The young man drove his shovel into the earth until he sank below the surface. The hole was darker than the night above, but no less biting.
He bit his lower lip as he dug. If this is just another one of Father's schemes... No. This is my only chance. I have to get out of here.
The shovel clinked instead of slicing smoothly through the soil. His face lit up instantly, only to fall again a moment later. He crouched down carefully, brushing the dirt away with the flat of his hand... until something glowed.
The light was muted, like twilight, yet it flared against his hand, hot as fire. The young man began clawing around his discovery with his bare fingers. Even as his nails threatened to tear off, he didn't stop.
Finally, it was free of dirt. He cradled it in his open palm, cupping it with the other as if it might spill. When he instinctively sniffed it, the stench reminded him of dark urine.
That thought shattered as he flinched. First, his ears twitched, then his head jerked. He was certain he could hear many tiny voices down in the hole.
"Put me down, you scoundrel!" There it was again, louder now. "Are you deaf? You—yes, you. I'm talking to you," it said.
He swallowed hard and fixed his gaze back on his prize. A tooth, inhumanly large, was attached to a chain that gleamed silver through the grime. At last, the light faded.
He stared at the tooth, jaw slack... until it reared up and launched itself at him, tip first. It was as if it had been fired from a catapult. Before the young man could even recoil, the tooth bounced off his nose and plopped back into the mud.
"Deserved," the voice hissed.
The young man clutched his nose for a moment, watching the tooth hop away from him. Finally, he stood up.
"Hey, listen to me," he said, watching the tooth struggle to jump out of the hole. "You can't get out of here, can you? It would be wiser to cooperate, dear Tooth."
It almost looked as though the tooth turned around slowly. "'Dear Tooth'... decades in the dirt, and the best thing to happen to me is you."
So that's how it is? The young man dropped into a cross-legged position. Even though his nose still throbbed and the tooth kept ranting, his hands moved with calm precision.
He rummaged through his brown canvas bag until metal clinked. He pulled out a tankard, then a bottle of red wine. The glugging of the wine almost drowned out the tooth's bickering.
"The fact is, oh almighty Tooth," he interrupted the tirade, filling the mug halfway, "that without me, you'll rot down here for decades more."
Before the tooth could fly into another rage, the young man held the mug out to it. "But it's also a fact that I can't leave this place without you."
The tooth began to glow again, albeit dimmer, and said, "Ohohoho, you understand me, boy. Maybe you aren't quite as hollow as the rest of your kind." It leapt into the mug. A few drops splattered onto the young man's face, but he didn't blink. The mingled stench of urine and wine pierced his nose.
As the contents of the mug slowly vanished, the tooth asked, "What is your name, child?" The wine reflected its subdued blue radiance.
"That's the little problem," the young man said with a sly smile. "I don't know it..."
A deafening silence followed. The wine stopped rippling, almost as if the tooth had fainted.
"Forget it—" the tooth began, before being cut off.
"How about a bath, Your Highness?" The young man rubbed his hands together.
"What have I done?" the tooth muttered to itself.
*** The young man crept along the walls of the orphanage. In his hand, the chain holding the tooth clinked with every step.
"You can forget about a pact. Let me go right now!"
"The well is just ahead, keep quiet," the young man whispered.
The well stood a little way off from the door leading into the orphanage. As they passed the door and reached the well, the tooth fell silent. The young man could finally hear his own thoughts again.
The young man lowered the wooden bucket until it splashed into the water. Then he cranked it back up and knelt beside the well. He set the bucket on the ground and scrubbed the tooth inside it with his bare hands.
As the tooth let out contented groans, the young man asked, "What should I call you, Your Highness? 'Tooth' seems a bit uninspired..."
"Go to hell. You won't win me over with— ohhh..."
"Trust me, there's no one better around here than me," the young man said, the tooth shivering between his hands with every scrub. "Nobody here has a name."
Gleaming in the moonlight, the tooth slipped free from his gripping hands and balanced on the rim of the bucket.
For a while, the two just stared at each other.
"You're lying. There has to be someone in charge here," the tooth said.
The young man didn't react.
"Look, I'd love to help you, but I can't enter into a pact like that."
The young man lifted his hands from the bucket. Water dripped from his fingers.
"You're right," he said. "Father knows his own name. But he won't bathe you. He'll break you down to nothing, until your will is no stronger than a dog's."
"And our alliance would be any different? Don't be ridiculous, boy."
Unhurriedly, the young man let himself fall backward onto the ground. He reached his hand up toward the stars, splaying his fingers. "Father always finds what he's looking for."
After a beat of silence, he added, "What I'm trying to say is: it's me or Father. There's no in-between."
"Wait. What is that on your hand—"
A strange voice interrupted the tooth. "Who are you talking to?"
The tooth instantly dropped lifelessly into the bucket.
The yellow light from the stranger's lantern was weak. Still, it illuminated a childlike face with large ears.
"Or have you finally lost your mind, Prince?"
Prince's brows twitched for a fraction of a second. "Is that any of your business, Puppy?"
"I see," Puppy said. "I see. Your clothes are dirty. Even though Father forbade us to dig. I see... Don't worry, I won't say a word..."
He turned around, his expression unreadable, and the lantern bobbed away.
Prince bolted upright, his jaw clenching. He snatched the tooth just as it hopped back onto the rim of the bucket.
"Hey, Tooth. You have to decide right now!"
"He's not just going to wake Father," Prince hissed, gripping the cold artifact tight. "He's going to destroy you."
But the tooth remained silent. The enamel merely vibrated slightly in Prince's palm. The young man's expression crumbled.
Water dripped away. Deep lines carved into his face as the darkness threatened to swallow Puppy whole.
"Puppy, wait!" Prince called out into the blackness. "Do you really think you'll escape Father's reach by doing this? Father is no generous god. If you let me go, believe me—I'll come back and free you all!"
Prince held his breath. The shadows seemed to deepen the longer he stared into them. Finally, a figure detached itself from the gloom. Puppy stepped back into the faint starlight.
"You're forgetting something, Princess," he said. "Generous gods don't exist."
Before Puppy even finished speaking, a second silhouette emerged behind him. The crushing weight Prince thought he had just shed returned with such force that it drove the breath from his lungs.
Father.
Prince spun around instantly. But he was denied more than a single step. The air itself seemed to turn into shackles. One leg hung suspended in mid-air, one arm outstretched toward the edge of the woods.
His face froze. It didn't change, even as the slow, rhythmic crunching of Father's boots against the ground began. Every footfall could have been his last.
The air around Prince froze so intensely that it settled as mist. Yet, at the exact moment Father's footsteps ceased, a sudden heat flared at the nape of Prince's neck. It spiked rapidly.
A shrill voice tore the silence in two. "You owe me!"
The tooth burst from Prince's petrified fist. It hovered exactly in front of Father's hand, which missed Prince by mere millimeters.
Father's eye twitched for a fraction of a second. His free hand sliced through the air, tearing it apart. A dark strike violently lashed forward.
But the tooth detonated. A blinding light shot out in all directions, casting razor-sharp shadows from everything. The shockwave bent the tree trunks backward, Father's coat whipped wildly, but the giant himself didn't yield an inch.
Then, it inverted. The tooth devoured its own eruption. What had been a shockwave turned into a violent inward vacuum. All the cast shadows rose into the wind. They condensed back to their source and swallowed the light.
Absolute darkness collapsed over Prince and the tooth. The black void plunged into the ground like ink and vanished without a trace. No one was left behind.
The air grew even colder. Puppy trembled, his eyelashes crackling as they froze into ice crystals.
Father's breath condensed instantly. It was almost a sigh. Calmly, he turned around and walked back toward the door.
Puppy flinched as the giant raised a hand. But it landed softly on his head, stroking his hair.
"My seedling has sprouted," he said.
When Puppy looked up, the giant was smiling.
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