You know I'm like a ghost,
sometimes I have to fade

Empire Reborn

All of the wolves of the Simien Mountains took pride in their home, in their heritage — but none quite so much as the wolves of Elvhenan, an ancient family pack that had for generations been known as the dominant force in the region. It seemed that it would always be this way, that nothing could topple their mighty empire — but none of the natives of the mountain range could have foreseen the events that would befall the revered pack.

The greed of humans ultimately felled the pack in one swift, cruel blow: the theft of the newest generation, dozens of pups swept away from their home over the course of a few days. None of the adults would ever be able to recall quite how it happened. Many times, they fell to unconsciousness with no memory of doing so, only to wake to find more of their broods missing. They assumed their children dead, and pack morale quickly crumbled to dust, leaving them weakened in more ways than one. The pack disappeared within the year, fading into the wind as if it had never existed.

Yet, unbeknownst to them, their legacy lived on — miles away, across a sea they had never seen.

The pups were dumped rather unceremoniously into their nightmarish new home; a small, unsuitable piece of land owned by a tycoon and his wife known for their eccentricity and ill-advised decisions often based on passing whim. For a time, the younglings were cared for, albeit poorly. After some months, however, the couple simply seemed to... forget about them. Their tiny home fell into disarray, and food became scarce. Eventually it stopped coming altogether. Perhaps the adolescents might have turned on one another, then — but they still remembered their heritage, their pride. They were descended from legends, warriors and scholars, meant for greater things than a short, nondescript life of neglect and brutality among brethren.

So they freed themselves.

It was no easy feat. Some died, while many more escaped in various states of sickness and injury. In the end, though, they were free — with one wolf in particular to thank for this freedom.

Her name was Brona, last-born daughter to the alpha pair of Elvhenan, and her intelligence and tenacity were at the heart of the group's successful escape. In those initial days of freedom, Brona was quickly elevated to leadership, despite being ill-suited to the role and one of the youngest of the group. This mattered very little to the newly-freed wolves, who thought only of their good fortune, their legendary ancestors, and how Brona would one day take her place among them. The group struggled to carve out their own place in the foreign landscape, thwarted at every turn by humans and unfamiliar fellow predators.

This changed when they encountered a pack of feral dogs, a ragged group that was a far cry from the noble bearings of the last generation of Elvhenan. Conflict rose between the two factions initially, yet they soon settled into an uneasy peace catalyzed by Brona's affections for Thalsian, the leader of the dog pack. Thalsian offered to lead the wolves to a safe place he knew of — a mountainous island easily reached by a determined canine swimmer, yet far enough from humans to be of little interest to them, and past the reach of other predators. Along the way, the groups began to form a stronger bond, and by journey's end the two factions had all but become one. The two leaders became mates to solidify the merge, and took up residence on the island in a revival of Elvhenan.

Their society was nearly utopian at first, owing to a combination of Brona's charisma and Thalsian's inherent skill at leadership — but such things never last. Generations passed, and slowly the island pack morphed into something different; something new, almost unrecognizable. Slowly, religion and politics shaped the new Elvhenan into a different beast entirely from that which had spawned the original group.

The pack Amadis was born into was nothing like the one fostered by Brona and Thalsian.

---

Legacy Transformed

Amadis was born in the midst of an era of strife within the pack, a conflict between the ever-progressing society of the Commonality and Underclass of Elvhenan and the staunchly traditional views of the Nobility and Royalty. It must be mentioned that this "traditional" morality was never truly rooted in tradition, for the Elvhenan of old was something of a hippie's paradise — but those in power willed it so, perhaps even truly believed it, and so it was known as tradition throughout the kingdom.

But the wolves of Elvhenan had always been free spirits, dating back to their origins in the Simien Mountains. The chains of restrictions in the name of religion and arbitrary rules of morality could never have held them for long. While the seeds of rebellion took root among the lower ranks, a different form of unrest materialized among the elites of the island pack.

It began with the Mortalitasi, the religious sect that had formed sometime during the reign of Brona and Thalsian's firstborn child, and controlled Elvhenan's military force. The most devout among them began to recognize the flaws in their ever-growing list of tenets, the ways in which their newest laws conflicted with the teachings of the ancestors they worship. In response, the order withdrew, closing itself off to recruits and culling from its ranks all but the most holy and their heirs.

At the same time, the ruling family of Elvhenan was embroiled in a scandal unlike any it had ever seen. The royal family, the Elvhen, had long been known for their strict and unusual marriage practices; the Sovereign of the pack had always been wed to a full sibling, to maintain the purity of their legendary bloodline. This tradition remained unbroken — until Eadric rose to power. Considered a progressive revolutionary in his youth, Eadric imposed several changes at the beginning of his reign, but none caused quite so much stir as his decision to marry outside of his family. Unbeknownst to the rest of the pack, his only sister already loved another — a woman (taboo only within the royal family) — and the young Sovereign refused to put tradition above the family he held so dear.

Tragically, it was this combination of well-intentioned disruptions that led to the misery and chaos that would define the lives of the next generation.

---

Heir Avant-Garde

The circumstances of Amadis's birth set the stage early on for a life as an outcast, the first heir of Elvhenan whose birth was not accompanied by weeks of celebration since the island pack's founding. Out of a litter of five, only Amadis was born without fatal and ghastly deformities; only Amadis survived to see the next day, a single hale child painted in ruddy darkling tones like aged blood. He resembled neither of his parents in those early days, and his entrance to the realm of the living was regarded with fear. Fear that a demon had somehow infiltrated Lanaya's womb, tainting her children and sucking the life force out of them; fear that the ancestors of Elvhenan had cursed the royal family for Eadric's shunning of tradition; fear that Amadis, too, would die, and leave the pack suddenly without an heir. There was no precedent for it; no matter the hardships endured, leadership of the pack had always been inherited by one born of the ruler's first litter.

But Amadis lived, and developed as any normal wolf pup might, assigned female at birth for his most obvious physical characteristics. For a time, it seemed the fears of the traditionalists were unfounded, and an uneasy sort of peace settled over the pack. This peace, however, was not mirrored within the small nuclear family at the center of the pack. Eadric and Lanaya, once married for love, grew distant from one another in the wake of the tragedy and subsequent scrutiny from the pack. Blaming Lanaya for their misfortune, Eadric turned to infidelity. Meanwhile, Lanaya blamed Amadis, who soon became the focus of her bitter rage at her circumstances.

As the child grew, it became apparent that he had not truly been left untouched by whatever force had transformed his siblings in the womb. He was different. Further maturation brought with it the revelation of the true ambiguity of his sex, and on the heels of these changes, Amadis discovered that he did not identify with the label given to him at birth. His parents would hear none of it. Eadric, grown jaded and fearful of consequences after years of being spurned time and again by the nobility and the Mortalitasi, lashed out with violence at any mention of Amadis's identity or his differences, while Lanaya fell back on familiar tools of manipulation and guilt. The pair believed they would not survive another scandal of such proportion. Amadis believed he would not survive his first year.

His peers accepted him no more than his parents did. The youngest generation of nobility, pampered and sheltered as they were, could not reconcile his differences. Amadis was ostracized from every angle. Full of self-loathing and misery, the prince turned his hurt inward, mutilating himself in subtle ways on the rare occasions he found himself alone. In the interim, he lost himself in his studies under his maternal uncle, the accomplished Mortalitasi scholar Loranil, distracting himself with the goal of absorbing every ounce of knowledge available to him. He learned the history of Elvhenan, the inner workings of the pack, the foundation and the complexities of their religion, and the full range of his people's knowledge of the world around them.

Simultaneously, and unbeknownst to the young heir, dangerous rumors circulated around the island. Wolves spoke in furtive whispers of a new organization of criminals rising to power, aided by the royal family itself. Those among the lowest ranks suffered the most, enduring extortion and abuse from wolves who seemed immune from justice. Soon, these rumors moved past whispers; the lower class of Elvhenan openly demanded rebellion. Through it all, the Mortalitasi remained eerily silent.

Sometime around the 6 month anniversary of his life, Amadis received a clumsy introduction to the world of friendship. An awkward run-in with a young outcast among the nobility, a girl named Valya, sparked an unlikely friendship between the two. Within weeks their connection blossomed into a platonic soul-tie of sorts; the type that had the pair finishing one another's thoughts, with an intimate knowledge of each other's motivations that seemed to border on psychic ability to those observing.

Shortly after he met Valya, Amadis's social circle expanded in other ways; most significantly, he became acquainted with Garahel and their brother, Ilmael. While his initial meeting with Garahel was unpleasant at best, he immediately felt a connection to Ilmael, perhaps spurred by the long-held knowledge that he would one day find himself betrothed to one of the siblings; the result of a pact between their parents made long before the births of any of the wolves involved.

Slowly, a small group formed around Amadis and Valya, first joined by Amadis's cousin Abelas, who found himself rudely cast down from his position among the most influential of the youngest generation when his preference for the company of other boys was discovered. Soon after, they befriended a lonely, melancholy youth named Felassan, descended from a prominent Mortalitasi scholar. The little group found peace for a time, despite the rapidly swelling tension in Elvhenan.

As Amadis grew further into maturity, he became aware of a disturbing change. Loranil, the only adult in his family who he truly felt he could trust, began to behave strangely; something in his gaze unsettled the young heir whenever he found the scholar's eyes on him, and he started to avoid the man he'd once adored, sensing something was amiss. Yet his avoidance ultimately did not spare him from the worst of his uncle's perverse inclinations. Later, the prince would recognize his uncle's overt affection as grooming, his sorrowful pleas as a form of manipulation that he ought to have been familiar with by then; later, it would be easy to blame himself for all that transpired. At the time, it only seemed to the youth that he was breaking the heart of the only family member who had ever truly loved him.

It was two months before the abuse was discovered, and Loranil was promptly executed by Eadric for his crimes. Amadis was sworn to secrecy, lest his reputation suffer further.

During that time, the prince turned to his peers in search of comfort and distraction. His friends remained dear to him, and his perceived connection with Ilmael blossomed into romance; he even befriended Garahel through a shared interest in the history of Elvhenan. Even these small comforts crumbled in time.

The tension on the island, by then woven tightly into the threads holding the pack together, reached a breaking point. Riots broke out, sporadic at first — then daily. In the chaos, Felassan and Abelas disappeared. Valya was attacked and mutilated by a commoner, the perpetrator executed on the spot by an angry mob; the trauma of it rendered her mute, unable to trust any but Amadis. Later, Ilmael called off his relationship with Amadis when the prince revealed the fluid nature of his gender identity, ending on a cruel note that left the heir unwilling to speak to him again.

By the time of Loranil's execution, Amadis had all but given up on the idea of achieving any sort of happiness — but fate had not yet given up on the prince. Flickers of light still found him within the darkness. Valya, his soul-tie, kept him grounded despite her own wounds — and his friendship with Garahel had grown into something more, though neither could quite admit it to themselves. Amadis found himself bonded irrevocably to the recently-ascended warrior of the Mortalitasi — and with this attachment came a great deal of fear. Already the prince had lost so much to the unrest in the pack, and Garahel was soon to be on the front lines of the conflict.

What he didn't know was that the warrior was already there, and had been for months.

Desperate to hold onto what few connections of value he still held, Amadis did the unthinkable. At 10 months old, nearly an adult yet not quite old enough to truly understand the weight of his actions, he sought out an informant of the now-infamous group of criminals at the heart of the chaos, and requested an audience. The response was swift, their deal more-so; the organization was all too eager to promise the safety of a single holy warrior in exchange for the guarantee of influence over the next Sovereign of Elvhenan, particularly one who appeared so naïve. After all, Amadis had no inkling of the fact that Eadric had already been an ally of the criminals for many months.

This deal was quickly revealed to be the worst decision of the prince's life. Less than two weeks later, the Mortalitasi finally broke their dreadful year-long silence — with a coup. The military branch of the Mortalitasi swept through Tarasylan Telas with brutal efficiency, slaying many of royal blood and taking Eadric, Lanaya, and Amadis hostage. With hardly a moment spared to rest, the operation was mirrored throughout the lower class areas of Elvhenan, this time targeting the criminals that had taken control there. By the time the order called off the slaughter, the connection was apparent to all but the most stubborn of the loyalists.

Eadric was executed without trial, his corpse displayed for weeks with a crier stationed beside to announce his crimes to all who passed, day and night. Lanaya was banished with similar celerity. Only Amadis was granted a trial, in part to appease the loyalists — and in part because his involvement was so painfully recent. There, the prince was faced with the next great heartbreak of his short and miserable life. At the trial, only a few key witnesses were presented; among them, Garahel.

Amadis absorbed little from those days spent in captivity, on trial, shamed and ridiculed on a scale even he had never known before. He could not even find the will to speak for himself, to reveal the true intentions behind the ill-fated deal he had made. He simply resigned, expecting to meet a fate similar to his father's.

Instead, he was exiled. Valya, ever-loyal, chose to follow. Amadis remained numb through it all. The pair was escorted from the territory by Mortalitasi warriors, all but dragged through the arduous swim to the mainland. On the other side, the two were met with a sight unlike any they had ever seen before: ruins. The land beyond the island was barren, a wasteland seemingly without end. Even the grass was sparse and hostile, pricking their soft pads until they left bloody pawprints. Amadis and Valya nearly starved in their first weeks in The Rattling Wastes, driven to exhaustion by the lack of viable prey and the constant rattling winds.

Eventually, they learned the ways of their ancestors; they learned to hunt rodents, small things that could exist in the rocky, treeless purgatory they'd been banished to. They learned where to shelter for the night, and how to avoid the scant few predators that roamed the wasteland. They found an uneasy, hollow sort of peace; perhaps even a spark of happiness, for the fact that they still had each other.

Then they stumbled across Amadis's mother, driven mad by her time in The Rattling Wastes — or so they thought. Her fevered rambling soon disproved the assumption, and a far more sinister truth was revealed. Lanaya's madness was unnatural, induced by fierce withdrawals endured alone and without food or water; she had been addicted to embrium, a plant with powerful effects found only on the island. Embrium... a plant recently discovered as a cause of deformities in pups when used by pregnant wolves; ironically, a discovery made by Loranil in the weeks prior to his death. For the first time in weeks, Amadis was brought to passion; an incensed, murderous sort of passion, though the prince had never been the violent sort. He cursed his mother, and meant to leave her for dead — until she attacked Valya.

The fight was brief, and tragic. Valya, caught off-guard and sent spiraling into a traumatic flashback, was gravely injured. Amadis, forced to matricide. The pair abandoned the scene as quickly as they could manage, and the former prince frantically tried to remember what little he knew of the healing arts. At first, it seemed that Valya would heal, that life would go on — but the ordeal was taking its toll on both of them. Neither was well-fed, but it was clear that Amadis had gone too far in his self-neglect, his desperate efforts to save the last love in his life. Perhaps that was the reason he woke alone one morning. By the time he calmed himself and gathered the strength to follow, Valya's scent was stale; untraceable. He contemplated suicide, for a time, but he knew in his heart that his soul-tie had abandoned him to give him a chance at life. He could not squander it.

The exiled prince lived alone for a week before fate sent him spiraling down another ill-fated path. A familiar scent on the breeze precluded events he could never have predicted; a contingent of Mortalitasi warriors, sent to collect their rightful Sovereign. In his absence, Amadis had been exonerated of his crimes; loyalists demanded their rightful leader; the commoners yearned for their outcast heir, once held close to their hearts. All of this came as a shock to the boy who had never felt anything but unwanted in his youth, and at first he did not quite believe it. Yet he followed nonetheless, driven by the need to be accepted that had festered at his core since birth.

On the cusp of his first birthday, Amadis claimed his birthright, and stepped into the role of Sovereign; his reign lasted four short, miserable months.

The wolves of Elvhenan celebrated his ascension for weeks, delighted by every aspect of their new Sovereign. Even his fluid identity, once shunned and rejected by the royals, became a source of fervent admiration and praise. He was seen as a symbol of the change brought to the island, change that every wolf from the middle to the lowest ranks had desired for generations. His rule was embraced, and every decision he made seemed to go over well with the people he served. The Mortalitasi were once again a proud order, serving their Sovereign joyfully.

Amadis hated every moment of it.

Unable to reconcile the environment that had so horrifically abused and traumatized him with the people who now looked to him as their guide and protector, he privately crumbled under the pressure of leadership. Nor could he bear the constant presence of Garahel, now among his personal guard; Garahel, who had been the driving force behind his exoneration, and who strove relentlessly to earn the Sovereign's forgiveness.

Friendless, suffering, and embittered by the circumstances that had led him to his role, Amadis fled the island.

Now, he wanders, truly alone for the second time in his life.

And it haunts me that
I have to be this way