UNKNOWN ❈ THE DARKLING
THE ORDER OF SUMMONERS (ETHEREALKI)
Man’s greatest folly is, perhaps, not his tendency to put his gods on a pedestal, to lay at their altars his heart and other fragile things, but his forgetfulness—his failure to recognize that all gods were once men, and all men were once children. He, too, was a boy once, a child who listened more than he spoke and learned far more than he let on, building empires out of sticks and stones and daring to call himself the king. Yet for all that he was once ordinary, he was different in a way neither he nor those around him could ever reconcile, and he knew it from a young age, knew it as well as he knew his own name: Aleksander, a name given to blacksmiths’ boys, to merchants’ sons, to fishermen’s heirs—a name he would one day give up in favor of another, in favor of the sort of infamy that demands blood sacrifice, though it would never be his own. To be remembered was to be forgotten, and so he was—year by shadowed year, death by hallowed death. Infinite. He became infinite, in name and ability, in lives and in victories, so entrenched in the shadows he commanded that the boy he’d once been was lost along the way, left to live on forever in oblivion or to die there—whichever suited him best. The darkness in his heart had never left any room for love, for gentleness, for light; it took and devoured until there was nothing left of what might’ve been, and all that was left was this: a man, half-legend and half-horror, with a heart black as night.
They called him the Darkling, though none could be sure whether the name had come from his own machinations or from the blackness that loved him like a son, and they feared him, as they did all terrible and unknown things, for it is in the nature of man to fear that which he does not understand, and he—perhaps even more than the rest of his kind—was utterly beyond comprehension. Strange and powerful though he might’ve been, however, his dreams, in the beginning, were the same dreams shared by countless others with similar gifts: a world where his people did not have to run like fugitives, did not have to hide like animals bred for the hunt, did not bear their gifts like crosses—like martyrs. They hailed him as their leader, thrust him upon a throne and called him moi soverennyi, and from his reign the seed of the Second Army grew, planted by hope and nourished by ambition. Beneath his guiding hand, Grisha became something to be valued, sought after—if not trusted, then tolerated, and in due time, his followers believed, they would be not simply Grisha, but Ravkans, seen as countrymen where they had once been only weapons. But great power begets great ambition, and a man gifted with the power to cast down the sun and stars if he so desired it could be no exception. His greed would know no bounds, as wild a thing as the dark it was born from; his greed would swallow the world whole.
And it did, ardently and utterly without his permission or control. It was ravenous, this power, this cold and cruel darkness—even crueler, perhaps, than the man it bowed to, and when the otkazat’sya told their stories in the centuries that followed, they would struggle to distinguish the servant from the master, the good intentions from the terrible. It was meant to be a good thing, a noble thing—a means of defending the kingdom from those who sought to destroy it, but his greed pushed him farther still, edged his power over the line that separated natural from merzost, forced his hand in ways none had ever seen before. Years later, they’d say the Fold was a mistake, the creation of avarice that knew no bounds, but the truth, dark and deep and raw, was that he’d wanted every wicked bit of it and more. It was his pride, his terrible hope, his mark on the world that no amount of inferni hellfire could burn away; he branded the world for all to see that infamous day, and the warning it gave rang throughout the kingdom like church bells, reverberated in the bones of his people like a prayer for which there were no words. Yet he hated it, too, this unconquerable, immeasurable thing, because for all that it came to be by his doing, it proved unruly even to him. And though it outlived the version of him that created it, as a man who never aged was far too much for mere mortals to understand, he swore that it wouldn’t outlive the last version of him; even if it took an eternity, he would see it bow to him once more, and with it, the world.
He has seen empires rise and empires fall, he has led rebellions and quelled them, he has tasted conquest, brewed terror, created vainglory as thick as a man’s torso and as crimson-deep as the cut which severs it. Moi soverennyi. That awe-tinged echo clings to him like the shadows to the hidden face of the moon; relentlessly, possessively – like brazen worshipers at the dais of their god. And darkness incarnate rose like a phoenix from the ashes of his own demise; remaking, retelling, reliving the same story of immortal splendor, inherent horror. Again, and again, and again he has made himself new. Five lives, five legacies, five tales of rule and ruin. Aleksander, a boy forgotten. Morozova, a man made myth. Moi soverennyi, moi soverennyi, moi soverennyi. He is their tsar, their emperor, their conquistador, their fragile life and rotten death – a thousand nights of fear, a thousand days of majesty and sin so sacred that it burns. His ambition drives him, his power feeds him, his pride rears up and swallows his enemies whole. He is cold and beautiful and void of love; yet still they come, with their prayers and their hatred, with their numinous wonder and effervescent longing. And as they cling to the black of his robes, there is nothing but odinakovost and etovost, manifesting like twin wolves at the heels of their master. For what is power? Power is power. And what is infinite? Nothing but the universe, and the g r e e d of men.
GEMMA PAVLOVA: It wasn’t something as mundane as loneliness—which all ordinary men and their faint, fool’s gold hearts are susceptible to—but a hunger for some great and terrible kinship, that led him to ask the universe for an equal, that led him to wait lifetimes for their deliverance, and at long last, he believes he’s found her: his balance, the only one that might keep his power in check, the light that might drive out his darkness. But for all that she seems a proper adversary in theory, she’s young, and she has much to learn before she can reach her full potential, before she can liken herself to him. Fortunately, he’s a patient man, and he’ll wait as many lifetimes as it takes for her to rule the world alongside him or be forced to lay it at his feet, for there are only two names for Grisha like them: saints and heretics—one cannot be both.
ALTAN YUL-SUHE: He’s capable, if nothing else—obedient enough to follow orders and ruthless enough to follow them faithfully, and he values the man for it, in the way one might value a prized hound. His right hand toys with heartstrings like red ribbons, steals the air from men’s lungs with a mere curl of his fingers, and he can’t say he doesn’t wonder, at times, what it must feel like to feel a man’s very life sifting through your fingers—that is, of course, until he remembers he already knows. He’ll keep him around, this red-cloaked brute, this heart attack of a soldier, until he’s served his purpose or strayed from it; even the best of men are replaceable.
ANTON LANTSOV: He is but a boy trying to fill the shoes of a king, little more than a child compared to his father and brother before him, and thus far, his attempts at preparing to run a country are laughable. Sooner or later, he’ll learn that wit only serves a man when choosing his last words; sooner or later, he’ll see that the fall of kingdoms and the rise of empires is inevitable, and by then, it’ll be too late. Let him whisper sweet nothings in the ears of his people; let him give them false hope with his victories and rally them onward with his defeats, for the real enemy fights not with guns and toy soldiers, but with horrors unseen. This war was never his to win.
THE DARKLING IS PORTRAYED BY SEAN O’PRY & IS TAKEN BY SIDNEY.
