Page 62 of Ascendent
“You have the power of the tundra within you, Sasha. You have the blood of the bear in your veins. Your spirit walks in the shape of the bear, and the shadow you cast in the upper world, indulyn buga, is of the bear. We are lucky, for bear is the strongest of all the animals. They are the warriors of the heavens. Gods that fear nothing. They are the spirits of the oldest humans, watching over us, until Little Bear leads all the stars home.”
Drumming started. Kilaqqi’s voice waxed and waned. Time was a wheel, circling overhead, unspooling starlight and midnight in waves of silk that draped around the world, around the forest, around the two of them, until nothing was left but their fire, the fur he laid on, and Kilaqqi.
The black of the sky pulsed with shades of darkness, each one different, each one more liquid than the last. Treetops stretched for the heavens, ladders into space, trying to brush the midnight, trying to touch the moon. The moon quivered in the sky, about to burst. A brighter moon could not exist.
Owls hooted. Bats spread their wings and leaped from their mountain caves. Eagles soared, silhouetting in front of the moon, carving paths through the starlight, dividing the night into epochs and eons. He could see everything, hear everything. Feel all of time in the fullness of his eyeballs. His body was too small, too small to understand the truths cascading like calculus and geometry and works of art before him. Tears built in his eyes, overflowed down his cheeks.
The stars shifted. Constellations rearranged. Reformed. Sergey’s face, carved from the heavens, painted in moonlight, stared down at him.
Ice stabbed through his belly, a giant upthrust, a spear shooting from the center of the earth. He felt it tear through him, rip apart his spine, separate his guts from his hips, his belly from his ribs. Frozen blood tumbled out of him, soaking the fur, the Earth, the midnight curtains of heaven spooling around him. He tried to call out for Kilaqqi, tried to scream, but the ice was grabbing him, no longer a spike, a fist, pulling him down, pulling him into the ground, into the darkness, into the underworld. He screamed—
I am with you.Kilaqqi’s voice sounded inside his skull. Not heard, but felt, like a string of his soul had been plucked. Gasping, he tried to reach for Kilaqqi.
His arms swung into nothingness.
He stood in a dark cave. His belly was whole again, his spine intact. He grabbed his stomach, checked for ice, for evisceration. Nothing.
Rumbling came from the darkness.
Every one of his senses roared, the primal underside of his brain shrieking that he had to run, he had to flee,now now now.
Kilaqqi appeared next to him, smiling, completely naked save for the paint on his chest, his face. His hand outstretched, he walked into the darkness. “Hello, old friend.”
A roar, a flash of teeth, of claws. A silhouette appeared: a bear, the largest Sasha had ever seen, three times as tall as Kilaqqi. He ran, scrambling for the cave walls, trying to find some way out, some way to climb. But the walls were shrinking, pushing him closer to the bear. His feet slid in the dirt, the world collapsing around him.
Behind him were wet sounds, the sounds of a body being torn apart. He heard guts and gore splatter the cave walls. He didn’t want to look.
“Sasha.”
“No!” He clung to the wall, closed his eyes.
“Sasha, open your eyes.”
“No!”
“Sasha.”
How was Kilaqqi still speaking? Hadn’t he been torn apart? Hadn’t the bear devoured him? He’d heard the claws slash, saw the blood.
Trembling, his breath coming too fast, Sasha twisted. Chanced to look.
Kilaqqi lay in fourteen pieces, scattered before Bear. His head lay on its side, gazing serenely at Sasha. Bear had one of his legs in her paws. She was skinning the leg, pulling out Kilaqqi’s bone, inspecting it.
Washing it. A waterfall of stars appeared behind Bear, and she dipped the leg bone in the cascading starlight, brushed off the extra shine. Sparkles rained from the bone, drifted across the cavern. Bear slid the bone back into Kilaqqi’s leg and placed it beside his severed head.
“Bear remakes our bodies to travel in the spirit realms. We cannot go as humans.” Kilaqqi smiled. “You are of Bear. You are like her.”
Sasha slid down the wall, let go of the rocks he’d clung to. He turned, but didn’t step forward. His naked skin prickled under Bear’s gaze.Prey, prey, prey, his mind screamed.I am just a tasty snack.
Claws flashed. He crumpled. The world spun, end over end. He closed his eyes, reopened them, and saw the world sideways. He stared into Kilaqqi’s eyes.
“Now you’ve lost your body, too.” Kilaqqi beamed. “Bear will reassemble you for this journey. You will see. You will see more than you ever have.”
Bear lifted Sasha’s leg, sliced into his thigh, and pulled out his bone. She sniffed it, sniffed it again. Froze.
Roaring, Bear flung Sasha’s bone at his head, lifted his body parts and flung them away, growled and stomped her feet. Tilted her head up and bellowed.
“What happened?” Kilaqqi shouted. “Why did Bear not accept you?”
