FENRER

Auric maelstroms flattened the grass in a coat of white when Yuven took flight on his hippogryph and left the furious burrs stuck to the air around his eyes. It stung with rage in his throat when he tried to breathe through the storm, and he found himself on the ground from the force Yuven left behind in his wake with a flap of snow-spotted wings. Grass weaved into a slow stop of the world with his palms dug into the tussocks. Words sharpened against his ears, he brought his hands up to his head and tried not to screech out Yuven's agony.

It quelled and left him with what he could only assume was his own. Damp trails rolled down his cheeks from the pressure of Tix'snuv's wings sending scattered droplets over his face. Burrs slammed into his throat as he scooted closer to the pond's edge. His heels dragged through the dirt as he sat there, alone with the prickled sharp icicles driving into his neck.

I will return, my son, my little wolf. Molvei'saliz.

Gravel pebbles stuck to his clothes when he tried to inch himself back out of the giant's shadow. Glyphs made out of emerald stones shimmered in the memory he tried to escape from as the arrows of war zipped around him. Metal tips on fire, he came to a stop when sticky ooze clung onto his forearm, but he found himself with no way to run when a large foreleg blocked his path. "Little Wolf," a deep growl sounded above his head without Father's voice. Kon, his resolute Aeoniir. "Keen that you feel someone's despair that overlays your own. You torture yourself with things that which you cannot change."

Mist fell through the lichen and he choked the grass in his hands. "Kon." His voice lodged in his throat when he twisted on his hip, then crawled onto his knees. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to ripple our connection to drag you out of your hunting grounds."

"We forged a covenant, Fenrer... when your despair calls out, I shall come at your decree," Kon reminded him and inched his giant paw back to stand tall with the other. "Do you remember what I said back then, Little Wolf? You cannot stay awake for the lives you haven't lived. Your compassion rings out across worlds, but you do not give it to yourself above all. Little Wolf... that is not a good path to go down." Kon's muzzle dropped and Fenrer swallowed the pain of everyone else.

"I'm fine," he forced through his teeth and hauled himself up. "Yuven's simply been dealing with a lot. He's suffered, I can't fault him for lashing out, and as long as it's not directed at other people then it's fine. He needs the outlet." He tapped his sides. "I don't mind."

"You are not an outlet, Little Wolf," Kon scolded with a held out paw in his direction. "You are not an eternal vacuum for other's pain. Your gifts are a double-edged blade, burning bright. Any of the obscura darkness formed in the hearts of man which you intake unto your soul must go somewhere, even if that means it stays where you put it. In your own heart." Kon padded forward to face him in full, the giant of a direwolf. "Your own soul."

Fenrer licked the pain off his lips and shook his head. "I'll manage, Kon. I thank you for your sage wisdom." He headed for the runic entrance into the small Storm Path. Mist gathered around his body from Kon's departure, and he swiped his fingers through the swirl to open up into the small waterfall seeping through the breaks in the mountain rock, the connection of a living organism full of golden, auric light. His hand split the curtain of fog to walk through it as a hippogryph called out over the clouds. Droplets skidded down his knuckles when he walked through the water to send a chill down his stiff spine.

He'll come back. He said he would.

He promised.

Foam scattered across the stones at the mountain's base and cast glittered sunlight through the oceanic fog creating a low-hanging cloud around the highest peaks. Thick foliage wrapped around the plateaus as he jogged his way through the Gauntlet, skipping the more tedious routes to get back to the citadel proper in time for his meet-up with Adara. Yuven is right on one thing... the Elder Convocation will try to catch us off-guard, but she has been improving, whether Yuven wants to acknowledge it or not. We promised to protect her with our lives. His steps slowed across the marble walkways into the caldera, where the empty training fields stung him with the leash of nostalgia into his lungs. From their very first bout to Yuven being named Unit Leader, though their Trainer often had it out for him. Fenrer folded his arms at the memory, then shook himself free of the swell in his temples — connected to Yuven's rage against the world stuck in his own throat.

He promised.

Fists clenched, he tried to keep himself from stomping into the citadel as if he was some petulant child, or Yuven. Fury glowed through the silken curtains hooked along most of the high, arched windows, drawn with a mosaic of stories. It bloomed through Yuven's voice, straight into his lungs, but he shook his head out once more, trying to squeeze it past his lips as he released a breath, heading for the Annex to not keep her waiting. Except Kon's words followed his footsteps.

The double-edged dawnblade, burning too bright behind his eyes. Flares glowed underneath the bubbles and pierced the heavens on a statue's call. Hands out to cup the sun, he found himself stuck between two windows arising from the floor. Beams of light cracked through carved stone and into the eyes of the First Flame, the First Pillar.

Over scorched ground.

Promises wept.

Embers fell across his brow and bit at the creases when he turned his back on the destruction and entered the Annex. Maps of the star sprawled across the walls, from the highest peaks of Naveera to the southern desert dunes of the giants with their towering cities brought low by the constant horde of the Derelicts coming out from the ground beneath the sands. "Adara?" he asked, enraptured by the pictures drawn with a painstaking hand for accuracy and forced himself to head to his favourite spot where she usually waited for him. He turned the corner of one stack, slowing to a stop at the sight of her.

A notebook floated in the center of a fireward. Tendrils wrapped around into interconnected whips, burning around the chains as her gaze focused hard on what she sought to protect. Larger than a petal. Her fingers curled against its surface of silver lilies, spread across the flow inherent to the world. It drew closer to her, responding to her call with ease and curiosity, fluttering with magick born butterflies to hit him in the stomach. He came closer into the unseen aurora, then found his voice within the current of time, "You're getting better everyday."

The flaming snakes retreated with her jolt and gasp as the notebook dropped to the ground, its edges smoldering. "Shit!" Adara sent a smothered wave into it from the edges of silver twine, which sent the notebook smacking into the wall, but the embers died at the burst of instant suffocation. "Fen, don't sneak up on me like that! I already have Yuven doing it enough." Cheeks puffed out, she swiped up the notebook to pat off the particles of ash.

"I think he's going to stop," Fenrer muttered when he drew out of the shadows and into the silver light. "He's dealing with the fact we still haven't had any news from Neven or Maria... so, I'll be taking over your training for the time being." He sighed against the burrs Yuven left in his throat when Adara's expression softened from the previous, playful annoyance.

"You don't seem to be doing good yourself."

Fenrer jolted at her voice through the misty maelstrom in his mind. "What? What makes you think that?"

"You haven't taken those hazebulbs Maria gave you," Adara's statement came out with an underlying question, to which, the answer he refused to share with anyone. "Fen, I get it... the thought of them being over there must be agonizing. We don't have good experiences with Naveera." Adara came closer to him. "You don't have to pretend that you're fine, because you're not. I'm shocked Yuven can't see what it's doing to you and would rather make it all about him."

"He's not..." Fenrer raised his hands to tear through the vines of pain. "Yuven's not intentionally doing that. His relationship with the both of them are much more complex. Maria is someone he loves, Neven is his adopted father," he pointed out. "Adara, I can handle it and Yuven." He tried not to drag out his own voice to carry someone else's annoyance to bleed the lilies which had found the strength to bloom. "I have faith."

He promised.

"It's not a question if you can handle it, and gods, I've never questioned your faith," she argued. "You've nonstop done this sort of thing since I met you at that orchard." Her aurora pulsed with painful floodshed, but she shook her head. "You healed a tree by taking its darkness. You opened the flow to release who knows how many spirits at the Summit when the horde stole their lives away while carrying my grief and uncertainty." Her warm hands wrapped around his limp, cold ones. "And you did it at Sungrove. Fenrer, you are one person. You need to stop doing this to yourself. You're worried just as much as Yuven is, and you're using his lashing out as an excuse to avoid it."

Distant memories tore through the auras on the winds of war. He squeezed the emotions through his mind, but he let her go with another ashen huff. "I mean, of course I'm worried, Maria is a good friend of mine, and Neven took care of me," he fought to keep his voice from shaking under the drumbeats of a raid. "But, I trust them to be able to handle themselves, and besides, I told Yuven to take his concerns to the Warden-Commander. This isn't like what happened with Lyzetiel back in Tebora." He sifted through her aura for a reaction, but she gave none, her thoughts frozen. "The Storm Wardens over there were trapped on both sides, with the anti-magick rule of law and the Derelicts on the other side of the wall chewing at it with them running out of supplies. It was attrition. Neven making that outpost in Irimount gave us a stronger foothold within the kingdom. If something did go wrong... we have the means to go save them."

"Has he actually gone to do that instead of lashing out at you, the one person he shouldn't be lashing out at?" Adara asked, arms folded. "You two are Oathbound, are you not?"

"We are."

"Then why is he treating you like you're the reason they're gone?"

"He's not."

Flames grew in the silver mist. "He is. Don't make excuses for him."

Fenrer waved at the curling embers threatening to explode into beacons. "I'm not making excuses for him. I've known him since we were both seven." He stepped out of the blur in the world to nod at the books she studied over. "Let's not... discuss this right now. It's a tough time for both of us," he acknowledged. "I don't want to snap at you, or Yuven, or anybody. I will deal with my emotions in silence and underneath the gaze of the Ancients. I will not add to the obscura." He put a hand on his chest, then pushed a smile on his face. "I'm fine."

Adara's lips pursed. "You're not, but I can't make you talk to me about it." Her hand flipped closed some of the larger tomes. "Fen, I've already had enough people not talk to me about things that I wish they had told me, but out of a need to protect me, they didn't." Back to him, she shook her head, where her brown, short-haired waves bounced against her shoulders. "So many things I didn't know because no one told me. I really would appreciate it if you at least tried."

"I'm not keeping anything from you," he whispered. "This is different from your mother and Warden Tyronai sealing your memories within the crystal—"

"I'm not referring to that, not completely," Adara said with a heavy-lidded frown.

Fenrer sucked in the pain and corrected himself with rueful reluctance, "Adara, I don't talk about what I... felt within Gregor's memories because—"

"You're trying to protect me."

Fenrer sank into his own shoulders, buried in shame.

Adara's smile faltered. "That silence says a lot more than you think."

It lodged into his throat and made it impossible to breathe from the pressure between them. "When I stood in that arena," Fenrer forced through his pain. "I was in Sungrove again, watching the people I had grown up with, had seen all my life, had their dignity and lives stolen from them with wanton destruction." He chewed on his tongue, but forced himself to face her. "I was in that arena, and I swear upon the Ancients, Adara, had they not rang the bell... I would have killed him." He rolled his finger towards the ground, the sand underneath his boots drenched with crimson and Gregor's pleas for mercy ringing in his ears.

"Just tell me one thing, then."

Fenrer forced himself to nod.

"Is she dead?"

Dark. Too dark with no moonlight. Forests and footsteps with nowhere to flee, leaving behind the one he loved the most. He rolled his neck for repetition, and the emotions coming off Adara dropped into cold ice.

"Derelict?"

Fenrer shook his head instead.

It went quiet.

"... you felt all of it, didn't you?" Adara rasped.

All he had the strength for was another nod.

This double-edged blade, burning bright.

He promised.

She promised.

Fenrer prepared himself to take in the growing darkness behind the silver mist, but he stopped when Adara hugged him close and tight instead, the blockage shielding him from the tempest of flames, and Yuven's words echoed in his ears instead of Kon while the lilies shuddered and closed behind faded memories born from the same cold ice of Naveera, and not the apocalyptic flames set upon Tebora.

I would not be happier in ignorance.