#koschei the deathless
Myths on Magic: Koschei the Deathless and the Winter Order
Koschei was Deathless they said. A Horcrux for a heart, a Horcrux in his head, and both ever-regenerating, made from long-ago thieved Philosopher’s Stones, made the old way, not with elements and magic but with the bones and brains of newborns, fresh and alive with youth and magic.
Not only was he impossible to kill, but he was truly unaging, the stones seeping their elixir into his bones and muscles and blood. He did not bleed red as your I, the babushki, the grandmothers would say. He bled a golden ichor, like the gods.
One in his heart, one in his head, that was the trick. Before the knowledge of Greek Healers, headed by Galen and Hippocrates and Asclepius headed into the cold expanse to the north one man stole two sacred stones, split his soul and made them reliquaries, and had the stones placed in his belly. He almost died then. But he lived and the stones, they think, saved him.
They merged together in his belly and when he died the first time they remade his body without the aid of others, and the stones remade themselves as two, one embedded in his brain, one buried beneath his heart. Stab him in the heart and his head heals. Crush his skull and his heart reconstructs.
Koschei founded the Winter Order, after a fashion. Followers who found his ability to live on, unaging, undying unusual. They made their own, perhaps more viable, horcrux, of their very country. How can they die when Russia lives?
And indeed they did not, though Koschei did. Stabbed in the heart, head crushed, neither stone could quite fix him. The Winter Order buried him, a vault of his own, hidden Chernobog knows where. Some say, like the Briton’s Arthur, he is only sleeping, that one day he will wake and return to us. That he sleeps and recuperates, that one day, one day when we most need him, he will return.
We know not. The Winter Order selected a new leader, and followed a small cycle, all those of sufficient seniority allowed to rule for half a century or so. Chernobog had his turn, the twin Zorya - both Untrennyaya and Vechernyaya -, Rasputin, all held the mantle of Deathless in their turn, all had their chances to direct the future of Russia.
They do not call themselves immortal, the Winter Order, though they might have every right to name themselves as such. But they claim they are no better than mortals, they are nobodies, nobodies who have given their selves away to make greater Mother Russia. Not all of them are even Russian, are even human.
They are changeable, the babushki said, as the winds, and like the winds answer to none but themselves. The Czars had no power over them the undying, nor the Dictator, nor the KGB. How do you threaten an army of them that are faceless, undying and as eternal as the ice of Mother Russia? And who, when they are needed, will turn back Charles XII of Sweden, will turn back Napoleon, will turn back Hitler?
It was against Sweden their true power came out, scorched earth, the Czar had asked for, to let the Swedes starve in the winter. And implacable as that same winter the Winter Order wielded their magic and with a wave fire flew forth.
Burn, Retreat, Freeze.
The motto of the Winter Order. If you hear it said, leave. If you hear it said, do as the cloaked men, women and monsters ask you to. Or you will die in the flames and frost.
They aren’t real, are they babushka? The Winter Order? So many children ask, half afraid of of the faceless, nameless Order that protects their country.
But no one knows child. The Church perhaps. The Czars once. But they are of magic, and only the magi know what of that is true.
—
(Submitted by the lovely and brilliant and truly imaginative essayofthoughts. Stones being made with the bodies of children from a discussion with everambling. Chernobog and the Zorya are ancient Slavic deities. Sweden’s attempted invasion of Russia failed largely due to Tsar Peter the Great’s Scorched Earth policy.)
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