25

"Fuck!"

Lyra floated in and out of awareness until Kel pressed something that burned and stung like pure alcohol against her side. She tried to jolt upright, but that only made it worse, and with his other hand, he pushed down on her shoulder to make her lay back.

"Hold still, priestess."

"What is that?" she spat. "It hurts!"

"It's a salve to stop the bleeding. Hold still."

"Well, it fucking hurts! You're burning my skin off!"

"I am not. The salve is contracting your blood vessels so you don't bleed out before someone can stitch you up. Breathe. Try to calm your heart rate. The pain should subside in a few moments."

It did, though subsiding didn't mean it vanished entirely. The pain went from feeling like he was shoving a burning brand into her side to a duller, throbbing feeling, as if she had burned her entire right side rib cage on a hot cast-iron pan. On the upside, she was pretty sure she wasn't bleeding anymore, but it was hard to be certain considering how much blood there already was.

"Oh my God, I really thought I was going to die," she said as Kel put the cloth and salve he had used on her side away in his backpack.

"Your wounds will still need to be stitched. The bloodbane salve will begin to wear off within a couple of hours. Can you stand up?"

It hurt to try, but with his help, she managed it. She felt lightheaded and shaky, whether from blood loss or shock she didn't know. She had never been injured this badly before in her life, and she felt an odd mix of high and terrified as a result.

"Raise your arms, I will wrap some linens around your ribs to keep the wounds clean, and in case you begin bleeding again before we return to the village."

"Are we just going back? Galin is still down there." She flinched as she remembered just how, exactly, she had gotten injured by the god – when she jumped at Kel to stop him from killing Galin. A thirteen-year-old boy! "What the hell, Kel? He's just a kid, and you acted like you were about to stab him."

He didn't quite meet her eyes as he wrapped a long roll of clean linen wrap around her ribs. She kept her arms up and out of the way as she glared at him. It hurt, especially when he tightened the bandage around her wound and tied it off, but it was easier to focus on her anger than the pain.

"He committed a great sin," Kel said. "I think perhaps... I misjudged what it truly means that you are not from our world. I find it difficult to imagine a place without gods and all they entail. There is much you don't know, but it's not your fault. I'll explain as best I can once we get out of here. I will escort you back to the village if you wish, and we will ask the boy's uncle to ensure he does not leave until I return."

"You're not really going to kill him, are you?"

"It is a kindness," he told her as he finished packing the healing supplies back into his bag. "Especially with God's Day so near." He paused, seemed to realize she had no idea what that meant, and explained, "It is the day where the Great God judges all of us directly for our sins, and the Great God makes no exceptions and gives no leeway, not even for children. The fate that awaits those who have a great sin on their soul is nothing short of horrific. I'm a paladin, which means I carry a relic. Relics are either a part of a saint's body or an item imbued with a saint's blood or bone, and they can be used to perform the Sacrament of Cleansing, which cleanses sin from the soul at the cost of the sinner's life."

Even now, Lyra's first instinct was to brush aside all of the talk of sin and souls, because that was what she had always done at home. Religion had just been... not a factor to her, and it was hard to change the way she had thought for all of her adult life.

But things were different here. She had seen gods, three of them, and she knew they had the power to do things that would have been unimaginable to her not even a week ago. Maybe these weren't the omniscient and omnipresent gods of the largest world religions back home, but that didn't mean they weren't powerful. She had no idea if souls were real or not, but since this was a world in which people could carry on conversations with their deities, which kind of removed a lot of the questions around those things, she thought it was a safe bet that they were.

But... Galin was a thirteen-year-old boy. How could she stand by and watch someone kill a kid? His mother was out there, waiting for them to bring him back safely. Her daughter had already been killed, and from the sound of it, by the very man Galin had sacrificed to this god in an effort to bring her back. She had no idea how he had managed to kill a full-grown man, but Saofoth had said Bria helped him.

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"What's a saint?" she asked, tired of not knowing what was going on.

"A saint is what we call priests and priestesses who have died."

She blinked. So his sword had part of someone's body in it somehow? That was... disturbing.

"You can't kill him, Kel. That's just... he's a kid. It's not right. Killing a kid has got to be a bigger sin than whatever he did to the man who killed his sister."

"It's not," he said. "Killing is only a sin when it is done as a sacrifice to a god. Of course, that doesn't mean murder isn't a crime in most civilized places." He paused. "It's not a law of god or man for me to take Galin's life here and now, but letting him live would not be a kindness. Sacrificing someone to a blood god is not a sin that he can cleanse from his soul otherwise. If I do nothing, his last moments on God's Day will be agonizing and full of terror, and when he dies, his soul will be destroyed by the Great God. I can give him a chance to find peace."

"Saofoth!" she exclaimed. "The god in Lokokami. They said to bring Galin to their temple and if he devotes himself to them, they will shield him from the Great God. I didn't understand why any of that mattered at the time, but I get it now."

Kel fell silent, lost in thought. Lyra kept glancing at the dark tunnel, certain she would see the lupine god returning at any moment, but nothing moved in the darkness.

"Devotion is rarely done these days, at least not at the small temples," he said at last. "That may work, depending on how strong Saofoth is, but you would need to perform the ritual for them. I'm also not certain what the consequences will be, since he shares his body with his sister's soul now. Devotion surrenders your soul to whatever god you choose to devote yourself to, but in exchange, it offers protection from other deities, even the Great God. Most gods will not accept devotion from anyone who has a great sin on their soul, but I suppose it is not... unheard of, though I have only ever seen it accepted by blood gods, who use the devotion of their followers to shield them from the judgment of the Great God on God's Day. Are you certain that's what the god offered? If not, it would be kinder to end the boy's life here in the cave rather than giving his family hope before snatching it away."

"That's what it said," she told him firmly. "So, that means we're going to bring him back alive, right?"

He looked troubled, but to her relief, he bowed his head after a long few seconds spent in contemplation. "As you say, priestess. However, he may not wish to return to the village. The god is likely too weakened to reverse the boon even if we could convince it to do so. Galen will face the consequences of what he did here for the rest of his life."

"You mean, he's going to have to share a body with his sister forever?"

"Unless he can find another god who will reverse the boon, very likely yes." He paused. "And when he realizes that doing so would essentially mean killing his sister again, he may not be willing even if he can find a god who would do it."

She blinked, then remembered that Kel's sister had died too. She wondered if he had ever thought about doing something like this. If people in this world could truly bring back loved ones with the right offering to the right god, the temptation would be hard to resist.

If she could bring her mother back, she wasn't sure common sense would be enough to stop her.

But it didn't seem the time to bring it up. The salve he had used on her side would only last for a couple of hours, and they still had an hour's hike back to the village — probably longer, since she was too injured to move quickly. They were on a time limit, in other words.

"Come on, let's go get him," she said. "We need to convince him to leave with us and get out of here before I start bleeding all over the place again."

"It may be better if you stay here. You lost quite a bit of blood already, priestess."

She shook her head. "No offense, but you scared the crap out of that kid and I doubt he's going to trust you if you chase after him alone. Plus, that god is still down there somewhere. You might need me."

She also didn't want to be left alone up here if the god came back while Kel was gone.

"Very well," he said. "You can carry the lantern. While I light it, tell me what the god looked like and how injured it was when you last saw it." He narrowed his eyes. "And for the love of the Great God, priestess, next time you see it, tell me. I cannot keep fighting blind. We will practice later, but for now, simply tell me where it is and what it is doing."

She described the lupine god for him as he trimmed the lantern's wick, filled the reservoir with oil, and lit it with one of the large matches that sputtered violently and stank of sulphur. Once the lantern's little flame was dancing merrily, he repacked his bag, then set it against the cavern wall and did the same with hers.

"You're too injured to carry them both, and I wish to be able to move freely," he explained. "I will, however, ask you to carry the lantern."

He helped her to her feet. She felt unsteady, and every movement made her ribs throb and ache, but she thought she could manage hobbling around while carrying a lantern. She noticed Kel was limping as he picked up his sword and moved over to the tunnel's entrance.

"Are you hurt?" she asked as she hobbled in front of him and shined the lantern into the inky darkness.

"Bruised, but I will live. I know it is not what you meant to do, but your interference kept the god from injuring me as gravely as it might have."

"It's not like I want you to get hurt," she muttered. "I didn't want you to murder a thirteen-year-old boy. Let's get going, I want to get this over with."

What she really wanted was to find her way back to her apartment, order food from her favorite restaurant, and curl up in bed to sleep for the next week, but that wasn't going to happen, so she raised the lantern higher and entered the tunnel.