the path of magic

She’s screaming about how this isn’t how things go, how things were forseen, and Andrey laughs so hard his lip splits. He’s hurting. He’s hurting worse than he ever has before, and laughing is just making it worse.

It’s easy to cross to her, to where she’s trembling under her own weight, and he snags her by the back of her dress like a kitten, wrings the scarlet fabric around his hand and starts hauling her back towards the stairs.

He looks like a man possessed as he does, tilting his head up at Notkin and Khan.

“ Go. I’m coming, I – just go. ”

Notkin takes two steps back towards the wrecked stairs before he reaches to wrap an arm around Khan’s shoulders and hold onto him. There’s blood pouring down his face and it makes his stomach turn a bit.

“ We – we need to get outside. Come on. I think he’s got this. ”

Andrey waits long enough for it to look like they’re going before he continues up the stairs, hauling her behind him with a snarl on his face.

“ You know, Maria – Nina, whoever you are. My brother and I really adored you. We came to this shitty town and built our beautiful tower for you on this pile of shit because we adored you. ”

He continues up, clenching his hands tighter when pain lances up his back.

“ And you know what happened? You tossed us after our tower was build. You didn’t need us to build anything else for you, so you tossed us. And then you got mad when we found other things to bide our time with. Peter fell into drink, I fell into my bar – I met Eva. You know the story. You saw it coming, probably. ”

He flicks his tongue over his teeth, stomping his way to where the damage was the worst, where his beautiful, beloved establishment was burned and ruined and broken, and he hauls her close enough that he can count the stars in her eyes.

“ You shouldn’t have put your hands on Eva Yan. Tell the rest of your family I’ll see them in Hell to do this all over again. ”

And then he’s shoving her against the broken railing until it creaks and breaks beneath her weight.

Khan watched as his sister had a moment of clarity before losing her force of will. The fires were dousing, and  the air hung thick with a mix of smoke and steam. His vision faded.

Notkin pulls on him, telling him they need to get outside. He’s inclined to agree. In his heart, he knows what happens next-

What needs to happen next. He had hesitated in what ruthless things needed to be done, and he wasn’t inclined to stick around, feeling like he had failed in his resolve by offering her a chance to turn back.

The hard truth was that his sister had probably been dead for years now. She started dying when their mother did.

He didn’t know what this would mean for the rest of the family. Or if after this there’d be any place for him in the Crucible.

It didn’t matter.

Notkin pulls insistently, leading Khan the half-blind out of the Broken Heart, traipsing over the wreckage, until the light of day hit again, and the fresh air hit his lungs, forcing him to cough. He gripped onto the rifle he picked up and leaned into the Chief of the Soul-and-a-halves. Dogheads and Souls alike were doing more than the adults to extinguish the flames- but this place was a goner.

Now they waited for Andrey Stamatin to come out. Alone.

She doesn’t get the chance to bite back at him before the threat sinks into her bones and in that moment Maria knows she’s actually going to die. Simon had always told her, her personal imaginary uncle she could only see the silhouette of, that she would never die- she was an anchor point for the magic in the world and the wildness that came with it. Beyond humanity. That’s what he had told his grandchildren.

The Kains never expected to die- and they made no plans to, but she was the first in a generation to fail at that. 

Her ribs cracked open, and the rest of her body followed, plummeting down to the floor of the Broken Heart to a skipping record. The flames rolled over her when she hit, and with a few twitches, the pressure that seemed to cover the entire town was released. 

There were no heiresses left for the blood-soaked heritage.

Elsewhere, the Kains dropped like puppets that lost their strings.

It’s a lot of chaos. The chaos and the fires are throwing Notkin back to the firestarters, the men who walked the streets and set fire to the infected. The screaming doesn’t help throwing him back to that time, to listening to them while he and his Soul-and-a-Halves marked the districts infected, burned or clear.

He’s frozen in place for one, maybe two heartbeats, before the ceiling crashes in and he’s moving. A hop over the balcony railing drops him with a roll to the one below, and he has to sidestep to avoid the flames. He clutches the second railing before there’s a streak of fire past him and it strikes Khan across the face. 

Khan. Khan’s hurt. Khan’s real hurt, by the sound of the impact.

Andrey’s attention is drawn when there’s gunfire and Maria throws flames to the top floor and he realizes there’s fucking children in the building with him. Who the fuck let children in –

Oh. It’s the leader boys, the ones who spent quite a lot of time here before and during the outbreak. He had given them waters and floats and sent them to the second floor.

He’s bleeding everywhere and burning everywhere else, and he points up at them to make them stay put.

“ Go, go, I’ve got this! I can get out! ”

There’s steam hissing upstairs from the fires being fought…and there’s a barrel toppled over on the stairs. “ Break that open! ”

-------------------------------------

There’s a beat and a searing pain as Khan gets struck. He cries out and clutches his burning face, blinded in his left eye. Maybe it was gone for good. But that didn’t matter right now.

In his remaining eye, he saw red. Red flames, red dresses, the scarlet of his own blood, and the Scarlet Mistress before him.

There was a lot to be said about the Kains. And as much as Khan tried to separate himself from them, he was still a Kain. And he was angry. As much as his family styled themselves philosophers and reasoned individuals, there was little anyone could do to stop a vindictive and vicious Kain when they had it out for you- their beastly tempers wouldn’t be satisfied until the thing that wronged them was absolutely destroyed.

Unlike the rest of his family, he thought that things that died should stay dead.

He ran on the other side behind his mother that killed his sister for this. And took his mark with the one good eye.

He cocks the rifle back steady, aiming as he takes knee, and fires. The bullet rips through his sister, and takes the path to the barrel that Stamatin needed opened. The wood explodes, and gallons on gallons of water comes spilling out from the stairway, spilling over to the flames, and starting to hiss and spit as steam forms from the evaporation.

Notkin’s next to him as the floor collapses above. Everything is closing in around them, and he looks at his friend with the good eye. It was just as dangerous to try to get out as it was to stay in. Smoke was rising, and it was hot, but they’d be able to breathe if they kept below. “Maria’s causing this, Chief,“ he coughs, “Dammit! We gotta take her out before she sets more fires!“

-------------------------------------

The bullet pins her again and in a moment of humanity, the girl reaches for the deep, deep hole in her side with a shriek. Water spills out of the barrel and quenches the entire side of the building, leaving a red, sliding stain that refused to be reignited.

Her feet touch the ground then, and drag. She walks on the floor, her arms losing their tensile strength with each shallow step.

“This can’t be... No. Not after everything...”

Another step. Another step, and she collapsed to her knees. This couldn’t be right. No. This is impossible. They needed three mistresses to maintain the balance! And she needed to rule as the balanced darkness and terror in the world- she needed to...

“No...”

She should be dead, with two rifle shots to her and a knife- her skull cracked, but she sat in the middle of the roaring flames and the screams faded. There was no chance at a utopia without them all. She felt her eyes water again through the broken skin.

This was it, then? This was the culmination of her failures to control and transcend into what she was- a creature beyond mortality. The town had rejoiced when she came into her skin, all the hells of the stars and the unexplainable pumping through veins that were too human. Bloody Nina and her were kneeling and bleeding out on this burning floor.

“I am... I didn’t see this. No. This isn’t true. Can’t be true. This isn’t how this ends...”

They had survived the test of the plague.

It couldn’t be how this ends... Killed by her own brother?

How very Kain.

Andrey and Notkin​:

It had been a calculated gamble made in a split second, and he’s never regretted something more in his life than he does right now.

She screams for her mother and bursts at the seams and he’s caught in the thick of it. His body howls in pain, a noise wrenched out of him that he’s never heard himself make before, and he has two very distinct thoughts:

One, that his bar was definitely a goner. And two, that he might be well on his way as well.

She drags him close and it’s like looking in a shattered mirror, like peering into all the broken glass Maria kept around her room. Nina Kaina and Maria Kaina are one and the same in this instant, and Andrey feels himself very, very certain of why people feared the Dark Mistress in town.

He rolls when he’s thrown, feels the table bite into his spine and hisses in pain as he curls on himself for the barest moment. Not long enough to make a difference, just long enough to count the points of pain across his body.

There’s too many to really make sense of, so – he’ll deal with it later. The table overturned nearby is one he and Daniil had been sitting at, with knives scattered around it. He hadn’t bothered to take them home. The bar hadn’t been open, after all.

So he hefts one in his hand and throws it with the finesse and surety of someone who’s done it a million times before.

Notkin, in his infinite wisdom, had been hauling the hoses and the extra barrels of water nearby, pointing out the spigots and fountains that sat around the Broken Heart – and then saw Khan disappear inside and his feet were moving him before he could stop himself.

He pulls his scarf up over his face to block the smoke, calling for Khan when he runs in after him.

Maria-Nina-Someone Kaina is screaming and looks inhuman. His blood runs cold, before he’s grabbing Khan’s shoulder.

“ Do something before this place comes down on top of us! ”

--------------------------------

Khan’s blood runs cold as soon as he hears the voice of his long-dead mother coming out through Maria’s body. It stuns him too as soon as Maria’s body becomes engulfed in flames. Notkin grabs onto his shoulder and exclaims that the building’s going to come down soon. He barks at the soldiers to get lost now that the door was open.

“Notkin, Maria’s crazy, we gotta get Andrey out!“

He takes the rifle ammo he had left from Dankovsky and loads his gun.

He promised everyone that he would deal with his family at some point.

Time was now.

He takes aim at the creature- his own sister- and fires at the creature in her body. The bullet hits with a small thump and a spattering of blood, but she was still standing.

He calls out, “Andrey Stamatin! Get out, I’ll cover you!”

He puts another bullet in the gun and advances a bit forward, calling out:

“This is now a family matter! Maria!”

He cocks the rifle back and gets ready for a second shot. He puts as much firmness into his voice as he can muster, trying to not betray the fact that this was scary. He was aware of what his family was trying to do and separated himself as much as possible.

Maria wasn’t responding. Not really. Nina, or Simon, or maybe both had already taken hold of this vessel.

“Stop this right now! Or I will fire again! This is your last warning, sis!”

He didn’t think his warning would be heeded.

@preciousanarchy/ @bonefoundation​

​-----------------------

The flames were coalescing into shapes and sounds. Rolling faces of the damned of Black Nina pressed against them and added to the noise- screaming. Howling. Black Nina was wild and bled her world regularly for sport. The throats she cut and the lives she stole began to claw at the walls. The Scarlet Mistress was thrown back with the force of the knife, and it snapped her clavicle. 

She reeled like someone on strings, blood soaking into her clothes and dragging behind her. Her long, ribbonlike shawl began to move like the flames and snake over the floor towards Andrey.

“Traitor child of mine.”

And then the crack of the rifle lodged itself in her burning side as the fabric lashed out at Andrey Stamatin over the burning ground. It strained itself, cracking down like a whip to split his skin open and feed the flames. Once, and she misses, striking the ground. Twice, and she splits him across the chest like a razor wire.

She’s bleeding profusely. She should be dead.

A portion of the ceiling collapses and cracks the stage in a roil of screaming flames. 

And she turns her attention to Khan, drawing a line in the air and throwing a red, angry jolt of flame that shatters into cinders on impact with skin and flesh. 

Andrey and Notkin:

Cliche, he knows, but the first thought that rolls through his head is that it’s very, very hot in here. He can’t stay in here very long – he’s going to die if he does.

Fuck, he might die anyways. The rifleman falls when shoved and the sound makes him wince as he presses himself flush to the overturned table he was using as cover.

He hisses when the bottles beside him burst and splash more flame across the floor – he has to pat out his coat, and he can tell he’s more than a little singed. However, he means Maria is on his level, he just has to get her close.

He waits until he can see the flames along her dress, the ones that don’t touch her, before he’s moving. He has maybe – a very hard maybe – one chance to actually do some damage to her before she roasts him alive in his own establishment.

Once she’s close enough, he’s wrapping his hand in her dress (in another time, he’d compliment the scarlet. It’s a lovely color on her, and fittingly the color of the blood she wanted to spill) and dragging her to his level.

“ You’re going to regret making an enemy out of me, Kaina. I was willing to talk before you set my building on fire. ”

And he’s reeling back to headbutt her – he’ll take the personal concussion to catch her off guard – and the crack of their skulls meeting is something viscerally satisfying to him. He’s never more in his element than when he’s in a fight.

The wonder of if someone has noticed the bar in flames is rising, and not unwarranted. A soldier catching fire is enough to catch a lot of attention, particularly from a gaggle of preteens lingering around the edge of the district. Kids with dogs and Dogheads are looking at each other, their temporary truce landing them in good enough company to spend time together.

Notkin’s biting his thumb before he’s looking to a few of his faster boys to go get someone. If the fire spreads, it’ll be bad for the entire district.

——————————-

Khan had arrived to the Broken Heart to continue negotiations with Notkin, and further discuss the situation of the Town with Andrey near- only to find the place burning.

Notkin had arrived before, and already had his Soul-and-a-halves getting someone to help.

But the fire was spreading, and Khan was concerned for anyone inside.

He quickly surveys the area, looking for a solution- the doors would be too hot to open, they needed something to break in-

One of the many water carts was just nearby. He moves to one side of it, starting to push it. “Dogheads! Souls! Help me- we gotta break the door! Help me!“

He’s not paying attention to who actually helps him on the other side- but the cart starts moving with ease, and getting faster. Dogheads and Souls combined rush the cart forward and it tumbles down the stairs.

Heavy wood, water, and gravity make the door fly off. The impact of the cart makes it drift as it passes through, swerving left before hitting the railing and the top heavy barrel pulls the cart over the side, taking one of the lizard panels with it.

Smoke immediately flies outside, and Khan douses his eyes, coughing and sputtering before he gathers himself. He heaves a deep breath and rushes inside, looking for someone to help.

Notkin’s not far behind, and his friend had his boys looking for the hose to bring here.

Khan makes a mental note to build a fire station in town, but his thoughts freeze when he sees soldiers, one of which was on fire… a rifle abandoned on the floor. Then he looked down.

And there was Andrey Stamatin, scorched skin and wild eyes.

And there was Maria Kaina, his sister, standing there with a scarlet dress, screeching like some ungodly banshee, adding an eerie quality to the crackling of flames.

He darts for the gun on the ground, wincing at the heat of the rifle, but powering through it, and levels it at his sister.

She was off. She was so off. He knew this was her doing.

“Maria! What the hell are you doing?!“

-------------------------------------------------

The impact of his skull into her head takes all the sense out of her and replaces it with colors. She's never been hit before, and never has taken a blow so damned hard- she feels something split in her face, and the look she gives is simultaneously shocked, petrified, and in complete disbelief.

He cracked her skull open with force. She's still standing because her feet don't touch the ground.

And the feeling of shock is overtaken with a dark black cloud as she covers her face with both hands and howls like a monster.

"I can't STOP! I CAN'T STOP! MOTHER. MOTHER-"

Her very skin splits like it's infected, and flames burst out of her. A wave of flames exploded from her body, hitting all four walls with a sound like an artillery impact.

She stops screaming abruptly to find the burned hide of Andrey Stamatin with a fist full of flaming fingers and pull him to her by his burning coat.

There's something wrong with her face. It's clogged with such mania and shadow- between the cracks in her skin there's an entirely different person willing itself out and that one had fangs. It didn’t acknowledge Khan as he shouted.

"Get your filthy hands off my daughter."

The air ignites and he can see the flames licking at the roof. A man bolts through the flames, more willing to burn than stand beside her anymore, and Andrey realizes what sort of trouble he’s in.

– and then Maria puts her name in her mouth and Andrey sees red. Not scarlet like her dress, but red like the capes they swung to entice bulls to maul and gore.

“ Don’t even say her name, you fucking witch! You’re the reason she’s gone in the first place! ”

He moves about the time the rifleman fires. The glass in his hand is hefted perfectly aimed for her temple before he’s ducking behind the bar and rolling.

It’s a little known fact that twyrine is extremely flammable. Something about the brewing puts an extra bite into it, and when the bottle shatters, it catches on the flames on the wall and showers the furthest corner of the bar in cinders and flames.

There’s other bottles on the shelf that are weakened from the heat. If they burst, this place would be swallowed in an instant.

It’s on his coat. He’s having to stomp it out even as he tucks himself under a table and shoulders it over to use it for cover.

“ Peter doesn’t fucking need you! And you need me more than you’ll ever know! ” There was once upon a time that both brothers would have waited on her hand and foot. Andrey grew up and got out – Peter’s low moods had spiraled for months until all he had was Andrey and Maria.

And then something had happened and – well, Peter was always his brother, but they weren’t as close as before.

With any luck, someone is going to take note of the soldier in flames breaking through the front door of the Broken Heart and they’ll have someone here before he either suffocates or burns up. 

He throws a glass and it shatters against the balcony, cutting her with glass shrapnel at the same time an inferno blazes up the Broken Heart wall. The sound of rolling fire is the same as the sound of a waterfall, and it’s absolutely deafening. Initially, she had wanted to have a one-sided conversation, only to find that she just had absolutely no want for Andrey Stamatin to continue living. Her mother’s opinion of situations like this was fairly logical and simple.

Just kill him. 

Saburov will rule it was a freak fire and the entire place went up due to the absolutely toxic content of the drinks. Her mother was pleased with this choice- in the spring they could reap different architects with better temperaments from the Capitol. The ruling hands do not matter when the Town on Ghorkon was far out of any jurisdiction that would influence it.

Maria’s dress drifts behind her like the flames.

She comes up behind the rifleman and pats him on the shoulder. She pushes and he howls as he falls into the raging blaze covering the ground. She splayed her fingers as she descended the steps.

Nothing caught on her. The fire rolled over her without consequence.

“I’ve seen you die over and over, and it’s not enough to satisfy me.”

It’s not Maria’s voice coming out of her mouth. 

She looked... shocked at herself, but she did not stop at the bottom of the stairs. Fire crept up the support beams and rolled into the ceiling. Peter’s paintings and creativity were swallowed in an instant. This was a last bastion of something in the town that her mother did not intend- it’s an eyesore.

The music from the phonograph is still playing.

“I’ll kill you and put you in Focus at the pinnacle of your death, so the knells will be like music! See this splendor and let your death be as artistic as your life!”

She starts screaming at him and he can feel his blood pressure rising. Oh, it’s terrible, really, how fast his temper flares. He clutches his hand on the glass in his hand and he gauges how far away she is, if he can hit her with it and duck behind the bar before the riflemen tear him apart with military fire.

If he dies, at least it won’t be without spilling Mistress blood first.

The room grows stifling before flames erupt on the balcony, blackening the lizards along the stair’s railing and blocking the door. They were trapped in here, underground, with flames dancing along the parts of the walls that aren’t stone.

One of the paintings, one of a Steppe woman dancing with a skull that Peter had painted for his opening, catches fire near her, the twyre paint blistering the canvas with the heat.

Oh, this was actually trouble now.

“ I’m not fucking stupid, Kaina. I know exactly what I did, and I would do it again – I’d tear down this whole fucking town just to spite you. ”

This was her town now, according to the reverb of her voice, and she’s not entirely wrong. The Olgimsky line is all but dead, and Saburov is barely hanging onto his power. If things go wrong here (or right here, for her) then she would rule the town with no competition.

“ You want me to build a replacement? Tough shit. There’s never going to be another Cathedral or another Tower. It’s gone, Maria. Stop throwing a tantrum about it. ”

She screams at him and bangs her fists into the railing a second time. From her, the very air itself seemed to ignite. Her mother was a consort of blood and humors, and she inherited a black heart and the fury of someone who had never known anything else. Her soul was fire and magic. Flames licked at both hers and the guardsman’s feet.

They were fine military men in bloody coats with congealing wounds. They were also outsiders and as ashes fell from the ceiling, one looked around and tried to run. 

So this was the power of a Mistress? The power to terrify and inspire abject truth. 

“You horrible monster. You used to love me! Your brother adores me! And this is all gone for what?! For that little false witchling Eva?!”

The man who leaps past the flames screams up the stairs, ablaze. 

The one remaining holds his rifle steady despite the panic and the smoke.

“I could bring her back in a new focus! See, her soul lingers here still and I could draw it in and harness it!”

She raises both hands and her nails curl into her palm.

“My flames will follow every pencil mark you made to construct this place-...”

The plague could have taken every person in this town, and she would not have cared. The town would be safe.

“And I could burn you alive. I could find her soul and flay it instead! I don’t need you at all do I?! Just your brother! Your brother still loves me!”

If there is anything Andrey Stamatin is good at, it’s knowing when trouble is looking for him. It’s a sixth or seventh sense about him, knowing when it was biting at his heels, and he had the feeling from the moment he woke to the moment he opened the bar to work on refurbishing it.

The feeling only got worse, to the point he took the keys from Goose and told him to go. Week off, on me. Come back later.

When the door above opens, he’s the only one in the Broken Heart. He recognizes military bootsteps in an instant and his fingers twitch. He has his knives and his fists and a revolver tucked under the bar for real emergencies. (The revolver had been Peter’s. Andrey had taken it after a man nearly cut his throat in a fight, and it had stayed there since.)

Maria is both a surprise and not. She’s a surprise because he hadn’t heard her coming, but not because he knew she’d come to find him eventually. He raises his head only when he’s done scrubbing clean a glass bottle with green within it, and sets it on the shelf behind him.

“ Reasonable equals, says the woman with riflemen at her back. Mmhm. How many holes do you foresee them blowing in me? ”

What had Daniil said? Don’t do anything to have Saburov arrest him, wasn’t it? Well, he wouldn’t be blamed if Maria came after him first, but…no, he has to do this carefully.

She blocked the only exit of the Broken Heart. Damnably, he had to admit he was at a disadvantage.

“ Fine. I’m listening. ”

"You might have convinced Saburov that you had nothing to do with the destruction of the Cathedral-” her knuckles were bone white, “But I saw you! I saw you leering at the wreckage like a demon. Of course you wouldn’t know what you had done- you didn’t build that one! My father’s lost now all because of you and that horrible two-faced snake!”

Her voice climbed and her eyes watered.

“Who is going to pay for that?! Georgiy is being eaten by the in-between now! By daemons of the miserable steppe! This town has gone to Hell all because of you! All of the magic in it is unbearable or dying now!”

Tears rolled down her face.

“You will build a replacement!”

One of the riflemen has a look on his face like he has a score to settle with the man cleaning glasses behind the bar. His gun goes up and trains on him. It’s not enough for her though. She’s impatient, and punts one fragile fist on the balcony. From nowhere, there’s a spark that draws a line over the metal walkway and erupts into flames behind them.

They’re trapped. 

Her hair’s stirred by the sudden heat. It smokes and fills the room. 

Both riflemen startle, one curses and wheels on his feet.

Her fist shakes and she bares her teeth at the same time as wiping her eyes with her long sleeve.

The Judge is catatonic. He has been lucidly dreaming for the day after the Cathedral fell, mute with horror. Her father speaks in her mother’s voice, but it’s not exactly either of them. The Cruicible becomes more an amphitheater of the lame and mute- she hasn’t the heart to attend either one of them with meals, assistance, or otherwise. No one has seen Kasper in days, and that is understandable. If she were him, she would be just as pleased as the rest dying.

For all of these small victories, though, the town in all of its magical, ant-farm like glory, was so much uglier and weaker than it had been. 

Time aggresses. She grows an entire grey streak of hair in a single day that she tucks back into her black hair to hide it. 

She is still a Kain with constitution, though, and with the rest gone... 

The list of issues to deal with had grown smaller. One major one had to be dealt with.

It took an hour to convince some of the rouge soldiers that had been coming to her for guidance, to join her on a personal expedition to eliminate, “The man that killed many of your fine comrades”. It landed them with two bayonetted rifles escorting her straight through the door of the Broken Heart. 

Maria didn’t touch the ground when she walked any longer, so she did not wear shoes. Her dress dragged along the balcony flooring and never picked up dirt.

“Stamatin-” she sang from the balcony, “I think it’s time we have a firm and understanding discussion. I’ve seen many facets of this conversation. Many of which end your life-”

And she gasps- the voice of someone much too young to be making death threats. She wrings both hands over the balcony, her red shawl dripping off it.