32. Wolves
WOLVES
TALIA
I will say plainly what my colleagues will not: the fluxborn are not animals. Whether they are sentient, I cannot say. But they count. They coordinate. They seek revenge.
Talia woke choking on someone else’s terror.
She couldn’t tell where it was coming from, maybe the edge of camp? Her blankets tangled around her legs, and she struggled to get free, to get air in her lungs. Had she imagined it? Then a scream tore the night open.
Outside, Holloway swore as he fought to calm the shrieking horses. A tent was ripped open, streaks of blood on the ground outside. Dawn was already moving—hair wild, revolver in hand.
Another scream sounded, farther away now. Emotions latched onto her out of the dark—terror, confusion, helplessness. Talia stumbled, grabbing Holloway’s shoulder on her way down.
“It’s Sorrel,” Holloway panted, helping her up. “This way.”
Talia reached back to grab her boots and ran without lacing them. They turned a corner and skidded to a stop on a ledge where the ancient city simply—stopped.
Beyond the last row of foundation walls, the ground fell away into a jagged black gash. Blood trailed down into darkness.
Something was moving down there. Many somethings. Shapes shifted among the rocks, and the scrape of claws echoed.
Sorrel’s terror spiked again in Talia’s chest. He was still alive.
“We have to go now,” she said. Her voice was shaking. “I can feel him down there.”
Holloway didn’t ask how that was possible. She didn’t explain.
A narrow gravel path cut down the steep slope. Talia’s unlaced boots wobbled on her ankles. The air from below smelled musty, of wet fur, old blood, and something sour that made her throat close. She half slid, half climbed down the broken slope.
Sorrel’s fear guttered and flared like a dying candle. Every time it dipped, Talia’s stomach dropped with it.
A growl rumbled from her left. Very close. She froze.
Rocks skittered off the side of the path, bouncing into darkness. A pale shape moved at the edge of her vision. There and gone.
Another growl answered from her right. Then one from below. The tones repeated, almost like a conversation.
The path narrowed as they approached the bottom of the ravine. Walls pressed close on both sides, slick with moss. Above, Ashenfell’s broken skyline shrank to a thin strip of stars.
Lore was just behind her, and his hand found her shoulder. “Keep moving, Talent. I’m with you.”
Sorrel’s mind flared again with pain so bright it whited out her own vision. It felt like her own bones were cracking. Then his terror dropped. Flickered. Held on by a thread.
“Faster,” Talia gasped.
Just before they reached the bottom, a sound echoed around them. Not a scream this time. Bone cracking. Wet. Messy. Sucking and tearing. Then a gurgling breath that didn’t resolve. Her tether to Sorrel’s mind snapped and went quiet.
The absence hit her in the chest. She bent forward, hands on her knees, trying to breathe around the hollow where she’d felt him.
They found the body just around the corner.
What was left of it. He lay at the mouth of a tunnel, propped against the wall, throat torn, chest opened, organs spilling out in a pool of red.
His right leg was gone below the knee. A thin trail of steam rose in the chill air. He’d been alive moments ago.
Dawn stepped over the ravaged body and stalked into the darkness. “I’m getting his fucking foot.”
Talia hesitated. Dawn was already gone. Holloway and Lore exchanged a look, then Holloway’s hand found her shoulder.
“You okay?” he asked softly.
“Yeah,” she said, swallowing back the lump in her throat. “Let’s just get Dawn.”
The dark tunnel opened into a vast cavern, and Talia gasped.
It was beautiful in a way, tiers of rock cascading down the far wall, green moss glowing with eerie light.
The floor was scattered with bones. Old ones picked clean.
Fresh ones still speckled with blood and bits of flesh.
Movement flickered at the edge of the light.
A shadow detached from deeper shadow. Then another.
Wolves materialized from the darkness, shapes shifting in the rock formations above.
Talia’s empathy brushed against their minds.
She didn’t find the frenzied hunger she expected.
Instead, a feeling of calm settled behind her ribs, a sense of waiting.
Then a growl rolled from behind them. Another from the right. A third from overhead.
Without warning, a single wolf lurched toward them.
Dawn’s revolver cracked. The wolf twisted mid-leap, hit the ground, whimpered, scrambled back.
Two more shapes darted in. Holloway’s rifle boomed, and they scattered.
“They’re testing us,” Holloway said. “Back up. Slowly.”
Talia turned toward the entrance they’d come through, but the path was blocked. Another wolf appeared at the side tunnel to their left. Talia’s skin prickled. The wolves’ minds pressed closer. They were focused and patient. Clearly working together.
“This isn’t an accident,” she whispered. “They want us here.”
Then she saw why. At the back of the cavern, tucked under an overhang, a hollow was filled with small shapes all huddled together. Pups. Five of them, with round bellies and oversized paws. Watching with bright, curious eyes.
One had a human leg between its front feet, gnawing with clumsy puppy enthusiasm. Another tugged at the boot, tail wagging when the laces came free.
The pups’ minds were simple: hunger, satisfaction, curiosity. Her stomach churned. Sorrel was just meat to them. One stumbled forward on unsteady paws. Made a soft chuffing sound.
“We need to—” Talia began.
Another wolf lunged, jaws snapping. Dawn fired. It dropped, but the others surged forward.
The world narrowed to teeth and claws. Wolves surged from every shadow. Holloway fired, reloaded, fired again. Each shot bought them less and less time. Dawn’s revolvers cracked in the distance, deeper in the cavern.
Lore’s hand found Talia’s shoulder, a steady weight. He stayed there, his other hand throwing fire. A wolf veered away, yelping, fur smoking, and Lore dropped a spent flux crystal.
“Stay by me,” he commanded.
Another wolf lunged. Holloway took a shot and it dropped.
But more came. So many more.
A furry body slammed into Holloway from the side. He went down hard. Razor-sharp jaws snapped for his throat. He drove the rifle stock into its skull once, twice. It yelped but kept coming. Lore threw fire with his free hand. The wolf recoiled, snarling, and Holloway scrambled back.
Then one broke through the line. Flux-blue eyes locked on Talia. Intelligent. Determined. It lunged.
Talia didn’t think. Her mind reached out—clumsy, desperate—and grabbed hold of the wolf’s mind. Either panic or proximity, or both, reversed the flow of emotions, and she shoved with every awful feeling she had. Sorrel’s terror. The caravan bodies. The feral certainty she would die here.
The wolf flinched mid-leap. Its body stuttered, claws raking air inches from her face. Holloway’s rifle stock came down. Bone crunched. The wolf dropped, and pain lanced through Talia’s skull. She gasped, hitting the wall behind her. Lore’s head snapped toward her, pupils blown wide.
“That,” he said through his teeth. “Do that again.”
She felt the praise sink into her chest, warm and thrilling, but she couldn’t do it again. She didn’t know what she’d done, and she could barely think through the pain behind her eyes.
Holloway’s rifle clicked empty. He swung it like a club, driving one wolf back as another circled around. Lore threw fire again, but it flared weaker this time. His hand on Talia’s shoulder shook, and she watched in horror as black seeped up from his fingernails, up the back of his hand. Burnout.
Through the chaos, Talia saw Dawn fighting toward the back of the cavern, farther and farther away from them.
“Dawn, fall back!” Holloway roared, but she ignored him.
A wolf lunged at Lore. He turned to meet it, his grip leaving Talia’s shoulder for just a moment. Fire burst from both hands. The wolf twisted away, singed. When Lore turned back, his face was gray. Sweat tracked down his temples.
“We can’t hold this,” Lore gritted out.
Talia pressed her back against the wall, weaponless. Useless.
A wolf circled to their right, cutting off any retreat. Another moved in from the left. Their eyes gleamed in the dark, their fur glowing green in the strange moss-light. They could be patient. They knew they had won.
Holloway’s shoulder was bleeding heavily. Lore’s power was spent. They were going to die here. A massive wolf stepped forward, shoulders low. Her blue eyes fixed on Talia. She watched the wolf’s haunches clench, gathering herself to spring.
Then silver light exploded from the side tunnel, and Talia saw a ghost.
Riven.
He launched into the cavern, twin blades shining, his shirt already dark with blood.
His movements were unsteady, but his blades found their marks.
He hit the big wolf mid-leap, drove one blade into her ribs, then twisted, using its momentum to swing around and open her throat with the other.
They went down together in a spray of blood.
Two more wolves turned on him, and he came up fighting. He slashed, spun, drove them back with sheer physical power.
“Move!” he shouted, jerking his head toward the tunnel behind him. “Get her out of here!”
Holloway wrapped his good arm around Talia’s waist and hauled her toward the open path that Riven had cleared of wolves. Lore stumbled after them. Riven held the tunnel mouth. Somewhere behind them, Dawn’s revolvers cracked once, then twice. She was still fighting, beyond their reach.
They scrambled up the slope, gravel sliding away under their feet. Riven staggered behind them. Each step was slower than the last. His silver light dimmed. When they reached the top, he fell to his knees, blades clattering onto the stone. Blood soaked the entire left side of his body.
“Where’s Dawn?” Talia asked, looking around. Panic twisted in her stomach.
Then a gunshot cracked up from the dark.
Sharp. Final. Echoing off ruins. Talia held her breath.
A second shot.
A third.
Fourth.
Fifth.
Somehow, her empathy registered each little death. Confusion flared, then nothing. Fear spiked, then nothing. Five times, almost too fast to process. When Dawn emerged from the ravine, she walked steady. Holstered her revolvers as she reached them, then brushed grit from her palms.
“The pups? Really?” Talia asked, but Dawn just stalked past her and rounded on Riven.
“You just couldn’t stay away, could you?” she snarled. “I told you to hang back.”
“Wait,” Talia said. “You knew he was alive?” Dawn kept ignoring her.
“Seemed like you could use a hand.” Riven coughed, blood tracking a line down his chin. Then his eyes rolled back, and he slumped to the ground. Talia screamed.
“No—” Dawn dropped to her knees, but Lore shoved her over and took her place at Riven’s side.
“You still have that flux crystal you found, Talent?” Lore’s voice was unrecognizable, so hoarse it took Talia a moment to understand him.
She nodded frantically, pulled it out of her pocket—Riven’s coat pocket—and placed it in Lore’s outstretched hand.
“Last one. I can only fix the surface wounds. It’ll have to be enough.”
He pressed both palms flat on Riven’s chest with the flux stone between them and murmured. Light poured into the wound just as dark veins spiderwebbed farther up Lore’s arm. He swayed on his knees, cutting the spell short.
“That’s all we get,” he gasped.
Riven’s breathing came steadier. Blood had stopped streaming down his side, and there were spots of pink on his cheeks.
“Why did you save him?” Talia whispered. Lore had done everything he could to undermine Riven. It made no sense.
“We’re a week from Valrotala. We need every sword. And there are no”—he coughed—“degrees of burnout.”
No degrees of burnout. Once burnout set in, it progressed. Lore might as well keep casting at this point. But she couldn’t imagine Lore giving up. It felt like there was something he wasn’t saying. It seemed to Talia, true or not, like he’d saved Riven for her.
They returned to camp, plenty of night left to go.
Dawn kept watch. Lore tended to Holloway’s shoulder the old fashioned way—with bandages—then wrapped his own wounds.
He worked one-handed, tearing strips of cloth with his teeth.
Riven lay by the fire, chest barely moving.
Even after Lore’s healing, blood seeped through the bandages. Talia sat apart, arms around her knees.
The fire crackled between them all, throwing sparks. Dawn sauntered up behind her, and Talia didn’t look back.
“You’re angry,” Dawn said. “About the wolves?”
“The pups were innocent.” Talia’s throat felt raw.
“They were small predators. Give them a year or two, they’d hunt every road from here to the coast.”
“You don’t know that!”
“I know what smart hunters do.” Dawn’s voice was hard. “They learn. Adapt. Kill more efficiently. That pack was smart enough to lay a trap for us. Imagine each of those pups leading its own pack.”
“So we just kill them? Because they might be dangerous someday?”
“Yes.” No hesitation. “Before they kill us. That’s how survival works.”
“Then what makes us better than they are?”
“Nothing.” Talia smelled Dawn light a twist of savuthe, heard her take a deep breath. “You’re mixing up ‘good’ and ‘not dead.’”
“You’re right,” Talia said quietly. “I would have spared the pups. And maybe that’d be naive of me.” She looked at Riven bleeding by the fire. At Lore’s ravaged arm. “Or maybe we’d be fine. And they would be too. They were intelligent, Dawn.”
“So are humans. And they do plenty of damage.” Dawn inhaled, and smoke curled around her face. “Hate me all you like, but you’re alive to do it.”
Talia pressed the heel of her hand to her chest. She’d done something new with her power tonight when she pushed into that wolf’s mind. She would have kept going if she’d known how—it had been life or death. But there was a difference between fighting for your life and killing the way Dawn did.
“What’s the point of surviving if you have to be a monster to do it?” Talia asked.
Dawn didn’t argue. She just tossed away her smoke and stalked into the darkness with a scoff. Talia hugged her knees to her chest and smiled. It had been a horrific night, but she was getting sharper. That part felt good.