Blessed Monsters

by Emily A Duncan

  “Ah,” he murmured.

  He took her hand, pressing her fingers to her temple, dragging them up something that was smooth and hard and thin, like bone, like horn.

  “It’s like a halo,” he said. “Fitting. Do you want to know about the eye situation?”

  “I’d rather not!”

  He laughed. “You’re perfect,” he said softly, leaning toward her.

  There was another trembling in the earth and stones came crashing down. His hand grabbed for hers and they fled. Right into a churning nightmare. The sky was dark and acrid and figures, large and monstrous and so difficult to comprehend, filled the expanse.

  Are these gods?

  “Not gods,” Veceslav said. “Echoes of the fallen. Echoes of those who have died. They could return, be brought back by elder powers, but for now they are only angry memories.”

  “Oh,” Nadya whispered. “Don’t do anything stupid,” she said to Malachiasz.

  He grinned. “I only know how to do stupid things.” He darted off in the direction of the beach.

  True enough, Nadya thought, running after him. He seemed lighter without Chyrnog’s presence, but she was scared to consider that she might have been too late. Chyrnog might have melded deeper than she was able to remove, poisoning Malachiasz to his bones.

  And she might have doomed them all.

  “Who’s responsible for the giant spider?” Katya yelled when they made it to the beach.

  The bridge was gone, and the sun was dark. It was almost impossible to see. Nadya chewed on her lower lip, darkness crowding in at the edges of her vision. A hand slipped into hers. Anna squeezed it, smiling.

  “You look terrifying,” Katya said.

  Anna rolled her eyes, then added. “I mean, you kind of do.”

  Nadya grinned. “We need to mobilize those armies.”

  Serefin jogged over to them. If she and Malachiasz and Parijahan had become monstrous, Serefin had become resplendent. Stars rotated around him in loose constellations and tight circles of unearthly light. Moths fluttered around each movement. There was a bright glow at his edges, some power Nadya couldn’t name, so different than whatever Nadya and Malachiasz were toying with. The scars on his face were like burnished gold.

  “Who did you talk to?” she asked him.

  “Velyos,” he said.

  “Huh.”

  “We need to get back to high ground. Bring the bridge back.”

  “Do you think the armies have already met?” Żaneta asked.

  “If they have, this will have given them pause.” He looked to Katya. “Shall we?”

  “Show me why they gave you command of the army so young,” Katya said, a well-meaning challenge.

  Serefin winked. “I am incredibly charismatic, haven’t you heard?”

  Nadya gazed around her. The figures were everywhere. One that stood as a vast skeleton, one with hundreds of wings covered with eyes, one with dozens of arms all holding masks but with no face to place them on. There were so many, all so unfathomable, that Nadya couldn’t quite comprehend killing one. But they had to. They had to stop Nyrokosha. They had to stop Chyrnog. And she was on her own. There would be no help from her gods.

  “What did you think that was at the temple?” Veceslav asked. “Did you think that was not help?”

  I have no idea, frankly.

  “When the last four bound Chyrnog, there had to be sacrifice. They chose differently. They chose death. What have you four given? An eye, a soul, safety—”

  Blood.

  “But was it enough?”

  Nadya glanced to where Parijahan stood with Malachiasz, her fingers pressed against his forehead. His eyes were closed. Chaos and reason.

  “Nadya?” Serefin prodded. “We have about thirty seconds before the one east of us slams that fist down and I’d rather not be on this island when it does.”

  Ignoring his commentary, she plunged into her ocean of dark water and drew up a sea of power. Stone after stone, lifted from the pool of blood.

  “You.”

  Chyrnog’s voice was a blade driven into her ears, nails dragged down slate, screeching, clawing, cloying.

  “How much more will you resist, child? Let me in. Let me help. I know the desires of your heart. This world of peace that you dream of. It would be so easy.”

  Bile flooded her throat. She drew up the bridge and retched, wavering on her feet as Serefin and Katya raced off, Kacper and Ostyia at their heels. Anna hesitated, glancing at Nadya, who couldn’t speak. If she did, she would break. Anna nodded once and took off after the others.

  A soft touch at the small of her back.

  “How loud he is,” Malachiasz murmured.

  “I’m going to break,” Nadya said, her voice trembling. She wasn’t strong enough to fight this. Gods, how had Malachiasz withstood it for so long?

  “You aren’t. You’re more powerful than he knows. Now, what are we to do while Katya and Serefin rally the armies?”

  “That’s trusting they can rally the armies,” Rashid said, sounding skeptical.

  “We have to kill Nyrokosha.”

  “The big spider?” Żaneta asked.

  “An old god.”

  Żaneta nodded. “You worry about Chyrnog. I’ll take care of Nyrokosha.”

  “Wait.” Malachiasz grabbed her wrist. “Żaneta, be careful. I won’t lose another of my order.”

  She blinked at his hand on her wrist. She tilted her head at Rashid. “Do you think my odds are better if he comes along?”

  “It might even them out.”

  Malachiasz let her go and she and Rashid took off to where a monstrous spider crushed down on the bones of gods.

  That left Nadya, Malachiasz, and Parijahan.

  Three, not four. They needed Serefin.

  52

  SEREFIN MELESKI

  Her words are like needles in my ears and they’re constant they’re constant and I can’t hear Veceslav and I’ve lost Odeta and it’s over it’s over it’s over.

  —Fragment from the personal journals of Celestyna Privalova

  The climb out of the ravine was treacherous. The gods around them were fighting each other and everything shook, a blessing in disguise until they inevitably turned on the fragile, breakable mortals.

  “What are these, anyway?” Katya asked.

  “Why on earth are you asking me?”

  “Right. Tranavian.”

  He laughed. They scrambled up onto a battlefield.

  And Serefin Meleski was rendered completely useless.

  He would never escape. There would only be war, the screams of battle and sounds and smells of death, forever. That was his fate. War, eternal.

  Someone’s hands were against his face, directing his attention away from the battlefield.

  “Give him a moment.” Kacper, that was Kacper’s voice. “He’ll be all right.”

  “We don’t—” Katya started and stopped. He heard her sigh.

  She was right. They didn’t have time for Serefin to be acting like this, but it was so much and so loud and this was all going to be in vain. They were going to die, and this time it would be final.

  He squeezed his eye shut. “I’m fine,” he said. He took a long, shuddering breath. He had to be fine. He reared back, Kacper squeezing his hand before letting him go. He had to be.

  The battle had stalled in the wake of the horror around them, for now. Serefin could feel the tensions he knew too well, the crackle before it started up anew. Someone’s crossbow would set off a bolt and everything would fall apart. He had seen it again and again and again.

  Malachiasz landed gracefully next to him, carefully folding his heavy black wings up against his back.

  “Even if they refuse you, my Vultures can’t refuse me,” he said to Serefin. “Katya, go to the Kalyazi.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do,” Katya said, but she was already moving.

  Serefin jogged to catch up with Malachiasz, who was already striding off. He didn’t want
to think about the army before him.

  He paused in the field. It took Malachiasz a few seconds to notice and turn back around. Kacper and Ostyia had caught up to him by then.

  “I can’t go back to this,” Serefin said, voice soft. Not another battlefield. Not another warfront.

  “You’re not,” Kacper said, taking his hand. He shifted the signet ring so it was facing out. “You’re the king. You’re going to be the king.”

  “Also, I’m not good at rousing speeches,” Malachiasz said. “So, I’m gonna need you to make a rousing speech.”

  Serefin shot him a dry look. Malachiasz shrugged.

  “I’m the one with the occult throne.”

  Something slammed into the ground nearby, making all of them jump. One giant misshapen skull. Serefin took that as the sign they needed to go.

  When he got closer, he recognized the standing commanders and immediately relaxed. Ruminski had done his time at the front, but he had never led the army. The other generals didn’t know him the same way they knew Serefin. The military would be on Serefin’s side.

  Oliwia Jaska jolted when she saw him. A tall woman with dark skin and hair shaved down close to her scalp, she looked far more worn and frayed than the last time Serefin had seen her, more than a year ago.

  “Meleski?” she yelped, in a way that did not sound altogether horrified. Rather it sounded like she never thought she’d see him again. She stared. “Apologies, Kowesz Tawość.”

  “My feelings about honorifics haven’t changed, Jaska,” Serefin said, his spine straightening just by being back in this environment.

  She bowed. His heart hammered in his chest.

  “We were told you…” She trailed off.

  “You were told I lost my mind, yes, like my father. I made it rather easy for Ruminski, I’ll admit. So, you’re here on a suicide mission against the Kalyazi?”

  She lifted her chin. “We are here to end this once and for all.” Her gaze went over his shoulder to where gods clashed. “That was unexpected.”

  “If I were to give you orders, would you listen to me?”

  “You’re the king,” she said, sounding puzzled. “You also outrank me.”

  Serefin grinned. “I do! I outrank everyone!”

  Kacper closed his eyes briefly. “I thought you had considered that walking here.”

  “I hadn’t!”

  “We don’t have time for this,” Malachiasz muttered.

  Oliwia’s gaze went to Malachiasz and her expression twisted.

  “Are you with me, Jaska?” Serefin asked.

  There was a beat of hesitation that Serefin did not like—until he realized it was simply because of, well, everything. The Kalyazi army. The gods clashing around them. They were so small and this was so big and it was very hard to see anyone coming out alive.

  Finally, she gave a sharp nod.

  “I must ask what you will not want to hear.” Serefin pitched his voice, catching the attention of those around him. He hopped onto a cart, climbing to the tallest part and balancing precariously. “I don’t need to tell you what’s happening around us, we all see it. Also, hello, it’s been a while. I never abandoned my people, though I suppose it did look that way.” He gazed out at the soldiers, vaguely recognizing many. His stomach did a nervous swoop. “And it is long past time to settle our grievances with the Kalyazi—I agree—but not here. Not today. Not like this. Today, we have something bigger to fight. Literally.”

  Someone groaned. It might have been Kacper. He deserved that.

  “Things have spiraled greater than this bloody war. What happened to our magic is terrifying. We’re desperate. But if this is our final stand, let it be against the beings that would seek our destruction, not the people who would also be destroyed.”

  There was little reaction as Serefin clambered off the cart, hopping down. But then Jaska clasped him on the shoulder with a grin, and someone else ruffled his hair—which was not something he thought one did to their king—and suddenly there were a lot of voices talking to him at once and he had to be yanked out of the crowd by Malachiasz. Jaska regained control.

  “Does the job,” Malachiasz noted.

  High praise, coming from him. Katya drew a horse up in front of them, shoving a bundle off her saddle. It landed with a hard thud and groaned. The cultist.

  “Look who I found,” she hissed. “Whispering his lies to my armies. No matter. My people will help.”

  Ruslan glanced from Malachiasz to Serefin suspiciously, his eyes darting to where a god rumbled near, focused on a strange, birdlike creature across the ravine.

  “This is Chyrnog’s will,” the boy muttered.

  “Is it?” Malachiasz said. He pulled a ring from his pocket, flipping it between his fingers. Was he missing part of a finger? “How many more pieces of yourself are you willing to let him consume?”

  Serefin glanced up at the blackened sun. That was Chyrnog’s will, he rather thought, all the rest was incidental.

  Ruslan sneered. “As much as possible.”

  “Now really isn’t the time to hold onto your ideals,” Serefin said. “This is the end of the world. If you’d like to die here, fine. I’ll throw you over that ravine and you can die knowing you’ve wasted your life on a being who doesn’t give a shit about whether you live or die. Chyrnog doesn’t give a shit about you. Do you want to live, boy? Or do you want to die with your life wasted in the mud?”

  Ruslan’s mouth fell open slightly. Something flickered over his face. Malachiasz gave Serefin a slight nod, and then paled, his entire body tensing.

  Giant limbs had begun crawling out of the ravine, dissonant screeches puncturing the air. Someone slammed into the spider’s body only to be flung right off.

  “What is that?” Ruslan asked, horrified.

  “An old god. Not quite what you imagined? Well, why don’t you have a go at killing it anyway.” Serefin said.

  While we try to destroy the truly unkillable one, he thought wearily.

  Ruslan looked to Katya, exhausted and beaten down. Her face was dirty. Her hair had fallen out of its braid.

  “I’m not forgetting what side you were truly on,” she warned.

  He smiled, smug. “I wouldn’t want you to.”

  That was all they could do about Nyrokosha. Serefin had to hope it would be enough.

  The ground had started moving, corroding, like something was tearing through it, eating through it. The graveyard looked strange, like the edges of it were being ripped, shredded imperfectly, caught by the wind, except the air had gone perfectly still.

  “What is that?” Katya asked.

  “That,” Malachiasz said, his expression darkening, “is Chyrnog.”

  Serefin had expected Ruslan to be delighted. That was his god, after all. But there was only fear on the boy’s face. Reality striking.

  “You know,” Ostyia said. “I expected it to be more … tangible.”

  “You can’t fight that,” Katya added. “There’s nothing to fight.”

  Malachiasz glanced at Katya. “Take the armies and deal with Nyrokosha. We’ll…” he faltered, his expression fracturing. “We’ll deal with Chyrnog.”

  The giant spider was horrifying, to be sure, but it was something.

  Serefin turned to Kacper. “Stay with Katya.”

  “But—”

  He grabbed Kacper’s face and kissed him hard. “Please,” he murmured against his lips. “I love you.”

  This time it was potentially a goodbye.

  Kacper’s dark eyes filled with tears. “Serefin.”

  “It’ll be heroic, yeah? One for the history books.”

  “There’s no glory in being another dead king.”

  He didn’t know what to say to that, so he kissed Kacper’s cheek softly, and turned away, toward Malachiasz.

  “Kill a god with a god,” Malachiasz said.

  “That’s all well and good, but we decided it would be better not to go down that road,” Serefin said, following after t
he roiling chaos of his younger brother as he headed to where the field had started to look like shredded linen. “Surely he has a weakness?”

  Malachiasz wordlessly gestured to Nadya.

  She stood thirty paces away, her head lifted to the sky. Dark clouds swirled, lightning striking from one to the next. A huge chunk of the graveyard was suddenly gone, swallowed up into an unfathomably large ravine. Something slammed onto the ground much too close to where Serefin and Malachiasz stood. It took a moment to register another giant skull of a risen god.

  “We won’t survive them killing each other. We won’t survive Chyrnog, what’s the point?” he mumbled.

  Malachiasz glanced at him. He was quiet for a long time. “One good thing,” he finally said.

  “What?”

  “I have to do one good thing. I have done so much wrong, Serefin. I have to try.”

  “Who are you and what have you done with my brother?”

  Malachiasz laughed. “There’s no changing me. But I have to fix this, somehow. She’s going to blame herself, and it never would’ve happened if she hadn’t met me. If I hadn’t decided that the only way for us to live was to eradicate the Kalyazi gods.”

  “You don’t believe that anymore?”

  Malachiasz gestured to the madness surrounding them. “Oh, no, I believe that. But I don’t think it would change anything. New gods would simply rise to take their place. It will go on forever.”

  “At least we won’t have to worry about that after we’re all devoured by this deity of entropy.”

  “Serefin, so good of you to be optimistic,” Nadya said. Her voice was a chorus. It was wildly unsettling. Nadya turned, her eyes like a spider’s, too many wrapping around her temples. “Do you have that pendant? Velyos’ pendant?”

  “I would never lose a beloved momento of such a horrible time.”

  “We’re going to trap him in there.”

  “How?”

  She glanced at Parijahan, then Malachiasz, and smiled.

  “Absolutely not, Nadya,” Malachiasz snapped.

  “You’re not going to stop me.”