The Lupine Curse: A Tale of Netherway

Another empty street of broken glass and ransacked shops. There was a child on the ground, crying for his mother. Fenris snatched him up, wasting no time, and hurried toward the nearest home.

Everything inside was overturned, as if a storm and gone through the house, taken all the valuables and left all the sentimental items. All but for a woman, sitting in a chair, looking blankly through a window.

“Woman!” Fenris shouted as he pushed through the half-shut door. “Your child was …” he trailed off, his voice falling to the floor like a stone. The woman was dead. At her feet was a jewelry box with a family crest on the top, empty. A single, wide line of red was running from her neck.

Fenris stormed up the stairs and left the child in a room with a bed still upright. The screams of that boy followed him like ghosts all the way down the stairs, prickled his spine. And as he shut the door, wondering if it would have been better if that child, too, had died somehow, he could’ve sworn that he felt the woman’s eyes follow him.

He grasped a handful of daisies growing on a patch of grass, tossed them at the doorstep of the home. Perhaps Calan’s followers will have enough compassion to help the city after the chaos settles. If they survive, at all, he thought.

He put his hand on his daggers and sprinted through the city, following the noise of destruction until he was in the main courtyard again, close to the the guard tower that Deidre was in.

When he ran to the door, he noticed Ashara’s body was missing. Every part of him begged to go find her, but he ignored it, pulled on the handle and went inside.

Dust filled his lungs. He coughed and sputtered for awhile.

The door oaken door slammed behind him, casting him in darkness and silence that soothed him like a splash of cold water in summer heat. He hissed Deidre’s name, but no response came.

But there she was, like a ball wedged in a corner, clutching her knees the same way she had that same night Crowshead was attacked. “It won’t open,” she mumbled as Fenris crouched down next to her.

“Are you certain?” he asked stupidly. He shook his head. “Never mind that. Where is it?”

She pointed at the lever.

He threw all his weight on the damned thing. Orange dust from the years of rusting fell in a cloud on his shoulders. It creaked beneath his weight, twice, as if it might even work … until it snapped entirely, and he was left holding half of the lever like a stick.

“With or without the gods, I’ll shut this damned gate,” he promised himself. Then he looked at Deidre, crouched in defeat. “Deidre, I need you to leave this place. You can’t leave the city, but you can find somewhere safe enough for you to stay until this all calms down.”

“But Fenris—”

“Dammit Deidre, listen!” he roared, knowing it would be the only way to reach her, even if it hurt him to do it. “There are children here. Motherless children. They need help. They need you.”

She began crying with protests cracking in her throat, trying to reach out to him, to anything that might solace her.

“You’re the Hare of Crowshead. You’ve got some strength in you yet,” he said as he got close to her again, grasping her shoulders. “And if it is your strength, it is yours to spare, to give. There’s not enough mercy in this city to spare even the rosebuds growing along the paths. But surely, if there’s someone who can summon enough blessings for this city to survive this, it is Deidre the Hare, the Witch of Crowshead.” Fenris smiled at her through the darkness, the whites of his teeth the only thing pure on his face. Sweat dripped from the tips of his hair.

Deidre got to her feet, and nodded at him, biting back tears.

With the iron lever still in his hand, Fenris walked with her out of the tower, and watched until she was running away towards the ruins of the city.

There were plenty of empty beds in Calan’s chapel. The innocent and wounded could be kept there until the city repairs itself, she decided. Then she turned around, to get one long glance before she left to find the wounded, but by the time she turned around, Fenris had already disappeared.

Vidarr ascended the ladder in the tower, gritting his teeth. He slammed open the trapdoor, slapping one of the cultist’s legs in the arc, causing him to lose his balance and fall into the dizzying height of the battlements, screaming.

There was another Hand standing there, though his hand was full with his bow. Vidarr hauled himself up, grasped his body like a shield while the other Hands buried their arrows—for the second time—in their own ally.

When they stopped to retrieve more arrows, Vidarr dropped the dead weight, drew two arrows from the elf’s quiver, nocked them and watched them soar into his victims. His quickness was nothing short of masterful.

Marksmanship had always been his talent. Even the others in his encampment would admit it.

The two remaining fell prey to his accuracy as well, while their hands shook and fumbled with arrows.

Something dark and massive was crawling in the distance. Vidarr turned, and couldn’t help but let out a noise of surprise. What he thought was the darkness of the evening creeping up on the horizon was more reinforcements of the Crimson Hand advancing towards the city, nearly at the gates now.

Vidarr nocked another arrow, shot an archer far on the opposite wall, and watched his life get snuffed like a candle’s flame.

All the remaining bowmen on the battlements focused their attention on him. He grinned. An archery competition had commenced.

Darkness filled Fenris’ eyes as he watched Death sweep the streets of the city with delighted grace. People were still clamoring, exchanging fists, threats and scars. The shadow of his Curse came up behind him, though now he did not hold it back, he did not run from it. He felt its claws snare around his body, dig into his chest, cause him to shake and grunt while he knelt to the ground in suffocating pain. He let it engulf him.

His nails dragged against the stones on the ground, leaving pale, thin marks. Small spots of red started to appear at his fingertips.

That dreaded pleasure of devouring himself rose at the base of his back. It shivered up and played on the keys of his spine.

Past indulgences filled his memory as he felt his body relinquish itself to the previous transformations. He let himself become an echo of his old actions, to recall how iron tasted so sweet on his tongue. All restraint crumbled.

Before enough people could turn and warn others, before enough of them had even noticed, a werewolf had been birthed right in the center of the city. Beneath him were tatters of clothes and skin, a massive shadow growing ever steeper as the sun bled behind him, sinking lower. The broken lever to the city gates rolled at his feet.

For the first time in hours, a silence fell over the people of Gods’ Rest. Fenris the Cursed One rose from a crouched position and outstretched his arms, looming over the people like a dark god and letting loose a howl to send many of them scattering to the outermost walls.

Ignoring the people, the werewolf lumbered through the crowd as calmly as any who might find themselves walking on a warm evening. He swept aside idle bodies too frozen with fear to move. A roar scattered the last at the front, revealing the two massive slabs of ironwood of the city gates.

Through the entrance tunnel, Fenris saw the dark army approaching. He growled.

A dark wind came rushing into the tunnel. Arrows. Fenris felt dozens of them hit him in a sudden and sharp pain that only fed his rage.

Outstretching his arms, he grasped the doors and dug his claws deep into the wood, pulling them back.

The Crimson Hand had another volley ready. Fenris clenched his eyes shut and felt it shower over him like fiery rain. The anger surged through his arms, pulling the gates closer together.

Groaning, squeezing and grinding, the hinges on the doors shook while the gates dragged against the ground. He pulled them until he needn’t any longer, until the next wave of arrows was blocked by the gates, and the last of the space was only the width of a spider’s web.

A profound thud crushed the silence, and then inspired an even greater hush. Gods’ Rest, for the first time in years, was closed to the world.

Fenris stood facing the walls, panting, blood raining from him. Bodies littered the ground around him, but for once they had not fallen from his hands. From the heap, he found Timothy and Arienna. He picked them up and let them rest on his shoulder like two broken dolls that a child would carry back to his home.

Vidarr was crouched above, so the army could not see him on the battlements. He stared with a toothy smile playing on his lips, watching Fenris with a pride in his chest that felt to him like a sunrise.

He’d won the archery tournament, and left no enemy combatant standing to question his prowess.

Fenris stumbled through the courtyard, heading toward Calan’s Chapel, too saddened and too wearied to care for the bloodlust, for which he was certain would be silenced forever by what he saw today.

Blood was running from him in small rivers through the street.

A pale hand grasped at the tufts of his fur around his feet. He looked down.

It was Ashara, on her belly, also bleeding. A smile cracked her lips only for him. She had tried to find Vidarr when she finally woke, only to become wounded in a similar predicament as the one before. He picked her up in his jaws, just by the clothes on her back, and carried her away. Although many would not attest to this particular detail of the legend later, it is said that the werwolf was grinning.