The Echoed Realm

by A. J. Vrana

  Kai’s brow arched. “We were partners in some fucked up scheme?”

  The voice of Velizar bellowed with a deep, reverberating laugh. What else is godhood if not scheming among mortals? The villagers didn’t know we were divine—that their king was a god in human form. And the black wolf they dreaded? That god’s brother. Creation and destruction, he echoed, two sides of the same coin.

  The weight of those words struck heavier than the bus had three years ago. The poetic nonsense about coins wasn’t just metaphor; there was truth to it—devastating truth that Kai didn’t want. Yet here he was, asking the questions himself.

  His eyes were fixed on the Grey Gnarl, his jaw set as myth and history weaved into a terrifying tapestry that showcased a distant past he loathed to accept as part of himself. Yet it explained so much, gave meaning to everything he once considered the universe’s arbitrary cruelty.

  You were the stuff of nightmares, said Velizar when Kai didn’t respond, and I was there to harvest those nightmares, to mould the fear they inspired into law. It paved the way for an orderly society—one that thrived in my hands. We were born divine, and we were born to rule men.

  “Foiled by the Dreamwalker?” Kai mocked.

  Ah, that woman, Velizar sighed ruefully. A girl born with the power to traverse realms. She defied order. A god of chaos in her own right.

  “She was like us?”

  Velizar growled, sounding offended. Like us? No. But what does it matter? She always brings about the same result, whether she means to or not. She healed you when you should have died.

  That’s right. The girl from the village found a dying wolf. Kai had assumed he’d been shot by hunters; it seemed a common enough theme in his life. But perhaps there was more to it. “Why was I dying?”

  Why don’t I show you, brother? he offered sweetly. Then you can decide for yourself who the villain is.

  Shaken by his bald-faced confidence, Kai faltered. “Are you serious? I’ve got a demon to hunt down, and you want to take a trip down memory lane?”

  Cooperate, and I’ll take you to the other side, Velizar twisted his earlier promise. Resist, and I’ll lock you here until you submit.

  “You piece of sh—”

  And I wouldn’t take too long deciding if I were you. It’s only a matter of time before Rusalka reaches your precious Emiliya—that’s her name now, isn’t it?

  Something struck Kai like a hammer to the knee. What was Rusalka’s beef with Miya? Her MO was manipulating men into killing women they loved—a sick revenge shenanigan, no doubt. If she was going for Miya directly, there had to be more to it. Kai figured Velizar knew Rusalka somehow, though the bastard was well-practiced in guarding his secrets.

  It was unfair. Kai’s every racing thought was transparent to his antagonist. Their power dynamic was lopsided, just as it always had been.

  “Forcing my hand isn’t very endearing,” said Kai.

  Unlike you, Velizar rumbled, I have always made the hard decisions. You took the easy way out. You’re still trying to.

  Kai felt an uncomfortable prickle in his chest; a kernel of truth had burrowed its way in.

  Through my eyes, I will show you the world you’ve forgotten. Soon, brother, you will understand. Violence is not strength. The power to kill is not strength. Strength is neither wild nor free, as you have always fancied yourself. Strength is found in discipline—in loyalty to a cause greater than oneself. It transcends your petty impulse towards self-preservation. It is the resolve to obey when your heart yearns to rebel. It is the persistence of faith in spite of doubt. Strength is quiet, patient…and unyielding.

  Kai’s vision began to blur. His feet sank into the earth and tangled into the Grey Gnarl’s roots. Abaddon had been a menace, but nothing could have prepared Kai for the eloquent knife Velizar twisted into his heart. Survival at any cost. Animal rage in the face of any threat. These made Kai who he was. They made him resilient—or so he thought. He enjoyed towering over those who thought they could hurt him, and he enjoyed hurting them back.

  He still tasted Rusalka’s bitter lips, felt her blackened blood spilling over his hands. He’d wanted to hurt her too.

  What if Velizar was right? What if Kai’s brutality was nothing more than a fragile façade to hide his weakness? What if true strength looked nothing like him?

  Of course it looks nothing like you, Velizar replied, and Kai could hear the smile as he spoke. How do you think I’ve survived this long while you have died a thousand deaths?

  Kai gasped for air, but he was already underground. Roots like snakes coiled around his limbs and embraced him in a vise-like grip. All the physical power in the world couldn’t have helped him break free, so he surrendered, closing his eyes and giving in to the darkness.

  He’d already invited one monster in.

  Why stop now?

  29

  VELIZAR

  For endless moons and eternal suns, Velizar had been drawn by the Hollow’s impervious mists and its thick, devouring forest. The warren nestled in the heart of the viridescent sea was a prize—a wild colt to be tamed.

  Velizar would be its equestrian.

  He stood half-hidden amongst the woodland, paces from the tiny settlement. Milky flower buds spotted the surrounding apple trees as they stirred from their winter slumber. Basked in moonlight, dewdrops glimmered on the petals like nature’s ephemeral diamonds. Wildlife beckoned, but the chaos of the animal world bored Velizar. He didn’t care for nature’s equilibrium or the blind instinct that drove baser creatures. He sought something greater, something higher—an order extricated from man’s greatest gift: the will to power.

  The Hollow’s people needed a leader. They needed a king.

  He called to the figure behind him, “You know what to do then, brother?”

  Sendoa sidled up to Velizar, his wild black hair blowing around his neck, uneven edges just barely grazing his shoulders. His footsteps were quieter than the breeze.

  A true predator, Velizar thought.

  “Kill those who stray too far,” Sendoa echoed his brother’s earlier instruction. “Seems simple enough.”

  A slow, satisfied smile crept up the side of Velizar’s face. His sable mane hung lower than his brother’s, tied back by blue yarn. “Careful, executioner. You are only to snuff out the lives your king commands you to.”

  “My king?” Sendoa laughed indolently. The word should have been weightier, yet it left Sendoa’s lips with the lightness of a sparrow’s feather. “Go on. Claim this hole as your kingdom. It doesn’t make you my king.”

  A sour taste filled Velizar’s mouth. “Oh?”

  “I’m not a pawn playing house with your little village,” said Sendoa. “I’m the monster keeping the people docile behind its walls.”

  “Just do as you’re told, Sen.” They exchanged pointed looks—cold, gleaming gold clashing with dark, molten red. “Destroy as you were born to, so that I may create as I was destined to. We cannot thrive without each other’s cooperation.”

  “So you’ve said,” muttered Sendoa, breaking away from their terse battle. He skipped a pebble across the shallow stream that threaded through the trees.

  “Do as I say, and all will be well. We will have balance and purpose. We will have order. I promise you that.”

  They needed human faith to sustain them, yet Velizar had learned that belief was fickle; when the tides changed, so too did people’s loyalties. He needed to be more than ethereal; he needed to be visceral. The whims of human imagination would not subdue him.

  To be a king was far nobler than to be a god.

  Sendoa rolled his eyes, then stalked into the woods. “I’ll humour you…for now.”

  Velizar studied his brother. How alike they were in appearance, even as the younger scoffed at the pursuits of his elder. “Why?”

  Sendoa flashed Velizar a wolfish grin. “Because we’re gods. What more do we have than a wretched abundance of everlasting tedium?”

  “For once, you spea
k wisely.” Velizar’s smile glistered against the night. “Now go, brother. Sharpen your claws and bloody your teeth. There’s fear to be sown.”

  Sendoa’s lips twisted into a sneer. “As you wish, my king.”

  Velizar stood at the precipice of the village plaza. Nestled under a crooked oak, he was caught in the sharp divide between shadow and light. The spring sun brought new life with it, yet death lingered like the final blusters of winter winds.

  A thick, knotted tree trunk rose from the dirt at the center of the commons. Stripped of its branches, the totem was cloaked in furs and decorated with tokens: bones, claws, teeth, arrowheads, and the odd piece of jewelry. A bear skull hung from the top, its cavernous eyes boring directly into the settlement’s new guest.

  At the foot of the grotesque display knelt a woman with luscious tresses, dark as midnight and restless as the sea. Her shoulders shook, and her sobs filled the still air. She was grieving.

  Velizar slithered from the shade. As his steps crunched closer, she met him with a tear-stained gaze.

  “Are you well?” he asked as he folded onto one knee.

  “Where’d you come from?” she answered his question with another, then looked past him into the woods. “You are not one of us.”

  “I am a visitor,” he said.

  She wiped her eyes, her hand calloused from long days of labour. “Why are you here, stranger?”

  “I followed the sound of sorrow,” he answered truthfully, “and found you at this peculiar altar.”

  Bowing her head, the young woman clutched her cloak tighter around her shoulders. He sensed she was too timid to interrogate him. “I was imploring the Viyest to be kind to my husband in the Silent Place.”

  “The Viyest, you say?” Velizar looked upon the great bear skull.

  The young woman nodded. “My husband, Decebal—the Viyest was his winter kill. Its flesh fed us through hungry days, and its fur kept us warm during long, frigid nights. We place the Viyest’s skull here as thanks for its sacrifice, for protecting us throughout the year until the next Viyest is hunted.”

  “It must be difficult,” said Velizar, “placing your fate in the paws of a dead animal.”

  She smiled, clement and reserved. “It’s not for outsiders to understand, but the Viyest is sacred.”

  “And how do your people choose their Viyest?”

  The woman averted her gaze. “The Dreamwalker chooses.”

  “The Dreamwalker?”

  “Yes,” she nodded. “She travels to the dreamscape and finds the next Viyest every autumn. But now…since Decebal went into the woods…since the black wolf took his life…we’re doomed.”

  “I am sorry for your loss,” Velizar consoled her. “Surely, your Dreamwalker will find your next Viyest?”

  The woman shook her head. “The Dreamwalker was killed in the hunt with Decebal. Bartha summoned her to assist him in tracking the black monster that roams close to the village, dragging off goats and hens. We fear for our children and what little livestock we keep.”

  Triumph pumped through Velizar’s veins like a stormy current begging for release. Sendoa must have killed them both—the Hollow’s greatest huntsman and this Dreamwalker. Though primitive, the Hollow’s people were hardy. There was no creature they feared, and their hubris was not unfounded. The Viyest’s head, dangling from a stick, was proof of their ferocity.

  But with each arrow knocked, fangs crept closer to the throat. Since the Hollow hunters were unmoved by profane beasts, Velizar had given them an infernal one to contend with.

  Sendoa had made himself their harbinger of death: a stygian wolf with eyes like blood and teeth like daggers. He inspired all the dread Velizar required to subdue even the bravest—and the most foolish—of men.

  Nothing tasted sweeter than courage liquefying into helpless terror.

  When Velizar reined in his glee, he placed a hand on the woman’s shoulder. “What is your name, girl?”

  “Lana,” she replied, her large russet eyes meeting his.

  “Lana,” he coaxed. “Thank you for your patience with me. I believe I know this creature that prowls nearby. Perhaps I may assist?”

  Her suspicion melted away, and she rose to her feet. “Bartha would want to know we have a visitor.” Her cheeks blossomed with colour, her smile sweet as a fresh peach. “You must have travelled from far away. There is nothing but forest between us and the horizon. I can’t help but wonder where you’ve come from.”

  Velizar chuckled as he towered over the girl. “Perhaps I did come from the horizon.”

  She burst into a laugh—the most pleasant of songs. “If that were true, I’d think you something from another world.”

  Velizar only smiled.

  “I will not pry,” Lana assured him, then turned away from the Viyest. “Come, I’ll take you to Bartha.”

  “You have my deepest gratitude.”

  Now with her back to him, she didn’t see his eyes glint like gold—this mortal with the instincts of a fawn.

  Lana had invited the beast’s brother straight into her home and offered him the hearth.

  The forest had always been plentiful. Sustenance was easily procured from its verdant depths, so the hunters never acquiesced to an outsider. Yet with Sendoa’s savage attacks, their unwieldy pride fissured. A single summer was all it took for Velizar to harness the Hollow—to break in the colt.

  “You were once a stranger to us,” said Bartha as he fought the tremor in his hand. The bear skull at the center of the commons had yellowed from neglect, its power lost with its magnificence. Bartha wobbled closer as others gathered around him. Autumn leaves peppered the grass, and a chill settled over the village. The elder bowed his head in humility. “Velizar—you are as a great king. You have proven yourself our savior.”

  “Please, Bartha, I am simply a man like any other here.” Velizar placed a firm but gentle hand on the old man’s shoulder.

  “Your modesty betrays your station.” Bartha further lowered his head, nearly crumpling like paper. “Before you came to us, we feared for our lives—preyed upon by a demon in the woods. Now, the creature’s influence has dwindled, its familiars decimated under your miraculous guidance.”

  Velizar had confidently led the hunters to packs of wild dogs loitering near the mouth of the woods; he’d convinced them the scavengers were thralls of the great beast. With each animal slaughtered, Velizar chipped away at Bartha’s reservations until the armor flaked off and the elder was left vulnerable, and so too his people.

  Now, Velizar had them eating from the palm of his hand.

  “I wish only to bring prosperity to the Hollow. I am overjoyed to have staved off the darkness with good sense,” said Velizar.

  Rapture coursed through him, the Hollow’s worship filling him with life. With neither the Dreamwalker nor the Viyest to compete with his authority, he had come to replace the old ways with his own. He’d given enlightenment to a nascent and unsightly culture.

  Order and structure could only be inspired by fear—a thing like raw dough, easily moulded.

  As much as it disgruntled Velizar to admit it, his success was due in large part to Sendoa’s bloody efforts. His brother—a god of destruction—would always be the monster lurking in the shadows, the villain the Hollow would perpetually seek to eradicate. With the demonic black wolf sowing fear, Velizar had engineered his throne.

  “The perils beyond the Hollow have not abated,” Velizar called to the villagers. “Ghoulish horrors stalk the woods, lying in wait for innocents to stray. Please, remain here. Do not disobey, for disobedience leads only to tragedy.”

  “And what of the Viyest?” a voice shouted from the back. Pavel, an eager young hunter, stepped forward. “I have a wife and two children to feed. Between your rules and the beast haunting the woods, we’ll starve by mid-winter!”

  Murmurs rippled through the crowd. Velizar levelled his gaze on the teething whelp. Pavel’s sharp grey eyes were in stark contrast to his muddy hair. With a
well-muscled frame and an imposing presence, there was something wild and unruly about the boy that reminded Velizar of his brother.

  “The Viyest is superstition from a cruder time, my child,” said Velizar. “Do not place your faith in such myths. There isn’t even a Dreamwalker to guide your hunt.”

  Pavel pressed on, “How many beasts have we slaughtered in your name? How many times has the purge of wild dogs and coyotes lulled us into complacency? Yet our best men fall to the black wolf no matter your words!”

  “That is why you must keep from the woods,” Velizar reasoned. “The danger is endless. I promise the creature’s army has been weakened. Heed me, and all will be well.”

  Pavel threw his arms up. “Our people are born hunters, yet since you arrived, we run scared like barn cats. You keep us as such with your portents. You destroy our way of life!” He cast a finger towards the gnarled branch where the Viyest hung like a tired ornament. “We need the Viyest. It has protected us for generations. Why should this winter be any different?”

  Velizar’s insides bubbled like lava. Humans only prayed when they wanted something, and that was a precarious source of power for a god. Absolute power was in the blood and body: the authority to let some live and make others die.

  Velizar’s gaze drifted towards the trees where he caught a pair of candescent red eyes witnessing the strife. He inhaled deeply, then peered into the roiling darkness. The wolf melded into the shadows as though a part of them, waiting for the king’s next command.

  This one, Velizar instructed, his aurous stare shifting to the mouthy hunter. “I only seek the safety of our people, dear Pavel. Surely, a single night of hunger is not worth your life.”

  “Too many nights of hunger, my king,” Pavel sneered the words, “and my daughter will lose hers.”

  A collective gasp echoed through the town commons, but Pavel was unfazed by Bartha’s cautionary glare. “I will hunt!” he declared, pounding a fist to his chest. “Who will join me?”