Thirst for Life
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Vasilisa jolted awake, her chest burning as she took gulped in the cool, alpine air.
Was this another dream? She remembered the cleaver in her neck, and choking on her own blood as she struggled to breathe. Her eyes looked up at the gray clouds slowly hovering above the towering pines, and then she felt her neck for a wound. Instead, there was only a small scar, like the seam on a dress.
Gods…gods…what happened to that monster? The gigantic black obelisk still stood in the middle of the outpost, but the sounds of battle were gone, replaced by the incessant cawing of carrion crows and the crackle of fire. The town was burning - buildings were beginning to crumble, their thatched roofs sagging and collapsing inward.
Vasilisa sat up, dizziness washing over her. The Khormchaks lay scattered - flies and birds had already settled on two of them. A black corpse charred beyond all recognition lay against the wall of a burning house. Nearby, Yesugei lay on his back - his chest and throat pierced by glinting metal shards.
Next to the swordsman lay a great pile of black ash, shaped like a fallen man. A gust of wind scattered the ashen pile, revealing a tiny crystal - her mother’s crystal - smoldering and darkening its surroundings. Everyone lay dead: the monster, Chirlan’s guards, and the Khormchaks. No. Not all of the Khormchaks.
Yesugei’s chest rose and fell erratically - his skin was as gray as the clouds above. Vasilisa rushed and knelt down to examine his wounds. The nomad’s eyes widened as he saw her - his lips moved soundlessly. Vasilisa hushed him and gingerly lifted his head into her lap. A deep wound in his neck trickled blood, but he was still breathing. Vasilisa tore one of her sleeves and packed the wound, ignoring the nomad’s weak thrashing.
“I need you, my friend,” she muttered as she glanced at the metal shard in the nomad’s chest. It had struck him just near the heart, missing by only an inch. “I need you to guide me home. You aren’t dying today, and you aren’t dying here.”
Yesugei gasped sharply, grabbing her arm with a bloodied hand. With the other, he pointed toward the ash pile—and the cleaver still lodged in the ground.
“Warn…warn them.” He managed to gasp in the Common Tongue. “The kurultai…warn them...”
The short utterance took everything the nomad had, and he collapsed back into Vasilisa’s lap, breathing slowly but steadily. How much longer would it last? Would it be a cruelty to leave him alive, lingering like this on the edge of death?
“Who do I warn?” Vasilisa demanded, gingerly trying to rouse him. “I need you to guide me back home, to my family. They must also be warned. Do you understand me?”
Her thoughts flashed to her father’s throne room - the false posol Chirlan and his masked guards. If Chirlan had carried her away from Belnopyl, it would have only been over her parents’ dead bodies. The image of her mother and father lying cold and bloodied in the throne room filled her with horror, but she forced her fears down. Perhaps tricks had spared them, just as he had put her to sleep. She resolved to mourn only when she saw their bodies, and would leap with joy and promise to never argue with them again if they were still alive.
But regardless, Belnopyl was in danger. The other princes - Gvozden of Gatchisk, Svetopolk of Pemil - needed to be warned of the silver-masked invaders and their gray demons. She imagined more black crystals falling from the sky, impaling Klyazmite land to spill out death and darkness across the world. She could not imagine Ilya or her father’s druzhina - the armored pride of the city’s army - standing against monsters who cut through iron and flesh like cloth. Yet this nomad and his band killed one - even if it cost them nearly their entire company.
She needed to know how, and she needed to warn Belnopyl.
The nomad’s eyes were unfocused. His throat moved faintly as he swallowed down blood and spittle between breaths. Vasilisa wasn’t sure if he had even heard her.
“Belnopyl! Do you know where it is?” she asked, nudging him gently.
The nomad’s eyes closed, and Vasilisa’s heart sank, fearing the worst. She felt his wrist for a pulse and breathed a sigh of relief - it was strong, filled with desperate life. For now. But she would not get any answers from him any time soon.
The heat and smoke were becoming unbearable - if they lingered any longer, the town would become their pyre as well. The fiery sigil burned into the outpost gate had faded, and outside Vasilisa saw the Khormchaks’ horses were tied to a tree. She stood up and dragged the nomad out from the burning town, then propped him up against a moss-grown rock. His bleeding had stopped, and she felt again for his pulse. Still alive.
The horses were beginning to panic - whether from the scent of blood or the spreading fires, she did not know. She gently approached the sturdiest - a chestnut-colored stallion with a marked saddle. The Khormchak horses were smaller than the destriers her father’s men rode - more like large ponies than real horses. She wondered whether it would even be able to support two riders.
She softly patted the horse’s shoulder, and let it sniff her hand. When the sniff was followed with an aloof turn of the head, Vasilisa softly whispered to the horse in the Klyazmite tongue. Did Khormchak horses even understand it? Did horses understand language at all?
Rifling through the saddlebags of the others she gathered supplies - salted meat, cheese, bread, and a pouch of silver coins. She left the Khormchaks’ horsehair banner by a tree. After she packed the chestnut stallion’s saddlebags to bursting, she untied the remaining horses and sent them trotting down the valley, away from the raging flames.
Leading the stallion to the unconscious nomad, she coaxed it to kneel as she carefully heaved Yesugei’s body onto the saddle. Tying him securely, she mounted behind him. The horse buckled slightly, but soon trotted forward, steady and strong.
The nomad’s lips moved but made no sound as he settled against her back, still unconscious. Vasilisa thought back to his words of warning, then looked back at the burning town and its scattered bodies.
No, one last thing.
She dismounted and rushed back into the smoke-filled town. The fires were rising high, and cinders floated thick in the air. Through the haze, Vasilisa spotted the giant cleaver still lodged in the ground, blood-slick and gleaming. Grasping the handle, she yanked it free as easily as pulling a weed, then ran back out of the town. She slung the heavy blade across her back with a rope - it was uselessly heavy, but it was all that remained of the madness that consumed the town. Even the most untrusting among the boyars and princes of the west would have to give pause on seeing such a sword, held together by strange magic beyond even the foulest blood-sorcery.
Back on the horse, Vasilisa scanned the forest for bearings. Snow-capped peaks loomed unfamiliar, and the winding stream might mislead her for days before she could find any landmarks. Then she spotted a moss-covered pine and heard Stavr’s voice from her childhood echo in her mind: See there Vas’ka? If you aren’t scared, go touch the face of Leshy! She remembered playing with the boys in her father’s hunting grounds, fearing the mythical guardian of the woods. But Stavr’s teasing had also taught her a grain of truth - Leshy always looks north!
The dark green moss grew thickest on the darkest sides of the pine trees, always to the north where the sun shone the least. Orienting herself, she chose a trail westward. The Khormchaks’ presence suggested she was in the eastern borderlands, somewhere between the Klyazmite principalities and the Great Horde. For hundreds of years before the Horde came screaming out of the east, the dense woods had marked the boundary between the steppe peoples and the settled Klyazmite folk. If she traveled far enough west, she would reach the open plains - from there, a village, and from a village, a city.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Clicking her tongue, she urged the horse forward. The nomad murmured in his sleep, his head resting heavily against her back as they disappeared into the dense woods.
***
Beneath the gray skies, the princess of Belnopyl and her nomad charge traveled slowly. Every few miles Vasilisa had to readjust her seat, or check on Yesugei whose feverish murmurs soon faded. Occasionally, she dismounted to ease the horse’s burden, leading it by the bridle as she scanned the side of the dirt path for medicinal plants. Despite the vast, blooming greenery, the forest yielded little of use - only a few black leaves of “wound healer”, as her old handmaid Mariana had called.
When the sun set, she mimicked her father’s trackers to set up camp: clear the ground, arrange stones, gather wood and grass, and pray to the gods the tinder would spark. By the time she had managed to coax a tiny ember with flint from the Khormchak saddlebags, Vasilisa felt too tired to do much else besides sleep. As she searched through the saddlebags for food, Vasilisa heard a groan from Yesugei and shuffled over to check on him.
Laid out on a bedroll near the fire, the nomad’s face resembled a skull. His features had sunken, his skin remained sickly gray. The veins in his neck and face swelled visibly from underneath his skin, reminding her of a condemned man she saw hanged by her father’s order. She wondered again whether her healing was having an effect - or whether it was just prolonging the suffering, loosening the noose of death, but not breaking it.
She knelt by him, removing his robe. The wounds had completely stopped bleeding and showed no signs of infection in the firelight. She thoughtfully chewed on the wound healer leaves, then spit the pulp into a cloth and pressed it to his wounds. The nomad hissed at the sting, and Vasilisa remembered crying when Mariana did the same for her, tending to a bite wound from one of her father’s hunting dogs. She missed the old governess’ steady presence, her sharp advice.
“Why…do you do this?” Yesugei rasped weakly.
Vasilisa startled briefly. “You saw that monster, same as I. And you killed it-”
“-and soon, it will kill me,” said Yesugei with a hacking cough. “A pointless trade.”
He curled his fingers tightly around her hand, and Vasilisa’s breath stopped. Her mind expanded. She saw vast, shimmering steppes that stretched for thousands of miles in all directions. The great tide of horses and traveling yurts of the Khormchaks, cursed and blessed to forever be on the move. Faces flickered before her: half-remembered ancestors, siblings older and younger, brothers of blood, and brothers of oath. Targyn with his falcon, Kenes with his scars, Sergen and his unfulfilled promises. Black teeth of night swallowed the lantern-light on a dark day of blood, and the black tendrils that swallowed the sun.
She felt everything—the pain, the helplessness. But she also felt a powerful, inhuman black hatred - not directed at her, but outward to the entire world, vast and unrelenting. She felt the desire to plunge it all into the depths of a great pit, and to weep for loved ones and gods that never were.
The nomad’s hand uncurled from hers, and the sensation faded.
“This…these wounds…it is not pestilence.” Yesugei shivered, and his head dropped back, weakened. “It is a curse.”
Yesugei tried to smile, but only clenched his teeth in pain. Hanging on with what little strength he had left, while the black rage ravaged his body like a wildfire.
“A curse, yes…the wise men say spirits curse those who kill them. Legends come to life…and so does their hate. You feel it, don’t you? Endless hate - to blot out the sun, to swallow the sky and the stars.”
Yesugei struggled to keep his eyes open. He was fighting against sleep, not sure if it would be his last. Death and sleep - how well they went hand-in-hand.
“Black crystals…the teeth of night…they will save you. They will kill them,” Yesugei’s tone grew desperate, and he grabbed at Vasilisa’s sleeve, as if hanging onto her could stop him from falling back into slumber. “Don’t be afraid. Do not let yourself be afraid. Teeth of night…they will save you. They will kill them…”
Yesugei fell back into oblivion mid-sentence, his grip slackening. Vasilisa covered him with a blanket and sat on a small log, trying to clear her mind. Strange birds whistled in the distance, and a low breeze whispered among the trees that loomed overhead like spears pointed to the heavens. Her scarred hand bushed the crystals nestled in her chest, feeling their pulse. Her curse.
They will save you. They will kill them.
Or was it salvation?
Yesugei’s question swirled in her mind as she stared at the flickering fire, hoping to find answers in the flame.
Why do you do this?
By the time the fire had died and the sun began to rise once more, she still did not find her answer to the dying nomad’s question.
***
The gray clouds returned with the daylight, bringing with them rain, thunder, and lightning. The storm of frigid rain soaked with Vasilisa and Yesugei, who remained half-lucid, muttering in the Khormchak tongue as they continued to travel. He barely shivered from the cold, his lips turned pale, and his gray skin began to flake off and crack. Soon, his mutterings fell silent.
Eventually the rain slowed to a trickle, replaced by strong gusts of wind that chilled Vasilisa to the bone as the towering pines began to grow sparse. She almost wept at the sight of the familiar Klyazmite plains when they yawned out before her beyond the treeline. Trotting the steady-footed stallion out of the woods, she scanned the horizon for villagers or traveling merchants. As she looked on, Yesugei begin to shake violently in the saddle.
Vasilisa reached out, but he slipped from her grasp and fell with a quiet moan. She dismounted and turned him onto his back.
Why do you do this?
His blue robe was torn to tatters, and crusty with blood and dirt. The nomad’s chest barely rose and fell now, and his dry, cracked lips released a deadly breath.
Why do you do this?
Vasilisa tore open his robe and saw a large patch of darkness spreading across Yesugei’s chest, crawling out from the metal shard stuck in his breast. Instinctively, she took hold of the metal shard and slowly slid it free, trailing dark crimson and viscous black as she pulled it out. She dropped the cursed shard when it burned in her hand. Yet the spreading darkness didn’t stop - it slowly inched across Yesugei’s chest, crushing his breath.
The curse was overwhelming. Vasilisa felt it - a dark smoke choking out all life around it with its unending hatred. Yesugei writhed in silent agony.
Why do you do this?
She took the nomad’s hand, and his feeble thrashing slowed. She opened her mind once more, trying to show to the dying nomad what she could not say.
She let her pain, her fears, her sorrows bleed out. But from them, she found herself wanting to live more than anything else. Wanting this total stranger, whom she had only met a scant few days ago, to live. A thirst for life bloomed from her chest - it washed over the land, the sky, the wind, and the distant villages and cities. Tiding over soldiers, lords, and peasants alike. Everything that she knew and loved was to fall into the great pit of hatred, and the only thread that held it, that prevented the world from falling into the abyss forever, lay within her heart.
She loosened her dress, letting the cloth covering her impaled breast fall from her shoulder. The crystals hungrily drew in the light of day.
It was so quiet, out in the Klyazmite plains.
She didn’t understand what she was doing, not entirely, as she took hold of the cursed metal shard. She stifled her wince of pain as the hateful metal burned in her grasp. Then she slowly slid the pointed tip into her chest, just beneath the smallest of the crystals.
Vasilisa froze for a moment. A voice in her head told her she was on the verge of the abyss. Whatever happened now-
You can never go home. Never again.
She hesitated only for a moment.
Dull pain flowered in her chest as she dug the metal shard deeper into her chest, slowly scraping free the smallest crystal. She let the blood from her wound drip free and was surprised by the strange feeling of lightness that came over her as she pulled the crystal out.
The light-swallowing fang hissed in the presence of the cursed wound - into it she charged life, passion, desires and imagination, and a thirst for living. She dropped the cursed metal blade, and placed her free hand on Yesugei’s chest, steadying herself.
The words came to her on their own as she placed the hissing crystal inside Yesugei’s torn wound.
“Gods of mine…”
Vasilisa fell backwards, breathing heavily as she felt a sudden, crushing weight release itself from her shoulders. Confusion crept into her still heart as warm blood continued to leak from the hole in her chest. She heard that same voice in her head. Its tone rang with resolute determination in her mind.
And so it is done, and so it shall be.
Gods of mine…
Fire, earth, and stars above…
Accept my blood, my spirit, and my love.