Coen stiffened, his hand whipping up over my face, covering my mouth. “They shouldn’t have heard you say that,” he muttered.
“I don’t know,” another voice answered, evidently unaware of Coen’s words. “Check in the storage, I’ll search the entrance chamber. Someone might have followed us in.”
“Don’t move,” Coen cautioned, as a door swung open, flooding light into a room that I hadn’t even realised I’d been standing in, thanks to the darkness.
It was a tiny room and all five Abcurses were squashed inside. Coen had turned just enough for me to make out the others: Siret was standing by the door, his arm bent and notched against the doorjamb as he casually stared at the guard. Aros was behind him—looking uncomfortably cramped against the wall—and Yael was on the other side of the door. Rome was behind Coen, attempting to tuck his massive arms into his sides. He looked like he was literally wedged in between cupboards. We would probably need machinery to get him out.
They were all looking at the Minateur guard, who was passing his eyes about the space, disregarding the five massive bodies squished within.
“Will he come in?” Rome grunted to Siret.
“Of course not,” Siret replied, as the guard’s eyes came to rest on me.
The guard paused, and then his eyes widened. “Dweller? What the hell are you doing in here?”
And then he took a step inside.
“What the hell?” Siret seemed outraged that the guard had disobeyed his prediction.
He reached behind him, and Aros took that as a sign to grapple with something on one of the shelves, slapping it into Siret’s outstretched hand.
“Oh crap,” I said to the guard, noticing the old frying pan. “You shouldn’t have taken that step.”
The guard opened his mouth to reply, but the frying pan slammed into his face before he could get any words out.
“Could you not kill him?” I asked Siret, wrenching out of Coen’s arms. “He didn’t really do anything wrong.”
Coen grabbed a hold of the back of my shirt, indicating that I hadn’t so much wrenched out of his arms as he had allowed me out of his arms. And now he was holding me back again.
“He disobeyed Trickery’s power,” Coen reasoned, as Siret raised the frying pan threateningly.
“C’mon,” I begged, trying to take another step. The hand in my shirt still held me back. “He didn’t know he was disobeying your power. He didn’t do it deliberately. Also, I’m a little confused. How was your power supposed to stop him from coming into the room?”
“It wasn’t.” Rome sounded gruff and uncomfortable, which wasn’t a surprise, since there was a shelf trying to cut into his midsection. I felt sorry for the shelf. “He just masked the room to look like there was nobody in here. He wasn’t supposed to see you, dweller.”
“Did I break Siret’s power?” I asked, a little shocked. I was pretty good at breaking things, but this would have to be the first time I’d broken a god’s magic.
Was that even possible?
“Of course it’s not possible.” Siret sounded a little defensive, and he looked like he wanted to hit the guard again, his grip tightening on the handle of the frying pan in preparation.
“Well it’s not his fault—oh my gods, is he bleeding?” I had started toward the fallen guard, only to notice the slow pool of maroon liquid that was creeping across the store-room floor.
Siret lowered the pan, probably picking up on the note of hysteria in my voice. I knew, on some level, that the Abcurses were technically above reproach, since they were gods and everything. That still didn’t prevent the panic from creeping up on me. I was sure that someone would walk in at any moment and find us like this, and then we would all be sacrificed to the gods.
Which just proved how unreasonable I had become.
Siret stepped in front of the body just as I lurched forward, but a voice outside the room caused us all to come up short.
“Gary—you in there?”
“No wonder he went and got himself knocked out with a name like that,” Yael said, drawing my eyes for a moment. He spoke at a normal volume, so he either didn’t care about being found out, or else Siret was still masking us. Or … attempting to mask us.
“Is the body hidden—” Aros started to question, before the door opened again and another man stepped into the room.
He stepped on his friend’s finger and didn’t even flinch, so I supposed we were all cloaked again. Until his eyes found me, just as the other guard’s had.
“Dweller?” he questioned, a click before a frying pan clanged loudly against his face.
“Stop doing that!” I yelled at Siret.
The new guard fell onto the old one, forming a small pile of lank limbs in front of the door.
“What else am I supposed to do?” Siret asked. “Our powers are getting stupidly weak. Persuasion’s magic probably won’t work—it takes less effort to alter what a person sees than it does to change their will.”
“You made that sound like a super reasonable explanation on purpose,” I accused, frowning.
He managed to stop his smirk from appearing, but I could still see it in his eyes. I briefly considered how I would be able to get revenge on him for always being on the point of laughing at me.
“Careful, Soldier.” He swung the frying pan up, resting it over his shoulder. There was a little speck of blood on it. “It’s not just our power that we lose if we spend too long in Minatsol. We also tend to lose a little bit of reason right along with it.”
“Just a little?” I asked, my eyes on the frying pan. I wasn’t scared of them. Not even a little bit. Never had been. Other than the times when I thought they were trying to kill me—
“You always thought that we were trying to kill you, Rocks.” Aros spoke up from my side, arguing with my thoughts as though I had aired them out in the storage room for them all to have an opinion on.
“Do you really wonder why?” I flung my arm up, pointing at the frying pan.
A frying pan which seemed to have disappeared.
I flicked my eyes to the floor—to where the bodies should have been, and the anger deflated out of me on a sigh. “You’re wasting your power, Five.”
“Not quite,” he replied, just as the door burst open. Again.
I quickly jumped forward and grabbed Siret’s arms, yanking them toward me. No way in hell was there going to be a third body! He swore just as something heavy slammed into my foot with a loud clunk, and my leg buckled in pain. I released Siret and started hopping around, holding onto my foot after the frying pan attack. My grab had startled him enough that he’d dropped it.
I’d forgotten all about the next victim—right up until I hopped into him. Hands wound around my arms, steadying me, and a broad face grinned down at me.