Chapter Text
The One Who Waits, Narinder, the god of death, screamed in fury when the Lamb spared him. The Lamb had killed Aym and Baal, his kits, had stolen his crown, his very divinity itself, and now they were subjecting him to the worst possible indignity. Between enslavement in a cult that should have been his, servitude to his usurper, to the one he had trusted who had betrayed him, and death, he would have chosen death in a heartbeat.
And yet he was forced to live. He appeared in the land of the living for the first time in a thousand years alone, without the kits he had wanted to introduce to that world, that he had promised he would share his first meal with, that had been his only comfort for the last thousand years of solitude. Narinder screamed again in fury, in agony, as he collapsed on the stone of the circle, his lungs seizing from the need to breathe when he didn’t know how. There was a pounding in his ears, an unfamiliar noise with an unfamiliar rhythm as he choked and curled into a ball on the cold stone, only for somebody to rest a hand on his back.
Narinder lashed out, could only lash out, because he had just lost everything, and he raked his claws across the Lamb’s face before they could pull away. That was a small vindication, even if Narinder could see the gashes already healing only a second later. The Lamb, for their part, did not seem to be perturbed by this and Nardiner could only wish he’d thought to go for their eyes, but nonetheless the Lamb crouched down in front of the heaving form of their former god and offered him a smile. Narinder wanted to cut it from their face, wanted to mutilate them the way they had mutilated him, trapping him in a mortal form like he was nothing.
“You’re alright, my lord. If you stop fighting it you’ll breathe automatically, your body will know how to do it,” the Lamb told him gently and all Narinder’s fur stood on end, but all he could do was hiss violently. The Lamb at least didn’t try to touch him again and that was the only saving grace, because Narinder found, horribly, that they were right. He’d been so distracted by them that he’d stopped paying attention to his seizing lungs and they’d started breathing on their own, although that same noise still pounded rhythmically in his ears.
“Slay me!” Narinder snarled, “Do what you should have done! Finish what you started, coward!”
The Lamb blinked at him, like he’d just suggested something totally absurd, but then shook their head. “You started it,” they said patiently, “I served you faithfully and you turned around and tried to kill me, after everything. I wasn’t the one who started this, my lord.”
Narinder stared at them blankly for so long they started to look nervous, “Are–are you stupid?” he finally asked and they just blinked at him in surprise.
“No?” they told him after a moment.
“You are stupid!” Narinder hissed, “I had to kill you! That was part of the ritual needed to break the chains, but had you not already died a hundred times before that and I resurrected you every time? You really thought I’d have wasted my own most faithful follower?!”
Again the Lamb stared at him blankly before they gave him an awkward smile, “In my defense,” they said in a light tone of voice, “You said nothing of the sort and sacrifices have always seemed awfully…permanent.”
“If you had done as I suggested and sacrificed followers when it would be to your benefit you would know they can be resurrected, idiot!” Narinder snarled back, pushing himself up to stand on wobbly legs and scowling down at the rags he was clothed in with disgust.
“My bad,” the Lamb told him woefully, “but I think it’s a little late to take it all back now, I’m so sorry, Nari.”
“Do not speak my name, traitor,” Narinder hissed, digging his claws into his own ragged gray tunic, “You have no right to it.”
“Okay,” the Lamb sighed, their expression still apologetic, “That’s fair, I screwed up, but…you look cold, I can give you new clothes at least.”
Narinder bared his teeth when the Lamb produced one of the red garbs that his cultists wore, “I would rather freeze to death than wear the uniform of my own servants.”
The Lamb just let out a sigh and tucked the red robe away, nodding gently, “Okay, maybe I can get you a spare blanket. Are you hungry? You must be, you haven’t eaten in a thousand years.”
The question brought Narinder up short, because the pit in his stomach might have been hunger, but…he couldn’t, he couldn’t eat, not when he had promised to share the first meal with Baal and Aym. “No,” he growled almost sullenly, looking down at the ground, unable to look at the Lamb when pain twisted in his chest like a python curled around his heart, crushing it. A heart that beat for the first time in almost three thousand years, if his best guess about the pounding noise in his ears was right. It should not beat, it should be dead, like all the things he had thought he was about to have when the Lamb defeated Shamura, all the things he had longed for for centuries, now just so much ash. He didn’t want the Lamb to see that pain, that weakness, on his face, so he looked away.
“Come on then, maybe…maybe you should rest, just so you can settle in a little. I had a room prepared in the temple for you before…well everything, although it might be a little big for you now,” the Lamb chattered as they walked around behind him and reached out like they were going to push him forward. Narinder started walking just so they wouldn’t touch him, and they didn’t once it seemed he didn’t need to be forced. Instead they skipped back around him to lead from the front now that he was moving and, with nowhere else to go, Narinder followed.
Now that the immediate panic was subsiding, even if it was just shifting into a new dread that pooled in his gut, Narinder was overwhelmed. He had seen the living world through the eye of the crown, but the view had been dulled, being there now in person was so…colorful, loud, alive. There were cultists all over the place, talking to each other, praying, whistling while they swung axes into trees or picks into stone. There was so much noise . Narinder could already feel a pain in his head, building behind his eyes, and all he wanted to do was escape. He didn’t want to go back to the land of the dead, he would never wish for such a thing, would never wish for his chains back, but…he did want to rest, to…to catch his breath, so he might feel less overloaded. The Lamb led him back to the temple, then took him through the silent empty building to a space behind the altar where a door was cleverly concealed.
The Lamb rummaged around in the pockets of their fleece before producing a key and fitting it into the door’s lock. They opened the door and gestured for Narinder to step inside, which he did just to be out of their wretched presence. “This is your room,” the Lamb said kindly, “I’ll have food brought for you in a few hours, and see about getting something more...appropriate…for you to wear.”
“Begone, traitor,” Narinder snapped and the Lamb raised their hands in surrender as they rested the key on a shelf that was attached to the wall near the door and then turned to leave, shutting the door behind them. Narinder immediately locked the deadbolt on the door and then turned around, examining the room.
He had thought, even back when he was chained, that the Lamb had constructed a cult that was, if not quite grand, then at least dignified. Before he’d been betrayed the first time, Narinder’s temple had been a sight to behold, as were his quarters back then. This was pitiful in comparison, but it was still better than a hovel. The room was indeed large, with high ceilings and a bed that was ridiculously huge for his new body. The bedclothes were blood red silk sheets with a white and red bedspread, like the robes he had worn before. Above the carved wooden headboard was a round stained glass window, showing the red crown with its eye wide open. There was a desk and chair as well as several tall shelves full of books and a gold embossed chest that sat at the foot of the bed, all far too large for him now.
Narinder looked at the bed with distaste and instead opted to sit on the elegantly carved wooden chair that sat before the desk. To what he was before, this was pitiful, but now even such a mediocre attempt at extravagance felt like a mockery. Narinder was a god no longer, there was an empty hole in his chest where his power had once burned white hot like a star. He was a mortal, he was nothing.
There was nobody there to see him, so he brought his legs up on the chair’s seat to hold against his chest and wrapped his arms around himself, shivering. It was quieter here, a little less overwhelming, but the quiet was just as bad as the noise had been. He hated the quiet, had hated it for a thousand years. That was what his kits had been for, to chase it out of Narinder’s head, to chatter at him so he wasn’t alone, but they were gone.
He would not see them again.
Listlessly he ran his fingers over one of his wrists. No shackles were there and the feeling of lightness, the lack of the chains always pulling him down, felt surreal, but there was blood matted into his fur. He had blood now, instead of the black ichor that had run through his body before. The flesh had been completely stripped from his arms during the fight with his siblings and it had not healed while he was chained, but it seemed even with the flesh back, the chains had done damage to it, damage that, if it ever healed, would probably scar badly. The wounds stung when he touched them, so he took his hands away. He was in enough pain already, he needn’t inflict more on himself.
For a long while Narinder simply sat on the chair and stared at nothing, mourning all he had lost, all that had gone wrong, and for what? A misunderstanding? If he had assured the Lamb that they would be resurrected after their sacrifice would he still be a god now? Would the Lamb not have betrayed him? Would his kits still live? His chains were gone and yet still he was shackled, still couldn’t be free, not like this. He would never be free would he?
Another shiver went through him and dully Narinder looked over the surface of the far too tall desk. There were stacks of clean parchment and quill pens for writing as well as little pots of ink in a variety of colors, but petty gifts meant nothing to him, they were less than he deserved. All the Lamb’s attempts to win him back over would be fruitless, they had stolen everything he’d ever valued from him for no reason at all, there was no coming back from this.
Again he shivered, but the silence was eating into his head, he hated it. Even just ten minutes of it was too much, far too much. He reached up and pulled on his ears despairingly, but of course it did nothing. The room was too quiet, he needed something else. It had been cold outside though and admittedly Narinder didn’t want to go back out where the cultists might try to talk to him, where he would have to interact with the Lamb, but even so, after a moment of desperate consideration, he was driven to his feet.
Narinder dragged one of the blankets from off the bed, but its size was ridiculous, so he tore it to shreds until he had a section he could wrap around himself without having to drag around something ridiculously huge. He was a little warmer with it hanging from his shoulders, but that still left the larger problem, the silence. Again he was driven forward by it, this time examining the window above the bed. To his relief he found it could be opened, and doing so chased the silence away just a bit…but not enough.
This was going to make him look like a total fool if he fucked it up, but he could hardly be lowlier than he was already, trapped in mortal form, dressed in rags, with tattered bloody wrists and matted fur, so Narinder climbed out the window enough to examine the outer wall of the temple between the window and the roof.
The gap between them wasn’t all that far, and while Narinder wasn’t used to this new body, he’d always been coordinated. He was pretty sure he could make the jump from the sill of the window to the roof…and if he fell? Well maybe he would die and wouldn’t have to worry about any of this nonsense anymore anyway.
Balancing just the right way on the sill so that he’d be able to make a steady jump took some maneuvering and his tail swayed out behind him, adding to his balance, but then he lept, reaching up as he did. He caught onto the roof, only to slip and end up scrabbling at it with his claws, both the roof with his hands and the wall with his feet. After a humiliating moment of flailing, Narinder did manage to pull himself up onto the roof and at the cost of only two knocked down shingles and a bunch of claw marks in the wall. Triumphantly Narinder walked across the roof, careful of its steep slant, and then sat down in a patch of late afternoon sun.
It was…warm. There had been no warmth in the land of the dead. Of course there was no cold either, the land of the dead was desolate in every way and that included in terms of sensory deprivation. The warm sun lessened the pain in his chest just a little, lessened the suffering, and he sat and soaked in it, his ears swiveling to catch all the sounds of birds tittering and cultists working and talking and praying. It was still a little overwhelming, but that was better than the silence. He’d take anything over the deafening silence that had lurked in his realm, waiting until he was forced to send the kits away to perform their duties or for when they slept so it could creep back in like a disease.
Narinder stayed on the roof until long after the sun had set, watching the clouds go from white to orange to pink and the sky to shift along with them until it was dark and the stars came out. It was beautiful and it hurt, because if the Lamb hadn’t betrayed him he’d have been able to show it to his kits, the way he had wanted, the way he had promised.
It got even colder as night fell and soon Narinder was shivering again, even with the blanket over his shoulders…but if he went back inside it would be too quiet. He was at an impasse, either stay outside and freeze or go inside and lose his shit all over again. Maybe…well he was smart, he’d figure out something.
So then he had to decide on how to get back down off the roof, which, as it turned out, was much more challenging than getting up was…even if the solution he ended up with was so simple it was practically a fool’s errand. Narinder hung over the side of the roof and dropped, his hands out and his reflexes sharp, and then caught the sill of the window as he fell. It slammed him into the side of the temple and knocked all the air from his lungs, but he managed not to let go and was able to pull himself back up into his new room. It was just as he’d left it, only the darkness obscured much of it. There had been candles on the shelf where the Lamb had left the key as he recalled and while he had superior night vision to many other creatures, it was imperfect. The candles would be needed if he was to do something about the silence.
He found them easily enough and sat several on the desk once he’d lit them, finding they did illuminate the room well enough for his purposes. Maddeningly, they were scented and when he lit them the smell of herbs suffused the room in moments. It was annoying because it just reminded him of the things he deserved, the things he should have had, would have if he’d not been betrayed, but at the same time it was good, it helped ground him in the sensory input he had lacked for centuries. No smells in the land of the dead other than the scent of dust.
Now for the next step. What that step would be, he wasn’t sure, but Narinder examined his quarters in more detail, this time looking for things he could use. After a moment he came to a conclusion and climbed onto the bed back up to the window, pulling it shut and then winding back and punching the glass with all the strength he could muster in his weak mortal body. The glass shattered, as he had hoped, although it also shredded his arm, which was something he had not anticipated.
No god had ever been cut by broken glass, it had never occurred to him that such a thing even could harm him, and he recoiled, hissing violently as he drew back and clutched his arm to his chest. He’d already had blood matted in his fur, but now it was starting to coat the front of his clothes and seep into the bedclothes as he knelt on the bed. His arm was in agony and he felt the glass cutting into his legs where he knelt on it, which meant he should probably get off the bed.
Once Narinder had retreated he decided to just pull the rest of the bedding off the bed and remove the glass all in one fell swoop. With it on the floor he sat down at the desk and inspected his arm. He could see that there were shards of glass in his wounds and while he didn’t know that much about how mortal injuries healed, he figured having foreign objects imbedded in the wound would impede that, so he painstakingly used his claws to pick the glass out of his arm and then his legs. After that he picked up some of the scraps of the blanket he had shredded and wrapped them around his arm and legs to hopefully stop the bleeding.
At that point he felt there was little else he could do for his arm or legs and more importantly, the silence was grating on him, digging claws into his head, and something needed to be done about it. He wasn’t going to give up on his plan even with his arm shredded from it, so he went over to all the bedding he’d dragged off and selected the largest shards of glass, picking them up carefully now that he knew they could injure him, and then piled them all up and brought them back to the desk. Here he was faced with the problem that was the height of the desk. It was too tall. The solution he found for that was to pull numerous books from the shelves and stack them on the chair so he’d be able to use the desk from atop them. From there he took the remaining shreds of the torn blanket and tore them into even smaller strips.
With all his supplies spread out on the desk before him, Narinder dove fully into his arts and crafts project. When he was done he admired his handiwork with what he felt was well earned pride, then picked up the arrangement, climbed back down off his tower of books to the floor, and brought it back over to the window. After some more finagling he managed to attach his creation to one of the strips of metal that had been between the glass panels in the window and then opened said window before sitting back to admire the finished thing once again, pleased with himself, (even if his arm and legs hurt like mad).
The object he had created consisted of the pieces of glass tied to thin strips of fabric so they hung down close enough to touch each other and clink audibly when they were moved. He’d put it in the window in the hopes that the breeze would move through it and cause it to tinkle and he grinned in satisfaction when he found it worked. He listened to his device tinkle for a few minutes, only to be distracted when he heard the jingling of a bell.
“Nar–I mean, my lord?” came a voice from the other side of the door, much to Narinder’s displeasure.
“Begone,” Narinder responded, making no move to get up from the bed, his ears pressing flat against his skull in annoyance.
“Are you okay? Somebody said they thought they heard a crash from the temple,” the Lamb asked, their voice filled with concern that made fury burn hot in Narinder’s stomach. Where did they get off being concerned for him? They had betrayed him, had forsaken any right to concern over him the moment they had refused to return his crown.
“I said begone!” he yelled and heard the bell jingle on the other side of the door, like the Lamb had taken a step back.
There was a long pause, one that thankfully wasn’t silent thanks to his contraption tinkling in the breeze, then the Lamb responded in a soft, woeful voice, “Alright, my lord, if that’s what you want, then I’ll leave you for the night. I…I brought an extra blanket and a meal, but I’ll leave them outside the door for you…and I’m still looking into finding you something else to wear, so you aren’t dressed in rags. I know that must be troublesome for you.”
Narinder said nothing and he heard a small sigh come from the other side of the door. Good, let them be sad, that was what they deserved. And yet. And yet. For reasons beyond his understand the sound of the Lamb’s despair filled him with guilt. Guilt! As if he had been the one to cause this whole wretched situation. Narinder did his best to crush the feeling with avengeance and did nothing else but listen to the Lamb’s bell jingle as they set their offerings down outside his door and turned to leave. He let them go and waited until he’d heard the front doors of the temple close before he got up and opened his door. As the Lamb had said, there was a bowl of various cooked fishes sitting on the floor with a blanket folded up next to it.
The scent of the food made his stomach turn over in hunger, but while Narinder took the folded up blanket, he left the bowl where it was and shut the door again. This blanket was less opulent a fabric than the one he had shredded, but it was soft and Narinder could tell it would be warm. It was also more of an appropriate size and importantly wasn’t full of broken glass, so Narinder wrapped that one around himself on top of the one he was already draped in, willfully ignoring how the tacky blood that had drenched the front of his tunic made the fabrics stick to his fur, and sat down with his back leaned against the headboard.
It was quiet, but the tinkling sound of his noise-maker kept it from being too much and Narinder dozed for a while, trying to think of nothing if only to have some relief from the anger that was burning him up on the inside. He dozed until the candles he’d lit burned down to nothing and the room was fully dark, by which point he’d flopped over on his back on the stripped bed, looking up at the twinkling stars and trying not to think, not to remember that that too was something he’d wanted to show his kits. The pain in his arm and legs was good for that if nothing else, and when his thoughts started to spiral he pressed his fingers into his wrapped arm until a shock of it shot through him and cleared the smothering despair out of him if only for a moment.
Narinder did this repeatedly: trying not to think, inevitably remembering what should have been, and then clearing out that suffering by causing himself suffering of a different kind until finally he could hold on no longer and fell asleep entirely, only to find that now that he could dream, his dreams were restless.
I did some goofy art for this largely ungoofy chapter, which can be found here.