« Side Story | Swords unto Scramjets | Side Story »
There is something muddled in the beggar owl's sensorium, in what transits its trigeminal nerve, speaking of a subtle but significant shift in the magnetosphere.
There is something odd in how the EWT-3's gyroscopes balance during its endless scan of the heavens. An additional weight offsets its designers' expectations. A new blanket muffles even the highest-reaching radar.
Mountainside paths soon slough from stone faces, their tumble mirrored by bridges and docks proofed well against water but never its cousin. Roofs collapse and ditches fill with snow. New fires are stoked in hearths once thought redundant beside the furnace. As a chill envelops civilization, its twin screams through branches made brittle, heralding new winter in wild Cherinmark.
And through that winter did twenty-four tracks repeat near the porous border Pardusht once enforced by woodsaw; not divided into sets of two or four, but twenty-four paws which refused any standard. Different toe counts. Different arrangements. Different weight, and gait, and much more, all attached to a wolf whose graying form had only grown in gorging. Although misaligned so severely, it traced a serpentine path between copse and thicket, hedgerow and hunting lodge, feet always finding proper spots to land. That a single brain controlled such mass was nearly as impressive a feat as the rider managing to perch atop it.
"Galowyn, I'm going to fall off," said Mealworm, cloak caught on winds that swept along the pressure gradient.
The wolf cared not. Its heart had gone feral in this storm, chambers doubling, then tripling, ventricles multiplying to supply excess mass. Biology ran amuck along every bodily path, freed by the force that awoke in this rarest of storms.
"Galowyn, I'm falling!" she shouted. Hands clutched the makeshift harness that better fit a beast of burden than a beast burdened so. Fingers found bunches of fur. Weapons clanked and canned rations clattered. "Galowyn!"
Eleven tons of meat couldn't easily stop even after her snarl cut through the wolfheart's swirling haze. Although his front paws dug into snow, their shapes among the most natural, others continued to scramble—reversing, twisting, tangling, crashing together into a great mound that would be blushing had its cheeks shown.
"We're not in that much of a rush," said Mealworm more calmly than most would manage. She pulled herself free hand by hand, breath steaming far less than his. Passing decades took disparate tolls. Where her body faltered in age, his grew without restraint; where wisdom supposedly stemmed from the great war's experience, reason halved and halved again within dividing lobes.
"Yeah, I figure we've got a right to enjoy crossing Cherinmark for once," she continued once it became clear he could no longer answer through an overcrowded maw. "No gnats buzzing around. No drones buzzing either. If the land wants to sleep, who are we to wake it?"
So they returned to plodding across ridges which had yet to collapse. Across firebreaks burned by defoliant more vicious than the sorcerous flames it held at bay. Through groves where trunks displayed shrapnel's careless passage. Between graves, of course—the bone fields, the shallow trenches, the craters that filled with bodies once digging became impossible.
Galowyn's gray-flecked muzzle turned to sniff at crossroads where Coalition convoys once met unfortunate fates. Mealworm scanned hollows for any hint of new occupants. No threats showed themselves though, not even old mines clicking underfoot. Far off, a party of four adventurers trudged through the snow, robes sodden and armor heavy, no doubt hoping to find relief in one of the tent cities that had sprung up across Cherinmark in recent years. Perhaps they would even find it before frostbite set in.
Mealworm patted Galowyn's flank as he watched, something awry in those glassy eyes. Humor had once shown in the creases around them; concern, when her plans seemed a step past good sense or good taste. Above all else, humanity persisted throughout transformations, regret that their misdeeds could never be undone but needed doing anyway. Whether she found it respectable or grating on any given day, those moral calculations were now replaced by the hunt's lesser math. Who could be run down. Who would stumble first. It didn't suit him in the least.
Smoke shrouded the Carrignaut Rise, thick and oily even as wind blew across Pardusht. Instead of braving its slope's fortifications, they took the switchback path, each segment so steep that Galowyn's manifold paws struggled to find purchase. Its own fortifications ranged from pillbox to excavated strong point, but none posed a threat when the defenders were touched by winter worse than most. Their bodies forgot themselves among the sleet. Joints reversed without acclimation. Skulls compressed and elongated heedless of what they were meant to protect. Cursework screamed through their genes, and its hosts screamed too as Galowyn climbed past, the second son of a second line returning to his family's mountaintop seat.
A few guards posted outside the eastern gate comported themselves better, perhaps having been granted access to baser secrets. Surviving the wolfheart's call gained them nothing though. Convulsing, crawling, their bodies behaved more like sludge than flesh, successfully contained but no more coherent for it. What could they do to stop Galowyn from slamming himself against the blackwood gate again and again? Forehead first, as Mealworm tugged at fur. Shoulder next, as she shouted words lost to his ears.
"Galowyn!" came his name again. Came the binding stake. She rolled off his back and stalked forward, yanking on a tuft that dripped runoff from split gums. "I told you that we're doing this right if we're doing it at all, didn't I? If I've got the hard role, you can't let the wolf do whatever it wants just because it's easier." A steaming breath rolled across her face. "Got it, soldier? I want to hear a yes, sir!"
His yap almost sounded like it too.
Plastique blew the gate's ancient lock apart, itself a relic of different times beset by different enemies. One half swung open as Mealworm shot each guard in their malformed skulls. Better than letting them rupture whenever changes became unbearable. Twenty-four paws again swept them forward, this time along streets frozen over, taking corners that barely accommodated his surging course. There were other bodies here, children of the children of the pack who suffered a spell diluted across generations without care for its ultimate effect.
The castle guards were indoctrinated somewhat better than their external counterparts—transformation not lethal yet incomplete, retaining too much humanity to have attained knighthood in the Carrignaut tradition. Walking on two legs was useless in the warfare it envisioned even if thumbs had some minor utility. "Halt!" barked one of six as they leveled spears in Galowyn's direction.
But, as on the hillside, there was no stopping such momentum even if its source was willing. He collided with one, barreling over their redoubled, still-incomparable form even after a spear struck true. Paws again pounded away on stair and pelt. Galowyn's maw tore through another's breastplate, flinging them aside as Mealworm finally managed to undo the strap keeping her CALO-AX in place. Gunmetal was warm where it had absorbed his rolling heat, warming further as she fired a three-round burst that pierced armor but merely staggered flesh. Galowyn's own flesh surged through before they recovered. Pouncing. Goring. Tearing out everything that should be inside, including the lead she lodged there, and leaving not a single guard to stop his rummage through entrails.
While local royalty preferred high, airy towers in the elvish tradition, their warriors dug dens instead. Galowyn compressed his mass through tunnels that had seemed endless as a barefoot child who could only escape beatings for so long. Training rooms where that abuse was disguised, cells where secrets were imparted, these places might be traumatic if considered for long, but his transit had become too liquid for that. He crashed down stairwells as a waterfall might, descending, descending, ever descending toward the contagion's source.
That his family's truest warriors barred the way made no difference. They knew the words, drank the elixir, made the oath, thrust the blade, and yet their lupine forms paled before a mass that spent years prowling the Tower Carved from Night. Although trained in techniques never revealed to Galowyn, they hadn't gorged as he gorged or grown as he grew. They believed too earnestly in this world's mysteries, knowing far less than what Mealworm had shown him of the other's calculated violence. And moreover, they were weak. Brittle. They broke, crying beneath his jaw's clench, ceasing only when her rifle drilled between orbital bonemass.
Both beast and rider were shivering by the time they reached the castle's nadir. Frost brushed every stone there thanks to a column of ice rising from floor to domed ceiling; at its core, the fetal ur-wolf, barely formed despite its massive size, content in its curl despite the hollow blades thrust inward.
Lord Carrignaut circled the pillar while lapping at the gemstone droplets budding on each pommel. His form grew around a heart freshly nurtured by bondmilk, legs outnumbering Galowyn's own and clarifying with each sip. No malformed flesh for the apex of old Pardusht's might. No legs that bent wrong or paws which couldn't support muscle above. His was the centipede's crawl, the millipede's flow, body curling and layering upon itself as he supped at a table which killed countless aspirants. Only when the last droplet was licked clean did those eyes turn toward them.
"A nephew," said the mouth within its maw, human teeth and tongue enunciating even as his bestial shell panted. "Returned at last. Beckoned by the frigid howl." Eyes opened between the fangs, feverish compared to the black glass outside. "But weak. Weak as all our scattered kin. Mastered by heritage instead of mastering it."
And those words were wasted on Galowyn too. Although he snarled, it merely acknowledged scorn's shape instead of confronting its meaning. Banter was thus left to Mealworm, and that was a younger woman's game. Age instead brought an appreciation for incendiaries. The grenades she pulled from his harness sparked and sputtered in hand, contents distilled from local fauna, and they flared brighter than any import when arcing across the dim chamber.
Carrignaut screeched as burning fur swathed all in smoke. Through it swept claws, parting curtains that reformed at once. Through it came teeth and lead and a bayonet which struggled to part hide half as well. Billowing clouds only thickened, fire spreading on that enormous beast as flammable gel coated fur, then onto the second, smaller creature as their grappling dragged on.
"Pitiful," snarled the mouth internal as surrounding fangs bit into Galowyn's neck, casting Mealworm aside with one thrash.
"Pitiful," he repeated while stomping on weaker limbs.
"Pitiful!" Up Carrignaut reared, scattering smoke from ember-bright fur as his nephew fell to the floor. "This winter is mine. These lands will be mine. From sea, to Cherin's Hubris, to sea again. All will know themselves wolf or meat. As it should be. As it should be!"
Perhaps a taste for banter returned with age. A taste for knotweed resin didn't, proven as Mealworm's next grenade flew between rows of teeth. With a target so gaping, so ravenous, it was nearly impossible to miss. New clouds hissed out as Carrignaut screamed through both mouths, venting all the gas he could to no avail. Galowyn helped by punching new holes in that sinuous neck. Jaws clamped tight as he crawled up on shattered legs, trembling and bleeding himself, refusing to let go despite renewed thrashing.
They burned bright by then, fire catching fat accumulated through rancid meals on one side and royal feasts on the other. It found its way under bone, into hollows, stirred by lungs that heaved throughout the struggle until flames illuminated skeletons from within. Shadow plays could almost be seen there. Traced by vein and tendon, a brand of haruspicy formed without any present to divine its meaning. Shadows played in Galowyn's marble eyes as well, fleeting remnants that dispersed as their darting became more pained, more feral, a state that carried him back down with his uncle. One final twist brought Carrignaut's neck beyond its breaking point. No number of excess organs could save him from that. Only one role remained for the body left behind, for its meat now clearly demarcated from wolf: to be gorged upon too.
Which left the harder role to Mealworm. She had sworn as much in the past, especially after other promises fell short, but helping secure his revenge against distorted traditions brought her no joy. After all, it was those distortions that linked them in the first place. Careful not to express malice or weakness, she loaded her pistol with a different magazine. Two cycled rounds brought one in particular to the fore. Equally neutral steps shrank the distance between herself and Galowyn—or, not Galowyn, but the thing he always feared becoming—as tumorous instinct drove it to crack bones, slurp marrow, neither slowing nor allowing her into a blind spot. Breathing deep for what might be the last time, she raised her gun.
It reacted even faster than expected, swallowing her arm before she could pull the trigger. Teeth sank just below Mealworm's shoulder. Although driven deep, their severing didn't prevent a final twitch from shooting the priceless anti-hex out through its nape. The injury wouldn't stop further chewing, not even close, but it wasn't intended to either.
At this range, her bullet retained enough power to pierce the column of ice untouched by immolated beasts. Mealworm vanished beneath blood-sodden fur without seeing how etchings glowed bright upon contact with the fetal cub frozen at its center. How four eyes closed, restful at last, or how spurts of bondmilk ran from new fissures. She had no way to witness hundreds of peaceful deaths granted on the rise above—hearts stopping without magick to sustain the pulse, fur falling away to reveal stilled flesh beneath. Perhaps some even survived its retreat. Righting errant forms would allow them to face the future properly, untroubled by conscription, corruption, or consumption at last.
Whether aided or ailed in that, none needed to see her grieve beneath the body of a friend who hadn't been himself for quite some time.
« Side Story | Swords unto Scramjets | Side Story »