Chapter 3
Cat
Icrashed into the mist beneath me, but there was no jarring collision, no jolt of pain.
I simply fell into a cloudlike cushion and was swallowed, my vision bleeding white, replaced by fog and nothing more.
All sounds vanished. I couldn’t tell up from down, directions ceasing to exist with the fog around me.
I could barely feel my own hands when I twitched my fingers, or my feet when I tried to get them under me.
This was what Exile really was—the endless pillow of fluffy white brume, the void of noise and smell, the utter emptiness, the infinite silence. Exile was nothing—a vacuum between life and death.
There were no clawing hands here, only peace. No fear of Violence’s lemon and mint scent, no ache in my chest from my missing memories, only fluffy fog and—
A hand latched around my wrist.
I cried out, the sound splitting the serenity of this place, and the hand tightened on my wrist until surprise turned to a sharp ache. The cotton fog of Exile clung to me, resistant as I was pulled further and further from its sticky grasp.
It took seconds to fall, but an eternity to be pulled from the fog’s grasp.
Forced free, I collapsed on solid ground, wheezing as if I’d been drowning.
Before I could begin to process what had happened, those ruthless hands grabbed me, lifted me off the ground, and I was thrown unceremoniously over someone’s shoulder.
“Put me down!” I screamed.
“Sure,” a dry voice snarked. “Would you like to go back in the fog, or should I hand you to Violence?”
“Ender,” I breathed, deflating.
Every running step he took jostled me on his shoulder until an ache expanded in my stomach. But that ache was strange enough after days of emptiness and a strange lack of feeling in my body that I didn’t protest.
“Hold on!” he yelled, making my eyes stream as he spun in an arc, dizziness swimming through my head from the speed. And the fact I was upside down.
“Hold on, hold on,” he rasped, standing in place, and it occurred to me the words were for him as much as me. I saw why a moment later: Violence barrelled towards us, cutting like a spread of shadow through the infinite alabaster of Exile. But he wasn’t the only one moving.
Hands thrust from the churning fog, claws curled and hooked as they reached for us—and for the intruder. I saw Ender’s plan immediately, and hated it.
“Run!” I screeched at him. It might have been silent and peaceful under the mist’s surface, but death could be peaceful as it could be violent, and I had no interest in giving up this second chance at life.
Not before I could exact my judgement on those who’d wronged me.
And something plucked at my chest, the deep resonant song of a cello string plucked.
It had been vibrating in me for a while, but I thought it came from the dark shadow of new magic.
The silence and stillness under the fog had revealed its true source—something deeper.
A vibrating string sang a low, mournful note, urging me to return.
To what, I didn’t know. But I wanted to find out, and I couldn’t do that if Violence killed me. Again.
“Ender!” I screamed when the hands came close enough for their claws to brush the backs of my legs, to scythe the ends of my hair.
When they were millimetres away from grabbing me again, he whipped around, slammed down a club forged of churning, angry fog until the hands scattered, and ran so fast my head swum.
My vision wavered, indistinct and hazy, but I saw the blur of Violence’s dark form collide with the monstrous hands, saw them drag him down.
“I hate you, I hate you,” I chanted as Ender sprinted at top speed, skidding around paths I couldn’t make out, kicking up fog until he reached a flat plateau where the fog was lower, calmer.
The second he put me on my feet, I punched his arm. I lost my balance and toppled onto my ass, but it was worth it to give the bastard a dead arm.
“We’re fine. No harm done,” he grumbled.
“No harm done!” I forced myself to take a breath, scanning the empty land around us. No Violence. No reaching hands. Safe, for now at least. “What would have happened if I’d stayed under the fog?”
“You’d fade away forever,” Ender replied, sitting beside me, his legs stretched in front of him. “You’re welcome for the rescue.”
I muttered indistinctly and considered punching him again. “So Violence will fade away under there,” I breathed, the thought hitting me with a deluge of relief.
“If fucking only,” Ender muttered, glaring into Exile. “You’re a fledgling god. He’s a powerful prick, and very difficult to kill. He’ll come back, angrier than ever.”
I stared at him. Waited for him to laugh at the joke he just told. “I’m a what?”
“Ah.” Ender sighed at the white sky. “Yeah, that. I was going to break it to you slowly, but that ship sailed. You know that endless thirst you have for judgement? It’s because you are Judgement. Only the second in existence, in fact.”
“What happened to the first?”
Ender was silent for a while, frowning at the emptiness on all sides of us. “He fell in love, and was punished by the higher power for it.”
“They killed him?” I breathed. What if I fell in love? What if I was already in love? There was a feeling in my chest sometimes, a pang of longing alongside the tremor of the cello’s low note.
“Worse. They sent him here for eons. For entire ages.”
I stared at Ender, a furrow between my brows. “You’re the first Judgement. But if you’ve been here forever, why am I the second? Why haven’t there been others since?”
He smiled, a little wry, a little sad. “Judgements are only created when the balance of life and death is in turmoil. That’s your job.” He glanced at me. “To fix it.”
My heart jumped, the next few beats crashing together. “I don’t know how to fix life and death!” If the entire world relied on me, it was going to have a very swift apocalypse.
“Don’t worry.” He patted my shoulder. “You have a very good teacher. The best you could ask for, in fact. What do you think all these lessons have been for?”
“Magic…?”
He scoffed. “Magic is the first step. Accepting the power of judgement is the second. That’s what we’ll work on next.”
“And after that?” I asked, and wondered if I should keep the question to myself.
“Every crack in the domain needs to be repaired. Every rift healed, every wrong righted. Only when that’s achieved will the domain be in one piece, and power return where it belongs—with Death, not Violence.”
He watched me, as if that ought to have some effect on me other than panic.
How was I meant to fix the balance of the universe?
I didn’t even know who I was. Thanks to Ender, I knew my name was Cat and that I’d died an unjust death.
I knew I had magic, and there was a slumbering beast inside me who thirsted for blood.
But that was it—the grand sum of who I was. A name, a hunger, and magic.
“That seems like a lot of things to accomplish,” I said uneasily.
“Not to worry.” He grinned. “I’ll write you a list.”