FENRER

Queasiness lit a fire in his soul and brought him back to the land of the living. Darkness encroached every time he blinked, the tunnel getting longer with each giant step his holder took. "Dad..." He groaned and tried to lift his head, but strength left his neck through his spine, straight down to his toes. He drew his attention to the blood-smeared bandage around his arm. Droplets fell off his fingers, and he dug his cheek into the figure's shoulder. "Dad... did you win...?"

A steady breath lifted their chest. "Rest, Little Wolf."

Fenrer studied the craggy corridor they carried him through. It fell into noisy silence with little lamplight to show the way. It lulled him into the claws of sleep with their heavy, wide stride, slowly taken. Numbness stretched through his bandaged arm when he tried to adjust it. "I tried to protect the dawnblade... Pyren's are the harbingers of light..."

"It is okay, Little Wolf. Rest." Their massive hand fit his shoulder against the bridges of their fingers. "You are unwell."

Must... stay awake...

Moonlight touched his cheek with a gentle breeze when a different gate opened ahead. He whimpered when the thin drizzle fell against his face. Smoke tangled in the air, but empty shells remained in the environment. Tops of the canopy burned, but the rain sizzled out the rest of hatred's flames. "Where are all the colours...?" he mused when the giant sat down and rested him in his lap, before twisting his head around to the ridge where a plume of smoke battled the storm clouds. "Where are they... it's all empty..."

The giant scowled at the ashen bloom before returning his attention to him with a worried crease to his lips. Awe filled his blood when they held his entire arm in their gentle grip in examination. His arm slipped out of his grip to rest on his stomach, and Fenrer tried to push out the bile in the back of his throat at the spotted blood on his skin and pulsed in his veins. "It hurts..."

"I know..." the giant whispered, softer than Mother. "We must away. I must find you somewhere safe."

Fenrer groaned when the nausea drove itself into the edges of darkness when the giant stood up and took him farther from solid ground. He stifled a sob at the last drumbeats of war, trying to find a stronger grip on the giant, who frowned down at him as he walked deeper into the forest.

"Bad things..." He tried to wrap his fingers into their armor, but it slacked and washed into ice. Crimson orbs filled the shadows, but the giant continued. His aura crushed all in his way with his strength and size. He lapsed into the dark with the hum of the sea. Golden wind whispered into his view and formed into a wyvern to fly him far from the flames. "Things... Storm Wardens..."

"Fenrer."

The giant said his name, and he peeked through the dark to their harried face.

"I'm tired..."

You must survive.

Fenrer winced when the giant adjusted him, and Fenrer wrapped his arms around his neck to rest his chin on his shoulder with a moan. Toxic aura slipped down the wilting flow and spread blood through the cloud of smoke over Sungrove. He held on tighter when their hand kept him supported, nothing more than a babe to them.

"Focus on breathing," the giant instructed.

He tried. He tried to focus on the way air moved through his chest, but it burned. Torches glowed through the leaves, but the giant changed his course whenever different sets of footsteps hunted through the undergrowth. Onto a different path he couldn't recognize, the noises died and moonlight remained. Tears fell down his face as he dug deeper into the giant's shoulder. Blankets of rain burned his bandage and he bit on his tongue to taste blood.

The giant came to a stop in a broken grove to twist around at the shuddering undergrowth. He drew his attention to the stormy sky. Arcs of lightning danced and grew wings, until it spun into his eyes and he tried to catch himself from flopping over like a doll.

Fenrer frowned when the world fell silent, but then gasped when lightning struck too many times into his temples with a familiar scream. It tore apart the ash cloud and revealed the dripping sadness from the storm. It flayed his mind and the flow of auras around him. "Ow... Dad... it hurts..."

"Konyiiu."

He met the gaze of the giant, who frowned at him, full of weary age.

"Dad..." Fenrer rested his cheek and wriggled at the shadowy worms trying to take away the world from him. He flinched when the giant shook his head and kept on his path, further out of reach of the raging lightning in the cloud. "Where are you taking me?"

"You mentioned the Storm Wardens. If that is where you wish to go, I shall carry you to them."

"Oh..."

He slipped back into the dark and longed for the warmth of his bed and wool blanket. Of his magick tomes to learn glyphs, runes, and how to use them. He wanted Dad's map of the mighty land of Haneka, full of people born of the desert seas and into the water to journey to world's unknown. Ink traced every line and guided him to names and faces he never met. "Konyiiu..." he whispered out the unfamiliar name, but the giant responded with a glance. "What does that mean?"

He swore the giant smiled. "Loyalty."

"...Loyalty? Is it okay if I just call you Kon?" He tasted it in Hanekan. "... I'm Fenrer... how did you come to me?"

"Yes, Kon will work, and I heard you through the rift."

He tried to understand, but pain whipped into his temples. "I don't feel good..."

Thunder cracked, but it numbed his bones as he nodded into the giant's shoulder.

"The storm is worsening." Kon leaned around, and the pace quickened at another crack of thunder. He ducked into an outcrop, and Fenrer winced when he placed him on the grass. "You need to rest. You have been through much, Little Wolf."

"I wasn't strong enough..." He sobbed and dug his fingers into his numb elbow.

Kon twisted his lips and glared at the path they took from the smoke cloud, but he drew his attention to him. "Wrong," he said. "I have come through your strength, Little Wolf. It is you who summoned me."

"Summoning... I don't remember reading how to do that..." Fenrer tr
ied to lift his arm to rest it on his brow and shivered with the chill down his spine. "Cold..." He frowned when the giant cupped his chin in his huge palm with little effort. Concern brushed through the blank emeralds to stretch throughout the sunlit aura of the night.

"We need to wait for the storm to pass," Kon's voice overlapped with Mother's, and Fenrer clung onto his wrist with both hands. "You are burning deep."

"... I'm not on fire. I said I feel cold..." Irritation dug into his throat, but it brought another wave of vomit into the back of his tongue. He sucked in a breath when Kon gently tugged the bandage around his arm. Blood crusted to mix with the new. Embers dug into his veins and popped them against his skin. "Arrow..."

"I can tell." Kon nodded and wrapped the bandage. "I am sorry I can do naught else. I do not wish to use your magick further to speed up the healing. Must conserve energy for the journey. If you mention the Storm Wardens... they can and will help you." His giant hand trembled against his elbow. "You have forged the covenant, and now you will survive. I will see to it — my goal as an Aeoniir. This, I will do, Little Wolf. I will see that you survive."

Familiar.

Fenrer hummed and tucked into his own headdress. "I'm tired..." he repeated. "Cold still..."

He breathed deep when Kon shimmered. Misty pearls collected and formed into a direwolf. Blue replaced emerald as mist flicked off his bushy tail. He tried to scoot to leave some room, but he stopped when Kon's giant paws raised over him. Lighter than air, he trembled when Kon curled around him. His fur tickled his nose, both solid but ethereal to the touch. His apparent heaviness betrayed nothing of the spirit. Warmth stretched with each of the direwolf's breath, their ears pointed forward to hear the forest.

Fenrer dug his fingers into the fur of mist.

"Kon..."

"Yes," the direwolf answered. "I am still Kon. I will also be what you need me to be." His tail wrapped closer against his side and over his legs. "This, all I can do for you until we must walk again, to the coast."

Sivaport... yes, the Storm Wardens take a boat from there...

"I will survive?"

"I shall do all in my power to see it through," Kon echoed with a low rumble in his throat. Tears of despair filled the dawn, but Kon rested his muzzle on his paws. "I know... I cannot turn back the terror. You called to me, and so many others... I am not a heralder of light, I am Kon. I will tear through hordes to get you somewhere safe — to make up for the failure of mine." His ears flopped and pressed against the back of his head when he let out a stifled sigh through his nose.

In his hands, the molten dawn.

"You lifted the blade."

"A covenant forged in blood." Kon closed his eyes. "Sleep, Little Wolf. It will burn through you... but you will survive." He scooted closer, and Fenrer fell into the warmth of a spirit. "I promise."

I promise to return.

Fenrer bit on his lip. Rainwater mixed with his tears though they took refuge underneath the rocks. "You are a giant who can tear trees out of the ground," he rasped, then sobbed when Father smiled down at him. "You are a giant... You're brave and unstoppable." He squirmed deeper into Kon's fur, who lifted his head to examine him. "Giants don't feel fear... Pyren's aren't afraid of shadows..."

He stopped when Kon scoffed, but when he switched his attention to the wolf, a smile glittered in the blue.

"We feel the poison of despair as keenly as others, though the toxins in nature will never strike at us as hard as those without the desert blood," Kon whispered. "Hope. Hope, Little Wolf. It is our strength — our burden." Thought filled the glimmering aura when Kon raised his head to the storm. "What yet lies behind those clouds?"

"The sun..." Fenrer whispered and tried to keep his eyes open.

"The sun..." It was not an affirmation, but full of confusion. "The sun?"

"Yes... the dawn... it will always come back."

Kon blinked down at him. "... Silver light heralds the dawn."

Fenrer hummed with the song of silver dawn. "Her moonlit fire. His howl of the sun. Silver light. Silver light. Into a loving dawn of silver might..." He tried to bounce along the rhyming sea shanty, but its tangle of words escaped him with each drop into darkness. "Hearken to the silver dawn and the sky-splitting herald... Pyren, the Wolf of Haneka. Pyren, the Giant of the Sea. One King — Two in his dragon lover's reach..."

Kon rested his head above his with a huff. "To call yourself weak... but to have the strength to sing the song of hope. You are not weak, Little Wolf." He tipped his ear. "You... are more of a giant than I am."

Fenrer closed his eyes. "... I forgot the rest."

"There's more?" Kon chuckled. "Why... Little Wolf, I have never heard anything else past than the loving dawn of silver might... why did they add Pyren to the end of the song?"

"He saved Haneka from the Great Crimson Dusk. Have you heard of him?"

It glimmered in his mind, a promise of dawn. Emerald hidden underneath a wolven headdress, sharing noses. An older reflection in a mirror, a giant to tower over all.

"Kon?" His silence scared him into the clutch of darkness.

"Sleep, Little Wolf." A bushy tail slapped against his numb legs and sent a wave of pinpricks to his chest. "Sing the song of the silver dawn, feel its love and sleep."

Sleep...

It bubbled into his temples and he listened to the rhythmic tune of a song screamed in the night and cried well into the day.