It started, as it had before, with the screams. Those blood-curdling, inhuman screams.
Ralov was too young to remember the last time it had happened. The last time that young women across the realm would rise from their beds, unable to do anything but shamble mindlessly from village to village and shriek until their throats bled. But he had been taught about it during his training, where the events that followed were cited as a prime example of why his order existed.
He hadn't always killed gods for a living. Once, shortly after his nature as a Driftwalker had come to light, he had been studying to become a Voztratana, willing to bind his soul to that of a Vozt and bring magic into the world. That changed after he met a Vozt for the first time. He knew from that moment on nothing truly good could come of a relationship with those self-centred spectres. His people were merely their playthings, and now one of them was bored.
One might even say bored enough to scream.
It had been three days since the girl had been left gagged and bound on the doorstep of the Ztanadrat cloister Ralov called home. Even through the gag and the stone walls of the crypt she was being kept in he could hear the wailing maiden, preventing his meditation. He couldn't imagine the kind of things that must be happening to her soul in the Drift. The things Dolvadin was doing to her.
He rose from the straw mat of his chamber, picked up his oil lamp. He would need to meditate elsewhere this evening. The armoury would be quiet, tucked away in it's own separate corner of the cloister.
As Ralov made his way toward the armoury, the wailing grew louder. The entrance to the crypt was along the way, and he soon found himself outside the thick reinforced door. The sound coming from within was truly horrible, yet he became overwhelmed by a grim curiosity. He reached out to grasp the iron handle.
“Struggling to sleep, brother?”
The voice startled him, and he snapped his head around. Yelzin, the head of this cloister and one of the men who had fought Dolvadin three decades ago.
The old man's white beard bobbed up and down as he spoke. “I've already had to stop one man from killing her. It's tempting, I know, but she is not herself.”
“Master Yelzin. I wish to go to the Drift tonight. I was going to the armoury for peace.”
“That's the wrong door. It's the other side of the courtyard.”
Ralov could not tell if the old man was annoyed or jovial. His manner was so serious, even when he was jesting.
“I know master. I was just -”
Yelzin began to hobble toward the door “I'm about to examine her. Perhaps you would like to accompany me?”
Ralov simply nodded, and pushed open the door to let his master through. Screams reverberated painfully through his skull. He liked to think he was a difficult man to unnerve, but the mere thought that anybody could be in this much pain chilled him to the bone. The flickering fire of his lamp barely penetrated the thick darkness of the crypt, but he knew she was just beyond the light's edge.
“Come, Ralov. We cannot understand what we cannot see.”
As they moved forward, the girl came into view. She barely reacted, if at all, to the light which bathed her. She just stood there, held in place by chains, spittle running down her chin.
“An attractive girl,” Yelzin remarked. “If we can save her, people will kill for her hand.”
The old man wasn't wrong. She was slim, but not too skinny, with high cheekbones and full lips. Ralov took a moment to imagine what she was like. A pleasure to be around, he thought, with a penchant for laughter and a child-like wonder. Nothing at all like the dead husk staring at him through those soulless eyes. When Dolvadin took a woman, all that remained was their scream.
“I was told that last time, Dolvadin took measures against those interfering with the maidens.”
“Yes,” replied Yelzin, as he checked the girl for more signs of Vozt influence. “If anyone tried to restrain them, they would find their hands burning. These chains would not have been a problem either, he would have lent them the strength to break through. Little short of death could stop their journey.”
“So why do we have one contained?”
Yelzin shrugged. “Perhaps he has overlooked her. Perhaps he does not have the strength that he used to. We did kill him, after all.” He was quiet for a moment. “Perhaps he is working on a larger scale.”
Ralov considered the responses. They were logically sound theories. It took a lot of energy to push magic through from the Drift. Only particularly powerful Vozt were even capable of it without a soul-bond. But even so, a knot in his stomach told him there must be more to it.
“What if he doesn't want to protect them?”, he ventured.
The old man paused in thought for a moment. “That is not his method. He likes to display his victims. He wants them all in one place, a choir singing of pride and terror. We must work with what we know.”
What Ralov knew was that the Vozt were unpredictable. And that knowledge made him fearful of what the future might hold, angry that somewhere in the gloomy depths of the Drift those vile self-professed deities were playing a game with him. A game he did not stand a good chance of winning.
It made him want to scream.
