The Merciful Path, Pt. I

[Colt]

Shahar pulled Yvex into the cave and set him down on one of the softer portions of floor, somewhat confused as to what else he might do. It had brought him no pleasure to separate the man from his pet, and he felt that he should at least try and make sure he was alright.

“Yvex,” Shahar said. “Your Flint is fine. He will find his mate and they will find a territory. I will make sure that they are safe.”

“Why did you take him?” Yvex rasped, too grieved to be angry.

“I did not take him. I simply allowed him to leave. You captured him, I freed him.”

“He left because you let him.”

“He left because he is a wolf. That is what wolves do.”

“But he can’t!” Yvex shouted, taken by a sudden bout of energy. “I need him! He’s the last one who knows how to see like I do! He needs to carry on the magic!”

Shahar tilted his head in bemused curiosity. “Then perhaps you should have taught a dog instead of a wolf.”

“My father taught his magic to a wolf. The wolf never left him. My mother taught hers to a hawk.”

“Where are the animals now?”

“Dead.” He shook his head. “They’re all dead. And I’m not much better.”

“Your strider?”

“Dead. The storm of 512.”

“Do you have any relatives?”

He shook his head, vehemence painted in the lines of his body. “No! There are none! They’re all dead! Storm, plague, siege; it’s taken them all, one by one.”

Something resembling pity stirred in Shahar’s heart. “You shouldn’t be out here,” he said with a degree of concern. “Does anyone know where you are?”

“Not anymore.” The admission seemed to take the life out of him in one great breath. He sank into the floor, staring up at the ceiling with blank eyes. “No one’s left to care. It’s done. Flint is gone. The Windrivers are gone. There’s nothing left anymore.”

Shahar knelt beside him, peering into those brilliant orange starbursts. “Endrykas is due south,” he said. “If you keep a steady pace, you can make it back by nightfall.”

Yvex looked away, to the wall of the cave, and said nothing.

“You should go, before the grasslands take you. It is safer there.”

Again, there was nothing.

“I cannot stay. I have business elsewhere. There will be nothing to protect you.”

Silence.

“The decision is yours, then.”

He could not remain and look after the man, as sad as he felt forcefully parting him from his Flint; there was still work to be done, and the grasslands would not wait.

[Colt]

Shahar left Yvex to his own devices, calling a bemused Snow back to his side as the two of them left the cave behind. She kept close, but he could feel her confusion; she didn’t know if she had done the right thing in letting the wolf go, or in helping him threaten Yvex. It had only been six days since she had done much worse to another human, but it was a human that had smelled distinctly not-Drykas. Yvex was different. He was one of them.

As soon as they were out of sight of the cave, Shahar stopped and wrapped his arms around Snow’s considerably large chest, digging his fingers into her ribs where he knew she liked best. She yipped and wagged her tail in happiness, and he pulled back for a single moment before shoving her rump playfully and mock-growling. It was a wordless admission and a reassurance that she had done the right thing. When her heart was eased once more, the two set off to finish what they had started.

Flint had found his mate fairly quickly; the two wolves had returned to the site of their previous kill and were sharing it with a collection of young ravens that had caught wind of it. The she-wolf ate the most voraciously; Flint had apparently been well-fed by his previous master to the point that he was no longer hungry. Shahar felt a flicker of concern regarding the male’s hunting skills, but pushed it down; even if Flint did lack in such an area, his mate almost surely made up for it. They had, after all, managed to bring down an elk already.

Although initially wary of Snow, careful negotiations kept them from bolting again. Shahar waited until they had eaten their fill, then bid them to follow, flashing them pictures of the now-vacant wolf’s den. They obeyed him, with some convincing, confident now that their bellies were full; they would not need to gorge again for another few days, and they had little to lose.

The sun was descending by the time the four travelers began the trek to the den, but none of them were very worried about it. Three of them had fur, and Shahar was well-cloaked; they found Akaidras before sundown and made good use of what daylight they had left.

Still, it was well into the night by the time they reached the den. The wolves were uneasy here, too, sensing the death that surrounded the place. They scented the other wolves, but also scented the absence of them; they could tell quite well that a pack was supposed to be here, but that something had happened to change that.

The two found the den fairly quickly, as well as the cold corpse of the she-pup. They weren’t quite comfortable eating it, so they removed it from the cave and left it outside. Shahar took a moment to inform the ravens of its location, who were peering at the new wolves curiously. It would take time to build a relationship between the two families, generations even, but there was no aggression between them. The ravens recognized the pair as new hunting partners, even though the wolves themselves were too young to know the same. They would learn.

The entire lot of them slept there that night. Akaidras eventually found enough ease with the location to drop his head and doze, while Snow and Shahar piled in with the wolves to share warmth. It was somewhat awkward, and there was plenty of negotiating until all four felt safe enough to actually close their eyes, but they managed. In the end, though, it was enough.

[Colt]

11th of winter, 515 a.v.
before dawn

Shahar woke before morning, as did Snow, and after making certain that the wolves were settled he rousted Akaidras and left them to their own devices. There was little he could do to assist them now, other than visit periodically to make sure they remained hidden from the Drykas until the city of tents moved on.

A breakfast of cold rations and dried meat tided them over into the day. The cold ground had made them all stiff in one way or another, but that was to be expected, and it proved to be more inconvenience than actual damage; they left the territory with some degree of weariness, but that weariness was soon burned away by Syna’s rising warmth. Another day dawned, and another task was lain before them.

Before finding the young pair of wolves, Shahar had planned on the trip lasting no more than a day or so. He was well within his power to return to Endrykas then and there, but the thought of Yvex stopped him. Surely the man had returned to the city it made no sense to have spent the night in the wild. Without strider or wolf-pet, Endrykas was likely the only place he could survive.

Still, it wouldn’t hurt to make sure that he had taken the wiser path.

They passed the city by at a steady lope, one Snow could keep up with and maintain for as long as it took to reach their destination. And it was not a destination reached quickly; by the time they saw the telltale rise in the earth indicating the rim of the Stardown, it was well into the morning, almost to the point that ‘morning’ was no longer a proper term for it.

Shahar halted at the edge of the treeline, leaning back in the yvas and dropping his weight until his strider slowed to a trot, then a walk, then inevitably halted just beyond the shade of the trees. Had he come all this way for nothing? Yvex had to be gone. It wouldn’t make sense otherwise. He could already feel the annoyance of a pointless pursuit creeping up in his mind, trying to cover up the even greater annoyance that would rise if he had come here under correct assumptions.

Which he hadn’t.

Not if Yvex had any sense in him.

In the end, Shahar dismounted and asked Akaidras to guard him. A somewhat redundant request, as he knew that wandering lions and glassbeaks did not pose threats to him whilst he was indisposed in the echoing dome of the Web, but he signed for it nonetheless. Old habits, especially those that were built for survival, died hard.

He crossed his legs and took a few meditative breaths, centering his mind and bringing his awareness into himself instead of the outside world. All day his thoughts were centered around what lay beyond himself, regarding those threats to his family or his health, or now to the health of the land around him. It took effort to clear those thoughts away and sit them down firmly so he could conduct his magic in peace, and turn his thoughts to what lay inside.

Breathe. Calm. Silence.

The strands of Djed hummed around him when he pulled upon his other sense, flickering in and out of sight like spiderwebs caught in sunlight. He reached out with something other than his hands and touched the magic, tracing the lines of its stability and age and knowledge. It echoed with history and lives and knowledge, both from the past and from the tense plucking of this creature or that creature pulling it with movement. It had the information he needed, but on the inside.

Taking a deep breath, Shahar took hold of the Web and hauled himself out of his body and into the threads of magic.

[Colt]

The Web welcomed him with as much grace as it always did––which was to say, none at all. It bent under the weight of his soul, then sprang back to where it was supposed to be and jarred him into grabbing hold with something other than hands. His flesh and blood was behind him, and now there was only him in his most basic form of thoughts and feelings and desires. It was a somewhat sickening transition, and one that he was not at all used to.

Still, he knew it to be something that he could wait out; the great, hollow echoes of those who had come before washed over him like a wave, and he held his breath and cantered himself. In time, the echoes smoothed into a wide, level chorus, one that no longer overwhelmed him.

When he had his metaphorical feet back under him, Shahar began to move.

The first thing to do was carve a quick circuit around his body, sensing the vibrations of Snow and Akaidras as they watched faithfully over his physical vessel. They were whole and well, rippling within the Web like stones thrown into a mirror-still lake, and it gave him confidence to leave them behind and strike out towards the Stardown proper.

The terrain felt different inside the Web, but it was still the same terrain. He felt the rise in the earth that preceded the sharp drop into the crater, and he felt the deep tethers of the trees that crowded around the ring. Looking deeper, he could feel the silvery threads of yesterday’s passage, where he and the wolves had left for the open plains. It was a start, and so those were the threads he latched on to.

A closer examination confirmed their age and number, and he didn’t have to spend time determining which direction they had been going––he remembered that well enough. All he had to do was trace it back. There, that was where he and the wolves had found Akaidras, and he had mounted and allowed them all to move at a much quicker, steadier pace than if he had been on foot. Following it back, he saw where the wolf threads briefly separated––that there was the place he and Snow had caught up to them, and had convinced them to follow their lead to the now-empty territory of the pack that was no longer with the living.

It stood to reason, then, that following the trail backwards would lead him to a hopefully vacant cave.

The threads grew ever so subtly fainter as he traced them, worn down by time and the elements that had come with the night. But he could soon enough sense the shape of trees, woven in with the Web and anchoring it in place. He picked his way in between them, ever mindful of the trail, but then he saw a new trail. It was more distinct, as it belonged to a Drykas, and beyond that, it was tainted by magic. He was as woven into the Web as the rest of the land, and more noticeably so; it was much easier to see where he had gone, circled, doubled back and generally wandered aimlessly around the area he had chosen to kidnap his former pet. It all converged before the rise of the Stardown rim, where he and his wolf had taken shelter in the cave.

Where only one now sheltered, thrumming and whole and alive and very much a resident, very much motionless and apparently quite content to do nothing but just sit in the cave instead of moving to safer grounds.

Because of course Yvex hadn’t left, since it was impossible that Shahar ever had an easy job that took care of itself.

- End of Part I -

[Dove Brown]

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Shahar Dawnwhisper

Skills

• Hunting 1
• Socialisation 2
• Weapon: Hunting knife 1
• Intelligence 2
• Tracking 1
• Brawling 1
• Unarmed Combat 2
• Tactics 1
• Subterfuge 1
• Webbing 2
• Meditation 1

Lores

• A hollow echo where a wolf pack was
• Ravens and wolves work together to hunt
• Ravens don't understand arrows
• The mystery of a misplaced wolf
• Finding a replacement pack
• Tactics: using sign to drop an opponent's guard
• Yvex Windriver: a strange Drykas
• Magic in starburst eyes?
• Yvex Windriver: last of the Windrivers
• Tracking: tracing a creature's passage through the Web

Comments:A lovely read. Enjoy your grades