Page 3 of Souls of Steel
Normally, I would have denied it, but at that moment, the words didn’t come to my lips. My mind went blank and I couldn’t find anything to say.
Truth be told, if I had belonged to the group of attackers, the man wouldn’t have stood a chance. One of the Ungifted could never go against someone with the power of the gods flowing through their veins. No matter who guided them—Gaia or Tartarus—such people could only be stopped by others just like them. A plain knife would’ve likely not even scratched me.
But fear wasn’t rational, and the man wasn’t thinking straight. To make matters worse, he had plenty of friends and allies. Someone came up from behind us and pushed Louise into me. She tripped, almost sending me sprawling to the ground. I didn’t fall, but it was a close call.
The shove snapped me out of my shock and I forced an answer past my numb lips. “I’m not a terrorist. I just came here to see the chimera, just like—”
“Bitch!” one of the men cut me off. “She came to spy on us. She came to spy on us for the Sun-Dwellers!”
Oh, for fuck’s sake. This was the worst possible time to run into someone who believed in that fairytale. Descriptions of Sun-Dwellers had always been unclear, but some sources had claimed they were always redheads. The rumor had spread, and in the years after the war, humans with hair of that color had been looked down upon, persecuted, and even killed. But the information had been identified as false, and the campaign against us had stopped. High Priestesses of Gaia had deliberately had sex with redheaded men in the hope of birthing children who would prove that we were all just human.
It had mostly worked, and now, things were pretty much okay. But there was still the occasional wacko who came up with a conspiracy theory. And now, I’d stumbled into one of them.
Under different circumstances, I would’ve found it ridiculous. Ironically, some of the other people here would’ve felt the same. But terror did strange things to people, and right now, they needed someone to blame.
“Get her!” the crazy stranger bellowed. “Catch her before she uses her magic on us!”
The man closest to me complied. I elbowed him in the gut, mentally thanking my father for having given me lessons of self-defense. Then, I aimed for his groin, the area where I knew I could cause the most pain in the shortest amount of time. He let out a sharp cry and went down like a rock.
I’d have been happier about it had three other men not taken the first one’s place. Behind me, I could now see the fire growing brighter and fiercer.
“Are you all crazy?” I asked them. “We need to get out of here. This place is going to burn to the ground.”
“Not if you stop it!” one of the men said. “The spies of the Sun-Dwellers have power over flame. You can put out that fire. Do it and we’ll let you go.”
He was completely insane. A Sun-Dweller spy wouldn’t have bothered to have a conversation with a human at all. Then again, Sun-Dwellers had been pretty straightforward people and hadn’t really sent spies behind the front lines at all, since three-quarters of the time, they hadn’t been very good at staying under the radar.
I might’ve taken an approach similar to that of a Sun-Dweller had it been in my ability. Not that I had any desire to carbonize people, but I didn’t want to die either.
Gaia help me, if I escaped this place with my life, I’d… I didn’t know what I’d do, but I’d make sure it left an impression.
Why, oh why, had I been born one of the Ungifted? If I’d been able to wield Gaia’s magic, I would’ve never ended up in this situation, to begin with. I would’ve been too busy terra-forming the still devastated areas of Earth to worry about how beautiful chimeras were.
“Look,” I tried again, “we can’t do anything like that. We’re just regular, Ungifted humans like you. Be reasonable.”
“Oh, we’re perfectly reasonable,” another man said. He was older, and in his cold eyes, I saw death and war. “If you really are Ungifted humans, then we might not be so unlucky after all. The terrorists won’t harm us as long as we have you with us.”
At least he wasn’t a complete idiot and he realized that too. But that didn’t help me much, considering what it meant for me and Louise.
Somewhere in front of us, an explosion of bright green illuminated the horizon, making the sky glow with an almost sickly, poisonous light. I shouldn’t have seen it that way, because the source of the magic was Gaia herself. But there were some things that could corrupt even the powers of the gods, and the will and mistakes of mankind had always been among them.
“P-Please,” Louise stammered. “This is pointless. Let us go. We should all be trying to make our escape together instead of fighting.”
“There’s no escape now, girl,” the older man said. “I’ve seen those terrorists fight before. They call themselves Gaia’s children, but they don’t care who they kill as long as it’s one of the Ungifted—and a man. You’re our ticket out of here. We’ll use that.”
Unfortunately for us, the man underestimated the extent of the violence the attackers were willing to inflict in order to claim the chimera for themselves. I had no idea how it happened or what could’ve led them to use such powerful magic, but the ground beneath us began to change color and the trimmed grass started to grow. That wouldn’t have been much of a threat, but it was just an omen for what was really coming.
The earth pulsed with the anger of the people who’d attacked us. The path beneath my booted feet cracked, revealing the bright green light that emanated from underneath us.
The men immediately shielded their eyes. Rumor had it that whoever looked straight at the magic of a primordial deity was blinded, maddened, or even instantaneously killed. I would’ve turned away as well, but I had Louise to worry about, and she seemed frozen, unable to move a muscle.
I grabbed her and pulled her away from the cracks, hoping against all hope that I’d still be able to salvage something from this madness. “Louise, stay with me! Don’t lose yourself. Stay with me.”
“But… The light,” Louise whispered. “The light, Selene…”
The light could go fuck itself for now. I didn’t intend to lose my friend anytime soon, not even to Gaia. I sent a mental apology to Mother Earth and clutched Louise’s arm even more tightly. “The light will still be there later, once you’re older and ready to move on to Gaia’s embrace. We can’t touch it now, remember? We’re one of the Ungifted.”
I should’ve known better than to think my words would help me. Louise did seem to hear me and her vision grew a little more focused. But her potential light-induced insanity wasn’t the only problem here.
