Interlude: Ekaterina II “Rina” Maksimovna Shuiskaya

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Skulking around his own home in the early morning like a thief, the Shuisky family heir descended to the lowest levels of their home. Rina followed. Awoken by the sound of the front door opening and shutting multiple times, she had risen to see what he was up to. Monitoring Casimir was always interesting. The girl copied her brother’s tense energy, but made herself even quieter. She felt like a mouse hiding from a cat as she slipped off her shoes and socks, and tried not to shiver against the icy stone floor.

Casimir ducked down the creaky stairs that led to her least favorite place in the universe. Rina counted his footsteps, knowing already which would creak when stood on. As stiff as a miner hunting for a gas leak by candle light, knowing that it might blow up in her face but lacking better options, Rina worked her way down the stairwell after him. She paused at the last step, choosing instead to let one eye and a strand of blonde hair extend past the stairway’s walls to look into the antechamber. All she saw was a boy in front of a thick metal door and a dented padlocked container. What a dump, she thought. Nothing but cobwebs and rust.

Casimir looked ghostly. More phantom than flesh. His face was bloodless and his lips nearly pale, such that the dried blood, dirt and debris stuck out on his skin like scars. His golden hair shifted as he paced and muttered to himself, wringing his hands in front of the basement door. The clothing he wore only made him look more like a corpse. Something that had crawled from a gravel grave in the family crypt, fine clothes torn to shreds with one sleeve crassly rolled up to the elbow. There were numbers glowing faintly on that arm, brightening and fading in cycles. Casimir’s left hand rubbed against it compulsively. A new nervous tick like that chant he would mutter when he thought no one would hear?

The System? He got it? He made it into the Academy? Rina wondered.

“Too soon, too soon,” said her brother to himself. “I must wait until I’m ready. Have to hold on, not yet.”

Casimir turned to leave, and Rina shrank out of the way. There were no footsteps. She held her breath and counted for three seconds before peeking again. It was foolish to risk him seeing her, but he did not notice her. Why? She was not sure. Casimir’s eyes were unfocused and cast to the ground. Was his mind too distant? Even with the System? Her brother had frozen in place, his face going from anxious to an unsettling emptiness as he turned back to the lead lined door. Resolute.

“Stupid. You stupid idiot. You never learn, do you?” he said, walking over to a metal lockbox and throwing it open. A padded coat filled with lead plates went over Casimir’s head, catching his nose in the process. Cursing and rubbing his nose, her brother reached in to grab a skirt-like wrapping and a belt that he folded around his waist and locked in place with the belt’s buckle. Finally, thick gloves were pulled over his hands and a mask tightened to his mouth securely. The lockbox was shut, and the door was wrenched open. The screech and the sparks against the floor set her teeth on edge.

Through a short passage that was painted in mold he went, and Rina snuck after. Her shirt pulled up to cover her mouth and nose was the only protection from the mold spores, but going further in or leaving were not options. Not when Casimir was going for a visit down here. With bated breath, Rina knelt in the passageway’s shadows and stared into a room that had unseen illumination. A place that was deeply, truly wrong.

Casimir Shuisky was the only human in it, but he was far from the only thing inside. Directly across the room from Rina was a hole in the wall. The Hole. She could not maintain her gaze long enough to see what was inside, her attention always slipping away to the edges no matter how hard she tried. What she could observe was the way it made her skin crawl and the oil slick that wept from the lowest edge. The line of tar led a trail from the cavity down the chamber’s center and then arced to the left. Here and there along the way were black imprints of hands and feet on the outskirts of the streak. Careful to avoid stepping in the mess, Casimir stood before what it led to.

A statue of bone that was not a statue. Something humanoid, but so distorted and gnarled that Rina only knew that this had once been a girl smaller than herself because she had been told. Told that this was the first Ekaterina. It was difficult to believe even so. How could anyone consider the possibility when faced with the sight? Nothing about this could be human, could have ever been human. Not with the way that the mutation swelled inside the bone gargoyle until it burst out to corrupt everything around it into madness. Insanities like the vineyard of veins sprouted from the monster’s shoulders and spine like a fallen angel’s wings. They branched out across the wall and then curled inward to penetrate any surface they came across. A pulse throbbed even though the veins never made a completed loop back into their host.

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It made Rina want to vomit.

“I’ve got the System. I’m on the way to fix you, make you whole, but it needs me to tell the truth, or part of it, to someone who will judge me. And no one could do that better than you,” said Casimir. He was rambling, almost raving. Barely coherent to Rina’s ears.

The bone creaked. Little splinters snapped off and fell into the black sludge. As they sank in, Rina knew instinctively that they would never float back up.

“I must confess that I have lied to our parents. I must confess that I told them that I thought you had already left when I closed the rift. I must confess that when I realized you could barely speak or move, I was relieved because it meant you couldn’t tell them what really happened,” said Casimir. The phrasing was deliberate, mechanical.

It provoked a reaction. The yellowed white material cracked as Ekaterina strained to move from her perch. Every fissure that formed from her movement filled with blood that hardened back into bone, trapping her into a new statue, and the bluish veins pumping dark fluid were chaining her spine to the walls they burrowed into. Her own body was a prison. Even with that, Ekaterina was unable to give up, and Casimir was unwilling to leave. Step by step, tearing veins from the stone, the monster moved more than she had in years to reach up with an elongated limb and grab their shared brother by the throat.

I have to do something! Rina thought. She’s going to kill him, and Caz isn’t doing anything to stop it! Why isn’t he running?

Something shifted behind his eyes to match the gargoyle’s only human trait. Green eyes with a darkness behind them.

“Don’t be ungrateful. I only did to you what you threatened to do to me. And we both know you wouldn’t save me if our places were switched,” he said. “But I will save you despite that.”

The taloned hand let go of his throat.

The monster’s smoothed helmet cracked open to reveal remarkably human lips. Was there a normal girl just beneath the surface? The red edges spread to show teeth as thin as needles, and far too many at that, shattering that illusion. “Pro… promise…”

“I promise. We’ll be even then. Hell, with me out of the way now you might be able to blackmail Father into getting what you wanted,” said Casimir, consoling her.

“Get… g-get rid…”

“I told you I’m not doing that.”

Get rid of what? Rina wondered, staring at her own feet rather than looking at the ugly thing.

“Rid.”

“I’m not going to kill her for you,” said Casimir. “What? What is it?”

When Rina looked up, she saw Ekaterina’s hateful eyes piercing into her from the deep sockets of the bone mask. Casimir turned and Rina shrank back. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

“Caz, I’m sorry,” whispered Rina.

“You don’t have protective gear on. You shouldn’t be near the portal,” he said, picking her up and leaving their sister behind. Rina’s last view of the horrors within as he threw her over his shoulder were green eyes. Eyes that matched all three of the Shuisky children too perfectly for even normal siblings. Eyes that judged Rina and despised her.

Casimir shut the door and put her down, dusting her off before he realized he was just getting more dirt on her.

“You shouldn’t go in there without protection, Rina. How many times have you gone in? You could get sick if you stay there long enough,” her brother said.

Rina ignored the question. “Why does she hate me?”

“Ekat? She doesn’t hate you.”

“Yes, she does. She asked you to get rid of me,” said Rina, starting to panic.

“Hm? No, that wasn’t about you.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I’m telling you the truth; it was someone else,” said Casimir.

“Who?”

“Mom.”

“I don’t believe you.” Rina repeated.

“Rina…”

“Don’t call me that. I’m sick of that nickname,” said Rina. “It was about me, wasn’t it? Don’t lie to me.”

“We’ll talk about this another time.”

“I don’t want you to bring her back. Don’t fix her, Caz. She’s going to hurt me. Please, Caz!”

“I won’t let her,” he said. “I would never let her.”

Her heart rate spiked.

“So, I was right! She really is after me,” Rina said, lip quivering.

“Ekat is not, I promise you. Would I lie to you?”

“You said you did to Mom and Dad.”

“Did you hear all that? All of it?” Casimir said as he judged her reaction. “Okay. Here’s some truth then. She won’t be able to leave until I’m powerful enough to fix her, and by then I will be so strong that I can keep you safe. I love you. Do you think I’m lying about that?”

“No.”

“Then there’s nothing to worry about,” he soothed.

“I don’t understand why she hates me. I was not even around when it happened,” said Rina.

“We can’t get into this right now. It’s not a conversation that can be done in a sitting.”

“Now!” Rina stamped her foot.

“Look, all I can say is that you and I weren’t made like normal children, and she was.” Casimir said.

“Why would that make her hate me if we both were that way? Especially if you did something bad and I did not.”

“I think, I think she’s always seen me as the first thing that ever belonged to her, and when she learned about you… Ekat felt you were just her replacement.” Casimir said. “You’re more than that to me though.”

Rina hugged him like the world was about to end for a second time and all she could do was hold on and wait for the fallout.