Something in his eyes firms. He nods. He pulls the door open. He has no idea what the world looks like from her eyes. If she's seen electric lighting before. If elevators make any sense to her at all, or if it feels a little like teleportation, like magic. The doors close, the doors open. The world changes.
Glad you're feeling better, the night receptionist says as she sees Danicka. Lukas mutters something about going out to get some food, hungry, etcetera. The night is chilly, a handful of degrees above freezing, and the wind hits them in the face as they exit the revolving doors. Lukas doesn't need to get his bearings this time, and neither does Red Vengeance. They move in the direction of the fountain together.
"If there's anything you need to tell me," he says as they walk, "anything I should know, anything that might help us -- tell me now."
Red VengeanceIn another life, he was her Alpha. As they walk out into the hall, Red Vengeance strides with a dogged sense of purpose that is as focused as a bloodhound. If the sconces strike her as too bright, if the buzzing of electricity surprises her, she does not lift her head or her eyes from what is ahead. She has waited a long time. Silver Warning has been deathless for Christ knows how many reincarnations Lukas has been free to go through. She all but stomps as she walks, still figuring out the length of Danicka's legs -- or simply not entirely comfortable in a human body after so much time, and with so much rage.
But she defers to him. When the night receptionist speaks to her, her head lifts, her eyes pinning on the woman, who flutters a bit, faced with another shockwave of rage that was not there during any of the other nights the couple has stayed with them. Red sniffs the air as Lukas mutters about food, then follows him out onto the street. Outside, she walks a step -- just one step -- ahead of him, hardly even blinking as she walks at a rapid clip toward the ancient fountain.
As they go, she fills in the pieces of a story he heard so long ago that even in this life he has almost forgotten the details.
Their quest was spurred by one of White Vision's prophecies, she tells him. They did not go seeking some great weapon, though, no lost klaive or legendary fetish. They sought wisdom: her second sight had shown her a place where a great secret was held like a treasure in the hands of a neutral, mercurial spirit. Every wolf that could find her would be tested. Every wolf that passed that test would be granted an insight that could help them, in their way, turn the tide of the war.
They told elders about it and were dismissed. There were no tales of such a thing, no songs, no living creature who had ever even heard of it before. No such place. No such spirit. No such insight.
The pack trusted their sister over their elders, though. Her prophesies had never misled them. So for months, Red tells him as they walk, they searched for this place. They walked every moonbridge they could find, talked to every spirit and Theurge and long-runner. They even spoke to human wizards and searched for relics of the fey to help guide them. They eliminated every possibility they could. They induced visions in rituals with their sister, even though every time she was overtaken by her oracular gift she went blind for hours
or days.
Eventually they found the path, and the doorway, though even then they were not entirely sure where it led. Not, Red tells him, to the deep umbra. Not even to a recognized realm. It was not a piece of the underworld but, it appeared, something constructed by the entity herself. She appeared to them as a human woman, with golden skin covered by a thin layer of downy fur and slanted, lidless eyes. Her hair was long and silver, her ears pointed and tufted at the ends like those of a lynx. Her fingertips and toes ended in miniscule claws, and she wore a voluminous white robe.
They found her reclining on a throne, even.
She asked them who they were, what they had come for, and how they had found their way to her. When they had answered her, she explained to them her rules: a simple test, not of their strength or honor, but their wisdom. They would each come to her alone. If they succeeded, she would grant them their truth, their secret, their insight that could help them somehow to overturn the tide of the war. If they failed, she warned them then and there,
they would not be permitted to return. They would never leave her realm, neither alive nor dead.
Red Vengeance's jaw is set, hard and angry, as they approach the fountain. "White Vision went first. She would not tell us what she had been told, or how she had been tested. She said it could not work that way. Then you followed, and said much the same thing when you emerged." She is frowning. She looks to him. "I will tell you now how she tested us: all she asked was why." Red shakes her head. "Only that word, nothing more. Staring at me, staring into the pit of my soul, leaving me alone with that word."
Her eyes move to the gates around the fountain, staring without seeing it for several long moments. Eventually she exhales harshly through her nostrils.
"Silver Warning never emerged from her chamber, though. We waited. But eventually we began to pace, to howl. We began to tear the place apart to find him. Then she came and faced us." Red's eyes close, tightly and suddenly. "She is no mere spirit. She knew of our weakness to silver and conjured flames that turned into the stuff, burning off our flesh and then covering us in silver that molded to our limbs. It seemed to drain her, though, at least her magic. She was still strong, though, and her claws and teeth were sharp enough." Her eyes open again.
They are haunted.
"We thought she had killed him. I would have died to avenge him, and to ensure that at least two of us would take the wisdom we had earned back to our world, use it against the Wyrm."
Her voice falls, her eyes unseeing again. "I did die," she whispers, as dazed as Danicka sounded earlier when they passed by this selfsame fountain. "But his soul was not waiting to run with me to the Homelands. It was the two of you who told me, not so long after, that he was still alive. And still waiting." Her throat moves. Her voice hardly rises.
"It was all for nothing."
Black WindThere are thoughts in Lukas's mind that he does not voice. Perhaps in that previous lifetime he would have hid nothing from Red Vengeance, but he is a different person now. He does not remember that life. He does not remember her. Not really. He recognizes her, the same way his soul recognized Danicka the moment he saw her, but --
he doesn't know her now. He doesn't know Silver Warning, either. And the thoughts he has are unkind; perhaps even cruel. Certainly, they are touched with a measure of ruthlessness:
that perhaps if Silver Warning did not return, he did not deserve to return. He knew the price of failure, and then he failed.
Still; when Red Vengeance says it was for nothing, he turns toward her. There's something sharp in the swing of his head. "You passed the test," he says. "The wisdom she gave you: was it really worth nothing?"
Red Vengeance"If I had lived, no," Red says, almost immediately, turning to face him, "but I didn't. None of us did. We all failed."
She walks over to the grate around the fountain, the ornate iron that is almost as old as the fountain itself, and grabs it with both hands. The retelling of a story she has played over and over in her mind for all these interminable years has set her on edge, sent grief and impatience spiraling into rage, and despite the people around, despite the body she's in, she
clenches her fists,
tightens her shoulders,
and yanks one wall of the grate open. Like turning the page of a book.
Black WindHe stops her. He puts his hand on her shoulder as her muscles are tightening in anticipation of work, of violence. The feel of her jars him. The body is the same, but the inhabitant is different. No; he corrects himself. The body isn't even the same. Danicka was never this strong. She never could shift.
Lukas's hand doesn't snatch away as though burnt, though. It stays where it is, firm, warm, perhaps intolerably physical after so long without a body.
"You're here now," he says, "and your memory is intact. I'm here. White Vision's spirit is here ... sleeping, as you said. And we're going to find Silver Warning. None of us have failed. We just haven't finished yet."
He lets her go, then. And if she pulls the grate open, peels it back like opening a book, he lets her.
Red VengeanceThey are not enemies. She calls him brother like she means it, like it doesn't matter if he remembers or not. She has remembered for all of them. When he touches her, she does not snarl or bite at him, but turns her head. The rage in her is well-contained, just as elegant as her raw strength, her fluid shifting. This is the first time he has touched her, though, rather than merely tolerated her touch.
The first time she saw him, she moved to embrace him.
They are not enemies.
He tells her they didn't fail. They just haven't finished. And something twists in her like a knife, the expression not unlike Danicka's tears of joy comingled with loss upon driving away from a family that is a part of her, loves her, does not hurt her. Forgiveness and comfort can be as cauterizing as hot iron on a wound.
Red says nothing to him, though. She pulls the grate out of their way. Horns honk, people begin shouting, but they matter as little to her as electric lights, elevators, all the modern madness she is surrounded by: she has a duty. And to fulfill it, she reaches back, grabs Lukas's hand, and with her other, lays her fingertips on the eyes of the lion carved into the base.
The world around them shudders, and Red's hand only tightens on his. She keeps her fingers planted firmly over the lion's eyes as its mouth opens, its teeth bared, a roar beginning to rumble from beneath. The fountain grows larger, the world smaller. The fountain grows brighter, sharper, the edges clearer, as the world fades into shadows and mist. That roar is growing louder, a thunder of defiance.
"Put your hand in its mouth," Red says suddenly, sharply. "Now!"
Black WindBriefly, madly, Lukas wonders how much of this the bypassers see. Do they see it? Do they see how easily this woman, this slight, elegant blonde reaches out and shreds metal like paper? Do they see the surreal expansion of stone and water, the warping of granite, the lion roaring:
does she see it? He looks at his companion, this woman that looks like his mate but is not his mate at all. Put your hand in its mouth! she says, and he recalls that myth, that one Fenrir myth everyone knows, Tyr and the binding of the wolf, the sacrifice you make to control the monster in yourself. That's not what the Fenrir got out of it, but that's what Lukas always heard in that story. He draws a quick breath and he doesn't hesitate. He strips his glove off, puts his hand with fingers spread into the lion's mouth.
This is going to hurt, he thinks, and -- never one to be passive -- grasps the lower jaw of the stone animal as firmly as Red grasps his other hand.
Red VengeanceBare skin. Gloves off.
This is going to hurt, he thinks, feeling the wet of the lion's tongue, the sharpness and length of the teeth that have grown to full-size. When he grips the lion's lower jaw, he feels fur against his palm.
The roar turns into a low rumble, a purr almost, then a grunt. That enormous tongue lolls over his fingers, the lion going gentle and benevolent. Not as though tamed. No: as though accepting his surrender. The lion in the mists with them nuzzles against his palm, releasing his hand. Red releases his eyes, and the beast gives a great yawn before turning its great body around, loping slowly into the world that has become little more than fog around them.
"Come," Red says, never once releasing his hand. She begins following the lion, talking to Lukas as they go: "In the time I have had to think of it, I have come to believe that the being that riddled us was once a human will-worker that became... something else. Fashioned herself after a Sphinx, with all the hubris of any mortal wizard. Even the doorway," she says, keeping her eyes on the lion, whose tail slowly sways behind it. "Did you see what we had to do just to get in?"
Black WindIt's not stone at all. It's warm, the tongue scratchy beneath his palm. It licks him, and then it turns on those huge, velvet paws. A lion never lopes; it is never light on its feet. Powerful, deliberate, lazy, it strides away from them.
They follow. Lukas looks at his hand, bemused, then after the lion. There's a faint slick of leonine saliva there, which he wipes away on the front of his coat. "I thought it'd take my hand as a price," he admits. "I've heard of will-workers, but I've never met one." Pause. "In this lifetime, anyway."
Red's eyes are on the lion. Lukas, his hand still firm on his once-sister's, allows himself to look around. He tries to catch some sense of the landscape, the terrain; where they are. How far, how deep.
Red VengeanceMist surrounds them, even underfoot. They could be walking on air or stone. They could still be in Prague. They could be falling, even as they walk, safe somehow from any sense of wind or gravity. Red snorts: "The last one you met --"
Stops there. Frowns, and tugs him forward a bit faster. "The last one Black Wind met, he killed." Her eyebrows quirk, she tips her head in the admiration of a peer. "Creatively.
"The lion must be dominated by one hand and appeased with another. Either alone will get you torn to pieces. The tension between the two, at once, opens the doorway," Red explains. "It seems very balanced, unless you think more about it." And what has she had, but time to think? "Those who failed, no matter which element they missed, lost a hand."
Black WindThe laughs Lukas gives is dry, and without much in the way of mirth. "Did he deserve it?"
He means the will-worker. He means death -- creative or otherwise. Perhaps the wolf he used to be would have never asked such a thing. He used to be a half moon. Law, punishment and retribution were what he said it was.
Red VengeanceRed cannot risk taking her eyes off the lion, but there's a twitch that seems as though she might want to, just then. "He trespassed on our territory," is all she says of that.
They come upon a pair of marble pillars. Out of nowhere, their roots and their tops hidden by the mist. Between them is the gate of heaven as it is often personified in popular art: all filigree and gold, taller than a giant. Worked into the gate is the image of an eagle, talons forward, wings spread wide. Were it real, its feathers would be the length of Lukas's forearm. The lion circles in front of them, yawns, then flops down beside one pillar, tail twitching, watching them lazily.
"This gate," Red tells him, "I never understood. I knew, the first time, that it was my duty to dominate the lion and White Vision's to appease it, but this gate... you and Silver Warning opened it. You stood like this," she says, still gripping his hand and moving to his side, their arms stretched between them. She raises her other hand and opens her palm in front of -- but not yet touching -- the talons of the eagle. "And then the eagle gripped your hands, dug into them. Something happened as you both bled, and it began to turn to flesh and bone and feather. Then it shrank smaller, until it was a sparrow held between your palms. You let it go, and there was no more gate barring the way."
She frowns deeply. "You said the gate was looking for unity. Silver Warning said it was looking for truth." Her nostrils flare: another remembered pain. "You argued about it until we met the thing that made this place. I stopped listening rather quickly."
Her head turns; she looks up at him. His wife is so much smaller than he is. "I am sorry, Alpha. I do not know for certain how we will pass through."
