Duncan Heimdall Jackson (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
inchesofevil) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
zenderael_rl2013-05-17 06:49 am
inchesofevil) wrote in zenderael_rl2013-05-17 06:49 am
Entry tags:
[Duncan] - Best guess
Who:
Duncan
When: 8/13, Saturday
Where: Irena's apartment
Before/After: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
Warnings: Blood, vomiting blood, death, cannibalism, I got pretty detailed with the god-organ part so consider yourself warned, but you'll see it coming up if you want to avoid it
Duncan's gaze followed Irena's exit, the rest of his body unmoving. Once the door was shut after her, he let out a slow breath and straightened, lowering his rifle. He shouldn't even have bothered freaking out about that, it wasn't like it--
What the fuck was he thinking! Of course it mattered! The fucking Vahishta was standing right here! His head snapped up, whipping from the door to the man across the room from it.
The Vahishta spoke before he could. "Quite the situation you've found yourself in--Duncan, was it?"
The words flew right over his head in his sudden urgency. He set the gun on the table to get it out of his hands, pushing himself up in the same motion to approach the Vahishta. "Can you heal me?" It was out of his mouth before he considered it. He remembered who he was talking to and froze after a step and a half, drawing in a sharp breath.
The Vahishta's eyebrows rose. He didn't seem offended by the outburst, just mildly interested in whatever had caused it. Duncan did have a few apparent injuries, apart from the bruising on his arms. There were spots where Nova had managed to get through his leather coat, but all those wounds were obviously superficial. Nothing worth the kind of urgency he asked with. "Your ailment?" inquired the Vahishta.
"Th--" Duncan set a hand on the back of the chair that his gear rested on. "The Red Death."
His mild interest turned grim. Some of the pieces came together with that information. "The Asha warned me of an epidemic in Fall City."
"Yeah," Duncan said, almost automatic. "Yeah, I've been--I've been trying to find a cleric to cure me for the past week, and, just..."
"They are overtaxed," the Vahishta finished for him, based on what the Asha had said. "You have been unable to find anyone who can heal you."
"Yeah." Yeah, and then Irena goes out and finds the Vahishta, how even--
The Vahishta spread his hands in invitation. "Come here, my child."
Hesitant, Duncan moved away from the table, coming to stand before him. He almost didn't want to believe this was true. He'd had his hopes raised so many times just to have them shattered. It couldn't possibly be this easy. Something was going to happen. Something was going to go magnificently wrong in a way he could never have guessed at.
"Remove your gloves."
Duncan's brow furrowed in a momentary confusion, but he did as asked and hurriedly pulled his gloves off, stuffing them into his pocket.
The Vahishta reached out and took his right hand, inspecting the blood caked under his fingernails and congealed around the edges. Duncan winced, twitching to pull away, but he didn't. It was the contagious factor that concerned him, but he realized belatedly that the Vahishta could just cure himself if he did get infected.
Having discerned whatever he was looking for, the Vahishta turned Duncan's hand to press it over Duncan's heart, holding it there with his own laid over it. An uncertain, "um," made it out of Duncan's mouth before he realized this was probably the healing he'd asked for. He shut his mouth and waited.
A warmth swelled up inside him, starting at his heart and flowing into his limbs. There was no spell effect, no glow, just that sensation, like gentle sunlight pouring through his body.
The Vahishta pulled his hand away. The feeling abated, but didn't vanish. It settled as a quiet but strong presence behind his heart. Puzzled, Duncan looked down to his hands, growing concerned when he saw no difference to his bloody nails. "Did you--heal me?" he asked warily, as he looked up at the Vahishta.
"You will be healing yourself," he replied.
Duncan's eyebrows shot up. "Holy shit, you made me a cleric?"
The Vahishta's face took on a half-stunned, half-amused smile. "Is this not acceptable?"
He laid his hand over his heart again, fingers curling in the fabric of his shirt. That light inside him--the tie-ins called it a center, something clerics and paladins both shared. The place within that holy magic came from. It felt comfortable, like it was always supposed to be there and he'd only just now discovered it.
That was an oddly unsettling feeling, actually.
"Well, I was holding out for spellsword," he joked, but it came out weak, still too stunned by the fact of being made a cleric to joke properly.
The Vahishta's smile solidified into fully amused. "Hopefully you'll find cleric a suitable alternative. Your name?"
"Uh--Duncan," he answered, looking up to the Vahishta again. "Jackson."
"Then, Brother Jackson, allow me to teach you how to use your new gifts."
~
In any other circumstances, he would have been awed by having access to this power, and honoured to be taught by the Vahishta himself. In these, he didn't have the time to stop and marvel at what was actually happening.
It was difficult to concentrate on learning the basics of holy magic with two dead bodies in the same room, one his sister's and one he'd killed. While the Vahishta taught him how to access his mana reserve, channel it through his center, and weave it into magic, he was distracted by the thought that this was just a waste of time when the Vahishta could heal him and resurrect his sister any time he wanted. It felt like a marathon runner stopping to teach him how to crawl.
Ironically, his frustrations with how long it was taking only made it take longer.
The Vahishta was patient and unhurried throughout, giving instructions and gentle reminders and moving smoothly onto the next step as soon as Duncan demonstrated passable understanding. The basics were a rushed overview that took maybe thirty minutes. After that, another fifteen to learn specifically how to cure illness.
It caught him off-guard when the Vahishta finally stepped back and told him, "I believe you're capable now."
His head snapped up. "Now?" He'd been impatient seconds before; now he felt daunted. This insurmountable thing he'd become convinced would kill him no matter how hard he fought it--him? Now?
The Vahishta nodded, his gentle smile inscrutable.
Duncan stared at him a few seconds, trying to fathom the idea of magically curing himself of a terminal illness. He couldn't. He didn't trust himself with his own well-being, not like that. He'd been a cleric for less than an hour. Why couldn't the Vahishta do this, again? "For real? No, I can't--I'll fuck this up." It came out rambling, his breath growing shallow in his nervousness.
"You can," the Vahishta told him, firm, confident.
Duncan shook his head. "No, listen, I'm just some college kid--"
"You are a cleric."
"Unskilled healers, they leave scars, right? I don't--this shit makes you bleed everywhere, I don't want a digestive tract full of fucking scar tissue, okay?"
"You will cure yourself. I will heal you."
He inhaled sharply, lowering his gaze, pushing his bangs back, leaving his hand against his forehead. "Fuuuck."
The Vahishta placed a hand on his shoulder. "Do not question yourself, Brother Jackson. You have the knowledge and the means, you lack only the confidence."
He looked up, pulling his hand away from his head without letting it fall. "Why are you making me do it?"
With another inscrutable smile, the Vahishta answered, "You will need to know this."
Duncan stared at him, waiting for more of an explanation.
None came. The Vahishta stepped back, motioning for Duncan to continue.
It did nothing to assuage his fears. He didn't know any of the nasty ways this could go wrong, but there had to be something. If unskilled healing left scars, maybe unskilled disease curing fucked up your immune system, or maybe there was a way to create super-bacteria by accident, or--
Fuck, the Vahishta had made it pretty goddamn clear that he wasn't going to do this for him, though. The answer was in his hands and he was the only one who could use it.
He lowered his head and closed his eyes, taking a deep breath, forcing himself to focus. He brought his hands up, index fingers extended against his lips, the others laced together. The mana reserve was new and strange, but not difficult to find. Nor was it difficult to channel it through his center, pulling the magic down into his arms to his hands. The first few times it had 'caught' around his joints, but the Vahishta had showed him how to push it through, letting his bones guide it.
He took his time weaving it separately from channeling it. He absolutely could not afford to fuck this up. Even though, in theory, he could just try again if he failed, he was more worried about doing some kind of irreversible damage to himself by getting some small detail wrong.
The Vahishta stood by and waited, no sign of impatience, no attempt to rush him.
Duncan held the spell once he was done, double-checking it, triple-checking, and then simply hesitating because he still wasn't sure it was right.
Just this and he was cured. He wouldn't be doomed to this slow, bloody death anymore. He wouldn't have to send that e-mail to his mom telling her she was losing two children instead of one. Just this one thing.
Another breath to steel himself, and he finally turned his hands on himself, lowering them to his collar, flat against his chest with his fingers still interlaced. He released the spell.
It was like a wash of cleanser through his veins, harsh and hot and abrasive, but somehow not painful. It flowed from his hands into his chest, through the rest of his body and back, dissipating at his center. He wasn't sure if that was what it was supposed to feel like. He couldn't tell if it had done anything. None of the bleeding had been painful, he wouldn't be able to tell without waiting to see if any of it started up again.
He pulled his hands apart and opened his eyes to check his nails, wary. No change, they were still bloody.
The hand on his head was unexpected; he almost flinched away before realizing it was the Vahishta and stilling. Warmth, a white light, and then gradually all the little aches and pains from his fight with Nova left him. He watched the purple fade from under his nails, though the blood around them remained. Likewise, the bruises scattered across his arms faded and disappeared.
The Vahishta's hand left his head, going back to fold with the other.
Duncan looked up at him, disbelieving. "That's--I'm cured? That's it?"
"That's it," the Vahishta confirmed, with a soft smile and a slight nod. "You have learned well."
It couldn't be that easy. Something was going to go wrong. He was still contagious, or...
Actually, he felt sick. A now-familiar kind of nausea that had been easy enough to ignore before but was suddenly urgent. He left the Vahishta, rushing to the sink, and threw up in Irena's garbage disposal. It was unsurprising by now to see the blood there, but he stared at it with a sinking feeling in his stomach as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
"I don't think it worked," he said, his voice small and pitched with a note of fear.
The Vahishta's voice was calm and factual. "What blood you've lost must leave your body naturally. Such is the Red Death."
"Are you sure?" he asked, looking cautiously over his shoulder.
"I have been through many such outbreaks. I am familiar with its process."
"Like, how many?"
His mouth quirked, lifting the corner of his mustache. "How old do you suppose I am, Brother Jackson?"
Duncan turned away to wash the blood down the sink, cupping water in his hands to rinse the blood out of his mouth. That seemed like a weird question to ask, he thought. He spat, wiped his mouth on his shirt, and then guessed, "Uhh, at least forty?" It was probably a lot older, but the Vahishta's age had never been given in the books.
He moved on to washing the blood out from his nails. And bleaching the sink. Just in case. He still didn't quite trust that he was cured.
"Do you know how new Vahishtas are chosen?"
"Yeah, the church scouts for kids who look like the current Vahishta then takes 'em and trains them up to replace the old one. That's why all the past Vahishtas look alike." One of those lore notes you'd only find if you were interested enough to dig, but it wasn't exactly a secret. He rattled it off without a thought, and only paused afterward to realize he might be completely, embarrassingly wrong.
"The church does scout a child every one-hundred years to find one bearing a strong resemblance to the current Vahishta," he echoed in confirmation. "But those children are not trained. They are killed."
Duncan stopped, his hands freezing in the act of capping the bleach bottle.
"I am nearly twenty-one-hundred years old, Brother Jackson. There has never been another Vahishta."
He carefully set the bottle aside, not bothering to finish screwing the cap on. He realized he'd stopped breathing and forced himself to start again, slowly and quietly, as if fearing having it noticed.
He remembered the event X-DAV had run, a gigantic raid boss fight against Xumurdad, with the original ten heroes beside them. The first Vahishta's model had been the same as the current, but with a close-trimmed full beard instead of the mustache, and short hair instead of the outdated feathered style. Easily overlooked if you didn't know the lore, easily explained if you did.
Changing your hairstyle and facial hair was easy. Easy to make yourself distinctive, easy to make yourself inconspicuous. Easy to make yourself look like an entirely new Vahishta if everyone was already expecting you to look similar to the last one.
"Killed?" he asked, a nervous breathlessness creeping into his voice. He wasn't sure what the Vahishta was getting at, why he'd be sharing this now. He wasn't even sure he should believe it.
"So that they cannot share the secret once they are grown."
Duncan turned away from the sink, his motions slow and cautious, as though any sudden movement would incite danger.
The Vahishta stood in the same place, hands hanging before him with his fingers interlaced. The warmth had gone from his face, replaced by a thankfully nonthreatening seriousness. "So, you see, I have been through a great many outbreaks of a great many illnesses."
Duncan tried to swallow down a rising sense of dread. Surely the Vahishta hadn't gone through the trouble of making Duncan a cleric, training him, and forcing him to heal himself just to kill him afterward. "How?" he asked, once it became clear that the Vahishta was not going to continue.
A slight tilt of the head and puzzled furrow of the brow was his answer.
"How--did you stay alive that long?" he elaborated. "I mean, I thought the god-organs only added a hundred years." It was marginally terrifying to keep talking to him after that revelation, but it was more terrifying to try to run out of the apartment and leave his sister's body behind.
A short hum to acknowledge understanding of the question as he straightened out. "Consuming the heart of Xumurdad granted me the knowledge to overcome death. It should come as no surprise that it insulated me against it, as well."
"You're immortal?" he asked, disbelieving. That wasn't in the lore. Then again, neither was the murdering of Vahishta candidates...
"Unaging," he corrected. "Eternally."
Duncan's eyes flickered to Nova's body on the floor, then his sister's on the couch, then back to the Vahishta. "Okay, so..." He paused, not sure if he wanted to continue or even what he had to continue with, instead waiting for the Vahishta to pick up the conversation again.
He didn't.
Duncan rubbed his wrist, then nervously pulled his sleeves down from where they'd been pushed up to his elbows. "Are you going to make me resurrect her myself too...?"
"No. I will not teach you resurrection."
"Okay, so, um. Are you...going to...?"
Silence answered him.
Duncan bit his lip to keep himself from letting out any nervous rambling, but it was becoming clear that the answer to that was no. He forced down the growing panic and thought through what to say. "Why--?" He meant to keep going, but he didn't know what to finish it with, and let it hang there.
The Vahishta picked up the thread regardless. He spread his hands. "Xumurdad has brought me here, but for what purpose, I can only guess."
"It brought you here to resurrect her!" Duncan insisted, unable to contain his nerves any longer.
His eyebrows rose in an uncharacteristically sharp gesture that made Duncan press himself back against the sink, his hands on the edge of the counter behind him. "One week," he said. "And a destructive merge will begin." There was an edge to his voice, but it vanished now, back into that calm, patient tone from before. His hands folded in front of him once more, as his face smoothed out. "Was I brought here to resurrect these two? Or because Xumurdad desires whatever will merge next to be destroyed? Or to facilitate a smooth merge? Or perhaps another option that has not yet become clear? It is not for me to guess at. I do not presume to know Xumurdad's desires."
His breathing quick and uneven, Duncan stared at the Vahishta, trying to figure out what he was getting at.
All the others, all his friends who'd received god-organs, had been put into situations where those powers would get them out. The Vahishta had said--what was it he'd said? The wording had been oddly specific. 'Consuming the heart of Xumurdad granted me the knowledge to overcome death.'
Harriet had been granted the knowledge of the past Khshathras. Ezra had known how to banish Kharveryos without training.
If Duncan took the heart, would he be able to resurrect Missie himself?
One week. He'd figured out, along with Rhys and Ezra's help, that the merges had always happened right after a god-organ changed hands. Always with someone from Earth, as far as he knew. There had been destructive merges twice, the second confirmed as ending when Gabe became the Asha and went to Zenderael, which had been followed by Safta's coastline appearing in the ocean.
That meant someone from Earth had to take the Vahishta's heart to prevent a destructive merge. And he was here, in front of Duncan.
And Missie was dead. And the heart was here. In front of Duncan.
"When you became the Vahishta," he asked, somehow keeping his voice steady despite the idea forming in the depths of his mind, "how did you learn resurrection? Did you just know?"
A single, slow nod in answer.
Duncan's eyes darted to Missie again. "It's not for you to guess at--are you just, what, going to stand there and wait for a sign?"
"Xumurdad's plans are not for me to know. Mine are not for you to know." A pause just long enough to be meaningful, as he looked Duncan in the eyes. "And yours are not for me to know."
For a moment, Duncan was perfectly still, not even breathing, his eyes locked with the Vahishta's. He couldn't help but feel the Vahishta was just short of outright telling him to do what he was thinking.
Why else would he explain all that? Why would he confirm that Duncan could solve his problem by taking the god-organ? Why would he mention the destruction?
Why else would he make Duncan a cleric first and specifically teach him the spell he would need to help fix the situation in Fall City?
But he wasn't handing over his god-organ. He wasn't offering. He wasn't asking. Duncan's conclusion was based on circumstantial evidence, at best. There were perfectly reasonable alternate explanations for all of it.
If Duncan asked, he risked being told he was wrong. And then what?
He looked toward Missie's body again.
"I believe we have exhausted the purpose of this time together, Brother Jackson. If you will excuse me." The Vahishta turned and began to walk for the door.
Duncan couldn't know whether he was leaving permanently, or leaving to fetch Irena to tell her that he wasn't going to resurrect Nova or Missie, or leaving to bring her back so she could watch as he resurrected them.
He could only guess.
From the kitchen sink to the chair holding Marlene's borrowed potion belt in a matter of seconds, a vial yanked from its place, a solid right-handed throw at the Vahishta's back. It happened fast, he staggered and then fell forward, knees first, then tipping to the side, hitting the ground on his shoulder, sprawled on the floor with one hand extended toward the door, fast asleep.
Duncan, already hyperventilating in his panicked urgency, rushed away from the table and ransacked Irena's kitchen for a knife. He yanked open the drawers, moving on without bothering to close them if he did not find what he was looking for at a glance. Finally, after what felt like years of searching, he snatched up a simple butcher's knife and slammed the drawer shut in his wake, turning to hurry over to the Vahishta's sleeping form.
Sleep potions. Five minutes? He was pretty sure Harriet hadn't given him the bare minimum three. That was plenty of time.
He nudged the Vahishta over onto his back with his boot and stood over him, staring down at his face, at the familiar mustache and features surrounding it. He paused, breaths heaving, quick and deep. He dropped to one knee, raising the knife.
One second. Two. Five. He let out a hard breath and brought himself back to his feet, pacing away, back toward the kitchen.
What if. What if he was wrong? What if the Vahishta had meant to fetch Irena so she could be present while he resurrected both corpses? What if he'd taught Duncan just so there'd be another cleric available to help with the workload? What if he'd said all that because it was a secret every cleric in the church was supposed to keep? What if what if what if--
What if Duncan was murdering a man based on the erroneous assumption that he was asking to be murdered?
He stopped, snapping around to look down at Nova's body. Not even a second thought. Pulling the trigger was easy. It would be just as easy to tell himself that the difference now was the weapon he was using, that it was harder to kill someone with a knife than a gun, but he knew that wasn't true. He would've slit Nova's throat without hesitating, would've plunged the sword into his chest just as thoughtlessly. It was Nova. It was the fact that he'd deserved it.
The idea that anyone could deserve to die was largely frowned upon in the circles he frequented. He'd convinced himself he was on board with that. Lied to himself about it, really.
Nova had deserved to die.
The Vahishta...
Duncan's head turned to look at him, on the ground near the door. 2100 years, one child scouted and murdered every hundred or so to keep up a charade. That was only 20 children, in the end. Not even a significant amount in the greater scheme of things. A single busload of schoolchildren in a fatal accident would be a higher body count.
And none of them had been Duncan's siblings.
The subjectivity of it, the fact that he could stand here and justify death versus death as acceptable or unacceptable, it made him feel nauseated again.
What if he was wrong?
But what if he was right? What if he let the Vahishta walk away from this and he walked off forever and Missie never got to come back?
Worse still, what if he was right, but the Vahishta had not been implying that Xumurdad's will was for Duncan to murder him and take the god-organ? Did Duncan's desire to have his sister back override the Vahishta's desire not to be killed by Duncan?
Five minutes. Three? He had to assume three. He couldn't be sure.
He paced again, past the couch, past his sister's pale corpse, and then back, coming to stop beside the Vahishta again.
Three minutes. How much time did he have left?
He thought he saw the Vahishta stir. Two things he could have done. He could have stopped, waited, let him recover, apologized, and let him walk out to do whatever he'd chosen, and risked that he'd chosen not to resurrect anyone.
He also could have plunged the knife into the Vahishta's chest and eliminated that risk..
He chose the second.
The Vahishta did not move. Duncan waited a few seconds, watching him intently, and then pried his fingers away from the knife, rocking back on his heels, bringing his hand to lay over the lower half of his face.
He must have imagined it. The stirring. Blood seeped out around the knife, staining into the Vahishta's white robes. While his own breathing remained hurried and ragged, the Vahishta's slowed.
Stopped.
Did not resume.
What if he'd been wrong?
Feeling like he was pulling against magnetism, Duncan reached out and wrapped his fingers around the knife's handle. He breathed in, held it, held it too long, let it out as a quick burst and then gasped in another breath to hold. He yanked out the knife, leaving a bloody hole in the Vahishta's chest.
He'd been unsettled because it had been easy for him to kill Nova. Now he felt unsettled because he'd been able to kill the Vahishta for perfectly selfish reasons despite it being hard.
He wasn't sure how long he stayed there, crouched beside the Vahishta, bloody knife in one hand, staring down at his work. Longer than three minutes, probably.
That was only half the job done. He swallowed, leaned forward, reached out toward the Vahishta's chest, hesitated, and then continued on to begin unbuttoning the robe. His hands were not steady, he fumbled the buttons enough to frustrate himself and ended up just ripping it open. It wasn't like he needed to preserve it for future wear. The tunic underneath he tore open starting from the hole the knife had made.
All through his mind screamed at him that he'd just killed somebody to steal their heart and fucking eat it what the fuck was wrong with him did he even realize what he'd done did he understand what he was doing did he understand that this would make him the new Vahishta and that he'd have all the responsibilities that came with it and--
But Missie was lying on the couch right over there, dead for hours now, and this was the only way he could be absolutely positive that she would not stay that way.
He didn't slice the Vahishta open at the chest. The ribcage and the sternum protected the heart, he'd have to break ribs first to pull it out from there. It had to be right beneath the sternum, a big enough incision to dig upward and pull it out through. He held up the knife, but hesitated, wincing away from that bare skin, an obviously human chest that he was carving up for parts like a monster kill.
He wished this death had been as easy for him as Nova's. Feeling nothing was a far sight better than this overwhelming panic.
He looked just long enough to line up the stab and then closed his eyes and turned his head away. He plunged the knife in, grimacing with the sickening resistance it met. He yanked it down the body's midline, sawing to open up a hole in the abdominal cavity. It was harder work than it'd seemed, especially when he hadn't chosen a serrated knife, and moreso when he felt like throwing up the whole time at the thought of what he was doing.
He didn't feel any better when he looked back at his work and set the knife aside. He forced his eyes not to stray above the red gully he'd gouged into the body. He reached toward it, but hesitated again before he touched it, drawing his fingers back, pulling a face. This was so fucking gross. And Ezra had done this with a colon? Jesus Christ.
He rolled up his sleeve and took a breath to steel himself. He held it as he averted his eyes again and slid his hand into the wound. The number of faces he went through as he dug around in the Vahishta's body for his heart was impressive. It wasn't hard to find. The lumpy fist-sized thing centered between three other large organs. Pulling it out was harder. The first tug didn't tear it away from the major arteries and veins. He was more prepared on the second, but it still wasn't hard enough, and it finally came loose on the third, jerking Duncan backwards with his own force.
He pulled the heart out through the gash, wincing at the sight of his bloody hand and the god-heart clutched in it.
He set the heart down on the Vahishta's stomach, still holding onto it, and set his other hand over his mouth. "What the fuck is wrong with me?" he muttered.
What would Missie think? Theresa? Lindsey? His mom, dad, siblings? If they knew he'd done this, would they think he was a monster? He was starting to question that he wasn't, himself.
He accidentally chanced a glance at the Vahishta's face. Peaceful, completely at odds with the bloody gash in his torso. It didn't make Duncan feel sick, though. It made him feel shamed.
He'd gone too far to quit now.
He stood, leaving the knife and taking the heart, carrying it with him to the kitchen. He made his best effort to keep from dripping more blood on Irena's carpet. He ate it over the sink to catch the blood. The first bite was the hardest. He had to talk himself up to it, a heart was just a muscle, all the meat he ate regularly was just muscle too, he'd forced Ravindra to eat raw meat in his backstory, wasn't it fair for him to have to do the same at least once so he could know what it was like? Fuck, fuck--he finally just forced himself to do it before he could stop himself.
So. First bite was the hardest. Warm, bloody, tough. Fucking nasty. He gagged on it once but choked it down. A break to breathe a bit before the second, and that was easier because he knew what to expect, but still awful. More than once he wondered if the god-organ would take if he threw up during or immediately after eating it. He made it through without having to find out, at least.
When he was finished, he braced his hands on the edge of the sink and just leaned there a minute, grimacing, feeling disgusted, trying to get over the fact of what he'd just done.
Rhys had done that with a stomach? Did Gabe eat both lungs? Holy shit. You guys. You guys. What the fuck was wrong with all of them? He was so sorry he had not expressed more sympathy for what they'd all had to go through to get where they were now. It wasn't even the cannibalism aspect, just--eating whole organs completely raw fresh out of the body was fucking gross.
But it was over with. He'd done it. He took a deep breath and exhaled some of his tension. He turned on the faucet and cleaned himself up, and then the sink, and then any blood that had dripped on the kitchen floor.
It hit him as he was dumping the bloody paper towels in the trash. He was the Vahishta now. He didn't feel any different from the normal cleric he'd been moments before, but he was. He was the guy in charge of the church, the functional leadership of Bastan, the one who guided Omid and worked alongside the Spenta.
He stopped, momentarily overwhelmed by the realization, leaning a hand on the counter, staring down at the floor. "Fuck." He ran a hand through his hair, resting it at the back of his head briefly before letting it fall. "Fuck! I was holding out for spellsword!"
A frustrated groan, he straightened, looking across the kitchen into the living room. Toward the couch.
No, this was more important than getting his first choice of guild.
He breathed deep, in and then out, and then he walked across the apartment to the couch, his gaze avoiding either of the bodies on the floor.
He knelt at his sister's side and took her hand in his.
Maybe he was a monster. But he'd done it for a reason.
Duncan
When: 8/13, Saturday
Where: Irena's apartment
Before/After: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
Warnings: Blood, vomiting blood, death, cannibalism, I got pretty detailed with the god-organ part so consider yourself warned, but you'll see it coming up if you want to avoid it
Duncan's gaze followed Irena's exit, the rest of his body unmoving. Once the door was shut after her, he let out a slow breath and straightened, lowering his rifle. He shouldn't even have bothered freaking out about that, it wasn't like it--
What the fuck was he thinking! Of course it mattered! The fucking Vahishta was standing right here! His head snapped up, whipping from the door to the man across the room from it.
The Vahishta spoke before he could. "Quite the situation you've found yourself in--Duncan, was it?"
The words flew right over his head in his sudden urgency. He set the gun on the table to get it out of his hands, pushing himself up in the same motion to approach the Vahishta. "Can you heal me?" It was out of his mouth before he considered it. He remembered who he was talking to and froze after a step and a half, drawing in a sharp breath.
The Vahishta's eyebrows rose. He didn't seem offended by the outburst, just mildly interested in whatever had caused it. Duncan did have a few apparent injuries, apart from the bruising on his arms. There were spots where Nova had managed to get through his leather coat, but all those wounds were obviously superficial. Nothing worth the kind of urgency he asked with. "Your ailment?" inquired the Vahishta.
"Th--" Duncan set a hand on the back of the chair that his gear rested on. "The Red Death."
His mild interest turned grim. Some of the pieces came together with that information. "The Asha warned me of an epidemic in Fall City."
"Yeah," Duncan said, almost automatic. "Yeah, I've been--I've been trying to find a cleric to cure me for the past week, and, just..."
"They are overtaxed," the Vahishta finished for him, based on what the Asha had said. "You have been unable to find anyone who can heal you."
"Yeah." Yeah, and then Irena goes out and finds the Vahishta, how even--
The Vahishta spread his hands in invitation. "Come here, my child."
Hesitant, Duncan moved away from the table, coming to stand before him. He almost didn't want to believe this was true. He'd had his hopes raised so many times just to have them shattered. It couldn't possibly be this easy. Something was going to happen. Something was going to go magnificently wrong in a way he could never have guessed at.
"Remove your gloves."
Duncan's brow furrowed in a momentary confusion, but he did as asked and hurriedly pulled his gloves off, stuffing them into his pocket.
The Vahishta reached out and took his right hand, inspecting the blood caked under his fingernails and congealed around the edges. Duncan winced, twitching to pull away, but he didn't. It was the contagious factor that concerned him, but he realized belatedly that the Vahishta could just cure himself if he did get infected.
Having discerned whatever he was looking for, the Vahishta turned Duncan's hand to press it over Duncan's heart, holding it there with his own laid over it. An uncertain, "um," made it out of Duncan's mouth before he realized this was probably the healing he'd asked for. He shut his mouth and waited.
A warmth swelled up inside him, starting at his heart and flowing into his limbs. There was no spell effect, no glow, just that sensation, like gentle sunlight pouring through his body.
The Vahishta pulled his hand away. The feeling abated, but didn't vanish. It settled as a quiet but strong presence behind his heart. Puzzled, Duncan looked down to his hands, growing concerned when he saw no difference to his bloody nails. "Did you--heal me?" he asked warily, as he looked up at the Vahishta.
"You will be healing yourself," he replied.
Duncan's eyebrows shot up. "Holy shit, you made me a cleric?"
The Vahishta's face took on a half-stunned, half-amused smile. "Is this not acceptable?"
He laid his hand over his heart again, fingers curling in the fabric of his shirt. That light inside him--the tie-ins called it a center, something clerics and paladins both shared. The place within that holy magic came from. It felt comfortable, like it was always supposed to be there and he'd only just now discovered it.
That was an oddly unsettling feeling, actually.
"Well, I was holding out for spellsword," he joked, but it came out weak, still too stunned by the fact of being made a cleric to joke properly.
The Vahishta's smile solidified into fully amused. "Hopefully you'll find cleric a suitable alternative. Your name?"
"Uh--Duncan," he answered, looking up to the Vahishta again. "Jackson."
"Then, Brother Jackson, allow me to teach you how to use your new gifts."
~
In any other circumstances, he would have been awed by having access to this power, and honoured to be taught by the Vahishta himself. In these, he didn't have the time to stop and marvel at what was actually happening.
It was difficult to concentrate on learning the basics of holy magic with two dead bodies in the same room, one his sister's and one he'd killed. While the Vahishta taught him how to access his mana reserve, channel it through his center, and weave it into magic, he was distracted by the thought that this was just a waste of time when the Vahishta could heal him and resurrect his sister any time he wanted. It felt like a marathon runner stopping to teach him how to crawl.
Ironically, his frustrations with how long it was taking only made it take longer.
The Vahishta was patient and unhurried throughout, giving instructions and gentle reminders and moving smoothly onto the next step as soon as Duncan demonstrated passable understanding. The basics were a rushed overview that took maybe thirty minutes. After that, another fifteen to learn specifically how to cure illness.
It caught him off-guard when the Vahishta finally stepped back and told him, "I believe you're capable now."
His head snapped up. "Now?" He'd been impatient seconds before; now he felt daunted. This insurmountable thing he'd become convinced would kill him no matter how hard he fought it--him? Now?
The Vahishta nodded, his gentle smile inscrutable.
Duncan stared at him a few seconds, trying to fathom the idea of magically curing himself of a terminal illness. He couldn't. He didn't trust himself with his own well-being, not like that. He'd been a cleric for less than an hour. Why couldn't the Vahishta do this, again? "For real? No, I can't--I'll fuck this up." It came out rambling, his breath growing shallow in his nervousness.
"You can," the Vahishta told him, firm, confident.
Duncan shook his head. "No, listen, I'm just some college kid--"
"You are a cleric."
"Unskilled healers, they leave scars, right? I don't--this shit makes you bleed everywhere, I don't want a digestive tract full of fucking scar tissue, okay?"
"You will cure yourself. I will heal you."
He inhaled sharply, lowering his gaze, pushing his bangs back, leaving his hand against his forehead. "Fuuuck."
The Vahishta placed a hand on his shoulder. "Do not question yourself, Brother Jackson. You have the knowledge and the means, you lack only the confidence."
He looked up, pulling his hand away from his head without letting it fall. "Why are you making me do it?"
With another inscrutable smile, the Vahishta answered, "You will need to know this."
Duncan stared at him, waiting for more of an explanation.
None came. The Vahishta stepped back, motioning for Duncan to continue.
It did nothing to assuage his fears. He didn't know any of the nasty ways this could go wrong, but there had to be something. If unskilled healing left scars, maybe unskilled disease curing fucked up your immune system, or maybe there was a way to create super-bacteria by accident, or--
Fuck, the Vahishta had made it pretty goddamn clear that he wasn't going to do this for him, though. The answer was in his hands and he was the only one who could use it.
He lowered his head and closed his eyes, taking a deep breath, forcing himself to focus. He brought his hands up, index fingers extended against his lips, the others laced together. The mana reserve was new and strange, but not difficult to find. Nor was it difficult to channel it through his center, pulling the magic down into his arms to his hands. The first few times it had 'caught' around his joints, but the Vahishta had showed him how to push it through, letting his bones guide it.
He took his time weaving it separately from channeling it. He absolutely could not afford to fuck this up. Even though, in theory, he could just try again if he failed, he was more worried about doing some kind of irreversible damage to himself by getting some small detail wrong.
The Vahishta stood by and waited, no sign of impatience, no attempt to rush him.
Duncan held the spell once he was done, double-checking it, triple-checking, and then simply hesitating because he still wasn't sure it was right.
Just this and he was cured. He wouldn't be doomed to this slow, bloody death anymore. He wouldn't have to send that e-mail to his mom telling her she was losing two children instead of one. Just this one thing.
Another breath to steel himself, and he finally turned his hands on himself, lowering them to his collar, flat against his chest with his fingers still interlaced. He released the spell.
It was like a wash of cleanser through his veins, harsh and hot and abrasive, but somehow not painful. It flowed from his hands into his chest, through the rest of his body and back, dissipating at his center. He wasn't sure if that was what it was supposed to feel like. He couldn't tell if it had done anything. None of the bleeding had been painful, he wouldn't be able to tell without waiting to see if any of it started up again.
He pulled his hands apart and opened his eyes to check his nails, wary. No change, they were still bloody.
The hand on his head was unexpected; he almost flinched away before realizing it was the Vahishta and stilling. Warmth, a white light, and then gradually all the little aches and pains from his fight with Nova left him. He watched the purple fade from under his nails, though the blood around them remained. Likewise, the bruises scattered across his arms faded and disappeared.
The Vahishta's hand left his head, going back to fold with the other.
Duncan looked up at him, disbelieving. "That's--I'm cured? That's it?"
"That's it," the Vahishta confirmed, with a soft smile and a slight nod. "You have learned well."
It couldn't be that easy. Something was going to go wrong. He was still contagious, or...
Actually, he felt sick. A now-familiar kind of nausea that had been easy enough to ignore before but was suddenly urgent. He left the Vahishta, rushing to the sink, and threw up in Irena's garbage disposal. It was unsurprising by now to see the blood there, but he stared at it with a sinking feeling in his stomach as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
"I don't think it worked," he said, his voice small and pitched with a note of fear.
The Vahishta's voice was calm and factual. "What blood you've lost must leave your body naturally. Such is the Red Death."
"Are you sure?" he asked, looking cautiously over his shoulder.
"I have been through many such outbreaks. I am familiar with its process."
"Like, how many?"
His mouth quirked, lifting the corner of his mustache. "How old do you suppose I am, Brother Jackson?"
Duncan turned away to wash the blood down the sink, cupping water in his hands to rinse the blood out of his mouth. That seemed like a weird question to ask, he thought. He spat, wiped his mouth on his shirt, and then guessed, "Uhh, at least forty?" It was probably a lot older, but the Vahishta's age had never been given in the books.
He moved on to washing the blood out from his nails. And bleaching the sink. Just in case. He still didn't quite trust that he was cured.
"Do you know how new Vahishtas are chosen?"
"Yeah, the church scouts for kids who look like the current Vahishta then takes 'em and trains them up to replace the old one. That's why all the past Vahishtas look alike." One of those lore notes you'd only find if you were interested enough to dig, but it wasn't exactly a secret. He rattled it off without a thought, and only paused afterward to realize he might be completely, embarrassingly wrong.
"The church does scout a child every one-hundred years to find one bearing a strong resemblance to the current Vahishta," he echoed in confirmation. "But those children are not trained. They are killed."
Duncan stopped, his hands freezing in the act of capping the bleach bottle.
"I am nearly twenty-one-hundred years old, Brother Jackson. There has never been another Vahishta."
He carefully set the bottle aside, not bothering to finish screwing the cap on. He realized he'd stopped breathing and forced himself to start again, slowly and quietly, as if fearing having it noticed.
He remembered the event X-DAV had run, a gigantic raid boss fight against Xumurdad, with the original ten heroes beside them. The first Vahishta's model had been the same as the current, but with a close-trimmed full beard instead of the mustache, and short hair instead of the outdated feathered style. Easily overlooked if you didn't know the lore, easily explained if you did.
Changing your hairstyle and facial hair was easy. Easy to make yourself distinctive, easy to make yourself inconspicuous. Easy to make yourself look like an entirely new Vahishta if everyone was already expecting you to look similar to the last one.
"Killed?" he asked, a nervous breathlessness creeping into his voice. He wasn't sure what the Vahishta was getting at, why he'd be sharing this now. He wasn't even sure he should believe it.
"So that they cannot share the secret once they are grown."
Duncan turned away from the sink, his motions slow and cautious, as though any sudden movement would incite danger.
The Vahishta stood in the same place, hands hanging before him with his fingers interlaced. The warmth had gone from his face, replaced by a thankfully nonthreatening seriousness. "So, you see, I have been through a great many outbreaks of a great many illnesses."
Duncan tried to swallow down a rising sense of dread. Surely the Vahishta hadn't gone through the trouble of making Duncan a cleric, training him, and forcing him to heal himself just to kill him afterward. "How?" he asked, once it became clear that the Vahishta was not going to continue.
A slight tilt of the head and puzzled furrow of the brow was his answer.
"How--did you stay alive that long?" he elaborated. "I mean, I thought the god-organs only added a hundred years." It was marginally terrifying to keep talking to him after that revelation, but it was more terrifying to try to run out of the apartment and leave his sister's body behind.
A short hum to acknowledge understanding of the question as he straightened out. "Consuming the heart of Xumurdad granted me the knowledge to overcome death. It should come as no surprise that it insulated me against it, as well."
"You're immortal?" he asked, disbelieving. That wasn't in the lore. Then again, neither was the murdering of Vahishta candidates...
"Unaging," he corrected. "Eternally."
Duncan's eyes flickered to Nova's body on the floor, then his sister's on the couch, then back to the Vahishta. "Okay, so..." He paused, not sure if he wanted to continue or even what he had to continue with, instead waiting for the Vahishta to pick up the conversation again.
He didn't.
Duncan rubbed his wrist, then nervously pulled his sleeves down from where they'd been pushed up to his elbows. "Are you going to make me resurrect her myself too...?"
"No. I will not teach you resurrection."
"Okay, so, um. Are you...going to...?"
Silence answered him.
Duncan bit his lip to keep himself from letting out any nervous rambling, but it was becoming clear that the answer to that was no. He forced down the growing panic and thought through what to say. "Why--?" He meant to keep going, but he didn't know what to finish it with, and let it hang there.
The Vahishta picked up the thread regardless. He spread his hands. "Xumurdad has brought me here, but for what purpose, I can only guess."
"It brought you here to resurrect her!" Duncan insisted, unable to contain his nerves any longer.
His eyebrows rose in an uncharacteristically sharp gesture that made Duncan press himself back against the sink, his hands on the edge of the counter behind him. "One week," he said. "And a destructive merge will begin." There was an edge to his voice, but it vanished now, back into that calm, patient tone from before. His hands folded in front of him once more, as his face smoothed out. "Was I brought here to resurrect these two? Or because Xumurdad desires whatever will merge next to be destroyed? Or to facilitate a smooth merge? Or perhaps another option that has not yet become clear? It is not for me to guess at. I do not presume to know Xumurdad's desires."
His breathing quick and uneven, Duncan stared at the Vahishta, trying to figure out what he was getting at.
All the others, all his friends who'd received god-organs, had been put into situations where those powers would get them out. The Vahishta had said--what was it he'd said? The wording had been oddly specific. 'Consuming the heart of Xumurdad granted me the knowledge to overcome death.'
Harriet had been granted the knowledge of the past Khshathras. Ezra had known how to banish Kharveryos without training.
If Duncan took the heart, would he be able to resurrect Missie himself?
One week. He'd figured out, along with Rhys and Ezra's help, that the merges had always happened right after a god-organ changed hands. Always with someone from Earth, as far as he knew. There had been destructive merges twice, the second confirmed as ending when Gabe became the Asha and went to Zenderael, which had been followed by Safta's coastline appearing in the ocean.
That meant someone from Earth had to take the Vahishta's heart to prevent a destructive merge. And he was here, in front of Duncan.
And Missie was dead. And the heart was here. In front of Duncan.
"When you became the Vahishta," he asked, somehow keeping his voice steady despite the idea forming in the depths of his mind, "how did you learn resurrection? Did you just know?"
A single, slow nod in answer.
Duncan's eyes darted to Missie again. "It's not for you to guess at--are you just, what, going to stand there and wait for a sign?"
"Xumurdad's plans are not for me to know. Mine are not for you to know." A pause just long enough to be meaningful, as he looked Duncan in the eyes. "And yours are not for me to know."
For a moment, Duncan was perfectly still, not even breathing, his eyes locked with the Vahishta's. He couldn't help but feel the Vahishta was just short of outright telling him to do what he was thinking.
Why else would he explain all that? Why would he confirm that Duncan could solve his problem by taking the god-organ? Why would he mention the destruction?
Why else would he make Duncan a cleric first and specifically teach him the spell he would need to help fix the situation in Fall City?
But he wasn't handing over his god-organ. He wasn't offering. He wasn't asking. Duncan's conclusion was based on circumstantial evidence, at best. There were perfectly reasonable alternate explanations for all of it.
If Duncan asked, he risked being told he was wrong. And then what?
He looked toward Missie's body again.
"I believe we have exhausted the purpose of this time together, Brother Jackson. If you will excuse me." The Vahishta turned and began to walk for the door.
Duncan couldn't know whether he was leaving permanently, or leaving to fetch Irena to tell her that he wasn't going to resurrect Nova or Missie, or leaving to bring her back so she could watch as he resurrected them.
He could only guess.
From the kitchen sink to the chair holding Marlene's borrowed potion belt in a matter of seconds, a vial yanked from its place, a solid right-handed throw at the Vahishta's back. It happened fast, he staggered and then fell forward, knees first, then tipping to the side, hitting the ground on his shoulder, sprawled on the floor with one hand extended toward the door, fast asleep.
Duncan, already hyperventilating in his panicked urgency, rushed away from the table and ransacked Irena's kitchen for a knife. He yanked open the drawers, moving on without bothering to close them if he did not find what he was looking for at a glance. Finally, after what felt like years of searching, he snatched up a simple butcher's knife and slammed the drawer shut in his wake, turning to hurry over to the Vahishta's sleeping form.
Sleep potions. Five minutes? He was pretty sure Harriet hadn't given him the bare minimum three. That was plenty of time.
He nudged the Vahishta over onto his back with his boot and stood over him, staring down at his face, at the familiar mustache and features surrounding it. He paused, breaths heaving, quick and deep. He dropped to one knee, raising the knife.
One second. Two. Five. He let out a hard breath and brought himself back to his feet, pacing away, back toward the kitchen.
What if. What if he was wrong? What if the Vahishta had meant to fetch Irena so she could be present while he resurrected both corpses? What if he'd taught Duncan just so there'd be another cleric available to help with the workload? What if he'd said all that because it was a secret every cleric in the church was supposed to keep? What if what if what if--
What if Duncan was murdering a man based on the erroneous assumption that he was asking to be murdered?
He stopped, snapping around to look down at Nova's body. Not even a second thought. Pulling the trigger was easy. It would be just as easy to tell himself that the difference now was the weapon he was using, that it was harder to kill someone with a knife than a gun, but he knew that wasn't true. He would've slit Nova's throat without hesitating, would've plunged the sword into his chest just as thoughtlessly. It was Nova. It was the fact that he'd deserved it.
The idea that anyone could deserve to die was largely frowned upon in the circles he frequented. He'd convinced himself he was on board with that. Lied to himself about it, really.
Nova had deserved to die.
The Vahishta...
Duncan's head turned to look at him, on the ground near the door. 2100 years, one child scouted and murdered every hundred or so to keep up a charade. That was only 20 children, in the end. Not even a significant amount in the greater scheme of things. A single busload of schoolchildren in a fatal accident would be a higher body count.
And none of them had been Duncan's siblings.
The subjectivity of it, the fact that he could stand here and justify death versus death as acceptable or unacceptable, it made him feel nauseated again.
What if he was wrong?
But what if he was right? What if he let the Vahishta walk away from this and he walked off forever and Missie never got to come back?
Worse still, what if he was right, but the Vahishta had not been implying that Xumurdad's will was for Duncan to murder him and take the god-organ? Did Duncan's desire to have his sister back override the Vahishta's desire not to be killed by Duncan?
Five minutes. Three? He had to assume three. He couldn't be sure.
He paced again, past the couch, past his sister's pale corpse, and then back, coming to stop beside the Vahishta again.
Three minutes. How much time did he have left?
He thought he saw the Vahishta stir. Two things he could have done. He could have stopped, waited, let him recover, apologized, and let him walk out to do whatever he'd chosen, and risked that he'd chosen not to resurrect anyone.
He also could have plunged the knife into the Vahishta's chest and eliminated that risk..
He chose the second.
The Vahishta did not move. Duncan waited a few seconds, watching him intently, and then pried his fingers away from the knife, rocking back on his heels, bringing his hand to lay over the lower half of his face.
He must have imagined it. The stirring. Blood seeped out around the knife, staining into the Vahishta's white robes. While his own breathing remained hurried and ragged, the Vahishta's slowed.
Stopped.
Did not resume.
What if he'd been wrong?
Feeling like he was pulling against magnetism, Duncan reached out and wrapped his fingers around the knife's handle. He breathed in, held it, held it too long, let it out as a quick burst and then gasped in another breath to hold. He yanked out the knife, leaving a bloody hole in the Vahishta's chest.
He'd been unsettled because it had been easy for him to kill Nova. Now he felt unsettled because he'd been able to kill the Vahishta for perfectly selfish reasons despite it being hard.
He wasn't sure how long he stayed there, crouched beside the Vahishta, bloody knife in one hand, staring down at his work. Longer than three minutes, probably.
That was only half the job done. He swallowed, leaned forward, reached out toward the Vahishta's chest, hesitated, and then continued on to begin unbuttoning the robe. His hands were not steady, he fumbled the buttons enough to frustrate himself and ended up just ripping it open. It wasn't like he needed to preserve it for future wear. The tunic underneath he tore open starting from the hole the knife had made.
All through his mind screamed at him that he'd just killed somebody to steal their heart and fucking eat it what the fuck was wrong with him did he even realize what he'd done did he understand what he was doing did he understand that this would make him the new Vahishta and that he'd have all the responsibilities that came with it and--
But Missie was lying on the couch right over there, dead for hours now, and this was the only way he could be absolutely positive that she would not stay that way.
He didn't slice the Vahishta open at the chest. The ribcage and the sternum protected the heart, he'd have to break ribs first to pull it out from there. It had to be right beneath the sternum, a big enough incision to dig upward and pull it out through. He held up the knife, but hesitated, wincing away from that bare skin, an obviously human chest that he was carving up for parts like a monster kill.
He wished this death had been as easy for him as Nova's. Feeling nothing was a far sight better than this overwhelming panic.
He looked just long enough to line up the stab and then closed his eyes and turned his head away. He plunged the knife in, grimacing with the sickening resistance it met. He yanked it down the body's midline, sawing to open up a hole in the abdominal cavity. It was harder work than it'd seemed, especially when he hadn't chosen a serrated knife, and moreso when he felt like throwing up the whole time at the thought of what he was doing.
He didn't feel any better when he looked back at his work and set the knife aside. He forced his eyes not to stray above the red gully he'd gouged into the body. He reached toward it, but hesitated again before he touched it, drawing his fingers back, pulling a face. This was so fucking gross. And Ezra had done this with a colon? Jesus Christ.
He rolled up his sleeve and took a breath to steel himself. He held it as he averted his eyes again and slid his hand into the wound. The number of faces he went through as he dug around in the Vahishta's body for his heart was impressive. It wasn't hard to find. The lumpy fist-sized thing centered between three other large organs. Pulling it out was harder. The first tug didn't tear it away from the major arteries and veins. He was more prepared on the second, but it still wasn't hard enough, and it finally came loose on the third, jerking Duncan backwards with his own force.
He pulled the heart out through the gash, wincing at the sight of his bloody hand and the god-heart clutched in it.
He set the heart down on the Vahishta's stomach, still holding onto it, and set his other hand over his mouth. "What the fuck is wrong with me?" he muttered.
What would Missie think? Theresa? Lindsey? His mom, dad, siblings? If they knew he'd done this, would they think he was a monster? He was starting to question that he wasn't, himself.
He accidentally chanced a glance at the Vahishta's face. Peaceful, completely at odds with the bloody gash in his torso. It didn't make Duncan feel sick, though. It made him feel shamed.
He'd gone too far to quit now.
He stood, leaving the knife and taking the heart, carrying it with him to the kitchen. He made his best effort to keep from dripping more blood on Irena's carpet. He ate it over the sink to catch the blood. The first bite was the hardest. He had to talk himself up to it, a heart was just a muscle, all the meat he ate regularly was just muscle too, he'd forced Ravindra to eat raw meat in his backstory, wasn't it fair for him to have to do the same at least once so he could know what it was like? Fuck, fuck--he finally just forced himself to do it before he could stop himself.
So. First bite was the hardest. Warm, bloody, tough. Fucking nasty. He gagged on it once but choked it down. A break to breathe a bit before the second, and that was easier because he knew what to expect, but still awful. More than once he wondered if the god-organ would take if he threw up during or immediately after eating it. He made it through without having to find out, at least.
When he was finished, he braced his hands on the edge of the sink and just leaned there a minute, grimacing, feeling disgusted, trying to get over the fact of what he'd just done.
Rhys had done that with a stomach? Did Gabe eat both lungs? Holy shit. You guys. You guys. What the fuck was wrong with all of them? He was so sorry he had not expressed more sympathy for what they'd all had to go through to get where they were now. It wasn't even the cannibalism aspect, just--eating whole organs completely raw fresh out of the body was fucking gross.
But it was over with. He'd done it. He took a deep breath and exhaled some of his tension. He turned on the faucet and cleaned himself up, and then the sink, and then any blood that had dripped on the kitchen floor.
It hit him as he was dumping the bloody paper towels in the trash. He was the Vahishta now. He didn't feel any different from the normal cleric he'd been moments before, but he was. He was the guy in charge of the church, the functional leadership of Bastan, the one who guided Omid and worked alongside the Spenta.
He stopped, momentarily overwhelmed by the realization, leaning a hand on the counter, staring down at the floor. "Fuck." He ran a hand through his hair, resting it at the back of his head briefly before letting it fall. "Fuck! I was holding out for spellsword!"
A frustrated groan, he straightened, looking across the kitchen into the living room. Toward the couch.
No, this was more important than getting his first choice of guild.
He breathed deep, in and then out, and then he walked across the apartment to the couch, his gaze avoiding either of the bodies on the floor.
He knelt at his sister's side and took her hand in his.
Maybe he was a monster. But he'd done it for a reason.