It started with a finger. A paltry trade for magic. Took it clean, he did, right off, little pain. Didn’t blink when he took another. My hand was missed, but it was the left one anyway. Walking got tricky when he took the leg. Let him take whatever he wishes.
—Fragment of a journal entry from an anonymous worshipper of Chyrnog
Malachiasz felt better after sleeping, suspiciously so. That he had slept at all was suspicious. He hadn’t slept much in months.
“Astonishing how different things are when you comply with me,” Chyrnog said.
Malachiasz didn’t respond. There was a lot he was trying not to consider. How it had felt to slide his teeth across that boy’s throat. To kiss him. How much he did not want to remember what he had done. Each time he thought he had fallen as far as possible, he proved it untrue.
But what haunted him most was the chill when, somewhere, the girl with hair like snow had been struck down forever. Her death was an ocean he would drown in. Better for her to be alive for him to quietly hate from afar.
Let him live with the denial.
“Were you expecting something other than my survival?” Malachiasz asked amiably.
Ruslan smiled slightly, tilting his head. Malachiasz was better, sharper, stronger, and those things were bad news for these people.
“You wanted me to destroy the boy, no? I hope that was your intent because it’s certainly what happened.” He gestured vaguely at the tree and straightened to his full height. “We have things to discuss, you and I,” he said, smiling. The barest flinch, nearly invisible, as Ruslan got a good look at his teeth. “Just the two of us,” Malachiasz continued, stepping around the square of light and closer to him, away from his brother. It was strange, thinking of Serefin that way, but … right.
“Wait, what?” Serefin sounded distressed.
Malachiasz glanced at him, holding back a sigh. He’d hoped Serefin would have figured out his game by now.
“I’m the vessel for their god reborn,” he said, flatly. “They don’t really need to talk to you.”
Trust me, he thought, knowing Serefin wouldn’t. He had no reason to. What had Malachiasz done except consistently undermine his power and ignore his authority?
“Only talk?” Serefin asked cautiously. He glanced at Kacper, whose fists were clenched. For all he knew Malachiasz was intending to go off with these cultists and leave him to die. Malachiasz had found people played their parts so honestly when they were truly desperate.
“Well, if we come to an understanding during our chat, that wouldn’t be so bad,” Malachiasz replied with a shrug.
Except this time the deception didn’t feel particularly good. He discovered, with some measure of surprise, that he didn’t want Serefin to think he was betraying him. He’d committed a horrific act and Serefin had treated him with kindness after. He didn’t deserve that. As much as he hated what Chyrnog had made him do, he’d relished it all the same; he was too much a monster to fight Chyrnog’s appeal to his basest instincts.
A wounded look flickered over Serefin’s face. Malachiasz bit his lip.
“Malachiasz, don’t you dare,” Serefin said, his voice dangerously soft.
Ruslan held the door open, glancing over his shoulder to see if Malachiasz was following. He did, feeling wretched the whole way.
“How long have you been waiting for his return?” Malachiasz asked, unable to keep the curiosity out of his voice. He folded his hands behind his back as he trailed after Ruslan.
They were in a stone church, potentially a monastery, but Malachiasz wasn’t entirely certain. It had a similar feeling to the one Malachiasz had been to with Nadya, though this was exceedingly colder. Empty and hostile. He carefully stepped around sunlight spilling in through window slits, though it couldn’t always be avoided and at times he was forced to grit his teeth and press on. He gathered Ruslan had taken him on this route purposefully.
“The order has stood since the beginning of time,” he replied.
“A nonanswer. That’s fine, it’s worthless information anyway.”
He took a step back in expectation of Ruslan whirling on him. Ruslan moved closer, holding a blade to Malachiasz’s jaw. Interesting. He wanted magic. His skin didn’t react to the blade, he noted with relief. Not a relic, then. He could survive any number of blade wounds—outside decapitation, the only true way to kill a Vulture—but not a relic, as had been discovered so painfully.
“Don’t press your luck,” Ruslan hissed.
He’d had plenty of practice thinking quickly with a blade at his throat thanks to Nadya. He had plenty of practice pressing his luck, too.
How much control over me do you have, truly? he ventured to Chyrnog. He didn’t want a demonstration, but he had a theory and quite liked the idea of testing it.
“You are mine,” Chyrnog replied.
That doesn’t answer my question. Whatever. Malachiasz had picked up enough nonsensical religious jargon from Nadya to hold his own.
Reluctantly he let a thread of control go—his shifts roiled faster and more chaotically when he gave in—bracing himself for the kaleidoscoping of his vision as it shattered and reformed only to shatter again.
“I am the voice of your god made flesh,” he said, dropping his voice and speaking through teeth of iron. “My genesis is irrelevant. I don’t need you or your order if you choose to treat me without the respect I am due. I am entropy. I am chaos. You will bend to my will or I will see you in the same pieces of flesh and marrow that are left of your last acolyte. What makes you think you can chain me, bind me, break me, and drag me like a fool through your halls of light?”
He had Ruslan’s jaw in his hand, turning to slam him against the wall before he had the chance to blink.
“Think very carefully about how you have chosen to go about this and how you are planning to proceed,” he said softly. “We could be allies. You could have glory at my ascension as I rip apart the heavens and take it all for Chyrnog. Or I could kill you right here.”
A shift of muscle under his fingertips as Ruslan swallowed. Malachiasz smiled ever so slightly. This was a game he played very well.
“But how long until it no longer is a game?” Chyrnog contemplated. “Do you think I chose you without reason? That I had not been biding my time, waiting for you? I spent eons tempting Velyos to be in my thrall. To have him finally take a vessel and to lead that vessel to you.”
Malachiasz refused to believe that what was happening here was predetermined. It brought up far too many questions that he simply was not willing to contemplate.
“I will let you continue pretending, but, oh, just wait until the day it is no longer a pretense.”
Malachiasz dropped Ruslan, eyeing him dispassionately.
“Have we come to more of an understanding?” he asked, pulling everything back and carefully folding it up, his voice cheerful.
Ruslan looked up at him from underneath dark eyelashes. Was that hatred or respect in his eyes? Veneration? Malachiasz would take any of the three. They could all be molded into zealotry.
The other boy grinned, blood staining his teeth. “Yes,” he said. “I think we have.”
“Please,” Malachiasz replied, gesturing. “Lead on. And keep it to back hallways, if you will, my skin is sensitive.”
He was led to a study that seemed to double as a library. Though he knew that the majority of these texts were religious in nature and thus ridiculous, he couldn’t shake the itch of desire the sight brought him.
He missed this.
He missed being left alone to his study and his books and his paintings. He missed living without the weight of desperation and the feeling of his time running out clinging to his chest. He missed his idle dreams of holing up in his study with Nadya and showing her what could be accomplished if they worked together with their equally enigmatic magic.
He missed Nadya.
She’s in a better place. The thought was poison. If Kalyazi beliefs about the afterlife were to be trusted, the thought was true. If it were Tranavian, well, things got a bit trickier. She deserved peace. But he wished he could have seen her one last time.
Did he?
He didn’t know.
Maybe idealistic hindsight was all he had to keep himself from going mad with grief. He couldn’t really think about it. The knowledge was very distant, unreal. The longer he avoided that snapped tether, the longer he could pretend. He had to deal with this god and this cult when all he truly wanted to do was break down and shatter into pieces.
Ruslan was talking, and he hadn’t been paying attention. He was out of practice. Even when he had been lying to Nadya, he hadn’t been, not really. He’d hid pieces of the truth from her but found it near impossible to hide everything else. She brought out the anxious, messy parts of him that he tried his very hardest to conceal from the world.
He had to stop thinking about her.
“Come again?” he asked, tone flat.
Ruslan moved to the desk, sitting behind it. Malachiasz remained standing. He wasn’t going to sit before the boy like a student being tested. He moved to a bookshelf behind his chair. Ruslan tensed. He was resistant, which was curious. Had he thought that he might be Chyrnog’s vessel? Had the god ever spoken to his followers?
“Why would I speak to maggots?”
I’m sure they would appreciate knowing you think of them thus, Malachiasz returned. Though he didn’t think they would particularly care. It took a certain type to be dedicated to a dead entropy god, he figured.
“I’m sure you have questions,” Ruslan said.
“Why, because I’m Tranavian?” Malachiasz replied. But he did have questions. What he knew about the Kalyazi gods from his years of study had never lined up with what Nadya had told him; though Nadya seemed to be working off dubious information at best for someone who could literally talk to them. “Don’t bother with the base pantheon. Too tedious. I understand all of that. If you have more, give me more, go deeper.”
Ruslan lifted an eyebrow, a smile tugging at his lips. “You mean the old gods.”
Oh good. Chyrnog had friends.
“There is much of the world we don’t understand,” Ruslan said. “Much has been destroyed in this ceaseless war. A wealth of knowledge burned because it dances too close to what one mortal council decided is heresy.”
Malachiasz turned, leaning back against the bookshelf.
“Worship of the fallen gods is heresy. Worship of the old gods is worse.”
“But aren’t they all your gods?” That was what Malachiasz didn’t understand. This line drawing between deities. “Or is it rather about where they came from?”
“Do we know the genesis of the gods?” Ruslan asked, raising his brows.
Malachiasz thought of the pages upon pages of spells in his study in Grazyk. Of draining the blood from so many veins. Of it pouring from Serefin’s throat as he died and gave Malachiasz a key element to so many interlocking pieces of power. About the copper taste as he’d drunk it.
He did not remember much after that.
“I should say it’s easier to guess at the current pantheon,” Malachiasz said, treading carefully.
“And that is why we welcome Chyrnog’s return. One of the ancient powers. A true god. No ascension. No time before consciousness. He has always been, and we have always been made to be ground under his heel.”
Malachiasz made a thoughtful noise.
Ruslan’s expression darkened. He gazed over Malachiasz’s shoulder at the bookshelf. “There was a war,” he murmured. “Not here, but there, yet it spilled over all the same.”
“How does a god of entropy lose a war?”
Ruslan’s eyes narrowed. Malachiasz was being obvious, but he hadn’t shown himself resistant to Chyrnog’s will in front of this boy, so there was little risk.
“When the divine war spilled over, there were mortals drawn into the battles. Old clerics turned saints. Our magic always comes from the gods, but not always from sanctioned divine sources.” His hand ghosted over the ring on his index finger. It was absolutely a relic.
“Why do you have the girl, then?” Malachiasz asked, distracted.
Ruslan waved a hand. “Olya? Because Olya went from being a terrible witch to one with actual power in a matter of months and I want to know how.”
Idly, Malachiasz considered how he had killed the goddess of magic. How there had already been new avenues of magic springing forth, but with her death and Nadya’s meddling, something had broken and all the rules they had lived by and fought for were ashes. Their new reality was one where magic was not so carefully bound—how would they survive it?
Well, he supposed they wouldn’t, if Chyrnog had his way.
“Apologies for the diversion, about the clerics?”
Ruslan didn’t seem perturbed. “There were four, Innokentiy Tamarkin, Milyena Shishova, Lev Milekhin, and Sofka Greshneva.” He got up, raking both hands through his hair, leaving it standing on end as he nudged Malachiasz out of the way, reaching for a thin volume on the bookshelf. He handed it to Malachiasz, something feverish in his gaze. “The Books of Innokentiy are all we really have that tells us anything about what happened. Four clerics who, by some means or another, lost contact with their patron gods. There are more volumes, but they’ve been lost. One of my order is chasing rumors of more in Komyazalov, but nothing yet. They were the ones who turned the tide against Chyrnog. They were the ones who accomplished the impossible.”
Malachiasz opened the book and skimmed through the pages. “Well, we won’t have to worry about that now, will we? We no longer live in the time of the clerics.”
Ruslan grinned. “Exactly.”
Ruslan was a fanatic driven by the desire to understand the past, but he had cracked, fissuring so that he could only look back. Everything would be made right if it were made to be like it had been before it all went wrong.
“Of course,” the boy said, “telling you this voids your brother’s life.”
Fear jolted down Malachiasz’s spine. “What?”
Ruslan’s fingers danced across the ring on his finger. “Did you not feel it? I suppose not. You wouldn’t, if you were truly Chyrnog’s vessel. You wouldn’t be able to feel his power on you. But I know now that you are as you say, but I also know that your brother disobeyed Chyrnog’s will, and for that he must die. It’s fine. I won’t make you watch. Unless you want to?” He glanced over his shoulder at Malachiasz, lifting a dark eyebrow.
Malachiasz realized with a startling clarity that he did not want Serefin to die. He had lived for so long with the idea that he was wholly unwanted, that there was no family, that he had come from the Vultures and there was never anything else for him. Finding that there was someone, even if that someone was Serefin, it meant something. And he was not willing to use Serefin as a sacrifice for his own pride.
“I’m doing what you want,” Malachiasz said. “Leave him.”
Ruslan chuckled. “Absolutely not.” The ring on his finger glowed with a sickly light.