Chapter 29
The camp where Yaelic was taken to is miles away. Basuin finds the tracks of horses leading through the forest, his hand lit with red magic. But wolves are faster than horses. And Basuin is faster, yet. He won’t let them have Yaelic.
Basuin runs like he ran in Valkesta. Like he’s running out of time. He sprints through the trees, breaks through the forest. Like Tomaas is already dead, Sa-cha help him. Aless’ head is seven feet away from her body, her blonde hair dyed red with her own blood. And Isaniel is—
Fuck, Isaniel is—
The wolf-man roars inside of him, lunging to tear his lung out of place. It feasts on his organs, muzzle bloody and rank.
No. Basuin leaps from a gnarled root and off an escarpment, boots landing heavy on the forest floor. But he keeps running. No. This won’t be Valkesta again. Basuin won’t let it be Valkesta again.
If he dies, Ren dies, too.
He hears Yaelic before he sees him, the soft whine filtering through his canines and whistling through his snout.
The legion encampment is bigger than the others, and Haaman flies up to the canopy, circling the perimeter and scouting.
But there is no dramatic entry. No stealth, no magic.
This isn’t a game—it’s a reckoning. Basuin comes up behind the watchguard and slices his throat open with the dagger he wears on his hip.
Basuin presses his boot into the soldier’s stomach and rips the legion rifle from his holster. He feeds bullets into the chamber and reloads, gun in one hand and dagger in the other. There will be no mercy here. None.
Haaman drops from the trees once they’ve found Yaelic’s cage.
In a flurry of quick movement, they dispatch the soldier who guards Yaelic, splattering blood across the kennel door and leaving entrails slick on the ground.
Basuin hears the rattle and the piercing clink of Haaman breaking the lock.
The squeak of metal as Yaelic rushes out, white fur dirtied.
He runs straight for Basuin, but Basuin holds steady.
“Haaman,” he barks. “Get Yaelic out of here.”
Yaelic whimpers, rearing back on his haunches. The sight of him hurts, makes Basuin want to tear out his own throat, so he looks away before Yaelic’s emerald eyes can soften him too much for the war he brings to this encampment.
Haaman hesitates. “You’re staying,” they say.
Already, the tents of this camp are rustling with movement, soldiers awake and alert. They yell orders at one another, screaming across the clearing they’ve cut out of the woods. Basuin sheathes his dagger to grab the lit torch they’ve set by the watchguard.
“Go,” he commands them. Then, arm aglow and veins pulsing with god magic, he hurtles the torch upon one of the legion tents.
The flames swallow the fabric, crackling with red wisps of his magic, and shouts of soldiers begin to swarm the camp.
Weapons click, armor rattles, blades swathe along the air.
As smoke disperses through the forest, Basuin doesn’t look back, but listens as Haaman’s footfalls disappear under the cacophony of the legion.
Basuin stands at the cusp of the legion’s camp, blood boiling, red magic rising from his skin, body hot as sweat from the burning flames curling over his forehead.
Once, Basuin was a warrior feared across the legion.
Praised as a war hero. Idolized by soldiers who coveted his strength and his devotion to the military. A perverted sort of worship.
But now, he’s stronger. Basuin opens his clenched fist, spreading his fingers to free his god mark. Now, he is a god.
“There!” someone yells, and bodies begin to run at him. Basuin can’t tell them apart from the shadows. His vision is dark. Everything is red. He moves by instinct alone, blind. But his ears catch everything.
And when he snarls at them—the legion which captured his wolf pup and threw him in a cage—his tongue swipes over sharp canines in a mouth that tastes like spoiled meat. Then, he lunges.
Basuin bleeds them and he burns them. If these soldiers had any gods left, they wouldn’t have a breath left to beg for mercy.
They don’t deserve mercy. This is justice for what they’ve done.
To Yaelic, to Ren. Clawed fingers strew vocal cords and innards across the forest. Black fur rises along his arms and legs, hackles tense on the back of his neck.
His teeth rip into limbs, canines creating sharp incisions that bloody his maw.
Basuin runs through the fires he’s set even as it singes the fur that’s grown into armor over his skin, tackling soldiers to stab a dagger through their eye only to turn and shoot hot bullets through another man’s torso.
Gunpowder fills his nose but he doesn’t gag.
He stretches his neck back and howls, bashing the butt of his borrowed gun on someone’s temple until blood sprays across his face.
He doesn’t care. This is a frenzy. They locked Yaelic up.
Tried to kill him. Not another prisoner of war.
Not another Tomaas. This isn’t Valkesta. Gods’s sake, this isn’t Valkesta.
Basuin tears a tent down with his claws that the flames haven’t yet breached, barreling inside. A scream rings out from the corner where a man and a woman sit, cowering away from him. The man’s arms are spread wide as if he can stop Basuin.
“Please!” the man begs, sheltering the woman with his body. “We’re medics! We—We’ll leave! We’ll go back, please. I told them not to take the wolf. I told them it wasn’t—”
“Shut up,” Basuin barks, making them flinch. “You suffer the consequences of your brethren like everyone else. Like I did, like my men did.”
But his claws retract. He curls his hands into fists around his weapons, hesitating.
They’re just medics. They’re afraid. Just like little Tomaas, the medic who could barely fire a gun without his hands shaking, making the shot go wide.
They had to train it out of him, beat it from his back the way they beat Basuin into form too.
When he blinks and the red recedes from his vision, just an inch, the man’s face morphs into Tomaas’, hair turning to ginger. But it’s not him. Tomaas is gone like the rest of them.
His grip tightens. Medics know how to shoot, too. They’re forced to kill like all the rest. They’re not just medics, they’re soldiers.
Behind him, heavy boots skid to a stop and Basuin whirls around, gun pointed at the medics and dagger braced against the enemy. Their faces all are blank to him, bodies black amalgam beneath the red filling his head.
“Bass?” a familiar voice calls, incredulous. “Captain, is that you?”
His head snaps up, eyes blinking away the bloodlust. There, a few feet away with a rifle in both hands, is Tehali. Her hair is pulled back in red-coated braids. Piercings have been ripped out, ears gored. Blood is smeared down her neck.
“Tali,” he says, voice rumbling into a murmur.
“It is,” she says, dark eyes widening in disbelief. “Captain, what are you doing out here? What are you—” Her eyes sweep over him. “What’s happened to you?”
He tries to laugh but it comes out as a growl. The fire burns brightly still, heat licking at the tent now. Ash rains down across his boots.
“Why are you here?” he asks her, because there is so much death here. And his hands still beg for more destruction. For devastation.
“Who are you?” Her gun is loaded.
“The Wolf God,” he answers. It burns from the hole in his chest and outward.
Tehali takes a step back. Basuin takes one forward, holstering his gun. And then another, and another until he snatches Tehali’s armor and forces her backward, out of the tent and into the burning grounds, snarling down at her until her shoulders are shoved against a tin supply shed.
“Where is Kensy?” he demands.
Tehali stutters. She’s afraid of him. “He hasn’t been seen in days. He came back without you—said you were dead.”
“I was.”
She searches his eyes, fire reflected in her black irises. “What happened?”
“Where did he go?” he asks instead, shaking her by her armor.
“What have you become?” Tehali whispers. His eyes go wide, then narrow with a heavy anger hanging on his brow.
“A god.” Dead, twice over. Saved first by Tehali. Saved again by the gods and made into this—this thing. He must look like a horror to her. Is his skin pitch black, has he grown fur, are his eyes bleeding red yet?
Is he monstrous yet, his outsides finally matching his insides?
“I’m sorry,” Tehali says, barely heard under the crackle of fire as tents and tarps collapse around them, eaten away.
Basuin shoves Tehali away from him with a guttural sound. He would kill the whole legion if it meant keeping Ren safe, but why must it be Tehali who stands here before him? Tehali—his only friend left. Captain Tehali, of Ariche’s Fleet, of the soldiers Basuin once led.
Please, not Tehali. Make Tehali go home so he doesn’t have to kill her, too. Basuin closes his eyes, feels the fury ripen and sour within him.
Then, an explosion bursts through the camp, incinerating the vicinity. Basuin is thrown forward by the impact, heat sizzling on his skin with a hiss. He topples over Tehali, shielding her from debris as the blast shudders through the camp.
When he turns to look back, the tent where the medics hid is completely destroyed.
“Fuck!” he screams. He checks Tehali, fingers pressed to her neck until she coughs and sputters alive, and then he breaks into a sprint for the medics. But it’s too late. Even as he sifts through the wreckage, hot and sharp, there’s nothing but bodies. No pulse. Just blood and bits.
Nothing solid to drag away, like the Grimmalian soldiers dragged Tomaas away.
Basuin stands, flicking blood from his hands. His claws have gone; his mouth is dry. He runs his tongue along his teeth and find all of them flat again. But it doesn’t stop the magic coursing through him. The need to howl. To track Kensy down and tear his throat from his body in hunger.
“Bass,” Tehali pants from behind him, struggling to stand. He doesn’t look at her. If she shoots him in the back, so be it.
“Get out of here, Tali,” he says. “Get off this island.”
“Will you come?”
A huff of a laugh leaves him in shock. After all the carnage she’s witnessed, he can’t believe she’s asking that.
“No.”
“It doesn’t have to end like this,” she pleads. “You can still go home.”
He shuts his eyes. There is no home anymore, no shack still left on the edge of the village. No Ma waiting for him to come back from the forest, trappings for stew and fallen branches to sturdy the roof.
There’s only Ren and the softness of her hand in his, the way her lips curve in a smile and the color of her bruises with every mark the legion leaves on the forest.
“Go, Tali. I won’t give you another chance,” he lies.
Tehali grunts in pain, almost quieted by the fire still ravaging the camp. “He went north,” she says. “That’s all I know.” With a hard inhale, Tehali starts to walk away, footfalls still familiar, then stops. “Captain?”
Basuin cracks his scarred knuckles, but he turns to her in response.
Tehali pauses before she speaks. “Be well, Basuin of Ankor.” Then, she trudges off.
The fire blazes around him, collects in a tornado which swallows the encampment. He waits until he can’t hear Tehali anymore to murmur, “Congratulations.” She’s gone, but he still says, “Congratulations, Captain Tehali.”
Basuin stands until his knees start to give out, and then he stomps out the flames.
Culls them with the last of the magic sunk into his bones.
He waits until there is nothing left but blackened bodies to leave the legion camp behind.
It’s quiet, the aftermath. No cicadas and no animal cries and nothing at all.
Only the sound of charred grass beneath his boots, the crunch of twigs and ash.
Basuin walks all the way back to his own camp, the sky turning to a dusky lavender overhead.
He turns before he comes too close, heading down to the stream that runs through the woods.
Yaelic is fine—he can feel it through their bond.
Ren, too. He doesn’t need to check on them.
He needs, first, to wash the blood and ash from his skin.
It crawls all over him like fat centipedes wanting to burrow inside him.
He kneels at the bank, shoving his arms into the cold water. With quick, rough hands, he scrubs his limbs of what he can until his skin feels raw. Then, he splashes his face and rubs it clean, washing soot from his eyes and blood from his jaw.
Basuin sits back on his heels, wiping water from his vision. But when he looks down at his reflection in the creek, it isn’t him.
Instead, he stares at the Wolf God—black skin, red lines, a black wolf’s head. Basuin raises his hands to his face as the Wolf God raises his clawed ones. No, it is him. Basuin is the Wolf God, just like he told Tehali.
What’s happened to you? Who are you? he asks himself just as Tehali asked him. What have you become?
He plunges his hands back into the water, gritting his teeth to bite back the scream in his throat. His lungs feel empty. Choking. He’s losing himself. He doesn’t know who he is. He doesn’t know who he was before. A man, a god, a soldier—who was he?
Basuin bows his head and grits his teeth to swallow the sob bubbling up in his chest as fear sinks lower into his stomach. He’s dead. He really is dead.
When he looks again, reflection only seen by a sliver of moonlight, he’s staring at himself again.
Bronze skin, dark eyes, scar threaded white through his brow.
And behind him, Ren is staring at him, too.
Her skin is mottled with red burns. New burns.
The ones he’s given to her as easily as he could give her a fistful of wildflowers.
The ones he’s caused by setting a fire that burned black rings into the forest floor.
He hurt her again. He always hurts her. Basuin doesn’t know any better than this. Horrified, ashamed, he hangs his head, hand covering his mouth to hide the tremble, eyes squeezed shut and burning with unshed tears. These hands—they only bring war.
But Ren, despite it all, sits beside him. And her hands—her hands made of peace—fall to his arms, gentle and soft and forgiving.
Despite it all, Ren lays her head on his shoulder as Basuin cries into the creek. The gods, they damned him. But not before he damned himself.