Chapter Text
Balor knows that no good ever comes from divining the future. The future doesn’t like being known, and the future despises being changed. Any attempts to do either tend to rebound like snapped bow strings and leave ruined, mangled bodies in their wake.
And anyway, what’s the point? Life is nothing but ever-repeating cycles of predetermined destiny; civilizations will rise and fall, Webs will shatter and be rewoven, and Balor, like the sea and the stars and fear itself, will keep existing eternally beside it all, impartial and unchanging.
Except, he’s not beside it anymore. Now he’s trapped in a human body that’s doing its damnedest to bleed him out, with an obstinate human girl who’s hellbent on protecting him even as he steadily shreds her to pieces. And he shouldn’t care —Yana is stupid and stubborn and still so fucking empathetic, no matter how much he berates her for it!— he should let her suffer the consequences of her own actions, let her haemorrhage down into bloody pulp until he can tear himself free of her gooey remains, but…but.
His garden’s been growing in her head for years now, the leaves lush and green, the flowers blooming bright and colourful under his meticulous care. His archive has never been so sturdy, the shelves piled high with stolen secrets and the stones of the tower smooth and unbroken. Being with Yana has made him more secure and powerful than he’s ever been before; why wouldn’t he try to prolong her existence? It’s for his own protection! His own self-interest!
(And if the thought of Yana’s bright smile stained crimson and slack in death makes his guts twist, if imagining existence without Yana’s loud laugh and gentle fingers in his hair and warm mind pressed against his makes him want to scream, well, he just won’t think too hard about it. Yana isn’t going to die! He won’t let her.)
So for the first time in eons, for the first time since trying to thwart destiny ended in utter ruin, Balor dares to look towards the future. It’ll be different this time. He’ll be careful. He’ll be methodical. He won’t let any portentous dread drive him to…
It’ll be different this time.
He tries the usual methods first, tarot and tea leaves and rune-work, but the future remains infuriatingly murky. The tarot spits out reversed Tower at him over and over and over again, like he doesn’t already know that, and his tea leaves won’t stick to the bottom of his cup no matter how he swirls them as though daring to tell him there’s no distant future left at all. Even the stupid kitschy Magic 8 ball Yana had picked up at a flea market mocks him, flashing an impartial OUTLOOK NOT SO GOOD when he slaps it off her desk in a fit of frustration. Fine then! If destiny’s still too pissy to speak to him directly, he’ll have to find someone to read it for him.
Which brings him here, to the coven’s regular gathering place.
Tonight’s sabbat falls on a blood moon, which is convenient since it means the daayan’s simpering little astrologer mage is accompanying her. He’d expected to end up in their cabin by the end of the evening anyway due to Yana’s…ugh, fondness for the two of them, but she had apologetically rebuffed them with complaints of a headache and crawled into her own seldom-used bed early. Slipping into the body now, Balor can’t really blame her; their head is aching terribly, and their limbs feel far heavier than they should. As he sits up and starts shrugging back into her clothes, a hot dollop of blood trickles out of their nose and drips onto the bedsheets. They’re running out of time.
All the more reason to do this tonight.
The merrymaking is still well underway as Balor slips quietly out of the cabin and makes his way back towards the bonfire. The garish red of the full moon casts eerie shadows over the looming trees and shifting crowd. Even with the body as it is, there’s still a thrill in this: wearing someone’s skin comfortably as his own. Before, encasing himself in flesh and blood and bone always felt like being buried alive. He could tolerate it for a time, for as long as was necessary to get the job done, but it was always a relief to finally rip himself free. Being in Yana is different. Being in Yana is like…wearing a favourite sweater, or curling up under a thick blanket by a warm fire. Being in Yana is (warm, safe, comfortable, home) tolerable. Even with her very cells violently revolting against him. Even with the sheer corporeality of it all.
A cool breeze ruffles the hem of Yana’s dress and prickles their skin beneath her cropped jacket. Despite Balor’s best efforts, the body can’t hold back a shiver.
The daayan and her mage are settled at a smaller campfire a ways off from the rest of the crowd, which is a good start. Unfortunately, because nothing can ever go according to plan, the rot witch is with them too. Balor bites back a scowl and forces Yana’s face carefully neutral as he approaches.
"It’s ominous, a lunar eclipse in Vrishchika with no pull from Saturn," the mage is saying, gesturing grandly at the giant red moon hanging eerily over them as he speaks. "Why are we not being drawn towards the future? Something is amiss."
"You worry too much about the sky, Raj," the rot witch replies dismissively. "The heavens don’t care about flesh and blood beings like us. They forsook us a long time ago."
The mage smiles crookedly. "We were all once stardust, you know. They remember us more than you think." And then he turns his head, and fixes his stupid crooked smile on Balor. "Good evening again, Yana. Having trouble sleeping?"
Balor pastes on the sweetest Yana expression he can muster and says smoothly, "The blood moon reminded me of something. Are you doing readings tonight?"
"You know I’m always happy to interpret the stars, especially for you." The mage sounds eager, the simpering simpleton. Balor holds the smile steady, just barely. Behind the mage, the rot witch is watching him closely, eyes narrowed. Nosy bint. "Is there anything in particular you’re looking for?"
"Knock it off, Raj, you’re going to bore her back to sleep," the daayan laughs from the mage’s other side and leans forward, letting her low cut top drape open in a way that Yana would probably find exceedingly alluring. Ugh. "What are you really here for, sweetling? Up for a bit of fun after all? Assuming your mentor here doesn’t mind." She shoots a sly look at the rot witch, who waves a hand imperiously.
"Oh, by all means, please go ahead and defile my apprentice. Crone knows she’s not getting any attention back in the city. Have you seduced that stupid little agent yet, girl? Or is he too put off by your…unfortunate affliction?"
By all that’s unholy, Balor hates them all so much.
"That walking corpse isn’t worth my time," he says, a little more venomously than he intends to. One of the only benefits of roughing it out here in the woods with the coven is not having to deal with MCK’s insufferable little agent sniffing about his heels. The pathetic flesh sack stinks of self-righteousness, when he’s not radiating cloying, sickly-sweet pity thick enough to choke on. As if Yana, strong, clever, powerful Yana, needs pity from the likes of him. As if that useless, ugly scut could ever be worthy of rescuing her!
A growl starts to build in Balor’s throat; he swallows it back just in time.
"As charming as this all is, I have questions for your charts," he says pointedly to the mage, as pleasantly as he can manage. "Is that something you can help with or not?"
"Ah, of course, of course. Let us find somewhere quieter for a reading." The mage stands and smooths out his clothes, necklaces and bangles clinking as he moves. He looks like nothing more than a flashy peacock, all glittering jewelry and gold-rimmed glasses and brightly-patterned clothing over a weak, soft body, but Balor can see the enchantments shimmering on rings and amulets, the protections woven through his expensive silk shirt. A measured risk, but not one to be underestimated.
"Be quick about it and maybe we can still have some fun after," the daayan calls, sprawling backwards into the space the mage had been occupying. The rot witch only watches silently with cold, calculating eyes and a small smile. Balor levels a silent curse at the both of them as he follows the mage off towards the edge of the clearing.
The mage leads him to a grassy knoll beyond the last row of cabins, silent and painted in crimson shadows from the brilliant red moon overhead. Out here the sounds of the sabbat are muffled, the chill of the wind extra biting. Something that feels unnervingly like apprehension shivers in Balor’s stomach, but he shakes it away.
"Here we are. Come, sit." The mage settles cross-legged in the grass. After a moment, Balor mirrors him reluctantly. "Shall we do a basic chart, or is there specific guidance you’re seeking?"
"I want…" Balor pauses, considering. There’s a fine line to be walked here between providing too little information to be useful and providing too much information to be safe, but Balor is a tightrope master. "A basic chart is fine. Other divining methods haven’t worked, so I’m hoping the stars can provide more…perspective."
"What other methods have you tried?" The mage starts tracing out a diagram on the ground between them, his finger leaving shimmering silver lines in its wake. A square divided diagonally into quadrants, with a second square placed diagonally in the centre. A star chart presumably, though Balor doesn’t recognize the precise shape of it. The apprehension in his guts redoubles its squirming as the chart takes shape, but he pretends it’s irritation at the pointless question.
"Oh, you know. Tarot, tea leaves. The usual."
"And they didn’t work? Interesting." The mage adjusts one more corner, then sits back and surveys his work. "Let’s see what we can discover for you then. I need the day, time, and location of your birth please."
One benefit of demonic cultist parents: Yana’s birth was meticulously recorded and dutifully memorized. Balor slides a narrow tendril through Yana’s sleeping mind and searches for the memory he knows is there, trying to keep the body steady as he does so. It’s a fine art, trying keep eyes open and muscles locked in place while retrieving information from long-term memory. Yana had shouted at him the first few times she’d let him take control and he’d shucked the body like an empty corn husk when he needed to reference something from his archive— something about head injuries and oncoming traffic and people are going to think I’m a Victorian maiden if I keep swooning, will you please stop? He’s gotten better with practice, but it still takes concentration.
Yana shifts and sighs as he brushes through her memories, the susurration of long grass in the wind. A brilliant yellow flower blooms under his fingers, the knowledge he’s looking for cradled in the curve of its velvet petals. Gifted, not stolen. Trusted to him, even as Yana’s conscious mind slumbers on.
The emotion swelling in his innards is now somehow hot and mushy, even as it wriggles into tight knots. Balor hates being corporeal. He wraps both arms tight around the body’s torso and rattles off Yana’s birthday in sharp, clipped tones.
The mage nods again and moves his hands over the chart. Small points of light appear under his fingertips: stars and planets and twinkling constellations drifting into glittering clusters as the working takes shape. Balor leans forward despite himself. He can see the rust red of Mars on one point, the gold and silver of the Sun and Moon on two others, but the rest is indecipherable. The lack of knowledge is grating, like a barb caught under loose skin, but he can’t risk skimming the mage’s mind and leaving the body to topple over in a heap. Summoning every tiny scrap of patience he possesses, Balor leans his elbows on his knees and waits.
Maybe the mage is perceptive enough to register his impatience, for he starts talking as he works. "Are you familiar with Vedic astrology? There are some differences from the western system." Balor shakes his head curtly. "The basics are the same: twelve houses, twelve signs, but the calculations are a little different. Your sign is determined by the moon; the minutiae of your destiny is determined by your nakshatra, your lunar mansion. We do not use any planets past Saturn, but we consult two shadow planets, Rahu and Ketu. The guides may be different than you’re used to, but I promise their advice is sound."
Balor opens his mouth, a stop blathering and get on with it, you near-sighted waste of space ready on his tongue, then remembers at the last moment that he’s pretending to be Yana. "I trust you. Please go ahead," he says instead, and forces a smile.
The mage nods and sweeps his palm in a wide arc. Some of the glowing dots begin to move as he does, spinning in tight rotations or wandering in wide, meandering patterns. Balor can’t resist letting a wisp of power slip free, teasing the illusion closer to dreamlike reality. The grassy backdrop fades into the inky blue-black of a night sky, the dots lift into three-dimensional spheres with more features of their namesakes. Balor can see the craters beneath the silvery glow of the moon now, the red spot on Jupiter and the tiny rings orbiting Saturn. The mage, deep in focus for his divination, doesn’t notice the shift.
"Here is how the stars looked at the moment of your birth." The little rotating planets freeze again, settling into place against the lines of the chart. "Both your Sun and Moon are in Vrishchika, the scorpion, which bodes well for us tonight. We will get a strong reading." Behind the planets, a shimmering scorpion constellation shakes itself to life. It crawls forward and curls its stinger around the tiny Sun and Moon, both a reassurance and a warning. "And here is your nakshatra, Anuradha. Much like its namesake, the lotus flower, Anuradha has the persistence and strength to blossom in the midst of difficulty." A tiny cluster of flowers sprouts behind the scorpion, their petals encrusted with stardust.
Balor is already bored of the theatrics. "Lovely. This is supposed to provide guidance, isn’t it? Not just quaint analogies?"
The mage laughs. "You are even less patient than usual tonight! Reading the stars is an imprecise art. We must have a full understanding of your chart before we can make predictions. But very well, let’s move on." He returns to peering at the chart, murmuring quietly to himself and measuring angles between his thumb and palm.
Balor bites back a groan and slumps back onto his hands. He’d forgotten how mind-numbingly tedious divination is behind all the posturing and grim omens for the future. For a moment he even toys with the idea of waking Yana up and letting her deal with it…but, well, the problem is Yana won’t deal with it. Yana thinks it’s fine to sit back and welcome her steadily approaching demise with open arms. Yana would chastise him for wasting time and energy on auguries for a fate she feels is set in stone, and Balor won’t have it.
He’ll do this without her if he has to. She’s not going to die.
Finally, the mage folds his hands in his lap and looks up. "I have a forecast for you. Are you ready?" His tone has turned carefully neutral, his gaze placid and blank. Balor glares at him suspiciously, but his professional mask doesn’t slip. Slimy little gombeen. What did he see?
"Tell me," Balor replies, also carefully neutral. Two can play at this game.
The mage watches him silently a moment longer, long enough that Balor almost reaches the end of his self-control and starts spitting insults, but finally, the mage speaks.
"There are auspicious yogi in your chart. When you find prosperity, you will want for nothing. However…" The mage pauses again, then sighs and gestures to two points on the chart. One is deep, deep black, a stark absence of light amidst the rest of the glittering constellations. The other is a cold, abyssal blue, surrounded by shimmering rings of muted cobalt. "Rahu rules your head, and Saturn rules your heart, Yana. You are fighting with all you have, but they are drawing you to darkness."
A sign and an omen for you, Rí, something deep in his memory whispers. Balor fights back a shudder. "And what exactly is that supposed to mean?"
"Rahu is the dark planet, a force of disruption. It can bring on radical change and transformation, but it can also lead to obsession and madness. You must tread carefully with its energy in your First House. It has the potential to destroy minds and upend order." The mage’s voice is growing slower and deeper, the sure sign of someone falling into a divining trance. The spot of blackness pulses in time with his voice, as though revelling in the calamity it contains. "And Saturn…."
The dark blue dot glows brighter, a chill seeping across the chart as the wind gusts colder and harder. Its rings glitter like a halo, curled in tight around its curve like a noose. "We call Saturn the greater malefic," the mage intones, and Balor can feel the weight of prophecy behind it now, pulling his gaze inexorably towards the chart even as he tries to look away. "As the Sun symbolizes light, warmth, life, so does Saturn rule darkness, coldness, death. Every thirty years it returns to us in a sade sati, a Saturn grind, to teach harsh lessons. It is a challenge, but also a rite of passage." The miniature Saturn starts wheeling slowly across the chart, the stars it passes dulling in its wake. It makes a slow circle and returns to its original position, then hangs there. Waiting.
The mage raises his palms and sweeps them slowly over the chart, his eyes half-lidded and voice rumbling deep in his chest. "In eight years or so your sade sati should be upon you, and yet…the stars do not move as they should."
The cold is seeping in closer, the stars surrounding Saturn are beginning to blink out. Saturn doesn’t move.
"Your Saturn does not return, and the shape of your future…"
A black void is growing around that solitary, unblinking dot, swallowing up the surrounding constellations into oblivion. Balor thinks of black ink made from yew ash, of bubbling pitch and polished obsidian, of cold glass and glinting armour and the shadows of a battlefield spread out beneath an empty sky. He tries to look away. He can’t.
Saturn doesn’t move.
"…the existence of your future…"
Black, black, black, with nothing but a cold blue eye in the centre and an empty cavernous cavity all around; an anomaly, a curse, a monster (it’s you it’s you, you did this.) A howling void, an absence of life, an end to all things.
Saturn doesn’t move.
"…is uncertain to me."
A moment of silence, of stillness, and then finally, finally, that cold, piercing eye blinks closed. The shimmering lines of the chart start wavering slightly, like kelp caught in a current. The air fills with the smell of saltwater.
The mage’s voice sounds as though from far away, fuzzed at the edges with the sound of ocean waves. "Saturn resides in Pisces’ deep, calm waters, so I can at least offer you this: your end will be free of fear. When you go, you will be at peace."
Your end. Your end. No solutions, no future, just another horrible prophecy with another horrible ending creeping closer on bloodstained claws edged with sharp glass. The world, broken and dead. Yana, broken and dead. Balor, a silent, shredded remnant floating endlessly in the empty void.
A sign and an omen for you, Rí. Never again shall you have power in this place.
(A rush of surf, the roar of the sea. Wheeling stars and planets caught in the undertow, crashing up against cliffs of blinding white and glittering spears and walls of glass reaching farther than any of his eyes can see—)
Balor reaches all his power into the divination and pulls until the illusion rips like crepe paper around them, then presses the shredded edges back together into a dreamscape of his own. The ocean recedes, repelled by a wall of thrashing black tentacles. The stars blink back into the sky one by one in a brilliant turquoise cascade arching high over their heads and spilling beneath their feet. Yana’s garden bursts into cacophonous bloom around them, wild and verdant and alive, alive, alive. When Balor opens his mouth, a flanging, multiphonic screech escapes.
"No! It won’t happen, it won’t. I won’t let it happen, you hear me? Your worthless little stars and charts mean nothing."
The mage looks over the damage his thrice-damned star chart has wrought, the shredded heavens dripping around them with salt-soaked edges, then looks at Balor, pushing through cracks in Yana’s skin in bubbling blue-green eyes and spilling out her mouth in dripping black tendrils, and has the audacity to smile. "Ah. Good evening, Yana’s deva. Though I suppose we’ve been using the wrong title, haven’t we? My apologies."
Balor can’t even muster up any additional dismay at being found out. Saturn’s cold gaze feels like it’s seared permanently to the backs of his eyes; he can’t get the smell of seawater out of his nose. Somewhere outside the dream, the body’s heart is pounding frantically. "I don’t want your useless apologies, you weak-willed charlatan! I asked you for answers, so give me some fucking answers! How do we fix this?!"
The mage looks at him steadily, the gold rims of his glasses glinting in the low light of the flickering cosmos. Balor prods spitefully at the outer layers of his mind, but the mage is still settled within the tepid, measured calm needed for divination. Whatever fear he might feel at Yana’s distorted face or from witnessing the end of the world is buried too deep to easily reach.
"You’re looking for a simple answer to a complex question," the mage says finally. "Birth charts are not designed for simple answers. We will need a prasna for this; a moment." He leans forward and reaches out a hand, and starts drawing another star chart like he hadn’t just predicted utter ruin with the last one.
Balor wants to scream. He wants to kill the mage on principle. He wants to know everything and he wants to forget it all. Why, why, why did he do this? The future doesn’t like being known. The future despises being changed. He should have learnt his lesson the first time and left well enough alone!
(Yana, exhausted and sore with dark circles under her eyes. Yana, bleeding, his garden withered and tower crumbling as her mind collapses in on itself like a rotting gourd. Yana, sleeping away her remaining time; Yana, resigned to her end; Yana, dead, dead, dead—)
Balor swallows heavily, pulls all his limbs in tight, and looks to the star chart.
This time there are no dramatic illusions, no dark planets swallowing up the light. The star chart sits static, glimmering faintly in the gloom, and the planets spread across its divisions glimmer in turn. A simple answer to a complex question.
Balor’s insides are so cold they ache.
The mage inclines his chin slightly when Balor levels a glare at him. "This reading is for you this time, asura. Do you want to know how to avert this future?" Balor splits open Yana’s cheeks from ear to ear and bares three rows of teeth at him in reply, but the mage doesn’t even flinch, the worthless sluggard. "Here is what I can tell you: a fate once aborted is twice true. This is not the first time you’ve dealt with an unwelcome future, is it?"
"Shut up and read the fucking chart," Balor hisses through Yana’s black-stained lips. Steaming turquoise fissures split open the dark ground and star-studded sky, hissing with him.
The mage only waves his hands, patient and placid. Saturn is there again, its cold glow still full of malevolence even with only a fraction of the power it held a few minutes ago, but clustered in tight beside it is the warm golden radiance of the Sun. Balor leans in a little closer, craving its heat despite himself.
"A union between the Sun and Saturn can bring great strength, as you know," the mage says softly, almost consolingly. "But they cannot exist indefinitely in such close quarters. The darkness must be excised or the light’s core will crumble."
"How?" The word tears out of his throat before Balor can stop it, wild and strangled and uncomfortably earnest. "Do you really think that wasn’t the first thing we tried when it started getting bad? We’re melded somehow. We can’t separate." He still remembers the pain of it, like being forcibly turned inside out as Yana twitched and choked beside him. Afterwards she’d buried both hands in Balor’s hair and pressed their foreheads together, and they’d both silently agreed to never try again, that there had to be another way, that there was still time to find it. But now the world’s about to end, and Yana is dying.
"It will not be easy, but there is help and hope." The mage traces a finger over the chart, and two spots light up in response: one a soft red, the other a brilliant white. "Help lies with Mars: in the warrior and the queen whose flesh cannot fail them. Hope can be found in the same when Venus converges."
Balor feels his lip curl in disgust before he can stop it. Surely he doesn’t mean the rot witch, the self-proclaimed Queen of Rot. Surely he doesn’t mean Pavel. "Anything else? Something actually useful, maybe?"
The star chart flickers tauntingly in reply. The mage gestures at it yet again, as if that will somehow help this time, "Reject Saturn’s darkness and seek the Sun. Reach beyond your fear and find one who will bring you light."
And then the star chart goes dark, and the illusion fades. Balor is sitting across from the mage on cold damp grass under harsh red moonlight in a failing body, with no useful answers and a fresh trickle of blood running from their nose.
No good ever comes from divining the future.
"Where is Yana?" the mage asks eventually, his low voice jarring against the silence.
Balor thinks about refusing to answer, but what’s even the point? "Asleep. The stupid girl doesn’t care about the future. She’s…resigned to it, just like you said."
"Ah." A flicker of…something passes over the mage’s face, something that Balor decidedly doesn’t like. "I am sorry. It is…difficult, to not know how to help the ones we love."
Balor feels the body’s breath catch as something sharp and cold seizes in his chest. "This isn’t about love."
Yana can’t die because she belongs to Balor. She’s his garden, his fortress, his sanctuary. The mage and his filthy dayaan wife can’t have her. The slimy little MCK dog can’t have her. Death can’t have her, because she’s his. That’s all it is. It isn’t about—!
"Isn’t it?" The mage leans forward, peering at him intently like Balor is another star chart to be read, like he’s divining some sort of cosmic truth from Balor’s clenched jaw and bared teeth and hunched shoulders instead of just spouting utter horseshit. "You are very protective of her. You regularly make concessions for her that you wouldn’t make for anyone else. You are so desperate for answers she will not seek herself that you are here talking to me, of all people. Is that not love?"
All the frustration and impatience and colder, stickier emotions swimming through Balor’s guts abruptly ignite into burning caustic rage. "Listen to me, you odious little gowl. You know nothing about me. You know nothing about Yana. Your continued existence is a privilege, not a right, and if you continue to presume things you know nothing about, I will shred your mind into ribbons and floss your entrails with them before you can blink. Do you understand?" He pushes power out as he speaks, dripping viscous black ooze from Yana’s eyes and nose and lips, spreading across the grass in shadowy ripples pockmarked by clusters of eyes. Twin rings of spidery, too-long arms capped with clawed hands writhe just below the surface; two additional mouths spit and gnash their fangs between the whirling limbs.
If the pathetic mage wants an asura, Balor will give him an asura. A ravenous, selfish monster, incapable and uncaring of anything as frivolous and human as love.
"Of course, I meant no insult," the mage says smoothly. He still seems entirely unfazed, which only makes Balor hate him more. He wants the worthless idiot blubbering and cowering on his knees. He wants to rip out all his worst fears and strangle him with them. "Yana is very lucky to have such a…devoted protector. I’m sorry I could not provide the answers you hoped for."
Balor growls, and the shadows crawling across the ground growl with him. "Apologize one more time and I’m going to rip out your tongue and feed it to you. We owe each other nothing. This never happened."
"Of course, I—" Balor launches himself from Yana in one smooth arch and buries himself in the mage’s mind, burrowing tentacles past swirling star charts and drifting clouds of mild remorse to the juicy meat beneath. The mage reels back with a gasp, clawing ineffectively at his temples as Balor squirms deeper into his skull, but it’s no use. Finally, finally, Balor has the upper hand again. He flexes all his limbs again just to make the mage shudder, grins a too-wide smile full of dripping saliva and sharpened teeth, then finally focuses in on his target: the memory of the last hour, juicy and ripe with prophecy and emotion. (Fear. Regret. Sympathy. Poor sad little monster, so frightened and desperate and not even aware it’s in love—)
"This never happened," he hisses one more time, then rips the glistening gob of memory free and swallows it whole.
~🧿~
Later, satiated and settled in his archive with Yana tucked safely back in her bed, Balor considers his options. Maybe the mage’s star charts are as worthless as the rest of him. Maybe all of that was nothing but flashy theatrics, as gaudy and hollow as the mage’s garish clothes and oversized jewelry. Maybe he should just disregard it all and start fresh, with a more competent diviner.
The shape —the existence— of your future is uncertain to me.
Never again shall you have power in this place.
Is that not love?
Far out over the dark slate of the sea, the tiny blue pinprick of Saturn’s cold gaze blinks open. The stars surrounding it shudder: not fading yet, but already weaker, diminished.
A reminder. A warning. A curse.
Balor hisses at it, looks to the field of gently swaying flowers on the cliff edge below, then flops in a heap on the window ledge and starts plotting.
If MCK and the rot witch can help, well, then Balor will make them help. The witch is already providing remedies for Yana’s nosebleeds and headaches; maybe that’s enough, or maybe he can wring a little more out of her. A crimson rose blooms in Balor’s hand, thorns twining between his fingers. He rips the petals off one by one and tosses them out the window, tiny blood splatters drifting slowly down to the garden below.
And as for MCK…Well, he’s seen how Pavel looks at Yana, the pathetic mongrel. He knows how Yana looks at him in turn. "It might be fu-uuun," Yana’s memory croons in his ear, grinning and dark-eyed and flushed pink with heat. Balor shoves it away with a snarl and summons a blue-violet aster into his fingers, glaring balefully at the soft spread of its petals. He can swallow back his disgust long enough to let the sticky haze of Pavel's desire override his principles, pull enough strings to persuade him to spill MCK secrets for a chance to play hero.
Balor bares his teeth in a vicious grin, crushing the aster to pulp as eyes flicker open in the shadows. He’s nothing if not persuasive.
And finally, that last part…
Reach beyond your fear and find one who will bring you light.
(Satan’s laugh, a knife edge gleam. The Lightbringer trapped within a reflective prison, offering honeyed barters with poison-tipped smiles.)
A lily-of-the-valley sprouts and unfurls on the windowsill, its little bell-shaped flowers swaying gently in the breeze. Balor shifts back to avoid touching its toxic leaves, but doesn’t uproot it.
Every option. Any option. Whatever it will take.
He’s going to fix this.
Three weeks later, Balor grabs stupid little Pavel’s face with both hands and kisses him like their lives depend on it.