Her words are like needles in my ears and they’re constant they’re constant and I can’t hear Veceslav and I’ve lost Odeta and it’s over it’s over it’s over.
—Fragment from the personal journals of Celestyna Privalova
The climb out of the ravine was treacherous. The gods around them were fighting each other and everything shook, a blessing in disguise until they inevitably turned on the fragile, breakable mortals.
“What are these, anyway?” Katya asked.
“Why on earth are you asking me?”
“Right. Tranavian.”
He laughed. They scrambled up onto a battlefield.
And Serefin Meleski was rendered completely useless.
He would never escape. There would only be war, the screams of battle and sounds and smells of death, forever. That was his fate. War, eternal.
Someone’s hands were against his face, directing his attention away from the battlefield.
“Give him a moment.” Kacper, that was Kacper’s voice. “He’ll be all right.”
“We don’t—” Katya started and stopped. He heard her sigh.
She was right. They didn’t have time for Serefin to be acting like this, but it was so much and so loud and this was all going to be in vain. They were going to die, and this time it would be final.
He squeezed his eye shut. “I’m fine,” he said. He took a long, shuddering breath. He had to be fine. He reared back, Kacper squeezing his hand before letting him go. He had to be.
The battle had stalled in the wake of the horror around them, for now. Serefin could feel the tensions he knew too well, the crackle before it started up anew. Someone’s crossbow would set off a bolt and everything would fall apart. He had seen it again and again and again.
Malachiasz landed gracefully next to him, carefully folding his heavy black wings up against his back.
“Even if they refuse you, my Vultures can’t refuse me,” he said to Serefin. “Katya, go to the Kalyazi.”
“Don’t tell me what to do,” Katya said, but she was already moving.
Serefin jogged to catch up with Malachiasz, who was already striding off. He didn’t want to think about the army before him.
He paused in the field. It took Malachiasz a few seconds to notice and turn back around. Kacper and Ostyia had caught up to him by then.
“I can’t go back to this,” Serefin said, voice soft. Not another battlefield. Not another warfront.
“You’re not,” Kacper said, taking his hand. He shifted the signet ring so it was facing out. “You’re the king. You’re going to be the king.”
“Also, I’m not good at rousing speeches,” Malachiasz said. “So, I’m gonna need you to make a rousing speech.”
Serefin shot him a dry look. Malachiasz shrugged.
“I’m the one with the occult throne.”
Something slammed into the ground nearby, making all of them jump. One giant misshapen skull. Serefin took that as the sign they needed to go.
When he got closer, he recognized the standing commanders and immediately relaxed. Ruminski had done his time at the front, but he had never led the army. The other generals didn’t know him the same way they knew Serefin. The military would be on Serefin’s side.
Oliwia Jaska jolted when she saw him. A tall woman with dark skin and hair shaved down close to her scalp, she looked far more worn and frayed than the last time Serefin had seen her, more than a year ago.
“Meleski?” she yelped, in a way that did not sound altogether horrified. Rather it sounded like she never thought she’d see him again. She stared. “Apologies, Kowesz Tawość.”
“My feelings about honorifics haven’t changed, Jaska,” Serefin said, his spine straightening just by being back in this environment.
She bowed. His heart hammered in his chest.
“We were told you…” She trailed off.
“You were told I lost my mind, yes, like my father. I made it rather easy for Ruminski, I’ll admit. So, you’re here on a suicide mission against the Kalyazi?”
She lifted her chin. “We are here to end this once and for all.” Her gaze went over his shoulder to where gods clashed. “That was unexpected.”
“If I were to give you orders, would you listen to me?”
“You’re the king,” she said, sounding puzzled. “You also outrank me.”
Serefin grinned. “I do! I outrank everyone!”
Kacper closed his eyes briefly. “I thought you had considered that walking here.”
“I hadn’t!”
“We don’t have time for this,” Malachiasz muttered.
Oliwia’s gaze went to Malachiasz and her expression twisted.
“Are you with me, Jaska?” Serefin asked.
There was a beat of hesitation that Serefin did not like—until he realized it was simply because of, well, everything. The Kalyazi army. The gods clashing around them. They were so small and this was so big and it was very hard to see anyone coming out alive.
Finally, she gave a sharp nod.
“I must ask what you will not want to hear.” Serefin pitched his voice, catching the attention of those around him. He hopped onto a cart, climbing to the tallest part and balancing precariously. “I don’t need to tell you what’s happening around us, we all see it. Also, hello, it’s been a while. I never abandoned my people, though I suppose it did look that way.” He gazed out at the soldiers, vaguely recognizing many. His stomach did a nervous swoop. “And it is long past time to settle our grievances with the Kalyazi—I agree—but not here. Not today. Not like this. Today, we have something bigger to fight. Literally.”
Someone groaned. It might have been Kacper. He deserved that.
“Things have spiraled greater than this bloody war. What happened to our magic is terrifying. We’re desperate. But if this is our final stand, let it be against the beings that would seek our destruction, not the people who would also be destroyed.”
There was little reaction as Serefin clambered off the cart, hopping down. But then Jaska clasped him on the shoulder with a grin, and someone else ruffled his hair—which was not something he thought one did to their king—and suddenly there were a lot of voices talking to him at once and he had to be yanked out of the crowd by Malachiasz. Jaska regained control.
“Does the job,” Malachiasz noted.
High praise, coming from him. Katya drew a horse up in front of them, shoving a bundle off her saddle. It landed with a hard thud and groaned. The cultist.
“Look who I found,” she hissed. “Whispering his lies to my armies. No matter. My people will help.”
Ruslan glanced from Malachiasz to Serefin suspiciously, his eyes darting to where a god rumbled near, focused on a strange, birdlike creature across the ravine.
“This is Chyrnog’s will,” the boy muttered.
“Is it?” Malachiasz said. He pulled a ring from his pocket, flipping it between his fingers. Was he missing part of a finger? “How many more pieces of yourself are you willing to let him consume?”
Serefin glanced up at the blackened sun. That was Chyrnog’s will, he rather thought, all the rest was incidental.
Ruslan sneered. “As much as possible.”
“Now really isn’t the time to hold onto your ideals,” Serefin said. “This is the end of the world. If you’d like to die here, fine. I’ll throw you over that ravine and you can die knowing you’ve wasted your life on a being who doesn’t give a shit about whether you live or die. Chyrnog doesn’t give a shit about you. Do you want to live, boy? Or do you want to die with your life wasted in the mud?”
Ruslan’s mouth fell open slightly. Something flickered over his face. Malachiasz gave Serefin a slight nod, and then paled, his entire body tensing.
Giant limbs had begun crawling out of the ravine, dissonant screeches puncturing the air. Someone slammed into the spider’s body only to be flung right off.
“What is that?” Ruslan asked, horrified.
“An old god. Not quite what you imagined? Well, why don’t you have a go at killing it anyway.” Serefin said.
While we try to destroy the truly unkillable one, he thought wearily.
Ruslan looked to Katya, exhausted and beaten down. Her face was dirty. Her hair had fallen out of its braid.
“I’m not forgetting what side you were truly on,” she warned.
He smiled, smug. “I wouldn’t want you to.”
That was all they could do about Nyrokosha. Serefin had to hope it would be enough.
The ground had started moving, corroding, like something was tearing through it, eating through it. The graveyard looked strange, like the edges of it were being ripped, shredded imperfectly, caught by the wind, except the air had gone perfectly still.
“What is that?” Katya asked.
“That,” Malachiasz said, his expression darkening, “is Chyrnog.”
Serefin had expected Ruslan to be delighted. That was his god, after all. But there was only fear on the boy’s face. Reality striking.
“You know,” Ostyia said. “I expected it to be more … tangible.”
“You can’t fight that,” Katya added. “There’s nothing to fight.”
Malachiasz glanced at Katya. “Take the armies and deal with Nyrokosha. We’ll…” he faltered, his expression fracturing. “We’ll deal with Chyrnog.”
The giant spider was horrifying, to be sure, but it was something.
Serefin turned to Kacper. “Stay with Katya.”
“But—”
He grabbed Kacper’s face and kissed him hard. “Please,” he murmured against his lips. “I love you.”
This time it was potentially a goodbye.
Kacper’s dark eyes filled with tears. “Serefin.”
“It’ll be heroic, yeah? One for the history books.”
“There’s no glory in being another dead king.”
He didn’t know what to say to that, so he kissed Kacper’s cheek softly, and turned away, toward Malachiasz.
“Kill a god with a god,” Malachiasz said.
“That’s all well and good, but we decided it would be better not to go down that road,” Serefin said, following after the roiling chaos of his younger brother as he headed to where the field had started to look like shredded linen. “Surely he has a weakness?”
Malachiasz wordlessly gestured to Nadya.
She stood thirty paces away, her head lifted to the sky. Dark clouds swirled, lightning striking from one to the next. A huge chunk of the graveyard was suddenly gone, swallowed up into an unfathomably large ravine. Something slammed onto the ground much too close to where Serefin and Malachiasz stood. It took a moment to register another giant skull of a risen god.
“We won’t survive them killing each other. We won’t survive Chyrnog, what’s the point?” he mumbled.
Malachiasz glanced at him. He was quiet for a long time. “One good thing,” he finally said.
“What?”
“I have to do one good thing. I have done so much wrong, Serefin. I have to try.”
“Who are you and what have you done with my brother?”
Malachiasz laughed. “There’s no changing me. But I have to fix this, somehow. She’s going to blame herself, and it never would’ve happened if she hadn’t met me. If I hadn’t decided that the only way for us to live was to eradicate the Kalyazi gods.”
“You don’t believe that anymore?”
Malachiasz gestured to the madness surrounding them. “Oh, no, I believe that. But I don’t think it would change anything. New gods would simply rise to take their place. It will go on forever.”
“At least we won’t have to worry about that after we’re all devoured by this deity of entropy.”
“Serefin, so good of you to be optimistic,” Nadya said. Her voice was a chorus. It was wildly unsettling. Nadya turned, her eyes like a spider’s, too many wrapping around her temples. “Do you have that pendant? Velyos’ pendant?”
“I would never lose a beloved momento of such a horrible time.”
“We’re going to trap him in there.”
“How?”
She glanced at Parijahan, then Malachiasz, and smiled.
“Absolutely not, Nadya,” Malachiasz snapped.
“You’re not going to stop me.”
“This is not your sacrifice to make.”
A great groaning crashed around them, a hole opening in the sky. Darkness where there had once been a horizon. Serefin swallowed hard.“What’s your plan?”
“Nadya,” Malachiasz interjected.
Parijahan put a hand on his arm. He relaxed ever so slightly, but still looked ready to argue.
“I need you to cast all that wild, chaotic power you have,” she said, cupping his cheek with her hand. “I need you to be alive. It won’t work if you’re the one he takes. He’s already had you. You and he are the same.”
Malachiasz flinched.
“Serefin, the stars?”
He frowned, plucked one out of the air around him, and held it out to her.
“Magic, condensed,” she said softly. “Folded again and again. Weave it into a prison, Serefin.”
He nodded, curling his fingers around the light.
Nadya took Parijahan’s hand. “I do not want to ask this of you,” she said, her voice—voices?—trembling.
Parijahan smiled. “You didn’t think I would let you face this alone, did you?”