It’s blood boiling underneath skin. Teeth tearing flesh. It doesn’t end. It never ends. We made a mistake. We made a mistake. We made a mistake.
—Fragment of a journal entry by Svoyatova Orya Gorelova
Malachiasz woke to darkness. His first instinct was to panic because not again not again. But the air didn’t taste like copper and terror. He wasn’t in the dank depths of the Salt Mines. But he also wasn’t in the church room.
And he wasn’t alone.
A door creaked open, and a knife of light landed on him. The smell of burning flesh filled his nostrils, and too late he realized it was his. He scrambled back, knocking into boxes and something that rattled. His body gave out on him and he ended up crumpled on the ground, too weak to run or strike, when a hooded figure entered. Face in shadow, they crouched in front of Malachiasz, a hand breaking free from the folds of their robe to tilt his chin up. He was being scrutinized and he hated it. He hated feeling weak; hated being this vulnerable.
The figure muttered something in Kalyazi that Malachiasz couldn’t parse and he blinked, puzzled. He was fluent in the language, especially after Nadya’s refusal to speak in Tranavian if she didn’t absolutely have to.
“Where am I?” he asked, stupidly, in Tranavian, his voice hoarse. A misstep.
The figure grabbed him by the throat. Malachiasz shut down, instinct finally winning out. Teeth sharpening in his mouth, the world closing in as his focus narrowed. A spike of iron split from his wrist and he lashed out at the figure, who caught the spike on the palm of their hand, and silently, slowly pushed down until it broke to the other side. The hand on his throat tightened its grip and he was pulled abruptly into the light.
It burned.
Malachiasz coughed, spitting up blood as he tried desperately to move back into the darkness and the figure held him down. His skin was bare, the shirt he’d been wearing long since rendered into tatters by his shifting body, and his flesh was sizzling like hot oil. Eventually he was let go and kicked back into the shadows. He slunk away like the wounded animal he was.
When he next woke, it was in the tiny room in the church, the oven still cold and dormant in the corner. He retched, spitting out a mouthful of bile.
Scorched flesh ran up his arm, bubbling into blisters. He gritted his teeth, hissing against the pain. Light flickered in through the shattered window and he carefully moved out of its way. After some consideration, he tentatively stretched his fingers out underneath the beams.
He jerked his hand back, squeezing his eyes shut against the white heat—the terror of what this meant. Against the ripple of chaos shuddering through him as his control slipped.
Taszni nem Malachiasz Czechowicz.
Taszni nem Malachiasz Czechowicz.
Taszni nem Malachiasz Czechowicz.
He needed to get out of here. Figure out this new … development. Had that dream been real? Was he not alone? Blood and bone, he hoped he was alone.
“Never truly alone.”
Malachiasz buried his head in his hands, his breath coming in pained, shuddery gasps. He was going to die here if he remained, or worse.
He wasn’t used to not knowing what to do. There had always been a next step, more to reach for, something else to gain when everything came crashing down. The ashes could always be swept aside to reveal a greater path.
Now, when he pushed the ashes away all he found was darkness.
He didn’t want to live in the darkness. As close as he may be with it, he didn’t like the dark. He scrambled to his feet, deciding to find someplace less likely to burn him. He’d wait out the rest of the day before he made his escape. To where, he could figure out later.
And if the voice in his head wanted him to kill another god, he could see that into being. But what was he dealing with? What kind of god would taint themselves with a heretic like him?
“It’s your heresy that makes you so compelling,” the voice said.
Malachiasz winced. None of his thoughts were safe, then. That was … less than ideal.
“Heresy is too simple a term. It is your denial of reality that makes you so interesting. Your power, your cleverness, your ruthlessness, all things I can use.”
Malachiasz would have to be willing. He knew that much. Nadya’s gods couldn’t force her hand, not truly, they could only suggest and grant power.
“Oh, that is precious,” the voice said, sounding like a sigh and a groan and death and death and death.
Malachiasz stumbled as pain lanced through his head at the base of his skull. He put a hand on the wall to steady himself.
Suddenly he was sitting down, a hairsbreadth away from the light, a needling feeling to edge closer, to let it bathe his face, and burn.
“I can make you do whatever I wish. You have no choice but to comply. I am not like the pretenders. I am more, I am greater.”
Malachiasz swallowed hard. His body sagged as he was released. He shoved away from the light.
Serefin had been dealing with a Kalyazi god in his head—had he managed to break that off? Was he even alive? Malachiasz couldn’t decide whether he hoped the boy, the king, his brother was dead, or if he hoped he’d done what he set out to do and had torn himself away from malevolent powers too great to fathom.
No, not that. Not unfathomable. Malachiasz was near that state, too, wasn’t he? A sidestep into the void, and he could touch the chaos he had power over. Nothing could truly control chaos, though, it did as it willed. Malachiasz was a channel and a vessel but he could harness it, at least; he could point it in the right direction.
He had what he wanted but nothing was right. There had to be another step forward. Surely all the pieces could not have fallen so fast.
The Vultures. He needed to get back to the Vultures. He needed to go home.
To do what? To what end? He didn’t even know if he could get out of this forest. It was idly chewing at the back of his mind. And he let it, if it wanted his madness, it could have it.
He blinked, confused. He wasn’t in the church anymore. Like he had been taken apart, scattered, and reformed somewhere … else.
The clearing.
He swore softly, spinning in a slow arc to take in his surroundings. It did not look as it had when he had been here with Nadya. There had been forty statues in a ring, each more grotesque and bewildering than the last.
There hadn’t been an altar in the center. Or bones scattered around the clearing, shattered skulls and broken ribs. No fresh blood scrawled in a pattern along the stones.
A black decay had begun creeping up the base of the statues. One was completely consumed. The figure had captivated Nadya when she was here. Marzenya, then. Mold dripped out the many eyes and sharp mouths of the statues.
I wish this didn’t terrify the shit out of me, Malachiasz thought idly. It would be fascinating if he didn’t feel like he was going to tremble himself into an early grave. Although he had already died, he supposed.
“Many have died, many will die, many are dying as we speak. You are not nearly as special as you think.”
Special enough that you’re here, Malachiasz shot back petulantly. He moved toward the altar, though he sensed that wasn’t the wisest decision. You clearly need me.
He picked up a cracked skull, mostly in one piece. The person it belonged to must have died from a pronounced blow to the head.
Why me? Aside from my cleverness. I’m hardly going to make this easy for you.
“When the lives of paltry mortals are spread out before me, why would I not choose the one who has consistently altered the course of the world with little regard to life?”
Malachiasz winced. That was true enough.
“The one who tells himself that it’s all for a greater cause but relishes fear and chaos and blood.”
He absently rubbed his thumb over the skull. It was for a greater cause. What would have changed had he not taken the Vultures? Or if he had not … lied to Nadya again?
Except she had been lying right back.
Why had he thought coming to this place had only been about her magic? Because if he had been in her situation it would have been the singular force driving him?
Instead she had wrenched away the only thing that had ever truly mattered to him. All to pull him down and salt the earth behind her. It was fair, ruthless even, and he’d be impressed if he wasn’t so furious.
“Do you hate her for it?”
The question caught Malachiasz off guard. Did he?
Yes. A little, a lot. Too much, not enough. He hated that it had surprised him. He hated that it hurt, that he had allowed himself to be vulnerable to that kind of pain. That he had let himself love her. It was supposed to be a game, an act, a layering of truths over lies so she trusted him enough to do as he wanted, but somewhere it got muddled and he forgot he was pretending.
He wished for indifference. Hatred burned too hot, too close, and it would be better to forget the Kalyazi girl who had broken so much. Indifference would mean a concrete answer to what he might do if he ever saw her again.
At the moment, he didn’t know whether it would be better to run her through or …
He didn’t know what the other option was. Let her kill him? She would try after what he had done. A betrayal for a betrayal. It was fair, rational. This cycle of theirs would burn forever. This was why a war between their peoples had churned for so long; there was nothing else, and there never would be.
The change he had been fighting for would never happen. His was a doomed quest, hopeless.
“Yes,” the voice confirmed, gleeful.
Malachiasz almost rolled his eyes. He set the skull down on the altar, careful, though he wasn’t sure why. Do you think reminding me what I already know will make me turn to a being I have spent my whole life fighting against? You’re supposed to be a god—be better than this. Appealing to his emotions wouldn’t work. He knew when he was being toyed with.
A tremor before the shift; he closed his eyes so when others opened, it wasn’t as jarring. There was no way to get used to this and still retain some measure of humanity, and it was the latter he’d been so willing to lose, only to discover that it wasn’t the case at all once he’d lost it entirely.
As much as he might hate her—or hate that he didn’t—what Nadya had done for him was something he would never be able to repay her for. Because he had miscalculated the spell—it had driven him farther than he expected, and if she hadn’t gone into the Salt Mines to throttle him back into a bare semblance of human, he would still be down there. He would be gone.
He remembered what he had done in that state. Leaving the mines for the battlefield, rending apart his enemies, cementing his place in Kalyazi stories of what monsters Tranavians truly were. There was no regret there. One vibrant Kalyazi girl didn’t make up for the rest.
“Is that what you want? Better? Fine. This game can be played until you realize that fighting what I wish is futile. If you must be broken, I will break you.”
Malachiasz didn’t have a chance to point out that he was already broken before he shattered.
It was cold and dark, and he knew this cold, this darkness. He had been here before, a different time, under different circumstances. But he had forgotten this part, forgotten everything, because that was the way the Vultures wanted it. They wanted children to be blank slates, nothing but vessels for the magic that would be embedded in their skin. It was a closely held secret, how Vultures were made, but there were no secrets kept from the Black Vulture. He knew struggling was useless.
Agony, a searing heat that flashed to cold and back, too fast, too much, a boiling, a flash burn, a block of ice pressed down, down, down against skin. Repeated, unending, until a snapping point. There was always a snapping point. Everyone broke in the end.
Bones fractured, shattered, melded back together to be stronger than iron, harder than steel, and sharpened, so sharp. One wrong move will part flesh until they adapt, until they learn to control what they have become.
A baptism of dark magic and cold iron and blood.
But he wasn’t in that place anymore; he was more, he was greater.
No, he wasn’t. Not really. He was still that boy, confused and afraid and uncertain. Now he had all this power that could be twisted and formed and turned against him.
His spine fissured. The weight of heavy wings dragged at his shoulders and he tried to stop the changes—once upon a time he had control over them. Once, he could bend them to his will. When had that changed? His feet shifted and iron punched through his skin as he drew further and further down. Less human, less human, less.