“THE ANGEL OF DEATH”

1

There were some things even a goddess couldn’t do.

Those things included but weren’t limited to: bringing a person back to life, making someone fall in love, and apparently, doing their own dirty business. Not that Luz was blaming her Goddess, of course. It was just that she was rather pissed.

After all, her Goddess was the reason why Luz was in the mortal lands, dragging herself through inches of snow, forcing herself to restrict the miles of power she withheld in her bones. She could unleash hell upon this land if she wanted to, but she placated the darkness in her veins.

That wasn’t made easier by the fact that everything was so…tangible down here. The trees, covered in dusty snow, swaying in a silent melody; the snow, crunching under her bare feet; the barely-there footsteps of someone behind her…

Luz’s eyes flashed. In a heartbeat, she whipped around, streams of darkness preparing to choke—

“Oh,” Luz sighed, tension seeping out of her body all at once. “It’s just you.” The blasted wolf had been following her all morning.

He tilted his fluffy head at her, blinking his yellow eyes.

She’d been pissed at the creature originally, but perhaps a companion was exactly what she needed in this weather.

“Come.” She clicked her tongue at him, patting her side. He took a step back, eyes narrowing in distrust. She tried again, with a softer voice. “Come on. I’m not going to hurt you.”

Finally, after quite a bit of coaxing, the wolf came up, stepping beside her. For the first time, she noticed the distortion in his tail, the glitchy black mess that it had become. She grimaced. So that’s why he’d been following her.

Like calls to like.

The voice of Luz’s Goddess echoed in her head as she peered down at the wolf. Against her better judgment, she let a tendril of inky darkness seep from her fingers, wrapping around the wolf’s ruined tail and relieving him, temporarily, of the pain. The corruption down here was worse than she thought, but she had sworn she’d try to fix it to the best of her abilities.

“Ink,” she decided, after the ordeal was over. “Your name is Ink.”

Ink looked up at her, and Luz could’ve sworn he smiled.

Luz shoved the door of the tavern open, letting in an icy gust of air.

Ink padded in after her, sniffing the air tentatively. Inside, the patrons sat at broken tables, sipping giant mugs of whatever it was they served here and playing games with worn cards. No one paid her or Ink any notice as they stepped towards the counter,

The owner of the tavern—an old man with a fluffy white beard—was asleep, somehow, while standing up. Luz eyed him and rapped her knuckles on the counter.

He woke up instantly, eyes wide. “Huh?”