Chapter 35 #2
“From the Winter River, there arose a god,” she recites, eyes closed. “And that god was Sa-cha, and he was good.”
Basuin recoils, jerking his head away.
“Our good Sa-cha cried until the River ran, and his tears birthed more gods, and they birthed man.”
Man is weak and man is small, his mother would recite from memory, her hands moving across his own as they sat up late at night in her bed. But Sa-cha’s River has love for all.
A man, and another man, shuffle toward the woman. Each places their palms out to him in worship, soot-streaked faces and fingers covered in blood. They look weary, not scared. They have already lost.
“Be us weak and be us small, we turn to Sa-cha, for he is ever and he is all. Our gods give the gift of light and night, birth and death, mistake and mercy,” they pray to him. To the Wolf God.
“And if we are good,” a voice pants, breathless, over everyone else’s. Tehali is waiting behind him, blood streaked across her face. “The Winter River opens its gates and grants forgiveness to those who are worthy,” she finishes, closing the prayer. Her hand is dripping blood.
Cold, freezing guilt replaces the burning heat of anger. Shaelstorm is ruined. Dead bodies litter the ground. The bastion is half destroyed, lit aflame, and continuing to burn to pitch. These soldiers aren’t the ones standing in their own wreckage. It’s him.
Kensy really did make him. Desperate enough to become violent out of fear. Out of love. Out of losing something.
Ren—if Ren saw this, she’d be ashamed. He can hear her voice perfectly in his head, a blessing and a curse. Her voice is an echo on the roar of the flames around him.
The way her lips form his name and the way she told him that she didn’t want to go to war with an army she couldn’t fight. Her voice is clear, and stubborn, and still gentle somehow. The way she told him that she loved him. That he was the first.
She’d be disgusted if she saw him like this. Horrified at the beast he’s become. A monster, just like Kensy. Basuin kills everyone he loves. It’s a curse to love Basuin, but worse a curse to be loved by him.
Ren wanted peace. She didn’t want things to end in blood.
But he’s glad he did it anyway, because it’s ended. No matter how horrified she’d be.
An animalistic cry tears out of his jaws and Basuin leaps across the bastion and toward the watchtower.
His claws scrabble for purchase, turning into fingers once again as his tree-bark armor chips away and his body wanes into something not quite human again.
Still godly, still rife with scars and blood and red magic, but human as he climbs over the guardrail to fall onto the platform. His body aches.
Part of him believes it was a mistake. Part of him thinks it’s righteous.
A means to an end. He told the deer-girl he would end it in fire and blood and he did, but Ren wanted peace.
Ren is dead and she wanted peace and he should’ve honored that.
But he couldn’t. The anger inside him, half human, half god, or maybe all him still—it consumed him.
Ren is dead. He can’t bring her back. They deserved to die for that.
No, they didn’t. It was Kensy who brought this war, Kensy who shipped them over the sea and to this island, Kensy who commanded they destroy the forest. It was Kensy who killed Ren.
They were just soldiers, like Basuin.
He stands now, grunting as he pulls himself up just to sag on his feet. To see his destruction. To face what he’s done. Basuin grips the railing of the watchtower—he’s been here before. Overlooking the forest before. Questioning his duty, questioning himself.
And now, he overlooks Shaelstorm as it sinks into the fiery pits he’s made, all to avenge a woman who never wanted it.
Far out, people are rushing to row their boats out toward the sea. In the long distance, one ship sits on the water. Good. Good riddance. They should have left so long ago. Should’ve fled before they destroyed half of this forest and killed its god.
Basuin rests his head on the railing.
Rushing footsteps find the stairs up into the watchtower. He doesn’t bother to look at the intruder. He sets his chin on the guardrail and stares into the black sea before him. Lit lamps dot the water as the soldiers row toward safety.
“Are you done killing?” Tehali asks. She’s out of breath.
He doesn’t respond.
“Are you Basuin of Ankor?” she asks, too. “Or are you Basuin, the Black Wolf?”
“All and none,” he answers. “I don’t know anymore.”
After a moment, Tehali moves to rest against the railings beside him. She smells of ash and gunpowder. It makes him gag, makes him slap a hand over his mouth. She smells of death—of the death he razed.
“Are you going home?”
After a long moment, Basuin gives her a curt nod. “I will, after this. We’ll replant the forest. Rebuild.” The word tastes like metal pressed to his tongue, branding it into his flesh. He wanted to do it with Ren. With Ren.
Tehali looks at him, dark eyes wide. “You’re staying here?”
“It’s my home.”
She drags a bloodied hand over her face, thinking. They take that moment, standing in front of the burning bastion, together. It’s been a long time since they’ve been together like this. The last time, they were in this very watchtower. And this time, he understands much more than he did then.
“I want to shed my armor,” he says, swallowing hard. “I want peace now.”
Tehali gestures out at Shaelstorm. “This isn’t peace, Captain.”
“I know.” He hangs his head. It hurts worse to hear it aloud, to hear yet again that his hands brought war instead of cultivating peace. Ren would’ve found a way. “She didn’t want this.” If they had more time, she would’ve found a path to peace.
For better or for worse, Tehali doesn’t ask who he speaks of. Basuin’s eyes burn something rotten, not with smoke, but with another wave of tears wanting release. He already misses her.
He wants Ren beside him, even with disgust. Even with shame. Even if she hated him after all of this, he wants Ren here.
“You should go home,” he says finally. “Go back to Jankri. Visit with your family again.”
“My father would send me away,” Tehali says with a bark of a laugh. “After this shitshow?” She shakes her head and the chime of gold rings in her ears is so familiar it aches. “My mama would be happy, though.”
“Then you should.”
Tehali’s mouth makes something of a smile, pained but heavy with the duty of a soldier. She’s still a soldier, through and through. Less than he was before, but more than he is now.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean for any of this.”
She shrugs. “We do as we’re told, Bass. It’s how we scrape by. But you—” Tehali takes a deep breath and sighs. “You’ve never had anything but war to love.”
“War is easy.” He tightens his grip on the railing. “War doesn’t die.”
“And look at what it’s killed,” she says.
He swallows.
“You should go home,” Tehali tells him. “If this is your home, then you should go back to it. Stay here. Be happy, Captain.” She beats her fist on the railing in a soft rhythm. “I’d like to go home, too.”
“Then go,” he says.
“Will you let me?” Tehali stares into him with a gaze that burrows deep down inside of him. “Will you grace me with your mercy, Wolf God?”
Basuin flinches. More than ever, he doesn’t know who—or what—he is.
He closes his eyes. The image of Ren, soft and a little sharp and so forgiving, paints across the back of his mind.
Worst of all, if she could see all this, she would be sad.
For him, for the burden of war he carries.
At least it wasn’t her. He would do it thousands of times over, as long as she wouldn’t have to bear this sin.
“I’ve done enough harm. To you, and to this forest.” To Ren. He’s done enough. Basuin waves his hand out at the bastion. “Good night, Tali. Be well.”
He doesn’t turn to watch her leave. It isn’t fair of him, but Tehali is the only friend he’s ever had. The only person who’s truly cared for him as if they were family. And it hurts too badly to say goodbye to her.
But Tehali reaches and grabs Basuin’s hand, giving it a firm squeeze.
“Good night, Bass,” she says. Then, her steps start back down the ladder and fade down the stairs as Tehali descends.
If he’s ever to move on, ever to rebuild this place, ever to go back home again, he needs to let go. The blinding, howling winds of Valkesta. The death of his squad. The death of his mother. The death of Ren.
Forgiveness is so hard. The thing in his breast aches. He clutches at it, wishing he could wrench it out and destroy it the way he’s destroyed everything else. But all he can do is live with it.
Once, Basuin wanted to throw himself off this watchtower and find the death he felt was all he had left.
Now, he jumps from the watchtower and lands in the center of Shaelstorm, right atop Kensy’s office with a slam.
It draws shouts and shrieks from the remaining soldiers still scrambling to get out of Shaelstorm alive.
When he stands to full height, he’s different. His skin has gone black, red lines of magic running up and down his bones like tattoos. Like the wolf-man. He can feel it, see his black snout in his watery vision. He’s become the very thing he tried to escape from.
“I will give you a choice,” he shouts above the bray of the destruction. His voice sounds like a growl, archaic and consuming. Some soldiers flee, but others stay to look up at him. “You are free to stay and fight and die.”
Freedom. He used to pray that someone would give him a choice. But now, he makes his own. It’s his choice, war or peace.
“Or you can leave and never return.” His voice reaches across Shaelstorm. “Send word to Xalkhir of us—of powerful gods, of what destruction we can bring. Tell them that we’re here, and that we live, and to never set foot in our forest ever again.”
Basuin holds out a hand and gathers magic on his god mark. Then, something materializes, the Wolf God’s black staff of red crystals, glimmering in the light of the flames. It pulses with his anger, his fury, his scalding wrath. It’s made of him. He points it at the crowding soldiers.
“Choose what you will,” he tells them. “Be free of this place.”
The soldiers scatter and scurry off, grabbing what they can.
Grabbing the bodies of their friends, dragging them to the docks and the beach.
They’ll save who they can. They’ll bury who they can recover.
The rest will burn with Shaelstorm and their ash will turn to fodder for the new forest Basuin will grow.
His new duty still belongs to Ren. He’ll rebuild their island, heal the scars and burns and bruises he left here.
The deer-girl appears in a blink, sitting on the end of his staff with her tilted head and her white hair tangled in her antlers.
Is it over? she asks him.
Almost. Basuin reaches out his hand to her, and when she slips her fingers into his, it’s a ghost of a touch. Nothing real. But he pulls her from his staff and she takes flight, disappearing in a blink. Almost over.
Basuin raises his staff high above his head and stakes it straight through the roof of Kensy’s bunk and into the ground.
Fire bursts forth from it, setting the building aflame.
A crack runs through the stone-bricked streets of Shaelstorm, running through the earth in lines of lightning.
A fissure in the earth. A split in bones.
The Wolf God fractures Yesua, the earth quaking beneath his feet.
In a thunder, the island snaps at the breach, ground collapsing and sinking into the ocean which once belonged to Ithika.
The ocean he sailed here on. Hungry waves devour the war that was wrought, gobble up anyone who is left.
The Shaelstorm bastion finally falls at his hand.
Basuin shuts his eyes tight, his scar aching.
No longer will this land belong to anyone but the gods and the spirits who roam here.
No longer will death and destruction place its flag here.
Let them know—let them know that the Wolf God protects this land again.
Let them know that he kills in the name of peace, and peace only. But that he kills.
“Now, it’s over,” he says, standing at the precipice. It ended with fire and with blood, just like he said it would.
It’s time to come home. Ren’s voice is sweet in his ear. Basuin closes his eyes, breathing in. Come home, Basuin.