Page 99 of Katya and the Young God

There’s a flash, and Not-Thomas is back, right on the other side of the runes, his face impassive. He nods at her, like he’s merely acknowledging another person passing on the street. Like she isn’t on the ground, injured and battered and covered in mud.

But the Magician’s back is to him, like he didn’t sense his appearance. “You realize he’s just going to do that to you again,” he says, crouching next to her and all but plucking the revolver out of her hand, throwing it away. It clatters in the underbrush, splashing into the mud.

Katya tries to struggle up, but her shoulder gives again. She’s still on the other side of the rune mark, she can’t just be teleported away, and —

He pushes at her injured shoulder, an idle motion, one most people could shrug off, but it sends sparks up behind her eyes, her hand spasming.

It takes a certain sort of person to do something like that, to so clearly cause pain out of boredom, out of revenge, instead of searching for the thing he just lost. It tells on him, tells his priorities, tells her how to manipulate him.

So Katya lets herself huddle down, makes herself small, like she’s hurt, like she’s weak, and sees a gleam in his eyes, some sort of sick satisfaction.

She pulls herself inwards, her legs to her chest, like she’s some simpering innocent, and he buys it. Her hands go to her boots, to the heel, and he doesn’t get it.

He leans over her, so close she can smell the blood from his shoulder, and the Golem is right behind him but unmoving, like he’s merely there to intimidate.

“But don’t you think that the mighty Organization will try to get you back?” He says, like lording her workplace over her is the way to go. “Don’t you think —"

She presses down on her heel, to the secret small compartment, her finger looping through the hilt of her tiny punching dagger. She jerks it out, then jerks it into his chest in one smooth, clean motion.

He spasms around her hand, the glowing magic sputtering out, his eyes wide.

“Never assume I’m helpless,” Katya whispers, and her voice rasps over her throat, past the pain in her shoulder and the ringing in her head.

The Magician stares down at her, and she jerks the knife up, towards his lungs, and he gives a tattered, ratty gasp, like the air has been forced out of his lungs, popped like a balloon.

He falls, half onto her, and she has to shoulder him off, pulling out the punching dagger with a ragged, wet jerk. It’s a slick, meaty sound, one that brings an instinctive bile to her throat.

He gasps at her, useless, on the forest floor, blood mixing with the mud, hands spasming around the wound, like there’s a chance magic can fix him. Sparks, literal sparks, arc between his hands and the wound, but it’s not enough, and never will be.

“More are coming,” Not-Thomas speaks, voice monotonous, from the other side of the runes. “Hospital or the cabin?”

“Cabin,” Katya pants out, trying to push herself up off the slick muddy floor, the Magician rattling and gagging next to her, and it takes more than one attempt before she gets her feet underneath her.

The Golem still looms, eyes still glittering, but doesn’t move. She gives it a leery glance, before stumbling over the line of runes.

Not-Thomas all but catches her, and immediately twists her out of the way, and in the space between two breaths she is back outside her cabin.

Her legs almost give out again, but she grits her teeth and keeps her feet underneath her.

“Care to tell me what you’re doing with an actual god?” Not-Thomas hisses, under his breath, still supporting her upright. “I don’t know what the hell you’re planning.”

“She’s a child,” Katya says, and she’s so tired she wants to melt into the damp forest floor. “She’s a child, and they were torturing her.”

She can’t wait until she no longer has to say those words.

He watches her, watches her face, as if searching for something, some sort of clue in her expression. Some sort of motivation, some sort of magic, something.

“Be careful,” he says simply. “She’ll kill you with the barest of touches, and you don’t know how far her reach exists beyond that.”

“Obviously,” Katya says, and he supports her as she starts to stumble towards her cabin.

“Child gods need support, and unless you’re about to start a religion, you’re going to have a rough time,” he says, and it might be the single most useful thing she’s heard, something concrete, something accessible, and she remembers that the Archdemon is old. Millennia old. “Don’t let her consume you.”

“Got it,” Katya says, and he opens the door for her, which is good because Katya’s not entirely certain she can manage a doorknob at the moment. “Thanks.”

He nods, but not crossing into the cabin, instead staring at her, paying no attention to Pieter, to Selene, nothing. “Miri would be upset if you died,” he offers.

And that’s really his motivation, really the only reason why he’s helping them.

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