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The moment Arkady had been banished to Lovushka, he knew it would be his grave.
During sleepless nights, he had imagined death in a blazing hail of Circassian bullets. Maybe he would die of the cold. Maybe he would be struck by a disease. Maybe he would become a victim of one of these duels whose purpose was quickly forgotten, in contrast to the eternal effects of its bullets.
But he had never expected to die like this.

Grappled, he and Bela were dragged deep beneath the earth, straight into Lovushka's belly. It was a tight corridor carved deep into the stone beneath the fortress, only illuminated by flickering lamplight. It cast gruesome shadows across the rough edges of the walls.
Krassotkin, petrol lamp in hand, lead their little procession.
"What are you doing?", Arkady choked out.
Firing squat. Hung by the neck. Tossed from Lovushka's highest tower. All of these seemed more reasonable approaches for punishing them than... this. Whatever it was.
With a chill running down his spine, he remembered Krassotkin's words at the wedding. Their blood will satisfy the deathless one.

"My sweet, precious lieutenant Bessmertny."
The kapitan had stopped, turning around to his disgraced officer, and his lips twisted into one of his wicked little smiles.
With a touch that could nearly be interpreted as gentle, he stroked Arkady's cheek.
"Your pretty face only houses an empty skull. Educated, yes, but still so horribly stupid. Morally abnormal."

Arkady gritted his teeth and started:
"It was the right thing to do-"

The kapitan simply brushed his words away.
"Oh, I am sure you know all the great Russian, German, and French authors. You must dance the Mazurka quite wonderfully!
And yet, you can't even bear to pick up your rifle for your homeland!
If it was at least cowardice! But no, you are brave enough to fight for the enemy. Against your own brothers. You spill good Russian blood like others would drink wine!"
His brows lowered.
"But not anymore. This charade is over."

The corridor opened up into a wide hall - or rather into the maw of a beast.
The floor was too smooth, the walls too slick, and the darkness far more than the simple absence of light. It was a living, breathing thing, slumbering till it woke and swallowed the world whole.
Yet, it was not that which made Arkady shiver.
Because the room was completely empty- except for a singular stone coffin placed in its centre. The floor beside it was caked in dried blood.
Arkady was sick in the stomach as he saw twelve chains wrapped around it.
He thought of Tatiana and her tales about the Bessmertny's forefathers. He thought about Bela and her story about the great evil from the north buried beneath Lovushka's towering walls.

Krassotkin raised his arms in a grand gesture.
For a moment, Arkady did not see his superior, but Faust, who had already sold his soul to the devil.
"Now," Krassotkin smiled. "I allow you to die for a greater cause."
With these words, he produced a blade from his uniform.
No matter how gilded and decorated it was, its purpose was that of any blade: to harm and draw blood.
The kapitan's eyes had locked on Bela.
"The esteemed general Yermolov once said We need the Circassian lands, but we don't have any need of the Circassians themselves." He clicked his tongue. "Well, maybe I still have use for you."

"What are you doing? Stop this madness!"
Arkasha tried to pull himself free, but the soldier's grasp was worse than an iron shackle.

"You don't understand anything. Both of you", Krassotkin sneered. "I will protect the world itself from monsters and barbarians. Evil lies buried here in this cursed land. I will keep its belly full, satiate it's greed with your blood until it falls into a deep slumber again. A little spilled blood is a price I am willing to pay."

Arkady could only think about the tale of Koshchey the deathless. How he was freed by drinking water. How giving evil what it wanted only made its greed glow brighter.
"You don't understand. The tales -"
He tried to say, but Krassotkin scoffed:
"Stop your foolish boy's tales," and with his blade in his hand, he stood before Bela, the storm restrained by flesh and bone, ready to deal the fatal blow.

"You stupid old fool!" She hissed. Nothing but defiance glistened in her eyes as she stared into the abyss of death. "You don't defy evil, you are like it! Men like you seek greatness, but only bring ruin!"

"Damn you, savage girl."
The blade touched her skin, and Arkady could already see her body on the floor, cold and stiff, and a scream erupted from his lungs.
"No! Please! Not her!"

As he was about to drag the knife across the soft flesh of Bela's throat, Krassotkin hesitated.
"Oh," the kapitan made, and light shimmered in his eyes. "You are dear to each other. I see. This changes things."

Too quickly to notice, he had turned around and dragged Arkady by his collar towards the coffin.

"What-", he gasped as he stumbled along, but Krassotkin gave him a shove, his body slammed against the cold stone, and he was bent over the coffin.

"Watch your treacherous little sweetheart closely, princess," he mused and toyed with his blade.

"I am not a traitor," Arkady spat out. His entire body was shaking. But not because of fear, he noticed absentmindedly, but out of anger. He would not die a coward.
"You and your kind betrayed Russia. You desecrate her body, her land, her citizens. You claim glory by inducing cruelty. You burn down Circassian villages, starve them, while you let our own people perish from hunger, progroms, and sentence them to live in dirt. You feast upon Russia's corpse, not knowing that you are the one killing her. Maybe we should allow her to-"

He could not finish. His words forever died on his tongue as Krassotkin grabbed him by the hair, yanked him forward, and before Arkady could even feel pain, Krassotkin slit his throat.

Immediately, Arkasha sucked air into his lungs, but as he reached for his throat, only hot liquid gurgled through his fingers.
This can't be it, he thought, as he gulped down his own blood.
The entire world tilted. His head hit the ground, surrounded by a halo of liquid ruby.
For just a moment, he was the most beautiful saint of all.

Bela's scream shattered the air. She broke free and a nasty crunch echoed through the hall as she smashed her foot against a soldier's knee, but before the man could let out a scream, she hurled herself over Arkady's body and bedded his chest on her knees.

"Please, please, please", she whispered, carassing his chin, holding his head in her hands, while treacherous hot tears blurred her vision, but his beautiful forget- me- not colored eyes had gone dull.
They were the color of cold ash now.

She clawed at his crinkled uniform and let out a wailing scream.
Krassotkin's cold words gutted her like an animal on the slaughterblock.
"At least in death he could serve a higher calling. That's more than he deserved."

Suddenly, Bela was twelve again. Her dead father lied in her arms, and all she could have done was watch in horror. There was no one to cradle her, no one to confess her fear to.
There was no comfort to return to.
Only the abyss. At its bottom, down in Jahannam, waited revenge.
Just like back then, she plunged into the darkness, deep into the boiling waters that scorched every softness and bleached the mercy in her bones.
She could not save him - or anyone. She failed. Miserably. Horribly. Every time. But Bela was an angel of vengeance, armed with divine violence.

Screaming, she whirled around and threw herself on Krassotkin with nothing but wrath.
She scratched his face, drawing dark lines across his face. His fist smashed into her nose. For a moment, the world went numb with pain, but still, her fingers found his throat, and all she had to do was squeeze-

A horrible creak thundered through the room, and Bela's eyes grew wide.
Then, everything went terribly quiet.
Arkady was lying in a pool of his own blood, dead eyes directed at the ceiling, but the Ruby liquid had already spilt far enough to touch the coffin with its chains.
Arkady's cursed blood was their key.
Uselessly, their metal links clanked to the ground, more fatal than artillery shells.

In the end, Krassotkin was like all of the great men in history:
In the name of glory, he brought the demise of himself and countless others.
For the coffin's lid opened and Arkady rose from the dead.

The fairytales were full of wizards as clever as their were evil. They defied death itself by storing their soul in a needle that is hidden inside an egg within a duck within a hare, buried deep in the soil of Buyan, the island behind the eternal fog.
But Arkady did not have a needle. He did not have an egg either. Nor a duck, to be precise.
Yet, he lacked human flesh to begin with.
Born from the mortal body of his mother, but given the eternal soul of his creator's magic, he staggered to his feed, gasping for air and retching up his own blood.

"Arkady."
Bela stood there, covered in wounds and sweat, more beautiful than ever before, and they simply stared at each other, as dark fog emerged from the coffin and covered them like a shrout.
But they did not care for it, for in this moment, the two of them were deathless themselves.

They looked at each other, Bela - the executioner, the princess, the warrior - and Arkady - the sacrificial lamb, the saint, the demon from hell - and they loved each other, despite their monstrosity. Or maybe because of it.

The spell broke as she fell into his arms and pulled him close to her until she could feel his warm - alive- hands wrapped around her torso.
For the first time since the death of her father, Bela wept. But she was not stricken with grief or wrath but utter relief.
Instead of anything substantial, she could only choke out "You are so soft" , even though his body was not soft at all. And yet, he was.

But like all joy, it did not last.

"To belief in love", a cold, bodyless voice echoed. "How endearing."
It came from everywhere. From above. Behind. North and south. It sounded ancient. No. timeless. *Deathless*.

"Who are you?" Bela shouted, and her eyes twitched.
They only found Krassotkin choking blood, his spine bend and limbs trembling. There was no triumph in his face anymore.
And with a hint of terror, they realised that the black mist had wrapped itself around Krassotkin like a fist.

Suddenly, Krassotkin jerked. He uprighted himself, and his eyes flew open.
They had turned black - except the irises.
They were the color of forget-me-nots.

The second one of Krassotkin's soldiers - the one whose knee had not been shattered- let out a scream of terror, dropped his weapon, turned around and sprinted into the darkness of the corridor.
Or at least he tried.

Lazily, nearly annoyed, Krassotkin snapped his fingers.
The soldier collapsed where he had stood. Lifeless by some strange magic.
But as the Kapitan lowered his hand - once strong and cruel- the fingers had turned grey, ridden with dark necrotic spots. The smooth skin of a man not yet fifty had crinkled into the creased hand of an old man. Worse, he had started to rot alive.

Krassotkin- who was not Krassotkin at all- crinkled his forehand.
"Useless vessel," he muttered, and his violet eyes wandered across the room.
Then, finally, it found the two of them.

"Arkasha," it whispered through Krassotkins decaying face. "My sweet, sweet Arkasha."

Out of sheer shock, Arkady let go of Bela's hands and stumbled a few steps back.
"What are you?", he muttered, but he knew. He already knew since the moment their gaze had met.

The thing inside Krassotkin was a flower. Poisonous, with a horrible stench and fat black petals. And Arkady was its bud, fresh and pretty and delicate, yet fated to bloom into this.

A memory inherited from his mother echoed in his blood.
Princess Avdotya Golitsyna, how she sat in front of her gilded mirror in Count Bessmertny's estate, humming a tune as she brushed her golden hair with her ivory comb.
She was so absorbed in her work that she failed to notice the cold whistling through her curtains and the cawing of ravens circling the night sky.

But as her gaze sought her own reflection in the mirror, she saw glowing violet eyes, staring at her from behind her chair.
A suffocated scream escaped her lips. She whirled around and knocked her vase from her dressing table. It shattered, spilling flowers and water over the floor.
She blinked again and again, shook her head, but instead of vanishing, the grotesque shadow of an old man hovered in front of her, thin like a skeleton.

I am going mad. The count is going to send me to the madhouse , she thought as she stood before the spirit, frozen in shock. She could have run, even if that had not changed anything. But her limbs betrayed her. So she stood there, an ashen marble statue. A fruit ready for plucking.
And yet, despite the danger, all she could think about was her disgraced cousin, who had shunned his inheritance and title in order to live in a chamber in Moscow and marry a prostitue. Now, he drooled in a cell in a sanatorium in Yalta, eaten alive by syphilis and tuberculosis, rambling about the end of monarchy and the vengeance of the peasantfolk.

But her fate was worse than that of a madwoman sent to the periphery of the empire.
For her visions were not mere visions, but very real. She knew the moment the thing had touched her.
Not that any would have believed her, even - and especially- if it had been done by a real man.

Princess Avdotya did not now of the massacre of one of too many Auls on this day - men, woman, and children dead, some burned, some beheaded, some stabbed in the back as they were fleeing, murdered in the name of honour and civilisation - and how their spilled blood was greedily sucked in by the soil near Lovushka, making the spirit entombed in its belly tremble in lust, freeing him from his slumber, if only for a night.

Not a year later, Princess Avdotya's decaying body, eaten by maggots and rotten, laid in a mausoleum decorated by the same daffodils she had hated so much in life.
Still, her son was breathing, and his heart was beating.

"Arkasha," the thing whispered through Krassotkin's blue lips.
"My beautiful, beautiful child."

Koshchey the deathless simply left Krassotkin body in a cloud of black mist, discarding him like Krassotkin had done to countless of people - the Circassian girls whose blood sullied these room, to which Bela and Patimat could have belonged.

The last thing Arkady saw was Krassotkin's body spasming on the floor, devoured by his own ambition. Then, everything was eclipsed by pure darkness.

"My precious littke child."
The purr of the bodyless voice was like ripples in this sea of shadows. Sickly sweet. Just as chai with too much Varenye.
"How beautiful you are. Soft mortal flesh. But my eyes. Oh, my eyes. The perfect vessel, crafted into perfection. "
Arkady could feel shadows wrapping around his limbs, licking his skin and yet groping like hands. Wanting. Claiming. Sullying.

"No," Arkady forced over his lips.
"Leave me alone."
He wanted to take another step back, but his feet sank deeper into the shadows. They clung to his boots with thorns buried deep in his flesh.
Sweat started running down his neck, and he swallowed hard.

"Oh, poor young Arkasha."
The pity in this velvet voice was like arsenic.
"So alone. So afraid. Tell me, is it worse than when the Count beat you blue and black? When his wrath made you crawl into a chest and hide till the next morning, even though you were so hungry? Or when he sent you to the cadet school, even though you wanted to go to university more than anything else? Poor, sweet child. And even your revolutionary friends? Did they ever listen to you? Let you speak? Properly, I mean? Or were you just decoration? Their pet, just like you are of your savage princess-"

"Why are you saying that?" His voice trembled. Not only his voice. His entire body was shaking.
There was nothing around him. No one. Only darkness. He was alone. So terribly alone. Oh mother of God, where was Bela-

"I could make it stop, Arkasha," it whispered. It was everywhere. In his ears. In his bones. In his heart. "You would feel safe. powerful even. The scared boy can crawl out of the chest. Just surrender to me."

"Stop it", Arkady screamed with tears in his eyes. But despite him pressing his hands against his ears, he could not unhear the words uttered.

"My power could make you tsar, Arkady. You could end the injustice. We could end it. You could usher in the kingdom of heaven, where all are equal. And the people would love you for it."
The words were like twelve cold chains tightening around his chest.
"No one will sneer at you again. Laugh at your clumsy mistakes. Ignore your words, only to repeat them later as if they were their own genius plan .
Warm hands will cradle you, and you will be safe."

As Koshchey spoke, a pale hand manifested itself in the shadows. A silent offer of a pact.
Arkady only had to take it, and the darkness would be gone. Forever.

Hesitating, he raised his own arm.
"Yes", the black void muttered. "Smart boy. Good boy."
Arkady extended his hand. Only centimeters parted them from eternally weaving their fates together, millimeters now -
In the seconds their skin should have met, Arkady lurched forward, his fingers clasping Koshchey's wirst.
Arkady tore the ugly old man from his shadows and, with all his might, struck him in the face.

"Stupid boy", Koshchey growled and bared his teeth. He revealed a pearly white row of the sharp edges of a beast.
"If you are not willing", he hissed. "I will take what is mine by violence."

In this moment, Arkady knew he had screwed it. He was like Hermann in Pushkin's tale, who had lost his entire fortune as he bet his entire money on one fatal card.
Now, Koshchey's clawed fingers curled around his neck, crushing his windpipe with surgical precision.
He gasped for air, but his lungs remained yearning for its soft release.
His eyesight flickered, his ribcage wanted to burst open, and cold magic crept up his veins, directly into his heart-

It was a maiden that saved the prince.
She gleamed bright like an angel sent from heaven. A single candle bravely flickering against the night. Maria Morevna, about to defeat the evil wizard once again.
But it was Bela who carried Krassotkin's blade and thrust it into Koshchey's chest.

The wizard's howls shattered the darkness, and Arkady collapsed to his knees.
Brighter than the summer sun, the twilight of the cavern burned in his eyes.

He coughed and wanted to curl up on the floor, but he could ascertain Bela's silhoutte towering above Koshchey, trying to wrangle him back into the prison of his coffin.
The wizard did not even seem to notice the blade buried deep in his chest, piercing it where his heart should be.

"I am the body of my people begging not to be forgotten," Bela panted. "I will live."
Koshchey scratched her face and made her skin blister in the miasma of his magic, but she persevered. She pressed him down in his coffin with sweat on her brows.

With the entire world still spinning around him, Arkady stumbled forward, grabbed Koshchey, and pushed down with all his remaining strength.
Brimming with magic, the broken chains to their feed rattled, slowly lifted again by invisible hands.

"I made you!", the wizard screeched. "I made you! Obey me, you stupid brat! I made you!"

"I owe you nothing," Arkady spat out. "I reject the guilt and crimes of my forefathers. They will not be my inheritance."

With these words, Bela brought her blade down and severed Koshchey's head.
It flopped into the coffin, rolling across the stone.
Nevertheless, Koshchey laughed his booming laughter.
"You foolish, foolish children!"

Even as the heaved the heavy lid on the coffin and the chains wound themselves around it, dull laughter remained.
But Arkady did not care. He could not care anymore.

Spilling hot tears and weeping like a child, Arkady sank to his knees. But this time, there was Bela's shoulder to cry on as she cradled him.
"It's over," she whispered. "It's over."

But they both knew it was not.
The thing was sealed shut, but not dead. Slumbering again.
But it would wake.
Maybe next year. Maybe in two hundred years. Maybe it would still be imprisoned in millenia.
But Arkady thought about Koshchey's gaunt body of an old man, thin like a skeleton, unable to grow fat or sated.

He lived. There was no needle to destroy. No island behind the fog.
Koshchey was a type of man. A concept. The greed, never to be satisfied. The consumption of people and objects. The total disregard for life in favor of personal profit.
Weren't these the men that still waged a war outside of these walls? They would never die.

But now, as they both staggered through the corridor, they could see a bright light at its end.

Lovushka laid before them, slumbering and quiet. Bathed in the grey light of a time that was neither night nor dawn, her impenetrable walls and high towers possessed a peaceful solitude.

For a long time, Bela and Arkady stood on one of its parapets, quietly overlooking the valley beneath them, not really believing that they would really see the sun rise again.

Shyly, Arkady gazed into the dark pools of Bela's eyes.
"Don't leave me," he managed to say. "Please."

" I could never."
She clasped her hands around his cheeks and pressed a kiss on his forehand.
"How could I? After all, you are my most priced possession, "she smiled. "At least after my horse."

He snickered and wanted to lower his head, but Bela only raised his chin.
Hot blood shot into his skull.
Finally, he remembered his thoughts as he and Bela had raced across the lands on her marvellous steed.
How it would be like to kiss her, to taste her lips.
Now, he returned her embrace and closed the distance between their faces, shutting his eyes in sweet anticipation-

"Arkady!" Boomed an all too familiar voice.

He immediately flinched and let go of Bela.
"Petritsky?" He blinked in utter confusion.

But still, there he stood, Petritsky in all of his glory, even though his moustache might have suffered from the last day's lack of pomade.

"What are you doing here?" Arkady demanded. "How- Why- How did you escape the Circassians?"

"Well!" He stuck out his pigeon chest, smiling widely. "It is a long tale about a Circassian maiden, who grew so enamoured with me after a passionate night of love that she decided to free-"

He stopped as he finally realised what shape they were in. Their blood smeared faces and clothes. The silver scare slashing Arkady's throat. And Bela, the enemy, the nightmare that plagued them, towering in their own fortress.

He paled instantly.
"Krassotkin," Petritsky choked. "Is he-?"

"Yes," Arkady simply stated.

"Oh," Petritsky said, staring at the stones in front of him.
For a moment, no one dared to speak.
But it was Petritsky that broke the silence again.
"Well, then I suppose no one is stopping us from breaking into the old tyrant's wine stock and having a toast to our freedom, eh?"

For the first time in many days, Arkady dared to laugh. It sounded like bells, a clear sound, so unlike the scratching echo of claws on stone retched up by Koshchey's throat.

All three of them looked up to the sky.
The sun rose on the horizon.
Dawn had finally come.