It should have been impossible.
The wolf should have been long dead or at least ruined by age, but he looked barely any older than he had at Idrun. There was a terrible vitality to him, an undeniable sense of familiarity, and Eni was struck with the sudden image of the Archon being filed away like a book on a shelf. She shuddered, her skin crawling as she stared down at the wretch, and Neira spoke.
"Pathetic, are they not?"
Her voice filled the chamber, shaking Eni to her core, but the stream of words from the scrawny wolf went on. He was repeating his mantra over and over, his sunken features brightening. "It is promised!" he cried, stumbling forward as he reached for Tin's legs, "It is promised!"
Tears flowed down his cheeks, tracing crazed patterns over his scars, and the words became barely distinguishable as his thin form was racked with sobs. Tin took a step back, his face twisted with revulsion. "What did you do to him?" he asked, and although his eyes were hard as he glared at Neira his voice was uneven.
"His torment is his own doing," she replied, "Even now, he has never seen me nor heard a single word pass my teeth."
A creeping sensation ran down Eni's spine as she felt the awful conviction of the words. The wolf really did seem unable to hear the dragon speak, his entire body quaking as he tried to stop crying. "Even your mind rebels against my presence; this wretch could not bear me," Neira said with absolute finality.
Eni's stomach heaved, the cruel mercy of the dragon like a weight on her chest. She knew Neira was telling the truth; her voice had rung with absolute certainty. She didn't dare imagine why the cultist had been spared, but her throat was too tight to force words through. All her questions died before they could leave her mouth, and Tin was equally frozen, his muzzle turned in a grimace.
The crushing silence was broken only by the panting of the wolf as he composed himself, lifting his head toward Tin even as he kept his eyes downcast.
"I failed you," the wolf said at last, his voice thick with emotion, "But in your mercy and wisdom, you have spared me."
His eyes rose to meet Tin's, feverishly bright as he stumbled on. The wolf reached up to the collar of his rotting robes and pulled sharply, the ancient cloth giving way with a sound like a gasp. He was left wearing only a loincloth, the rest of his body exposed. His chest was just as shorn of fur as his face and limbs, but his flesh was not unblemished. The scars on his face were nothing compared to the ones he had carved into his body, and for the first time Eni felt a horrifying sense of how long his torment had lasted.
His body was like a city map, crisscrossed by marks that jumbled and ran across each other. Many looked ancient, their edges blurred into the surrounding skin, and there were so many that Eni couldn’t have hoped to count them. Among so many faded injuries, one stood out as being impossibly fresh. Unlike the others, the lines that formed it were incredibly sharp, exposing muscle with wounds that somehow did not bleed, and Eni knew the symbol they formed.
Vanargand.
The sigil was unmistakable, and before Eni's eyes it seemed alive as the wolf's chest moved with each breath, his trembling fingers pointing it out. The edges were oddly dark, as though the beautiful light of the Dracrysts couldn’t reach them, and she shuddered as the wolf spoke. "I saw it," he said, his voice reverential, "I… I am weak, my lord. It whispers to me, and at first I was afraid. Oh, for so long I feared what it tells me."
He took in a deep and unsteady breath, and Tin seemed unable to look away even as his fingers clenched so tightly into his palms that Eni could see rivulets of blood dripping to the floor. His eyes had become fathomless pools, glassy and distant, but there could be no doubt that he was hearing everything the Archon had to say. "I know now Idrun was not the first," he said, bowing his head solemnly, "I saw…"
He swallowed, apparently too choked up with emotion to continue, but Tin's reverie broke. "No," he said, the word a harsh croak, "Never before."
"Are you certain, All-King?" Neira interjected smoothly.
The dragon's voice was venomously sweet, as if she was merely concerned, and Tin stumbled back another step. "Surely your memory is not so feeble," she added, "Your loyal servant knows what you did."
She gestured at the sigil etched into the cultist's chest; he shivered as though a cold breeze had passed against his bare flesh but remained silent. "How many massacres went unsolved, oh Slayer of old?" Neira asked, Tin's title sounding woefully weak leaving her mouth, "How many times did you lose control?"
"Once," Tin said, his voice barely above a whisper, "Only once."
There was a wavering edge of uncertainty to his words, and Eni reached out for him, gripping one of his clenched fists. His fingers remained tightly together, so rigid he didn’t seem able to feel her touch, and the Archon on the floor spoke.
"I saw Telifast," he murmured, rocking back and forth, "I watched in Verighast, as they… They didn't run. Not like Intrisar."
The wolf clutched at his ears. "Heard it all," he whispered, his voice breaking and fresh tears leaking from his eyes, "Heard your song in the blood… The darkness made flesh…"
The air in the room grew oppressively thick and stale, Eni's head feeling light as the Archon stumbled on his words. "The Risen Mother will purify you, my lord. She will pull him out!" the wolf said with sudden fierceness, and behind him Neira idly moved one finger.
The Archon collapsed like a marionette with its strings cut, his limbs splaying out limply as his eyes rolled up into his head. The frantic heaving of his chest slowed until he could have almost been asleep, but there was nothing restful about the expression on his face. It was still taut with fear, his eyes moving behind their closed lids. "Not true," Tin said, "I… I would remember. I would know."
"Tell him," Neira said imperiously, her gaze turning to Eni, and the words fell out of her mouth.
"Those villages he named," she blurted, helpless to control herself, "They were all destroyed during the Scourge."
Tin turned to her and Eni forced herself to go on. "But they were monster attacks," she added desperately.
"As Idrun was?" Neira asked idly, her eyes burning, "Besieged by a creature that could never be identified? By one that ate the misborn inhabitants alive, leaving only ashes and sorrow?"
"Yes."
Eni would have given anything to give a different answer, but she couldn't. Tin looked stricken, as though his legs could barely support his own weight, and he collapsed in on himself, his shoulders slumping. "That doesn't mean that Tin did it!" she protested fiercely, but a twisted smile came across Neira's massive face.
"Why do you suppose he made you promise not to use magic to tamper with your own thoughts?" she asked slyly.
Eni gasped, her entire body going rigid and her fingers coming loose from Tin's wrist. "No," she whispered, but her heart was heavy as the terrible implication ran wild through her mind.
She didn't want to believe that Tin could have altered his own memories, purging himself of his regrets, but the dragon's voice was unshakably confident, her words undeniable.
"Liar," Tin said, but there was no strength to his word.
He sounded lost, his uncertainty obvious, and Neira's smile widened marginally. "You'll remember in time," she said soothingly, as though he was a pup awakening from a nightmare, "You always do."
She gestured to take in their surroundings, the glow of the Dracrysts making her scales shift through dazzling colors. "On your last visit, the truth came to you there," she added, pointing out a spot on the floor about three feet to Tin's right.
It was utterly unremarkable, no different than any of the other patches of marble, but a cold chill of certainty still crept through Eni as she inspected it. "This is, however, the first time your gift for me has still been sensate," Neira said, her eyes slowly turning to Eni, "A most remarkable development indeed. Perhaps the one needed for me to do as the whelp said."
Her gaze was terrible, filling Eni's vision, and a question slipped out of her as she was helplessly transfixed. "What's that?" Eni asked.
"Purify the All-King," Neira replied, glaring at Tin, "He devoured Kidu; I will have him back. There are traces of him, are there not?"
She brought one massive finger so close to Tin that for a moment Eni was sure she was about to spear him on her talon, but she didn't touch the wolf. She held the tip immediately above his heart, pulling in a deep breath that filled the chamber with a roar like the ocean against a beach. "But very little is more dangerous than seeing what you wish to see," she murmured, apparently oblivious to Tin's terror.
The wolf was panting for breath, completely unable to move, and at last Neira pulled her arm back. "A new topic, then," she said, and she lifted her palm.
The cultist's eyes snapped open at once as he jerkily pushed himself into a sitting position. He looked about in obvious confusion before he noticed Tin, a manic grin crossing his face. Neira's head turned toward him, and her jaws parted as she spoke.
You are a wolf.
Eni was running through the woods, trees rushing past as her legs pushed her on. She was unbelievably swift, loping along with barely any effort as the ground sped past close under her belly. The leaves overhead were thick and not even the slimmest fraction of the moon filled the night sky, but her sight was wonderfully sharp, every detail perfectly clear as she nimbly raced onward. Her hearing was oddly muted, all the sounds coming from a long ways off, but her nose more than made up for it. The musk of her pack mates was unmistakable despite their bodies being nothing more than grayish blurs at the edges of her vision, flitting among the underbrush in almost total silence. The entire forest was alive with scents, including the one that made her mouth water, strings of saliva breaking free as she panted for breath.
Prey.
The aroma was intoxicating, filling her head with visions of the hunt ending. The rich coppery taste of success was on her tongue, somewhere between memory and desire, and Eni licked her chops. She almost howled with the exquisite delight of it, but she kept her silence. Their approach hadn't been noticed, not yet, and the thick vegetation was giving way to a wide clearing of grass. In mere moments there would be no possible escape, nowhere their quarry could flee, and Eni nosed a branch aside as her eyes at last locked onto her target.
A hare stared back, her orange eyes wide with fear and her white fur gleaming in the faint starlight. Her mouth opened and—
Eni reeled back, nearly falling to the floor as she leaned heavily on her staff. Neira's words hadn't even been directed at her but they had struck like a hammer to her jaw, filling her mind with the sudden sense of what it was to be a wolf. Tin had collapsed to all fours, his limbs trembling as he tried to push himself upright, and he flinched back from the paw she offered him to help him rise.
His eyes were shameful as they met hers, sudden relief filling his expression as she said his name. "Tin?" Eni asked softly, "Are you alright?"
He wheezed for breath, managing to nod, and a sharp scream split the air. Eni whirled, the sound pressing against her ears at an unbearable volume, and she could only watch in horror as the Archon on the floor changed.
The scarred wolf's fur was growing back, thick gray strands pushing their way out of his skin like the work of a hundred thousand seamstresses in perfect harmony. His limbs were flailing wildly, making terrible cracking noises as they twisted and reformed into something bestial. His splayed fingers looked horribly broken, as gnarled as an old tree, and then began to grow shorter and clumsier. He pawed at himself in agony and terror, kicking with legs that were changing as rapidly as his arms. His screams were distorted, turning into whining whimpers, and his bulging eyes grew somehow duller.
Pulsing waves of power vibrated through the space between them, Eni's ears tingling with the sense of it, and all at once she knew what Neira was doing. The magic at the heart of all living things was being torn from him, ripped away by the dragon's overwhelming strength, and the wolf's body was giving way under the onslaught. His ribs cracked and creaked as his chest took on a new shape, the All-King's sigil still visible through his thick fur as it radiated a cold fire, and his loincloth fell away as his hips took on a radically different form.
The wolf spasmed, his back arcing painfully as he yipped and growled, but as the force against Eni's hearing reached a terrible crescendo it all suddenly stopped. For a moment, she could almost see swirls of magic, as thick as a dense fog, before they suddenly rushed toward Tin. "No!" she cried, throwing herself in front of him as visions of Tin being the next to suffer as the wolf had filled her mind, but the power went through her.
For a heartbeat she felt luminous, burning brighter than the sun, but no matter how she strained she couldn't grab at the threads of energy. She turned, dreading what would meet her eyes, but all she saw was Tin. There was no nimbus surrounding him, no awful signs of his body changing, but his breathing had eased.
"Fine," he said, cocking his head to the side in puzzlement as their eyes met.
Even his voice was more robust than it had been as he straightened, mustering some of his old strength as he drew himself to his full height. Eni nodded with relief, placing herself at his side as they looked back at the former Archon.
There was no intelligence in the creature's eyes; he was not nearly as large as a barghest but seemed quite similar, his quadrupedal form graceful and muscular. He shook his body briskly, from the tip of his nose to the end of his tail, and scratched at his side with one rear leg. The lines of his face had changed subtly, his muzzle more powerful but too crude to form words, and the scars marring it felt ghastly. The wolf's nostrils flared as he scented the air, and his ears dropped back as he began picking his way toward Tin and Eni.
His jaws parted as he slavered, his footsteps delicate as he slowly crossed the distance with his savage eyes not leaving Eni. He was panting, his lips curled away from his gleaming teeth, and a low rumbling growl seemed to come from deep within his body. Eni was captivated, staring down at what had once been a thinking being, and a fresh wave of fear made her fur prickle. Neira's power was far above anything she could have even guessed at; the dragon was watching in silence, showing no sign of exertion.
The wolf's hackles rose slowly as he paused, all four feet planted firmly on the floor, and then he lunged. His leap was tremendous, his snarling jaws aimed right for Eni's leg, and as she hefted her staff she knew she would be too slow. She winced even as she started her swing, knowing that in an instant the wicked teeth would be sinking into her ankle, but the expected pain never came.
Tin had drawn his whip-sword so quickly that his body barely seemed to move, its tip lashing out with a fierce crack that echoed against the domed ceiling overhead. His aim was perfect, catching the bestial wolf around his neck, and he jerked the weapon sharply to the side. The wooden chew toy around one wrist clicked against his bracer as he used his arm like a pulley, redirecting the attacker's momentum in an instant.
The former Archon was sent flying to the ground with a yelp, but the thick fur surrounding his neck had spared him from a fatal injury. Brilliantly red runnels stood out against the dark gray of his fur, minor wounds that didn't slow him down for an instant as he got back to his feet. He howled, the sound eerie and desperate, and snarled as he slowly circled.
Tin watched with narrowed eyes, igniting his whip-sword and brandishing the flaming links toward the wolf. The creature had no fear of the fire, his scarred muzzle twisting as he growled, and Eni held her staff in front of her. Her attention never left the beast, but he was impossibly quick, feinting left and then lunging just as she started swinging her weapon. She pulled back, desperate to protect herself, but even as she tried she could tell she was too late.
Tin hadn't been fooled.
The pungent smell of seared flesh filled Eni’s nose, a burning arc cutting through the air like the blaze of the setting sun. The twisted mammal howled in agony as Tin pulled with all his might, and there was a sickening crack as his body hit the floor. Tin's eyes were as hard as rock chips as he glared down at his opponent, and Eni felt a queasy sort of gratitude as she did the same.
The wolf had been nearly cut in half, his body split just below his ribs. The gleaming white of his spine was briefly visible, severed almost all the way through, before his blood began pooling. He twitched feebly, his mouth still open, but there was no ferocity left in his eyes. There was nothing but the dim confusion of a creature who couldn't understand what had happened to him or why his limbs would no longer move, and after a moment even that was gone.
The rapidly spreading crimson puddle formed strange and twisting paths against the smooth marble floor, impossible shapes coming into view and then vanishing again. The glossy stone somehow drank up the blood as though it was a sponge, leaving behind not even the slightest of traces. Eni's stomach roiled as she searched desperately for her composure, but Tin had turned to Neira.
"Why?" he demanded, his voice filled with barely concealed rage.
"You protected her," the dragon replied, her words mellow, "I was curious if you would."
"Curious?" Eni repeated faintly before she was even aware she was going to speak.
"Not all conversations are conducted with words," Neira replied, settling her vast bulk down as her gaze fell upon first Eni and then Tin, "I have an answer you couldn't have given with your pitiful excuse for a language."
"You didn't have to kill him," Eni protested, and the dragon cocked her head to the side in a gesture that felt tauntingly reminiscent of Tin.
"I don't recall swinging the toy," Neira said, glancing at the flaming whip-sword that Tin still brandished and tapping one claw against the floor.
The fire surrounding the blades went out at once, dying before the sound had even finished echoing, and she went on. "But the life of a misborn is of little enough consequence," the dragon added, "Once snuffed out, nothing remains."
Her features grew strangely wistful, as though filled with some secret regret. "You might leave an echo," Neira continued after a moment, "But that is no more you than your shadow is."
She gestured to take in the Dracrysts that surrounded them, each glowing with its own beautiful light. "My comrades are dead," she said, and the word rippled through Eni's mind, conveying the rich possibilities of family in combinations impossible for a mammal, "And yet they await life. That is what it means to be a dragon; we can neither be created nor destroyed."
Neira’s certainty that Kidu somehow still existed despite the All-King devouring him suddenly made a perfect kind of sense, but Eni’s realization was tempered by a more unsettling phrase. "Await life?" Eni asked.
Neira indicated the nearest Dracryst, sweeping her arm in a slow circle as she named it. "Akaran," she said, and a sigil suddenly burned at the heart of it, Eni's head filling with a sense of impossible power.
Furious clouds roiled through her mind, flashing with lightning and roaring with thunder. A tempest that could wipe a city off the face of the world howled its anger, and at its heart was a dragon who called forth galvanic bolts with every sweep of his mighty wings. He was the king of the storm, impossibly vast and utterly unstoppable, and—
"Tempessun," Neira went on before Eni could even recover, and her mind reeled as a new vision took its place.
A typhoon beyond even the most fearful legends of Nihuron made the sea boil, waves crashing higher than mountains as they filled the air with stinging brine. Eni choked as water filled her, hungrily trying to consume her, and framed against the dismal sky was a dragon who swam through the treacherous seas as easily as though they were perfectly calm.
Eni gasped, desperately grasping for her sense of reality, but Neira went mercilessly on, naming each of the Dracrysts in turn. Her mind didn't feel large enough to hold all the others, the Derkomai words slamming through her ears and searing her down to her core. She couldn't think, not as the true sense of each dragon demanded her attention, and when Neira at last stopped speaking Eni was flat on the floor.
Tin helped her up, the wolf looking shaken but not nearly as wrung out as she felt, and Neira was waiting patiently for them. Eni wondered how long had passed; time seemed to move strangely in Invermir, as though it might have been hours or days while their host simply held to her own inscrutable plans. "You understand now," the dragon said without preamble, "Their natures have been perfectly preserved, though eons have passed since their untimely demises."
Neira's voice held no remorse toward her victims, her words perfectly matter of fact. "Their memories may be lost, but that is no matter. When I bring them back into this world, my own will suffice," she continued, a hard edge creeping into her tone, "I will make them understand the depths of how they failed me, and they will beg my forgiveness. Their sincerity will be mine to judge, immutable and beyond any of the crude attempts at falsehoods that misborn attempt. And when I am certain…"
She trailed off, one of her great forelimbs falling to rub against her sleekly scaled belly in a gesture that was horrifyingly familiar.
"What mother would not forgive her own children?" Neira asked.
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