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“Tell me yourself directly, I challenge you--reply: imagine that you yourself are erecting the edifice of human fortune with the goal of, at the finale, making people happy, of at last giving them peace and quiet, but that in order to do it it would be necessary and unavoidable to torture to death only one little creature, that same little child that beat its breast with its little fist, and on its unavenged tears to found that edifice, would you agree to be the architect on those conditions, tell me and tell me truly?” “No, I would not agree,” Alyosha said quietly. --The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky --- “You’re shitting me, right?” The giant grunted. The giant often grunted. “I do not know what that expression means. I assume it’s either something vulgar, or you perhaps need to relieve yourself.” He cast a glance towards her and for a moment Lura remembered what it was like to be a small child, learning from a man that seemed a giant. In her early years, the giant in question was her father. Now, the giant was a giant. “Neither case interests nor concerns me. Let me know when you are ready to proceed in a manner befitting an adult.” He’d only sneered at her eleven times today. Eleven. Lura thought that maybe he was beginning to like her. “Sorry. I just mean that … those are ... bugs.” Eloren nodded towards the half dozen waist-high boxes, around which a cloud of insects buzzed happily. This in itself was a rather unique phenomenon in Lura’s estimation. Not the nodding, the buzzing. Insects that buzzed usually did not do so happily. In fact, the sound usually preceded anything but happiness. Once she had climbed the rickety steps of a shack along the outskirts of her village. When she had placed her hand on the railing she immediately wished she hadn’t, as her entire arm soon erupted in agony where her palm had been pierced by the stinger of some sort of small wasp. How something so tiny could cause such anguish still seemed as curious to Lura now as it had when she had seen only seven winters. She had ran the entire way home and was soon in the arms of her mother as her father pressed a cold compress into her palm. It was a fond memory of her parents; it was one of many. “Your education must have been truly astounding,” Eloren mumbled as he calmly reached to the top edge of the nearest stack of boxes. “I’m at a loss for words. These are, indeed, bugs.” “And they make food?” “And they make food.” The giant smiled as he opened the lid, soothing whispers slipping past his lips as if he were addressing a family pet. Lura remembered Tam saying that despite the fearsome impression the large gahreer made he was--in her words--a “big puppy” and could sometimes be found flipping beetles from their backs onto their feet when they found themselves upside down on the path. “They make food,” Lura repeated, half to herself. “But they ... are not themselves ... food?” “If you eat my bees, I will ask Enadyse to immolate you. She will do it. She has been waiting patiently to do it. Now come here.” Lura slowly slid closer, resisting the urge to swat at the flying yellow-and-black aberrations for fear of startling them. As she drew closer, the giant pointed along the edge of the box. “Do you see the yellow patterns around the edges?” “The demonic structures made to glorify the long-forgotten gods of whichever hell these things spawned from?” Lura smiled to indicate she was joking, but humor seemed as much a mystery to her naked companion as the common loincloth. She had a feeling if he attempted to smile his face would become injured in some way. “Those are the structures I was referring to, yes.” He pointed at another cluster of crystalline wax. “See how some are darker than the others?” Lura nodded before quickly adding a “Yes.” Eloren was entirely focused on the lair of the demon spawn in question and wouldn’t have seen her nod. “The darker ones are those that the queen lays her eggs in. We don’t interfere with those.” “They have a queen?!” Lura shuddered slightly. “Of course they have a queen.” “The brighter ones are what we are after. As long as we harvest them regularly then they’ll keep rebuilding them and the queen won’t have time to lay her eggs inside.” He lifted a dull knife from beside the aviary. “Watch. I’ll get the first and then you’ll try.” Lura watched as the colossus of hair and muscle slowly sliced through the bright tissue like a sawbones cutting away a leprous mass. “Why in the gods’ names are we doing this?” “You’ll see. Careful cuts, slow and deliberate. See how they’re landing on my arms? But they aren’t stinging me. Respect the hive as you respect your new pack. Never take more than they offer, just as they only take from us what they need.” “Wait,” Lura interrupted. For his part, Eloren looked back at her with only the barest hint of impatience at her newest question. “What are we offering them exactly? Souls?” He smiled. It lasted only half of a heartbeat before he realized he had almost given an indication that he was a human being. Which, she supposed, he wasn’t. She’d have to adjust that expression accordingly. “My wife’s garden is lovely, yes?” It was. Tam had a knack for growing flowers that was matched only by her hunting prowess. Once, when Lura was small, she had caught the glimpse of a rainbow through the ever-present smog that suffocated the world. For just the briefest moment she had seen reds, yellows, greens, purples--colors unlike any she thought she would ever see again. She believed that it would be the most beautiful thing she would ever witness. Tam’s garden put it to shame. Lura had never dreamt that the entire world could contain such colors, let alone that they could be confined to such a small place. Oranges the color of burning embers, blues like the eyes of the first boy she had ever had a crush on, purples like … Like something that was purple. She had little frame of reference for the sheer brilliance of the garden. For Lura it seemed almost a hallowed ground; for Tam it was a hobby. She had even planted some along the pathway leading to their cave, although they seemed to thrive the most in whatever spot would give them the most sunlight. Lura could hardly imagine having so many wonders on hand that some could be used purely for aesthetics. It was like choosing to decorate a dirty old path with a priceless emerald. “Yes,” she finally answered, returning the smile he had done his best to cover up. “It’s the loveliest thing I’ve ever seen.” He nodded, and this time it became harder to cover up his smile. Eloren loved his wife dearly and any compliment directed to her or her works was in his eyes worth a dozen directed at him. Lura would have to remember that for later: say something nice about Tam, get a happy Eloren. Such a trick could come in useful, should a day come when she would need some sort of leverage with him. “My little friends seem to think so, too. You’ve seen them admiring her work?” “I … Yes, I suppose.” Now that he mentioned it, the hell-spawn did seem to frequently visit the garden. “Why?” The answer came slowly but patiently, like a teacher instructing a slow learner. “Flowers make pollen. Little golden specks of dust. Bees take the pollen. Bees use it to make this.” He gave a little shake of his basket. “They make … Wait.” Lura couldn’t keep from laughing. “They use flowers to make--” “No, they use pollen. From the flowers.” “They use--thank you--they use pollen from the flowers to make structures of the--” “To make combs.” “Structures of the purest sort of evil ever witnessed on this, a world filled with layers upon layers of misery heaped upon humanity.” “We aren’t human.” “Werewolves.” “We aren’t--” “Gahreer. Whatever we are. That is what you’re telling me? Flowers plus demon-bugs equal demon-castles?” The giant grunted. Again. “Something like that, yes.” “And you let them do this? Close to the cave? The place where we sleep? Are you feeling okay?” His answer was to offer the knife’s hilt to a bewildered Lura. “Your turn.” “I am in no way fucking with--” “Your. Turn.” He held in his eyes a sort of stern warmth that reminded her of when her father wanted to illustrate the importance of one lesson in particular. It reminded her of the look their alpha sometimes gave her, though it was the gentle flicker of a campfire compared to the angry glare of a desert sun. Lura gave an uncertain whimper. She was whimpering a lot lately. She wondered if it was a wolf-person thing. With a trembling hand she took the small stone dagger being offered to her. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” she whispered pitifully. “Slow. But deliberate. Here.” He pulled her forward gently, placing a hairy ham of a hand on top of hers as she tested the weight of the dagger. It was like a hound placing its paw atop that of a mouse. “Easy,” he whispered as he guided her to another yellow outcropping. “Go slow and they won’t sting you. And even if they do, it won’t hurt very much. They aren’t wasps, they’re bees.” “There’s a million of them!” “You’d have to kick over the hive to have them all attack you at once. Don’t do that.” “I fucking won’t!” “Good. Easy. You’re doing fine.” He guided her hand closer until she was slicing through the mass of golden combs. “Good! Very good. I’ve got the basket ready, just let it fall.” Lura giggled like a child as the comb fell into the basket. “I did it!” “You did it,” he whispered kindly. “Now do it again, on your own.” “Fuck you.” “Or I could keep helping. That’s fine, too.” It took a few minutes for the pair to collect most of the golden residue. When they were finished they eased the lid shut and turned towards the second structure. Within half an hour the basket was full of … whatever it was full of. “We collected all of the shiny bug-hell,” Lura notified her teacher. “We did! You can put the knife down now.” Lura gave a grunt of uncertainty, as if she was reluctant to lower the weapon should the death-bugs choose to attack. She placed the dagger next to the first apiary, though she earned her first sting when she pulled her hand away too quickly. She squeaked in alarm. She was a huntress of power and grace unlike anything humanity was capable of, an almost mythical beast so fearsome that the humans trembled in fear at the very mention of their name. Yet still: she squeaked. “It stung me!” He fought to keep from laughing. The absolute bastard. “It fucking stung me!” He was losing the fight. “Am I going to die?” The restrained giggle turned into a rumbling guffaw, a sound so loud it was as if the moon itself had come crashing to the ground. He slapped her gently on the back, or at least she assumed it was what passed for gentleness for a creature that stood two heads taller than any man had a right to. The gesture startled Lura, less from the force of the contact than from the realization that Eloren was actually being friendly with her. Lura appreciated the gesture, though apparently the bees did not, as several made their displeasure known by delivering a few more stings to both of the gahreer. “We are going to die,” she whispered. “We are not going to die,” Eloren coughed. “Although this might be a good time to give our friends some distance.” “Yes!” Lura exclaimed. “It is a good time for that. It is a very, very good time for that.” The pair calmly but quickly retreated to the group’s gathering spot, where Tam was just beginning to build a campfire. “Hi, you two! Back from the hives? Did the brave warriors return from their quest to--” “I got stung,” Lura whined, holding her hand forth to demonstrate that she had, in fact, been stung. Tam turned to the fire pit, if only to hide her smile. She looked as if she had just been told a joke. “Yeah, they do that. It’s kinda cute, actually.” “I got stung,” Lura repeated before adding a sullen, “for what? Do you make weapons out of this shit? Use it for kindling? I really don’t understand why we did the thing we just did. You have bugs in boxes. None of this makes sense.” “Sit,” Eloren softly ordered. It took a glance at Tam’s reassuring smile before Lura acquiesced. “Try it.” Lura felt as though she had just been asked to consider the merits of self-decapitation. “Try … what exactly? What am I trying? Wait … No.” “Just a little,” Tam offered. “It’s pretty strong. I like to mix mine with tea.” “You want me to eat the little yellow shit-crystals? The ones made by the creatures obviously summoned from the darkest of the hells?” “Gods,” Eloren groaned. “Not the comb. The honey.” When the look of confusion remained firmly on Lura’s face he clarified, “The gooey stuff. Eat the gooey stuff, little sis--” He stopped himself, ignoring the happy squeal his wife let out. He had almost acknowledged her as a member of their fucked up little family. Lura would win him over yet, although she wasn’t sure why the prospect of befriending the giant seemed so appealing to her. “Eat the gooey stuff, Lura.” She raised the bucket and gave it a sniff. It had a pleasant smell, despite its demonic origins, though she supposed that was part of its sinister allure. “You’re not trying to kill me?” “If we wanted you dead we’d just wait for Enadyse to tear your heart out,” Eloren offered. “Not helpful,” Tam hissed before she placed her hand on Lura’s shoulder. “Try it.” Lura sighed as she slowly touched the semi-transparent muck. Her finger hadn’t burst into flames. That was a good sign. She lifted a small drop to her lips, carefully extended her tongue, and … Tam’s palm touched Lura’s back and she even felt Eloren’s hand envelope her entire shoulder. She was confused at the gesture until she slowly came to realize that she was sobbing. “I didn’t …” she whined. “It’s … I didn’t know that …” She was soon incapable of even stammering out her words, content merely to bury her face into Tam’s breast like a child begging comfort from her mother. She hadn’t sobbed like this since her mother passed away. “That good, huh?” Tam silenced her partner’s snickering with a low warning growl. “It’s so sweet,” Lura finally spat out. It was like she had just stupidly announced that the sun was bright. “It’s so sweet.” She had never in her life tasted something so utterly amazing. “I never thought anything in the world could be so sweet. How in the hells is it so sweet?” “Because this world is filled with wonders,” Eloren answered with a softness that she hadn’t known he was capable of. “Because despite all its sorrows, there is joy to be found. Sometimes in the most unexpected places. Because the Mother of the world wants you to be happy. And so do we.” Lura looked up into the beaming face of the giant. It was like she was waking from a nightmare only to find a family she didn’t even know she had was ready to comfort her. She suddenly realized where she was. Where she belonged. Where she was always meant to be. She was home. “Thank you,” she whispered. The smile never left the giant’s face. “Anytime.” --- The beast gazed down at Lura, one monster acknowledging the other like colleagues nodding towards one another from across the room. She wondered if this was what her prey felt like when they were seeing her for the first time, in whatever form she happened to be in at the moment. It had been a long time since Lura had felt any fear, and she wouldn’t let this be the day to break the streak. Even if it was him. Even if she was about to die. His eyes regarded her calmly, like a well-trained dog watching an approaching stranger. He wasn’t visibly hostile, not yet, just cautious. Still, there was no mistaking his intentions towards her. He was going to tear her apart and eat her, but that didn’t mean he had to be rude about it. It was the same look one would find on the face of a fat tomcat who had found a mouse stumbling into the room. He would eat the creature, yes, of course, obviously. Just not now. He’d wait until it suited him. He’d be hungry again later. No reason to kill her now. Not unless she became a threat or a nuisance. Lura closed her eyes. No, he was an animal, not a killer. Not a murderer. If they were both monsters, then even now, even reduced to this, he was still a better monster than her. The gate screeched shut behind her, a shrill, almost painful sound signifying she was now alone in the pit with the monster calmly regarding her. Trapped, although probably not in the way the Vicar believed. Despite the harshness of the sound of rusted steel grinding against itself, it was the wet choking anguished coughing behind her that caused her discomfort. Lura’s eyes left what was left of her brother as she turned back towards the door. The less hairy of the two Annoyances leaned against the bars, her concern for her mate momentarily forgotten in the presence of the monster. “What … is it?” “He,” Lura sadly corrected as she doffed her shift, tossing it to the side to stand naked in front of the beast. As she stretched her taloned fingers, she felt mildly insulted that the Vicar’s men made no catcalls as her body was exposed to them. “He’s not an ‘it.’ At least, I think he isn’t.” The Lesser Annoyance leaned closer, the skin of her neck just barely regrowing enough to keep the silver thorns from entirely shredding her skin. “Is he one of us?” The tone in her voice wasn’t lost, not even on Lura. She was showing concern for a fellow abomination even while her life’s blood fought its way past her larynx. The stupid, silly cow. “He used to be,” Lura answered. The best of us. “Not so much anymore, as you’ve probably deduced.” “That’s why neither of you could sense him?” the Greater Annoyance asked. “He isn’t gahreer anymore?” Lura sighed before answering truthfully, “I don’t think so. No.” “What the fuck did they do to it--to him?” “It wasn’t them.” Lura wasn’t sure if she had ever felt this tired. Maybe after she had ruined the world. Or the day Shade had thrown a castle into the sun. Perhaps the incident with the well. She’d almost forgotten about that one. Eighty years old. Or was it eighty-five? It didn’t matter anymore. Nothing did, not really. “They didn’t do this to him. But I’m still going to tear them all apart.” “A prospect that I look forward to watching you attempt.” Dyst--the Holy Fucker Above All Holy Fuckers--took his seat on a noticeably unimpressive central chair. “I’m not one for sport, as I’m sure you can assume, but I do have to admit I feel a certain fancy at the idea of watching the two of you tear yourselves apart. When evil battles evil, good wins. So it says in …” He paused, glancing at his praetorian guard. “... one of the holy books. Probably.” “When I’m finished, I’m going to beat you to death with your own dick.” Lura turned to the man she’d once dared to hope was an ally. “I imagine it will take a good long while. I’m sure it's rather small, as far as murder weapons go. But I’m a very patient woman.” Dyst laughed. The fucker. “I am looking forward to watching you eaten alive more than I have the capacity to express.” Lura nodded. “Good. That’s just great. Now get them out of here. The kids don’t need to see this, daddy.” “We can help,” the Lesser Annoyance whispered, though Lura wasn’t sure if it was because of a lack of conviction behind her words or if she were perhaps in more pain than she was attempting to display. “We can help you.” “No, you can’t.” You never could, she thought. “He’ll tear you apart. You’d be dead before they shut the door behind you. You aren’t strong enough for this.” “You care? About us?” The Greater Annoyance seemed simultaneously relieved and saddened that they wouldn’t be joining in the fight. “When did that happen?” “I don’t know,” Lura answered, surprised at her own words. She turned towards them slightly, though she never kept her eyes from the giant wolf’s. “Let me do this. Okay? Let me do something good for once.” She smiled bitterly. “You know, just to see what that’s like.” The Vicar motioned to the acolyte that was holding the Lesser Annoyance hostage, standing nearby as if awaiting for his inevitable command. “Take the other two to the seminary hall. Tell the lecturer that he may have trouble with the hairy one, but I imagine he’ll relish the challenge.” Seminary hall? They were going to be instructed in the dogma of their little fairy-tale faith? Given the choice between being lectured by one of them or facing imminent digestion Lura supposed she was the lucky one. The guard leading the ugly Annoyance tightened his grip on the rod, causing her to stumble and instinctively grasp her collar. The device must pierce her flesh the more the handle was turned. The humans were always so inventive when it came to new ways to cause pain, especially to Lura’s own kind. The Greater Annoyance reacted as she usually did when her mate was in peril, pulling against her own bonds and threatening to disembowel her tormentors with the claws and fangs that she didn’t actually have. It would’ve been adorable were it not so disgusting. The beast--not Eloren, not anymore--rose to its paws, pacing around Lura. It still seemed more inquisitive than hostile, for the moment at least, though it did bear its fangs once or twice to let Lura know she was still in danger should it decide to attack. Lura supposed it was time to do what had to be done. She rose to the balls of her feet, rolling her shoulders to loosen herself up. This was going to be bad. No, this was going to be absolutely horrible, the worst fight she’d had in decades. “Hey,” came the voice of the Greater Annoyance. Lura cast a quick glance at the Cunt-Above-All-Cunts, though she kept most of her attention on the rapidly approaching beast. “Don’t die.” Lura raised a brow in surprise until the bitch added a simple, “I’m the only one that gets to kill you.” This earned her a gesture of affection from Lura, who folded her hands in a loose heart shape and mouthed the word “Sisters.” For a moment it seemed the Greater Annoyance almost smiled before the heavy oak door slammed shut and Lura was alone. A strange thought. Being alone. As if she hadn’t been, ever since the world opened up and vomited darkness and blood before Shade claimed half of the lives the demon had sworn to protect. She had been alone for so long, and the world was all the better for it. So why did she find herself sad that the two Arch-Cunts had been escorted from the room? The monster growled, and Lura was reminded she was very much not alone at all. She was still in the presence of what was left of her big brother. That and the eerily silent throngs of the faithful surrounding the True God’s Voice, or whatever it was Dyst called himself. She couldn’t wait to kill him. She absolutely could not fucking wait. And yet she would have to. Her first priority was becoming more and more apparent as the giant wolf opened its maw, drool spilling forth from its gums like … Like honey. “I know you’re not in there,” Lura whispered. She didn’t want the bastards watching the show to hear her. “I know you’re not, but I still owe it to you to try. Are you in there, Eloren? It’s me, the failed little adopted sister that ruined your life. Can you hear me?” The answer came in the form of a lunge and a snap of jaws that could tear a ballista in twain. Lura leapt out of the way, sliding to just beside the wolf, in the line of its vision but far enough that it would have to take a few steps to try to devour her again. She cursed herself, realizing only too late that she had given up her greatest weapon before the game had even begun. She had revealed how fast she was, and now she couldn’t take the beast by surprise when it was time for her to attack. She held her hands out in a disarming gesture, as if she were approaching a stray dog. Which, she supposed, was all too accurate. “I don’t want to do this.” She was speaking to herself just as much as the creature. “I don’t know what they did to you, but I’ve got a pretty good idea of how you came to be this way. It happened after she died, right?” She knew this angle wouldn’t work either, but she owed it to her brother to try. “Tam? Do you remember Tam?” Again, no response. It didn’t cock its head to the side, whine piteously, howl mournfully for the life it had once lived. He was the best of us, she thought. Stern, unyielding, stubborn, but still the best of us. The giant who took pity on every creature who ever crossed his path. And now he had been reduced to this. Lura found new reasons to hate herself every day. She had heard the tales. The humans presented it more as a folk-tale, but there was as much truth in it as anything else these days. Tam had died, somehow and sometime after Lura had ended the world. She couldn’t say when, but she felt it the moment she died—as if the brightest star in the sky had darkened. The grief had driven Eloren insane. He spent more and more time as a wolf and less as a human, intentionally losing himself to the Wild, a state of being where he wasn’t bothered by the curses of sapience and memory. Lura remembered when her pack had attacked the bandits in her old village. It was the first night she’d tasted human flesh. When they arrived, Eloren was starting to go feral. Enadyse, her leader, her mother, the woman Lura would eventually lead to her death, eyed him warily for days. If any of them were to slip, it would have been him, probably to the ruin of them all. Even in his half-wolf form he was enormous, easily twice as large as the second largest of them, though still not half again as large as the horror that he had now become. Yet still, even as they launched their attack, even while he was half feral, he had scooped up an innocent peasant woman and deposited her on a rooftop to get her away from the fighting. Even half-animal, he was more of a human being than Lura herself could ever hope to be. And now, he was this. And as the beast let slip a low growl, Lura knew there was only one way this was going to end. It was the only way anything ever seemed to end, with Lura covered in blood, smiling and laughing to cover up the shreds of horror that she would have felt were she still a redeemable person. Before the shadow. Before the lonely nights. Before she had seen Their eyes watching her from beyond the sky with the bland inquisitiveness of a carp. Lura was ready to die. She wanted to. She had known that for sixty years. Yet something kept her going, whether it was the whiskey or the feel of blood beneath her nails or the beds she’d slip away from in the early morning rather than face another mistake. The fact the world might as well end as soon as she could no longer serve the shadow hardly crossed her mind anymore. Hardly a concern. She wasn’t murdering for the greater good anymore. She was murdering because she was a murderer. She wanted to die, but not like this and not to him. Not to Eloren. “Okay,” she sighed. “Yeah. Here we go then.” Lura closed her eyes for a moment, readying herself to fulfill the only job she was ever good at. It was the moment the beast was waiting for. For the first time since the Tree-Cunt had set her on fire, the pain that enveloped Lura caused her to fear for her own life. Teeth the size of spearheads were suddenly piercing her belly and back. One of the longer ones had actually impaled her entirely, spilling dark pink bits of her intestines into the sand. The creature that was once her brother lifted her from the ground, shaking his head back and forth like a dog playing with a stolen toy. Oddly enough, her first thought upon being impaled was that she hoped the two Annoyances hadn’t heard her scream. Her second thought was how much it hurt as she was slammed into the bars of his cage, the liquid bite of silver razorwire cutting into her back and legs. Lura coughed, the stale dirt of the pen tasting like ancient bones as she started to push herself upright. “Fine,” she coughed, fighting off the urge to vomit as a wave of nausea assaulted her. “Have it your way,” she whispered, half to the giant beast and half to the shadow. It must have been watching even now, as much a spectator as the small legion of guards and warrior-priests that sat near the makeshift throne of their prophet. “Please don’t make this into a disappointment.” Dyst smiled, his white teeth somehow gleaming even in the dim light of the chamber. “I’ve been planning this since I came across your little band in the hovel that night. And it’s been such a lovely day. I’d hate for it to end already.” Lura snarled, her fangs extending from her lips as the change started to take her. She grasped the bars, tugging like a madwoman trying to escape a sanitarium, her only reward a slight bend in the silver wire as it loosened its hold on the black iron rungs. The thorns pierced her hands like the fangs of a viper, causing her to hiss as they dug red furrows in the black pads on her palms as she quickly pulled her shifting hand away. Silver wasn’t lethal to her kind, at least not from simple scratches, and it would take far more than a few cuts to bring an end to the tale of Lura Veloren. Darkness suddenly enveloped her as she found her upper torso in the maw of the beast. Silver thorns wouldn’t do it, but being bitten in two and devoured would probably be enough. But she wasn’t going to let that happen--not while being gawked at and mocked by the human spectators. ‘Do you require assistance?’ “Fuck. Off.” Lura slashed at the gums of the beast, using what little leverage was afforded her given that her arms were pinned to her sides. The monster’s enormous tongue pressed her against the roof of its mouth and she had to turn her head to the side in order to keep breathing and to keep berating. “I’ll handle this. I’ll handle him.” The thought of the shadow whisking away the creature that was even now attempting to swallow her filled Lura with the spite that had kept her going for the past sixty years. Shade could’ve erased Eloren from existence--albeit at the cost of a continent or two--but he deserved better than that. He was always the best of us, she thought once again as she managed to open her big brother’s maw just enough to cause him discomfort, her arms swelling with muscle as her body began to change in earnest. She squirmed between the gnashing teeth, dropping to the dirt as she fought to fill her lungs with the stale air of the arena. This time she couldn’t suppress herself as she coughed up blood and stomach acid. This day was not going as she had imagined it would this morning. “Never been almost swallowed whole before,” she mused absentmindedly. “I think. Maybe. Hard to remember these days.” She slumped to all fours as her fingers stretched, claws emerging from her fingertips as her feet began to slowly lengthen. She coughed again, allowing herself a piteous whine that she hoped would indicate to the monster that she had been fatally injured. The creature that had been her brother didn’t take the bait, choosing instead to pace in a circle around her, attempting to herd her into the center of the pit. Lura wondered if perhaps there wasn’t a bit of Eloren still somewhere inside of the wolf; she prayed there wasn’t. ‘This is taking too long.’ “I would like for you to be quiet now,” she growled through blackened lips. ‘The other two will need assistance. I had expected you to be finished by now.’ Lura’s spine stretched, her frame swelling with corded muscle as she prepared for another strike. “I love it when I have the opportunity to disappoint you. I really, really do.” She cast a quick glance at the spectators. The guards were watching the show with the fearful interest of a hare caught in a trap. Dyst however noticed her seemingly speaking to herself. He hid his thoughts as well as he always seemed to, but there was a brief flicker of confusion, perhaps fear. The Arch-Daddy didn’t know about Shade, and there had to be some way of turning that to her advantage. That’s what she did, after all. Find a weakness and exploit it, unmake something whole, end something beautiful. Kill and maim. Bite and slash. Break and ruin. It was the only thing she had ever been good at. The momentary bout of self-pity was all it took for one monster to be pinned beneath a larger one. ‘It would take considerable resources to remove this obstacle.’ Lura’s hands wrapped around Eloren’s fangs, pressing his maw away from her, though her hold began to slip as her hands shifted further into paws. “How considerable?” ‘One of the remaining kingdoms. A smaller one, at least.’ “I hate you so fucking musch,” Lura grunted, her words slurring as her jaw pressed forward into a short snout. “So very fucking--” Laughter and cheers rang out amongst the gathered spectators. Lura cast her eyes towards them, scanning the crowd once again for the prophet sitting upon his wooden throne. He was frowning, his infuriatingly handsome features turning to concern as she continued speaking to Shade. Dyst was definitely now aware that an unanticipated variable had made itself known. A lengthening tongue slipped past Lura’s lips as she mockingly threw an affectionate lupine smile towards him. Still, he was the only one of the men gathered that wasn’t elated at the sight of the demoness pinned beneath their favorite pet. “Alright,” Lura growled. “They want a show. They’ll get a show.” ‘A quick one. This is taking too long.’ For once, she agreed with the demon. --- The wall felt soggy and strangely comforting as Willow was pressed against it, shoved into the cell by two men who couldn’t have been much younger than she. This wasn’t a seminary hall, and these weren’t lecturers. Mongrel had fallen to the floor, her claws stained with her own blood as she tried to pry the silver collar from her neck. The coughs emanating from her throat were wet, ragged gasps as she forced the humid air into her lungs along with her own life’s blood. They had her pinned to the ground, the polearm keeping her from rising from the floor. “Let her the fuck go!” Willow wasn’t sure if she were pleading or commanding, though she knew the response would be the same. Their gaolers paid her no mind as the one holding the end of the device twisted the handle again, the silver teeth chewing even further through her partner’s neck like some sort of mechanical lamprey. It never even occurred to Willow that the door to the cell was still open as she fell to her knees, cradling her love’s matted, wet hair, brushing it from her face as if that would provide any comfort. “Think we have time for a bit of fun?” A smile appeared across the younger of the two guards’ faces, like a worm emerging from the dry earth. “His grace has plans for her,” replied the other, his hand gripping the handle tightly, trembling slightly as if he were deciding to twist the device further. “Don’t reckon her cunt’s included in his grace’s plans.” He spat towards the pair. Mongrel’s eyes seemed to want to open for a moment before she clasped them shut again. “The fuck you want with its cunt?” the other sneered in reply, his arms steady despite Mongrel’s attempt to roll away from the pain. “That’s no cunt that belongs to something y’should want to stick your prick in. Y’know I always fackin’ wondered about you, Greck. You always did spend too much time in the fackin’ stables.” The younger guard started to turn his head to reply but instead shifted more of his weight on the polearm. “Not the she-bitch, you ass! The pretty one. The one that doesn’t have a hole in her fucking neck. Gods-fucking-below. Half the faithful torn to shreds by the god-down-below’s own demon cunt and I still get stuck with the fucking dumbest of--Oi!” He stamped his foot in Willow’s direction. “Up against the fucking wall! There, in the corner! Don’t think I don’t have another one of these fucking pretty little sticks lying about somewhere.” He smiled again. “Unless yer ladyship wants me to find it? You seems the sort that might enjoy a bit of rough play, eh?” Willow glanced at the table in the corner where her knife and sword were waiting. Maybe the next time Mongrel struggled enough to loosen their grip she could slip by them, make a dash for the knife, bury it in their fucking throats. It wouldn’t work, but she almost didn’t care at this point. She had to do something, anything. The older of the two seemed to have seen the glance. “Now now, none of that, luv. This thing has two more clicks before it tears your bitch wife’s fackin’ head off, and his lordship has plans for that head.” What the hell did that mean? “Over in the corner as me fackin’ associate asked, there’s a good lass.” They hadn’t checked her boot. Why didn’t she keep a knife in her boot? A shiv, a file, anything. Anything at all to lunge into his throat, make him drop the pole, make him stop hurting her. Please, please make him stop hurting her. The younger looked to the other. “So, do you think--?” He didn’t think. He never would again. There came the sound of a string snapped like the god-below’s own whip. The crossbow clattered to the ground just as the arrow pierced the back of his skull. He wasn’t dead yet, though he soon would be. His eyes turned the color of plums as he lost the use of his hands as they let go of the rod. To Willow, that was the only thing that mattered. Mongrel’s eyes shot open as for the first time in half an hour she was able to take a full breath. Willow could think of nothing else but holding her mate, though she knew she should be using the opportunity to tackle the other remaining guard to the ground, wrap her hands around his neck, watch the light leave his eyes. Thankfully she needn’t have bothered. He had time for one last curse as he turned to face his attacker, only to find a blade suddenly wedged in his chest. He stumbled back against the bars, screaming in agony as his associate fell lifelessly to the cold floor. His own end wouldn’t come as easily. With the remaining guard stumbling out of the way, Willow could finally see who it was that had rescued her. She expected it could only have been the demon bitch. That was the only ally they had at this point, if she could be called that. Apparently she was mistaken in that assumption as the red-haired youth extracted a sword nearly as tall as he was, plunging it into the guard’s soft belly. The bastard slumped to the floor, wordlessly screaming as he raised his hand to deflect the incoming third blow. And the fourth, and the fifth, and the sixth. Pit’s eyes were filled with tears though his teeth were gritted so tightly they looked as though they’d break as he brought the sword down again and again. It took nearly a dozen chops before Willow was sure the man was dead, though the youth seemed too lost in hopeless slaughter to have noticed. Willow rose to her feet, slowly stepping in the boy’s direction, though she dare not get within arm’s length of the still descending blade. “Kid,” she softly called. “Kid? Kid! Pit!” The name seemed to bring him out of his trance as the sword fell from his hands, suddenly too heavy for him to lift. His pupils slowly shrank. Willow was afraid his heart was about to burst as he fought to catch his breath. “I didn’t,” he whispered. “I didn’t!” “It’s okay.” She knew the terrible moment had passed as the sword fell to the floor and he slowly wiped the dead guard’s blood from his hands. He began to weep and Willow tried to remember how old the boy was. Fifteen? Fourteen? “Hey, it’s okay. It’s okay.” She wrapped him in her arms and he returned the embrace tightly. “I didn’t want to,” he sobbed. “He-He said he needed me to be the one to do it. Said you wouldn’t see me as a threat. Wouldn’t see it coming. He said he’d come after the children if I didn’t help him. I didn’t want to, I didn’t want to!” Willow was surprised to find her hands cradling the boy’s hair. “It’s okay. You did what you had to do.” She looked at the corpses on the floor, one barely identifiable as human at this point. “You did what you had to.” Willow pressed him away gently as she leapt towards the pole, twisting the handle in the direction that gave the least resistance. The teeth of the collar retracted, finally releasing her mate from its grip. Mongrel tried to slip free of the collar, but was still too weak. Willow fell to her love’s side, carefully taking the collar in her hands and with Pit’s help slowly slid it over her head. When she was finally free, the pair tossed it to the side as Willow cradled her partner’s head in her lap. “It’s okay,” she whispered. “It’s gone.” For her part Mongrel managed a small nod. She tried to form a word, her black lips weakly smiling as she tried to reassure her mate that she was okay, only for her to cough up more blood. “Is she going to be okay?” Willow nodded. “She is. She heals fast. The silver will make it take longer, but she’ll be fine in a few minutes.” Speaking of the accursed metal made Willow remember her weapons laying on the nearby table. She quickly slid her sword and dagger into her belt before returning to her mate. “I don’t think we have a few minutes.” Pit rose to his feet. “Most of the others are at the feast, but not all of them. They’ll be here soon.” “Help me get her up.” Willow gently wrapped Mongrel’s furry right arm behind her neck as the lad did the same for her other side. Together they lifted her from the floor. The she-wolf lowered her bare feet to the ground, trying to support her weight as best she could. “Don’t try, just let us carry you.” For her part, Mongrel managed another weak nod and a simple whisper of a single word: “Ow.” “Where the fuck do we go?” Willow whispered. “The ground level is two floors up,” replied the youth, struggling to hold the wounded she-wolf aloft. “Two floors up it is,” Willow returned, though she almost immediately sighed in defeat as Mongrel shook her head. “Four ... floors,” she managed to gasp. Blood was no longer slipping from her lips, although the wound in her neck would still take several minutes more to begin to mend. “Four floors up.” “M’lady, you’ve lost a lot of blood.” Pit kicked the door to the small gaol open, leaning through the doorway to make sure no other guards were coming. “We’ll get you back to the church, don’t worry. No one knows the secret passages of this place better than me.” Mongrel shook her head, but it was Willow who replied. “We’re not leaving. Not yet. You’ve found it?” The half-wolf managed a nod. She seemed on the verge of passing out, though a look of concern passed over her features as she sniffed the air. “Four floors up,” she repeated as they drew to an intersection. “Something is definitely there. Something magical. Gods that feels so dumb to say. That way.” She pointed to the left. Pit looked as though he would definitely prefer the right. “A big dragon come to help us?” Willow whispered softly to her mate as they shuffled in the direction she had pointed. “Maybe one named Grim-wah?” She placed a soft kiss on Mongrel’s temple. The weak laughter was interrupted as Mongrel suddenly went limp as if she had fallen asleep. For a moment Willow was afraid something horrible had happened until her mate begin to struggle to free herself from their grip. “Let go,” Mongrel whined. “Something’s wrong.” She lunged backwards, away from the direction she had originally wanted them to go. “Smell something. Something familiar.” Pit’s eyes widened. A look of relief passed over his face as though the night’s woes had no longer happened. As though he hadn’t just killed two men. “The Bishop!” He suddenly rounded on Willow, his teeth grit in displeasure. “We’re going to save him.” The look the lad gave Willow said all that she needed to know. He was expecting her to object, to try to save her own skin rather than to rescue the old man who had given them shelter. Mongrel looked back in Willow’s direction, though less unkindly. “Of course we are.” Willow nodded reassuringly, though perhaps more to herself than the boy. He had assumed she would object, that she would go back on her word and flee. Maybe that’s what people had come to expect of her. “Let’s go.” Mongrel was back on all fours now, quivering a bit but still steady as they hurried down the hall towards another heavy metal door. It was opened just slightly, the barest hint of light issuing from the crack. It wasn’t locked. Why wasn’t it locked? The answer came in the form of slurred words barely audible to Willow’s human ears. -Sing in … murn … good hurrss -Wait … neerrrs -Takes hand … ffrush -For the too god lovesshall “No,” whispered Mongrel. “No no no no no.” She threw herself on the door, trying to pry it open, even placing both of her feet on the wall to give herself more leverage, her strength still sapped from the bite of the collar. “No no no no no!” The others leapt to her aid, pulling the heavy door until it was open just enough for the she-wolf to slip inside. “What?” Pit yelled. “What’s happening?” He attempted to follow Mongrel inside, but was caught by Willow, who dragged him away as if protecting him from a fire. “Don’t look,” she whispered into his ear. “Please don’t--” She hissed in pain as the boy bit into her wrist, slipping free from her and chasing after the gahreer. It took only a few moments before he screamed and then his sobs joined that of her mate. Willow closed her eyes as she pressed herself through the crack, lingering in the doorway in case it were to shut and lock them in. She didn’t want them to be stuck here. Not with that. Not with what they were seeing. Bishop Elias Jacobi sat in the center of the room in a chair designed by the worst minds such a broken world could offer. He was naked, the smell of piss and shit lingering in the room like incense gone bad. Blood had pooled around his wrists and ankles where they were fastened by the heavy iron shackles that kept him pinned to the chair. Near him a simple wooden table held an assortment of knives, scalpels, pincers, and other devices Willow was happy she didn’t know the names of. There were strategically placed scars across the kind old man’s face. One in the corner of each eye. A shallow one in the forehead that had evidently been insufficient for the procedure. But it was the blood seeping from his nose that hinted at the operation’s success. Evidently going through the nasal cavities was the surest way to the goal. Perhaps the three other unsuccessful incisions had been the work of a novice, some sort of apprentice butcher-in-training. Regardless, the assortment of wounds meant that the procedure had to have been carried out multiple times on the old man. “Oh no,” were the only words Willow was able to whisper. “Oh gods no.” Mongrel was inconsolable. She placed her head across the old man’s lap as if she expected him to run his soft wrinkly fingers through her tangled hair and tell her it was all going to be alright. Just as he had done last night. Pit could only weep in the corner as the old man that had saved his life and loved him like a father drooled and tried to sing once again. -F’the true god luvsh us all -Too god lovsh is all -Loves ush? As though sleepwalking, Willow slowly, reverently took her place behind the old man’s chair. What was she going to do? What could she do? What she’d always done. The thing she was good at. What was it the bitch had said? The only thing separating you from me is sixty years. “M … I’m going to put him to sleep. Okay?” The half-wolf’s only response was to sob harder. Willow hoped she wouldn’t blame her for what she was about to do. It was the only thing she could do. The only thing any of them could do. “Once he’s asleep, I’ll … send him on his way. H-He won’t feel anything. I swear by every god he won’t feel any pain.” “You said fate had been kind to me,” she sobbed, stroking the old man’s hands. “Th-That I was lucky to have been an orphan. I didn’t believe you, but …” Her clawed hands tightened around the bishop’s bruised hands. Wrinkled with age, they looked as soft as an infant’s pillow. “I would’ve been blessed a thousand times over if I had grown up with you watching over me.” Slowly she nodded her head in silent answer to Willow’s words. Pit slowly sank to the floor, taking the bishop’s other hand. He didn’t try to meet Willow’s eyes. She’d be forever grateful for that. Willow wrapped her arm around the old man’s neck, her elbow resting softly on his throat. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered as she applied pressure. Willow hoped that in his condition he would lose consciousness quickly. She was incorrect. The bishop thrashed, though Willow kept him from moving his head. There was enough of him left inside for him to remember how to cry. He was resisting, fighting against her if only on instinct of self-preservation. He sobbed like a child, not understanding what was happening to him. Willow prayed that Lura was eating Dyst’s organs even now. “It’s okay, Bishop.” Pit whispered. “It ain’t nothing.” His words were bitter, as if he regretted saying them, as if he’d spend the rest of his life weeping every time he heard those three words used together. No grand epithet would mark the old bishop’s exodus from a world that didn’t deserve having such a kind soul living in it. Merely a boy’s silly refrain of, “It ain’t nothing.” His feet were the first to stop moving, then his hands. He slipped into unconsciousness. Willow said a silent prayer that the true-god would be waiting for him, along with his father, his mother, and every other soul whose life had been blessed merely by crossing their path. She knew that as soon as he saw them he’d have something nice to say. Something wonderful. Something kind. As soon as she was certain he was no longer awake, she pulled her silver dagger from her belt and pressed it against his throat. It would be quick. She would make sure of that. It would be the surest strike of her life. He deserved to feel no more pain. Out of everyone to walk the earth, he deserved to feel no more pain. --- The hill seemed a little smaller every time Lura climbed it, her back laden down with a pack containing jar after jar of clean water from a nearby spring. She had long ago stopped complaining. The idea that she would live to see a day when clear, cool, safe water was only a scant mile and a half away was one she never thought she’d be able to entertain. She wondered, not for the first time, how many of the people in her village would’ve lived to see a few more winters if there was a reliable spring a mile and a half away. Still, it wasn’t an easy climb, particularly when laden down with almost her own weight in filled clay jars. There was always danger on the path, a stray bear or lion that had somehow survived the end of the world. A snake in the path wasn’t an uncommon sight. And of course the ever-present bugs. But she couldn’t complain that much. The night was warm, but comfortable. The path was packed even given the tread of many bare feet, sometimes human, sometimes more than human--terrifying beasts ranging the forest, scattering small mammals far and wide as they returned back to their den, whereupon the horrid monsters would usually engage in charades or stories of happier days in order to pass the time. Scary, scary beasties all. And Lura was now approaching the scariest of them. “This was a foolish idea. A stupid, silly, foolish idea.” The voice was ancient when man was first learning to sharpen sticks--dangerous and laden like an approaching icestorm. It was a voice belonging to a creature Lura hoped to never have to face in combat, though she was becoming more and more sure each time she heard it that one day soon she would. The voice conjured up images of the eyes she had seen in the corner of her old home on that fateful night. But while Shade’s were eerie yet blank, the eyes of the woman speaking now were full of anger, awareness, and predation. Lura felt sure that one day those flashing eyes would be the last sight she’d see before she left this world for a better one. It was the voice of the alpha. It was the voice of her Mother who was not her mother. Enadyse. Lura slid behind a tree, carefully peaking around the trunk to eavesdrop on the conversation now taking place. It concerned her. All of the conversations lately concerned her. “A stupid, silly idea for a stupid, silly time.” This was his voice. Kyrun. The one who had led her here. The one that along with Tam seemed ever intent on vouching for her full inclusion into the pack. The one that Lura didn’t mind seeing walking about without a shirt on. “Those seem to be the only ideas the World-Mother allows us these days. Maybe we shouldn’t be so hasty to turn them aside.” “Or maybe we should tear her head off and toss it back into the quicksand pit she crawled out of.” A subtle cough. Kyrun again. “The pit she pulled me out of. Entirely upon her own honor and at the risk of her life.” “And entirely under her own power, hmm?” The alpha again. “With no help from any outside … party? You know, it’s strange. I haven’t seen quite as many birds circling about the canopy these days. I wonder why that may be.” A pause. Lura knew this must mean Enadyse was glaring at Kyrun, daring him to challenge her authority. Daring him to meet her eyes. The silence meant that he couldn’t. This conversation was about her. About her place in the pack. About her continued existence. But the contempt in Enadyse’s voice hurt Lura more than any wound inflicted upon her could hope to match. Her mother was proposing that Lura needed to die. “No. Better to do it now. Tonight. I won’t have her put this pack in danger--in any more danger than we already are. She doesn’t belong here. She isn’t natural. She wasn’t made Gahreer by the Mother, she was made by …” ‘There are … complications,’ the shadow had said. It was more correct in that regard than it would ever realize. “And I was made Gahreer by a plague.” This wasn’t Kyrun’s voice. Lura’s heart skipped a beat. This was Eloren. Eloren who seemed to despise her despite his wife’s insistence that she be allowed to stay. “And Kyrun was made Gahreer by luck. And my wife by war. And you, you were made alpha by …” Another pause. Enadyse was sneering. Enadyse rarely sneered. “Yes? I was made alpha by what, child? An apocalypse? An apocalypse caused in some part by the thing that made her?” Lura ducked behind the tree as Enadyse walked into view, her hair white as mountain snow and her eyes filled with the scorn of righteous condemnation. She was followed at a distance by the other two, Kyrun with his shoulders slumped and the giant Eloren with his head held high. Tam must have been asleep somewhere. Tired after a day of hunting alone for the night’s meal. That was probably why this conversation was taking place. Tam would’ve objected and Enadyse would’ve had to reprimand her, and her alpha hated reprimanding her. “Thank you for reminding me,” Enadyse almost taunted her children. “I won’t have Darden Veloren’s whelp bringing further ruin to this pack. I won’t have that … demon’s white eyes peering down on the three of you like some twin moons from the ninth hell. I will not have that happen.” She turned to face them. The fire in her eyes suddenly diminished. “I won’t have her hurt you. Any of you. I’ll die before that happens. Or she will.” She turned towards Lura’s hiding spot. Enadyse knew where she was. Of course she did. Lura almost stepped from behind the tree. Almost revealed herself. She thought of the Pup, back home in her tiny shack. Maybe she had already forgotten about her “sister.” Lura hoped that she had. “Kill her, then.” Eloren’s words were surprisingly soft. “Kill her and be done with it. I’ll go wake my wife.” At this, Enadyse growled, but Eloren held up his hand. “Not so that she can witness the deed. Just that we’d rather be off before sunrise. It’s so gods-damned hot these days.” At this the alpha seemed genuinely surprised. “You’re going to leave? Leave your pack, leave your … your alpha? Because of her?” Eloren shrugged and answered simply, “Yes. Kill her and you kill the pack. I’d never follow you again.” He laughed. “And not just because my wife will skin me alive for letting you do it.” “Game is scarce these days,” Kyrun offered slowly. Eloren turned to face him, unsure where his brother was going with this line of thought. “Tam is the best tracker we have, but I’m not too bad in that regard either. And I know a couple of good traveling songs. It’s an easier journey with three than with two. That is, if you don’t mind the company.” The giant slapped his brother on the back. Lura noticed the wince. She had wondered if one eventually got used to Eloren’s particular brand of showing affection. She supposed she had her answer now. “You are always a welcome traveling companion, brother. You don’t even complain about my snoring.” Enadyse’s words were a hiss, vapor escaping her lips despite the relative warmth of the forest night. “That’s it, then? You’ll leave your home--leave me--in protest for taking the life of this girl?” The two men shared a look, then slowly nodded. It wasn’t often that either of them could meet Enadyse’s eyes, but they seemed to have decided to brave her glare. “You won’t be our alpha if you do this,” Eloren answered. “I couldn’t follow you anymore, Mother. I love you too much to watch you murder one of our own.” “And you as well?” she turned to Kyrun. Kyrun nodded, as quiet as he usually was. But the silence was not without its own conviction. Lura expected the fire to return to her Mother’s eyes. Instead she her eyes only held a wet twinkle and her sigh of relief. “Good. Thank you.” The two exchanged another look. “Good?” Eloren quietly asked. “Wait …” “You’re ... not going to kill her,” Kyrun slowly stated. “You never were.” The ancient presence shook her head. What in the hells was going on? Eloren frowned. “This was some sort of test?” There was the familiar rumble is his voice of deep discontent. “No,” Enadyse answered before adding, “Yes. Of a sort, I suppose. I had to know your own judgment. If any one of you thought she had no place here then I would’ve cast her out.” She smiled. “I value your opinions too much to allow her a place unless it was a unanimous decision. We didn’t need Tam for this discussion, she was ready to adopt her the first time she saw her walking up the path.” “Then … you agree?” A smile threatened to appear on Eloren’s face. “You think she belongs here, too?” Enadyse nodded. “There is so much hatred in her. More hate than I think one person could ever bear. Hate enough that I think could drown the entire world. But there is good there, too. She has a place here. She has a home.” The pair started to bow before her until she waved the motion away. “Get up, little fools. We need to get started on breakfast.” The giant hesitated, but not for long. He wrapped arms like tree trunks around her shoulders. “Sometimes I hate you, old woman.” She laughed. --- Pink stars floated in her vision, gradually dissipating until Lura focused on the ground, dirt and her own blood creating a nauseatingly pretty pattern. She missed the pink stars almost immediately. A glance at Eloren--at the beast that had been Eloren--revealed that it was circling her, though it was also using the pause in battle to attend to its wounded paw. It would heal just as fast as her own wounds, perhaps faster. Even now Lura’s own scrapes and bruises were mending. The third joint of her pointer finger was missing along with the entirety of her smallest finger, but even these were already regrowing. This would not be a short battle. And yet, it was not a stalemate. While they both healed quickly and Lura had the advantage of speed, it paled before Eloren’s sheer size. If he could get her head into the back of his maw he could crush it like a grape. She would have to be smart about this. It had been years since she had really felt her life was in danger. The last time she had come close to feeling she was going to die had been when she was attacked by the cunt-duo back in Sailor’s Piss. When they had … Maybe that was the solution? Lura cast her yellow eyes quickly about the room, though her gaze fell back to the predator as soon as she could. She hadn’t seen any support pillars. Nothing to indicate that they were in the basement of the magistrate’s manse. What building were they in now? They had taken a long hallway. Was this a warehouse? Did the tunnel lead into the earth? There was a hill behind the mansion. Wasn’t there? No, that wouldn’t work, although she did relish the idea of dropping a building on the Vicar’s head. Perhaps she could allow herself to be swallowed? Tear the monster apart from the inside out? No. A stupid idea. It was too fast, and enough of Eloren’s intelligence may have remained that he would figure out what she was doing, cough her up, crush her skull in his jowls. Perhaps she could taunt the guards, get them to draw closer, grab one of their silver-tipped spears? But what the fuck would that do against him? She’d have to get close enough to stab at him and that was a horrible idea. He would bat it aside easily if she threw it at him. This was stupid. This was so fucking stupid. Both monsters were sufficiently healed. Lura rose to her paws. Another quick glance at the crowd showed the Vicar’s men with their mouths agape, drawing closer to their prophet as if they could hope to protect him. Dyst had his demon. Lura wagged her tail and her long tongue in his direction, though his face revealed none of his thoughts. As she shifted fully into her wolf form she hoped it would provide some sort of assistance, but she knew it was a vain hope. This was not going well. She was a rat trapped in a lion’s cage. Lura squinted at the thought, the barest hint of a plan beginning to form. Eloren charged, mouth open, tongue like a carpeted walkway unfurling. An obvious diversion. The charge left his flanks open, his neck exposed if she rolled under the wild lunge. Her brother may have been gone, but the monster that replaced him knew how to goad her into being vulnerable to a counterattack. Lura pretended to take the bait, dropping into a crouch as if preparing to roll under the attack even as a paw the size of a handcart began to swipe at where she would have been had she fell for the feint. Some of the praetorians saw it, cheering for their pet as they assumed she had misjudged the attack. Instead, Lura fought against her own crouch’s momentum, springing to the side as Eloren crashed into the jagged fangs of the silver-barbed wire. She took a moment to relish the look on the guard’s faces as they recoiled in fright as she slammed into the fence next to them. Now it was time for a feint of her own. Lura leapt at the beast, her claws digging into his hind legs as she pulled herself to his haunches, lumbering on all fours along his spine before leaping at his neck. It wouldn’t work; he would turn at the last second and snap at her. It wouldn’t work, but it didn’t need to. Lura rolled to the side as the behemoth rolled onto his back, a cloud of ancient dirt and dried blood kicking into the air as he snapped at her in midair. She had intended on kicking against his maw and falling to the side but had again misjudged just how gods-damned fast he was. The shadow’s voice returned as she felt the sting of the barbed wire cut into her flesh. ‘I may have underestimated the size of the kingdom in question. I’m having trouble judging dimensional space these days.’ “I fucking noticed,” Lura hissed as a paw descended on her. Several of her ribs would need time to mend now as she felt jagged bone threaten to pierce her lungs. “Give me a minute before you cause another apocalypse. The world’s alcohol production still hasn’t recovered after the last one.” Again the beast’s teeth pierced her torso, and Lura let out a roar of agony. She spat blood and phlegm against the fur on his neck. “Please don’t bite there, doggie. I really get grossed out when I have to regrow my tits.” She whined as she wrapped her arms around the barbed wire, fighting against the urge to let go as her body did its best to mend itself while Eloren whipped her back and forth in its jaws like a dead hare. Instead she clung to the hissing fire of the silver thorns biting into her arms and paws until she felt the wire start to come loose. Only a foot, perhaps a little more. She’d need much more than that. Her muscles strained as she tried to pull more of the wire free, praying Dyst wouldn’t discover her intent. His men certainly seemed to be caught up only in the moment as they pierced her shoulders with silver-tipped spears. She had to let go for now. It was that or be literally ripped apart. Letting go of the bars, Lura felt the ground leave her as she was slung left and right by the great beast. Her claws dug into his nose at the apex of Eloren’s death roll, freeing her to sail through the air and land ungracefully on her back. She tried her best to roll into a crouch but her legs didn’t seem to be receiving her commands. Without looking up to see the beast leaping at her she backpeddled away, even as his jaws snapped at her. Lura dug into her own torn belly, pulling out part of her large intestines and tossing it like a treat at the monster. She watched in morbid fascination as the beast, unable to resist its hunger, snatched her discarded organs from the ground and quickly swallowed them. “First time I tried that,” Lura hissed in agony. “That was every bit as disgusting as I’d anticipated.” Still, the morbid move had given her a few precious seconds to breathe as Eloren tossed her flesh into the back of his throat. If nothing else, it allowed her to shove her organs back into her belly and hope her flesh wound would mend before her next move. If only she had any idea what her next move should be. Eloren cocked his head to the side like a confused puppy as he found his opponent still living. Need more time to heal, Lura thought as she fought through the pain, lunging at her opponent’s neck before her intestines had even found time to regrow. “I can do this,” she whispered, half to herself and half to Shade. ‘Perhaps,’ the remarkably unremarkable voice returned. ‘But it needs to be done quickly. One of the others has died already.’ Lura’s heart sank as her teeth pierced Eloren’s flesh. Which one? she thought. Which one is dead? She found herself strangely hoping it wasn’t the Tree-Cunt. ‘The older one,’ the shadow replied. Which one was that? Lura thought they were both around the same age. Her thoughts were forced to her own predicament as she dug her claws into Eloren’s throat, warm blood trickling past his strangely pristine undercoat. Just a second longer, she thought. Just a second longer, then I can-- Again she found herself sailing through the air, back in the direction of the slightly bent cage. She caught the bars, using what little mobility was in her front paws to hold herself aloft, using the opportunity to snap at the guards. Good. Let them see you drooling, gnashing, howling at them. They think you’re a demon, an animal. Give them the show they came to see. More spears pierced her sides, causing her to slide to the ground, though she still kept her feet. She pressed more of her weight against the bars. They were bending now, just a little, but they were bending. The silver wire was growing looser. The row of praetorians parted slightly as Dyst strode forward. He wasn’t close enough to be in range of her claws. He wasn’t stupid enough for that. He may have been the true-god’s emissary, but he was still a man and he’d still need to get his little japes in. “Do you really think that will work?” Now it was Lura’s turn to turn her head to the side quizzically. “Bend the bars enough and you can get out? Do you really think that’s going to work?” So he knew she was trying something, but he hadn’t yet figured out what. He thought she was trying to get away. Good. Very good. His guess was wrong, but she didn’t need to let him know that. Not yet. Still, she couldn’t help but lean into the assumption. “Please,” Lura whined. “I don’t want to do this. I can’t do this. Please, just let me go.” The bastard turned his back to her, shaking his head in disappointment. “Don’t do that, demon. Don’t pretend you’re capable of asking for mercy. We both know that’s not what’s happening right now. It’s a poor trick: demeaning to yourself and insulting to me. And boring for the both of us.” Fuck. Lura turned to the advancing monster, a growl of pure hatred escaping her lips, though it was directed entirely at the man standing just outside her reach. The roar seemed to give Eloren a momentary pause, though Lura couldn’t help but fail to use this to her advantage, instead using the few precious seconds it afforded her for an entirely different matter. “You goat-fucking son of a bandit’s whore,” she taunted the Vicar. “I’m going to rape you to death with one of those little pig-stickers the fucking instant I--” Her diatribe was interrupted as she howled in pain as Eloren’s teeth descended. Her right thigh was being pierced by the beast’s large fangs. His front teeth had managed to mangle her tail enough to remove it entirely from her body. She was failing. She was going to die. “Charming.” She hadn’t noticed Dyst crouching down to meet her at eye level. He wasn’t even attempting to stay out of her reach now. Why would he? She was finished. “Just so you know, your existence isn’t going to be entirely pointless. You’ll save more people with your death than you ever could have expected.” Stay conscious you stupid bitch, she berated herself. Stay awake just long enough to listen to what the bastard is saying. She found herself wanting to hear his little arch-villain speech. “After you’re gone,” he continued, “it will break the spirit of the other two. You might not believe it, but they’re expecting you to come to their rescue. Even Willow, though she hardly matters. We’ll use her as a test run for the she-wolf. Lobotomy is as of yet still an impractical science, and Mongrel is a special subject that I want to get just right. After I plop your head on the table and begin running a steel bar up her nose, well … That would break anyone’s spirit, don’t you agree? Of course she heals almost as fast as you do, so the procedure will likely have to be carried out several times a day, but that just means we should be very practiced at it. After that, well …” He rose, placing a hand on one of his follower’s shoulders. “It’s been said that you furry little demons can sense others of your own kind. Assuming there are any more, I can use her to lead me to them. A demon, bending the knee to the true-god’s will, helping us to catch other demons? Nothing will rally the faithful more than a nice little holy crusade against the children of the god-below. Perhaps the next few cities to be … invited to join the true god’s faithful will do so rather willingly when they see the heads of demon-spawn decorating our spears. Perhaps we can avoid any unnecessary bloodshed for a few years. That would be nice. So, yes. You’ll do far more good dead than you ever have done alive.” He leaned even closer, completely unafraid. “What I’m trying to say is: Thank you.” --- By the time the trio had climbed to the manse’s second floor Mongrel’s body had fully healed, though the scars of what they had just done would stay with them for the rest of their lives. Once Willow had attempted to speak about the “mercy” they had just delivered. Mongrel’s response was a simple, “No. Not now.” The words weren’t angry or cold, just tired and hurt. Being the smallest of the three, Pit peaked his head through the doorway first, motioning silently for the pair to follow when he saw the coast was clear. Many of the papal guard had been killed the day before during their last little adventure. Most of the rest were either presiding over the Feast or gathered watching the spectacle of Lura battling her family. Still, Willow felt it was only a matter of time before they’d run into trouble. The thought of the madwoman having any sort of relatives sat oddly with Willow. What was it that she had said? “My mom wasn’t, but my mother was.” Was the poor creature her literal brother or something else? Perhaps the answer was something only one of her kind would understand. Mongrel sniffed the air as if discovering some sort of scent that only she could detect. Willow supposed that wasn’t too far from the truth. She padded silently on hand and foot, gold-flecked eyes darting to each room they passed as if whatever they were searching for lay within. As if it existed at all. Once they were forced to hide in a bedroom as a pair of guards neared the trio. The room was only slightly smaller than the hollow old church that they had spent the night in, though it was bereft of all furnishings and contained only the ruin of an old mattress. Rents in the fabric indicated where knives had cut into it, no doubt someone searching for any valuables hidden by a fleeing noble after the riots had turned the city into a ruin. The room was like the mansion that contained it, like the city outside of its broken window: skeletal remains of the world’s former opulence. When the coast was clear they resumed their pointless search. Willow wanted to go home. She had to pee and her feet hurt and the sword at her side seemed heavier with every step. She just wanted to go home. Pit seemed to agree as he glanced about nervously as if expecting at any moment for the Vicar or his servants to step into the hallway. “What the fuck are we looking for?” he whispered. He would find no answer. Neither of them had one to give. Before Willow could make her hourly declaration that this was stupid and that they should leave, Mongrel drew to a halt outside one particularly plain door. “There,” she offered before her dirty clawed hands wrapped around the handle. It was locked. Of course it was locked. It was solid oak. No doubt the she-wolf could smash her way through it, but she’d need to fully transform and that would take time they could ill afford. “Fuck.” Mongrel looked to her mate as if she had any sort of answer. Willow gave the most honest shrug she could manage. “I don’t have my lockpicks. Even if I did, I don’t think I could open that.” She looked back in the direction from which they had just passed. “Think you could slip out the window back in the room? Climb alongside the wall from the outside, see if there’s another way in?” “It’s a vault,” Pit plainly stated. “It doesn’t have a window because it’s a vault.” He seemed like he was trying to look in both directions at once. “Lady Mongrel, whatever is happening right now it’s a bad idea.” “Of course it is,” Willow answered for her. “Those are the only ones we have. M? Plan?” The she-wolf sniffed again. “It isn’t a vault. At least it wasn’t built that way. Why would they have a vault on the third story? It has to be a special place. Somewhere Dyst--” She bowed her head slightly as if it hurt to say his name. “Somewhere the Vicar would keep artifacts only he’d have access to.” Without another word she sprang away, running on all fours down the hallway and sliding into the bedroom they had just left. The fiery-haired lad started to follow until he felt Willow’s hand on his shoulder. “No. Wait.” “W-Wait?” he stuttered. “Wait for what? What’s happening?” “I have no idea,” Willow answered truthfully. “Just wait. She’ll figure something out. Or she has already.” Before the boy could object there came the sound of ancient wood groaning in protest, followed by the click of claws on stone tile and the clack of a lock being slid aside. Mongrel opened the door with what Willow presumed would’ve been a flourish had she been able to stand fully upright. “There was a window! It was boarded up but that didn’t matter because I am amazing.” Willow nodded in agreement before ushering the boy inside and quietly closing the door and locking it. “This is good. It’ll give us a little privacy while we find--” “Gods below,” Pit whispered. As Willow turned to face the pair she couldn’t help but agree with his assessment. The faux treasure vault contained an assortment of devices the likes of which Willow was glad to have never seen before today. A crystal ring. An egg which pulsed with a green glow. Several clay tablets bearing some ancient symbols that seemed to change as she watched them. A helmet no human was meant to wear. A simple piece of broken glass that hissed like a snake. Dozens of trinkets plundered from temples of long dead gods in lands with forgotten names. All arranged row by row on a trio of plain wooden shelves. Willow pulled the boy away as if one of them would decide to explode at any moment. “Mongrel?” The she-wolf slowly looked up at her mate, an expression of utter bewilderment on her face. “Um …” “Which one?” Willow asked, though she knew there was only one answer. “How the fuck am I supposed to know?!” Mongrel crawled closer to the shelf, hesitating to touch anything. “T-This one glows? Lura said look for one that glows.” “Lura is a lying, murdering walking atrocity,” Willow countered. “If she said to take the glowy one, we should probably take the least glowy one.” She paused to slap Pit’s hand away as he reached out to grasp a simple white cup that filled itself with a thick viscous red fluid as if poured by an invisible hand. “Stop that. You can’t just grab one of these things.” She looked at her partner again. “M, grab one of these things!” “What the fuck am I even looking for?” Mongrel paced the length of the shelves on all fours, looking for anything that would slay a god. “She said we could sense magical stuff but … I mean, it’s all magical stuff! I can sense magic in all of it but I don’t know what the fuck I’m even looking for.” She ran her fingers through her tangled dark hair. “Willow?” “A-A sword?” she proposed. “I always envisioned killing it with a magic sword? Or an axe?” “I don’t see a fucking sword!” Mongrel spat back unkindly. “Do we just take all of them? No, that’s stupid. One of these will probably kill us as soon as we touch it.” “Whatever you’re looking for, find it fast,” Pit reminded them. “The guards will notice you’re not in the cell soon if they haven’t already. This will be one of the first places they’ll check.” His voice dropped into a reverent whisper. “What color is that one? The-The little orb? I don’t think I’ve ever seen that color before. Does that mean it’s magic?” “Everything here is magic!” Mongrel whined. “The flowers, the horseshoe, everything is fairy-tale sparkly-dust, glowy-rune magic bullshit! Literally everything other than the sodding piece of paper.” Willow had not taken notice of the parchment until then. Why would she have? It was placed next to a toy worm that moved on its own. It was draped over some other doubtlessly useless bauble. She was halfway surprised to find that she could actually read the words written upon it, though that didn’t keep them from making no sense at all. “What’s it say?” The question came from both Mongrel and Pit as Willow slowly lifted the faded yellow paper. “Nothing, it’s nonsense.” Willow squinted in the dim light emanating only from the assortment of shimmering artifacts. “Something about … dirt. Literally just dirt. ‘Soil ... from the four ... somethings of the … wound? Womb? World!” It was written in the common tongue, but in a version of it that was so old it was hard to decipher, especially for someone who had only halfway mastered literacy from lessons her mother had forced upon her. She wadded the paper up and tossed it aside. “It’s just as useless as …” The three saw it at the same time. The thing that had lain beneath the parchment. It wasn’t shiny or glowing or impressive in any way that the other trinkets were. Just a dagger, only slightly larger than the one Willow kept at her side. Its blade was dull, yet strangely surrounded by an assortment of other blades perched atop a ring that served as the weapon’s pommel. It looked like something one could find at a country fair, some novelty made cheaply and pawned off to some of the wealthier peasants that stumbled upon it. And yet there was a malevolence about it. No stain lay upon the blade, but there was no doubt the device had tasted the blood of scores of victims. Family lines had ended because of this blade. Forests had burned. Dreams had ended. It was the she-wolf that finally broke the silence. “You found it.” Willow looked at her partner, unsure if she was joking. “This thing?” “It-It’s the only thing here that is a weapon. I mean, yes, obviously it’s a weapon, b-but …” Mongrel crept closer, her hand hovering above the wicked device as if she was afraid she’d be injured just by touching it. “I don’t know how, but this thing wasn’t meant for killing people. It was meant for killing something … unnatural?” “Like a god?” The words sounded as absurd to Willow’s own ears as they must have to the others. “Can this kill it?” “Wait,” Pit blurted out, almost startling the others. “Wait, wait … Who the fuck is killing a god?! When in the hells did that become a thing we’re doing?” “Take it,” Mongrel said simply. “We don’t have time and that’s the only thing that could be of any help. Just take it and let’s go.” Carefully, Willow picked up the dagger, taking care not to touch any of the sharp prongs circling the center blade. The horrid thing made a sudden clicking noise, and the trio jumped as the smaller blades began to slowly rotate around the central spire. The movement lasted only a moment. The ring serving as its pommel slowly ceased spinning, like the wheels of an overturned wagon. “Keep it away from me.” A look of loathing appeared on Mongrel’s face. It wasn’t often that Willow saw that look from her mate. “Whatever it does, whatever it is, I don’t want it anywhere near me.” Willow nodded. It was only then that she realized the device was made of silver. --- She hated herself. She hated herself for what she had done. She hated herself for what she had failed to do. For the tears sliding down her face. For the feel of the cold earth against her paws. For the grass brushing past her fur as she slipped away from a family she would never see again. Mostly she hated herself for what had happened to her mother. “Where are you going, little sister?” Lura didn’t give a start, nor a yelp, nor any sign to indicate she didn’t expect they would be there. The giant and his wife were waiting for her as if they were impatient, as if they were children awaiting their parent for a long-expected trip. Lura hated them for it; she loved them for it. They were already transformed--Eloren standing like an obelisk that threatened to blot out the faint light of the ever-shrouded moon, Tam like a magical fox out of a fairy tale eager to engage in a bit of mischief. They hadn’t brought any provisions; their kind neither needed them nor possessed them. Eloren turned his head to the side, awaiting an answer to his question. Lura had none to give. He would know immediately if she were to lie, but the truth was likely to cause them to hate her for the rest of their endless days. Well, the large one at least. Lura doubted Tam was capable of hate. She lied anyway. “Out for a walk.” She supposed she wasn’t lying just yet, not until she added, “Just around the line of trees.” What had she said earlier? Fuck. It was becoming harder to keep her current lies from the ones she spewed an hour ago. “Out for a walk? Off to check on your friend? Off to see your giant white wolf?” Eloren motioned for her to sit. Lura shook her head. She knew that if she sat down it would be harder to get up again, and she had many miles to walk. “I told you before. I have to check on my friend.” Now it was Lura’s turn to cock her head to the side. “I ... already told you this. I think?” The earth rumbled as the giant took a seat, eyes like lanterns never letting hers look away. Tam’s blonde-white paws pressed on her shoulder, gently coaxing her into sitting with them. Lura stood firm. This wasn’t happening. She wasn’t going to have another heart-to-heart with her brother and sister. She wasn’t going to have another tryst with the quiet man who said he loved her. She wasn’t going to sit and chat while the specter of her mother’s death hovered near her. She was going to walk into the dark, into the cold, and calmly discuss the end of the world with an apparition she was beginning to suspect she had never seen in the first place. Tam released her soft grip when it became apparent Lura wasn’t going to sit down. With little choice left to her, Tam plopped herself down next to her large mate and resorted to her default state of the nicest being to ever walk this unworthy world. “We told you that you’re family now. Wherever you’re going, we’re going. You don’t get a choice. Tough shit.” “Not this time,” she whispered. The giant cleared his throat, a somehow comfortable avalanche rumbling from his maw. “What was that? Couldn’t quite hear you. Sounded like you were trying to tell a joke, but I haven’t heard one of those from you in quite a while.” “Oh! I know one!” The blonde wolf looked back and forth between Lura and her mate before oddly deciding to punch Eloren on the shoulder. “I said: I. Know. One.” Eloren smirked. Or perhaps he was preparing to sink his fangs into Lura’s throat. It was always hard to tell with him. “I’d love to hear it, my love.” Tam squealed as if she had just been given a kitten. Lura wondered if their kind ever kept pets. “Have you heard the one about the bear and the toad? The bear comes across a pond where--” “What the fuck are we doing?” Lura hissed. “What the fuck are we doing right now? Before you said you understood what I had to do, now you’re acting like you’re going to keep me from doing it.” “I’m the big one, not the smart one,” Eloren suddenly admitted. “It takes a while sometimes for my mind to catch up with the rest of the group. Especially with you.” He smiled as he added softly, “There are always words within your words. The ones you say and the ones you mean and the ones hidden between. What I heard before was that you were checking on your friend and coming back home. But that’s not what’s happening now, is it?” “It isn’t?” Tam seemed as confused as her husband was infuriating. “It isn’t?” Lura held Eloren’s eyes for a moment more before she had to look away. Maybe he’d be the new alpha. She doubted it, but it was certainly possible. “I’m just stopping by my old village. Just for a few hours. At most I’ll be a few days behind you.” “You aren’t coming home again.” Lura hadn’t seen him this hostile towards her since the first few days she had known him. “What the fuck are you talking about?” “How do you know she isn’t coming back?” Tam seemed afraid of the answer. “Because she smells different now,” Eloren answered. “Because she smells like it.” “Like …?” Lura looked from one of her fellow gahreer to the other. She made a sound, half a sigh, half a growl. “I really don’t have time for this. What do I smell like, Eloren? What the fuck is ‘it?’” “I have no idea what ‘it’ is, Lura.” The hard look left his eyes, slowly replaced by sympathy. “You’re the only one who has ever seen ‘it’ and lived. Of the four of us, anyway. Maybe out of everyone in the whole world. You tell me. What is it?” Realization dawned on Lura. So that’s what this was about. Shade. It always came back to Shade. “It … doesn’t smell like anything.” “So maybe it’s your scent that’s changing,” he replied. “Maybe you smell different because it wants you to smell different. It wants to put its mark on you. Or the lack of one. Indistinguishable. Hidden. Unknown. It wants you to be a stranger to us. To your family.” He glanced at his wife. The fire had left his eyes entirely now. “You don’t have to do this, little sister. We can protect you.” Lura laughed and looked to the sky. Even at night, the scar that the Butcher had torn in the heavens was easy to see. “Not against this, you can’t. Not against it.” Tam rose to her feet and reached out, her paw the brightest thing in the clearing, as if the hidden moon had chosen at least one spot to illuminate. Her fur didn’t shine, it glowed, appearing ghost-white opposed to its usual blonde. Lura frowned at that. Tam wasn’t a ghost. Not yet. Was she? “Let us come with you,” she finally whispered. “I don’t care whatever ‘it’ is, it can’t be worse than what we’ve gone through already.” “What we’ve gone through already?” Lura wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t. “Everything we’ve gone through already is because of it. And because of me. The world almost died because of me. The sky is ripped apart because of me.” Don’t cry, she thought. You silly, silly girl, don’t cry. “She’s dead because of me!” They didn’t need to be told to whom she was referring. “Don’t …” She wiped the tears from her eyes. Gods damn it, there were tears in her eyes. “Don’t tell Kyrun. He’ll figure it out eventually, but I’d rather him have a few good days and-and he …” “And he cares for you.” Even Eloren’s whispers caused her spine to shake. “We all do.” He sighed, a rumble like the wind escaping from a cave. “But I guess that doesn’t matter.” It matters more than anything, she thought. It matters more than any happiness I’ve ever felt, any joy, any love. It matters more than all of it. It matters more than everything else in the world. That’s why it hurts so bad to leave. “I need to get going.” “You know we’re going to follow you,” Tam laughed, leaping to her feet. “We have no sense of self preservation whatsoever. We’re crazy people.” “You’re not going to follow me.” Lura tried to clench her fists, but her paws didn’t bend that way. The message would be received regardless. Eloren rose to his rear paws. Out of all of them, he seemed like he had the most trouble standing on two limbs rather than four while in this form. He made a show of dusting off his furry knees, like the argument had already concluded. “Of course we are. Absolutely mad. Especially this one.” He nodded to his wife, who stuck her long tongue out in his direction with a smile that shouldn’t be possible on her lupine maw. “You know how she is. Once my wife makes up her mind there’s nothing on earth that--” Lura looked at him. That was it. Just looked. Her eyes met his, just as they had a dozen times each day for the past few months. But the look on his face shifted from mirth to concern to shock and ultimately to sheer horror. Eloren held her gaze for only a second more and then he had to look away. But whatever he saw in her eyes shook him more than she had ever thought possible. Tam took him by the shoulder before she too noticed the look in her eyes. Her ears flattened and her black lips began to tremble as if she were a puppy left out in the cold. Lura didn’t need a mirror to see what it was they were seeing. They were the eyes of a murderer. A woman who had toppled cities. Consumed human flesh. Burned children alive. And all the while laughing. It was better to laugh while doing it. Better than thinking about the things she was doing. The things she had done? Because the old Lura would never be able to deal with what she had become and the things she had been made to do. Better to let go. Better to just become the monster the world thought her to be than to think about how it felt to ruin life after life after life. Eloren couldn’t meet her eyes. He never would again, not until he was little more than a beast trapped in a cage awaiting another scrap of flesh to keep itself alive. For a second Lura almost thought she could see the monster, could hear the roar of the crowd, the jeers of a man who had pretended to be her friend. When Eloren finally spoke, his words dragged Lura out of the future and back into the present. Or was it the past? Or both? Nothing made sense anymore. “What are you, little sister?” Eloren had never sounded so afraid. Lura blinked and Lura was gone. The Lura who was yet to be. What was happening? Her head hurt and her tail had been ripped off of her body. “I don’t know.” She coughed up blood and looked over her shoulder at the beast tearing her body apart. She turned to look at the bars she was holding onto. Behind them stood Tam and Eloren--the real Eloren, the giant with soft eyes, not the wild dog ripping her to shreds. The one with his bees. The one with the beetles on the path. “I don’t know, big brother.” The fucking tears were back again. “Please help me.” The bars turned again to dead limbs, clawing at her skin like razorwire. “One day you’ll have to make a choice between the shadow and us,” the giant spoke. “You’ll have to decide if the person you are now is going to be killed by the person you’ll become.” Lura sobbed as she tried to explain. “I’m helping it because if I don’t then it’s all going away. All of it, you, Tam, Kyrun, the forest, the-the home … The home ... I-I want to go home.” “Then you know what you have to do.” Eloren was fading now, his forepaws gripping his wife’s as if they were posing for a painting. “Lura, stop.” “I can’t,” she sobbed. “I can’t. I can’t.” --- “I can’t.” “Then give up,” the bastard whispered. “You’ve already lost anyway.” A look of disgust passed across Dyst’s handsome features. “Is that your spleen? I’ve always wondered what those looked like. There are more of your bits outside of you than inside. I’m honestly amazed you’re still breathing.” Maybe that was the trick. Focus through the pain. Look at the bastard. Better to see him than to see what was behind the bars. The family she betrayed a thousand times each day. Hate had kept her alive for decades. If she were going to see tomorrow, she’d have to rely on it. Hate was her crutch; it was her oldest friend. “I’m going to kill you,” she whispered. The Vicar chuckled. “Ah! There you are. I was worried you had left us for a moment there. I was feared the entertainment was over. You have so much more to atone for.” He took a step back as if to keep himself from harm. That was the signal that Eloren was about to pounce again. It was the signal that the end had come at last. Again the teeth punctured her stomach. She couldn’t take much more of this. But she had to hold on. More than anything, she had to hold on. “Lura, stop.” Who had said that? It was so hard to think. Pink stars floated through the sky and the world became soft as wool. It wasn’t Dyst, he didn’t know her name. Nobody did, except the cunts and the shadow. It was Eloren’s voice again. Or was it Tam’s? It didn’t matter. Just hold on, she thought, forcing herself to focus on what she was about to do. Hold on. Not to the past, not to her family. Hold on to the razorwire digging into her paws, scraping against the bones in her fingers. This time when Eloren pulled her away from the wall, she kept the wire wrapped around her paw. It was too strong; her arm would snap free before the wire would. At least until she looked into the Vicar’s eyes. He was preparing another taunt. No doubt he had been preparing it in the eight seconds since his last. Lura couldn’t abide hearing any more of his little japes. Her roar of anger matched that of the beast even now latching onto the remains of her right leg. As it pulled, so too did she, and the silver razor was tossed into the air alongside her. One chance, she thought. This is it. One of us dies in the next ten seconds. She spun in midair as the great wolf tossed her into the air, its maw opened wide. The great Lura—destroyer of kingdoms--had been reduced to a dog’s treat, a scrap of cloth, a stuffed rabbit. At the apex of her journey she wrapped the silver razorwire around her arm, hissing in pain at the viper’s bite of silver piercing through the blackened flesh of her right hand. With her left she slashed wildly, catching Eloren on the tip of his nose, across his top lip, until with a cry of anguish from the both of them she dug her claws into the great wolf’s tongue. Eloren recoiled as she forced her other arm down his throat, the razor wire shredding the soft pink flesh of the inside of his maw. The beast instinctively pressed its tongue against the wire in an effort to dislodge it, but this only entangled it further. Lura wrapped her free arm around the top of his snout, forcing the jaw nearly closed, although she left just enough of a gap to feed more and more of the razor wire down his gullet. Every time it tugged away, more of the wire came loose from the cage, giving her yet more to shove down his maw. Their kind could heal from nearly anything, including the bite of silver—she herself had endured three crossbow bolts of the stuff embedded in her arm just the previous day. But Eloren was being pierced hundreds of times, both inside and out as Lura switched from feeding more wire into his maw to wrapping it tight around his muzzle. Blood seeped past the creature’s lips. There was no way any gahreer could survive so many cuts, rapid and continuous, with no way to dislodge the wire. This of course included Lura herself. The blood that pumped in her veins felt like molten tar as Lura’s world continued to narrow, her vision darkening even as her head swam. But Lura possessed something that the world had uncaringly removed from Eloren. Reduced to nothing more than a beast, he could only recoil from pain. But Lura, for all she despised it, still retained her humanity. She could fight through the pain. She could ignore it if it meant achieving a goal. She could do harm to herself if it meant survival. After all, she was an expert at doing just that. Lura’s teeth pierced her own shoulder. She was mildly surprised that her flesh tasted just the same as anything else she’d bitten into. Past the fur, past the skin, past the flesh and the ligaments until her teeth touched something hard. Lura’s screamed as she gnawed on her own bones, wailing in agony until with a sickening crunch it was finished. At first she wasn’t sure if the sensation of falling was because she actually was plummeting or if it was another effect of having lost so much blood. She was just awake enough to feel her head slam into the wet, warm sands of the arena. Moments later the great wolf’s head landed just beside her, shaking in agony. Already the light was fading from his eyes. It was finished. Lura had won. And she had found another reason to hate herself. The cacophony of disbelief from the stands was almost as loud as the beating of her own heart as Lura’s body began to mend itself. What was it now? Were they in disbelief that she had won, or was something else going on? Lura got her legs under her, crawling on one elbow and two broken knees towards the brother she has just slain. He was breathing, just barely. Lura found herself almost wishing that the great wolf had succeeded. She should be the one dying now, not him. Her legs and tail were knitting themselves back together, although it seemed her arm was taking its time in regrowing. She placed her good hand on the top of his head. The beast that had been Eloren pulled away, whining like a whipped dog. “It’s okay, Eloren.” Lura was surprised to find herself crying. It felt strangely reassuring. Maybe there was something left of her from the old days. She lost herself once again in the past. She wished she could’ve stayed there. “It’s okay, big brother.” Her claws softly scratched at the top of his head, attempting to comfort him in his last moments. “Do you remember the honey? You’ll be making more of it soon. You’ll be flipping the beetles right-side up again.” Eyes the size of dinner plates seemed to focus on her as she spoke. Maybe there was something left of him in there after all. But she would never know, not for certain. She placed a kiss on the top of his head. His eyelids were drooping as she whispered, “Go find her. Whatever better world is after this one, she’s waiting for you there.” One final wet exhale through lips stained with blood and he was gone. Lura slowly turned to face the crowd. They’d likely have crossbows leveled at her. She’d be following him into the next world soon enough, at least if the gods took any sort of pity on her. Instead she found the stands were half-empty, the pontifical guard hurrying out of the room. The remainder of those assembled were gathering by the locked door to the arena. One man fiddled with the lock, as the others drew their swords. They were yelling something, but Lura couldn’t hear them. They were going to finish her. Lura didn’t blame them. She almost wished them luck. And then she caught a glimpse of Dyst’s long black hair trailing behind him as he rushed out of the room, accompanied by his personal guard. He was leaving. She couldn’t be sure if he was fleeing for his own safety or if there was another more pressing concern for the Vicar of Ronae. Either possibility was irrelevant. He was leaving. He had caused all of this, and he was leaving. The purest hate Lura had ever felt suffused her being as she rose to her paws. She was going to kill him. She was going to kill him and nothing would be able to stop her, least of all the guards who surrounded her. Shade was whispering something to her now, but it hardly mattered. The only thing that mattered was whatever lay between Lura and the Vicar. Her eyes glowed yellow as she focused on the first guard to approach her. Drool ran red and hot from blackened lips. A low growl issued from her lungs. And Lura began to change. --- “We’re not leaving her.” Mongrel’s deep brown eyes glared at Willow in defiance. Strangely enough, they would find no resistance. “Of course we’re not leaving her,” Willow sighed. “Leaving her would be the smart thing to do. So obviously we’re not going to do that.” “Back the way we came?” Pit whispered. “That seems like a bad idea. We’re bound to run into guards and I don’t even remember how to get back to the pit. Mongrel suddenly stared at the ceiling as though it held an answer. “Wait.” She sniffed the stale air. “She’s still alive. But so is the big one? And there’s ... only one of them? That doesn’t make any sense.” “Do we keep going then?” Pit was becoming insistent. “Or go back the way we came?” Willow added. “How the fuck am I the one suddenly making decisions?!” Mongrel whined, her eyes darting rapidly. Finally she lifted a clawed hand in a gesture towards a door several paces away. “That way. Maybe? I-I think it leads down.” “Down it is.” Willow ran to the door, flinging it open and immediately wishing she hadn’t as she was greeted with the face she was least hoping to see. The Vicar’s scowl slowly turned into a smile as his guards pressed into the hallway, fanning out to protect him and encircle the three of them. He even chuckled as he saw what was tucked into Willow’s belt. “Hello again, ladies.” He gave a small nod to the lad as well. “Hello again, son.” “Fuck you.” Pit spat at the Vicar’s black leather boots. “I’m not your fucking son. You killed the only father I’ve ever known.” Dyst sighed. “A regrettable necessity, and one I’ll never forgive myself for. Elias was a good friend. Lobotomy is an art that has been lost to the ages, and if we were to succeed in performing it on someone whose flesh seems to grow back at an alarming rate ...” Here he nodded towards Mongrel. “He may have become a traitor to the faith at the end of his life, but in his death he will still contribute to the great work of the faithful.” The slow scrape of metal on metal echoed in the hall as Willow slowly drew her sword. It drew Dyst’s attention to her belt, where a more exotic blade was tucked away. His smile widened. “It seems we had the same idea.” “About cutting off your head?” Willow returned. “About finding a weapon designed and proven to kill werewolves.” Willow looked at the weapon as if it had suddenly turned into a dragon. She glanced at Mongrel, who shrugged her shoulders. Or at least, Willow assumed that’s what the motion was. It was hard to tell, as Mongrel’s body was growing larger, shifting into her more feral form for the conflict that was rapidly approaching. She had already shoved Pit behind her. “I’ll bite.” Willow smiled. “Metaphorically, at least. Why would we out of all people want a weapon that would kill a werewolf?” “Because one is now headed in this direction,” Dyst replied with his usual insufferable confidence. “I’m afraid your friend blames you for her abduction and being forced to kill her acquaintance. I think, given our shared inclination to remain breathing that it might behoove us to work together for the moment. At least, in the interests of self-preservation.” “I’m still leaning towards decapitation,” Willow returned. She raised her sword. “Actually, I’m dead set on it, truth be told.” Dyst nodded as if acquiescing to a dinner proposal. His hand gripped the blade at his waist. “That is regrettable, although certainly expected.” He drew his sword, and turned his body away from Willow to present a smaller target. “I’ll try my best to keep my head where it is, I think. I expect a good fight from you. I know you won’t disappoint. I’ll try my best to do the same.” The woman and the wolf charged forward in tandem towards the approaching host. --- The arena had become a butcher’s floor, layered with an assortment of red, wet splatters that had until recently stood on two feet. The idea that they would even think to defile the ground where her brother lay was offensive to the beast in ways she had never dreamt she would find. The beast didn’t need to slash, or bite, or maim, instead merely hammering any of the little bipedal creatures made of metal and skin and bone. The beast didn’t kill for food, or to protect its domain, or to ward off another predator. Reasons for killing were a complication that no longer mattered to her. She killed because that was what she did. It was who she was. Giving up sapience was the first good decision she’d made in a long, long time. She raised her paw. She brought it down. The creature made of tin screamed and turned into a red puddle. A spear bit into her side. She loved the sensation. Like an itch she couldn’t reach finally being scratched. She raised her paw. She brought it down. Another red puddle. There were so many now, though the ability to count was now far too complicated for her. Another tin man. Another red puddle. And another. And another. On and on until she beheld a figure not made of tin. This one was older than the others. He wore dirty leather traveling clothes. His beard was poorly trimmed, as if done in haste, as if he had obligations that kept him from spending time on his personal appearance. His eyes were kind, his hands held forward as if attempting to calm the beast down. He smelled familiar to the beast. No, he smelled almost exactly like the beast. In a voice she just barely recognized, the man whispered soothingly. “Lura, stop. Let’s go home, dear heart. Let’s go home.” The beast found her threshold for hatred rising beyond what she had thought possible. She raised her paw. She brought it down. She was disappointed when she was not rewarded with yet another red puddle. There wasn’t even a pleasant squish. He was just gone. Just like when she was a child. He was always just gone. She had at least managed to hit something with her swipe. The bars surrounding the pit fell away, as brittle as dried wheat. Had they really held her captive before? She started to fall to all fours, but for some reason stumbled and was forced to stand on two legs. But she could slam her paw down as easily on two legs as on four. She stalked from the room, looking forward to making more red puddles. --- Mongrel was doing everything she could to avoid outright killing the pontifical guard. Unfortunately, it was becoming apparent that she would have no choice. Perhaps she’d already done so. Blood was soaked into the fur on the back of her paws, splattered against her furry shoulders, dripping from her wet nose. This was not going to be easy. These were the best fighters in the entire faith assembled, the Vicar’s personal guard. Moreover she had Pit to consider. She’d never forgive herself if anything happened to him. She felt a strange connection with the kid. They were both orphans dumped into the middle of an uncaring environment. If anything, the kid had the worst of it. Growing up in her little coastal village seemed a paradise compared to what he must have gone through. This land was rife with war and had been before Pit was born. Or Mongrel herself. Perhaps even Lura. A spear thrust towards her face caused Mongrel to dodge to the side, swiping at the attacker with her right paw to use his momentum against him and send him careening into the wall behind her. For his part, Pit used the opportunity to extract the guard’s knife from his belt, raising it above his head and preparing to strike at their foe before he could regain his feet. Mongrel cast a side-growl in Pit’s direction, and the lad was content merely to brain the guard with the heavy knife’s pommel. He seemed relieved that he wasn’t going to have to kill anyone else today. Good, thought Mongrel. It would be nice having someone on her side that didn’t immediately jump to murder as a first resort. Mongrel spared her partner a quick glance to confirm she was okay. Willow and Dyst seemed to be trading words rather than blows, though Mongrel was too busy trying to keep her head attached to her shoulders. They weren’t winning this. At best, they were holding them off, keeping them at bay until ... Until what? Mongrel already knew the answer to that, of course. Until Lura. Everything seemed to always come back to her. Whether Willow wanted to admit it or not, they weren’t going to make it out of this hallway alive without her help. Mongrel wanted to take a few seconds to sense her location, but the pontifical guard wasn’t willing to cooperate on that account. “Really wish you guys would’ve picked another job rather than your little church-cult-thing,” Mongrel whined. She allowed her shoulder to be pierced by another oncoming spear, if only to throw the next attacker off balance and allowing her to smash the wooden shaft into splinters. “Like baking?” She bit at the remaining length of the spear, pulling it from her shoulder and tossing it to the floor with her teeth. “Ow. You’d just make cookies all day, not a care in the world.” She leapt to the side to avoid a vertical slash from another guard. “And you’d even make money! You’d have money AND cookies!” These days, speaking in her she-wolf form was becoming easier and easier. She supposed all of the fighting had some positive effect on her after all. Pit was yelling now, probably signaling the man whose knife he had stolen very much wanted it back. Mongrel bit the arm of the guard closest to her and whipped him around like a rag doll towards Pit’s assailant before he could get to his feet. She spat blood from her lips. She hadn’t meant to bite down on the guard’s arm quite that hard but she was rapidly running out of options. Another spear pierced her, this time in the small of her back. She roared in agony; it must have been tipped with a silver point. Attempting to spin around to face her attacker only succeeded in wedging the point deeper. She batted aside an incoming sword strike from her right flank, but was not going to be fast enough to do the same to the next strike coming from her left. Instead of the bite of steel, she was suddenly pelted with splinters. Apparently the red-haired child had traded in his stolen knife for a chair, wielding it like a cudgel against Mongrel’s latest opponent. “Hold on!” Pit screamed as he pulled the spear from her back. Free from the spear, Mongrel whispered a quick thank you before leaping onto the guard behind her, pinning him to the ground with her teeth. With a sickening crunch, his neck was snapped and the man lay dead on the ground. Mongrel hated this town and what it was making her do. She hated the killing and the blood and the pain. The near decapitation of their fellows made the other guards pause, giving Mongrel just enough time to glance toward Willow and confirm she was still standing. Then she was surrounded by at least seven pious men wielding less than pious weaponry. She whined piteously as she rose back on her hind legs. “I want to go home.” --- Even with her enhanced sense of smell, she was worried she would lose the scent of the man-king she was following. The place was a maze, and she couldn’t wait to be free of it. Whenever the beast was certain she had lost her way, a few of the helpful metal creatures with legs would file out of a stairway. She’d mash the closest one into paste, which would send the others fleeing the way they came, back in the direction of their master. They were helpful beyond anything the beast had hoped to expect. Kill the first one. Let the others run. Follow. Repeat. The pattern had repeated itself five times now. She was looking forward to the sixth. As if on cue, four figures rounded a corner before dropping their pokey-things and running in the other direction. The beast barely had time to bring her paw down on the closest one. Strangely this one did not offer a satisfying pop of bones turning to mush. Lifting her paw, the beast was surprised to find this one was not only still standing but seemed unphased by the beast’s attack. The beast turned its head to the side in confusion. This one’s scent was familiar, despite it not having one. It was much smaller than the others, and wore no metal-skin, just a simple woolen dress that looked far too large for her. The child-thing looked at her hopefully from eyes that streamed blood. Its jaw was slack and unmoving as it said simply, “Lura, stop. Stop, you shit.” The beast didn’t stop. She brought her paw down on the apparition again and again, battering it until the floor on which it stood gave way to the basements below. And then it was gone. It did not leave a red smear. The beast continued on her way. --- Both Willow and Dyst wore smiles as they circled each other. For his part, whenever one of his pontifical guards sought to attack Willow, they were quickly chastised by the Vicar, who would give a silent nod of apology toward his foe. “You’re a very odd little man,” Willow admitted. Her words almost sounded like a compliment. “You’re—what--offering a fair duel? Because you’re just filled to the brim with so much honor? The man who lobotomized the only friend he’ll ever have?” Dyst shook his head. “Of course not. There is no honor in anything that takes place in these walls. Certainly not where I am concerned. What little honor I ever possessed was burned out of me in the fires of Nartor.” “So what are you doing? What is this?” Willow gestured with her sword at the lack of any guard standing between her and the man she hoped to kill. “Why a one-on-one fight?” “Because you deserve it,” he returned, shocking Willow by the honesty in his voice. “After all I’ve put you through, you deserve a fair shot at me with none of these in the way. You’re the hero here, Willow. Not me. Please don’t think I’m under any illusion that isn’t the case. The hero deserves a single duel to the death with the villain, especially one as heinous as myself. Do you not agree?” Willow almost smiled. “A very, very odd little man.” With a shout she advanced on the Vicar as he raised his sword to meet her. The two combatants couldn’t be more dissimilar. Since he was a youth, Dyst had been trained in swordsmanship, rising through the ranks to attain a place in the previous Vicar’s personal guard by the age of sixteen. He had killed his first “heretic” that same year. Throughout the campaigns at Nartor he had survived where so many of the faithful had fallen. He commanded a legion at the siege of the dam at Leht. He led a host through the fires of Ilgaia, then returned once more into the fray to save the Vicar himself from the flames. The men that followed him believed he had no equal in battle. Some said he was the mythical Butcher reborn. Dyst had been forged in war, prepared for any campaign the faith may one day call upon him to carry out. Throughout his entire life he had been prepared for war, for siege, for slaughter, for any threat the world could throw at him. He was not prepared to face the daughter of a poor fisherman. He was not prepared for Willow. The Vicar raised his sword to parry Willow’s horizontal strike, only to find his opponent twisting in midair, ducking behind his parry to slide within reach. Before he could bring his sword down on his assailant, he suddenly found himself almost blinded as she tossed a teacup containing what appeared to be some sort of writhing, living black tar into his face. The teacup shattered to the ground, only to reappear solid and whole once more back on its place on a shelf in the storage closet the three had just visited. Dyst cursed as he tried to scrape the tar from his eyes, though it vanished as soon as his gloved hand reached his face. Still, it was enough of a distraction to allow Willow to stab her silver knife into the Vicar’s boot. With a scream of anguish he stepped back just enough to dislodge the knife, just barely managing to keep his knee from sinking to the ground. He parried the incoming slash from Willow’s silver sword, though this too seemed somehow part of her plan as she let go of her sword at the moment it met his own blade, allowing Willow to duck under the parry and connect her forehead to the bridge of Dyst’s nose. Dyst was on his back now, though he finally managed to wrap his free hand around her wrist. He grappled with her, pulling her closer in an attempt to wrap his hands around her neck. In response to this Willow sank her teeth into the soft flesh of his right cheek until with a scream Dyst had no choice but to let her go. While he backpeddled away, Willow had quickly regained her feet and retrieved her sword. She reveled in the look of surprise on the Vicar’s face as he lay stunned and shocked on the floor. “Get up,” she ordered. “Get the FUCK up! I want you on your feet when I kill you.” Dyst complied. --- Stairs were annoying, unnatural things. Ridges that dug into her paws. Difficult to stand on. But the flesh-things seemed to love them. They placed them everywhere. Stairs leading into their homes. Stairs leading out of them. Stairs inside of them. Stomping the metal-with-legs creatures wasn’t as satisfying on the stairs. They’d come apart, yes, but their wet bits—her favorite bits—would get stuck in the grooves between the steps. Better to just have a hill. A hill leading into the home. A hill leading out of it. Hills inside. Even better, no home at all. She’d never had one, never needed one. Stairs were just poorly-made hills, and hills belonged outside. Once she found what she was looking for, she’d find the biggest hill, stand atop it, howl her triumph to the moon and stars, her only real companions. She growled in annoyance as she rose to the top of the stairs. Another one. There was another one. Not the metal ones, one without metal. Or rather just a scrap of metal. A little glowing moon. A small one? Maybe it wasn’t a moon, but it was round. It was a moon. It had to be. A moon being held by a young child. Her guts were hanging out of her not-fur. Had she pulled the moon from her guts? It hurt the beast’s mind to think of something so small holding a moon. It hurt her so much that she smashed at the young one, again and again. No red smear on the hate-stairs, aside from the smear of her entrails on her not-fur. She opened her mouth. For some reason the beast expected her to say “mama,” but instead she said something much worse. “Lura, stop.” Bring the paw down. Bring it down hard. Again and again. The young one didn’t become a smear, but she did disappear. That wasn’t as good, but it would do. Fuck stairs. The beast arrived at a door, and beyond she heard the sounds of fighting. Of killing. She smiled, although that expression had no meaning to her anymore. This was her floor. --- A quick glance was all Willow could afford, but it revealed to her that Mongrel had killed at least three of the guards so far. It was three more than she wanted to have to kill, but it had to be done. To his credit, the red-haired little shit was watching her back, calling out any attacks she may have missed, or jamming the butt of a spear into one of the Vicar’s men if they got too close. At least, Willow hoped it was the butt of the spear. The kid hadn’t seen fifteen winters yet. He didn’t need more deaths on his conscience. He didn’t need any of this. Another swing from the Vicar. Another parry, this time by Willow, although she wasn’t as good at those as her foe. There hadn’t been much time for fencing in her old village. Just the fencing between her parents as they jousted each other with sarcasm and friendly japes. No, she thought. Stop. Don’t think of that. Don’t think of them. Just end this fucker and get out. Dyst seemed to be taking her more seriously, at least. He was no longer assuming he’d win this fight easily, which brought not a small amount of satisfaction to Willow. The most powerful man on the continent and he was having to try to best her. Not bad for the useless human of the group. She ducked his blade when he launched a wide horizontal swipe. In response she jabbed at his belly, hoping to skewer him like a piece of meat over a campfire. But of course he’d expected that, and stepped aside just enough to grab her sword in a mailed gauntlet and yank it forward to throw her off balance. Willow hated this. Every move he made was just a prelude to a better one. Every mistake he made was anything but. Every time he attacked, deflected, parried, it was always just another step on the way to another attack six steps from now. Tactics within tactics, plans within plans, schemes within schemes. Fuck this, she thought. I’m fighting his way. Time to fight our way. “M!” she screamed as she tossed her sword like a javelin towards her foe. There was a confused look on Dyst’s face that Willow knew she’d remember gleefully for the rest of her days. He stepped back, preparing to batter the sword aside. He was probably wondering why she had done this. He was thinking she wasn’t fast enough to put this stupid attack to any sort of advantage. And he was right, she wasn’t. But her mate was. Willow leapt into the air, knowing that her partner would be there. She was, of course. She always would be. Mongrel quickly slid underneath Willow, catching her in one paw and slinging her towards her foe. In midair she managed to grab a spear from where it stood upright, perched in the belly of one of Dyst’s minions. Before Dyst could recover from deflecting the sword, Willow was there, stabbing at his shoulder with the tip of the spear. His armor was too strong to allow it to pierce him, but it would throw him off balance. Stumbling into a wall, Dyst tripped over the bodies of one of his own soldiers and fell to one knee. Willow was on him in an instant, stabbing at his shoulder repeatedly with a sword she borrowed from another dead guard. She would love to watch his shoulder disconnect completely, but was more than satisfied to find his arm posed in an unnatural way from the abuse his armor had taken. Dyst was forced to toss his weapon from his right arm to his left. Panting, Willow spat out bloody phlegm. “Please tell me you aren’t able to fight with your left hand as well as your right. That would be such complete bullshit.” Dyst half-smiled, half-winced as he shook his head, grabbing at his wounded shoulder. “No, I’m quite shit with my left arm.” Without taking his eyes off of Willow, he extended his arm and placed his blade firmly against Pit’s neck. “But then again, I suppose I don’t really need to fight with it.” Willow was gritting her teeth so hard she thought they’d break. There was no way. There was no way he’d set this up too. “Gods fucking damn it.” A look of terror came over the young boy’s face as Dyst’s blade bit into his throat, just enough for a few streams of blood to trickle down his neck. “Stand down. Now. Or I’ll cut his fucking head off.” A whine behind her indicated Mongrel was shadowing her. “You wouldn’t do that. Not even you would do that.” The smile returned in full. Dyst knew that he had won. “He wouldn’t even be the youngest boy I’ve decapitated. Maybe if we’re counting this year alone. Stand. Down.” Mongrel bowed in submission and lowered her paws as the remainder of Dyst’s men encircled their Vicar. Dyst turned his attention to Willow. “You too. I’m leaving and I’m taking the boy with me.” “You’re running away?” Willow hoped the disgust she felt was evident with every word. “You’re taking a child captive and running away.” “I thought that was obvious,” the Vicar replied. “Now drop your sword and step back. Unless you’d like to see his head rolling across the floor? Or perhaps you think you can stop me before that occurs? Is that worth the risk, ladies?” Willow didn’t need to look at her mate to tell her yellow-orange eyes were on her, pleading silently. “No,” Willow whispered. “No, it isn’t. We’re better than that.” The clang of the stolen blade hitting the ground was the only sound in the hallway. A sigh of relief came from Mongrel’s maw as she slipped her paw into Willow’s hand in silent thanks. Willow ignored the Vicar and addressed Pit. “Don’t worry, kid. We’ll get you out of this. I swear to you.” “I wouldn’t be so sure of ... what?” Dyst turned towards the door he had intended to use for his retreat as if hearing something on the other side. One of his men was already opening it before the Vicar could stop him. All survivors of the skirmish began to back away, allies and enemies forgotten at the sight of what lay beyond the threshold. One man was too slow in backing away. Soon he was simply not there, as the creature pressed its maw through the doorway and bit his body in two. The door wasn’t wide enough for it to get its entire body through, though that hardly seemed to matter as the wall gave way, along with most of the ceiling as it pressed forward. At first Willow believed that Lura’s “brother” had escaped his cage, but soon realized the truth when she heard her mate whisper “Oh no” and begin to softly weep. It wasn’t the beast from the arena below, it was what was left of the winner of the contest. The horror didn’t so much enter the room as it oozed, blood and viscera trailing behind it. It seemed like every blade in the world had been turned against it all at once, so much of its red flesh was visible behind its mangy brown fur. Part of its face was hanging nearly to its chest. A bit of brain was visible just behind where its left ear should have been. It wept blood from eyes that no longer bore any resemblance to the crazed but cunning eyes of the woman it had once been. Yes, it was the eyes that were the worst. As yellow as the sun. Pupils barely the size of a horsefly piercing into the soul of anything the nightmare looked upon. Grown men wept as its eyes passed them, only half an instant before they were turned into soft liquid and bent armor. Whereas before, Willow’s tormentor had always been so damnably fast, this shambling corpse simply didn’t need to be. With a snap of its teeth it severed arms. A swipe of its paw turned a half dozen men into one, a fusion of blood and hair and viscera that melded together until it was no longer recognizable as having once been several separate people. Willow felt a tug at her shirt as Pit leaned against her as if she could shelter him from those eyes. Dyst had let him go immediately at the first appearance of the living death that now faced down the four survivors. Willow closed her eyes, knowing she’d never open them again. One hand reached for Mongrel, for her paw or her shoulder or any part of her. She wanted to touch her soft mismatched fur one last time. On instinct her other hand slid toward the knife at her belt, forgetting she’d tossed it away in the battle with the Vicar. Instead her hands closed on the haft of an altogether different sort of blade. She hadn’t realized the monster was breathing until it seemed to be holding its breath at the sight of the strange bladed device they had pulled out of the magical storeroom. Willow opened her eyes slowly, expecting to find the corpse-thing’s paw barreling down on her. What she saw instead was much, much worse. Slowly the creature’s pupils shrank and shrank as they focused entirely on the device until they weren’t visible at all. It was as if nothing else existed in the universe, just her and the blade and the woman holding it. It didn’t seem to be registering it as a threat. It just seemed to recognize it, as though she’d had some interaction with it before. The creature breathed again, its foul breath slipping from her maw as well as several parts of her chest that hadn’t healed, a horrid whistle like the cry of death himself escaping from the tears in her exposed lungs. The creature slowly lunged at Willow as if killing her was the only thing that mattered in the world, the only thing that was real. Every second seemed a lifetime as the nightmare leaned closer, its maw opening wider, bits of flesh and bone visible as it the hunter prepared to feast on the prey. “Lura, stop.” The creature’s pupils appeared again as it focused on the half-wolf. At some point Mongrel had shifted to her more human form. In this body it was hard for her to stand upright on her feet, but evidently she felt it was something she needed to do. The horror’s pupils continued growing until Willow could see them darting around the room, focusing on the four survivors in turn and also on figures only the creature seemed able to see. It slid to its knees. It was barely able to stand upright in the hallway, but this seemed to be less of the case as the creature shrank, its flesh mending as its claws retracted, its maw shortened, its tail shrank. It was the slowest Willow had ever seen her transform, but it still happened swiftly. Where before a nightmare had stood, now knelt a tired woman, with tears in her eyes. A word tried to slip past Lura’s cracked lips, though only as a shrill wheeze. Lura swallowed, although her throat must have been dry as it seemed to cause her pain. When the word finally emerged fully formed, it was a simple “Why?” She turned her eyes to Mongrel as if awaiting an answer. The half-wolf had no idea what response was expected of her. She simply shook her head, though she leaned closer as she dropped to all fours, as if letting her know she wanted her to repeat herself. “Why was it you?” Lura was looking at Mongrel as if she held all the answers, as if she was some sort of oracle, a wise woman met atop a mountain path. “I saw them,” she continued. “I saw them all. I saw everyone. All the ones I remember. I saw my--” She looked away. She didn’t want them to see her weeping. “None of them could get through. None of them except ... you.” Lura looked again at Mongrel, repeating the word: “Why?” Mongrel had no answer for that question, and so she simply whispered, “Lura, let’s go home.” Lura’s tears were forgotten as she began to laugh, as though she had run out of human emotion and now was reverting to her usual spiteful self. “’Go home?’” “Yeah.” Mongrel slowly reached out to touch Lura’s hand. She hardly seemed to notice. “It’s okay.” “No, it’s not.” Lura was trembling. “It’s not okay, you stupid silly little bitch.” “It’s okay, let’s just—” “I snapped your fucking neck!” Lura interrupted. “I threw you into the ocean! I-I made you ...this!” She gestured at Mongrel’s misshapen body, half-werewolf, half-woman, both and neither. “And you want to-to just ‘go home?’” Mongrel slowly nodded. “Yeah.” Silence, as heavy as regret lingered before Lura said simply: “... Okay.” And then her eyes met Willow as if to ask her if that was alright with her. Willow opened her mouth, though she didn’t know what to say. Finally when she found her words it was because she had noticed something amiss. “Your ... arm.” All eyes turned to Lura’s right arm as though they had all only just now realized half of it was missing. Lura reached for her stump of an elbow as if to confirm it was true. Her arm had regrown from where she’d bitten in off, but her hand was still missing. She was shaking as she touched where the blackened hand should be. “Oh,” she whispered simply. “I’m ... sorry,” Willow offered, surprising herself. Lura smirked. “It’s ... It’s fine. Never liked that one anyway.” Before Willow could respond, she spun on her heels and leapt atop Dyst, who had recovered his wits enough to try to slip away. Pit wrapped his arms around his throat as well. They struggled to keep him pinned until the fight went out of him as he watched Lura slowly rise to her feet. Dyst sighed, nodding to Willow as if to say he was defeated and he’d offer no further resistance. He tossed his sword to the floor. Once the pair let go of him, he slid across the floor enough to prop himself up against the wall, cradling his wounded shoulder. “I can honestly say I didn’t anticipate this particular outcome. I am at your mercy, ladies.” He nodded to Pit, a look of almost pride in his eyes as he added, “And gentleman.” “What do we do with him?” Willow asked as she rose to her feet. Mongrel slid into Lura’s line of sight. “We could take a vote on it?” Lura laughed, her smile deepening. “You know what? Sure. I’ve had enough rationalizations and moral dilemmas for a while. Let’s do something simple for a change. We vote.” “Vote?” asked Pit. “Yes. We vote.” Lura reached for Dyst and lifted him to his feet by his black vestment. “I vote we kill him. Obviously. That’s my vote. What’s yours?” She glanced at Mongrel. Mongrel sighed and stared at the Vicar as if considering. “Something tells me it will be worse for us all if we kill him. I vote he lives.” “You’re probably not wrong.” Lura nodded politely towards Willow. “Tree-Cunt?” It had been so long since she’d heard the insult that Willow almost didn’t realize it was her turn. “I think ...” She looked at her partner. Mongrel gave a small nod as if to say that whatever she decided was okay. “He’ll keep coming after us. He’ll never stop. I vote he dies.” Lura nodded. “Two-to-one. Sorry, daddy, but--” “I get a vote,” Pit whispered. “You absolutely don’t get a--” “I get. A vote.” Lura stared at the red-haired boy with the awful haircut for but a moment before nodding. “No, you’re right, kid. You do. You get a vote. Go ahead.” “I vote ...” Pit sighed. Willow placed a hand on his shoulder to reassure him. He had played several parts in the events of this horrible night, some that hurt them and some that helped. “I vote he lives ...” Dyst seemed almost surprised. “In prison,” Pit continued. “Not here, but somewhere. He can’t get away with what he’s done, but ... for the sake of the children he rescued and pretended to care about, I guess ... I vote he lives.” “That’s two-to-two,” Mongrel offered. “It’s a tie. So what do we do now?” “We haven’t all voted,” Lura muttered darkly. “We haven’t?” Lura shook her head as she lifted Dyst off of his feet by his collar. “No. There’s one more of our happy little family that also gets a vote.” Willow’s heart skipped a beat. --- It was dark and raining as they filed out onto the balcony. Lura led the way, carrying Dyst like a scolded puppy by the scruff of his neck. Mongrel, Willow, and Pit followed behind. There were no guards to impede their progress. Willow wondered if perhaps Lura had killed them all. She doubted it, but strangely felt no need to fret over any of the faithful barring their way. The others seemed to feel the same way. Especially Dyst. He wore a smile despite being carried to what would almost certainly be the last few moments of his life. Worse, he seemed on the verge of laughter, as if there was a joke that only he was in on, and he was just waiting for someone to ask what was humorous about his current predicament. As he seemed intent on glancing at Willow every few steps, she felt she was obliged. “Okay,” she sighed. “What’s so funny?” “Everything, actually.” Dyst’s smile widened; Willow wished he could’ve stayed a friend. “Look at them.” He motioned below, where the assembled faithful were wrapping up their feast. “They don’t have a care in the world. Why should they? As long as--” “SHUT. The FUCK. UP.” Lura gripped his throat now and for a moment Willow wondered if she hadn’t decide to “overrule” their little democratic judgment. “I have fucking had enough of you. I had to chew my own fucking arm off, and that isn’t even the worst thing to happen to me today. And I am so, so gods-damned tired of dealing with you right now.” Despite his lack of oxygen, another smirk threatened to spill across Dyst’s face until Lura simply dropped him unceremoniously on the ground. His head turned this way and that, looking for a way to escape, until Lura placed her foot on his chest, pinning him to the cold, wet balcony. “SHADE!” Mongrel slid closer to Pit. “Hey, kiddo? Come here a second, okay?” She softly wrapped her arms around him. “W-Why?” he stammered. “What’s going on? What are we doing? I need to get back to the orphanage. I gotta make sure the kids are okay.” “We’ll go soon,” Willow whispered. “But we really need you to be brave, okay? This will be over soon, and then we’ll go back to the church. I promise.” The fiery-haired lad nodded in agreement, probably realizing he had no real choice in whatever was about to happen. In truth, Willow thought, none of us do. “SHADE! GET THE FUCK OUT HERE! NOW!” It didn’t so much appear. Usually it simply faded into view from absolute nothingness. This time, however, its presence wasn’t known until the group noticed that the rain refused to fall in a certain large area just beyond the balcony. It was like an invisible tower had been erected just beyond the manse’s crenelations, looming several stories above the large building. The raindrops—or rather the lack of them—gave the impression of a familiar outline. Still, it wasn’t until its “eyes” appeared that Willow could be sure the shadow had answered its foremost minion. Twin spheres of blinding light illuminated the balcony, the buildings nearby, even part of the street below. “What the fuck is that?” Pit whispered, choosing to ask the same question Willow found herself pondering whenever it appeared. “What the fuck IS that?” “It’s a long story,” Willow whispered back. “It’s okay. It’s not going to hurt you. It probably doesn’t even know you’re here.” Suddenly cries of shock and terror came from the streets below. The feasting before the Day of Want was still taking place, despite the cold and the rain. The gathered legions of believers stared up at the anathema of their belief in a loving, personable god. Almost immediately they began to flee. A few of the guards attempted to maintain order, keeping the panicked crowd from trampling on the dozens who stumbled and fell during their escape. This lasted only a few moments before they too noticed the shadow and fled, mailed boots trampling on those who had fallen. “Oh fuck,” Mongrel whined in despair as she watched the panicked crowd below. “They saw it. Willow, d-did ... did we just start a new religion?” “By the gods.” There were tears in Dyst’s eyes as he beheld the shadow, though of awe or fear, Willow couldn’t be sure. She wondered if this was the first time the Vicar had honestly said those three words and meant them, although she supposed she shouldn’t have been surprised to hear them. Dyst was no longer an atheist. How could he be? “It is finished?” It was the same question it had asked the night before in the previous Vicar’s chamber, though it felt like it had been years. Its eyes focused one by one on those gathered, thankfully passing by Pit fairly quickly. The boy had seen enough horror this night, and it was better than this horror didn’t see him. Last of all it turned its gaze to the Vicar. “It is not finished.” “The fuck it isn’t.” Lura placed her remaining hand on the stump of her elbow, wincing as if the appearance of Shade had caused her pain. “It’s done. It’s all done.” Her bottom lip began to tremble. “I’m done. If you want him dead, you do it. And do it without killing anyone else.” Shade remained still as a statue for several moments. Willow wondered if it was thinking or if it had simply found something else to occupy its attention, as seemed to happen more and more often lately. The current Vicar was slowly rising to his feet. “How is this possible?” He turned to Willow as if she had any sort of answer. The man belonged to an order that had used religion to further its own goals of conquest for at least a century. Dyst seemed to have a hard time when faced with the true face of the divine. “It’s ... this thing is a--” He gave a single sharp bark of laughter. “There really are gods?” The rain pelting her bloody jerkin suddenly seemed like it had turned to hail. Willow began shivering. For some reason she felt as though the shadow was amused at Dyst’s words. Shade was examining the Vicar himself as though he were an insect in a jar. “Oh yes. There very much are.” The frozen rain seemed to stop in midair. Willow knew something was happening, something familiar, but she couldn’t place it. “There are gods all around you,” Shade continued in its monotone, unimpressive voice. “Worlds beyond what you can see. Doors waiting for you to open them.” The word “doors” sent a shiver down Willow’s spine. Suddenly she knew exactly what was about to happen. She grabbed Pit, shoving him to the ground and forcing his face into her shirt. “M, don’t look. Look away now, please!” Lura turned to Willow, a look of confusion in her eyes. “Wait ... how do you know what ...?” Mongrel did as she was asked, huddling next to Willow and Pit, hiding her eyes by placing her face against Willow’s shoulder. “What’s going on?” The shadow asked the question Willow knew was coming next. It was one that it had asked her once before, if only in a dream. “Do you want to see what’s beyond the stars?” Dyst only needed a moment to consider before he gave his answer. “I do. You ... You can show me?” Shade spoke a single word. A simple word, one of the first words a child learns. One repeated countless times every second of every day. An innocent word. An ordinary word. “Yes.” Windows shattered. Buildings toppled. Trees fell. Rain fell upward. Light became dark and dark became everything. The faithful down below cried in agony as if the word had caused them pain. Willow’s brain felt like it was swelling, the bones of her inner ears pressing against something soft and pink. She felt something warm and wet against her cheek as her partner’s ears began to bleed. Willow had always been struck by how unimpressive Shade’s voice always sounded. Bored, disinterested, tired. She could never place if it sounded masculine or feminine. It wasn’t until this horrid moment that she realized she had never heard it speak at all. Not with it’s true voice. Not until now. Lura was screaming. Pit was screaming. Willow and Mongrel screamed as well. Everyone on the streets below was screaming. Families in their homes. Travelers on the roads outside of Ronae. Men and women from lands Willow would never visit. Everyone was screaming. Everyone except for Dyst. The Vicar’s eyes were glowing almost as bright as Shade’s, as though he alone was witnessing something. Dyst took one step toward the edge of the balcony, then another, gazing in rapt wonder as Shade seemed less a shadow and more a window, a door leading into the realm of the divine, a tear in reality. The Vicar, first among the faithful, truest servant of the true-god, beheld the gateway to the divine. Lura had barely glimpsed them once; Willow had come close as well. But only Dyst had now truly looked beyond the veil of their world and seen what lay beyond. It was only then that he began to scream. “They see me,” he wailed. Over and over. His hands were shaking. His eyes had vanished, leaving smoking black holes leading into his skull. He tried to speak again but his words came out slurred and wet. He had bitten off his tongue. Willow felt the Vicar leaping on her, tugging at her belt. It was only after he had worked it loose did she realize what he was grasping for. Willow finally opened her eyes as Dyst raised the device above his head, its silver prongs whirling around the central blade faster and faster. She tried to push Mongrel and the child away, hoping to shield them as he stabbed the horrid device down. She needn’t have bothered. Dyst brought the central blade to his open mouth. The prongs soon caught, tearing away his cheeks, his jaw, his teeth. It ate through his trachea, his windpipe, his vocal chords, until all that was left in the place of the most powerful man in the world was a gasping, gurgling thing barely recognizable as once being alive. The Vicar’s corpse fell to its knees, then sloughed onto the wet stone floor of the balcony. Dyst was no more. He had seen what was never meant to be seen. He had heard their screams. Felt their touch. Seen their eyes. With no other refuge left to him, he had found safety in the welcome embrace of oblivion. Willow released her hold on Mongrel and the boy. She wiped streaks of blood away from Pit’s face, unsure if it was his or hers or Mongrel’s. From the look in their eyes, she could tell that her friends hadn’t been lost to insanity. She only hoped they reached the same conclusion looking into her own eyes. It was Pit who first found his voice. “You were going ... to kill ... that ...” He nodded towards Shade, who had returned to its normal absurd form. “... with that?” He pointed towards the blade, still embedded in what was left of the Vicar’s face. Its rotating blades were starting to slow. “It wasn’t a good plan,” Willow coughed. She started to rise to her feet before she noticed Lura already had. She expected a gloat, a sneer, a scorn. Instead she was simply staring at her master. Lura waited for a long moment before speaking. Perhaps she was trying to talk herself out of what she was about to say. Or perhaps she was working up the nerve to say it. When she finally spoke her voice was shaky, tired, as if she had just woken from a dream. “I’m done.” Shade was observing her in its blank, expressionless way, neither upset or elated at her words. “You are done. With?” Willow was thankful it had reverted to its soft toneless voice. She closed her eyes. “You know what I’m saying. Everything. I’m done with all of it.” She tried to force herself to smile. It just made her look afraid. “You can kill me. Torture me. Drag me off to the darkest of the hells. You can do whatever you want to do. But I’m done. I can’t do it, not anymore. If being your monster is what it takes for the world to keep spinning then ...” She sank to her knees, not in worship but in exhaustion. “The blind gods are welcome to it.” She glanced at Pit. “I’m done being a monster in the nightmares of every child who has ever met me.” “You are sure?” Shade asked. Lura barely nodded. Its eyes swiveled as if on a wheel from Lura to Mongrel and finally to Willow. “Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps this world is no longer worth the trouble. Perhaps it is time to end this.” “End what, Shade?” It was already gone, the cold rain finally daring to take the place of where the shadow had once stood. Mongrel rose to a crouch. “What did it mean? What did it mean ‘all of this?’ What’s it ending?” Lura wiped the rain from her face. Or were those tears? She stared at the bladed device as it fell onto its side, Dyst’s broken skull no longer able to keep it standing upright. Willow almost laughed. It didn’t seem like a weapon that was destined to kill a god after all. Slowly Lura rose to her feet, peering over the edge of the balcony at the scared, frail humans below. For the first time in a long, long while she felt like she could relate to them.