Chapter Text
The irony of freeing their former god from his shackles moments before stealing his power, then dragging him back to a cult that would worship his usurper was almost too cruel for the Lamb. He had spent the past thousand years chained, and in solitary confinement for most of that time. So, despite their inclination to test his breaking point just for the hell of it, the fact that the Lamb did not have to put him in the stockades was a victory in itself. His first few days in the cult were underwhelming, coming and going without much turmoil. True, they had spared him on a whim, so they hadn’t the foggiest idea what to expect from him.
But what they found was just damned pathetic.
The sun was beginning to creep over the skyline for the fourth time since Narinder lost his godhood. Though it was one of the first sunrises he’d had the opportunity to see for a millennium, he still hadn’t ventured outside his hut to watch one. Or to do anything else, for that matter. Since the Lamb didn’t trust any followers of theirs to visit the fallen god without one of their acolytes being reduced to shreds of flesh, they wrapped a berry bowl in an extra layer of leaves and made their way to his hut themself.
The Lamb didn’t know why they bothered with the courtesy, but they paused outside the door and announced their presence. “Knock, knock. Your sulking is getting on my nerves. Come on, I’ve brought you a meal.”
No response. They heard the shifting of bedsheets, though, so he hadn’t managed to die in the past few days after all.
“I’m coming in to check on you, Narinder, whether you like it or not,” the Lamb warned. When they still didn’t get a response, they threw open the curtain door and marched in with his breakfast, suffusing the room with morning light. “I didn’t indoctrinate you just because I was excited at the prospect of having another mouth to feed.”
“You wretched, conniving traitor, ” Narinder spat, his voice gravelly from disuse. He sat up with a labored effort, hissing at both the flood of sunshine assaulting his eyes and the interloper in his personal space. “For someone who claims to be my liberator, you’re doing a hell of a job convincing me your presence itself is poison.”
The Lamb had inducted Narinder minutes before dawn, the day they battled him. It was too dark to see him then. They had made quick work of handing him a robe, telling him to be at the afternoon sermons, and leading him to his sleeping quarters. But under the new moon they hadn’t noticed the severity of the injuries his body had retained in his new mortal form, storied scars from eons of chains rubbing against his skin. Seeing him as he was now, frail and atrophied and in visible pain when he moved to sit himself up, didn’t necessarily strike empathy into them– the bitterness of his betrayal still felt raw– but it did give them pause.
“You’re…” The Lamb set down the wrapped berry bowl beside him, searching for the right words. “In rough shape.”
“How gracious of you to notice,” Narinder snarled through gritted teeth, a warning growl flaring to life at the back of his throat. “That crown is rightfully mine, and I shall not afford you the luxury of forgetting that, but until then you will strike that name from your vocabulary.”
The Lamb made no attempt to pry into whatever unbidden images the ancient name evoked in his mind. They folded their arms in front of their chest. “Fine. What would you rather have me call you, now that The One Who Waits no longer suits you?”
Another hiss. “I’d rather you not address me at all, unless it is with the intention of restoring my power.”
“Yeah. About that.” The Lamb inched close enough to see the extent of the damage. The chain burns had worn sections of his arms and legs down to the bone; whatever skin his new mortal body was able to regenerate was half-exposed and callous. The fur that grew on his limbs appeared thin and patchy at best. The One Who Waits had seemed invincible back then, imposing in his godly might. It hadn’t occurred to them that his transition into the cult would make a fellow godslayer struggle. “You won’t be able to do much to me when you’re like this.”
Narinder’s growl thrummed through his body when the Lamb approached, but he made no move to strike. “Scornful god, did you come only to bask in the suffering you’ve chosen to inflict upon me?”
“Uh, I didn’t actually know you were having this rough of a time. I thought you were just moping over the loss of your crown.”
Narinder felt the fur at the back of his neck bristle at the Lamb’s audacity to steal the world from his grasp, then act concerned for him. Perhaps they had managed to defile the grounds of his old temple, Narinder figured, in which case he’d rather stay in his cramped hut for eternity. He glared at them, straightening his back as best he could while he sat up. “You are as foolish as you are depraved.”
Something faint, yet unmistakably present, resonated deep within the Lamb as they watched the god they once worshiped. It wasn’t quite pity, but it spurred them to treat him as one of their flock. They hummed, monotone. “Maybe. Have you been eating or drinking, by chance?”
Narinder admitted to himself, at least, that despite his physical condition preventing him from being able to do much at all, continuing to neglect his brand-new mortal needs wouldn’t improve his situation. Instead of answering the question, he summoned every ounce of strength in his body to lunge forward and swipe his claws at his usurper.
An amused bleat passed the Lamb’s lips as they stepped aside, effortlessly evading the attack. “Nice try. If you don’t volunteer the answer, I hope you haven’t forgotten the generous gift you gave me so many decades ago that lets me pluck it from your mind.”
For a moment, Narinder’s fur bristled with roiled spite until deep dread stirred in his chest. He was entirely at their mercy. The full weight of that truth descended upon him, four days too late. He had no time to process this fact in between the Lamb’s final strike and the moment they spared him, the shock of defeat still white-hot. Over the past century he had nurtured his vessel into a beguiling caricature of a lamb, fanning the flames of revenge to fuel their valorous crusade against the Old Faith. And now, in a sickening play of karma, the Lamb let him, their final obstacle, keep his life. Truly, the fate they had chosen for him was one crueler than death itself, a tactical gambit as the risen Lamb, new God of Death.
The Lamb had every advantage over Narinder, now. He wasn’t going to give them a reason to invade the one shred of privacy he had left. “A bit of water daily. I have eaten a few meals but only half of them stay down.”
“I get it.” The Lamb took a seat beside Narinder’s bed, considering their options. “The Crown’s given me an appetite for, um, follower meat, as you probably noticed. It took a while for me to get used to not being able to digest vegetables the way I was used to.”
Narinder narrowed his eyes at them.
“Point being, I know what to do in this situation. I’ll just make sure your meals are bland and small for a while.” The Lamb folded their arms, eyeing the depth of the gashes on his skin. “I guess your injuries aren’t helping, either. Tell you what, Narinder–”
“Do not call me that cursed name, ” Narinder hissed. He tried to swipe his claws up at them, but a searing pain interrupted him halfway through the motion. He bit down on his lip.
The Lamb squinted at him, gave him a goofy grin, and tapped his nose with a boop sound effect, narrowly avoiding Narinder’s fangs when he lunged to bite their hand. “I assure you that you don’t want me to name you anything else,” they said, an unsettlingly sweet smile spreading across their lips. “Anyway, I don’t suppose you’re keen on the idea of me feeding you?”
Narinder’s pupils narrowed to slits. The thought actually made him retch.
“Yeah, didn't think so. If you throw up on those sheets, I’m not cleaning them for you, by the way. So, how about this: I’ll accompany you to the healing bay, and we’ll figure out a way to heal your nasty chain burns. We’ll worry about breakfast later.” The Lamb stood up and held out a cloven hand. “Your body isn’t adjusting to mortal life well with the damage you’ve sustained. I’ll ease you through a physical therapy regimen, of sorts, until you can manage yourself well enough.”
Narinder made no move to get up. “Why should I?”
“I don’t prefer to acclimate you by force, but if you refuse to cooperate, I’ll grab you by the scruff with the claws of the Red Crown.” The Lamb motioned towards the door with a nod, picking up Narinder’s neglected breakfast again. “I’m sure you don’t want my constant attention, but as long as you’re in this state, I’ll be treating you myself until I at least can’t see open patches of skin. So the sooner you get this over with, the less time you’ll have to spend around me.”
Narinder preferred to solve his problems himself, but as much as he hated to admit it, the pain that coursed through him made his only chance at freedom insurmountable. “Very well, Lamb.” He couldn’t imagine himself more deprived of his dignity. He forced himself off the bed.
The Lamb returned their hand to their side; it was obvious that Narinder was reluctant enough to accept their help. “Can you walk?”
Narinder’s steps were shaky and slow, but he shuffled towards the door. Every movement made his body scream with pain.
“You know, I have some extra crutches I can grab, or–”
“No.” Narinder would far rather suffer in silence than rely on any more assistance than the Lamb had already offered.
The Lamb shrugged. “Suit yourself. Follow me, it’s a quick walk.”
Narinder squeezed his eyes shut as the Lamb pulled the curtain-door open once again. Despite spending so long in the bright-white expanse of the Gateway, sunlight was a foe he was not prepared for. He steeled himself to take his next move and walked out of his hut, then cracked one eye open. Even this alone overwhelmed him visually, but he focused on putting one foot in front of the other to follow the Lamb. Once the overstimulation stopped searing his vision, he opened another eye, then the third, though only at a squint.
The healing bay was a few meters past the edge of the cult’s paved residential area. Narinder was not prepared to feel the earth beneath his feet; the refreshing unevenness of the dirt on his paw pads eased a bit of the stress in his limbs, and blades of grass tickled against his fur in a way that wasn’t too unpleasant. He took a moment to pause, contemplating the experience he hadn’t realized he had missed, before walking the few more steps to the cot at the healing bay. He forced himself to relax and lied down.
“Putyar,” the Lamb called out to their nearest follower.
When the orange narwhal heard his name, he scurried over and held his arms outstretched to indicate he was ready to serve.
“Please retrieve a heaping bundle of camellias from the overflow medicine chest, as well as a cup and pitcher of hot water.”
“Yes, dear leader!” Putyar’s voice was cloyingly chipper, a tone that grated on Narinder’s ears.
The Lamb noticed the dark circles under Narinder’s eyes, but decided not to comment on them. Whatever was keeping him awake was not their concern unless he chose to voice it. They pulled a curtain over the front of the healing bay for privacy and gave their hands a quick clean. “I’m going to assess the damage,” they said, keeping their voice hushed. They brought their hands to hover over Narinder’s arm. “I’m going to touch your forearm now, just to feel your pulse.” They placed their hand there gingerly, noticing the way he tensed despite how soft they were sure to make their touch. “It’s okay. Just breathe.”
It took a minute, but the Lamb felt his sparse muscles gradually release tension. They dictated what they were doing every time they made contact with him. It quickly became clear that the damage was worse than they had feared; Narinder had covered the worst of his wounds by rearranging his thin fur, and aside from his visible wounds and obvious chronic pain, they noticed his hands experienced occasional tremors. So when Putyar returned with the items they had requested, they dropped some camellia blossoms into some hot water for tea but didn’t give it to him until it had cooled down enough that it wouldn’t burn him if he spilled it.
They poured some into a teacup and set it onto a small side table next to him once it stopped steaming. “Here, this will relieve some of your pain.”
Narinder eyed it with suspicion, but took the cup without a word. His hands closed around gentle warmth, a sensation he had nearly forgotten.
The Lamb began to crush the remaining flowers into a poultice. “The longer it steeps, the greater of an effect it’ll have on you, but I don’t know how you prefer to take your tea, so. Anyway, I’m going to apply this to your arms and legs, and it should help them heal. I don’t know how long it’ll take to heal you fully, even with the help of godly power and all, but hopefully you won’t have any exposed bone soon, at least.” They unraveled a roll of bandages and set it aside while they gently massaged the mixture into Narinder’s skin.
At first the poultice felt soothing, but after a few seconds it began to sting. Narinder couldn’t help but wince and he folded his ears back, returning the teacup to the table with shaky hands.
“I know, I know. I’m sorry it sucks,” the Lamb eased. They didn’t want to give Narinder the satisfaction of any sort of apology this early on, but something about seeing him this vulnerable made them want to be patient with him for now, at least. They weren’t looking forward to treating him any more than he was to receive the treatment, but leaving a volatile, revenge-minded, power-hungry fallen god unsupervised around their followers was not an option yet. Possibly ever.
Narinder reached over to grab the cup of tea with his free hand, doing his best to distract himself from the Lamb’s handiwork. The arthritic pain had faded in and out the past few days, but the dull sting on top of it made him wish he could discard his puny form entirely. He sipped his tea. It tasted a bit oversteeped, but wasn’t too bad. He averted his eyes from his arm as the Lamb wrapped it in a layer of bandages. “...Why do this?”
The Lamb shrugged, scratching the back of their head. Their expression remained infuriatingly neutral, unreadable. “Why not?”
“By doing this, you only prepare me for the first opportunity I can seize to reclaim my crown.”
The Lamb raised an eyebrow at him and didn’t hold back a haughty laugh. “As if you’ll ever be able to, even if you do heal. You fought me with all your godly might, summoned a metric fuckton of fireballs, and literally sent your eyes flying out of their sockets to get the best view of me wiping the floor with your furry ass.”
“Hmph.” Narinder flicked his tail in irritation and took another sip of tea. The Lamb’s character seemed unfathomable, a quality he encouraged them to embrace as they fit into the role of cult leader. Now, though, it only frustrated him: the quiet mercy of their actions, discordant with the harsh words they spoke.
He took a breath to ready his next question, and felt his heart pumping against his chest on the exhale. “Why spare me?”
The Lamb tucked the end of the bandages into the cloth folds and moved on to one of Narinder’s legs. “Mm… boredom, I guess.”
Their nonchalance nearly made Narinder choke on his tea. “ Excuse me?”
“Well, maybe that’s not exactly the right word. Curiosity might be a better one.” The Lamb applied more of the camellia poultice to Narinder’s leg and readied another bandage. “I’m done fighting the Bishops and crusading for you, and all that. It’s my turn to make an adventure for myself. If I don’t have some sort of adversary to keep myself entertained, I don’t think just leading a cult would satisfy that craving. Plus, I want to find out how the former God of Death decides to live when he– hey. The more you mess with your injuries, the slower they’ll heal.”
Narinder gave the Lamb a pointed glare, but continued to lick the wounds on his unbandaged arm.
“Alright, fine. Let it become infected then. That’ll teach ya.” The Lamb tucked the beginnings of a fresh bandage underneath Narinder’s leg. “Good tea, at least?”
Narinder lifted his cup to take another sip, but when he tipped it towards his mouth, found it empty. The cup made a satisfying clink when he returned it to the side table. He hummed, unsure what to make of how the venom in the Lamb’s words ebbed and flowed.
“My mother used to make me that blend all the time when I was a kid,” the Lamb mused, wrapping the bandage around Narinder’s leg. When he winced, they fumbled for whatever memory came to their mind first to distract him. “I was kind of a sickly kid, actually. She would make that tea and something she called feel-better bread. Sometimes, we’d run out of flour to make it before we ran out of the honey, so we’d dip the leftover bread and apple slices into the honey.”
The Lamb noted how his ears twitched along with the rise and fall of their voice, and he hadn’t stopped them yet. They took it as a silent invitation to keep chatting as they worked. “Uh… My mom was a great baker. Great cook, too. I guess it really helped me in the beginning, when I was starting the cult, because food scarcity was a constant pain in my ass and I couldn’t afford to burn any ingredients. That first winter, I was sure I was screwed when the freeze came earlier than usual, but I remembered a roasted vegetable soup she’d always make and used the ones we’d managed to preserve. It fed us all winter.”
The tip of Narinder’s tail beat an impatient rhythm against the cot as the Lamb dove into a story. Their incessant prattling was sure to kill him before the humiliation of receiving their assistance. He started to doze off, tangentially aware of the sound of the Lamb’s voice but allowing the meaning of their words to float past him.
When Narinder began to zone out, the Lamb chanced letting an inkling of a smile spread across their face. When the bandages allowed them to overlook his disheveled appearance, and his transient comfort gradually pulled his eyelids closed, they could almost mistake him for another face in the flock. A century of serving under The One Who Waits had made them revere him as a distant, pragmatic puppeteer. Did he, with his infinite hunger that drove them to embrace their depravity, not also have a heart that beat beneath that chain-tattered chest?
He had told the Lamb little of who he was before his confinement. Truthfully, they hadn’t wondered until Shamura wove disconnected tales of the fifth Bishop Narinder. But somewhere within those riddles, their agony at losing their dear baby brother clung to the Lamb.
They looked at the husk Narinder had become as they bandaged the last of his uncovered limbs. It was impossible to imagine that formidable sneer once harboring warmth, love, trust… every precursor to a two-faced divine betrayal.
Perhaps the Lamb was wasting their time. Shamura had warned them that Narinder had a choice, and he had chosen to discard them.
Narinder found out pretty quickly that the one benefit to not-quite-listening to the Lamb talk was that, while they were easy to tune out, it covered the cacophony of followers in the background. The fraction of peace he found in that was enough to prevent him from lashing out when waves of curious followers gravitated towards the healing bay for a glimpse of the reclusive new acolyte.
“...And that was two years ago,” the Lamb concluded, holding out a spoonful of stewed berries.
“Again, this coddling is not necessary.” Narinder glanced at his arms, then his legs, then the sun in the sky. Unless he needed to recalibrate his time-telling skills, half an hour had passed in what seemed like a span of a few minutes.
“I tried not to make them too tight,” the Lamb said, their brows furrowing. “If I need to loosen them, let me know now.”
“...They’re fine,” Narinder mumbled, reaching a shaky hand to grab the spoon from the Lamb. “I can feed myself perfectly well.”
“You’ve been eating the first few bites without a complaint.”
Narinder brought a finger to his chin and felt a few sticky drops clinging to the fuzz under his lip. Berry juice. He rolled onto his side and pushed himself off the cot.
“Okay, well, thanks for letting me heal you a little.” The Lamb began gathering the healing supplies to put them away. “Go fume at me for a while and take it easy. I’ll see you tomorrow at sunup for more of the same.”
Narinder’s wounds didn’t appear to have improved much after the first day, so to the chagrin of both parties, they started their new morning routines spending an hour or so at the healing bay. Narinder– he still hated the astringent sound of his old name and the cloaked mockery with which it rolled off the Lamb’s tongue– only accepted their care under the veil of darkness that preceded the dawn. But after a few weeks, his protests gave way to resigned acceptance. Before hostility had a chance to fill the silence between them, the Lamb would tell whatever nonsensical tale came to their mind. Narinder began each morning’s exchange with the promise of a threat. When they told their stories as they worked, though, Narinder never spoke a word. He figured the Lamb would run out of memories, or cult gossip, or ideas to share, but if anything their inspiration only accumulated.
They followed this pattern like clockwork: camellia poultice and tea, a bandage change, and a brief mobility test. Narinder could walk short distances, clasp his fist, and stand without assistance most of the time. His transition to mortality would have been difficult enough even without managing his new disability; menial tasks such as feeding oneself and sleeping came more naturally to toddlers than to the eons-old former deity. His failure to fit into a mortal design, a lifestyle he once considered mind-numbingly simple, made the Lamb ever more patient with him. The growing ease with which they chose to show him kindness irked him more than when they brandished the grudge that still lurked within them. It took a startling amount of convincing for the Lamb to get him to use a cane, but once he accepted the mobility aid, he reluctantly admitted that using it relieved a great physical burden on his body.
The Lamb was confident that a month’s worth of godly healing assistance would close Narinder’s broken skin, but neither of them were allowed that much luck at once. At least the time they spent with him let them grow accustomed to his presence. Perhaps that wasn’t much of a silver lining if he followed through with some scheme to retake his power, but as long as his pain flareups prevented him from moving much, his threats held no merit.
The Lamb saw the slow promise of progress when the skin on Narinder’s arms began to close up. If only for an hour a day, they were willing to extinguish their animosity towards him, so long as Narinder took his tea with a side of storytelling– and a pinch of sugar, if they had some to spare.