36. Chapter 36
Chapter 36
Viola
T he ringing within my ears is constant, a buzz of magic so extreme I feel like I am drowning in a vat of it.
That is the only explanation for what is happening to me because the air around me is thick, dragging my limbs down and rooting me at the bottom of what must be a pool of magic- unfamiliar magic. This isn't mine, is it?
It doesn't feel like mine.
Why doesn't the ringing stop? This isn't like the magic I have seen cast that sounds like a swarm of bees. This is a high-pitched squeal, like a boar with its throat slit.
I need to get out of this because drowning in magic is not how I want to leave this world.
Can I move my fingers? I try, but if they move, my brain isn't registering it.
My mouth must have been filled with sand to be this dry.
Why can't I open my eyes?
"I think she's coming to."
Who said that?
Who is coming to?
Why haven't they noticed I'm drowning here?
"I don't know, man, you hit her pretty hard, plus the slag… it may be a bit until she wakes." His voice wavers, like he's afraid or he's lying.
How far away from me is he?
The ringing is dripping out of my ears, slowly dissipating. I feel like I'm finally starting to break through the pool of magic I have been buried in. I can feel my fingers again.
"She better fucking wake up. And she better do it soon. I don't have all night. They'll come looking for her."
Why is he so angry? What does he have to be angry about? I am the one who's drowning, treading water in pure magic.
Hands roughly grab my cheeks, fingers pull my eyelids up, and light rushes my vision, but I can't see anything.
"There she is. Wake up, Viola Mistflow."
That's my name. I'm the she they're talking about.
My head lolls on my neck, and the angry voice squeezes my cheeks hard as he bites out, "Wake the fuck up now, bitch."
Painfully and slowly, I wrench my eyes open. The world starts to come into focus, but I am having a hard time processing what I'm seeing. My chest is tightening because the more awake I become, the more danger I realize I am in. I try to tap my fingers, but they are tied behind my back. I set intentions and try to call for Shadow but something is stopping him from answering me.
"Are you trying to use your magic, Viola? Aw, what a shame." Angry voice walks into view, and I see a man slightly older than me with a hooked nose, his skin almost the same shade as mine and covered in gray dirt. His hair is a light brown cut close to his scalp. But his eyes are the clearest blue I've seen outside of Himureal, and they are just as cold.
He backhands me across the face.
"I asked you a question, bitch. Were you trying to use your magic?"
Well, that wakes me up.
I spit blood onto the floor in front of me, making note that it's wood, not packed clay, so we must be inside a home or nicer shop. With a growl, I answer him. "Yes, of course I was." I can't stop my tongue from toying with the split on my lip.
"Unfortunately, the slag we've coated that chair with puts a damper on your magic." That is afraid or lying's voice, and it's attached to a smaller man with dark hair that cascades down his shoulders. I look down at the chair, but I wouldn't know what slag was if you put it in front of me so I don't notice anything out of sorts.
As my head finally settles, I'm starting to get a picture of the room. It's definitely a home, and I take stock in hopes of mapping an escape. I see a countertop with a sunken basin, a table and chairs, and a bookshelf. The table has all my weapons piled on top but is missing a chair.
I glance down. I seem to be occupying the missing chair.
My legs are free, the amateur kidnappers forgetting to restrain me by the ankles, but I keep them still to not call attention to it.
How did I even get here? I was walking to meet a Foxgrove relative, which I begrudgingly was going to do. Mace was in front of me with Plume.
Then my memory is just blinding pain, followed by blackness.
Ah, these two imbeciles attacked and abducted me. Of course.
"Too cowardly to attack me head-on, huh? To come after me when I'm full-powered?" I ask, knowing that Angry will most likely reward me with another slap.
He does.
The metallic taste of blood from my split lip grounds me, steadying whatever Blood magic is still pulsing within my veins. My face curls in a menacing grin as I stare the men down. I won't allow them to see a single flinch from me.
"You don't know us, Viola, but we know you," he sneers, squatting in front of me to look me in the eyes. This close, I can smell soot on him and the sour scent of ale. "You see, we have a friend in common."
I roll my eyes to the top of my head to feign indifference. "And who would that be?"
"Amio."
My mind flashes back to the dark-haired man in my bed and then quickly flits to an image of his throat split, blood rushing down to the ground, soaking my shoes. I lick my lips at the memory. "The name doesn't ring a bell."
Afraid or Lying walks towards me now, his voice stronger. "You see, I don't believe you. Amio was Racing with us. We were all lined up to go together. Shortly after we started, he told us about you, about how you opened your legs for him." He moves behind me, running his nose up my neck. "He told us how easy it was to get you in bed."
Afraid or Lying is neither of those things anymore. Now, he is Predator.
I feel my knees getting wrenched apart and Angry settling himself between them. "But after he told us all of that," he says, "he told us how he was going to find you and kill you for what your parents did to his."
The longer I sit here, the clearer my mind becomes. Whatever dampened my magic must slowly be starting to wear off because I can feel the Shadow magic rolling under my skin, the Fire burning in my chest. If I can keep them talking long enough, I may be able to fight them off soon. "I'm afraid it's hard for me to think clearly after I've been roughed up like this," I say with a smirk.
Predator runs his hands down my arms, pulling at the ties on my wrist as if he's testing them. "We haven't even begun to rough you up, bitch." His hand drifts down my collarbone towards my chest, where he roughly grasps my breast and squeezes. "We never saw him again, you know. At first, we didn't think much of it since the Race has casualties every year. But imagine our surprise when we find out the woman he was hunting won the whole fucking thing."
My stomach roils at his touch, and bile creeps up my throat. I tap my foot, counting up and down from five to center myself. I know it's not going to be much longer until I can get out of this.
It can't be.
This isn't going to be like last time.
Angry has a blade that he's twirling in his fingers. "Now, maybe something intercepted him on his journey to you. I could believe that, seeing as the Race is unpredictable, after all. But then," he looks directly into my eyes with pure malice in his own, "we got word from friends in Pran that you not only took down a minotaur, but you supposedly have Winter magic. They called you a God." His laugh is bitter.
"Now I don't believe in coincidences," Angry says, "so all of that together leads us to one conclusion."
"You killed him, didn't you, Viola?" Predator says, his hand gripping my hair tightly.
His grip tilts my head up so I can look at him in the eyes. There is nothing in them but malice. I sneer through gritted teeth, "I slit his fucking throat as he begged for mercy."
That was the wrong thing to say because Predator nearly tears my scalp with the force he has on my hair. "That's what I fucking thought."
Angry swings and his fist makes contact with my eye. Brightness flashes at the collision, and pain blooms from the impact. He sneers at Predator over my head. "Let's teach the bitch a lesson, shall we?"
The smile that crosses Angry's face churns my stomach because I have seen it before and know what comes next. It's been a decade, but it is seared in my brain for the rest of my life. My body locks on instinct.
Angry takes a blade, and my pants are cut away, my shirt shredded. He took no care with the blade, shallow slices decorating my thighs and chest. When I'm left in just my chest wrap, boots, and underwear, they laugh at me. "Look at the God now," Predator purrs, his grip on my hair intensifying further. I feel a trickle of blood drip from right above my ear. "Do you think her cunt is still as tight as Amio said?"
Fire is building my limbs. Anger simmering below the surface that is growing slowly, smoldering and begging to burst from my skin. I can feel the coiling of my two types of magic waking up, the slag's effect on me finally close to wearing off. I just need to hold on a little bit longer, and I can burn through these bindings.
"You've got a smart mouth," Angry says, rising to his full height and grabbing my chin. "I think we should make good use of it while we still can, don't you think?" Predator grunts approval, and I spit directly into Angry's face.
This is not happening to me again.
This will never happen to me again.
"You fucking bitch," Angry snarls as he punches me directly in the nose. Blood pours down my chest, soaking the wrap around my breasts. The ache wrenches a snarl from my chest. Predator pulls my hair as high as he can manage, my scalp so tight it feels like it is going to rip from my skull, and then suddenly the pressure is gone. I barely get to breathe a sigh of relief because a bundle of hair lands in my lap, quickly soaking up the blood that pools from my nose.
I can't think about the comfort my hair has given me my whole life. About how my mother insisted it be short, but my father encouraged me to keep it long and taught me to braid it. How my hair has been a security blanket for me my entire life.
I can't think about that, or I will come undone.
The sound of pants hitting the ground next to me echoes in my ear and my memories, and the clumps of my hair, cut and soaking in blood, is the catalyst I need to push all my magic to the surface. With a scream, a wave of Light erupts from me, knocking Angry and Predator on their asses.
A quick focus of Fire on the ropes has them turning to dust, and I'm on my feet before the men have even recovered from the blinding flash.
I feel my face beginning to swell from their hits, and the blood still drips from my nose and down my thighs. But I stand before them, unflinching in my underclothes and boots, weaponless and fuming. Angry attempts to get his pants pulled up while Predator takes multiple steps back.
"How? How did you get out? Slag is supposed to stop your magic…" Predator stutters.
Turning my head to the side, I summon flames into one hand and swirls of frost into the other. "I think, when you knocked me out and kidnapped me, you forgot one little variable."
Angry is on his feet now, teeth bared as he moves slowly towards me with knives in his hands. "And what's that?"
"That I'm a fucking God."
I throw Fire at Angry and Frost at Predator, one lighting up and the other becoming rooted to the spot as his blood begins to freeze. "Oh wait!" I exclaim, dousing Angry with snow to smother the flames and flames to melt the ice that coats Predator. "I forgot something!"
This time, I don't forget to use my magic.
I summon the room's shadows to my bidding and truss both men up, hanging them from the building's rafters with their toes barely touching the floor. Shadow must've joined the shadows in their journey to me because he twists up my leg and settles around my neck, his head resting in the center of my sunfire.
Stalking forward, I pick up a knife that Angry dropped and slide it across his cheek, leaving a deep gash. Without breaking eye contact with him, I lick the blade clean of his blood. My sight blackens and I'm quickly thrown into a vision of all the things he had planned for me today. The disgusting, immoral images make me feel like my soul needs cleansing.
Once the vision clears, I lean close to him and threaten under my breath, "What you want to do to me? That's what I should do to you." He blanches, and I tap his cheek with the flat of my blade before skipping over to Predator with glee and waving the knife in his face. "It's your turn!" I exclaim as I drag it across his cheek.
As I did with his friend, I let him watch me lick the blood off the knife, and then I'm falling into the darkness of a Blood vision.
This one is different, though.
I can see his intention to kill me, his darkness, and all of the horrible things he's done and wanted to do. His blood is not holding back from me, as if it wants me to see everything it has. It even takes me to a memory of Predator sliding on a pair of smithing gloves. The vision lingers on those gloves, showing me memory after memory of him pulling them on before he began to work.
When I return from the vision, my head spinning and knees weak, I find both me staring at me slack-jawed. I right myself and sneer, "What, have you never seen bloodlust before?"
They're both shaking now, crying about the families they have and how it was all a mistake.
It's quite boring.
Nothing creative at all is coming out of their mouths. Their protestations are just too loud. My head still hurts and rings from the initial blow that they used to knock me out and the additional ones I received since I woke, so I am not inclined to be gentle with them.
"It's quite pathetic, don't you think? You were all talk just a few moments ago," I twirl the pilfered blade in my fingers. "Amio at least presented a challenge."
With little thought, I step to Angry and slit his throat just as I did Amio, and then I step back and watch the life drain from him. My mouth waters at the scent that fills the room, and I fight against the curiosity to see what his blood would tell me now that he's dead. I don't need to know. I've got what I needed from him.
Predator screams as he watches his friend's lifeless body hanging from the ceiling, thrashing against the shadows that restrain him in hopes of avoiding the same fate. I pull the restraints tighter to reduce his movement. "Oh, you're so dramatic. Just shut up. I'm not planning on killing you."
His voice wavers with a hint of optimism. "You're not?"
"Well, not yet. I think you could be of some use to me." I hardly recognize my voice, and I am sure if I looked in the mirror, I wouldn't recognize my face either. I reach for my hair, my fingers falling out of it above my ears. The sensation of it churns my stomach, and I tap a comforting rhythm on the hilt of the blade I hold.
"How could I be of use to you? You're a God, I'm a blacksmith."
"That's what I wanted to talk to you about. Your blood seemed very keen to let me know about your smithing gloves. Tell me about them." I cross my arms over my chest, staring into the eyes of the Predator, who has become my prey.
He looks at me with confusion. "They're my gloves. They were my fathers and his fathers. There is a superstition in my family that they are lucky. Whenever we use them, our blades are said to be better than all others and fetch a higher price. But it's all just a legend, of course."
"No, I don't think it is. How long have they been in your family?"
The man rolls his eyes towards the ceiling and sucks his teeth before replying, "Long as anyone knows. They never wear out, we just keep passing them down."
I clap him on the shoulder, but he stays rigid in the shadows. "That's exactly what I wanted to hear. Where are they now?"
He squirms. "If I tell you will you promise not to kill me?"
I run the flat side of the blade across his face. "Of course," I coo, leaning so close to his ear my breath caresses his face. "I am a cruel God, but I am just," I echo words Himureal once told me.
The man visibly relaxes and nods. "My shop is the last one on the northernmost street. I've got a green tapestry hanging in the back. They're in my workbench. I can take you."
"Oh, that won't be necessary. Thank you," I say, tilting my head.
I pull the blade across his throat, and as his blood drips out, I hear a feminine gasp behind me.