Chapter Text
Ismark and Doru art commission by the incredible @ampreh!
Part I: Ismark the Lesser
Having spent his entire life in the village of Barovia, Ismark Kolyanovich—the lesser son of a greater man—is no stranger to screams. Whether it be from a mad man’s moaning, the anguished wails of the dead, or the cry of a mother who’s had a child stolen from their crib, torment pierces the suffocating Barovian nights with the frequency of a bell toll.
Ismark has become proficient in drowning it out. He’s forged battlements in his mind out of weather-worn stone and carefully tucked all his hopes for a better world behind them. The walls have taken a battering of late, but remained standing.
Until yesterday, when Ismark heard a scream that shook him to the core.
Spongy wet ground gives way beneath Ismark’s boots as he trudges up the familiar rise that leads to the Church of Barovia. The sun is at its peak, cowering behind a perpetual veil of gray cloud, and the sad little building ahead appears to be sagging back into the hillside. A bell tower tilts behind it. Shingles flutter loosely in the sticky wind. The church, in many ways, is microcosm of the village’s inhabitants—time-worn and weary, but resilient, having borne the assaults of evil for centuries.
Ismark was here just yesterday to bury his father, Kolyan Indirovich, the beloved village burgomaster, who’d taken ill several weeks earlier. He isn’t sure whether Barovian custom or superstition dictates a soul cannot rest peacefully until funeral rites have been delivered, but he knows better than to risk upsetting either. He enlisted the help of some adventurers who recently became ensnared in Barovia’s mists to transport his father’s body to the church.
It had been when Father Donavich was choking out burial prayers through wet tears that Ismark heard the cries. They seemed to be coming from beneath the ground: Papa, I’m starving!
A chill goes down Ismark’s spine as he reaches the church’s scarred wooden doors. He knows exactly who those pleas belonged to—a voice he knows almost as well as his own, but thought he’d never hear again.
Doru Lukavich died a year ago.
Ismark pushes his way inside.
A hallway that reeks of mildew leads to a chapel. Ismark tenses as he passes the door to the bedroom that once belonged to Doru, the priest’s son and his best friend. He and Doru spent many gloomy days making their own fun behind this door, reading adventure novels and sparring with wooden swords, then many nights betting on cards and drinking as they got older. And dreaming—they were always dreaming. Of a better future, a brighter one than either of them could eke out under the ever-watchful eye of their tyrannical overlord.
Pop… please! I can’t—I’m so hungry.
Ismark clenches his fists as he steps into the chapel.
Father Donavich hasn’t been right since Doru marched off a year ago with a cocky black-robed wizard from a faraway land who blew into town and started fanning the flames of rebellion. Most villagers have been avoiding the church of late, fearing the priest’s madness. But even knowing this doesn’t prepare Ismark for the disrepair all around him—the pews have been shoved roughly aside, many overturned and broken, littering the floor with wooden shards; the stained glass windows are cracked and caked over with grime, divine symbols warped into grotesque shapes; relics of the Morninglord have been knocked from the claw-scarred altar.
Ismark finds Father Donavich crumbled in a heap behind his pulpit, clutching a wooden icon with chipped gold paint. Laying there in his soiled vestments and muttering to himself, the priest appears truly mad.
Ismark’s foolish hope sputters before his heart bottoms out. No matter how much he’d wished to see Doru again, nothing is meant to return from the dead.
“Father…” Ismark says softly. Then more forcefully, “Father, it’s Ismark.”
The priest lifts his head and blinks his red-rimmed eyes. “I–Ismark?”
Another inhuman cry rises up from beneath the floorboards: Papa. Forgive me.
The priest flinches.
The wailing reminds Ismark of the first horse he ever owned, who broke a leg when he and Doru recklessly lost track of time in the Svalich Woods and were pursued by the devil’s wolves—how the horse groaned and screamed in anguish after its leg got torn, and how Kolyan put a sword in Ismark’s hands, forcing him to be the one to end the poor creature’s suffering.
Ismark stares down at the priest and asks, “For how long?”
Father Donavich’s dirty knuckles whiten around his icon. “A year,” he says, in a papery voice. “But you must understand, I’ve been praying day and night. The Morninglord will deliver him. I know it.”
“Look around, Father. There’s no deliverance in this.” Ismark waves an arm to the debris-strewn chapel. Deliverance can only be found in the rites Father Donavich performed for Kolyan Indirovich just yesterday. “Children have been going missing from the village—three in the past year.”
“Not me,” Father Donavich raves. “Not my boy. I–I’ve been feeding him rats.”
“Rats?” Ismark folds his arms. Even if true, he knows the damned can only survive on vermin for so long before their lust for human blood consumes them. Steeling himself, Ismark says, “Take me to him.”
“No, you’re going to hurt him—kill him.”
“He’s already dead, Father!”
Saying those words aloud cuts Ismark down to the marrow, but he knows they’re true. The story of Doru’s fate is inscribed on the scattered relics and claw marks as plainly as ink. Ismark grabs the largest fragment of wood he can find—there are plenty to choose from—and makes his way down the hall. He doesn’t need Father Donavich’s help. He’s certain the screams are coming from the undercroft where he and Doru used to hide as boys and play tricks on kneeling supplicants.
Father Donavich grasps at Ismark’s muddy boots. “Ismark, please, you must understand—”
“This has to be done, Father.”
Kolyan always said, There is no justice in this world unless you deliver it. It’s up to Ismark as burgomaster to protect the village.
Father Donavich tries to tackle Ismark from behind, but it isn’t hard to subdue the old man. He’s weak and delirious from grief. As much as Ismark does not enjoy striking people—he was more often the loser of his and Doru’s mock duels—he’s a Barovian, and the son of Kolyan Indirovich, and defending himself is second nature. He shoves Father Donavich into a stone wall, shimmies into the church’s store room, and bars the heavy, wet door with a broom handle.
The store room was once filled with dried meats and sacks of grain, but it has become a compost pile of moldering flour and rotting cabbage. A puddle of water has collected beneath a large hole in the roof, and rusty animal traps are piled up along the walls. The trapdoor that leads to the undercroft is in the corner. It’s held shut with a chain and padlock, both heavily corroded from exposure. Ismark opts to brute force his way through. The wood is thick but rotting, and it gives way under his heel on the second kick.
Father Donavich rattles at the door, snivels and begs for mercy as Ismark descends.
The undercroft has rough-hewn dirt walls and a mushy clay floor. Ismark moves cautiously, giving his eyes time to adjust and preparing for attack. He’s terrified of what he’ll find. When he reaches the bottom stair, he ducks quickly behind one of the rotting wood pillars that strains under the weight of the chapel floor. He clutches his stake in two shaking hands, breathes in deeply, and tries to don courage as if it were a cloak.
Chains rattle in the damp dark.
Then, he hears, “Quit your simpering, Ismark. I know it’s you. I can smell you.”
Ismark swallows and emerges from behind the pillar.
Light slicing between the floorboards cuts the darkness into ribbons. Against it, Ismark can just make out a gaunt shape slumped against the church’s back wall with nearly skeletal arms bound in silver chains. An arc of dry flaking blood is smeared across the clay floor, indicating just how far those chains extend. Thin white bones are littered through the miasma. None of them appear human—rats, just as Father Donavich said.
Ismark approaches the apex of the arc, and the figure lifts a heavy head. A half smile draws back to reveal a mouthful of fangs stretching against graying gums.
“Come to gloat?” Doru Lukavich says.
Ismark nearly chokes. It’s easy at first to see all the ways the curse has warped his friend. Doru’s wide, deep-set eyes—normally as gray as the Barovian mists—are red and radiating a hunger Ismark can tell he’s struggling to maintain. His ears have been chiseled to harsh points, hands and feet are bent and twisted into beast-like claws, and his skin is so devoid of color it appears almost blue. But more disturbing are the ways he hasn’t changed. There’s still that mop of black hair Doru would purposefully mess up as if defying order were a style, and those dark brows that were always slightly raised into a look of perpetual wonder.
“D–Doru? Is that really you?”
He laughs darkly. “It’s that bad, huh?”
“I… no— it’s just that—” Ismark truly has no idea what to say.
“Well, what was it you called me before I left—a mist-addled pox, an unholy terror?”
“I’m sorry.” Ismark winces.
Suddenly all the accusations he hurled back then seem too cruel. Where Ismark has hidden his dreams behind stone walls, Doru wore his openly on his sleeve. It was no wonder that when the black-robed wizard came into town—displaying magic the likes of which no Barovian had ever seen before—Doru took up a pitchfork, while Ismark cowered behind his father, who cursed adventurers for fools.
“I really did want you to be right,” Ismark says. “I really hoped that wizard would be the one to save us.”
“Yeah?” Doru drops his head against the wall. “Well, be careful with that. I have it on good authority the devil doesn’t like it when his playthings have hope.”
The derision cuts Ismark deeper than anything else Doru could’ve said. All he can manage through his strained throat is, “I miss you, Doru. Every damn day. The world is so dull without you.”
“It’s Barovia,” he snorts. “It’s dull with me, too.”
“Not like this.” Ismark shakes his head. At least then, it wasn’t so lonely.
Silence falls thickly between the friends. Ismark fumbles with the stake in his hands. He’s only just remembered it, but he’s been clutching it so hard the grain has left an imprint on the meat of his palm. Doru’s chains rattle as he pushes onto hands and knees with jerky, labored movements. His clothes are soiled with blood and mud, and they hang limply off his emaciated frame, as if his body were a laundry line someone pinned their most foul linens to.
“I’m glad it was you who found me,” he grits out. “Though I’m surprised it took you this long. I thought for sure the burgomaster would come to have a stern talking with Pop after he stopped giving sermons.”
“I’m the burgomaster now,” Ismark says, solemnly. He doesn’t bother hiding his insecurity from Doru. He never could before.
“Oh—so Kolyan?”
“Last week.” Ismark nods. “He’d been sick for a while. We buried him yesterday. That’s when I heard… well, you.”
Doru flinches. “Really, from the cemetery?”
“You’re not quiet.”
“I’m insane, is what I am.” Clawed hands carve trenches into the mud as Doru pushes onto his feet. “And I’m getting more so. Ismark”—he takes a lumbering step forward—“this curse… it’s hell. I don’t even recognize myself. I barely know what I’m saying, or who I am beyond this horrible need tearing me apart.” Doru’s eyes flicker, and such a raw sadness rises within them, it drowns out the crimson hunger. Red washes away to reveal that dark, storm-cloud grey that Ismark remembers so fondly. “But you’ve come to set me free.”
“What do you mean?”
Doru’s gaze drops to the stake in Ismark’s hands.
Ismark attempts to draw himself up straighter.
“Good.” Doru gives him a toothy grin. He shambles forward, rat bones crunching underfoot and chains dragging through the cold slop. “I was ready to die the day we stormed the castle. I was ready to go out a hero. I never imagined…” He shudders before saying, “I’d be reduced to spawn.”
“Don’t say that.”
“But I am, Ismark. The devil is in my head. He sent me back here to break my father, destroy his church—to crush whatever hope Barovia has left. But I don’t want to.” He lifts his manacled hands as much as he can, barely more than a shrug. “That’s why I chained myself up here. I’m not the friend you remember anymore. I’m nothing more than the devil’s puppet.”
“Doru—”
“You’ve always been soft-hearted. I think you might even be the brightest thing in this dismal world. The golden boy of Barovia. Please, do me this mercy.”
Doru pushes to very edge of his chains. He’s inches away from Ismark now, and Ismark can smell every day of imprisonment on him: his soiled clothes, his oily, matted hair, the mud crusted on his skin, the blood of vermin on his breath.
“Do it,” Doru begs. “Let me rest. For all the love you’ve ever held for me.”
Ismark holds the stake out, aiming its jagged toothy end at the center of Doru’s chest, right above where his cold, dead heart lies asleep behind a protruding rib cage. Ismark remembers his old horse again—how long he stood there with his father’s sword in hand, watching the poor animal kick and cry out in distress, all because Ismark couldn’t bring himself to pierce the living flesh.
But Doru’s flesh isn’t living. He died a year ago. Sooner or later, Doru will have to feed on human blood, and he will become a terror to the village Ismark is sworn to protect.
Blood is the very nature of his curse.
Doru snaps his chains. His eyes flare red again, glowing with hunger as he sneers, “I smell your fear, you coward!” And when Ismark flinches, Doru bares his fangs. “Kolyan would’ve done it already!”
Doru must be desperate to evoke Kolyan’s reputation as an insult. He knows that’s a sore spot for Ismark, the way his tenderness has earned him the moniker of “Lesser”—a foolish son who dwells in the shadow of a stronger man who would do what was necessary to keep the wolves at bay. Since his father took ill, children have been going missing from town, spirits march outside Ismark’s window at night, and the villagers avoid the church. For several days, Ismark has sat alone in the burgomaster’s empty estate, contemplating how little he has left, and how what does exist is fraying like an overstretched rope.
“Ismark!” Doru snaps at him.
He’s starting to thrash more wildly now, eyes glowing red.
This world is unforgiving, Ismark can practically hear his father instructing in his cold Barovian monotone. It’s merciful to end a beast’s suffering. But why has that lesson always felt so hollow? Looking at Doru now—even as he’s lashing out with preternatural claws and would drain the life from Ismark’s veins—Ismark thinks, not a beast.
He thinks maybe this is the game the devil was playing all along—to turn friend against friend, brother against brother.
He thinks that if he does this, the devil wins.
Ismark steps back, shakes his head. “I won’t let him win, Doru.”
“He already has!”
“No.” That word, at least, sounds defiant. “I won’t let this be your ending.”
Ismark turns, and he feels the impact of Doru’s screams battering the walls inside him like cannon fire. But Ismark hides on the other side, and curls himself over the hope he’s buried there—the hope he and Doru once nurtured together—and promises that for now, he will keep it safe for the both of them.
Upstairs, Ismark finds Father Donavich laying on the floor with an ear pressed to the largest crack he could find between the boards. Ismark drops his stake at the priest’s feet. “Doru is not yet a criminal, and lucky for you, I am not my father.” Though he lowers his voice into his best imitation of Kolyan and says, “But if I trace a single one of the disappearances from town—a single body—back to this hell, then I will have no choice but to deliver justice.”
“Thank you, thank you.” Father Donavich grovels, kissing Ismark’s boots. “I always knew you were a most merciful boy.”
Ismark flinches. Is this mercy—or is it madness?
In the end, Ismark was not able to slaughter his horse that day. He dropped his father’s sword in the hay and went to hide in his room, and that night, the wolves descended on the barn to finish it off. Villagers call Ismark “the Lesser” because he does not believe in killing broken things—and in Barovia, there may be no greater failing.