CALAMITY, MASSACRE, TYRANT #3
The Void still existed in this world. It was just in pieces. She just had to find it.
There was a chance she could go home.
She pressed a hand to her chest. She hadn’t felt this light in thirty years.
The Song smiled so gently it was difficult to imagine he’d cracked an enormous rat over his knee three days ago.
He watched her sparkle with hope with such a familiar warmth, but shifted his gaze the second she noticed it.
It was cute. Terrible half-god monster that blushed when a woman noticed him.
“So, now do I get to see what’s under your glamour?” he asked. His gaze remained on her face, as if he was rebuilding another from her features.
“Perhaps,” Esme said, tapping her lip. “I am quite the opposite of you. If you lay your eyes upon me, you will be so overcome by my beauty that you will fall to your knees and become completely useless.” She smiled. “I am protecting your fragile mind.”
“I have a very strong mind,” he said, biting his lip. “Test me.”
Esme’s cheeks burned red. She rarely took off her glamour for anyone, and especially not a man she didn’t even know.
She might thin it to terrify a human, but the Song wasn’t asking to see her to be scared.
His eyes held a glinting fascination, a longing.
Like he knew what she looked like already but needed to bask in it just one more time.
“If you help me drive Magic from this city, I shall allow you to drive yourself to madness from gazing at my unglamoured form,” she said.
“Then you shall find I can be quite helpful,” the Song drawled. “Now, what’s my name?” He said it like he already knew it, and just wanted to hear her say it. His every word, every gaze, was heavy with knowing.
“I haven’t given you one yet,” Esme said, hiding her blush and side-stepping around him. “Now, come. I have a city to tame, and a job for you.”
“Already putting me to work?” He crossed his arms. Not even the twin stenches of blood and Magic rolling closer made his smile falter.
“Every man in my employ earns the right to become enamored with me,” Esme teased.
They broke from the alley into the Foot, where guards wrestled nobles into the backs of carts to be taken home.
The peasants they ignored, pushing them aside to snatch up the betters.
Some guards flinched for their swords when people didn’t move fast enough, then caught sight of the Wraith standing guard and fixed themselves.
“They fear you,” the Song said, grinning.
“I find that having devoured a man’s heart softens people to your instruction,” Esme replied, leading him to one of the pits that now sat empty.
This was the Foot. There were no fancy curtains and fenced-off rings.
There were no ladders. You could claw your way out when you’d murdered yourself a pile of men high enough to climb.
“What are these?” the Song asked. “Fighting pits,” Esme said. “They were fun, but I think they’re drawing Magic into the city.” She sighed, squatting down to peer into the hole. Small bones. She refused to think about it. “How much would you have to burn to make this much ash ten times?”
“Hmm.” The Song sized up the hole with his hands. “’Bout half the city. Maybe a third if I’m crafty.”
“Okay, so that’s not an option.”
“Then… maybe a few trees?”
“We’ve been ruining the forests lately.” Turiel had just finished building a new summer house up north before he’d died. “I guess this is the one thing I’ll have to do myself.”
“How are you going to do that?” The Song asked.
Esme threw herself into the hole and sank her hands into the dirt.
Shadows slithered up to greet her and she thinned her glamour for them to smooth over her silver nails and shiver against the yawning coldness of her skin.
She closed her eyes and sent her magic out and out and out, squeezing between each speck of dirt packed almost airtight along the pit walls.
They were not used to her call but wriggled awake anyway.
Soon, the entire pit shuddered with churning darkness.
“You’ll want to stand back,” she said.
The Song took three steps away.
“More.”
Six more steps.
“Better.” Oh, he was still going to get caught in it, but Esme wanted to show off a little.
Shadow serpents dug their noses through the packed earth, drumming up an earthquake of just ten or so feet. The ground groaned and cracked until there was an avalanche coming for Esme on every side.
The Song leapt back, but Esme stayed put.
Dirt piled up under her, the pit getting shallower and shallower as shadow rearranged the earth until the pit was nothing more than a wide crater a foot or so deep.
Twenty feet in any direction was freshly swirled dirt, and in the middle was Esme, whispering thanks to her black friends before sending them back to their homes in the earth.
“It’s already thinning,” the Song said, waving a hand through the Magicless air.
“Like I said, I tend to have a plan—”
“You are a cruel woman!” Magic shrieked in her ear. It was thin, hands soft and petty, yet still it tried to shake her shoulders. “Why?”