“What are you doing? Stop!” Flicker found himself on his feet without knowing how he’d gotten there, and certainly without permission from the Goddess of Life. “That’s a soul in the care of the Bureau of Reincarnation! You can’t destroy it!”

  His former superior lifted a finger, and a weight fell on him, crushing him to the floor. He was lying flat on his belly, arms and legs and fingers all splayed out against the boards. His nose was being smashed into the cold wood. Starlight puffed out of his skin.

  She’s going to kill me, he thought. She’s going to kill me right here. Crush all the starlight out of me until I’m nothing but a dried-up skin that turns to dust and blows away on the next breeze….

  “Please!” he gasped, before his lips were mashed into the floor too. “Thin’ ob wha’ this soul can ‘oo for you!”

  The pressure continued for another eternity – and then vanished all at once. The gush of starlight back into his body nearly knocked him unconscious. Flicker lay with his head twisted to a side and his cheek flattened against the floor and sucked in shallow breaths until the starlight stopped raging through him.

  Piri! What happened to Piri?

  She’d stopped screaming. An eerie silence hung over the office. Panic drove Flicker onto his hands and knees and nearly to his feet before he remembered himself and bowed his head.

  “Heavenly Ladyship,” he repeated, trying to still the tremor in his voice, “please think of what this soul can do for you.” Please let her be all right. “Its cunning is unmatched in all the world.” No, don’t use adjectives that make her sound like a threat. “It has the potential to be an invaluable source of offerings for Your Heavenly Ladyship. Surely – surely it is worth it to give this soul a trial run before you…before you….”

  Flicker faltered and gulped. He’d never seen a soul destroyed before. He hadn’t even known it was possible. And yet – and yet –

  Gathering up the shreds of his courage, he said what he thought Piri would say in this situation, if she only were conscious to say it. “Heavenly Ladyship, we are all part of Lady Fate’s grand project to reunify the Serican Empire under the rightful emperor.” How would Piri phrase the warning, so that it would sound less overt than: Mess with us and risk the wrath of Fate? “We have offended you, and I understand that we must be punished for that offense, but please, would you not consider deferring the punishment until after we carry out Lady Fate’s wishes?”

  There. That should work, shouldn’t it? Flicker rolled his eyes up as far as he dared, but he couldn’t see any higher than the knees of the Goddess of Life’s robes. For the first time, he noticed that the silk was white and shimmery, and covered with glittering white embroidery. Piri would most likely know the name for the style of embroidery.

  Please be all right, Piri. Please annoy me with boasts about the gowns you once commissioned.

  The white silk rippled: the Goddess of Life sitting back down. “Well. Who am I to interfere in the plans of Fate?” she inquired, but her light tone sounded forced. “Very well then, clerk. Your plea is heard and granted. Your punishments shall all be deferred until after you reunify the Serican Empire under the rightful Emperor.”

  Flicker flattened himself in a grateful prostration. “Thank you, Heavenly Lady! We do not deserve your mercy – ”

  “No, you don’t. But you will earn it. I have seen into the depths of that and determined that it is still not to be trusted.” Flicker turned his head far enough to see a single pale forefinger pointing at a cloud of wispy black shreds. Piri. The Goddess of Life had torn her apart. “You will supervise it and ensure that it does not turn on Heaven again. It promised me offerings. I will have them.”

  Flicker swallowed hard. “Yes, Heavenly Ladyship.”

  “You are dismissed. And take that with you.”

  Keeping his head lowered so he wouldn’t meet her eyes by accident, Flicker got to his feet. With trembling hands, he gathered all the pieces of Piri into the hem of his robe. On his way out, Shimmer appeared and helped Flicker scrape her into an urn.

  “I hope the meeting was worth it,” the Goddess of Life’s head clerk whispered.

  Flicker wrapped his arms around the urn. “I hope so too.”

  When I came back to myself, I wasn’t a glowing ball. I was a black mist that filled an urn and sloshed back and forth over its brim. The motion was making me seasick.

  I moaned, a thin sound like a dying sigh.

  The rhythmic sloshing stopped. Flicker’s wide, anxious eye filled the opening. “Piri! You’re awake! Are you all right? How do you feel?”

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  How did I feel? Like the Goddess of Life had just dismembered my soul. For the second time. How did he think I felt?

  “Just hang on. I’ll get you back into your box. Everything will be okay.”

  The rhythmic sloshing started up again, harder and faster, as if Flicker had begun to run. I crashed back and forth against the sides of the urn. It hurt. It hurt so much.

  As my awareness faded once more, I thought I heard Flicker say, “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. Just hang on a little longer….”

  I woke in darkness. Not the sort of darkness lit by a Black-Tier soul’s glow, but actual darkness. Absence-of-light darkness. What was wrong with me? I felt gingerly for the edges of myself and found that I was still a haze, spread throughout the inside of an archival box. I was a little more solid than I had been in the urn, though. More like a cloud than a mist.

  Voices filtered through the sides of the box. “…Taking so long to coalesce.”

  “What’s wrong with this one?”

  Wood grated. The lid slid back, and light fell through me. A bony, gnarled finger stuck into me and swirled me around. Glitter’s cracked voice said, “It must have been damaged more than expected in its previous death.” She shut the lid and slid the box back onto the shelf with unexpected gentleness.

  “Should we report it to the Assistant Director?” fretted the other clerk.

  “Absolutely unnecessary. Just check on it from time to time. It’ll be fine.”

  Damaged. So a soul could be damaged. Then – did that mean it could be destroyed?

  Part of me tried to panic, but the rest of me was just so, so tired. I fell back into darkness.

  Gradually, the pain and exhaustion faded, and each time I woke, I felt a little more solid, a little more like myself. I didn’t know how long the recovery process took, but it was certainly far longer than the standard forty-nine days. Various clerks opened and shut my box with increasing anxiety. Glitter even put in a second appearance, the lines of her scowl carved so deeply into her skin that her face resembled an old pine tree.

  Flicker never came. I hoped it wasn’t because he’d been caught and punished. If even gods could be cast out of Heaven, what would they do to a star sprite who was dabbling in divine politics?

  I should never have dragged you into my schemes, I thought.

  If he’d never met me, he’d still be a perfect little third-class clerk, following the rules and regulations perfectly in his tidy office, sipping starlight tea in the stairwell to save time so he could complete more paperwork perfectly. If he’d never met me, he would never have filed a complaint over Cassius’ conduct, never have gotten me that first audience with the Goddess of Life, never have drawn the attention of the gods to himself. He’d never have given his superiors any reason or excuse to punish him.

  I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Where are you? Please be okay. I don’t want to be assigned to a different clerk for reincarnation. I want you and only you to ever be in charge of my reincarnations.

  And so I fretted away the remainder of my interminable convalescence, until one day a clerk opened my box, peered in, and whooped. “It’s healed! Hey! Everybody! Come see! It’s finally healed!”

  In what had to be a first for the bureau, running feet thundered into the archives, and a good dozen star sprite faces topped with black clerk hats blocked out my view of the ceiling. Also in what had to be a first, they were all grinning.

  “It’s okay!”

  “It’s really okay? Are you sure?”

  “Yeah! Look at how well it’s holding its shape! Do you remember how floppy it was?”

  “Its glow is back to a normal level too!”

  “Somebody tell Glitter!”

  “On it!”

  A set of footsteps ran out while more clerks poured in to see me. I basked in their joy and goodwill. As I soaked it in, I couldn’t help glowing more brightly. How kind they all were! They all loved me! They all wanted me to recover!

  A stately tread processed into the room, and the clerks made way for their superintendent. Glitter’s wrinkled face replaced the happy grins. She fished me out, examined me from all angles, bounced me off her palm a few times, and nodded. “Yes. It is ready for its next reincarnation.”

  “Should we take it to Flicker?” the clerk who’d opened my box asked eagerly.

  Flicker! That meant he was all right too! Nothing as horrible as what I’d been imagining had happened to him.

  Yes! Take me to see Flicker! I shouted, making all of the clerks jump.

  Glitter waggled a gnarled finger at me. “Not so fast. His schedule is already full for the day. You’ll have to await your turn.”

  I drooped across her palm like a deflated bladder. Awwww. Can’t you squeeze me in?

  “Absolutely not. Are you trying to work him to death?”

  Fine, fine. Flicker and I did have a lot to talk about, and I really shouldn’t add to his workload, no matter how much I wanted to see him with my own, er, not-eyes.

  Can’t I just pop in to say hi? It won’t take long! I’ll be in and out so fast that it won’t affect his schedule at all!

  Glitter hesitated long enough that I thought that if we’d been alone, if we hadn’t had an audience of her subordinates, she would have allowed it. But the Superintendent of Reincarnation couldn’t be seen flouting the rules in public. “No. Absolutely not. You will wait your turn like every other soul. Now back into the box with you.”

  Awwwww, I started to whine, but at her scowl, I sucked it back in. Something about her expression made me feel less like I was being cute, and more like I was acting childish.

  I slunk off her palm and plopped back into my box. She snapped the lid shut. The world grated sideways as she slid my box back onto the shelf. Through the wood, I heard her order, “Enough gawking. Back to work, everyone,” and a couple dozen feet shuffled away.

  As I settled back down to wait for the next opening in Flicker’s schedule, I consoled myself. At least now I knew he was all right. Overworked and exhausted, but all right. That was the most important part.

  Another thought occurred to me: Glitter had covered for him. She must have. I’d been shredded and damaged so badly that all the clerks knew something was wrong. They were so worried that they celebrated my recovery. By all rights, Glitter should have reported the anomaly to Cassius. But what had she said, near the beginning, when one of the clerks suggested it? “Absolutely unnecessary.” I agreed with that – but I wouldn’t have expected her to think so.

  She hates Cassius too, I realized. She was protecting Flicker. Because she knew there was something to protect him from, and because she thought he should be protected.

  And a final thought, as I drifted back to sleep: She’s on our side.