With a sense of direction that most would call preternatural, and rightly so, he had made his way through the dark, brooding woodland towards the capital of Gothica. He had been clothed when he arrived, so he knew he had a life before that time, prior to the Blessing that changed his life and nature forever, but he could only remember the goddess and the light and nothing preceding that.
On that journey back to human civilization, Lupus encountered many trials and obstacles. The forests were heavily infested with beasts so predatory and malicious that they had been walled off by the locals for decades. No-one was really quite sure how the animals had come into being the way they were; legends said that when man first made its settlements around the forest, the animals were simple, benign creatures, but someday without explanation it seemed as though hell itself had warped them into the monsters of modern cultural horror stories. Since those first few years, no human had set foot in the woodland, forever walling it off to protect themselves from the unknown. Yet, despite their vicious forms and their formidable size, Lupus found he could fend for himself. After all, he was no longer just a human, but something altogether greater.
During these first days, he truly came to appreciate the reality of his other given name; the Lion. It had been several days of isolation, walking through the forests, ever-wary of dangers, when the first evidential event happened. He crossed the path of a feral thing, a bear in a previous life, now nothing less than a spawn from the underworld.
It had been feasting on the flesh of another, smaller creature. Lupus had smelled the meat from a few miles away and hadn’t appreciated the acuity of his senses until he traversed the distance between the signal and its origin. When he realised how great a range his nose could pick up a scent from, even though he hadn’t changed into anything like the goddess had implied he could, he realised that the Blessing had enriched every bit of his nature from the supernatural to the human.
The ghastly, deformed bear had caught its prey by a river running through a deep gorge. Lupus found the beginning of the natural rent in the earth a long way back and had stalked through the shallow water, with boulders and outcrops of rock obscuring his view, before he came upon the scene. At first, he was so shocked by the overwhelming information his refined senses supplied him with that he had to bite back the urge to vomit. The feeling was short-lived as the wretch before him turned its attention on a living victim and raced towards him, nostrils flaring wildly and a blood-curdling roar escaping its maw.
Lupus ran, but not from fear like he expected. Rather, it was the natural instincts of survival that drove him to retreat. His mind overestimated his body too quickly however, begging him to run faster than he was capable of with his human legs. Catching a rock in the riverbed, he stumbled and crashed to the floor.
The bear was on him in seconds, tearing at his skin and snapping at his face with long, bloody teeth. Somehow it couldn’t find a mark on Lupus, as though he were wrapped in a protective bubble that helped him force it back. As it tried to wound its prey, failing with every attempt, it became increasingly vicious. At first Lupus thought a protective shield from the gods was put in place to protect him for a higher purpose, but then he remembered that the only reason he was there was because the last great deity had died in front of him.
The painful memory of Vermillion’s death swam in front of his eyes as he thrashed on the ground, trying to escape the clutches of the massive beast that couldn’t kill him. The sheer torrent of emotion flooding through him burst into an explosion of anger and he felt himself roar before the noise filled the forest for miles around. Even now, he remembered how the first locals had asked him if a new, more terrible beast had been born that day.
Smashing the bear aside, Lupus stood on all four legs, proud and fierce. He had taken his form as the Lion for the first time and he dwarfed the bear in size, potency and ferocity. His enemy was suddenly as intimidated as the dead creature at its feet must have been by the unnatural, terrifying transformation of the human it was intent on eating. With a wise change of mind, it fled in panic for its life.
After this shocking, revelatory experience, Lupus stayed in the forest longer than he had originally planned. Before then, he wanted to escape the place of evil darkness and find the light of the capital, but now he was forced to come to terms with who and what he was so that there were no nasty surprises when he integrated with normal society. He spent weeks adjusting to his new nature and sought to embrace the very power that had changed him so dramatically. For days he would remain as the Lion, feeling the changes in his senses, the abilities of his second life and what it meant to be this powerful animal.
When he had sated his thirst for understanding and exploration of both his environment and himself, he exploited his newfound knowledge of the area to the fullest. Discovering vast mineral deposits of ores he knew would be scarce outside the forest, for they had been untouched for thousands of years due to the mysterious dangers inside, he made safe storages of them deep in the woodland where no-one else would venture.
Eventually, bringing his ores to the markets of the city and selling them as precious rarities, he accumulated a small fortune. A wealthy businessman, who had heard stories of a stranger that came from the forests with sacks full of the most beautiful ores that hadn’t been seen for millennia, approached him one day at his stall.
Keeping a shadowy appearance with a hooded cloak, no-one had ever seen Lupus’ face. He did this on purpose, knowing it was the only way he could enter society comfortably and make his own means without being recognised by anyone as the stranger that could venture unharmed into the forbidden forest. Although secrecy wasn’t necessary for his physical safety, as he had proved his martial discipline dozens of times when greedy men had tried to rob him of his goods, it was for the safety of others; he did not want to be drawn into conflicts that could only end in violence, and he didn’t trust himself to control his other nature to take the risk of being put in volatile situations.
With the fortunate approach of the businessman, who also kept his identity hidden by giving no name, Lupus finally found a man greedy enough with the wealth to back up his desires. Proposing to pay Lupus any price for the rest of the minerals in his stores, his last customer had gave him an easy way to be secure for as long as he needed to be.
Lupus was no fool and knew this opportunity would likely not come again in such amiable means, so he wisely took the offer. Leading the businessman and his convoy of trucks to the forest fence, Lupus alone travelled back and forth with his remaining stocks of precious ore.
In ironic truth, Lupus wasn’t certain why the materials were so valuable. His nose had picked up on their scent and that was all it took for him to know that people would buy them; he trusted his senses beyond anything, because they were all he had.
The ferrying took several days, but none of the henchmen that his generous buyer employed dared go into the dangerous forest, even if Lupus did seem to prove it was possible to survive unscathed. Privately, they all sensed something very dangerous about Lupus and they didn’t have the courage to find out how it was that he could enter the woodlands freely with no worries and withdraw unperturbed. Later, when the avaricious businessman wanted more, he would demand that they go deep into the forest with him to find other deposits. They would all pay with their lives for his naive greed.
With the transaction long ago complete, Lupus faded away into the forests again for several months. When he emerged, no-one made the link between the missing stranger at the market stall and the newcomer. Claiming that he was from a neighbouring city and that he had been dropped near the outskirts of the forest by a rogue transporter he paid a handsome fee to, he found it easy enough to set up an identity and build a semblance of human life.
Using his fortune, he found a nice place in the city near the prestigious Academy. He decided that he still looked young enough to attend the institution and did so in order to blend in better with the population. He reasoned it would be th
e easiest way of learning how the world around him had developed, because he simply had no real way of knowing anything anymore apart from the Blessing and his future. To him, the past was a convoluted enigma that had to be cracked.
Now, sitting at his glass table, Lupus wondered what the future held for him after all. Some things he knew, others he did not. He was certain of many events yet to pass, and consequently most of his life was laid before him, thanks to what he had been shown in the Blessing. All his troubles until now were minute in comparison to what he would soon face. Yet, he still felt an undeniable longing for something normal. Part of him wanted to be a genuine human, not just an actor that would practice the role for a while until he had to fulfil his true purpose.
He knew there were others like him. He remembered there being eleven of them, yet he could not find their faces in his memories. Then there were the legions that the goddess Vermillion had spoken in detail to him about. With the recent discovery of the mammoth planet Colossi, he wondered how soon it would be before it would all begin as the Prophecy foretold and as She had warned him.
For now, he would play the patient game of waiting. He would prepare for the future and pretend to be one of the crowd. He might even allow himself to love, if there was time.
AS ALWAYS, LUPUS went to bed early. Laying his head on pillows of the finest quality material Cygnus City could offer, wrapped under a quilt of royal blue silk, his thoughts strayed to what they always did at this time; his dreams.
For as long as he could remember, he had experienced the most vivid of visions when he slept. Not only were his dreams clear, but the emotions he felt during them stayed with him even after he woke, much like those of a real memory. Closing his eyes now, he could still remember one in particular that haunted his conscious mind.
His memory of it was perfect; there was no decay of clarity or feeling that was typical for most dreams. It had been a dark, warm night. Walking with Calla and some of her friends, he realised rather suddenly that they were traversing the tracks of a railway, albeit cautiously and tentatively which was the only sane part about it. Though he did not know why they were taking the risk, he felt an odd sense of necessity, as though the other side was beckoning to them urgently.
They crossed the first pair of rails without any fault when the bright lights of a train approached them. It was one of the newest models, the type that used high-powered magnets to propel it along the tracks smoothly at ravenous speeds. Lupus heard Calla cry out behind him and turned as she tripped.
He thought she had crossed safely with him, but now it was obvious that he had been negligent in his assumption. A horrible feeling swept over him as he understood the imminent danger she was in and how it had been his fault. He failed to notice that she was slower than he was and that he should have helped her across.
As Calla’s friends made it safely to the far side, he took a step back towards her and reached out with his hand. Just as he did this, a paralysis struck him, as though his intention was not enough for the action and his dream was cruelly denying him the opportunity to save her now. He saw Calla crash down on the rails and the train thundered over her legs, crushing them completely.
Strangely, there was no blood, only pain and shock for them both. Calla’s friends had quickly picked her up – Lupus couldn’t be sure if he helped – and taken her to the side, where she lay down, her legs flattened like it was all a cartoon. She gave no blame to Lupus, but he could only feel guilt and a terrible dismay at his failure to protect her. He had the potential and time to stop what happened, but he simply did not; his strength had abandoned him and the dream was punishing him for some misdeed he had committed.
The heartache of witnessing such a traumatic devastation to the girl he cared about most soon became a physical pain. When he awoke after the dream, he felt it all through the following day. Even now, closing his eyes, that pain served as a reminder that once his mind surrendered to tiredness and he delved into the unconscious darkness, nothing was in his control. The notion that his dreams were limitless, that the emotions wrought upon him were impossible to predict or prevent, scared him.
Despite this fear, he closed his eyes and hoped that tonight his mind would be fair to him. He longed to see his brothers and sisters, his fellow Apostles finally by his side. Yet in his heart he knew there was a long road of trials before that would happen. Determined to live in the present, he set his mind to think about the only thing that gave him light in the depths of the doom looming over him; Calla.
HIS DREAMS THAT night had been kind, after all. Waking up to a dawn where the sun filled the sky and bathed the city in gold, Lupus smiled as he allowed himself a respite from his feelings of prescience and thoughts of the future.
It was a day free from the Academy, the end of the working week and he had no plans. Despite the freedom, he could not sit idle and decided to go running to fill up his time. As an aside, he was sure the exercise would help him prepare for whatever physical endurance he would need in his upcoming life. Sometimes, it would irritate him that everything he did had a dual purpose. He longed to do something for its own sake.
Catching the rising sun, the route Lupus followed took him through the local green park. There was a gentle river running all the way through it, bisecting the grasses in places wide enough for decorative stone bridges to adjoin the sides together.
The run was intense as he kept a high pace. He tended to vault any obstacles in his way rather than go around them, bar the river where he would use the same method to cross as everyone else. It was best to avoid suspicion, even if his athleticism meant there were easier options to get around. The adrenaline pumping through his blood was the closest experience he could get to being in his other form without actually changing, an act he had not indulged in since the first days he spent in the forests south of Cygnus City.
The run went on for ten miles and he finished in just under half an hour. With thick muscled legs that were used to such a constant pace, he never found the task too challenging. Onlookers would often wonder at how he could achieve such a time and distance, but he had no desire to drink in their attention. Instead, he used the exercise purely to clear his mind and bring back the instincts that he now associated more intimately with his wider nature.
During his time spent in the city, he came to appreciate that the attuned senses he experienced as the Lion also fed into those his human body were capable of. It refined his interactions and perceptions of the world around him, to an almost unnecessary finesse. He tried not to reveal this fact to those around him. He already drew enough notice with his unusual understanding and knowledge of the Empire. Lupus had to be careful not to make anyone too suspicious. There was simply no way of knowing what people would do if they put all the pieces of him together.
When he arrived home he had lunch, as always, on his own. Markus called him to see if he was busy, but he lied and told him that he already had plans. In truth, Lupus just wanted to prepare for what he believed would be a very important night. He had a big reputation at stake if what Calla said was no exaggeration and he wanted to make the best impression he could on her family. He appreciated, all too well, that family was everything given that the closest people to his own kin were effectively demi-gods.
When the evening came he dressed himself smartly. Not formal enough to make him look as though he was attending a business meeting, but well-dressed so not to appear unseemly and tardy. He wore a rich white shirt, tucked into some casual black trousers that rested on the tops of his brown leather shoes.
Without a second thought to his appearance, Lupus left his solitary abode in peace and made his way to Calla’s house. The walk only took him ten minutes or so and when he found himself at the hedges by her garden path, he hesitated.
To his memory, he had never done anything like this before. He wasn’t sure if this was a date as such, or just an occasion that most friends shared. Nonetheless, he was confident and stood firm as he knocked on Calla’s door.
After an agonising moment, he heard someone running down some stairs beyond the door and recognised the female voice calling out. The sound drew nearer until its owner opened the door. Standing there, resplendent in a black top and blue jeans, Calla beamed and pulled Lupus in gently by his arm, welcoming him to her home without a word or warning.
THERE WAS A second door after the first. With a small gap between the two and coat hooks on the wall, it was there to keep heat loss to a minimum in the treacherous winters that often plagued the city whilst people prepared to leave the house or return.
Calla had closed the second door before letting Lupus in and before taking him through she smiled at him reassuringly and told him not to be nervous. This was the first time he was meeting her family, so when they walked through the second door and into the hallway, he was surprised to see just how many of them there were; only then did he realise he had never thought to ask her much about them.
The hallway ran through the middle of the house, with stairs leading up on its right half. Rooms branched off from the corridor; the living space on the left and a study on the right. One of Calla’s younger sisters ran to them from the left of the house and embraced her with joy.
She could have only been eight or nine, but she hugged her older sibling with the deep love held by those with more years than she could have seen. Her name was Bella and Lupus was warmed to see such closeness in the family.
Two more of Calla’s siblings walked out. One introduced herself as Lyra to him directly and politely, seemingly happy to see him. The other sister, second oldest to Calla, was less enthusiastic. While she was delighted to talk to her kin, it was though she saw Lupus as an intruder. Nonetheless, she greeted him like Lyra, but a little colder and more reserved.
The Deian War: Vermillion's Apostles Page 3