Chapter 13 Feather #2
“The others were taking the food, too,” they complained.
“It’s every soul for themselves. The Abyss is upon us.
” Their voice was filled with greed and anger, but also with fear.
I’d seen this sort of thing dozens of times or more on Earth.
When people got scared, they got grabby.
Hoarding things they didn’t need, just in case.
They couldn’t see past their fear. I understood it, but I had to put a stop to it, now.
I tried not to yell. “Where were you going with all that food? To a group of injured Protectors, like we are?”
The Guide’s gaze fell. “No. I was… I was not.”
Just then, Truth and the others came racing out of the Dining Hall, carrying sheets so full of food over their shoulders, they looked like Santa sacks. A few Protectors I’d never met came behind them. “These are the chefs, Feather,” Truth explained breathlessly.
One stepped up and bowed before me, his wings glinting a pinkish-gold in the dimming light of the hall.
He had marks on his face, like he’d been in a fight, and when he glared at the Guides I’d tied up, I knew why.
“The other chefs and I have the ability to tap into a small pocket of Sanctuary’s power to create new foods from the pure power source. ”
“You’re Makers?”
He blushed. “No, nothing like you and Maker Mikhail. We do what we can.”
“We’ll need you.” I nodded to Perception. “Take them to The Merge. Sing loud as you go; it’ll attract attention. If anyone pokes their head out, tell them the leader of Sanctuary said to meet at The Merge.”
“The leader of Sanctuary?” the head chef asked, his eyes moving from Arabella, to the bound shadow beast, to me. Then he and all his chefs bowed their heads in my direction. “We hear and obey, Leader Feather.”
Aw yeah. I could get used to that.
As soon as he’d divested them of all their stolen food, Truth dragged the sputtering, protesting Guides away to The Merge.
Arabella stayed with me, and we both stared down at the shadow beast. The tiny knots that lined up all along what sort of resembled a spine really were well done, I thought.
“I need to untie its… foot parts, so it can walk,” I mused.
Arabella gasped. “You should kill it! You can’t be thinking of taking it with you. It’s not a stray kitten.”
I sighed. Yeah, that probably wasn’t my best idea.
It was a guaranteed way to cause a panicked stampede out of there.
But… “I can’t kill it, Beauty. It’s helpless.
And I keep thinking, why does the Abyss even want inside here?
Is it like a moth, trying to get to a light?
Is it the moth’s fault that it doesn’t want to stay in the dark? ”
“Technically, moths are following a mating instinct,” she began. But then the shadow beast… moaned. It was a multi-tonal, agonized sound, and I could have sworn I recognized the underlying voice.
I squatted next to the thing, running one hand over the golden cord that bound it prettily, appreciating my own efforts, even if no one else did.
I spoke to Arabella as I thought of what to do with the captive beast. “They tried to teach me that there were some souls that were bad to the core. That couldn’t be helped.
But Rumple—Seraphiel—told me that all souls are redeemable. There are no bad ones.”
“These souls have become something else, Feather,” she said, leaning over me, her wings wrapping around us both. “They have taken on so much spiritual imbalance, they’ve been twisted. Warped.”
I held up one hand, showing her the curling patterns of hematite gray that moved under the surface.
“Like I am? I’m not pure. But I talked my way into the Celestial Realm.
And who am I to say that these lost souls can’t find their way there, too?
If I unmake them now, I’ve decided they’re not redeemable. And I’m not prepared to do that.”
“It’s not fair,” Arabella complained, in a voice thick with emotion.
I glanced at her. “What’s not?”
She pouted. “I got the extra wingspan. But you got the extra heart, sister. You have more compassion than anyone I’ve ever known. Thank you for teaching me, little Maker.”
Her final words coincided with a significant vibration directly under my feet.
I tapped into my Sanctuary link to perceive what was happening, and caught a glimpse of something infinitely long and thick, pressing on the exterior of the realm.
The Abyss had wrapped so many shadows around themselves, it had formed an enormous snake.
All the myths and legends slithered into my thoughts.
Jormungandr. Python. “Shai-Hulud,” I breathed, thinking of the sandworms in Dune as invisible scales rubbed against the bottom of the realm.
I felt waves of hunger, which seemed to set the gray streaks in my skin humming.
Hunger and loneliness and hopelessness. The Abyss was going to burrow up into Sanctuary and consume us all, but not because it wanted us to die.
Because it was a galaxy-sized moth, coming for the candle that was this realm.
I laid one hand on the shadow beast at my feet, feeling that same hunger there.
Its skin was sharp, and it scratched at my palm as it shivered.
“There are no bad souls,” I murmured to it.
“There are no souls that are beyond redemption.” It went still, and then slumped against the bonds. It felt so helpless, submissive.
I chewed at my lip. I knew one way to help this beast, but I didn’t have time or the energy to take on its smut right now.
The lethargy that had begun earlier was returning, as the pools of power my mates had given me dwindled.
I couldn’t use that energy up on this one, not if I was going to save my friends, and this realm.
“Come.” Arabella pulled me away from the trussed-up beast. “Come back to it later. We have to go.”
I pressed my palm against the creature, feeling a tiny bit of my blood squish out of the cuts its serrated flesh made, and promised, “I will come back for you. You spend your time in the ropes thinking about this, beast bunny: you are worthy. The Maker of All made you, and misses you. Come back to Her. Remember who you are.”
Then Arabella had me in her arms, and was flying as fast as she could to The Merge, dipping into my thoughts for directions. I heard a stray thought as she flew, one she was obviously trying to suppress. How can she be so far from her other mates, and still so strong? She truly is a miracle.
I shivered, wondering what price my mates had paid to give me this much energy. Fly faster, I whispered.