Page 49 of Katya and the Young God

The buzzing sensation, the sound of something going wrong at the back of her head, the audio sensation that they shouldn’t be there, rises up over Katya, and she doubles over, her boots sliding on the stone floor.

A glance shows Feketer, Rory, the Magician, and the human cavers in similar states.

But Pieter and the small human caver stand still, at the giant stone box, both looking in, both in a crushing silence.

The moment, the absolute moment, Katya gets her breath back, she straightens, jerking herself upright with more force of will than she would have ever thought she had.

“It’s a body,” Charlotte says, her voice stealing over all of them, over the buzz behind their throats, over the carved stone floor and the bones imbedded therein. “It’s the body of a little girl.”

Pieter raises his eyes to Katya’s, and there’s horror in them, a horror she’s never seen.

“A body couldn’t make that noise,” Feketer says, straightening, as if all he had to do was crick his back up to a normal position. “A body couldn’t...” he trails off.

Pieter reaches his hand inside the box, inside the crypt, and the buzzing abruptly stops, and the absence of it jerks Katya again, and she’s moving, she’s moving towards the box, her orders suddenly flashing through her mind. “Stop —"

There’s a thud, there’s a quick intake of breath, and then whatever is in the box sits up and screams.

Katya catches a glimpse of tangled black hair, of wide eyes, of the scared face of a child, before arms dart out, clawing at Pieter by the shoulder, trying to pull herself up, up out of the box, and her skin is slicked red with blood, and —

She heaves herself onto the lip of the box and reaches out like a lost child. Like a child in need of saving, like a scared little kid in want of their mother, and —

“Oh my god,” Charlotte says, reaching back. “Come here, oh my god...”

The moment her hand reaches the child, touches the blood-slicked skin, she drops.

Just.

Drops.

Body hitting the floor with a wet thud.

The child recoils back in horror and grabs onto Pieter, clinging, throwing her arms around his neck and burying her face into his shoulder with a shuddering gasp.

Katya spins around the box, and Charlotte’s body lays broken on the floor, eyes open and unblinking and obviously dead.

Pieter backs away, holding the child, and his eyes are wild. Wild but very much alive.

There’s a beat, there’s a breath, where his arms tighten around the child in a way that’s clearly protective, before Katya puts her hands up, not approaching him.

Just a breath, and then the rest of the room explodes into movement.

“Is she okay, is she okay!” The one remaining caver bursts forward, knees hitting the ground next to his friend, cradling her head in his lap.

“Why is there a child?” Calm, somehow calm, Rory steps forward, towards Pieter and the child. Pieter takes a step back, swinging the bloody girl away from the group, away from their eyes.

“You can’t just claim a power like that!” Feketer says, loud, at the same time the Magician clicks open a small copper knife.

“Stay back,” Pieter says, and his voice is unsteady, a tremor in it. “Everyone stay back.”

The Magician steps forward, holding the knife openly outward. “Put her down,” he demands, and his hands are sketching some sort of rune, something too fast for Katya to identify

The girl, her black hair tangled and ragged and hanging loose around her face, looks up for just a split second, her brown eyes meeting Katya’s. A little bit of fear, a little bit of awe, and a little bit of wildness in her eyes.

Katya’s had a lot of training, had a lot of experience in identifying others, in identifying someone who is not a normal human, but whatever is in that little girl’s eyes is beyond her. Some mix of power, some mix of fear, some mix of pure hunger.

And she’s a child. A child, somehow sealed away in this crypt of a cave for who knows how many years.

She looks maybe six.

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