Young Writers Society

Cassia’s first pain-free gasp tore from her throat. Her eyes flew open and she stared up into blackness. Her chest heaved as her heartbeat slowly steadied and the memory of burning faded, but the panic did not quite leave her chest. She was not sure it ever would.

She rolled over onto her side and pushed herself up with her good hand. Her bandages had vanished when they completed the ritual and slipped into this plane, but her body still favored the injuries instinctively.

Her stomach ached, a dull throbbing pain not quite eased by Mithrinde’s cooling power. But that terrible ember was gone. She was not burning from the inside out any longer. She was saved.

And Fyn had taken her place.

Cassia cried a wordless cry. Fyn’s body, not three feet away, lay crooked on the ground, one hand stretched out as if to cradle her cheek. She had taken his mote to save him, but he would not let her keep it, and now he was burning again before her eyes and she could not stop it.

She crawled to him and cradled his feverish body in his arms, not caring how his skin scalded hers. She didn’t wonder where the other Archpriests were, or what had happened to the Treatise. In that moment, all her anger, from the roots of her hair to the bottom of her heels, was for Fyn, and against Selach’s evil, twisted idea that he owned him.

“He’s not yours,” she spat into the darkness, tears wet on her cheeks. “He’s not yours.”

Cassia. The cool, gentle voice enveloped her, though she did not want it to make the pain go away. You have to let go.

“No.”

He did it. He bound Selach in exchange for himself. You have to let go.

“No!” Cassia shouted again. “I won’t leave him.”

Mithrinde materialized fully in front of her, silver train floating away into the darkness.

“I’m so sorry, Cassia,” she said, and Cassia didn’t doubt it. Her face was a perfect, gentle expression of sorrow.

But that only made Cassia angrier. “Don’t stand there and be sorry. Help him!”

“I can’t. You bound me. Even free, I could hardly face Selach without destroying myself.”

“If you just fought for him… if I gave him my wings again…”

She was already reaching back when Mithrinde’s sharp “No” stilled her hands. Whether they stopped of their own accord or were forced by Mithrinde’s command she could not say.

“Be sensible,” MIthrinde urged. “We have to go. The human gods are coming and we must parlay. Though your friend wore my mote, he’s still a drake, not an angel. He’s bound to Selach… and so he pays the price for defying him. He is not mine, Cassia, though I wish he were. There is nothing I can do.”

A cold certainty hardened in Cassia’s stomach. She laid Fyn’s body gently on the dark, featureless ground and stood, facing her goddess. The majestic gleam to her deep bronze face shone hollow.

“Then you’re not the goddess I follow.”

Mithrinde’s face went very still. Cassia pressed on. “Though Micah bound you, though he freed us all from the gods’ tyranny — yours included — he never stopped serving you.”

“He condemns me to my face every year!”

“Maybe, but he’s never stopped loving you. You know how I know? Because he taught me to love you. He would tell us you were always there, always listening with an open heart, listening to anyone who had a need. The moon, our Lady in the sky who watched and listened and only asked that her people do the same. I whispered all my secrets to you as a child. Every one.”

“I treasured them,” Mithrinde said, her voice a breath from still lips. “Cassia… he believes in me still?”

Those words slipped past the cold shell hardening around her heart. Suddenly Cassia saw not divinity, hollow or real, standing before her, but the open, earnest hope of the person behind the power.

Cassia wanted to shout at Mithrinde, to rage at her for every time she had possessed an angel, condemn her for her selfish shortsightedness, for forcing Micah to do what he had done. For that matter, she had still not quite forgiven Micah for his lies.

But in the face of those sad, earnest eyes, she could not quite bring herself to do it. She remembered her father, sitting on his throne and listening to his people’s grudges with an endless patience. And once they talked themselves into silence, he would take them by the hand and help them stand and give them quiet words in return. He had done it in Mithrinde’s name like everything else.

Maybe all anyone needed was someone to hold out a hand. Sometime.

“He does. He believes,” Cassia said softly. “But the goddess Micah loves — the goddess I love — cares about everyone, not just her angels. The goddess Micah taught me to follow doesn’t give up when things get hard. When the world isn’t pretty. She helps fix it instead.

“I think you can be her, my Lady. I think you already are.”

And Cassia reached out and took her goddess’ hand. Together, they touched Fyn’s chest and felt his racing heart beat pleas under his skin.

A crystal tear streaked down Mithrinde’s cheek. “Cassia, I want to help. I swear to you, more than anything. But I don’t know what to do.”

“You’ve already done it.”

The voice startled Cassia. She turned and Sasha was standing there, her dark clothing and black braids fading into the thick darkness around them. Cassia had not heard her approach.

“Done what?” Cassia asked, guarded. Sasha was on their side. But Cassia couldn’t look at her without remembering how she had pressed the edge of a knife against her throat and left her to Iona’s mercy.

“Proved Bateno was right.” Sasha lingered over the name, a flash of pain in her eyes, but it meant nothing to Cassia. She did not have to ask again, though, as Sasha’s gaze shifted from Mithrinde back to Cassia, and she began to speak.

“He knew the god-lore. What every child knew, before the Treatise, but more than that. He understood it. It was his spirit.”

She struggled for more words, then shook her head. “He’s gone now. But he said — he said you godformed made a mistake. When you made the Treatise. You were hurting everyone, because our gods are tied to all of humanity, including you godformed. He said our gods… reflect us. I think he believed your gods reflect you too. He said you bound them because you didn’t know that you could change them instead.

“At first, I didn’t realize what that meant. Then I didn’t believe it. How can we change them? We’ve both felt….”

She broke off with a slight nod, her lips pressed together. Cassia nodded. They had both felt that crushing power when a god breaks through your mind and takes you for their own. In the face of that power, you were nothing. Nothing.

“But he was right.” Sasha stepped forward, fully out of the darkness, her full lips parted, her eyes wide and almost awed, looking back and forth from Cassia to Mithrinde. Cassia had never seen her look at anyone or anything with that near-reverence.

“I saw it, just now. You did it, Cassia. You changed her.”

And she pointed at Mithrinde, whose hand still lingered on Fyn’s chest.

Cassia looked, openmouthed, from Sasha to Mithrinde, waiting for Mithrinde to smile and shake her head, to tell Sasha she must be mistaken.

Instead, Mithrinde met Cassia’s eyes and nodded once.

“But — but that was words!” Cassia protested. “I just said things, and told you the truth, and you decided to believe me —”

Mithrinde nodded again, more earnestly. Her eyes widened as if an idea was taking shape behind them. “And there was power behind your words because of your connection to me. Amplified because of the extra power you carried to shape the Treatise. I felt it Cassia. You called so loudly. You reminded me of better times. It was easy to believe, because you believed.”

Sasha nodded. She looked at Fyn and hope broke across her face, an expression that lightened her eyes and softened her whole visage. “He can do it too. He has the connection. He has that old power. It’ll be hard, but if I were placing bets on who could be stubborn enough to argue with a fire god and win... he’s done it before. He got me out of the dark.”

Thick elation warmed Cassia’s throat. If it was true, if any of it was true, and of course Fyn could do it—

“But he doesn’t know!” she shouted, spinning around to put her hand beside Mithrinde’s on his chest, as if she could press into him the words she so desperately wanted him to hear. We have to tell him! Tell him to fight!”

Mithrinde smiled. Her hand began to glow with soft white light. “That I have the strength to do.”

The soft white light spread to cover Fyn’s chest. It pulsed with the beat of his heart, extending up his neck until it sank into his fin-like ears.

Cassia’s breath came in rapid bursts and she reached out with her mind, calling Fyn’s name under her breath, straining to reach him even if it meant passing through fire and fury again.

Movement caught the corner of her eye. She looked back and saw Sasha shifting there, her hands empty and dangling, eyes fixed on Fyn with a look that was almost longing.

Cassia extended her other hand. Sasha looked at it, confused.

“Come tell him,” Cassia urged. “You figured it out. So you’re going to save him.”

Cassia could have sworn Sasha cracked a smile. She took Cassia’s hand and human and angel kneeled beside the drake.

They pressed their hands to Fyn’s chest, side-by-side. The white light glowed brighter until it was blinding to look at though deep and cool to the touch, quenching the wisps of steam rising from Fyn’s body. Mithrinde pushed, and the stillness of the moon pierced them deep.

“Speak,” Mithrinde said, voice strained with the effort. “He will hear you.”

------

A voice interrupted Fyn’s burning.

It was entirely unlike the voice that had been haunting him sometime in the vaguely-remembered Before, the time before his world was purely fire and pain. That voice had been harsh and cruel, like scorching sparks. This voice was soft and gentle and kind.

Fyn, it breathed, brushing against his consciousness. Somehow, the voice alone soothed his pain like a cool breeze on a hot day. It faded away, and he hoped it would return.

It did, and stronger this time. Fyn. You have to listen, listen close. There’s not much time.

The voice was strangely familiar somehow. It reminded him of the cool scent of night, and long blonde hair, and… wings?

Cassia! Fyn clung onto the scraps of the name, the memory of her, and her smile, and her open heart, and the cool power of the goddess she served.

Another voice pierced into his skull, this one direct and almost biting, though also familiar.

Fyn. I asked you once: what matters? What do you want? I was asking you, not your god or anyone else. But that was only half the question.

Our gods reflect us, Fyn. You have the power. And by the elders, you have the stubbornness.

So here’s the rest of the question: what are you going to do about it?

This second voice rattled Fyn’s bones, lodging in his skull like a lance. Narrow eyes and dagger-points — Sasha.

She had come for him in the dark. She knew the way out.

You have the power.

He felt it, then. A scrap of that same old, untainted power unfolded in his stomach, a scrap that Selach had not yet destroyed. Selach as he once had been. Selach as he could be again.

If it was what Fyn wanted. If he fought, instead of closing his eyes and letting go.

Fyn set his teeth and decided it was.

He seized that scrap of power and pushed it toward the burning mote in his stomach.

Our gods reflect us, Fyn.

Each limb seared with new agony as Selach roared against Fyn’s struggle, but Fyn pushed anyway. The two powers met, the old and holy against the twisted and angry.

And Selach’s old power ignited into a warm, clean flame. It covered Fyn’s mote in a blaze and sank in deep, purging every trace of anger.

With the anger went the pain. The fog in Fyn’s brain lifted as the flame spread like a wildfire to the tips of his fingers and horns, giving strength to muscles and limbs he had almost forgotten he had. He reached along the thread that connected him to Selach, forcing the new power down its length.

Something resisted him, blocking the power from going further. Fyn bent his will, concentrating on everything that could be, on the potential born in dark caverns and newly cooling magma.

The resistance broke. Fire surged through Fyn, a rush so fast it disoriented him, or maybe he lost consciousness for a second, or maybe the rushing was actually him moving, hurtling forward somewhere in this plane of magic.

However it happened, when Fyn opened his eyes, he was standing on the rim of a volcano.

It wasn’t Mt Onyx. This volcano rose so high Fyn could not see anything else around it, not even clouds. The basalt rock fell away at his feet and merged with the inky black sky so he could not tell where one ended and the other began.

A thin ridge of rock ran out from his feet and across the volcano, where it widened into a stone circle supported by three other ridges. The circle was just large enough to support a crude throne of jagged obsidian.

A human man stood perfectly still in front of that throne, his pale brown eyes locked on Fyn. He had short, wiry black hair that clung to his ears and a thin, sculpted jaw. Fyn recognized the emotion behind his gaze.

It was fear.

Fyn was filled with a bizarre desire to laugh. After all this, after every last moment of pain, this was his god who had served his punishment. He was just… a man.

Fyn raised his hands and examined his fingers. They were all there, whole and unblemished, red scales running up the backs of his palms to his fingernails. He thought of fire and it played around his fingers, easy as breathing, leaving him dizzy with the giddiness of new magic running through him.

There was one piece left. He sensed it. This new mote was not quite his.

He raised his gaze and looked back at his god. “Selach,” he said boldly, tossing reverence in the caldera, more to shore up his nerves than anything else.

The look in his Selach’s eyes hardened. This man, his god, spread his smooth, uncalloused hands. “What are you waiting for? Cast me down. Do what you came for. Kill me and take my place. I can’t stop you anymore.”

Fyn opened his mouth, then closed it again. He didn’t have the words. He was not like Cassia, who could change hearts with a plea.

Instead, he stepped out onto the narrow bridge that supported Selach’s throne.

Selach did not shirk or back away as Fyn approached. So his god was not a coward either, in the end, or at least he was stubborn. Fyn knew stubborn.

His feet found purchase on the rock, one step after another until Fyn was standing inches apart from Selach, looking up into the fearful face of his god.

Selach inhaled sharply, bracing himself.

And Fyn extended his hand.

In the end, he was still a drake. He couldn’t deny who he was, nor the cruelty he’d been taught as a hatchling. But what being a drake meant could change. It had to. And because he was not Cassia, because he could not sway with words, he would just have to do it by example.

Selach looked down at Fyn’s outstretched hand and sensed his meaning in the crackle of magic between them. He stumbled back, half-sitting on the throne behind them, his eyes widened and his resolve broken.

“You want to seal a new oath with me? I thought you were coming to….” Selach didn’t finish, but he didn’t have to. What kind of enemy would come to parlay, when he had all the power on his side already? Just a month ago, Fyn would have thought himself crazy too.

“I want things to be different.” Fyn said simply.

He couldn’t know, because he had never seen Selach’s human body before forcing him to accept his old magic again — he hadn’t even known gods had human bodies — but he thought he recognized that old Selach, somewhere in the set of the god’s jaw and the flicker in his deep brown eyes.Maybe the magic was already changing him, reminding him of what he used to be.

Then Selach’s gaze flicked to the side. Fyn followed it and saw a huddled, scaled mass curled on the ground at the edge of the caldera, where the left rock beam met solid ground.

The mass stirred, deep crimson scales glinting, barely visible in the dim lava light. An enormous head lifted from the mass, and fear clutched Fyn in a vise.

“You disgusting worm,” Ashwythe sneered at Fyn. “I should have killed you when I had the chance.”

Fyn couldn’t move. She was enormous and he was tiny in his human form, and any moment she would leap on him and devour him for his insolence as he deserved.

But then a hiss escaped Ashwythe’s teeth, breaking her sneer, and her haunches sank back to the ground. It took Fyn a moment to make it out in the flickering light, but then he saw it.

A jagged wound in her side that looked like it had been torn by a spear or a trident. And a gray discoloration creeping up her legs.

“You’re dying,” Fyn blurted.

“You can’t keep your mouth shut for one second, can you, you little slag?” Ashwythe swore at him.

“Kill him for me, my lord,” she said in a sickening sweet voice, addressing Selach. “Kill him and come to me. I need your power. Death’s witch is getting stronger.”

Selach whipped his head between Fyn and Ashwythe very fast. “He holds all my old power. He’ll kill me.”

His voice was like a hatchling pleading with an elder to get out of doing chores. A god, begging.

“He won’t,” Ashwythe sneered. “He’s too weak. Am I not your strength? Haven’t I guided you all this time?”

Selach flinched, and Fyn finally understood. Our gods reflect us. How twisted Ashwythe’s heart must be, for Selach at his cruelest to reflect her.

His heart beat an explosion in his chest. He would fight if he had to. If he had to. But his hand was still stretched out to shake. The pressure from his new mote built inside him and he wished with all his might, bringing every ounce of influence his connection with Selach could muster to bear. He knew Ashwythe was pulling as hard as she could, and so their wills fought, a tug-of-war between two drakes with their god caught in the middle.

Ashwythe had snared him longer. But Fyn held the truth of the past with him, and the promise of the future.

Selach looked at Fyn, then at Ashwythe. “He wants a new oath and he has brought the power to bear. I can’t deny him. It’s the law.”

His voice was desperate but firm, and when he looked back at Fyn, Fyn saw something different in his eyes. A flicker of respect — and gratitude.

“Don’t!” Ashwythe screeched.

But without another word, Selach seized Fyn’s hand and shook it.

Power exploded between them. Orange light burst from their clasped hands and wrapped around them, blinding Fyn. Selach’s voice wove around him, rich and fiery.

My power is yours. What do you give in return?

Loyalty, Fyn answered. Of my own free will. And change. For you and for all the drakes, if they want.

It is done.

The new mote slid into place in Fyn’s stomach and warmth swept through him, filling every particle of his soul.

It burned through his body and focused to a tiny point between Fyn’s shoulder blades. The back of his shoulders bulged, splitting his skin as something fueled by the new, pulsing mote in his stomach pushed its way out of his back. There were two somethings, really, and they grew and unfurled themselves and spread, but the orange light blinded Fyn and he could not turn his head to see—

With a crack and the brightest flash yet, the oath was sealed.

And when Fyn opened his eyes again, he had wings.

He was laying on the ground now, not standing at the edge of a caldera, and the ridges of his wings pressed into his back, but he hardly had time to notice them before he was smothered in a crushing hug, white feathered wings wrapping around him and long blonde hair falling in his eyes.

“Fyn!” Cassia cried, and hearing her voice was like falling into your nest at the end of a long hunt. He could hardly breathe, the way she was clutching him, but breathing was the last thing on his mind. “You did it, you changed him, and your wings!”

Fyn held her to him and didn’t try to speak. He didn’t think he’d be able to.

He must have made some kind of pained noise though, because she let out a soft “Oh!” and pushed herself off him, then helped him sit up.

“Are you okay?” Cassia asked urgently.

“I’m fine,” Fyn said. “Better than fine.” And it was true. His new mote sat warm in his stomach, familiar and new all at once, and it was almost frightening to hold power but not fear its source.

“Good,” Sasha said. She’d stood up already and had her hands on her hips, but Fyn could hear the smile in her voice and it was as good as Cassia’s hug. “We’re still trying to stop a war, you know. And we have company.”

Fyn and Cassia looked around wildly, Cassia helping Fyn to his feet. They were still in that black featureless void where he had come to save Cassia. He fell into a defensive stance. Now it all rushed back — the Treatise, the human gods coming to parlay.

All around them, human figures were melting out of the darkness and shimmering into view as if Fyn’s very thought had summoned them.

Like Mithrinde, these seven figures looked fully human, all young, with skin spanning from deep cool black to light brown with red clay undertones. Also like Mithrinde, Fyn knew just by looking at them that they were humanity’s gods. It was in their eyes.

The middle one spoke, and Fyn could not tell from their voice whether they were male or female. Their head was shaved and they wore robes of black and white in such fine lines that Fyn’s vision blurred them together into gray whenever he focused too hard on any single pattern.

“You brought us here,” Duality said, addressing Sasha. “You told us we would see potential. That the worst abominations of the godformed’s oaths could be changed.”

“With all due respect, I think you’ve seen a lot more than ‘could be changed,’” Sasha said, folding her arms.

“We have seen,” Duality agreed. They paused, looking left and then right at their fellow deities, and Fyn was sure the looks that flashed between them were an entire argument all by themselves.

They shared a last look. Duality nodded with finality.

“It is accepted,” they told Sasha. “We will parlay for peace. Perhaps we all… can stand to change a little.”

Death approached Sasha. She was tall and beautiful and terrible, like Ashwythe had been but with an aura of finality rather than terror. Sasha stood rigid as Death laid a hand on her shoulder, staring straight ahead rather than look at the goddess whose power had been forced upon her.

Fyn felt he should look away, but a fascination at hearing Death speak kept him fixed on the scene.

“I am sorry,” Death said quietly, “that I did this to you. Some oaths a god cannot resist.”

Sasha’s knees buckled, and something gray rushed up Death’s arm. Fyn knew Death had taken back her power, which Sasha had had never wanted.

Death’s hand lingered on her shoulder for only a second. Fyn barely caught her last words to Sasha.

“They are at rest.”

One by one, the gods were fading. Mithrinde had already vanished, along with Duality.

Sasha shook herself and turned. “Come on. The gods are assembling at the Treatise for negotiations.”

Fyn hesitated, glancing around. Where was Selach? Was Ashwythe gone?

Go, Fyn felt Selach’s voice like a candle flame. I’ll be there.

Fyn’s new wings seemed to tingle on his back. A sudden exhilaration flooded his body at the thought. He had wings.

Fyn looked out into the darkness, then back at Sasha and Cassia. He grinned. “How about a ride?”

He slid into drake form and spread his new wings as they grew. Cassia gasped in delight, and Fyn’s breath caught in his throat when he glanced over his shoulder to watch them unfurl.

Because these wings were not angel wings. They weren’t white and feathered, but instead were wrapped in leathery, bat-like skin. Patterns of deep scarlet red rippled across the crimson skin and flowed smoothly into his shoulders. They weren’t Cassia’s, or Tilana’s, or anyone else’s.

They were his.

Fyn dipped a wing to Cassia and Sasha and laughed, unable to contain the joy bubbling up from his stomach. His laugh let out a small wick of fire that curled and vanished in the air.

“Climb on!” he told his friends, and when they had settled themselves just behind his neck, Fyn launched himself into the black sky.