A lion. An eagle. A sphinx. Lukas believes Red Vengeance when she postulates that the creator of this realm was once a human will-worker. These are constructs of human myth; fantastic creatures that held prominence in the symbolism of many cultures. He wonders what else awaits them. Manticores? Dragons? Griffins?
Alpha, she calls him. He looks at her, a quick turn of his head, a quick furrow of his brow. Something in him aches. I am not your Alpha, he wants to say. You do not belong here anymore, and I will miss you when you are gone.
The pain is sharper, there at the end. He turns away again to face the eagle gate. His hand flexes against hers. Then he murmurs: "Let's do as we did once, then. Grip the talons."
-- and so he does.
Red Vengeance[Important questions! The difference between 'think' and 'feel' matters, too!
1. What is at the forefront of Lukas's mind when he takes the talon?
2. What does he think about himself in the midst of that act?
3. Why is he here (in this place specifically, not like 'in the universe')?
4. How does he feel about Red standing beside him?]
Black Wind[1. Apprehension, determination. He's not sure exactly what's going to happen here. He wants to get through this; he wants to finish what he started lifetimes ago; he wants, most of all, to get Danicka back.
2. Nothing very specific. A certain level of self-sacrifice: if pain and blood is what it takes to get through, so be it.
3. He wants to get Danicka back. More than anything else, this is what drives him right now. He 'knows' he has a certain responsibility to finish what his past life started, and he even wants to do that -- but getting his mate back is a huge, preoccupying impetus at the moment.
4. Mixed. Some part of him feels indebted to her and guilty. After all, he's gone on to live who knows how many other lives, finding his soulmate more often than not (he presumes), while she's just WAITED FOR HIM. FOR EONS. Another part feel very bad for her -- not just because of the waiting, but because as the end of all this she's going to forget it ever happened and just be reborn. And some part of him still can't help but resent that she's just taken over his mate's body like this, no matter what she says about past lives and oaths taken. He's pretty sure in THIS life, she doesn't exactly have Danicka's consent.]
Red VengeanceShe forgets he isn't a Philodox anymore. Jumps when he steps forward to reach for the eagle's talon, moving faster to take the eagle's grip at the same time he does. Their fingers lace with cool gold, thick bars of it that end in artistic renderings of claws. They do not stay artistic very long. They do not stay renderings for long. As promised, the gold begins to creak, begins to curl forward. The tips of those claws -- thankfully made of gold and not of silver -- tap against the backs of their hands.
Red says what he thought earlier, muttered under her breath: "This is going to hurt."
At their widest, the eagle's talons have the diameter of silver dollars. 'Hurt' is putting it mildly. As the individual feathers begin to shudder and peel outward from the frame of the gate, as the two-dimensional eagle's beak begins to turn outward and open in a shriek, those talons dig suddenly and sharply into -- then through -- Lukas's hand. Shred it open. Without a few connective tissues in between the claws, without the claws themselves, his hand would be so many disconnected pieces danging from a stump.
Red is shifting her arm to try and compensate, biting back howls of pain, but not for long. They turn to shrieks. Screams.
In Danicka's voice. Danicka's voice. Not Red-in-Danicka's. Danicka.
"Lukáš!" she starts crying, still holding his hand though she is crumpling, her body no longer supporting its own weight, held up by where the eagle grips her and where she still grips his hand. While she. Screams. His name.
Black Wind[I DON'T CARE IF THE MOON IS PRACTICALLY NEW.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN8 (3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Black WindLukas doesn't even try to hold back. He bellows as the talons clench -- first through clenched teeth, and then open-throated, open-lunged roars of agony. Some detached part of him sees the damage, marvels at the surgical cleanness of the destruction, and then --
and then Danicka starts screaming.
He is not a Philodox anymore. Even the Philodox he would might have been driven beyond the brink by this. The Ahroun he is now, with that savage beast of Rage always so tenuously and carefully reigned in his breast, quite simply
loses his shit.
He's suddenly half again as tall. There's black fur bursting through the seams of his splitting clothing. That delicate gold chain he wore around his neck bursts asunder; his wife's wedding ring pings off somewhere. He has claws of his own now. He has hot flesh and thick blood, and both are pouring around those talons, his body trying to reknit itself even as he lets go his mate's hand, grasps the eagle by its feathered throat. Ears pinned, eyes glaring, his jaws unhinge and he blasts a raw roar in the eagle's face. Tries to tear it off the gate. Tries to rip that offending taloned claw off like a drumstick off a chicken.
Red VengeanceDanicka's hand is not healing. It is, however, trying to. She is screaming with her own voice, screaming his name and then wordless shrieks of pain, but that hand of hers is trying desperately to grow fur, to heal, to withstand the damage that Red knew she could take. He lets her go as she's changing, and Danicka -- terrified of this form he takes in a way she is scared of nothing else on earth -- doesn't even seem to notice. She goes to the ground as he goes after the eagle.
It meets him. Is pulling its wings out, growing from two dimensions into three, made of gold that feels like steel. It shrieks right back to his roar.
Danicka's body hits the ground, her right hand a grisly, twitching mess. She is still conscious, eyes rolling back and moaning. Not that he can hear it. The eagle is free of its pillars, came free just as he was letting go of Danicka's hand and yanking his own hand out of its talon, but it doesn't shrink. It doesn't turn into a sparrow. Its talons come toward his chest, ready to open him up.
Red Vengeance[correction: lukas's hand is still caught with the talon]
Black WindThere is no time to think. He can't think anyway -- his mind is a roar, empty and furious. The talons reach for his heart. He reacts: not by throwing the eagle back, not by biting at its head, but by
intercepting that grasping talon with his own handpaw: both his hands caught in its pitiless grip now.
Red VengeanceTo one side, Lukas may -- or may not, given what he's facing -- be aware of what happens to Danicka then. Her right hand is elongated from those enormous wounds, blood leeching out of her only to vanish in the mists beneath them. But curled on her side, her form melts. The clothes he found for her, to keep her warm, to keep her protected when he didn't know that Red Vengeance could shift from within her, do not so much tear or shred off of her as simply vanish. In moments she is a small, black-furred wolf, and her right forepaw is slowly knitting itself back together, the tide of blood stemming, the breathing of the limp figure returning to normal.
Hard to see, with bars of gold shaped like wings beating all around him, shrieking in midair. Hard to notice, as instead of letting the eagle cut open his chest and expose his heart, Lukas grabs its other talon. As with the first, it digs in instantly. Those talons still stained with Danicka's blood dig into his palm and the back of his hand, splitting his handpaws with enormous holes.
He sees into -- and through -- the sculpted eyes of the golden eagle. And he remembers the last time he was here.
He and Silver Warning never really got along. They were rivals from the day they met, both living under the roof of the same mentor, Ice Cloud. Silver Warning -- though he was not called that yet -- was so much softer, so much more malleable. He did things for their mentor's approval, not because they were right. He put up with the greatest fools among the other cubs, laughed at the stupidest stories. No one seemed to see his weakness or care for it. He made them weaker in that way.
Even Ice Cloud told Black Wind to try and be more like Silver Warning. Reach out to the other cubs, who might one day be his packmates. He told him not to be so cold, so isolated. Resentment closed his ears. Everyone preferred Silver Warning: so be it. And no matter, either. In the end, the truth would win out and the battle would need to be led -- and won. It wouldn't matter then who was most liked.
They went through their Rite of Passage together. Red Vengeance was with them, hot-tempered and wild. She disliked Silver Warning, too. Nearly bit his head off -- quite literally -- the first time he tried to command her. She was trying to lead the whole mess. It didn't work very well: their first task involved a spirit that none of them could talk to. It didn't respond to Black Wind's intimidation and shied from Red Vengeance's wrath. Silver Warning pantomimed to it, prostrated himself to it, and won it over.
He said something to Red Vengeance then, when she mocked him for submitting to a small, weak spirit, and it caught Black Wind's ear. He'd never heard that sharpness in his almost-brother's voice before. He'd never heard Silver Warning say anything like that: I am willing to do what it takes for the good of us all, even if it is my own glory that must be laid down. Even if I am thought a fool, even if no songs are sung of my name when I die. Can you say the same?
Red Vengeance was calmer after that. She took his words to heart. When they spoke, she listened. When a threat came to them, she did not lunge at it with no mind for the two half-moons but stepped in front of them to take the brunt of the attack. And Black Wind replayed those words in his mind over and over as they went on.
The riddle of the bridge -- what boards to step on, which to avoid, the counting game and the symbols that had to be deciphered -- was where both of them realized that Black Wind's silence and stoicism were not stupidity, though perhaps a bit of snobbery. He was not clever in the agile, friendly way that Silver Warning was but methodical. He would not take a step -- or allow them to take a step -- until he was certain he was right. And when it came down to it, when he was not completely sure, he risked his own life rather than let either of them face potential failure or death on his word.
By the end of the rite, their leader had emerged. Red Vengeance made him take risks. Silver Warning made him connected. And he made both of them safe, made both of them wise. They were brothers and sister after that. It was years before they adopted White Vision into their pack, the sin-born, often-blind, half-mad Theurge who loped alongside them on three well-formed hind legs compensating for the withered, shortened arm she had been born with. Red resisted that decision. Silver Warning was wary. Black Wind blew up at them for their judgement. Hadn't they despised one another at first? Hadn't they refused to see each other's strengths when they were young? He called them on their faults, their pride, and
when White Vision overheard the tail end of his rant, she laughed. All say you proud as Fang. Say Warning gentle-heart one, Red loud-voice one. You loud voice, gentle heart, humble as earth. Will not tell. None listen what I tell! And laughed and laughed, a wheezy and hiccuping sound in lupus, as she licked his hand. It made him feel simultaneously three inches tall and warmer than he'd ever been in his life. She never did tell, though. Spoke in riddles if she had to, but nothing ever said to or around White Vision was ever repeated outside of the pack.
Ranks later, years later, battlescars later, he and Silver Warning were still arguing. They argued about the nature of justice and whether it was more important than the law. They debated the litany for hours at a time, never quite playing the Ragabash to each other, but sometimes coming quite close. Black Wind never named a Beta among his pack, for each of them was necessary to him in some vital way, but Red and Vision both knew whose word he listened most closely to. If Warning ever questioned his judgement, it gave him pause in a way a word from Red or Vision never quite did. Warning knew him best. Warning had been his brother since they were ...god. Eight, by human counting? Maybe younger. And though they got into fights that sometimes left blood staining the dirt, for all their disagreements and differences, he trusted Silver Warning to keep him from becoming a monster.
When Red died because she could not help but try to save their brother, Black Wind was calling at her to stop, STOP! She died in a flash, died with her flesh crawling with silver. He was biting White Vision's hind legs as she ran ahead of him, snapping at her to run. His soul was sick. He felt like he would like to spit his own heart out rather than feel it breaking. Red a lump of dead flesh behind him, Silver Warning abandoned. When he died and rage took him, lifted him up and made him fight again, some part of him was grateful. When his spirit departed his body, he thought:
at least I don't have to live without them very long.
at least one of them will live a little longer.
But he couldn't abandon her in the homelands. Red's soul howled at a moon larger than a house in the ever-storming sky. Grief was twisting her spirit into something unrecognizable. He couldn't leave her like that. Not alone. So he stayed. He waited with her, made her chase spirit-prey with him, made her commune with the storm. But her most recent life had been an Ahroun, just as his most recent life had been an Alpha; she could not bear being the first to die, and to have not managed to save anyone.
Vision, he told her, licking at her ear in lupus, trying to comfort his sister. Vision lived. She did.
For a while. It was not very long before their sister's spirit joined them. And they made their oaths. Black Wind resisted: they should follow nature. They should let themselves be reborn. But with both of them in agreement, both of them demanding... his own guilt, his own grief, did not let him say no. Maybe his greatest failure as an Alpha, in all that time, was not telling them no. His spirit was tired. He had fought the natural cycle too long already. So he oathed.
One of them would stay, to remember the path. White Vision volunteered. Red refused: she did not want to forget. And White Vision had already lived a brutal enough life. She had earned a fresh start, a new body, an unfettered heart. All she asked was that Vision and Wind find each other. If you find each other, she believed, you will come back and find me again. You will. Then we will all find our brother, and all of us will be free.
That is the last memory he has as Black Wind. White Vision's suffering finally coming to an end. Red Vengeance's desperately optimistic faith. And for the first time since he was a child, Silver Warning's voice too far away to be heard.
His hands are pain. There's no sense of flesh or bone or reality at the ends of his wrists: only pain, turning his vision into a brilliant haze. The eagle clutches his hands as its wings
slowly
stop
beating.
It hangs in the air, seemingly lifeless, until a voice speaks from, apparently, the gold itself:
WHERE IS YOUR PACK
Black WindLukas,
Wyrmbreaker, Cold Victory, Black Wind,
does not know how to answer that. His memory is split right down the middle. Two lifetimes echo suddenly in his mind. He remembers it in an incapacitating flash, who he was superimposed on who he is. The pack that was and the pack that is. The people they were; the man he is now. The way he knew them then. The way he knows only one of them now, because the other two were lost, are lost, have been gone from him so long that he forgot how much his spirit needed them.
WHERE IS YOUR PACK, thunders the voice of metal itself: like glory and poison, the essence of gold. His world is pain, and not merely because his hands are shredded apart. He is an Ahroun in this lifetime. He's felt so much worse than this. He was an Alpha that lost his pack in a previous lifetime, and that was so much worse than the ruin of his hands: that was a pain livid and alive, and it seizes him now as violently as it had the first time, because once again it was new to his experience. The question is demanded of him, and he answers from the unthinking core of his being:
"My pack cannot stand with me here!"
It is the only intersection of truth. He and Silver Warning argued about that once, lifetimes ago. What did the eagle seek, unity or the truth? He hopes Silver was right after all:
"I stand for my pack!"
Red VengeanceThe eagle, motionless in midair now, does not alter.
WHERE IS YOUR PACK
Black WindHis teeth bare. He grips the talons, shakes the eagles with sheer frustration, succeeds only in shredding the fine meat between his metacarpals.
"Chicago," he spits the word out. "San Diego. Here beside me. Slumbering in her own body. Trapped by your mistress."
Red VengeanceThere is no sense that he has given the right answer, the wrong answer, that the eagle is pleased or displeased, that it is threatening him or granting him mercy. Only, again:
WHERE IS YOUR PACK
Black WindHe twists his head to the side. His hackles are up; the tendons in his neck are obscured, but they stand out like steel cables. He spits a noise to the side, somewhere between snarl and curse.
Then a roar:
"Red Vengeance! Get up! UP."
Red VengeanceThe wolf at his side is twitching, trying to respond, but hardly moving. The foreleg is healed, healing, but it moves to press down against -- nothingness, really -- to begin pushing up. The eagle is not distracted:
WHERE IS YOUR PACK
Black Wind"SHUT UP," he snaps at the eagle, genuine irritation overlying rage and frustration and pain and all the other reasons he has to be shouting. He twists around again: "Red Vengeance, get up, NOW."
And when she's beside him -- a short, sharp breath, almost a gasp, and then:
"Give it your hand." He can't bear to watch. "Let me -- here -- ahh, fuck! -- take it. Take its talons; that's it. That's my mate's hand, you fuck; she's here, my pack is here, are you satisfied? My pack is here."
Red VengeanceRed Vengeance moves as though drugged. It is not unlike seeing the way Danicka first transformed, jittery and pained, pieces of her body moving without being strictly connected to each other. But she is moving, fighting to her feet, shapeshifting up from lupus into hispo into crinos.
Take it. Take its talons. Red is willing. The eagle is not. It is focused entirely on Lukas, digging its talons in all the harder. Red snarls, gripping the bars of its legs, trying to pull them off of Lukas. It hurts like a bitch.
WHERE IS YOUR PACK
Black Wind" -- stop!"
It's not the first time he's told Red Vengeance to stop. The last time he told her, she didn't, and the thing that lives behind the lion gate and the eagle gate and who knows what other gates killed her, covered her in silver and seared her to nothing.
"Stop. That's not it; stop." Pain makes it hard to concentrate. He gathers his will; for the first time, he exerts his mind, presses down on the pain, forces it back, finds his center.
"My pack," he tries again, steady now through gritted teeth, "is here with me. My pack is always with me. In my mind, in my spirit. With me."
Black Wind[DLP.]
Black Wind" -- stop!"
It's not the first time he's told Red Vengeance to stop. The last time he told her, she didn't, and the thing that lives behind the lion gate and the eagle gate and who knows what other gates killed her, covered her in silver and seared her to nothing.
"Stop. That's not it; stop." Pain makes it hard to concentrate. He gathers his will; for the first time, he exerts his mind, presses down on the pain, forces it back, finds his center.
"My pack," he tries again, steady now through gritted teeth, "is in Chicago, where Truth's Meridian lives. My pack is in San Diego, where Brutal Revelation lives. My pack is here beside me, because Red Vengeance is with me again. My pack is sleeping in her own body, because White Vision was reborn as my mate. My pack is New York City and Los Angeles and Prague and Stark Falls. My pack is in the Homelands, waiting to be born. My pack is trapped behind your gate.
"And my pack is here with me. I carry them with me, always. The ones I love, the ones I trust, the ones I protect, the ones that protect me." His crystalline eyes search the mist a moment, then rise to meet the eagle's. "That's where my pack is."
Red VengeanceRed stops. She maintains her grip on the eagle, with the renewed hand that she came out of some sort of physical-spiritual unconsciousness to heal for Danicka, but she stops pulling. They might take Lukas's hands completely off if they fight too hard with the eagle. Red is watching him with eyes that would be Danicka's if Danicka were a wolf: searing green, venomous, full of rage.
She stays next to him. The way Danicka might stay. The way Sinclair or Kate would stay. She watches him and not the eagle. He is, after all, her Alpha. And she waited for centuries for him to find her again. To do exactly this.
His pack is in many places. And some of them are waiting to be born.
The eagle does not ask him that question again. It does not release his hands, either. Red Vengeance is almost holding her breath. The wings of the eagle give a long, slow beat. Then grow smaller, glowing slightly as they go. Within moments it has become the size of a regular eagle, its feathers filling in with light and then with fine hairs, its eyes coalescing into amber orbs, the talons growing warm even where they pierce his hands. It keeps growing smaller, and Red exhales in relief, releasing it when it becomes too small to hold. It seems to cling to Lukas last of all, though, even as it shrinks to the size of a --
sparrow. In the end, he's holding a small, living bird in his hands, which are beginning to heal now that the talons are not holding the wounds open. Wings beat furiously at the palms of his handpaws.
"Not kill," Red snarls, her jaw malformed by her crinos shape. She begins to shift down again, to homid, even though it leaves her naked. Danicka's right hand and arm are bloodstained still, smattered with the last remnant of the wounds she took. The sparrow, if freed from Lukas's hands, flaps over to the lion, bobbing in midair. The lion glances up, lazily,
and
smashes it to the ground with his paw, holds it there, and begins to eat.
Red stares as this happens. Before them stand two pillars with nothing between them; only mist. Fragile, hollow bones crack and snap as the lion devours its snack. Red exhales and looks at Lukas again. "Was it truth or unity?"
Black WindAs the eagle shrinks, so too does his rage, his pain. Red haze dissipates from the edges of his vision. In the end he holds a living sparrow in his hand; an amorphous sorrow in his heart that he can't quiet explain.
"No," he echoes quietly, "not kill."
He opens his hands. The sparrow flies away. What happens next makes Wyrmbreaker bare his teeth and snarl, but he does nothing to stop it. His shoulders lift and fall, and then stoop; he falls to all fours. While the lion feeds, the Ahroun puts nose to ground and sniffs, hunts, looks for the ring that pinged off into the mist when he burst into this form.
There's a brief pause as Red asks her question. His head lifts, swings around on that thick, muscular neck. He whuffs.
"Both."
Black Wind[note to self:
lukas totally freaked out on instinct when danicka seemed to be hurt, but in the end he was willing to let the sparrow go because -- as he saw it -- the responsibility ultimately falls to him. the answer it sought was a truth in his heart; the reason it took so long and hurt both him and his mate's body was because HE didn't get to the core of it himself fast enough.]
Black Wind[another note to self!
i think i caught on pretty quickly that this gate was seeking a more philosophical answer -- almost an acknowledgment of who was in his pack. but it took me a DAMNED LONG TIME to expand 'pack' beyond just the garou.]
Red VengeanceRed Vengeance was not in control of Danicka's body when that ring went missing. Red Vengeance looks haunted as she stands there now, wearing that body in a way he has never seen it before. Or else: seen it only at the worst times, the hardest moments. He was not there when she was shot, but he could smell her blood all over her when Evan brought her to the Brotherhood after. He was out of his mind when they were attacked on the street, but when he came back to his own body he could see how injured she was, did not know if he had been the one to do it, knew it couldn't have been him because if it had been him she would have been dead.
She looks exhausted now, those green eyes dark ringed, following him as he searches. The lion ignores them. The pillars wait. His answer makes a pained smile tighten her mouth for a moment. She nods. It makes sense. Of course they were both right. It was usually so.
Walking after him, apparently satisfied to wait a few moments before they go on, she asks: "What are you looking for?"
Black Wind"My mate's ring."
The answers are short. Perhaps terse. Perhaps Red Vengeance thinks he's angry at her; what a bad job she's done of protecting Danicka's body. That's not it, though. He feels the pressure of time. Ironic, since it's been centuries -- but the pressure doesn't come from how long Silver Warning has waited, but from how long Lukas himself took to find the right answer.
He'll tell her, later, after they pass through those pillars and before they come to their next task. He'll tell her what the eagle said, and how impassively, implacably it asked the same question. Over and over and over until he saw the key, which was truth and unity: which was the truth of unity. Where is your pack. Not merely the Garou bound to him now, but the Garou that were once bound, the Garou who would be bound to him, the kin, his family, his blood, his loved ones. And not merely where they are, but where he keeps them. How close he holds them in his mind. How dear.
All of it. Unity; truth. That's what the eagle sought. And he'll tell her all this, just in case --
just in case they fail. Just in case she has to wait again, another endless round of reincarnations until the pack is together again, close to the gateway, ready to free their brother and fulfill their oath.
For now, though, Lukas is quite preoccupied. He's looking for the ring. It's a tiny, almost ridiculous detail to care about right now.
Red VengeanceMaybe she thinks he's angry at her. It wouldn't be the first time. Just the first time in multiple lifetimes. He tells her what he's looking for, and she remembers that thing, that small thing he asked her to take off. It made sense to her: she never married. She won't tell him this, it doesn't matter, but he left a widow last time. She remembers how tender he was with her, how no one but his pack would ever have guessed he was anything but a brute or a monster with his kinfolk. But they knew: how soft he was, how careful. How sometimes he was afraid to touch her, in case he might break her. She was, after all, a fragile thing, submissive and obedient. She had been lucky to have been won by him.
Dropping to her hands and knees as well, Red Vengeance begins to help him search. And in the end, Lukas is the one who finds it: right in front of the gate, sitting between the pillars. But as they look, Red does talk to him:
"I think that is why it struck me down," she says. "Truth and unity. I am two souls in one body." She is quiet a few moments. "I am sorry, brother. I did not think of it. I do not know why she woke up. I was not expecting it. She said she would sleep, and I promised to watch over her."
Black Wind"I don't understand," Lukas says as he is rising, shifting down into his human form to cram Danicka's ring onto his little finger. It goes down as far as the proximal interphalangeal joint; no further. He frowns at it. He'll have to dedicate it, he thinks, and wonders if he has time.
To Red, then: "Why would being two souls in one body make it strike you down? I don't think you could have predicted it. It wasn't your fault."
A pause. And then, "You ... spoke to her?"
Red VengeanceRed looks over at him when he stops moving, and sees that he's found the ring. He's putting her ring on. He's clothed, the items dedicated. She walks over, up off her hands and knees, and watches him try to cram the ring on. Her brows tug together. It's so like Danicka's frowns. It hurts to look at her.
"We are not one," she tells him, in answer to that first question. But he tells her it wasn't her fault. She doesn't answer that part. She just glances through the pillars, the mists they haven't approached yet. Looks back to him, meeting his eyes, as he asks her what he does. That tug of her brows turns into an actual frown, as she nods: "Of course. Before I came. I could not be here if she denied me."
There's a beat. "I could be," she corrects. "But I would not do that to my sister. I would wait another generation, or ten, rather than subjugate White Vision so." Red exhales. "She should not have woken. I cannot keep her body safe if she wakes."
Black WindIt hurts, too, to hear what she says. Lukas takes a breath and lets it out, lowering his hand to his side. "I know," he says. "I'm sorry I ... "
He doesn't quite know how to finish that sentence. Mistrusted you, he could say. Thought poorly of you. Hated you for taking my mate away. Made you wait so long. He says none of in. He reaches out, embraces Red Vengeance roughly, powerfully. It is nothing like the way he holds Danicka.
"I'm sorry," he says, and leaves it at that.
Red VengeanceIt would be comic if Red Vengeance stiffened awkwardly, flailed her arms, didn't quite know how to take this. But this is the creature who tried to embrace him the moment she first could. She had not seen him in hundreds of years. He was her brother. They've saved each other's lives countless times. She never asked herself if she knew him in other lives. All of her own, she simply felt that it was true.
When Lukas reaches for her, Red Vengeance is there. She hugs him back, too. It is nothing like the way Danicka holds him. It is tight, though, and firm, and even possible for a moment or two to forget that these are Danicka's breasts pressed against him and Danicka's body hot to the touch where sometimes it is cooler by several degrees from his own. Except for sometimes.
Red Vengeance steps back, her hands on his arms, but holding him there. "We need to go on," she says.
Black WindTo that Lukas nods. She's right. They need to go on. And so he does, passing the lion and the pillars, his footsteps stirring the mist. He's not sure where he's heading. This time, though, he leads, certain that wherever he needs to go will find him.
