Dragoncrest Cliffs Buffany of House Bufflepuff

It wasn't going to be that easy. Of course not. Vercingetorix was too stubborn a wolf to back down from a juvenile's shout, and anyway, the Cheka had always seen right through Ephraim, or so he believed. The sheer number of times they'd misunderstood one another and still somehow supplied one another with answers was enough for Ephraim to believe the older warrior could see his every move before he made them. Maybe it wasn't so far off, either, because it was painfully obvious from his stance that he didn't mean to come back from this.

Fuck Rusalka, he swore, shaking his head as the hallucinations cackled behind Verx's shoulders. Sure, part of him wanted to throw himself down those cliffs and take one of the sons of bitches to the grave with him, but that part was buried under layers of paranoia and fear now. Drageda had been stripped of all the things that once made Ephraim believe in them. The process was gradual—first allowing Rusalka to conquer their land, then letting the enemy lick their wounds, then allowing the natrona to walk free, then Antumbra ending her life—but the point of the knife reaching to his heart and chilling it felt sudden, and it was maddening. I'm done with them. Done with this.

Get lost, Verx, he implored, more quietly now, as he turned back. Those specters in his head seemed to crowd nearer as he went and he flinched away from them, baring his teeth and shrieking, get lost! at the air as the imagined wolves leered and snarled and chanted, "natrona, natrona, natrona!"