Blessed Monsters

by Emily A Duncan

  Fear shot through Żywia’s expression. “Where is he?” she asked. Her confidence had drained away, and she sounded lost and scared.

  Nadya let her head fall back against the ground. Żywia scrambled off and she sat up.

  “Not here,” Nadya said, standing.

  The Vulture eyed her warily as she held out her hand. Nadya didn’t know what she was doing anymore, but she had done enough to Tranavia, anything more was baseless cruelty. Malachiasz was Żywia’s friend and she had to tell her that he was gone. Just punishment.

  The Vulture took her hand, iron claws slowly receding. Nadya hauled her to her feet and turned her in the direction of the forest. “Go,” she whispered. “I’ll meet you shortly.” After she disappeared into the trees, Nadya woke Rashid to take watch and slipped away when he wasn’t looking. She didn’t doubt that he was aware of her leaving.

  The forest around her was a terrifying, suffocating darkness that pressed down at her chest. She wasn’t entirely sure how far Żywia had gone until something rustled in branches above her.

  “Taking high ground really isn’t necessary,” Nadya said. “I’m not going to harm you.”

  Żywia slid on the branch she was perched on until she was hanging upside down in front of Nadya. “I don’t trust you.”

  “You shouldn’t.”

  A trickle of blood dripped down the Vulture’s face, starting from the corner of her mouth. Could she use magic still? What did wrenching blood magic away from Tranavia mean for the Vultures, who were made of magic?

  “Something broke in the air,” Żywia said, her voice holding the chaotic note of wrongness that came whenever the Vultures were closer to monster than person. “Something broke and our Black Vulture is gone. You’d better talk fast, little cleric, because I’m not feeling particularly kind and I would very much like to kill you.”

  Nadya lifted her chin. She couldn’t crumble at every mention of him. “Your Tranavian king killed his brother,” she said.

  Żywia frowned, head tilting, before understanding sparked in her eyes. She closed them for a heartbeat. “Of course they are.”

  “They had the same eyes,” Nadya mused, unable to hide the tremor of fear in her voice as she waited for the Vulture to react fully.

  Żywia pressed her hands to her temples, still hanging. “How did it happen?”

  “He was stabbed in the heart with a relic.”

  The Vulture frowned. Her eyes opened and she stared at Nadya for a long time. She carefully cut a line down the back of her hand with an iron claw. Nadya tried not to wince.

  “That is impossible,” Żywia said.

  I wish. But did she? There had been no other way for this to end. No matter how strongly her heart was pulled to him; he had been everything she was born to destroy, and so she had.

  “I know you Vultures are functionally immortal—”

  Żywia scoffed. Nadya ignored her.

  She could still feel the warmth of his bloody fingers against her lips. “He’s dead, Żywia.” Her voice cracked. The Vulture’s eyes flew open at the sound.

  Nadya only had seconds to react as the Vulture struck. She moved fast, shooting to her feet and away right as the Vulture snapped. Żywia whirled, crouched, baring her rows and rows of iron teeth. Nadya swallowed hard. She wasn’t so lucky a second time, Żywia slamming into her and throwing her to the ground.

  She raked her corrupted hand against Żywia, and the Vulture hissed, immediately scrambling back, a pained whimper escaping her. Nadya watched in horror as her torn flesh rippled. Eyes flickered open and closed along her arm. She slammed a hand over the cuts, staring at Nadya wide-eyed.

  “What are you?”

  Nadya shook her head slowly. She clenched her hand into a fist, her claws digging into her palm, blood trickling between her fingers.

  A series of sluggishly bleeding cuts raked down Żywia’s arm from her shoulder, but no more eyes. What had that been?

  “It doesn’t make sense,” she murmured. “That’s not how we die.”

  Nadya didn’t know how to kill a Vulture, but dying from a relic wound made sense to her. “What’s happening with the Vultures?”

  Żywia glared, a shiver of anxiety cracking through her. For all the Vultures had been twisted into monsters they were still painfully human. Żywia shook her head. “Why should I tell you?”

  “Because we’re past this war deciding our fates,” Nadya replied, wishing she could say she had tried to save Malachiasz. Wishing she had.

  Żywia lifted her chin and Nadya recognized something in her expression that cut down to her bones. A girl, grieving. What had he done to trap so many under his spell that their lives were so altered by his death? It seemed wrong, that so terrible a boy could leave behind so much hurt.

  “Another turning of the war is on the horizon,” Żywia finally said. “I won’t be able to stop it. I don’t know if I want to. The Vultures have always rested tenuously at the edge of chaos and now—”

  There was noise from the direction of the camp. Nadya stood.

  “Get out of here. There’s Voldah Gorovni in our group.”

  Żywia gave her a dirty look. “Of course there are.”

  Nadya sighed. It was useless explaining that she had nothing to do with Katya’s presence. None of it mattered.

  Żywia eyed the cuts on her arm dubiously. Then she glanced from Nadya to her corrupted hand before disappearing into the darkness.

  Nadya tugged at the end of her braid, chewing on her lower lip. Divinity twisted mortal flesh—but Vultures weren’t entirely mortal, so what was that?

  She was no better than the Vultures she had spent her life thinking were abominations.

  Katya stepped through the trees, her hand on the hilt of her sword. “You shouldn’t be out here,” she said.

  “I can handle whatever these woods spit out,” Nadya replied wearily.

  “Even so,” Katya said softly. She was looking at Nadya’s hand with narrowed eyes.

  Maybe Malachiasz was right and her hand was a product of corrupted divinity, an allowance of a taste when she had freed Velyos. That night she had set free a part of herself she never would have known had she not bled for power and treated in heresy. She’d found the dark water in a place where she never should have trespassed. When she considered all the pieces of herself that were different, wrong, they all came from pushing back at the structures of her life that had been presented as immutable truth.

  If only she knew what to do with those revelations.

  “If I go to Komyazalov, can you guarantee me your protection?” Nadya asked. She was too cautious to think she would have another Brother Ivan in her future. The Matriarch and the capital city would not be so kind toward her transgressions.

  “Why would you need that?” Katya asked.

  Nadya shot her a dry look. “Don’t pretend. I’m not the cleric that was promised to Kalyazin. I’m not the one to stop this chaos.”

  If anything, I’ve made it so much worse.

  Katya scoffed. “You’ve stripped heretic magic from the world—”

  “And caused the death of a god.”

  “—and the death of the worst Black Vulture we’ve ever known.”

  Nadya flinched.

  Katya was oblivious. “The Vulture killed Marzenya and he’s dead.”

  But he killed her with my help. She was sick of being lied to, controlled. She’d wanted out from underneath Marzenya’s thumb.

  Thunder rippled through the sky. Katya lifted her head. “Can you still feel them?”

  “The gods?”

  Katya nodded.

  “Yes and no. They’ve turned away. They won’t talk to me. I think they’re … preparing for something. It’s not like when my access to them was blocked off, this is willful. Are the fallen gods truly that deadly?”

  “I wish I knew,” Katya said. “I wish we had more than some apocryphal texts that are vague at best and meaningless at worst. I don’t know, Nadya. I don’t know what’s
to come.” A strange expression flickered over her face. “Were you talking to someone out here?”

  “No.”

  It was clear Katya didn’t believe her.

  “What is the Matriarch like?” she asked.

  Katya lifted an eyebrow. She eyed Nadya in silence, deciding whether she wanted to discuss this with her. Whether Nadya was worthy. It stung to know the tsarevna didn’t trust her, but she hadn’t exactly earned it.

  “Is she why you’re asking for protection?” Katya finally asked.

  Nadya hesitated, then gave a small nod.

  “I see.” The tsarevna leaned back against the same tree Żywia had been hanging from. “She and I do not get along.”

  A knot formed in the pit of Nadya’s stomach. This was not what she wanted to hear.

  “She can be … draconic. She’s the high mouthpiece of the gods, her words are law within the Church.” Katya’s eyes studied Nadya’s face. “She has been quite gleeful in eradicating all magic not divinely appointed from Kalyazin.”

  And there it was. The confirmation Nadya needed. Katya’s gaze strayed to Nadya’s hand.

  “You think she’ll go after you,” she said.

  “Katya … I don’t…” Nadya sighed. “Yes. I do.”

  Katya took that with a carefully neutral expression. Nadya had no idea where she stood with her.

  “Is it because of the Black Vulture?” she asked. “Is he why you’ve strayed so far that you think the Matriarch would hang you?”

  “I think I’d be put on a pyre, actually,” Nadya said. “No. He helped. I’ll grant him that. He asked some very pointed questions that I had no answers for, but … I would have ended up here without him.”

  Nadya had no idea if that was true but had to believe it. Otherwise it gave far too much power to a boy who had too much to begin with. But she would have posed those same questions for herself eventually. She was too damn curious, and it was her downfall.

  “I’ll do my best, Nadya,” Katya said, after a long pause between them stretched out into the cold air.

  Katya turned back toward camp as glimmers of dawn began to break through the trees, and Nadya touched the ink-stained skin of her left hand, fearing what was to come.

  9

  MALACHIASZ CZECHOWICZ

  His fingers clawing, grasping, scraping at anything he can rake into his maw to sate his unending hunger.

  —The Volokhtaznikon

  Malachiasz wasn’t used to being alone. Even in the Salt Mines there were other Vultures—aside from the isolation of the mines themselves. Any other time he surrounded himself with people. It never eased the loneliness fully, but it was tempered: Vultures, Rashid and Parijahan and an odd group of Kalyazi renegades, Nadya …

  He closed his eyes and abruptly collapsed amidst the acrid, rotting flowers, his knees going liquid. He didn’t dare prod at the magic that bound them, but he doubted his death had broken it. There was too much. Too much magic that was not his and not under his control. The thread of Nadya’s weird, dark power. Chyrnog’s touch heavy upon him. All of it the same and he didn’t understand why.

  He raked his hands through his hair. He should be dead. He died. A part of him was still on that mountain and he wouldn’t ever get it back. And what was the cost of his return?

  How old was the god that had Malachiasz? What had it seen? Done?

  What had it consumed?

  The thought struck him like a thunderclap. Consume. He thought of his hunger. Constant, gnawing, eternal. He thought of the darkness, absolute and complete.

  Malachiasz considered what he had become.

  Judging by the silence, the god wasn’t always paying attention. It wasn’t always listening. That was important. So what if he couldn’t fight it? It didn’t have him completely. He wondered if it had slept for so long it was left weak. Weak, maybe weak wasn’t the word, but it hadn’t yet obliterated Malachiasz.

  He needed answers. He needed to—

  “Start by getting out of here,” he asserted, standing.

  Ignoring the shifting of his body, he made his way up the stairs. It was dark outside, blessedly so, and though he didn’t want to leave the church—he was safe here, protected from the forest—he knew he must.

  How did I even get here? he thought. Dragged into divine nonsense. He should have stayed in Grazyk. He shouldn’t have left the mines. He shouldn’t have listened to Nadya.

  He shouldn’t have loved her.

  Well, that’s over.

  He needed to stop thinking about her, the last thing he wanted was her knowing he was alive. Better she think him dead. Better she live with her righteous—so she thought—fury. He was so tired. Still so much farther to go.

  Still so much farther to fall.

  The gnawing hunger chewing at the core of him was more, somehow, than simply not having had food in a while. It was ancient and old and altogether too familiar. He had to ignore it or else it would drive him mad.

  The forest didn’t bother him when he finally left the sanctuary of the church. It was too dark, the trees oppressive and too close together, the cold wind cutting straight through his jacket and down into his bones.

  When he stumbled into a clearing with a squat hut in the center, he gave a heavy sigh of recognition. He considered turning right back around and going deeper into the forest, but with an exhausted sort of resignation he knew there was no avoiding it. This was why the forest had been so lenient.

  The hut seemed to move as he approached, as if it were breathing. He passed a gate with skulls perched on the narrow fence. He paused and eyed them—some were far too fresh for his liking—before continuing through a small garden of what he was fairly certain were fingers embedded in the dirt—he didn’t really want to investigate that further—until he knocked on the door.

  It swung open on its own into darkness. He closed his eyes, almost wishing he didn’t know what was coming. He shook his head. Better to face this with dignity.

  “Czijow, Pelageya,” he called, stepping inside. “How are you always exactly where I don’t want you to be?”

  “I was rather enjoying watching you turning in circles in the forest.”

  He was in her sitting room—the one from the tower in Grazyk?—but different. The skulls weren’t all fleshless here, and something bubbled thickly in a cauldron on her fire. The witch looked old; her white curls tied back and her face lined with wrinkles. She glanced over her shoulder at Malachiasz before turning to the fire.

  “Oh, you bring a vile taste in with you, shut the door.”

  Was it too late to leave? The door shut before he could touch it. Well, that answered that.

  “Just you?” Her face screwed up. “Sit down, boy. You and I have a great deal to discuss.”

  That wasn’t what Malachiasz wanted at all. “Not like you to want anything to do with me,” he noted, sitting regardless. They never got along, he and the witch. He turned to magic for answers, and she refused to give him any, and he hated her for it. He was volatile and rattled the order of the world, and she hated him for that.

  “You bring death with you, no, no, worse than that. Something else.” Her head tilted as she considered. “What have you done?”

  He opened his mouth, unsure how to answer, but she waved a hand. Filling a bowl with something from the cauldron, she offered it to him.

  “Soup?”

  A whimper broke from his chest. He was so hungry. He didn’t have the restraint to not desperately grab the bowl from her hands. She watched him as he ignored the searing heat and drank down the thick stew.

  “Ah, I thought so,” she said softly.

  The bowl was empty, and still he felt hollow. Ravenous. It clawed at him from the inside. He tasted iron in his mouth, blood and flesh and need.

  The bowl clattered to the floor. Malachiasz pulled at his hair and, pressing the heels of his palms to his forehead, let out a long breath through his teeth. This wasn’t what he was, was it?

  “Your true nature
finally come to light,” Pelageya said. “I did think that you might escape it, beat what you are, but we all succumb to ourselves eventually.”

  He curled over his knees, tears spilling past his hands as he shoved his palms against his eyes. “What did you do to me?” It hurt and beside the hurt was the knowledge that nothing he could do would sate the hunger. That the gnawing at the core of him that he had always carefully fed so very slowly to keep it at bay had finally become enough of a beast to ravage him.

  “Ah, child … I did nothing.” She picked up the bowl and filled it again, crouching in front of him. “This won’t really help with that, but it will ease the mortal hunger. I feel the touch of that shin bone on you and I can guess what happened there. Not what I expected, I thought she would use it on … someone else, but it takes a lot to die and be alive again, doesn’t it?”

  Malachiasz lifted his head slowly. He wiped the back of his shaking hand over his eyes before taking the bowl carefully. “Why does this feel suspiciously like you’re helping me?” he asked, trying to keep from devouring the second bowl as quickly as the first.

  Pelageya leaned back, glancing at the relics in his hair. “This wouldn’t be the first time.”

  Quiet settled over them as he ate, almost painfully slowly this time. And she was right, it didn’t help, but the tremors eased when the bowl was empty.

  “What is this?” he asked.

  “You know, sterevyani bolen, you’ve always known. You’ve been keeping it quiet your whole life, feeding it magic and progress and promising that one day you’ll get there. One day things won’t be quite so bad.”

  It was what he had always held close. That someday he might know a life that wasn’t pain and disaster and the constant ache of hunger. He closed his eyes briefly, knuckling the bridge of his nose.

  “You made it easy for him.” Pelageya’s eyes tracked through Malachiasz as if she wasn’t seeing him. “To grasp the pieces of your soul, the little you had left, and crush them. Little godling, little chaos god, little boy so far from home. Chyrnog didn’t even have to try. You’ve given up. You gave whole pieces to me, after all.”