But the spirits all convene, and now, it’s real. Qia drops to Ren’s other side. Her hands are already covered in the glow of green forest magic, ready to heal Ren’s new wounds.
Then, a shot goes off, barreling through the woods from miles off. Birds crow and scatter. Basuin flinches, eyes shut tight. His body is so tense it aches, waiting for the smell of smoke and gunpowder and blood.
Blood. Tangy and rich. His eyes fly open. Ren is beneath the shelter of his body. Caged between his arms as she sleeps on, unconscious. Blood colors the foliage beneath her.
He’s going to throw up. His stomach rolls. Fuck, he’s going to heave. The green is turning white. The warmth is freezing around him. Ren is bleeding out on the ice; the winds are howling. Bowling through the plateau. Valley of death, they should have named it. Val-something. Val—
“Bass!” someone calls above the screams of Valkesta, and he turns his head. “Did you hear that?”
He stares up at Haaman, whose feathers stand sharp and at attention on the back of their arms. Ren isn’t dead, he realizes. Her heart flutters beneath his hand. She’s just asleep.
“Did you hear that?” Haaman repeats, and then another shot goes off. Bass flinches all the same.
Qia cries, “Am-sa! We have to—”
Bass looks down again. His palm is coated in blood. The wolf-man roars in his chest, a howl for war, and it reverberates through every single part of Bass. His sinew and his bone and his flesh and his blood. The crack of his spine sounds just like the gunshot as his body morphs into something not all human.
There’s rotting meat between his teeth when he licks his lips. His eyes are wide, vision fielded by red.
“We need to move,” Ko hisses, reaching for Ren. “I’ll carry her on my back.”
A growl leaves him before he can register it, body shielding Ren from Ko. He’ll carry Ren on his back. That’s his duty. He’ll protect her. He’ll keep her safe. He’s her guardian. Her protector.
“Am-ga, please,” Ko says, face twisting with grief. “The army is close.”
He knows, but it makes blood fill his mouth. The wolf-man scratches at his ribs. Bass knows. They need to stop the legion, let Qia and Ko take Ren away from here. Painfully, he looks away from Ren. Haaman waits for him, still human, but ready to take flight. Yaelic shakes out his white fur, head down and staring at Bass.
He smells it now. The gunpowder. It makes him gag.
Beneath him, Ren grows paler. Sickly. She’s losing blood and it’s staining his trousers. She’s dying.
Basuin takes her hand in his, clean of her blood, and presses his lips to the back of her knuckles. A blessing? A curse. A knight promising something to his lady. A servant vowing his life to his god.
“Take her,” Basuin whispers. It aches to let go of Ren, but Qia wraps her in green healing magic and Ko labors her on his back. “To Hou-tou.”
Haaman takes off before he does, headed straight into the forest toward the legion. But Basuin waits. He lingers. When he flexes his hand and red claws burst forth from his fingers, and when the wolf-man stands on its hind legs to take up all the space left in the chambers of Basuin’s chest, he moves. He runs into the woods, spine hooked and picking up speed. Basuin runs into the woods until the trees are a blur of angry red passing him by.
Always too late, the wolf-man snarls.
Last to arrive, but first to leave. The only one who leaves.
It isn’t a loaded promise, either. When he finally arrives at the blood-spattered site of marching soldiers and dead animals, Basuin tells them to run. He gives them that chance. And none of them take it.
He doesn’t spoil their supplies nor break their weapons. Basuin burns them to the ground the way that Gyeosi burned. The way that Ulenski burned. Basuin recreates the same scenes over and over again, just like the nightmares do.
Have mercy, the women cried as they fled their homes with their babies bundled in their arms. A little girl clinging to her mother’s skirt as they raced toward the Valkesi Mountains—the only side of Grimmalia that was still left unoccupied by the Xalkhans.
Black Wolf, one of them cried as she bumped into him, hands covered in soot so black he could not tell where the darkness ended and he began. Black Wolf, Black Wolf, please spare us.
And now, in the present, Basuin’s hands pulse with red magic as he brings his sword down upon a Xalkhan soldier and slashes through the flesh and bone of his arm. Lumped bodies—more humans than heavy slumps of bears—burn with smoke and smell of fresh meat roasting over an open flame. He swears he hears the dinner bell ring, the one from Ilkana where he trained. Where he gave up his life to be as cruel as these soldiers are. Where he pledged to give up his gods, beaten until sick by iron bars, shoulders lashed bloody.
His hands are hot and they are violent. There is black fur sprouting from his tongue and he runs it over his teeth. Grown into sharp points, canines. Basuin growls from somewhere deep inside him.
More, more, more. With every man he fells he can taste their body. He’ll slink on all four paws and rip the throats from these soldiers, show them how cruel this forest can be. Show them how the blood they spill grows claws that draw blood, too.
His fingers twist and click, curving into talons. He breathes, hard, heavy, quick—flexes his hand out to stretch away the claws trying to break free from underneath his nail beds.
Let it, the wolf-man snarls. Let me.
