The beasts of Sunvaar rushed from through the gates of the city, forms thick with blood, surrounded by red flames. Their breath seared the stones below their claws, howling death. The beasts howl eternally, screaming for the death of the Sun.
-Fall of Sethelm
Content Warning: PG-13/R sexual content, largely implied.
Claws. Cold. Fingers refusing to move. Blood pooled on the ground.
The wolf was there, snapping her jaws apart and shut as her claws clicked along the bricks, getting closer and closer to where Zelith was hiding, crawled up one of the smaller pipes.
She was going to get her. The only thing buying her time was the beast’s fury and desperation, nothing else.
She couldn’t focus, not to cast, not to do anything. Her shoulder was torn open where the wolf had lashed out when she tried to cast, like it knew she trying to escape.
She couldn’t breath. She was going to die down here. Soon, if she was lucky.
Everything was slow. Seconds dragging out, mind racing, trying to find some kind of thing she could do, some way to escape. But nothing came, just a sense of numbness.
Her eyes drifted down to the wolf. Even as The Grey Storm was trying to claw her apart, Zelith felt a pang of something in her heart. The eyes were still recognizable. Still Grey’s.
As the witchblood kept looking at her, the claws almost getting her leg, Zelith sighed.
“I don’t know if you understand,” Zelith said, her voice weak. “Maybe…it’s just sounds. I’m sorry I didn’t say it sooner. Say it to…you.”
The wolf growled, slobber hitting the bricks as Zelith just smiled.
“Can’t say it isn’t easier. I can pretend I’m not talking to you. Pretend that I’m not obvious.”
She looked away from the wolf, some worry still hitting her. Even saying it indirectly was terrifying, like something in her was trying to violently stop her from opening her mouth.
“…I don’t want you to go. I don’t know what this is, what we…were. Don’t know what I want,” Zelith said weakly, the smell of blood still hitting her. “Just…that it’s you. I can…I could learn things beyond that. I’m good at that.”
Part of her leg stung, claws digging into her pant leg as she began to be dragged out of her hiding space. Zelith slammed her eyes shut, bracing herself for death to begin…
After a moment, a paw stepped down on her chest, a loud sniffing noise echoing out as a wet nose was shoved into Zelith’s neck and face. As she slowly opened her eyes, she could see the looming form of Grey’s wolf form standing over her, continuing to sniff around her before letting out a bark, immediately licking Zelith’s face and pacing around her, spinning around before plopping down into a pile next to Zelith, massive head hitting Zelith’s stomach as she could see the beast’s tail wagging.
Zelith stared, waiting to see if anything was going to happen, if maybe this shift in behavior was temporary, before she began to tearfully sob, leaning closer to Grey as her vision went dark.
Danger.
Grey’s eyes shot open, her pupils narrowing as she immediately stood up, claws dragging on the bricks below her as her heart raced. Around her, she could see the sewers she’d been tracking through, golden light drifting down from above. The smell of the demon was overwhelming, even down here, and she let out a snarl as she scanned the pipe around her.
After a moment, her gaze flicked down, finding…
Grey was immediately trying to feel Zelith’s pulse with clawed hands, panic flooding through her as the mage began to stir below her. She was injured, her shoulder cut apart.
Claws. Fuck, fuck. Not this.
She reached down for her backpack, but didn’t find it, her hands finding only fur as she cursed, voice still a growl. The moon still sat heavy in the sky, even as the sun rose. She could feel her body reverting, shrinking back down as the sun rose, but the dawn must have only just arrived.
“Sorry,” Zelith said weakly, reaching up and touching Grey’s jaw. “Thought I’d…find you. Talk. Didn’t realize you’d be…”
Grey growled, annoyance flaring through her.
“Stop talking. Hurt,” she snarled, glaring at Zelith as the witchblood started trying to sit up, Grey’s knuckles clenching as she pushed Zelith back to the ground.
“Stay down. Hurt,” Grey shot at the mage, looking around, trying to find her bandages as Zelith let out a breath, coughing as Grey walked on her knuckles, the paws still partway back to being normal hands. After five minutes of searching, she’d found her discarded satchel, the belt broken by the transformation she hadn’t realized was coming when it hit.
Dragging it over to Zelith, the witchblood looked over as the Sunvaar started fumbling to get bandages ready.
“…Do you remember anything?” Zelith asked, Grey pausing as she looked over. There were flashes of memory, raw and red and distorted, but nothing solid. She’d been tracking something, a smell, and then Zelith was there. She smelled so close to the scent, Grey hadn’t hesitated. Prey.
Tracking, down her out of the pipe. As the memory concluded, she glared around the sewer around them.
“It’s down here. The demon,” she said. “It’s…it smells like you. Damn close. Didn’t realize how much until now.”
Cursing to herself, she began to blot the blood, the shoulder injury luckily having clotted, no longer openly bleeding. It was difficult, stuck between a full wolf as she slowly, achingly shifted to being bipedal as the sun rose, trying to look over Zelith. The injury was bad, but Grey knew from the flashes of her memories that Zelith had barely managed to avoid worse.
“Almost died. Foolish,” Grey snarled, glancing over at the horned witchblood and pausing, glaring a bit as she noticed-
“…You’re blushing,” she grumbled, voice low as Zelith just looked away. “Almost kill you and you’re blushing. No instincts.”
“I thought you were gone,” Zelith muttered, not looking at Grey as the blush stayed. “That I’d never see you again. I…I had to see you. I know I don’t mean much to you, but-”
The flare of annoyance, not helped by the moon’s influence on her, caused Grey to snarl again, lupine face inches from Zelith’s.
“Words. They lie. Mind…machine built to make you feel bad. Just don’t think! So easy.”
“Because going with your gut worked so well last night, right?!” Zelith shot back, baring her own teeth as she tried to sit up again. “Maybe thinking isn’t always a bad thing!”
Grey growled, feeling a tension rising in her chest as the conversation shifted, backing up a bit from Zelith.
“I would not have gone. Like that. You would have deserved more. Proper goodbye.”
Zelith shook her head, shaking her hands a bit.
“How am I supposed to know that? If you don’t say it, I don’t…I don’t know your past! I don’t know what it’s like with other people you’ve seen before!”
Grey let out a breath, trying to the keep the rising tension in her chest under control as she sighed.
“Fine. Say whatever it is. Your hunger for my flesh is too strong, hmm?”
“I love you!”
Grey paused, that rising tension in her chest getting stronger as she looked over at Zelith, the witchblood looking at her as if waiting a response. The Sunvaar opened her mouth, but no words came. Nothing that fit. Even trying to answer in her own mind was fruitless, her entire body just a tension coil of impulses, sensations on her hands, her mouth, her legs screaming at her to move to Zelith, immediately.
In moments, she was on Zelith again, pinning the mage’s hands to the stone floor. The mage’s face was immediately flushed, but not scared. Just surprised, as Grey looked down at her, leaning closer as her face began to steadily look more and more human again, although her teeth and features were still more lupine than not. Words came, the only ones that made any sense in response.
“Mine,” Grey growled, voice low as she leaned closer to Zelith’s ear, nipping at the pointed end before starting to trail kisses down Zelith’s neck. Going down to her shoulder, she bit at the skin and relished in the witchblood’s gasps and moans. “Say it. Love words so much. Use them.”
“Yours,” Zelith murmured, Grey feeling the other woman’s tail wrapping around her waist, trying to pull her closer even as her arms were held down. Grey laughed softly, a rumble in her chest as she looked at the quickly enraptured witchblood below her, running a clawed finger along Zelith’s jawline, resting it near Zelith’s mouth.
“Good,” Grey said, leaning closer, her lupine form still covered in fur as she started tracing her hands down, claws starting to casually cut through the front of Zelith’s tunic.
“Not leaving until I am sure you understand.”
The look in Zelith’s eyes was pure focus, the tension in Grey’s chest fading as she looked at the other woman. Whatever uncertainties she had melted in the face of that gaze, that focused drive that Zelith buried in insecurity. Words were difficult. Love, all of these things, they were nebulous. Uncertain, tricky, like nets or fisher’s lines. But that look, the tremble that passed through Zelith as a clawed finger trailed down her side? There was no misunderstanding that.
In the hours that passed, not many other words were exchanged, beyond Zelith’s impassioned cries that she was Grey’s. But in the language Grey understood, the only way she could answer Zelith’s confession, the response was clear.
I love you too. Obviously.
Strike The Horizon 