Dirt on her hands, muddied from the last dousing she’d given the plant, she took a deep breath and began to draw a circle on the light stone floor with the soil, mimicking how she’d seen Damien do it. The shapes came easily, the Chthonic writing itself under her fingers as if she were born knowing the language. But then she came to the name.
Amma traced what she remembered Damien’s markings to look like in the mountains, but it seemed incorrect. Beneath it, she tried again, and again, something was wrong. Finally, she reverted to Key, and simply wrote out how she imagined the name would look in her own language. It was the best she could do, and if she could summon at all—a thing she wasn’t terribly confident in—she would hopefully end up with some kind of help.
She sat back and took stock of her work, Vanders perched on her shoulder and finishing off a crust of rye bread. Under the candlelight and against the clean floors, the Chthonic scribbled in messy soil took on a creepy slant, but it was beautiful too.
Clearing her throat, she read aloud the Empyrean of the song she’d torn from Isldrah’s book, beseeching the goddess for help but replacingguardianwithimp.When she reached its end, she caught the page on fire with her candle and dropped the burning parchment atop the plant—Damien used fire, so she guessed she needed it too—and then offered her finger to Vanders.
“We’re in this together,” she said, and the vaxin nipped her again. Quickly, before the flame went out, she squeezed a drop of blood over the burning fern, and then a second and third, just to be sure. Finally, she buried her hands into the roots of the plant, whispered an apology to it, and pumped her arcana in.
Amma didn’t expect the sudden burst of silver that cameswirling up before her, but then she really should have as, for all she didn’t know about arcana, she had gotten a pivotal thing correct—urgency. She needed help, and she needed it now.
Throwing herself back to avoid being blasted in the face by a portal to another plane, Amma held her breath, watching arcana and burning leaves swirl up to the chamber ceiling. Crawling backward a few more feet and gnawing on her lip as the portal grew, silvery strands licked all the way to the corners of the room overhead.
“Don’t burn through,” she muttered, eyes flicking to the door, but then the light doused itself, and she was left in the quiet of the dark with just her candle and a blobby shadow where the plant had been—or where it still was, she couldn’t exactly tell as it very well could have just been the husk of the plant, burnt tendrils poking out oddly. And then one of the tendrils moved.
“Kaz?” Amma leaned forward carefully.
A ball of claws and fangs and red skin shot at her, wrapping around her neck so tightly she thought she was being attacked until she heard the familiar panting and snuffling of Quaz. A laugh broke out of her as the feral imp dragged its tongue up the side of her face. Help was help, she supposed, and scratched under his leathery chin.
But there was still movement in her circle, and another imp sat up out of the soil, slow and wretched. “Mistress,” it said as if the absolute worst were about to happen, “I have been resummoned.”
“Oh, my goodness,” said Amma as Quaz clamored down her side and began to investigate the room by darting from corner to corner. “Or, badness, I guess.”
“Get off, get off, I need to greet my master!” a gurgly, strangled whine called from below Katz, and the sallow imp was shifted away as a third rose from the ground, soil smeared all over his front and crooked jaw drawn into an intent grimace.
“Kaz!” Amma pushed up onto her knees and threw her arms out.
“Harlot!” Kaz bound toward Amma and wrapped long, spindly arms around her middle. Amma squeezed him back, tears in her eyes. His little wings flapped, and his tail wagged, and she couldn’t bring herself to let him go even when he began to squirm away. “Okay, okay,” he grumbled, slipping out from under her grasp. “Where is Master Bloodthorne?”
Amma wiped at her face. “Well, that’s sort of why you’re here.”
Kaz stepped back to stand beside Katz, and Quaz came scurrying up to his other side. Six bulbous eyes shined back at her in the candlelight from the little row of infernal creatures, each varyingly invested in what she was about to say.
“So, Damien’s been abducted.”
Three vastly different noises erupted from the imps, but they all amounted to the same declaration ofWhat in the Abyss are you talking about?
“Quiet, please, you’ll wake up the priestesses.”
“Priestesses?” Kaz pressed claws to his rounded stomach. “I thought it was the summons that was making me feel so awful.”
“No, that’s probably the temple—don’t make those faces, I’m pretty sure Isldrah herself let you in here, so at least pretend to be grateful. Step one is breaking out of this place anyway, and then step two is finding Master Bloodthorne.”
“YoulostMaster Bloodthorne, Mistress?” Katz’s disappointment was immeasurable, and his summons was ruined. Quaz whined quietly, tail wrapped around him, and Kaz was tapping a clawed foot against the stone with his knobby arms crossed tight.
“Only a little, but it’s not like it’s the first time.”
Kaz’s massive eyes widened. “You said you would take care of him, and you lost Master twice?”
“I know!” she hissed back, his words weighing heavily in her chest. “I’m not happy about it either, but at least I have experience saving him now, okay? Also, I’ve been doing my best, but Damien has proven himselfquiteabductable lately. Like, maybe a little too abductable considering how close together these two abductions happened. In fact, if someone were telling me about this, I would probably think the pacing was a little off.” She ran hands through her curls and cleared her throat. “But this is the problem the gods have dropped into our laps, and we need to deal with it. It’s not like this next part’s going to be very hard anyway. You three just need to sneak out, fly into the courtyard, and smash something for me. Kaz, I remember how especially good you are at throwing things on the ground from up high.”
Kaz stuck out his tongue. “We werejustsummoned. No flying’s happening tonight. And I don’t know how you think imps are supposed to sneak around a temple.”
“Oh, I already thought of that: disguise yourselves as birds—theylovebirds here, it’s a whole thing.”
“I don’t think I can transform yet,” droned Katz.
Quaz squeezed his eyes shut, clenched his fists, and started to shake. He emanated a low growl, but all that came of it was a puff of rank-smelling gas before he collapsed onto the ground from the effort.
