FENRER

Faces bathed in shadow smiled down at him with glimmering axes awash with blood, their feet crushing the pottery meant for the vaunted dead of Sungrove. Old coins clattered onto the stone floor with some of them examining the treasure not meant for them. Robbers and killers. His own tiny fingers wrapped around the dagger, his only shield of protection when the largest one came forth. "Looks like we missed a wolf," he said with a toothy grin. Though when his heel covered the runic glyph shaped into a visage of the sun, it cracked through his bones and he held on tighter. "And a snarling pup too." His laugh slammed into his eardrums with the screams of the burning town. Blood filled the divots closest to him, pouring from the slice in his arm.

This is a dream. As they encroached, he lost his ability to breathe. This is the past. A shiver clutched at his throat, but the sun glyph shone with his pyretic blood. Auras reflected off the leashes starting to rise from the graves. It caused the raiders to back off, but a veil of flames blocked the door — for there was no escape if they would not even give one to a child. Summoned at the core, a giant of a man rose, blazing as the pyre they set aflame when he raised the giant sword made of molten fire. Droplets filled the rune, and his mighty swing cleaved their head. In an instant, as fast as it started, it ended, and he once more found himself in warm arms. Adara looked down at him with a frown, the world glittering and expanding her aura. Every color intensified. Her eyes dripped with honey browns. Though nearby, Kon, the mythic legend of his family who chose him to save. Unlike with Adara, his aura turned into pale wisps to reveal the lie of his form.

"Fen?"

Her voice created a ripple effect in the air, the truth too much to bear. It burnt into his temples, but he let himself sit up with her assistance. Kon cast his gaze over to them, and he found his footing on the grass beneath him, as soft as a blanket. It tangled against his fingers, but he took Adara's hand to heave himself upwards. Across the expanse, everything shone with a soft radiance. It's beautiful... but there's... something not right. Whatever name it bore, tales spoke of Velteraiia as a place of revelry, peace and tales as old as the heroes of Old Haneka with one such legend sitting closeby. Or Avae'londu, the echoniic realm the fae once originated from, beautiful and sharp. Though the landscapes breathed, he spotted no other spirits. It was as Kon remarked, it was as if they didn't want to be seen by his eyes. Paths of desire betrayed the presence of something, though what he failed to comprehend.

"We need to keep moving," Kon said, having to lift himself up by the knees. "Time is not an equalizer when it comes to the living soul and this palace is everchanging." He pointed a thick finger for the mountain which pierced the storm. Auras flew through the lightning, the energies bursting his eardrums. "Come. Stay close to me." In his expansive shadow as he had been as a child, but no longer swaddled in his arms, guided through life, he stumbled, trying to find his sense of self. Reality chewed on his brow, but he kept a hand on Adara, and the silver flames pushed into his fingertips with the contact. As they drew closer over the paths of desire, the foot of the mountain rippled.

Arcs of lightning bounced across pillars embedded with faint purple crystals, and the plateau stretched forwards. Draconic statues turned their stone gazes to them when Kon approached the center. Truth in lies. Though he went to follow his ancestor, he slammed to a stop when he held out his hand with a shake of his head. Colors filled the statues, and Adara clung onto his arm with a gasp when they started to crawl over the sharp ridges.

Balls of lightning bounced over their head, striking black marks into the smaller runes below. It was then Adara nudged his elbow with a point upwards.

Silence, walls of an eye, with the cloud lining a shimmering rainbow to the high peaks above. Stars moved quicker, but the moons slowed when they peaked over the walls with a sense of curiosity. His bones rumbled with the shake of the mountain when Kon sent a flash of fire upwards. Fenrer held on tighter to Adara, fear battling with wonder when the clouds turned a fierce black and crashed like waves into each other, while Kon's voice rang out, "I call upon the king of dragons to guide land-locked souls to the lands above, and so below," Kon said, the howl of a wolf resounding an echo. "By the truth of mine name, Konyiiu — the first heralder of the dawn! The First Flame!" His foot dug deeper into the rune, and Fenrer forced himself to look away when a sun bloomed and caused the statues to freeze.

Thunder roared, and lightning struck the peaks.

It yawned an abyss in his heart when the gale lowered, but what came out of it were wicked talons, black as night with scales with a deep, orange hue. It hissed, a familiar sound. Yuven and Neven, but it shook his heart when a maw lowered out of the winds with a breath and the reveal of long teeth. "Oh, Gods," Adara rasped when the dragon's wings flapped once to dispel the clouds clinging onto him. Ripples of lightning followed the motion, and Kon took a step back when the dragon wound itself around the platform, blocking their escape with a forked tail. Though when he blinked further, the clouds collected again, and it was not a dragon who stood in front of Kon, but a man. Hair as black as his other forms scales.

And there stood the second pillar, King Kolis... the king of dragons. Two statues come to life.

He stood shorter than the giant Kon, not nearly as unfathomable a height — more closer to the heights Father reached in life. Adara continued to snap her head around, trying to comprehend something only he could witness. Kon's features softened when the man who wore the shield of a dragon came closer. "It feels like it's been too long," his voice spoke twicefold. One, a testament of thunder, the second, a softer sense of rain. Fenrer blinked once more, and the dragon again took the place of the man. He craned his neck over to them. "Yet you have brought those unfamiliar to me with the scent of an old echo." His muzzle lowered closer to them, and Adara took a step back, her silver aura alight with his own fear and awe.

Kon kneeled to the second king. "I beseech you to take these two across the Traveller's path, into the land of the fae."

Kolis eyes glimmered with the coals along his irides. "It does not become you to kneel, Koniiyu, the first son of the pyre." Fenrer jolted when his gaze flicked to him with deft swiftness. "Especially when you've brought the next inheritor of the Flame." Though his attention drew to Adara next, his eyes widening and the scales along his mouth curled upwards to reveal the teeth. "And a phoenix that has yet to experience the ash of life." He stood up, his massive size brushing against the mountain face and causing Kon to slide back. "Both yet live."

"What?" Adara frowned.

Kon looked back at them, then stood in front of them. "That is why I have brought them to you," he replied. "Land-locked as they are, they have come to find the Traveler — in hopes to close the rift that had been created what felt like moments ago." Kon's hands trembled, but he continued, "Though the fight is over for us, it is not so for them. We gave our lives so that their world may yet survive, the world we left behind to be birthed from the rot of the wound." His hand bumped against his chest, and Kolis returned his attention to his legendary lover. Another hiss left his throat, and the judgment weighed heavy on his shoulders in the silence.

"How long has it truly been since I tasted life's pleasures?"

Kon furrowed his brow, then looked back at him — as if seeking confirmation to the answer he knew.

"It has been a thousand Turns since the Great Crimson Dusk," Fenrer answered.

"Yet it feels only moments since the Traveller fell through the sky to create a trail of stars." Kolis stretched himself around them. Fenrer froze when his eye came closer, then dipped low to the visage of the crescent blade on his hip. "Storm Warden." His neck drew back and studied them both. "You have felt it too, Konyiiu? Worlds shift. Things are not as they should be... the infection we tried to burn left a mark."

So... that confirms beyond a doubt what Adara saw... not that I thought her lying, but... to hear it from not one but two myths from the oral tales Father used to tell me around the hearth... Fenrer looked between the two king consorts. The Wolf and the Dragon. "That's why we're here," he claimed. "It's important the infection you speak of doesn't spread into this land — or it will be the end as we know it. Another Great Crimson Dusk. We're trying to avoid it. While we're here, an army of Storm Wardens are trying to destroy an old Goliath and seal the rift its presence created and the potential crystal it corrupted." His own hands shook. Eyes burned. "But to do that, we need to get to Evyriaz — Euron Traye, he who crossed the boundary and split his soul."

Kolis gave a blink, his third eyelid fluttering at his proclamation. "The Fae will exact a toll," he explained. "Beware their ways. Seek the information. Ask questions. Leave this place wiser than you entered." He moved a long forelimb towards them, and Fenrer let Adara go, her silver awe winning over the doused fear, though when he went to follow, Kon grabbed his shoulder.

"Little Wolf," he said. "I know you have suffered shocks with the truth—"

"Finding out my Aeoniir is my ancestor is a bit out there, yes. I thought Aeoniir were always animals." Fenrer tried to avoid his gaze, though his size made it difficult to avoid anything.

"But heed this warning," Kon said and leaned forward. "I give you it as you are the one who returned mine hope for the new world for me. I have opened something within your blood. Care for its power. It was beyond my ken, so it is beyond yours, but it is a responsibility we have borne for time immemorial since I created the covenant of the sun. Where crimson darkness feeds, it shall answer with the fury of the light." He nodded, and Fenrer shoved down tears when Kon patted his head with a giant hand. "Though I am dead, you have reminded me of the preciousness of life, that to fall into despair is to make it truly meaningless. Protect it, them, and yourself well. Call upon me, you know I will answer."

I believe... in our enduring will to survive. Fenrer dipped his head to his vaunted ancestor. So easily did I forget my own words to Adara. He put distance between himself and the man who could turn into the wolf of his family crest. Onto the wings which raised him to the back of the dragon, he settled himself against Adara when Kolis raised himself up with a hissing sigh, while Kon made room. He held on tight to the tiny spikes nearest him when Kolis' wings stretched, casting shadows across the rune filled with lightning. Adara held on tight to him in turn when Kolis took a standing launch with a crack of thunder.

"We're going to entreat with the fae?" Adara called over the wind. "Isn't that...a bad idea?"

Fenrer lowered his head when the colours shape-shifted around them. Clouds of rainbows into dark pockets of air. Kolis glided across the rivers of magick flow. "We just need to remember our goal here," Fenrer replied to her. "We can't be led astray by whatever they may ask of us as a toll." Ice swept over his skin when Kolis passed through a burst from the flow. It sent shivers down his spine when the blizzard smacked him in the face. Each sound slowly oozing out of his hearing when Kolis turned into a white-feathered wyvern. As the snows thinned, Fenrer gasped when the beast below him lurched with a piercing shriek in the distance, sending a blazing blue light into the clouds. The blizzard roared, and he looked downwards. Scales fluttered to release the feathers when the flight changed course, but it wasn't his armor. Is this...?

It burst once more, and he steadied himself when they left the cloud.

"Fen? Are you alright?"

Kolis flew without interruption. What was that? Fenrer looked down at his hands to check on them. His fingers shook, but he followed with his pulsating head and he tried to rub out the colourful realities. "I'm alright," he told her. "This place is... much." Flames dug into his temples, but he relaxed when Adara wrapped her arms around him, the silver speckles of moonlight chasing away the torment of a land they didn't belong in.

But... Fenrer looked back to the colorful storm-cloud. What was that? It felt... real.