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When he hit me, his body had the force of an earthquake. He was on top of me in one instant, a massive collapsing mountain range that hit me with full force.

I went flying, my body moving through the air like a bird taking flight. My body hit the wall of the cavern. I hadn’t known there was one, hadn’t been able to conceive of one, but I hit it all the same.

The rock was more solid than the home of the Krustavian dwarves. If I had been in my old body, I would have broken from the impact. My bones would have turned to shards and my mind would have been destroyed.

I slid down the wall, feeling my bones straighten under my skin, my flesh holding even as it began to glow with the heat of the fire dragon’s flames. I could withstand this. I had withstood worse. I pushed up, my arms trembling.

Under the destructive power of the scorpions’ poison, my body had become stronger, and under Ox’s rage, I felt my own begin to heat. I burst into flames and he laughed, the booming sound echoing through the spiral of unmoving animalia.

I gritted my teeth, grinding through the pain because it would only make me stronger, it would only help me to rise. I would become stronger, become more because the pain he dealt me had made me so.

“You think you can kill me? I am exactly what you have made me,” I said. I would not shout. My mother did not shout.

Around me at the far edge of the temple, beyond the known animalia, were unformed statues: animalia who had yet to have life breathed into them. They were potential, like eggs.

I brushed my hands over one and felt life inside it—a beating heart and yearning.

It filled with color, sparkling gradients of it filling the stone. Under my fingers, it began to take shape, a form that fit the yearning inside it.

Then the ground under my feet began to rumble, the vibrations of a mountain tearing itself free from the earth and throwing itself at an enemy. It shoved through the other animalia, Ox pushing aside enemies and allies alike as he sought me out.

“You are not free to do as you wish,” he thundered. “You are ours. You belong to us.”

When he reached me, I tensed, baring my teeth, the ocean of power sparkling and glowing inside my chest. I screamed, loud and harsh and desperately feral.

Thirty-Seven

Ox plunged forward, his horns lowered and ready to gore me. I didn’t hesitate, reaching into my chest and finding the ocean of power waiting for me. I screamed again, loud and impossibly desperate. Because I had survived him once, my bones forming stronger under his assault, and I would survive him again.

Only there was a yelp, a screech like a child, and Fox was behind me, plunging a blade into my back. She made the sound again, the noise deafening me.

Pain speared me where her knife pierced me, and wet blood soaked my clothes. Red splashed onto the white floor when Fox pulled the blade free. It stained the stone, then spread like an infection across the marble.

I screamed, and Owl was on me, landing from above, talons slicing into my cheeks, her expression unyielding as she pulled apart my skin.

“Foolish mortal child. You think to tell us what to do? You think you have the right to correct us when you are no more than an infant in our eyes?” She tore out a chunk of my hair. “You belong to us. We made you and if you will not serve us, then we will destroy you and everything you think to love.”

Crane landed next to her and her long beak reached for my eyes. I was going to be consumed whole and my body would recover but I knew my mind would not, that what Kacha had done would combine with this and I would have too little left of myself to keep hold.

Because there was something else beneath my skin, rumbling like a roar, shivering into my consciousness.

“Are you ready to beg for your life, yet?” Fox whispered in my ear. “Are you ready to whimper and beg and realize your place in this too-wide world?”

I laughed as my skin burned where Owl tore free another piece. I laughed until my stomach hurt, my body shaking as I lifted my head up, feeling Crane’s beak on one of my eyes.

“I will not beg. What mercy could you, whose hearts are stained and soiled with your own greed and vanity, offer?” I managed the words even as they tore more strips from my flesh, even as I felt the heat of their rage taken out on me.

“You dare to speak to us this way?” Owl pulled back. “You are not worth the gifts we gave you and if you are not worth them, then we will take them back.”

I smiled, watching as her face twisted in anger once more. They swarmed me, all the animalia whose rage had been banked for so long. They would take it out on me.

But I pulled my own anger to me. I let it boil, let my flesh grow anew, let everything in me set fire to them. Owl’s feathers caught, the scream cut off as she hacked up smoke and ash. She pulled away, but was trapped against me by the angry mob she had built.

My bones reformed, my muscles growing, my flesh stronger even as I shouted above the chaotic noise they made.

“Try,” I said. “Try to best me. Try to win. I promise you will not.”

Ox shoved his way through, pushing so hard that he sent several animalia stumbling into each other. When he reached me, he grabbed hold of me, my shirt twisting tight around my neck as he swung me in a circle before launching me into the wall again.