Chapter Fifty-Two: The Boy and his Wolf

“It is the highest point in the known world, a place where few men dare venture, where fewer still return alive. To go any higher is to become a god.”

—Dagus Adem, The Adventurer’s Guide to the Continent

Ein and his mother walked along the river, hand in hand. It was night, not so early that the drunkards were still sober in Koth’s inn, but not so late that they’d passed out or gone home to sleep. Rhea took him to where the Brackenburg wound towards the lake, a quiet corner away from the bustle of the village.

“Be very quiet,” she said. “Not a single word, understand? Your father will kill me if he finds out.”

Ein nodded, eyes burning with curiosity.

They waded their way through the bushes, stopping at the very edge where the treeline gave way to the riverbank. There was a man standing knee-deep in the Brackenburg, washing himself. Rhea brought a finger to her lips.

The man was tall and broad, and he reminded Ein of a sturdy oak. His muscles were thickly corded and hard like wrought-iron, his coal-black hair streaked with grey. Ein settled himself in his position beside his mother and stifled a gasp.

Scars lined the man’s back like a plague, marring the otherwise slick surface. There were all manner of markings covering his body—snakes of raised flesh, thin black lines bound together by gut, pale brown streaks spanning the length of his torso. They crossed his arms and legs as well, and the back of his neck too. There wasn’t a patch of skin left untouched.

There were burn marks, scalds, every manner of permanent disfiguration Ein could imagine. It was like watching a moving doll of flesh, a human body stitched together from the limbs of various others. He hurt just imagining what sort of pain the man had experienced.

The man turned to one side, and the moon fell upon his face. It was Alend.

Rhea clamped her palm over Ein’s lips, smothering his cry of surprise. Alend waded across the river to the bank and began to dry himself.

“This is what becomes of heroes who have served their time,” Rhea whispered. “Watch closely, Ein, and think to yourself: Is this what you want to become?”

Alend finished dressing himself and sat upon a rock facing the river. A minute passed, and then two, and then three. Ein saw a quiver of movement from his father’s back, heard a quiet sniffle.

Alend was crying.

“Your father has lived a life steeped in blood,” Rhea continued. “You cannot become a Hero of Faengard and keep your hands clean. Countless men have fallen to his blade; men with wives and mothers, sons and daughters. Every year he comes here to cleanse himself of their blood, and to mourn them.”

Alend continued to cry, oblivious to his wife and son who were watching him. Ein couldn’t peel his eyes away.

Alend the blacksmith, the strong man who never showed any signs of weakness. Here he was, broken and battered before Ein, his body marked with a thousand scars, his soul marked with a thousand more.

“Being a Hero of Faengard comes at a steep price,” Rhea continued. “It isn’t always rescuing princesses and slaying dragons for treasure. A hero will kill one to protect ten. But once a hero has protected countless people, he will also have killed countless people.”

“My father… what exactly was he?”

“That is not something you need to know right now,” Rhea said, stroking Ein’s hair. “He will tell you in due time. But know this—he was a hero, the type that you wanted to be, and now he is no longer. Each life taken becomes a burden, until in the end you walk with the weight of a thousand deaths upon your shoulders. He still sees the faces of those he’s killed in his sleep, hears their voices in his mind. Villains they may be, but they are still human. Many a time have I woken to see him tossing and turning in his sleep, reliving nightmares over and over again. That is what it means to be a hero, Ein. Is that what you truly want?”

Alend bent down to the edge of the river and washed his face. He drew a deep breath and released it, staring at the night sky.

“A quiet life is not something to be taken for granted,” his mother said. “Know this, and understand why your father does not wish for you to take his path.”

#

Tushar left in the morning as he said he would. Ein, Aeos, Garax and Rhinne followed the trail as they’d been instructed, and surely enough, they came to the pass that led to the Summit of the World. It lay between two halves of the mountain, a gaping chasm like an open maw, jagged pieces of rock sticking out of the sides like teeth. They could spot the peak above them, a vague shadow behind the whirling snow-wind that was picking up. At the base of the entrance were several large chunks of rock and ice, broken off from above to lie destitute in the snow.

“I still can’t believe it,” Ein murmured, glancing sideways at Garax. “To think that you were Dagus Adem, the greatest adventurer of all. Wyd almighty, to think a legend was living amidst us Felhaveners all this time.”

Ein had always just assumed the storyteller was well-read and had travelled more than his fair share of roads, but when he gave it more thought, Garax had always known little tidbits here and there that only a person of extensive age and knowledge would have known. When his nature had first been brought to light that night in the Sleeping Twinn all those weeks ago, among the village elders and the Children of the Wind, Ein had thought him to be a Songweaver like the Druid Talberon, or perhaps a half-breed mix of some other race, which was rare but not unheard of. He’d never expected the cripple to be a dragon of all things.

Thinking back on it now, the signs had been there. The fact that Garax had never really seemed to be affected by cold the way a normal man would. His familiarity with Rhinne and Lord Drakhorn. The time he’d ignited the air inside Graendal and saved himself and Evaine, the Darksteel blade he always carried that could only be forged with dragonfire, the sayings he’d occasionally use from The Adventurer’s Guide to the Continent, which Alend had a copy of back inside the Thoren family forge. His uncanny proficiency with the blade.

“Felhaven was a great place to settle down and lie low for a while,” the old man mused, acting as if his revelation had been nothing more than a childish fib laid bare. “No one ever passed through, and if they did, I was just an old cripple with one too many stories under his belt. I only have your father to thank; he made it his business to limit the village’s external dealings.”

“Why now, then?” Aeos asked. “Master… Dagus.” He seemed uncertain at what to call him, speaking with a tone of awe and respect that Ein never would have expected to hear from the Prince. Aeos had been surprisingly accepting of the storyteller's true nature. Perhaps it was because of the conversations they’d shared back in the mines of Mor’Gravar, bonding over artifacts from times long gone.

“Why do you think? Things are on the brink of change, young Prince. New heroes will rise, and as a survivor from the ages of old, it’s my job to guide them.”

“But surely, with you on our side, we don’t even need to go to all this trouble of saving our damsel in distress and restoring Aedrasil. I’ve heard your tales; I’m sure there’s child who hasn’t. It was said you could slay armies with a single sweep of your blade and set cities on fire with your breath alone. Can’t you just kill Al’Ashar and be done with it?”

“Damn minstrels,” Garax muttered. “If there’s one thing I stress to people when I tell my stories, it’s not to believe them. Any legend that sounds too incredible to be true probably is. I could do perhaps half of those things you mentioned, though that was long ago when we had the Dragonstone.” He glanced at Rhinne. “I try to avoid using any of my Heartfire now if I can help it. I’m old, and even walking around drains the fuel from my flame. I don’t have much of it left. Perhaps enough for a single transformation, and I only plan on using it if I have to. Besides,” Garax peered into the chasm, “there’s something I have to do for an old friend.”

The ground beneath them rocked slightly, sending powder snow sprinkling down from above.

“Faenrir,” Ein murmured.

“Aye,” Garax nodded. “An old friend I have to take responsibility for.”

Aeos and Rhinne looked at each other in puzzlement.

“Well,” Aeos said. “Celianna will be beside herself with excitement when she meets you after all this is finished. She’s a big fan of your work.”

“Yes,” the old man muttered. “After all this is finished...”

They took a break before the passage, tightening the straps in their armour, making sure their weapons were secured, eating what little they had left to spare. Even Rhinne slipped on another layer, protecting her exposed skin from the biting cold. She spent a few minutes sharpening her knife with a whetstone, listening to the smooth sheen of stone against steel. Aeos polished the short-spear by his waist while Garax sat atop a rock, staring into the distance.

Ein strayed away from the entrance to the pass, studying the creviced walls that rose towards the sky. They were jagged and uneven, as if a large pile of rubble had been dumped on the ground with snow cemented inside the gaps—likely caused by all the shaking. A short distance away from where they’d set up camp, he found several bodies half-buried under the rocks and snow, the remains of a party that had gone before them. They looked to be soldiers—Legionnaires, donning the black and silver of the Legion, with the spear and shield of House Uldan upon their breasts. Ein called out to the rest of the party, waving them over.

Aeos came first, followed by Garax and Rhinne. The Prince lifted one of the visors, revealing a pair of frightful, unblinking eyes, and grimaced.

“I knew these men,” he muttered, running his hand along another of the bodies. It was a large man in black and silver armour, a warhammer embedded in the debris nearby. “This one’s name name was Darius. We called him ‘The Crusher,’ and he was one of our best.”

“The mountain does not discriminate,” Garax said. “All men are equals before its wrath.”

“I’m beginning to have second thoughts about this whole thing. In the end, we really do only have a boy, a girl and an old man to fight one of the three Great Relicts.” Aeos sighed. “Oh well. I’m so sick of this place that death will be a reprieve. Can’t even breathe properly up here.”

“You shouldn’t push yourself,” Rhinne remarked. “I’ll say it once again; there’s no shame in staying behind and waiting.”

“And I’ll say it again as well, dragon,” Aeos snapped. “I’m fine. Worry about yourself.”

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Rhinne scowled and shrugged. They finished their meal and stepped towards the entrance with heavy hearts. Ein drew a deep breath.

“To the Summit of the World, then,” he said.

The others nodded. “To the Summit of the World.”

They entered the passage, ducking out of the snow and wind and into the unknown.

#

It was like a completely separate realm in itself, a path wedged between the two halves of the mountain. It was barely wide enough for two horse-drawn carriages to travel abreast, and it twisted and turned like a glacial serpent. Chunks of rock and ice spilled across the ground where pieces of Raginrok had broken off from above.

Aeos found himself panting before long, partly from the climbing, partly from the thinness of the air. Each breath barely filled his lungs, as deeply as he breathed. He would keep going until his vision began to dim; only then would he admit defeat. For now, he would manage—though all the large boulders blocking their path were becoming a nuisance.

The wind roared above them, a howling gale that buffeted the sides of the chasm, blowing snow horizontally in their faces. The tremors in the earth, although slight, were becoming more frequent. Aeos felt his heart stop every time a stone broke off above them, bouncing and clattering down the walls on either side to land in a small puff of dusty snow. The mountain could come down on them any time, and they stood little chance of surviving it.

What would Mother and Father do if they found me dead? he wondered. He knew what Celianna would do; she would weep for him and sing of her loss, like Sonata the Speechless had for Selin. Would he have a funeral as exquisite as Willard’s had been? Would they speak of him fondly, or as a stain upon the Uldan name?

Abruptly they came to a halt. Garax had been leading the way, and now he turned around to address everyone.

“Concentrate on anything but the singing,” he said.

Aeos frowned. The singing? He closed his eyes, and that was when he heard it. It had been so soft, melding seamlessly into the environment that he’d scarcely paid it any attention. A distant echo that trickled off the walls, hidden in the wind and the snowdrifts, the quivering of the frostweed that lined the walls. It was the voice of a girl, a haunting song, one that spelled death and destination, one that tugged at him gently with sweet-sounding tendrils. It blew away the soil from the graves of his memories, laying them bare, all of them. Of Willard, of Celianna, of Aedon and Illia when they had been smiling from their hearts.

“The song that shackles the beast,” Ein muttered. They looked shaken, both Ein and Rhinne, even Garax, though he hid it well. The old man locked eyes with each of the party members and then resumed his passage.

A shadow passed over them as they entered the final leg of the route. A large chunk of the mountain had fallen over the pass, forming a narrow cave that stood between them and the Summit of the World. It was dark inside, very dark. The song grew muffled overhead as they made their way through the dimly lit hollow, guided only by the faint slivers of light trickling through cracks in the ceiling. Aeos placed his hand against the wall, head swimming. Black spots were beginning to dance around the edges of his vision. Rhinne gave him another questioning look, but said nothing.

At last the cave ended and they broke out onto the mountaintop, in the midst of a violent snowstorm. The wind lashed at their hair and clothes, threatening to push them off the steep precipices on either side. Grey clouds stretched on towards the horizon around them, a sea of mist with no end in sight. They were on the highest known point in Faengard, the mountain that was said to connect the earth to the heavens. The Summit of the World.

#

Before them was a narrow path that led to a plateau at the centre of the peak. The wind wailed and howled, blowing snow like sand across a white desert. Ein squinted into the distance and called out, struggling to be heard above the din.

“There she is,” he cried. In the centre of the snowfield, before a large stone ridge was a black-haired girl. She sat on the ground wearing nothing but a clothspun robe, and her face was streaked with tiredness, dirt, and grime. The words continued to spill from her mouth, an alien song that evoked feelings inside Ein he didn’t recognize.

“A Sylvan,” Garax cried out, rushing to Ein. “Be careful, Ein. Don’t fall victim to her voice.”

“A Sylvan?” Ein stopped a few paces away, waiting for the others to catch up. Rhinne and Aeos made their way to the edge of the plateau, the latter bending over to catch his breath.

“The child of a fae and a human,” Garax explained. “That would explain how she’s managed to stay alive all this time. Look at her eyes.”

They were deep and clear, like the frosty clearing they were standing on. But as he looked deeper, they shifted colour—to steel grey, and then sky blue and lapis lazuli, to the colour of springwater and slate. They never remained the same shade for long.

The girl noticed them at last and shook her head frantically. She waved her hands, urging them to go back, to leave the mountain. The chain that bound her ankle to the ground rattled.

“Go back,” she cried out in a hoarse voice. “Go back!” Her song broke for a moment, its strange tone fading. The wind stilled.

“Lachess,” Ein cried, drawing his sword. “Is that your name?”

“Leave me,” she said again. “It will hear you. I mustn’t allow it to awaken!” She tried to sing again but her voice was slow to weave its magic, its threads flailing weakly in the wind.

She couldn’t have been more than thirteen or fourteen years old. Ein was reminded once again of Cinnamin—they even shared the same hair colour, though this girl was paler in complexion. A brotherly instinct rose inside him, something that made him want to protect her, to shelter her from the cruel wind. He was next to her before he knew it, sword raised to strike at her chains.

“No!” she cried again. “Stop—”

And then the mountain rumbled.

It was a different rumble this time. It was laden with purpose, the low growl of a beast that had awakened to find trespassers within its den. The mountain shook from deep within, tremors slowly making their way to the surface, causing chunks of snow to break off the edge of the precipice and plummet into the clouds. Ein stumbled and righted himself, and then hacked at the chains again. His blade dug a chip from one of the links.

“Just a little more…”

The ground before him darkened. Aeos had suddenly fallen backwards, his face a bloodless white. Rhinne was also looking up, mouth agape.

Ein followed their gaze, puzzled, only to find that a large shadow had covered the sky. The shape loomed over them, slowly materializing from the mist, a titanic creature on four legs, silver fur sprouting along its length, crimson eyes as big as horses, yellow teeth like serrated swords. Each rise and fall of its chest caused the mountain to shake.

The chain holding the girl in place snapped free, but Ein paid it no heed. The monster before them was still rising, higher than a house, higher than a tenement, as high as the walls of Uldan Keep. It rose so high that it blotted out the sun, staring down at them with a hungering look. A shimmering tether bound its feet, a weaving of reds and blues and violets that prevented the creature from standing.

It was a demon god that belonged to no mortal realm. It was a Great Relict, a being as old as the Pantheon, a relic of the past from a time when men could raise mountains and split the earth. It was a child of Al’Ashar, a survivor of the Hundred Years War and the Age of Gods.

It was Faenrir, the World-Eater.

The demon wolf roared, and the mountain roared with it. Ein was thrown to his knees, his palms jarring painfully against his wrists. The wind howled, tearing across the Summit of the World. Stone shattered and slid, tumbling down into the mist, blasting holes across the sea of clouds.

Rhinne let out a high-pitched scream as a chunk of the ground fell away beneath her, sending her sliding towards the edge like a ragdoll. Aeos went with her, and together they clung desperately onto the broken crag. Garax thrust his darksteel blade into the snow, using it to anchor him as the landscape shifted.

The World-Eater’s howl continued long after it had stopped, echoing across the mountaintops in tune with the wind. Rhinne managed to crawl her way back to the the entrance of the cavern, dragging a dazed Aeos with her. Ein clambered to his feet, grabbing the girl’s hand.

“Let’s go!” he screamed. He pulled her forcefully with him, towards the walkway that led back to where the others waited. Garax was two steps behind, slogging through the wind and snow.

FATHER! OH, FATHER!

The voice shrieked inside Ein’s mind, the voice of a beast who’d gone mad with solitude. He lost his step and the wind pulled him forward, almost tossing him off the edge of the mountain. The entrance to the cave before him quivered. He didn’t know which way was up or down anymore. Everything was shaking.

Faenrir howled again, and there was anguish in its voice. Clouds gathered around its head, tumbling across the horizon in a black mass. The wolf shifted forward on its haunches, eyes rolling madly in its head, froth dripped from its maw. Ein saw all the way through the rows and rows of teeth to its throat, a gaping black hole with no end in sight. The force of its voice blew a sheet of snow backwards, colouring the air white.

FATHER! BROTHER! FRIEND! WHY DID YOU LEAVE ME?

The stone in front of Ein split and came crashing down onto the entrance of the passage, blocking it. He halted on all fours, the girl’s hand still in his own. She was looking between him and Garax and the wolf, and at Aeos and Rhinne who were already inside the cavern.

“Shit!” Garax shouted.

“We can still get her through,” Ein yelled back. The wind was deafening. Faenrir continued to wail, a cry of woe and agony.

“I have to sing to it,” the girl said. Her lips were cracked from the wind, her eyes brimming with tears. “I can make it calm again. Please, let me sing!”

“Aeos! Rhinne! Take her!” Ein ignored her pleas and boosted her up the rubble with all his strength, to the small gap above that only she could fit through. Aeos and Rhinne grabbed her from inside the hollow, one hand each, and hauled her through. He heard them land with a scuffle on the other side.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Aeos cried from within. “You’ll die out there!”

“Take her!” Ein screamed back. “Take her down the mountain! Get her to safety, we can’t lose her!”

“You’d better make good on your promise, Ein,” Rhinne cried out. “You told me you’d help me find the Dragonstone, remember. I won’t have you dying before then!”

Ein couldn’t help but smile as Aeos and Rhinne fled with the girl, their footsteps disappearing deep into the mountain. Once they emerged into the pass below, they would be safe.

He turned around, only to find Garax standing face to face with the giant wolf.

FRIEND! FRIEND, YOU HAVE COME BACK! Faenrir’s voice was hysterical. It let out a garbled noise, a cross between a choke, a snarl and a bark. WHY? WHY DID YOU LEAVE ME? WHY HAVE YOU COME BACK?

Garax quietly sheathed his sword.

“I’m sorry, friend,” he said. The wind vanished, and the mountain fell silent. Ein stumbled to his feet, sword drawn, rushing to Garax’s side. What should he do? What could he do, against a demon whose strength rivalled the gods?

The storyteller raised his right hand, the one that was missing, calling Ein to a halt.

“Come on, Faenrir,” Garax murmured. “It’s time to go home now.”

He fell to his hands and knees and began to shake. The mountain held its breath, watching.

The storyteller’s body rippled and expanded, bursting free of the loose-bound clothes he’d been wearing. Garax arched his neck to the sky as it grew longer and longer, his nose extending into a snout, golden scales blossoming across his skin. A tail burst from his behind, a magnificent gold that shone like the sun.

He continued to grow, no longer a man now but a dragon, as big as a horse, as big as a house, as big as the walls of Uldan Keep. His left arm grew longer and thicker, and from the soft underarm a webbed membrane took form—a wing of shining gold. His right arm grew as well, but no wing accompanied it, and it ended in a stump instead of a clawed hand.

Garax lifted his neck from the ground. He was Garax, and yet he was not Garax. The old man was gone and in his place was a great dragon of gold with only one wing—but beneath those scales and the grand, proud visage, the storyteller was still there. It was in the mischievous way that it held its chin, the silent wisdom within its eyes.

Garax lifted his head to the sky and roared, stretching his lone wing behind him. It was a proud roar, a valiant roar, the roar of a magnificent creature who was finally free. Raginrok bowed in respect. The wind parted before it. Even Faenrir was still, awe flickering inside its eyes, deep beneath the madness.

Garax roared, sprouting a pillar of flame from its nostrils. His roar was a song; a story filled with sadness, lament, and regret. There was a boy in that song, and a young pup. The boy fed the pup, and little by little, bit by bit, they became friends.

The boy became a youth, and the pup became a wolf. The youth threw a stick, and the wolf chased it. They pair wandered through the green valleys, chasing flocks of pigeons into the air.

The youth became a man, and the wolf became a direwolf. The man brought home a woman, and the direwolf faded into the background. But it was always there, chasing away the highwaymen at night, the hunters and the poachers, the wild animals that strayed onto the farm.

And finally, the night where it had all changed. The night where the armoured men had come for the wolf, and the wolf had fled. More nights, road after road, wood after wood, moon after lonely moon. The wolf fled, drawing hunters from all over the land. It still remembered the days of light it had shared with the boy, and it longed for those days.

Ein blinked, and the world skipped ahead in time. The wolf was old now, and so large that it was almost a demon. It met the man, and the man fitted the fetters around its feet. And when they tightened, the wolf knew that it had been betrayed, and it was taken by a sadness and an anger so great that its howl shook the world. It clamped its jaws shut, taking the man’s hand off, burning with rage as it was taken away to its cold, lonely prison.

Ein blinked, and he was back on the mountain. The wind picked up again, the clouds circling above the two behemoths as they faced each other. Faenrir drew a deep, shuddering breath, madness taking over once more from the brief moment of clarity. Garax twisted his head around to look at Ein.

-It has been a pleasure.-