“Forced discharge – it is a technique used with a rare range of patients whose bodies produce an excess of magic. Most often, the condition is associated with other abnormalities – it is most common in shifters, such as the werewolves. The technique involves drawing out the excess magic from the patient through a portable device not unlike the tenyan.”

~ Bek Trent, M.A.S.O

Three steps into the room, the wolf had seen the humans seated together at the table. They had seen her as well. But it had been Faei that rose first, ears forward, already reading the truth in the scent of the girl’s blood in Elorian’s fur. He must have heard the ringing as well, not in his ears, but in his mind. Every hair on the wolf’s body rose with that sound, a subtle warning that death danced just beyond the acuity of her gaze.

“She is awake. You must come,” the wolf had snarled at them all, already turning back. Whether they understood her words or not, she had expected them to follow.

“She lies dying,” Faei had stopped her with a growl. The wolf looked back at him, emerald eyes fiery. “What will you do, Elorian? What can you do?”

She had snapped her jaws, her only answer. But before she could move even one step towards the room, an explosion had rocked the human den.

Now, she finds herself falling, the earth beneath her paws alive, trembling and groaning with the weight of a tremendous strain. Overhead, the joints of the roof scream protest against some unseen power. The beams shudder under the settling of a new weight. And suddenly the air is humid with the scents of smoke and heat.

And raw magic.

A gurgling rumble eases between her jaws. The wolf senses rather than sees Bek rise as she stumbles, hears Illian’s questioning exclamation of surprise. Dragging herself up from the ground, Elorian rushes to the open door. For the briefest of seconds, she reels, luminous green eyes catching on the crumbling edges of the wall. It has been blown to pieces. She hears a loud thumping directly behind her as the humans, one after the other, turn the corner and catch themselves against the wall on the uneven flooring. They are rooted to the spot just as she is, staring in horror and dawning comprehension at the scene of destruction.

“Where is she?” one shouts above the groans of the house.

“Outside,” the wolf howls. Despite the scents of smoke and settling dust, burning wood and fresh blood, she is not blinded as they are.

But the earth is shaking again. The wolf senses something, a great wave of power, imposing and invisible. It sweeps in on the fringes of her senses seconds before it hits. In that moment, the remains of the wall shudder massively, buckling beneath the weight of Silver’s magic, but miraculously remaining standing. The rest of them are not so lucky. Beneath the wolf’s paws, the boards buckle and crack, leaving her to scrabble against open air.

If a moment before the world had been between heartbeats, now it is gasping for breath. She feels herself crushed, floundering against gravity itself.

Somehow, Faei rushes past her, and with a snarl she forces herself up and after him. Rounding the corner amidst rubble and wood chips, not minding the clay shrapnel that slices the thick pads of her paws, she charges into the night. Elorian’s ears are up, tail raised, her visage one only of flashing claws and fangs striking out into the black.

The other wolf is just ahead of her. He looks back, amber eyes bright in the dark, and she can read his words in the cant of his ears and the subtle drop of his tail.

“So it begins, wolf who is not a wolf. So it begins.”

Again, she snaps her jaws, not understanding. But they draw level with each other as they come upon the girl, lying in the fields between the streets of Alti and the Issurak. There are no walls here. Nothing but openness. Bowed grasses at the edge of richer crops, turned to order by human hands. The wolf’s eyes swivel furiously in the darkness. They are not alone.

“Show yourself!” When she snarls, the air in front of them trembles, and for an instant the moonlight catches on a creature without compare.

A dragon…a dragon transformed. Invisible to her eyes, but not to her nose. Raw fury. Raw power. There is no beast in all the world that knows so well how to destroy as a dragon with something to protect.

In that instant of visibility, she sees Seijelar crouched over Silver’s prone body, caging it with her fore paws, head lowered, reptilian lips pulled back in a snarl that reveals every half-foot long tooth in her massive maw. Her eyes are drawn wide, gleaming with unmasked rage, and where the moonlight touches her great horns and claws, they appear longer and more treacherous than ever before.

There is no reason in the beast’s gaze.

“Dragon, there is danger here,” the wolf snarls. Again, the flicker of air around the beast as Seijelar draws back, jaws open, preparing flame.

“SKOURETT!”

The shout is not a request; it is a command. The wolf quails beneath the force of the magic that springs from behind her, feeling the snarl already ready on her lips, but the humans are right to call on the dragon’s brother.

In front of them, the air shudders, revealing a momentary glimpse of two dragons slamming into each other, rolling over and over in the fields. Skourett’s keening and Seijelar’s trumpeted roar shatter the night, louder than all the curses Illian can utter.

“If you give us away, she’ll die a traitor’s death!” Illian shouts, trying to gain the dragon’s attention.

“I will not leave her side again,” Seijelar roars wrathfully. Afterward, however, there is silence; a tenuous, strained silence. Skourett has said something, perhaps, to calm her.

“The danger right now is within her. You can’t protect her,” the wolf rumbles warningly into the night as the humans go to the girl. From the empty air there comes a snarl, the grass shifting as the two invisible dragons right themselves. In the moonlight, Elorian catches a glimpse of the crimson beast’s whip-like tail lashing angrily.

“Neither can you, wolf.”

The wolf knows Seijelar is right, and yet she turns away, feeling Faei’s gaze sharp on her skull. She goes to the humans to press her nose into Silver’s shoulder. There are rumblings between the other two, human words that she understands only passingly.

“Her fever’s gone. Did she do something to save herself?”

“Of course she did,” the wolf huffs impatiently at them, but there is no one left to understand her.

“If she’s alive, that’s all that matters. Bek, I need you to go get everything from the house, and head back to the outpost. Tell them to evacuate. Now. Cevora is to lead everyone towards the heart of the Issurak, while I lead the king’s guard to the outpost, and before dawn…we will destroy it.”

“What? What are you talking about?” the boy growls angrily, and the wolf sees his grip on the girl’s shoulder tighten as he glares at the older man. His bronze eyes narrow. “What are you planning?”

Alpha among men, Illian merely stares levelly at him in response. “What Silver just did was like a beacon to the MASO, the king, all of Alti. That power was not something to be ignored, not to mention,” he turns and sweeps a hand in the direction of his crumbling house, “do you understand? This is the end. A strike has come from the Issurak, be it beasts or men that have done the damage. I can make it appear that nothing happened, but I cannot explain away the power that shook us moments ago. Better to seek out the rebels under our terms. Better to say it was men that struck out at me, and erase all evidence that the beasts were ever involved. I can’t turn either of you over, Bek. Not now.”

“Then leave with us,” Bek demands.

“There is someone I cannot leave behind.”

Silence again, and Elorian flicks her ears irritably as Faei rumbles, “This is always the way with humans. But rest easy, wolf, it is not humans we should fear pursuing us.”

“Fine. But after this…” Bek warns, unaware of their conversation, unaware that the two wolves stare at one another, one knowing, one wondering. Elorian turns to the trees, ears flared to the hiss of the wind in the humid air. There is no breeze, but still the trees sway. The world whispers. Ghostly wings beat against the air as things settle in the trees to watch them.

Invisible things.

“This will be my final act for our srinn,” Illian says simply, turning away and picking his way back towards the ruins of his house, “Cevora will succeed him. No man can follow two kings.”

The boy goes with him to retrieve their things as the wolves stare into the night, leery of what it brings. They follow when the boy returns, lifts Silver, and turns wordlessly away from the ruined house to slip into the shadows of the Issurak. Together, the three of them jog with only the sound of their breath, until the dragons finally suggest their mighty paws are quicker than the human’s legs. Then, the boy settles himself aboard Skourett with a knowing glance at Silver’s dragon. To the wolf, it is clear that he does not sense the things that follow them. Neither do the dragons. And what would she tell them is fast on their tail if she could speak to him? It is the wind when there is no wind, the trees bending in, eyes following them through the darkness.

The night has only just begun.

A flurry of action meets them at the outpost. The witch is waiting for them with the princess and the fiery-haired child at her side. One look at them and the witch is turning, pointing, shouting. Humans scatter like frightened mice before an owl at her command. When she turns back, her snowy brows are set with resolve.

“I thought we would have longer,” she says.

“I’m sorry,” Bek responds flatly, “but no.”

What need is there for more words than that, the wolf does not know, but other humans come, the ones that spend their days with Silver running the flats, time and again. They bring supplies, and they bring questions. Endless questions. What was that power they felt? Does the girl still live? Yet, when the witch sends her child to gather supplies and spread their tools so the outpost looks like a rebel hideout, and when the child returns with bells…tinkling, singing, dancing bells…no one asks why the witch’s gaze meets with the eyes of the wolves and she swallows, old eyes peering into the night.

No one but Seijelar.

“What is it, wolf? You snarl at the night like it is your enemy.”

“I do not know,” she rumbles. Faei is silent, looking between them. Seijelar hisses something, steam erupting from her parted jaws.

“Give her to me.” Suddenly Seijelar is beside her brother, standing over Bek, leering down at the boy as if she would love nothing more than to snap his head cleanly from his shoulders. Indeed, the wolf has experienced similar feelings in the past.

“I can’t do that,” Bek says, and Elorian has to admire him for not flinching when the dragon blows hot air directly into his face and leans in until they are nose to nose. Any beast less foolish than a human would have run.

“If you want to carry her, you’ll carry me as well,” Bek says in measured tones.

The wolf huffs laughter at the crimson female’s indignant glare, but the dragon is beyond caring about such things. She turns readily, exposing her broad back and sheathing her spines. And as they shift from one dragon to the other with the help of those around them, the people and beasts of the outpost gather. The wolf has never seen a pack so large or so varied, the aged and the young, human and canine, feline, avian…beasts ordinary and beasts extraordinary, from a feathered steed to a flying lizard that watches them all nervously through slitted eyes.

A hush descends, marked by the nervous wail of a child somewhere in the throng of people. In a moment, the child has also fallen silent, and all that remains is the shuffling of feet, the harsh whisper of clothing in the night breeze, the clink of armor and weapons and metal and baggage. As they should, the eight dragons have shifted to the head of the group. They are like jewels in the night, bronze, silver, green, gold…they look out over the crowd, fluttering the membranes of their bat-like wings and snapping their jaws. Most are not unencumbered; they carry the humans who would lag behind in the coming hours. Skourett takes passengers as well, one of them the boy from the smithy.

The wolf’s ears twitch as the whispers around them grow in volume, filling the night.

“You hear them,” Faei’s eyes say when he looks at her. “They gather, filling the night as water fills a pond when the rains swell.”

“What are they?” Elorian asks.

He does not answer, because there is another sound now.

Along Elorian’s back, the fur slowly rises as the dragons crane their heads towards the skies, one by one. There is a barely discernible scent on the wind now – warm, metallic, smoky – the scent of dragons. Their voices precede them, a rumble like thunder in the night.

“Be silent, all of you,” the witch’s voice rings out over their heads, followed by more commands, issued by men and women who move with authority, carrying weapons. There is no need for them to instill fear in the pack tonight. No one utters a word as, overhead, the magic barrier begins to warp and swirl. Like the ocean tide, it recedes and is gone. They are plunged into still deeper silence.

“We must go now,” Seijelar growls softly. There is no reason to relay the message. The other dragons are saying the same. Elorian shifts her stance to look ahead and see the princess and the witch astride the silver hatchling. The dragon’s pale blue-green irises skim the crowd searchingly.

“Follow us, and do not get separated, or we cannot guarantee the forest won’t take your lives,” the princess’s commanding voice rings out over the crowd, repeated farther along by the armored humans. Whispers follow, real whispers. Throughout the pack, there is a sense of the inevitable, of determination, of purpose. The people here know that the Issurak does not fully welcome them. But their fear of their kind, whose ways they know well, is greater than of the beasts. Within seconds, they are moving forward, seeping out of the now symbolic arch and spewing into the woods.

Elorian moves as if to follow, only to pause at the sight of two dragons approaching through the crowd. They are the rusty red and green-tinted bronze beasts of the twin brothers. When they draw level with Seijelar, they wave to Bek to get his attention, and then point out over the crowd.

“We’re to bring up the rear,” one says.

His brother quickly adds, “If the king’s kivgha see us, we need to divert their attention.”

The wolf senses that the first is unhappy with that decision, though the second seems unmoved by it.

“The guard have asked that you keep to the edges of the central column, to keep the beasts at bay. Avalone and Sori, and Gilgrech and Ren, will do the same. Keep some distance from them, if you can. We’re trying to spread out,” the first brother adds.

Bek responds with his characteristic nonchalance. “Understood.”

As they leave, he draws three narrow metal blades from his pocket, each roughly the shape of a distorted teardrop and the length of his hand. He looks at them for a second, and then replaces them in the pocket of his pants, seems to think better of something, and transfers one to his boot. The wolf watches all of this with nose twitching and ears flared, and he finally turns to look at her as they ride the surge of bodies forward into the forest.

“Stick close, Elorian,” he says, “Silver wouldn’t want anything to happen to you.” His bronze eyes move to Faei for a moment and he adds, “You, too. Whatever Illian tasked you with, stick close.” Agreeing by the drop of her hooded ears, the wolf glances back into the outpost.

It is dead.

Without people, the buildings are hollow and dark, their doors thrown wide and windows tightly shuttered against the outdoors. The training ground is so much empty earth, once stirred by many feet, now touched only by the breath of an angry sky. In the distance, the song of the gurgling stream where they bathed plays a haunting lullaby. The dragons are coming. Not the dragons of the Issurak, no; the dragons of the human srinn.

There is no more time for words after that. Faei moves ahead of Elorian, dancing through the humans, sliding between them like some wolfen eel gone to sea. She remains behind, ears flared and nose working, sensing that they are followed, but unable to catch any hint of what follows them. In time, the hatchlings murmur that their kin are near, and there is a sound like the chatter of prehistoric beasts far behind them. Heads turn, staring back to find dragons circling high above what might be the outpost, ghostly black raptors borne in on the night wind. Their dark silhouettes are barely visible, but their flames are like lightning, searing the bottoms of the steely clouds.

It is not long, after that, before the acrid scent of smoke finds them. It rises in a dark curl from the tall trees, visible even through the thick canopy. It is lit from its heart now and again by flashes of red flame – of dragonfire. Around the rising plume, the dark clouds swirl and loose forking lances of electricity that strike again and again into the trees behind them, leaving behind the bitter scents of ozone and molten pitch. Tonight, the dragons hunt. Even the invisible things that follow them turn back in wonder.

Snorting as the first drops of rain fall on her upturned head, the wolf presses on. The sky seems to swell and burst with the dragons’ dark clouds. Rain floods from the skies, and all around them the heavy boughs of the trees dip, beaten by the weight of the downpour. Hours pass, all sound drowned out by the continuous pound of the rain and the occasional, earth-shuddering burst of lightning that showers them all with molten shards of light. Her eyes grow accustomed to the constant, dull press of the night. Shadows flicker in and out of her vision, some of them dragon or human, others beast, and others some otherworldly things. Sharp scents brought up by the damp send her nose into a frenzy of activity, but are washed away so that only those of the humans remain, hanging, stifling, in the wet air.

Then the earth begins to slope up. People slow. The dragons chitter at one another, Seijelar warning that the ground grows treacherous, slick where the slope is muddied and bare. Around them, the trees thin, so that anyone who dares can turn and see above the Issurak for miles and miles. They can see even the thin, deathly spires of the Grand Castle of Altiannia. They pause at the top of the rise, and it is a long time that the wolf stands and stares as if transfixed at that dark silhouette on the horizon. She fails to move even when the other humans press onward again and Bek calls to her, his voice grating on her silver ears. She flicks them to show she has heard, doubting that he will understand the gesture, but unwilling to turn away.

Why?

Because she has known such a vista now in two worlds, and in both the castle seems to root into and dominate the land. It does not instill fear in her, but captivates her all the same. When a booming crash of distant lightning paints the black spires white, it seems that the very castle itself turns towards her, fixing the oppressive weight of its un-living gaze upon their little party.

Finally, Elorian trains her emerald eyes away, to a point ahead of the humans. There, a series of sloping ridges and shaded contours rise into the mountainous peaks far to the north. Nearer at hand, there is only the single ridge, a wrinkle in an otherwise unbroken flat of trees that extends for miles. It is, perhaps, the lone natural obstacle between Alti and the lowlands at the heart of the Issurak forest.

They are passing through it now.

As she looks on, a series of startled shouts sound from the head of the column. Frozen, she waits, listening. There is another sound, a deeper rumble of movement in the trees around them. In a flash she is off, growling a question to Seijelar as she races past, and receiving no useful response. Her emerald eyes flash as she darts between the legs of the humans to reach the head of their band, lungs filling with the scent of dirt and moss and greenery. Her paws dig into the rain-softened soil, feeling it tremble with the motion of something massive. She is far from the head of the column, far indeed. Surprisingly, something catches her up long before she has reached it. Motion. Shouts and the tingle of magic.

Elorian’s paws dig in, spinning her to a stop in a break in the column. Some protective magic shoots past the side of her skull, narrowly missing the silver fur of her jaws. It leaves the steamy after-image of its passage in the rain-laden air. Her eyes skim wildly in that steamy path, her ears and nose at work. Again, unexpectedly, the earth rumbles beneath her paws, and she sways. Whatever has come for them, she can neither see nor smell it.

Steadying herself, the wolf takes another sharp gulp of air. Someone shouts from her other side, causing her to jump and look around. His outstretched hand draws her gaze, and it is then that she realizes her mistake. It is not that she could not see the creature bearing down on them, but that it is so large she has overlooked it.

The very trees are alive.

Her green eyes widen, tail rising, the ridge of hair down her spine suddenly and clearly visible. A snarl escapes her half-parted lips.

What stands before them is a creature for which she has no name. Some number of trees, twined time and again with hundreds of thousands of vines. Those vines writhe with purpose. Together they form the silhouette of something with the vague semblance of a draconic neck and head, nine yawning pits for eyes. The massive body of the beast, if it can really be called a beast, is nothing more than a coiled mass of vines, undulating against the canopies of the trees.

As she watches, the vines uproot one massive tree trunk, knocking people to the earth and flinging clods of dirt the size of a man’s head in every direction. More shouts ahead of them mean there must be more than one of these creatures.

As the humans begin to fight back, the beast roars, a sound that is little more than the rasping of leaves against wood, amplified by the shape of the vines.

As the vines dislodge themselves to lash out into the column, the wolf knocks someone aside, plants herself, and points her narrow nose to the sky to howl. It is a hollow sound, beginning in her chest and the deepest reaches of her throat, and then slowly scaling up and then down again with the clarity and crispness of glass bells. The humans cannot hear it, but these beasts must. Her words are clear.

“These humans I claim as mine. Harm them, and death shall find you, for the dragons walk with us.”

She breaks off with a grinding snarl. At the last moment, some sense of ill foreboding causes her to leap aside, knocking the nearest humans backwards. In the place where she had been standing only seconds before, a woody tree root lances upwards from the soil, showering them with dirt and bark. Elorian snarls again, hearing her voice joined by that of the princess, Cevora. Her head turns.

It is not only the princess she hears, but also...the tree wolves, their voices rising in the throaty, woodwind howl of their kind. The wolf’s emerald eyes turn towards the darker reaches of the tree canopy, seeing the flash of movement in their depths. The vines seem to hesitate. In seconds, pair upon pair of glowing eyes, snaking tails, flashes of violet or blue or black fur, fill the shadowed spaces between tree boughs.

Then Sheurai and Yanrian are in clear view, their voices audible in the din.

“Leave them be.”

The vines turn, head-like appendages directed towards the tree wolves to fix them with those nine abysmal eye pits.

“The matter of their passage has been brought before the dragons. These humans have been given the protection of the Issurak.” It is Yanrian who speaks this time, pale eyes flashing against his darker coat.

As they are listening, the wolf sees a change come over the vines. They are coming together to form a more cohesive head, a body rigid as bone. They model themselves, she decides, after the things that they see, and so now they give themselves ears of twisted vine and jaws lined with barbs.

“Nersvrian,” the vine beast wheezes, gathering the air from the night to form words. “Turn,” the creature’s eerie head turns, and the wolf follows its gaze towards Seijelar, who blazes with the intensity of her ire in the gloom, “Back.”

“Will you face the dragons tonight, then?” Sheurai snarls, violet eyes shimmering through the veil of the rain. “It appears they will face you.”

Tense moments pass into silence as the vines appear to take stock of the dragons. This time, it is the one farther up the column that speaks, barely visible to the wolf through the rain.

“We. Give. Our. Word. To. Our. Srinn.”

There is no consensus. It is possible the vines are all of one mind. They simply withdraw, before the eyes of everyone involved, coiling slowly around the trunks of the massive trees and then lying still. In moments like this, at least, the humans of the outpost are wise; none try to attack the vines in their retreat.

“Have you come to help us?” the princess’s voice rises in the silence, swallowed up by the night. The wolf forgets, sometimes, that the tree wolves’ words are meaningless to the humans.

“We walk with you now,” Sheurai rumbles in the human tongue, “we guide you to the Sacred City of the Vampires.”