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But I’d learned to control my own power in the first days of my existence, and I used the same techniques to wrestle this new ability into a tool I could use to nourish my own fading form, and carry the suffering kraken to the place that might heal him.

I could feel how near to true death he was, though. Whatever strength he’d given me, he could ill afford it. I’d come close to striking a death blow on the glacier just before he’d stabbed me. Now, our powers were oddly combined, his seas and my storm and ice working together to keep us alive, though it seemed there was not quite enough to keep both of us conscious. Not until we reached the ocean, at least. I could feel a tiny hint of energy stretching toward me from the small particles of seawater that blew across the land, even as my own strength was sapped by Edan.

Edan. The burning stench of him lingered at my throat from my unhealing wound. It was almost humorous that he’d failed to kill me all those years ago when he had tried, and come so close to success with one of his blood-quenched daggers in the hands of a mortal beast. Though this Lusca had been a worthy adversary.

I felt the kraken wake, though he was too sapped to converse. I knew what he needed to give him the strength to hold on as I walked, human slow, on the ice. A distraction.

Knowledge.

“I will tell you about the battle my brother and I had long ago, and his abilities. When we reach his island, I will be at my weakest. You will need to know what you face.”

I dragged my awkward, human-shaped feet across the slick surface, following the pull of the sea and listening to the whispers of the ice below me to find the easiest path. Even thinking of where I traveled, to the center of Edan’s brutal power, had me slowing my steps.

“We came into being almost at the same time, his fire first, then my ice immediately afterward. We balanced each other, as the universe insists. Others like us, though with less power, came into existence soon after, all the elements finding places to play here on this new world. We all built our own homes. Mine was a glacier as wide as a hundred rivers, with blue ice the color of⁠—”

“Of the Southern Seas,” he rasped, before falling silent again.

I nodded. “Edan’s home was nearer those seas, his fires happiest in the warmer climes, close to fuel to burn and heated by the sun. Somehow, he became enamored of the insects… ah, the humans that played with fire. He watched them, even moving closer to my domain in the cold seasons to examine their work with metal and flame. He began making blades and shifted his home to where it now lies. He built a place to work with his own fire, but instead of burning wood or coal rock to feed it, he tapped into the power of the earth itself.

“He began consuming the world we all needed to survive, to feed his desire to make a perfect weapon. When our siblings confronted him about his greed, he smote them with raw power. He’d grown too strong by tapping the world’s heated core, and some of our siblings were injured beyond their ability to regenerate.”

“They are dead?”

I did not know, but repeated a thought I’d had before. “Some of them had sexual intimacy with humans. Many of those humans became priests of their god-lovers. Traces of power pooled in the places where my lesser siblings lay with their humans, so perhaps they are not completely extinguished.”

I wondered what would occur if I lay with my thief. I could not seem to shake the need to go to her and bind her to me. The mere thought of entering her⁠—

“Y-you?” The kraken only managed one word, but I understood what he asked.

“I never had human lovers, or lovers of any kind. I never understood the desire to…” I swallowed and shifted the kraken on my back. He was wriggling, and when he spoke again, his voice was filled with mirth.

“Virgin?”

I snorted. “If you mean to ask if I have quenched the prodigious knots I carry on my cock—with some effort, as they are quite large and cumbersome—I have not. But only because I never desired to take form, and only did so in order to strike the blow against my brother.” Sadness filled me. “I did not want to harm him. I had no quarrel with him. We were in balance, but when he went mad…”

I walked in silence until the sun dipped close to the horizon, then began again. “In his madness, Edan attempted to send a burning river of fire to destroy my domain, but I had spent my time creating a home far too cold and perfect for molten rock to destroy. His efforts tainted the air, though, and layered dark ash in my ice. So I fought him. I circled the island where he was forging the blade you struck me with. I spun a frigid storm around him and froze the sea itself. I trapped him using rock and ice and air to bind him to the molten earth, though at great cost to my own power. I retreated once he was contained, and spent thousands of years healing my wounds.

“Then the one the humans called the Goddess dropped down into this world from the moon. I did not pay much attention to her, but I believe Edan did. The wind told me of his efforts to breed her tears⁠—”

“Tears?” The kraken shifted in my arms, and I held him to face the closest sea, so he could breathe easier.

“Omegas. They are called her daughters. That is ridiculous, of course.”

“I don’t understand. Tears?”

I stifled a sigh. For all his power, Lusca was a mortal creature and had limited understanding, as they all must. “I have heard the story they tell of the moon goddess. That she left her children here and returned to the moon,” I scoffed, though the effort made the wound in my neck burn for a moment. “No god or goddess worth their power would do such a thing. I would never let go of anyone or anything I have claimed.”

He didn’t argue, which I took as a sign he understood my claim on the little spy was secure. “He wants to breed her,” he gasped. “Can he?”

“I did not believe so. No deity can sire or give birth to humans. Or at least, we couldn’t until the moon goddess left the world.” I pondered what had happened to create the Omegas. After the seal man Lachlan had told the story of the ones who had been locked away in Starlak, I’d been moved to tears. Tears my little spy had stolen from the waves, though most of them had been washed back into the sea. I would need to collect them.

“Then why would She call the Omegas Her daughters?”

“She could not have given birth to them. No matter how beautiful some of them may be.” I thought of my own little spy, and how soft her skin had been. How bright her gray eyes, like the most dangerous of storm clouds. Her perfect, silken hair had been as dark as mine was pale, and I wanted to braid them together. Tie her to me and allow her to choke me again.

I smiled as I remembered those small, soft hands on my neck as she squeezed, and how she had marked me with her little tooth. I carried it inside me, still, along with the hoard she had lost to my own superior thieving.

“Why does he believe he can breed her?” Lusca’s voice was growing stronger as I continued walking.