The sun rode high in the early afternoon sky, having passed its highest point for the day. Kocak could easily discern this through the thinning fall canopy and yet little sunlight actually touched the forest floor, so thick still was the ceiling of foliage.

  In another two weeks the thick, multi-colored overgrowth would be a thin veil of rust and gold-colored leaves. Soon after that, the forest would be bare and desolate, asleep for another long, cold, northern winter.

  At the moment, the woods around him were far from sleeping. Birds, bugs, and small forest rodents moved about busily and with much chirping, squeaking, cooing, buzzing, and hooting. The natural creatures in the vicinity had gotten used to his presence and determined he was no immediate threat.

  The wolf crouched deeply, his rearend almost touching the ground, and shifted with the ease of a dancer into a forward lunge, extending his blade forward as far as he could thrust without taking another step. He carried his exhalation evenly through the entire movement, then held both his breath and his position at the end of his piercing lunge.

  Gradually he allowed his lungs to begin pulling air back in, slowly filling them from the bottom to the very top. When his lungs gathered a full breath, he held it for a few seconds and then released it, exhaling from the top to the bottom just as slowly and deliberately as he had previously inhaled.

  Like a statue he held his posture for several minutes without the slightest flinch. The only trace of movement across his immense frame was the gradual rising and falling of the breath through his lungs.

  After a time, he shifted his weight back onto his rear leg, letting his sword naturally come to rest in a low, two-handed grip with the blade diagonally across the front of his body. With stunning quickness he switched his stance and swept around in a very wide, circular movement.

  Almost lazily, as if moving of its own free will, the sword swept over and around the wolf’s head and into a wide cutting arc perfectly synchronized with his circular step. The tip of the blade whistled through the target space just as his front foot landed and settled.

  The hair on Kovak’s neck stiffened and the now-familiar tingling ran its course along his spine and down his arms. Quickly, with discretion, not haste, he returned his blade to the scabbard on his belt and took an unassuming stance.

  The silhouettes of the fairy court began to manifest atop the toadstools encircling the clearing. After a few seconds of shimmering and shifting, the vague forms became intensely vivid, just as they had earlier in the day.

  Twenty-nine fairies stood before and all about the wolf, appearing sharper and more in-focus than the world around them. The myriad colors of their attire seemed exaggerated, even impossible to the eye of the beholder. Their every move was possessed of a strange, otherworldly quality. Kovak couldn’t identify exactly how the purples and greens looked more purple or green than they should, nor could he articulate the precise quality of the sprites’ motions that struck him as extraordinary, but he knew his eyes told the truth about these details.

  A strange odor entered the clearing along with the fairy court. At first metallic and sour, then overwhelmingly floral with a hint of ash. Something struck the wolf as familiar about the smell for the briefest instant, but as he gave attention to it he recognized nothing,

  He was also sure many of the small beings had changed clothes since their last meeting. In fact, he realized, some of these fairies were different from those he saw on the same mushrooms earlier that same day.

  The fat trumpeter was missing. In his place stood a warrior.

  A small, winged creature yes, but with an unmistakable posture and bearing, plus a tiny sword strapped to its waist. The fairy had silvery white hair and stared intently at the wolf.

  Some of the other fairies had also been replaced in this manner. Situational awareness and attention to detail were important aspects of a Faolchu warrior’s training; from an early age Kovak had practiced counting and categorizing the people in a room he entered or a group he encountered outdoors.

  Three very small female sprites with matching pink half-gowns were missing from this assembly. In their stead diminutive males with intense eyes locked their gaze directly onto Kovak.

  A male fairy with a top hat and an ornate cane was also absent. A female with a winged metal helmet and a bow over her shoulder had replaced him.

  He noticed a rather large male fairy with a sword on its belt where before a female with a parasol had stood. This fairy was not as tall as the queen but it was three times as broad about the shoulders and chest as the other fairies. Interestingly, the thick sprite’s tunic was the same yellow-and-orange design of the parasol held by the female who previously occupied the same toadstool.

  The wolf noted several other instances of warrior fairies where eccentric members of the queen’s court had previously stood. These replacements were spread out about the ring, a fact that Kovak interpreted as an attempt to be subtle and an effort to place warriors on all sides of him.

  He counted a total of twelve little soldiers. Knowing the feathery-winged heralds on either side of the High Morrigan to be her personal guard, he wondered why the matron brought a total of fourteen of her warriors with her to this meeting.

  He consciously suppressed the hair on his neck and shoulders before it could bristle out and potentially alert the fairies to his recognition of their maneuver. He heard the herald to the right of the fairy queen announce her presence with the full list of titles.

  As the word “Domina” passed from the creature’s mouth, so too did an involuntary growl escape Kovak’s throat. Silver! The strange odor was silver that had been soaked in some kind of perfume to hide its scent from him.

  Kovak caught the growl, but too late. A wave of murmurs rolled across the fairies and around the ring of toadstools. He caught the flinching of tiny muscles as the warriors restrained themselves from drawing their small, silver swords.

  “Forgive me, Kovak.” The matron of the clan spoke.

  The hooded fairy behind the matron leaned out over the queen’s shoulder as she spoke. Kovak could not see her eyes under the cowl but he felt them pressing upon him.

  Knowing she could read his mind and feeling her at the edge of his awareness Kovak stilled himself and focused on her words. If trouble was imminent his warrior instincts would guide him; there was no need to betray himself by thinking the matter over.

  “These warriors were part of the ceremony I spoke about earlier.” the High Morrigan continued. “As a queen I must keep my word, and there was no time to change the court before coming here. I instructed them to conceal the odor of their blades in hopes we would not offend you.”

  The wolf detected no deception, but his muscles told him he was under threat.

  “Please forgive my insensitivity.” the queen implored. The word “forgive” rang like a chime and sounded as if many voices uttered it in unison.

  His muscles relaxed immediately. Kovak understood the queen could not possibly be lying.

  “Of course, high Morrigan.” he forgave her. Her beauty truly rivaled any female he’d previously beheld.

  “Your kind have certain abilities of the mind and body, do they not? What you call ‘the Sight’ for example?” the queen asked him.

  “Yes Sublime Radiance, but I am not as yet fully endowed thereabouts.”

  “No matter. If you have any of this ‘sight’ at all I can work through that and show you what I spoke of before. Still your mind and prepare yourself, if it is your wish I should do this thing.”

  Kovak closed his eyes and lowered himself to a half-kneeling posture, placing his left knee onto the forest floor and laying both hands palms down atop his thigh.

  “Good.” spoke Claercholybus. “Come with me, Kovak.”

  The wolf suddenly felt as though he was floating upwards. With a start, he opened his eyes to find himself still in the half-kneel.

  “Do not be afraid. Only your mind will travel. Your body will remain in this clearing, and my loyal court will allow no harm to come to it, you have my word.”

  Kovak regretted agreeing to let the fairy queen share her vision with him. Every warrior instinct cried out that he should exit this space at top speed.

  “No, Good Kovak.” The High Morrigan spoke without her voice, directly into his mind. “It is natural to be unsettled the first time you travel in this manner. For the warrior, loss of control is unthinkable, but you must trust me if I am to show you, and I MUST show you, for we have made a deal you and I.”

  “I understand. I will try.” The wolf thought, but more than that, he sent his thought into the fairy’s mind the same way he sent thoughts to B’keul during training sessions. Never before had he spoken to the mind of any other than his mentor back home.

  “Yes.” The high matron telepathically encouraged the wolf. “It is true that you could merely think and I would hear you in this manner but you have done something more. You have sent to me with your mind, and now you are in me as I am in you.”

  She let this statement hang for a few seconds. “Be careful.” The Mother of Thorns playfully stretched both of the words out far past their normal enunciation.

  Kovak closed his eyes again. He also understood the queen’s warning, however playfully expressed, was very real. Gathering his resolve, he let his thinking mind go and relaxed fully into the moment, letting apprehension fade from his mind and body and becoming willing once more to go with Claercholybus.

  A pleasant tingling sensation emerged from his solar plexus as he again experienced the sensation of floating upwards. The tingling became a strong vibration, then a rattling gyration, finally subsiding altogether.

  Kovak slowly awoke, but not fully. He drifted a moment in that field of white light existing between the instant consciousness returns and the mind’s full realization of the circumstances and its surroundings.

  Where had he slept last night? He strained to remember.

  “Well done.” A lovely female voice interrupted his efforts.

  Mlasha. He remembered. The three rangers had travelled to the Waywards to eliminate a wyvern troubling the local population.

  He slowly opened his eyes. The ambient brightness compelled him to immediately close them again. “Forgive me. I’m a little punch drunk.”

  “Take your time.” Mlasha assured him.

  Once more he raised his eyelids to survey his surroundings, still unsure of where he had slept last night. The pitch-black darkness of night surrounded the wolf, yet at the same time vivid illumination permeated everything.

  The stars were more vibrant and clearer, perhaps even larger than he had ever seen them before. He suddenly realized he was in the upright position. How could this be? Standing, but unable to feel the solid ground beneath him, he looked to his feet.

  The shock of what he beheld jolted him. For a second he found himself half-kneeling in the forest amid a ring of mushrooms, each one supporting a small wood sprite on its cap.

  “Kovak. Relax and return to me.” The voice no longer belonged to the giantess. The High Morrigan spoke again: “Let go and return.”

  Remembering everything and recognizing that he had lost consciousness when his mind left his body, the wolf again stilled his mind and focused on his breathing. A few seconds later he found himself in the strangely bright darkness that made no sense to him.

  The high Morrigan stood next to him in the emptiness. Neither of them rested a foot on solid ground yet they remained stable in a standing posture.

  “We have travelled beyond the sky that you may better see what I am explaining.” The High Morrigan informed him.

  “Thus far I still do not understand, Matron.”

  “You will.” She pointed past the wolf to something behind him.

  He turned to follow the trajectory of her pointing finger and beheld an immense sphere suspended in the emptiness. He couldn’t tell if it was near or far away because he didn’t know the true size of the thing, but he could tell it was massive, bigger than anything he had ever beheld.

  “Those clouds, you see? That is our sky.”

  Kovak noted the large, swirling clouds that seemed to hang or hover above the surface of the globe. He also saw what looked like water.

  “Yes.” The fairy queen encouraged him. “That is the great sea. And look there, see that slender channel of water between the island and the larger block of land?”

  “I do. It’s the likeness of northern Gutheria and Sovereign’s Crossing. The island is Myrrha.”

  “Yes! It is more than the likeness of these things, however.”

  “This is some kind of magical map. Very impressive.”

  “Not a map, Kovak. I told you, we are seated above the sky. We now look down on our world. The great sphere is the planet on which our bodies reside in this moment. All that you do, where you travel, your friends, your battles, everything you know from your life as a ranger takes place or exists on this sphere. It is called Mirabillis, and it has upon and within it many realms, regions, kingdoms, and environments.”

  Kovak tried to take all this in. He wanted to reply but no words came to him.

  Despite his bewilderment, he also knew with a certainty the fairy queen spoke the truth. Being linked to her mind, within her in fact as she herself had put it, he knew she believed what she was telling him.

  “This empty eternity we visit is a space with infinite spheres, planets, like the one before you.” The fairy queen paused a moment, then continued. “I know it’s difficult, but this is the way of things.”

  Kovak still said nothing, for what could he say? He wanted this to make logical sense somehow but it remained absurd.

  “Your home world is on another planet somewhere in this vastness. It is impossible to cross or even survive within using the physical body. The magic that transported you to this planet,” She waved her hand once again to the great sphere, “made it possible for you to disappear from there and end up here without entering this space we are now in.”

  Kovak listened, trying to conceptualize all this. He suddenly realized he had heard the word “planet” before.

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Pidwermin used this term to describe what he called the wandering stars in the night sky. On his home world sages and sorcerers had a different word for the same thing. These planets, moving bodies in the sky, were of great importance to certain magical rites and procedures.

  “Yes.” The fairy queen encouraged the wolf. “Those wandering stars in the night sky are great orbs in space, and they are each tuned to a certain energetic nature magicians can attune to and use in their magic.”

  “Look there.” She pointed to a much smaller sphere, perhaps one third the size of Mirabillis and colored a dusty orange. “Kepplan, the swift messenger and trickster, also patron of thieves and merchants.”

  “Yes. I have heard of that sphere. How appropriate – benefactor of both thieves and merchants.” said the wolf.

  He and the fairy queen shared a chuckle at his barb towards the mercantile class.

  “There too.” the High Morrigan gestured. “Thrombus, the sphere governing time and change and restriction and death.”

  Kovak beheld a small black sphere, that he intuitively understood to be very far away. Somehow he knew it was many times the size of Mirabillis, and he felt a heaviness and density aa he looked at it.

  Kovak spoke up again: “Pidwermin speaks of these spheres as both great concentrations of heavenly power and as sentient beings, and yet they also are the places where whole lands and kingdoms reside, indeed are carried through the beyond. What is the truth of this?”

  “Complicated is that truth. The planets are as you see them now, some are bodies upon which civilizations and species rise and fall. Others have no life upon them, not in the physical sense. These latter sorts of planets contain life forms known as angels and intelligences and other spirit forms. They emanate and govern certain celestial energies which in turn become the things and events and ideas and possibilities of our universe.”

  The wolf recognized the ancient words the fairy included in her statement, which she otherwise spoke in the trade, or common tongue. “In our one song? What does that mean, Radiance?”

  “Very astute, Kovak!” Claercholybus squealed like a child. “The old words ‘uni’,and ‘verse’ do translate to ‘one song’. In the present-day philosophers and sages sometimes use the term universe to refer to the great reality, or the larger world of which our world is but a small part.”

  She waved her hand from one side to the other, emphasizing the motion with a great arc. “All of this and beyond is the universe.”

  Her words still rang as truth in Kovak’s heart. The wolf was prudent, however, and did not let his mind rush to conclusions. He absorbed her words and considered their implications.

  However ludicrous sounding or fantastical, the fairy queen’s explanation did carry a measure of logic. When he arrived in this strange land years ago, he had assumed he would eventually be able to navigate back home. However, despite all his good efforts he had found nary a clue to help him even begin that process. If this business about planets were true, and he had left one such sphere to arrive at another, such circumstances would account for his inability to pick up the trail leading home.

  “Look there. She pointed and the wolf’s gaze followed. “The mother moon!

  Another sphere, much smaller than the first but still enormous, had emerged from somewhere to hang over the ‘planet’ the High Morrigan had shown him. On the new sphere Kovak could see silvery mountains and broad, shimmering planes. It looked nothing like the flat, illumined disc he’d seen thousands of times in the night sky.

  The wolf noticed what resembled structures. Squares, rectangles, pyramids, and small domes clustered at various points on the surface of this ‘moon’.

  “Those are the cities of the Moon Elves. The Moon Gate, which their kind uses to travel between our world and the moon above, is similar to the portal that brought you to this world.” The High Matron explained.

  Kovak somehow knew the aforementioned Moon Gate would be of no use for a journey back to his home world. It was as if the queen answered an unasked question on the matter directly in his mind.

  He then wondered about the daughter moon, and found his gaze drawn to his left where a substantially smaller object, a rough spheroid with craters and canyons and small, flat-topped mountains all over its surface moved through the emptiness.

  He had felt the movement of the mother moon; though he could not visibly see it travel the fact that it did so was somehow implied to the wolf. The daughter moon, on the other hand, very obviously glided forward on a subtly arced trajectory, rotating on its axis at the same time.

  Nearly mesmerized by all that he beheld, Kovak started to ask about the sun but again knew the answer before he posed his question.

  His connection to the High Matron grew stronger each minute, such that he now appeared to have direct access to her thoughts as they formed. Her mind felt very uncomfortable, foreign to the wolf.

  He somehow knew this was not simply an otherness of someone else’s mind. For he had been touched before by the mind’s of others; his mentor and other Faolchu mystics for example. Also he had interacted with human psionicists, as they often called their psychics. The mind he experienced now had a quality very different from those he had felt before; the structure seemed less orderly, more vast and chaotic, yet terribly brilliant.

  The sun is a star, like the many stars in the night sky, but it is much closer to our planet than any other star. Behold it as it truly sits in the heavens.

  The wolf looked off to his left and understood the illumination that filled this nonetheless still dark abode. Another sphere loomed, by far the biggest yet, many times greater than the planet-spheres and formed of pulsating fire.

  In the next instant Kovak felt himself pulled back by some force. He hurtled through the empty space at great speed, and the stars became streaks of light all around him. The sun grew smaller and smaller as the wolf flew backwards for several seconds.

  He suddenly stopped; now the gargantuan sun was a small orange ball far away, and the planet a marble that circled about the ball of fire. He could barely perceive a faint dot close to the planet and moving around it in a circular orbit – the mother moon; the smaller daughter moon was invisible from this distance.

  It is but one flame in a sea of many millions like it. For look at how many others there are. Each of these suns has with it other planets, or worlds, like ours.

  Kovak understood the concept of a million. The great, seemingly endless hordes of the south, from Sarda, had been numbered as half a million soldiers. The Duke’s treasury reserve, enough gold to fill a feast hall from floor to ceiling, reportedly boasted over one million gold rounds. Many millions, on the other hand, he found disconcerting and even unrealistic.

  He quickly counted some of the flickering dots of light across the black canvas before him and reached nearly one hundred stars, or suns, in a patch of sky he could cover with his hand.

  “It seems nonsensical doesn’t it?” The fairy queen asked. “Much of creation is wondrous and impossible in the same way.”

  Having now seen for himself what vastness might lie between two of these planets, and understanding the stars in the night sky to be physical balls of fire in the strange, empty place beyond the sky, the wolf began to truly comprehend.

  When he first arrived in Gutheria something that struck him profoundly was how different the stars were at night. It was unsettling to say the least, for gone were the stars which had been significant to him through his spiritual lore and even his own astrological birth chart.

  Add to this his confoundment over two moons above instead of one and the orange tint of the sun in the daytime sky – not yellow like the sun he had known for more than two centuries - and the wolf’s first year in these realms was dominated by a spiritually and physically overwhelming sense of being lost not just to his home and family, but to even his deities and benefactor spirits.

  He had eventually made peace with the idea that even the sky might change when one travelled far enough. Here, beyond the sky with the fairy queen Kovak began to remember the role his mentor had played in his coming to terms with the changed heavens. In his dreams as his body slept B’keul had helped the wolf understand that no matter how far from the familiar world he might be, the currents of spirit and the connection to the deities of his people still flowed within.

  His initial shock and eventual reconciliation aside, Kovak now knew the depth of the mystery of missing stars and altered skies. The truth turned out to be more incredible and surreal than he could have ever imagined.

  Kovak wondered which of these myriad stars was the sun of his home world. Immediately he understood that the High Morrigan was unsure of this specific information.

  You don’t need to know the way through physical space. When soul travelling, or projecting into the astral, as we are now doing, you may go to your world at the speed of thought.

  Kovak had forgotten the state of things momentarily. His body knelt in the fairy ring on the planet below, while his mind, or soul travelled beyond the sky with the High Morrigan.

  Upon hearing the fairy queen’s thoughts, his instinctive reaction was to focus on his home so he might travel there and see his pack again. His intent was disrupted by the queen.

  “Not now. My goodness, I have a clan to govern, after all. Now that you have been quickened you may travel there any time you like, without my aid.”

  “I am quickened?” The wolf asked, suddenly remembering his mentor’s words from the night before.

  “You understand ‘becoming’. or growing into your psychic potential?” asked the fairy queen.

  “I do. Sublime Radiance.” Kovak remembered protocol this time.

  “This can take years. Or, one can be quickened. There are many ways this might happen. For some, a close brush with death spurs their full attainment of their gifts. For others, like you, interacting with a magical creature or fully realized psychic in an intimate manner will ordain the quickening.”

  “Does this mean I have become, High Morrigan?”

  “No. That will still require some work, but much less now that you are quickened. Over the next few days, while the quickening remains with you, assert your will and use what methods you know to reach towards your gifts. Do this and you will become during these days. Refrain from this work and the quickening will leave you.”

  “Then I owe Your Sublime Radiance yet another gratitude.” Kovak admitted humbly.

  “I suppose you do. We shall think of some form of payment. Now it is time we return.”

  As soon as the fairy queen finished speaking the scene around them began to blur and fade. The tingling came over Kovak once more, only this time he easily maintained consciousness.

  As he felt himself drawn back down and towards his waiting body, the wolf-warrior simultaneously felt himself passing through the mind and essence of the High Morrigan and felt her pass through his innermost being as well.

  The peculiar nature of the queen’s mind still confounded the wolf, yet he found it less disturbing than before. He let go of any effort to comprehend the structure of her awareness, which at times presented itself as a geometric matrix within another matrix of astonishing complexity.

  Waves of euphoria rolled through him. A bliss and pleasure he had not felt before consumed him, held him within its glow, and then began to subside. A faint sadness grew in the wolf’s heart as the ecstatic peace faded away.

  In an instant he saw the fairy queen’s life flash before his eyes. He saw a young sprite, barely the size of an apple, playing with other fairy children. Even then and even by fairy standards, Claercholybus possessed great magic. He watched in the blink of an eye as she grew, loved, hated, feared, and mourned through a period of 2,816 years from a time when the Age of Empires had just ended to the present day.

  He saw, felt, and knew everything about the Mother of Thorns and Mistress of the Anemone. He knew her clan waged war against the pixies of the forest where both species lived. The bird-winged fairy standing to her left at the fairy ring assembly, named Zap, was one of her secret consorts, and although he loved her madly she merely used him for sexual pleasure. The wolf tried to let these realizations pass from his mind, not wanting to anger the High Morrigan, for he understood she too saw his life and knew his thoughts.

  Despite his efforts, the knowledge of his host kept flowing through him. He knew the creature had not one, but two true forms. In one state she was the painfully beautiful, feminine creature as he now saw her. In another she was a grotesque, malformed beast, much larger than her present size and filled with malice.

  She had not always been this way, but centuries ago she made a bargain with a powerful entity in an effort to save her lover. The entity tricked and double-crossed her, letting her beloved perish and somehow still binding her to the fate she agreed to in exchange for the evil creature’s aid.

  Kovak now assertively pushed away the imagery and information flooding into his mind about the High Morrigan. Gathering his will as if for battle, he demanded no more be shown to him.

  Yet still it came, like a wave from the sea overwhelming his senses and awareness.

  She had lied to him in saying there were only two ways he could return home, for in truth she could send him there with a wave of her wand. She kept this information to herself because she was petty and cruel, but also for another reason not yet clear in the wolf’s mind.

  She deemed herself above the lowly wolf-thing, and before when she said “good Kovak”, this was no formal address nor title, Indeed just as Kovak had wondered at the time, her words were disparaging, an insult.

  Anger now rose in the wolf, and he stopped resisting.

  He saw the Matron and her children starting a fire that destroyed a local farm. He knew they worshipped a demonic creature that lived beneath these woods.

  The wyvern, he understood, had not wandered down from the mountain. Claercholybus had called it down to create fear and do harm to her human neighbors, not only for her amusement but as an appeasement to the thing in the ground.

  He could see and feel the great swamp to the west and could feel the queen’s hatred of the place. She feared and reviled something in that swamp.

  He saw three children caught in a net and crying for home. In a flash he saw the same children cold and dead after the fairy queen drained their life force to sustain her own magical energies.

  He knew the soldiers in the fairy ring brought silver swords with them to kill him, and for a specific reason. Was it in case he learned their queen’s secrets, in particular about her involvement with the wyvern ordeal and the missing children?

  He sensed it was more than this, but that truth remained hidden somehow. The wolf understood implicitly this hidden truth was linked to the reason the fairy queen would not send him home, which had also been obscured from him.

  He realized that several minutes ago the queen had easily convinced him the silver was not intended for him by charming him, not with beguiling magic against which his kind had a strong immunity, but with her psychic talents, or powers of mind.

  Then he saw it, looming large right in front of him; out in the open in fact where he should have seen it long before now. How had his instincts failed him so utterly?

  He saw the biggest secret the Mother of Thorns had kept from him, not through clever trickery or subterfuge, but by simple omission. The wolf had been so desperate for information about the way back to his home that he’d thrown caution, even basic prudence, to the wind. Claercholybus withheld her secret from him only by not telling him about it, for no other precautions or preventions had she employed to deceive him.

  The fairy queen desired Kovak as both a source of food and a sacrifice to her evil demigod overlord that slept beneath the forest. She meant to quicken him – that is provoke the blossoming of his latent psychic powers – then feed on his life force alongside the natural evil she worshipped.

  She and her clan would raise the demon from the ground and then run with it, consumed by their bloodlust and hatred of mortals. They would burn and terrorize and devour the people of the Waywards and then move beyond the forest where they would be met by other dark forces and evil creatures.

  Yet there was still more to her silent plot. She saw something about the wolf that made him such a desirable victim and gift to her god. She believes I am touched by the hand of divine providence, favored by the gods and chosen for some special purpose.

  The wolf balked at such a ludicrous notion, yet he could plainly see in the fairy queen’s mind that she believed this to be the case. The madness of this tiny creature seemed matched only by her wickedness, for she reveled in the epic power and favor her overlord would grant her for delivering the blood and life force of a being chosen by benevolent gods to do their bidding.

  More than merely the implication of such dire evil, the presence and pulsing energy of that same evil confronted Kovak. The weight and depth of that presence filled the wolf with a heavy sorrow and caused him to feel nauseous.

  His hackles raised and sensing imminent danger Kovak willed himself to wake up in his body immediately. As his mind rejoined the flesh so too did suppressed memories crash in waves upon him.

  He remembered the forgotten dreams; all of them. There had been hundreds of nights spent on a mountain spire or on the shoreline of a roaring river, in the presence of his old Eshj Eshja.

  He recalled the training sessions and meditations, the lessons on various mystical or psychic abilities, and the epic tales of his pack’s deities and heroes. His soul had travelled to be with his mentor every time his body had slept since the day a bizarre vortex of light and energy had pulled him from a familiar landscape to this foreign world.

  The tactile sensations of the body grew more vivid, more real. It felt similar to the experience of gradually waking from a long sleep. He could feel the fire of latent talents emerging to sear through his nerve endings and course upward along his spine. Whether real or imagined he found himself engulfed in a brilliant white light; more than that, he became the field of endless light.

  Suddenly came a still, silent void. The light simply vanished.

  Gone was the mind and presence of the fairy queen. No more were the tactile sensations of the mossy forest floor beneath his kneeling body.

  Quiet. Motionless. Peace.

  For what felt like a long moment but was likely a fleeting instant he saw the face of B’keul. The old wolf stood directly in front of him.

  Peace gave way to alarm, near-panic, which was an emotion both unfamiliar and uncomfortable to Kovak.

  “Go Kovak!” B’keul ordered.

  Once more the wolf’s awareness shifted into his physical form.

  The experience reminded him of the first time he put on a full suit of armor. He stretched and pushed himself into his arms and hands, tensing his muscles as he rolled and shifted into his legs and hips.

  With a great popping sound, he awoke fully to find himself kneeling in the clearing and surrounded by fairies. Tiny beams of midday sun penetrated the ceiling of changing leaves to become spikes of yellow, orange, and red that poked harshly into his eyes. His body pressed hard and abruptly like a stone slab against his awareness.

  The last thing his mind saw while in the transitional state was the twisted, beautiful face of the High Morrigan, her glare of pure rage burning through eyes the color of red fire.