Tala, Rane, and Terry sat next to the physical manifestation of Anatalis, god-beast of the Pack and Lord of the Northern Forest - northern from the gated-human perspective.
As they were traveling out and away from the cycling cities, Tala was trying to reframe her understanding of various things like that.
Rane’s acceptance of the opportunity to test himself against the Pack’s current sireling—whom Tala had faced years earlier—still hung in the air, along with the magical signatures of more than fifty giant wolves who were now looking down on the arena in which their group rested.
Well, he didn’t waste any time.
-Well, of course not. He’s excited to clash with an opponent he saw you fight. That doesn’t get to happen very often.-
That’s... fair. She really couldn’t fault his eagerness.
Anatalis had a lupine—very predatory—grin across his face as his guests looked around at the surrounding creatures.
In that moment, Tala had a realization. If the sirelings take a hundred years to mature, and the Pack only has one at a time, just the wolves here represent more than five thousand years of Anatalis’ life and consistent growth in power—even if just by the expansion of his Pack—and this is likely not all of them. Though it is most likely the majority.
-It also explains why no one has seen him as a specific threat, not yet at least.-
Yeah. I mean, we’ve no reason to believe that he’s more powerful than any other Sovereign level entity, and his descendants are easily matched in number and power by others we know of. The Pack couldn’t bring down the arcane cities by themselves, and even gated-humanity could probably cause him trouble if we came to conflict.
-Not a lot of trouble but definitely some, yeah.-
Still, his base of power would only continue to expand, and he had a near eternity to continue. It was no wonder that he had not been more prominent, but with gated-humanity by his side? Possibly even under his aegis? Tala suddenly understood why the wolves had approached Alefast, Waning, to test gated-humanity.
They were at—or very near—a tipping point of power.
In the momentary silence in which Tala’s mind was racing along concepts of power and alliance, Terry flickered to stand on his own, sized to match an oxen’s height, if not mass. He trilled at the sky, causing a ripple of rumbling chuckles from the watching wolves.
Anatalis regarded Terry for a long moment before dipping his head. “Your own request for an individual trial is noted, avian cousin, but your experience makes a match against the sireling useless as a test, as profitable as it might be for his own development.” He let out his own rumbling laugh, speaking even as it wound down, “Only your lack of advancement allowed your participation in your flockmate’s test, and that has since been... remedied. Congratulations.”
Terry paused a moment, head tilted to one side, before trilling again.
That caused the watching wolves to exchange looks, as they clearly understood him even better than Tala could. “Very well. Once the human is tested, I will allow your test against a mature Packmate. You may fight the sireling at your leisure after that, should you please us with your performance. Reviving one such as your would-be opponent is not without cost however, so the contest will have other conditions for possible victory, aside from death alone.”
The watching wolves threw back their heads and howled almost as one, the slight dissonance lending a haunting quality to the clearly approving gesture.
Both combatants can fight to the death without it being a final death.
-That should be rather interesting, yeah. Even with other win-conditions, the potential to go all-out? It will be fascinating to see.-
“But first, the sireling shall test his fang, claw, and power against young Rane.”
Tala and Terry moved to the base of the cliff before both flickering up to a clear space on the edge, looking down. Terry preceded Tala by a bare fraction of a second, but that was enough for her aura to be firm enough atop the cliff so that she could join him without appreciable delay.
Rane remained seated even as Anatalis faded, seeming to break apart into glowing mist that in turn lost its glow and vanished.
A moment later, the sireling—a russet furred wolf just about the size of a large horse—jumped down into the large, round depression.
His fur was crisscrossed with a few scars that should have given him a haggard appearance, but instead of lacking hair, the scars grew fur of a silver-white, and that gave him a more mottled, textured appearance than was usual, even if it was less extreme than it had been when the sireling fought Tala.
Apparently, his coat had been refreshed upon his death, and he’d not had the chance to re-earn as many scars as he’d previously boasted.
Rane stood slowly before bowing to the wolf. “Greetings, sireling of the Pack.”
A voice that Tala recognized responded, sounding more animalistic than Anatalis’—or even Lupin’s—had, “Greetings, human of the cycling cities. Fight well, so that we may both learn and grow from the clash. Remember that surrender is an option. I’d hate to end your life needlessly.”
A presence descended upon the arena, suppressing and deactivating Rane’s inscriptions, but that was only a mild inconvenience for the young man. His natural magics were as chasms, as he had had nearly the same inscriptions for the entirety of his time with magic.
Enar would, unfortunately, be suppressed for this time, but Alat said the alternate interface was fine with that. She was confused by his feelings, but she wasn’t about to try to argue Enar into a fear of such things.
Aside from Enar, the changes that Rane had received were almost all enhancements of previously existing spellforms, meant to build upon those which were already in place, deepening them and extending their utility.
All told, he would be fighting at a very high level for a human Mage, bereft of inscriptions.
Tala couldn’t keep the grin from her face as she watched her husband face off against the sireling. As she watched, bone seemed to sprout from his skin, looking like a combination of fast-growing wood and plates coming from hidden compartments—even though she knew it was neither—and in less than a second, Rane’s bone-armor had literally clicked into place, entirely encasing him.
The magics inherent in the armor—derived from the bone-golem he’d harvested—allowed him to see using the bone itself. Being soulbound, it was allowed, and all of its power was ready to hand.
He’s taking this quite seriously.
-Indeed.-
Her magesight easily picked out the magics as the sireling carved spellforms into existence itself around himself, sending out the opening attack of the fight, a simple fireball.
Rane didn’t even bother blocking, simply extinguishing the attack as soon as it entered his aura.
Tala felt her eyes widen, however, as she—being intimately familiar with Rane’s magics—noticed how he did so. Aside from her familiarity, she felt something through her soulbond with him, but she didn’t have time to trace that down at the moment.
What the sireling had done could have easily been seen as a test of Rane’s aura strength, which Rane would have classically responded to by simply obliterating the magic once it was within his control.
Instead, Rane had done exactly as he had told her he would. He manipulated the kinetic energy, taking in the monumental amount of power that the open spell had contained, and holding it in readiness for... something.
A smile pulled at Tala’s lips. He’s going to surprise us all, isn’t he?
-If I said yes, wouldn’t that mitigate the surprise?-
Tala huffed a laugh, causing the wolf to her right to glance her way, mild confusion in his eyes.
Finally, he began to build a spellform that Tala thought was familiar, though she’d never seen it before.
The working was only half created when Anatalis’ voice cracked out, his power destroying the spellform even as he spoke, “No soulmagics.”
There was a fractional pause, in which the sireling hung his head in obvious shame, but it didn’t last long.
With ranged magics clearly not working, the sireling finally charged in, seemingly set on winning by dint of fang and bulk.
Rane held Force up above his head in a ready pose, his offhand reaching forward defensively.
As the wolf lunged forward, the sireling activated a form of teleportation, utterly changing his attack trajectory, but Rane’s magics reacted all the same, moving him out of the way of the snapping jaws.
At the same time, Rane reached out with his offhand and touched the side of the wolf’s snout.
Tala felt the flexing of Rane’s soul as he bore down to enact magic through the authority of that brief contact.
The massively heated rock of the sanctum lost all the extra energy Rane had painstakingly built up in a blink, and Rane strained himself to the extreme in order to force his power to work.
And it did.
It was as inefficient as blowing on the surface of a lava-flow to cool it off, but when he had the breath-equivalent of a monsoon, it changed the results.
The wolf’s head jerked sideways, kinetic energy imparted through the lupine’s defenses.
With a crack like the shattering of a glacier, the sireling’s neck broke. With continued motion, now no longer as resisted, the arena filled with the horrid sound of rending flesh, and the massive body tumbled to the ground, lifeless and still.
The head slapped wetly against the nearby cliff a moment later before sliding to the ground more than twenty feet from the body.
In the sudden silence, the only sound was the building, predatory laugh of Anatalis, god-beast of the Pack.
No one spoke or moved for nearly a quarter minute as the head slithered across the ground back toward where the corpse lay. Then, with a sound like rustling canvas, the flesh was mended before the sickening sound of cracking bone and popping cartilage filled the arena once more, the sireling’s head and neck coming back into proper alignment.
The large wolf stood slowly, causing Rane to take several steps back, cautiously regarding his opponent.
Instead of attacking, however, the sireling tilted his massive head to the side, exposing his throat to Rane. “Thank you for the lesson, human. I have been... remiss in my studies on more esoteric magics. You have held my deficit up in stark relief. I will strive to improve so that my next showing will bring honor to the Pack.”
Rane gave a bow in return. “Thank you for the match, sireling of the Pack. You were a worthy opponent against which to sharpen my magics. It has been my honor to prepare for this clash, since I watched you clash with my wife.”
Anatalis’ voice came from the very air around them. “Pack, has the human shown himself worthy?”
The giant wolves present—the sireling included—threw their heads back and howled toward the massive moon hanging low overhead.
“I agree. Be welcomed, Rane of gated-humanity; may your hunts be ever fruitful, and your den ever safe.”
Rane bowed again in thankful acknowledgement.
Tala could feel the soul-deep joy bubbling up within Rane even as his inscriptions blazed back to life across and throughout his body.
So many of the principles that he’d applied in the fight with the wolf had been ones that they’d worked on together over the last years, brought to culmination in the last months. He was a force to be reckoned with even if his lethality was mostly confined to melee range at the moment.
-And he hasn’t even begun to experiment with the battlefield control work that your breath weapon inspired him to conceive of.-
She hadn’t thought of that.
With a predatory grin of her own, she adjusted a small portion of his aura to be fully hers before flickering down—using him and his aura as she did Terry—without conscious thought.
When she arrived, she gave him an almost demure kiss on the cheek—having to hop up a little to make it land—only the smoldering intensity in her eyes keeping it from being a truly chaste kiss.
Her husband was becoming powerful, and he was here with her.
He was hers.
She was his, and they were forging something new, together.
In that moment of glory, she felt like Anatalis himself had struck her in the gut, all her joy leaving her in a rush.
They were together, but there wouldn’t be anyone to pass what they built onto.
What does any of this matter? I continue childless, without heir or legacy. Even if I were to live ten thousand years before death, what will I leave behind?
Rane noticed the shift within her immediately—likely through their soulbond—her pain reaching her very soul, her gate trembling as the truth of it struck her deeply.
He caught her up in his arms and enfolded her in his embrace, even as she was wracked with uncontrollable sobs.
Silence fell over the Pack as the wolves regarded the two humans.
Terry flickered down to stand beside them, glaring around as if daring any wolf to either take advantage of their distracted state or disrupt their moment of unified venting emotion.
Tala wasn’t sure how long passed in that way, and Alat was kind enough to not tell her one way or another. But when she had pulled herself mostly back together, she pulled slightly away from Rane, feeling suddenly embarrassed.
Anatalis spoke then, “You bear a heavy burden, one that is antithesis to much that I and Vidarra stand for. Know that we mourn with you, and you have nothing to be ashamed of in your grief.”
Tala nodded slowly, feeling some justification from the words, even as she continued to take comfort from Rane’s presence. “Thank you, Anatalis. Your words are a great boon to me.”
The wolf manifested near to them and huffed. “It is no true boon, but I take your meaning, young one.”
Tala’s eyes widened in a momentary, hopeful thought. Would he... maybe give a true boon? Would that be enough?