A Shield of Faith (BOOK 4)

Chapter 46

FENRER

'Hearken the defiant souls, sailing the breathing seafoam.'

The black fur of the wolven headdress tickled his fingers when he pushed into the long flaps. Two small, carefully carved lenses made the wolf's eyes, staring up at him in confrontation. In the reflection, arrows of fiery war flashed in the shadows made of Derelict teeth. He ran his finger down its brown leather nose, molded into the likeness of his family's patron as the drumbeat of Haneka's greatest sea shanty echoed through its entire land, unifying the multitudes of people who called it and the ocean waves home.

'Those who help their fellows have no need to fear the end of days; for the silver dawn shall rise above the largest waves.'

The Wolf of the Silver Dawn. Fenrer raised the headdress to look at it in its ceremonial, but no less practical eye. He who wielded the morning blade and split the heavens suffocated by crimson teeth. His fingers slipped into the empty cranium as he turned it around, the nose facing the mirror as he put it on his head, adjusting it where once it fell over his face. Fur pinched, he breathed deep of the consistent weight and lifted his gaze to the mirror. Embers fell from gravelamps and pulsated with someone's faraway scream. Tension broke into his collarbone, and he brushed his nose, nuzzling into his own palm.

"I feel your dismay, Little Wolf," Kon growled through wolven teeth, but it sounded soft and gentle.

I told Reyn I'd accept the dawnblade when... I felt like I was worthy of it. Only when I was ready to take up the mantle my forebears took up before me. He escaped the safety of his palm to gaze at the complete stranger in the mirror, and he failed to grasp how anyone could compare him to Father, a giant who tore trees out of the ground and pinned with a wave of arrows straight to his knees. He raised his fingers to the braid hanging beside his cheek, and he slouched onto the wide dresser to try and find familiarity behind a rotten snarl of sharpened teeth and deadly strength. Did I truly win my challenge in the end?

"You were not challenging him for the seat of Sungrove, pup," Kon pointed out. "In what world could a young boy win against his father? In that situation, Fenrer, what you were doing was a mercy."

One who lost him in the first place.

"You are looking for his reflection and not your own. You were seven, Fenrer... and I have yet to see a seven turns old boy win a war by himself. Do you believe Reyn won as a boy on the cusp of being a man alone? I assure you, Little Wolf, he did not do so, and he knew he couldn't."

Fenrer straightened out his spine and furrowed his brow as he adjusted the wolven headdress again to sit on his head and not block the upper half of his face. His only protection from the sight of a cruel, faithless world. He dug his fingers into his scalp underneath the headdress. Air bubbles pushed into his lungs every time he tried to breathe underneath the current. He drew his fingers down his own jawline and the braid bounced with the motion when he covered his own mouth. Do you think he was let into the halls of Velteraiia? Released from that accursed existence... Mother was waiting for him on the other side.

"Yes."

Kon's answer failed to give him a sense of serenity as he pushed both his fists into his dresser. Its nose clinked against the reflective glass when he slumped closer to it. He rested the heels of his palm against his eyes, then drew himself away from the weighted reflection. Over to the little statuette of Ojain, he knelt in front of it, hands over his eyes to block himself from the lie of a material plane. Ojain, the Echo's Gatekeeper, I beseech you to guide the wayward souls through the Obscura and to their rest in the hallowed mead halls of unsung heroes born of both desert and ocean waves. He pushed his fingers into his nose. Protect Neven and Maria from the darkness hanging over a land drenched in its own curse, drowning underneath unbreakable ice. Deliver them to warm hearths and soft shores of peace. Hands against his lap, he let out the tension built in his lungs as a whisper of an icy maelstrom shimmered through the flow with strength and intent. Its crimson speckles of a short life dissipated as the days went on, and he turned to his door to greet the one, bound by the soul.