not gods and what if these gods we worship aren’t gods at all?
What if?
What if that wasn’t the right question? So what if the gods, as they were, were something else? So what if they had ascended to this state from something lesser? They were there. That wasn’t the thing that immediately made Nadya want to flee.
It was the other twenty.
The fallen, the lost. What had happened there, and what would happen if they were to rise? And what was she that she felt some draw to—not even the fallen, but the older ones? The ones created from a void so complete and deep that it had been forgotten because to remember was to go mad.
Divinity and an unknowable darkness.
“There are more here than I thought your pantheon held,” Malachiasz said thoughtfully. His sharp chin rested on top of her head.
“Do you suppose we’ll meet the people who carved these?” Katya asked, moving up to the statue that Nadya somehow knew was Bozidarka. The figure had holes in her palms, her spine visible through a cavernous torso. The face had no eyes, only empty sockets, including one in her forehead. Nadya’s forehead itched. “Not the original people, but surely someone tends these?”
“There’s no one here,” Nadya said. This place was not made for mortals. There were stories of clerics who had made this journey, surviving in the Bolagvoy monastery for months in solitude before clawing their way free from the forest. Mere folklore. No one ever made it out.
Katya snorted. “Well, I suppose I get to tell my priest back in Komyazalov ‘I told you so.’”
Malachiasz tugged on a piece of bone in his hair. “Does this mean I’m right?”
“No.”
He waved erratically to the primordial twenty. Nadya eyed them, shivering as her palm ached and the sudden desire to move closer to them rushed through her. She turned back to him. He stared at something just past her, his face deathly pale.
“We’re not alone,” he said, voice low.
Katya’s head whipped around and she swore.
Malachiasz rolled his sleeves up, reaching for the knife at his belt. Mage, not Vulture. That made Nadya feel only marginally better. She tugged her bone voryen from her belt. Malachiasz nodded slowly.
“The relic will do you well here,” he said.
Katya’s eyes narrowed.
Nadya reached for her necklace. She had finished restringing it and her fingers found Marzenya’s bead. Despite everything, she still turned to her goddess first.
Just … please.
Nadya got no answers and no magic. Only silence. Just the expectancy of complete dedication. Nadya had to go this alone. She chewed on her lip, watching Malachiasz. She had no idea what she would find when she turned, but she didn’t like anything that made Malachiasz nervous.
“Litkiniczki,” he murmured.
Lichni’voda, her brain supplied in Kalyazi.
Bad luck. Dark omen.
Except not the concept. The creature.
“Move very slowly,” he said quietly. “Though it doesn’t matter. It sees us. I see it.”
There were regular Kalyazi portents, small ones, simple ones. Little creatures that spelled out small disasters when they were seen. But the big ones, the monsters, if you survived an encounter with Lichni’voda, you would have all the bad luck of the omen to follow you.
Blood trickled down Malachiasz’s forearms. Nadya heard Parijahan call out to them, but Malachiasz held a hand out.
“Don’t pass the threshold,” he said, his voice only just loud enough for them to hear.
If the Lichni’voda didn’t see them, the portent would not follow.
Only Nadya, Malachiasz, and Katya were caught by its eye.
Parijahan ducked out enough to see what Malachiasz was staring at. She moved back around the statue, eyes wide.
They were in trouble.
“All right,” Malachiasz said gently. “There’s no saving any of us from this, so we might as well kill it, yes?” He moved closer to Nadya, ducking his head and kissing her.
His hand was bloody and it smeared against her chin as he lifted her face to his. It was a desperate thing, messy and scared. She could feel his heart beating fast in his chest. He was panicking but trying to keep calm for her sake, but he didn’t need to, she understood the gravity of the situation.
Killing the thing wasn’t the problem.
There had been a part of her that thought all of this fear of the forest was unnecessary. That what they would be up against would be easily dealt with. Serefin was a powerful mage. Malachiasz was the Black Vulture, the king of monsters. And as much as she doubted it, Nadya had power of her own.
She hadn’t expected something so far