The Hollow Gods

by A. J. Vrana

  It didn’t help that Vuk put every effort into driving them off when he caught them poaching. Men who hunted simply to mount an animal’s head on the wall were not worthy of the right to kill, he said.

  Yet Mirek couldn’t help but think him foolish. How could he be so brazen? So bold and unafraid?

  And Cassia—seeing them together sickened him. Her warm smiles, the brightness of her eyes, the melody of her laughter—it haunted Mirek. Why had she chosen his brother? What made him worthy of her?

  “They’re warning me not to come back here,” she told Mirek one night. “They say I’ll be taken by the Dreamwalker. Some even think I am the Dreamwalker.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “It’s what they believe.”

  It was Vuk’s fault the rumours had spread. The black wolf had become the great evil of the forest. He abided by the whims of the Dreamwalker and did her bidding. Now they were offering a reward for anyone who brought in his brother’s head.

  “I would keep you safe,” Mirek told her. “I’m more careful than he is.”

  He searched her eyes for any sign of acceptance but found nothing resembling the warmth she radiated towards his brother. She did not speak, and in doing so spoke what Mirek most dreaded to hear.

  He disappeared further into the woods, running from those clear blue eyes.

  The villagers were falling ill—though it was a disease of the mind that consumed them. It spread like wildfire from one person to the next until dozens were afflicted. The Dreamwalker had taken her next victim, they said, and the name of this victim was one Mirek couldn’t bear to hear.

  Cassia.

  He knew she hadn’t been spirited away by any Dreamwalker, but only by the black wolf.

  And yet they continued to whisper of her curse, this spirit whose thirst for vengeance was insatiable, eternal.

  Mirek wondered, was the Dreamwalker even real? When had her story begun? How could he believe a story about an exiled girl when there was no record of her having existed?

  For Mirek, there was no Dreamwalker.

  There was only the black wolf.

  44

  Miya

  The black wolf.

  His haunting, mahogany eyes struck Miya as they always did. She knew him. She knew his presence.

  He called her out of his tormenter’s memory, leading her back into the forest. And there he lay—wounded as when they first met. Miya watched him, crumpled on the ground, blood pooling around his limp form.

  She heard cheering from somewhere beyond the trees, somewhere close to the village. She could feel their fear as she was blinded by the burning light of torches.

  Burning.

  Something was burning.

  Miya looked up and saw flames, red as the sunset.

  Miya was being burned alive. Only it wasn’t her—it was the girl with clear blue eyes.

  Gazing through them, she saw a harrowed Mirek. His sorrow tore her from the fire, and she merged with him once more.

  45

  Mirek

  Cassia was gone.

  The smell of burnt wood and human flesh polluted the air, and Mirek was disgusted by the thought of even breathing. He would have rather suffocated than filled his lungs with even a particle of her remains.

  He kept thinking that if he ran far enough, called her name loud enough, she would have eventually appeared.

  But he knew that wouldn’t happen. He saw the smoke rising to the sky; he heard her screams, smelled her blood, tasted her fear like ash on his lips. Her cries rattled inside his skull, trapped there until his heart began to break and he wanted nothing more than to stop the pain. Yet there was nothing he could do but bear it until it was over—and after it was, he was all too aware that his burden had only begun.

  “It was him…It was him…him…HIM…”

  “It was his fault.”

  He did this.

  “If only she’d chosen to stay with me.” Not him.

  If that hunter had killed him.

  “She’d be alive.”

  Vuk fell to the ground, clutching his side, the bleeding from his wound profuse. The villagers had nearly killed him, but it wasn’t enough.

  “Get up,” Mirek hissed.

  Vuk did as he was told, knowing he was to blame.

  “You did this.”

  “The villagers did this.” His voice was barely a whisper.

  “You did this!”

  Vuk’s face twisted, and Mirek knew something in him had broken. He loathed that his brother even dared to grieve. He didn’t deserve it.

  Mirek struck Vuk’s broken ribs. He stumbled, jaw clenched, but Mirek hadn’t finished. He drove his fist into the side of his brother’s face. Once, twice, three times. He saw blood, but it didn’t stop him. Mirek wanted to bring him to an inch of his life and let him crawl back from hell’s gates. Then he wanted to do it again.

  Before Mirek could resume pummelling him, Vuk shoved him away with inhuman strength. His eyes were wild; sharp, canine fangs protruded from beneath his lip. Mirek could see the animal fighting to survive, but he knew the man wanted to die.

  “Stop it,” Vuk snarled.

  Mirek didn’t listen—not to him, and not to his own instincts. Like a madman hurling himself off a cliff, he lost himself to the grief and rage. His vision was blurred by tears, his screams laced with hatred. He blamed his brother, battered him, cut him with his words—all the while, Vuk held the wolf inside himself at bay. Until he couldn’t any longer.

  The animal struggled to live more than the man yearned to die. He lunged at Mirek, teeth bared and eyes ablaze.

  Mirek’s blood soaked the ground, and he knew he was a dead man. He could see his brother hovering over him, his expression fraught with recognition. Vuk’s hands, painted red with Mirek’s life, hoisted him up. He screamed with violent desperation, but Mirek couldn’t hear any of it. He was slipping away.

  The sun was bleeding into dusk—a fitting metaphor for Mirek’s own demise. He mustered all his strength to reach up and cup his brother’s face. The black wolf looked down at him, silenced, and Mirek realized just how much he hated him. It felt like a poisonous snake had hatched in the pit of his stomach. It slithered around, eating away his insides. The venom spread, turning everything rotten.

  “Monster.”

  It was the last thing Mirek said before the light left his eyes...

  “…And I joined my brethren in the darkest night…”

  46

  Miya

  Miya was back in the void, wraithlike as she floated through time and space. She searched for her feet, trying to force herself lower until she touched a pathway with nothing but darkness around it. The stones were weathered, cracked, and crumbling. She sensed him nearby, waiting for her to speak.

  “You were there when it happened,” she said. “When they burned the girl—your girl.”

  “She was his girl, too.”

  The voice remained disembodied. “You blamed your brother for what happened. But you also blamed the Dreamwalker.”

  “I didn’t know this Dreamwalker while I lived. But the First knew her. I joined the First when I died.”

  “You and the First share the same soul.”

  “We do.”

  “But the First hates the Dreamwalker,” Miya insisted. “Joining him only continues this vicious cycle. You’re just creating the same destruction that destroyed you.”

  “Creation...destruction...we think of them as opposites, and yet they are like brothers—two sides of the same coin.”

  “Like you and your brother? You seem to think he’s the destructive one.”

  “He is. He ended me.” His words betrayed a lingering wound. “But I wished for him to lose the girl as penance for his destruction, and this desire created fertile soil for fear to grow among the villagers. My thoughts were in one place, but my heart—my soul—was in another.”

  “You think your soul created this fear? But you didn’t do anything wrong,” Miya call
ed into the void. “I was in your head; I heard your thoughts. You were jealous of your brother, but you didn’t want anyone to get killed.”

  “But did I truly, in my heart of hearts?” the voice of Mirek confessed. “I always looked down on my brother. Something in me wanted to see him punished. It was justice.”

  Miya wondered: could the darkness hidden in a person’s heart—passed down from histories they didn’t even understand—be so contrary to what they believed in their mind?

  “Do you think those desires were inherited from the First?”

  “Was it not the First who began it all?” He laughed—a bitter, humourless sound. “If I share the same soul as the First, am I not responsible for birthing such fear?”

  “You weren’t able to cope with the guilt,” she observed, “so you blamed your brother. You convinced yourself it was his fault for being destructive, but deep down, you believed you created this. You thought she died because of you.”

  “I did it. I wished it, and it happened. It was my will. It was the First’s will.”

  “You overestimate your importance,” she hissed, repulsed by his narcissism. “History is bigger than you and your feelings.”

  “Feelings are all I had. Even after so many lifetimes, I could not best them.”

  Miya never imagined one of Abaddon’s incarnations to be so self-deprecating. Yet what was it worth when the self-loathing became an excuse to loathe others? His guilt was meaningless.

  “What happened after you died?” she asked.

  “I returned, unified with the First,” he told her. “We awoke as Abaddon. And together, we created madness. The villagers set fire to the forest—burned it all to the ground just so they could find the black wolf.”

  It was crippling; to think an emotion could be so overpowering, that it could birth a collective driven by a singular purpose. “And did they?”

  “My brother and I always find each other.”

  “But it brought you no peace.”

  “I have forsaken peace. The First and I—and all those between—will remain here forever. Our axis is long broken.”

  Miya whirled around, trying to find the source of the voice. “So the First is the author of all this? The one who set the village against the Dreamwalker?”

  “We are her enemies, yes.”

  “But that’s insane!” Her voice echoed through the hollow chasm. “Can’t you see that the woman you loved was burned to death because of the choices you made in a past life? Your first incarnation set this in motion. You’ve merely lived the consequences of that. Now you’re wilfully choosing to continue doing the same thing?”

  “Do you think reason matters to the cursed, girl? I only came here to tell you of what I lived. As for the First—his story is his own.”

  “Why does the First hate the Dreamwalker so much?” she interrogated him, but he only dwelled on his own loss.

  “My brother took her from me. And she took my brother from me.” There was a pause before he continued. “In the end, I was alone. The First understood this. He lived it.”

  “I want to meet the First.”

  “For that,” the voice rumbled, “you will need to go deeper.”

  The stone path beneath Miya’s feet crumbled. In the distance, she saw a speck of light, like a firefly, floating amidst the darkness. Gradually, it grew larger, ascending like the sun as she fell into the abyss beneath her. As her body tilted with the pull of gravity, Miya found herself upside down, the sunrise turning to sunset. The great orb disappeared, and her feet found the ground.

  Up ahead there was a hill covered in dozens of scattered lumps, but Miya couldn’t make out what they were.

  As she approached, she realized the protrusions were comatose bodies, lined up in perfectly symmetrical rows that stretched to the horizon’s edge. They were unmoving, lifeless as gravestones. And like gravestones, they all looked the same—similar in size and build with blurry faces and plain, grey garments. Still, Miya knew them; her soul reverberated with recognition. They were her previous incarnations—the victims of the spirit she sought: the First.

  He was sitting on a large rock at the top of the hill, staring down at the women as though he was their king. His face was obscured in shadow, but his presence was distinct; it was the same as the king of spades who referred to himself as Abaddon.

  “Come here,” he crooned, his voice inviting.

  Miya wanted to meet him, but she remained guarded in her approach. At first, the climb seemed endless, like no matter how far she walked up the hill, she couldn’t get any closer. She heard him laugh before he extended an arm, pulling her to him as though he was a magnet.

  As soon as Miya was in front of him, she realized he was the one who looked like Kai—the man with cold, yellow eyes. She could see him clearly now—the lines of his face identical to those of the man she’d grown close to.

  “Are you—”

  “I am the First,” he answered, his voice smoother and less gruff than Kai’s.

  “Does the First have a name?”

  “You don’t remember my name, girl?” He seemed disappointed.

  “Like I said before, we’ve never met.”

  “Ah—that again,” he chuckled, then spread his arms out towards the mass of bodies before them. “Why not lie down and rest?”

  His offer was surprisingly tempting. He must have known how exhausted Miya was, how badly she wanted to sleep. She reckoned he was the one draining her.

  “Is that what you told these other people?” she challenged. “I already know that if I fall asleep here, I’ll never wake up.”

  “You will,” he smiled, “if you know where to stop.”

  The words meant nothing to Miya. He was trying to seduce her, to distract her from her purpose. “You’re the reason Kai’s in so much pain. You’re also the reason this village hasn’t been able to move on from its bloody past. You keep bringing it back. You’re the reason Elle’s dead.”

  “I don’t make the villagers kill their women.” He sounded offended by her insinuation. “They do it themselves. Sometimes alone, sometimes as a community. Even when warned by the Dreamwalker, your Elle fell prey to Black Hollow’s madness.”

  “You push them to it.” Miya swallowed, something tart and astringent oozing down her throat. “I’m not trying to absolve them of their sins by blaming you. They’re accountable for their actions. But you’re also accountable for your intentions.”

  “You would judge someone for their intent alone?”

  “You’re a spirit,” she told him. “Intent is all you have.”

  “Do you believe that intent has power, girl?”

  “You’ve already proven it does,” she said. “But what’s the point of this? Endlessly repeating this miserable cycle? You’ve condemned your soul to an eternity here just so you can carry out some vindictive scheme a million times over. What does any of this prove?”

  He pulled back and looked at her with eyes that bled pure malevolence. “It proves that I have control.”

  “Who the fuck do you think you are? God?” Miya glared down the phantom. He was so unlike the man lying next to her back in the physical world. “Having control over someone else doesn’t make you free.”

  He said nothing, but smiled bitterly, his cold eyes faltering in the brief second it took her to blink.

  “You would say that, wouldn’t you?” he mocked as though he knew her, then sighed once the irritation had washed over him and passed. “But it has always been you I despise most.”

  “What did I ever do to you?” Miya demanded. “Why’d you turn so bitter?”

  “There is no pleasure in exiling someone who wants to be exiled,” he spat. “And there is no sense in talking about reasons. They’re like quicksand. The past is the past, and it cannot change the present.”

  Miya didn’t understand his meaning. Had he confused her with someone else? “But it has changed the present,” she insisted. “And it continues to. Haunting changes things.
”

  A hint of a smile coloured his sinister lips before he asked, “Why are you here? How did you get so far in?”

  He didn’t need to know the truth.

  “I had help.”

  The First threw his head back and laughed—the sound vacant. “Or you are not who you think you are.”

  His words rattled her until she lost awareness of her feet. Looking down, Miya saw thorny roots coiling around her ankles.

  “Sleep with these people,” he tempted her again. “Dream with them. If you wake up, I will show you what you wish to know.”

  “There is no waking up from this,” she rebuked, certain he was trying to trick her.

  Again, he smiled, his teeth shining like pearls as he repeated his earlier condition. “You will wake up if you know where to stop.”

  “You’ll have to do better than that if you want me to risk my life,” Miya challenged. This monster had chipped away at Kai for years—a dark taint that followed him wherever he went. The First had a singular goal: to create misery no one could escape, least of all Miya and her black wolf. Even if Miya didn’t care for the townspeople, she cared for Kai deeply enough to risk everything to free them both. “Giving me information won’t be enough. If I win this wager, you have to break the cycle. Leave Kai, and Black Hollow, forever. Promise me that, and I’ll take you up on your offer.”

  At first, he appeared stunned she’d bargain with him, but his expression quickly soured. “Greedy woman,” he accused, his mouth twisting into a grimace. “Your death is not worth that risk.”

  “Fine,” she held her ground. “What would make it worth the risk? If I lose, what do you want from me?”

  He took pause and weighed her words. It was like he’d never considered it because no one had ever asked him. For a moment, Miya felt something other than disdain towards him—pity, perhaps—but it vanished when she saw that cold smile spread over his face.