Gruffyd led Fade and I all the way through the village, to a gate that was set into the back wall of Tŵr Gronn. While it was guarded, it seemed more like a back exit than a proper entrance into the village. The Chief exchanged a few words with the armed and armored guards there, before opening the gate with one hand and striding through. I followed after him, aware of the curious gazes of the guard as I stepped through.
They shut the gate behind us.
Out in the grasslands that surrounded Tŵr Gronn, I was able to take in the night better away from all the light in the village.
I couldn’t help but smile to myself slightly.
Elys hung full and heavy in the sky, while the stars around her twinkled brighter than anything I’d ever seen on Earth. Wisping through the sky were what I had determined to be a view of the galaxy that this planet resided in. It meandered in a soft violet haze through the abyss, broken up only by the glisten of starlight, almost curling around the bright form of the moon that Grey so loved. I rarely had cause to stay up and take in Vereden’s night sky that I didn’t often see this view. In fact, I’d say I’d never seen the night sky so bright as it was now.
For a moment, I longed to go and fetch Sylvia, so we could admire this together.
Later, perhaps. After I was done with the Chief.
Speaking of, Gruffyd had stopped about ten feet from my position and was waiting for me with a knowing look on his painted features. I had halted in the middle of his tour in order to admire the night sky. I smiled apologetically at him, sure he could see it from the bright silver light of Elys. He merely gestured me forward.
I did so.
The Chief of the Thunderheart Clan led me in the direction of the ring of standing stones that I had noticed on my approach to the village. From a distance, I could see that a series of small bonfires had been lit around it, casting deep shadows in the night. To my eyes, those fires were lit in such a manner as to cast said shadows into the center of the ring.
Directly onto a large, flat sacrificial stone that had been laid in the center.
How did I know it was a sacrificial stone?
Because there was a large stag carcass bleeding onto its rocky surface.
Actually…I think that was a hart. I could see the red of its coat flickering in the firelight.
I felt a chill run down my spine at the coincidence. I was sure that it must be one, because I don’t think ‘hart’ translated perfectly into Veredenese Common.
I stopped at the edge of the ring as Gruffyd walked further in. He approached the dead stag and laid an almost reverential hand on its body. “I hunted this myself, you know,” He said suddenly, turning to face me. The man was smiling almost peacefully. “That was the bulk of my preparations for tonight. In truth, Nathaniel Hart…your addition to this ceremony is last minute. A certain segment of the Thunderheart Clan was always intending to beseech the Ancient One tonight.” He chuckled. “As grateful as we are to you, we don’t typically put on traditional and important ceremonies simply for guests.”
Stepping tentatively into the ring with Fade following at my feet, I took a look around. The insides of the stones were painted beautifully, depicting a creature that I was pretty familiar with by now. My eyebrows went up in surprise, while Fade perked up in sudden intense interest.
It was a Spirit Wolf.
It was painted all along each of the stones, seeming to tell a story. On one stone a regular wolf painted in black was curled in a ball, seeming to be almost sobbing. On the next, he was howling to what seemed to be the moon.
After that?
A female figure painted in blue descended from the sky, cupping the wolf’s head in her palms. With her hands, I could see her touch his forehead, from which she drew out a pair of large, majestic stag’s antlers. On the next and final stone, the wolf was now painted in blue, complete with the antlers that I had grown used to seeing on Fade. He was standing proudly in the middle of a forest, as what appeared to be a human man in yellow beseeched the new Spirit Wolf.
I furrowed my brow, taking in the entire story from first stone to last. Was this…some kind of fable about how Spirit Wolves were created? I was startled from my inspection by a large hand falling on my shoulder. Looking up, I could see Gruffyd looking at the stones proudly. “The first of the Llais y Gwyllt.” He said in admiration, before looking down at me. “What we call the ‘Voices of the Wild’, and you know as Spirit Wolves.”
My lips parted. “The first Spirit Wolf?”
Below, Fade had grown incredibly still, eyes fixed on the last stone. It almost looked like he and the painting were locked in a staring match.
“Yes, the very first, who we know as Taran,” Gruffyd confirmed. “I have to say, young Hart, we were all very surprised to see your young Fade traveling with you. It lent a certain weight to your words, and made us take you more seriously. It is…beyond rare for a Spirit Wolf to choose a companion, as he has for you. According to the annals of the Calonawr, it’s only happened three times in all of history. And,” He leaned in, winking. “Those annals extend from before the time of the War in Heaven.”
“So…” I said slowly. “Over two millenia?”
“More like four,” He said to my shock. He smirked at my reaction. “We’ve been here for a very long time, far longer than any mortal Kingdom, and arguably before the long-dead gods.”
Four millenia…
You know, now that I thought about it, I had never heard Grey speak about the time before the War in Heaven. I knew it must have existed of, course. There must have been a long stretch of time from before the mostly dead gods ruled. But here was someone saying that their Clan had been around even before those gods had ruled Vereden and the six other planets that had comprised their now broken empire.
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I was, admittedly, a little curious.
Before I could ask Gruffyd to say more about that, the Chief looked beyond me and nodded. Turning around, I was able to see a number of other Thunderheart members approaching the standing stone ring. All of them, both the men and the women, were mostly bare-chested and painted in the same way that Bleddyn’s father was, stripped to the waist and wearing simple leather breeches. Thankfully, the women were at least wearing a modesty-concealing sling, even if it left little to the imagination. I fought down a blush of embarrassment at the sight of the mostly naked women, but even I could tell this wasn’t a sexual thing.
I took a deep breath and decided to ignore it as best I could. Besides, I wasn’t getting any more than a few curious looks from the dozen or so people who had joined us.
“Nathaniel Hart, if you and young Fade could step back?” I heard Gruffyd say to me. Turning, I found that the Chief was nodding in the direction of just outside the ring. “I and my pack must commence the ritual. If the Ancient One deigns to meet you, then you will know when to come forward.” He paused for a moment, before affixing me with a serious look. “No matter what happens, do not be alarmed. I promise you, you are in no danger from us.”
Danger? Pack? Man, don’t you think you’re taking this wolf thing a bit far? Still, I did as I was asked, stepping back. I had to actually nudge Fade with my foot to break him out of a slight trance, though. The Spirit Wolf snapped back to reality and glanced around, almost as if he had forgotten where he was. He followed me out to the edge of the ring just fine, though.
Meanwhile, everyone else here had gathered in a wide circle around the altar, including Gruffyd. He lay a hand in the pool of blood that had gathered on the stone, and then lay that bloodied hand on his face. When he took it away, I could see a crimson handprint left behind. Everyone else copied him, also marking themselves with the blood of the sacrifice. The blue of their paint contrasted sharply with the crimson of the lifeblood, in the flickering of the nearby torches.
Gruffyd raised his hands into the sky, almost as if he was trying to cup the full moon in his hands.
He started speaking.
Problem is, I couldn’t understand a word of it. I tilted my head in confusion before I remembered an offhand remark Grey had made months and months ago, about how Language Adaptation worked. According to him, the talent that everyone had only worked if it was activated. You could turn it off if you wanted to, and from that point on, other people would only hear you speaking your native language without a translation. It had been a pretty neat explanation about how distinct regional and racial languages still existed, in a world where everyone could understand each other as soon as they had a Status. Luckily, children who were still Unawoken were still able to understand a person who didn’t speak their birth language, even if they didn’t have the talent yet.
It seemed to me like Gruffyd and his ‘pack’ had disabled Language Adaptation. I don’t know why, maybe they didn’t want me to understand the call and response chants that they had started, or maybe it was just part of the ritual. I could only recognize a few of the words that were being thrown out. Calonawr, Llais y Gwyllt, and Blaidd.
Taran.
The gathered group of clan members slowly started to dance around the sacrificial stone, gradually picking up speed and drumming their chest but never stopping their chanting. Meanwhile, Gruffyd had picked up a nearby ritual dagger lying on the altar and plunged it into the chest of the hart, cracking bone as he did so. In seconds he had removed the heart of the stag and raised it above his head, dripping blood down onto him.
He finished by screaming the name of who I was beginning to suspect we were out here to summon.
“TARAN!” Gruffyd bellowed out into the sky, causing the other clan members to stop and do the same.
The torches went out around us, all at once. The ring of standing stones sank into darkness, lit only by the light of Elyse above, as the gathered ritualists became eerily still.
It almost felt like the world held its breath for a moment, as the chirping of insects and night creatures died out completely in the background. The wind stopped, and I swear I felt a brief huff of hot air on the back of my neck. But when I turned to look, there was nothing behind me.
All of a sudden the torches flared back to life. But this time, the fire was different.
It was an eerie, flickering blue. The light of Elys above us grew brighter, as I saw a monstrously huge shadow rise from nowhere, just out of sight in the pitch blackness beyond the stones.
I tensed up.
When I say monstrously huge, I mean it. The shadow that had started to circle the ring of standing stones was easily larger than a city bus from back home. Whatever creature it belonged to was by far the largest living thing I had seen on Vereden, dwarfing the Frostbrine Abyssmother as the previous largest. The top of it cleared the tallest of the stones around us, allowing me to make out at least one feature in the shadows that stretched out of sight.
Two large, clear, crystal blue eyes that shined through the dark.
I had to stop myself from shivering as I felt the shadow circle behind me, from my position in between the stones of the circle. I thought I felt it pause just behind Fade and me momentarily, before moving on.. Eventually, the creature stopped its circling directly across from Gruffyd just outside of the ring. Everyone, including me, was still motionless.
The heart in the Chief’s hands somehow began to glow in the same blue light of the torches, as it incongruously started to float into the air above us. It grew so bright that it was almost acting as an artificial sun, piercing the gloom around us.
The massive shadowy creature leaned forward into the light, allowing me to see it clearly for the first time.
As I had suspected, it was a wolf. A Spirit Wolf, to be exact, gigantic in size. Its fur seemed to be pitch black in color while its astonishingly huge rack of antlers was ivory white. Two wise blue eyes took in the entire circle at once, including Fade and I. It might just be my imagination, but I think they lingered on us for just a moment.
With a slight exhalation of air through its enormous nose, the wolf bent down and swallowed the sacrificed hart in a single, delicate bite. I don’t even think it had to chew.
When it was done, the Spirit Wolf threw back its head and howled, loudly enough that the sound echoed off the distant mountains. I’m absolutely sure that everyone and everything in a dozen miles heard that.
The gathered Calonawr’s joined the Spirit Wolf in his howling. First, as humans.
But that changed.
My breath caught in my throat as the gathering began to shift and morph before my eyes. They grew taller and sprouted fur over their entire bodies, while their arms and legs lengthened. Claws grew from their bare feet and hands, and their ankles elongated until they stood on sharp claws. But yet they still stood on two legs like men and women. The very shape of their skulls changed, as their faces elongated into snouts and their ears migrated to the top of their head. Long, furry tails sprouted from their behinds, stretching out behind them and swaying in the night air. However...
None of their increasingly lupine howls sounded pained.
Rather, they were filled with a wild form of joy and exultation in the bestial that was alien to me. One final change came over the gathered clansmen and women.
From each of their foreheads sprouted a set of sharp, clean, fresh antlers. Not so different than the kind that grew from Fade’s own head.
Before long the transformation of the gathered clansmen and women had been completed. Howling in front of me stood over a dozen wolves that stood as men.
Werewolves.