Far better to allow him to die than to inflict this torture on him.
I remember the first time the Vandawolf held me on Malak’s enormous anvil—a titanium alloy table that had soaked up all of Malak’s brutality, all the screams and all the horror he’d inflicted. I remember the agony I’d felt when I was exposed to so much pain, but the Vandawolf roared at me:“Do you think it hurts you more than it hurts me? Do you think I don’t feel everything?”
Hot tears leak from my eyes because my resolve is complete.
To save him, I will become the monster.
My battle now is to control the commands, to cut through the mess of desire and guilt, and focus on what I need to achieve.
Cover the entry wound.
Spread out across his chest and fill the gashes like streams.
The medallion obeys me far too easily, liquifying and spreading across his skin from the point of origin on my palm. The metal in the medallion is capable of expanding in size exponentially, this single band forming daggers, spears, and swords, although I’ve never fully tested how far it can stretch.
As far as it needs to, it seems.
All too willingly.
As soon as it covers the wounds on his chest, filling the gaps and halting the bleeding, I continue pulling the bolt through the rest of his body. Again, slowly. Ignoring the distant sounds of marching boots that are muffled behind the still-closed outer gate. Commanding the medallion as I continue to work.
Spill through his body.
Attach to his organs.
Fill the spaces.
“Become him,” I whisper. “Become new muscle, new sinew, new bone.”
I sense the metal fusing and bonding, becoming hard where it needs to be hard and flexible where it needs to be flexible, mimicking and replicating the broken parts of his shoulder and chest.
Finally, I pull the bolt clear at his back, sending a quick command to the remaining unused metal in my medallion.
Cover the exit wound!
The titanium responds, pouring out across his skin so quickly that only a single drop of blood slides down the Vandawolf’s back before the metal hardens and the exit wound is plugged.
The flow of blood has stopped.
The black metal solidifies once more, taking on the outline of a splash of liquid across the back of his shoulder.
I lift my left hand from his chest, my palm now bare.
The medallion is now part of him.
Rivulets of molten metal have adhered to his chest, a film of titanium filling all of his wounds, mimicking flesh and muscle and skin. Metallic streams that glisten in the morning sunlight.
He is a patchwork of cold metal, and it is my doing.
I leave him on his side, not wanting to upset the sealing process in case it’s ongoing, but I carefully slip my arms across his chest and back, my cheek pressing to his upper shoulder.
His heartbeats are weak at my ear. Sweat bathes his brow. Shivers are coursing through him, little ones, although I’m certain they’ll only get worse.
But he’s breathing more deeply, and the blood loss has stopped.
He’s alive. For now.
It’s a consolation I repeat to myself.
