the edge of the pillar so tightly, the skin scratched and bleeding. “You went through what I did, what do you think forced means?”

“Please take your citizen ID,” the voice repeated cheerily.

I hated myself for doing it, for taking the cold silver metal ring in my hand. If I could have done anything else I would have, but I wasn’t going to jump from the train to escape, and I wasn’t inclined to find out how they forced one from the train either.

It was the lesser of two evils.

“What do we do with it?” In response to the man’s question, the voice replied, “ID's are worn around the neck. Please comply.”

Lines of iridescent silver circled the collar in geometric patterns, as though something else was merged into the material. But all I smelled was iron and traces of copper. There was no seal, no hinge to open it and get it around my neck.

The man, his scent as young as my own, attempted to pry the metal apart with his hands, regardless of the fact it bore no seam.

When that failed, he chose to touch it to his neck.

The effect was instant. A river of molten silver, the metal liquified, crawled away from his hand and around his neck where it reforged itself into a solid state.

I’d never seen nanotech before. Deos refused to acknowledge the achievements of the apostates Prean Progressivism worshipped, but I was certain that was what I’d just witnessed.

Regret and I had bid farewell long ago, allowing it to return would not be in my favour, and my choices were limited to but one. With Etrina secured back in her sheath, I touched the collar to my neck and felt it come alive.