Blessed Monsters

by Emily A Duncan

Nadya wet the tips of her fingers with blood from the icon.

  “Ignore me, fine. I will force your attention upon me.” She pulled Malachiasz’s spell book out of her bag.

  She had read most of it in the past few weeks, deciphering his almost incoherent handwriting. Even on the pages with carefully constructed spells she’d found scattered sketches. It was a part of him that she had overlooked until it was too late, his constant frenetic need for creation. Regardless, he carefully denoted on each spell page which were experimental and which he had thoroughly tested. There were pages upon pages of contemplations on divinity, experimental spells tucked in between. Alongside investigations of greatness were spells of unspeakable horror. The depths of his capacity for cruelty were greater than she had imagined. He had been truly dangerous, but she couldn’t help thinking—as she flipped through his labor of passion—that he could create wonders as well as nightmares. He had been complicated, more beautiful and terrible than anyone had known, and the world was better and worse for his passing.

  But she found what she wanted within those pages. The knowledge of blood magic might be gone, but she could read the spells he had constructed, somehow. She wondered what it was she had done. There were exceptions that suggested she had been prodded in a more specific direction than a broad stroke of wiping out blood magic. Marzenya had some bigger plan that included Nadya in a way that she could not escape.

  Or there was power in blood that could never truly be wiped away.

  She crossed her legs and rested the book open on the floor before her. Using her bloody fingertips, she carefully copied a spell onto the floor in front of her. It didn’t totally make sense. It felt fragmented, so even within her something had shaped around the destruction of blood magic, but it would serve the purpose she required.

  “I know you’re listening,” she said aloud. “I can tell, I feel it. I will force you to hear me. I don’t care who, but one of you will speak to me.” I am more than a cleric and I will not be ignored any longer.

  She yanked a voryen from her belt and very carefully cut the back of her corrupted hand. Corrupted or … divine?

  Regardless, it bled all the same. Spilling the blood is the hard part. Using it is easy.

  Desecrating this holy place with heretical magic was easy. If this world was going to be saved from destruction, this is what she had to do.

  The spell caught. Nadya’s head snapped back, her spine arching. Something pressed against her, a weight, a presence, and her vision blanked out—nothing but white.

  “You are persistent.”

  She did not know this voice. One of the fallen, then. There was a twinge of disappointment at being ignored by her pantheon, but she would speak to whoever answered her.

  I’ve been called worse.

  She was no longer in the small sanctuary and snow fell in this place. Her feet were bare and bloody footprints trailed behind her. Funny, how blood always followed her dealings with the gods.

  Where am I?

  “Not where you belong; not where mortals tread. Who are you?”

  That is a very good question.

  “But you didn’t answer.”

  No. You first.

  Amusement hung in the air. She was very close to witnessing a god and there was no preparing for it, not truly. She came to the edge of a lake, and there was no making it any less terrifying when he was in front of her.

  Something churned within the dark water. Moving closer, ever closer, until a soaking, wriggling tentacle came curling up onto the shore near Nadya’s feet. And more, dozens, as a hulking figure hauled itself out of the water. Almost human in shape, but not quite, churning with tentacles that did not stop moving, seeking, searching. His eyes were covered in dirty rags. Barnacles clung to his skin and hung from dripping pieces of scraggly hair.

  A smile stretched, punctuated by broken teeth. “Zvezdan. And you still stand.”

  “I still stand.”

  “Not mad yet?”

  “No more than usual, I should say.”

  “Interesting.”

  That should have been her fate. Her brain was rationalizing Zvezdan’s form. Just as it had flickered over Malachiasz and only took in the pieces that made sense, protecting her from everything that simply did not. She curled her fingers over the eye in her palm, wishing she had her glove in this place.

  “Not even my drowned priests have survived this,” Zvezdan contemplated.

  Nadya had no interest in this god’s—fallen god, but a god all the same?—priests. How long had he been locked away? Had his priests continued on in his absence? Well, maybe she had some questions about being devoted to a god that no longer existed.

  Though Zvezdan had not died, merely been locked away for centuries. There was no hope for her with Marzenya.

  She was aware of the god watching her intently, somehow, even if his eyes were covered—though she suspected there were no eyes underneath.

  “Are you the one that set us free?” he asked.

  She had moved closer to the edge of the water, almost letting the waves lap at her bare toes. “No,” she said, voice soft. “What are you planning to do with your freedom?”

  “There is much to tend to. Many have fallen to heresy in my absence. Many have forgotten the terrors of the deep. I intend to make them remember.”

  Nadya’s eyes narrowed. She did not take her gaze away from the water. “Not revenge for being locked away? Why were you locked away to begin with?”

  The water splashed as Zvezdan shifted, his tentacles in constant movement. “Who would I revenge myself on? It is so much easier to enact my will on this world than the other, so I shall.”

  “Are the others of the same mind? Those who were locked away?”

  “Ask them yourself. I’m sure they’ll come when you call, little cleric, the glimmer of something we have never before tasted is too strong within you to resist.” He was very near. “What are you?” he asked, sounding curious.

  She could smell the rot of his breath, feel the strange ice of his presence. She did not move.

  She had no answer for this question that kept being asked of her.

  What kind of power did a fallen god have? They wanted to consume her, what could she do in return? She who had taken the power of the gods her entire life, who had held more than any mortal ever should have been able to withstand, who yearned in its absence in a way no human ever should.

  She stretched out the fingers of her left hand, the eye blinking open.

  Then she slammed her palm against Zvezdan’s forehead. He froze, every part of him going still, air choking in the back of his throat. Did he need to breathe, she wondered? Did gods need air in their lungs?

  Her vision went white and she saw the ocean of dark water, dark power. She could dip her hand into the water, she could take whatever she wished.

  It could go in reverse. The gods could give her power, but she could also take it. She didn’t know what needed to be done yet. But how much power would she need to do it?

  She knelt at the edge of the black water and drank deep.

  * * *

  The shadows on her skin were up to her shoulder. Had it been wise, what she had done to Zvezdan? Almost definitely not, but that hadn’t stopped her. Not much could.

  “We can’t leave, not yet,” Katya said, dropping a full bottle of wine onto the table and sitting.

  Nadya rolled her eyes. Katya was so much like Serefin sometimes, it was uncanny.

  “Why not?” Nadya asked. She felt jittery and strange; the light had hurt her eyes when she’d left the sanctuary. At least they were no longer in the boyar’s home. Nadya could relax. The inn was more crowded than she would like, but the fire roared hot in the pit and the lingering chill from the magic she had done began to leave her bones.

  “We have to figure out what’s happening with those empty graves.”

  Rashid, who had been about to sit down next to Nadya, frowned slightly and straightened. “On second thought, I don’
t think this is a conversation I want to be involved in. Let me live in my sweet, grave-less ignorance.”

  “A whole bunch of graves in the cemetery are empty,” Ostyia said.

  “See, now you’ve ruined everything.” Rashid gave an exasperated sigh and sat.

  Nadya peered at his plate. “They have herring here?”

  “You are not allowed to eat off my plate, you absolute monster.”

  “Old monastery habits die hard,” Nadya said, taking a piece of bread and herring off his plate when he wasn’t looking. He pretended he didn’t notice.

  Rashid’s forearm rested beside her. He didn’t have any tattoos—that she knew of—but it looked like vines had been painted on his skin, cut through with strange gashes that didn’t appear to be healing. Katya and Ostyia were discussing the empty graves, and Nadya half-listened as she took Rashid’s wrist and tugged his arm over. He followed her gaze and grimaced.

  “What is this?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  Parijahan joined them, saw the strange markings Nadya and Rashid were inspecting, and her eyes widened.

  “No…” she whispered.

  Rashid glanced down the table; Katya and Ostyia weren’t paying any attention to them. “She knows, it’s fine.”

  Parijahan let out a breath through her teeth. “Not here.”

  Nadya traced the vines on his arm, frown deepening. She didn’t know what kind of magic would do this except … she shivered, thinking about her arm. Divinity and corruption; all the same. She met Rashid’s gaze and the worry in it stabbed her through the chest. He had been running from this his whole life and it had finally caught up to him.

  She took his hand and squeezed. “We’ll make it.”

  “I can’t believe you took my food when I told you not to,” he replied.

  She grinned and he immediately brightened.

  “You’re right, we will. Somehow.”

  Katya tapped the tabletop. “Back on task.”

  “When did it start?” Nadya asked. If they weren’t going to move until this problem was solved, she might as well try to fix it.

  “I think you know,” Katya replied dryly.

  “A handful of weeks ago,” came a new voice as a thin boy with gently curling blond hair sat across from Nadya. It was the boy from the church—what had Katya said his name was? Viktor.

  “Where have you been?” Katya asked.

  “Doing my job. I moved out here for a reason, you know,” Viktor replied.

  He was about Katya’s age, maybe a few years older. His clothes were fine, with his kosovortka embellished at the hem and collar. His coat was trimmed with fur so hearty it had to be bear. He wore his hair half tied, long, past his shoulders. A boyar, though Nadya should have expected that from someone Katya knew.

  “No one has seen anything aside from an old woman who is known to have a habit of raving.”

  “No one has said they’ve seen anything,” Ostyia replied.

  Viktor immediately tensed at Ostyia’s heavily accented Kalyazi. Katya shrugged at his quizzical expression.

  “What, you don’t have a Tranavian prisoner you cart around?”

  Nadya expected Ostyia to snap but she only rolled her lone blue eye. She really is in the same mess I was in last year. Escape impossible and thus settling into the inevitable. A survival tactic, and one that Nadya didn’t want to see someone else using.

  “Ostyia has a point,” Nadya said. Kalyazi were a superstitious bunch and catching a glimpse of a neighbor who had passed away wouldn’t necessarily be a noteworthy occasion. They might have gone home and left food in their bathhouses and at their ovens, muttering about the spirits being a little stronger than normal, but think nothing more of it. “If there hasn’t been anything malevolent from the corpses, who’s to say they would be reported?”

  Viktor lifted an eyebrow.

  “Has there been an uptick of people attending church?”

  “That’s a question for the priest,” Viktor replied.

  “Ah, well, apparently a lost cause for me.”

  “Why is that? And what is your name?”

  “Nadya, and—”

  “Nadezhda is too humble,” Katya cut in. “It’s not every day someone meets our famed cleric.”

  There was a glint of recognition in Viktor’s blue eyes. That and something Nadya knew all too well. People always wanted an easy ear to the gods. And the gods had never really cared to hear petty grievances.

  “It’s not that we don’t care, but why would I want to hear it secondhand? It makes me feel like they don’t want my help.”

  Nadya didn’t jolt at the voice even though she didn’t recognize it. Another fallen god?

  And you are?

  “Ah, you don’t know? Pity. Has everyone forgotten me? A shame.”

  Nadya tuned back into the conversation at the table but found it flowing steadily without her. Parijahan cast her a knowing glance and purposefully redirected Viktor’s attention away from Nadya.

  It wasn’t obvious when the gods were talking to her, Nadya knew that much. But maybe Parijahan knew her well enough to sense when Nadya wasn’t wholly present. It was a nice thought, that someone might know her like that. She never thought she would have that again.

  You never answered my question, Nadya pointed out.

  “I was hoping you would reach the proper conclusion on your own, but I suppose that’s expecting far too much from a mortal. My name is Zlatana.”

  It’s only polite that I ask what your domain is.

  “Is? You are decidedly charming. I dwell in the dark and shallow waters, the marshes. I whisper to the creatures of the dark and they listen to me.”

  What interesting timing that you show up now.

  “Oh? Is it?”

  “Are there swamplands near here?” Nadya asked suddenly, and everyone fell silent. She had no idea where she had broken into the conversation. “Sorry,” she said. “I had a thought.”

  “Apparently,” Viktor said wryly. “Yes, there are swamps about a mile south of here.”

  Katya rested her chin in her hands. “What are you thinking, kovoishka?”

  “Serefin set a fallen goddess of the swamp free and now any place near a swamp is going to face particular difficulties.”

  Ostyia let out a short laugh. “That’s all of Tranavia, then.”

  Nadya met her gaze and shrugged. Ostyia’s face paled as she realized the gravity of the situation, that Tranavia was not safe from these fallen gods. They no longer had the veil of magic that Malachiasz had strengthened protecting them; they were vulnerable, those heretics—

  Nadya had never considered why. Even after getting to know the Tranavians, she had never stopped to think why these people were so abhorred beyond how they spilled blood over parchment. Almost like there never was any real reason.

  “What should we do?” Viktor asked Katya.

  Katya didn’t answer, her green eyes were on Nadya, uncomfortably sharp.

  Nadya picked at her glove. “We should go to the swamps tonight.”

  14

  SEREFIN MELESKI

  Lev made a breakthrough, somehow, but everything he writes is nonsense. Innokentiy is at a loss. I think Sofka has lost her mind. We’re doomed.

  —Passage from the personal journals of Milyena Shishova

  Serefin couldn’t shake the feeling when he woke that he was very far from the clearing and Pelageya’s hut. His head pounded like nails were being driven behind his eye sockets.

  It was dark. One dim torch on the wall had to be sufficient as he took in his surroundings. He couldn’t tell where he was. Was he alone? Blood and bone, he hoped not. He felt around, fingers catching on a lot of hair. Malachiasz. He shoved hard on his shoulder.

  “Wake up, you scrawny disaster,” he hissed.

  If Malachiasz was down here, hopefully Kacper was as well. He kicked Malachiasz for good measure, and he groaned in response, finally stirring.

  Serefin choked back
the urge to cut his hand for magic. There was only disappointment there. He did have the stars, though. If he reached, he could touch them, in that place outside his awareness, the place where other magic dwelled. It was easy this time, natural.

  “That’s what happens when you’re godstouched,” Velyos noted.

  Divine magic. It was growing harder to push back against what he had become. He cast out a handful of stars. The room lit up.

  Malachiasz groaned again, softer, curling in on himself. Then his whole body convulsed, suddenly shifting wildly out of control. Serefin frantically scanned the room, finding Kacper in the opposite corner, unconscious. Torn, he hesitated. But there was little he could do for Malachiasz except let him ride out the seizing of chaos. Serefin started toward Kacper, his legs almost giving out. He shuffled over before crumpling to the floor, gently shaking Kacper’s shoulder, panic gripping him when there was no immediate response.

  “Kacper,” he whispered. He kissed Kacper’s temple. Pressed his fingers against his neck. There was a pulse, he was breathing.

  Serefin leaned back on his heels, hoping desperately that this wasn’t magic. He glanced over his shoulder at where his brother—blood and bone, his brother was alive—convulsed on the floor. He let out a breath and kissed Kacper’s forehead before returning to Malachiasz, unsure what he could do.

  It was hard to watch. Serefin had seen this in the mountains, his loss of control, the god that Malachiasz had become overpowering his mortality. It was cracking bones and tearing skin and teeth and claws and horror. Bile rose in the back of his throat and he choked it down.

  Abruptly there was light from high above and Serefin realized they were in a cellar, the steps very far away. A door slammed closed and the light disappeared. A few seconds later a far-off torch flickered.

  Serefin wanted to restrain Malachiasz somehow, keep him from tearing through his own cheek with razor teeth, but he couldn’t get close enough.

  What happened to you? This was more than eyes and tremors, and Serefin felt a twinge of unexpected sympathy. At least Serefin’s divine troubles had only manifested in losing an eye. It seemed like a paltry trade, watching this.