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Because we had. Dimly, we saw the faint cone of light shielding our original body back in Oemis, the dying glow of energy all that kept the encroaching darkness from swallowing us whole. Oemis was the realm of the Great Black Wolf now, everything dead or dying, broken and mouldering away. A realm entirely of death, destruction, and entropy. We were the only point of light left, that and the black sun that hung in the sky, and we needed to change that.
The others had twittered on about a balance, but what balance was needed but the one between life and death? Oemis had been a beautiful world, vital and living, and one mistake had changed all of that. In trying to refocus the world’s energies into us and Lonan, it had stripped everything else out. He smiled and nodded, knowing exactly what we meant.
Of course he did. We’d raised him on visions of how Oemis was, its beauty and grace, all destroyed, but now was
our chance to make it right. Lonan was dead, gone, obliterated, but Oemis, it could rise again through us. We watched him climb the steps to the much smaller dais at the shrine, take his place under the Black Wolf sculpture. The god’s representative in this world and the next, our mate. We stepped up, feeling the weight of everything that had passed before now. It had been such a long game, putting all the pieces in place, ones that were thwarted over and over again. When the matriarchs of Sanctuary banished this body’s line, removing what they saw was a threat to their way of life, not understanding that the Black Wolf and the White were both needed, seeking to protect their petty little town, not realising that paradise was within their reach… We shook our heads, feeling the rush of energy from the dais when we placed our feet upon it.
“No, Sylvan, no…”
Arelia’s whines were Jaya’s and just as objectionable. She’d spluttered something just as meaningless when we stripped her of her power, but we were gratified when Sylvan’s eyes refused to look anywhere but at us. He smiled gently, then placed his hand on the sculpture next to him, we doing the same thing. The song rose, the old woman holding the child close as it began to surge, crystals firing up all across the ceiling, creating a blinding halo of light.
The mosaic on the floor formed a familiar pattern, of a gate. We had used them to travel between the worlds, trading and sharing wisdom and knowledge. Now the light of the crystals was focussed, converging on the central point of the mosaic to conjure this. A tear in reality, initially of just rippling blue light which quickly resolved itself into something much more terrible. A black desolate landscape, a grey sky hosting a black sun, and them—the revenants of Oemis. Black wolves with scarlet eyes, shadowy figures that flickered between reality and ghosts. They milled uneasily at the edges of the lake that formed a barrier between the remains of our city and us.
But not for long.
Our eyes jerked back to meet Sylvan’s, the look in his eyes a warm balm on our skin, containing all the love and understanding we’d been forced to do without since that day. We’d lived a haunted existence, using what was left of our power to create the ungrateful bitches of Sanctuary, then been made to lurk in the skulls of our reincarnations, until him. He saw us, loved us, understood everything we’d tried to do and more besides, dying in the end for us. We’d thought that was the end of it, that he was a necessary sacrifice for our goals, but… When he’d come back, when we’d seen him again, we’d gotten that second chance we’d always longed for. He and I would walk into a renewed Oemis as its king and queen, just as we’d always dreamed.
But first, to regenerate it.
Only we could redirect all that untrammelled energy, pushing it right where it needed to go, back to the central space between the two daises on the ruined plaza. The crystals lit up as we pushed energy towards them, hungry things at first, sucking all we gave them before starting to sing again. The sound was horrible initially, taking so much more energy, until they began to ring true, but when they did, light came.
Not just light, birth, life, regeneration, the stones themselves repairing, the sky clearing, the plants sprouting, creating a pathway for her. In through the portal came the Great White Wolf, shadowy and immaterial, a being of pure energy. She stalked through the gate, making it widen as she went, following the pathway of creation we had made and bringing so much more. Finding a foothold back in the world she helped create, she transformed it, sending a massive wave of life and light over everything. The shadowy black wolves turned and ran and then disappeared, vaporising into nothing. Death and decay were a part of life, but without life, it was not sustainable. This place, what Lonan had created, was as much a drain on the Black Wolf as a boon. In his birthplace, he had nothing to feed on without the living.
“Come, Sylvan,” we said, holding out a hand, the two of us stepping down from the daises together and into our kingdom, breathing in the air that was growing steadily sweeter. The feel of those stones under our feet, we had felt it so often before in our memories, but it had been so long since it had happened in reality. The black pall faded away from the sun, casting a gentle warmth over the two of us.
“It’s so beautiful,” he said in wonder, his eyes seeking to take everything in, but that wasn’t possible. We grinned, then laughed, feeling a lightness we hadn’t felt since that fateful day. Oemis was complex and multifaceted. There was so much to discover, and we would, together. We drew him down the plaza towards the two daises, broken still, not repaired like everything else was, but a hum inside us pulled us closer.
Screams, the sound of stone cracking, an unearthly howl. Our eyes flicked around, the current reality reasserting itself, the only other sound that of the others who had followed us through. I looked back over my shoulder and saw them come, the girl, the two women, and those men. We smiled, slow and sly, our focus flicking from Sylvan to the guys and back again. A pack of five… The idea was positively delicious. They would never tire. We would be able to move from one man to the next, slaking our lust, the others waiting for us to turn our attention to them.
We would do this from the suite in the palace we had formerly occupied, restored by the goddess just for us. As if in response to that, the Great White Wolf paused, sitting down behind the statues that stood by the dais. She awaited our return, her conduit, the only one who had ever been truly worthy, and now with a consort fit to stand by her side.
The others would be concubines of a sort, adjuncts to our power, but we were getting carried away. We needed to complete the ascension rite, the great marriage here, on Oemian soil, restoring the land as we restored the balance between the conduits. We felt almost shy, ascending the dais on the White Wolf’s side. We had longed, planned, plotted, manipulated, and strove for so long, to finally experience this? One foot after the other, we felt the rush of power that came from taking our place, and when we looked over, the flushed, heightened look on Sylvan’s face said he felt the same. Then, with the sound of a gong, the Great Black Wolf appeared.
We had plumbed our ancestral memories of this rite, and the appearance of the Great Wolves was an auspicious thing, largely something that happened in our deep, dark past, their appearances coming less and less as time went on, so it was fitting they had arrived. Having a crowd of cheering well-wishers would have been lovely. Instead, we were forced to deal with the sullen stares of the women that had come through and the fearful ones of the men. That pricked at us, threatening to unseat the immense feeling of wellbeing that swelled within us, but not for long. We’d dealt with displeasure and those who wished to hem us in too many times to worry about that now, so we turned our backs on them and turned to face the White Wolf.
As she stared down at us with those lambent green eyes, it felt like she saw all of us, in all our incarnations, with the warm, caring eyes of a mother. She had birthed us as a people and then shepherded us through our different existences, everything bringing us to this. Our arms went wide, and we sank down, in an attitude of surrender. The first time we had done this, we hadn’t meant that at all, just desperate to grab at the power due to us, but now? We had paid the price, learned our lesson, and now we would reap the reward. We waited, on our knees, for the touch of the goddess and her power.
It came, just not for us.
“Maiden, mother, crone,” came an arch little voice, her tone throbbing with malicious intent. “They are phases we move through, never meant to be held tight to. Each has its power, its strength, but to keep living, you need to keep moving, through all of the goddess’ divine forms.”
I slid an impatient look sideways, saw the little girl standing beside me, on my dais, looking upon my goddess, pontificating at me, but knew this was only temporary. Once I ascended—
“You bore no children, Branwen, but you birthed a people. You created us, for entirely selfish reasons as far as I can see, in anticipation of creating a captive audience, one who would feed your insatiable need for energy, for life.”
Our jaw tightened, our arms starting to tremble, but we looked up, staring into the goddess’ eyes, sure she would only tolerate this desecration of her rite for so long. Perhaps she would gobble up the child and the old woman who had come to stand on our other side, just as the Great Black Wolf had done Sylvan. We let out a tight sigh, whistling through our teeth, feeling the energy in the plaza build and build, the crystals’ song growing louder.
But not enough to drown her out. That little piping voice cut through everything.
“The crone brings the world wisdom, experience, a knowledge of what was tried and failed, what came before. How did we end up here?”
We glanced at the old bag. Flora, her name was? She just stared into the goddess’ eyes like we had, and we were glad for her silence. If only the impudent little bitch would do the same. This child had been alive a mere blip of our existence. She would not have even come to be without us.
Which proved to be a somewhat ironic thing later.
“And the maiden. I am the sharp, hard, new energy of young women. I am the push of new shoots, wanting to grow up into something never seen before. I am the rush of spring, the flowering of plants in the new season. I am the blade that cuts through what was to create what should be.”
That was the only warning I got, the energy surging at that moment, the goddess’ muzzle sinking down, down, until her nose was a mere few millimetres from mine. Her breath was the wisp of a cool morning breeze on my skin, and her eyes, they pinned me to the spot.
