253
David
The icy expanse stretched endlessly in all directions, a desolate and frozen tundra beneath an inky sky. The cold felt too close and too distant at the same time, and unlike the last time I had been here, the ground felt solid. The snow beneath my boots glittered, the only source of radiance in this otherwise lightless world, but it didn't crunch the way snow did. It just seemed to shift away like sand almost. My stomach turned the longer I looked at it. The cold air bit at my face, and each breath hung in the air like a ghostly wisp.
"Can you hear me?" I yelled, my voice echoed like a screech in the wind, but no one answered. "Is anyone out there?"
My chest tightened with grief and wariness. The vast emptiness weighed on me as I trudged through the snow, leaving a trail of footprints that quickly vanished in the snow drifting. I looked up and around, trying to orient myself, trying to figure out where this place was. If my theories were right and this was Hel in some twisted way, then there had to be a way out and into this place.
I worried my lip. Where was the Balder of this story? Loki's reinforcements waiting for Ragnarok? How much of the story was true, and how much was false? If Selene had a hand in crafting the story, how much did she really know? And if it wasn't Selene who crafted it completely, who had?
It felt like I would have to keep looking. There had to be someone, somewhere, who could answer any of these questions, even if they were lost to time too.
I shivered. My hands started to go stiff as I kept walking. I reached the top of a dune and looked out, seeing nothing. Then, the sky lit up. A single point of light in the sky appeared in the distance. A star, or what appeared to be one, plummeted from the sky, streaking across the sky. It left a trail of ethereal glow in its wake, and the wind picked up, screaming, wailing, begging me to go to it.
"Hold on!" I yelled, pitching myself forward.
A surge of determination coursed through me as I sprinted toward the descending star. My heart was in my throat as I stumbled and trudged toward it. I could hear the voice screaming at me.
Faster.
Quickly.
You won't make it.
I'd make it. I had to. I couldn't say why or how I knew that I had to make it, but I did. I f I could just move a little faster.
Suddenly, I was leaping over the piles of glistening, glowing snow. I tumbled and rolled at the harsh landing, but I didn't stop moving. I pushed and pushed.
"Just hold on!" I screamed. "I'm coming!"
The star kept falling, seemingly floating on the wind and drifting down from the sky, growing dimmer, though it didn't seem to grow farther away.
I was running out of time.
"Just hold on!" I screamed desperately. The sense of urgency trembled and shook through me. I pushed myself harder. The star seemed to be slipping away faster than I could catch up, and a growing unease tugged at the edges of my consciousness.
I reached out, my fingers brushing against the frigid air as if I could somehow grasp the falling star across the distance. I had to get there.
I had to get there.
Help me.
The gust of air that swept through the area blew the piles of snow apart, parting them so my feet were on solid, cold ground. The path ahead was clear and flat, following the path of the falling star.
Two legs became four, and I raced towards it. I howled, hearing it echo in the wind, calling to others who howled with me. The howl turned into a roar, a scream, and a plea.
Not yet.
You can't go like this.
The transformation surged within me, scales replacing fur and wings unfurling from my back, taking me into the air on the wind that blew me forward, pushing me to get there. I soared through the wintry air, the cold biting against my face.
The frozen landscape blurred beneath me as the star finally seemed to hit a bank of soft snow. I landed in the snow, claws sinking into the icy drifts. The light flickered beneath me. I shifted into my human form as the snow started to clear.
"It's alright," I said. "You're alright. I'm here. I'll help you. Just hold on."
Fire seemed to spill out of me, circling the fallen star and forming a protective cocoon. I slipped my hands into the snow, cupping the little star in my hands, so bright and fragile, fading even as I held it close to my chest.
"Stay with me," I whispered.
What did I do? What could I do? I looked around, searching for an answer, but was there one? The glow flickered, revealing the form of a bird, a dove, I was sure, delicate and ephemeral. Its wings were tattered, and the light that emanated from it was fading fast. This was a bird shifter's spirit. My stomach churned as I tried to heal it, though nothing seemed to work. The light kept fading, and I felt a pang of sorrow as its gaze met mine. Its fear seemed to ease, shifting to gratitude and a deep weariness.
"Don't give up yet," I whispered to it. "I'm here. You'll be okay."
It barely twitched before nuzzling my hand.
Thank you for trying, young Fenris.
My heart lurched. It knew me. Had I been right that we were all connected?
Thank you for being here.
A profound sadness settled in me as I watched the light flicker and die no matter how much magic, force, or will I tried to pour into it. With a final, grateful twitter, the bird spirit's light went out, and its form crumbled like glowing, white sand in my hands and vanished into the snowdrift.
I could hear its song in the wind, and my stomach lurched as the horror settled on my mind.
Every granule, every whisper of wind, every bit of light had once been a shifter's animal spirit. I had known before that this was a graveyard, but this... This was something different.
A dumping ground, a mass grave where no single spirit maintained any sense of what it had once been.
My whole body was tense, clenching the fabric in my hands so hard that my nails bit through it and into my palms. The tears were hot and blinding. I could still hear the howls of hundreds if not thousands of wolves in the wind, the bird's twitter, and so many others. The desolation of the tundra, the fallen spirits, their fading glows haunted me. Grief and rage intertwined, a storm raging within my chest. I could barely breathe around it, let alone think.
"You're awake." I heard Trent say.
I looked up as he came to my bedside, concern etched across his features.
"What happened?" he asked. "What did you see?"
I shook my head. I couldn't say it. I could barely think it. The tundra flashed through my mind. The helplessness, the hopelessness of it, the despair that chilled the air.
I hadn't been able to save a single spirit. Part of me knew that a spirit falling from the sky to that place meant that there was no saving them, but if I had all this power, untapped and known, why did it feel like I couldn't do anything with it?
I took in a shuddering breath. I had to do something. I had to get answers.
"You've been out for over a day."
It had felt like years of grief and effort that had gotten me nowhere.
"David--"
"How much longer am I on bed rest?" I asked, my voice sounded hollow.
I looked up at him. Trent's brow furrowed in worry, but there must have been something on my face that told him I needed this answer: to be on my feet, to be doing something rather than lying in bed.
"That question is beyond my paygrade," he said and turned. "Joy?"
The healer entered a calm presence amidst the storm within me. He smiled at me. Though his eyes said he knew that I was troubled.
"We weren't expecting you to end back in a trance of any sort," he said. "There's a possibility that your powers haven't completely settled yet. My immediate suggestion is to focus on trying to burn the poison out of you."
I glanced at the flames still dancing within the open wound.
"Is that something I can do?"
"With a bit of guidance, and I'd be happy to help."
The longer I stayed in bed, the longer I couldn't figure out what was happening. The crystal necklace, that wasteland, and the whole mess of Selene and Oren were all connected. I had been taught that there was a balance to everything and that the world of magic required a balance. If there was a wasteland of shifter spirits being added to more and more by the day, that couldn't be good.
And there were only a few ways to kill a shifter spirit.
I nodded, sitting up. "Let's do it."
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