Chapter 33: Hell-breaker

{WHERE ARE YOU, WAMPUS?}

There’s this strange feeling welling up inside Septimus’s chest. An ominous rhythm like a hundred war drums beating all together. He wants to thrust his hand inside his chest and pluck the feeling out, to stop the hurt.

This pain is very curious. It borders the physical, something he can perhaps knead smaller with his hand. It makes it hard for him to breathe, makes him feel sick. He can’t understand it but he keeps recalling a scene he witnessed once on the Lachesis screens: a man getting drenched in the rain and shouting to the heavens while pounding his fist against his chest.

Wampus has explained to him once that love in the human world makes someone a gentler, happier and better human being, but the sudden absence of it makes the same person feel small, turns him into something dark and nasty. Because love’s a drug and sooner or later its effects are going to wear out. Then you’ll be down on the cold, hard asphalt like an angel with sheared wings. You’