The winged horse was like a mirage from a dream, heavy bodied and thick legged compared to any horse Val had seen the nobles or Dorius’ cousins parade around. They were thin, scrawny things in comparison to this creature, shadows of their ancestor species.

  She was shaded a flicked grey in the body, deepening to black on her legs and face without white markings. Her feet were feathered, starting with a black down above her fetlocks and carpeting her wide, dark hooves. Her wings were a silver white, banded with black on her great pinions, and were tucked tightly against her body so their size could not be easily estimated.

  The two silver wolves gave short barks of excitement, and cavorted between her legs nipping playfully at her feathers and crawling on their bellies with tails wagging. She put her ears back but mostly ignored them, stamping her broad foot once in warning.

  The black wolf raised his head lazily and looked at the mare. You’ve tracked her?

  The mare flicked her tail, a silver wolf snapping at it joyfully as it whizzed over their head. She came down on the eastern side of the Sacral Peaks. Whitesmoke traced her through the night, but did not see her land.

  The wolf rose to his feet, towering over Val’s head even, and casually stepped past them, half stepping up the steep slope that must have seemed little more than a gentle climb for a creature so big.

  The kid keeps heading north. Just our luck to follow on foot. We’d be better baiting her south and seeing if she can do our work for us. You’re a fire singer, Laon?

  The wolf did not turn his head as he asked the question and Val blinked, unsure if he was indeed addressing her. He turned an ear back to her, his nose in the air and asked again. Was it you that called that fire? Days ago? Val meekly nodded.

  Dorius scrambled to his feet, head swinging between the wolf and the mare, who continued to flick her tail for the wolves to play. He leaned against the side of the cliff, brushing his clothes off from his scrambled run. “Can one of you explain what is going on?” he asked, his tone halfway between annoyance and awe.

  The wolf turned one yellow eye back to look at them, and hopped his back legs up the cliffside to tower over them. Flopping to his feet, and hanging his forepaws down the cliff, he grinned white fangs, and Val felt a feeling in her mind that could only be laughter.

  My apologies, oh Dragon Prince. Mocked the wolf, although there seemed to be a playful sarcasm to his mind voice. I am the Wolf God, although I still go by my once mortal name Fenris. You may use it too, if you like? My winged companion is Driftbane, her herd have been following Abrigale since she woke.

  Dorius tucked his hands within his robes at this odd audience, Val settling at his shoulder to lean on her axe and nurse her now throbbing hand.

  “I do not know the proper greeting for a god,” he said, surprisingly calm, “But I will take your offer then, Fenris. I am the Cinereal Dragon Prince Dorius S’dias, and Val my guard. The Vigilants said a guide would meet us, that they maybe knew the Dragoness? Although the histories we had access to named her Abrigardius?”

  The mare snorted, and turned her back on them, wandering up the mountain path out of view. The black wolf watched her go lazily then turned his attention back to them.

  Aye. I knew her when she was a tiny pup, all fragile and newly immortal. Both names are hers, she may prefer you use the later, it was a human habit to differentiate themselves from those that diminished. The wolf's eyes glinted with playful amusement.

  Dorius frowned, “That what?”

  The wolf’s laughter echoed in their heads, and he bought his jaws together in an audible snap.

  Come. He said merrily, giving his tail one amused wag. There is a long way yet, plenty of time for stories. I have not spoken with a hume in many years, I shall enjoy myself.

  There was a shimmer in the air, and Val felt a mighty surge of energy unlike anything she had experienced, buffeting her with its passing as if she were in a howling gale. The wolf's form shimmered and dissolved, the very fabric of his outer shell wrapping within itself. It was best described as a collapsing, or maybe a folding, and somewhere - like a note scrunched up into a ball in a hand - the mass of the giant wolf shrunk. When the effect was complete, a boy, no older than his late teens, stood grinning wolfishly down at them from the perch, wearing only a complicated harness of blades and chains around his waist and completely unashamed of his nudity. He nimbly vaulted down, landing barefoot before them, and offered Dorius a grubby hand. His hair was shoulder length, black and tipped with silver like his pelt had been, his skin was swarthy from exposure and his body hair thin with his youth. His eyes were a wolf’s eyes though, clear yellow with no white.

  Dorius looked apprehensively at his hand and, thoroughly confused, said, “You’re so young?”

  The boy laughed, full throated and sonorous with the feeling of wild places and turning seasons. He grabbed up Dorius’ hand and gave it a friendly shake, “I’m older than you, kid,” he joked, his voice sounding every bit his apparent age except for the odd undercurrent of wind through the valleys that hinted to something greater. He turned, and ran his hands through the fur of his wolf companions, who both drew close twining between his legs in greeting, then loped ahead to follow the winged horse.

  “It’s sort of part of becoming a god. You get a bit disconnected from everything else when it happens,” he explained, “I’ve lived for so long now I stopped counting. The Vigil probably knows my age,” he mused, and turning his attention to Val, “Can I have my skin?”

  Val started when she realized he addressed her, and touched the wolf pelt around her shoulders - it was sticky with Fae blood where it had matted into the fur in her fight. She lifted it over her shoulders with her uninjured hand, still pinned with the pin she used for her company badge after leaving her broach for Lee’to, and held it out for the boy, who opened it and unceremoniously wrapped it around his waist.

  “Stop my bits all hanging out,” he chuckled as he wrapped one of the chains to help secure his makeshift garments, tucking the diamond shaped blade at the end back into his belt.

  “You’re immortal?” asked Dorius, Fenris had turned his back and was already walking up the path.

  Fenris shrugged, the chains at his waist clattered loudly as he walked, “Don’t age, don’t bleed, don’t eat, don’t drink,” he counted against his fingers and paused on the fifth trying to think of something, “Don’t feel much need to fuck either?”

  “You’re not what I expected?” replied Dorius, a little startled.

  “That’s on you for expecting anything. You right back there?”

  Val grumbled as she shouldered up their pack again, trying to tangle her painful hand through the straps. The tooth embedded in her hand sent white pain racing up her arm when she moved her fingers, she was quickly finding the hand useless to her as the adrenaline of combat subsided. She tore part of the loincloth off the Laon clothing she was wearing, wrapping it around the wounds and tucking her hand with a hiss under one elbow to keep the pressure on.

  “Watcher, Val what happened? I thought all that blood was theirs?” asked Dorius, suddenly aware of the injury.

  “I got bit,” was her short reply, she blushed a little with frustration at herself.

  Fenris drew a hissed breath between his teeth, “Don’t use that name. Least not around Abrigale. There’s a clearing not too far ahead, we can stop and you can clean yourself up. You reek of blood.”

  Val sniffed, her hair was wet and sticky with the blood, and her only change of clothes caked in burgundy mud where she had scrambled with the Fae. She was not fond of the thought of smelling herself rotting for however long their travel would be with this wolf god.

  Fenris chatted merrily as they marched up the path, unperturbed by their violent meeting and very much sounding as if he had no one to talk to for years as he had claimed. The wolves jogged back and forth on the path, galloping ahead to run between the legs of the winged horse who had put a distance between them so she did not have to participate in their conversation, then doubling back and sniffing or cavorting through the underbrush until their party reached them again.

  “It’s a pain finding anything worthwhile to talk to,” remarked Fenris, twirling one of his chains in a hand as he walked, “All these bloody horses too, so serious! Every one! You wouldn’t believe it. There’s a free state to the north, bit like High Haven, but a shepherd boy saw me shift once and now I’ve gotta wait for the current crowd to all die out and forget about me. And the Vigil! Don’t get me started…”

  Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

  “Why is the Watcher’s name bad?” asked Dorius.

  Fenris grumbled an oath, “It’s complicated. There’s only so long detachment goes before just feeling like negligence. You will live and die and grow to only curse her name as well. This whole thing stinks of her hand in the Weaving, you’ve got her eye for sure.”

  Dorius blinked, “The Vigil seem…” he struggled realizing he didn’t have words, “Okay with… Her?”

  “The Vigil gets the gift of death, they suffer only long enough to view her touch on them as meaningful instead of capricious. They delude themselves into thinking they feel some solidarity with her eternal existence. My advice is don’t overthink it. She cares as little about you as you care about an ant, if care is even a thing she can feel. Occasionally she pawns off linchpins of reality to another vessel and thinks free will is a suitable payment for eternal service.”

  “The Vigil is right then, about the Weave?”

  “They're right if you think they're right,” replied Fenris with a derisive bark, “No one's stopping you from making the choices you make. But if you make choices per your nature, and that was formed by a million other interactions and decisions before it, and those the ones before them, and on and on forever, and maybe once upon a time, at the start of it all, the Watcher placed a finger on the scale and caused the wind to blow a certain way to set it all into motion. Who's to say? Like I said, don't overthink it.”

  “How can I not overthink that?” replied Dorius, reeling at how casually Fenris was confirming what he had previously believed was the most outlandish parts of the Vigil’s beliefs, “You are saying we are set on a path outside of our control? Everything is inevitable?”

  Fenris turned and poked him firmly in the gut, “You think the slime in your gut sees you as a god? Your every action leads to their every outcome, as inevitable as it gets, but I doubt you give a thought about them as you live. You don't know what they do? Nor can you tell any individual slime from any other? Same thing. Don't overthink it. You are the slime in her gut, and who knows what the body around us does. I made peace with what I am a long time ago. But the only reason I mentioned avoiding her name is that Abrigale hasn't. She's young and mostly new to this god thing, and generally not fond of the idea that everything she ever gave meaning to was the slime.”

  “I’m not fond of the idea either!?” replied Dorius, “What are you then? Not the slime?”

  “With my luck? Probably the organ that tells you when you need to shit!” he cackled with laughter at his analogy and merrily marched ahead.

  “What are you really?” asked Dorius' earnestly when he caught his breath.

  Fenris swung his chain and thought for a moment, “Something like a focus for the natural world to rely on, a bedrock for its continuity. I'm fairly certain we provide a protective effect against the diminishing.”

  “I've heard that term used so much, the Vigil, the Laons, everywhere. What is the diminishing?”

  Fenris for the first time seemed grim, and when he replied his voice had none of his carefree tone, “The diminishing is the great tragedy, and the reason for our creation. We were created to atrophy, to grow lesser and rot, be thinner and fewer and weaker till we cease and there is nothing but dark. Abrigale is the God of the diminishing - she is everything it is not, and in being that, shows the world what it once was and measures its progress. How would we know how far we fall if we do not know what once was?”

  “Why are you here then? Why protect some things and not others?” asked Dorius confused and upset.

  “Slime in the gut, remember,” Fenris tapped his nose knowingly, and seeing how upset Dorius' was looking relented, “Look, I don't know all your answers. Some things need to diminish slower or faster than others, don't know why. That's my guess.”

  "But why create us to die?"

  "Probably because it's the only thing we do that she cannot."

  Dorius was silent, his eyebrows tight as he was deep in thought, so Val ventured, “What were we? before this diminishing?”

  Fenris shrugged, “You’re not hume. Fae species were not there at creation and you sprang like the animals and plants from the first water. You are my domain where something is still preserved and your history looks a little different. The memory of what was still lives though, in history, in rocks that don't crumble, and music, and other hume legacies. The rest you'll get to see when you meet a dragon god.”

  —

  Val regretted not bringing any strong spirits as she washed her hand. It had already swollen and was uncomfortably warm, a bad sign for a clean healing. The silver wolves had sniffed them out a mountain stream, running clear with cold meltwater from the peaks. She’d stripped her outer layers gingerly, and left them pinned with a rock in the stream to run clear of blood. She unbound her hair, and scooped water over her head with her good hand, flinching with the cold and rubbing the gore from her horns. With a stern face she considered her hand and what supplies she did have, and had a growing fear that this mess was not a good omen so soon into their journey.

  “Let me,” Val lifted her head to see Fenris coming to sit at her side cross legged. He’d followed her example and put his pelt in the stream to wash, and was naked again except for his strange belt.

  Val looked nervously over at Dorius, who was hunched and deep in contemplation over the fire she’d started for them. Fenris ignored her concerns, and carefully pulled her hand out to inspect it with his head cocked to one side, being careful to keep his dirty fingers away from the wounds.

  “You got a knife?” he asked. Val obediently handed him her hip blade. “This’ll hurt,” he warned.

  It seemed a very long life had taught him some tricks, and he washed his hands and the blade in the stream first. “Heat the blade for me, fire-singer,” he instructed.

  Val lowered her eyes, “I don’t have that kind of control,” she admitted shyly.

  “Nonsense,” he chirped, “Give it a go.”

  Feeling odd to be encouraged by this strange teen boy, she took the blade back with her good hand, and balanced it in her palm. She was tempted to just summon the flame like she was used to, but he seemed to be encouraging her to try something more subtle - heat without flame. She imagined the glow of coals, the heat of the sun, the hot blast of brick ovens.

  There was a baker in Southold, who woke before dawn to bring his ovens to life. The coals at the back never died, there was always a small heart of flame. He would feed them with wood, and coax them back to life. Then he’d build the fire and push it to the back of the oven. The great mass of the stone collected the heat, and baked far more bread than could be made over an open fire.

  From her core, she willed the stream of fire, but instead of opening it to the air, she asked it to be like the stone of the oven in her palm. Without light or form, but hot and steady and constant. The freshly cleaned blade began to steam.

  “Not too hot, I just want it clean,” instructed Fenris, and he flicked it off her palm with a dog-like yelp so it dropped with a hiss into the stream.

  Val looked determinedly away as he retrieved the blade and with firm hands used the pointed tip to dig out the broken tooth for her.

  “Why are you helping me?” she asked, “The Vigilants sent Dorius.”

  “Why? You are my domain,” replied Fenris simply, levering up the tooth as Val hissed. His hand holding hers was so firm for the first time in her life she was unable to pull herself free from someone's grip when she flinched from the pain. “I’d like to know why you are helping him. The Watcher’s had her eye on you too… Here, wash it clean.”

  Val plunged her aching hand into the icy mountain water and grimaced through the mix of pain and hot and cold that it throbbed with. She sighed, somewhat sick of explaining herself.

  “I grew up with humans, Dorius’ family found me and took me in," she explained, providing a short summary of their journey and concluding, "I didn’t know I was even something else until we came here and met the Laons at the Chapel. I mean, I knew I was something, but we thought I was a half-breed with the wild-Fae. It’s been… confusing,” she admitted.

  “Hmm, I bet,” Fenris rocked back on his haunches, his crouch oddly canine. Then said frankly, “The Laons here are under my protection, you're not Mountain Colony, but I’d offer you the same. You already wear my skin.”

  “They gave it to me. On reflection, I think it showed they were welcoming me, in their own way. Although, I don’t really want that one back,” admitted Val, knowing where he'd worn it.

  Fenris laughed, “Your humor is hume!”

  Val grinned a little, “You remind me of someone…”

  Fenris raised an eyebrow and gave her a toothy grin, she swore if he had a tail to wag it would be wagging.

  “What do you know of what is happening here?” asked Val, “I admit I have the same questions as Dorius. You dismiss it, but I can’t help but feel the forces of things beyond my control sweeping me somewhere…”

  Fenris was pensive, he raised his head to sniff the wind and said, “There is a change coming. A change as great as the Unrest. The Weave has woken the Dragoness, who was the final result of the last great era. It carries here a Dragon Prince who can trace his lineage to the old Monarchy and the blood of a god, and a Fae that has survived the diminishing with old magics, raised at his side. You’d be stupid to not see it. But it has been my unfortunate experience that when the Watcher herself pulls the strings, we are all along for the ride and can only see the pattern once it’s woven.”

  With serious yellow eyes, he looked directly into her and warned, “He is not your species. But the Fae have always served the Dragon Throne in one way or another - we owe our creation to the water that was the blood of the first Dragon God. Whatever you choose, that will be the choice that was meant to be." Fenris scratched his chin thoughtfully, and then added, “Oh, those things are hume by the way. The ‘wild-Fae’.”

  Val sighed, and began to rebandage her hand, “I was figuring as much, given some things said. I’m still not clear on what makes hume, or human, or whatever the rules are there.”

  Fenris grinned, “Oh, they’re all dragons. Just in various states of decay.”

  “What?”

  The concept was so absurd, Val dismissed it as a joke.