Page 97 of Katya and the Young God

The strange glow around her, the only light around them, immediately shuts off, and it only takes Katya a spare moment to flick her flashlight into place on the rifle mount, illuminating the grisly scene around them.

“She still alive?” Katya asks, and the buzzing is so loud, so powerful, that it threatens to climb up her throat, choking her over the smell of concrete, dust, and blood.

He nods, terse, his hand on Selene’s head, holding her, gentle. “They’ve been draining power, she’s going to be out for a while,” he says, and his voice is raw, affected.

Her Demigod is affected.

The guard on the floor, so close already to passing out, twitches, the blood already smearing the concrete floor.

“We need to go,” Pieter says, in an undertone to Katya, picking up Selene with a bare flinch. Selene’s head lolls against his shoulder, limp, casting deep shadows against the wall. “She needs medical treatment.”

Katya agrees, of course, but it’s too easy, it’s far too easy, and what the hell sort of medical treatment can she give a goddess?

Stepping over the guard, she kicks the small combat knife he’s clutching in his hand, sending it skittering away. He gasps, somehow still trying to defend the cage, even after all this.

“Trust me, they don’t pay you enough,” she says, as he presses his remaining uninjured hand against his leg, but it’s far too late for him to avoid losing consciousness, not with the amount of blood spilled.

If no one gets him medical care, it’s going to be a short while until he bleeds out, until there’s nothing she can do, but it’s not quite remorse she feels there.

An alarm sounds deeper in the building. Katya holds the rifle against her chest, a familiar movement for a familiar gun. “If they start shooting, hit the floor with her,” she commands. “That’s a lot smaller of a target than you standing.”

He nods, already moving swiftly towards the hallway, and there are lines of stress on his face, lines of hurt, and he’s not going to be able to carry her long if they have to run. His stitches will burst, and he’ll be set back days, and he’ll have trouble with any transportation and caring for Selene and —

The alarm blares, and Katya nods for him to go first, holding the rifle out behind them, but no footsteps follow them, so she swings in front, giving Selene wide cover.

Selene’s fingers twitch when she walks by, as if reaching for her, but Katya’s not gonna risk that. Get Selene back home, get her in gloves and a blanket, and Katya will give her all the affection she possibly can.

But not until they’re out.

Her flashlight sweeps over the hallway in front of them, and there’s the doorway, miraculously unguarded, and it can’t be this easy, it can’t, and —

She kicks open the door, the alarm blaring, and the cold wind slaps her across her face.

Across the small clearing, holding a glowing ball of energy in one hand and a knife in the other, stands the Magician, staring at Not-Thomas across the glowing lines of runes in the dirt.

The Magician’s eyes flicker to Katya, then to Pieter behind her, lit by the glow in his hand, and his face gleams. “Should have known you weren’t dead.”

Not-Thomas stands, unhurt and unruffled, but for the red sheen in his eyes as he doesn’t stop looking at the Magician.

Katya tightens her grip on the rifle, swinging it over to blind the Magician, but he doesn’t flinch, not even with the additional light.

Slow, his hands dance in the air, sketching out runes, fingers barely moving, like they’re in the most minute, intense game of charades.

Next to the Magician, a large shape lumbers up, crystalline and glittering of stone.

A Golem. Different than the one who went down under the mountain, than the one buried in stone. With an expressionless face and glittering crystals for eyes, he stands a foot and a half taller than anyone in the clearing.

In the crystal eyes, there’s something resembling ambivalence, something resembling fear, something resembling unwillingness. As if Katya can read all the emotions and pull them from such an expressionless face.

The Magician waves his hand, and the Golem turns towards them.

“Oh fuck this,” Katya murmurs, then fires, an ear bursting ratatatat, at the Magician.

The bullets glow orange, stopping in midair, a foot away from him, which of course he’d be able to do, but she can see the set of his jaw, from the stance of his feet. This costs him.

“Take Selene and go,” she whispers, and doesn’t look back, taking aim at the Golem.

Of course, the bullets ping off of it, bits of stone flinting off with each strike, but it doesn’t show any pain. Doesn’t show any sign of being distressed, that the flakes of stone splintering off affect it at all.

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