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Plants tended carefully were trampled and ripped from their roots in seconds by the rampaging Volken. Tools were smashed, water barrels tipped over, and fire put to the remains. Then they turned their energy towards the animals.
Starting to shift restively in their pens, animals that looked a bit like sheep or cows watched the approaching Volken with rolling eyes, their massive bodies colliding with the barricades that kept them penned in as the Volken approached. Some were able to kick their way free, but running did little. The Volken whooped as they stampeded away, the similarities between the Uldariel and the Volken immediate. Just like their fan boys, the Volken ran down the beasts, throwing rapidly spinning knives after the beasts and dropping them with considerable precision.
Those beasts that didn’t run, with their great slabs of muscles twitching with the effort of staying in one place, didn’t fare any better. Volken grabbed them with the sort of casual intimacy farmers use, yanking their necks back and then dispatching them just as swiftly. Volken stepped into the sprays of blood like children under a sprinkler, basking in the gore.
I knew what was coming next. I had to. It was logical that their focus would turn now to the servant’s houses, but it didn’t stop me from fighting that realisation.
No, I said, but the cloud didn’t listen as the first door was kicked in. No, no, no. This makes no sense. They need that food to eat, these people to clean and look after them. Still, screaming people were pulled from the house, a mother with a baby in arms, a father, their sons. Those kids will become future workers!
I was arguing with a cloud and people who didn’t, couldn’t listen.
Through death, comes regrowth, the voice said to me.
What kind of bullshit aphorism is that? I said as tears choked me. The family clung together as the Volken approached, screaming, clawing at each other’s limbs as they were torn apart. Then the Volken took hold of the children.
The degradation and harm of anyone is harrowing, but the gut deep instinct to protect children, anyone’s children, made it all the worse. We hate that piercing scream in the supermarket aisle precisely because it galvanises you. Hard coded in us is the need to help the child, give it what it needs to stop crying, and the irritation springs from a resentment of this instinctual burden.
I buried my face in the cloud, rolling away from the edge when the screams started. It didn’t help me or them, I had too much material to use to fill in the gaps of what I wasn’t seeing. The sounds of kids crying and screaming just got louder and louder, the children begging, for help for their parents, for someone, anyone to do the things they couldn’t. This just spread as more and more families were torn from their homes. My teeth ground so hard, I thought they’d crack as I fought the sound. I couldn’t do anything. I was strong, but no more than any one of the Volken. I’d fucked around, literally, never learning to use the souped up new body I’d been given, too myopically focussed on my heart and my clit.
I dashed away the tears angrily. I had no right to cry. I was part of the problem, just listening to this horrific symphony of pain. I lay there, each scream a baton used to bludgeon me, until finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. I threw myself off the back of the cloud.
Wind whipped past my face as I plummeted to the ground. All sense of self-preservation was gone. I wanted, craved the inevitable collision. To say I was surprised when I landed with the kind of cat-like grace superheroes demonstrate in Marvel films was an understatement.
I watched the Volken tear children from their parents, only to slash at them with knives, my eyes struggling to take in what was happening. I saw some ripping at their clothes, pulling them around by their hair, tossing babies to the ground, and my head titled.
Everyone can dream, but magic is the ability to turn that dream into a reality. The White Wolf’s words echoed in my mind as I watched the horror play out.
This was a dream, or a nightmare really, but whichever it was, I was doing so lucidly. I could control what was happening.
For a second, there was just that rush, that beautiful kno
wledge that I could do anything I damn well pleased in the bizarre reality that was this dream-vision. I looked down at my hands and smiled when a couple of flaming swords appeared, which would normally be cause for concern.
Me, sharp objects, and fire weren’t a great combination, but in the dream realm, they could be. I imagined myself right in the fray of Volken, waving the children away into safety with one hand, healing all injuries, mental or physical with another. It was so seductive, this simplistic wish fulfilment world. The kids looked on now, wide eyed, their parents rushing to take them in hand. Good thing too, as I raised my swords.
What I did was hazy. Never having really played a lot of role-playing computer games or watched many sword and sorcery movies, I couldn’t tell you exactly what I did, it just kinda happened. One minute, I was holding my swords, and in the next, the Volken were chopped into mincemeat before me. I looked at the bits of leather-clad flesh and felt nothing but burning vindication.
From death comes regrowth.
I looked up at the sky, searching for my cloud, but instead saw the White Wolf moving ponderously slowly across the landscape. She was massive, taking up the whole sky, her head moving so slowly to look back at me, her eyes gleaming like emeralds. Each step she took shook the earth, but not in any catastrophic way, more like the feel of the earth’s heartbeat. Boom, boom, boom. Until the gaps between the booms bled into one another, and the reverberations turned from vibration to an actual earthquake. Everyone’s eyes turned to the top of the plateau where the buildings shook like jelly on a plate. They collapsed like sandcastles, dissolving into rubble to make way for what came.
His paws were what came first, followed quickly by his muzzle. Black as night, his fur seemed to absorb all other light as he pulled himself out of the ground. Buildings, people, the plateau itself, all collapsed in to make way for him—Lonan, the Black Wolf. My eyes swung to the White Wolf, expecting to see her start to move faster, run, rally, fight back, or something. Instead, she continued to plod along at her same pace. The Black Wolf was initially much smaller, but he soon expanded, now that he was freed from the confines of his cave. He howled the moment he reached the same size as her, the sound blasting through my ears so loudly, I could only hear part of it. And then he was on her.
Her reaction was so slow, I wanted to scream, her head swinging, swinging, swinging as he launched himself on her back and started tearing into her flesh. Blood ran down her sides, soaking the earth beneath her, turning the burning, rubble strewn horror into an abattoir. Her screams of pain filled the sky, her teeth bared, ready to attack, but he was so damn fast. Seemingly sick of chewing chunks off of her, he launched himself at her throat, tearing it out with brutal efficiency. She crashed to the earth, blood fountaining out, her body twitching as the last of its life left her.
From death comes regrowth. Prepare for the Great Rite.
The voice was little more than a whisper in my head as I watched in horror. Then he turned, scanning the mass of people desperately trying to escape, and launched himself at us. We stared down the velvety black throat, a maw of complete nothingness, where no growth, no life could exist. People screamed and ran, but I didn’t bother. This was the wolf that ate the world. It bit the sun, devoured the stars, and our puny efforts were nothing by comparison. Still or running, we were all swallowed up, sent to the Black Wolf’s gullet.
Then the world narrowed down to two things—darkness and cold. I couldn’t see my hand in front of me, couldn’t feel it move. There was nothing but a frigid sensation. Minutes, hours, days passed, I had no way of knowing. There was no movement, no action with which to estimate time, not even my own heartbeat. It was all frozen.
So when the green came, I had no response. It was little points of colour at first, which was odd, since to even notice them, I had to have eyes. That consciousness brought with it an awareness of my body, though I couldn’t see it at first. It was only the slowly unfurling seeds of green, growing and broaching the blackness, then appearing to eat it up, taking in the gloom like other plants would the sun and then photosynthesising it into long wispy tendrils of growth that curled and twined, drawing higher and higher. Until finally, something popped.
Sunlight rained down upon the lot of us, a rich verdant landscape rolling out where there had been nothing. And people, no Volken, no uniforms, just people and animals and plants and rivers and birds…and the Great White Wolf, surveying the lot of it with a gentle eye, panting lightly as the bright light was reflected off her snow-white pelt.
“Jules!”
I woke up with a start, finding Finn and Slade looking down at me in concern, but Brandon and I turned to Sylvan. Brandon’s hand shot out and took mine, his fingers wrapping around mine as we stared at the wide-eyed seer.
