Disclaimer: I don't own the Grisha Trilogy and its characters – it belongs to Leigh Bardugo. I do not own the Shadow & Bone TV series, which was developed by Eric Heisserer for Netflix and based on Leigh Bardugo's books. Any recognisable dialogue is from the books or TV show – some lines may be included verbatim, others in an amended form.
This chapter is early since I split my planned chapter into two shorter ones.
Morozova's Stag
It was odd being outside the Little Palace walls.
Alina yearned to explore the places they passed through. The little villages, the forests, the ruins of buildings long abandoned to the elements. Her experience of Ravka was pretty much limited to Os Alta and Keramzin and she was curious about the rest of the country.
This wasn't the time, though. The stag was their goal and she knew the Darkling would not permit deviations from their route. Whenever she got the chance to look out of the carriage window, she would see him and the oprichniki, eagle-eyed as they watched for any possible threats or dangers.
Hopefully, once she had her amplifier, things would be different and the Darkling would agree that she was able to sufficiently protect herself. In any event, he'd probably send a contingent of oprichniki with her if she went anywhere, which would make her even safer.
(Alina had seen the oprichniki train – they were scarier than plenty of the Grisha she'd met).
Alina began to make a mental list of the places she wanted to see. Maybe she'd start small, with Balakirev and Poliznaya. She couldn't decide if she wanted to see Keramzin again – her memories of it were faded and blurry, after all, and the orphanage had never really been a particularly happy place.
When she was able to get safely through the Shadow Fold then she could visit the bustling port town of Os Kervo. And the True Sea – what would such a vast ocean look like, she wondered. What would it be like to sail across the sea on a ship? She could travel to Kerch to visit Ketterdam University, or go to the lush, green Wandering Isle or the coastal towns of Novyi Zem.
A small, secret part of her was curious about Fjerda, and wanted to visit Shu Han so she could see what her mother's homeland was like. She wasn't sure if it would ever be possible, though, considering the wars that were ongoing with both countries, and the way they treated any Grisha they came across.
"Are you alright, Lady Starkov," asked Marit.
Alina shook herself out of her reverie, realising she had been staring silently out of the window for a little too long.
"Fine, thank you," she smiled at the Healer, "just admiring the scenery."
She had tried to get Elena, Maksim and Marit to simply call her Alina, but they didn't seem to think that it would be appropriately respectful and she'd given up on it, grateful that at least they didn't try and call her Sankta. At least David used her name, well, he did when he remembered he was out with other people and not alone in the Fabrikator Workshop.
Marit and Elena began talking about a joint assignment they'd had a few months previously, and Alina looked out of the window again.
She couldn't quite believe she was on the way to Morozova's Stag. Even when the Darkling had told her it had been found, it didn't quite seem real to her. Now, though, she would see it within a matter of hours, a creature more ancient than even the Darkling and Baghra.
A creature she would have to kill.
It seemed a cruel way to gain power, the destruction of such an amazing creature, but as far as she knew it was the only way. No text she had ever read suggested that there was a way to gain an amplifier without killing the animal.
She would just have to steel herself for the unpleasant deed. She needed the amplifier. For herself, for the Grisha, for Ravka.
Alina only wished the stag didn't have to die in the process.
They met the trackers in the grounds of a small manor in a secluded part of the countryside that seemed to have no other living occupants for miles around.
Morozova's Stag was in a large wooden cage that had been placed atop a cart and carefully secured there. The trackers were clearly taking no chances with a potential escape. Alina couldn't blame them for that – if the stag had managed to get loose, she imagined the Darkling would have been incandescent with rage.
Alina didn't think they needed to worry. The stag seemed entirely unconcerned with its captivity and when turned its gaze on Alina she felt like it knew exactly what she was there for.
She looked over at the Darkling as he first caught sight of the mythical creature. His eyes flashed darkly, with greed and want, and for a brief, horrible moment Alina was terrified that he was going to break his word to her and kill the stag himself.
Baghra had warned her about his craving for power. If he believed it might further his agenda to protect the Grisha, she thought he might try and control her power through an amplifier.
He looked away, though, and she breathed a sigh of relief.
Perhaps she had misjudged him. He had kept secrets but when confronted about them he had been more honest than he really needed to be.
Alina looked back at the stag, "we have to let it out."
The Darkling shook his head, frowning at her, "it will flee as soon as we set it free, Alina."
"No," she disagreed, "it will stay. I'm sure of it."
"Please," she said when he still didn't look convinced, "it won't run."
"How do you know?" he asked sceptically.
She only shrugged, "I … I don't know. I'm sure, though."
He looked at her for a long, tense moment and then he nodded his head, "very well. But, Alina, if it tries to flee then I will cut it down if you do not kill it. We cannot afford to lose the stag, not when we might never find it again."
For a second she wondered if she was doing the right thing, or if Morozova's Stag would vanish back into the forest as soon as the cage was unlocked.
No, she was right, she knew it deep down, with a certainty she rarely felt.
The Darkling nodded to one of the trackers, who fiddled with the lock on the cage and then opened it up so that the stag could step out and down to the ground.
Alina moved forward nervously until she was face to face with the stag.
Words couldn't quite describe the creature in front of her. It was stately, powerful and magnificent. A true wonder of their world.
Their eyes met and she could see the centuries of wisdom there, and real magic.
One of the Grisha texts she had read had suggested that Morozova's Stag was part of the making at the heart of the world, that it had been there at the beginning of creation itself. She could well believe that.
Alina put one of her hands out to stroke the stag gently, gasping when she felt a rush of power as both she and the stag lit up.
She laughed loudly and happily with delight and wonder.
So many emotions coursed through her veins. Delight and shock and fear and amusement and love and sadness and hope and worry. She felt them all as she locked eyes once more with the stag.
She couldn't kill this creature. Of course she couldn't. She didn't understand how she had ever even contemplated it.
Alina stepped back, still glowing, and bowed her head in reverence.
Morozova's Stag bowed back and the light got brighter and brighter until she wondered if they would all go blind from it.
And then she heard a voice in her head, deep and soothing and ancient.
Be well, daughter of light, Sun Queen.
When the light vanished a few seconds later, Morozova's Stag was gone.
Back to the heart of the world, away into the forest to find its herd, or perhaps it had simply become one with nature. She wasn't sure and she didn't think she'd ever know for sure.
There on the ground, however, were two pieces of the stag's antlers, still glowing faintly.
Alina had her amplifier.
The Darkling strode forward as soon the light faded, looking at the antler pieces with a confused sort of awe.
"You didn't kill it," he murmured to her as the others all crowded round the pieces and spoke excitedly about what they had just witnessed.
"It didn't seem right," she told him honestly, "the stag … it was so old, so powerful, but it seemed to want me to have something. I guess I just trusted that everything would turn out the way it was supposed to."
"Trust," he mused, as if it was something foreign to him.
It probably was. He had trusted Alina to keep the information Baghra had revealed to her to herself, but she knew it had been a difficult decision for him. After all, he had not lived six centuries by trusting easily.
"You are remarkable, Alina," he looked at her with a similar expression to the one he had worn when he looked at the antler pieces.
She flushed pink and turned away from his intense gaze to see what the rest of the group were doing.
"What do you think you would like?" David asked, as he examined the pieces of antler bone in his hands.
He glanced up briefly to contemplate her, "a collar of sorts? I could fuse the pieces to your collarbone and –"
Alina's eyes widened, "err, maybe just a bracelet, David. That might be easier."
"Hmm," he nodded, seemingly oblivious to the fact that he just offered to give her the world's worst necklace. Saints, the idea of having bits of bone sticking out of her neck was horrible – would she even have been able to move her head much without accidentally stabbing herself?
"Fabrikators," Marit said with a shrug, "they're not always on the same plane of existence as the rest of us."
That, Alina thought, was an understatement.
David worked for about five minutes, both Alina and the Darkling watching carefully. Alina found the whole process fascinating – during her time at the Little Palace she'd seen a lot of how the Corporalki and Etherealki orders worked, but the Materialki were still mostly a mystery to her, as they were to many of the other Grisha.
When he turned back to her, David had fused the two pieces of antler bone together into an almost complete circle. He gestured for Alina to put her arm out and she did so with a little reluctance, not entirely sure what was going to happen.
David wrapped the bone around her wrist and then held the two end pieces together, concentrating and murmuring to himself as he twisted the bone and fused it together so that she had a firmly fitting bone bracelet twined around her wrist.
Everyone backed away quickly then, as if they knew something she didn't, as if they were worried that she would …
Oh.
The light exploded out of her, flooding the area and making it seem more like the middle of a sunny day than dusk.
She felt a rush of power stronger than she'd ever experienced before, even stronger than the times the Darkling had amplified her.
A column of light rushed upwards and she realised then why the Darkling had chosen such a remote location for them to meet with the trackers. Even so, she thought some villages far away might glimpse the light, even if they didn't realise exactly what it was.
The light kept coming, so powerful and bright that Alina felt as if she could take on the Fold immediately and blast a path straight through to Novokribirsk.
She thought she heard the Darkling calling her name, but he seemed so far away and she felt almost drunk on her power, unable to focus on anything else.
She suddenly remembered the Darkling's words – "a new amplifier tends to shake your control of your power for a while until you get used to it."
She attempted to dim the light, to show herself that she could still control it.
It kept coming, though, as strong as before. All the control she had worked so hard to gain seemed to have vanished in an instant, replaced by immense, unwieldy power.
Alina began to panic. Would she just blast light until she burnt out? Would she end up killing herself and everyone around her with an accidental explosion?
"Breathe, Alina."
She tried to focus on the Darkling's voice, to calm her heartbeat and take back control of her power.
Baghra's lessons on resisting amplification came back to her. They had been tailored towards living amplifiers, rather than ones that were worn, but hopefully the old woman's advice would help her now.
In. Out. In. Out. In. Out.
"Breathe, Alina."
She came back to herself slowly, swaying precariously once the light had faded completely.
The Darkling caught her in his arms, "Alina?"
"I'm alright," she whispered, "just tired … so tired."
She felt a twinge of pain coming from the wrist David had put her amplifier on and looked down, gasping in shock.
Her bone bracelet was still there, but it appeared to have sunk into her skin, becoming almost a part of her.
"Don't worry," the Darkling reassured her, "that is sometimes what happens with amplifiers. The first burst of power causes it to fuse with your body. Fabrikator creations are difficult to remove but not impossible – this ensures your amplifier can never be taken from you."
"Will … will it stop hurting."
"Within a few hours," he promised, "you just need to get used to how it feels."
"Right … good," she mumbled, "need to rest … so tired."
"Sleep, solntse," he said softly, watching her with a proud look in his eyes, "sleep now."
Alina slept.
Thanks for reading. Hope you enjoyed it.
The next chapter, set three months after this one, should be out on Friday.