The faerie portal opened between the stone walls, carved with long-forgotten scenes and symbols of ancient times.
Koshis’het turned his pale face in its direction. He sensed him even before he appeared, the strong, intoxicating scent of night. His blind eyes couldn’t see the gates open, but the vibration of them doing so made him shiver. So good. Letting out more darkness than they took in. Allowing him to breathe with the world outside.
He knew Lorian would come. He always waited for him with fear and joy. All Ritualists felt his shadows like a caress, like a touch of the void. And that was all that mattered in an eternal night where you could feel the blossoming power of the old gods penetrating every crevice of their bodies, every crack in their souls.
He was taking it from them and replacing it with a familiar darkness.
Koshis’het approached him slowly. He didn’t need to bow or show obedience – he was High Priest, touched by the sacred woods with holy blindness. But he bowed, felt him, saw him in his soul like a black silhouette of shadows.
“A long time,” Koshis’het smiled, his wide mouth showing sharp, very white teeth. His wings spread behind him in the changeling form of respect – white as snow, radiating light in the dark chamber. Normally, priests wore dry veils that covered their entire faces, but in the deep guts of the Temple of the Sacred Forest, such conventions were not necessary. They were naked before the divine prisoners they held within these walls.
He saw in his soul Lorian’s shadow, so beautiful in its purity.
“I wouldn’t say long,” Koshis’het heard a low voice. The voice of someone who would release him from the pressure of the divine presence… very soon. “We are all bound by earthly needs. For me, it was the blink of an eye.”
“For me… an eternity,” Koshis’het whispered, a quiet, sussing sound.
He only heard Lorian chuckle slightly.
Shuddering with the anticipation of not having the terrible stones in his head pressing on his brain, he moved closer to Lorian, and suddenly his fingers touched his skin.
Koshis’het’s blind eyes opened in joy.
“I feel you. You are ready, so eager. They will fill you and fall sleep again,” he murmured. “Give me more of your night and I will open the walls.”
He craved for it, to the life-giving touch of the night. Being drained by ancient power all the time took its toll. This… this would allow him to think clearly again.
Lorian didn’t answer, didn’t seem to react, but after a tense moment a veil of shadows entered Koshis’het’s body. It entered, spread… and pulled. Every nerve in his body was touched by the tantalisingly beautiful night, and Koshis’het’s soul was filled with pure joy, primordial and as old as time. The shadows brimmed in his veins, swelling, taking over and feeding him with Lorian. A beautiful torment. Much tastier than flaming power of the gods.
“You give less and less…” he had to complain. But the darkness was beginning to make itself at home in his flesh, and that would give him more time… and more strength. More patience. And more resilience. But with time… crueler hunger too. He felt as need settles in him and makes him an addict to his king’s grace.
“Maybe because I need more. I need all my strength. But I allow it because I know how… you long for it.”
Koshis’het sighed with pleasure. He was already full. Yes… it will be enough. As long as Lorian comes more often. As long as he gives it to him. He will have the power to keep walls closed and realms untouched.
He had forgotten how to do it without it.
“Come,” he said, smiling again, a white smile of snow and blinding light and hellebore petals. “You may enter the chamber. The Ancestors move slowly in my mind. In all our minds. Dig further.”
Lorian didn’t answer again, but Koshis’het felt his trembling dark aura, his endurance in the face of what he was about to do. He felt his hunger, his pain. Delicious. Tasty like sweet and intoxicating liquor. The woods were right. The woods are always right. As their high priest, he always knew that.
The doors to the sacred chambers were never closed, they didn’t need to be. No one in their right mind would enter them if they wanted to live. Even Koshis’het was there once, only once, but he barely survived.
But Lorian will go there and begin to swallow. He will drink it all and fill himself with the energy of eons and empty centuries. And it will hurt him. And Koshis’het will feel less pressure in his head. The gods’ words were cruel. And cut so, so deep.
But Lorian knew that, and for that alone Koshis’het was willing to celebrate him.
*
He felt the rough and coarse texture of the walls. The pores and whorls beneath his fingers seemed to dance and twist, like living bark, like resin-filled flesh. But that was it, wasn’t it? The trap of the forest for the sleeping gods. The poisonous thorn burrowed deep into their minds, making them slumber… but not forever.
Lorian could feel, too, the raw magic beating in the sacred chamber. Pure as the winter night, it was already seeping into his skin, pressing under his nails, into his eyes. When he was weaker, when he didn’t drink enough, it was worse than the pain he felt day and night. A nightmare he had allowed into his life. There were moments when he was sure he wouldn’t survive, when the blood and thoughts and soul particles of the gods would enter him like cruel splinters of fire.
The gods were made of flame and light. Unlike the Fae, who were made of night and winter frost. Their powers clashed, their auras were enemies. Like hunter and prey.
The chamber was drowned in silence and Lorian could hear the cracking of the old wood, the bark moving, the branches creeping and squeezing the gods within. How the old times spoke to him through this ageless space. His shadows loved the green and black darkness of the sacred chamber, a touch of the pure power of the forest that chose him and crowned him. Which loved him. Which desired him.
Slowly, very slowly, Lorian began to release tendrils of darkness. The same ones he had sent to Ain’asel to feel. But now it won’t be a pleasurable, sensual sensation like the first one gave him. It will be an agony.
He felt Koshis’het begin to release the barriers that had sealed the walls. Walls where the forest had kept the gods asleep, tangled in vines and branches. Their flesh had long since become one with the wood, so that they could no longer be seen among the tangles, becoming more leaves and twigs than creatures of blood and bone.
The gods were once blood and bone. Golden blood. Black bones. Sunburnt.
Powerful beyond comprehension.
Lorian felt his nocturnal tendrils reach through the bark and pierce the wood to go deeper, so deep, to penetrate the prison of the gods in search of his painful fulfilment.
And he found it. Deeper than usual, eyes half closed, bodies dripping with liquefied sun and resin.
He pushed. Hard.
His shadows plunged into the mass that was divine flesh. He pushed into their still beating hearts, into their minds.
And it struck him like a sunburst.
The power entered his body with a massive amount and spread over it with the speed of a lightning. He felt as if the gods were trying to scream, to resist him, but they were too weak, too numb… slowly aiming at nothing.
The searing pain flooded him with suffocating heat, taking his nerves hostage and biting them with needles of pure light.
He felt like he was starting to melt inside, but this time it was a thousand times more painful than outside the sacred chamber. Here he witnessed the full power of the Ascended Ones. He absorbed it all like a poison, allowing it to fill him with power, taking away his mind and soul.
He couldn’t even scream. His lungs were on fire. His mouth was melting.
He hated it. And he loved it. Loved it so much when the pure power attacked his senses and gave itself to him on a plate. And he devoured it, hungrily. He hated the pain that blinded him to his own thoughts.
But… the gods grew weaker each time he did it.
One day they will give him everything.
And he will have them all in him. No more pain.
When the vessel comes. When he gives his life and his power on an altar of dark future, which will belong to the feykind.
His darkness drank the flames, his body absorbed the heat and he screamed within. He allowed the gods to scream as well.
Their mute, unconscious scream inside his head, silencing his own.