God Within Us

The moon shone its sickly-pale light down upon Vasilisa as she ran. The air was cold, and her throat burned from the chill as she flew past endless rows of dark trees that stood like great spears jutting out from the soft, black earth.

Behind her, she could feel them. Things chasing her in the dark - bounding, whispering, salivating - out of sight but always close. She felt great jaws snap at her heels and her fluttering skirt, and felt cold breath from snarling mouths blow against her back as she continued to sprint through the infinite woods.

Above her head she saw four crows take flight, their beating winds silhouetted against the dead moon. Soaring away. Abandoning her to her fate. As they flew, the crows seemed to laugh at her - cawing, “Gods-gods-gods!”

She felt the snarling tide at her back fall behind a few paces, and hazarded a quick glance over her shoulder.

Through the darkness, she saw three pairs of shining lights bobbing in the darkness - golden eyes reflecting the dead moon of a starless sky. As her pursuers passed beneath the rays of light that filtered through the black sentinel trees, she saw the stalking wolves.

The first of the pack was a white she-wolf with a split face, the two halves of its jaws and snout hanging limply to opposite sites. The she-wolf’s enormous hanging belly - bulging with unborn pups - nearly dragged along the dirt as she chased after Vasilisa. Black briars curled out from underneath her fur, wrapping the pregnant she-wolf in a suit of thorns.

The second wolf that led the pack was an old, grizzled male with patchy red-brown fur. Large, bloody sores dotted the old wolf’s body, smelling of burned flesh and sulfur. As he charged after her, the wolf gave a great howl that surged through Vasilisa’s bones with a shock.

The final wolf lagged behind the other two, its black fur causing it to blend into the woods even under the moonlight. Its jaws hung open, and from its mouth escaped a very human laugh. The erratic staccato of its cackling seemed directed as much at its pack as at Vasilisa, and she willed her tiring legs to push ever harder as the laughter seemed to close in around her from all sides.

The solid earth suddenly began to wobble. Before she knew what was happening, she felt the rush of cold water twist a knife through her burning lungs as the ground at her feet suddenly became a dark, freezing sea. She fell face-first, trying to hold what little breath she could in her chest, but the cold clawed it out of her. Vasilisa felt herself sinking fast, and in the darkness of the drowning sea the only thing she could make out at the bottom were thousands of small, white points that looked like glittering stones.

No, not stones. Stars.

As she continued to sink to the bottom Vasilisa suddenly felt herself ripped free from the ground’s watery grasp. She fell deeper towards the glittering stars beneath her - spinning uncontrollably through the darkness - and landed painfully on a featureless plain devoid of trees and snarling wolves. The stars that were beneath her were now above her, stretched out across the dark, moonless sky from which she had fallen. As she adjusted her footing, she saw that with every slight movement along the void, ripples formed and expanded as if she were standing on water - trailing off and fading until they were no more. For a moment, there was nothing but the sound of her own breathing, and a sense of hushed wonder as she looked upon the majesty of the stars - stars so close she felt as though she could reach out and touch them.

The fading waves of another ripple traveled underneath her feet - someone was striding behind her. She turned to look, and gave a gasp as she saw a towering figure looming over her - all she could make out was a dark robe…and glittering golden claws.

Vasilisa tried to step back, but suddenly the golden claws grabbed her and Chirlan pulled her close to his chest - sealing her cry of alarm with a kiss. Cold, bruised lips took her breath, and she felt her heart curl in terror and disgust as she squirmed against the sorcerer’s grasp and twisted free.

“Bastard!” she cried as she shoved the sorcerer - and with her shove the sorcerer fell backwards into the void at their feet, swallowed without a sound.

She still felt the strange, creeping cold of his lips lingering on her own. Then came the laughter, just over her shoulder, followed by another voice - one that sounded of grating, scraping glass.

The stars above began to glow brighter.

“Wake up, Vasilisa.”

As the stars’ glow spread, illuminating the sky above, she realized she was not staring at stars at all, nor at stones.

“Wake up, Vasilisa.”

The many glowing lights were nestled inside of yellow-white sockets. Skulls - thousands of them - packed together into a single, flat expanse above her head. Their glowing eyes stared down at her. Watching. Waiting. Whispering.

“Wake up.”

***

She opened her eyes in the eastern Klyazmite plains, lying on her back. Hovering just in front of her face, the steel tip of a blade glistened in the morning light.

Yesugei stood over her with a hunting knife. The color had returned to his face once more, and the rot that bloated his veins had all but retreated from sight. His slightly gaunt face was twisted in a mix of fear and anger as he looked down on her.

“What are you?”

His question hung in the air, unanswered. Vasilisa struggled to come up with an answer as she felt the memories of the last day rush back up to the forefront of her mind. Her hands had seemed to move on their own accord - she had felt like she had moved more on some deep, remembered instinct rather than any kind of logic or reason. The hole in her chest felt raw and stung with every breath she took - and it reminded her of the warning she heard from the voice in her mind.

You can never go home. Never again.

Who was she now? Belnopyl lay forty miles from the borderlands, but it may as well have been a thousand for all the good her noble blood would do her out in the open plains. She wondered how her parents - if they were still alive - would react to their daughter and her silent, crystal-pierced heart. Would they still take her in? Would they hug her if they were to see her again, or would they look at her with the same fear in their eyes as the nomad who stood poised over her - looking at her as if she were something other. Less and more than human at once.

She felt her healed wound, and traced the thin line from the back of her neck to her collarbone. Was she still human? Humans did not survive gigantic cleavers stuck in their necks - they bled out and died the same as all other beasts of the earth. She had heard stories of men - warriors, mostly - who were blessed by the gods and able to survive mortal wounds. But the gods whose names she invoked were not the Lord of Lightning, nor the Mother of the Earth - not even Veles, who reigned over the damp and grassy underworld. Gods of fire, earth, and stars were whom she had evoked - nameless, but somehow so much more real and ancient than the divines she had prayed to all her life at her family’s Elder Oak.

She propped herself up on her elbows and studied Yesugei’s face - the confident way he now stood over her with a knife in his hand.

“Are you a witch?” asked the nomad. “Or perhaps a blood-sorcerer? Whatever you are, tell me - what have you done?”

With his free hand, Yesugei pulled open his dirtied robe to reveal the dark fang nestled deep in his chest, just over his heart. Where the tendrils of darkness once twisted out from his wound, there was now only healthy, muscled flesh - the ravenous curse pierced and anchored by the crystal. Her crystal.

As the final tinges of haziness from sleep faded from her mind, she recalled how she carried the dying nomad on horseback and tended to his festering, cursed wounds. Now he stood above her - healthy, angry, and with a knife jabbed at her face. Vasilisa felt herself grow flushed with anger. Who was he to jab a knife at the woman who saved his life?

“What have I done? You’re asking me what I’ve done, you ungrateful ass?”

The nomad seemed taken aback with her reply, and the tip of the hunting knife lowered slightly from her face. She looked down and away from the knife, and saw an opening.

The nomad gave a strangled cry as Vasilisa swung her foot upwards as hard as she could - kicking up and between his legs. Yesugei staggered back and away from her as he wheezed and coughed in agony, and Vasilisa threw herself to the side. She rolled across the dirt and grass, then stood up as she searched the ground for something, anything. Her eyes settled on a large, gnarled tree branch the size of her arm, and she snatched it up as she saw Yesugei recover.

The nomad winced and staggered crookedly as he closed in on her, only to draw back a few steps when he saw her holding the heavy club. She had half a thought to rush forward and bludgeon the nomad over the head, but the shining knife summoned an almost uncontrollable urge to back away.

If they fought, it wouldn’t be a duel between warriors - it would be an ugly, angry scrap between two exhausted dogs, and more likely than not both of them would end up dead. Again. She saw hesitation in the nomad’s eyes as well, and the two of them stood in awkward silence - shivering in the morning breeze.

“I dragged you out from that massacre. I carried you for twenty-so miles through the Devil Woods.” said Vasilisa as she readjusted her grip to hold the club with both hands. “I healed you, brought you back to health when I could have left you to die-”

“-who says I haven’t died?” barked Yesugei as he gestured his knife at her. “I no longer feel my heartbeat in my chest. I no longer feel alive. And now I have a Modkhai tooth of night stabbed inside me. So spit it out - what have you done to me? What am I?”

“I don’t know what you are!” she shouted back. She felt the confusion that she had set aside in her mind since the cavern boiling over with her anger. “I only woke up with these…these crystals in my heart two days earlier, and everything’s been a gods-damned nightmare since!”

“What are you, then?”

“I don’t know!”

Vasilisa felt her shout become a roar, mixed with the sound of cracking glass. A voice that felt like it wasn’t her own - one of terrible dread and power. She saw Yesugei’s eyes widen with fear, and the nomad nearly dropped his hunting knife as he took a few more steps back.

She let her voice soften. “I don’t know what I am - not anymore.”

Her silent heart clenched with new sadness as she saw Yesugei’s terrified face. He fought without fear against Chirlan’s guards - yet now he stood like a trembling deer in front of her. How would others react?

The people of her city - merchants, freeholders, and serfs - were as superstitious a lot as all Klyazmites were, and most had far less courage than a Khormchak swordsman.

Would they also tremble when they heard this new voice of hers - thinking her a devil?

Would they run from her, abandon their homes and leave her to rule over an empty, dead city?

Or worse - would they turn against her to defend their homes against their liege lord’s cursed daughter? She imagined the familiar faces of her father’s court twisted in hateful scowls, swirling in a shouting sea of Belnopyl folk. She imagined merchants and freedmen and serfs throwing rocks, rotting food, and foul cowpies at her as they had when her father’s men led a murderer to the gallows.

You can never go home. Never again.

But she had to try. If only to see her parents and her people once more - to know whether they would cast her out. The pain of not knowing, she judged, felt worse than the prospect of being exiled. She had to try. And she had to know.

The nomad seemed to calm - seeing the fear in her own eyes.

“I don’t know what I am,” she said again. “And I don’t know what you are, either.”

She gingerly set the branch on the ground, keeping one eye on Yesugei and his knife. When she let go of the club, she brought her scarred hands up in peace.

“You have questions, and so do I.” The crystals in Yesugei’s sword came to mind. The crystals that stilled her heart had caused the monster to give pause - had warded her and Yesugei from its rotting, hateful curse. The nomad had called them "Modkhai teeth of night" - it was as good a lead as any to find answers. “It won’t do us any good if either one of us is a corpse then, right?”

Yesugei lowered the hunting knife to his side, and gave a slow, careful nod.

“Perhaps…” The nomad spun the knife between his fingers, then tossed it to one side a few paces away. “...and perhaps you aren’t a witch.”

Vasilisa raised an eyebrow angrily in response. “Pray tell, what led you to that conclusion all of a sudden?”

The nomad made to dust off his boots, only to wince in pain as he tried to bend over.

“Witches don’t kick people in the balls.”