“Dreams are memories of the Future.”

– Emperor Yanasura

* * *

“What’s over there? Where’s mommy and daddy?” asked little Hora. She tried to tiptoe and glance beyond her older brother’s shoulders, towards the entrance of their glass-domed garden.

Cyrus hugged her close to shield her from the view. “It’s nothing, they’ve – they’ve just gone out to get us something to eat, okay?”

The sound of crunching bones issued from behind him in the deep shadows.

“Um…” stammered little Hora, her voice trembling. “Are they back now?”

“No, no, they said they’ll take a while…”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

Hora made a little glance towards the glass dome in the ceiling. Reflected off were hues of wavering red. She glanced back at Cyrus’s eyes.

“How come it’s shiny when it’s still time to sleep?”

“Oh? Haha… it must be the… fireflies. They must be restless like us.”

“Mmhmm.”

The sound of crunching bones had stopped, and was now a gargle of something far fleshier. Sounds of ripping fabric and splattering liquid entered his ears.

Cyrus clenched his teeth and closed his eyes, trying his hardest to stop trembling. He took a deep breath and opened his eyes again.

“Hora, we’re going to play a little game, alright? We’re going to play a surprise game. Just the two of us.”

“A game? Hide and seek?”

“No, not hide-and-seek. The game’s called a… it’s uh… it’s called ‘where in the world am I?”

“‘Where in the world am I?’ But there’s no game like that…”

“No worries, big sis Miriam told me about it yesterday. Now, I – I want you to close your eyes, and hug into me. I will tell you when to open, and before you do, I want you to guess where I brought you, okay?”

“Oh! Um… Okay. Right now?”

“Right now, yep, mmhmm.”

Little Hora nodded, closing her eyes tight and covering them with her hands.

“Make sure not to open them until I tell you to. No matter what. Promise?”

“Promise.”

The squelches and belches of voracious feeding stopped. There issued from behind Cyrus the smacking of teeth and wet lick of a tongue upon snout. And as soon as the sound stopped, he felt the hair on the back of his neck stand on their ends.

He needed to be fast. He needed to run faster than his legs ever carried him. The exit out of the glass-domed garden was about twenty yards away. He would first need to leap through the gap between the marble pillars. Then, he would need to skip across the stone benches and the thorny rose bushes. He would hold Hora close and tuck her legs under his shirt so that he would get scratched instead. It would all take less than 5 seconds at the maximum.

One mistimed stumble and he and Hora would be eaten. Yet it was better than nothing.

Cyrus took a deep, measured breath.

Then, cleaving the stone tiles under his sandals, he launched himself towards the gap between the pillars.

A deafening roar issued forth from the shadows, shattering the glass panes of the dome entire. The creature burst forth, blocking the thin light of the wavering red reflected from the flames of the city around them, and chomped at Cyrus and Hora with its gigantic maw.

Cyrus ducked out just underneath, sliding across the rough stone with his bare shins, the gravel tearing his skin. He rolled with Hora in his arms as the broken pillar impaled the earth and plant-pots, and got up to sprint again.

Shards of raining glass stung his eyes as he leapt over the first stone bench, the creature so close behind him that he could smell its putrid breath. He leapt over the next one, nearly spraining his ankles, his sandals skidding on the next and smashing his knee, tucking Hora’s legs under his shirt before diving into the rose brambles. The thorns caught his hair and fingers and arms, but still he ran, sparing Hora under. In less than three seconds he had sprinted out of the gates to his family’s now glass-less domed greenhouse, and making for the wide steps down to where the canal ran. He would race all the way there, and tuck Hora and himself where the gigantic creature could not reach.

But out here in the boulevards between the garden and the steps to the cobbled avenues, there were no obstacles that could hinder the creature. No obstacle except low-rising hedges and short hornbeam trees.

Cyrus made a sharp turn, feeling the weight of the air push behind him as the creature narrowly missed them both in its snapping jaw, the clapping of teeth reverberating off the immolating city around him.

As he glanced back for a half a second, he registered the full form of the creature, now that it was unveiled from tenebris: what seemed to be a colossal wolf with a pelt of ink and blood, its shoulders grazing the height of his two-storeyed house. But what betrayed it as not belonging to the world of nature – not belonging to any picture book – was that the limbs of this wolf-creature were too elongated, too long, too prehensile, like human arms, so that it could stretch and tear and grab things like a human.

And now that it was out in the open –

The demon-wolf made a swipe at Cyrus with its gigantic claws, extending several yards in front of its snout. Cyrus felt the coming air and dodged it just in time; its long arms and claws latched onto a hornbeam tree and ripped it in four trunks like knife to paper, spraying sap and splattering it across Cyrus’s eyes.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Cyrus made a sharp turn left for the creature in his blindness, and Hora whimpered; the creature skidded and sparked its claws against the cobblestone in a frightening display of agility, and rebounded towards Cyrus’s direction.

The entrance to the canal pipe was just fifteen yards away now. If he could keep up the pace –

And just as hope flashed in his thoughts, the wolf made a backhanded swipe at them both, aiming not at where he was but where he was likely to dodge.

And the strike met true.

Cyrus careened several yards – he let go of his little sister else she would face the brunt of the impact – and smashed waistfirst into the street wall. Hora tumbled away, the gravel and sharp stone tearing her skin, coming to a stop near her brother. She opened her eyes wide, unceremoniously disturbed, and at seeing her brother smashed into the bricks, his body twisted in an unnatural shape and an eye hanging out from its socket, she screamed.

The wolf ravaged the stone tiles in its enthusiastic race sideways, sighting Hora’s lone little figure; as Hora was turning her head to face the creature, before she could make an even more frightened scream, its massive jaws were already closing on it.

A gust of wind, and something seemed to have come between herself and the giant wolf; a man in a beige robe-garb and long tousled hair was holding the wolf’s jaws open with his bare hands, arms outstretched, his head almost inside the giant wolf’s mouth.

Blood trickled from his palms. He grunted, his arms mere seconds away from collapsing.

Elwin hollered to his brother, his words sounding so alien yet familiar to his tongue.

“MITHRA! NOW!”

“DANCE OF THE DAWN, VANQUISHING STANCE!"

Came a man’s bellowing shout. From away came the clackle of sprinting steps, displacing the tiles on the rooftop; arcs of surging fire shot forth like lightning into the blood-red sky, gathering into tendrils of roaring flame shaped into massive blades.

Mithra took to the sky and kicked the air above. He somersaulted towards the wolf, spiraling ever faster, uniting his body and fireblades into a cyclonic saw.

“LEAVE OUR PEOPLE ALONE!”

His fireblade cleaved the upper jaw of the wolf clean off as Ahura – with Elwin a witness in his mind – seized Hora in his arms and dove away. The demon made a guttural roar, tackling Mithra full force into the wall which Mithra ducked out from underneath. The entire house behind began to collapse.

“Ayu imi Ameshem, ayu nara itri,” Ahura sung melodiously with little Hora in his arms, coaxing a current of wind at their feet that gracefully swept them away to the boulevards below. He shielded Hora with his arm, away from view of her brother’s crumpled body above and from the wolf locked in battle. He tucked her away into the entrance of the canal, just two feet tall, where cool water still flowed in small trickles.

“What’s your name?” Ahura asked.

Hora gawked at Ahura, eyes so wide Elwin could see their whites.

Ahura closed his eyes and put his finger over her heart. It was beating wildly.

“Ayuniye, hvastraye akshana aman,” he whispered to the winds, listening to its call.

“Naie haorsvad Hora Esfanya,” the currents from her heart replied in his unconscious register.

Ahura opened his eyes.

“You’re Hora, am I right? Hora, of Esfaniad?”

Hora nodded erratically, wary.

An explosion rocked forth from above with the roaring of a wolf. She flinched, covering her ears.

Out the corner of his eye, Ahura saw that the wolf had grown back its snout, and was snapping wildly at Mithra, clawing the trees and the tiles apart. But he focused his attention on Hora. Ahura spoke in gentle chants, carrying his words directly into her heart.

“Hora, my name is Ahura. I am a strong warrior, along with my brother and my very dear friends nearby. We are going to beat the big bad wolf and keep you safe, okay? But for us to do that, I want you to stay here. You need to stay safe.”

“But my brother!” Hora shouted, throwing her palms off her ears.

“We will bring him back,” Ahura assured.

“You promise? No lying!”

“No lying. Promise.”

“Pinky,” Hora stuck up her chin defiantly, extending a gutsy pinky finger. Ahura took it and gave a firm pinky shake and a reassuring smile, patting her on the head.

“We won’t be long. If anything goes wrong, whisper my name,” he said, handing her a crocheted figure of a Celendir, leaping over the steps towards the wolf above as the entrance to the canal disappeared from view.

“Why, this demon – is – real – feisty!” Mithra muttered, his long-loose brown hair and voluminous braided ponytail tracing arcs against the air, dodging the wolf’s blows. He parried them back with an equal measure of fire and muscle, blowing out its limbs with stupendous shockwaves and vaporizing them, but every missing appendage regrew as fast as it was torn. If burning its limbs off had no effect, then perhaps its eyes would do. So Mithra incinerated its eyes just as it was swiping at him, ducking and skewering it with a spear of flame.

“Brother, now!”

“TEMURIAE VAIZAHA IRINR UTUN!” Ahura uttered, flying towards the wolf, issuing his spellsong with such speedy succession and ferocity that Elwin could barely register their syllables. The atmosphere above hammered down upon the back of the wolf with pulverizing torsion, ripping its fur and twisting the cobblestone underneath.

Without wasting a second, Mithra took to the sky with arm outstretched and descended with a lance of brilliant gold flames to skewer its head, but –

“TIRISH!” Ahura shouted with all his might, as the wolf sprouted yards-long quills on all its body and rose to impale Mithra in his descent.

Mithra caught the saving winds and skidded on the cobbled roads next to his brother, barely being able to burn the quills fired from its body like cannonshots. The weighty quills, seeming to be made of tenebris metal, ripped off the cobblestones and rocketed away into some distant walls in their hideous bounces. But just as the duo had regathered their composure, the wolf had regrown its quills over its body, and instead of firing them off again for which the duo was prepared for, gathered all of it and merged them into a giant drill half the size of its body. It made a hideous cackle as it launched towards them in full sprint.

“DANCE OF THE DAWN, BASTION STANCE!” Mithra roared as he pounded the heat of the world into thin lines in the path of the wolf’s advance, vibrating the atmosphere.

“HAOVAR, AYUM ASHEM!” Ahura shut his hands together, compressing the air in his path to bolster his brother’s coming flames.

“NOW!” Both Mithra and Ahura bellowed into the air, quenching the blistering flames of the houses around them and shunting the energies into the tunnel of air towards the wolf, their dancesteps in concord. The line of flame exploded into blazing walls the size of several storeys, surely melting the wolf in its passage and destroying it for good, but –

The wolf’s tenebris drill pierced through the flaming wall one after the other, past the first, the second, and third, its fur vaporizing to reveal black, amorphous flesh underneath. And as it did, the flames unraveled and were parted by a force from the wolf beyond their comprehension, by something which cut off the two brothers’ senses to the energy of the world –

The wolf was just yards away from them now, the drill mere inches from their heads – it was too late to dodge –

But a giant axeblade descended from the heavens, shattering the drill off the wolf’s head. Shards of ice and whiffs of frost ascended from the cold metal as the wielder of the axe drove the full force of her momentum into the wolf with the handle; the demon ragdolled away a hundred yards and into the wall of a neighboring house, pulverizing it with a cloud of smoke.

The tornado of frost and snow parted their whirls to give view of the wielder’s visage. Out of the frosty veil emerged a figure - a human crossed with the features of a tiger. Cold defiant eyes shone like sapphires from the shadows of her face, her head framed by silver-teal hair and the ears of a white tiger.

“Kaniya!” Ahura shouted, nodding in welcome.

“Felt it trying to pull some bullcrap,” she said, hoisting her axe on the shoulder and adjusting her cape, pointing towards the distant wolf with her prehensile tiger tail. “It’ll grow more tenebrite.”

“Tenebrite…” Ahura repeated, his eyes shut in brief thought, revealing to Elwin glimmers of his allies arising in memory.

Ahura opened his eyes again, his mind crystallizing in a plan of action. “We rally the rest. Kaniya, call them all. Ampara!”

The tigerine warrior thundered her voice into the red, starless sky.

“CANTOR! CHATTERBOX! KIRIEL!”