Moonspear and the blessings on my table multiply and divide.

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he walked out into the night where the endless sky met a mountain millennia old. navy nothingness so thick he could reach out and pluck from its depths a glittering star -- so close was he to the zenith of the world that his breath turned to shimmering smoke and the air was thin and unforgiving.

the man that walked the steppes today was a pale imitation of the one that had once trained on these brackets of glacier-stone and sparse soil. now, he walked uphill thin and rakish -- were he ever a wolf once handsome and in good condition, little evidence of it remained.

his thoughts were not on training today; they turned skyward. to the stars, the cosmos -- to the entire unknown. was wraen up there walking between swirling vortexes of cosmic matter and dust? or was she somewhere buried below with her body, no more a soul than the stones he tread over?

and of his parents -- did their souls linger after their bodies hit the ground, or did they vanish immediately like a twisted tongue of lightning; here once and never again?

how many things had changed in the course of his lifetime - how many times had he stood at the summit of the spear and felt immense with pride and glory? now he stood on the perch he had once used to survey the kingdom he'd helped shape, and only bitterness and ash fell to his mouth.

gone, all of it.  and only he remained.

to what purpose? it felt cruel that life for arcturus had been so unhappy. when his parents had died he had put his efforts towards the greatness of moonspear.

and then moonspear had died too.  what great part had he played in this dissolution? was it all on him, in some small way, that he stood now not at the height of a kingdom but the very zenith of ruination?

only he remained. but throughout all of this, he'd had wraen. he remembered they day they had met. he, a brutish little boy, sequestered and arrogant. how she had changed him for the better.

and now she was no longer, too. gone, and all around him little reminders of her keenly felt absence.

he continued climbing. the air grew thin and cold with a little breeze that stirred along his back. he came to a stony outcropping that looked over the throat of moonspear; here, his parents had stood many times and surveyed the seemingly endless reaches of their reign. here, he had stood many times with hydra and discussed moonspear's future.

and now he stood at the zenith of moonspear's greatest peak, alone and with no more a kingdom than an ant. arcturus felt his heart clutch, a cold purpose seeping into his veins that displaced the thousand threads of grief. here was where his life began --

and here was where it could end, too.

he closed his eyes and felt the edge of the cliff where stone reached out into empty space. he listened as a rock tumbled down those distant depths. he thought of his parents, of wraen, of hydra, of revui -- of every soul he had loved bitterly that now resided in a world he would never physically be able to breach. hold on, i'm coming too - arcturus thought, knowing his final peace would not come until he too went to the clearing at the end of the path.

for a brief, almost peaceful moment arcturus breathed in as the stars thrummed overhead. and then he threw himself from the cliffs with the certain finality of a man who had nothing else to live for.

* * *

night moved on without arcturus, whose body sat still at the bottom of a rock-shattered vale. around him the wind played his thick black fur and the morning was alive with the sounds of buzzing life. at last the mountaineer found his hard-won peace; at last his soul was sent away.