The town of Oflen, home to many races, was not often a place that one would find the Dwarven race. Even still, the quaint and quiet town was home to a young Dwarf named Kithri. The streets were their playground, the gutters their resting place, and the locals their entertainment. This was how Kithri liked it, and, being the only Dwarf around, they learned at an early age the benefits of being low to the ground.

Sneaking around was never really a necessity for survival, but Kithri learned how to manipulate their stocky frame to be undetected to any passers by. It became a sort of game for them, seeing how many people Kithri could successfully hide from, and just how far they could push the envelope.

Kithri was born into a family, they think. They were orphaned before an age that allowed for solid memory. In reality, the only glimpse of their parents that Kithri could make out was by staring at their reflection in the river and imagining themselves as an older male or female. This never lasted long, though, as Kithri would come back from the daydream and cringe at the actual thought of themself as either gender. Obviously, they knew that gender was a concept that existed, but they never attached themself to either gender. Growing up Kithri didn't feel like a little boy or a little girl, but rather felt like they were beyond the concept. This got roped into their sneaking game rather quickly, as they would introduce themself and wait in anticipation to see what others would gender them as, often ending the conversation early when the other party grew confused by their seemingly random cackling.

When Kithri wasn't entertaining themself with daydreams and innocent trickery, they were sitting by the local forge, mesmerized by the craftsmanship of the swords, shields, and armor made from various different metals. The warm glow cast off of the gold, the almost-reflective sheen of the silver, the rainbow of colors that gemstones came in; the entire world of smithing was an enigma that Kithri wanted their own share of. At the age of ten, Kithri decided to use all of their practice sneaking around and fiddling with disposed machinery to attempt to break into the forge. In the dead of night, with only the occasional chirp of a cricket, Kithri made their move. The lock was harder to pick than they'd expected, yet they were eventually able to pick it open and open the door slowly enough to avoid the creak that they knew the hinges were prone to making. The world was their oyster after that day, and they would spend multiple nights a week acquainting themselves with the feeling of tools, gemstones, metals, and using scraps to craft various trinkets and small weapons. The weapons were so small, they weren't even very practical even for someone of such a short stature as Kithri. Still, this went on for three years until Kithri felt confident enough in their abilities, that they asked for an apprenticeship. The blacksmiths laughed, but still allowed Kithri to join them. What they thought would be a chance to finally get their hands on better materials quickly went south. The blacksmiths decided that Kithri would make a better errand person at their age, much to their chagrin. One year later, however, Kithri had managed to stash away a small amount of materials, little by little, until they could craft a proper weapon. Their semi-nightly trips to the forge were enhanced by their ability to now access better materials, undetected, during day trips to the miners. The sword that Kithri crafted was a thing of beauty; a golden handle, silver blade, and a sheath unique to Kithri alone. The sheath disguised the sharp blade as nothing more than a decoration. Made purely of soft and inexpensive moonstone, it would surely deter anyone from stealing it. Kithri decided to quit their apprenticeship only when he discovered theue next passion; one that they felt even more strongly about than smithing.

Kithri was no stranger to the bustle that happened on weekends in Oflen. The otherwise peaceful town would gather in the square and light up the night with music, laughter, and, of course, plenty of ale. It was on one such night as this that Kithri happened to look inside and lay their eyes on a magical sight.

Perhaps they were just too young to appreciate it at first, but Kithri loved how this place seemed to enchant the townspeople. He recognized the faces of some that often walked past them in the mornings, tired and melancholic, now with large smiles on their faces and warmth in their cheeks. The one thing that every one of the smiling faces had in common? They all just so happened to be holding a brown mug with a white froth sloshing above the rim.

Dwarves didn't reach their age of maturity for forty years and, at fourteen, young Kithri knew that this would have to be their next venture. Waiting for twenty-six years seemed agonizing, so Kithri began plotting. They didn't like breaking the law, but had done so before at this point. Breaking and entering as many times as they did in years prior would have definitely been enough to see a jailhouse or two, but the decision to do so was always justified to them. So long as nobody was hurt by their actions, was there harm in it? Accidents happen and things go missing all of the time, was it so wrong to take half an ounce of silver here and there? To Kithri, the law was important, but happiness and freedoms were much more just in some cases. Their plan came to fruition four years after the fateful day of discovering the tavern life.

The town of Oflen, home to many races, was not often a place that one would find the Dwarven race. Kithri had always known that, and used it to their advantage. Their status as a minority helped shape them into an impeccable rogue, and the town not seeing many Dwarves kept Kithri from being questioned when the then eighteen-year old lied their way into becoming a bartender. Later, they would go on to own the tavern known as The Golden Mug. Many years passed, and at the age of thirty-one, Kithri decided that a change of scenery was in order. There's only so often they could find joy and excitement seeing the same things and same people day in and day out. Their uncanny natural ability with bar tending was sure to land them a job elsewhere and, when eavesdropping in on a conversation at the bar top, Kithri learned of a mysterious town called Blade's Refuge. There was some sort of disappearance there, yet Kithri felt almost called to be there. They didn't know what would come of a life there, yet they still gave away their beloved tavern and packed up their things in the pursuit of change.

Azania made sure to not trample any plants as she made her way through the forest undergrowth. Around her the Forest glowed in various shades of green. There was warm dark brown and cool dry brown and birch white nestled among the green. The Forest loam was soft and from it arose herbs, grasses, shrubs, saplings, and trees of all sizes as well as mushrooms and fungi. Soil edged along half-decomposed tree roots that were covered in moss. Between the trees she could see the sky as it stretched bright blue.

It would be a lie to say she was at peace here. She still held onto the grief she felt of missing her friends, who were more like family. She felt so bad about leaving them, her heart was overcome with worry. But she knew they understood. This had been her chance to get free and Azania had taken it.

She loved her friends. More than life she loved them. But she couldn't stand the rest of it all. She couldn't stand the demands of her masters, the way they looked at her, the way they talked to her, the way they yelled at her. She couldn't stand knowing that they were the people who took her away from her family. She couldn't stand it when they bragged about her to their friends as if she was a shiny thing that they bought. She couldn't stand the crippling loneliness of that big house that swallowed her whole. She couldn't stand the quietness that enveloped the nights or the constant, crippling pressure of work, work, work and more work that enveloped the days. She couldn't fucking stand it. She just couldn't.

The adults in her life saw her as no-one, as nothing, as a shadow to be ordered around and used. And she hated it. It tore her up inside and left her screaming silently, drowning invisibly, bleeding in her mind and in her soul. But she was clever. She was good at lying. She was good at thinking outside of the box. She had a plan, a plan that took three long arduous years to accomplish.

She pretended to be a perfect, meek, submissive, broken girl. She pretended to be emotionless and loyal and completely brainwashed. Until they trusted her. Until they trusted her completely. And then she took the money for buying groceries. And it was a lot of money. And smiled meekly and softly as she stepped outside the locked door - locked by a key she didn't have - to go to the store. And she bought a wooden snorkel with it, tied herself to a rock of carefully-measured weight, and threw herself in the River. She almost died. But she wouldn't have cared if she had died. This was the way to freedom. Eventually she felt the temperature of the water cool. That indicated that she was finally in the Forest.

She kicked and swam until she found herself on shore. And it was the most beautiful place she had ever been in. Not beautiful like how a painting or a dress was beautiful. Beautiful like how the reflection of firelight in the mischief behind her friends' smiles were beautiful. Beautiful like how a gentle hand brushing over your own was beautiful. Beautiful like how a greeting embrace near the shared stairwell between different flats was beautiful. Beautiful like the songs she only half remembered and the stories she knew she must've once heard but now forgot.

She cried. She cried like a lost child finally returning to the arms of their mother. She cried like a soldier coming back from a war. She cried like a farmer seeing rain clouds after a drought. She cried like a prisoner setting their first foot into freedom. She cried until the sky got dark and then she saw stars for the first time and she cried more. When the morning came she was cold, she was hungry, but she was free. She walked until she found a bush of berries. She hoped to the gods that they were edible. They were tasty and just a little bit sweet on her tongue so she assumed that they were. She gorged herself until her stomach hurt. She drank from a clear stream. She felt so light, so free, so calm. More than she ever had before. Yes her grief was still unimaginable, unbearable. But her joy was as well.

She couldn't describe the way she ran with life and joy and beauty. It was the type of beauty that wasn't truely seen no. It was felt in her heart. The Forest held her like a mother. Like the mother she had had but barely remembered. The Forest held her like a lover. It hugged her like a child. It held her hand like a best friend. It flowed and moved and reached out all around her. She never knew it was possible to love a place before. She only thought you could love people. But she realized what it meant to love a place, to be loved by a place. Because in honesty you could only love what was alive. People were alive. And the Forest around her was alive. So very alive. It sang and hummed and shone and shadowed and moved and stood and flowed and danced with so much life. All in perfect harmony. As she couldn't help but be inspired, so inspired.

She was still full of misery. Still full of grief. She was still beside herself with worry, with mind-numbing, crippling anxiety for her loved ones. But she was held more than she had ever been before. She was freer than she had ever been before. The Forest nurtured her, nourished her, soothed her, loved her, protected her, and wanted her like a mother and she couldn't even begin to process the emotions she was feeling right now.

She though that maybe she should be scared. There might be predators here after all. She had no clothes, no weapons, no rope, no knowledge of survival. According to all logic she should die out here. But she didn't. She stumbled upon a berry patch every time she got hungry. She found clean, dry wood to make a fire as well as rocks to ring it and even spark rocks to start it. The stream was easy to follow. The day was neither too hot nor too cold. If she didn't know better she would say the the Forest was going out if it's way to protect her. She had always believed in magic. And now she did more than ever before.

She found a warm patch of sunlight on soft dirt and curled up and went to sleep there like a cat. She woke up, stretched out, and moved to find the stream so that she could fill her cupped hands with the cool, clear water.

Walking by the edge of the stream, she did however find a sight that brought fear into her. Pressed into the soft ground were the unmistakable tracks of a wolf. Well she thought they were at least, because they looked like a dog's tracks but much larger. They didn't scare her in and of themselves, no. They seemed like just another part of the Forest. But she knew what wolves were and she knew what they were capable of. And that scared her. Still she knew it would leave her well enough alone if she avoided it. She made her way the opposite direction as the tracks. The day was cooling down now, just marginally. She didn't feel like walking. She was overwhelmed. So once she put a bit of distance between herself and the wolf she lay down on a patch of dirt without any plants on it and she stared up at the sky. It was so bright, reaching up and up and up above her to who knows here. But not really. She couldn't describe what it was. Not at all. Even in her old life she could never describe the sky, never comprehend it.

And she still couldn't.

Maker, Azania spoke in her head, wherever you are, please keep my friends as safe as you can. Thank you for this. For all of this. I can see you in every piece of it. Thank you for holding me, Great Mother. Thank you for holding all of us who are suffering. I know you cannot take care of us in the way that you want to. I know that your reach only extends out so far. But I know you love us all and you always have and you always will and I thank you for it. I will keep your Land safe. I understand how it is a piece of you. Teach me how to care for your Land and how to respect it, protect it, and look after it. And I will. And please. How can I give back to you? You have protected me - no all of us - with your life and your blood and your tears and your joy and your rage and your pain and everything you have. And we must all take care of each other. I know. We are all a part of you. So how can I take care of your people? What should I do? I hurt so much. I long to go back and free my people. And I will. I know that the people are your people. All of us who live under the heel of suffering. I know that I swear to you that I will. But I do not yet know how. Give me strength. I have my freedom and with it I will give other people theirs. I swear it.

Azania felt invigorated, now that she had a goal. She stood up and kept walking.

Soon she heard a shrill cry, not unlike a newborn baby. Overcome with worry, she ran towards the source of the sound. She gasped at the sight. She hadn't been wrong. It was a newborn baby. Wrapped in the arms of a woman lying under a tree there was a newborn child, swaddled in a thin cotton cloth, crying. The woman's dress was soaked in blood. She was not moving. Holy fuck. Was she dead? Azania's heart thudded in her chest. So hard. Despite being surrounded by death in her old life, she had never seen death with her own eyes like this. When she cried they were not tears of joy, or mixed emotions, like they had been earlier that day. They were tears of pure, unshakable grief and sorrow. She knelt beside the child and mother, heart lead-heavy with sorrow. She touched a hand to her forehead, then her lips, then her chest, and then reached out to hover it over the mother, offering a silent prayer for her departed soul, so that she may finally be at peace and free now. Then she moved to quickly yet carefully pick up the baby, holding them softly in her arms. She cradled the baby girl - well they were probably a girl and she would just assume they were unless they said otherwise - in her arms and tried to get her to stop crying. But the baby continued crying. She quickly realized the baby was probably hungry.

How would she feed the child? She had no idea. The child couldn't eat berries or roots or anything. The child needed milk. The child would die.

She wouldn't be able to save her. The baby would die just as the mother had and she wouldn't be able to save her. No matter no no no fuck what would she do? She kneeled there, a newborn infant in her arms, panic racing like lightening through her heart. And she heard a haunting, piercing howl move through the air.

The child stopped crying. The teenager whipped her head around to see what it was. There, standing only a yard away, was a wolf with silvery fur and pointed ears. The wolf looked at them, steadily, evenly. It was so much larger than she thought it would be. She could see how strong it was. How easily it could devour her if it wanted. And the child. She was very glad the baby had stopped crying. She held the child close to her and she didn't dare move.

Slowly, ever so slowly, the wolf stalked closer to them. Azania didn't dare move. The baby looked at the wolf with big, round, ember-dark eyes. She didn't seem aware at all of the danger they were in but was rather mesmerized.

The wolf was coming closer. It was coming closer. It was coming closer. Azania was frozen. She could not move. Soon enough the wolf was right beside them, its head just above their own. The wolf made no move to hurt them. Just silently nuzzled its nose into Azania's shoulder, then softly nuzzled the baby. So softly. The baby made a sweet gurgling noise at that.

Azania was still afraid. Slowly the wolf stalked away, but only a couple of meters away, to a bush full of fat black berries. Azania watched it closely, with wary eyes. The wolf took a bundle of stalks in its mouth and pulled them off the bush. There were stems, leaves, and a dozen or so berries that came with. The wolf then walked over, with the berries in its mouth, to Azania and the child. Slowly it inched the berries nearer to Azania's face, until the leaves brushed her lips. And it waited there. She slowly, tentatively twisted her mouth around a berry and bit it off its stalk. It was ripe and full of juice. The wolf stayed until she ate all the berries.

Azania cradled the baby close as the wolf slowly crouched down to nuzzle the child. The baby looked at the wolf and she cooed. She was so cute. She needed food. The The wolf nuzzled the baby again before lifting its eyes to meet Azania's for a moment. It lay down on its side and stayed there. Azania recognized this gesture from the way dogs at home would feed their pups.

Was ... was the wolf offering to feed the baby? Azania did not fully understand what was happening but she was no longer afraid of the wolf. She didn't understand, but when she looked at the wolf she saw a strange, beautiful sort of power. Like lightening or a River rushing. She saw the sort of power and energy that permeated through the whole Forest, electrified and pulled into the form of the wolf before her. There was something deeply, fiercely protective about it. Something fiercely kind and nurturing, life-giving and loving. Nature was strange. The Maker was strange.

Everything was. Azania was no longer scared anymore. She didn't understand. But she did feel in her heart that this was where she was meant to be. This was what she was meant to trust. She laid the baby next to the wolf and held her as she drank. This was so strange. But it was what was happening. Once the baby was full, and burped, she held her close and moved to stand up. The wolf stood up with her, and trotted a few step ahead of her.

She followed it through the undergrowth, through the maze of green. And she thought to herself that this must be some strange gift from the Maker. Well, who was she to turn down a gift? Especially when - when the baby needed it. Hmm? What should she call the baby? She did not know. She knew names should mean something. That they should be significant. She knew the child was her salvation. Her pathway to her destiny, whatever it was supposed to be. The baby was beautiful. She had huge, piercing eyes and warm skin the colour of wood right on the verge of catching fire. She had a small button nose and soft little lips and fingers that were so so so tiny. She had her destiny spread out before her. All the rest of her life. She was free. And Azania would make sure she stayed that way. Azania would free everyone she could.

Around her the Forest glowed like a haven as she walked carefully, making sure to keep the baby properly supported. The wolf walked slowly, keeping pace with her. The ground was uneven, but it was glorious.

Soon enough they got to a place near the crest of a small hill, where where were about other adult wolves, and four pups. They were sharing meat and they all turned to look at Azania before they all came and nuzzled her. She moved to sit down and they nuzzled the baby as well.

———

She named the child Shayla. Shayla was a good child. She had eyes full of wonder and curiosity, empathy and kindness. She grew up strong, nourished in the love her birth mother gave her, the love Azania showered her with, the love her pack buried her in, and the love the forest blanketed her with. She was free. She was wild. She was happy. She was loud. She was inquisitive.

She was caring. She was free to come into herself.

Azania was so grateful for her pack. They had adopted her, adopted both of them, as if they were family. They cared for her and provided for her and her child. The first year with Shayla had been very busy. She had always been feeding her, with the help of their pack, or changing her, or washing her clothes, or rocking her to sleep or soothing her. That was when she wasn't making new clothes to match her constant growth. And through all that she had to find food for herself, too. The pack provided furs for her, from their kills. She just had to process them and put them together. The pack even gathered berries for her to eat. They all slept curled up together in each others' warmth.

The next two years were much easier. The pack made sure Shayla stayed out of trouble, they took care of her just as they took care of their other pups. Azania had gotten much better at putting together clothes. She also helped the pack hunt, and looked after the pups. Her skills at running, stalking, tracking prey, and throwing spears had improved greatly.

Shayla learned to talk. But also she learned to howl and bark and yip and chirp. She was full of questions, once she started talking. She loved the stars. She was full of new ideas. Most of them were adorable and hilarious. She was afraid of rain. She loved snuggling up with her pack. Especially with Auntie Silver, the wolf who found them that fateful day and saved her life.

Shayla was like the spring, like a raging wildfire, and Azania thought she never saw a child so free before. Shayla was concerned. With the Forest and protecting it. With the wolves and protecting them. With the world outside the Forest and what it held, with everything.

The whole while she was thinking of ways to help her people who were still stuck in slavery back in the place she came from, the place that was absolutely her homeland just as much as this place was her homeland. It wasn't easy escaping the masters. They had their guards that would watch over you. They had their police that would go chase you down. And they'd find you. She didn't know how she could go about saving people. She could tell people her idea, of using the River as a getaway car. But the problem with most of the slaves was that they had loved ones to think about and take care of.

The thing about house slaves like her - like what she'd been before she got away - was that they were forced to live in isolation. The interaction they had with other slaves were always secret, hidden. Stolen moments on stairwells when sweeping and washing the stairs or the railings or the walls. Stolen moments when passing by each other on the stairs while delivering something or another. Stolen moments while waiting in line for the communal bathroom. Stolen moments while slipping away unnoticed at night. But no matter what, they made sure to keep their interactions a secret. They made sure to keep their connections a secret. Because what the masters knew they could exploit. And they would exploit. And they would use to destroy the slaves. And that included personal connections. It especially meant personal connections. The masters thought less of house slaves than they did of anyone else. Thought them incapable of love. So Azania knew her friends were safe. She knew of house slaves that had escaped before, and the slaves of neighbouring houses were never hurt on their account.

But that was not true with the other slaves. The farm slaves, the factory slaves, the mine slaves, the transportation slaves, the construction slaves. All of them were allowed to form close networks of family and found family and friendship and the masters knew they had people they loved. This was a curse as much as it was a blessing. Because while the slaves were often technically allowed to go to the market or other places without supervision, they were never, ever able to escape. Because unless you could escape with all your loved ones, which was incredibly difficult if not impossible, the masters would kill your loved ones when they figured out that you left.

Everyone would have to escape together or not at all.

And she did not know how to do that.

One day Shayla was four. The pack was out hunting. Shayla was with Azie picking dark purple berries. These were the same berries that had played such a pivotal role in their rescue. They had been talking and joking around as Azie kept an eye on Shayla who was wandering around more than she was picking berries. Well, she was four.

"Mama! Mama!"

"Yes Shayla?"

"Auntie ... Auntie White find big tree!" Her eyes were full of excitement.

"Oh did she? That's great."

"There birds in tree. And ... squirrel! But not us."

"You're right. We aren't in trees. Humans can climb trees I think. But I've never really needed to and you're too small. And wolves can't climb trees at all."

"But why?" She emphasized the why a lot.

"Because, baby girl, different animals do different things. Some animals climb trees. And some don't. Some animals fly. Some don't. Some go very fast. Some go slow. Some live in the water. Some live on land. Some live in the water sometimes and sometimes they're on land. Every animal is different. But they all are in the world and they all have a part to play."

"Mama?" Her voice was so cute. It always was.

"What?"

"I got berries."

"Great job! Put them in the bag." She gestured to the shoddily tied-together rabbit fur she put berries in.

"No mama look." Azie turned around. These berries were bright orange. She had seen them before but refrained from eating them. The berries she did eat, she had previously encountered outside of the Forest. Occasionally a bush would grow in an alleyway and the slaves would eat from it in secret. Those berries were safe. These berries never grew outside the Forest and she had never encountered anyone eating them before. She didn't know if they were poisonous or not.

"Shayla, no. Those berries are not good."

"Try once? Please?!" She was really dead set on trying these new berries, wasn't she?

"No Shayla. They could be dangerous."

"But they could be good."

"But maybe they're not. We already have so many yummy berries to eat."

"Mum. Mum. Please." Aziania knelt down to look into her eyes. She was young. But that didn't at all change the fact that she was a bolt of lightening sent from the Maker. And right now her eyes seemed to glow with longing. Azania didn't know why but this was really important to Shayla. And she knew what she was talking about.

"Alright. But not right now. After we reunite with the others, yeah?"

"Sure."

"Okay.”

They continued picking berries until their bags were full. Azania struggled to hold them all but when Shayla asked for a piggyback ride she let her get on.

"Mama are we the only humans?" Shayla asked quietly, close to her ear. Her voice was solemn. Almost sad.

"No honey."

"But we are. I never seen other humans."

"Do you want other humans? Are you lonely."

"I like you. And I like the pack. They're family. I'm a happy pup. But ... I want to know."

"Shayla there are many other humans. Maybe, maybe even five hundred other humans."

"Wow. That's so much. Where are they? I never seen them in the Forest once."

"They're not in the Forest."

"But the Forest is home."

"Shayla ..." she hadn't planned on telling her daughter the truth so soon but she couldn't lie, "the other humans are trapped in a place far away from the Forest. And they're very sad. They have to work very very very very hard, too hard, with not enough rest. And, you and me and the pack, we work so that everyone has what they need to be healthy and strong, right? They have to work for no reason. Just so that the big mean bad guys can have stuff they don't need."

"Mama?"

"Yes?"

"We have to save them. We have to bring them to the Forest. The Forest is nice. They can be happy. Safe from the bads." Azania's heart stopped. She wanted to. Oh how she wanted to. But she didn't know how.

They walked through the symphony of life until they found where Uncle Blue-Silver was taking care of the pups. Shayla let out a jubilant yip and immediately went to play. Azania crouched down and cuddled and snuggled the pups. After a while she left to go do some solo hunting.

The sky was electric blue with twilight when Azania got back to the pack with a deer slung over her shoulder. She let the pack feast on the meat while she feasted on berries and then gathered the discarded furs for washing.

Finally she got Auntie Silver's attention. She held out the orange berries in her hand, to see what the wolf would do. To her surprise Auntie Silver did nothing. She brought the berries closer to her own mouth, slowly, and then swallowed them under the light of the moon. They tasted a tiny bit sour, a little bit spicy. Not her favourite taste by far but they would make good seasoning. She didn't feel any different though. And she didn't feel any different when she fell asleep on the ground surrounded by warm bodies, with her baby in her arms.

She woke up feeling strangely groggy.

"Mama!" She heard Shayla yell as the small child flung herself into her. A couple of wolves also trotted up to her.

"What?"

"You were sleep for four sun cycles!"

Well damn.

Azania had an idea. She knew now, how she'd free her people.

———

Azania walked through the undergrowth, making her way to the edge of the Forest. She had a bag full of dried berry powder. She held it carefully, making sure not to spill any. She knew she needed the cover of darkness, the cover of night to cloak her during her journey. A young woman wrapped in shoddily tied together animal pelts was sure to raise more than a few eyebrows and end in her arrest if she was discovered. She might still be discovered anyways. But her old clothes were ripped and worn and lost and her mission was more important than anything she had ever done. It didn't matter how dangerous it was. It didn't matter how terrified she was. She had to free her people. This was her chance.

She had sought out Auntie Silver last week. As the suns was dipping below the horizon and the sky was painted with fire. They nuzzled and cuddled a bit. Azania kneeled in front of her. She asked,

"Auntie Silver. I'm going to go back to free my people. I'm going to bring them into the Forest. Do I have your blessing?"

Auntie Silver had looked deep into Azania's eyes with her own bright gold ones. She nuzzled Azania's cheek, fondly. Then she lifted her head and

howled into the burning sky, rich and bright and strong and triumphant. Azania smiled.

"Thank you, Auntie. Again."

She had made preparations immediately, embraced her pack in the unbridled way that wolves embrace, and blinked down her tears as she told Shayla she would always love her. And then she had walked into the twilight, knowing how much Shayla would miss her.

Her plan was as well thought-out as a plan could be. She had to find a slave hovel that was near a shadowy alley. Most of them were. This would be no problem. She had to stay in the shadows where no armed guard would find her. This was easier said than done. But still, she had learned stealth from hunting and could move through the night silently. This was not something the wolves had taught her but rather something she had learned for herself.

But the town, it was unfamiliar. Though she had grown up in it, it was far more unfamiliar than the Forest. Then she had to reach through the tight metal bars of the hovel windows. And she had to wake up a person. And explain to them the great things she had discovered. And how they could use it to set everyone free. She had to bury the bag so that they could secret it away. And then she had to revisit the town every few weeks or so, see how the plan was going. She had compete faith in the ability of the slaves to form a coordinated plan. If they had anything, they had unity. And resourcefulness. And the collective sort of ingenuity that came from not being beholden to convention.

She felt hope. The Forest and her new family flowed through her soul and pumped bright in her veins. And her love for her old family - family that she never really left, not in her heart or in her soul - burned through her entire being. She was a shadow under the moon but she was also a torch lit with fire and she was ready to die for her cause.

She would miss Shayla. And the rest of her family. Like the earth misses the rain during a drought she would miss them. But she knew Shayla would be cared for. And she knew she couldn't leave everyone else to suffer.

She silently prayed as she walked through the familiar Forest. In a few short years, how on Earth had it become so familiar to her? How on Earth had she grown to trust and depend on it so much? How on Earth had she grown to love it more than life itself? No she hadn't grown to love it. She had loved it the moment she had set foot within its arms. She had loved it for longer than she'd been alive. And she had a duty to fulfill. The slaves were children of the Forest. Just as she and Shayla were. They meant to become free. Just as she and Shayla did. The Forest weeped for its lost children and Azania was the one tasked with returning them.

She prayed as she found herself getting closer to the edge. The stretch that separated the Forest from the town was within sight now. Fear clenched her heart hard. She was loathe to leave. There were so any terrible memories tied to that place. So much pain, and suffering. And there would be more if she wasn't careful enough. She didn't want to go back to slavery. She didn't want to risk everything. She didn't want to leave. But she did want to. And she must. She gave herself a few minutes to cling to the comfort around her before taking the step that properly separated the world she was entering from the world she was leaving.

———

The town was bathed in the darkness of the new moon. There were large sprawling estates where the free people lived. There were the factories that ringed the south side of the town and pumped thick smog into the sky. There were the slave hovels that ringed the factories in neat, tightly-packed misery.

The streets facing the doors were guarded by armed guards. But between the back of the huts, where the windows were, there was space narrow enough to crawl through. Just barely enough. But there was space. She stalked to the first block of huts she could find. She made no sound. Moved from shadow to shadow from the few trees to the walls of clay brick. She turned her body to the side and squeezed herself through the narrow space where there was a gap between two brick walls. The cold clay walls pressed on either side of her. But she managed to press through. She got out the vine she had inside her coat. It was the length of her arm. And it would easily reach a sleeping occupant inside one of the huts.

She slipped it through a window, before reaching her arm down as far as she could and flicking her wrist. She felt so bad for waking a slave up. They needed all the rest they could get. She knew firsthand. But she was sure they'd understand.

"Aah!" A voice, softer than she'd expected, called out into the night.

"Hush!" Aziania stated with a bit of authority in her voice.

"What the fuck?"

"I'm sorry for waking you. My name's Azania. I used to be a slave but I escaped. I can help you escape too. I can help all of us."

"What? Is this a dream?" He sounded tired and entranced and disbelieving all at once.

"No. No it's not. I swear."

"I need to see you for myself."

His face appeared behind the iron bars of the huts. He had dark skin that melted into the shadows and broad cheekbones and a small, pointed nose.

"You're real," he said, with wonder in his voice.

"I'm real." Azania smiled a little. "And I'm an escaped slave. I've been living in the Forest for four years. See?" She held up her fur-covered arm, "And I can get you all free."

"How?"

"The masters don't know what's in the Forest. They don't know all the gifts it can and wants to give us. There are berries. And I've made them into a powder. Eating even a spoonful of the powder will make anyone go to sleep for three or four days. We can use this."

"Yes! If we dose all the masters with the powder. But we'll have to do it all at the same time. Maybe during some great festival. Then with no guards or anything around it will be so much easier to slip away."

"Yes. But what about the door locks? If we poison them during a festival, that means that the doors will be locked. And also there will still be guards around."

"I'm sure we will will figure something out. Thank you for this."

"Please get the word out. I'll be back in a month. Check progress and stuff."

"Yeah. You do that. Thanks."

"Thank you."

They both looked at each other. Neither person thought that the words they exchanged were big enough for the event that had just happened, for the pure, concentrated transcendence that they had shared. The moment was far too big to be put into words. Far too big to have words, or anything at all in the entire universe, even come close to doing it justice. They looked at each other and in each others' eyes they saw more than they could ever say. And under the light of the moon the tender bud of hope blossomed into a delicate flower.

"Well," Azania started, her voice sounding like the evening wind, "I'll leave a sample of the powder buried under the window."

"Okay."

"I ... didn't get your name."

"My name's Marro."

"It's an honour Marro." Her voice was solemn and serious. The moon's glow reflected in her eyes.

"Same." His voice was soft an airy yet dark and full of wonder. Like the wisps of a cloud passing by the harvest moon.

———

The boy told the slaves who lived near him, his voice all quiet whispers. He told the slaves who worked with him. He told the slaves at the market. They told everyone they could. In a few months almost all the slaves knew. They got to work planning and strategizing. They decided when to strike. How to strike. Who would do what. What tools they would need. How to procure those tools. And how to keep all of this a secret.

In the meantime Azania came back once every month, at great personal risk, to drop off more and more of the powder. She heard their plans. Helped plan as well. And her heart soared. She gave them some tips for how to move through the Forest when it was finally time for them to pass into it.

When. Not if. Her people would be free at last.

In the meantime Shayla grew up into an adorable, curious, fierce little girl. She was happy. She was confident. She moved with the Forest like she was a part of the wind, like she was a stream of running water. She knew the plan. She knew that soon there would be more humans in the Forest. She was happy. The Forest was freedom. It was home. It was love. It was life. And she was excited to share her home and her love and her life with people who were fleeing for freedom and love and life. She wondered what other humans would be like. She resolved to teach them how to live in the Forest and respect the Forest and keep it healthy and safe like she did.

In the meantime the pack hunted and roamed and played and cuddled. New pups were born. Old pups grew up. Wolves left the pack and new wolves joined. Life continued. The pack took care of their human members and raised Shayla as if she was one of their own. They ran and howled and tumbled with each other in the soft soil.

In the meantime the slaves found a hope they could only long for before. They learned that it was much easier to feign submissiveness when you know that soon, soon enough the trap is going to spring. It was easier to hide mischievous smiles than it was to hide tears. The slaves always knew that. But they learned still that it was easier to hide pure and righteous malice.

They stored the powder covered in newspaper underground. They managed to hide away bits of metal for picking locks. The factories would be opened first. And from them every single electric saw taken. And then it would only be a matter of hours before every single door was open. And a matter of two days before every single slave had passed into the freedom of the Forest.

At the end of two years, it was time.

———

Shayla was up late, staring at the stars. Uncle Blue-Gray was with her. Around them the rest of the pack slept.

Azania waited near the edge of the Forest to watch for anybody.

Marro walked ghost-like and silent amongst the revelling party-goers in bright, shimmering clothes and thick, gem-studded jewellery. He wore a simple copper robe. They shouted at him and ordered him about as he silently exhausted himself getting drink after drink after drink. People talked and laughed and sang and danced. Marro worked and obeyed and kept quiet.

The night went on an on and people got increasingly tired. It was time to strike. He rushed into the kitchen. Got a tray full of drinks. Spiced wine. The type of drink where the flavour of the berries would not be noticed at all. He flitted about as people ordered him to them. And he kept his face carefully blank as one by one the partygoers fell asleep.

He knew that the few guards that were patrolling also partook of the food. That there would be slaves bringing them their own spiced wine or seasoned snacks.

He waited until all was quiet.

And then the other waiters smiled jubilantly, unrestrained. And he joined them.

They hit the factories first, as they said they would. Picked at the locks and kept picking until they finally gave away.

Soon enough electric saws were whirring and screaming at the doors to hovel after hovel after hovel while the lock picks worked on what locks they could. Every opened door saw new people picking up their own tools from the looted factories and helping open other doors.

And soon enough throngs of people, all who couldn't quite believe what was happening, were all walking towards the boarder. They walked as if they were somehow suddenly miraculously walking into the sky itself.

———

Azania knew a lot about how to live in the Forest. She taught the others. Shayla knew even more, somehow. Despite her young age, she had grown up in the midst of the Forest for her whole life. The Forest had raised her. And she knew how to ensure that the people and the Forest would be safe and healthy for all the new generations that the Forest would raise.

The other humans didn't live with the wolves. They lived in their own type of pack, wandering through the land. Azania and Shayla split their time between the human pack and the wolf pack. Both were their family. Neither was less important than the other.

There was enough food. For the people there was enough good, healthy food. There was enough fresh, clean water. There was time to rest, time to play, time to dream. The children did not work. They played and they learned and they came to understand life and the land. Everyone had enough. No-one had too much. Everything was shared. People decided together how to do things, how society would be formed.

Not that this even was a society at this point. It wasn't. People had been slaves for too long, have been held down under corrupt power structures for too long. They knew that they would never let the structures and hierarchies of a society overcome the freedom of the pack they had learned to create for themselves.

Shayla grew into a healer and a wise woman. And she lived a long happy life amongst wolves and humans and trees and rivers and the bright blue of the sky before she gave herself over to the land to continue on the circle of life.

And the masters never found them.

“There’s a wolf!” Mr. Marshal yelled. He shone his flashlight in a direction, different to the one Foster pointed.

Schuster gingerly let go of Foster, who swayed for a moment. Drawing his gun, Schuster slowed Foster’s topple into the mud. “Sorry, buddy. Take it easy.”

The wolf hunt for two wolves continued a couple of blocks away; the police and wolf hunters expected to kill or capture at least one soon. Wayne thought the wolf that attacked Foster would die or become incapacitated, leading Schuster to believe somebody would catch up to the wolf Mr. Marshal sighted. He worried about shooting a person.

“Anyone there?” Schuster yelled. “If there are people back there, holler.”

“It went to your left,” Mr. Marshal said.

“Okay,” Schuster said.

“Do you want me to get Officer Foster indoors?”

“No, stay put. Okay, Zach, this is going to be unsafe gun handling.” Schuster took his finger off the trigger and put the safety on and wrapped his arms around Foster’s chest to drag him towards the Marshal’s house. “Well…I’d say yes if a person was attacking us.”

“I can call the ambulance again,” Mr. Marshal said.

“The situation is under control,” Schuster said.

“Why isn’t anybody coming for you?”

“They’re doing their jobs.”

“They have to catch the wolf,” Foster mumbled.

“There’s a wolf! On your right side! It’s going to get you!” Mr. Marshal yelled as the wolf collided with Schuster and bit his upper arm.

Schuster’s head clanged off the Marshal’s swing set, and he caught himself on it. He felt that if the wolf pulled him to the ground, he would never stand up again; Wayne had advised officers to make themselves look bigger. The wolf dodged the kick, and the kick unsteadied Schuster.

Foster told Schuster to hide in the Marshal’s house, but Schuster thought separating was impossible.

The wolf wrenched Schuster’s arm behind him, and he let him. If resisting a K-9 dog’s bite-and-hold technique caused further injury, resisting a wolf would cause greater damage. His clenched Beretta 92 pointed away from the wolf. He fired the tranquilizer gun at the wolf, intending to pry the wolf’s mouth open after it dozed off. Although the wolf bit shallowly, and whimpered like his mouth hurt, he seemed unwilling to release Schuster soon.

Sloppily, Foster stabbed the wolf’s hindquarters.

The wolf released Schuster’s arm to snap at Foster, so Schuster shot the wolf’s torso. Yelping, the wolf jumped and lunged to his left side. He jerked his left arm over his head, tearing his sleeve. Schuster fired again. Then the wolf latched onto his right forearm, and bounded backward, pulling Schuster face-down into the mud.

The wolf drew Schuster’s arm out from his side, a position that prevented transferring the handgun to his other hand. Schuster knelt on his knees and other hand, but the wolf jumped on top of him. Schuster groped for his flashlight. The wolf was scrabbling his arms and leaning its weight on Schuster’s lower back. When a paw slid off, the wolf regained his footing. His nails dug into Schuster’s skin. Hoping to scare the wolf, Schuster fired twice. He worried about harming somebody behind him or inside a house.

Mr. Marshal said during the attack: “I’m calling the police.”

“Okey-dokey, just stay inside,” Schuster called. “The situation will be controllable sometime, so don’t worry.”

When Schuster told John about the attack, he expected officers to swarm the Marshal’s backyard. Schuster refused to explain why he and Foster fought the wolf alone. During the attacks, Schuster heard the police and other wolf responders attempting to capture the other two wolves.

Then Foster did something to the wolf, but neither Schuster nor Mr. Marshal saw what. Again, the wolf attacked Foster.

With Schuster’s left arm, he blocked its attempt to bite his head or neck, and he shot the wolf between its chest and neck.

Whimpering, the wolf darted behind the Parkers’ garbage; Schuster was still shooting. Doubting he would hit the wolf, he fired through the plastic cans.

Schuster worried about low ammunition because he had left his other magazine in the police car’s trunk. One magazine seemed sufficient at the time, but since the attack on Foster and Schuster, the Wolftown Police Department required all patrol officers to carry at least two magazines on their persons. He considered borrowing Mr. Marshal’s shotgun despite the impracticality; Wisconsin law allowed it.

Earlier, Foster had suggested somebody watched them; Schuster thought he noticed ordinary civilians peeking through the windows and the like. Now, as Schuster told John, he “felt like a subject was hiding and watching us. Maybe he wasn’t a bad guy, but he wasn’t just watching like people do at crime scenes. I’m not 100% positive there was somebody there and maybe I was just worried Mr. Lyons would take one more potshot at the wolf.”

He tried to drag Foster one-armed to Mr. Marshal’s house and point his gun simultaneously.

Seeing Schuster struggle to drag Foster one-armed to Mr. Marshal’s house and aim his gun, Mr. Marshal asked, “Are the things you accused the police chief of true?”

“You’re asking now? I mean, yeah, we have a lot of evidence, but why ask now?”

“I can get Officer Foster indoors,” Mr. Marshal said.

“Okay, but if the wolf comes back, drop him and go inside,” Schuster said.

“I’ll keep an eye out for the wolf.”

A savage wolf mauling a civilian whom Foster intended to protect but was instead protected by would disturb him forever.

“Why ask about Chief Laufenberg?” Schuster asked.

“Maybe my wife won’t yell as loudly if I tell her you two need to give evidence or something. Where’s your backup?” Mr. Marshal dragged Foster to the back porch steps.

“The police are doing their jobs,” Schuster said. “They have to catch the wolves.”

“What about the ambulance?”

“EMTs can’t put themselves in danger because if they were bitten, they couldn’t treat us. They’re doing their jobs, too. The situation is controllable, but we appreciate your assistance. Take it easy.”

(John privately suspected half of Schuster’s reassuring sentences lied.)

The wolf ripped Schuster’s ballistic vest and skin, and he collided with a Little Tikes push-and-ride car. Sliding, Schuster ordered Mr. Marshal to drop Foster and run indoors.

Unusually, compared to Schuster’s previous encounters with him, Mr. Marshal did not comply. Foster spluttered along the lines of, “Mr. Marshal, go inside.” Schuster repeated himself until Mr. Marshal said he had shut the back door behind himself.

The wolf had bitten through Foster’s cheek. Mr. Marshal turned gurgling Foster on his side, hoping the blood would pour onto the floor instead of into his mouth.

Meanwhile, Schuster managed to sit up, still under woozy attack by the wolf, who tended to stay behind him, jump, or yank his arms. The wolf still latched onto Schuster’s left arm, but weaklier. Then when he transferred the gun to his right hand, the wolf snapped at his right arm. He fired blindly once, the wolf hid, and Schuster fired again.

Radioing dispatch, Schuster bolted for the door, but, again, the wolf attacked his ballistic vest. Outside, Schuster slammed the back door and drew his pepper spray.

Mr. Marshal said through the kitchen window, “Do you want my shotgun? I can shoot it, but what if the buckshot hits you, too?”

The wolf charged the window, and Schuster followed, yelling, “Shut the window!” Mr. Marshal thought of the same idea.

The wolf’s front claws screeched down the glass. Schuster yanked the wolf’s tail; Mr. Marshal locked the window.

As the wolf drunkenly turned, Schuster tripped it. He pepper-sprayed the wolf; relatively little blew into his face because of the height difference.

The wolf and Schuster toppled off the concrete back step, Schuster losing his grip on the wolf’s tail on the way down. Though the wolf did not bite Schuster, it bowled him over and aimed for his head and neck. He pistol-whipped the wolf’s snout, thinking a broken jaw would deter biting and attacking the eyes might equalize the two species’ night vision. It felt like hammering the teeth deeper into his forearm.

Thinking the wolf had bitten Schuster, Mr. Marshal opened the window just enough to yell, “I’m worried about missing, but do you want me to shoot the wolf?”

Lacking a safe way to reach the shotgun himself, Schuster said, “Okay. Just don’t shoot the glass out.”

The wolf careened between the houses. Mr. Marshal fired his shotgun once, Wayne his .44 Magnum six times, and Officer Lang his Beretta seven times. Schuster had heard Wayne and Lang in the distance but assumed they were discussing the other two wolves.

Wayne followed the wolf and Lang remained in the backyard. Schuster called, “Wayne, don’t go alone!”

“I’m with him,” Lang said. “Where is Zach?”

“I bet it crawled off to die in a hole,” Wayne yelled, sounding full of adrenaline and matter of fact, while Schuster said, “In the Marshal’s kitchen.”

“Check on him. We’re fine here,” Lang said.

Mrs. Marshal was comforting the children in another room.

“Well, maybe the rain just makes it look worse than it is,” Mr. Marshal said. “For you, anyway. Not Officer Foster.”

Schuster opened Foster’s mouth. He worried Foster died from Schuster forgetting to check his airway, breathing, and circulation after the first attack, but Megan said that he died of massive blood loss.

“The dispatcher walked me through first aid. Maybe I’d better use it on you.”

Foster spluttered.

“Take it easy, buddy,” Schuster said.

Lang and Wayne crashed through the door. “The wolf isn’t moving fast or well, but it’s out there,” Wayne said.

“He can’t wait for an ambulance,” Schuster said.

“Neither can you,” Lang said. “Wayne and I will get him to the police car, and I’ll drive.”

“Then I’ll hunt the wolf. It’s weakest now, so all of us probably won’t be attacked getting Foster to the police car,” Wayne said.

“I’ll drive,” Schuster said. He felt like the time between donating blood and eating the orange juice and the cookie.

“Wayne, you need to apply pressure,” Lang said.

“I’ll do it,” Schuster said.

“Who will do it to you?”

Mr. Marshal asked, “Will you get Dennis Laufenberg sentenced for something?”

“What? Yeah, probably,” Schuster said.

“I’ll go with Officer Foster,” Mr. Marshal said.

In retrospect, Schuster believed Lang tourniqueted his arms with Schuster's and his tourniquet. He remembers he, Wayne, and Mr. Marshal providing first aid to Foster, which required all hands constantly, and nobody else had the opportunity.

“I’m good to drive,” Schuster said.

“Fine. Foster doesn’t have time for an argument,” Lang said.

They discussed how to transport Foster to the police car. When the police began chasing wolves, they asked Dr. Groves to wait for casualties in the Wolftown Medical Clinic. Wolftown’s two ambulances took two other officers to the clinic, but Schuster could not tell John why.

Mr. Marshal and Wayne carried Foster and, Lang and Schuster guarded them against the wolf. Schuster borrowed Mr. Marshal’s shotgun and Wayne had reloaded his revolver.

“What are you doing here?” Schuster asked.

“Wayne stopped cooperating. I said I was chasing him to bring him back,” Lang said.

“So, he stopped cooperating, too,” Wayne said.

Nobody saw the wolf, including Lang and Wayne, who continued hunting the wolf.

Schuster had asked Lang to check on the Parkers and Mr. Lyons, and later in the morning, Lang told him they reached a friend’s house safely.

Stephanie and Megan overheard the wolf attack on the radio and waited for Schuster and Foster at the Wolftown Medical Clinic. Schuster told Stephanie that Foster told him to tell her to tell Megan to stay away from him because, regarding other wolf attack victims, Dr. Groves had not ruled out rabies. Apparently, Mr. Marshal promised Foster he would give Schuster a couple of personal messages for Megan. They did.

The medical clinic already typed all policemen’s blood and, with type AB+ blood, Foster could receive any type. Dr. Groves could not collect blood from pregnant Megan and Schuster lost over one pint, and so Stephanie donated.

Because Foster worried about losing his wedding ring and infecting Megan, Schuster asked a nurse for a specimen container.

Dr. Groves called an air ambulance.

Worried that the Wolftown emergency services could not transport Foster to the landing site, and they might request county resources too late, Schuster called Sheriff Jordan’s home. The Sheriff immediately coordinated with the air ambulance, then notified the Wolftown Police Department. Sheriff Jordan thought if the Wilde County Sheriff’s Department appeared, the local police might not disperse them.

The country police escorted the ambulance crew and Foster safely to the air ambulance, but Dr. Groves and Stephanie forced Schuster to remain in the Wolftown Medical Clinic. Nobody saw a wolf. Stephanie and Megan drove to the University of Washington Health University Hospital.

Foster died in surgery before Stephanie and Megan arrived. Transfusions and IVs pumped more blood and fluids than a human body normally held, but Foster bled too rapidly. His heart stopped and he could not be resuscitated.

Schuster convinced Dr. Groves he could continue working, and they hid some injuries from the police. Schuster showed John his bite wounds and the claw marks on his back. The wolf sprained or tore his shoulder’s muscles. Dr. Groves had no idea how the wolf’s teeth caused serious but not severe damage.

Dr. Groves asked Schuster if he or Mr. Marshal should receive the last rabies vaccine. Schuster told him to vaccinate Mr. Marshal. On Monday or Tuesday, Dr. Groves expected the shipment, and he and Schuster relied on the incubation period. Although the first victims’ rabies test results were negative, he would vaccinate Schuster anyway.

Because the Marshals had one bathroom and Mr. Marshal worried about infecting a friend, Schuster let him shower at his house.

He washed the blood out of the police car’s front seats, but some soaked the upholstery. Dr. Groves said the rabies virus died when the blood or other fluids dried, so Schuster borrowed Stephanie’s hairdryer.

Schuster disinfected Foster’s wedding ring and left it to dry on his dresser. He washed off the mud and blood, changed his uniform, and wrote a note for Stephanie, warning her he would disinfect the bathroom later.

Dropping off Mr. Marshal, Schuster noticed Mrs. Marshal scolding him, but it did not seem to be a domestic altercation.

Then Schuster returned to work because the Wolftown Police Department lacked enough officers. He offered to wash out the back of the police car, but Karl Henry volunteered, saying he needed to protect the sutures. They talked while he cleaned.

Deputy Chief Phelps assigned Schuster to routine patrols instead of unpaid administrative leave, but only for the duration of the wolf emergency.

Schuster had asked Lang to check on the Parkers and Mr. Lyons, and later in the morning, Lang told him they reached a friend’s house safely.

Due to the holidays, the next post will be on November 29, and there will be no post in December. Regular, every-three-weeks posting will resume on January 3, 2025.

John generally left the wolf responders alone; they seemed too tired and bedraggled to answer questions, and a few treated him with suspicion or as an intruder.

But he learned that Mayor Dwyer reluctantly mobilized the Wolf Guard in the early morning of March 11. Most had neither hunted wolves before nor joined the Wolf Guard before March 11, but they tended to own guns and patriotically worry about Wolftown’s safety. They relied on the authorities’ instructions.

Due to the flood, some responders sheltered in houses or businesses, ready to patrol the streets once the water level lowered, but most people rested in Holy Trinity. Some people preferred living in damp houses without electricity or plumbing to venturing outside and encountering the wolf.

Phil, the town plumber, and Gary, Holy Trinity's, acquired potable warm water and improvised ways to relieve people. They asked John not to describe their methods to inspectors.

Most wolf responders were male and unaffiliated with Holy Trinity, but Lutheran women popped up, apparently prepared for anything. They scrounged water-tight containers and laid out the locker rooms’ towels and washcloths in the science lab. Their hot food and coffee wafted from the Fellowship Hall, which John avoided. If he asked, “What brand is it? What’s in it?” somebody would ask why, and speaking with people all day made him too tired to explain veganism.

Eating a granola bar from his pocket, John re-read and organized his notes at the gymnasium’s folding table.

Officer Billy Schuster trudged to him. “Hi, Mr. Dalton.”

“Hi. You don’t need to call me mister,” John said, four years older than Schuster.

Previously, John had been too preoccupied to think about Schuster’s appearance, but now he noticed Schuster’s red eyes. He assumed Schuster had cried; he forgot if his eyes were red earlier.

“I’m on duty, so I call all men mister,” Schuster said. “I’m looking for Wayne.”

“He’s taking a nap, but I don’t know where.”

“Let him sleep. Half the wolf responders are too old for stuff like this. While I’m here, do you have questions for me?”

“I was told to be careful what I asked you because you answer whether or not you have authorization.”

He snorted a laugh and said, “It depends on the topic. I’ve asked Phelps and Mayor Dwyer what I’m authorized to tell you. Has Wayne told you about the attack on Foster and I?”

“Not yet.”

“It’s important to things I have to ask Wayne. I’m assuming you would be listening, so you need context. You can chime in if you want. Do you want me to tell you?”

“Sure, but I can’t help you if you intend to kill the wolf. I don’t know how I could help anyway.”

“Okey-dokey. If you want to listen but decide not to give any advice, that’s fine. It’s up to you and I won’t pressure you. With the kind of ideas we have, we need multiple perspectives. And you seem to be available.”

“I’m a lot less experienced with wolves than Wayne is. And a lot of other people.”

“I also don’t have a good way to preserve my account of what happened. I think you’d write down what you heard and it would be difficult to get the only copy from you.”

“Because of the police corruption?”

“Making multiple copies of things and stuff like that is a reflex at this point. It probably isn’t a big deal.”

“Sure, I’ll listen.”

To avoid somebody inconvenient overhearing, Schuster led John to the principal’s office, which much of Holy Trinity’s activity would bypass. Normally, John would have dubiously gone with him, especially alone, but Schuster seemed ethical.

“Just so you know, I’m not looking for revenge. I don’t care if the wolves get captured or killed or whatever, but they need to stop killing people,” Schuster said.

“I agree that they need to stop,” John said. “And most mayors would have authorized killing them.”

“You won’t like what we did to the wolf.”

“It might be acting normally for a wolf, but I feel sorry for the victims. I don’t want wolves to attack people.”

“We didn’t, either. Officer Foster and I were on unpaid administrative leave for accusing Chief Laufenberg of misconduct. We volunteered for duty because the wolves were attacking people and somebody was going to die sooner or later. We became cops to protect people and sometimes animals are involved. If Wolftown had a bigger force, we probably would’ve been given duty today instead of last night.”

The Wolftown Police Department issued officers with pepper spray, also called OC, 92 Beretta handguns, and, against the wolf, tranquilizer guns with ketamine darts. Pepper spray and grappling subdued the average unruly person in Wolftown, but Wayne was highly theoretical about pepper spray’s effects on wolves. They carried guns because many citizens owned guns and some visitors hunted. The semi-automatic handgun fired 9mm rounds and one magazine held fifteen rounds. Thus far, every attempt to tranquilize a wolf failed, but Schuster and Foster expected somebody to sedate a wolf sooner or later.

“But this morning, you shot seventeen times before reloading,” John said.

“Stephanie made me switch to my Glock,” Schuster said. “I don’t think it changes anything, but it makes her feel better.”

Left-handed, Foster carried the gun and pepper spray on his left side, but Schuster on his right. They could use weapons with the opposite hands, but less accurately.

In his briefing, Wayne essentially said, that the wolves would win a grappling match except against Tarzan.

Corporal Karl Henry advised policemen to bring bandages and tourniquets in their pockets, instead of leaving them in the patrol cars’ first aid kits, and to use the injured policeman’s first aid supplies.

On March 10, the Marshals worried Ms. Parker and her boyfriend or their friends might be unaware of a wolf near the children or unable to protect them during a wolf attack. Mr. Tyrone Marshal offered to board up Ms. Parker’s dog flap. She had already barricaded the dog flap.

On March 11, at approximately the same time as the wolf attack on Schuster and Foster, police officers and animal control nearly caught Barker and Charlie.

At 5:00 AM on March 11, Mr. Marshal woke up, letting his wife sleep in. With children inside and a wolf outside, in order to smoke a cigarette, he ran the stove’s ventilation fan and stuck his head out a kitchen window. His kitchen window faced Ms. Parker’s backyard.

Mr. Marshal looked out the backyard. Seeing a large dog different than Ms. Parker’s mutt, Rowdy, he turned on the back door’s light. He thought the animal seemed less doglike. It pushed halfway through the dog flap, paused, backed out again, and walked between the houses.

Worried about the wolf attacks, Mr. Marshal warned the homeowners. Ms. Parker told Mr. Marshal they preferred animal control over the police and asked him not to call anybody. Because the wolf left, and their quick search showed no wolves, they felt safe. He worried the wolf could have returned or would in a few minutes.

Mr. Marshal called 911, brought his shotgun and buckshot shells to the kitchen, and through the window, watched for the wolf. Also, he warned the dispatcher about his shotgun and promised when police arrived, he would store it in the master bedroom’s closet.

Schuster and Foster responded to the 911 call and saw a wolf further down Ms. Parker’s street.

The policemen woke up Ms. Parker, and Schuster assured her that the Wolftown Police Department focused on the wolves and fatal situations, disregarding everything else. Her family’s and friends’ safety concerned Schuster and Foster. Foster pointing out wolf eyes across the street changed Ms. Parker’s mind.

As if looking for a human, having little idea how else to conduct a house search for an animal, Foster and Schuster cleared the messy, dirty one-story two-bedroom house. They gathered Ms. Parker, her boyfriend Mr. Lyons, her children, and Rowdy into the master bedroom and told them to lock the door.

To block the door, Ms. Parker had piled stuff around a broken chair that Schuster considered junk but Ms. Parker might consider a legitimate piece of furniture. The pile had been scooted and toppled towards the kitchen like something shoved it from the dog flap.

Because of people smoking, Ms. Parker’s gas stove, and a cluttered house scattered with flammable things, plus Schuster and Foster’s unexpressed dubious feeling about the smoke detectors, the policemen offered to board up the dog flap themselves. Ms. Parker thought their barricade worked well; she cared slightly about damage to the door.

Ms. Parker kept Rowdy inside because of the wolf, and she and Mr. Lyons said the front door was shut when Mr. Marshal called. They wondered if he called the police on Rowdy again.

The family intended to go to sleep when the police left. Schuster and Foster thought Ms. Parker might agree to boarding up the dog door if Mr. Marshal’s description did not match Rowdy, but disturbing her sleep again would irritate her.

Meanwhile, Mr. Marshal saw the canine and heard a wolf.

Schuster and Foster picked their way back-to-back around Ms. Parker’s house to the Marshal’s house. The upkeep levels clearly marked the boundary between their properties, and less so the other neighbors.

“Do you feel like somebody is watching us?” Foster asked along the way.

“They could be,” Schuster said. “Do you think we get that feeling from animals?”

“No idea.”

Foster and Schuster asked Mr. Marshal to leave his gun inside the closet until they left and warned him that firing a gun within Wolftown’s city limits was illegal. He said, “I won’t go near it, no way. I don’t want a misunderstanding where somebody gets shot.”

They asked Mr. Marshal about their dog flap idea. He was willing to lend tools to Schuster and Foster, but absolutely never to Ms. Parker’s family or her guests. “And don’t bring the toolbox with you,” he said. For extra wolf resistance, he suggested the drill, and he volunteered to unscrew the board later.

Schuster and Foster apologized to Mrs. Marshal for waking up her and the children. Taking Mr. Marshal’s statement, they heard gunfire near Ms. Parker’s house. They told him to stay inside, lock the doors, and keep everybody away from the windows, and radioed dispatch again.

Cautiously, Schuster and Foster returned to Ms. Parker’s house, both with drawn guns. Schuster saw a wolf’s glowing eyes, but the wolf ran away.

According to Mr. Lyons, a wolf jumped near the window several times. Standing inside the bedroom, Mr. Lyons fired through the window, breaking the glass; police determined he completely missed the wolf. Schuster considered this surprisingly clear thinking compared to Mr. Lyons’ thought processes on previous calls. He and Foster warned Mr. Lyons about various laws and recommended telling officers he had a gun. To his and Foster’s relief, Ms. Parker’s family would go to a friend’s house.

Schuster and Foster intended to escort the family safely to their car, but Foster saw the wolf across the street. It bolted behind a neighbor’s house.

Instead, they decided to search for the wolf and ask Mr. Marshal to warn his neighbors.

So, Ms. Parker’s family locked themselves in the windowless bathroom, waiting for the police to either catch the wolf or chase it away.

The wolf vocalized closer to the Marshals’ house than Ms. Parker’s house.

On the dash to the Marshals’ house, Foster said, “Sometimes I really hate the Second Amendment.”

Mr. Marshal opened the door in time for Schuster and Foster to run straight inside. They still asked for permission, though. He began phoning his neighbors.

Mrs. Marshal said she saw something towards the front of their house.

Schuster slung his tranquilizer gun over his back and drew his handgun, while Foster held the tranquilizer gun in one hand and had his other hand on his handgun. They walked with their backs to the walls, and when going between houses, they moved back to back. Schuster could not tell John what they said during radio transmissions, but they remained in contact with the dispatcher.

Over a couple minutes, the wolf returned to Ms. Parker’s and Marshal’s house. The dispatcher said that Mr. Marshal said the wolf explored the dog door again. By the time Schuster and Foster reached Ms. Parker’s house, the wolf had moved out of sight along the wall with the broken window.

A pair of wolf eyes glowed in front of Schuster for several seconds; he doubted his shot struck the wolf.

As Foster turned the corner, the wolf bit his right leg just above the knee. He screeched and fell.

Schuster turned the corner. He tried to dazzle the wolf without blinding Foster. He repositioned himself. Because Foster and the wolf moved constantly, Schuster could not find a clear line of fire.

Foster fired his handgun three times, once inside the wolf’s mouth, and once striking it.

Retelling the events to John in a church building, Schuster paraphrased much of Foster’s words through the rest of the attack. In an alarming, panicked tone Schuster had never heard from anybody before, Foster yelled, “Shoot it! I can’t fire my gun!”

Just when Schuster saw Foster and the wolf, he tore something off Foster’s body. Schuster initially hoped the floppy thing was his shirt or the softer fabric covering of his body armor, but worried it was Foster’s flopping skin or an intestine.

In the same tone, Foster said, “I lost my gun!”

Likely, Foster gripped any part of the gun with either hand, but rain, blood, and mud made the gun too slippery for a secure grip, and the pain probably discouraged using his hand. If only one finger looped through the trigger, and nothing else touched the gun, Foster could have lost it. Schuster believed Foster touched the gun without holding it for as long as possible; he may have dropped it multiple times. The wolf bit through Foster’s left hand, affecting his dexterity. The bites on his forearm affected his grip strength. The wolf injured Foster’s right hand less severely, but enough to complicate firing a gun with a non-dominant hand.

He continued wrestling with the duty belt and told Schuster to shoot regardless of hitting him. He fired at the wolf’s ribs; around the same time, Foster pepper sprayed the wolf, which flinched and yelped.

Schuster fired three more times at the fleeing wolf, while Foster tranquilized the wolf one-handed. The heavily bleeding wolf held a solid metal object in his mouth. It resembled a gun.

Slumped against the wall and ground, Foster fumbled with his tranquilizer gun.

“I can’t reload,” he said.

“Take it easy,” Schuster said.

Schuster looked for Foster’s injuries under the mud, from head to toe.

“Did it bite you?” Foster asked.

“No. Where are you bitten?” Several times, Schuster would tell Foster, “Take it easy.”

“In my radio.”

“What?”

“You didn’t shoot me.”

“I shot you?”

“No, you didn’t. It whizzed.”

“Mr. Marshal, can you hear us?” Schuster yelled.

Mrs. Marshal said, “He’s getting his shotgun! Tell him not to shoot around policemen!”

“Tom Lyons?” Foster asked.

To Schuster's relief, body armor protected the front of Foster’s chest and torso.

“Okey-dokey, ma’am. Tell him Foster and I told you to make him listen to you. Stay inside.” To Foster, he said, “Mr. Marshal has a shotgun.”

Foster paid little attention to the pain throughout the attack, but he began to notice it. His left hand and arm poured blood, causing most of his blood loss. His left middle finger dangled by a tendon or his skin, and the wolf had bitten or torn off his left index finger, his trigger finger; blood gushed from them.

Foster asked, “Where’s my wedding ring?”

“You have it,” Schuster said. “Where’s your tourniquet?”

“I promised Megan I wouldn’t take it off. Where’s my wedding ring?”

“It’s on your finger.”

Schuster applied Foster’s tourniquet to Foster’s arm. More blood streamed down Foster’s hip and leg, and Schuster hoped it could wait. Applying direct pressure outside felt unsafe.

“It bit my knee and knocked me down,” Foster said.

“I’m inside, keeping an eye out for the wolf,” Mr. Marshal called.

The empty space between Ms. Parker’s house and Mr. Marshal’s house was shorter than the space between Ms. Parker’s house and the police car. Moving Foster would require a few minutes. Schuster administered first aid and asked Mr. Marshal for permission to hide in his house, despite rabies.

Simultaneously, Foster groaned that the wolf tore off his duty belt, his gun was gone, and the pepper spray blew into his eyes, and, scared, that the wolf would return. He fiddled with his pocket, wincing.

“I can’t get it and open it in time,” he said.

“What?”

“Yeah, come in, but stay in the kitchen, so she can bleach everything,” Mr. Marshal called. “She’s got the kids in the bathroom.”

Schuster was sticking Foster’s flashlight in his right pocket and telling him which side.

“My knife. I need a weapon.” Foster dropped his red Swiss Army knife.

“Okey-dokey. We’ll be there in a minute. We appreciate it, sir.”

Schuster unfolded the larger blade, and Foster squeezed the pocketknife in his right hand.

“I’ll watch your back.” Being dragged, Foster said, “Yeah, Mr. Marshal. Thanks for your help,” Foster called. “Come on, I’m scared. Give me your OC.”

“I’ll take the safety strip off, so you can grab it off me.”

“Tell Megan to stay away from me.” Foster methodically reached for the flashlight.

“Take it easy.”

“No, you’ve been exposed. Stay away from Megan.”

Schuster began dragging Foster again. “Okay. Take it easy. I took off the safety strip.”

“Tell Stephanie to tell Megan.” Foster yelled, “Wolf, wolf, wolf!”

Part 10 coming November 1, 2024.

I once heard someone say that sculptures are like moving pictures. That's not to say that the pieces are alive or sentient. But that the fluidity of their third dimensional forms seem to give the audience a sense of movement. And that is exactly what I felt when I first set eyes on The Glass Lady. Made entirely of clear crystal, the life-sized figurine was the shining star of St Gerald's Art Gallery. People from all across the country came to see it, overcome by the intricacy of her flowing gown and the delicate strands of hair blowing in an invisible wind. But what truly drew the visitors attention was the woman's face. She appeared to be crying, crystalized tears running down her face. It was as though the artist had captured her in time, immortalizing her sorrow for all to see. I was enraptured. I had never seen anything quite so beautiful. Her eyes, like the Mona Lisa's, seemed to follow me as I moved. The small black plaque, where the artist's name was usually written, was blank. I remember asking the man next to me if he knew who had worked on the piece, but he too had no answer. No one seemed to know exactly who the artist was, only that they were a friend of the gallery owner's, and the only correspondence they had had with the director had been by telephone, and that they wished to remain anonymous. I stared in an equal measure of awe and puzzlement at the woman's crying face, and I remember thinking about the kinds of people who can create such beautiful art and not want to claim credit. But as I continued to stare into those shining glass eyes, I began to wonder if the sculpture was a manifestation of the artist themselves. That perhaps they too felt made of glass.

“Cassius Marcellus Coolidge,” Mary shrieked upon entering the living room, “get those dogs off the chairs and away from that table this instant.” Startled by his wife returning home earlier than expected, Cash sheepishly replied, “Yes dear. Sorry dear.” Although today’s portrait session was cut short, this didn’t upset Cash because he had already completed most of the painting. The rest he could finish on his own later.

The smell of drying blood and viscera should probably have been a sign that things were not going to go according to plan. But then again, when do I ever plan? Almost never. So hah, take that fate! How do you ruin a plan when there isn’t one?

You know what the best part of my abilities is? Turning every stairwell into an elevator. No, not literally. That would be a terrible power. Unless Apotheosis decides to make the world into a life size game of chutes and ladders again. But what would be the odds of that happening a third time? I’m betting very low.

Anyway, what I meant was, I stepped from dark corner of the stairwell to dark corner of the stairwell one floor above the previous dark corner, over and over until I started seeing “weird shit™”. Besides no sane person takes the elevator anymore. And what am I if not a paragon of sanity. I think that to myself, as I'm pelted in the face by what felt and smelled suspiciously like ocean spray…on the 22nd floor…in the stairwell. Hm.

Well, I’ll be damned if I don’t enjoy a good mystery, so I walked to the door leading to the 22nd floor hallway and yanked that fucker open. I had a good split second before I managed to shadow-step into the hallway itself which left me soaked up to my knees in the lake’s worth of saltwater that spewed out of the doorway like a haphazard gas station burrito breakfast after a few hours.

Quite an image, I know. What can I say? I’m an artist.

What was infinitely more interesting than that, was the eight foot tall being made of salt water, coral, and an entire school of fish that was fighting someone that I recognized.

“Ionic, good to see you again.” I said to the very powerful electrokinetic.

All he said in reply was a series of grunting noises, though that was probably because of the series of punches to his sternum that the sea creature decided to levy his way, rather than in response to my greeting. Probably.

Ionic had been an interesting member of The Saviors to meet. If you can call unchecked aggression and less than heroic homicidal tendencies “interesting”. He had fair skin, bright electric blue eyes, and platinum blonde hair that was about medium length, in that classic style of “short enough to not be a liability in a fight but long enough to look like Zeus’ younger cousin”.

Does Zeus have cousins? Probably.

According to word on the street, AKA The Savior’s files that I kind of sort of maybe took a look at when I was in their headquarters letting them have the honor of hiring me to do what I was already doing, he used to have a robotic body that was used to contain his immense amount of bioelectricity after he burnt out his original one, but then an Activated by the name of Ambrosia made him a new fully organic body. Which is kind of the full genetic equivalent of finding out that someone isn’t a natural blonde in my opinion. Like yeah, he might have a pretty boy thing going on, but they’re not real, if you know what I mean.

When I saw arcs of bright blue electricity start to form around Ionic, that’s when I decided that I should probably just leave him to his little spat and make my way further in. Which I did.

Ignoring the sounds of one-sided combat coming from behind me, I made my way towards the next closest throwdown that I could hear. There was an even bigger fight going down upstairs too that was deafening, even through the walls. I came upon an interesting sight. A man with pitch black skin and bloodshot yellow eyes all over his body. Like, ALL over his body. Even on the soles of his feet. It was pretty disturbing. You would also think that he would have noticed me, but I guess he was a little preoccupied.

Luckily enough for him his feet didn’t seem to touch the floor. He just levitated about a foot off the ground. Currently throwing miniature black holes at the guy and levitating as well, was Dr. Elias Magnus, better known around here as Darkstar. Elias is a local legend, born and bred in New York post-Activation. He was a scientist trying to find a way to harness different forms of esoteric energy to try and find a permanent replacement for all of the old-world power sources.

One critical mishap later and next thing you know, he’s Activated. He’s one of the only people I know of that wasn’t born with his powers. Then again, maybe he was, but the accident was the first time he ever used them out of reflex. I’ll have to pick his brain about that at some point.

Nice guy, honestly. Unless you piss him off. Then you get to be subjected to having your entire body shoved into a blackhole the size of a human fist. A normal human fist, not like the planet crackers on Atlas.

I sit there for a minute watching old man Elias, who is about a third of my age by the way, before he notices my presence and then gets his block knocked off by an invisible punch while he’s distracted. You would think that he would know better than to let his guard down in a fight, man his age and all. Also, apparently Eye-guy is telekinetic. So, I do Elias the favor of wrapping inky black tendrils around the many-eyed man and giving him a second to breathe. I’m a nice guy like that.

Elias whips around the guy in the air and aims a fist with a black hole wrapped around it right into the back of the many-eyed man’s eyeball laden head. The ensuing impact splatters blood and eyeball juice everywhere and sends Eye-guy careening out of a 22nd floor window and down to the streets below. I guess he knocked him out, or maybe he can’t actually fly and can only levitate, because the poor bastard hits the ground below at full force and splats.

“Void?! What are you doing here? I thought you were rejec-passed over.” The 43-year-old scientist says, doing a terrible job of covering the blatant insult.

“Just doing my civic duty, as always. And I wasn’t rejected. I declined.” I lied through my teeth at the man. He frowned at me, then sighed.

“Look, have you seen Sentinel or Gigaton?”

“Sentinel yes, Gigaton no.”

“Good, then he must still be fighting Redstar.” he said, relief evident in his voice.

I pushed past the initial thought of why so many people needed star in their name and told him where I saw Sentinel. He visibly paled, which was impressive given his already pale complexion. Between that and the grey streaks in his otherwise jet-black hair and beard, he had a goth Dr. Frankenstein thing going on. Actually, I imagine that this is what I would have looked like about 70 years ago, if I could age that is. Then he turned and started nervously pacing, even though his feet still weren’t touching the ground.

“…no.” he said. “Not again. It’s going to be too late by the time he comes back again.” Then he turned back to me.

“I need you to do me a favor. I need you to find Eldritch and Starchild and tell them that Ana…Gigaton, needs backup.”

“Another star name? Why are there so many of you? Not that Void is the most creative name or anything but still-”

“Nicholas! Please hurry!” he said. I frowned at the mention of my first name. I wasn’t aware that he knew it, or that anyone did. Except for me and a whole host of dead relatives and acquaintances.

I just nodded and shadow-stepped away from the room. Next stop, the 23rd floor.

The sight of Eldritch and Starchild wasn’t all that surprising, given that I was told that they were here. The sight of the…thing, that they were fighting was another thing entirely. It was a hulking mass of irradiated tumors and body horror. Fun. And then there was a man dressed like an old-world party magician, who kept opening and closing portals to redirect telekinetically thrown objects and energy bolts back at the two heroes. And man let me tell you, what a fight.

But first, more origin stories. Yay!

Eldritch is a pretty big legend. Mostly because he was actually the first Activated on record, technically. It’s a bit complicated.

In 1922 the man that would come to be known as Eldritch was a creole conman on the streets of New Orleans named Achilles Dupont. Selling fake voodoo and hoodoo to all of the naïve and gullible European tourists and refugees on the streets of the French quarter, he would end up crossing the wrong man. A white man by the name of Alistair Wicked.

Fucking ominous name, right?

Achilles found himself kidnapped along with a lot of other “people who shall not be missed”. Alistair’s words not mine. Turns out that Alistair was an occultist who bought a talisman from Achilles that would supposedly protect whoever wore it from malevolent spirits. Except that Achilles was a conman selling nothing of the sort. Not really anyway.

So, when Alistair’s beloved wife Francine wore the talisman during one of their rituals, and against all odds they actually made contact with something, it did nothing to save her from being ripped away to some nightmare dimension by the entity in question.

Achilles and the other people taken by Alistair and his cult were meant to be used in a sacrificial ritual to bring his wife back. But instead, when all the other “sacrifices” had been cut down during the endless chanting juxtaposed with screams cut suddenly short, and Achilles found himself under the ritual knife apologizing and begging for his life to a man that had lost any morality well before he had lost his wife, something…unexpected happened.

Not that anyone noticed at first. See, the knife came down, right into Achilles’ heart no less. But, unlike the others, he was ripped away, just like Francine Wicked had been. And in his place was a single multi-faceted jewel containing the screaming visage of Francine Wicked.

Alright, I may have made that last part up.

But truthfully nothing happened. Alistair’s wife was not returned to him, the entity did not intervene in anyway except by removing Achilles from the world, and Alistair spent the next few years going insane before being convicted of killing his wife and hanging himself in his prison cell.

I’d feel bad, if he wasn’t a racist, murdering, cult leader son of a bitch.

According to the man formerly known as Achilles Dupont, there was a lot more going on behind the scenes, though. He spent an amount of time between a few minutes and literal eons trying to convince an alien, eldritch entity that looked like a dying galaxy to return him home. An odd specification of time, I know. But I’m not the one writing the stories here, just recounting them to an adoring audience is all.

Achilles claims to have made a deal with the entity. Apparently, it hadn’t been aware of anything outside of its own dimension before the Wickeds tore a temporary hole in the walls between its dimension and ours. But now it found itself infinitely curious about all of the things and concepts that flooded the minds of humans. Love, hate, hope, despair. And that was just the surface. Sunlight, grass, ice cream, the list goes on.

The point is that Achilles offered a part of his very soul to the being just to be taken back home. That way it could experience all of those things through the lens of a mortal being, i.e. him, in the safety of its home. Except that, oddly enough, the entity considered this to be a raw trade for Achilles himself. So, it offered a fragment of it’s own essence in return, to replace the part of himself that he would be giving up.

And look, I know what you’re thinking. But Void, how did any of this happen if the world before Activation was mind-numbingly boring and normal? I mean, still awful a lot of the time but in a non-reality shattering way. Good question. I have no idea. But I have some theories. Worldshaper rewriting history? An alternate universe? Or maybe, the world was never as cut and dry as we believed it to be, and we only started paying attention when it became impossible to ignore. Who knows?

Anyway, Achilles, afraid of the consequences of being part eldritch abomination, attempted to turn down the offer but his attempt fell on deaf…well not ears, but you get the point. It didn’t listen. After having a part of his very soul removed and haphazardly replaced with a dark, writhing shard of iridescence like an ill-fitting puzzle piece, he was sent screaming out of that twisted reality. According to him, he awoke back on Earth but in a very different world then the one that he had left behind. And with his heart once more intact.

Oh, and he could also read people’s minds, fly, and crush a man with his mind like a fucking soda can.

Which oddly enough is what he just did to the monstrosity being fought while I was explaining all of this to you. What a coincidence. Body horror is down for the count. Kinda makes you wonder why Eldritch didn’t just do that to begin with.

I yell out across the room and tell Eldritch what Elias had told me. He acknowledges my words and disappears down an adjacent hallway, presumably towards the explosive fight going down on the other side of the building. I also told him that I like his hair. He didn’t react to that part, but as a man with shadow abilities, I kind of wish that I could pull off the black dreads look.

Starchild seemed a bit preoccupied with the magician, who had begun throwing his own energy barrages at the star skinned hero.

Right so, next up for story time is the Radiant Wonder: Starchild.

He was born on a Native American reservation in Dakota post-Activation, though I can never remember which Dakota. I guess it doesn’t matter anyway, both are basically gone now. Nobody knows his real name, but his past is interesting to say the least. Maybe not Eldritch interesting, but still interesting.

According to Lakota tradition he was assigned a “wanagi”, some sort of star spirit meant to protect him, at birth. Except that unlike pretty much every member of his people ever, his star spirit decided that it was not content to watch and protect from the sky. So, it decided to become one with him and give him the power to protect himself, and his people. And that’s about it, as far as public knowledge goes. Didn’t really have a chance to do more than skim his file.

Starchild has glowing white hair, bright nuclear green eyes, and skin like a nebula. Stardust and cosmic gas flit across his form constantly, as if his body is just a human shaped tear in reality that acts as a kind of window into the cosmic void. And he can fly, create bolts of very painful and dangerous plasma, and, perhaps most obvious of all, can survive unaided in the vacuum of space.

Which about brings us to the close of this little scuffle, as Starchild decides to go full supernova on David Copperfield, leaving nothing left.

“Bit much, don’t you think?” I say.

“He kept making jokes about Indian giving every time he redirected a blast back at me. So, no. Excuse me if my patience wore a little thin.” he said back.

I hadn’t heard anything like that, but then again, I was kind of busy talking to you.

“Darkstar said-” I began.

“I heard.” he said, cutting me off. Then he flew down the hallway just as Eldritch had.

“You try to help a guy out, and does anyone give the slightest bit of gratitude? Of course not.”

“Why is the reject still here?” came a particularly electrifying voice.

I turned around to see Darkstar and Ionic coming up the stairs behind me. Right, I had completely forgotten about everyone’s least favorite sparkplug.

“I wasn’t-”

“Don’t care. Leave.” he said before pushing past me and following after the others.

I looked at Darkstar who was giving me a sympathetic look.

“He’s just jealous that I can teleport, and he still has to run down a hallway like a normie.” I said trying to brush off the blatant hostility.

“Nick…Void, you really shouldn’t be here.” he said. Take a wild guess what he did next. If you guessed “levitated down the hallway leaving my pasty ass alone, yet again”, then you are correct.

Well, that’s why I have you. Right? YOU can’t fly away and leave me grasping at the scraps of my ill-fated existence, unlike everyone else. Huh…where did THAT come from? Looks like something has managed to worm its way free of the prison that is my subconscious. Time to put it back where it belongs. Aaaaand…repressed.

What were we talking about? Oh right, Ionic and his ocean of character defects. Well, I suppose we have time to deep-dive into his backstory as well. I didn’t really bother with the full treatment before, but oddly enough I can’t remember why,

Anyway, Ionic was born as Lucien Leclair, a French-American from San Diego. Lucien is one of the handful of people I’ve met that has been around as long as I have. When the Activation occurred, his abilities manifested themselves and the sheer amount of bioelectricity running through his body burned him alive. As if by instinct, the bio-electric field that was his consciousness shunted itself into the city’s power grid in order to survive.

After a few months he was discovered by another legend. Lexicon, a man given knowledge of many Activated by whatever power he had. Of course, back then, he didn’t quite know how to use that power to get at specific information. He just had to go with whatever his super-powered mind spit out. But this is Ionic’s story, not Lexicon’s.

After he was discovered, the government agency that Lexicon worked for found a way to move Lucien into a new mechanical body designed to contain his power. And Lucien himself. See, the thing about Lucien is that the months of crippling isolation without the sensory input that comes with having a human body had a disastrous effect on his psyche. That and whatever method the government had used to rip him out of the San Diego power grid and put him into his new body.

Lucien suffered severely violent psychotic episodes that seemed completely random and could stop as suddenly as they started. So, they added to his body a kind of shut down function that would detect when he was on the verge of emotional instability and then shunt his consciousness into a kind of faraday cage, where he would essentially be put into a timeout sensory deprivation chamber until he calmed down. Yeah, pretty twisted.

He's still an asshole but, nobody deserves that shit.

The “does not exist” agency that employed Lucien, called A.R.E.S. though I have no idea what the name stood for, used Lucien as a super-powered assassin. Well usually assassin would denote some level of subtlety, but in Ionic’s case they kind of just switched his timeout function off and set him loose on whatever unfortunate organization had become enough of a problem to need to be deleted from existence. Obviously, this was back before the world was completely broken, when the world governments still somehow believed that they could control what was happening.

Thankfully for Ionic, his life took a different path when he met a Greek woman going by the codename Ambrosia. Ambrosia was a biokinetic, which meant that she could manipulate the human body on a molecular level. Or animal body. Any body really, as long as it was organic.

Ambrosia had taken to using her abilities to heal less than savory people as a back-alley doctor for hire. Apparently, she had information on several key targets of A.R.E.S. that had been given patch-ups by her, and Ionic had been sent to retrieve said information and then either forcibly recruit her or remove her from the picture entirely. Except that, in a rare moment of non-violent clarity, Ionic begged her to fix him. And she did. Eventually.

Making an entire body from scratch is a lot more difficult then healing a gunshot wound or even a brain hemorrhage, but she figured it out and even managed to curb most of his violent tendencies.

How? I have no idea, but I won’t pretend I’m not curious.

And the rest is history. Just like this building, IF THOSE EXPLOSIONS KEEP GOING OFF!

What the hell is going on back there, anyway?

Vincent stood aways from the cafe finishing his second bottle of cheap red wine, the easel stood unsteadily on the cobble stone road and the stars were so strange tonight.

He dipped the brush into coloured paint of his choosing, not what he saw, life was a phantasm anyway thought Vincent.

Tonight he would see her again, the girl, and if she did not love him he would prove his love to her.

Perhaps his brother would buy this one he painted now, for a few pennies.

Such a strange light tonight, such a strange strange light.

Perhaps

We come now to a place that was once a mechanic's garage. The whole block was purchased by a man of means, and gut remodels have been completed in all the old brick buildings except this one.

This one has become storage for things unwanted.

Bare concrete is occupied with stacks of dusty furniture, a broken hydraulic lift, and rat-nested boxes of magazines or books and receipts from forty years of businesses that occupied this side street off of the main drag.

A meandering path is cut through the forest of yesteryear's calendars and filing cabinets, and it opens into a clearing lit by a cracked skylight.

In a pool of starshine, glowing as if center stage beneath a spotlight, she lies.

Oil-stained concrete gives way to a bare, yellowed mattress.

Bare, yellowed mattress gives way to a bared, stained girl.

Bared, stained girl gives herself away so easily.

He took her, those months ago, when she strayed off the beaten after wandering away from the Greyhound bus station. That logo leers in her fevered dreams between his visits; she sees a silver, sleek running wolf in her deepest moments of need, and she prays for just one more beautiful release.

Thoughts of home fade when memories seep from her veins, and she is weightless as she floats into the warm oranges and reds of sweet surrender. Not even her worn, dirty crimson hoodie can comfort her as much as the poison that flows so sweetly.

Silver, slender fangs bite into her, but she welcomes the peace as she is consumed one fix at a time.

In a pool of starshine, glowing as if center stage beneath a spotlight, the savage beast of a man claims his prize.

We now draw the curtain, leaving the hunter with the hunted, in this place that has become storage for things unwanted so far from the gaze of grandmothers and woodsmen.

Once there was a gallant knight,

Who said, to a Dragon, “Beware, foul wight!

For I have come to slay your kind,

And steal what treasure I might find.”

The Dragon said, “You lack acumen;

A ‘wight’ is a ghost, or unlucky human,”

…but the Knight continued, as if he’d not heard:

“I heed not thy trickish word!”

“Note you this sword!” he did continue;

“It slices through the toughest sinew!”

The Dragon said, “Thy sword, I hail;

But I’d note I’m covered with armour’d scale.”

The Knight went on, “I have come hence!

And I’ve brought my own audience.”

And, indeed, in looking down,

The Dragon noted half the town.

They’d come out to see his end;

And to his funeral attend.

They cheered the Knight, and his actions spurred,

And they called the Dragon unkind words.

“You see!” the Knight, in triumph, cried,

“I now have many on my side.

We’re here to dispense righteousness

(And also, to loot thy treasure chests.)”

The Dragon then a sigh did heave.

“Are you sure you all don’t want to leave?

I don’t enjoy your smug disdain,

But I’d hate to see all of you slain.”

The crowd did boo. The crowd did laugh.

“Why, he’s a proud one, by a half!”

Said one wag, to loud applause;

The Dragon sighed, and clicked his jaws.

“I know our species are not friends

But must we work towards crosswise ends?

Leave me to my cave, and you to your lives

Everyone goes; everyone survives.”

The Knight then struck a Knightly pose

“Foul beast, too late – for everyone knows:

Dragons are sickly things, and weak

They’re scarcely smart enough to speak.

They do not fly. They breath no flame.

They’re easier than dogs to tame.

These things, our Bards have taught us well.

We know you’ve neither strength, nor spell.”

The Dragon shrugged and did let fly

A blast of flame more than twelve feet high.

The crowd, in turn, all eyes did roll.

“That’s just a trick,” the Knight did scold.

The Dragon said, “What do you believe?

What you’ve actually seen? – or the words you receive

From Bards, who (if I might remind)

Are not all truthfully inclined.”

The Knight cried out, “Now, that’s enough!

Speak thy no more of this lying stuff!

We know what’s true, we know what’s real

Because what we’ve been told matches what we feel.

If a truth’s displeasing, then – forsooth!

That alone proves its untruth.

The World is easily understood:

Those we like tell the truth, and are good.

Those we dislike, lie, and all of those

We’ll someday hang by their big toes.

And so, weird lizard, thy words do grate!

And thusly shalt thou meet thy fate!”

So saying, the Knight’s great sword did slash

The Dragon’s belly, where it made…no gash.

Instead, it bounced – in fact, it bent,

A thing the Knight didn’t live to resent.

For the Dragon sighed, and took one inhale,

And swishing, a tad, his giant tail,

Breathed forth a flame so vast and huge

It was like some mighty, fiery deluge.

But it wasn’t rain; it was pure heat.

And it fried six tons of human meat.

The Dragon gave a sigh of consternation;

Now he had problems of refrigeration.

But a local Wizard, for a moderate cost,

Cast, in the back of his cave, a Frost,

and helped him moved the tasty remains

Of a bunch of humans with too-few brains.

So now, the Dragon’s catching up on reading,

And he’s got lots to chew if he needs feeding.

And as for the town, it continued to exist

And none of the mob were very much missed.

Need morals? To start, know that many a Knight

Looks good in armor, but ain’t very bright.

And: some lessons are cruel, and ain’t lenient:

Reality’s real, even when it’s inconvenient.