Seemed like a good idea at the time. Now it might cost me my life before I get to do something grand and heroic with it.
“You paid for a return trip,” Noeve says, and I shrug.
“If I die, keep the change.” I wiggle in my seat again, trying to find a more comfortable position while I stuff my mouth full of meat. “Perhaps use it to invest in some Creators-damn padding.”
It’s been seven slumbers since I saw him last. Since I heard him play Mah and Pah’s song, dropped my shield like a battle-weary soldier, cried in his arms until I finally drifted off, then woke wrapped in Slátra’s tail. Though there’s still a fresh meal set by the door each slumber, accompanied by a small stone carving I add to my growing collection of pint-sized pity-dragons I want to toss against the wall, there’s no song.
No him.
Every time I walk around the corner and find the hall empty, I’m weighed down by another brick of humiliation I throw into my punches.
My kicks.
Veya says I’m improving. If that’s what I get for trying to beat the shit out of this feeling, I’ll take it.
Tucked in one of the quieter wind tunnels, I stuff my head through the hole in the wall and peer down the rubbish chute, face twisting at the sour reek wafting up from the trogg’s lair.
I sigh, pull my head back, and unravel a length of rope from where it’s bound around my shoulder, attaching the large metal hook to the chute’s lip. I toss the rope down the hole, hoping it’s long enough to skim the top of whatever rubbish pile I’m about to become uncomfortably familiar with.
“Veya, you know what?” I mutter to myself. “You’re marvelous, but you really screwed yourself with this one.”
In the future, I intend to make much better decisions. Preferably ones that don’t land me in one of Gore’s rubbish chutes, preparing to have a conversation with a creature that nests somewhere near the top of the food chain.
With another sigh, I give the rope a tug, then climb into the hole feetfirst, slowly lowering myself down the chute’s lengthy throat toward a blue glow radiating from below. The warming air thickens with the stench of sour, rotten things, and the underside of my tongue tingles.
If I vomit all over my leathers, the trogg won’t take me seriously.
I swallow a wad of bile, tipping my head back while I try to keep it down.
Next time life throws me a magical bangle, I’m just going to put it in my jewelry box.
Wherever it is.
Reaching the opening, I ease down a touch farther, dangling midair above a pile of reeking trash.
“Fuck me,” I mutter, casting my wide-eyed gaze around the large cavern, taking in the ceiling—a splintered mess of stalactites. From their tapered tips hang long, blue, dripping strings that are draped across the ceiling like the threads of a web, igniting Gore’s refuse in a bold glow. Mountains of it.
I quirk a brow, noticing how there are separate, very organized piles for things: old chairs, clothing, footwear, plates, glass—
Everything.
She’d work wonders in my sleepsuite.
My attention snags on a shimmery pile in the distance. A stack of glinting goods.
Maybe I won’t have to confront the trogg after all. I just have to spend the rest of my life hunting through that pile. Silently. While living off trash to sustain myself.
I sigh.
This entire plan is flawed and I’m going to die a horrible death.
A dense thump attacks me from above, and I glance up, struck with the terrible realization that something is currently plummeting down the chute above me. The mostly abandoned chute. Midslumber.
Probably a dead body.
Groaning, I loosen my grip on the rope and plunge toward the pile of trash. Colliding with the clanking, slushy mound, I roll sideways, tumbling groundward, simultaneously coating myself in an oily fluid I refuse to acknowledge.
I clamber to the ground, plucking fruit peels off my tunic and egg shells from my hair, tiptoeing along the frail pathway threaded between the mounds—pointing myself in the direction of the glinting treasure pile I saw in the distance.
I’m struck with the sound of something chewing. Of popping, crunching, slurping sounds that chill me to the bone.
I pause for a moment, listen, then soften my steps, moving closer to the pile of mostly broken chairs and peeking around the edge of it.
My blood chills.
Crouched on a nest of ramshackle garbage is the velvet trogg—bony knees up around her fiercely tapered ears as she brings a piece of chair to her lipless mouth, wraps her maw around it, and bites. More popping, cracking, splintering sounds, her second set of arms preening her oil-slicked hair that falls about her bony body, coiled around her limbs like a nest.