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st-just · 4 years

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On The Undead

Because hey, worldbuilding continues to be fun

When we speak of the undead, there are certain similarities of type that hold constant-they are a mortal soul (not a god) untethered to the natural rhythms of life, divorced from vital flesh or novel thought. But that tells us nothing of interest for any but the most arcane of theologians.

More helpfully, then, the undead come in four varieties, and nigh-on endless races and clans within each. They are the Righteous, the Penitent, the Ravaged and the Damned. We shall now discuss each, in turn.

The Righteous Dead are formed from the body of men who, having sworn some great and sacred oath, were struck down before they could see it to completion. Rather than letting them be damned as forsworn, the Gods in their mercy granted their soul strength to match its will, time and power enough to see to their duties so they might pass on as honoured heroes. Having Higher Purpose, it would in nearly all cases be blasphemous to bind such souls to secular aims (and difficult, besides) and so we have not given them much study. As a rule they are puissant and singular, incapable of reproducing themselves, are only occasionally bound by barriers of sunlight, salt or running water, and are greatly weakened or destroyed should they ever set aside their Purpose.

The most storied and famous race of these is the Revanent-those who, their hearth and kin left as ashes and tears on bloody ground by the treachery of those who should have stood with them, swear righteous vengeance upon those who ruined them but are struck down before they can make good upon it. Though they still wear their mortal frame, it is very clearly but a puppet for the soul, death wounds left unhealed, moving with inhuman strength regardless of what their muscles should allow. Their hunt is ceaseless until they have visited bloody vengeance upon all those they swore doom upon, and should they be moved be appeals to mercy or prudence the next sunset will send them to their appointed hell.

The Penitent Dead are of a similar kind to their Righteous kin, and a subject I can hold forth on at length. In the Crown Lands of Belthaya it is the sacred right of the condemned and indebted to assume all responsibility for their sins and mistakes themselves, and so spare their kith and kin any punishment they might be do. After their execution, the souls of these wretches are bound into their boiled skeletons and entombed with arms and armor, to be called upon in times of war, or else bound to some useful fetish or token so they might provide useful service to their victims or creditors. While a few truly grand heretics are said to have been condemned by Heaven, when created by mortal hands these bindings are inevitably temporary (a matter of decades passed or of commands given or campaigns fought) and replete with necessary bans and banes incorporated to the rituals-pure salt, running water and sunlight are as ever the most reliable.

Beyond the Legions, the most famous, or infamous, more properly, example of the Penitent in modern times are assuredly those fools who fall into debt with the Society of Echoes, the salacious examples of which far outnumber what I have the ink to describe. Suffice to say that the necromantic syndicate collects secrets and treasures like a counterfeit dragon, and are only to happy to take advantage when those they loan out to default, binding their souls into jewelry or weapons or useful tools until they have been expended or worked off their debt.

The most pathetic and pitiable race of the dead are, without question, the Ravaged. In some ways seemingly indistinguishable to the Penitent, the crucial distinction is rather than condemned and bound by right, their souls have been wounded and warped by the assault of some alien force. Despite what their appearance might lead one to believe, corpses used as hosts by demons almost never qualify, as Incarnation invariably destroys the soul of the unfortunate victim beyond hope of recovery. Instead, these are nearly without exception the victims of the Damned who we will discuss momentarily, or of particularly debased and decadent renegade sorcerors or terrestrial gods. Bleeding spiritual wounds filled with shock or suffering, they only show intellect or consciousness when directed by their creator or something like him, and are easily warded off or destroyed by the standard elements and symbols of purity and life (the vast majority being entirely powerless through the day, for example).

The two most famous examples of the Ravaged are surely the ghost, killed in some particularly foul and wounding way, their soul forced to relive and suffer from that wound until laid to rest, and the husk, the all-to-common final fate of those preyed upon by the Damned, a rotting and half-eaten corpse sustained only to fetch their replacements as their master’s meal of choice.

But of course, when we whisper of ‘the undead’ around camfires and tavern tables, it is very nearly always the Damned to which we refer. The terrible lords and ladies of the grave, the mad heretics and proud blasphemers so terrified of their final judgment the sacrifice all admirable and lasting legacy on the altar of their own existence. They invariably seem more complete and closer to human than any other race of the dead (it would be a poor trade indeed, else), but they are by nature parasitic. The Lich’s wit and intellect will never dull, but those in their thrall will grow dimmer and duller until they are naught but a soul in a corpse without thought to guide them. The Vampyre will remain forever in the splendour of their youth, with attributes far beyond any base mortal, but those they feast upon will in the long run become nothing but a spectral choir chained to their glory, all vitality bled from their flesh. The Wraith bears a passing similarity to a god, all will and power unchained to mortal form, but he must devour his sacrifices completely, lest the souless husks become easy prey for demons grander than he. And so it goes, for every novel hubris and innovation the most subtle apostates can devise. The soul itself cannot sustain life outside its allotted span, and its parody lasts only through predation.

Those Damned that are taken as facsimile of children or companions by some elder progenitor very often carry the usual weaknesses, inherited from their ‘father’ or ‘mother’, but it is foolish in the extreme to assume this of the self-made damned. Some flaw in their ritual is inevitable, but most clever apostates make certain to protect themselves against anything so common as oceans or cold silver.

-The Lady Binder Katerine ir Paimon, “The Dead and the Damned, or, A Study On The Relation Between The Hells And The Living Dead”

#writing #worldbuilding #abhari #this is theoretically a writing blog

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vulpinmusings · 5 years

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Ski’tar and Friends part 12: Mines of Tragedy

This week, Ski’tar, 6, and Vemir walk into a thasteron mine. They don’t all walk out...

The fateful start

The last battle

Vemir, 6, and I spent a couple hours resting in the bar, healing up what little we could, and fixing my Drone as we waited for the shabbad mystic to come to. At last, I got a little tired of waiting and splashed a bit of healing serum onto her and downing the rest for a tiny healing boost. The mystic work up ranting about Talbot like he was a living god that could do anything and had nothing to fear from anyone. We tried every angle we could think of to coax information out of her, but she proved equally unconcerned about dying or being left behind by her glorious leader, not the least bit worried that Talbot had insulted the god Abadar by cheating his church-slash-corporation out of good money with sham goods, and didn’t fall for any promises that we wouldn’t hurt Talbot once we found him. That last tack almost did work, actually, but after thinking over Sixer’s words, she decided she’d had enough of us and blasted her own brain into mush.

Having failed to secure any clear information beyond the fact that Talbot’s scheme seemed to have started a cult of hyper-zealots, we left the bar to begin the less certain task of following any fresh vehicle tracks we could spot. We found a set heading out toward the thasteron mines and figured those were as good a bolt-hole as any, plus one of Vemir’s bounty targets was probably around there so we could at least get something of value out of the search. Sixer took a nap in the buggy as we drove out, desperately trying to recover a little more from his acid wounds before the inevitable confrontation.

As we drove into the mountains, Vemir and I spotted a human on a higher ridge just in time to stop the buggy before the boulder he pushed down would have hit us. Screaming and babbling incoherently, the man tumbled down the mountainside himself and ran up to tell us to get away from his mine. Vemir fished for information as best he could; the crazy old man couldn’t remember his name, and confused being shot with a nonlethal jolt from Vemir’s arc pistol as wizardry, which Vemir decided to just roll with. The miner said that three other “wizards” had started squatting in “his” mine, and he didn’t want any more of our type around. At this point, Sixer woke up and knocked the miner out, and we tied him up in the buggy’s trunk on the possibility that he was the miner Vemir had a bounty on. We then continued on our way to the thasteron mine, as I noted we seemed to be doing quite well so far, given we didn’t know for certain we’d actually succeeded in finding anyone we were looking for yet.

The mine was a series of branching tunnels that looped back on themselves in places as the miners of old had stretched to the very limits of structural integrity searching for the once-valuable ore. Following the freshest set of footprints I could find, we made our first to a little room that had been set up as a repair station and looted it for abandoned credits and a specialist engineering kit that could supplement my custom rig. Down the next most-likely tunnel, we spotted an automated sentry gun at the precise moment that Sixer crossed over its detection threshold and tanked a shot. After I spent a few minutes puzzling over how to approach the gun without activating it so I could overload its circuits, Sixer decided to cut the knot by blasting the sentry with his cryo-gun, freezing and shattering it instantly. The right-hand path from that point just looped back toward the start of the mine, so after determining that, we went the other way. Coming up to a bend, we manged to spot a man in a Starfinder-branded coat getting into a mine cart while three pistol and club-bearing miner-types stood ready for trouble before any of them saw us. We’d finally found our man.

The plan of approach I came up with had the aim of getting Vemir past the miners before Talbot could get the mine cart moving, after which Vemir would incapacitate Talbot while Sixer, the drone, and I kept the miners busy or made them stop living. I pulled out my second smoke grenade, pulled the pin, and then fumbled it so it went off at my feet. The resulting smoke cloud was just big enough to obscure the vision of the miners, so Vemir still had a chance to slip past them.

He must have tripped on a rock or something, because he barely made it around the corner before the miners were alerted and Talbot got rolling. As the ex-Starfinder rolled past us, he clocked me in the face with his pistol, and in the reflexive gasp of pain I inhaled a lungful of my own smoke. Coughing and choking, I was unable to move for several crucial seconds and could not give directions to the drone. At the least, the drone was stuck in front of me where it acted as a shield against the miners. While I was trying to not asphyxiate, Sixer – who does not need to breathe and thus could not choke – moved up to guard my flank as best he could, swinging his sword at one of the miners that came running up to me. Vemir was too far from us to be seen clearly, but we could hear him trying to fight off the other miners.

I vaguely recall a very meaty impact sound followed by a body-shaped mass in the smoke slumping to the ground, but I was too choked up to wonder who it had been.

After driving his assailant back, Sixer found a moment to activate the environmental controls on my armor – something I should have remembered to do before setting off the smoke! As soon as my lungs were cleared, I tasked the drone with shooting the miners while I ran after Talbot. I saw his cart was heading up the long way around to the entrance, so I ran down the shorter path and readied my frags. Talbot shot me as he came around, which caused me to fumble my first throw, and he made the turn into the mine’s entrance tunnel. I threw a second frag out with the intent to wreck the cart, but managed to land the thing inside the cart, so Talbot took the full force of the blast. He was cut up, thrown into a wall, and the Charlatan’s Stone flew out to land near me.

At this point, Sixer came running up to join me, so I figured the miners had been dealt with. I noticed Vemir hadn’t come as well, so I tapped into my drone’s camera real quick to look for the kasantha.

I saw him lying among the human corpses, his goggles utterly destroyed and his face a bloody pulp. Dead, fallen to a lucky blow from a washed-up miner driven to protect a fraud.

I saw red, and advanced slowly on Talbot as I gave voice to my new conflict of interests. One of my friends, someone who I had faced giant alien worm-bugs, skeletons on a collapsing Eoxian ship, and other harrowing battles with, was dead thanks to one disaffected Starfinder who, as I ranted at him, showed only disdain for the Society and our little group. He deserved death; he deserved a frag grenade down the throat. But, we had made a deal with Filt and Abadarcorp to deliver them Talbot alive. Talbot was wounded, barely able to stand; perhaps Sixer and I could have taken him down and dragged him back to Tash in one piece. But, after several minutes of growling at him and him throwing my words back at me, I decided I no longer cared that much. We had the Stone. If Abadarcorp wanted Talbot, they could come pick him up themselves. I told Talbot to run, if he could, and commed Filt with our precise location so he could send goons out to collect.

Once Talbot had cleared out of the mine, Sixer and I went back to collect Vemir’s body. We weren’t sure what to do, but just leaving him to rot in that old mine seemed wrong. We let the miner we’d tied up earlier go so we could put Vemir in the buggy’s trunk. If that miner had been a bounty target, he wasn’t of any use to us now that our team bounty hunter was dead. Sixer called the Starfinders to report our success and loss while I drove us back to Tash. There, Filt gave Sixer and me five thousand credits apiece – holding back what would have been Vemir’s share – and told us he’d keep us informed when Talbot was located. Then, Sixer and I got back in the buggy and drove back to the city of Maru to get a proper casket for transporting Vemir back to Abaslom Station, where we would finally have to determine what to do with him.

It was hubris that killed Vemir. My hubris. I fancied myself the idea guy of the group. I had all the tech savvy, the quick mind, and the gumption to think up ways for us to minimize our personal risk in engagements. We had always pulled through. Often it had been by the skin of our teeth, but my ideas and willingness to act had always seen us through. And in my supreme confidence in my own brilliance, I completely forgot to have everyone activate the environmental protection systems on their armor before setting off a grenade designed to incapacitate as much as it provides cover. I thought, in the moment, that choking on my own smokescreen was punishment enough for my hubris; that my haste would let Talbot escape as I lay helpless on the ground.

Talbot didn’t escape, but my foolishness cost me a friend.

Never again. No more smoke grenades. The perfect boom will not produce smoke.

#ski'tar #Starfinder #Vulpin plays

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unclefungusthegoat · 6 years

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EXODUS FROM EDEN

A Far Cry 5 AU: The Plagues of Egypt

Hope County Gothic 2018- WEEK 1- PROJECT AT EDEN’S GATE

Word count: 1327

WARNING: Blood, dead animals, frogs, insects, rotting food, sickness/disease, starvation, scars and wounds, self-flagellation, child death, major character death, child abuse references, self harm

A Pharaoh once sat on high, his towering empire built by the hands of enslaved Israelites. But he defied the commandments of God, and his hubris was punished with pestilence, famine and death, wrought upon his lands through God’s messenger- a man he once called his brother.

Joseph Seed sits on high, his Project, his Eden inhabited by the unwilling, the unrepentant. And now God sends another messenger, one who trusts in and upholds the law, to warn the false prophet-

Let my people go.

Joseph Seed seeks to build a garden. An Eden where God’s chosen will be saved from the fury of an impending, catastrophic reckoning. With those he loves at his side- his brothers, Jacob and John, his sister Faith, his wife and infant daughter- he fabricated a devout and holy empire, claiming the people of Hope County for indoctrination into his ‘family’. He believes he is saving them. He believes he hears the voice of God.

He is mistaken, misguided by demons.

In a small town on the border of Joseph’s empire, a young police Deputy wanders through the lush Montana landscape, seeking solace and serenity. They had once been a part of Joseph’s family, enticed by his soothing words, his condemnations of government and society, his genuine care for the world’s ‘unfortunates’. But they had seen his true face. His lust for power. His hungry gaze. His serpent tongue.

They had fled.

And it is in that liminal forest that they hear the true voice of God, whispered first through low hanging branches, slipping gently through evergreen leaves, before alighting a bush and illuminating the glade with an opalescent flame.

God’s message is clear.

The people of Hope County must be freed from the clutches of the false prophet.

Under a star-ridden sky, silent in the early hours of the morning, the Deputy meets Joseph in his church and explains to the Father of God’s commandment.

Unwavering in his faith, Joseph simply replies:

‘God will not let you take them.’

The Deputy pleads, but to no avail. And so they deliver the first warning:

...I will strike the water...

The Henbane River, once blue and speckled with the green haze of Bliss, grows thick and stains slowly with crimson. John is holding a sinner below the surface of the water, seemingly cleansing him, but instead he watches in horror as his hands redden and the scent of bitter metal claws its way down his throat. The sinner in his firm grasp begins to thrash and, as John brings him back into the cool night air, he looks upon a man glossed with so thick a sheen of blood, that he wonders how he is not drowning.

...I will plague your whole country with frogs...

Soon, Faith collects flowers by the tainted river. The soles of her bare feet are slick with the blood that has begun to soak into the soil. It is not long until the wild lobelias she gathers are scattered along the grassy path where she fled, as frogs are spat from the river’s depths in their thousands.

...Smite the dust of the land, that it may become lice...

The prisoners in Jacob’s care, their clothes stained with the rotting juice from meat they devoured, are used to the bristle of the Judges’ fur and the itching of lice. But upon the Father’s third denial of freedom, they see their captors begin to scratch the skin from their scalps, bloody flesh under their fingernails, their bodies overrun with the gnawing of a hundred thousand tiny mouths.

...Pharaoh hardened his heart...

Upon the release of a swarm of flies, which in turn brought disease as they settled on the harvest, chewing their way into the stocks hidden deep within the bunkers, Joseph’s voice fills the Deputy’s radio frequency. His words are faint from the unceasing cacophony of wings. He asks that the Deputy cease the plagues. He promises freedom for the people of Hope County.

The land was cleansed of the infestation.

But still, the people were not free.

...the LORD will bring a terrible plague upon the livestock in the field...

The bulls in Holland Valley collapse in the untended grass, their ribs prominent as they starve where they lie. Ravenous cougars rip all but the prongs from the elk corpses on the hot tarmac road through the Whitetail Mountains. The meat is poisoned by sickness. It is not long before the wild cats also succumb.

... festering boils will break out on men...

Joseph dabs soothing ointment upon the sores on John’s back, where they nestle among his deep scars. They grow inflamed and fever racks his body, droplets beading across his brow as though he was newly baptised. He bandages Jacob’s arms, where the patchwork of vermilion welts have given way to a new shroud of bulging sores. The Father is kept awake through the humid night by the screams of his infant daughter, boils burning into her tiny face.

...The LORD sent thunder and hail...

The Angels in the fields were nothing more than dust now. Each was incinerated by a lightning strike that evaporated their milky eyes, before claiming their bodies entirely. The church in Fall’s End no longer had a steeple, the hail having shattered it down. The people of Hope County had heard it crumble. The bell had tolled endlessly as ice rained upon it, and had then fallen silent. The thunder had rocked the earth and reduced the mighty statue of the Father to rubble.

...they will devour what little you have left...

There are no longer pumpkins at Rae-Rae’s farm. No longer are the fields blotted with fleshy fruits, but instead, dark with locusts that even devour the metal fencing, the wood of an old dog house, the tarp that covers a rusted truck. Radio towers appear like pillars of black salt, writhing in the fading sunlight. Joseph hides with his family, still ignoring the Deputy’s pleas.

...darkness that can be felt...

Madness came with three days of darkness. The Seed family kneel before the altar, whipping the flesh from their backs, unable to comprehend why God would allow this false prophet to punish them, his chosen, when they have all suffered so much already. Many of their flock walk out of the compound, never to be seen again. The shadow is suffocating, the silence oppressive. Joseph knows no light can be found in sleep- they are all haunted with nightmares.

...loud wailing... worse than there has ever been or ever will be again...

Joseph doesn’t cry when his baby daughter suddenly pales in his arms, her skin and lips fading to a periwinkle blue, cold to the touch. He does not respond to his wife’s heavy sobbing as she clings to the swaddled child. He holds her hand, gently winding his rosary around her palm. He doesn’t cry when he hears John screaming at the hunched figure of his eldest brother, blistered hands gripping at Jacob’s well worn camo jacket and oddly peaceful face, in desperate hope that he might wake. He barely hears the wailing that rings through the compound, through the valley and the mountains. God’s chosen few, chosen no more.

Instead, he radios the Deputy. He speaks in a quiet voice. It is a voice that lingers in the hollow space somewhere between forlorn resignation and tempestuous rage.

And the people of Hope County are at last freed. Purged of Bliss, their scars and swollen tattoos bandaged, the Deputy walks with them through the gates, as the sun rises once more.

Joseph watches them go.

He sits alone in the ruins of his garden. His Eden. He waits for guidance, an echo of the Voice that had let him climb so high and then allowed his world to be torn apart around him.

He is met with silence.

It is the same aching silence he had known as a boy in the moments after his Father had finished beating him. Perhaps he was still there now, in that moment, resting on a porch in the heat of a Georgia summer. Perhaps he would indeed see the Red Sea part, in the form of a gash in his back where leather met skin.

Perhaps this was not his promised land.

And taking a knife in his malnourished fingers, he cuts into his tall forehead, a permanent reminder to his forsaken soul:

Exodus 7:17

“By this you will know that I am the Lord”.

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Bold quotations are from the Book of Exodus. Painting is The Great Day of His Wrath, by John Martin.

Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed! This is my first fanfic for this fandom- I haven’t actually written fanfiction for a few years, (at least, not written down, I write it in my head all the time hahaha) and I’ve been concentrating on my meta essays for FC5, so I apologise if I was a bit rusty!

Also, disclaimer: I’ve never actually read the Bible, and obviously this is a fictional interpretation, so there are almost definitely some inaccuracies, but I tried to research as best I could! I wasn’t sure whether the death of the first born applied to daughters as well as sons, or to adults who were firstborn, but I used both for the sake of story.

Finally, I unashamedly acknowledge that I was 100% inspired by the Prince of Egypt.

#hope county gothic #hope county gothic 2018 #far cry 5 #far cry 5 au #far cry 5 fanfiction #project at eden's gate #joseph seed #john seed #jacob seed #faith seed #it's pretty wordy #and descriptive #but I was too frightened to write dialogue for my first fc5 fic #also confession #I've had this in my drafts for months #I was too scared to post #I've been putting it off all week too #but the first week of the gothic event is nearly over #so I had to pull myself together hahahaha

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officialravendc · 6 years

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Crimson Summer

Here’s a new story, for the first time in forever. Prompted by and dedicated to @princesscochlea.

"The rose was sweet like rotting death, like caramelised bones, a kind of corpse bruleé... and his eyes, pure glaring yellow. The colour of fear."

Iarina swears she's being stalked by Koschei the Deathless. But that's impossible, because Koschei is a character from a fairy tale. But as she searches for a saviour, something grim and ancient threatens to devour her city.

Read this story on AO3, or click here to keep reading!

There hung Koschei the Deathless, fettered by twelve chains. Koschei entreated Prince Ivan, saying:

'Have pity upon me and give me to drink! Ten years long have I been here in torment, neither eating nor drinking; my throat is utterly dried up.'

The Prince gave him a bucketful of water; he drank it up and asked for more, saying:

'A single bucket of water will not quench my thirst; give me more!'

The Prince gave him a second bucketful. Koschei drank it up and asked for a third, and when he had swallowed the third bucketful, he regained his former strength, gave his chains a shake, and broke all twelve at once.

'Thanks, Prince Ivan!' cried Koschei the Deathless, 'now you will sooner see your own ears than Marya Morevna!' and out of the window he flew in the shape of a terrible whirlwind.

- “Marya Morevna” (1890)

Deep in the woods, a single sick rose twisted its way up through the snow.

From a young age Iarina knew the shape of good and evil. Good was warm, human, charming; evil was the figure she glimpsed late one night out of her bedroom window staring up at her as she froze closing the curtains. It was quite clearly there one moment and the very next not - a lurking shadow, suddenly reduced to a brief flash of white and then nothing. Iarina could not explain this. It was like nothing she had ever seen, not outside of the TV, and so her teenage mind performed a strange leap of logic and snapped straight to the events of a faerie tale she had been told earlier that evening.

Iarina’s mother liked to spend the winter evenings weaving rich tales about the Faeries, the Dreaming Folk, like the Baba Yaga and the Firebird. These were the tales she had been told as a child, and her mother had been told as a child, and so on. These were old stories, stories with ancient roots in the cold Russian dirt – so it saddened and soured her when they failed to take hold with her teenage daughter. The slums of St Petersburg were a dismal and messy place that felt like a bit too much for a small, poor girl to take in. Iarina would rather be listening to easy stories of dashing American superheroes and tyrant aliens than grim complex faeries. It had been a while since Putin’s sardonic smirk had gently draped a new Iron Curtain across Eastern Europe, and the only escape from the perpetual uncertainty of politics was into simple uncomplicated fantasy.

This was why it came as a surprise when Iarina ran down the stairs one night and demanded a retelling of Marya Morevna. Her mother was taken aback, but complied gratefully until Iarina asked her to stop.

“Mama,” she said, “I saw him outside my window.”

Iarina, it seemed, had developed a fear of the archetypically brutal Koschei - Коще́й - the Deathless.

“The other tales I told you, they were based on respect,” said her mother. “A Baba Yaga? Something to be feared, yes, but also something to which you defer. If you treat her correctly, she will protect you.” She truly believed in the things she spoke of. “These are forces of nature, Iarina. Sheer elements. But Koschei?” She scoffed. “Koschei is a warning about trust. About deceiving appearances. He is not a god, a king or a spirit. He is dead. That was the punishment for his hubris.”

“But Mamulya – ”

“Don’t you ‘But Mamulya’ me.”

“Mama, you said to fear the Baba Yaga and her like, but…”

Iarina stopped, because it felt like someone was listening, and jumped when her mother spoke.

“…But?”

“But those stories are just fairy tales.”

Koschei was the Wife-Stealer, the hunter of young women, the ancient predator of Slavic folklore. No wonder, then, that he particularly struck a fearful chord with Iarina, who had to avoid men like him on her way to and from school each day. The trouble was Koschei was magical, and immortal, and probably much faster than anybody else she knew. Despite the fact that handsome young Ivan Tsarevitch had long ago killed the Deathless and burnt his lying corpse, something of him felt pertinent. Real. Current. Iarina had to admit that she fancied the concept of Ivan Tsarevitch, to the extent that her admiration of Prince Ivan was the only thing that matched her unnatural terror of Koschei. She was sure Ivan would carry her away as he had warrior princess Marya Morevna. She was sure.

A farmer by the outskirts of St Petersburg came across a great field of roses encroaching on his property. He went inside to call the police. They laughed at him, but five minutes after he put down the phone he was dead.

For a long time, Iarina had a vaguely embarrassing thing for Superman. Superman was simple and kind and good and wore bright colours to show that he meant well. He was a sort of prince, she thought, combining her two interests of aliens and superheroes rather neatly.

Then Ivan came along to vie for her affections, and of course he rapidly usurped the Big Blue Boy Scout, because he was Russian. Iarina knew of no Russian Superman. If he existed, she reckoned, he would be dour and grey and complicated. Ivan was not complicated. He had a sword and he killed bad men and was handsome and swept princesses off their feet.

Ivan kept Koschei and the Faeries at bay.

Trudging through the snow back home in the dark mid-afternoon, Iarina thought she saw movement in the gap between a couple of concrete shacks. A flurry, a flush of rich tail, like an animal out of a Disney movie just behind a thick pile of trash. Iarina came to a halt, staring curiously at the pile, and was about to take a step towards it when she noticed a pair of cruel eyes looking back at her from one of the windows. They peered coldly through a gap in the blinds, glaring bright yellow like a hungry tiger.

Iarina ran home and didn’t look back.

The roses crept along the roadside and down into the sewers. The smell was sweet like rotting death, like caramelised bones, a kind of corpse brûlée. It drifted on the breeze and suffocated three people in their beds. Despite the sugary stench, some insisted on picking the roses. Those who did shrivelled like dead petals and in minutes became screaming skin husks by the roadside.

“Iarina,” said her mother, “you’re being ridiculous.”

“You’re just saying that,” Iarina responded. “I can tell by your pale face and clammy hands.”

Her mother was silent for a long time. Iarina waited patiently if unhappily, but when the response eventually came it was terse and vague.

“I do not believe in Koschei,” her mother said. “He is a tale for unhappy widows to muse on and nothing more.”

“But Mamulya - ”

“No more questions. Go to your room.”

“Please!”

“Go to your room!”

Nothing more was said, though the silence was fraught with the ghosts of arguments.

Iarina found herself praying for Prince Ivan’s tenuous existence. She felt lost, scared, alone; she needed a confidant or protector or partner. The other girls at school ignored her already, and now that her mother had refused to support her the long walk home became bleak and harrowing. Iarina needed Ivan, because Koschei's shadow frequently tripped down the alleyways and loomed like a great tower under puddles of streetlight. She could swear there were eyes watching her too, ravenous demon eyes searching incessantly from the stark rooftops.

Iarina prayed, and hoped, and feared.

The roses had crawled a dark circle round the underside of the city, snaking grotesquely through the buried pipes and tunnels. They did not hesitate for the icy winter, spreading their knotted, thorny roots down into the brick and turf to take hold – and then, all of a sudden, it was time.

Iarina was lost.

These were streets with which she was familiar, streets she knew by their coarse individual feel on her feet. She could have charted her course home in her sleep. So why was she in unknown alleys, worn cobbles strange beneath her sole?

The mist closed in, bringing with it a flake or two of snow. The street was quiet.

So, so quiet.

So quiet that when Koschei stepped out of a narrow passageway just in front of her, Iarina couldn’t even scream for fear of disturbing the silence.

Koschei the Deathless looked like he had killed the Grim Reaper and climbed inside its skin. He made for a towering, skeletal figure in a smoky black shroud, and out of the peaked hood burst a pair of bright yellow predator's eyes. Iarina felt that hunting yellow, the colour of fear, as it wormed its way into her brain and down her spine.

So she turned and ran. Koschei reached for her, thin pale fingers stretching from the ragged arm of his cloak, but she slipped past his clammy grasp and ducked into another fog-swollen alley. Her feet pounded at the cobbles, Koschei’s hobbling step gaining pace rapidly from behind. Iarina flung herself round a corner onto a wider street, then back into another passageway, breath hissing through her teeth in short, panicked strokes. Fists balled, movement violent, adrenaline coursing. Legs like pistons – swinging round a drainpipe – throwing down a stack of empty crates – blood pumping like a drum through ears – harsh inhalations – clutched side – frantic searching gaze – painful exhalations – a cry –

“HELP!”

And as if to answer her call, there stood wonderful, strange, beautiful Ivan.

The Prince Tsarevitch was swaddled in rich fabrics, gold and red and woven like tapestries. His mouth was wrapped against the chill, but as Iarina stared at him in amazement and relief he pulled the scarf aside to reveal his warm, human eyes and confident smile. To his left stood a silvery, glittering unicorn, and to his right a coppery, glowing fox. Iarina recognised its tail as the one she'd seen some days prior slipping behind the trash in the alley. To think she’d been that close to safety, and had she followed her instincts then she would never have had to worry about Koschei at all. Ivan gestured in a kind of old-fashioned bow, and the animals inclined their heads towards her. It seemed as if he was about to speak, but then a dusty dry breeze wafted over Iarina from behind.

Koschei stood there, hunched, eyes glaring a blaze of red. Rage peeled off him like steam, his stance one of utter hatred. As Iarina stepped back towards Ivan, Koschei's glare flicked towards her for a second and darkened slightly before returning, brighter than before, to Ivan.

“Stop,” said Koschei in a mangled, unrecognizable voice, but Ivan waved his hand and the copper fox pounced to intercept. Iarina turned and ran, following Ivan and the unicorn down the barren street.

The gutters were littered with Koschei’s victims, skin shells that might have once been people. Iarina gagged as she fled, the sickly smell invading her nostrils and burning cold fire through her sinuses. Tendrils clasped the bodies, holding them close to the floor, pulling them into the drains. Ivan looked back, checking on her, then started at a roar and a flash of light behind them. Koschei burst through the edge of the mist in pursuit, the molten remains of the copper fox dripping from his clawed fists.

Ivan waved - the unicorn turned and struck, bearing Koschei back into the fog on its horn. Koschei grunted in pain, then vanished from sight. Ivan beckoned frantically, and Iarina followed his reassuring gestures, turning out into an open plaza. Suddenly she recognised this. They were back in the real world, in the city centre. Just up ahead, instantly recognisable, was St Petersburg’s famous Lion Bridge. Ivan’s eyes creased with hope, and the message was clear – over the bridge lay safety.

Either side of the great bridge archway waited stone carvings of those great alert cats, guarding the causeway stoically. Before the Prince and Iarina could reach the gate, however, there came another roar and flash of light as Koschei emerged from the mist behind them, bony hands soaked in both his own blood and the silver blood of the unicorn. Ivan stumbled onto the bridge, shook off one layer of the rich fabrics he wore, and draped it over a lion statue.

Ivan stroked the pelt, and the statue came alive, sheathed in gold. Iarina rushed onto the bridge, and the lion sprang at Koschei, just moments behind.

“No!” cried Koschei. “Stop! Stop!” But Iarina was already on the bridge, following her Prince, and Koschei struggled against the beast.

“Iarina Vasiliev!” Koschei pleaded. How did he know her name? “Don’t go with him. You are in terrible danger.”

“Yes, I am,” Iarina retorted angrily, stopping and turning. “From you.”

“From me?” Koschei asked. The lion roared, but Koschei hit it with a burst of purple light and it whimpered back a couple of steps, struck fatally. “I am not here to hurt you, Iarina.”

Iarina stared at him for a long moment. “But of course you are. You are Koschei the Deathless. Wife-Stealer. Girl-Hunter. You are a predator, a murderer, and worse. I can tell by your eyes. They are like an animal's.”

But Koschei's eyes no longer glowed yellow. Now they were soft and sad. He stroked the lion, shushing it as its semi-life melted away in his hands, and spoke.

“If I am like an animal, like a predator, then why am I not the one sending animals after you? The fox is a predator. The lion is a predator. And tell me, why do you think the unicorn has its horn? It is not to make it look pretty.” Although Iarina could not see Koschei's face, he looked expectant.

“It is for killing,” Koschei continued after a moment. He then reached up with both hands, still looking at Iarina, and slowly pulled the cloak back from his face. From under the hood there emerged a striking visage - hair as black as a raven's feather, lips red with her own crimson blood, and that same blood in tracks down cheeks as pale as the snow.

“You see,” said Raven, for it was she, “I am not Koschei.”

Iarina reeled. Who was this woman, this she-Koschei, this contradiction in terms?

“Do you know the story of Koschei the Deathless, Iarina?” the woman asked.

“ – of course,” Iarina said in a small voice.

“Then tell me how Ivan found Koschei in Marya Morevna's tower.”

Iarina stuttered, then began to recite: “There hung Koschei the Deathless, fettered by twelve chains. Koschei entreated Prince Ivan, saying – ”

“That’s it,” the woman said. “He appeared helpless, vulnerable... in short, exactly what a hero like Ivan wanted to see. Somebody to be saved.”

“What are you saying.”

“I'm saying, Iarina, that things are not always what they seem. So yes, I look scary, but...”

Her voice drifted as she looked up over the bridge. Iarina followed, and found Ivan, golden and handsome, standing on the other side.

The lamps lining the sides of the causeway glowed soft and somehow distant in the mist. Iarina's slight frame shivered in the middle of the bridge, over the icy water, trapped between Ivan and the woman Koschei. The strange woman was thin, sallow, unsettling; the colour of her irises twisted and shuddered like a jammed video cassette even though her gaze was calm and fixed. By contrast the Prince was warm, comforting, beckoning with his no doubt toned physique and deep blue eyes. Snowflakes drifted down, melting on Iarina and Raven's flushed faces.

“Why is he so perfect, Iarina?”

“Shut up.”

“The snow is sticking to him and staying there. He's empty and cold inside because he came from the ice and the snow.”

Iarina turned again, desperate. “Shut up!”

“And it hasn't talked once. I don't think it even understands the concept of language.”

“Stop talking! Koschei talked. He used his words to trick Prince Ivan into freeing him, because he was evil and dark and wicked, and so are you!”

Raven shifted. “Why did he appear? How did he appear? He’s a fairy tale, a story, nothing more!”

Shouting now, she gripped the plinths on either side of the bridge's entrance and leaned in. “You wanted a hero, a perfect saviour Prince, and down came the faeries or daemons or something from up in the dark stars or deep in the heart of Russia's collective imagination and made that, that thing there, and it wants you, it needs you, it lives and breathes you and as we speak it keeps eating and eating and it has to stop.”

Iarina was still watching the Prince, who shook his head and smiled, reaching slowly into his robes.

“And I can stop it,” Raven continued, “but you have to make the choice to reject it. You have to do this. You have to turn and walk away.”

“But,” said Iarina, on the verge of tears, “but...”

“But what?”

“But he brought me a rose.”

The Prince was holding it in his left hand, a gnarled beautiful thing, with the thorns and the petals and the scent, and somehow both he and it were utterly disgusting.

Raven's eyes were a deep purple, and Iarina felt a great sadness and love wash over her, and her tears welled up and split dark rivulets down her face.

“Oh, Iarina,” said Raven,

“...Roses only grow in the summer.”

“My father was terrible too.”

Iarina didn’t know how to respond to that.

“I can feel it in you,” Raven said. “I feel what you feel.”

“How?” Iarina asked, somewhat lamely.

“Magic,” Raven responded.

Iarina looked down at the pile of golden robes where the Prince had once stood. “The sun is up already.”

“Time passes quickly in strange places,” said Raven, wiping blood from her face, “and this is one of them.”

The Prince had looked on, motionless, as Raven twisted her hands and tore it into little chunks of writhing maggoty meat and roots full of rot. Now it lay in a hundred different places, a silent blast pattern, a thing departed. The fog, as if on cue, had eased and retreated into the distance.

“It made some sort of circle under the city,” Raven continued. “I think it was building something. Some lost broken magick or other.” She took hold of Iarina and turned her away, walking her back across the bridge. “Truth is, I don’t know what it wanted. Or if it’s dead. Or if death is a state that even means anything to it.”

They reached the broken lion, stepping off the bridge. “For all I know, it could have been an inanimate function just dipping into our universe. Like a gamma ray - infecting one cancer cell, something that spreads, making more, and so on.” Raven looked at Iarina. “But you’re safe now.”

“Are you a Baba Yaga?” Iarina said, after a moment.

Raven looked at her, then off into the distance, then down at her own hands.

“Maybe,” she said. “I’m not sure I’d know if I was.”

“What do I do now?”

“Go home, get some rest,” Raven said. There was a moment, and then the ghost of a kind smile crept onto her face. “Believe in stories.”

For an instant there was a pure white after-image, then a whining tone like a badly tuned radio, and Iarina was alone.

Epilogue

The roses wilted, one by one, stretching back from the woods to the farms to the streets. As they died, they let out little puffs of air, like sighs of relief.

The streets were empty but for a young woman running out towards the slums. Her head was purged of princes, as it had been of Kryptonian strongmen before. Instead it was full of someone else, someone tangible and present and – complicated, for once.

In fact, something that had been said about her father came back to her, and she began to wonder why she had cared for men at all.

One rose, with a Herculean effort, tore its roots free from the dying knotted network. It was an attempt to hold on to life that lasted for a few brief instants before the boot of a running girl came down, flattened it, and kept moving on into tomorrow.

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