Chapter Text
Silk Cradle was the ancient homeland of the gods, the cradle of civilization.
The greatest stronghold of the Old Faith.
It belonged to Shamura long before Narinder was born, the empire he was raised in once belonged to the hundreds of gods Shamura slew, the landscape of it as different as the clashing gods that carved out their slice of power in their homeland, many lands with many names.
But it had been changed, modified by the deep roots Shamura's vast power had placed, and it became just as much of a reflection of the landscape in Shamura's mind as the Bishop themself.
It became cavernous, the ceiling of the caves enclosed the land like the cradle Shamura had put in its name, where spiders of their kin would roam, with a few slashes where the light of the violet moon could beam down.
Shamura's dominion was always in perpetual night, and there was a midnight beauty to their land. The greenery was always a shade of purple or blue, and the trees swaying in the wind.
A lush, wild, untamed forest.
But the wilderness was the backdrop of Narinder's childhood before he joined Shamura in their conquest of the heretic gods and before he came to rule his own following, enjoyed but never places he would think back towards overly fondly, the cities of Shamura's domain was were he spent most of his time exploring, and where he thought the deeper essence of Shamura lay, in the heart of their faith.
Huge, marble temples with a ceiling higher than a child Narinder could even see, spider silk glittering in the moonlight, encasing Shamura's home in an artful way, tunnels of secrets in the hidden places where relics of Shamura's defeated gods still lingered, the blue-flamed candles that cast a light over everything, the grand palaces built throughout the land, the giant painted statues of Shamura as a young conqueror immortalized in stone, glowing bright in the moonlight as Narinder scurried through the streets, the knowledge contained both books and pottery vases, the latter stuffed into every possible nook and cranny by a small army of mortal disciples, painted with as much runes and art as any book, because in Shamura's youth was older than books that was how people told their stories, the spoils of war flooding the temples and the halls with a magnificence that Narinder privately admired but would never admit to.
There was always a dark and cramped place to curl up in, something a cat would always appreciate. Narinder's days were peaceful and painless before his younger siblings came and he discovered the true extent of his power.
Of course, Narinder wouldn't have thought that at the time. As an infant god, Narinder could dimly remember that he had thought himself lonely and isolated because the God of War was often too busy warring to..... constantly accompany him?
It wasn't clear what the infant cat had expected. Narinder could almost laugh now. The soft fool had no idea how much worse "lonely and isolating" could get.
Yet his dreams had brought him here. He was undeniably back in his very old quarters in Shamura's very old palace.
The dim blue candle casting a light over his cramped desk, his weapon resting on the wall, his body feeling very different from the mortal one he was stuck in, and yet Narinder knew he was much smaller than his proper godly form, because the room was sized for Narinder when he was a child, yet his mind didn't seem to grasp the difference.
Why was he dreaming of this place?
This had happened so long ago, this era of his life was nothing more than a bare whisper in his mind.
He dreamed often of his siblings and their betrayal, of his days imprisoned, of the dark days that were his first few years as in a humiliating mortal body in his own cult that had been usurped by his own vessel, several vivid revenge fantasy dreams of brutally murdering his siblings and The Lamb that quickly turned sour (the latter had stopped being a revenge fantasy and had become more of nightmare, because murdering The Lamb meant murdering his only...He was somehow married to them but he couldn't even bring himself to think the word), his days as the free God of Death when he was so much more powerful than even the Mighty Shamura could hope to achieve...
Why was he here? It was so long ago, when it was just him and Shamura.
He didn't even know he was The God of Death then, he didn't even have his Crown, he hadn't even taken up the art of the scythe.
The palaces and cities of his childhood had long since crumbled to dust.
Even the Silk Cradle he knew as a Bishop before his imprisonment was in ruins.
He had seen it through The Lamb's crown..(a jolt of shock hit him, it was-is-his crown, so he was going to ignore the fact that he just thought of it as The Lamb's crown, it was better to ignore it than unpack it)
Silk Cradle is a barren and desolate place now, infested and overrun with spidery bugs, stinking of decay and littered with bones.
Shamura would have never allowed their domain to crumble like this if they had been of sound mind. It was their crowning jewel, their greatest achievement, built up over countless years of labor and grief, an effort older than Narinder himself, their pride and joy, loved like a child...
Narinder knew that Shamura's mind had been addled by his claws. He took satisfaction in every misery he inflicted. But seeing Shamura's home like that...he had done this. Gracious and strong Shamura, broken by their own brother's claws, and that brother's vessel coming to kill them when they were in such a state...
Did they even know that death was coming for them? Did they know that their life's work was utterly destroyed? Did they know that their siblings were dead? Did they know that they were alone?
Needless to say, Narinder avoided looking through the Red Crown while his vessel was in the Silk Cradle. He avoided watching Shamura die. They deserved to suffer, and so just because Narinder found it hard to watch, didn't mean they shouldn't suffer.
Yet Narinder had dreamed himself here. Out of what? Guilt?
It had been years since Shamura had died. Also he shouldn't have guilt, but he did. A glaring weakness that he hated himself for.
His shameful nightmares usually took place in the temple where he knew the Lamb must've killed them.
Some awful vision of a tormented, senile Shamura weeping. Much more direct and upfront than this.
Narinder got up from his silk-covered chair. Shamura had once told him that gods seldom forget, but seeing the scene in his dream, he realized that wasn't true.
His dreams were usually very detailed, the places of his godhood seared into his brain by familiarity, but here...It was blurry around the edges, the sharp details of the room smeared, softened by forgetting.
Even now, the weapon resting on the wall shifted from a hammer to an ax to a sword. Narinder knew for a fact that the scythe was not invented until Narinder left this bedroom forever and joined Shamura in the conquest of The Fanatic's lands, but as he lay his eyes upon it, it seemed to solidify into a white-bladed scythe.
Apparently that was what his mind found natural. Fitting. Narinder took it. The room was desaturated even in the dim blue candlelight, in an unnatural way, quiet in a way it never was in reality, shadows brimming with menace. Narinder grimaced.
All clear signs of a nightmare or at least a discomforted subconscious. Best to get it over with.
Narinder looked at the door. Pale white stone emblazoned with the dark outlines of Shamura's crown, just how he remembered it. He ignored the fact that the outlines seemed to shift with every glance.
He reached for the rune-symbolled knob and opened it. Narinder stepped into the hallway. Nothing traumatic leaped out at him. Encouraging.
Narinder placed both feet in the hall and turned right to face the passage.
The first thing that stuck him was the complete emptiness of the great hallway. It had always been crowded with mortals in its time, but it was empty in his dream. Of course, the hallway to his room was always empty in reality, because no one could venture into his quarters without his permission except for Shamura, but the great entrance his hallway gave out into should not be empty.
Narinder walked slowly into the main hallway, the floor tiles of the crescent moons thudding underneath his paws. He ignored the silk tapestry that adorned the wall to his left.
(A birthday gift from Shamura that told the story of his finding with little knots dangling down that Narinder spent more time than he would like to admit batting around with his child-size paws when no mortal was looking. It was satisfying to see the knots swing against each other and then swing back. He later suspected that Shamura incorporated that on purpose because of his cat nature)
He gazed at the ghost of a place long since gone. It was a hallmark of Shamura's style that the halls were always tunnel-like and circular, no windows, but somehow not claustrophobic. The texture of the enclosing stone walls was not smooth, it had circular ridges like an artificial beehive, but the hall was so cluttered with trophies and artwork that the bare surface of the wall was seldom visible. The ceiling was painted a crisp black and speckled with dots of gold to look like the night sky. Great pillars rose in the corners in the corners of the wall, lathered with paint and carvings and decoration.
Narinder duly noted the jarringly crude carving on the pillar to his left , almost like it had been scratched in by a certain feline's claws, of a three-eyed cat's face.
How his mind bothered to remember such a minute detail but only a vague smear of the patterns on the pillars Narinder had no idea.
Narinder exited his hallway. He noticed that there was light coming from the right, and...There it was. In the center of the great hallway there was a skylight covered with spider silk so the light seemed to blur and make a halo over the huge statue of Shamura in the center. It was at least five times Narinder's height.
The backside of the statue was facing Narinder, of course, because it was facing the main entrance for maximum impact. It was raised on a pillar. The pillar was surrounded by a some sort of vague spikey mass that Narinder didn't care to identify. He was too busy staring at the robes the statue was dressed in. The robes were spider silk dyed every color that glowed with an iridescent sheen.
Narinder could see the backside of Shamura's old chest-plate on the statue too. His blood boiled with rage. He had almost forgotten after all of this time in The Lamb's cult, but there was a time when his siblings did not all wear the identical black-and-gold garb of the Old Faith.
A very recent time, in fact.
Each Bishop had once worn what they chose , once Narinder's white-and-red robes and veil was not an outlier. Until his siblings decided to make it one. They dared to imprison him, and then they had the audacity to cast aside their robes entirely just to exclude him. Their desire to abandon Narinder was stronger than their vanity. So they could look like a united front, because now that their wayward heretic of a brother was gone. Narinder seethed, flexing his claws. That was certainly a reminder.
How could he have forgotten? What a nice little incursion. His fangs sank .
The iron taste of blood resounded in his mouth as his claws twitched as the thoughts of violence smashed through his head.
He wanted to kill something.
Narinder tried to compose himself. It was very easy to lose the lucidity in the dream if he let his emotions take control.
That would make things worse, as then he wouldn't be able to anticipate the nightmares, instead lost in the present of the dream. There were some remainders of his godhood in the way his mind ordered itself in his sleep. His siblings were dead now.. . What better vengeance than that?
There was no need to get angry. Still, Narinder was nothing if not a bitter creature. He turned his gaze to the entrance. He prowled across the crescent moon floor, his eyes skimming idly over the temple's painted sky.
He was by the statue now, and realized with a startling clarity that the pointy mass surrounding the pillar was a collection of swords-no-not just swords-weapons.
Dozens of axes, swords, spears, bows, maces, daggers, hammers, maces, and knifes all standing up in defiance of gravity, artfully arrayed around the idol of Shamura, the tallest weapons surrounding the statue's pillar like an armed guard and the height of the weapons declining down.
Divine weapons. Weapons of all different designs and creeds, radically different but each the same in it's immortal quality, impossible proportions, impossibly lavish decorations of gold and jewels and blades the color that no metal could ever make them, and magical designs, like say, a blade of streaming water forever folding in it on itself or a bow made of fluttered butterfly wings.
Doubtless crafted by the power of crowns and Kuudai. He remembered now. One weapon for every god Shamura killed. There was three hundred and twelve of them. The War Gallery .
That was what Shamura had named this long-gone idol with it's trophies of conquest. It had been a long time since Narinder had seen all of Shamura's "gallery" in one place. A very long time. The vast majority of his immortal life, in fact. It shocked him, seeing it here.
A chill came over him. Narinder didn't understand why. It was certainly not out of pity to the dead gods. He took joy in purging for the Old Faith. Well, it wasn't just gods. There surely were millions of mortals killed by Shamura's wars for Silk Cradle, but that was hardly bothering either. All mortals fell into keeping, it hardly mattered how they got there. But the reason his siblings had betrayed him......this altar of weapons...
If Narinder...not that they could've...but if the Bishops somehow managed to erase him, if Shamura came out unharmed, would the spider take his scythe and spin it in their web? Another threat extinguished, another trophy taken? Another god much stronger than war but beaten by its cunning? Narinder just another step Shamura climbed? A ghost of a memory of a long-dead hall, already forgotten? Narinder did not know the names of these gods.
Shamura was a conqueror. Shamura was ruthless . Narinder knew this . He had seen the way Shamura had eliminated every threat to their family and power . He saw the shrine of weapons now, terrible in its truth. He was ruthless too. That was what the mighty had to be. But Shamura had been just as ready to betray and dispatch of him as they were ready to dispatch all of the nameless fools. And that hurt .
He turned his back on the statue and its gallery of ghosts. The main entrance did not lead to the stairs and into the city, as it had in life, but instead into one of the palace libraries. A minor one. Oddly, Narinder had not noticed the doors being opened before. He thought they were closed. But, the mind was a fickle thing. His semi-mortal one more so. He entered the library, closing the grand white doors behind him with a slam. It was startling how dark it was without Shamura's halo.
This minor library was a dark and compact place, lit only by the blue light of candles stacked on every surface. Narinder could see the wall of pottery vases, each with its own indents in the wall where it was displayed with the proper runes and sigils.
There were a few reading nooks for reading carved in the walls, filtered through the bookshelves.
There were white shelves arranged in a row, full of scrolls and books in every crevice. The shelves themselves were dusty and rendered dull by time, stamped with the black sigil of the crescent moon.
Something tugged in Narinder's memory. This place was familiar. Instinctively he looked up, half-knowing what he would see. The ceiling was painted with the mural of green eyes peering out of an monstrous deer skull, a crown of flowers and a brown cape around its neck, clasping the hands of a taller figure in a long orange mask with a brown frill around its neck, like a lover. Both of them reached out their left hand, a dead snake in their palms. It was rimmed with crescent moons, a hallmark of the Silk Cradle art style.
He had doubtless only remembered this little place because of the mural. It must've disturbed him as a child, those leering green eyes. He had not spent much time here as a child. He had his own study, after all. The only functions this place had were to store books and a lackluster place to read and perhaps sleep, but there were the mortal librarians to consider, and there were more remote places for a sleepy cat.
He came here infrequently. The books loaned from Shamura’s personal shelves satisfied him.
Whatever the spider’s faults, they were generous with their siblings. Narinder cast an idle glance at the pottery vases in the wall. His mind seemed to remember more now. There was a bright vase with black etchings painted inside, that told the legend of the great’s one’s blood and how Shamura had weaved it into a basket, only the half of their face kept visible, serene with their eye closed, the rest a black maw as the basket set in their lap, a row of followers bowing in a circle around them, each with a delicately carved pile of offerings. Narinder thought the likeness was good.
And then his eyes wandered. Surrounded by dark, crackling shadows, there was a crude, cracked vase, that looked more like a white stone instead of cleverly crafted clay, was the face of a screaming, wounded Shamura. Narinder froze. That should not be there. He took the vase by his paws, sitting his scythe on the bookshelf.
It felt a horde of crawling bugs underneath his hands, but he saw no movement. On the vase was a constantly shifting cat made of jagged lines and a wild scream, moving with every second, slashing its crude claws across Shamura’s head, blood streaming out. Narinder winced, and let out a sharp breath. It had begun. He threw it across the room.
Suddenly there was a soft click of mandibles, and a cold hand rested its fingers on his shoulder. Narinder jolted, wrenched their arm from his shoulder, and in his panic to attack he stumbled straight into the bookshelves. Each shelf fell to the ground with a mighty crash, and Narinder fell with it.
Narinder, a little dazed, looked up. And there they were. Shamura. Looming over him.
“Have you already become so remiss in this short amount of time? Ignoble brother. You were once clever if not wise. Too clever to succumb to such a base instinct. I daresay I taught you better, Narinder. ” Shamura’s mandibles clicked .
But of course, this creature wasn’t Shamura. For one thing, their head was whole, unbandaged and perfect, but their body was the frail and disheveled thing it was in the last millennia of Shamura's life, their robes were the black and gold of betrayal . But it was the eyes that gave it away. The eyes had a dull gray sheen, the color leached from their eyes.
They were completely absent of the spark that had animated them in life. They were cold and lifeless, but staring at Narinder with utter contempt. Worst of all was how Shamura’s face was contorting in a way that felt…wrong.
It smiled at him.
"I preferred it when these sad illusions were too incoherent to talk to me." Narinder hissed, grabbing his scythe.
Not-Shamura sneered, its eyes squinting with glee. "You always think with diffidence when you lie. Weakness, Narinder. Do you think your own mind cannot tell? You take some easement in seeing the damage done to me undone, no matter how much you try to suppress it. Shamura, of sound mind and hateful. " Not-Shamura smiled again. "Of course, Shamura had reason to hate you. You did it first. "
Narinder slashed his scythe. A perfect arc. Blood gushed from Not-Shamura's throat. Black, godly ichor. It splattered on his hands. Warm and ugly.
But Not-Shamura only stared, standing utterly still, dull eyes scathing. He was only a little shorter than it was, now that he was standing. He went again, aiming to tear its torso. Then he saw its soulless eyes explode with color, animated with horror and confusion. Narinder recoiled. Shamura?
Then their eyes dulled, and filled with ghoulish pleasure .
Narinder snarled. He went to strike again, but the scythe was melting. Its blade was corroding, caving under the ichor like acid. He threw it aside, and decided to use his claws instead. But Not-Shamura grew taller, it’s horrible face bending over to sneer at, it’s smile becoming a terrible maw. The library around them became a formless mass of shifting illusions. There was nothing concrete except for him and Not-Shamura, the soft ground slid beneath his feet, a sinkhole where Not-Shamura stood. Narinder let out an angry yelp and sunk his claws into the strange gray-white sand.
"I see. You cannot bear the remainder. You abhor and reject it, but it is true. "
Not-Shamura’s voice was a loud roar, overwhelming, a boom his ears with each word. He clenched his teeth, ears pressed down from the pain. By the sheer force of his will the ground had solidified beneath his feet, and he pulled himself up. He would not be cowed.
“Do you not remember the envy? Do you not remember that you forsook me long before I abandoned you? It was a game we played, a game of godhood and rules, a game I crafted and mastered, and you couldn't stand it. You never coped well with being restricted, not being able to claim more when your siblings could, keep in check by my Law. You longed for my knowledge, you longed for my wisdom, but you hated the fact that I had that power over you. So that's why you struck my head. That was your first instinct. You knew it would ruin me. It was calculated by your claws. You couldn't play, so you decided to cheat. " Narinder could hear Not-Shamura lean over even though his back was turned.
Something about hearing Shamura's voice scolding him with his own thoughts shook Narinder to his core. "You-no-Shamura betrayed me because I am a threat to their empire. Because I was mighty and wanted to be more . They molded me into what I am, but still they feared me. They were weak even before I cleaved whatever worthless plans they had out of their skull, I just made it more obvious." Narinder spat.
He turned around, directly in front of Not-Shamura's dull gaze.
"It was by nature we must abide Narinder. You knew that. You knew what encompassing both death and life would do to your family. To the fabric of nature. You knew and you did not relent. You were envious of Shamura for their cunning. But Shamura never envied your power. Death is more potent than both war and wisdom combined, yet Shamura did not want it, and did not try to take it from you like a lesser god would've. They only worried. You were family. You never stopped being family. They worried even after you took everything from them. Even after you were in chains and you broke their mind. Still they came to you bearing gifts. Yet you could not find the graciousness to forgive them after a thousand years. You let them to suffer forever. Do not pretend their kindness was a result of the madness you inflicted on them. They knew who you were and what you done. They never allowed themself to forget that. They never allowed themself to forget their love. But you did. You forgot."
Narinder was slient. Slowly Shamura's face started to decay, flesh sliding off their brow like a gory crown, a bloody slash splitting their forehead open like smile.
"You hurt me."
Narinder woke up in a cold sweat.