Chapter Text
Narinder awoke in a frenzy of long limbs and ringing ears. A familiar presence pierced the fog of sleep like a knife through the skull. It called his name in a garbled howl, nails against a window.
The Red Crown screamed.
In all the long years Narinder wore the crown, never once had it done this, but any animal could understand a cry for help when they heard it.
What in all the hells could have possibly happened for the Red Crown to sound the siren… to him?
Narinder was already moving before he could question why he cared. (He cared - He cared - Because he cared -) He didn’t bother putting a shirt on, only shucking on that days pants from off the floor and slipping on his cloak as he ran out the door of his hut.
The world suffocated in silence. Not a single song of night drifted sleepily through the cold air. Not a rustle of falling autumn leaves. Not a murmur of life. The night dripped with darkness. No cloud drifted across the sky, and yet not a single star could claw its way through the black smog. The moon had vanished. No blue saturated the thick decay of light, just black, black, black.
And red.
The temple was bleeding red.
Narinder dashed on light, quick paws towards the pulsing building. The stone and timber moved like muscles under the skin. He almost swore that black eyes blinked open between the seams of wood, only to close before he got a second glance.
It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter. He could worry about it later, right now it didn’t matter.
The Red Crown was screaming.
A scream Narinder knew too well. The scream of a person finding a bloody murder. The scream of a child finding their first taste of what awaited them at the end of the road. The scream of a parent finding their child dead.
Agony.
The heavy doors to the temple were locked. Someone was inside. He knew who it was.
Narinder banged his fist against the wood. “LAMB!” But his bellow dissolved into a hiss; a croak of voiceless nightmares.
“Dammit!” His shoulder slammed into the crack between the two doors.
Pain splintered across his synapses. The chronic pain had returned. Even after almost eighty years, it didn’t leave him. It had been a bad spell. His bones felt brittle and rough, rubbing against his flesh the wrong way with every motion. He cursed his fragile mortal form and hurdled himself against the doors again.
“LAMB!” He seethed. “OPEN THIS DOOR!” He pressed his ear against the crack and heard nothing. A string of eldritch curses flooded his tongue with the taste of blood. “MOSES, I COMMAND YOU OPEN THIS DOOR!”
The next moment he nearly fell into the sanctum. The double doors limply swung open. Instead of the Lamb, he met the single weeping eye of the Red Crown. Its snake-like form struggled in the air, like ink swimming in water. It turned its head towards the room. Narinder followed its gaze.
He couldn’t understand what he was seeing.
Inside the temple was dark, but it glowed red. There were no flames dancing upon the candles, no light through the stained glass, and yet the room was flooded with crimson luminescence. The pews had been shoved against the walls. The stone floor was splattered with drying ichor. A black mess of sigils and circles. As Narinder carefully stepped closer, he could recognize some of it. It was like a resurrection ritual, but twisted. Warped just like the finger painted pictures that built it. He stepped forward until he stood before a circle within a circle, and in it was a coil of small intestine. It still writhed with pumping blood, its tail crawled away from him, it was still attached. A glance to the right revealed the large intestine. To the left, the kidneys, connected by wires of veins and nerves towards its owner. They seeped fluids, but the circles kept it contained.
There was a wet, slick sound. It reminded him of ripping meat. The pungent scent of ichor seeped into the red haze. It attacked his senses, whispered sweet nothings into his ears. His mouth watered for it and his stomach lurched with nausea.
Quiet mutters traipsed across the room to him. At the apex of the circle was the Lamb. Knelt upon the floor with their back to him, red cloak spread around them like a pool of blood. No, not like a pool of blood, an actual pool of blood. Ichor reduced to dregs, pumping mortal crimson as quickly as it bled out.
“Lamb,” he said. They did not seem to hear him.
With his fists trembling at his sides, Narinder stepped onto the sigils. Each fall of a paw was carefully measured, silent except for when he collided with a puddle of wet ichor.
The eye on his forehead remained on the Lamb while his main two eyes swept from side to side. He studied the sigils, he counted the insides. The pancreas, gallbladder, liver, spleen, stomach -
His paw halted in mid-air as he stared at the beating heart placed in the middle of the room, mere inches away. Every hair on his body stood on-end, eyelids peeled back, pupils shivering. As his gaze landed on the halved, breathing lungs, left side and right side in corresponding circles, he felt his own kick with speedy gasps.
He took a deep breath, no matter how his body ached to hyperventilate. Deep breath. In and out. Steady.
It was the moment he walked around the heart that the Lamb finally noted his presence.
“Oh, good,” they smiled at him over their shoulder. Sweet, dark eyes bleeding, unfocused. Ichor stained their teeth. “You’re here!”
The Red Crown slithered behind Narinder, as if to hide from its bearer’s madness.
It sobbed, “Help them, for I cannot. Help them.”
Narinder remained frozen where he stood. “What is the meaning of this?”
Their smile did not waver. “To return the crown to you.”
The silence spliced the smog like lightning.
The Lamb turned back to their task. “I never wanted godhood anyway. You hate me. My god hates me.” A manic, sorrowful chuckle bubbled from their lips along with a burst of ichor. It popped in the corner of their mouth. “My family is dead. I am not who I am. I forget myself. I release my kinds’ killers because I must. Because I seek a way to free myself of my anger.” Their head swiveled back to him with bloody tears staining their fur. “What an absolute joke!”
Narinder flinched. In his peripheral, he saw the Red Crown pin him with a baleful glare.
“A joke,” they repeated. Exhaustion reaped whatever life clung to their eyes.
Narinder’s heart ached.
“Stop this,” he ordered in a cracking voice. “I know not what madness you’ve succumbed to, Lamb, but it ends now.”
“I’m only undoing my mistake. My pledge to never again bow to a god… what a fool.”
He remembered that vow. He remembered how they stood firm before Leshy, righteous in their fury. He remembered how they swore on their life, their kin’s lives, their kind’s lives, and by The One Who Waits, that they would never bow to a god again. How the scar on their neck must have burned. How pleased Narinder was with them at that moment.
It never crossed his mind that it would include him. How he loathed the Lamb for their transgression.
But never once did he think them a fool for it.
The Lamb stood. Narinder fought to stay where he was, but still felt his ears pin to the back of his head. Every muscle in his face went slack when they turned to face him on unsteady hooves.
Their torso had been split open, their skin and muscle now flaps of meat hanging off of them. The ribs had been pulled open like a clamshell. The open cavity spilled out a web of glistening red sinew, along with ropes of gore connecting them to their organs strewn around the room. Ichor stained their white wool, it dripped from their wet hands folded in front of them. Their collar was held in one hand and in the other was a knife.
Sacrifice and slaughterer.
“Just one last piece.” They placed the bloody knife to their throat. It found its resting place against the raised scar.
The bell jingled. Narinder’s fingers twitched as his stare locked on the dim golden bell. How the jovial chime had become a solemn tinkling in that hollowed sanctuary. He had always felt happier when he heard it in his prison. How his unbeating heart had warmed.
He almost didn’t hear them begin their prayer.
It was a prayer to him -
“Stop.”
They continued with fervor.
A sacred prayer -
“This won’t work, Lamb!”
Devotion swelled in Narinder’s lungs like vomit.
A prayer of love everlasting -
“That’s enough! Vessel!”
It had never left him.
A prayer -
“MOSES!”
of sacrifice -
They stopped. An expression of pleasant confusion, followed by a smile. A smile Narinder had not seen for a long time. Not for eighty-odd years, now. A smile that strangled his heart. Open mouthed, wide, brilliant, almost child-like in its wonder.
A tear welled in Moses’ eye, mirrored by the one that dripped down Narinder’s cheek.
“Thank you,” they said softly, genuinely. “I had hoped that would be the last thing I heard.”
Thunder rattled Narinder to his core. “Wait -“
"Amen."
Moses acted faster than Narinder’s eyes could watch. The knife sliced across their throat with godly strength. Thin ichor, red as blood, sprayed across Narinder’s reaching arm. Their head fell backwards, towards the final empty circle.
He could let it land there. He could see if it worked. He could have his crown back. He could be a god again. He could be free of his usurper.
He could lose the Lamb forever.
His hands cradled the severed head high in the air. The Lamb’s beheaded corpse slumped lifelessly against him. The front of his robes quickly grew wet and sticky. The clatter of a knife struck the ground, followed by the gentle cry of a bell as their collar slipped from their fingers.