Feeding Darkness
The world around him fell dark. Against the black soil, his guide, the wisdom tree, if that was truly its nature and not something a lot fouler, goaded him with eyes that burned like fiery-hot embers. The gash in its bark moved, the same words being uttered over and over again.
“Feed the darkness,” the twisted tree goaded him, its voice hoarse and reedy.
Theodore pinned the creature down with his front paws. His muzzle opened, saliva dropping on the black bark, making it sizzle as if burned with acid.
“Where is my pack?” he growled. “What did you do to them?”
“We weren’t the ones who did anything to them. Your feeble mind, alpha,” the tree mocked him, “abandoned itself to greed. You wanted to be the alpha of your pack so much. Do you remember? The fire in your heart, how searing hot it burned as you desired to grow up and seize your father’s throne--”
“You’re lying!” Theodore boomed.
But he knew. In his heart, and in his mind, the ghosts of the past gathered round, staring him down with their accusing eyes.
You were meant to be our alpha.
You were born for the crown.
You were our one true leader.
Theodore shook his head hard. Those memories… they couldn’t be true. Why had he gone against his father’s wishes at the time? Why had he stolen the flint and destroyed the Embercasting?
Yet, so many things evaded him. His memories, thin as silver threads, melted into a muddy mire that held him prisoner.
He closed his eyes, remaking his sire’s kind face from the bits and pieces still buried inside his mind.
You will lead, Theodore, one day.
Is that day today?
Eager to see me old and grey, my son?
No, father. I wish you a long and happy life.
If only greed hadn’t taken over his heart. Theodore knew he had done something terrible by stealing the flint of Embercasting from his father and then hiding it. But as much as he struggled to piece together what happened after… no other memories emerged.
Only a deep, cutting sensation of loss, the same he had carried himself all his life.
Lost in his thoughts, he failed to notice how a branch of the tree he held pinned down had slowly advanced toward his muzzle. When he felt the scrape of rough bark across his forehead, he shivered.
A memory emerged, a luminous point in a sea of darkness. He had been alone for so many years.
“You only have to join them,” the tree whispered in a voice like the rustling of dead leaves. “Enter the circle of Embercasting. Forget them and let oblivion take you with it. You will be at peace.”
The words lulled him into a state of drowsiness. His anger made no sense now. Why had he been so furious only moments ago.
“Feel the thirst for blood, the hunger for flesh,” the tree continued to whisper.
He did. His tongue was parched, and inside his soul a black hunger grew.
***
“Do you know what I’m thinking, Vee?”
“As much as I like to believe that we’re thick as thieves now, unless you’re telepathic, no,” Vince replied, amused with Jack’s ramblings.
They were advancing through the barren landscape, guided by Jack’s instincts and not much else. It unnerved Vince to no end not to be in charge, but he understood that someone who had saved him from a terrible wound could very well be the leader of their small group for once.
“I’m thinking that the wisdom tree from what the runes told us doesn’t exist in a single place. After all, together with that wise but annoying nehesh, it went on a little trip to help us.”
“That sounds legit,” Vince agreed. “And Theodore must be the one who needs to walk up to it.”
“Only the wolf whose heart runs true and free/May walk the path where stands the wisdom tree,” Jack recited from memory. “But we don’t even know where Theodore is right now.”
“Don’t tell me we’ve been walking in circles,” Vince joked. “You know we’re depending on you to lead us to our destination.”
He had barely finished talking, when Jack gasped and fell to his knees. Vince hurried to his side. “Jack, what’s wrong?” He made a move to touch his arm and help him to his feet.
Jack growled, his voice transformed into a low rasp. “Don’t touch me, Vee. Something’s happening. Sorry, didn’t mean to yell.”
“You didn’t yell,” Vince said, bewildered by this new evolution.
Jack sat with his palms pressed against the ground, his fingers fanned out, and his arms were shaking only trying to support him.
“Jack,” Vince whispered, troubled by his inability to help, whatever was going on.
“Don’t worry,” Jack’s new husky voice warned him. “I think I’m… bleeding ink.”
Vince took a step back in the nick of time. Rivulets of dark ink emerged from underneath Jack’s fingers, flowing through the cracks in the dry dirt, seemingly at random.
Until he began seeing the patterns they were forming. As they rushed, following their intricate paths, they formed a picture.
A tree. But it was a dry, twisted one, with gnarled branches grown haphazardly and against nature.
“Is this--”
He didn’t finish his thought. It couldn’t be the wisdom tree. Even if he hadn’t been awake when Jack had met the ancient tree and his nehesh companion, he knew that whatever bled out of his clairvoyant friend’s fingers couldn’t be the same entity.
With growing terror, he stared at the ever-evolving picture on the ground. Resting against its trunk lay a figure. Colors now bloomed from Jack’s fingers, a stark contrast against the black ink as the silhouette took shape.
“Theodore,” Vince said, his voice coming out a pained whisper.
He lay there, on one side, looking asleep. Ash fell from the naked branches of the tree, covering him in soot.
“What’s going on?” Jack asked, alarmed as he was bound to be. “I can’t look. Tell me, Vee.”
“It’s Theodore,” he replied. “He is…”
The man in the picture was slowly turning into his wolf shape. His bright white fur quickly darkened as soot tainted it. But it was more than black and white blending together. A light inside Theodore – as hard as Vince found it to explain – was going out.
And around the majestic wolf’s neck, the noose, the one Jack had been talking about, tightened.
***
A vision. It couldn’t be anything else but a vision, because Theodore’s heart ached, filled with the knowledge of the impossible and the desire that the past didn’t exist at all. Right before his eyes, his pack rose, from the eldest to the youngest, dressed in furs, their faces happy, their cheeks red from the cold, and their voices traveled to him, cheerful as golden bells in winter.
“Are you alive?” he shouted.
His echo bounced back to him. Alive, alive, alive…
He sprinted toward them. If he could only reach them… but that scene of perfect happiness eluded him, moving further the more he ran toward them.
“Who are you? Why are you doing this to me?”
The vision flickered and soon, it was gone. Theodore found himself in the middle of a winter landscape, nothing but snowy hills as far as the eye could see.
“You freed us once.”
The voice came from behind him, so he turned abruptly to face it. A creature made of mist and dead tree branches stood tall, hovering several feet away.
“Who are you?”
“I might just as well tell you.” The voice came from the part of the creature where the face should’ve been. But there was no face to speak of, no mouth. Whatever words were coming from there, they could just as well be coming from beyond the grave, ghost-like and merely imagined.
But no, he revolted, he wasn’t imagining anything. It was happening, whatever this was, no matter how strange. It held the key to what had happened to his pack, to his past, and most likely, his future, as dim and dark as it had to be right now.
“Tell me everything.” He walked closer to the apparition, all his senses sharpening, waiting for a sign that he could use to take down his enemy.
There was no doubt in his heart that he was facing his doom. But an alpha, even one fallen from grace as he was, would be fearless when facing his demise. Nothing worth living for remained in this world, so why not throw himself completely in his anger and the need to avenge his pack?
“The Embercasting, do you still recall that silly ritual?”
The creature was trying to provoke him, but Theodore knew that he needed to keep his wits about him if he wanted to destroy this dark, ghostly apparition.
“It wasn’t silly if it made you stay away,” Theodore replied.
A hoarse sound hissed through the dark opening from beneath a tattered dark cloth that surrounded the head of the creature like a shroud.
“Do you understand the meaning of the veil, alpha of Whiteflame?”
Theodore searched his memories. But they were lost, most of them, and he couldn’t tell what was real and what wasn’t. Yet he knew, inside his heart, that there was a meaning to the veil separating the lands of his pack from the rest of the world that made the creature before him fear.
“Why don’t you tell me?” A wolf might not be as cunning as a fox, but Theodore hadn’t lived in the world of humans, with their petty desires and penchant for cheating, without becoming tainted to a degree. And right now, his experience in that world would help him devise a web of lies to entrap his enemy.
“Once upon a time, as all fairytales go,” the ghost whispered like gurgling water through a dirty pipe, “we, evil souls, ruled these lands. We only had to hide from your mistress, the Moon. Under her silver light, we couldn’t survive long. Each night, when she climbed up in the sky, we hid in holes in the ground like worms.” The disgust in the creature’s recounting of this old tale was evident.
“You ruled the underground. Why not stay there forever?” Theodore asked. He was slowly studying his opponent. It wasn’t as much made of mist as it was trying to lead him to believe.
Harsh laughter shook the tattered cloth hanging over the creature’s face. “What kind of evil would we be if we were content with the dead and their lost hopes? We wanted to roam freely, across the face of the earth.”
“You haven’t succeeded,” Theodore pointed out.
“Yet.” Evil glee oozed out of the ghost. “The Moon created you, her most beloved pack, Whiteflame, and forced us deep into the wet dark forests far beyond the veil.”
“My pack guards these lands,” Theodore said with unconcealed pride.
“Used to,” the creature reminded him. “They’re all dead now, aren’t they?”
The words were caught up in the wind and swirled around Theodore, making the fur on his body stand on end.
“You do not scare me. You are still trapped beyond the veil.”
“Yes. Packs like yours are now scattered across the world. But they are not as powerful by far as yours used to be. Do you know why?”
“Because Whiteflame must protect the world from you,” Theodore said. As the creature spoke, his memories were flowing back to him, making more and more sense. The Embercasting, his father’s rage at the disappearance of the flint…
But his father had said that they would continue playing their role as protectors even without the Embercasting. Wolves like them were resilient in the face of evil. The ritual had been of great help for centuries, but its destruction couldn’t mean—
Theodore shook his head hard. As soon as he moved closer to the truth, to the reason why his pack had fallen, his thoughts became jumbled, impossible to make sense of.
“They had done that for a long time, before their demise. You are the last of their kind, Theodore Pembroke. And you are here to finish what you started.”
“Destroying you?” he asked, tensing and waiting, balancing his body on his hind legs, prepared to pounce and rip this creature of mist, dead wood, and lies apart.
“That is where you’re wrong, alpha of Whiteflame. I will tell you just one more thing before I make you face the truth of what you have done. We will see who is the last to survive.”
“Go on,” Theodore taunted the ghost. All were lies. Not the part about his pack being what stood between an entire world of evil and what was good in the rest of the world. His claws were sharp and could go through the toughest hide. When he attacked, even this evil apparition would fall at his feet, defeated.
“Cassandra.”
Theodore stopped. “What about her? The Luna’s Sentinels dispatched her to the world you used to live in. She’d dead now.”
“Yes, she is dead,” the creature said solemnly. “We sent her to lure you out of your hiding place. Using those righteous, gullible wolves, scaring them with a curse, was so easy. If only Ryder Asherman had done his job.”
“Ryder Asherman wanted to mate with me. Cassandra told him I was his fated mate. A lie.”
“Which you recognized right away.”
“Your plans were to destroy me, using him as the hand that killed me,” Theodore said. He felt like laughing. “Only Asherman found his fated mate. The true one. And he was instrumental in destroying one of yours. A mere human.” He took great satisfaction in saying that. Even if, at the time, he had been humiliated by the same mere human, he wouldn’t deny Danny’s value.
“Not a mere human. A mate. The Moon plays tricks on us, but her power wanes without her most ardent protectors. Whiteflame is no more, Theodore. And you will pay for Cassandra’s destruction. You led to her demise, as well, through your stubbornness.”
“Were you expecting me to let Asherman destroy me? Only his fated mate saved him from my wrath.”
“Look at you,” the creature goaded him. “That Whiteflame pride. What a wonderful decay awaits you, alpha. You must join your pack. Isn’t that what your heart desires?”
“They don’t exist anymore. But I will destroy you for the fate you inflicted upon them.”
He pounced, ready to deliver a killing blow. The creature disappeared, its harsh laughter fading with it.
He looked around slowly. Once more, he was alone in a land of snow and cold. His wolf loved it, ready to trot through the heavy banks, sticking his tongue out, hungry for the pleasures of winter only his kind could understand.
But Theodore reined him in. His enemy was gone, leaving him with more questions than before. The creature had said that he needed to join his pack. In other words, he had to die. But there was no one there, ready to challenge him.
A blizzard started. Theodore had to keep his eyes low to prevent the icy flakes from hurting them. His heart had never stopped hoping, but he knew the truth. His pack was no more, and all left to him was to avenge their demise.
Ryder Asherman had been lucky, indeed, to have his fated mate by his side.
But Theodore had chased his away. One of them. The other, he had simply left behind.
He turned away from the ghastly wind. Was there a way back? To them? But they weren’t his mates. That had been another lie, snuck into the cards Jack read and brought him here, to finish what he started.
An alpha wouldn’t go down without a fight. An alpha without a pack had no mates.
Wails woven through the storm brushed by his ears. He would walk forward and find the truth. This blizzard had been sent to stay him in his path. But he’d be stronger.
In the distance, smoke rose, its scent powerful, even despite the strong winds. Theodore could feel it in his bones. His true home was near. And this time, he’d unearth the truth, no matter how painful.
***
“Are you all right, Jack? Can I move you now? The picture has stopped moving,” Vince said quickly.
“Why aren’t you telling me what you see? It’s bad, isn’t it?” Jack gasped and was about to fall on his nose when Vince caught him.
“What picture…” Jack stopped, taking in with growing dread the strange image stretching below his feet.
Which were in the air, because his darling Vee had hiked him up in his arms before he ended up with a broken nose.
“That’s Theo,” he whispered, his voice trembling. “That creature is trying to kill him. We must go, Vee.”
“We will. Is this a warning? We’d be better off with a map,” Vince said.
“I know,” Jack agreed. “But… I have the knowledge now.”
The nehesh and the wise tree hadn’t told him lies. The image changed under their very eyes.
They were looking at ruins. Old ruins, although smoke floated over them, as if someone had just lit up a fire.
“Do you know anything about archeology, Vee?”
“I can’t really say. Only the basics, I believe. General knowledge.”
“We don’t need anything beyond that at this point. We must find the ruins of Theodore’s pack. That’s where he’s going, whether lured by whatever evil is playing hide-and-seek with us or because that’s where his heart pulls him.”
“Do you think he’ll remember…”
“That he was the one to destroy his pack? I don’t know, but if we’re there… we will prevent him from destroying himself, as well. Sounds good, Vee? We’re not afraid or anything?”
“We’re not,” the valiant guardian assured him.
That was good, Jack thought. Because he definitely needed someone courageous with him on this journey.
TBC
Thank you for reading!
@Derek - a lie is accepted more easily when it looks like the truth...
@Mark Mortland - the circle has an ominous meaning... 10-year-old Theo will gain some allies :)
@DavidB - They will be in it together, one way or another :)
Please don't forget to check out my newest story - it's a dark academia novel, and a bit of novelty for me to write... so I hope you'll give it a shot!
If you enjoyed this story, consider supporting the author on Patreon.
To get in touch with the author, send them an email.
