The cool waters of the Cherech seemed to glitter as a few rays of the morning sun poked out from the gray clouds overhead.
The fisherman from Denev, his eyes bloodshot, sat on the stern of his river skiff absent-mindedly fiddling with his net as he took in the peace and quiet of the vast river. His brother’s laughter suddenly rose up from behind his back, and the fisherman wondered, What does he have to laugh about? There’s nothing funny about this whole mess.
Over the last few days, it seemed something had happened at the capital city to the north. Vague rumors that trickled down from the outlying villages spoke of anything from dark magic cast by the Grand Prince, to a catastrophic fire caused by poorly-stored flour.
The only one who seemed to know what had happened for sure was a messenger who bore the bear sigil of Belnopyl, but the man had come and gone within the hour, and only arrived in Denev to speak with its boyar, who remained frustratingly silent on the matter.
But the fisherman had noticed how things had changed since the messenger’s arrival - the boyar’s soldiers, once content to laze about in their lord’s keep, now patrolled more regularly across the outskirts of the small town. And more worryingly, just yesterday the boyar had sent forth his scribe to note how many hearths stood in town, how many freeholder families there were, and how many of those families had young fathers or adult sons.
War. Gods damn it, it’s a war!
The fisherman had wanted to shake his fellow chattering townsfolk, to quell their mindless talk and gossip, but that would have only caused the tension hanging over Denev to snap into panic. And the last thing anyone needed was panic - Denev was a quiet town, unassuming, its people humble and hard-working, and its boyar good enough, as far as boyars went.
Besides, even if the townsfolk did know of the coming war, there was nothing they could do about it. The freeholders had sworn their oaths of service to the boyar when they took up residence on his lands, and the thought of fleeing the call to arms and going outlaw was only a flight of fancy - a joke to be laughed at.
Most of the townsfolk were young and untempered by war - many of the younger freeholder men would likely jump at the chance to prove their valor in battle, or the chance to acquire easy wealth from looting their enemies.
But those were the thoughts of young men, their heads filled with stories and prospects of glory. To the humble fisherman, all he wanted at his age of nearly fifty summers was a life as peaceful and quiet as the Cherech river.
“Look!”
His brother called to him - it seemed even the peace of the Cherech was to be intruded upon today.
“What?” grunted the fisherman as he turned to face his brother, who was holding something in the palm of his hand.
The fisherman’s eyes widened as he saw the dull shine of a golden coin - stamped with the Belnopyl sigil - sitting in his brother’s hand. In most peoples’ minds golden coins - zlatniks - existed only as theoretical measurements in the ledgers of merchants or the boyar’s tax-collectors. Most went their whole lives only ever dealing in silver, as was the way of the common folk.
But to see a golden coin in person, much less hold it in one’s hand…the fisherman felt his curious fingers trembling as he unconsciously reached out to touch it, to feel this alien treasure.
“Where did you find this?” the fisherman gasped.
“In the waters, I saw it floating on a piece of wood,” His brother pointed, jabbing his finger at a bobbing chunk of dark wood that passed by their skiff. “It was just lying there.”
As the fisherman and his brother looked out to the north, they suddenly saw more pieces of wood drifting down along the Cherech. Then the realization came that the pieces were not stray bits of dead tree, but debris - perhaps from a building.
Several of the bobbing pieces were painted, others had bits of soaked carpet still attached to them, as though ripped out from a floor. One of the chunks that floated past nearly spooked the fisherman from his boat - it was a large board painted to resemble a pretty girl in maiden-whites, with two holes where her eyes should be.
“Look at all this…” whispered the fisherman to his brother. “Do you think a merchant’s vessel sank? We haven’t had any storms of late but maybe-”
“Brother, over there!”
The fisherman looked out into the distance, squinting as he struggled to make out what his brother’s sharper, younger eyes had spotted.
“What is it?” the fisherman asked as his eyes scanned the water.
His brother pointed out at a large cluster of floating debris. “Look there! A lady in the water! She’s holding on to something!”
***
The fisherman rowed the skiff carefully, angling the boat so they drifted to a near stop right next to the figure in the water. The woman was dressed in a strange, foreign garb which might have once seemed regal, but was now tattered and covered in blood. She looked as though the smallest lap of the waves would send her sliding off the fragment of debris she held onto - her body limp and cold as her corpse floated downriver.
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“Careful with the net!” shouted the fisherman as his brother tossed it over the woman’s corpse and dragged her to the edge of the skiff. “Pull gently - we don’t know how long she’s been in the water. You’ll rip her to shreds the way you’re pulling her in.”
“Her damn hands are stuck to the board!”
“Then pry them off! It’s the death lock.”
The skiff lightly dipped to one side as his brother managed to wrench the woman free from the pull of the Cherech, depositing her onto the floor of their boat with a great splash.
“Gods above, look at her!” cried his brother.
Turned onto her back, the woman’s dark-gray guts were on full display as they hung out from her split stomach like in the grotesque tapestries. Looking further up, the woman’s chest was malformed, caved in from some powerful blow that shattered half her ribs, and her throat was slashed open.
The fisherman resisted the urge to gag at the sight of the corpse, but his brother could not - rushing over to the other side of the skiff before retching up his lunch.
As his brother vomited, the fisherman drew closer to the woman’s corpse. Blessedly, her eyes were closed - if it wasn’t for the gruesome mauling of the body, the fisherman could almost pretend she was simply asleep.
Something dark rested on the woman’s corpse, and when he drew closer the fisherman was what it was - a small, thin black crystal, thrust straight into the woman’s heart like a dagger. He prayed the crystal was the first blow, a mercy killing before whoever murdered her chopped her body up and dumped it into the Cherech.
The woman seemed like a noble from the look of her garb, but her face and style clearly marked her as not from the ranks of the Klyazmite nobility.
The fisherman’s mind spun with the implications of a murdered foreign noblewoman, but he decided against thinking on the matter any longer - he was only a fisherman, and all he wanted was a life peaceful and quiet. Dead nobles were not his concern - after all, this woman had really turned up in the demesne of his boyar, and it was the boyar who would need to investigate what had happened.
The fisherman looked to his brother, who had finished sicking up the contents of his stomach and looked as green as algae. “We need to take her to Boyar Vlan. He’ll know what to do.”
“There might be more bodies out there.”
“And we only have one boat. We’ll bring this one to the boyar, and he can search the river for any others.”
His brother fell quiet as they covered the woman with a damp cloth, and then turned the skiff back towards the riverbank. Denev was a small distance away from the Cherech, and the boyar’s home was right in the center of the town - as they neared land, the fisherman instructed his brother to disembark and run for help. His brother was much faster than he, and more uneasy around the dead woman - it worked perfectly for them both if his brother was the one to fetch a cart and the boyar’s guards.
Soon the riverbank was quiet once more, and the fisherman took a seat on a mossy log next to the laid-out corpse. As he sat he felt his mind begin to wander, thinking of the dead woman even as he tried to direct his thoughts elsewhere - to more familiar topics. But try as he might, he felt his curiosity slowly getting the better of him and took another look at the body once he was sure no-one was around.
A small amulet of jade hung from the woman’s tarnished silver belt, and it shone brightly as the fisherman pulled it free and examined it in the light. He weighed his options, then stuck the jade into the folds of his footwraps.
The crystal inside the dead woman's heart was the next thing that drew his curiosity - as his eyes fell upon the piercing stone, he saw that it did not reflect the morning light. Instead, he saw that within the crystal there seemed to be a strange, undulating murkiness - splashes of purple and blues and even vibrant yellows appearing and disappearing beneath the sharp surface.
The crystal was no longer a curiosity. He needed it. For what purpose, he did not know.
The fisherman slowly reached out for the crystal - his hand moving of its own accord. It felt as though a strange force was directing his grasp, but strangely, the fisherman found that he did not mind. His thoughts felt cloudy, and he felt as though a suffocating fog had blanketed all his senses - the only thing that mattered now was pulling free the crystal.
He felt no concern. No fear. No confusion.
He surrendered comfortably to the strange force invading his mind, turning him into a spectator of his own body's actions as he pulled the crystal free from the woman's chest with a wet schlick - then placed it against the quivering bump of his throat.
Invisible hands wrapped around his chest from behind in a soft, unseen embrace. Cold lips pressed against his ear, whispering a terrible truth into his mind as the force controlling his body gave its name.
Vaal - She of Earth and Love.
In an instant, the world began to swirl before the fisherman - swallowing up the view of the colorful trees and gray skies and plunging him into a dark, distant corner of his own mind as his hands moved by Vaal’s will.
He saw the swirling muddy darkness of the Cherech river, and then the darkness shrank into the eye of a small fish curled up inside an egg, its heart pulsing with blood and the promise of vibrant life.
The egg broke apart as the fish struggled free, and in the blink of an eye he saw the fish grow into a mighty female sturgeon, swimming through the Cherech. She swam, she mated, she released her eggs, and then she surrendered to the cycle of life - but not before setting the stage for the cycle to begin anew, again, and again, and again.
He saw a thousand-thousand repetitions of the cycle, stretching on and back for eons, his mind pulled apart in two directions through time as the fisherman opened his mouth in a silent scream into the void. The visions of the future and the past, the visions of life itself, flashed through his shattering mind in an instant that lasted forever - and then it was all over.
Hot blood spurted down the front of his shirt, trickling down his chest and dripping onto the dark, moist earth. But for the fisherman, there was no pain. Only the endless cycle of life, where there was no beginning and no end. Life for life, and the cycle continued on and on.
The cool dirt felt like a blessed balm on his burning skin as he collapsed to the ground.
As he took his final strangled breaths, he felt the strange being leave his mind - leaving him to die alone in the middle of the woods, where animals would eat his corpse, and the mushrooms and moss would strike a prosperous domain from his decomposed remains.
Life for life, and the cycle continues on and on.
Where one life ends, another may begin.
The eyes of the fisherman from Denev fluttered shut.
And Khariija’s eyes opened.