Page 12 of Devil's Doom

“He is ruthless!” he sobs. “He doesn’t just slay people, but their souls, too! He’s powerful enough to cause true death, and he does it to anyone who stands in his way. He’s evil!”

“Well, that sounds like Woland,” I say with a sigh, and the utopek shrieks and covers his face at the sound of the devil’s name. “All right. You’ve answered all my questions. I want one more thing from you.”

He blinks at me wetly, looking so pitiful, I feel a small stab of guilt, but then I remember he tried to rape me, and my guilt disappears.

“W-what do you want?”

“Once I free you, you’re going to bring me a pot. I know your bottomless pond is filled with treasure, and you must have pots in there. I need one that’s big enough to make soup in but small enough for me to carry with ease. Will you do it? Swear on your soul.”

“I swear on my soul,” he says at once. “Please, just let me go! You can gather walnuts here all you want and I’ll never bother you again, I swear.”

I will my invisible pitchfork into nothing, and the utopek scrambles to his feet, racing into the pond. He jumps in with a big splash. A moment later, a black, iron pot shoots out of the water, flying right at my head. I duck to avoid it.

“You just wait,” I mutter angrily, gathering my walnuts. “I’ll come back here once my power is back and I’ll make you regret it.”

The pond is utterly still, and in the east, storm clouds gather. I sigh and trudge back toward the forest, my feet aching, my body weary.

After a cold, rainy night spent in a burrow under a sprawling bush, I’m miserable and angry. Even though the sip of Woland’s blood healed all my shallow wounds and scratches, being homeless takes its toll.

At least I manage to disguise my hair. I don’t dare enter the forest again, and instead, I make a small fire in an abandoned, overgrown orchard, where I cook the walnut shells into a brown dye. My hair is now a few shades darker than normally, but I don’t feel too confident about the result. My eyes still give me away, like they always do.

When no other ideas come to mind, I pick a small branch to transform into a narrow rag that I tie around my head, covering my purple eye. I’ll just pretend I only have one, though I’m afraid the eye patch won’t make me any less conspicuous than my different eye colors.

I spend the day trudging through rain-soaked fields. Huge, dark shapes fly over a few times, hidden behind clouds, and lightning hits somewhere beyond the city, thunder rolling until the ground vibrates beneath my feet.

As I shake from cold and hunger, I wonder if it’s Perun, flying with his dragons and punishing the world. Or is it a battle? Is Woland somewhere out there, fighting the god of thunder and trying to take down his abomination of a fence?

I imagine Woland laughing in the face of the storm, his white teeth flashing in his dark face, his eyes taunting. I imagine the swish of his tail as he gets ready to fight Perun, the most powerful of the gods.

When my heart flutters with an uncomfortable feeling, I have to stop and think before I realize what it is.Worry.Stupid as it is, my heart worries for Woland, and I grit my teeth, trying to exorcise the unwelcome emotion as if it’s an evil spirit.

Begone. Shoo! We hate him, and that’s it!

When the toll rolls through Slawa in the early evening, it takes maybe a quarter of the magic humming in my bones. It’s still taxing, but I am left with enough power to feel confident I’ll survive.

Night falls when I reach the first dwellings at the foot of the mountain. Ramshackle cottages are surrounded by small, scraggly gardens, the paths between the wooden fences muddy from a day of raining. Colorful, cracked pots hang upside down on the sharpened tips of the fence staves.

Firelight flickers in the tiny windows of a few houses, but most of them don’t even have windows. The wet air smells of wood smoke and excrement, a few wooden outhouses radiating pungent stink.

Before, I wondered what they ate in the city. Now I realize eating isn’t a problem as big as shitting, since the outhouses likely overflow. Pity they aren’t bottomless like the utopek’s pond.

Up the hill, some of the roads are paved with uneven stones, but others are mudslides in this weather. I hear distant shouts, an unpleasant cackle that raises the hair on my nape, and a baby’s wail, quickly silenced.

Exhaustion makes me go slow, but I doggedly climb the widest, cobbled road. It winds among the buildings, which stand level in some places, the slope so gentle, it’s not even a slope. As I come higher, however, I encounter a much steeper area. The houses on either side of the road are uneven, their walls tall on one side, while on the other, the roof gables are level with my hips.

These are stone buildings, clearly older and better made than the rickety ones at the foot of the mountain. I suspect the city was always here, but Perun’s decision to tax it so mildly created a wild influx of new people.

It stops raining sometime through the night. Orbs of light, similar to those Woland called forth to light the scene when I got on my knees for him, hover in front of a few better looking dwellings.

People come out now that it stopped raining, despite the late hour. Dark shapes scuttle to the outhouses, someone rummages in a heap of trash, someone laughs, and a distant melody, fast and reckless, floats down the mountain. I look up, and the sky is clear and brilliant with unfamiliar constellations.

Exhaustion tangles between my knees, and I stumble a few times against protruding cobblestones. I don’t know what I’m hoping to find until I notice a brightly lit establishment ahead. It’s a large, rectangular building, taller than its neighbors. Gentle, hypnotic music pours through the open doors, and a few windows upstairs glow with mellow candlelight.

It seems warm and inviting, and my chest tightens with powerful yearning. For food, warmth, peace. A safe place out of the cold, with four walls and a roof to give me shelter.

Outside, long tables sit under an awning, a few people of various races and sizes sprawling on benches and smoking pipes. White smoke curls above them in lazy whorls, their eyes either closed or glassy. The scent drifts to me, diluted by the cool night air. It’s acidic yet sweet, the odor like nothing I’ve ever smelled.

Above the open doors hangs a wooden sign engraved with the shape of a large pair of breasts. Underneath is a smaller sign, depicting a bed.

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