He tells me how he will make this world anew. How sweet the goddess of the sun will taste. He takes a bit more from me each time. We cannot be stopped. There’s no one to stop us.
—Passage from an anonymous account of a worshipper of Chyrnog
Tranavia would burn if Chyrnog had his will, devoured right alongside Kalyazin. Malachiasz couldn’t stop this, it was hopeless. Chyrnog had him in all the ways that mattered. With each awakened one devoured, he would only grow stronger.
But Malachiasz would grow stronger, too. He liked to think the god was underestimating him like everyone else did.
He had considered leaving Serefin after Ruslan struck. It had taken no effort to take down Chyrnog’s priest and leave him unconscious in the study. He’d considered killing him, but the thought of Chyrnog’s retaliation stayed his hand. Killing him wouldn’t have stopped the spell he’d set into motion anyway. Malachiasz should have run, but he’d returned to the sanctuary with its marble floors and cracked walls and watched as something unmade the witch.
He was in so far over his head.
He still had the book Ruslan had shown him, slipped into his pocket with the hope that the boy wouldn’t notice its absence. He wasn’t planning on giving it back.
Ruslan had recovered fast and entered the sanctuary, looking perturbed that his attempt to kill everyone had failed.
“Did I make my point?” he asked Malachiasz pleasantly. He was cradling his bloody hand, another finger gone.
Olya hadn’t yet woken and Malachiasz was dreading when she did. He swallowed, fully understanding what it was Chyrnog could do. If he had hesitated, the witch would have been destroyed, and his brother and his lieutenant would have been next.
Ruslan had made his point.
“What now?” he’d asked, ignoring the despairing look Serefin gave him.
Malachiasz never did have to worry about the witch’s reaction to losing her hands. Ruslan had his cultists remove her from the sanctuary, sadness in his expression. Malachiasz couldn’t parse if it was genuine.
“I considered us friends, when I traveled with her band,” he said. “I suppose not anymore. Ah, well, the things one does for their god.”
“What will happen to her?” Malachiasz asked.
Ruslan frowned. “She wasn’t supposed to be caught in that, but it was Chyrnog’s will. I’ll have her returned to her village.”
Where she’ll have to live with no hands. Malachiasz bit back the comment. Plenty of people lost limbs at the front and returned home to live without pieces that had seemed so necessary once. There were a few Vultures with complicated hooks for hands or braces strapped to the stumps of legs that worked just as well. That wasn’t relevant. What mattered was she never should have been put in this position. Ruslan never should have been able to use Chyrnog’s power. Chyrnog never should have woken up.
“Another awakened one has been found. You’re coming with me,” Ruslan said.
And because Malachiasz didn’t want to risk Ruslan turning on Serefin, he agreed and tried not to think about what he would be forced to do.
Apparently the second awakened one was close. They would travel by night to avoid the sun. Malachiasz hated it.
Snow piled up so high that it was difficult to walk. They were so far from civilization that the roads weren’t tamped down by the feet of travelers. They had left behind the dark forest for wide, dead, untouched plains.
“How does it work?” Malachiasz asked.
“What?” Ruslan cast a wide-eyed glance up at him.
Ruslan had done some complicated magic that Serefin had complained about the entire walk, claiming it felt like being chained up.
He folded his hands behind his back. “The magic.” He wished he had his spell book. He wanted to take note of these strange divergences of power, but also Ruslan had a fascinating face and he wanted to put it to paper. And there were so many sketches of Nadya folded in those pages and he wanted desperately to cling to her memory.
A fracture, another piece crushed, another loss. She was clever and strong, and her power skirted the edges of what Chyrnog’s power tasted like. How could she have been cut down? What had happened?
What if…? But no. His death would not have been enough to force her hand. She would have moved on without him, been fine. She had practically plunged the knife into his chest herself. She was stronger than he would ever be. She wasn’t sentimental like him.
Ruslan was talking and Malachiasz tried to focus as the boy explained the same scenario Nadya had described when using her divine magic. Interesting.
If Ruslan was able to channel Chyrnog’s power, then why did they need Malachiasz at all?
He didn’t wait for the god to chime in. He knew the answer.
All these different roads for power where there had been only two. What did that mean? Change was inevitable, but some things were fixed. What had pushed this one into being?
“Are you so arrogant as to believe it was you?” Chyrnog asked.
I rather am, though I doubt that’s the case, Malachiasz returned. He had sent out a shockwave through the world when he had pressed past the mortal limits of power. Nadya had sent out another when she’d torn blood magic away. And there had been a third when Serefin had dealt with his eye. Tiny ripples of chaos that he, as the minor god of chaos, had caused, all creating a far larger catastrophe.
He picked up on it first, the sound of hoofbeats in the distance. Seconds later Serefin glanced to him, lifting an eyebrow. Did they tell Ruslan who had fallen silent, intent on their destination and another violent death? Malachiasz shook his head slightly.
They were in Kalyazin. There was no way this would end well for any of them.
Ruslan didn’t notice until the pounding was loud enough that it could no longer be ignored and they could not hope to outrun whoever was approaching. Serefin grinned. “Let’s trade one captor for another.”
Ruslan reached for his ring. Malachiasz snapped his hand out, lightning fast, and caught his wrist, yanking his arm away.
“None of that,” he said softly, smiling wryly at the boy’s glare.
“I talked my way out of the tsarevna murdering me, I’ll risk the army,” Serefin said.
“You’re an idiot,” Malachiasz replied.
Serefin shrugged.
Neither of them ran, though. Malachiasz recognized the uniforms. The army it was. They let the soldiers come, let themselves be surrounded. Serefin barked out a laugh when one of the soldiers dismounted.
“Milomir! What a pleasant surprise!”
Malachiasz vaguely recognized the boy from their time with the tsarevna. Dark hair and eyes and the saddest resting face Malachiasz had ever seen. The dour boy shot Serefin a weary look and did not give the order for his soldiers to lift their spears.
“Ona Delich’niya has had a tracking spell on you for weeks,” he said, sounding deeply bored. Malachiasz got the sense he always sounded like that.
“Oh, really?” Serefin asked, patting at his jacket as if searching for something lost in a pocket. “I had no idea. Where is she, then?”
“Komyazalov. Where you’ll be going.”
Serefin’s pallor went white as a sheet. “What?”
Malachiasz shifted uncomfortably. Komyazalov meant the tsar. Could Serefin hold his own? With no magic?
“Vashne Cholevistne, I would ask that you come without a fight,” Milomir said deferentially to Serefin. “But if you protest, I will take you by force.”
Kacper’s hand reached out, catching Serefin’s. His knuckles tightened. Serefin’s demeanor transformed. His chin lifted, the uncertainty gone. He nodded once.
“We travel at night,” he said. “My brother cannot tolerate the sun.”
Malachiasz did not have a name for the feeling that bloomed in his chest at hearing Serefin acknowledge him as his brother.
Milomir nodded, frowning. Malachiasz closed his eyes briefly.
“This will not last. I will simply find another for you to devour. I will be made stronger. You cannot hide. There are so many waking up.”
A sinking feeling overcame him. How long did he have?
“The tsarevna won’t have us slaughtered the moment we reach Komyazalov?” Serefin asked.
“As far as I’m aware, she has no plans of that sort,” Milomir said.
Serefin looked at Malachiasz, something careful and closed in his expression that Malachiasz recognized. This could very well doom them. This could very well doom Tranavia.
But Tranavia was already doomed. His Vultures would reach for power without him to hold them back. They weren’t content to remain in the mines and study magic the way he was. It was simply who they were. He could get his order back under control if only he could be there. He could hold the threads of magic, but …
He hesitated, puzzled. They felt closer than the last time he had tugged at the strings.
Finally, Malachiasz nodded. A flicker of relief passed over Serefin’s face.
“Let’s not waste any more of the dark, then,” Serefin said. “Also, put a spear to that boy’s heart, please.”
Milomir lifted an eyebrow but waved to one of his soldiers. A blade was immediately at Ruslan’s chest.
The cultist’s eyes were wide. Malachiasz could almost taste the salt from the sweat beading at his temples. He could hear the rapid fluttering of his heart.
“I—I—please. Let me go.”
“Oh, absolutely not,” Serefin said pleasantly.
Malachiasz took a step closer, placing a hand on the boy’s shoulder and tugging him back to whisper in his ear. “The ring.”
“No.”
Malachiasz let his iron claws grow out of his nail beds until they were pressing into Ruslan’s shirt, the tiniest bit of pressure away from piercing his flesh.
“Don’t make me say please,” Malachiasz murmured. “You won’t like it.”
Ruslan’s fingers grasped at his ring before tugging it off and handing it to Malachiasz.
“Thank you,” Malachiasz said. “We could be friends, you and I. But if you ever put a spell like that on my brother again, I’ll take you apart, piece by piece, and eat your heart.”
He let the boy go, shoving him forward a little so the blade at his chest cut him just a bit.
“Very good,” Serefin said.
“You’re making the right decision,” Milomir said to Serefin, voice low.
“Almost certainly not, but we’ll see, won’t we?” Serefin returned, easily.
The company was small, and they clearly hadn’t anticipated Ruslan. Milomir wearily had a few of his soldiers double on their horses, which promised to slow them all down.
“But if we’re riding at night we’ll have to go slowly anyway,” he said morosely. “I don’t like the screams I’ve been hearing, even when we’re far from the forests.”
Chyrnog settled, a tense thread of anger prevalent, in the back of Malachiasz’s mind. He could feel the god’s hunger—he was hungry, too—and knew Chyrnog had been betting on the meal that Ruslan was promising, even so close on the heels of the last one. Entropy, hunger, all those things were eternal, and one meal alone would have hardly sated him, even for a day.
“Well, this was unexpected,” Serefin said to him as Milomir rearranged his light company.
Malachiasz was starting to feel anxious and twitchy, the hunger gnawing at him in a way that was hard to ignore. Serefin noticed.
“You wouldn’t be driven to…” Serefin paused, glancing at the Kalyazi.
“I don’t know!”
“Malachiasz.”
“I have the barest thread of control, Serefin. He is much older and much stronger than anything we have faced, and each destruction will only make him more powerful.”
“You said you wanted to do that.”
“I don’t know what I fucking want,” Malachiasz snapped.
It wasn’t simple anymore. He didn’t know what he was fighting for, if he had anything left to fight for. Nadya had betrayed him and was gone. What was the point of living and fighting for a world that didn’t have her in it?
Serefin sighed. He raked a hand through his hair, pushing it out of his face.
“Well, I suppose we’ll see what Komyazalov brings.”
“Each day we spend away from Tranavia…”
“I know, Malachiasz. But we have a Kalyazi problem that I don’t think can be solved with Tranavian solutions.”