The whoever-it-was got off me quickly, stumbled a few steps away, and sprawled in a heap against the wall. A dark panel of shadow fell across him as the tin lantern rolled to a stop, the candle flickering inside. It must have been knocked over in the firework-color-frenzy. I sat up with a wince, gingerly touching a sore spot on the back of my head, and scooted myself away from the mysterious stranger. He was dark haired and dressed in deep blue trousers and jacket, and in the shadows I could have sworn he gave off a faint glow, like the filament of an electric light just after it’s been shut off. If I’d had to guess, he looked about sixteen or seventeen years old.

Shaking his head, the boy pushed himself upright, his thin-fingered hand braced against the wall. I spotted that rusty sword lying on the ground a foot or so away from me. Snatching it up, I scrabbled to my feet and aimed the pointy end at him as I edged back toward the staircase, although I didn’t think he’d even noticed me yet.

He peeled his hand from the wall and rotated it before his eyes, brushing his fingertips over his palm and along his arm. He felt down his chest, touched his legs, and spun around to try to get a look at his posterior, and then he finally spotted me. He was young, with a classic pretty-boy face and dark brows, inky-dark hair falling in soft, feathery layers across his forehead, and pearly-smooth skin. His strikingly blue eyes squinted at me the way someone squints at a package they expected to be full of fine cheese but instead unwrapped to find a live lobster inside. His lips pursed in an unpronounced word, and he raised a finger toward me. “You. You’re not…”

I pointed the sword more aggressively and demanded, “Who are you?”

He didn’t respond, just gazed around the room like a drunk waking up in a stranger’s house. His expression grew more and more confused, until finally he turned back to me and asked, “Where are the others?”

“The others?” I said.

“Yes, the others. The other Colors!”

“Don’t raise your voice at me, you… monochromatic screwball! I’m the one holding a sword!”

“Do you even know how to use that?”

“You ever heard of tetanus, boy? Lockjaw? I don’t have to be a master fencer to give you that.”

“Where are the other Colors?” he repeated.

“You mean what was in those things?” I jerked my head toward the row of cavities in the wall.

He glanced over at them. “Yes, those. You’re not a priestess, so what are you doing here?”

I glanced down at my mismatched, mis-sized clothes, most of which I had swiped from laundry lines or unattended luggage. “Do I look like a priestess? The priests are gone.”

“Gone? They didn’t complete the rebirth ceremony?”

“No ceremony. They just grabbed the valuables and booked it.”

“They just..?” He shoved a hand through his hair, making the shorter hairs fan down on his forehead. “Okay. Okay. Let me… So there was no ceremony.” His eyes thinned, and he raised his head toward me. “Did you let us out?”

I looked at him sideways. “Did I… pry open the grate?”

He spotted the grating that had once been in front of the cavities, now lying in the dust. “That grate?”

“Yep, that one.”

“So you released us by accident.”

“ ‘Us’ being…?”

He ignored me, folding his hands and pressing them to his lips. “Oh, that’s bad. That’s very bad.”

He frowned suddenly and lowered his fingertips to his jaw, as if feeling for a beard. He held out his hands and inspected them more closely. “How old do I look to you?”

“Uh… about my age? A little older?”

He closed his eyes and took in a deep breath. “Alright. That’s… alright. That’s not what’s meant to happen. Sorry, I need to… figure something out.”

He set to pacing, and I lowered the sword, watching him go back and forth. This was not part of the plan. I wanted magic jewelry, not weird glowing boys. “Hey, you never answered!” I said. “Who are you?”

“I’m the god of Blue.” He paused mid step and looked down at his clothes, patting the lapels of his jacket and checking his trouser pockets.

“You’re the— what are you doing?” I said, slowly stepping closer.

“Looking for…” He felt around in the inner pockets of his jacket and came out with a carved silver ring set with a blue stone, the same ring I’d seen in the glowing blue cavity. Holding it before his eyes, he gazed intently into the stone for an oddly long time before blinking back to himself. “Ah. My name is Cobalt this time,” he said, sliding the ring onto his finger.

“‘This time?’” I repeated. I jabbed the sword toward his chin with both hands. “Tell me what’s going on.”

He pushed the blade away with a finger. “Please don’t do that.”

On the spot his finger had touched, the rust retreated in swirly designs and revealed shiny steel underneath. I yelped and threw the sword down. The blade clattered across the floor, and I watched as the rust shrank away into nothing, leaving behind a beautifully ornate sword with some sort of carved emblem on the pommel. I nudged it with my foot, then crouched to pick it up. The emblem looked to be a craftsman’s signature, but I didn’t know whose.

I stared at the sword, then back at Cobalt. He raised his eyebrows in expectancy. “God of Blue, huh?” I finally said.

“Yes.”

“You’re a god?”

“Yes.”

“You’re a god?”

“Yes!”

“And you’re the god of Blue?”

“Yes, I am the Blue god,” he said.

I threw my hands in the air. “Of all the things to be god of, you’re the god of Blue? Why not lightning? Why not the earth? You could be the god of home-baked goods and you’d still be more useful!”

His mouth opened and his eyebrows crimped together in the middle, but he looked confused as to whether that was an insult or not.

I shook my head. “Nevermind, just… what are you doing here? What’s going on?”

“The gods were just reborn.” He craned his neck forward slightly. “You know that there are gods, don’t you?”

“Supposedly. I don’t pay a lot of attention to them.”

He sighed quietly. “There are eleven of us, each the god of a different Color, and every lifetime we take on an aspect of nature as our domain. Every few hundred years we die, are reborn in younger forms, and the cycle starts over.” He brushed dust from his pants and jacket, frowning at the chamber. “There’s supposed to be a ceremony for our release from our elemental forms, but apparently we skipped that this time.”

“So you all made the sun explode?”

“That was Yellow dying. When we die and retreat from our roles, the world feels the repercussions. He was the Sun, so the sun was affected. Green was the Plants, I was the Stars… You understand. Usually, our rebirth is relatively peaceful and we all emerge together, so we decide who will take which domain right away, but…”

“Is that part of the ceremony?”

“No, the ceremony is to let us out at the right time.” He looked down at his hands. “I think you let us out too early. Who knows how young the others are. Or where they are.”

“So what happens if you don’t decide ‘domains’ right away?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “If this has happened before, it was long enough ago that I don’t remember it.”

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Had there been something unsavory in the bread I’d eaten, or was this actually happening? He had magically de-rusted the sword, and there had been glowing jewelry in the room until they fireworked away. The ground had spit out rainbow flames. The sun had broken. Something supernatural sure was going on. But was he really a god?

“Do me a favor,” I said. “Could you do something godly again? Just to prove I’m not actually losing my marbles.”

His lip twitched up in a smile. “Sure.” He made a wafting gesture in the air, but nothing happened. Frowning, he tried again, but still got nothing. “That’s strange. This usually…”

“Godly magic on the fritz today?”

“No, it’s just...” He adjusted his feet and made a dramatic sweep of his arm. No results. He clapped his hands. Nothing. He spun around and swiped his foot across the dust of the floor, and the dust slung into the air and transformed into water, spattering into dark spots across the floor. The light from the lantern briefly flared blue, washing the room in glittering ocean tones. As the lantern light faded back to gold, Cobalt smiled nervously and combed his hair back from his face. “That’s better. Our powers sometimes change from lifetime to lifetime. It just takes a little getting used to.”

“So you are a god,” I said slowly. “Not just a priest or a magician.”

He tucked his hands into his pockets. “That’s right. But who are you?”

“Oh. My name’s Manda Colstryker.” I lifted back the corner of my coat to slip the sword into my belt. Might as well take it along to pawn somewhere. “I’m what you might call a recreational treasure hunter.”

“Recreational?”

“Don’t have enough of a reputation to call myself professional yet. Give it some time, I’m working on it.”

“Is that how you came to be here?” he asked.

“More or less. I happened to be in town when the sun exploded. Couple of priests crawled down here and made off with the valuables, but I decided to poke around anyway. Saw some sparkles behind a grate, pried it open, and here we are.”

A shuddering impact reverberated down the stairwell, like something massively heavy hitting the ground above us. Cobalt and I went silent and listened, and we heard several more thuds and the muffled sound of timbers cracking.

“That’s not another earthquake,” I whispered.

“No,” he sighed. “It’s worse.”