ALTAN YUL-SUHE

THIRTY-TWO ❈ HEARTRENDER THE ORDER OF THE LIVING AND THE DEAD (CORPORALKI)

He was born knowing the taste of dirt. How it felt on his hands and between his toes when he dug at the ground for scraps and roots to eat and bones to suck on, what it was like to sleep like a dog. He was a boy forsaken, a boy who learned how to run before he could walk. Altan’s family was no better, they’d all been born neglected, forced to become scavengers to survive, and they were some of the many invisible undesirables of Shu Han. While other children spent their days in the sun, Altan and his siblings traveled from corpse to corpse in the ruins of battlefields, looting what they could find and selling their meager bounty to buy their meal for the day, teaching themselves to make it last just short of a week. It was a miserable existence, being born to die in the gutter, and so dismal that he could not even imagine a better future to hope for. With Altan, and all nameless street urchins, there were no false suppositions, no daydreams, no ambition, no sights beyond what was in front of him - only resigned acceptance. 

There had been one thing that Altan had wanted to keep for himself - a small, dull dagger he’d found off a fallen Ravkan lieutenant. It was a far cry from lethal, and the embedded jewels had already lost their luster, but he’d tucked it away, wanting just one thing to keep, something to possess. But his brother (he hardly remembered his name now) snatched it out of his hand and rebuked him for being moved by sentiment and materialism rather than by self-preservation. “We’ll sell it and feed our house for two days - keep the poor bastard’s damned bones if you need something to play with.” There was nothing quite so dehumanizing as his own family reaffirming nothing was truly his, that no possession was singularly his to keep. Perhaps it was selfish to think so, perhaps the fault was in himself for thinking of himself over his family. But even boy conquerors did not think in terms of rations and loud mouths to feed - they thought of glory, they thought of battles to be won, the sea of corpses that would lie in their wake. Perhaps that was when Altan first realized even if he was born to rot and be forgotten, even if it was his destiny to die nameless, there was a perfect storm of ichor and teeth and claws within him that refused to be snuffed out by any forces aside from than himself. He remembered turning to look at his brother, his gaze burning, and for the first time looking at someone else as if they were beneath him. Then - his brother fell to his knees, his face turning blue, his usual sour expression contorted in agony as he gasped for air, hands outstretched. Only later when soldiers were at their doorstep asking for the Grisha did Altan realize it was his doing. And only when, as he was dragged away, he saw one of the soldiers drop several coins into his father’s and brother’s hands did he realize blood counted for nothing.

He’d heard stories of what was done to Grisha, how people would rather risk leaving Shu Han with nothing to their name rather than be experimented on by the army. Images of being tested upon with poisons and chemicals, exposed to the elements, forced to fight boars and rabid dogs flashed through his mind as he was taken to an imposing building, cold and grey, and then blindfolded. ‘Heartrenders need to be able to see their targets’. He wouldn’t be granted his vision back for another three years. Theories, as it turned out, counted for nothing when the real thing was far, far worse than he could have imagined. Altan endured, not only because it was the only thing he could do, but because there existed in him a new thirst for life that only came about knowing he was wanted dead so fervently. That they cut into his will because they feared how powerful he could become - and this alone was reason enough to survive. To feed their fear and lull them into a false sense of security, to convince them the little starving feral thing they found in the outskirts was finally learning their scent, learning to feed from their hand. The day came when, despite being ragged with hundreds of near-deaths and being dipped into hellfire, he felt a thrum of power surging through his veins, clamoring to be unleashed upon his keepers. And unleash it did. The Darkling was there to receive him, a beacon of sheer power that lent itself to his own, and he followed him back to Ravka where he joined the Second Army, climbing the ranks despite the revolted whispers of ‘Shu’ and ‘monster’ that followed him the entire way. They fancied him powerful merely because of the experimentation, but they neglected the divinity in him, the primordial terror in him, only to see it for themselves on the battlefield as he coiled intestines around each other with the crook of his fingers and wrenched the red and blood from a beating heart. But what they didn’t know yet was that he still had to reach the peak of his capacity, that he still hadn’t fully grown into his shadow, and the thought was as terrifying to others as it was thrilling to him. He watched Ravkan soldiers tremble at his orders, at a Shu’s orders, and he thinks divinity is a fine taste on his tongue.

How does a man become an empire? How does one become the second most feared man in the Second Army? How does one find his place at the Darkling’s right hand? The full answer is as calamitous as the shadow himself, full of sharp teeth and songs of the razings of lesser kingdoms and smiles with all the worlds daggers and molten meanings behind them. Past emperors and warlords make their home in him, gifted with anointed wisdom and bloodthirst from the far reaches of hell, and he is as cutting as he is sly, as sharp as a blade licked by brimstone and fire. His is a cruel concoction, the twist of black blood intertwining with ambrosia, and perhaps if he were anywhere else but beside Darkness himself, he would languish in his own cataclysm, spill his own blood just to have red on his fingers. But divine things often find where they’re meant to be, and he was no exception. At the peak of havoc, at the helm of the ship, ensuring it cuts through bodies and sea alike.

CONNECTIONS

THE DARKLING: Altan knows better than to become complacent in the knowledge that the most feared man in Ravka trusts his competence more than anyone else’s in his army. He refuses to dwell on the thought, for fear of becoming cocky or arrogant, and simply focuses his efforts on proving The Darkling right and cutting down whatever or whoever is fool enough to linger in their path. Every part of him knows that men like them are too often defined by their brutality, and he’s not stupid enough to believe that The Darkling keeps him around for anything beyond what use he can provide. Fortunately, Altan has barely even started.

MARGARETE STARIKOV: She bores him. Or, at least, she had once. He remembers her when she was a slight little doll wandering through the halls of the Little Palace, her tiny hands balled and itching to prove what she knew she was capable of - but her ambition was nothing new and echoed that of countless Grisha before her; a dove of a girl desperate to prove she was as much predator as the rest of them. Her family was a nuisance as well, as unsightly as a wart when they begged him to place her with the Healers rather than with the Heartrenders - in the end, he acquiesced. But the rumors as of late speak of a... ruthless girl, a murderess, a far cry from the wisp of a thing he thought he knew. He’ll admit his interest has piqued, but rumors aren’t quite so convincing as action.

FELIKS BAZIN: A living testament to his power, a walking trophy. Altan resurrected him on a whim simply because he knew he could bring back someone from the dead and wanted to prove it to himself. To consider how that knowledge must affect the boy’s psyche, how it might create a hell in his own head never crossed his mind or what was left of his conscience. He toys with the guard with curling, twisting words, and is always quick to remind him who it was who granted Feliks this long glimpse of limbo. “Consider this your penance,” he’d whispered once into Feliks’ ear. “Or consider this your purgatory. Makes no difference to me, and certainly not to you.”