Nightmares took the restfulness from my sleep. I sat upon the flax mat that was mine to sleep on in the cave. The pack was all around me sleeping soundly, and all of them warmed the cave. I still felt cold and alone, and I could not rest.
I went to the edge, drawn in chalk, where the entrance of the cave could not spill moonlight upon me. I sat there, enjoying the sound of crickets and the coolness of the night air. I thought of my nightmares, and they eagerly entered my mind, telling me the rest of the story that I could not know.
Our next target awaited while we stayed at Sanctuary. Somehow Buttercup's tale of lycans hunted to extinction and the treachery of The Cabinet had planted the seeds of horror in my subconscious. I knew we would find something truly diabolical, and the waiting was maddening.
"There is no moon tonight." Dreich's voice came to me from outside, inviting me to leave the cave.
"You aren't sleeping." I noted.
"I only sleep just a little bit." Dreich explained. "The Uphirim, my mother's people, they slept during the daytime. My father's people slept at night. Me? A dhampir, I only feel the urge to sleep during the hours of sunrise and sunset."
"You've mentioned before that the Uphirim were not like the vampires of today." I focused on Dreich's thoughts instead of my own.
"Uphirim were a noble people, born with their powers and thirst for blood. Vampires were once human and they became infected, or cursed, much like lycanthropy." Dreich somehow changed the subject to my troubles anyway. I sighed.
"You know I am worried about the hunting of wolves." I hazarded a guess.
"You talk in your sleep, Atanarjuat. You must be having terrible dreams. You can tell me, my lovely friend." Dreich patted my shoulder reassuringly.
I told Dreich my horrible nightmare:
"When I close my eyes, I see wolves in cages. They have them there, where we are going. They have kept them alive, torturing them. They test weapons and experimental surgeries. I can hear them howling and it freezes my blood, the howls of torment and suffering. Then, my dreams show me the worst horror of it all. They have found a way to keep a wolf alive, and its flesh is opened, its organs operating through the veins still connected to its body, but pulled from their natural sockets. It cannot howl, for its lungs were extracted through the removed ribs of its back, and folded over its shoulders. Every night when I sleep, I see it more and more clearly, the awful look in that lycan's eyes, suffering in silence, breathing slowly, unable to die."
For a moment, Dreich said nothing. Then he said:
"I have seen this done to humans, long ago. It was a method of execution called the Blood Eagle. I cannot fathom why someone would employ this gruesome practice as some kind of experiment upon a lycan. I think I have a theory, though." Dreich sounded serious.
"It is meant to provoke us to come to them." I told Dreich what his own theory was. "Is that what you were thinking?"
"Yes. However, it has only come to your mind, your dreams. The rest of the pack sleeps soundly. They have overestimated our prescience. But that means that you must have a personal connection with this lycan. Somehow it has reached out to you, and showed you its pain, and only you can hear its despair." Dreich said slowly and as he did my trepidations grew in intensity.
"Why me?" I asked. Dreich chuckled, breaking the tension with his strange way of laughing. I admired how he could turn something so dark and horrible into something he found amusing.
"I am sure it is because you are such a sensitive and caring person. You're just a nice guy, so you hear its cries, somewhere in your dreams." Dreich smiled at me, his fangs glistening.
"Thanks, I guess." I shuddered, but the anxiety I had felt was gone.
"Let's go find your friend and trade their misery for those who did this." Dreich suggested.
"An atrocity cannot heal anything." I recalled the massacre at the disease research center. "There has to be another way. If violence is the only answer, evil has already won."
"Don't be so serious. That's why you are suffering. The others, they know how to let go. What we do is what we are called to do. It doesn't have to define who we are. You don't have to hate our enemies to destroy them. War sucks, but letting evil go unanswered is worse." Dreich tried to enlighten me, but I still didn't get it.
"You've seen wars before. All the killing. You even saw what they are doing to that lycan before." I observed Dreich as he sat there in the starlight. His vampire eyes glimmered and he smiled just a little bit.
"I've seen enough. I can tell you that you don't have to carry the weight of the world on your shoulders the way you do. If you want justice, if you want peace, you have to be willing to fight for it. I get that you are afraid it is changing you. You don't want to be the one to do the killing. But that's who should be doing it. There will come a time when you will be allowed to show mercy, trust me. Is that what you really want, to show mercy?" Dreich described my feelings to me, and I felt relieved somehow, like I had wanted to confess to something and finally had told my sins to someone.
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"It is how I want this to end." I realized he was right.
"You have to earn that. You have to bring our enemies to their knees, so they beg for mercy. And it has to be you, Atanarjuat. You know why? Because when that moment comes, you'll gladly show mercy, and the killing will stop. That's your version of justice, isn't it? To be the one to stop all the violence." Dreich sounded uncannily amused, but I accepted that somewhere in his words he was being sincere.
"You sound like you know the feeling." I guessed.
"I spared the life of one of the men responsible for my mother's death. He begged me for mercy, begged me to forgive him. At that moment, I found my humanity. It felt right to drop my sword and walk away." Dreich recalled. "But I had to earn that, I slaughtered a whole army of enemies before I broke down his door. I made them pay; I'd had my revenge. I could see in his eyes that he was afraid, and I let him live his life as a coward, but only because he repented. I owned him by letting him live. History remembers him as a saint."
"The Elders have killed countless innocent victims. It's hard to imagine settling with them peacefully." I realized. "But the thought of eradicating them entirely, it makes me feel like we become them, and they somehow win."
"Don't worry. You're too lovely to ever be like Grandpa." Dreich assured me. He was smiling at me, his vampire's eyes staring at me, almost mesmerizing me. I felt a warmth and realized he'd gotten to me because I smiled.
We sat there in silence for a while and Dreich knew he had made me feel better. He started to sing for me, and my troubles floated away, into the night air. I yawned and Dreich said softly, his melody still somehow humming on the breeze:
"Go and get some sleep. These hours belong to me, alone out here, keeping watch. Go and rest, child." Dreich's tone of affection bore me to my flax mat and I curled up on it and in the dark, I saw Bruna's eyes watching me from her own bed.
"I've kept you awake." I said in a whisper, half-apologizing.
"Are you okay?" She asked gently.
"I'm fine. I had bad dreams. I feel better." I quietly replied.
"Good. Get some rest." Bruna blinked, the shine in her eyes gone for an instant and then she rolled over and went back to sleep.
In the morning the whole pack was gathered outside our cave and Buttercup was there. I saw they had their weapons and uniforms on, ready to go. Then I heard the crow speaking:
"My wolf with the sleepy eyes, I've told the pack that Dire Knights have left. The few soldiers still keeping watch can easily be avoided. The coast is clear - so to speak." Cory told me. He cawed and took flight, having delivered his message. We trusted him as a spy, because Ravenrock Pack was ready to move out.
"Who're Dire Knights?" Treach asked. Nobody knew.
McRaze offered an image from Frosty's thoughts of the future. "Soldiers of the secret army with mecha."
"Mecha? Where'd they get those?" Treach questioned. He got no further answers.
"Can we leave this crate here, in the cave of Sanctuary where we stayed?" Lieutenant Colonel Rose asked Buttercup.
"Yes, I will look after it. It will be safe here." Buttercup told us.
"Do you know what it is?" Doctor Imbrium asked.
"It contains a variety of powerful magic gemstones. I have a terrible feeling about it, but I understand it must be kept out of the hands of the Elders." Buttercup sounded worried about it.
"I just wanted to be sure you know what you are agreeing to." Doctor Imbrium sounded satisfied with Buttercup's response.
We left Sanctuary and followed the path until we were back in the forest. When I turned and looked back, I could not see any of it. Nothing but desolate snow-covered hills were visible. I wondered if we would ever return, and worried we might not.
The containment facility where they kept the captured lycans stood against the sunset on the third day of our stealthy maneuvers through the rotten patches and fields of broken boulders. We were never spotted by the lookouts they had posted, and as night fell, we had the element of surprise.
"I think they meant to draw us here." I said to the pack while we crouched and observed their defenses.
"Then this is a trap, and it would be an obvious mistake to attack." Dreich added.
"What about you, Frosty. How does this turn out?" Lieutenant Colonel Rose asked the yeti for a prediction. McRaze focused on reading his mind and spoke for him:
"He is uncertain. We have a choice, and if we do not attack, the outcome is not better. He wants to help us destroy this place. He says it is a house of pain, a very evil place."
"I don't want to leave this place standing. I say we destroy it and kill them all." I heard myself, but it felt strange to say it.
"Is this what you dreamed of?" Bruna asked me.
"They bring lycans here and experiment on them. It is torture." I revealed. "Those are my dreams."
There was a collective growl from the pack. "Then what are we waiting for?" Halo asked with a deep growl in his voice.
"If this is a trap, and we rush in, that is what they want." Lieutenant Colonel Rose objected.
"Wolves are trapped here, but the enemy has not prepared anything that we should worry about." Doctor Imbrium determined.
"The doctor is right. They are too busy searching for us to expect us to emerge from hiding to attack here. They think we are running from them with their prize." Abbot agreed.
"Sir, may I lead a team of volunteers?" Bruna asked Lieutenant Colonel Rose.
"No, Major." he replied. "Does anyone object to the risk of attacking this place when it could be a trap? Does anyone even want to stay behind?"
The entire pack volunteered silently. Lieutenant Colonel Rose stood and gestured for us to advance. We moved from cover to cover as we approached the entrance.
When the shooting began the guards kept coming until we had shot and killed most of them. Then we went inside. The very heavy doors were easily bashed open by hammering blows from Frosty and Adam.
We went from chamber to chamber in the freakshow of horror. They had dissected living lycans, somehow trapped in the shape of wolves, that we mercy killed. It was far worse than my dreams, and I could not unsee the evil things they had done.
The caged lycans in human form we freed, and they gladly joined us, pursuing the mad scientists through the halls and killing them brutally. When it was over McRaze torched the place like she had the last. We gathered in the cold night air outside under moonless stars.
Those we had set free wished to join our pack. Lieutenant Colonel Rose was our leader and he accepted all of them. They had suffered greatly, but not like the ones we had released from their mortal coils. They had watched all of that, waiting their turn on the surgery tables.
"Welcome, brothers and sisters. You may go free, but sine you wish to join our fight, you must obey my commands. I will lead you against those who are behind all of this." Lieutenant Colonel Rose told them. "And together we will not let what they have done go unanswered."