Where are you?

I’m here. I’m always here.

I see a flash of red and gold in my peripheral.

What are you waiting for? When will you act?

A gentle sigh in the wind. My son, when will you learn I act not as you act, nor speak as you speak? Listen well, son of my land and king of my people, today I send you victory, not by your hand nor by your power, but through mine alone.

But do you not expect me to act? How can you expect something of me and not do it yourself?

A breeze that almost sounded like a chuckle. Reacting is not acting, son. I will act when the time has set. Waiting is harder than reacting. Forgiveness is harder than vengeance. But one leaves you broken, the other leaves you scarred.

He expects me to forgive what was done?

No, idiot. He expects you to forgive yourself and quite reacting to what everyone else is doing. Forget the games of the world. Forget the lies you were taught. Forget what was and act today in what is.

Son of Elden, you have been a boon to the king and a good friend in times of trouble.

In other words, you put me with him to smack a little sense into his dense head.

This time the wind definitely chuckles. That, as well. Your waiting has come to an end. I am proud of you for listening, son. Now, watch.

Was it just me, or was that voice extra smug?

Oh, he’s smug alright. When the Allfather says to watch… there is going to be a show.

Something whispers on the wind, and I catch a gold and red form mixing the sun high above my head. A loud sound, something both musical and distinct but powerful threads through the air and rings like the sounding of a mighty trumpet but with a shrill, almost bird-like in nature but also more.

A scream from down below makes me turn my head, and in the center of dead dragons and blood, is a little white head on a little girl.

Shasta?

Nova streamlines her wings before I ask, and we arrow to the earth while hundreds of wolves I can’t name and jingoist and mages rush to meet the little girl I can barely see through the tears as the wind beats against my face.

She looks up at me and waves, her posture carefree and relaxed. “I am going to kill that kid,” I mutter into Nova’s mane as my eyes water from our quick descent and my ears pop at the change in air pressure. We dodge a dragon, barrel roll away from a red battling a wyvern, and duck a ball of flame.

When Nova gets close, she spreads her wings, a scream torn from her chest as the speed and velocity puts pressure on her wing joints. Fifty feet. Thirty. Twenty.

I jump from Nova’s back, landing smack in front of Shasta in a crouch.

She grins up at me, her little homespun tunic and leggings a shark juxtaposition between the men coming across the way and the dragons Nova’s fighting overhead.

Without me taking the brunt of her pain, Nova releases a bloodcurdling screech, and a rock shoots into the sky as she dives for the ground as I instructed. Nova sees it, but her wings are sluggish to respond. The rock comes closer… closer… closer.

No, oh no, no no.

I moan in a physical anguish as I see my dragon ripped from the sky. Her eye meets mine, and a single tear drops from it as if in slow motion, but then everything speeds past me as she falls and something inside me breaks.

Nova roars, her scream tearing into my mind as she lands in the earth, creating a larger crater than any other dragon so far. Then the scream and the roar… stops.

Something in me snaps as an inhuman scream escapes my lips, but I have no place for grief. Not yet.

Something in me wishes I had taken Yellow’s offer. If I could reverse time… I would. At least then Nova would still live.

Shasta watches me with nothing but pure trust as she stands before a monster coated in blood and screaming at the sky, and something within me aches at such a look in such a tiny body as I try to figure out how to protect her when I couldn’t protect a dragon.

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“Why are you here? Your mother is going to kill you,” I hiss, my voice low with bitterness and breaking with grief.

Her grin drops, but something in her face seems older, more mature, than her few years on this world can account for. She places her hand on my cheek, gazing up at me with wide blue eyes filled with faith such that only a child’s soul contains.

With the Phoenix at our backs, there is nothing to fear. Don’t you know this, Uncle Ro?

My eyes widen. I had almost forgotten this girl could speak to me through the mind like a Shifter, even in human form.

I close my eyes, taking a deep breath as the slave army runs at me and this tiny girl, coming ever closer with stumbling steps. “The Allfather doesn’t always prevent death.”

Her grin comes back. “Who said anythin’ ‘bouts prevanting—“ her lips twist as she tries to say the big word and almost gets it “—death? The Phoenix cares for souls mores than death, Uncle Ro.” She looks at me as if I’m an idiot.

The pounding of footsteps draws ever closer, and the wingbeats of dragons above make me want to turn and protect this child, but I know I cannot do it alone. And something about her simple faith… it draws me. Makes me wonder. Makes me wish to understand.

“But isn’t that why we’re here? To prevent death?”

She shakes her head, her stark white pigtails slapping against her chin. “You’ve got it all wrong. Life ain’t about pruvunting death. It’s about living.”

“But don’t you fear death?”

She cocks her head like a wolf, her eyes flashing with confusion. “Why should I? I know where I’m goin’. I know where my loved ones are goin’. The Phoenix takes good care of his children, I’ve seen it. There ain’t no reason to fear death, but only to fear not living.”

In the middle of a battlefield with creatures of legend streaming at my unprotected back, a little girl gives me, a werewolf assassin who has run from Death his entire life, a lecture about living.

Cynic, despite the grave circumstances, laughs long and heartily at my expense as the words of Pa, the Allfather, my birth mother, those friends and pack who’ve adopted me, and so many others finally… just… clicks.

I have no need to fear death. I have no need to let others, those of my past, present, and future, steal what was mine from the day I was born. The right to live.

For as long as I can remember, I have blamed my current unhappiness on the past. My birth father was absent or never loved me. My mother was banished. My birth brother was killed. I was sold to assassins. I was forced to kill, torture, and maim.

And yet… those things... they were not me. But I have let them define me. I have let what others did to me and through me steal my joy and my thirst for living. I merely survived.

I gave them power over me that they never should have held.

And it is time I forgave them. Forgave myself. And truly live, once and for all, not caring if I live or die, for the date and the hour of my death is written on the Allfather’s hand, and there it will remain in his keep until the day I take my last breath.

Until then, I choose life.

The dark and cold pit inside me flails. The numbness recedes. Peace and joy returns, and I feel Pa’s hand on my shoulder, squeezing as if he were behind me while I kneel on this dark and bloody soil.

And something whispers in the wind. I am proud of you, my son.

The voice sounds like the Allfather and Pa all in one, and it brings a tingling behind my eyes that grows into three tears that trail down my face. Tears of release, of forgiveness, and of joy.

See, the thing I didn’t realize… joy is not a place in life. It’s not when everything is perfect or right, for if there’s one thing I have learned in my life, it is that nothing will ever be right and perfect. Not in my lifetime, I expect.

But one can have joy in the midst of pain. It is a Gift of the Allfather. It is a choice.

Hate, anger, and seeking the numbness of pleasure replace the joy with something other. Something dark.

But when one chooses to release those things… that is when one finds the joy of the suffering, and the freedom of the chained.

They may take my body and scar it. Allfather knows they already have. They may kill those I love or bring death to my body. They may chain me. They may kill me.

But they will never control me. Not again. I am the Allfather’s and the Allfather’s alone, and he is my help and my shield… and my hope.

While I have him, there is nothing anyone on this planet can do to me to steal my joy unless I give it to them.

And I am done.

Something replaces what once was dark and cold. A wall inside is thrust open and peace threads through the part of me I still blamed. The part I held responsible for those things I couldn’t control and understand. The part of me that is my mother’s heritage.

The shackles that held Beast break and shatter. He purrs deep in my soul, unfurling and feeling… free. Light. Happy.

I bow my head as I hear a wolf leap from behind me and a dragon’s cry closer than ten feet above my head.

I open my eyes to see Shasta looking at me, tears raining down her face with her hand still on my furry cheek.

You are ready, Roland. Now is the time to act. Her voice melds with the voice of the Allfather and Pa.

Beast bursts from me. And something light, almost white, blinds me. I shield my eyes with my furry hand, blinking past the spots in my vision. When I look down, I see not the shadows I expected pooling at my feet… but something that glows with thousands of colors until it swirls into a white so bright it sears itself into my retinas.

It bursts from me. The dragon above me roars as I catch it in the soft embrace of warm light. The wolf howls as I bring it to a stop inches from the back of my neck, feeling the warm breath tugging at my fur.

And I feel the souls, just as I used to. The threads of life I could steal. I could kill with a mere thought. But it has changed. I feel the darkness that threads through the brokenhearted and terrified creatures as they are forced to mold to the will of another. I feel the hatred and the brokenness of the enslaved. The souls feel… tepid. Numb.

Set them free.

The world seems to suck in toward me, warping for a moment in time, before exploding outward, sending man, wolf, dragon, and creature tumbling from me.

And Shasta remains before me, her eyes glowing with happiness, her hand still on my cheek.