“Why not?” he asked, though it seemed he’d expected the question.
“I don’t…I don’t ever want to go back. To go through that again.”
“To what? To fight? To kill?”
She nodded.
He smiled sympathetically. He was an unusual soldier, she thought: though there was a sternness in his face, there was something inviting there, too, something often lacking in the commanding officers she’d had. “Soldiers don’t just kill, Mulaghesh. Most don’t, in fact, these days. We support and maintain and build, and keep the peace.”
“So?”
“So…I believe you might jump at the opportunity to do some good. You’re not even twenty yet, Mulaghesh. You’ve a lot of years left. I suspect you can find better uses for them than filling your belly with cheap wine.”
Mulaghesh was silent.
“Well, if you’re interested, we’re implementing a new program, a…sort of governing system for the Continent. Military stations designed to provide support and keep the peace.”
“Like cops, sir?”
“Somewhat. Colonel Malini will be overseeing Bulikov, but he will need assistance. Would you be interested in perhaps returning to the Continent and assisting him? You know a lot about the region. But maybe this time you can put it to some good.”
***
Mulaghesh stares over the cliffs of Voortyashtan. Gulls nest in the rocks below, and they flit back and forth over the waves, snapping up moths, ghostly, porcelain flickers in the moonlight. Besides them, she is alone. There’s not a single soul for nearly half a mile around her.
The horizon flickers with roiling clouds and lightning. A storm coming—unwise to be out here now.
She wishes she’d grown, that she’d put the March behind her. But seeing those memories in the thinadeskite mine—young Bansa, hardly yet a man, knocking on the wall of the ruined farmhouse, not knowing what would happen to him mere days later—it was as if all the years since the March were just condensation on a pane of glass, wiped away with the flick of a hand, and on the other side was that ruined, scarred countryside, and she could not shut her eyes or look away.
She looks at the label on the bottle of wine. Some putrid Voortyashtani concoction. She drains it, walks to the edge of the cliff, and drops it over the side.
She watches it plummet, a glittering green teardrop falling to the dark ocean. It turns to dust against the face of the cliff. She never hears the crash.
She stares at the moon’s reflection on the face of the waves. She imagines that it’s a hole in the world, that perhaps she could dive out and fall through it and find a place where she could rest.
But then it changes, and suddenly the moon’s reflection looks like a skull to her.
She blinks. To her bafflement, she watches as the moon’s reflection changes, shifts: it’s not a giant skull, but a face, a woman’s face, still and blank, lying just below the waves.
“What the hells?” she says.
Then the ocean bursts up, something shooting up from its depths.
It rises, rises…
And Mulaghesh sees her.
She rises up astonishingly fast, like a whale breaking through the surface for a leap, water pouring off her enormous shoulders, pouring off her arms, pouring off her chin: a giant formed of metals, of steel and iron and bronze and rust. When she fully stands the cliffs are just barely at her breast, a vast, glittering creature standing against the frigid moon and stars. Her face is cold and still, an emotionless steel mask, her eyes dark and blank.
It is a helmet, Mulaghesh sees: she is not made of metal but is wearing armor—beautifully wrought, ornate armor, plate overlying mail—and depicted on this armor are a thousand terrifying images of unspeakable violence.
She is magnificent, terrible, beautiful. She is the sea, the moon, the cliffs. Warfare incarnate, violence never-ending.
“Voortya,” whispers Mulaghesh.
It is impossible—utterly impossible—and yet it is so.
One giant, mailed hand grasps the top of the cliffs, and she hauls her vast bulk up.
No, no, thinks Mulaghesh.
The gulls are shrieking, terrified. The ground trembles beneath Mulaghesh’s feet. Her hand fumbles for her carousel.
Voortya towers over Mulaghesh, dark and impossible and lovely and monstrous. With a whine of metal she turns her blank eyes to stare at the fortress. In her right hand is a flicker of light: a sword blade rendered in ghostly, pale luminescence.
I won’t let you, thinks Mulaghesh.
Mulaghesh pulls out the carousel and points it up and fires. She sees the muzzle flash reflected on the giant steel greaves, and is vaguely aware of herself screaming: I won’t fucking let you!
Mulaghesh feels her sanity unraveling—it is all too much, too much to see, to behold—but to her surprise, the Divinity reacts, recoiling as if in pain. Mulaghesh hears a voice in her mind, huge and terrible: “STOP, YOU FOOL! STOP!”
Then the stars wink out and she feels herself falling, and somewhere in the distance is the sound of thunder.
Though no Divinity, from what we have recovered, was ever depicted with much coherence, the Divinity Voortya is interesting in that there was a distinct shift in how she is described in Voortyashtani texts. In the very early days she was depicted as an animal, a veritable monster, a four-armed half-person, half-beast that was wild and savage. This version of Voortya is commonly associated with bones, teeth, tusks, antlers: the natural, biological adornments of combat. These signatures were retained even in her later years.
But somewhere in the sixth century, while the Divine Border Wars were still ongoing and all Divinities and their followers battled for domination, Voortya underwent a distinct change. She stopped presenting herself as a beast and started to commonly manifest as a four-armed woman dressed in armor. The armor is described as being highly advanced for the era: plate on mail on leather, and inscribed on the plate mail were all of her victories, all of the foes she had slaughtered, depicted with graphic detail. It is shortly after this period that she began to wield the famed Sword of Voortya, the blade wrought of moonlight whose hilt and pommel were the severed hand of the son of Saint Zhurgut, her most ardent apostle.
It is interesting that this shift in appearance coincides with three other changes. Firstly, it is after this transformation that we begin to see coherent, consistent recordings of the nature of the Voortyashtani afterlife, as if before this point the Voortyashtani afterlife did not truly or properly exist. Secondly, though Voortya’s mostly human, four-armed appearance stayed more or less the same, her top-most left hand now appeared missing, as if severed during her transformation.
And thirdly, and perhaps most notably, after this change, there is no recorded instance of the Divinity Voortya ever speaking again. Either to the other Divinities or her own followers.
—DR. EFREM PANGYUI, “THE NATURE OF CONTINENTAL ART”