“I first encountered the tree wolves when I was only a child. It is possible that they intended to use me from the beginning. I certainly intended to use them.”

~ Bek Trent, M.A.S.O

Strange that the world could be so still. Silver stood at the edge of a great lake, staring at the black waters. There were no ripples. No hint of a breeze. Everything around her was absolutely, eerily static.

Not silent, however. There was a murmur of voices behind her, some of them familiar, some of them less so. One, just one, sent a shiver down her spine. But when Silver turned sharply to catch a glimpse of the speaker, she was suddenly faced with the Zara. It filled the space in front of her, black on white snow, eyes burning with an intense scarlet fire. Stumbling backwards, she waited for the raw fear that traveled with the demon to wash over her…but it never did. The demon simply stood, regarding her calmly, until her breathing slowed and she stood as well, half-turned so that she could run if she needed to. Her hatred for the Zara was visceral, made deeper by the frustration that it did not attack her immediately and ease the tension between them.

“Where am I?” she asked aloud, wondering if the demon could understand her, much less speak.

The Zara’s fangs flashed in the reflected light of the snow, but it…no, she realized…he – he made no sound. Instead, he dug his claws into the snow, and after a moment, she realized he was writing. Her eyes followed his movements as if of their own accord, recognizing the same letters of the strange language in Bek’s book. Now, as then, she knew them. Her eyes rose to the Zara, narrowed with suspicion. But he was gone. The snow was gone.

Silver opened her eyes with a groan. The first thing she became aware of was a horrible pounding in her head. Fuzziness swept through her mind as the pounding grew steadily worse. When something cold and wet brushed up against her cheek, everything that had happened to her before she lost consciousness came rushing back in a blur. A moan escaped her half-parted lips, and she covered her eyes with one hand to block out the blinding pallor of the snow. She had never had anything like a hangover, but suspected that she would never drink if it felt anything like what she was experiencing in that moment.

At least she knew Biarn was alive. She could sense him now, in a way that she had never sensed any living thing before. Strangely, she could sense the others as well, hovering around her, and she knew them. The wolf. Zien. To her mind, their magics were a faint buzz hovering at the edges of her senses. The Zara was not among them, thankfully; that had been a nightmare. But she wondered if what he had written was supposed to mean something to her.

The Castle of Divides.

After a moment spent lying unmoving as the sounds of the world slowly filtered back to her waking ears, Silver finally tried to force her blurred vision back into focus. The first thing she saw was the sky. There were no gaps in the clouds, which parted to reveal only a more fiercesome shade of gray before blurring into the mist that hung over the mountains. The second was the dark fringe of tree and rock and ice that mostly obscured the sky.

Turning her head suddenly, and groaning again as her neck muscles protested the motion and her head swam, she saw that beneath her there was only earth; dry, hard, cold, earth. More slowly, she turned her attention skyward again. It was still snowing profusely, but her patch on the ground was mysteriously sheltered. It both surprised and delighted her.

Then the wolf’s heavily furred face came into view, eyes intently focused on her and nose already at work. Silver lifted one heavy arm and wrapped her fingers into the beast’s warm fur. Her strength was returning to her. The wolf shook and licked her for a second time before curling its warm body more closely around her head and ears. It was so warm that even the pounding in her head seemed to subside at its touch, and she found herself fervently wishing she would never have to get up.

But it was morning. Past morning, most likely, and she knew the Zara had left them long before sunrise.

With one final soft, groan, Silver pushed herself onto her knees and heard her stomach rumble with hunger. Ignoring it, she stared in wonder at the perfect ring of earth that encircled her body. The snow was layered nearly half a foot thick against the invisible, but apparently solid, surface that protected her from the frigid weather. Then, her eyes strayed to the gangly tree wolf watching her from afar, bright red eyes shining. He looked so much better than she could have imagined.

Biarn turned his gaze away from her as Zien came to briefly brush noses with him before turning to her. Silver blinked and nodded slowly, seeing concern and something else that she did not know flicker in the tree wolf’s eyes.

“Are you well?” Zien purred softly, entering the barrier. Silver nodded slowly, realizing who must have erected the strange magic circle.

“You have saved one of my pack, and I cannot thank you enough, Silver.” For the first time in her life, she heard regret in Zien’s throaty growl. “You do not know this, but pups are rare among our kind. Our lives are long, our resources small. I sent him with you to keep him safe, but in that I failed. Forgive me.”

When she stared into the violet eyes of the alpha of the tree wolves, translucent and bright as tinted glass, Silver did not see regret or even guilt, or at least, not human guilt. What she saw was something different – perhaps the eyes of a predator who understands as they stand over a dying beast that it will be their sustenance, that their strength was the greater and has won out in the end, but also that there is inevitability in the end that lies before all things, and that there is a strange sort of respect to be offered up in return. Zien was not sorry, and perhaps could never be. The forgiveness she asked, then, was not entirely for herself, but was in some strange way for the world and everything that had happened since they parted ways.

“How is he?” Silver asked then. The alpha’s eyes glowed with pleasure and, perhaps, pride.

“Better off than most of us.” The alpha paused. “I do not believe that I can ever repay you for what you have done. All I can give you is an honor that has not been bestowed upon a human since the Divide; from this day onward, you are a member of this pack. You will be treated as another of our family, open to our speech and our sorrows, allowed to join in our songs and our hunts. No beast will wonder where your allegiance lies. And I give you another gift that has not been given to a human in many, many years; my thanks. You are always welcome here Silver, and you will always be. There are many prejudices I carry with me against your kind. I asked that you speak for us among humans, but now I see that you will also remind us why we fight for peace.”

The beast huffed and bowed her head.

“I have a lot to learn,” Silver replied, embarrassed by the alpha’s sudden humility, “How’s it going with the caverns and…everything?” Her heart was light inside of her, and her cheeks were on fire, even as the dome collapsed around her and the first flakes of snow melted into her hair.

“The entrance is nearly cleared.”

Silver sighed and once more swept her temporarily dry locks from her green eyes as she stood, realizing the implied message that they should go and help with the work. She frowned uncertainly then, freckles sharp against her pale skin as her gaze turned towards the caverns. Whatever she had been thinking, she forgot about it the moment she saw what lay in front of her.

Silver had never seen the caverns in their full glory, and now, she saw only what remained. The snow was churned and cracked, and trees clawed their way up the mountainside, broken-ribbed and cracked, lifeless and ashen gray. Most were knuckled and bowed into impossible positions, their branches warped and hooked and cracked. Holes had been burned through them, and in places she saw where they had been raked by claws half and again the length of her arms, or had crumbled to dust beneath the Zara’s deathly touch.

When her eyes rose, she saw where the mountain ridges had crumbled under the Zara’s onslaught. Snow had run like sand down the mountainside, and what secrets lay beneath it none would know or cared to know. Silent snowflakes fell over them all, making trees and stone as pale as china, and settling in the fur of more of the great bats. Silver recognized Dusk, bloodied but whole, but she did not know the others. They all watched her curiously, mobile ears swiveling from side to side and brown fur ruffled against the cold. One shuffled ever so slightly nearer, gnarled claws rasping against ice and stone. It, or rather she, looked older than the others.

“Silver, the srinn of the nightwings of the West,” Zien rumbled.

“Ill winds bring you to us, human,” the beast hissed in guttural tones similar to what Dusk had used in their earlier conversations. Silver was gradually realizing that hisses, screeches, whistles, and variations on these sounds were the only ones the nightwings were capable of. “Among the tree wolves I am known as Comet, or Zekaorian. You may also use these names if it is true that you speak our tongue.”

“I can understand you, at least,” Silver said after a brief hesitation. The nightwing’s ears flicked, swiveled back for a moment, and then came forward as she leaned back on her haunches.

“You create quite a stir, nerske,” Comet whistled, “you and the eggs you are rumored to carry.” At these words, Silver realized suddenly that she was no longer wearing her backpack. With a start, she reached behind her to her empty spine, and then whirled to stare at the ground where she had been laying. Before she got far, however, she noticed that Bek stood behind her, extending the backpack Cara had given her. The look on his face was not particularly friendly, but she took the bag anyway, with an awkward thank you. Rather than respond, he jerked his head subtly back in the direction of the nightwings. Comet was watching her expectantly, throat working to form some sound Silver guessed was far out of her hearing range.

With a questioning glance at Zien and the wolf, Silver strode forward and pulled one of the warm, crystalline orbs out of the bag. It pulsed in her hand, bright now with a magic she had not been able to sense before. Comet leaned closer, and Silver struggled to keep still as the great beast thrust her head within inches of Silver’s hand to chirp questioningly in the direction of the egg. Seemingly satisfied in this brief exchange, Comet righted herself again.

“You find yourself momentarily in the eye of the storm, but the winds shift quickly, nerske. Your eggs are near hatching.” Silver stood in dumbfounded silence for a moment, and then retracted her arm, staring at the opalescent shell of the egg in wonder. Comet, however, seemed to be done with her and the dragon eggs, and turned globular black eyes on Zien.

“Our Eastern cousin is dead. Whether he was in league with the Zara from the beginning or merely cursed in some way, I do not know. Our eastern kin are a vicious group, and their territory does not match in size the aggression with which they guard it. Their young sometimes fly far in search of better hunting, though to cross the sea is no small feat. It is possible that he was not the sole survivor of the East, but for now we must believe he was.”

Zien clacked her jaws in what Silver took for a nod.

“We have much to discuss,” Dusk interjected, and all eyes turned to him.

After a moment of silence, which seemed to suggest such discussion would be difficult and long, Comet splayed her papery wings, flexing them in and out as she said, “You have been given the choice to rest within the caverns…”

“We will do so gladly,” Zien rumbled.

“Good. Come to me when you are settled,” Comet hissed, “the messenger will guide you.”

Silver watched a brown bat drop from the trees and come to flit above Zien and the wolf. A glance at the other tree wolves suggested the tiny beast was familiar to all of them.

The nightwings left them then, though Dusk cast a final, parting glance in her direction. It was not long before the pack was left alone, and the wolf pressed up against Silver’s legs before addressing Zien.

“The colony suffered a great loss.”

“And displayed great bravery,” Zien growled softly, “the nightwings that died today were not the first beasts to fall in this war, nor will they be the last. The fact that we are welcomed into the ruins of their home is proof of how they value our cause.”

With these words, they began the trek up to the ruined entrance of the caverns. Bek’s eyes burned into the back of her head – Silver assumed because he had not actually understood any of the beast’s conversations – but the rest of the pack treated her significantly differently than they had in the past. Biarn trounced along at her heels, and several other of the tree wolves came to her as they walked, curious, warm, brushing up against her or stopping to make sure she could keep up. She knew each of their names, but they had never spoken to her till that day. She was surprised how much it meant to her.

Silver only paused once as they rose above the treeline, turning back to the world stretched out beyond her and looking, amidst that grand vista, for the home she had lost. Something irrevocable about her had changed in the time since that night, something that she would always notice even if nobody else ever did. Perhaps it was simply her magic, which had already begun to define her. Perhaps it was something else. She had no way of knowing. But the many emotions she had felt that night stirred within her again, still fresh and raw as ever.

“Soon we hunt,” the wolf growled, pressing its muzzle into her hand. “Together.” She looked down at the beast, but said nothing. There was no need to.