It starts at the edge of the forest, destruction purely unaltered and crowned in silver, a gaping maw yields open around a convolting snarl, scaled lips that peel over a fang-riddled mouth blackened and crackling with red tendrils that fissure through the ribbons of death sired on its rancid breath. The Blackwood is appropriately named for its bruise-violet trunks and thick foliage of evergreen; the vegetation is veined in black, having adapted to the carmine moon that gleams above, static and severe and all-knowing, always there and never eclipsed by solar design. Along its perimeter linger deadened vines and petrified trees with skeletal branches bedecked with thorns that form a barrier, they twine and bunch and even coil through the shadows and along the parched soil, looming as perverse guardians of the Blackwood’s queer abundance of life. Betwixt shadowed bark, moths possessed of demented shades of yellow gather and fester, each varying in size, forever marked by looming skulls, they squeak and trill and twitter and fly, shades of ochre bloomed under sanguine hues that glisten black against the flora as deepened shadows that swarm and crawl. Quivering antennae poke and prod, embedding wraiths of black into the trunks where they cluster whilst the ground quakes and shudders. Branches bow and break and snap, thunderous claims through the wood that scatter the fauna of twisted and malformed designs, squealing creatures that burrow through the brush and bolt, rampaging through the gloom. They impale themselves through the thicket, now manipulated mad with fear and agony, frothing heavily through quivering jowls as red tendrils glide through the trees; everything slowly succumbed to rot.

Places and things remember such malicious and cruel history of carnage and hate, of scarlet flame and rage that coils over teeth as deep into the void of its belly a hated glow begins to ascend, lost and forsaken fragments of power churning low and steady before it belches from the deep in crackling plumes of energy that reap red and silver through the trees. Blackened flame erupts, fading away into silver edges as churning cores of ruby pulsate and writhe, climbing up ebony trunks and immediately pouring through splinters of wood and leaves. The moths screech with such horrid sounds of immediate pain that clamor with frenzied wings fluttering into the shadow, only to fall soon after, burnt, dead with wisps of red wavering from trembling bodies. The dragon greedily inhales, those lingering vestiges of a powerful soul fueling the chaotic foundations of its awakened state, gluttonized upon the frenzies of energy scattered far and wide, pieces of a spiritual manifest eternally lost to the rages of destiny. Its pupils constrict and dilate; a secondary membranous film slid over its eyes as an ethereal glow pulses through a critical stare, a loathed blue webbed with obsidian lines that tremble under the might of life it now covets with ravenous hunger. The dragon cranes its massive head back and lets loose a screech, a battle cry, a challenge, a gauntlet now thrown with a symphony of rage that splinters in a roar, the tines webbed along its neck undulating with the powerful call that spears through the sky and summons with it rolling clouds of thunderous black that eclipse the entirety of the Blackwood in shadow.



“We’ve run out of time.”

From the maternal figure poised before her to the subtle shift of something else that is known to be ancient, wreathed in time, the fallen they were known to be and forevermore marked as. Some that whisper our old name, she had said, and Amma could not help but contemplate what exactly they were; her origins, she had to remind herself, and shuddered at the vague whispers slithering against the precipice of her addled mind: you are more like your father than you realize and maybe that's for the best. The gentleness once proffered is now exchanged for severity as Kylmie snaps her head toward where Amma notices a carved door suddenly bursts open, black-hewn wood echoing as it slams inward. Dain’s pack looms outside, a roiling mass of fur and gleaming, ochre eyes that snarl and yip, hackles raised, and lips peeled over enormous canines. They are a unit of sheer power and frenzied energy, tethered to the man who has prowled even further, encroaching on an unspoken barrier as he moves, blocking their only way out.

“I told you that the dragon is hunting her down. It’s coming after her.”

Kylmie carefully positioned herself near Amma, shielding her mostly from view even as she rose to her full height, and pulled the grey cotton tighter around herself, a frigid glare sheered through her lashes at the imposing forms of fang and claw, directly transferring their ire and fear at her. Shedding the blame as the world yonder their clamoring bodies begins to grow dark, eclipsed entirely in darkness, alive with a writhing appetence that Amma can feel. It’s a palpable emotion that lists through the air, and the fire at her back seems to rise in response, crackling with unspoken energy as thunder claps and booms, shaking through the foundations of the trees.

“Now isn’t the time,” she claimed. Dain laughs with a rough and edged sound that drags through the cluster of teeth pursed over his lips, a shift in his features begotten from the accumulated rage that boils through his body, heightening all senses and alluding to the beast within that prowls upon the precipice of a transformation. Gone from man to something other, he flexes scarred fingers, now elongated into claws. His pack agitates just outside, a cacophony of barks and shrill whines that roll into chuffs and snarls, she recognizes the sounds of their unique communication as they talk amongst each other, the biggest wolves of the pack congested on the threshold but never crossing over. They’re waiting on his command. Dain moves closer as if emboldened by their bestial derangement, crowding over Kylmie and Amma. Here, he seems larger, taller, his breath fanning down as he postures and threatens to tear her apart by the loathing festering in his eyes. Amma looks up, and she seethes at her helplessness as he demands:

“Why are you here?”

“I don’t know.” She snaps, her frustrations bleeding outward, coiling through her voice with an edge of panic. “I don’t even understand how I got here. All I remember is-”

Remember.

Remember that I -

A ringing sluices through her mind, coiling through membrane and bone, pinging away through her nerves over and over again as if a bell. She grimaces around the invasion as scattered memories drag her back to the dance, the looming fog of a nightmare distorting the events through shades of blood and ruin. She tries not to linger over the memory of Gil, the ghost of a kiss taunting her, the heat of his breath, and the eclipse of sorrow and rage that melded to form the construct of a bridge, unified through their powers, amber and red wed as embers through the combustion of yearning and sweltering desire. Through the heat of what was and could be came the grieving sorrow of their last moments, and she was forced to experience his death anew. Still, she cataloged through all that happened and fought to ignore the whispering malice of her nightmares, threatening to drag her back into the pit where she had fallen.

“She said, go to Sheol. She threw something at it.”

“And I - and it. It dragged me here, it grabbed me, and then I fell. I fell through the dark, and then…” Her breath came ragged and wet, gasping and wrent through her lungs and chest; her ribs ached, her body taut and throbbing with pain as she touched trembling fingers over her wounded leg. The bite seared through her veins; she had fought so hard to free herself, and now she fought with the continuation of life here when she contemplated allowing Dain and his pack to tear her apart. Perhaps she would step outside, face the dragon, and welcome the fabled flame.

“Limbo is unkind to all manner of souls,” Kylmie recited, breaking through her morbid revere, and leveled her stare at Dain, the latter having stepped back quietly from Amma’s infringing despair permeating the air. Too many emotions clustering here and there, hazed and wavering and burdened by the weight of fear they all felt on the eve of a tumultuous battle that awaited them in the dark.

“It is a prison. Meant for the most cruel and forsaken. The most heinous of Hellions that cannot be contained elsewhere.”

I am the advocate for the depraved and the unhinged.

“You crawled out of there.” He accused, a hooked claw dangerously close to which Amma closed her eyes. “And then the dragon woke and followed you.”

“We don’t know that-”

“They smell just alike. Like death. Something that doesn’t belong.”

She flinched, the damnation of such a comparison felled deep to lance through her heart where such acclaim rang hollow but true. For years, she had carried that mantle of death and chaos, of destruction, she nurtured it, donned it as a mask, built a chasm around herself, a moat of which none could cross, for none had ever been brave enough to wade through the depths of her malcontent. She had never belonged anywhere, and no amount of wishing or unfettered power could alter that reality. Mayhap in the dark where she was conceived, but even that had been forsaken and robbed when they strapped her to that cold, metal table for hours and hours.

Even days.

It was okay, as she told herself for many years, as she chanted as a mantra through the ear-splitting knell that vibrated as a funeral toll. Loneliness did not bedevil her life in monochromatic discrepancies of a wayward heart. Still, Amma could no longer deny that her spirit had been marked by the others, where breadths of humanity had slowly arisen and shook off the ashen bones marred by slivers of truth. Of hope.

“Enough,” Kylmie commanded. “She is of my blood. It matters not where she came from.”

“If I’m really to blame,” Amma interjected. “Then let me face it head-on, lead it away from here.”

“I’ve brought enough pain into my world, the least I can do is help keep it away from yours.”

“This beast,” Amma tried not to flinch; she did, but the appellations continued to fall, claiming true to words she had heard before, directed at her. “It is one we’ve faced many times before. It’s more than just a dragon. It is something that has lived long before, manifested as the wyrm because it is of hate and pain itself.”

Kylmie spared little custom and gestured outside, her jewels winking in the light. “Make your pack useful, scout out where it’s coming from- where it is now. We can forge a barrier around the coven, but if it destroys the Blackwood and all life within it, we’re done for. “

“What do you mean?”

“Some of the Familiars are born here, nurtured, made.”

The mention of Familiars settled a peculiar weight in Amma’s stomach, a soured note of something forgotten, of a dog that was not a dog of black and white. They walked the beach some nights, and other times, he would find her, a sadness that no mortal creature should be able to project but managed all the same. Amma never questioned how Rothschild came to her at the most random of times, but she welcomed his silent company during the first year when she walked the coast, looking back over waves that ebbed and flowed, trying to find the floating pyramids of her most hellish nightmares. When she was seeking answers to who she was meant to be. And why.

She still did not know, but she could find that answer in the sundering of life. Let it end, she thought, for what else did she have to live for if she couldn’t go back? A continuation of a lie sired by her mother’s unknown fate?

Dain slowly shook his head, but no words fell as he growled and snatched up a piece of black, silken fabric left forgotten, most of the pack instantly scattering, led by a series of yips and barks, rolling into one as they fled off into the shadows in various directions. He was the last to depart, features contorting into something feral and unhinged, the breadth of wildness about him shaped into muscle and lengthening bone, a painful transformation before her very eyes as a massive lupine-forged creature stepped out into the night and howled, challenging the skies that thundered in response.

Kylmie immediately turned and regarded Amma with hands clasped over her shoulders, a stern reproach awaiting, “I will not allow you to give yourself over. That is not an option. I didn’t stop your mother; I refuse to lose another daughter. We get through this; I will find a way to get you back to where you came from. Though we haven’t seen her in some time, there’s a woman by the name of Ellara, a Jäger, who might be able to help.”

Where had she heard that name before? It tolled distantly with familiarity, encompassed and accompanied by heartache shaded in twilight.

“Ünterseele – Überseelen and devour. The concept of heart and soul, the unification of one, as we all are.” She said without little thought, quoting an echo heard and felt as their eyes locked and something pitiful and mournful shimmered across Kylmie’s eyes, gone before Amma could even inquire as she dropped her hands from her shoulders and stepped back.

“We don’t have much time left, but in case this goes terribly array. I know she wanted you more than anything in this world. A daughter, a piece of her soul given part into another. She talked about nothing more than having a child one day. And the name she would give her. The everlasting of love.”

Ammaranthe.

“You are death, but also life. I feel the echo of something in you, fragments and pieces left lost and forgotten, a mortal heart without a mortal soul. A price...”

You paid the price. You said yes.

A piece of Amma slowly withers, stealing away her breath as she trembles, the utterance of her name latching onto the pieces of her memories as if a leech, festering boils of hatred that grew over the shards of obsidian shored against her heart and the blossoming of hope that soothed the barbs of the unknown. Bridges forged, broken, and then risen anew, connections and relationships she had once abhorred and held aloft, refusing to acknowledge them for what they were, for what they asked of her. Here, she coiled her arms around her middle to contain the sorrow of her name spoken and the unworthiness of it.

“What would your teammates say if they saw you like this?" She paused. "Blackjack, right?”

“How do you know that name?”

“You uttered it in your sleep. You spoke their names.”

Quickly, Kylmie knelt before a trunk she had not noticed before, set beside the hearth and a bed close by, covered in furs. She sorted through it efficiently, handing Amma a dress of black, fashioned as a tunic with tightly-fitted sleeves and a neckline that plunged at a vee, the scar over her heart on display as she pulled it over her body in mindless motions as she mulled over the thought of having said their names in her fitful rest. She tortured herself with the inquiry and thought of their lives; if perhaps they were now better off without her- if they even lived. Kylmie passed over boots shortly after and then paused considerably before she stood and proffered Amma a blade next, made of black and as long as her forearm.

“Your mother had one just like it. She had many blades made, but this she left behind, just in case she had said. Maybe she knew one day you’d wind up here.”

Amma took it silently, a kaleidoscope of colors shimmering off the weapon’s surface as she studied it under the light of the fire. In her grasp, it felt warm, harmonized, and humming beneath her scarred palm. Kylmie handed her its sheath next and helped her belt it around her waist. All of it foreign and yet not. She regarded the hearth, the flower set there still, a subtle glittering of red and amber shimmering there. She followed Kylmie outside without much thought or complaint, the flower hidden in her braided hair.

The Blackwood coven was quick to respond, immediate shouts and fires lit through the circling guard of huts: simple homes made of shorn stone and rock, smoothed and curiously marked with painted white lines formed into circles that overlapped, various shapes connected and bound together, runes, Amma is informed of later on. She can only admire them for the quiet tremble of power that threads through each cauldron of flame that ignites upon seated beds of precious metals and jewels. Gold and silvers, rubies and sapphires and emeralds explode with a myriad of colors and shimmer as an aurora borealis billowing in tangible waves of heat. In the distant browse there is a tremor felt, trees suddenly fallen over as clouds of winged creatures take flight and cry out, it is some miles away yet, but already Amma can see the shimmering red of flame that rises to block out the moon, clouds rolling over and booming with thunder.

“Get the barrier up!”

There were beasts and other creatures found here too, some as great winged things half bird and something else, others with colorful plumage and crests that spread aloft, shimmering with the interchanging hue of the flames as they climbed higher and higher with a pale, white light pouring from the runes marked into each home. There were snakes, vipers actually, Amma noted, and shuddered at the similarity of the illusioned manifest of their like that she had felt over her shoulders and chest once. One of black scales and vermillion eyes peered at her from where it coiled next to a ruby ember of a jewel, tongue flickering with every blink of her eyes, as if mimicking her observations before she tore her gaze away and watched as the barrier continued to climb, coming to an epicenter betwixt the trees. Kylmie stood in the center, arms raised, hands towards the sky thought to befall them as scarlet tendrils wove through the atmosphere, shattering and striking as lightning would. Wolves immediately broke through the trees, leaping over the ascending barrier and galloping in their direction before they skid to a halt. A few transformed instantly, the shift from beast to man a raw, unbidden shift of understated power, bone-crunching and skin-molding, some dusted in clumps of black ash and lashes of crimson that coiled over arms and legs. Wounded, they fell, others of the coven rushing to their aid immediately. Soft murmurs in a language unknown, jewels and metals heated by summoning annotations of looping vowels and words, flesh mended at their spellwork.

Dain was not among them.

“It’s coming,” one panted, groaned, and clutched at their ribs, bruised and mauled. “From the North, it doubled back from the East, some of the wood has gone up in flames.”

Shrill chirps and screeches filled the night, a lament, a cry- sorrow ruffled through feathers and furs as they mourned some of their home pillaged under ravenous fire.

“He’s trying to lure the dragon elsewhere. Using her scent.”

The silk…

“He took a piece of my old dress,” Amma realized, looking out to where thunder clapped and rolled, rumbling deep as even the very leaves above them shook.

“The barrier will keep us hidden,” Kylmie stated, “It won’t be able to see us, he knows that.”

“He doesn’t want to risk another massacre.”

Silence fell, and the woods quieted, the fear-laden cries whisked away as an esoteric drone slithered through the forest, it coiled among the ground as an eldritch horror, a writhing mass of despair and appetence. Its abstract manifest of all-consuming energy stained a familiar scarlet color and edged away into silver and black, and she recognized it for all that it stood for, as it called to her, as pieces of herself, of what she had always feared. Amma approached the edges of the barrier and laid her scarred palms upon it as suddenly a massive globe of blue appeared, staring straight into the depths of her very being, a sliver of a pupil expanding wide with veined lines of black fissured through its eye. Its massive, scaled head rose high, crowned with silver horns that glinted with blood and wore ash upon their sharpened edges. Near translucent wings, webbed in crimson, those ebony scales donned in a sheen of red, old blood, new blood, life, and death forged on that hide as it loomed overhead, its void-like essence coiling from its fanged mouth. There was no way they could truly stand against such a thing, and though the barrier did appear to block them entirely from view as its neck coiled in a serpentine motion, undulating, searching, and seeking, Amma knew…

She knew that it could sense her, parts of her, parts of it intertwined and bound as one through the fragments of her powers shorn and taken from her, pieces of her soul lain within the dragon that curled its tongue, the depths of a cavernous maw churning molten before it roared and released a gout of flame onto the ground, more black clouds and smoke summoned as boiling spheres of rot fled around the edges of the barrier.

“It knows we’re here.” Amma breathed and regarded this fabled beast of wrath, this monster that sounded with the demented knoll of her nightmares, a sound she had heard and felt once before. She recalled the trials and the beast of her other self and the looming figure of shadow bound in chains, a prophesied hell born of her dreams, and felt in the uneven breath she took as the dragon suddenly swung its head left where a massive wolf stood. Umber fur, familiar golden eyes, the largest she had ever seen, bigger than any of its brethren with a scrap of silk clutched betwixt barred fangs. A vicious snarl tore through its chest, humming with power and rage, thick, black claws dug into the marred soil as festering lines of destruction swarmed, reaping through roots and punctured by curled, hooked talons that marked each of the dragon’s wings. It balanced on thick, scaled hind legs and wailed in Dain’s direction, an answer and acceptance to his challenge as fire swelled around them.

Once again, she was faced with the realization of her powerless state, helpless to intervene as another stood in place to defend her, to defy the monster, to deny death once more. Dain prowled to his left, the severe draw of his muzzle highlighting the sheer hatred in those glowing eyes, more snarls ripped from his chest that heaved and caved with every sound. The dragon trilled and inched forward, nostrils flaring, a manic sort of quiver following down every tine on its muscled body, the overlap of its scales seeming to clack together with its teeth that snapped in his direction, baited by her smell. Amma slammed her palms against the barrier, but it only warped and swelled out before snapping back into place, the spells worked into the very ground, fending off the chaotic fire just beyond.

“He’s leading it away.”

“No,” Kylmie uttered, her voice a curious echo, seeming to fill every space all at once. “We have spells worked into the trees, one of many leylines that fall here, connected to other places and things. Wards and runes older than I, meant to defend the forest and all who remain.”

Dain moved back, and back, snarling and barking, coming closer and closer to those snapping fangs as the dragon screeched and fed into the fire that threatened to consume everything in its path.

“But if he crosses over those lines…”

Amma dug her nails into the barrier. She couldn’t allow another to step in and take the fall, she couldn’t be that helpless, that weak, but none of her powers worked here, nothing worked. It was all wrong and twisted and malformed, it was hell unsought and she was eternally cursed with it. A price paid thrice over. She was a void of nothingness that clawed against magic more ancient than anything she had ever known and she hated herself for it. Hated herself for not being able to stop the others, unable to save them despite the many times she had before, threads of power tossed into the ether upon her damnation, and for what? So they would not forget her? To be reminded of her likeness even when she had mocked all their hope and dreams and relished in the pain of it? Dain stalked further into the shadows as thunder boomed and with it, a storm erupted, thick droplets of rain that sizzled like static as it fell over the blackened flame. Red lightning crackled over her head and the dragon flared its wings outward, another gout of fire sundered from its maw, a horrid sound that she clutched her ears against, but she refused to look away as trees exploded, another reminiscence of her chaotic power.

She heard Kylmie as she struggled to contain the barrier, her breath coming hard and fast as others began to chant and weave spells anew, palms to the earth as they fed more energy into the foundations of runes. Amma drew her gifted blade and struck the barrier, but it glanced off and fired into her scarred palm where she screamed and stepped back, clutching her ruined fingers. Dain avoided the fire, but barely, chunks of fur gone, flesh singed and black, his movements though strong and never wavering as he stepped back over the rumored leyline and dropped the piece of silk from his jaws. He roared and launched himself at the dragon, fangs pierced deep into its neck where it reared up, a painful screech shattering through the storm’s thunder as it lifted them. Blood ran hot and heavy and it burned, likened to acid as it sluiced and spewed from Dain’s jaws and slid down the paler, silver scales underneath. He drove his weight down, a shrill whine slivered out from his teeth as he dropped and shook his head, the acidity of its blood frothing along his tongue as saliva pooled. He chuffed and barked and launched himself again, but the dragon turned its massive body, a thick, barbed tail swung around to impale the silver tines into his side as it battered Dain away. He yelped, the rest of his pack contained in the barrier responding in kind as he was launched across the shimmering line she now could see, old magic summoned to life as runes marked into the trees began to glow.

White light immediately exploded and expanded outward, a holy sanction of power imbued deep into the earth. It was a righteous conflagration of purity that poured over gleaming, overlapped scales and struck through the membrane of the dragon’s wings. It warbled and trilled, launching more fire into the sky, trees, and plumes of fire that rose and fell. The rain climatized into a deluge, putting out some of the lesser fires, but the damage was done and the damage remained. The dragon pumped its powerful wings, of what remained of them, and lifted itself high above the tree line before it suddenly fled. Lingering, festering pools of its blood burned among the roots of the Blackwood. Kylmie surrendered the barrier immediately and fell to her knees, more of the coven coming to her aide as Amma stared at the remains of the battle, the rain dragging against her hair and clothes.

The dragon had fled, wounded, but the damage was done. Pieces of the Blackwood were destroyed, and sacred homes of Familiars were lost and burned.

...And Dain was dead. The chorus of howls that filled the sky combated the raging storm, drowning out the thunder for the immense sorrow that struck a chord within as Amma wept and willed the illusion of the rain to cover her shame and regret at once again being powerless-

As another died for her.