Chapter 8
Sleep doesn’t come, and neither does morning.
Yaelic snoozes like a child, unaware of any danger that could fell him.
His deep, quick breathing keeps Basuin alert, and he rolls around in his sleep so much that he falls from his mat leaving Basuin to roll him back.
He never even wakes, just makes sleep-addled, nasal sounds.
So, instead, Basuin stares at the ceiling and replays his life’s worst failure, as he does most nights. Names the people he lost over and over so his war-torn mind won’t forget them. If he forgets them, then they were never real.
Basuin lays awake and repeats them over, and over, and over, and over, until the numbers and names and cities bleed into the pulp of offal he saw strewn across the snowbanks. It’s the one thing he can do for them, now.
Two days ago, he was the disgraced Captain Basuin, leading Ariche’s Fleet to conquer a new land—something he never wanted to do. Yesterday, he was just Basuin. Disgraced, dishonored, and deserving of death.
Now, he’s the Wolf God. A deity lives in his chest and has named him so. A boy belongs to him, has pledged his life to Basuin.
But in every iteration of his life, he’s just a soldier tasked with a duty he didn’t ask for. Basuin is tired. So, so tired.
Not tired enough to sleep. Basuin fixes the sheet over Yaelic’s curled-up form, sighing.
Then, he laces his boots on and heads out of their hut, into the village.
The lights still glow, but dimmer in the darkness of night.
It’s so quiet now, no spirits to be seen.
No Forest God, either. He’s thankful for that.
But as he heads down the steps from the treehouse and toward the edge of the village, he catches sight of her. Just a flash—the back of her white, fluttering shirt and a dirt-stained calf as she disappears behind the foliage. Where is she going?
Without thinking, Basuin follows.
It’s hard in the dark. She’s too fast for him to catch sight of, and too quiet to hear—almost. Every faint rustle of brush that most people would miss, Basuin finds.
And he holds on to that, letting it pull him through the darkened woods after the Forest God.
The place where his heart used to be feels so empty, but if he were still alive, it would be hammering away as he chases after her.
He needs to know what she’s doing to stop the legion. This duty she speaks of, what he’s getting in the way of.
Then, he hears her voice. Quiet, and softer than it’s ever been to him. “Wake, my friend.”
He draws nearer, the Forest God’s back illuminated by the moonlight streaming through the fronds that block out the sky. She stands before a tree, her hand placed upon its bark. At her words, it sways as though a harsh wind blows through, leaves raining over the crown of her head.
“Am-sa,” a voice groans from the roots beneath her feet. Unlike Qia, the tree doesn’t shift into something human in form. “Where do you go tonight?”
“That’s not for you to worry about, friend.” Her hand smooths over its bark. “But I would appreciate it if you would allow us passage.”
“Of course, Am-sa. And then, I will sleep again.”
The Forest God, slow and poised, turns around to face Basuin. “Well? Are you coming, or were you going to wait until I get back?”
He blanches. Shame is hot around his neck and crawling up his ears. Basuin rubs a hand over his mouth, wiry beard overgrown now, and takes a guilty step forward.
“To where?” he asks, spinning his shame into confidence.
But her lips twitch, flattened and mean. “To show you my god-given duty.” Every word slipping from her teeth is sharp enough to cut into him.
It sounds like a challenge, and Basuin has never backed down from one before. So he closes the gap, eyes glancing between her and the tree. Its trunk is knobby, an uneven oval wrought into its bark, and the Forest God traces it with her delicate hand.
“This is Chiro,” she says. A creak and groan of the oak meets her introduction. “He’ll take us there.”
“Hello,” he says, awkward again. He doesn’t know how to speak with the forest. But Chiro seems happy with his greeting, another gust of leaves spinning around them.
“Let’s go,” the Forest God says, and then that bright blue light pulses through her hand again.
This time, it hits him with heat—hits him and drags him closer to her.
The wolf-man teethes on Basuin’s necrotic flesh, muzzle bloodied with his organs, and starts scratching at the rest of him. It feels the pull, too.
Then, within Chiro’s trunk, a shimmering blue image fills the oval-like gnarled bark.
It looks like water, but brighter. And when she puts her hand to it, her fingers go straight through it.
Just like the dome that covered Gyeosi, she sinks into the magic.
It’s so quick, Basuin’s afraid she’ll disappear before his eyes.
“Wait,” he calls out as blue magic swallows her wrist. She stops, turning to look back at him, confused. Flustered, Basuin can’t think of anything to say. Nothing to protest with. He doesn’t even know why he spoke aloud.
For the first time, she huffs a laugh at him. But it isn’t kind. It’s mocking.
“Are you scared?” she asks. “You’re dead.”
The wolf-man laughs and laughs and laughs at him, too.
Then, the Forest God outstretches a small hand with a toss of her head for him to follow.
And despite her jeers, Basuin takes her hand, his large fingers wrapping around hers, and lets her pull him inside the blue portal of magic.
It’s warm, and it pops and sizzles on his skin, tickling him.
He holds his breath as he dives in, but it doesn’t last long.
And when he feels forest floor beneath his boots again, Basuin smells gunpowder. Like a sword taken to the gut, his legs give out beneath him and he stumbles, trying to breathe the scent of it away.
“We’re here,” she says, no fanfare.
Basuin looks up to the watchtower, to the lantern-lit walls of the Shaelstorm Bastion. The Forest God stands, staring it down like she’s on a battlefield, outlined in the glow of the orange flames.
She takes off in a blink, rounding through the forest and toward the bastion.
There’s no guard in the tower—Shaelstorm has no defenses.
That woman will be able to slip right through and slaughter everyone.
He’s seen little of her magic; he doesn’t know what power she has.
She could level the whole bastion. He has to stop her.
And wouldn’t that be deserved? the wolf-man asks him, gnawing his insides raw.
Basuin sprints after her. But she doesn’t head for the gates. She heads for the fields.
He’s too slow, and before he can catch up, the Forest God drops into a crouch and knifes her palms into the upturned soil the legion tilled for farming.
Blue magic pours, like water, through all the cracks and crevices in the earth and spreads in veins into the entire field.
Instantly, the green growth breaking through the dirt withers, yellow and soured. The crops die.
Shaelstorm is meant to starve.
Her bare feet barely kick up dirt as she bounds across one field to the next.
The mulch is wet with poison when he runs through it, and Basuin nearly can’t catch himself as he slips to chase after her.
The next plot of crops goes as quick as the last, god magic turning vegetal sprout into nothing more than rot.
The Forest God slips into a growing maze of corn, looking over her shoulder at him.
Her eyes are near-black, even in the light of the torches lining the bastion walls.
She disappears into the sea of green, her hand trailing over the ears of corn as she goes.
Her touch leaves behind a blue trail, the smell of mold and ferment hitting his nose as he dives in after her.
“What are you doing?” he shouts, slowed by the stalks. She’s small enough to slip through them with little resistance. He should’ve brought his sword, but it sleeps next to Yaelic in Gyeosi. How foolish of him, yet again.
“Not killing them,” her voice, bell-toned and poised, finds him. “Not like your people are.”
Basuin grits his teeth and speeds up. He hears her exit the field before he sees her leap away.
She’s fast, but his legs are much longer—and Basuin’s had plenty of chase in his life.
Not as kind then as he will be now. But the Forest God runs toward the food stores and this is his last chance to stop her.
When his hand closes around her arm, for the first time since he’s seen her, she looks back with a flash of fear on her face. Eyes stricken and wide. Lips parted and gasping.
Basuin lets go.
And then he stumbles, shoulder hitting the ground with a wicked thud and a cough of dirt.
Shit. Kensy was right. Disgraced Captain Basuin isn’t much of a captain at all anymore.
He’s lost his fight. Basuin rolls onto his back, out of breath, staring up at the sky.
There are no stars here, not with all the light and smoke from the bastion.
Where his heart should lie, the wolf-man snuffs a cruel laugh.
The Forest God’s face appears before him and his breath hitches. He sits up on his elbows, tipping his head back to meet her gaze as she stands over him. Peering at him. Her eyes aren’t angry so much as they are wary, but even still, he feels the ire radiating from her.
“Your world is so small and selfish,” she hisses. “One woman against a militant base content to destroy a whole island, and yet you chase after her instead.”
“You’re killing a few soldiers who are following orders—”
“I’m not killing them,” she snarls, and then she backs away from him. Basuin moves with her as if magnetic, pushing himself off the ground. “I would never kill them.”
“And starving them is better?”
“Yes,” she bites. “Your people won’t starve as long as they leave this island.”
“It’s not their choice.”
“Everything is a choice, Black Wolf.” It’s meant to cut, and it does. Basuin bleeds something awful. “You chose to come here, you chose to die, and your punishment fits your crime.”
There is a war inside of him—there is always a war somewhere.
The weight of it has bludgeoned him into nothing, shaped him into who he is now.
She’s as right as she is wrong. What choice did Basuin have when everything has been beaten out of him, until he’s been made into the perfect soldier he was always meant to be?
“You know nothing of me,” he says, voice quiet. “I wanted to die, not—”
“Perfect,” she interrupts him coolly. “You’re already dead.”
“Good,” he snarls back. “Great. I died, only for the gods to bring me back and command me to protect you.”
“To protect this forest,” she says.
“To protect you,” he snaps again. He doesn’t want godhood.
Doesn’t need another duty. Can’t be a protector the way the wolf-man commands him to.
Basuin couldn’t protect his mother. Nor his soldiers, and certainly not Isaniel.
So how, gods tell him, is he supposed to protect this woman and her forest?
He doesn’t want to. He won’t.
“I’ll make them regret coming to this forest,” she says. “And you’ll regret it too, if you get in my way.”
Then, as she always has, the Forest God turns and walks away from him.
Back toward the forest, leaving Shaelstorm cropless.
So Basuin starts walking, too. Following after her.
But she flicks her hand out at her side and an arc of blue magic leaves her fingertips, and then Basuin runs straight into something solid—something midair that he can’t see. A barrier.
She’s leaving him. This time, for good. Rage and fury seeps into his skin until he’s drenched in heat, anger dripping from his fingers until he has to make fists of them.
“Didn’t you hear me before?” she asks, cutting a glare at him. “I said you weren’t welcome.”
It takes everything in him not to bang his fist upon the barrier, to try and break through. His nostrils flare. “You said I could stay until morning.”
For the first time, the Forest God’s lips curl into a smile as she looks to the horizon. “And you left to follow me. It’s nearly dawn now. Let your people know that their fields won’t grow anything.”
He doesn’t even want to go back to Gyeosi. Basuin could walk away, right now, and they’d both be happy. But spite narrows his brows and keeps his hands hot. She doesn’t get to win—not when Basuin is forced to lose everything again.
The wolf-man stands up on his hind legs and howls. You are weak! it berates him. It sinks its canines straight into his flesh, tears chunks of it out until it can ravage his sternum, his heart-bone. How far you have fallen from grace. I thought you to be a war hero.
Once, maybe. But now he is nothing.
What a useless thing, the wolf-man growls, and then it breaks Basuin’s heart-bone in one bite. He gasps for air, sagging against the magic wall the Forest God has barred him from moving past. What a useless little soldier boy you turned out to be.
It’s better this way. For him to stay here at the bastion, to be rid of Yaelic, to offload the rest of his responsibilities so he can die—for good, this time. Basuin’s tried to die twice already, and each time he’s failed. Maybe this time, when Kensy kills him, it’ll stick.
When Basuin finally takes a step back, away from the barrier, the Forest God turns her back on him.
Then, the ground shakes. A chest-aching boom, loud enough to bleed ears, goes off with no warning.
She recoils, shifting into a guarded stance as she looks to the sky.
The barrier between them drops as the quietus of the forest is disturbed. The trees quiver violently.
“What—” she tries to speak.
And then another explosion goes off, louder and sharper, whistling into the air until it hits the ceiling of night and shatters into one thousand lights colored red like blood. The Forest God’s face is awash in it, her eyes wide and fearful.
The place where Basuin’s heart used to lie beats quick as a bird’s fluttering wings. They’re celebrating. It cinches something in his guts, twists his organs around each other. They’re celebrating.
Another streak of fire arcs across the sky until it bursts into blue sparks, fizzling out with a whine.
Kensy, and all of Shaelstorm, are celebrating Basuin’s death.