Ankyra Sound There are times that walk from you like some passing afternoon

At some point, he retreated from the sunlight at the entryway and hunkered deeper into the grotto, where the only illumination was a wash of blue bioluminescence. Maybe he meant to sleep or maybe he meant only to hide from the prying eyes that came with daytime, but whatever the reason, Ephraim avoided his mother's corpse. She lay at the edge of the pool where he'd strangled her, sightless and lifeless, and he sought a place along the wall where the mouldering scent of her was not so strong.

From here, he could watch the play of light from the outdoors on the wall, and so when a shadow suddenly cut across the grotto's entrance, Ephraim saw it. Up came his head and ears alike, trained with singular focus on the point where Raleska's shadow consumed the sun. He would've perhaps remained there, taut and alert, had she not spoken.

But when her hello? echoed down into the chamber, Ephraim found his feet. He coursed up the shadowy throat of the grotto to emerge right in front of her, all bladed fur and bared teeth and wild sunken eyes—not uncontrolled and not afflicted like his poor mother had been, but pure protective fury. The faraway familiarity of Raleska's face rang a number of bells in his head, but for the moment, he ignored them all in favour of pushing her back a step or two from the grotto. From Caiaphas' sacred resting place. From a home he'd been denied by the cruel hand of circumstance.

It seemed the oft cowardly Eyjolfur had a little of his parents' ferocity in him after all.