Chapter Four

“The Devourer will kill us all, unless we kill it first.”

“Uh, ma’am, don’t you mean ‘them’?”

“The Devourer is inhuman, disciple. It will always be referred to as ‘it’. Never give it a human pronoun, for it is no longer human. Any further human designation will be met with punishment.”

“Yes, ma’am!”

-Annals of the Church of Light, During the Time of Ilryana Luthana

Blackness had ended me, and it is what I woke to once more. I stared up into the darkness as I stood. The floor was cold, but that didn’t bother my callused feet as I slowly reached around me, feeling for any kind of wall or object. My hands caught nothing, and I reached out with my right foot to take a tentative step, and then a longer one.

I screamed as a spike of pain shot through my foot. I reached down, carefully feeling it out. Tears were cascading down my face, plunking on the floor. Finding my foot, I felt on the sides. There was nothing but a fresh spike of pain.

Then my hand passed over the top, and hit a spike of cold-wrought iron. Morbidly curious, I followed the bloodied cone to its bottom.

There, it found my foot, now a bleeding ring of flesh clinging to the bottom of the spike. “By Luthana,” I whispered. The pain hadn’t gotten to me yet, but I could feel the bones carelessly broken and shoved aside by the spike. I grabbed my foot, anger overriding my sense of caution. Then I let out a brief series of curses that would have turned a sailor beet red, preparations for what was to come. My arms tensed, lifting my foot slightly before I shrieked.

Darkness took over once again.

I woke to pain. Violent roses erupted in my mind each time the pain in my foot flared. I reached my hand down. The spike was still there. I grimaced and steeled myself. I hadn’t gotten this far by being unable to deal with a bit of pain.

My hand found my foot once more. Then, screaming, I jerked it off the spike.

It didn’t come cleanly. It slowly slid off, lifeblood running down my hands as I pulled. Bones cracked and snapped, grating along the metal and sending a vibrating pain back up my leg. Then my foot stopped sliding, and I carefully lifted it the rest of the way, crying silently as I carefully put it on the floor.

I took off my shirt and wrapped it around my foot as tightly as I could. The sound of trickling blood lulled me into darkness once more.

I woke to pain, once more. My stomach hurt from the pain of hunger-a friendly pain, one that I’d long known. My head hurt from concentration, from hitting the floor. Another pain that I knew, though not as familiar to me as hunger.

And then there was my foot. It was now silent, rather than the voracious, screaming pain from earlier. I felt at it again. My shirt was completely soaked through with blood. I sighed and steeled myself, preparing to move. I reached out, careful of spikes, to start crawling away from where I currently was. To my surprise, my foot didn’t scream at me for moving it. Rather, it stayed silent. Reaching down, I touched my foot. Preparing myself, I pushed down, ready to feel out the gaping hole in my foot.

I ran into unbroken skin, with solid bones underneath.

Screaming, I attempted to distance myself from my foot before slamming my head into cold-wrought iron and falling into blackness again.

I woke to the feeling of cold metal. The iron shackles around my wrists and legs reminded me of the spike’s cold touch, and I shivered. I was chained in front of an altar. Carefully, I glanced around, seeing dark figures standing around me. A strike from behind me slammed my head into the ground, so I trained my gaze directly ahead. The altar was made of a single cracked, black stone layered with soot. As I watched, a hand from behind me wiped away some of the ash, revealing intricately carved white stone.

My eyes rotated along the carvings. The carvings displayed a scene of battle, of war. One of the sides was made of twisted monsters, and the other was human. Before I could try to move my head to see the sides of the altar, a voice sounded behind me.

“My friends! Our Temple must rejoice, for we have found a sacrifice to restore our god’s power! We will be strong!”

The rest of the ‘temple’ cheered, loud enough to shatter my ears. If this was how I had to die, I’d fight it as far as I could. Resigning myself, I prepared for a final show of resistance against my captors.

I was not prepared for the person behind me to slam my head directly into the altar. I fell to darkness once again.

I woke staring into darkness. Mumbling a quote I’d heard from somewhere, I took stock of my situation. “When the world seems to hate you, hate it back with all your soul.”

My shirt was gone, but I seemed to have the rest of my clothes. Carefully, I felt around me, trying to find walls, and then stood. My right foot was standing on something bumpy. Or rather, there was something wrapped around it. Carefully, I reached down.

My hands caught on a blood-soaked shirt, wrapped tight around my foot.

I screamed, nearly stumbling before I caught myself, remembering the first spike I’d stepped on. I was back in this nightmare. For a moment, I sat down, huddling, before forcing myself to start moving. The quote came back to me. “Hate it back with all your soul.” Where had I heard it?

I felt forward with my hands, crawling across the ground on my hands and knees. A blood-soaked spike greeted me, and I carefully pushed past it. The confrontation with the cause of the hole in my right foot left me uncomfortable, and I kept crawling. Slowly, cautiously.

I found more of its kind, though the rest were clean without a trace of blood on them. Then I found something new.

My hand found a new contraption, some kind of plate on the ground, and the surprise caused me to jerk it back. This proved to be a lucky decision, for I heard a loud ‘snap’. I felt forward and only found solid stone. Had this fallen from up high? I kissed my hand, thankful that I hadn’t experienced it pulped. A hole through a foot had been enough pain for three lifetimes.

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Carefully, I inched further. I found another new trap relatively quickly. Fire and molten earth spewed out of the floor through tiny cracks. I didn’t see any pattern to the spurts, so I just gave them a wide berth. They provided small amounts of light, which probably saved me countless times by warning me about upcoming traps.

Soon, I felt forward and found a stone wall. I jerked back, nearly onto the spike behind me, but nothing happened. A spurt of fire shot up, right next to me, and I cried out, jumping sideways into a stone trap I’d triggered earlier, lightly banging my head on the stone. The fire showed me the wall. There was a small crack in the wall, just barely big enough to see through the otherwise unbroken stone.

I attempted to peek through the crack as the world fell to darkness once more. A massive metal chain link was just outside the other end of the crack. I squinted, seeing the chain move. Wait. There was light on the other side! Stumbling back, I almost fell on a spike, but recovered in time. I had to get into that wall.

Immediately, I started following the wall. I lost much of my caution after seeing that light-it gave me a furious, dangerous hope that I could escape. The wall curved gently to my right, and kept going until I found the crack I’d started at. I screamed, pounding my fist on the wall as I tried to get inside, to the light.

I was slowly losing my sanity.

To my surprise, the wall fell away. I stumbled through, suddenly able to see my surroundings.

I immediately turned and vomited at what I saw.

There was a giant, strung up on dark chains that disappeared into thin air. His wrists and ankles constantly wept blood. He wore a tattered set of clothes. Spikes were stuck through his joints, bloody metal spires poking through his elbows, knees, and shoulders.

A sideways fire-launcher constantly ravaged his back. I could smell it burning from here. Thankfully, the damage wasn’t visible from where I was.

And all the while, the giant eyed me. I looked down, seeing a circular indent in the floor. Maybe the wall had retracted into the ground?

Unwilling to walk forward and get trapped, I stepped just behind the wall. The giant-no, god, smiled. “Hello, child. I hope you understand what I am?”

“Good-” I looked up. The world extended into darkness. “Night, I suppose. You’re a god, aren’t you?”

The god nodded, even as the stone pounded into his chest again. “Yes, I am. Frightfully courteous for one in your state.”

“You mean one who’s about to get eaten by a god?”

The god laughed, a broken sound that unnerved me more than it felt comforting. “No, child. I’m not going to eat you.”

I glared suspiciously at him. “That’s what gods do, isn’t it? They eat, and they take, and they leave nothing behind except desolation and crowds of their followers.”

“I don’t doubt that my self-proclaimed church wants me to eat you. I won’t be doing that. The traps?” The god grimaced. “I’m sorry, girl.” He glanced out at the world, and I realized where the light in the area was coming from. The god was glowing. Traps were revealed when his eyes looked over them, as if they were searchlights. “They’re an expression of my pain.”

The traps disappeared, but the bleak landscape remained. “So, what happens now? And I’m not a girl, or a child.”

The god shrugged. “What happens now?” He looked at his chains. “I can’t do much. You can leave.”

Throwing caution to the wind, I stepped past the wall, and walked up to the god. “There’s a church waiting outside for me. They’ll kill me if I leave alive. Besides, I don’t know how.”

The god gazed at me thoughtfully. “Oh, I see. What tricks you play, Lady Midnight.” he muttered.

“What?”

He ignored me. “Stab me. Take my power. Then you’ll be able to escape.”

I started laughing. “This isn’t a fairy tale, god. I’m not going to be able to break your skin, or take your power.”

The god just stared at me. “Stab me.”

A knife materialized in front of the god, dropping to the ground. It was a plain dagger, with no ornamentation or frivolities. A straightforward weapon. “Wait, you think I’m the Devourer-”

The god smiled wide, and I knew right then. “Stab me.”

I picked up the knife. “Aren’t the gods evil?”

The god nodded as I closed the distance. He seemed to have no fear of his upcoming death. “Many are. I pride myself on doing the right thing as much as possible. Trust none of them.”

I walked up to him, but didn’t raise the dagger just yet. “Why are you so unafraid of death?”

“It is who I am. I will do much to save another. Besides, can’t you see the torture I’ve been through?”

I fingered the dagger, raising it. I could barely reach the giant’s stomach. “How will this change me?”

“I will leave you the dagger, my power, and another gift.”

I looked over his belly. “Will you be okay with a painful death? I can only reach your belly.”

The god let out a true laugh. Unbroken, hearty. “Gal, you’re stalling. Put the knife through me.”

I cursed at myself, and stabbed forth. The blade cut through the god’s stomach. Blood started to well up around the wound. It trickled down my hands as the god jerked his hands and legs, breaking the chains. Why hadn’t he done this before?

The god fell to his knees in front of me. “I would like to know your name,” he said, as I raised the knife to his neck.

I started crying. I couldn’t help it. “Allina.”

The god smiled. “Live well. Don’t show anyone your eyes. Don’t show anyone your upper arm. Tell people that the mask was attached to you by torture, and cannot be taken off anymore.”

I was about to ask what these new warnings were, but the god smiled, clasped my arm, and stabbed the knife into his own heart.

“Allina.” He smiles, revealing unexpectedly perfect teeth, contrasting the rest of his ravaged body. “Let the world know the Devourer is back.” The god’s smile turned into a grimace-even his pain tolerance wasn’t enough to pull him through. “I’ll be watching.”

I clutched at the blade, watching the life die out of the god’s eyes.

I pulled the knife out, and watched the god-who’d acted more like a kindly old man-hit the ground. The corpse dissolved into thin air.

Following my instincts, I turned around and sliced straight up with the dagger I’d been given. The domain cut open as if I was cutting through a piece of soft fabric, dissolving around me. Stone turned into hard wooden floors as the darkness became less oppressive. I opened my eyes, staring directly at the altar and the glowing white runes covering it. A crack ran down the altar, cutting straight down the middle. As I watched, more appeared, flowing through the stone without sound until it finally gave up and crumbled, the white runes softly fading out. Then I got up, twirling in a short circle. I was surrounded, completely. The cultist who’d been directly behind me was no longer close, having run into the circle. “Oh great god, we mean you no harm. Please return to your domain and accept this sacrifice we have prepared for you.”

I stared at them silently as they cowered before me.

Then I turned up to the broken roof and the sky beyond it. A giggle echoed around the silent room, slowly growing into full-blown laughter. “You think the god was the one who made it out alive?”

I exulted in the sight I saw, of the white-robed cultists’ faces turning as pale as the clothes they wore. Then I lunged.

It was time to enact the god’s revenge.