Chapter Text
The ballroom is dark.
It’s gorgeous still, and this time it’s not broken. What low lights there are reflect off the crystals and the outside world, an ocean filled with glowing fish that are too blurry to determine what they are, moving in a manner that appear like smears or brushstrokes in his mind. The mural above is visible for all to see, the banners undamaged and flying highly their symbol of the Old Faith.
And yet, Anchordeep’s presence was strong here. The seaweed, the distant shipwrecks beyond the glass, the air bubbles and sand just outside the inner dance room where the rest of the world was damp, oceanic and dangerous while the inside was beautiful. The cracks of age do not exist here. It’s as pristine as his memory allows it to be, and just as muddled with sentiment.
Narinder stands alone in the center of the room. His feet are wet, and when he looks down, it is not water. It’s ichor, and it’s rising. His reflection stares back up at him in the glossy liquid, and he can’t make out his body. A blink. The ichor has risen past his ankles, and now approaching the his knees.
There’s something in his reflection with him. White blurs glow in the image, a distance away as the ichor rises. Narinder looks behind him to find nothing but the walls shrinking, the world darkening. Something wet drops down onto his face. He raises a finger to it expecting blood, and wipes away what looks like to be a tear.
“You’ve repeated yourself again, Narinder.”
Narinder looks up.
Wool and fleece as white as winter snow, with the eyes to match. They are standing on the ceiling, their cloak and bell hanging from the gravity. Their feet stand on the mural, as though reality was correct in that manner. They smile when he notices them. Everything was heavy, save for them, and the tears that flowed freely down (or really, up) from their eyes, and fall upon his fur.
They’re holding mutilated flesh, dangling the pieces besides their head as though it were jewelry. It’s a familiar blue color, with sparse bandages wrapped around them to barely keep the flesh together.
It is grotesque. He wouldn’t have recognized what they were if he didn’t remember dragging claws through the ears over a thousand years ago.
“Fragile brother, a link weakened by time and Death. A good brother once. Not always, but you remember when he was. Back then he used to listen. For a time, he was the only one that did.” They waltz slowly upon the fragile mural of the Red Crown. “Pestilence and War work hand-in-hand together. For knowledge can spread like a plague, and often the ailments of the mind are the worst to wage war with. You know this. You know how easy it can be to lose yours.”
The ichor is reaching up to his hips now. The room is drastically shrinking, and it feels like his mind is weighing down with it. He feels his teeth bite into his tongue. Miserable dream. “Silence.”
“How strange, isn’t it?” They start. “Grief that permeates beyond Death. Exile wasn’t enough to completely erase you, even if they tried. Scars you lay upon them remain after your statues are gone, and murals are simply covered. Not broken. ” Blank eyes burn into him. Their mouth stays a smile, lips unmoving.
Suddenly, their grip crushes the ears. Black sludge slips between their fingers, trailing down and falling into the blood below. “How strange. For a brother that taught you bravery to be such a coward. I wonder whose fault that is? I wonder if you will confess.”
“He was a coward on his own.” Narinder sneers.
“His fear was not grown overnight.” The tears are still flowing freely, and they make no mention of it. “Always a finicky one, that squid. But he was a god for a reason. It wasn’t a coward that was among your siblings when there were hundreds of Gods blessed-” They blow air through their mouth to mimicked a comedy. Ichor stained hands splaying out for dramatics. “- and then only five remained.”
His arms raise as the ichor rises to his waist, and yet he’s too heavy to float. The Lamb is closer now. The ceiling feels lower. They’re making a mockery of him, arms outspread and circling the Red Crown beneath their hooves in a gentle, candid dance while he is swallowed whole. “I did nothing to him, he betrayed me on his own fears that my power would surpass his own. That it would threaten my family when I was meant to be more. I will not be scolded for someone else’s cowardice.”
“But you agreed to spare him.” They spin in a circle, head lulling side to side like listening to music. “You did more than hesitate. You didn’t mimic mercy, you swore it. You fell to my way.”
“Temporarily.” He grits his teeth. “He will die with the rest of them. They will all pay for what they’ve done.”
They hum, closing their eyes and raise one leg off the mural. “They are not the ones drowning.”
Suddenly, they stop dancing, spread out their arms, and tilt backwards as gravity seems to correct itself.
They fall. He flinches when they do. Uncaring, peaceful even as they plummet towards the ichor below. Part of him wants to look away before they hit the surface and the darkness swallows him whole. The other part of him can’t tear his eyes off the fall. It is a dream. It is a nightmare. It shouldn’t be so terrifying.
Neither matters, his body moves on his own. Narinder catches them. They drop heavy into his arms and weigh his elbows down into the ichor. The Lamb’s body is limply bridal as he holds them close. He’s still recollecting himself when their eyelids lift, and for a brief second, there’s fear in their pupils.
It disappears as quickly as he imagined it. Their eyes are white. The Lamb’s arm wraps around his neck, and their head cranes to view him with an expression of mild interest. “You can’t resist your worst habits, even in your most horrible nightmares.”
Miserable trickster.
Ears pinned flat back against his skull with teeth bared, he drops them with a curse. Well, tries to. They chuckle as he pulls his arms out from underneath them and they merely fall into the ichor, but the arm around his neck stays. It pulls him down further. The weight of the Lamb doesn’t break away, and his arms are skeletal, and heavy as though the shackles had been returned. The ichor was still rising.
(Trickster, horrible liar. A demon of his mind with it’s only purpose to torment him in every un-waking moment, a dread he awaits in his waking days.)
(...He won’t have waking days. He died. There is no Red Crown here. His body moves on his own, and he will suffer the consequences for it. The inventor of resurrection has been barred from it, right?)
“Death is a kind safe haven.” They’ve pressed themselves up against his chest. Black stained fingers brush against the raised fur on his neck. “If this is not kindness, and you are not safe, then is it really your death?”
He wants to snap at them. Push them under. Pull them out of the ichor. The Lamb can’t swim. The Lamb cannot swim and Narinder knows not how to stop the flood.
“Your torment is becoming boring and predictable.” He sneers in their face. He hates that they do not react to the show of fangs. “Your riddles make no sense.”
“In another dream, I once asked you to fish me out of the water at a dock. You did so later, with your chain.” Hands pet down his neck almost like a comfort. “Your aim is poor. You cut me on the leg. But it’s not something you care about when you’re scared.” They lean forwards, head nestling just underneath the collarbone. Narinder cannot move, frozen while wool shifts under his chin in a hug. “You don’t do well under pressure, do you? Split second decisions are not suited for someone who’s been taught to be patient all of his life. It is not the first time your decision will change everything. You have a pattern, Narinder. You move without thinking. You’ve repeated yourself again, Narinder.”
The wetness he feels through the fabric of his robes from their face is not ichor. His hands waver uselessly, trapped under the dark surface. “You dare call me repetitive and question me, but this is my mind. You are merely a thought.” The God of Death spats. “Do not harass me on habits that I have no intention of breaking.”
The Lamb’s head tilts upwards to stare at him.
Narinder’s twisted expression suddenly drops. He knows not what he just said.
“I asked if you would not save me from this, then.” They pull their head back. “I asked if you would not take hold of your Lamb.”
“I-” The room is shrinking smaller. The ichor feels like the cold iron of chain and shackles. He can taste blood and wool on his tongue. “What is happening?”
They’re smiling. Tears are still streaming down their face. “I don’t know.”
(It is strange, maybe, that the tormentor of his nightmares looks at him with pity. With condescendence. With apology. With fear. This time, the smile they are wearing isn’t reaching their eyes. This time, something’s different. They haven’t explained the crying. He doesn’t know why his mind would imagine them doing so.)
Tears fall down to their collar while they dig hands into his fur. His fingers ache to wipe the wetness, and for once he is grateful they are immobile within the sinking depths. The white eyed Lamb’s voice is soft. “Back then, do you remember what you told me?”
“Yes.” He answers, and his breath hits their face. “I feared you would drag me under.”
Their smile widens. Their skin around their eyes crinkle a little as they gloss over, hands moving to cup his face. “You were right.”
The Lamb’s cradle digs into his flesh, and he feels ichor enter his nose, his eyes, his mouth as they violently pull him down beneath the surface.
The inside of his small little hut is dark, but not as dark as the dream.
He doesn’t wake up screaming or coughing up blood from this nightmare. His body is surprised it’s even waking up at all. It thinks he’s dead. He feels nearly dead, still. That is, until his mouth starts to taste like iron and cotton as the senses return. The touch comes the next second, and the bed is warm while the body is heavy.
His senses are muddled and his vision is blurry as they crack open in slits. Wooden walls with tattered curtains closed over the curtains, blocking out any winter light that could have made it through. There’s a dresser with an old basket full of unused candles and trinkets, inks and other offerings. The singular heater is lit, burning at a low temperature and the only light in the room, casting it in a dim, warm glow.
It’s just as messy as when he originally left it. There are still rot marks where his ichor touched the floors, the ceiling and the frame of the bed. It was home, and it was oddly foreign. He feels like he hasn’t been back here in a long, long time. Which doesn’t make sense. It’s only been a few days.
His hearing is next to awaken. “Sometimes, I think about leaving.”
Narinder’s bleary gaze drifts to the voice. It is raw and quiet, and it belongs to the blob of color at his bedside. Their head is white, face wet. Their shoulders are shaking slightly as they keep their hands steady over his chest. In the back of his mind, he registers that he no longer wears his robes and his chest is bare. Looking down at what remains of him hurts, but at the very least, there are no tendrils or ichor wisping out of his gore to leave him.
“I…I don’t want to. Leave the cult behind, I mean. But I might be the only way to stop it.” Hands press something into his center. Pain suddenly shoots through him and simultaneously disappears so quickly the mind barely registers it happening. The blurriness is sharpening, and the voice is speaking clearer. “I could leave. I could leave and never know.”
It’s wavering. Familiar. It’s laughter rings like bells in the afterlife when they ran and ducked underneath his chains.
“I think about making you leave. Push you away from me. I’ll make you a missionary necklace. I’ll give you talismans. You’ll find your freedom away from me.” The way they talk is undeniably alone. They do not notice he is awakening, they are too caught up in their quiet mumbling to do so. Miserable, uncertain whispers that flow from their mouth in short sentences, repeated, and repeated again like they were comforting themselves as they press something to his front. “…Do you think our friendship was doomed from the start?”
One ear twitches. His lungs suddenly fill with crisp air, and Narinder awakens a little quicker now.
“The God of Death, and the Last Lamb of prophecy?” Mindless in thought, their fingers fumble when they accidentally stab themselves with what he’s starting to recognize they’re holding; gauze, thread and needles that hardly do anything for the injury. From the looks of it, they may have started over several times. It would have been better to just lie their hands on top of his skin and to behave as a bandage instead. “We’re both victims on opposite sides. Godhood and mortality. Maybe there is no saving this. We were meant to fail from the start.”
Quiet mumbling. They are lost in their mind, and his own was struggling to unblur the space around them. Only their face becomes clearer. It is stained with tear streaks and a raw lip from nervous biting. Their face was clean, but their cloak still neglected with dried blood. White brows furrow among un-brushed wool.
“I never wanted this. I wanted freedom. I wanted you to have yours-” Their low voice suddenly cuts up with a hitch as their hands stumble. The tools topple out of shaking hands. The Lamb’s throat catches as they fail to catch it, shrinking in on themselves as the gauze and needles promptly clatter to the floor, the thread touching him is dissolved like work undone. They stare forwards, wide eyed and at nothing. Nearby, the Red Crown watches. “I-...I can’t. I can’t.”
A sharp sting hits his lung when The Lamb sucks in a sharp breath to sob.
“I can’t do this anymore. I can’t do this anymore.” They repeat, maddened and voice wet with grief. They speak to the air, to his unconscious body, to the Red Crown that watches. The pain in his chest is starting to become unbearable. “I am… I am trapped. We are trapped. In this.…revolving cycle of anger and hurt from betrayal and I can do nothing to fix this. I can’t do anything to stop it. I can’t stop this! I lose everyone I care about, and this will repeat and repeat and I-!”
They’re spiraling.
Blood is pooling behind Narinder’s eyes, and it threatens to black out his mind the way it threatens to dampen his fur. His arms do not lift when he tells them to. He tries anyway. He fails. They are heavy. He tries again.
“I don’t know how to break the cycle! I don’t know who I need to become to break this pattern! I don’t know what Lamb to be other than the last, I have tried, I have tried-”
The pain in his limbs shoot up his arm, black bone and skeletal. His fingers twitch.
They’ve fallen into a true sob. Their hands curl into the fabric of the bedside with their shoulders raised and face twisted into grief. “This will not break unless one of us gives in or one of us leaves, and I can’t do this anymore. I cannot be apart of your freedom. I cannot do this anymore-”
A skeletal claw barely touches the skin of the back of their hand. Delirious in injury, Narinder’s voice is gravelly and quiet. “I have imagined a freedom without you...I have written it in with the rest of my nightmares.”
Lambert freezes. Their voice catches in their throat. The Red Crown even looks mildly surprised at his awakening. Full seconds pass before his vessel seems to return back to reality. Even the tears seem to have frozen in shock.
Slowly, their gaze shifts from seeing nothing to drifting over to the cat’s face, eyes wide and ears pointed straight up to the ceiling.
They’re staring.
Narinder blinks. Slow, one eye after the other.
Lambert’s response comes out small, weak, and pitiful. “…Huh?”
If he had enough blood in his brain to think, he might have found that absolutely hilarious. Maybe in a better state, he would have mocked them for it.
Instead, the comforting darkness of sleep beckons him again. This time there’s no stabbing feeling anymore. Not physically at least. The discomfort does not come from the gruesome sight his chest was, but there wasn’t a hole there, much less than just exposed tissue that his vessel’s hands could cover, and if they happened to dig their fingers back inside again, he doesn’t think that would wake him up either.
The God of Death wonders, briefly, if he’ll remember any of this. A part of him hopes he won’t. He’s dead. He’s dreaming. He cannot lift his hands to their face.
The Lamb seems to shake from their surprise just enough to call his name, and the sound is enough to weigh on his eyelids and lull him back to unconsciousness.
-
The second time Narinder awakens, it’s because two claws pinch his nose so painfully closed he sits up making an undignified noise, body reacting on it’s own to bring claws to scratch at the suffocating assailant.
“So, this is where you’ve been living!” The claws retract with a high pitched cackle.
The God of Death’s body stings with lingering pain, not as severe as before, but enough to make his entire body wince as the brain catches up with reality. The sunlight is peeking through the window. His chest is bare save for a stained bandage wrapped carefully around it. There are two figures standing around his bedside. His lungs burn, his teeth grit, and every piece of him is coming down from the adrenaline.
“From the smell of this place, it must be a mess. Your bones and wood rot. I don’t know what I expected.” The assailant snickers.
His vision adjusts. Narinder has to blink several times for the blurs to clear. His brother’s grin grows wider. Heket stands nearby, silent, but equally as dark a shadow over his injured form. Her hand is raised with her thumb and forefinger pinching together. She was the one who tried to suffocate him. Of course she was.
A wide, sharped teethed smile grins widely down at him. “You reek of Death, brother. Worse than usual.”
Narinder speaks (tries to, except it comes out more of a cough that echoes a sharp sting in his chest before he can properly form words). “Leshy…Heket….”
“Do you know how much trouble it was for me to find this place? I’ve been searching for a long time now, could never really pinpoint where you were hiding.” Leshy’s tone is triumphant. He raises his hands, and in-between two fingers is a ripped talisman. The writing on it akin to one for missionary necklaces, though it appears to be altered. “Should have checked the one place I always felt repulsed from. A little trinket like this, really? Against ‘ill intent’?”
His brother is mocking for a reaction, but Narinder is too busy squinting at the talisman’s paper. It’s message is to ward against ill intent, to stave off those who mean harm. Simple paper imbued with power enough shoo to ill-meaning mortals away from his home (which, in hindsight, explains why no followers skeptical of his arrival tried to kill him in his sleep) with handwriting that was undeniably familiar.
Worse still is that it looked to be aged a few months. Whatever this was, it’s not new.
Leshy suddenly pulls the paper up to his teeth, bites down and rips the paper apart. It’s bitten to pieces. The worm chuckles as he does it. The air feels a tad thicker. “Tell your vessel that Gods aren’t redirected by puny trinkets like this.”
“You annoy me.” Narinder snarls. Keeping face is difficult when your body feels like it’s crumbling, but if this were to be the chance his siblings took to assassinate him, then he was not going down without taking them to hell with him. How anti-climatic. Even the door is cracked open behind them both. Apparently neither of them cared for manners enough to close it. “Spare me from your harassments before I slice the smile from your face. You will wear two bandages then.”
He’s talking better now. Good. Now if he only didn’t look and feel like shit.
“Silence.” Heket interjects. She looks both mildly satisfied to see him in such an injured state and mutually uncomfortable by it. “...We...are not...here to fight…”
“What fight?! He has none left in him!” Leshy laughs, and it is grating. Narinder’s teeth grit. He cares not if his body screams when the bone claws of his fingertips sharpen to knives. If his brother sensed his steadily growing anger, the worm does nothing to move away from it. “We died countless times in that purgatory state, far too many to remember! This is nothing compared to the loop of dying we were sentenced to.” He jabs a finger towards his chest. “You’re getting off easy-”
Narinder grabs it, his grip hard enough to break bone. The worm stops, but his grin doesn’t falter. The cat sneers. “Where’s The Lamb?!”
A pause. Then Leshy appears to think for a moment. “Oh, them? They died-”
The God of Death’s lunge is a painful blur.
He swipes, catches one of Leshy’s antlers and is dragged forwards when the worm tries to pull back from the attack. Claws draw blood, Leshy curses and shoves him off while an intense shot of pain riddles from skin to bone, and he falls straight to the floor–
-Through the floor. Partially, halfway through the floor and back up again like his mortal body suddenly remembers it needs to be tangible. Bone and tissue and limbs morph between black, wispy sludge of ichor controlled like it was trying to teleport somewhere. Shift, meld, splitting, dissolving and reforming as reality reminds him he has four limbs, one head and a massive headache.
Heket’s face has switched from tense to shock, and he registers her hands coming to near his back. Narinder blinks down at the rotted floorboards. There’s a black puddle of ichor from where it’s dripping down his face.
Leshy curses something demonic. “You cannot take a joke!”
“Misery.” His sister curses. Her voice is raw when she does. The God of Death barely gets a moment to breathe (and recall that yes, his body is in-fact fully formed and he’s not about to become a pile of godly blood in the middle of the room) before a strong hand wraps painfully around his upper arm and yanks him upwards. “You...both of you...foolish-”
Narinder turns his head and bites directly on her hand. The frog yelps, yanks him back to the bed’s headboard and releases her grip only when his fangs have sunken teeth enough he hopes to leave scars. The end of the bedframe bruises painfully when it hits his bare back. Heket recoils, hissing equally now as Leshy appears to snicker at her misfortune.
“You…ungrateful...horrible brother!” Her face twists with anger. Narinder pants with eyes shrunk and lungs burning. “I’ll slaughter you...tear out your insides…and hang you with them…! Make sure...you have a scar...to match ours...”
“I believe you’ve been beaten on that.” Narinder spits black on the floor. Ichor collects on the corner of his mouth. Nightmares and injury together, he will never be unstained. “My insides were already carved out and stuffed back in, in case you couldn’t tell.”
The rage in her face grows harder. Heket’s own claws draw out from her sleeve and poise upwards. “Then…I will…rip them out again!”
Her claws swing downwards and Narinder’s half-a-thought to counter before Leshy’s own fist darts out and catches his sister’s. It’s a heavy catch, one that she struggles against while shooting the worm an intense look he’ll never see, the clawed grip on her wrist tight.
Leshy is half-faced away from him. He says nothing, but his mouth is downturned into a frown. There’s a small gash near an antler where his claws made contact but nothing that won’t heal in an hour. Still, the worm is oddly quiet. His head tilts to the side slightly. Unspoken communication.
Heket’s grits her teeth before it suddenly softens into a frown. The Goddess of Famine stops struggling and lets her arm drop. Her head turns to look away from cat and worm alike.
Narinder’s breathes heavily, eyes darting between worm and frog.
Something is wrong. Wrong as in different than what he expected. The strange behavior is so out-of-character Narinder almost thinks it would be easier if they just continued attacking him while he’s weak.
Silence in the hut. A cold breeze blows in through the cracked door, and it stings his exposed skin. Without thinking, his hand comes up to clutch at his chest and hisses under his breath. No longer a gaping hole right through him, at least not that he can feel beneath the bandage. The gauze is ichor-stained but otherwise too fresh to be a few hours old. The muscle he feels beneath it seems to be intact. The wound is still miserable.
Heket glances back at it. Her arms cross back into her sleeves. Leshy’s mockery a moment ago seems to have been replaced with something much more serious. Whatever comedy he found hilarious a second ago, it appears to have died.
“Your usurper is fine.” Leshy states. Heket isn’t looking at him.
The exhaustion does not leave him even when there are threats within the room. Narinder does not sheathe his claws, but he is forced to sit down upon the mattress and recollect his breath. The room is spinning a little. His skin was starting to burn from the cold chill entering the room. “Where are they?”
Leshy clicks his tongue. “Don’t know.” His brother joins his own arms in his sleeves, crossing them and leaning back against the dresser. His head tilts slightly towards the basket there, particularly musing the candles he’s left. “I waited for them to leave here, didn’t track where they went. Perhaps tormenting our brother until they feel satisfied.”
The running gears in Narinder’s mind stop clicking for a second. “...Kallamar?”
No response. At least, not immediately. Leshy’s frown deepens, and Heket only meets eyes with him when his anger starts to morph into bewilderment.
He does a poor job at hiding it. “He’s alive?”
“And toiling away in the healing bay, last I checked. Your vessel will not allow him a break.” Leshy scoffs. The resentment in his tone is mixed with hesitation. “Just revived him, sickly and weak, putting him to immediate work lest he suffer a numerous of threats by the Lamb’s hand.”
“He collapsed...several times...” Heket’s tone is equally as low. “...Healed himself...medicine taken...when the Lamb is...not watching...”
“They are still working him to death. Most of those mortals are healthier now, but they’re not letting up until he’s done every last one of them.” The worm almost sounds impressed if Narinder didn’t know any better. That, or there was intimidation in there. To guess, it might be a combination of both. “Ha! I knew the Lamb was a true tyrant somewhere. They behaved far too kind for Godhood.”
The mattress sinks further underneath his weight. Narinder feels a wave of heat and headache pulse against the back of his eyes. “...He’s alive?”
His siblings look at him with furrowed brows. They stand living in his room. Why wouldn’t he be, too?
It wouldn’t be in the Lamb’s interest anymore. It wouldn’t be because he asked it when he was arguing for the Bishop’s death. No, the excuse of Lamb’s free will wouldn’t apply here. Not if they were beyond rage and repair. Surely, they didn’t keep him alive for his sake. No, they would have killed him.
(He watched them almost kill the squid, in a memory blotted out by pain and the haze of Anchordeep. When the squid is small, and the Lamb wore wings-)
“Brother.” Heket calls him out of his thoughts. “The Lamb...screamed...of erasure...”
Leshy adds on. “Elaborate.”
Too much is happening all at once. This is the first time Narinder has even been able to feel like he’s alive in the last who-knows-how-long and he’s spending these precious minutes he has of awareness before he eventually collapses. He’s pretty sure he’s still dying. Maybe. Probably. Maybe not.
The ache calls him back to reality. Narinder looks down.
A part of him feels like the Lamb left their fingerprints on the raw flesh beneath his collarbone. His arms look skeletal and...solid. They were solid bone. Muscle was trying to grow around them, joints and tissue already forming. Not as fast when the Lamb does it, but there’s a difference. Enough that his body felt strong enough to talk which should have been an obvious sign.
The cat’s confusion switches from one focus to another in rapid pace. He was getting light-headed. “Did you both…try to heal me?”
His siblings exchange glances. Or really, Heket glances awkwardly at Leshy, and the worm stops trying to steal a candle before he remembers he doesn’t care what Narinder thinks and promptly slips it into the many pockets of his robes.
“Erasure.” Heket strains. “Your invention...I’m sure...”
Leshy speaks matter-of-fact. “And we can’t argue with you if you don’t exist anymore.”
Narinder’s eye twitches. Suddenly, turning into an unidentifiable mass and disappearing below the floorboards where he can’t be disturbed didn’t sound like such a bad thing anymore.
“…What?” Oh, how eloquent. His mind is starting to fail without the adrenaline now. Even his vision was blurring in random spots. “You cannot be serious. You are not a stranger to consuming souls.”
His sister’s nose crinkles up at his attitude. She looks as if she was considering taking the (second) candle Leshy was trying to steal to chuck it at his head. The expression lasts for just a moment, that is, until Narinder looks down at his hands and finds that he was having a hard time counting how many fingers he was supposed to hand.
“Erasure is your move to keep me from power.” Narinder continues. Out of the corner of his eye, his siblings glance towards each other again. His ring finger looks uncomfortably wrong for some reason. A memory bites on the inside of his cheek. The air was getting hotter. “What you did to the sacrifices...you consumed them, every sheep.”
“Blame us for what problems your meddling did with the order of the world. You cannot even commit chaos correctly.” Leshy scoffs. “We devoured their souls. They do not exist anymore, but it’s all the same. We made sure not to miss any, and if we did? Who cares! You clearly didn’t have them.”
Narinder’s eyes narrow.
“Do not mistake me brother, I care not for your continued living. But erasure?” Leshy trails off, and for the first time in a very long, long time, Narinder thinks his little brother looks truly concerned. “That should not be possible for us. You need to explain what part of death and existence you’ve broken-”
“Get out.”
All Gods within the hut freeze. Several sets of eyes turn towards the door. A shadow looms within it.
It’s the Lamb, their cloak barely cleaned with wool still un-kept. Their hands are dirty like they’ve been digging in soil and graves, the Red Crown shifted into a sword that hangs at their side. It’s not raised nor is it even lifted high enough for the blade to come off the doorstep, but the pupil was glaring hatred into the siblings.
There’s no light in their eyes. If they had heard what his brother had said, they made no reaction towards it.
(The Lamb, freshly decapitated and new to his domain and finished with their tears, assumes the face of a scornful victim. This face, too, was familiar.)
(There is an intense, sudden pain in his chest burning in his chest, his spine, his arms and his neck, and silently Narinder thinks he may go to the floor again.)
Heket is the one to argue first. “How dare you...this is our brother...”
“You are stressing him to death. Get out.” The Lamb sneers, turning up their nose. “Go tend to your other brother. I left him at the doorstep of his new home. I suggest you hurry. He’s currently painting your front step with blood.”
Leshy hisses. “You’re a monstrous heretic-”
“Get out.” The Red Crown’s sword starts to raise.
Fantastic. He’ll be subject to witness his vessel rip apart his siblings before his head hits the floor. Surely, all this fighting won’t be detrimental for his (already suffering) blood pressure.
He doesn’t even get to find out. His body is screaming at him for being alive long enough, and the gravity comes quickly as Narinder falls. His sister’s rage turn to surprise, a hand jutting out. Leshy’s head whips around to the sound of a thud hitting the floor, and Narinder catches a glimpse of the anger draining from the Lamb’s face along with the rest of their color before the world shuts out.
Narinder is getting really tired of waking up disoriented as all hell.
He mildly registers he’s propped to sit up on back pillows. Eyelids crack open slowly, and the lack of light peeking through the windows suggests it’s night. The door is closed, there’s a candle illuminating the room, and the heater is burning again. This time, the body wakes up a little quicker, and it doesn’t punish him for the crime of being alive when he scans the room and feels his senses come back to him.
The Lamb is besides the bed in a chair, staring dead ahead and holding his upturned hand in their own. Their wool is still tousled like they had been running their hands through it in a fidget. Their hands are washed, but their cloak still carries traces of soil. Two fingers are resting on the pulse of his wrist.
They stare straight ahead, seemingly staring at nothing. An eerie look.
He shifts in the slightest, and black pupils flit to his face in the dim light.
Narinder meets them head on. “When’s the last time you brushed your wool? You look unpresentable.”
They blink.
“You would never let the flock see you like this.” He sniffs, and sits up straighter. There’s pain in his movements, but it’s bitten down on his tongue and ignored. “Meaning you haven’t seen the flock.”
Silence, save for the nightly crickets outside. The fingers pressed down on his pulse shift slightly like reacting to something different. Lambert’s ears have raised to stand outwards like flags. The tense lines in their face threaten to waver. Their brows start to furrow.
Their hand lingers when they finally speak. “...Do you remember when you told me I bleat in my sleep?”
“And?” The God of Death uses his free hand to wipe the sleep from his eyes. His face is cleaner too. In the back of his mind, he briefly notes the small water bowl and rag setting on the bedside table. “You do. What about it?”
They hesitate, then the hand over his wrist pulls back into their lap. “Nothing.”
They watch as he pulls his arm back and stops to look at it. Flesh has molded around the skeletal bone completely, fur starting to return in earnest. The cat flexes his fingers and though he feels sore all over, it doesn’t take too much effort. Narinder breathes deeply like he’s testing how the rise and fall of his chest feels, and whatever the answer is, it must have been satisfactory enough for his attention to switch back to them. “How long have I been out?”
Lambert thinks for a long moment before answering. They don’t know whether to answer since his last wakening, or since he last blacked out. They don’t know if it mattered. He was hardly coherent for most of the time. “...It’s almost been a week since we fought Kallamar.”
They watch his ear flick as the cat seems to process the information. If he had any thoughts on the matter, it was nothing he’d share, for the God of Death is instead looking down upon himself. Two fingers pluck at the fabric of his tunic shirt, mouth downturned in a frown. He spots his robes sitting folded at the end of his bed, freshly cleaned, and oddly not-torn to shreds like he thought it would be.
His nose wrinkles up into a sneer. “Who undressed me? Your doctor?”
“The only one who can touch you without rotting.” The Lamb answers plainly like they were expecting his reaction. Immediately, the irritation in him drops, and they’ll take that as a good sign. “I only took your robes and undershirt. I wouldn’t have let anyone from the healing bay lay a hand on you anyway. I know you don’t like to be touched.”
They half expect him to snap at them anyway. He does not. The answer appears to pacify him. The cat scans the bedside table while the Lamb’s fingers interlock in their lap. A water bowl with a rag, signs of blood in the fabric. A mortar and pestle with a pink paste inside. A candle, sewing tools that might have been used to try and repair him now with a white stitch threaded through the needle. The ink has been moved to create space for everything else, but his journal sits completely untouched. There’s even a small layer of dust collecting on it’s top. The Lamb had been working around it, not even willing to push it to the side as though that might be a grand crime, and there was only so much guilt they were willing to stomach.
He says nothing, and Lambert thinks that’s fine, because he doesn’t need to know that they’ve spent most of the their time in his unaware hours sitting next to him cleaning and re-stitching the robes back together so it appears as if nothing had ever happened to them. At the very least, that was something they could fix. Their fingers twiddle together. “I was thinking about moving you into my room in the attic of the temple. You could continue your recovery there.”
Narinder stops plucking at the thin threads of his shirt to send them a look.
“You’ll have the room to yourself, I’ll stay here or elsewhere.” They reach near their feet; a small wicker basket is below with fresh bandage rolls. They pull one out and begin to undo its tie, beginning to unwrap. “I know it’s not ideal, but it’s better than having your siblings invade you again.”
He makes a disgruntled sound. “Your paper symbols cannot deter Gods.”
They pause momentarily, then continue their motions. “Maybe not, but they won’t enter the temple because they’re scared of me. And I made that to deter followers from bothering you, you know. Since you killed some, I cannot trust everyone in the village…and you didn’t want visitors.”
“They do not bother me because they know I would kill them should any of your idiot flock trespass on what meager privacy I have.” He retorts with only the slightest bit of sarcasm. Maybe more than slight, and to be fair he’s earned the right to be snarky. “Do you think me weak? You insult me. I’d kill them.”
The Lamb does not look up from their unwrapping. “I know.”
Quiet. The pause is punctured by the sound of the wind brushing up against the hut. It whistles so quietly, and it smells like rain was trying to break through winter.
Narinder’s fingers drum against his leg. “You look horrible.”
This time, they glance back up at him with the smallest light in their eyes. “…You’re more yourself, today.”
“...Myself?”
“You just insulted me.” They stop their unraveling, hands patient in their lap as they wait. The smallest tug on the corner of their mouth, and his brows furrow at their strange reaction. “You must be feeling more like yourself.”
They will say nothing of the sleep talking, or the odd days where he’d stare at them while they worked on stitching, or any other memory that seems to be lacking in his mind because for the first time, this Narinder is responding when they ask him a question, and his irritation is frighteningly familiar comfort. If the God of Death was not at least slightly annoyed with them, then he’s not quite all there. Surely.
On cue, the cat’s frown downturns into annoyance. “I am no stranger to grave injuries. You forget I have fought and killed hundreds of Gods. The battlegrounds I’ve lain waste to is nothing compared to this. Stop looking at me like I am some pitiful patient.”
They sit up straighter, surprised. “I’m not looking at you like that-”
“You are full of pity.” His nose wrinkles up with a snarl. “I’ll claw it off your face.”
“That’s not it-”
“What is it then?”
“This is not-!” Lambert cuts themselves off, and sucks in a breath of air through their teeth. They wait two seconds, three. The God of Death’s tail is lashing behind him, and they count how many times it sways before they speak again. “This is not how I wanted to greet you when you woke up.”
Whatever he’s thinking about that has his blood boiling and fur raised, they think he might speak it. He does not. Narinder appears to bite the inside of his cheek. He does not avoid looking at them. Lambert bites down onto their tongue.
(Where do they even begin? How does one even start discussing this?)
(Should they even try? Make an attempt? Or should it divert, re-direct, something they’re good at. Ignore the elephant in the room and eventually it will wither and die and they’ll ignore the stinking corpse of that too. They’d swore they’d be normal about anything that may have gone wrong. They had prepared for something to go wrong. For siblings to fight, to bicker, for ideals to clash and revenge to be brought up again and again. They had prepared for his attitude to sour and his mood swings to be volatile as it adjusted, as much as it was their own. They both swore to be on the same side. They did not prepare for this-)
“Fine.” Narinder breaks the silence that’s been staining the air for the last few moments. His fingers curl into the bedsheet.“…Hello.”
The Lamb gawks at him a bit. It is so ridiculous that it takes a moment for them to even understand what he’s doing.
“…Hi, Narinder.” Their ears relax, and the sigh that releases the tension from their shoulders comes out involuntarily. They raise the wrappings. “May I change your bandages?”
Truly, there was not much point to it anymore, not like the wrappings were going to keep any important organs from falling out of an already closing wound, and Gods were not prone to getting infections (And Narinder recalls this, they think, when he looks down at the wrappings with an air of certain scrutiny) but the Lamb has not the heart to tell him that it’s more for their sake than his own. They do not expect him to let them.
(The bleeding, the mangled flesh, would all eventually disappear. They know this. They will pretend, if it means to not feel so useless.)
They’re glad he cannot read their mind. They also wonder if he doesn’t need to in order to know what they’re feeling, because Narinder sighs and raises his arms behind his head to grab the collar of his shirt. He pulls it off, sets it to the side of the bed and sits up fuller so they’ll have better access. “You may.”
They scoot the chair closer to lean forwards. He could very well cut off the gauze with a swipe of a claw, but the cat allows the Lamb’s hands to move underneath to his side where the knot is tucked carefully in, pulling out the tab and unwrapping the cat with careful enough pace so as to not pull at skin and fur. It comes away gently this time, not so stained until it comes down to the very last layer. The God of Death’s mood starts to visibly relax the further the bandages come undone. Hair on the back of his neck starts to lie flat again, and the tenseness in his knuckles start to wane.
The last of the wrappings come undone, revealing the wound; blackened muscles with new flesh and fur trying to to meld together over it. All ribs, organs, and pieces accounted for. The most of it was healed, no where near what gore it was a week ago, save for what there was remaining to piece back together, and a dark scar over his heart where it tries to blend in with the rest of his fur.
As they place the dirty bandages to the side and ready the new ones, Narinder pushes their hand down. “I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to be re-bandaged.”
The change is so quick that Lambert is stuck holding them in the air. “What? Why not?”
He lets their hand drop, and looks off to the side. “…The wrappings are beginning to be as claustrophobic as chains.”
The sting is sharp enough that Lambert could feel it in their lungs. Both ears pin back instantly, despite a neutral’s expression’s attempt. Narinder definitely notices, even as they focus on dumping the wrappings into the wicker basket and pushing it underneath the bed with their foot. “Got it. Gotcha. No problem. You could have, you know, just told me no and taken them off yourself. I wouldn’t have been offended.”
Narinder scratches at the newly exposed skin. “I wanted you to do it.”
“…Yeah, well.” They resist bobbing their leg up and down. “I’ve uh,…I’ve think I’ve done all that I can, especially with the...wound.”
He stops scratching momentarily to look down at himself, and for some reason, Narinder looks very confused. “This won’t scar. None of our battles with my siblings thus far would leave scars.”
“...You will have a scar. I’m looking at it.”
“I’m healing just as we have had with Leshy and Heket. I would know if it would leave a scar.”
“What? No, it’s here-” They abandoned anxiety for the brief ride of confusion. Lambert leans forwards, wincing as they make full eye contact with said injury again. In the back of their mind, they scold themselves. In the corner of their eye, Narinder is squinting at them. His eyes follow down to their hand as they hover right over the place where one’s heart would be beneath, near the wound. “I know Godhood is supposed to remember what form it goes back to, what with healing and resurrection and all, but no matter what I do, it’s like it only wants to remember this mark.”
Red eyes flit between their hovering hand, his chest and to their face again. He looks mildly confused. He does not answer.
“Your lungs, ribs, organs, skin, everything; it’s all healing, save for this part here.” They don’t poke it, because that would be very much Not Good, but Lambert does try to trace the air around the edges of scar on his chest. It’s only when their finger has completed it’s picture do they realize Narinder has gone very completely still, enough to where his chest doesn’t move with breath.
Lambert pulls their hand a few inches back, closes their hand, and awkwardly fiddles with their collar. “I’m sorry. I was trying to keep you from having a reminder of all this. I know it’s faint, but it’s as stubborn as the one on my neck from my sacrifice-”
“Don’t-” He suddenly starts, remembers to breathe normally, and continues. “Don’t concern yourself with it. It’s old, I’ve had it on this body for a long time. I don’t believe it can be healed.”
Their face immediately drops. “Oh.”
Their mortification must be very evident, because Narinder adds on. “Wipe that expression off your face. I have no story for it. I don’t remember where it’s from.”
(He’s lying. He has to be. To carry another scar from a sibling, that was their fault-)
Great. More awkwardness. “That’s okay.” They’re quick to add. “I’ve got one just like that too-”
“I know. I remember.”
“-and I’ve got one under my ear, and my leg. My tail is technically scarred, but you’d never be able to tell with how my wool sits. I’ve got a few smaller ones you can only see when I shear in the summer. None of them are as gnarly as the one on my neck or yours and-” A pause, then Lambert clears their throat. “Do you feel well enough to eat? I could grab you something from the kitchens.”
Narinder’s fingers are curling in and out of his palm, fist opening and closing. The hand raises and returns to scratching the back of his neck. He appears to be feeling something, or searching for it. He’s looking down at the bedsheets again. “No. I will vomit it up, or it will rot in my mouth.”
“Right, right.” They sit in the chair a moment longer with only the silence as their conversation partner. Then, Lambert stands up and starts to collect the items from their arms. “I’ll just clean up a little.”
He says nothing, but his tail thumps against the mattress in replacement for a response. They grab the wicker basket and its contents, to which the Lamb walks over to the heater, props open the door and tosses the dirty bandages and rag inside. No odd protest or inquiry comes from behind them. Hopefully, they will not need to explain why materials tainted with the blood of a God guaranteed to decay anything it touches would be considered too hazardous to bother cleaning. The mortar and pestle are next; camellias crushed with mushroom caps, a paste meant to relieve pain, and frankly one that probably didn’t even work on him. It’s shoved into the basket to be reused somewhere else.
The water bowl is last, carefully taken to the door where they crack it open. They catch their reflection just as they go to tip it. Narinder was right. They look as tired as he did, and with no injury to excuse it. They dump it. Immediately, what dead grass was peeking through the thin layer of snow turned grey and withered from traces of ichor sinking into the soil.
The door is shut, the bowl set to the side, and mindlessly the Lamb’s hand raises to their wool to comb through a tangle near their face. They turn to speak, and pause.
Narinder is staring at them.
Well. He always stares at them. But he’s doing it weirdly, with a slightly wide eyed look of a man who’s found the thoughts he’s been searching for. The palm of his hand is pressed to his cheek, partially covering the corner of his mouth.
Lambert feels their own brows furrow. “What is it?”
The God of Death hesitates. His tail thumps again, and his fur is slightly raised. Something has him put off. Phantom pain, maybe.
Red pupils flit to their mouth, and then to their eyebags. “You haven’t been sleeping again.”
Oh, or that. He’s doing that again. “No, I haven’t.” They answer. Purposeful, they try to smile as they return to the chair. “It’s a good thing you’ve been sleeping well enough for the both of us then, right?”
It’s not the right thing to say. Too soon, they think, when his eyes sharpen with something akin to frustration.
“You can’t blame me. I’ve been very busy. There’s been a plague rampant in my cult, and a new god I had to account for. I don’t really have the time for a break between everything.” They keep the smile up. One reserved for followers and one they have decades of practice with, for it’s the only option even as the cat appears unconvinced, and possibly growing more irritated by the second. “The flock has been getting better, though. It’s been easier to keep track of-”
“I’ve never seen you react this badly to a death before.”
Silence.
Narinder’s glare does not waver. His palm presses to his face.
Lambert’s smile slowly drops into neutrality. “You did not see me before you met me. Before my sacrifice, I lost everything, once.”
Quiet, once more.
Narinder’s hand slowly drop from his face. He’s turned closer towards them while they’ve sat politely in their seat. He’s made no move to put his tunic shirt back on, or does anything to conceal the injury Lambert was making a considerable effort to avoid looking at. They wish he would.
“You’ve grown resilience since. You’ve seen countless die in gruesome manner, many by your own hand, and followers you’ve had for generations.” His tone is clear and almost cold. Calculating. “Mutilations and death do not frighten you. You are morbid and used to it. This is no state to exist in as a cult leader nor a God.”
Their awkwardness begins to morph into something burning. He was provoking them, and it was working. “I don’t know how many more times I have to state I care about you and you still be surprised when I do. If that is a crime in your book, then go ahead and charge me for it along with my treason.”
“No.” He scoffs. “I tire of your falsities. I know you to dance around an anger until it bites first. There is something else. Spit it out.”
“I will not argue with you in this state.” A deep breath, inhale and exhale. They will their nerves to calm as they reach for his tunic. “You should re-dress. Fresh air might be good for you-”
He grabs their outstretched hand, and Lambert suddenly grits their teeth when they are yanked down a few inches towards the cat with bristled fur. That thrashing tail the last few minutes was not him processing his emotions, it was him considering when he was going to strike first. The God of Death grips them tightly. “Do not avoid the question-”
“You did something reckless.” Suddenly, the lingering anger that’s been sleeping in their throat this week is starting to spark again. “You did something stupid, and you swore you wouldn’t-”
It must be the reaction he wanted, because Narinder’s teeth bare in equal earnest. “Do not lecture me upon broken promises, traitor. I swore nothing would change after the fight, and you are the one making it so. You are angry I saved your life-?”
“Do you think I owe you for it? Do you think so little of me to fall for that trick?” They yank their wrist out from his grip, claws catching them down the skin as they pull. It leaves red rivulets that sting, but they hardly notice as the movement pulls him forward enough that a wince is visible. A pang of guilt stunts the anger as the cat recollects himself, and Lambert steps back and diverts their eyes to the floor.
“…Look. Either you’re a major hypocrite and a liar, or you didn’t mean to move in front of me. I can promise you that one of those options is in favor for your pride and neither of them are in mine.” The Lamb wills themselves to face him head on. “I mean…you are certainly a liar and a hypocrite, but I’m not angry with you for something that was accidental, reckless or not. I just-”
They cut themselves off when Narinder suddenly moves to get out of the bed, using the bedside table to help stand. “Made your opinion of it all before I’ve even woken up? I won’t be scolded by someone who does not even have the patience to hear me first.”
“I’m not-I’m not scolding, I just-” Their words fumble, partially because their brain is running miles, and Narinder was currently standing on his own for the first time in several days purely to argue with them and they don’t know whether to feel relief or blanche at the audacity of it all. “Hells, Narinder, you almost got erased!”
His jaw is tight when he stands, but he’s standing. “We don’t know that.”
“No, I mean- No, of course we don’t know that. I don’t even know how you survived!” The sheep’s hands pull in and out in front of them, debating to assist him or stay out of arm’s reach even as the cat takes a step forwards. They take one step back, and he follows. Part of their mind says to assist him, the other says it’s a trap. Their chest feels like it’s both. “You still can’t be reckless when the stakes are-!”
The Lamb suddenly cuts themselves off hard.
Narinder is sucking air in through his teeth and half debating on putting himself between them and the door (and if he had the energy for it, summon a chain from his palm) before the silence stings his ears. The cat’s eyes narrow further. “What?”
Lambert is staring wide eyed at him, their voice low. “Did you do it on purpose?”
A pause, then Narinder scoffs. “Angry?” He taunts. “From the very first week of my arrival, I told you that I will either kill you, or I will die. There cannot be both of us with the Red Crown and my power in the end, and I will not share nor relinquish it to a traitor-”
“Did you do it on purpose.” They repeat, firmer, lower. “Not knowing what would happen?”
The cat hesitates. “Does it matter?”
“Yes,” The Lamb’s tone has hardened severely. “It fucking matters.”
He’s unfazed by it. “No, it doesn’t. You don’t get to pick and choose when it does. You said so yourself, what happened in our betrayals, what we don’t remember, how we got here doesn’t matter-”
Their shoulders raise as their blood starts to run hot. Fists clench at The Lamb’s side. “You are twisting my words.”
Narinder steps closer. “I am showing how you are a hypocrite. Angry with me, calling me reckless for saving your life!”
“I’m calling you reckless and an idiot for nearly throwing away everything we have worked for!” Yelling now, their voice fills the small room. They gesture wildly. “Six hundred years working for our freedom! I have killed hundreds, thousands for you, just so you can throw it all away on whim?!”
“Do not blame your misdeeds on me!” He snarls, hand catching their wild gesture, bared teeth met with equal fangs. “You started killing because of revenge.”
The lines in their face are furious, loud and poised like an animal backed into a corner. The small light of the candle blows out, and the wind wails outside. “Yes! I wanted revenge! But I wanted a life! And I wanted you to have yours!”
“Then do not scold me for what I do with it!” There’s a hiss in the back of his throat when he yells, livid with his tail thrashing behind him. Anger echoes between them both. “You dare scold me for my decisions and whine about the sanctity of your own? You are a hypocrite. Be rid of your guilt, vessel, you cannot control my nature anymore than I can control yours, and you are tricking yourself if you believe otherwise-”
“You.” The Lamb’s voice is vile, venom and knives low and as sharp as their stinging eyes. “You have everyone tricked, including yourself, that you are some uncaring, unfeeling, malicious prick and that everything is just an means to an end to get what you want! You do not get to take back everything that happened in the afterlife because you got pissed I wouldn’t sacrifice myself for you, just for you to try and do it yourself now!” The rip their hand from him, livid and voice cracking in their rage. “I’m sick of your acting! I hate this! I hate the Bishops, and I hate the Gods, and I hate the prophecy and I hate this and I hate that I ever met-!”
Lambert stops cold.
Narinder’s discarded hand is hovering in the air where they left it. His eyes wide, ears pinned back flat against his skull. He looks just like the brief moment they saw before the sword came down. He looks like they’re the ones who did it.
They take a step back.
The dead silence breaks when the floorboard underneath them creaks. Narinder blinks, shakes the surprise off and reaches outwards. “Wait-”
They’ve backed up before he can catch them. One step, two steps. Shaking hands. The Lamb backs up to the door, swings it open and slams it behind themselves fast enough that the cold air that hits him afterwards sting like knives.
He lingers. Narinder’s hand stays over his aching chest, moving back until the back of his knees hit the mattress, and slowly, slides downwards to the floor, staring at the wooden door.
-
The Mystic Seller is a merchant of knowledge as it is power, and to be a trader of such knowledge and power, one must acquire it as such and seek compensation in return.
The Beast is not smiling when it exits the cult grounds, nor does it look at it when it stops between the domain’s portals and stare blankly. It’s eyes shift between Darkwood, Anura, Anchordeep and finally upon Silk Cradle’s closed door. There, it’s gaze lingers the longest but doesn’t stay. The Red Crown’s eye is half-closed upon its brow. Their hands are clean, but their cloak is still stained with grave soil and blood that blends into the colored fabric. The wound once bared is now gone, a minor blood letting, completely healed. They hesitate. They know not of sleep walking.
It waits for questions, inquiries and bleating of stone tablets and old dead languages. God Tears traded for knowledge and materials, for maps and books of old, of the Old Faith and of even older crimes. The Mystic Seller expects a transaction. Perhaps a request. Perhaps another piece of themselves.
Instead, The Lamb lingers for a moment longer, murmurs something under it’s breath and turns back into the cult grounds.
Whatever they were planning to originally commit, they have been persuaded not to do so.
The sun is setting when they’re moving back towards the temple. There are flock healthy enough to return to work that cross paths and do not make eye contact, a symptom of their earlier display of aggression that they will need to address at some point, but not important right now.
They look not at the direction from where they’ve been pacing, unlatch the temple door and lock it directly behind them. The inner door to their bedroom is the same; unlock, enter, re-lock and double checked. Up the stairs and past that door (lock that one too) Lambert moves to the window, flips the latch to lock, then pulls it tight enough that the metal breaks. They toss handle to the side, permanently secured. There would be no intruders tonight.
(And if the world outside this room blurred and disappeared into black as they lock themselves in, they will pretend not to notice it’s disappearance.)
(None of it even mattered, anyway.)
“Running not an option, so you choose to hide?” A voice tsks in their ear. “Hiding didn’t save you from the prophecy the first time. It won’t save you now.”
They ignore him. Lambert moves to the chest, flips it open and shifts through several miscellaneous items (Trinkets, gold, jewelry, books, fleeces of many colors, all of which are still torn from a drunken fight that feels like ages ago and hurts to think about) until they find the latch for the false bottom. “Wait until I go to sleep. You could at least do that.”
The Monster behind them is grinning. “I did wait. I always have.”
Cryptic and unhelpful, just like the real one. They don’t know what they expected.
The latch clicks, and the false bottom comes up. They lift it. Several stone tablets are collected underneath, along with paper with charcoal markings across the pages, some filed neatly together while the rest are in an chaotic order they have yet to properly sort through. The Lamb scoops up the ones closest, the most recent ones, lets the lid fall back down and march back over to the desk. They make a note to plop down in the chair and ignore the feel of shadows gracing their shoulder.
In the corner of their eye, they look to the broken mirror in the corner. Still shattered from the cat being thrown into all that time ago, and they’ve yet to replace or repair it. His reflection is there in the cracks, over their shoulder, but he’s facing the mirror. He smiles at them in greeting, creepy and uncanny. Lambert looks away from the glass.
The pages are coherent, at least they try to make sure they are. What languages they don’t understand they are able to decipher. Doctrines unavailable to them now with instructions for the rituals they have not yet learned. Some of them are difficult to pinpoint the origin of, some of them are easy. There’s a ritual to incite chaos and rage, and they know not whether it would have belonged to Darkwood’s inhabitants or Silk Cradle’s. One for cannibalism is easily given to Anura’s kind. A ritual for an ocean’s bounty to be plentiful; something that belonged to Anchordeep, they are certain of it.
Those pages are pushed to the side. Unimportant. Doctrines of older rituals weren’t what they were looking for right now.
They find one of the first pages of many. The writing isn’t ink like it is in their journal. Charcoal rubbings over the stone tablets were rudimentary, but every detail would not be missed or at risk of mistranslation. There is nothing among them that speaks of resurrection. They do not expect them to, but they find the others. The instructions of different, unrelated rituals. What it takes for them. The ones who came before, and their demise. The Lands of the Old Faith was borne atop of corpses of hundreds of Gods, and each were starving to take the corpses of those that fall after. The relics were made of Old Gods. The rituals belonged to unnamed ones, stolen by the five. All save for resurrection.
Lambert’s fingers drum across the table. Their eyes dart over to a page sticking out from the stack, weathered and older, with blood staining it’s edges.
“Blame me for recklessness, but stress yourself out to the point of collapse.” He hums, leaning against the desk. “My lying Lamb.”
They ignore him again.
A clawed hand reaches beneath their chin, and their body does not move nor respond as it gently cups the underside of their jaw. Teeth grit and forcing their face to appear tense so at the very least, they will have their pride to say they did not fall when he tilts their face to look at him.
The white-eyed monster looks calm and only mildly analytical. He cradles their face in his hand like so. He’s smiling even, soft with no sharp edges. A melting feeling that comes from the warmth from his hands, and they hate how they cannot keep grasp of their anger with it. He would be a complete comfort, were it not for the black stain spread across his chest. “You wound me, Lamb.”
The hurt in their face wavers into something vulnerable as his thumb brushes across their cheek. They try to look away, and fail.“…I’m not unlocking the door.”
“I’m not worried of the door.” He chuckles, amused like he knows something they don’t.
Their nose wrinkles, and their eyes burn. “You’re being mean to me again, Narinder.”
“Blaming me again for unkindness brought upon yourself.” His head tilts. “You are in need of correction.”
They wonder if he will stab them next, maybe gouge out their eyes. Thoughts he knows because his other hand rises and moves so that both hands are cupping their cheeks, thumbs brushing over dark circles. It reminds them of a dance. They try hard not to think about it, and his eyes narrow when they do. “I said a correction. Not a punishment.”
The pages they grasp threaten to tear as their fingers curl and crinkle. They still cannot move, not away from this chair and not away from him. “You are unusually gentle with me.” Their brows furrow, and waver as his thumb moves like it means to smooth out the lines of frustration. “You are planning something.”
“I plan nothing. I only know.”
They’ve had enough. “You know what? Fine. Get it over with. I came back like you said and I’m tired of the waiting. What nightmares are you going to summon? Memories? Bloodshed?” They crane their neck upwards so he can have better access. “Feel like tearing my head off? If holding my severed head makes you feel any better than do it now, Narinder, or at the very least wait until I go to bed!”
Narinder grins, sharp white teeth and white eyed in deep satisfaction.
“You misunderstand.” He speaks low, soft with amusement. His thumb presses the corner of their mouth. “You’re calling my name out in your sleep again.”
They’re barely allowed a moment of confusion before he brushes over their eyelids and slides them gently closed.
When they open, their head is sideways resting against the desk in their arms. Lambert blinks as their head raises from the desk. They simultaneously feel rested and still utterly exhausted at the same time.
Their neck protests as they sit back from the desk and stretch a little. A quick glance to the window tells them it’s pitch black outside, but only in night, not nightmare. A metal piece of a latch is on the floor nearby. The window is secured, it couldn’t be opened unless the frame itself was damaged.
There’s a lit candle they don’t remember lighting on the desk to illuminate what they were resting on: papers and their journal, with a small fingerprint sized dollop of drool on the former. It is their ink writings and Cult Leader duties per usual. Not charcoal, thankfully (even sealed there was always a risk of ruining the sketches, that and the fact that charcoal doesn’t quite dry like ink does, and they really rather not wake up with half their face covered in a dead language of the damned.)
The Red Crown is sitting on the desk, eye shut like it’s asleep. They flip the journal closed and look up to find it squinting. It’s pupil blinks blearily at them, over their shoulder, and probably judging how ridiculous their wool looked.
They have no idea how they managed to take an accidental nap, but it honestly didn’t matter. The cult still had chores to attend to in the morning, and there’s a cat they’re going to have to apologize to very soon…Maybe after a week. Or two. Or however long it takes for the sinking feeling in their gut to go away and that’s even if he’s still here by the end of it.
They won’t think about it. They can’t think about it. Their ribs already hurt enough as it is. All this stress and anxiety is going to give them a heart attack if they don’t get some sort of break. They don’t know if Gods can get heart attacks, actually. They don’t really want to find out.
Inhale, Exhale. Will the fingers to stop trembling. Lambert sighs deep, pushes the chair back, and moves to retrieve the sleep tunic from the chest-
Their back shoulder clips into something that breathes, and it’s a split second where their first reaction is to summon the Red Crown’s dagger (To which its eye simply shuts back closed, which is the biggest ‘fuck you’ the Lamb has ever received from the damn object) and their second reaction is to curl their hand into a first and swing as they turn into whoever or whatever is standing in their room-
Their fist is caught in black claws. Their knuckles barely grace the outer fabric edge of his upturned hood. Narinder is veil-less, dressed in his normal robes, exhausted, and wearing his signature glare. They freeze, and he merely frowns as the gears click in their head.
Narinder is somehow in their locked bedroom because of course he is.
The surprise wears off. Lambert shoves off his hand and tries to move past him. “You can have the temple-”
“Sit down.” He sounds pissed. His claws find their wrist again, and this time, the claws don’t dig.
They turn back to snap at him. “I thought I banned you from my room.”
“You cannot be rid of me.” He sneers. “Run from me again, and I have the rest of eternity to hunt you down.”
“I can make you leave.”
“And I will come back. You will have to kill me first.”
Their skin tingles. Lambert’s mouth is downturned into an ugly frown. They glance between the door, to him, to the window (He didn’t break it this time. Shocker.) and they debate briefly on the consequences of their options: leave and be hunted (because frankly, they believe him), stay and be in a very, very difficult conversation. Or fight. Fighting is possible too. Or bang their head against the desk until they’re knocked out cold and it can stave this off a little longer. Actually, wait. No. There’s one of him waiting on the other side too. They’re truly cornered.
He is, at the very least, patient enough to watch them fly through several different ideas before the Lamb simply steps back, leans against the desk as their perch, and promptly ignores sitting in the chair as their one spit of defiance. “What do you want? An apology?”
Narinder’s response is immediate. “No.”
…Okay. Well, then. “...Do you want the room?” They raise a brow, confusion taking over the nerves just enough to show suspicion. “I haven’t washed the sheets because I didn’t know you’d be coming. You can have it, but it might smell like me.”
His eye twitches. “I want to talk.”
Of course he does. Lambert teaches him a single social skill in the first month and the first fights they have upon his arrival, and now he’ll use it against them when they’re still trying to figure out how the hell did the cat enter the room in the first place. For the sake of stalling time, they ignore the statement. “How did you get in here?”
“The door.”
Wow. That’s a new one. They resist sarcastically asking if he wants a treat for it. “The door is locked. Did you break it?”
“No. I went through it.”
Lambert deadpans. “So you broke it.”
“I phased through it.” He corrects, annoyed. “Painfully, because you called for me.”
There is no way in overworld or hells below he could possibly hear them all the way in here; which is the thought that Lambert is going to focus on and not the blaring obvious fact that they called his name in their sleep, and that they have no excuse for it whatsoever without being ever so vulnerable to a cat that looks like he’s two seconds away from biting a chunk off of them. Lambert crosses their arms (and if that so happens to annoy him further, so be it.)
“That doesn’t make any sense. You can’t-” They pause. “Did you say phased?”
Narinder’s exhales, and it sounds like a mix between exasperation and pain.
The Lamb’s eyes dart up and down his body, peek through the fold of his robes and is pushing themselves off the desk and placing their hands upon his shoulders and arms to guide him back towards the bed before the cat could even process what was happening. “What the hell is wrong with you?! Come over here, sit-Don’t give me that look! Sit, on the bed. Here.“ They steer him with notable effort that he’s only half protesting.
Narinder plops down onto the bedside and they don’t miss the slight wince when he does. The cat looks like he might bite at their hand when they reach their arm back and yank down his hood. His ears spring up and pin flat back as soon as his face is revealed. (No blood around the eyes or mouth, nothing to suggest he’s had a nightmare. Eyebags, dark circles and the usual exhaustion. He looked tired and mad, but that was the normal amount. He didn’t look like he was about to pass out.)
They shift their hands to the tie keeping the front of his robes closed.
Narinder hisses at them. “Lamb.”
“You’re the one who broke in here. ‘Phased’ in here. Whatever.” Fingers work quickly. The front of his robes come undone, and they do not bother with pulling the fabric all the way down his arms before his under tunic shirt is exposed. They ignore his sour look, hook their fingers over his shirt collar and pull it back.
Months ago, when he disappeared after fighting Leshy, it took nearly two weeks for the skin of his arms to heal back fully from a murderous rampage. An injury brought on purely from over-exertion and stress.
Now? The gaping hole in his chest was…mild. The exposed muscles was piecing together in a manner that can only be godhood, shielding ribs and lungs. Where the deepest of the wound was appeared to be a mortal gash, while patches of fur that was growing back around the edges as it tries to close, save for the old scar that they can’t un-see now that it’s been pointed out among dark fur.
Relief and confusion. Lambert stares at it almost awkwardly. His healing factor had improved along with his powers (Both of theirs, now that they think of it.) At this rate, it could be as good as it was before the crown’s split before long. Maybe considered a progress, a sign that the split was changing. Healing? They don’t know what’s behind it.
They glance back to the Red Crown on the desk like it’ll give them an answer. The damn thing has laid on its side and turned away from the both of them.
Narinder’s hand swats theirs away. “Are you satisfied?”
They pull back. Lambert stands with hands dropping to their sides. “…You still look like you’re in pain?”
“I am in pain.” He huffs. He looks away from them, and they see his gaze narrow briefly at the metal window latch on the floor. “…It’s why I’m here.”
Okay. Great. Fantastic. They don’t know how to help with that. There doesn’t appear to be an injury they could stick their hands on (or in, for that matter) any longer and the usual mixture of camellia and mushroom cap paste doesn’t appear to work on Gods who rot anything organic he touches, including the best medicine the cult has to offer. Lambert inhales deeply and tries so very hard for their hands not to appear antsy, (another failure, mind you, because even when they’re upset with him do they find it incredibly difficult to wear a neutral persona around the God of Death. Especially one they just screamed at hours prior. It’s fine.)
“I’ll see what I can do. Here, sit back.” They move past him and assume the role they’ve been practicing at the healing bay. Personal feelings later. They set the pillows up for him to lounge on, and gesture for him to lean back. He doesn’t, and Lambert directs their attention to the chest. “I might have something magical that can help with pain. I can’t guarantee it’ll be anything-”
“Not that kind of pain.” Narinder interrupts. He looks uncomfortable still, drawing himself closer to sit cross legged. “Sit on the bed. Give me your hand.”
The sheep looks at him like he grew a second head. “…Are you going to bite it? Break my fingers?”
“Your hand.” He extends his own, palm facing upwards.
...Right. Healing through touch. That thing. Right. Sure. It’s a trap. They know it’s a trap. Lambert sits down on the bed anyway, an arm’s length away, their own legs crossed. He waits for their hovering hand to settle into his own. They let theirs weigh into his hand, and his fingers mold around theirs with little pressure. Narinder’s gaze is locked on their fingers. He says and does nothing.
He looks vulnerable here, they think. Injured, tired, robes down his shoulders with fur tousled and uncombed like he’s been pulling at a few spots in stress. They can’t tell if it’s irritation or exhaustion that’s more prevalent in his face, or if it’s anxiety or something else that has his tail flicking in thought. (As poorly as he looks, they can’t imagine they look any better.)
He is calmer then they are, and it’s unnerving. Narinder’s thumb presses into the palm of their hand and he frowns a little like it was the wrong thing to do.
Lambert’s other hand curls into their lap. “What are you doing?”
His ear flicks. “Remembering how this works.”
His tail almost hits their knee. He’s still looking downwards. Lambert keeps their back straight and opts to look at their own reflection in the broken mirror.
Someone is going to have to speak first, and more than likely it’s going to be them.
“I was serious about you staying in this room now that yours is compromised.” They start. They feel their hand shift as it’s gently turned over, and he presses between their fingertips, but does not turn away from the mirror. Touch adverse as he may be, they’ve learned not to take that control away from him when he does.
(The White Eyed monster held them just as gently, but when their head is turned away, Lambert sees his reflection’s pupils flit up to their face briefly before returning downwards.)
His hands are warm. Lambert is careful not to move. “I can have something built somewhere else for you in the meantime, since I guess you’ve outgrown the one you’re in. Or you can stay, but I can’t guarantee it will be safe from your siblings. I thought putting them on the opposite side of the cult grounds would help with...distance.”
He says nothing, brows furrowed in focus. He manually separates their fingers like they are something delicate.
“I don’t know what they wanted when they were interrogating you, but I’ll admit I was…panicking when I brought you back to the village.” Lambert eyes the cracks in old wooden walls peeking out from their bedroom banners while they shift uncomfortably. “I wasn’t able to be discreet. That is my fault. It’s only fair, and safer you have somewhere to hide away from them. You still need to recover, and it’s nicer in here-”
“I’m sorry.”
They stop. The Lamb’s form freezes. Slowly, steadily, their head turns like stone to him. “…What?”
Narinder’s eyes lift from their hands; his ring finger wraps around their own, and that appears to be good enough. “I’m sorry.”
The silence isn’t ringing nor is it heavy like before. It is light, and there’s a fluttering in their upturned ears. Quiet enough to hear the candle burn from across the room, and the branches bristle in the wind outside. Lambert stares at him, and they do so until several beats pass to where Narinder has been waiting patiently. His tail flicks count the seconds; one, two, three.
Lambert’s voice is a whisper. “…For what?”
“…Almost everything. I am-” He sucks in a breath. “I am angry with you. I am not sorry for my anger at your betrayal.” He exhales, slowly. “But I never wanted you to have this amount of suffering.”
The warmth from their hand is starting to burn. It creeps up into their face, beneath their eyes and to their ears and down their neck. It doesn’t feel like embarrassment, it feels like they’re dreaming. Their free hand raises to touch his forehead. “Gods can’t get feverish…but you lost a lot of blood, and I know you feel the deaths of the sick. You should take some rest-”
He cranes away from it, and the finger wrapped around theirs tightens. “Listen to me.”
No, it’s not making sense. This is not reality. Lambert pulls their hand back just as their face twists into confusion. “You’re a walking contradiction…You’re angry because you’re not getting what you wanted as a god-”
“I’m angry because the one person I trusted beyond anyone else betrayed me, stole my power, ruined my revenge and has committed me to a life far from what I had spent over a thousand years hoping for, revives my tormentors and bleats foolishness and I am angry and I still do not hate you.” The hand around theirs tightens enough it shakes. Narinder’s teeth grits. “I have tried. I have desperately tried.”
Hesitation. Lambert’s brows furrow. “You still want to kill me.”
“I don’t want you erased.” Narinder speaks hushed, whisper loud in a quiet room. It is not wavering, it is firm, almost rehearsed. “I need you dead. There is a difference. Disagree with me, fight with me and call me a hypocrite. I don’t care.”
“…I don’t understand.” Their voice trails, ears raised. “You make no sense.”
“I could be livid with you until the end of eternity and I would still do it again." His grip tightens." You say you hate this, but this is all I have left. You’re-” He cuts himself off suddenly, swallows, and the Lamb's eyes start to widen further. The hand that’s intertwined with their own fidgets, and Narinder looks simultaneously deeply uncomfortable, disturbed, and resigned.“ One day, I will kill you. I want no one else to kill you. I need you to exist. I will not give up what I want, but I will not sacrifice your existence to obtain it. I still need you dead. I am angry with you, and I still want not your suffering-”
He cuts himself off again, struggling, and the God of Death murmurs a curse under his breath.
In this moment, Narinder doesn’t appear godly at all. “I am…trying to explain to you things that I myself do not yet understand.”
The fingers wrapped around them are hurting a little. They won’t tell him he’s holding the wrong one. “What do you want from me, Narinder?”
“…Patience.” He answers. “ I do not have an explanation as to why it’s impossible for me to hate you. I only know that I have tried, I have failed, and pretending no longer saves me. I give in.” The God of Death stares at their hands. He exhales, it sounds like release and relief in his breath. “I give in. You win. Relish in your victory.”
Lambert watches him, fur sticking on it’s end, the third eye watching them scan him and it stills when they open their mouth. “I don’t...I don’t feel hated. You’re just…mean and angry. You’re a major jerk. But I don’t feel hated.”
The pause it takes for him to answer is almost comical.
“That’s...that’s good. I think.” Narinder’s ring finger squeezes their own. “I’d like to stay your angry friend.”
(There is something otherworldly, they think, beyond their own shocked state and beyond their own emotions, to see the God of Death apologize in a manner that makes them wonder if he’s only learned how to negotiate by watching sinners plea for forgiveness.)
A little bit of madness starts to bubble in their chest. “Ha.”
The laugh is short-lived and out of place. It’s enough to have Narinder glance up from their hands. The Lamb’s face is weird, mouth curling, into a goofy smile that’s all gums and teeth. Narinder’s tail stops in bewilderment.
“My angry, prideful, selfish friend who just so happens to be my patron god.” They have the growing smile of a jester whose head is full of mockery. “My friend who’s baaad at lying, and definitely purrs when he dances because he likes my company, and now can no longer deny it!”
The tenseness in Narinder’s face drops to comedic horror. “I will kick you.”
“My dear friend who gets worried if I’m not sleeping, lets me break into all of his family’s treasuries and finds me simply because he’s bored.” Their grin is uncontainable, their free hand clasping over where theirs interlocked so the cat couldn’t think about getting away. “My lovely friend Nari, who will let me take him fishing, certainly help me do rituals, and help me shear in the summer, right?”
“Do you want me to kill you now? I can kill you now.”
“A mean friend that keeps many secrets.” They jest, leaning forwards enough that it forces his back against the pillow and bedframe. The God of Death looks like he feels every bit of warmth he’s summoned to the Lamb’s face with half of the panic. Revenge is sweet. “Many secrets, even through friends tell each other things.”
“...That’s true.” The God of Death spares awkwardness for another moment before clearing his throat and recollecting himself. Lambert raises an eyebrow as Narinder seems to shed the awkwardness from before and appear as nonchalant and stoic as he usually does. “Well, Lamb...is your day going well?”
They’re stunned mid-thought. “You can’t be serious.”
The cat attempts to clear his throat, trying to look very resigned for someone who was tearing apart his pride a minute ago. “I am.”
“Narinder.”
“I have sat bedridden for nearly a week in agony with nothing but my nightmares to entertain me. I’ve been waiting for a debrief for several days, all of which have held nothing but tedious arguing.” His tone is demanding, stern, but it’s so ridiculous they cannot take it seriously (and they doubt he is either.) “I’m frankly bored. What kind of vessel doesn’t report back to their God?”
“Not funny.” It comes out a half-laugh anyways. Hands pulling back away from his own, the disconnect leaves him sitting useless and them bringing their palms to their face. They press into their eyes where the cat cannot see. Lambert chuckles, and it sounds like relief and grief all the same.
They rub at the skin until their eyelids no longer burn, and sniff when they bring their hands down. He’s still there when they open them. Narinder looks softer, somehow. Lighter. A weight on his consciousness has been lifted, and left behind eyes that reflect the Lamb back better than the mirror could. Mean cat, evil cat, sitting awkwardly across from them with one ear craned towards them as they rubbed their face. It’s all just so funny.
“No, Nari.” They laugh softly, and it almost shakes. “My day didn’t go well.”
They half-expect it with the way his hands never returned to his lap, but it’s still surprising when the cat raises them, stilted and inelegant. He only knows how to better hold them in one hand, but he will learn with both. Narinder swallows. “Come closer. I will forgive your irritating touch for a few minutes-”
They descend before he finishes his sentence. They feel the lump in his throat try to swallow when they wrap their arms around his neck, knees touching his lap, and careful not to press too hard against his chest as the Lamb buries their face into the fabric around his neck.
Narinder does not know how to hug, or at least hug properly, they think. The touch aversion, centuries in isolation and a sour attitude would make one not-so-experienced on the matter. (Also the decayed touch. That too, they guess.) It is undeniably awkward. His arms hover behind their back like wooden poles until he can remember to bend the elbows where they switch places to find grasp. The upper back, side, arms, shoulders, then one presses against the back of the head. He appears to fumble with the location of one hand so much that Lambert almost debates on helping him until it finds their lower back and settles.
This is far more ‘advanced’ than just dancing. He is uncomfortable, notably so, and expected as such for a man who’s giving his first voluntary hug for the first time in over a thousand years. It is, in a way, a sacrifice given to them.
He smells like old blood and the laundry detergent they used to clean his robes. “Do you hate it?”
The body beneath them is warmer than usual. Narinder shifts. “I don’t know yet.”
Skin and fur against their neck from his neck when they adjust. Narinder tenses, and they feel blood rushing beneath the surface. Anxiety? “Does it feel like chains?”
“That’s not it.” He responds quickly. His cheek threatens to brush against their upper wool and horns, accidental surely, until he goes as still not to move. “You are far too overdramatic. My clothing has just been cleaned and you are rubbing your filthy face onto it.”
Well, the moment was nice while it lasted. Lambert wrinkles their nose and makes doubly sure to press it into the fabric fold of his shoulder. “I’m overdramatic? I’m allowed to be. All this trouble and you still want me dead.”
“I’m a reasonable God. I might let you pick the time and place. Maybe décor if you ask nicely.”
“Really?” They snort. The Lamb lifts their face, inches from his own. They are close enough that they see the shrink of his pupils as his eyes grow bigger than they would have thought they would. Oops. They try not to think of his whiskers that press against their face. “Does that mean I can-”
“That’s enough.” He brings up a heavy hand to their shoulder, and promptly shoves Lambert off of him and nearly off the bed.
It’s so abrupt they almost go flying to the floor. Their legs kick as they right themselves back up into sitting position. “HEY! We were having a moment!”
“Your bell was jabbing me.” Narinder’s arms have returned to him. One sits in his lap, the other rubbing one shoulder where their face lied. He’s glaring slightly. Some normality. “Your tail is wagging.”
Heat flares up in their face again. Their hand moves back to calm the damn thing, and find that it was underneath the cloak anyway. Miserable bastard shouldn’t have even been able to see the damn thing. “What? Is that a problem? I think you’re just looking for an excuse to kill me faster.”
“I have many excuses, but a solid one would certainly make things easier.”
“Does your revenge count if I feel like I’m dying?” They jest as they crawl right back up in front of him. Narinder’s eyes narrow, but they’re still trying to be light hearted. “When you were, you know, I felt like I was dying. It physically hurt. It felt like I was the one getting my heart ripped out of my chest. I mean, physically I was fine, but for a moment-” They laugh, pulling at their collar. “Does that count? Am I home free?”
Narinder is dead silent and wide eyed still. His hand has paused where it was rubbing the same cheek.
They made that joke wayyy too soon. “It’s fine. I’m used to dying. That’s why it didn’t take me down. I’m really resilient.”
He’s still staring.
“Bad joke.” Their grin thins. “Sorry.”
“It’s nothing.” His hand drops to his lap. Narinder glances to the window again, and back, where the Lamb’s ears suddenly perk high up in the air when the cat’s gaze does a shameless full body scan. “You still look horrible. Has the flock seen you during your duties like this?”
Ah, right. They don’t remember if they answered that for him earlier. Lambert pulls their legs up to their chest. “Ratau is here. He’s been handling a lot of the more focused Leader duties in my absence, like sermons and the like. I thought it would be better since I was busy caring for you and…I may have caused a scene.” They sound sheepish for something so serious. He raises a brow, and they continue. “…The flock saw me…’upset’. I have been careful to create this perfect image of a Leader for them, but now there are rumors and fear.”
The cat’s ear cranes forward. “Dissention?”
“I don’t know.” They are honest in that, at least. “I cannot read minds anymore, and you were out. I can’t tell who’s just concerned, who’s starting to doubt, and who’s safe. But I haven’t been free to ease minds.” They sigh, heavily. “I wish I could read your mind like the others. Maybe if we could read each other’s, everything would be easier.”
The God of Death’s tail thumps near their leg. “I believe it would only make things more complicated.”
“Yeah, sure. But it’s still useful though.” They stare at the twitching tail, and their hand comes down to catch it without thinking. Months ago they would have been hissed at and cursed through his home’s door. Now he’s just glaring at him with a sour frown across from them in their bed. Crazy. “I’d like to be able to read your siblings, or I need you to. I still haven’t figured out why your brother is so attached to the barn cat.”
“I told you. The Bishops like pets.”
“He was hovering over them in the healing bay. He didn’t want to leave their side.” They add on. Their counterpart’s mouth thins in thought. “It’s…I don’t know, I think I’d find it sweet if I didn’t want to throw Leshy off the cliffside every time I cross paths with him. I can’t deny it’s useful to have a spy on the inside that he might trust, but I can’t tell if he’s trying to indoctrinate them for his own, or if he’s just...attached.” They blow a piece of wool out from their eyes. “He acts like you, sometimes. I think that’s why it’s hard for me to tell.”
It is not intended to be a jab at a sore spot, but Narinder still looks peeved.
Lambert doesn’t seem to notice. Rather, they perk up with a new idea, and tilt their head. “Do you want to stay the night?”
Narinder’s ears shoot straight towards the ceiling. His tail lifts off the bed like a ghost.
“Like I said, your siblings cannot enter here. It would be safe.” They grin. Mentally, they count the extra blankets they have in the chest, and resign themselves to sleeping in their day cloak tonight. “You can have the bed. I’ll sleep in the chair. Or really, I don’t think I’m going to be able to sleep anyways, but that doesn’t mean you can’t crash here until tomorrow so you can recover.”
He looks awkward again. “I’m healing. I don’t need to sleep. I’ve done enough.”
“So? It will be warmer in here than it is out there. It’ll save you a trip in the cold.”
“My robes are unfortunately made out of wool.” One of his ears tilts. “My journal is in my home.”
“…I have an ink and quill here you can borrow?”
Narinder raises an eyebrow.
All toothy smile and hands in their lap, they look nothing like the grief-stricken sheep they’ve been floating around as for the past few days. There they are. “C’mon. You’re already here. It’ll be like…a sleepover?”
It hardly takes a second for recognition to flash across his face. It is a hopeful beat, one where Narinder sighs, adjusts his still disheveled robes and leans backs against the bedframe. He closes his eyes like he is long-overdue for meditation. “It appears I’ve missed a week’s worth of gossip and ugly bleating, and my punishment may be more ugly bleating. Fine. I’ll accept it.”
He hears the Lamb give a very gross snort.
-
It is the steady, humming of a heart beat that wakes him up.
The morning dawn is peeking through their circular window, blue tinted and basking the room in a cool hue. He sits up before his eyes open. For once, his lungs are without blood, his chest does not ache, and his mind does not carry memory of nightmares that teeth and claw at his near non-existent sanity.
There’s weight on him. Partially, that is. Lambert is halfway on the bed, halfway sitting in the chair they dragged from the desk, head slumped with their arms near his mid-section where he rest. There is no memory of them falling asleep, at least not them first. It explains why the covers are pulled up the way they are now, why the Lamb is respectfully besides him with their cloak and bell still worn, and the robes he discarded earlier neatly folded at the foot of the bed in the same fashion they also do.
They’re sleeping very deeply. Snoring lightly, even. It cannot be comfortable, not as much as the bed, but the Lamb sleeps like the dead. It is the most peaceful he has seen them since they left for Anchordeep. It is tranquil, and soft. The wool is messy and bright like moonlight. The God of Death blinks sleep from his eyes, and their soft, drooling face is still bright.
One of their hands is unfurled, resting against his side. A touch they probably aren’t aware of.
The heartbeat is quietly warm in his ears. His pulse is steady.
(The quiet feeling. He recognizes it, the same that brought him sleep and brought him serenity. A drunken night spent on the floor. Switching night watch on crusades, and the other is unaware. The hand he holds reaching besides his bedside in trade for his tail. The bell he listens for, the face in the sea of colors he searches for, among the new overworld he is unfamiliar with, and finds that anchor’s grin. It is easy to find them.)
One hand rises to his chest, and his claws clutch the fabric over the scarring. It does not ache. It does not bleed.
(Where is it? I can’t find it. I can’t find you.)
They don’t stir when Narinder’s hand raises up to their face, and presses his palm to the softness of their cheek, brushing claws up past their hairline. They shift slightly, sighing into his touch. A calmness enters his veins and watches him brush a thumb over their eyes.
(The afterlife is red, purgatory is hellish and they are beneath him. Bloody gurgles spill from their lips when they speak his name.)
Narinder’s hand retracts like he’s been burned.
The humming heartbeat stops. The scar aches.
(They do not have a heartbeat. They do not have a pulse. They will not rise.)
He’s being watched.
A shuddering that sits in his throat. The God of Death’s hand hovers frozen over a peaceful Lamb, claws shaking slightly. Narinder’s head turns slowly to a shadow. Its eye a glowing red against the blue of the room. It’s pupil stays on him.
At the foot of the bed, The Red Crown watches. It is waiting, just as Him.
He feels decay in his blood.
“Crown.” He whispers. Quiet enough not to wake them. His hand splays open. “Come.”
It is silent, and merely a moment. The Red Crown, with a glance to the sleeping vessel on it’s journey, floats simply over to The God of Death’s hand, and lands directly in the center of his palm.
The Red Crown is as light in his hand as the day he was bestowed it. Divine birthright of godhood, stolen and yet settled in his fingers, and yet he feels no different.
The body beside him stirs. Lambert’s mouth moves in the first syllable of his name, and automatically before the shock can even begin to process does his hand move to the space below their jaw and ear, cupping their jaw, finger gracing their eyelids. They fall still. The ache disappears.
The question comes out as a whisper. “…Where is it?”
The Red Crown blinks at him.