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Chapter 2

Rahk Panting, Rahk drove himself further into the forest, pushing his flagging body to the very limits of its endurance. He had to get away... He couldn't even feel the Power anymore... Hell, he could barely even feel any of his body except for a constant, pounding ache building deep in his muscles... But he had felt it the very instant that energy had disappeared. That had caused him to pause, heedless of the ground rushing beneath his paws... There was a sudden void in him, a sudden emptiness where there had been Power... And with a loud yelp he had fallen headfirst into the snow, face ending up buried under a foot of snow in a bank as his body slid to rest. That had been hours ago... The sudden absence of that roiling torrent of energy in him had given him pause, but only briefly... The terror of the flight, the bitter reality of the fact that he could never safely return home, wore down upon him until standing still had become an agony greater than running, and so he had sprung away from the spot upon which he had been rooted, running as though to escape everything that had happened that night. Now, as the faintest rays of sunlight shone over the the peaks of the encircling mountains, he felt truly and totally exhausted. He couldn't remember the last time he had felt this weary; it was as though the heaviness of his heart had sunk into all of his muscles, dragging him down until he could barely even move his paws anymore. Of their own volition, his eyelids drooped down, one sagging over the empty ruin of his right eye, the other slipping tightly over his remaining icy blue eye. Wincing at the pain, nonetheless he felt his conscious mind slipping away, and a vast shroud of blackness dropped over his mind, blanking out all thought.

*** He shivered, wistfully thinking of home again as the icy winds blasted across his body. Except... 'Home...' he thought mournfully, 'My home doesn't even exist anymore.' The journey had taken him months; months to think, months to learn, and months to forget... But even after all that time had passed, the memories were still fresh in his mind. _ However, here in this desolate wasteland, he felt a curious... Fulfillment? As though things were finally going his way. He had finally reached his destination, after all that time. Here was the only place he could be safe; the only place he could truly live free spread out before him in all its barren, wind-torn majesty._ _ Wind gusted powerfully off distant, pale peaks, tearing down at incredible speeds to blast against his face, embedding flecks of ice deep in his fur. He shivered violently, feeling his body's heat whipped away before it could sink into his fur. The wind, he decided, It will be the wind that kills me if I don't find shelter. And soon... Strangely, he felt no fear at the thought; laughing, he reached out with his mind, and suddenly heat was there, suffusing his bones, filling him to the brim with warmth. Putting an extra pep in his step, he trotted forwards, heedless of the gusting wind._ _ Cresting a hill, he stopped. Is that... he trailed off, words failing him. There, before him, lay the object of his quests. Xahnyaa._ _ It was just as he had pictured it might be. Riding the valley between two tall, windswept peaks, the towering, monolithic structures gave little hint as to what lay within, but he knew that it was for what he had quested for so long._ _ Just as soon as it had appeared, the wind kicked up again, and the blinding snow swirled forwards again, blocking out all vision, but he had seen it. He had! He just had to get there... So close! Setting off at a jagged, loping pace, he ran towards where he had seen it, heedless of any obstacles that may come between him and it. Salvation lay before him; damnation ran behind him with the howling winds._ _ As he ran forward, a slight sound caught the very edge of his hearing. It was slight, ever so quiet, almost like the sound of a bug droning in your ear... Shaking his head, he continued, but the sound began to grow..._ _ Mounting another hill, he began to full out sprint now, tongue lolling out of his mouth as steam rose from his panting breath in white clouds. The snow parted again, offering him another tantalizing vision... But it seemed farther somehow, as though it were pulling away. The vale seemed shrouded in mist, even through the blowing snow, and it seemed smaller, somehow... More insubstantial..._ 'No!' he exclaimed mentally, panting with exertion. Pushing his aching limbs for more speed, his paws pounded the icy snow, kicking up little puffs of snow, but even as he watched it began to shrink away, smaller and smaller, and all the while that buzzing was building up and up in his head, filling his mind with pain, with anger, with... Fear.

Rahk's eyes sprung open, pupils contracting from the sudden glare of the sun overhead. In the mountains of the North, it always was bright when out, but high up in among the peaks where he was it took on a whole new character, cruel and harsh yellow light blasting through his brain. Shielding his eyes, his ears twitched, and suddenly he was on his feet, running, without knowing where he was running to. The deep thrumming filled his ears, reverberating through his skull until it felt like it would crack. That sound filled him with almost instinctual dread; every cub knew it by the time they had been fully weaned. Of course... Most did not actually usually have to worry about it... But his case was different. Frantically, his paws pounded at the snow, sinking deep into the heavy snow drifts and catching against hidden obstacles, all slowing him down. It was louder now; the heavy whapping sound had grown so loud that it seemed it must be right beside him. Finding cover was the only thought on his brain; there was nothing but that. Flinging his head around wildly, he was dismayed at what lay around him. In front of him, a vast open snowy plane, scoured by winds to a perfectly level surface, nowhere to hide. To his right... To his right was a towering wall of rock and ice, slanting upwards on a near impossible angle, overhanging the plane as though it intended to fall at any moment. And to the left, he could see very little... A steep drop-off, that was plain to see, but beyond that he could see nothing. And behind him was the source of the sound. Whipping up over top of the cliffside, it rose like a bat from hell, clawing at the air with pounding blades as its' bloated, black metallic body bore down upon him. Bulbous windows, like a dead bug's eyes, stared down upon him across the blinding snowscape, and with a sudden increased roar it tilted forwards, moving as though pulled by an invisible cord from the heavens. A dense cloud of noisome smoke rose behind it, as though the machine itself was on fire, but he really did not care. All he knew was that he had to leave, to outrun it, to get away. Flinging himself forwards with renewed desperation, he pounded across the snow, kicking up clouds of the frozen dust as he charged across the plane. There was nothing, no feeling, no sensation in the world, other than the sharp, stinging burn of the icy snow on his raw paw pads, the snow blowing in his eyes, and the omnipresent roar and sulfurous stench of the dire machine behind him. The roar... Growing louder and louder as it bore down upon him. Suddenly, a new sound rose to the air, a high, piercing note, and with a howl he fell, burying his face and half of his body deep in the snow bank and jamming his nose into an unseen rock. Yanking his head back, he whined in pain as his wounded eye socket ripped open again, but that was nothing compared to what he felt inside his head. Burning, searing pain. Like an ocean of fire had been poured into his veins; like his blood had been switched out for caustic acid. His brain was an inferno of pain; he could barely even think. It was as though every nerve in his body had suddenly triggered. There was pain everywhere. Flailing about blindly, his mind reached out instinctively, reaching for that boiling font of power which had blazed through his mind the day before... And found nothing. To be more precise, it was as though he had been insulated from it... It was as though the power remained all around him, suffusing the air... He could feel it, he could sense it, he could almost touch it... But try as he might, he could not grasp it, could not control it. With a snarl of desperation, he flung himself away again, howling at the agony burning through his body. Fear pulsed through his head in a ghastly counterpoint to the pain; he had heard what humans did to those like him whom they captured. Things of fire, things of burning flesh, freezing, debilitating pain, things of horror and agony but never death. No... They liked to prolong that as long as possible, draw out every last bit that they could from the wielder. What they drew out was a mystery to his people; all that was known was something was taken from them before they were finally allowed to die. In an instant, the sound stopped, and just as suddenly as it had begun, the pain unravelled, leaving nothing but a memory. And, in that instant, he saw what lay before him, and desperately dug his paws in, skidding to a stop mere centimetres from the precipice. In his headlong flight, he had veered left, and now he stood, far above the ground, looking out over the vast plane below him. A small rock, displaced by his stop, tottered off the edge, and with mounting horror Rahk watched it fall, slowly, arcing away as the winds dashed it against the side of the cliff. That could have been me... In the instant that the noise had cut off, he automatically had reached out with his mind again, grasping vainly for anything... And this time he found it. With an electric shock, he gasped as wave after wave of pounding, pulsating energy filled him, swelling through to his very core. And in that brief instant, everything became clear to him. Standing slowly, he turned his haggard face upon his pursuers, overflowing with energy, with power. With Power. The machine was hovering on an updraft before the cliffside; he could actually see the currents of air flowing between its gyrating rotors, see the force that the spinning blades were imparting upon the air. As he stood there, the sound started again... But this time, filled with Power, he shrugged it off subconsciously, the effect sloughing off of his body and mind like it had never existed. He had no idea why the sound had stopped, and he didn't care. He felt energized; he felt like he had been living a dream up until this very moment, and had suddenly awakened and been bathed in the glorious sunlight. He knew what had to happen. Gathering power within him, he growled at the feeling. It was unlike anything he had ever felt before... It was as though he were trying to absorb the Sun itself; all of its' energy, and fury. He ached to use it... Instinctively, without knowing what he was doing, he gathered energy, the Power, and... He had no words to describe what was happening. It was as though something was coalescing out of the very air itself to form solid substance; it was energy incarnate that he was pulling together in front of him. A vast wall of energy formed before him, blazing golden in the bright light. It had no shape, it had no form, no substance... And yet, it was there, somehow, even though it was not.

Fully formed now, it took on a roughly round shape, but it shifted with fluid grace between different forms, at one moment seeming square, another with 100 sides, and another so many sides that it seemed a circle. He could feel it before him; it burned like a fire to his mind although he knew that no heat actually emanated from it. However, he knew what to do with it instinctively. Like a slingshot, he drew back upon it with power, pulling the surface of it backwards while holding it in place. It stretched and deformed, but then snapped back to rigid conformity of a circle, and then was completely without shape. Ridges of solid energy formed, drawing out upon themselves, forming a vast spiralling shape of their own accord, rippling under the strain. The tension was incredible; through the form before him was transmitted a force so strong that he felt as though he must snap in half.

Finally, with a loud huff, he released it, released everything at once. The roiling torrent of energy within him disappeared; everything around him suddenly seemed dim and bland... But what happened before him was the important part. That blazing, glowing bulwark of solid energy snapped away from him, flinging him backwards, and with a loud howl of rushing wind it dove forwards towards the flying machine. The pilots... He could see their faces, see the fear... And then it smashed into the machine, and all hell broke loose. With a shriek of tortured metal, the hovering vehicle smashed backwards into the imposing granite rock face, flattening upon the cliff. The energy dissipated as soon as it had struck, but the damage was done. Sirens blaring, the whirling rotors sheared off as they struck the ancient, immobile rock, and with a tormented scream of ripping metal the entire machine began to slide, falling down the steep mountainside... Straight towards him. He tried to run, he really did. His paws exploded into motion; bursting forwards, he almost made it off the outcropping of rock in time... But, with a horrible, twisting snap, his hind paw caught beneath a hidden obstacle and his ankle shattered. That pain was nothing, though, and his ignored it... Because the end of his life was hurtling towards him, faster and faster, a solid lump of metal and rock and wood and death. Raising his muzzle, he howled one last time, howled for life lost, howled for death to be... And then, with a grunt, he felt it slam into him, swatting him aside like a fly. Unfortunately, this particular fly had been flicked off a cliff, and without wings.

Falling now. A rush of wind filled his ears, deafening him. Strangely enough, he felt... At peace. The scent of flowers and fresh air filled his snout; breathing as deeply as he could, he felt... Ready to die. A trace of sadness filled his mind, but overall there was a sense of relief, palpable relief. They were safe now... His family, his friends. He could bring no harm to them.

Out of the shadow a rock came rushing upwards (Or am I rushing towards it?) and with a sudden, final, jarring smash blackness descended, total and instantaneous and irreversible.