God Within Us

YESUGEI led the way forth through the Hollows. In one hand he held a lantern thrust before him to illuminate the path ahead with pale light, and in the other he held his bow, strung anew for the hunt.

He moved with a sense of purpose, following the inexplicable pull within his heart towards the Vessel's location. Behind him went Tuyaara, and quietly bringing up the rear were Kargasha and Stavr, who had managed to steal away from the ceremonies above without rousing much suspicion. They trudged together in silence, counting their steps as they went deeper and deeper into the darkness of the world.

Aboveground the business of glories and reward continued, but once the fear and relief had faded away, there would be questions - above all else would be, Where is the princess?

Ilya would set their minds at ease, saying the princess of the city was convalescing from the cowardly blow dealt to her by the bastard of Denev. But the lie would not last long, a day or two at most. Then their battle for the city would be for naught, and even those stalwarts who had stood by the House of Belnopyl from the start might take flight, or pledge their allegiance to some other lord. Others might- no, many would try to loot the tribute that remained in the keep to take what they could before fleeing, and blood would spill in the streets again as Belnopyl's noble defenders would turn into the same starving dogs they had just repelled from the walls.

Yesugei shook his head at the folly. Their unity hung by a bare thread, and only by such. Vasilisa had already become like a god to many of the commonfolk above - they all spoke of Vasilisa the Fair in the same breath as their other gods, the Lightning-Lord and Mother-Earth. The nascent legend was growing, and soon it would reach out east, where another god dwelt in the steppes, turning men into beasts. All in service to the Harvest. Two stallions to clash over the fate of the world, and the rest of us will be like the grass at their feet, trampled and torn, given to the ones above.

He looked back to the others: the girl-shaman, the ragged crow, and the Klyazmite. Who among them would die? He had once traveled with another shaman, another pair of warriors, and a brother. Back then, he had thought them among the strongest people in the world, somehow unable to die because they were his friends, his (blood), yet now they were all gone, all given to the gods along their inexorable path to answering a Question he hardly understood. One that Vasilisa and Jirghadai themselves hardly understood. Yet they all moved towards it anyhow, trailing an ocean of blood, shattered bones, and bitter tears in their wake.

Even I go along this path, he thought to himself in the darkness. Puppets all, no matter what we do. But perhaps...perhaps some may yet be saved.

He had lost another shaman, another pair of warriors, and a brother to an Apostle. This time however...this time might be different.

The passage from the Great Hall twisted in bewildering fashion, until even Tuyaara could no longer speak to their heading. The path was ever sloping downwards, yet the air below was cool and fresh, blowing through small tunnels and holes that poked out of the walls. As they walked, Yesugei saw the vague outlines of other passages and hallways, and on occasion he felt possessed by the same urge in his heart to turn this way and that. In the suffocating blackness, groping half-blind along the walls, following a feeling in his own heart seemed as good as any other sense.

They went on for a little while longer, though how long that while had been Yesugei could only hazard a guess, for time seemed to lose all meaning beneath the earth. Eventually, he noticed the walls beginning to change - the jagged, rough-hewn edges began to grow smoother, as if now they had been carved deliberately by skilled hands. Then deeper in there appeared pillars and archways, marked with inscriptions whose meaning died with their creators. It felt as though they had passed from the wild underdepths of Belnopyl and into a new city, one of myriad doorways and infinite tunnels that poked out from the ceilings and formed long, perilous drops into the abyss at their feet.

It was in the vastness of the dead undercity that they at last reached the limit of their endurance. Sleep and hunger hung over them like a heavy cloud, and Yesugei looked for a place to find rest when suddenly the walls to right and left vanished. They seemed to have passed through some arched doorway into a black and empty space with no seeming end. A cold draft blew in from above, and Yesugei saw the flame within the lantern dwindle and dance wildly.

The others crowded anxiously. The darkness in this room felt as though it were a presence unto itself, and at any moment there might appear an eye to survey the intruders who had stepped into this empty undercity. Yesugei traced the sign of Gandroth into his palm, and raised his hand to the air as he closed his eyes, struggling to will into being the same flame he had wielded through the Latchwood.

There was a flash, and a red glow filled the room. The darkness took flight to reveal a great circular chamber with three heavy doorways, and the archways over each were flanked by great pillars that ran up and up into a domed ceiling decorated with old carvings in imitation of the night sky. And everywhere - the walls, the floor, the ceiling - all the stone was black and polished, smooth as crystal. No, it was crystal - a whole chamber of it, carved from like material as the teeth of night. The red glow lasted for only a moment, and Yesugei felt his strength suddenly bleed away as the red glow disappeared with a woosh like an extinguished candle flame. Then, he saw inscriptions reveal themselves upon the floor, suffused with his stolen strength to cast the whole room in a dim red light. They were magical wards, drawn with the simplicity of the Apostles’ magic glyphs - a perfect circle with a line through its middle, as if severing the bond between the world of dream and the living.

There was no sound in the chamber, only silent awe at the majesty of the room as their company spread out, gaping at the ceiling and the polished walls. The shapes were jarring in their perfection - it was as though the entire room had been transported out of some crystal palace and stuck in the middle of the depths. But once their awe had faded, Yesugei recalled Tseren’s words, spoken so long ago in the dead of night.

“We’ll rest here,” he said to the others as they turned to him. “I have seen such crystals before. Here, we will be warded from Unukalhai - but rest quickly all the same!”

“How much deeper do you think this place goes?” asked Kargasha as he laid his pack out on the ground. “Gods, we must be at the bottom of the world.”

“The air here is cooler, cleaner,” spoke Tuyaara. “We must be close to these waters that Unukalhai spoke of.”

“Which means we are closer to the damnable beast itself then,” interjected Stavr, speaking the thought on everyone’s minds. “Then what?”

“Then we kill it,” said Yesugei, clenching his burnt fingers into a fist. “Unukalhai spoke of bringing Vasilisa up to godhood in this place. We kill it, and then we find her.”

A deep silence fell over their group, and one by one the others began to nod. Though exhaustion was heavy about him, Yesugei found sleep elusive - he stood guard, watching the three doors, listening for any sound. All his mind was given to listening and little else, but he heard nothing for a long while.

Just as he was about to rouse Kargasha from sleep, he felt a sudden dread come over him like a rattling breath from one of the doors. Beyond one of the archways, he saw two pale points of light hovering in the darkness.

In an instant an arrow was in his hand, and he gave a cry to the others who scrambled awake as he loosed a flaming shaft down the hall. The arrow cast the entire chamber in an orange glow, but as it flew down the hall it stopped in midair, then exploded into splinters and embers.

The dying light revealed the corpse-like visage of the Apostle, standing before them with a grim smile.

Unukalhai let the starlit chain fall from their hands as they approached, but Yesugei saw the Apostle come to a halt just as the threshold of the chamber. “You should not be here,” spoke the Apostle in a low tone.

Yesugei stepped in front of the others, his second arrow levelled at the Apostle’s gleaming eyes as he gave reply, “We would not have had to set foot in this dark place if you hadn’t taken Vasilisa. Where is she?”

“Her wretched city and its denizens were saved,” said Unukalhai. The Apostle’s words took on a poisonous tone, one that seemed long-hidden behind a veil of servitude. “I could have taken her against her will, but instead I entertained her little…sympathies. Her weaknesses. No more.”

“Where is she?” Yesugei repeated.

“Somewhere you will never find her.” The Apostle’s voice became suddenly solemn. “She will become something more than human. You on the other hand…your place is here, among the failures of Vaal.”

Yesugei sensed a smile in the darkness.

“Would you like to meet them?”

There arose a sound from the halls, like the sound of tumbling pebbles, clattering against the stony walls. It grew louder, swelling into a great, echoing cacophony from all around. Then suddenly, it grew very, very quiet. From Unukalhai’s direction there came the rhythmic click-clack of approaching feet, and then from the darkness there emerged a sea of twinkling lights. A rattling sigh sounded, and then there appeared a horde of figures with deformed and swollen heads, hunchbacked spines, and fanged mouths. Some were small and crooked like the pigmies of the Sunset Isles, others as tall as Unukalhai, but all were cast like mockeries of the human form. The failures of humanity.

In their hands were clubs and spears shaped from stone and petrified wood, jagged and cruel as their master. In their eyes were pinpricks of starlight, cold and unfeeling.

There was a rush of terrible laughter that sounded like the fall of crushing stones, and then the Apostle beckoned the undercity’s denizens forth. The walls shook with the thunder of their approach.

There was a ring and the clatter of steel as the others drew their weapons - Kargasha and Stavr their swords, blood-red in the cavern’s glow, and Tuyaara her bow. With every flaming arrow Yesugei sent whining down the hall, he saw the sea of howling man-things growing closer and closer, heedless of the feathered shafts that set their kin alight like candles.

“Close the door!” Yesugei hollered over the screams. “Close the doors!”

Stavr threw himself forward and against the doors, heaving with all his might against the heavy stone. Flaming, screaming, clattering death closed in, but before they could burst into the chamber Kargasha leapt forward to help, and the doors ground shut. There was a crash against the doors that nearly flung the two Klyazmites away, and as they threw themselves against the doors a new the beat of a hundred fists boomed against the polished stone. There was a loud boom, and then a huge, muscled arm ripped through the small crack between the doors. A great six-fingered hand groped blindly about the other side of the barricade, and then it wrapped about Kargasha’s face, squeezing.

“No!” slipped out the cry from Tuyaara as she sent three barbed arrows into the giant arm. Its grip faltered just enough for Kargasha to free himself from his helm, and a moment later the polished steel crunched as the fist closed.

Kargasha gave a roar as he cleaved down at the arm with his sword, every hack issuing forth a great spurt of black, foul-smelling blood. In three heavy strokes the arm was severed, and it fell to the ground still twisting and grasping blindly. When other hands and stone-carved spears poked in through the hole, Yesugei and Tuyaara shot forth a volley of arrows, drawing high-pitched shrieks and roars from the other side.

The hissing shafts caused the pounding against the doors to abate for a while, but the reprieve did not last long. Giant footsteps sounded from behind the door, hastening into a wild dash, and when Stavr peeked through the hole in the barricade he scrambled aside.

“It's a giant!” The warrior managed to cry, before the terrible boom of shattering stone drowned out all else.

A huge, hulking figure stepped over the ruins of the doors. The red half-light of the chamber cast the monstrous figure half in shadow, but even shrouded in darkness Yesugei saw the demonic form. Two fanged, slobbering mouths sat on either side of a deformed head like ears, and in the middle there was a single golden eye, slitted like that of a feline’s. The head sat atop a massive, fat body covered in dark blue and gray skin, and Yesugei saw one of its arms was missing, severed at the elbow and dripping black blood.

The beast crushed a chunk of crystal the size of Yesugei’s head underfoot as it peered about the chamber. At last, the terrible eye fixed Kargasha with a knowing glance as the warrior staggered to his feet. With a sweep of its remaining arm, the great abomination sent the ragged crow flying across the chamber, and where he fell he did not rise.

“Back! Back! Back!” Yesugei screamed over the roars from a dozen throats as he loosed a withering hail of arrows at the towering giant and those that rushed into the chamber in its wake. He placed a shaft through the belly of one bent creature as it moved to strike Stavr, and the warrior staggered to his feet beneath Tuyaara’s helping shoulder. The giant groaned and snorted as it turned to face the others, and Yesugei loosed several shafts at its face. The beast staggered off ponderously away from Tuyaara and Stavr, and the two disappeared behind him, trailing deeper back into the hallway from where they had first emerged.

He heard their vague calls for him to join them, but the tide of howling creatures was too great. For every abomination that fell, two more seemed to claw their way through the piled debris of the shattered doorway, screaming and gnashing misshapen teeth. Soon there was a heap of corpses before the doorway, and their cursed blood spread like an inky tide across the floor.

With a start, Yesugei saw the inscriptions upon the floor beginning to grow brighter and brighter as they seemed to absorb the cursed life essence. His heart sank when the realization came - and the memory of how Alnayyir had awakened in the Devil Woods.

They’re feeding the wards. Feeding them until they burst! The black pool began to twist and writhe like a living thing, and a loud crack echoed through the chamber.

The glowing inscriptions flickered one last time. Then they faded, letting darkness fall upon the chamber. Silence and fear drowned him, and he saw no more of his escape.

For a long moment all Yesugei could hear was his own rattling, terrified breath, and the creak of his bow as he swept his arrow to and fro in search of any movement in the darkness. Then suddenly his vision exploded with stars and pain, and before he could get his sword out he felt dozens of hands wrap around him. Powerful, crooked fingers yanked away his bow from his hand and his sword from his belt, while others pulled his legs out from under him until he was brought to his knees. High shrieks of laughter and the gnashing of hungry teeth deafened him to all else.

The sound of light footsteps padding across the bloodsoaked floor silenced the abominations. Yesugei could vaguely make out the Apostle’s form in the darkness, but he felt the terrible cold that hung about them like a cloak.

Unukalhai knelt before Yesugei, their glinting eyes meeting his, their cold, dead breath wafting against his face. Then the Apostle reached into Yesugei’s belt, and withdrew the shattered hilt of Kargasha’s sword.

“You will be remembered,” spoke the Apostle as they weighed the sword in their hands. “You will be loved.”

Unukalhai punched him in the chest. He felt a tightness in his chest, and then a bloom of cold as he looked down to see the jagged steel buried in his flesh. Unukalhai twisted the chilling blade, but Yesugei felt no pain. He felt nothing - nothing but the cold, and the bitter end…

Yesugei closed his eyes, and let himself sink into a final, fleeting dream.

***

The freezing desert crept back into his mind once more. A terrible dream, for the terrible end of a terrible soul. Was this what awaited him at the end, for a Khormchak who died so far from the native steppe?

He was walking along the shifting sands of the White Pinch again, trudging endlessly beneath the cold, dead sun whose rays bleached the whole desert white. He was naked before the cruel rays, shivering as he forced himself to bring one foot forward, then the other. The chill of the desert bit at his skin, and he could feel the sting of frost in his lungs. With every step he felt as though he was sinking deeper into the freezing dunes. Where was he going? To what end, to what finality?

Keep on moving. If I stop, I die.

That was the mantra that had kept him moving ever since he awakened in the grasses of the foreign land, in the arms of the woman he had come to love. But where was he moving now? He was dead, and the vastness of the desert had no end in sight, for it was eternity itself.

He walked for an age, feeling his skin grow hard and frigid, his feet blistered and bloodied, and his tears like shining crystals upon his cheeks and brow. When he reached the heights of a great dune, he looked around and saw that even the traces of the battle and the blood split at the White Pinch were gone, disappeared beneath the shifting sands. Forgotten. He gazed all about the desolate sea, and nearly gave a start when he saw him - towering like a monolith over the emptiness, peering at the dead sun.

"Why am I here?" Yesugei demanded, his voice echoing across the empty expanse.

The Apostle's expression remained inscrutable, the blackness beneath the cracked stone mask of his face shifting like flowing mercury. You are here because you must be. This is the end of one path and the beginning of another.

Yesugei took a cautious step forward, feeling the sand shift beneath his feet. He paused at the precipice of the dune. "And what path is that?"

The path of the swallowed star, Alnayyir replied, a smile in his voice even when his face betrayed no emotion. You will die, Yesugei. In the black pit of the font of life, you will die to give another new life.

Yesugei's eyes narrowed. "If I die, so do you. The swallowed star is you, is it not?"

A dark chuckle rumbled from Alnayyir. I have had millennia to make peace with the path of the gods. Their design is perfect in its cruelty, flawless in its final execution - this I have seen at last, when you basked in the Vessel's Sight.

"Then why pull me from the moment of death?" Yesugei asked, frustration tinging his words. "Why bring me here?"

Alnayyir's lips curved into a chilling smile. Your small mind can only comprehend the end – the answering of the Question. But at the moment of your union with the Vessel, I parsed all the paths before us.

Yesugei felt a shiver run down his spine as Alnayyir stepped closer, his stone skin crackling with each movement. "I congratulate you on your revelation. What do you want from me?"

I wish to strike an accord, Alnayyir said, his voice almost tender, and far more frightening. I will give you the greater part of my power - not just those little fragments you have nibbled off and made a cheap wonder of in the eyes of the mortals. In return, you will carry me until the end of days, until the end of the world.

Yesugei's eyes widened. "Why would you do that?"

Suddenly, Alnayyir's form began to twist and grow monstrous, his stone skin giving way to a black, swirling cloud that blotted out the sky. A scream of pure hatred tore through the desert as the black cloud roared, Because I hate you, Yesugei. I hate you above all other humans - you who did not deserve to indulge the Vessel's mercy, her weakness. It is only by her hand your pathetic form still lives, and the correction of this fate will be mine to savor. To die here...it is too much of a mercy.

The cloud sucked back into Alnayyir's form, leaving him standing with a twisted smile on his face. No, I have seen the distant end, the finality of all finalities…and yours is beautiful. Carry me until the end of days, let me witness your end, and I will give you the strength to meet your own unraveling.

Yesugei's mind raced. The desert around him began to fade, the icy blackness of the underground tunnels seeping back into his consciousness. He thought of Kargasha, of Tuyaara, and the thousands, millions, who might yet be saved.

Other worms, Alnayyir mocked, They may yet be saved, son of the White Khan. How ironic you of all people should care for these other insects - you, who sits atop an empire of blood and bone, an empire of screams and all the savagery of your pathetic kind.

"I am not my father, nor Jirghadai," Yesugei said firmly, hardening his soul. That was the truth - one he had run from for far too long. But naked, beneath the cold sun, secrets were a thing of the past. "If they may yet live, then I accept. Give me your strength, and I will carry your soul to the end of the world, the end of time, the end of everything."

Alnayyir's smile grew wider. Then live, Yesugei. Suffer, and live.

***

Gods of mine, fire, earth, and stars above.

Grant me flame, let me save the ones I love.

Yesugei opened his eyes. Pain, unbearable pain, surged through his chest, but it was accompanied by a strange, growing warmth. The darkness of the crystalline chamber was pierced by the glow emanating from within him. He looked down to see his wound seeping bright red-orange fire in liquid form - his own blood, now aflame.

"What have you done?"

For the first time, Yesugei heard fear in Unukalhai's voice.

The warmth in his chest grew. It drove out the deathly cold of the iron blade, and then the fire within his chest erupted, sending a torrent of bright red-orange flames washing over the entire room. The cursed abominations screamed as the flames consumed their twisted forms, turning them into writhing, dancing shadows as they fled in all directions. The air became thick with the stench of sizzling fat and burning hair, charred meat and melting skin.

Unukalhai staggered away, and above the screams of the abominations the Apostle's howl of agony was loudest of all. Yesugei felt a stupid, sadistic smile come to his face as he rose up from his knees. His hand clenched around the red-hot sword hilt embedded in his chest.

Kill some more demons with it, why don't you?

Yesugei gritted his teeth as he pulled the jagged steel out from his burning heart. Then he saw with wonder that the broken sword seemed forged anew, for as he withdrew it the hilt lengthened to reveal a long, curved blade of dancing fire, at once hard as steel, yet flowing as if it were made of water. Tiny red droplets fell from the edge of the flaming blade, and where they landed they sizzled to form small black rocks.

Alnayyir's gift felt light and balanced to perfection, and Yesugei gripped the hilt tight as he saw Unukalhai appear out from the high sheet of dancing flames. The Apostle's hand that had been wreathed with fire was missing - all that remained was a burnt and blackened stump ending halfway down the elbow. Terror and cold anger was in the Apostle's starry gaze as they unwound the starlit chain, but the glow of the iron-bound stars had never seemed so feeble before.

"You blind, sorry fool," intoned Unukalhai. "I could have given you a beautiful end."

"I don't want a beautiful end, you fucking monster," spat Yesugei bitterly. He pointed the flaming sword towards Unukalhai. "I am Yesugei, son of Tsaagandai, the Scourge of Three Gods. I want to burn, and I will take all of your twisted kind with me before I am gone. That is what I want. Now have the good decency to die, will you?"