The Wolfmaster
This is a very old story. I wrote it...oh, back in 2003 I think. Just a quick note on the names: :-p It is JUST a coincidence, okay? I didn't realise I'd used a variation of the same name in a different story. I'd plain forgotten I'd used it already. :-p Sorry. Still...I hope you enjoy the story. I think a lot of furs could relate to it. :-)
Read on...
The Wolfmaster
Darkness reigned as the sickle moon set behind the canopy of trees that surrounded the ancient castle. It had stood in ruins for as long as anybody of the surrounding communities could remember. Even so, nobody dared follow the path that wound upwards through the hills from the lowlands. The path was entirely too well travelled for comfort.
High up, on the crumbling battlements of the ancient structure, a shape draped all in black stood virtually indistinguishable from the darkness of the night. It watched impassively as a lone wagon creaked and rattled its way up the rocky path toward the castle. Below, the driver produced a storm lantern and adjusted the shutter. Three flashes of light assailed the senses of the watcher on the battlements. Quickly and silently, it moved away from its perch and headed for the door that led back inside. It has finally come! Resignedly, the shadow moved away to await her fate.
Inside, guttering torches were mounted on the walls at precise intervals. Black smoke mixed uneasily with the moist air. Doors on either side of the hallway led to rooms that hadn't been used in many years.
Our kind is growing scarce, the young watcher thought sadly. She moved forward with purpose, her stride confident. Impatience made her boot heels click loudly on the floor stones. Far ahead and below her, stone grated and rusted iron squealed as the portcullis was raised. Wooden wheels rumbled on uneven stone as the wagon rolled into the courtyard. Voices called to each other softly, excitedly. Far off a wolf howled. She shook her head in disgust.
Ever since the Fall, many members of her kind had lost the knife edge of control that had served them so well in centuries past.
As far as she was able to determine, little more than five years had passed since the Passing and the consequent Fall. Far too long. Memories of those awful years clouded her mind briefly before she brushed them aside impatiently. That time was gone and a couple of levels below her, a new future and a new Master awaited her. She lifted her chin proudly and confidence returned as she strode forward. The duty she'd been Made to perform awaited her attention.
She made her way down the stairs to the meeting room. Along the way she encountered many of the others. Her heart clenched in her breast at their condition. Most of them had not yet Returned, and others were still locked in that primitive state of mind that had consumed them at the Passing. She'd been one of the first to Return, to shrug off the dark cloak that had enveloped them and turned them into beasts. She hastened past them.
Ahead loomed the iron bound door of the meeting chamber. The timbers had started to rot and the iron door handles ran red, leaving streaks of rust on the wood. She pushed at the door, then pounded it with her shoulder as it stubbornly resisted her efforts to open it. Wood splintered and screeched on the floor, then banged open. She stumbled inside and almost fell, but managed at the last instant to right herself.
Inside, her breath made long white plumes in the frigid air. The musty scent of wet stone and rot made her gag. Who knew when last this room had been aired? She glanced around her, frozen in shock. High windows lined the walls on three sides. The drapes, once colourful, now hung in moth-eaten and faded tatters from the rails high above. The fireplace contained a mountain of hardened ash. Thick dust covered the central table and high backed chairs, the chandelier, the floors. Like the draperies, the once proud tapestries and banners that lined the walls hung in sad imitations of glory.
Oskira, an Elder of the People, found her there, still staring in disbelief at the shambles that surrounded them.
"Gaelen?"
Oskira had been first to Wake, to realise what had happened. Under her gentle guidance, Gaelen had Awakened complete, her soul intact. One of only a handful of their kind to do so.
Heart sore, she turned to the old woman and choked back a sob.
"Have we really fallen this far?"
The old woman drew her close, and soothed her. Over Oskira's shoulder, Gaelen could still see the whirling dust dully illuminated through tiny cracks in the roof. Unable to bear it, she hid her face in the old woman's shoulder. They'd worked so hard, Oskira and herself, to gather up all the survivors who had any chance of recovery. For months they had searched and worked the little healing spells that was all the power they could muster. They'd hunted themselves into exhaustion each night to feed the survivors, then worked some more to draw them back. Every day had been a nightmare of fear and pain and horror. And now this. The once proud home of her kind, reduced to a rat's warren of neglect and decay. Gaelen wept as Oskira soothed her, stroking her long black hair and muttering encouragement in her ear.
Finally, wept out, Gaelen drew away. Oskira watched her impassively, but her ancient blue eyes revealed concern and understanding. From a deep well of courage, Gaelen summoned a brave smile for her teacher. Oskira smiled back and held out her arm for Gaelen to take. Gaelen's mind wandered back to the wagon she'd seen.
"Did they find him?" she asked as Oskira led her away.
"Mmm. I would suppose so." She said in her rusty-sounding voice. "Borgan warned them not to return without the boy." She snorted. "They're so terrified of him they'd sooner face fire!"
Gaelen shuddered. Of all the things in the world that was worthy of fear, her kind lived in terror of fire the most. It was an aspect of the animal instinct that lived in all of them, and Borgan held more than his fair share of that instinct.
Gaelen privately detested him. From the moment he'd Awakened, he'd shoved Oskira and herself aside and taken charge of the Pack. He was an Elder, it was true, and Oskira was his junior in age, yet she had Awakened BY HERSELF and had guided everybody ably. By right, Oskira should have been the Alpha until the Master returned. Instead, he'd placed her on the sidelines, put her in charge of the infirm. Gaelen ground her teeth. Borgan ruled by terror, not respect. Not a week previously, he'd tried to take her as his mate. Such things were not proper, especially considering the rank Gaelen had taken in the hierarchy of the Pack. She was Omega! The least one. Borgan's own mate was numbered among those who would not recover. It made Gaelen sick to her stomach to think what Borgan had tried to do. She for one was not going to forsake the traditions of her people she'd fought so hard to revive. Now, the most important thing she could ever do for them lay ahead or her. The sacred charge that had been laid on the Omega centuries ago by the first Master loomed ahead. Perform it she would, even if it cost her her life.
Gaelen snorted.
"Oskira, would you have them take the boy to the North Tower please? I'll talk to him there. Oh, and have some of the Damaged Ones gather nearby. I have a feeling this boy will take some convincing. I want something to fall back on if he doesn't listen to reason."
Oskira started to bow, but Gaelen caught her and pulled her up.
"No obeisance is due the Omega. I but do my duty. Now go. I'll be ready in a couple of hours. Isolate him. And provoke a lot of howling. I need him to be unnerved before I perform the Making."
Oskira hesitated. She drummed her fingers on the railings of the stairway, then lifted her head. Gaelen's heart twisted. Oskira's eyes were lit with worry for her former charge.
"Child, are you sure this is wise? To provoke him will cause you grief...after. You must..."
"No." Gaelen held up one hand to stop the old woman. Her voice came sharper than she intended and it lashed the old woman like a whip "This is the way I have chosen!"
Oskira's fingers drummed harder on the wood. Gaelen moderated her tone. "Oskira, we are too few. We cannot afford to lose any more. Not if we are to regain what we have lost." She looked deep into the old woman's eyes, and saw comprehension dawn there. Her heart twisted once more as tears welled up in her foster mother's eyes. A moment later, Oskira had her clasped in her arms once more. Oskira wept shamelessly, sorrowfully for a while as Gaelen held her. When she finally broke the embrace, she looked up into Gaelen's eyes again. Pride shone there. A moment more she hesitated, then shuffled off to do as Gaelen had asked.
Gaelen watched her go, and swallowed her own grief. The moment was almost upon her. She'd best prepare.
Daylight was approaching when Gaelen emerged from her room. She'd swapped her billowing black silk robe for an elegant deep blue gown of satin. The cut was daring, the better to distract and unnerve the young man. Around her narrow waist she wore a silver chain that looped over her shoulder. Her black hair was arranged loosely and was unadorned, hanging free. Oskira had done the final inspection and passed her grudgingly. Pride and grief had momentarily robbed the old woman of her usual graciousness. Now Gaelen stood in front of the door that would lead her into the North Tower. She took a last, deep breath and opened the door without knocking.
The boy backed away slowly, his eyes wide and frightened.
Gaelen sized him up swiftly. He was poorly dressed in an ill fitting and threadbare tunic. Its colour might once have been green, but had faded badly to a dull and dirty brown. The black leather breaches had been extensively used and were torn in many places. Likewise, the boots might have been more at home in a gutter than on human feet. He was tall, slenderly built and obviously undernourished. Grey eyes regarded her defiantly, but with much fear.
Gaelen smiled. The Damaged Ones had had been howling for hours and their scent hung thick in the air. She held her face carefully impassive and watched him intently from the open door.
His gaze fixed longingly on it, but he made no effort to escape. By now, he knew that there were wolves within the castle walls.
Gaelen waited patiently for him to speak, and when he did not, she closed the door behind her.
This seemed to unnerve the young man.
"Look, what do you WANT of me?" he demanded when she didn't speak. "I want to go HOME!"
Gaelen looked at him calmly for some time until her frank gaze made him blush.
"What home?" She asked flatly. "The streets? Back to begging and stealing and selling your...talents? What home...Daeriann?"
He blushed and looked away. Gaelen gave him no moment for thought. "What am I to do with you?"
His head snapped up. "What? What do you want with me?"
Gaelen ignored him. "Have you ever heard of Lycantheri?"
His eyes widened as he backed away from here. A howl from outside the door caused him to flinch violently.
"The...the accursed ones...sent by the Devil..."
He was breathing rapidly now, and valiantly tried to control his fear, Gaelen saw. The wolf in her responded to his fear...calling on her to hunt. She suppressed the instinct and smiled.
"Incorrect in every point. But that is of no consequence. What do you know of our kind? Do you perhaps know that we serve at the command of the Wolfmaster?"
She watched him carefully as she asked this. So much depended on his answer. She deliberately made the next question sound casual, off-hand.
"Have you ever heard of him?"
His wide eyes confirmed her instincts and she answered her own question before he could.
"No. Clearly not. Good!" She smiled a sinister sort of smile that made him recoil from her.
"I wouldn't want you to have any sort of preconception to what a Wolfmaster does. Because you see...as far I and everybody else in this place are concerned, YOU are the Wolfmaster."
She waited, her entire body unnaturally still, every muscle coiled as if to strike as hunter instinct took firm hold of her.
The young man seemed to sense that she had suddenly become a danger to him. His eyes darted here and there, looking for escape.
Humans...such soft creatures...
"M...me? I'm not! I'm..."
She bared her teeth in imitation of a wolfish grin and he swallowed hard. His scent drifted to her: fear-sweat, defiance...a hint of arousal...
She bit her lip, ignoring both his scent and his question.
"Out there..." Gaelen gestured grandly, indicating the world outside the walls, "...you are nothing, nobody. But here...You can do better. As the Wolfmaster, you WILL do better. Better by us! Is that so difficult," her voice softened slightly, "...or so bad?"
He looked up. His eyes blazed rebelliously. "I don't KNOW anything about any Wolfmaster! I've never even SEEN a wolf...except when that pack came to me yesterday! I don't WANT to be Wolfmaster..." stormy grey eyes met hers and he blushed again.
She smiled privately within herself. Human males were so easy to lead around. Trained never to attack a woman, he could no more harm her than he could harm himself, and the daring cut of her dress...the way she moved within it was working its magic on him. His spirit was at war within himself. She sensed it boiling within him. He didn't want to admit it...but the side of him that was Lycantheri was responding to her own scent. It calmed the beast within him...and he didn't understand why, at the same time as his human side responded like any human male would.
Gaelen pinned him with an icy glare and shrugged.
"You will learn, like all Wolfmasters do!" Seeing his eyes grow even stormier, she shrugged again and changed tack. "Look, you said you don't know anything about being Wolfmaster, so how can you know whether or not you will like it?" She looked at him levelly. "A Wolfmaster has power, authority...he controls the destiny of the packs, our lives! A Wolfmaster commands our destiny. Isn't that what you've always dreamed of? Having the authority to command thousands?"
Rebellious eyes met hers, and held them, finally goaded beyond endurance.
"Not this way!" he stormed. "I wanted to earn it! I..." he stopped abruptly as another eerie howl cut the icy air. He looked around fearfully. "What are you going to do to me?"
Gaelen glared at him. "Do to you? I think you know what I am going to do. But I wonder...such a pathetic little thing could never be lord and master over us. Do you think being Wolfmaster is easy? That sacrifices won't have to be made? Being Wolfmaster...." her eyes clouded briefly, as if she was deep in memory.
Daeriann stared at her, unable to move or speak. Shame writhed within him.
She continued, "I was like you once. I didn't want to be a wolf either, but since that time...so many things have changed! Life can be so much more..." Her eyes softened, but her voice grew more intense until the urgency of her words was impossible to escape.
"I know you don't want to be the Wolfmaster, that you are frightened and alone. Well, so are we! Our existence means nothing without a Wolfmaster! For years we ran around, hunting and playing and rutting like the wild things we are! Time meant nothing because we were NOT! Our souls, the binding of our minds...were gone. The Wolfmaster had left us. Abandoned us. Only months ago did we start to recover, our binding forces restored and we started hunting for a new master. You. You have the force, the spirit of the Wolf in you. Your power, the power of command, of decision. It's yours. It is what you are. Like a lion can never be other than a lion, like a man can never become an eagle, so can you never be other than the Wolfmaster. It is your destiny...like it is our destiny to serve you."
During all this, Daeriann had backed away, his eyes wide in fear. Sweat ran down his face and back in streams. Even as he continued to shake his head in denial of her words, she sank down onto her knees, the proud image of an Empress bowing down in supplication. Many others, human and wolf filed into the room and did the same, bowing forward until their foreheads touched the stone floor. All around him, wolves were whining as they grovelled before him. Everywhere he looked, images of scraping people and whining wolves confronted him. His throat closed, his legs tried to run, but there was no escape, no distraction from his power over them! The beautiful Gaelen was a shadow of abject supplication before him, her eyes blue pools of worship. Horror filled him, but his throat was too closed up to scream as the shadowy shapes around him crept closer to whine at his feet, to lick his hands and brush their silky fur against him. His back touched the wall and he looked up.
At the back of the hall, Gaelen stood and raised one hand. His eyes begged her silently to get the creatures away from him, to restore the world to its former sanity and order. For a moment more, she stood silent, unmoving, and then, just as his heart sank and his soul shrunk within as courage ebbed away, she commanded the room to clear. For just an instant, her words went unheeded, then one by one, the wolves filed out. Doors closed silently behind them. Daeriann collapsed onto the floor, sobbing in helpless terror. Satin rustled and warm arms held him, arms that offered comfort, comfort he desperately wanted but dared not take.
Nevertheless, he clung to her fiercely with a desperation that frightened him. She said nothing, just held him close.
"You...think of me as nothing but a helpless whelp. Worthless...I have always been...worthless..."
His voice held bitter pain and soul deep hurt, like a child rejected. Gaelen said nothing, but let him go. Her gaze held pain as deep as his own.
"Daeriann...It need not be that way anymore. I was nothing before the pack found me. I lived a life without purpose, without hope. Day by day I scraped together an existence so that I might survive to another hopeless day. The fire that burned in me threatened to consume me many times and each time, I stopped at the edge of the abyss and didn't allow myself to fall because I believed that someday, I would find something! That something found me. The Wolf pack took me and made me their own. Finally, I had a life with purpose. I had a family, friends who cared for me even when they didn't have to. They took me in and gave me what was theirs even if they had so little to give. I was Omega, the lowest of the low in the pack, the scapegoat, the most expendable member, but at least I had purpose! The pack cannot survive without me. My existence is hard, my place far from secure, but...I belong!" She shook her head. "Humans cannot possibly understand the dynamic of the pack, why I would submit to being Omega." Her eyes challenged him. "Because it takes a different kind of power to be Omega! The power to see what needed doing and doing it, the power to ensure the survival of the pack by sacrificing my own, to raise strong pups...and to further the purpose of my kind by making the new Wolfmaster!"
At this, Daeriann's eyes widened as he finally understood. Her arms flashed out and snared him. There was no time to scream. In an instant, she was no longer the beautiful Gaelen but a monster of grey streaked white and black. Her face stretched to become a muzzle, a muzzle that contained dagger-like fangs. As those shining canines sank into his neck, the final horror was revealed...even as she bit him, in her eyes Daeriann could see the soul deep regret she felt at what she was doing to him...and the regret that she would never see another day.
The duty of the Omega...to serve as scapegoat so her pack might survive...
Daeriann screamed then as his blood slicked down her throat. For a moment, no more he blacked out. When he came to, she was standing over him, a thin line of blood running from the corner of her mouth. In human form once more, beautiful, ethereal. A young woman no older than himself in appearance but who could be centuries old. Her eyes showed incomprehensible pain: the pain caused by recognising new aspects on one self. She had made him Wolfmaster without his consent even as she had been made a wolf.
The circle was complete.
Daeriann's world went black.
Gaelen shivered in the cool morning air, exhausted.
She knelt beside Daeriann, and ran her fingers through his thick, black hair. Tears streamed down her face as she silently wept. The muscles under his skin writhed as her bite did its terrible work, forever altering the young human, changing him into the monster his kind feared.
She knew what they were called in human parlance: werewolves - part human and part wolf. All kinds of wild stories circulated about her kind, all of them related to the truth only by implication.
How the werewolf came to be no one really knew. In the New World, the natives believed that there were Keepers who protected the land and the creatures that lived in it. These creatures could communicate with humans and speak for the creatures and occasionally, for the very spirits themselves.
In that land, humanity lived in harmony with nature...unlike her native range, where humans intruded more and more...and the Keepers were hunted when humanity turned from the Old Ways to the new religion. The same thing was now happening in the New World.
It had forced the spirits to take a stand, and so was the Wolfmaster born. The Wolfmaster kept the Lifelines that connected them to the spirits so the Keepers could work together as a single unit, a single enormous pack...a force to be reckoned with.
She sighed. It had taken Oskira and herself years to find and bind the Lifelines that had been cut loose upon the killing of the previous Master...and now, once the transformation was complete, she would give them to Daeriann.
The chosen one of the Wolfspirit.
He dreamed.
Sleek muscles bunched and flowed effortlessly as he loped easily through the tall grass. He felt the slight strain against his legs as the grass whipped against them, felt his claws dig into the turf and the thick fur between his toes grip the surface, helping him keep traction as he ran. His thick, bushy tail swayed quickly from side to side, helping to keep his body balanced.
The fierce joy of the lope filled his heart as his brain processed the vast magnitude of information that his senses provided him with: the scent of a thousand creatures, of the grass, the soil...the very wind itself. He tasted the moisture in the air and knew that there would be rain this night. The cold didn't penetrate his thick fur, but he knew it was cold through his wet, black nose and the thick pads of his paws.
Golden hills, and atop a rocky crag, a lone castle. Wolfskeep. The black silhouette stood out starkly against the multicoloured sky as the sun fell slowly. It shimmered and wavered, the molten silvery-red disk providing a spectacular backdrop.
There he stopped and watched, waiting.
He smelled her before he heard or saw her. The breeze carried the scent of the woods to him...and the familiar scent of the wolfess that had made him.
He did not look back, knowing that she would join him. Instinct now had a much more prominent place in his mind. He knew his place...and hers.
She slinked closer, her ears dipped and tail low as she approached. Her scent spoke volumes of her submission
Daeriann's heart softened within. It was her scent more than anything that told him what he needed to know of the one who had made him.
She waited for a moment to see what he would do, then raised her head and licked his nose. Her warm tongue lapped the side of his muzzle gently, ears still flattened.
Daeriann pricked his ears and accepted her submission by licking back just as softly. He detected the taste of blood on her lips. His blood.
He turned to face Gaelan, and she sank lower to the ground, then rolled over onto her back, exposing her vulnerable throat and belly to him.
Daeriann's tail wagged. There was submission in the posture, and acceptance of fate...but her scent and taste told a different story. The young wolfess was in no way cowed, or afraid. She had more courage than any Omega had a right to call her own. It daunted her not at all when he approached and bared his fangs. She did not bat her paws at him to placate him, nor did she whine.
He paused. He could kill her right here and now...the one that had made him like this. He knew she expected it. The regret he remembered seeing in her eyes was gone as he looked into them.
I did what I had to do...and I am prepared to pay the price, that look said.
He bared his fangs and lowered his muzzle. Gaelen never once so much as twitched or closer her eyes...not even when his muzzle opened and closed around her throat. He could bite down...end her life...
He chose not to. Instead of ripping out her throat, he licked her softly. His wet tongue ran through the thick fur of her throat, a gentle gesture of acceptance.
Yes...you did this against my will...but it is not your fault...
Her eyes met his, and something passed between them.
_You are in charge. From now on...I am your instrument..._her eyes said.
His own eyes softened.I cannot do this alone...I need you.
I will be with you...I will help you. Her reply.
He lay down beside her then, accepted her gentle nuzzling, the comfort of her presence. He licked her muzzle and nibbled softly on one ear.
They looked up toward the castle as the sun set. Daeriann felt the threads of consciousness shift as he looked back at the wolfess beside him. He felt the Power of her being as the Lifelines of the Pack shifted from her to him with his now willing cooperation. Something else did too...something that he could never have imagined as a human, something that he knew deep within, deeper than instinct, deeper than trust, deeper than love. A statement of fact so profound the very universe itself could not shake it.
You will always be there.
Her eyes reflected the same deep certainty that was peculiar to wolves.
I will. Forever.
Deep in the heart of the castle, Oskira felt the moment when Gaelen, her mind and soul entwined with Daeriann's, surrendered control of the Lifelines to him...and felt the shift in Hierarchy, the strengthening of the Lines when their souls merged.
She smiled.
One soul. Two bodies. Shared Power.
The Alpha and the Omega, forever living as One.
This story was the result of certain feelings I had...way back then. I didn't know what they were...but they found expression here. I had no idea it was the wolf in me trying to make me acknowledge it...acknowledge that essential nature. There's a LOT of me written into the character Gaelen. Back then...I interpreted myself as female because I had no understanding of being gay. I could not reconcile my attraction to males just like I couldn't come to terms with the whole wolf thing. Finding the fandom has been one of the things to bring me peace. So I thank all of you who have touched me in some way for being there. It means the world.
*hugs*