Damien held his hands out as if asking the sky. “What? Why?”
“I don’t know,” she called back, heartbeat in her ears as she maneuvered to a path that led more safely downward.
“Amma, it’s not worth it,” he called, following after. “You’ll only make yourself feel worse.”
She grunted in annoyed agreement, but there was no stopping herself, not when her emotions were already so heightened. Gods, she’d forgotten how fraught bleeding without injury made her.
As she neared the site, there was a smell, rancid and pungent, though she was unsure how so quickly after the calamity she’d caused. Her stomach turned over as she set her feet solidly on the final ledge. The massive stone was cracked up its middle from the impact, and there was no denying the liquid splattered about was most certainly blood.
Damien slid to a stop behind her. “Amma, really,” he said after taking a deep breath, “it was an accident.”
Belly still aching, now with the added twist of guilt, she squeezed her hands into nervous fists. “Can you use magic to tell what it was?”
“And potentially make you feel worse?” He scoffed. “No.”
She knelt beside a small pool of blood, thicker than she expected, but then there could have been bits of flesh or intestine within—it was hard to tell post-smashing. “Please?”
Damien heaved a sigh, coming to stand beside her. “Yes, fine, but I’m not promising I won’t—” He cut himself off abruptly then clicked his tongue. “Well, I suppose I won’t get a chance to lie about it.”
Amma lifted her gaze to peer where he was gesturing. Katz had just reached the bottom of the ridge, and behind him, in the carved-out mouth of a darkened cave, shone a great number ofeyes.
Carefully, Amma got to her feet and inched closer to Damien. “You think it was one of them?” she whispered, hands beginning to tremble as she clasped them before her.
“Oh, almost certainly,” he said, tone slightly lower but with none of the fear she thought he should have had when looking on an uncountable number of creatures looming in the darkness. They were low to the ground and small, but there werea lotof them.
Amma cleared her throat and took a step forward. “Hi, there,” she said, shakiness to her voice. “First, I want to say this was an accident, but I think it is my fault, and I’m very sor—”
“You do this?” asked a voice, scratchy and high-pitched.
Damien put a hand on Amma’s arm. She nodded.
“That one died Jiblix,” said a different voice.
Another piped up. “Jiblix is died?”
“Died?” asked another. “Jiblix?” And so the voices continued back into the cavern, echoing with curiosity more than anger.
One of the figures stepped forward, bringing itself into the sun. Green-skinned with massive ears that dwarfed its wide head, the creature was only about two feet tall and dressed in tattered leathers with skinny limbs and huge, bare feet. It blinked bulbous eyes in the brightness of the afternoon as it came to stand a few yards from Amma and Damien. She had seen a creature like it before in Aszath Koth, and she had been afraid then of being eaten, but this one looked so demure that even when it opened its mouth full of jagged, yellow teeth, she felt next to no fear.
“The king is died!” he announced, raising knobby hands above his head.
Three more skittered out from the darkness, just as small, running on feet so big she was sure they would trip. They were quick though, clambering around the fallen rock’s other sideand reappearing with strange objects in hand. Damien casually went for his dagger when the three swarmed them but waited to unsheathe it.
The creatures stopped short before Amma, one taking a low stance as another leapt onto its shoulders and the third scrambled up to perch at the top. The three swayed in a stack, and Amma spread out her hands, unsure if she would catch them or fend them off, but then a stick was thrust into her hand, and while she was distracted with the odd amalgam of rocks and feathers stuck to it, something was plopped onto her head.
“What called you?” squeaked out the one at the top of the stack just before it tumbled down.
Amma sucked in a sharp breath though it seemed unharmed by the fall.
“Go on,” said Damien, nudging her, “tell them your name.” He was grinning much too widely for how odd the situation appeared to be.
Hesitantly, she gave it over.
“All hail Amma,” one of them called back to the rest in the cave, “King of the gobbies!”
CHAPTER 13
OF RECKONINGS AND OBSCENITY
