Face-Slapping13 min read
My Luck Was Stolen — So I Bought Back the World
ButterPicks14 views
They had been waiting for the thunder like it was a blessing.
"She’ll ascend today," someone whispered near the gate. "Three months and she’s already at Perfect Divine. How could any of us compare?"
"Three hundred years of us, and she did it in sixty days," another voice said. "If she makes it, Longqing Sect becomes the first to hold a High Deity disciple."
I smoked a yawn into the wind.
"Save your prayers," I said aloud, waving a lazy hand down at them. "If I die, the sect can try selling my name on a charm."
There were gasps, a cough or two, and the chief elder walking over with every piece of iron he owned strapped to his sleeves. Fitzgerald Elliott — their eyes glittered when he looked at me, the way a man looks at the horse he thinks he owns.
"Keep calm, Arianna. Center your heart," he said with a smile that wanted a reward. "We will spare no treasure. We will spare no life. We will push you into the sky."
"I know," I answered. "You can stop posing now."
"Do not joke!" Fitzgerald snapped. "This is—"
Thunder tore the air.
The thunder that gathered above us did not twinkle or weep. It sat like a coiled thing. Purple-red, a crown of storm, and behind my eyelids I remembered larger skies: the last time I had worn a crown like this, I had been a god of ruin who smashed constellations for hobby.
"Three thousand worlds," I murmured. "I used too much of it. I thought the animal would stay asleep."
The Fate Beast had been a foolish, furry thing that liked to sleep in my ear when I grew bored of the cosmos. I had stolen a trick, and then I'd stolen luck with it. I had cheated a sky. So the sky had sent me on a tour: return every piece of stolen fortune, world by world.
"Do not intervene," the Fate Beast said—its voice a tick in my mind. It refused to be more helpful than a pearl in a jar. "You will not be allowed to use your extra fortune. Die if you must; earn it back if you can."
I blinked at the thunder.
"Fine," I told it. "But if you make me do all the poor worlds, I'll make the poor worlds swear to be interesting."
People nodded around me like it was a good plan. They always wanted me to be bold. They never expected me to be honest.
When the purple cloud struck, it was like being split open and not hearing my favorite song. It tasted of ozone and cold iron. The elders chanted and burned their last talismans. Fitzgerald planted flags and recited names like offerings.
Then the sky did what I had never let the sky do to me: it threw me into a smaller life.
The curse of returning luck is dull and round. The Fate Beast, the green earring now sleeping against my jaw, hummed in the darkness. "You get the lousy ones too," it said. "Also, do not use my luck anymore."
"I get it," I told it. "Three thousand lives, back and forth. I return the favors, make things right. Then I go home."
"Not quite." The beast's voice was patient and flat. "You also owe a debt to the boy who died for you: his name is recorded. Until that debt is repaid, you carry his obligation."
"A debt?" I frowned.
"A life saved with life," it said. "He gave you his last fortune. You carry what you owe."
We flicked across a pale seam in the world and spat into a new one. I woke coughing in a stone room by a reed bed.
"I said do not panic," the Fate Beast muttered like a lecturing grandmother.
Two boys were leaning over me. One had a high ponytail and a sword at his hip. The other had sky-blue robes, calm eyes. Garrett Conrad and Wilder Rivera, names I would learn as the bells in this life called them.
"She’s awake," the ponytail boy said with contempt. "Honestly, she always acts. How could she drown in a pond?"
"Don't," the blue-robed boy said. "She’s hurt. Help her up."
They called each other "brother," fond and mocking in turns. They dragged me upright, scowling like I was the awkward thing between them.
"You should apologize," Garrett snarled. "You pushed to make it a big scene. Say sorry."
"I don't owe you," I said, and breathed until my ribs stopped arguing.
"Watch your mouth," Garrett hissed.
Wilder stood between us, sympathetic in that polite-smile way. "Take care of her. Don't push too hard."
I smiled inside because the body I had entered was thin and broken. I had been a god who murdered a dozen empires for the fun of a Tuesday. This body had been pried open for its heart once. Longquing's darling — Audrey Blair — had needed that heart for a cure.
"What a waste," I said to no one. "A whole life of quiet, turned into a pharmacy."
"Shut up," Garrett said, lunging. "I am not in the mood."
I flicked a rock with my foot and it struck his temple. He blinked, surprised, and then pushed. I pivoted and clipped his hand with a small, surgical motion. He yelped. Wilder looked furious.
"You—" Garrett's shout was a broken whip. He moved as if to strike, and I did what I always did: I moved faster.
The duel lasted less than a breath. I broke his sword and tossed him like an inconvenient crate. Wilder stepped forward with a warning which sounded suspiciously like an apology.
"She’s been hurt," he said. "Cedar thorn—"
"Save your sermon," I said, swallowing bile. I was not a social person in this body. The fate here was low. Soup would not fix the debt.
They patched my shoulder. Wilder's hands were sure and cool; he left a sachet for me and a look that smelled like regret. Garrett left like someone who gritted teeth and thought it noble.
That night a man came.
"You could have killed me," Wilder said softly when he returned. "Why—why did you do nothing?"
"Because it's inconvenient," I said, standing in the doorway. "Also, your arrogance is small enough to be squeezed."
He laughed and invaded my room. "I am not here to spar."
He pinched my cheeks. I bit his thumb until he hissed. A small cloud of smoke drifted from his mouth. He staggered.
"You are dangerous," he murmured, eyes narrowed. "I don't like that in a woman."
For reasons I don't know, I let him stay in my house that night. I let him be foolish enough to believe that his fussing could change me.
The Fate Beast told me later that Wilder had an odd soul; quiet, mixed by blood, a half-breed with scales. Marcel Bird — another name I would recite slowly later when I needed to remember who had saved me. He had always been the type to keep a promise once made. When he whispered that he had prepared a present, he meant it.
"Take this," he said, handing me a loose strand of green stone. "If you are going to the trial, you should not go as you were."
"A wardrobe change? Charming." I made my most blasé face. "What am I paying you with?"
"Nothing." He said it with no snark. "You helped me once."
I accepted the trinkets and the mental map of the trial grounds. Secret places.
"Five days from now," he said quietly. "I'll be at the trial entrance."
"Fine," I said. "I'll be there too."
I went alone, a rusted knife sewn into my sash, a shameless grin behind my mouth. The trial was a hollow: a mirror lake, a glass wall, and other students chanting like gulls.
"She's riding on the coattails of Marcel again," someone sneered.
"She lives on pity," another said.
They were right: I had lived on other people's help more than I liked, because long ago a sky had been cheated, and now I had to walk three thousand roads to fix a mistake.
The trial started. A tree woke and hired an army of stone monkeys made of mirror and jealousy. I cut and danced and took what should have been possible only in a cheat's dream: I cut trunks loose, hammered at roots, and found little green beads that were eyes and teeth.
"Stop playing with it like a toy!" Garrett cried from the edge of the mirror world. "Give it—
"—give it to the elder," Wilder finished, voice small as a reed.
"Why should I?" I said, and I thought of the gaping wound where someone had taken that body's heart. I thought of Audrey’s hands—desperate and gentle—and I thought of the heat that rose in the back of my skull: the thousand worlds were watching.
"Because they will take what they want and not say thank you," I said aloud, and the crowd went still.
Then Fitzgerald arrived, eyes like polished iron. He walked in with Audrey fluffed at his sleeve. "Return it," he said.
I laughed. "Return? That was never your word. You want me to be your example."
He slapped. The whip of taste and smells danced across my skin. I spat:
"You're playing the righteous man now, Fitzgerald? After you stole what belonged to me?"
He hadn't taken my things in that sense—he had taken blood, a heart. He had called it charity. "We did it for the sect," he murmured, dangerously soft.
"Charity? You call theft 'charity'?" I stepped forward. "You picked my heart as a commodity. You sold my years for your student's comfort."
A dozen students gaped. Audrey's face was a pale blossom of shock. Wilder's jaw was a line. Garrett's voice was a slit of cold.
"How dare you—"
I clenched my hand and flicked my earring. The Fate Beast unrolled like a moth and hopped onto the table. It spoke with the voice of thunder.
"These are the records," it said. "These are the little things the sky kept. You stole them, Fitzgerald. You took them to save your chosen. You wrote your name in my ledger."
My fingers burned. I had enough proof: the Beast autolog, the green earring list of exchanges, the signatures in those tiny bones. The secret ledger blinked open like a snake.
"Look," I said. "Look at this."
The elder's eyes widened. He had the arrogance of men who believe their hands never bleed.
"We took what was necessary for the good of the sect," he said loudly now, because men will say anything if it keeps them in a decent reputation.
"It was theft," I said. "It was theft and cruelty and the theft of a girl's life to patch up another's vanity. You thought you owned hearts. You thought you were a righteous shepherd."
"There are rules—" Fitzgerald managed.
"Then follow them," I snapped. "Begin by confessing."
The crowd drew closer. Someone turned out a lantern. The Fate Beast spread a glove of smoke between us and the tent-lamps. A hundred eyes reflected like jewels.
"You want proof?" Fitzgerald said finally, the shriek of a man who thinks he has a breastplate under his ribs.
"Yes," I said. "Proof. Proof you made my life into a bank account."
I took a breath and unleashed the ledger.
The public hall fell into a hush. Names crawled out of my earring like moths—transfers, small signatures, the thing Wilder had helped hide in the month of bright rain. The ledger was not forged; it was the fate-bank's own receipts.
"That ledger will show your transfers," I told the circle. "It will show that you drained a girl's life into your pet's cure. It will show—"
"Enough!" Fitzgerald floated forward, a sleight of magecraft in his voice. He was still the chief. "This is nonsense. This girl... she has delusions."
"Delusions?" I let the word hang. I let the hall taste it. "You deluded me into obedience. You deluded yourself into sanctity."
He smiled at that, the way men smile at the weather because the weather cannot strike back. "You accuse me? You, who have been... reckless with your own fate? You are hardly a moral paragon."
"Neither are you." I pulled forward the image he'd never expected to see: his own prayer beads, mutated by magic into a ledger of stolen breaths. "You wrote it with your own hand."
"Forged!" Fitzgerald shouted. It was the small word of pride.
"Show them," I said. "Show them the girl who gave her last heart for your pet's cure. Show them the daughter's diary. Show them the names on the ledger."
"Wilder!" Fitzgerald barked. "You and Garrett testify. Say this is a lie."
Garrett stepped forward, lips thin. I had broken him earlier, and now I held the leash of his shame. "It wasn't like that," he said. "We—"
"Then tell the truth," I said softly.
Garrett's voice climbed, then broke. "We were told—he said—"
Wilder’s eyes met mine and, with a single, small nod, he unrolled a memory like a cloth.
"He lied," Wilder said. "He told us it was for more important people. He told us—" Then Wilder stopped. His face shifted: heaven had been wronged.
A sound rose: the courtyard chattering like broken glass. People took out tools. Someone filmed with a small magical scrap for gossip. A hundred small hands reached to take the ledger. The hall leaned forward.
"Why did you take it?" I demanded Fitzgerald. "Tell them."
He opened a mouth that was used to command. For a second he looked like a god, and then he saw the ledger. His face went through seven small deaths: surprise, anger, calculation, denial, panic, pleading.
"That was—" He started. "This is a lie. Someone falsified it. Me? I would never—"
The crowd hissed. Some spat. I watched him move through the four stages of a man who thought he was untouchable.
"Denial," I told the hall. "He can't pretend forever."
"Fitzgerald," I said, now the voice everyone was waiting for, "why steal breaths? Why barter my heart?"
He laughed like a man who had swallowed a stone. "For the sect," he said. That was his chosen armor.
"For whose good?" I asked. "For yours? For Audrey's comfort? For your vanity?"
"Do not speak to me of vanity," he said. "I saved lives."
"By killing mine," I said.
The first wave of reaction was a stunned murmur. Then it rose like a crowd flipping a page. "How could he?!" people cried. "We trusted him!" Others whispered of the bargains of the elders, of favors worth a heart.
"Enough," Fitzgerald said, and then he tried the old, refuge-laden tactic of calling for ritual. "We will bring witnesses. We will—"
"You already did," I said.
I turned the hearing into a public theater. There are rules among cults and there are rules in halls. I dragged out the ledger, the earring's scrap-inscriptions, Audrey's diaries — small, private things that fit like little knives. I put them on the table and spoke.
"See? He admitted in this note he took blood 'for the master’s child.' He listed the date, the talismans used, and a child's name. He believed he was right."
Fitzgerald stilled as if a spear had found his chest.
Then came the best part: the crowd; the onlookers whose power came from being many.
"Shame!" someone shouted. "Shame on you!"
They began to call for punishment because mobs love spectacle and want guilt to end in spectacle. Fitzgerald's face, once as calm as carved stone, melted. He tried to fix it with ritual words, but they were small things now. The crowd wanted blood.
"Strip him," said a voice.
"Bring the ropes!" another cried.
At first Fitzgerald looked baffled. His hand trembled. "You cannot—"
"You already did," I said.
His defenses cracked. He tried to plead with a muttered incantation. The crowd closed in like a tide.
"Please," Fitzgerald said. "Please—"
The voice from the back, the small one nobody expected to speak — Audrey — stood.
"Forgive him," she whispered. It was the heartbreak of someone who owed so much to comfort that she could not imagine losing it. When she said it, the crowd's hunger twisted: pity and fury collided.
Then, like a collapse, the stage moved.
Someone grabbed his sleeve. Someone else threw salt. The ritual ropes were binding enough; they drew him to the ground. Fitzgerald, the man who commanded for decades, found himself on his knees, the silk of his robe dusted in ash.
"Please," he said then, the sound of a man landing. "Please—"
He moved through the motions: first a shrug of stubbornness, then shock as the reality of being held in front of a rabid crowd entered his bones; then denial—"I did not—"—then bargaining—"I meant for everyone—"—then collapse. It was theater but also true.
"Stop!" Fitzgerald begged. "Hear me. I did it for balance!"
"Balance?" someone sneered. "By stealing a girl's blood?"
He did not have an answer.
"Beg," I told him.
He begged, badly. He fell face-first into the dirt and kowtowed. He shouted, lips trembling, "I am sorry! Forgive me! Forgive me—"
Around us the onlookers were a chorus: gasps, some clapped, some filmed. A child took out a scrap and pressed it to the ledger like a talisman.
"How do you feel?" I asked him quietly, as he lay there.
"—I am terrified," he confessed, small as a mouse. "I thought I was right. I thought—"
"You thought you could trade lives and call it charity," I said. "Tell me how that felt."
He could not put it into words. He could only tremble and lick the dust with a tongue of fear.
"Do you want the sect to forgive you?" I asked.
"Yes," he whispered.
"Then stand and confess in front of all of us," I said. "Tell them what you did and why. Let them judge."
He pushed himself up and the crowd settled into a hush like a tide backing off the cliffs. He spoke. He stumbled. He tried to make reasons for the theft. He said it was for the good of the sect, for the balance of the temple. He swore he had thought it would cause no harm.
They jeered when he finished. Some spat. Audrey sat with closed eyes. Wilder's mouth had the shape of stone. Garrett's shoulders were square with a guilt he could not shake.
"Now," I said. "Oaths."
I turned the earring. "Let the ledger decide." The Fate Beast rose like a king on a throne of coins and sang the transactions. It spoke of names, dates, small sealed breaths.
The more it spoke, the paler Fitzgerald grew. His denial became a ruin. He went from defensive to pleading to blank-eyed, to begging, to crying.
"Confess," I said. "Beg them for the oversight you demanded. Beg the girl you used."
He fell at my feet and pressed his forehead to my boots.
"Please," he sobbed. "Please spare my name. Please—"
There were offers of mercy and retaliation in the air. Some wanted him exiled, some wanted him stripped of rank, some wanted his reputation burned so that no one would ever trust him again. The elders hissed at the spectacle, but the crowd wanted the truth and the truth wanted its due.
He wavered and then a sound rose: Fitzgerald's knees hit the earth, again and again, his robes torn and his voice thin.
"Save me," he begged and then, like a child, he collapsed.
A change occurred. The crowd, once feral, softened. The spectacle had stripped a man to the elements; people no longer wanted to lynch him, they wanted justice that balanced truth with consequence.
What they decided was brutal: public exposure, service to those he'd wronged, and a removal of the title that placed him above others. He would stand in the morning and speak the truth to every student. He would ask the families for forgiveness and he would, in public, relinquish any hand he had in tender sympathies.
He flailed with every reaction—shock, self-justification, denial, bargaining, collapse, pleading. The sound of his mind falling apart was as loud as any storm. Cameras told of his shame. The event trended in the gossip networks.
Above all, he had lost the easy lie that made him godlike. He had been made small.
Afterwards, as people dispersed in thin groups, Audrey came to me with tears on her face.
"Why?" she asked, voice raw. "Why did he—"
"Because he could," I said. "Because he thought he could buy a life and call it an act of kindness."
"Will they punish him?" she asked.
"They already did," I said. "Look at his knees. He is not a god anymore."
I sat on the table, the ledger humming like a sleeping thing. The Fate Beast curled around my earring and blinked at the crowd with a peculiar, small satisfaction.
"That was public," the beast said. "You made them see."
"I didn't do it for spectacle," I said. "I did it because theft needs an audience."
It purred, an annoyed, furry sound. "You made the sky look. It likes the theater."
"Good," I said. "Keep watching, then."
Fitzgerald Elliott—respectable head of the sect—had been stripped, exposed, and brought to his knees. He had traveled the five stages of collapse in public: smile of gain, frown of doubt, denial, bargaining, and breaking. He sought forgiveness and found it only in ritual obligations. He had the circled eyes of a man who once wore the sun and now was ash.
The world itched with gossip for days. Apprentices whispered on corridors. Some cheered my justice. Some called it reckless. Wilder sat under a cherry tree and refused to meet my eyes.
"You won't tell me what you did," I told him.
"I did nothing," he answered, too fast.
"Then why did you help my ledger exist?"
"I had to do something," he confessed, voice small. "You saved something of me once."
"That boy did," I said. "He saved you because he couldn't help himself."
Wilder's face hardened. "I will keep the word," he said.
"Good." I shrugged. "You owe him, then. We both do."
A few months later, I left Longqing Sect with a wind in my hair and bandages on my pale shoulder. The Fate Beast hopped back into my earring and settled like a bead.
"Next world?" it asked.
"Next world," I said. "We fix what I stole, and then I take my seat again."
As I stepped beyond the gate, someone called out in a voice that had once tried to own me.
"Arianna—"
I turned my head to give the slightest of bows. "I am not for you," I said softly, the earring catching the light like a wary eye. "And I never belonged to you."
The Fate Beast wriggled and patted the hollow near my ear.
"Keep that ear ring warm," I murmured. "It remembers everything."
We walked away into the road that goes through a thousand fates.
The End
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