Chapter 36 #2
After Valkesta, he wanted so badly to die.
And when he came here, deified to be a god who was only meant to protect the forest and its god, he wanted nothing more than to die again.
But now, he has a job to do. A duty he chooses to take on, not one he’s commanded to.
Ren is dead, but he needs to keep the memory of her alive.
He has to. The hurt will linger and he will live on, even without her by his side.
And in the time it will take to rebuild, Basuin will learn forgiveness. He’ll do as Ren told him and he’ll learn to forgive himself—even for the death of her. Not today, not tomorrow, and not soon. But one day.
Basuin looks down at her, the softness of her sleeping face. “This is our home. I want to protect what belonged to her. So I’ll stay. I’ll protect the forest.”
The wolf-man laughs that huff of a laugh it always did, then sweeps the deer-girl into his arms. They spin around, happily, until they form into one soul.
Together again, they shoot like a star across the sky straight into Basuin’s chest, and he staggers back.
It feels familiar again, hot and bright but familiar.
He’s full again, the gods nestled in the space in his ribcage.
But Basuin falls to his knees and sobs, clutching his chest. The Wolf God and the Forest God are inside him, both of them. There’s no one left to deify Ren. No one to bring her back. She’s gone—she’s really gone. Basuin sinks, on all fours, coughing out a sob.
Ren’s dead, and he’s left behind.
But over the roaring in his ears and the rush of water, Yaelic gasps. “Captain,” Yaelic calls. “The River.”
It’s enough to make Basuin look up, vision blurry with hot tears.
The cave is awash in blue, so brightly blue.
Walls painted in all shades and facets of sapphires.
Magic floods the River, fluorescent, but then it trickles right back to Ren’s body.
She’s absorbed it, encased in it, like a cocoon webbed around her.
Breathing in and out as if the magic has become a lifeform.
White lines, tattoos and leylines and scars like a god mark, thread through her body and drip down her limbs. It starts at the crown of her hair and draws down her arms, her stomach, and down her legs to wrap around her ankles. A split in a chrysalis.
Then, Ren’s eyes open. She takes a breath and consumes the magic on her skin, alighting her in something only described as godly.
He’s stunned. But not stunned enough. Basuin rushes to cradle her, pulling her body against his in a crushing grip. He cries into her wet hair, tucks his face into her neck to feel for her pulse. It beats, and it beats, and Ren wraps her arms around him.
“Basuin,” she whispers, clutching him. “It’s all right. I’m here.”
He sobs in her arms like a child would, purely and freely as the grief breaks from him. There’s magic on her skin and he can feel it. Taste it. A buzzing in the air like static that he still isn’t sure is real.
“How?” Bass pulls back enough to look at her, to run his hands over her face and smooth her hair out of her eyes. He needs to know how she lives, needs to understand before she’s ripped from him again. “How are you here? The Forest God—”
“You are the Forest God,” she says, placing her hand on his chest. “You reunited them.” It makes her smile. “They were eternal lovers. Separated in death, when their shrines were destroyed. And you reunited them.” She repeats it with pride.
Basuin almost laughs. He could shake her. Cry again, because this isn’t real. “Ren, how are you alive?” he pleads. If this is a trick, if this will only last a second, it’ll devastate him. He’s already so broken. It won’t take much.
But Ren smiles that beautiful smile, infused with the sun. “I house a new god,” she tells him. “Sa-cha has chosen me. When Kensy broke his shrine, Sa-cha had no home left, not without a host. But he chose me.” Ren takes his godstone into her hand where it still hangs around her neck.
Then, a hand on his shoulder, Ren surges forward and kisses him, desperately, until they’re both breathless. She wipes away the tears that continue to fall from his eyes.
“I remember it now,” she says. “How I died before. When Ithika was killed, my family and I were on a boat. It sank, but the Forest God found me. It was lonely.” Ren presses her hand to his heart again. “It didn’t have its other half, its guardian—the Wolf God. So it saved me.”
Ren takes his hand too, god-marked and all, and presses it to her own heart. He feels it fluttering under his palm, racing in response to his touch. He watches her breathe, listens to her heartbeat, and even still his eyes burn with tears when she looks up at him, alive.
“It saved me so I could house it until it found the Wolf God again,” she says, staring at him so fondly.
Basuin laughs, resting his forehead against hers. And he laughs, and he laughs. And then, he laughs again until Ren wipes those tears away, too.
“Then I am glad,” he tells her, nose bumping hers. “I’m glad that I died to meet you. That I was deified to protect you.”
He breathes in, the scent of her still the same. White lilies and grass and upturned soil. She’s the same. His Ren, more woman than god, with her twilight eyes.
“I am glad, because I can love you,” he says. “I love you, Ren.” And he means it. He means it in the deepest sense, in the forgiving sense, in the sense of gratitude for all the mistakes he’s made and the losses he’s grieved and the pain that clung to him with every step he took here. To Ren.
“Then rebuild with me.” She grins against his mouth. “This is our home.”
“Our home,” he agrees. No longer a soldier, and not quite a man who lived on the outskirts of a village in Ankor. He’ll build a new one, here in the forest, with Ren. A place of peace he’ll carve out for himself with two scarred hands—of wars, and of gods.