Red Hands (editing)

Chapter 5: Unworthy

We sat around a long table in the hall of the outer guard, feeding on dry bread, stew, and mead with the officers we'd fought alongside to defend the wall. Silent and starving, I inhaled my portion and reached across the table for another, tearing off a chunk of bread with my fangs like I always did. The bread was stale and hard, and it tasted like sand in my mouth. When I dipped it in the stew, it went down like mud. I could barely swallow, and whatever I managed to eat roiled in the bottom of my stomach. Being surrounded by the First Circle Elysian guard and the rest of the Abluvion unit set me on edge.

"Do you ever stop eating?" Cordelia sneered from across the table, wrinkling up eir perfect round nose.

"Wish I could, but all that panmagik I used savin' y'all's asses drained my energy."

"Your magic uses energy?" Aamon Astaroth spoke with such vigor that she dipped her identifier tag, tangled in her lava curls, into the gravy pot on the table in front of her.

Beside Aamon, their brother Andras peered at me with glowing red eyes, his prosthetic jaw locked in a frown. "What happens if you don't feed?"

"You draw your magik from an ancient source o' energy. Daemons manipulate magik usin' their connection to the daerealm, 'nd fairfolk through faeland," I said. I shot a look at Wylo and then Natalex. "But pandorans, we could be anyone, any race o' being. Where d'you think our magic comes from?"

"Excuse me," Mayflower said, holding a small hand over eir painted mouth to stop a giggle, "but it's common knowledge the deities abandoned the world long ago - Or perhaps impurities like you aren't taught that by your parents?"

Lightlake let out an amused snort, and he and Mayflower erupted into cackling laughter. Even Aamon sniggered from beside Mayflower, taking a sip from her goblet to avoid a ruder outburst.

I forced down a sigh, but before I could retort, Lovelace placed a hand on my leg and cut me off. "Then the food, pet, it supplements energy?"

Lovelace was trying to protect me, but I wanted to correct the officers around the table. It didn't matter whether they considered themselves enlightened, believed the divine existed, or thought celestials controlled the cosmic order of life. The Elysian crown'd been hiding the truth to protect their twisted agenda of subjugating sentient beings so they could continue scrabbling for power. What'd happen if the elite understood that panmagik was part of every one of us and that anyone, even a purebred goblin like Embrose Grimlock, could be a pandoran? Panmagik didn't come from another dimension like Lovelace's daemagik. It was in our blood, inside all of us.

I didn't say that. Instead, I nodded to Lovelace, my stomach churning as I took another bite of stale bread. It felt like sandpaper against my throat and I chased it with a full glass of mead. "Panmagik requires sacrifice," I said. My gaze went to Natalex, who was shrinking into her chair. Then my eyes rose to Florian Lightlake's. "'Nd those who wield it, through dimension or divinity, will suffer the consequences."

It was Aamon who laughed this time, throwing back their head of black hair, now smoking like molten rock. Their black skin was alight with fiery freckles, sparkling off of her like stars. "There are worse things than divine consequences," she said, "and if you haven't learned that already, you will soon."

"I don't think so," Wolfe spoke up from down the table. "Just look at the state of Elysia right now. We abandoned the divine, and they abandoned us."

"That happened so long ago though," said Officer Asha Aspen. "Only the temples honor them now."

"No, you're all wrong," I said, and as if my voice was magnetic, all eyes turned to me. "The divine never left this realm except to visit others."

An Elysian soldier clunked his goblet on the table with a wry smile. "Think you're a wise one, huh?"