The Gembound: The Price of Keeping Chapter 13: Chapter 12 — The Hunt

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Chapter 12 — The Hunt "Find the ones who did this," Yara said. Her voice came out steadier than she felt. "Cultists. Monsters. Whatever's left that deserves it." The Scion's head swiveled toward her, green eyes unblinking. "Yes, I know." She pressed her palm against her chest where the Gem pulsed. "I know you're hungry. So am I. But we're doing this right." Right is a direction. Hunger has no compass. "Then I'll give it one," she said, and started toward the temple. The plaza still held the kneeling dead. Yara kept her eyes forward, looking past them toward the cultists she'd killed inside. The bodies would still be there. Fresh enough. Wrong enough that taking them wouldn't feel like murder. The temple doors hung crooked where she'd torn them open. She stepped through into smoke-stained darkness. The cultists lay where they'd fallen—three by the pillars, two near the altar, one sprawled across the dais. She approached the nearest one, the leader she'd blasted into the pillar. His mask had cracked. Beneath it, his face looked almost human. Young. Maybe twenty. And already dissolving. His skin had gone chalky, the same pale gray-white as the monsters in the streets. Where her blast had struck him, the flesh was crumbling inward, collapsing to fine powder that dusted the marble. His fingers were beginning to fragment, joints separating like they'd never been properly fused. She crouched beside him, watching the slow deterioration. Whatever the cultists had done to themselves—wearing those masks, channeling that power—had changed them. Made them into something that dissolved like the creatures they'd summoned. The Gem stirred in her chest, tasting the air. Hollow. Already spent. Nothing remains. "Nothing?" She looked at the other bodies. All of them are showing the same signs—skin going pale, flesh starting to powder at the edges. "They're dead. That's something." Dead is not food. Dead is empty shells. I need what burns, not ash. She stood, jaw tight. Six bodies. All useless. "Fine. Then we find something that's still burning." The goblin warren was a gutted shop near the eastern wall, the kind of place scavengers nested after the real residents fled or died. Yara had passed it earlier—heard the chittering, smelled the rank stink of too many bodies in too small a space. Now it was silent. She approached carefully, spear ready, the Scion padding behind her. The broken door hung open. No sounds came from inside. She stepped through. Goblins lay scattered across the floor. Eight, maybe ten. Small twisted bodies with too-long fingers and needle teeth. They'd torn into each other—claws and teeth marks everywhere, blood splattered across the walls. Some kind of feeding frenzy that had turned inward when there was nothing else left to kill. Fresh kills. Still warm. The Gem should have wanted them. Beasts. Animals. Barely aware. Feeding on these is like eating grass. "They're alive—" She stopped. Looked closer. None of them were breathing. The frenzy had been thorough. They'd killed each other completely. Her stomach cramped. She leaned against the wall, the hunger twisting tighter. "Where else?" she asked. "Where else can I look?" The Scion's tail swept across the floor, scattering goblin corpses. Anywhere there is fire still burning. Anywhere the light has not yet failed. "The Guard posts," she said. "They had barracks. Training yards. Someone has to be holding a position." The first Guard post was abandoned. Equipment scattered, doors hanging open, no bodies. They'd run when the temple exploded, or been called back to defend something more important. The second was worse. Four Guards lay in the courtyard, arranged in a defensive square like they'd made a last stand. Their armor was scorched black. The cobblestones beneath them had melted, then re-solidified in warped puddles of stone. Whatever hit them had been fast and absolute. Yara checked for breath anyway. Found none. The Gem pulsed once, irritated. Cold. Hours cold. You waste t