The Sunspire in the end, you’re just meat

He crossed around the edges of scents that wrapped around the mountain peaks, knowing that this was perhaps Epoch, and not wishing to delve into the vale. Perhaps it was simple want to be alone. Perhaps it was bitterness of the fact that Epoch stood while Mereo lay in the rubble of her fallen empire. He clattered through narrow stone hallways, scrambled up and over boulders and over the faint traces of what used to be. He knew this place, remembered looking up at it from the canyon below.

He stood there, a vantage point over the canyon, looking down at it and tasting the bitter tang of bile in the back of his throat. Mereo couldn’t have been gone long, her great helmet still upon the ground, and yet there was movement below him. Wolves going about their lives, their routines, a normalcy they did not deserve. If looks could kill, Aquillius’s acid glare would have set the whole canyon alight. Would have filled it with lava, would have salted the earth with gleeful spite and hatred. He pressed the back of his tongue to his teeth, pushing forward saliva that drooled from his mouth in big, shining droplets, before he let a spitball arc into the air. It wouldn’t hit the canyon, wouldn’t even come close to it, but he didn’t care. It was out of sheer spite he did it, a teenager’s riotous outburst, the kind of thing followed by either roaring laughter or a swift kick in the teeth via rules or a baton. When no such thing came down on him, either option, he skulked there. Like a church gargoyle, grotesque face shown to the world.

So deep was he in the anger he thought righteous, thought correct, he didn’t notice the scrabble of rock falling from the rock face behind him. It was only when the smell hit him that he turned, angry, so angry that he wanted to go ahead and bite the wolf before him. And then he..paused. Because that was not a wolf.

It stood a few yards from him, grinning with teeth like icicles. It’s eyes watched him, words coming garbled from its wide maw. It continued to…to question, to mock, something. It wasn’t a wolf, not with the sleek narrowness of its head, it’s tall ears, even it’s weight. From here, Aquillius could see it’s muscles rolling. The not-wolf stared at him. Aquillius stared back.

What…what are you.. It answered in that odd language, garbled and unfamiliar, like something he had known once upon a time, but couldn’t place now. It started stepping closer, head low and tongue sliding from its mouth. Aquillius stepped back, one paw hitting open air before he was reeling back. He hopped, once, to the side, the not-wolf laughed in a mockery of a wolf’s. Aquillius’s nostrils flared, not in anger, but in disbelief.

W-What are you?! It felt like staring into a mirror, and seeing your reflection horribly twisted. A caricature of all he thought he knew, so keenly familiar and yet not. It twisted its head, tongue peering through its teeth as it answered in that language, musical but not his, not any he’d heard before. The eagleson’s ears went back, flattening to his head. Fear kicked in his chest like a spooked horse, his heart setting a gallop that sounded like a constant hum in his ears.

What are you?! Demon?! Answer me!

It was only after the words had been said that Aquillius realized what the not-wolf looked at him like. It looked at him like he had looked at the fish Heda put before him. It looked at him like a hunter looked at prey when times were lean. It looked at him like a predator.

And he was just prey.

It cackled, he pulled his head back in a vicious s-shaped arc. The non-wolf charged with a speed foreign to Aquillius, but he felt it when the hot breath touched his shoulder, when those ivory points dug into the shoulder already touched by the cat. A cry wrenched from his teeth, half yelp, half scream, as he tore from the un-wolf and did what he could.

He ran. He ran faster and faster and faster, down the spire and across the land before it fell away into the canyon itself, hearing the non-wolf at his heels. Teeth caught the back of his thighs, his ankles, his hips, ripping gouges into the flesh, sending iron blood cascading down his inner thighs. Aquillius couldn’t think, couldn’t dream of it in that moment beyond run run run run. He leapt between crags, flew over open ground, pursued by the demon, the creature, the spindly beast that hounded his heels and drove him forward like the devil with his pitchfork. He couldn’t help the tears that sprung to his eyes, running down his cheeks. When the non-wolf saw this, the laugh that howled in his ears was high and cackling, and he knew in that moment that it would never leave him. For the rest of his days, it would haunt him. Forever and a day, he knew. Aquillius struck backwards blindly with his legs, knowing he wouldn’t do anything, couldn’t do anything, but-!

The non-wolf yelped, cut off abruptly with a crack of teeth against teeth against flesh. The thing screamed like a banshee, and Aquillius risked a glance over his shoulder to see that the non-wolf was bleeding from the mouth, a chunk of tongue taken from it. It’s eyes watched the drips of blood, then looked to him. That demon lurking in the mirror, captivating him with its gold coin gaze. So much that he didn’t even notice when his paws struck open air. For a single moment he sat suspended, hanging in the balance, but he couldn’t take his eye off the non-wolf as it’s mouth curved into a cruel grin.

Then, he was falling.

Impact hurt, he thought in a distant way, but he was free. The non-wolf couldn’t get him here. He struggled to his feet, and began to stumble away as fast as he could, giving little grunts of effort, panting with it, shaking with adrenaline and fear.

The non-wolf, whatever it was, watched him go.

He didn’t fight the urge to look back for only a moment.

The non-wolf was gone. Leaving the blood matting Aquillius’s fur as the only sign of its existence at all.