Aedmorn loped along in his bestial form, long arms knuckling along the ground. His mind was in part clouded, as it was want to do when the beast took over, his thoughts subsumed. Through the wilds he ran, as much a part of it as the thick growth that clustered about him. He should not have been able to pass through it, and yet it was as if the wall of foliage parted for him, recognised him and allowed him through. He did not question it, even if he noticed it at all.

On he rambled, on a random path, for he had no destination in mind.

A scent came to him, even though the overwhelming, heady perfumes of the forest that would normally drown out all others, but his senses were keener yet in the bestial form, and it was a scent that he felt he knew, part remembered, familiar, one that filled him with comfort.

He pushed on, quicker, towards the sources of it, running across the ground in great strides, bursting through the wilds, pushing aside bush and shrub and vine.

There was a clearing in the wilds, though to call it that was to overstate it. It was barely large enough for a large tree that grew in it, one with a split trunk. In the heart of the split was a glowing web of energy, and before it stood a young woman, dark of hair and eye, stern of countenance and fierce in expression. She held in her hands a sword, one familiar to him. Much as she was familiar as well, though he could pin no name to her, as his mind was a haze of bestial thoughts and little more.

She turned her eyes upon him as he entered and some tension eased from her bearing, though her face changed little. “Aedmorn?” she said. “I did not expect to find you here.”

Aedmorn. Yes, that was his name. A name almost forgotten. He struggled to remain himself, to remember himself. It was as if those parts were slipping away, submerged beneath the beast that was growing yet stronger. He half growled in response and shook his head, trying to toss aside to the beast, but it clung on tight.

He turned and ran, disappearing into the bush, barely hearing the woman call out. “Aedmorn! Wait.”

He could not wait though, crashing on through the wilds, heedless of where he was going. If the beat took control fully he was not sure he could control himself anymore. Bushes were upended in his flight, branches snapped and grasses and flowers crushed underfoot.

The blind flight carried him onward, into the unknown. A bush parted way before him and he almost tumbled into a pool of water before him, if water it was, for it lay perfectly still, without a ripple upon it, and clear as the finest crystal. In the heart of it appeared a statue of green stone, of a figure that appeared like a man, but was not entirely, for there was too much other in it, of beast and plant. One hand was rising up out of the water, curled around as if it was holding something but nothing was there.

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He heard the snapping of branches behind him and half turned, to see the woman stumbling through the wilds, plants clawing at her, trying to impede her progress, but such was her stubborn determination that she would not allow it.

She crashed through and collided with him, such was her focus on trying to battle the plants and both went tumbling, to crash into the still waters of the pond.

The waters were smooth, flowing over them like silk, like no water they had touched before and so they sank into it. Aedmorn could feel the beast be washed from him, seeping away until just he remained, and his memories came back.

With a strong kick, he pushed himself to the surface, the slick waters flowing from him. Ivkarha surfaced beside him, her eyes seeking him out.

“You ran. Why?” she asked.

“The beast was taking charge,” he told her. “I had little control over it. What are you doing here?”

“I was about to ask the same. Came looking for you.”

“This is not where I was, though. This is not the realm of the shadows.”

“It was meant to be safer this way,” she told him. “The Realm of the Ancient.”

“So that was who that was.”

She frowned at that. “I am not sure I follow.”

He chuckled softly. “Let's get out of this pool and I will see if I can explain, at least as much as I can. Most I do not really understand.”

She smiled dryly. “No real change there.” She looked to the statue that rose up through the water. “Is that what you saw?” she asked.

“More or less.”

Ivkarha began to swim over towards it, still holding the sword in her hand. “It looks as if he is missing something,” she noted as she reached the hand rising up out of the water.

“Yes,” Aedmorn agreed, swimming over to join her. “Who can say what though.”

Ivkarha looked at him and laughed, a wild look in her eye, and Aedmorn thought he caught maddening hints within it, a look that sent a shiver through him. Whatever she had encountered on her journey had changed her it seemed.

“It seems obvious,” she said.

He raised a brow in her direction. “And what, pray tell, would that be.”

She raised the sword she held, and now that he was himself again he could see, improbably as it seemed, it was the sword that he had found in the shadowed realm, the sword that he had dropped and had slipped away somewhere. How though, he could not tell. There was something very odd about the sword, a mystery that he could not solve.

Before he could say ought to stop her, she had placed the hilt of the sword in the statue's hand, and, as they watched, the fingers of the statue’s hand closed around it.