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Chapter Text

He goes to them in the night, having shed his vestments hours ago, not even bothering to brush his overgrown hair. He knows where they sleep–he even has the keys. But no, it won’t be like that this time. Right now he cannot stand to be the prophet. He feels that if he tries it will break what is left of him. Right now there is nothing left for him to do but slough himself bare. 

So he dresses himself in baggy, faded jeans, a black t-shirt and a grey flannel. It’s an ensemble he wore a hundred times on his pilgrimage with Carpenter, and he braces himself against the pain of that reminder. Even the feeling of their texture on his skin makes him think of that journey, and by extension, of her. But he cannot go down that road, not now. It’s alright, he tells himself. Because now he’s finally going to do something about it.

He runs a hand through the blond curls that now almost reach his collar, which his disciples like to fuss and fawn over and never cut. Long hair befits the image of a high prophet, and he has noted the amusingly macabre possibility that they want to keep it intact to harvest as relics in the future.

He walks in the dark, through the damp chambers of the Paraclete’s Gulch, the very same ones where they were once under siege. Where he once fought side by side with his disciples–and his sister. Down the dripping twists and turns and all too soon he is at their door, breathing hard and raising a timid hand to knock.

Timid–he almost does a double take at the thought that he would be afraid to knock on the door of his disciple. He, the High Prophet Faulkner, who has protected them day and night from the ugly truth, who has been the orchestrator of their delusion, who delivered them in this very place and rose up as their savior. The Prophet of the Trawler-man, the god’s very voice. 

But he catches himself before he can turn and leave. He can’t do this anymore; he has to get away.

He also can’t do it alone. He isn’t strong enough to be alone, and he hates himself for that, and he hates Rane too, but the black venom of that hate isn’t enough to keep him from grasping onto the muddy banks of his mind and dragging himself out of the depths. Faulkner must leave. He will die if he doesn’t.

He needs to find her. And if anyone will help him (and they very well might not) it will be the one who when he asked Can I trust you? looked him deep in his eyes and said With my life.

So Faulkner knocks.

After a minute, in which he is afraid he will have to go back in silence, because there is no way he is knocking again, he hears a shuffling from the other side of the door.

When it creaks open, and Rane is suddenly standing in front of him in the doorway, one hand on the door, and another sleepily rubbing their eyes, Faulkner is struck by how ordinary they look. They are wearing simple grey, fuzzy pajamas, and their hair is mussed, making them seem bewildered and funny-looking. They don’t even have any hooks in their ears, or hanging from their neck.

He could almost love them, like this.

It only lasts a moment, before they snap to attention, and their eyes fill with the sight and subsequent reverence of their High Prophet.

“Fau–High Prophet Faulkner,” they start, before taking in his clothes. There is something indecipherable in their eyes now, something he is sure he does not want to see. Disappointment? Unease?

This is it. The psychological moment. The words come out broken, hoarse, stumbling halfway through hesitation. 

“Can you drive?”

He sees the flash of surprise, and their own moment of hesitation. He wonders if this is the end of him, because if Rane no longer believes in him, well, none of the disciples will. Rane has been his right hand, his voice and support. They turn from him, the rest of his desperate, hungry children will follow. He knows how easily they turn.

He almost welcomes that end.

But then Rane says, “Yes, of course, High Prophet. Let me just grab my keys.”

He shouldn’t be surprised, and that surprise shouldn’t turn to mild disappointment as well as relief.

Of course they would go, because it’s their prophet asking this of them. And Sibling Rane would do anything–would well nigh goddamn kill themselves if he asked them to.

As he waits, it is this that suddenly makes him tired, the kind of bone-deep soul-exhaustion that he has been feeling so often lately. He almost leaves them rummaging around and goes back to bed.

But then they are at the door again, and the keys are in their hand, and they have changed into a simple black t-shirt and grey slacks. He notices with muted amusement that they have forgotten–or simply haven’t bothered–to brush their hair.

Only the best for their prophet, he thinks, and he doesn’t care that it’s not fair and that he’s being an asshole, because his resentment is already so thick it coats his throat.

He knows his mingled hatred and pity for the disciples is pathetic and misplaced self-loathing, but he does not try and staunch it. Hating them instead of himself is his last line of defense. And he will wear it down until the loathing is pounding on the doors of his fortress.

And Rane takes his hand, of all things, and they lead him along the halls of the Gulch with a firm and gently guiding hand–as if they know it better–until they have reached the outside without anyone being the wiser.

He is almost home free, he lies to himself. 

It’s raining, and their shoes squelch in the grass as they approach Rane’s car. It is a truck, utilitarian and obliging and simple, just like them. It is clean, except for where the tires are splattered with mud.

When they get into the car, Rane stops, keys in hand, hovering over the ignition. They turn to him, and he feels dread like a cold, wet towel slapped onto his neck. He should have known this was too good to be true.

“Where are we going, High Prophet?”

He hesitates, and something hardens in their eyes, and their hand is no longer hovering. Everything stops. They aren’t going to let him do this. He curses them in his mind. They would never let him run away.

“We’re going to find her, sibling.”

Their eyes widen. “Who?”

Faulkner feels something close over his throat when he replies, “The anathema.”

A silence. There is always so much that they don’t say to each other. Then, spilling out of him, “We’ve been hunting for too long. I can’t let her go. And sibling,” he leans forward and now he is the prophet again, and he will not let them doubt him, he will do whatever it takes. “When the Trawler-man wants someone dead, you have to kill her yourself.”

And for now, they are satiated.

Chapter Text

It was a beautiful day. That was the truth of it, and one that Val narrated to herself and to all those listening in, back home in Glottage. It was a beautiful day, and Val was walking towards Nesh.

The sky was clear and empty, and everything shone, and Val was a limitless thing. She thought to herself often these days about the nature of limitation, on how limited the woman whose body she inhabited had been. So very limited that ultimately all she could do was become something else.

She could do anything now. She could kill her mother over and over again, in new and interesting and increasingly ugly ways. The girl she had been was gone, and along with her so many feelings and memories had vanished as well, but Val exulted in the knowledge that she could avenge that girl as many times as would satisfy her. 

Val thought about the other gods of the Peninsula and how they were satiated. Throwing people into electric dams or tying them to trains with prayer marks burned into their flesh appeased the Saint Electric, and Val wondered now if she would ever be sacrificed to in the same way. What could make her satisfied? Perhaps the sacrifices would have to all become her mother. Yes, that would be lovely.

There was power in being limitless that Val had not even explored. When she told the woodsman that he would find riches in a tree, she felt so unexpectedly pleased. What a marvelous thing it was to know that being limitless did not simply mean that you could wreak glorious havoc on those who’d wronged you (alright, and those who merely resembled them as well), it also meant you could give joy and prosperity where you wished it to be. You were the author of everyone’s narrative. You were no longer the one on which things were inscribed–although the markings carved on your skin and tongue still smarted in not-so-distant memory–you were the inscriber.

The girl she was had not been talented, not in anything she’d really wanted to do. Her dancing had been weak and her mother had scorned her singing.

But now if she wanted to sing she could force her voice into place. So she did, raising it beautifully to the empty sky.

She was not just sainted, she was divine. From a foolish mortal bound tightly in the reality others created for her they had shaped something that would rend the firmaments of reality itself, and torture the universe into a form that suited her.

But then she stopped singing, because she came to a place that used to be a town.

As Val gazed and gazed, taking in her fill, staring almost determinedly at this desolation that seemed to stretch eternally into the horizon, she felt herself growing angry. And as she narrated all she saw, for she never forgot that duty, not once, she made herself watch the crows tear at the masses of flesh that had once been so many real people. These people had died buried under the things they had cherished, and the people they had loved. 

She spoke, she bore witness until she was sure she should be hoarse, but that was no longer an escape for her. She dared them to question her anger, because surely she would have been kinder, or gentler, or even just less clumsy with her cruelty. And even if it wasn’t true that she would have been better, why did it follow that she couldn’t hate them for this? She was a god. She wasn’t a person any longer, but they were. They had inflicted this on other human beings, and people should be kinder than the gods that eat them. 

Those self-indulgent, willfully blind people that she was speaking to did not even see what they had done, and she was sure that what she was saying would not reach them. Nothing would. They refused to even look at what they had ordered.

What a terrible thing, to be monstrous and not even know it.

Chapter Text

They stopped at a gas station, and Faulkner told them to wait in the car while he went to buy them some snacks. Rane knew without having to be told why they couldn’t both go in; though the rest stop seemed mostly empty, they’d come too far to abandon the caution necessary to survive as members of an illegal faith. It only took one straggler breaking in and finding their prayer marks and copies of the Silt Verses to incriminate them.

As soon as he was out of sight, Rane opened their bag and pulled out a small square of wood.

Aside from emergency cash, fake identification, and chalk for prayer marks, Rane had brought one more thing with them, something that Faulkner didn’t know about. A few weeks ago they had commissioned the artist who had painted the mural of their miraculous and divinely ordained victory at the Paraclete’s Gulch to create for them something much smaller, and yet, to them, much more precious. 

It was a tiny icon, painted (although the technical term for creating them was “writing an icon,” not painting, as if they were each a story rather than art) in a style that was specific to a very old sect of the Parish. Though so many precious relics and sanctified items had been destroyed by the government, there were a few similar images on small, square pieces of wood that had survived. 

They were mostly scenes of various holy days; there was one that depicted the story of the Fiddler’s Crab Feast. There were a couple with full body portraits of long dead Katabasians, mostly written posthumously for a particularly notable figure, but Rane didn’t mind that this one didn’t fit that death-mask mold. This icon was tiny, small enough to fit snugly in their palm, and it was of their beloved High Prophet. 

It depicted him standing in the river, which was indeed rising, flowing upward around his slender form. He wore the Katabasian’s vestments, with the slight differences that his Faulknerian disciples had thought would befit someone of his unique office. They were white, and trailing, but unlike in real life, they fit him perfectly. They did not engulf him or drag upon the floor in the way that Rane always found slightly irksome, although they knew it was a ridiculous thing to be bothered by (It was probably just their imagination, but sometimes they got the vague impression that it was the robes wearing Faulkner, rather than the other way around). His lovely curls brushed his collarbone angelically, and his golden head was adorned by the crown of kelp. Around his neck hung a silver fishing hook, and the fingers of his right hand curled around another. Tucked into the crook of his left arm was a sleek black copy of the Silt Verses, not battered or hidden within the dust jacket of another book, but proudly displaying its true identity for all to see. Around him the Trawler-man’s scuttling crab-angels were gathered, as if congregating to hear his good Word. Icon-Faulkner’s mouth was partially open; his face was fixed in an expression soft and serene. 

More and more, it looked nothing like him. They knew that surely he must have once looked like this, because when Rane closed their eyes they could still see the image of him as he should be. But these days they couldn’t recognize who they saw when their eyes opened on him.

Rane was suddenly struck with the thought that they didn’t know why they had come with him. Were they just letting him run away? They rationalized calmly that all they were doing was letting him get this foolishness out of his system. The two of them would drive for a few days, and they would survive on gas station chips and soda, and they would endure the sight of the Saint Electric’s advertisements and towers until he was sick of them and realized that his place was with his disciples, leading them to the day that the river finally rose and overtook everything. Their prophet had taken leave of his senses somewhat, but the damage was not irreversible. Rane could fix this, they just had to meet him where he was. And when the moment came that Faulkner decided to turn back to the Gulch, Rane would praise him and they would praise the Trawler-man, and they would laugh that they had ever been afraid. And if Faulkner truly knew where the Anathema was, then they would be solving two problems at once. Rane would enjoy destroying her, the source of so much of his strife and distraction.

High Prophet Faulkner would be as his icon portrayed him once again.

When they looked back down at it, they saw that there was a single rivulet running down from his tiny painted eye.

Then they blinked, and it was gone.

Chapter Text

A god should not be able to avert their eyes.

So maybe it was a testament to the lingering mortality inside her that she didn’t want to look.

She remembers when the light did not come from her own burning. She remembers the sun’s rays coating her with only sweetness and no pain. The buttery, full-meal feeling of lying stretched under its warm stare. 

Sometimes, hazily, it comes to her: memories of crushing grass under bare feet, sliding against slippery, water-smooth rocks in a lake. 

The memories become harder and harder to focus on, and they are so, so very ancient that she isn’t even sure they are real. They feel located somewhere near her heart, if something like a heart still exists in her.

She smarts at the touch of the loss. And when the sweet, soft images slip away again, and there is nothing but the burning after all, it is worse in their absence of the memory. She is sure there was something there and it has gone, and it hurts hurts hurts and she screams and lashes out with sharp and all-consuming lightning. She opens her gaping, holy maw to swallow another and another sacrifice. She feeds and she burns, and because of this the world keeps turning.

Val gasped. Those thoughts–those memories were wholly unfamiliar. They were not hers, she was sure of that. She thought for a moment they were her own coming back to her, but the alienness of them felt stark and hot as the old brand against her tongue. She looked up, gaping with the pain that was for once not her own, and saw again the desolation of Sutler’s Weald. Once more it was too much, and against her better judgment, she closed her eyes.

She remembers before the darkness, and she remembers when the darkness descended. It did not seem like a catastrophe at first, only as it stretched on. But the ancient fear came true, that fear is so old it is stamped into the bones of mortals even though they do not know it. The sun did not come up.

They did not want to believe it. Surely it would return as it always had, every morning since the beginning of time. It was late, perhaps, but it had been late before. This suffocating night could not last forever. 

Slowly, they were all of them proven wrong. Every rationale, every reassurance whispered from friend to friend or parent to child was struck down as the hours of darkness scraped painfully by. The black and blue and deep purples that meshed together to make this eternal night did not lighten their hues.

The sun did not come up.

The wailing began then. The endless fear and lamentation. The light and warmth had abandoned them. The end had come.

She recalls the moment, a full nine days after the sun last dipped low into the ocean, never to return, that she finally lost all hope. She doesn’t think she even cried; there is not even the warmth of tears on her cheeks in her memory. The loss of hope leaves her cold with certainty and despair, and then determination. If something did not change, she would never again wake up to the sunshine kissing her face, never lie basking in a glade. She would never run in light, or see a sunset set the sky aflame. 

Death would be preferable.

Perhaps it was that sentiment that drove her from that moment on.

It surprised her when she stood, because her legs moved almost of their own accord, and she was so used now to being in control.

She knew who it was. She could feel it in her bones where it was coming from, like a fiery beacon guiding her home.

Home. What was the last thing she could remember, the memory that came up after all the things she’d forgotten? So much was lost, she could only think in fragments. And so these visions, in a way, felt just like her own mind. Perhaps she really was divine, now.

She needed to go back. This was the only way. Being a battle-saint could wait, for the moment. There would be time for it later–of course the moment that she entered Nesh the war would be over–but right now there was only the need to find out. She needed to go home, and maybe that way she could find her mother without the help of the sickening people she worked for. Maybe she didn’t need them for her ascension, for her revenge.

Val turned her back on Sutler’s Weald and made her way towards the tall pylons of home.

Chapter Text

They drove for a long time without speaking. Occasionally one or the other would express the need to go to the bathroom or restock on water and food, and they would pull into another rest stop, always careful to stash any incriminating objects–hooked necklaces or earrings, copies of the silt verses, even the chalk they used to draw out prayer marks could be used against them. And Rane’s most beloved possession, the icon that would not only condemn them both to death if found, but would identify Faulkner to the authorities as the Trawler-man’s prophet.

The icon had not stopped crying. 

Every time Rane pulled it out to venerate when Faulkner wasn’t looking, and over time, out of a paranoia that it would soak through their bag, which it strangely never did, they would gaze at the river water leaving its scummy tracks down his painted, placid face and down his robes.

It was surely a miracle. Surely. They ought to praise the glory of the River, and perhaps even finally show it to Faulkner with tears of joy in their eyes. Instead, when they looked at it, the hair on their arms rose straight up. 

Still, something about it, as repellent as it felt, made them keep pulling it out to stare at whenever Faulkner’s back was turned.

When they slept, Rane lay curled at the foot of their prophet, as was right and proper, in the pulled out backseat of the truck. And increasingly, a cold dread began to stir in them.

Because as the nights stretched on, and the days of driving began to feel like a new, nomadic normal, Rane would lie awake, equal parts poison and tenderness pooling in their heart. They had been cursed with insomnia since childhood, and now they liked to look at Faulkner sleeping. Often his head would be hidden in his arm, or his whole body turned on his side so they could not gaze upon him. But sometimes he would shift, and they would see his face, lips gently parted in sleep, serene and slackened and still somehow, sad. 

Why was he sad? They supposed in some ways that look befitted someone with his burden, someone who had to guide and care for so many faithful with a gentle but firm hand. A man who had so much weight on his shoulders would not always have a smile on his face, they tried to reason. 

And still, on a baser level, it irked them. Why was he being such a coward? Why could this divine man, this River-sent messenger of Fury and Exultation, the one who was to bring about the wrath of the Wither-tide itself, why did he insist on this sullenness? Why had he asked this of them? Something horrible crept into their mind as they looked at his holy form that was being besmirched by everyday clothes. 

Because they could almost see him now and not recognize who he was.

A thousand times they wished they had shut the door in his face–gently, always gently–and prayed that he would come to his senses by morning.

But what if he had set out alone? And more than anything, this made the abyss open under their feet. They thought about waking up to a world where the High Prophet Faulkner was nowhere to be found, a world where they knew he had abandoned them. Rane felt a shudder go through their body at just the thought, and they thanked the mercy of the Trawler-man that they were with him now.

They studied him like a starving man devouring his fill, until despite themselves, their heavy eyes drooped shut.

They were in a garden. The garden, where the Trawler-man resided. And in it was standing their prophet. He was…holding something, throwing small, red chunks of meat into the water, and as he stood, ankles-deep, chittering things were clustering at his feet. He was feeding them. They looked into his eyes, and found they could hardly stand to stare at him, because there was light emanating from behind his head. Or was it coming from his head? Through the hot tears running down their face they saw that he, too, was crying, but his tears were dark and scummy, just like the accursed image of him they carried, and he was beaming at them, and beaming at the hungry things at his feet, and although he was smiling widely enough to split his skin, his eyes were the deepest, most terrible pools of nothingness that they had ever seen—

“Rane!”

Hark! The voice of their prophet came to them from the sky rather than from his mouth, and they were pierced through the heart. 

“Rane!”

They started awake to the sensation of Faulkner, almost nose to nose with them in excitement, tapping their cheek.

“What’s wrong?” Alarm congealed behind their eyes, left over from their dream. 

But his cheeks were flushed and his eyes were dancing, those long curls askew and dipping low over his collarbone–and Rane took him in, looking him full in the face for the first time while he was awake in a long time. It had never seemed really quite respectful enough before. But he had freckles sprinkled across his nose, and they noticed that he had a crooked tooth, and half a dimple in his left cheek.

He looked so different from that miniature version of him that they treasured–roughing it in his red flannel and baggy jeans. Yet…something in their chest lightened at the sight. He looked so alive.

“High Prophet?” they sat up and groggily rubbed at their eyes, trying to tamp down any slight annoyance at their sleep being interrupted if they weren’t in any danger.

His mouth quirked upward with a twitch that was almost vicious. 

“I’ve told you,” he said conspiratorially, “it’s a little dangerous to call me that out here, Sibling Rane.”

This was rank hypocrisy, but once again they let it slide. Rane forced a small smile and looked away. “What is it, Faulkner?”

His eyes lit up again, and leaning in, Faulkner says, “We’re almost there, sibling. It’s gotta be only a few days' journey away now.”

Rane sat up straighter. They’d been so angry with him in silence the past week that they had almost forgotten what the whole point of this expedition was. “You know where Anathema Carpenter is?”

They were wide awake now, and everything seemed so clear all of a sudden. No wonder he had been acting so bleak recently, no wonder he looked so impassioned now. He had never been able to forgive himself for what happened to Katabasian Mason and Sister Thurrocks. He would never be able to rest until the anathema was dead.

His mouth twisted again, and they wanted to throw their arms around him and fall at his feet and weep. He was the fury again–finally. He was the searing truth and deep crawling things and the Wither-tide that he had brought about at Bellwethers personified. They looked down, reeling from the intensity of his holy gaze.

“Yes, Rane,” he breathed, in that slow, drawling way of his. “You and I, we’re going to kill her. Don’t worry. But first, there’s a stop we have to make.”

They were so close now, and suddenly Faulkner lifted his hand and almost wonderingly brought his fingertips to the underside of Rane’s chin. They looked deep into those dark eyes, and they saw something horrible there that they could not parse, and they were so very afraid.

But that was the glory of the Trawler-man. This was the nature of his two mouths, one to devour and one to return. It was a privilege to fear the thing you loved.

And then he turned his hand and laid his palm against their eyes to cover them. Rane leaned into his touch as Faulkner brought his lips close to their ear, and whispered what had started all of this.

“Can I trust you?”

What could they do? What could they possibly say besides what they had sworn before?

Chapter Text

She stood tall on a dais in the middle of her village, holding a blazing torch high for all to see. Her face lit up with the beacon, and she saw them whisper to each other.

“Look how she resembles an immortal goddess.”

This only poured hope and courage into her heart, more of that cold certainty and need–and what a horrible thing need was–and she spoke to them. Her voice lifted as if by a deity living in the wind, and it reached every last ear in the village and from there carried even further.

She told them that if the sun would not come up of its own accord, then they would have to force its hand, or coax it back somehow.

“Either we have called a god of darkness upon us, or we have displeased the sun, and must give it an offering. The only way forward is through sacrifice.”

A murmur of assent rippled through the crowd. Sacrifice was not unfamiliar to them. Every year they gave offerings to various ancient gods, hungry beings that descended only to devour and then retreated back into their dark, holy places. If the people were lucky, they would leave something in return.

And so the world kept turning. After all, a god must be fed. Why should now be any different?

She had been a normal girl, once. She had probably loved to dance, and sing, and dream. She had loved the sun. She had made the mistake of being brave for the good of others. Stupid, stupid girl, thought Val, and wondered who she meant.

She’d been walking back towards Glottage for a few days now. At first she’d been able to endure the endless screaming and whining in her ear from the press secretary, but over time it had become irksome and she’d torn it out, stepping on it on her way. There was no need to worry, she’d be back. There was no need to rush when you were all-powerful. And maybe once she’d discovered who she was (because more and more she was convinced these visions from the Saint Electric were the key), then she would go and slaughter the people of the CLS some more until they had to surrender, and her insatiable children would be mollified. And from the ruins and the ashes she would create something much more beautiful and good than what had been. You needed destruction for rebirth, after all.

At first they tried animals, but that was not enough. Desperately, they built a makeshift altar in the town square, an altar to the sky, cobbled together from stone and wood and the things most precious to them that they pulled from their dark houses. She wielded the knife herself, slicing clean deep lines into bleating goats and sheep and cows. 

And when they began to cut human throats, it was her holding the blade as well, on those who walked voluntarily to lay down on cold stone, baring their throats. And when they ran out of those, there were the ones they had to drag and hold, struggling, as the knife came down.

But neither forced or freely shed blood could tempt the sun to rise.

Finally, she stood again on that dais, bloodied and changed, but against all odds, still herself. With the torch blazing she spread her hands and said:

“If the sun is gone forever, then we must turn to something else. We can’t depend on it for light and warmth anymore. We must create a new source.

“Set me alight,” she said, and her face was golden and her obsidian eyes were bright. “I will be reborn as your new sun. Our world will never be forced to stop again. I will make it turn and turn forever.”

She was almost used to the pain of the visions now. It wasn’t like the old pain, and the newness of it was nearly refreshing.

On her way back she’d passed many a cold house where she had murdered her mother. Something was wrong now, it was harder to walk these great distances, it was harder to take pleasure in those memories. More than once she’d had to stop during the day and catch her breath on some stone or on the bank of a forest. Perhaps the visions were taking something out of her.

She tried, just once, to sleep in her mother’s house again. She’d done what she’d always done, but this time it was wrong, somehow. The meticulous cruelty of it that she’d honed by making her way through the little old ladies of the CLS felt empty, and before she knew it she was lashing out, and it was over much more quickly than it ever had been before. By the end she’d just wanted to be done, to not have to look at her anymore. She didn’t even sleep there, just kept walking through the night hours, stumbling and almost frantic.

It was so infuriating. Had she not gone through enough that now she was losing her touch? That the one satisfaction of her life was missing and hollow? The purpose she’d set for herself, to avenge the girl whose shell she wore, was it all for nothing now? Were there limits to her after all?

Chapter Text

A day’s drive from their destination, Faulkner and Rane finally started to relax in each other’s company. They started with little conversations, mentions of the weather, or laughing together about the frivolous things on the radio. Over time they began to speak of other things, for the first time Faulkner asked them about their childhood with sincere interest, and they drank his tidings of youth like sacred wine. Faulkner confided in them about how he came into the faith, his many hours outside the door, refusing to let their obstinate silence cow him, and how long he’d been on testosterone.

He looked at them, then, almost as if he was afraid of them. They’d been quiet as he’d told them, but when their eyes met his they didn’t know what to say. So they just smiled at him, trying to encourage him to talk more. Anything he had to tell them was a gift.

Faulkner hesitated, then said, “You know, Sibling Rane. I’ve…I’ve never liked having hair this long. It reminds me of being…small.”

Rane started. “But–High Prophet, your hair is sacred. It mustn’t be cut until…”

He had turned away, eyes shuttering. “Yes. Yes, I know, Sibling.”

A skein of silence stretched between them until the awkwardness became painful, like a long scrape. Against their better judgement Rane spoke. 

“Would you like me to cut it for you, High Prophet?”

Perhaps that grateful, somewhat guilty shock on his face was worth it, and so was the grin that came after, splitting his freckled face and chapped lips so suddenly it seemed against his will. “Yes, Sibling Rane. That would be a great service to me.”

Some further tension seemed to have broken with that, and as they drove to the nearest secluded copse of trees, there was a slight giddiness fizzling in the air between them. Faulkner even cracked a joke once, and before they could suppress it Rane was chuckling.

Faulkner pulled over near a thicket, trying to hide the car behind the trees. But there was a kind of careless abandon in him now, like he was rushing. Rane wondered how long he had felt like this. And they’d never even guessed. They remembered now moments they’d caught him running his hand through his curls anxiously, or tugging on a stray lock now and then. A nauseous tugged at their insides, but they tried to shake it away. Surely they could not be blamed for seeing him as he should be and not as he was? A prophet should not concern himself with this kind of foolish, human vulnerability. He turned to them again and his eyes were alight, and for the first time Rane saw that shining, fervent look and hated it. How dare he waste his precious fire on something so–mundane and mortal? So base.

But for some reason, Rane continued. They climbed out of the car, and Faulkner allowed them to take him by the hand and lead him to sit on a rock. It was smooth with moss, and with firm hands they held his shoulders and positioned him, facing away from them. They didn’t have any scissors, but in a pinch a pocket knife would have to do.

Faced with their heretical task, the air around them seemed to crystallize. They felt the motes of dust in the air, the sun filtered through the trees sparkling in his light hair and over the skin of his neck. Rane suddenly felt heady and intoxicated. They’d never felt so powerful, so trusted. If they wanted to they could stick the point of this into the side of his throat, and leave him gasping on the forest floor. He must know that. He’d been betrayed before, hadn’t he? But they were his most faithful disciple, and yet he was letting them do this, out of the desire that he feel more himself in his skin. It was beautiful, and terrible, and it felt blasphemous and holy as the dark parts of the river, all on its own.

Rane began, and it was clumsy, but they tried to be gentle, holding each tuft away from his head as they sawed. The knife was sharp enough for carving, so it did its work well. He was still, but they could feel him nearly vibrating under their hands. 

When they were done, they found they were so used to being close to him that they thought nothing of turning him firmly to see their handiwork. 

It was…Bait and Flesh, but it was not pretty. They’d only ever cut their siblings' hair, and even then they’d had scissors. It was so uneven, and pieces of it curled against his face with an almost childish lilt. 

“How is it?”

“....It’s certainly shorter, High Prophet. I’m afraid–”

But he was already reaching up to grasp at it, running his hands through the shorn back. And he was still smiling, beaming. Just like their dream, only it reached his eyes, which were still so full.

Faulkner spent a full two minutes feeling it, and breathing like he hadn’t taken a breath in a long time. When he finally looked up at him, his face was strange.

“Thank you, Rane. I’m…really grateful.”

They only nodded then, but later they would wonder at his informal address, and how much this clumsy haircut seemed to mean to him.

The next time they looked at the icon, they stared at it for a long time. For a split second, they thought they saw its lips twitch.

Chapter Text

They allowed her a day to prepare. The children were sent for hours into the dark woods with torches in order to find branches and sticks to add to the pile. They organized it in the village square, where she had so recently stood in front of them, and, still in that ever-present, smothering darkness, they set up the stake where she would be burned. She spent her day alone inside, for there was nothing outside to comfort her anymore, and she knelt in a dank corner of her cottage and prayed fervently. 

When enough hours passed that they could say it had been a day, a crowd gathered around her house to escort her, with a bumbling, nervous energy that she almost despised, like dogs that couldn’t be sure what to do with a bird they’d caught. It took her a moment, looking out onto those twitching, blurry faces, for her to remember she was doing this to save them. Steeling herself to what was to come, she allowed them to escort her to the elevated stake. 

She smiled, and it was nearly easy. A man led her gently up the steps and with trembling hands, bound her to the stake. The surrounding branches and straw scratched at her legs.

She saw them all looking up at her, waiting armed with blazing torches, so afraid that even this would not work. 

It was only the moment that they tossed the first torch onto the pile that she realized what she had done.

It hit her that the darkness didn’t matter anymore. Who cares if the sun never came up? Or what if it did, what if it came back of its own accord and she was no longer there to cherish it? The gravity of it came thundering into her ears as the fire blazed around her. The heat was so close, and she cringed away from it, but there was nowhere to go. In the last moments before the fire enveloped her, she screamed that she wanted only to live.

She screamed herself hoarse and raw that they untie her and take her down, but there was madness glinting in their eyes now, and she had spilled too much blood for this cause for them to give her the choice to recant at the last moment.

So she burned, and as she burned the people stopped hearing her shrieks from within the inferno. The fire blazed higher and higher, a raging column of light reaching heavenward. The villagers cowered, huddling together, cringing away from the unbearable heat that was filling the sky. 

But the next day, the sun came up, and the world kept turning.

And she lived in their fire, in the torches and their burning things. When the darkness closed in, they offered more sacrifices to her, burning them at the stake in her place. When the centuries passed, and technology became more advanced, she became the lightning they harnessed, and instead of burning they threw people into electric dams or crucified them on pylons or in their towers. All of them were eaten by her, and all of them became her.

And although they stopped hearing it, she never stopped screaming.

Val came out of her final vision screaming too. She roared, pressing her fingers to her temples and squeezing hard. She felt her knees hit the rocky floor, the pebbles and grit pressing deep into them. It didn’t matter, she could speak it away. Right now she wanted to suffer. She screamed until her throat was stripped as raw as the Saint Electric’s had been, the moment she first became who she was now.

“Are you all right, dear?”

Val looked up, her vision dark and blurry. It cleared upon a woman, older, with greying hair and a brown cardigan. She was stooping over her, eyes wide with concern.

She didn’t look very much like her mother, but she would do.

Only, when she opened her mouth to speak those sweet, gruesome words into existence, all she tasted was ash.

“No–” she hissed. “I mean–I don’t want to talk to you. Leave me alone.”

And stumbling with pain, she brushed past her and went on her way.