God Within Us

The sorceress collapsed to the ground - the gray monster’s cleaver of flesh and bone dragging her to the dirt where she gurgled her final breaths.

Yesugei felt his heart catch at the death of the girl. In the short time he had seen her, she appeared like a well-needed prayer - fighting alongside them even as they stood as foreigners to her, and using her strange magic to halt the monster much like Tseren had. Now she was dead, and only the two sons of Tsaagandai-khan remained.

The crystal-decorated handkerchief and Yesugei’s own sword left brief trails of pale-green smoke in the air as their weapons danced up and down. Silver blades hissed like snakes, leapt out high and low to bite and rip into bleeding muscle and sinew beneath hard, cracked skin. The monster stepped to and fro in a slow circle, its every move becoming faster and faster as though a great burden were lifting from its shoulders. The girl’s magic was fading, much like Tseren’s before. Yesugei felt himself beginning to panic. They had skewered and sliced the monster two dozen times over with their weapons, forced it to buckle and even step back under their assault, but its wounds healed and healed and healed each time - ripped flesh closed as if by invisible sutures.

The head. We need to hack the head off - fully. Without the head, the body will fail.

“Kaveh!” Yesugei shouted in Khormchak as he threw himself low, ducking under a clawed swipe by the monster. “Take the leg!”

His half-brother spun around as if in a circle-dance, and with a loud cry he drove the tip of his spear into the creature’s covered knee. The spear ripped through the ancient leather skirt, and Yesugei saw the shaft wobble as Kaveh threw his full weight into the back of the creature’s knee - forcing the towering beast to lower itself slightly. Just slightly enough.

Yesugei darted forward as the creature threw one hand to the ground to balance itself. Its distracted gaze turned back to Kaveh. He curled his free hand around the scalding pommel of his shamshir.

The blade whistled through the air and bit into the creature’s neck, stopping short an inch deep in knotted muscle. Before blood could begin to well out, Yesugei tore the shamshir free and threw a second cut from the other side. The monster fell on all fours, its muscular neck straining and swelling as for the first time, it seemed to be in pain. The two bleeding cuts were separated by a final expanse of grey flesh - an impossible barrier of cursed muscle that now began to crawl closed around the shamshir’s blade. Yesugei’s breath caught in his chest, and he planted his boot on the tip of the blade as he threw his entire body weight forward, burrowing the hissing steel deeper and deeper through the monster’s neck as it struggled to stand. Gray skin split like wood before an axe, ancient flesh and muscle rent in twain by shining Khormchak steel. Yesugei pushed deeper - a cry escaped his lips, but it sounded muted to his own ears, drowned out by the deafening war-drum of his heart.

Then there was a muted, rasping gasp. Yesugei’s blade flew free.

The monster’s long braids wrapped messily around its head as it fell free from the body, which gave a shiver before surrendering to the earth. The grey, emotionless visage now lay in the dirt, and the ground lapped happily at the poisonous blood which seeped from the jagged stump.

A gasp. A shiver. And it was over.

Yesugei let himself drop to one knee. His shamshir fell from his softening grip, the blade bearing a dozen small cracks throughout its whole length. The hissing of the crystals was the only noise that sounded in the ruined outpost - now littered only with the bodies of fallen allies old and new.

Kaveh’s tired hand fell upon his shoulder, and Yesugei braced himself against his brother as he shakily stood upright, never letting his eyes stray from the monster’s body. He allowed himself a small smile that didn’t reach his eyes. A bleak tide of sorrow washed over his exhausted heart as he looked over at the scattered others.

Tseren, the old shaman disgraced and redeemed, whose promises of answers died beneath his own knife.

Targatai, whose body was already set upon by the crows as they descended from their seats on the roofs.

Khenbish, who lay so mangled his own kinsmen would scarcely recognize him if they brought him back to the Qarakesek ulus.

And the strange girl, who appeared as if from nowhere. Who bought them time to finish the monster when she could very well have fled and taken their horses while the silver-masked assassins butchered their company. This girl whose name he didn’t even know, who saved his life twice and was repaid only with her own death.

Yesugei bent his head down before the fallen, and brought forth a small prayer. “Spirits of the White Heavens - may these brave souls ride with the wind, and journey across blue skies forevermore.”

The prayer rang empty, as devoid of life as the rest of the outpost. The blood-sworn of Tsaagandai had their own kinsmen back in the ulus - Tseren’s grandchildren, Targatai’s two wives, and Khenbish’s younger brother who trained with spear and sword to join his brother in the ranks of the keshik guard. The blood-sworn would be placed on their horses, and they would journey back to be mourned and buried in the western hills by Qarakesek shamans. But the girl was foreign - Klyazmite by her look and tattered dress. There would be none to mourn her in the Qarakesek kurgans. Yesugei resolved to bring her home. If she had kin, he would use his own personal hoard to see to it they would live without want.

The hissing of the black crystals in his sword died down. The melted horse’s head now sat without eyes. Kaveh untied his burnt and twisted handkerchief from the shaft of his spear. The lifeless crystals were so small they fell free and disappeared in the midst of the outpost’s sparse grasses.

“Legends come to life, hm?” Kaveh whispered softly, giving a cough as he adjusted his grip on the spear.

“I suppose we’ve written one ourselves, today.”

Yesugei staggered forward as Kaveh gave another hacking cough. Their companions might have died, but they didn’t die in vain. His fingers brushed through the fallen monster’s greasy, shining black hair. Its head was twice the size of his own, and weighed as if it were made entirely of stone and lead. But the severed head, heavy as it was, would be solid proof to be laid at the feet of the khans at the gathering kurultai to the east. A sign of the Modkhai legends come to life. He felt the cuts across his leg and back ache, and let the head fall from his shaking grip as a deep exhaustion took hold of him.

Kaveh’s coughing grew worse, violent, and his brother bent over double as he continued to retch and heave. Yesugei felt a strange scratching at his own chest. His lungs began to burn, and he felt a thousand small pricks like the legs of skittering insects erupt from inside his throat. He gave a dry, hacking cough to dislodge the scratching. Then another. Then another. Rising panic pushed aside battle-exhaustion as Yesugei brought his fingers to his throat. He felt the veins in his neck bulging beneath his touch. Shifting. Crawling up across his face.

No…the monster is dead.

His chest whooped and shook violently as Yesugei continued to cough. The burning in his lungs spread like very real fire across his body, the unseen insects crawled beneath his skin and felt so real he looked at his arms as he fell to the ground. The veins on his hands bulged and squirmed as if they had come to life on their own - he would have screamed, but the scratching in his throat took his breath away as he continued to cough. He felt himself choking on the invisible miasma that wafted off the corpse - the miasma that claimed the cultists and Targatai. The corpse!

His eyes had left the monstrous gray body for only a moment, and Yesugei clumsily rose to his feet as he looked back. The corpse had rolled over onto its side. From the cracked earth, tendrils of black blood stretched upwards and wriggled back into the exposed gray stump of the severed neck like carrion worms.

No. No. No.

“Yesugei!”

A fleshy crunch sounded from behind him. Yesugei turned again, and saw the dead girl’s body lift up off the ground, pulled upwards by the gigantic cleaver in her neck. Her body slowly peeled off the toothed blade, then the cleaver spun through the air in a lazy arc. Yesugei threw himself to the ground, and saw the cleaver blur past and over his head. Kaveh - bent over double - tripped over himself as he scrambled to dodge the spinning blade. The wicker shield came up a half-breath before the flat of the cleaver blade smashed into his arm. Yesugei saw Kaveh tumble to the side, his left arm shattered in two, his split shield held together only by its thin leather strap. The cleaver, its flight deflected by the wicker shield, landed softly in the dirt a few steps away from the gray corpse.

The black worms sprouting from the creature’s neck inched their way across the ground, and buried themselves into the empty eyes and dead flesh of the severed head that lay at Yesugei’s feet. He reached out to grasp the greasy braids, but the snaking blood quickly yanked the head away from him. The two stumps connected, merged. Invisible string tied the two ends together, and then the jagged wound was closed as if it had not been there at all. The monster’s chest rose, then fell. A hollow breath sounded.

Yesugei tried to cry out, but his throat tightened as he felt the veins in his neck grow to bursting. He dug one of his nails into his graying flesh - if he could pop the veins, perhaps the pressure would relieve itself. Perhaps the agony would stop. His nails dug into the flesh of his neck. He felt his skin crack, bleed, and then peel away as he scrambled to rip out the swelling rot as it suffocated him. And all the while, he saw the hulking gray corpse stand up from the ground once more, one hand bracing itself on the cleaver stuck in the ground.

“Foolish child,” the monster boomed, its grating voice sounding just as it had before. As though he hadn’t just ripped off its head a few moments ago. “There are no legends - only truth.”

Yesugei felt his legs spasm uncontrollably as he gasped for precious breath. He inched his fingers across the dirt, grasping for his sword as the monster stood to its full height and approached Kaveh. It licked its finger, then looked for a moment at the writhing man before it. With a single hand, the monster lifted Kaveh into the air by his collar, smashing him so hard into the wall of the house behind him the entire wooden structure seemed to shake. The crows began to caw, chanting for suffering. Suffering. Suffering.

“May the gate be opened!” cried the monster, raising a clawed finger to the sky. “Great Keeper of the Stars, accept this sacrifice!”

The black claw tore through Kaveh’s silk tunic seamlessly, exposing his bare, bruised chest. The claw pressed against quivering flesh, pressing deeper and deeper until a single droplet of crimson blood formed on the monster’s finger. The claw shot downwards, ripping through Kaveh’s chest as the monster traced a crimson cross into his flesh, followed by a triangle at the cross’ apex. Kaveh’s cry was gurgled, gasped as he kicked and struggled beneath the monster’s grip, and he let out a cry as the monster released him - dropping him to its feet like a discarded toy.

“Now, suffer. And be enlightened.”

The carved sign flashed with fire, and Kaveh screamed as the flames turned black and spread across his body. Burning. Singing. Consuming.

A desperate, agonized cry exploded from Yesugei as he forced his heavy body to its feet, and scooped the shamshir from the ground. Kaveh’s screams filled the world as he staggered forward, and he roared in reply as he flew at the monster with his sword to cut, to hack, to rip apart with his sword, his bare hands, his teeth. Kaveh continued to thrash wildly on the ground, the black flames turning him into a dark, flickering shadow as the air filled with the smell of burning hair and flesh.

Yesugei threw a slash at the monster's back, but the blade stopped in the air at a single lift of the monster’s finger. He tried to jerk the blade away, but found his hand remained stuck in space as well. Yesugei felt the crushing pressure on his chest grow heavier as the monster turned to look at him, but now he felt no fear. Only heart-splitting rage.

The monster brought its thumb and bloodied index finger together. Yesugei struggled against the invisible force that held him - struggled to reach the monster with his other hand so he could gouge out its black eyes and rip into its throat. As the monster’s fingers slowly came together and twisted, he saw the cracked steel of his shamshir’s blade tremble and shake. And then the steel shattered.

The decorated shamshir blade split into a dozen great pieces that exploded outwards. Silver glinting shards pierced Yesugei’s arm, his chest, his throat. He gurgled on black and crimson blood as his paralyzed body screamed and tried to thrash impotently. The great force which held him in place now picked him up, and Yesugei felt his feet leave solid ground. He sailed through the air and landed in the middle of the courtyard grounds. He felt something crack in his back as he hit the ground, and all sensation in his legs suddenly died.

Yesugei managed a gasp for breath through a mouthful of blood, and spat out a glob of black and crimson. His body knew he was injured, that shards of his own sword pierced his gut and his neck, but he didn’t care.

It would be so easy to die, to surrender and ascend to the blue, endless steppe of the heavens.

Perhaps his death was set in stone the moment the monster emerged.

Or perhaps when they had decided to enter this cursed outpost.

Or even when they had first set out from the Qarakesek ulus to search for Dagun, whose survival now seemed so inconsequential.

But none of that mattered - Tseren, Khenbish, Targatai, and now Kaveh all lay dead. The only thing that mattered now was hurting this creature as much as possible - trying to draw as much blood in vengeance as he could even if it meant he would be shattered into a million pieces, and even if the monster would heal and go on to reap its human harvest. All that mattered now was giving forth one final, desperate, stupid fight.

The girl lay just off to the side, her torn neck continuing to weep blood. Yesugei crawled towards her limp form, reaching for the scimitar that lay just out of reach as the monster stomped towards him. As he tried to reach for the pitted sword, he felt a giant hand grasp the back of his robe. Something lay in the dirt, tucked in the folds of the girl’s ripped dress. Yesugei grabbed at his final, desperate insult as the monster lifted him into the air.

“Very good,” came the scratchy voice right above his head. As the monster lifted its other clawed hand to carve another sign Yesugei grabbed the monster’s clutching hand to brace himself, and twisted in the monster’s grasp. He threw his right arm forward, struck as hard as he could with the shard of black crystal that lay in the girl’s pouch.

A heart-rending howl filled the outpost, sending the waiting crows soaring to the skies.

Yesugei fell to the ground, and he watched with a sickly grin on his face as he saw the howling monster clutch at its smoking chest where the tooth of darkness was driven into its foul, wretched heart. The monster desperately grabbed at the shard in its breast and began to step back until it tripped on its own clumsy legs. As it fell, the cracked gray skin came apart, followed by the knotted muscle, and then the strands of its greasy hair - all turned into black ashes, and spilled onto the ground.

Yesugei let his head fall back, and he stared up at the gray clouds.

It was over. The nightmare was over. The monster lay dead, his vengeance was complete, and he could finally die in peace.

He felt the flow of his life essence from his wounds slow to a steady trickle as he let his breathing still.

He thought of his grandfather of whom he only had a single, grainy memory of falconry with. He thought of his mother who disappeared when he was still young - gone forever when she was taken by a rival tribe of the Qarakesek. Their faces were blurred in his memory, faded by time.

Perhaps he would see them again, in the final, heavenly steppe that awaited him. He let out one last, slow breath and let his hands fall from his bleeding neck to his sides.

He heard something stir beside him. Through his darkening vision and half-closed eyes, he saw a silhouette appear over him. It was a womanly figure, dressed in bloodied, tattered royal dress. Long black hair brushed against his face as the woman knelt down.

Yesugei’s eyes widened. His gaze was met by two bright pools of molten gold.