Basuin swallows, shaking out his hand. He hears a man lunging from behind. In a practiced swing, he draws his sword and slashes in an arc until the soldier falls at his feet, cut plainly and dead.
No.
Basuin’s throat is parched. He craves blood. The wolf-man is panting for it, foam dripping from its jaws. He won’t let it. He won’t.
The magic that clings to his hands and winds up his arms in trails of red retract and dissipate. Then, he plunges his sword into another body. The smell of blood consumes him, but all it does is make him gag. He doesn’t remember where he is anymore. If he’s in the forest or in Grimmalia. If this is home, or if this is Valkesta.
If he’s a boy again, or if he’s still just a god.
For what it’s worth, the blood washes off easily. He rubs his hands together under the slow-moving stream of Hou-tou’s creek, a little ways from camp. There’s a stubborn streak left on his cheek, blood threaded and dried in his wiry beard that he struggles with. It takes a few rubs with the damp hem of his shirt to budge. He doesn’t want Ren to see any of this. If she sees the blood, she’ll know what he did.
There wasn’t any sabotage on this day. There was only carnage that turned to ash on the ground. Basuin is a bad, bad liar. But he washes the blood away before he checks on Ren despite it.
Of course, he isn’t lucky enough to go unbothered. Before he can shake the water from his hands and dry off, he feels the watchful gaze of a spirit from upstream. Her blue-white eyes, sharp and narrowed at him. Hou-tou pokes her head up from the water in a cloud of bubbles, hands clasped together and cheek perched atop them.
“What a deceitful deity the Wolf God is.” She hums. “Lying to our Forest God.”
“Yes, Hou-tou.” He plunges his arms back into the cold water and doesn’t let her see him twitch. “I know you don’t care for me. You made that clear when you told me to go die, before.”
But Hou-tou doesn’t giggle. “You’re a useless god, are you not?”
“Yes, Hou-tou.” He scrubs the blood off one, two, three more times. His skin is red and raw.
With a loud splash, Hou-tou jumps from the water, shrieking. “You’re going to get her killed.” Rage colors her cloudy eyes.
Basuin looks up at her, exhausted. Yes, Hou-tou. “You’re trying to protect her, I know. But I am, too.”
For a long moment, she stays there, glaring him down. But the fight in her dies eventually, and Hou-tou sinks back down until just her eyes peek out at him, nose blowing bubbles on the river’s surface.
“Do better,” she demands. And then she disappears in a ripple.
Basuin is doing all he can do, but Hou-tou is right. It isn’t good enough. He can do better.
Only the crackle of flames Haaman has started to keep everyone company breaks the quiet of their camp. As Bass passes by on his roundabout through camp, he stops to shake his hand through Yaelic’s golden hair. Yaelic bats his hand away playfully, looking very bashful. Especially since Qia, who sits next to him, giggles.
Ren isn’t in her tent when he ducks his head in, but when he looks up, her leg dangles from one of the branches atop the tall oak tree she sits in. He doesn’t know whether to smile or scold her.
“Why aren’t you resting?” he asks. “There’s a perfectly pitched tent down here for you, Forest God.”
Ren huffs and waves her hand at him. “Does this not look like resting to you? City folk should learn to go outside more often, breathe in the magic of the forest.”
“There isn’t much magic left on the mainland.” Basuin leans his back against the tree’s trunk. “None at all.”
“The fault of your own kind, then.” She doesn’t say it meanly, but he still feels the heat of anger creep up his neck. He knows whose fault it is. He knows who burns down this forest. “It’s peaceful here. Even the sunlight can heal you if you let it.”
He tips his head and looks up at her. She stares off into the sky. “Is it healing you?”
Ren presses a hand against her stomach. “Little can anymore.”
But Basuin can. He looks down at his hand, bloodied before but now clean of sin. He’s a god; this hand of his can mend. He’s done it before. The god mark swirling across his palm feels tight and leathery as he stretches his fingers out.
“Come down,” he calls to Ren. “It’s warmer in your tent.”
Instead, Ren says, “I remembered something, from before. You made me think of it.”
Though she says it lightly, it sits heavy on his shoulders. “What is it?”
Ren labors a breath. “When I was a child, we were celebrating something. I was given this sweet thing, in a bowl shaped like a flower. It was red, and I liked it.” Her eyes are faraway. “I can remember how it tasted. Like cherries. But what was the name of it?”
