The Awakening of the Gods (Forgotten Ones)

by M. H. Hawkins

  That was then, just minutes ago. Things seemed to have changed. And now, even Fenrir’s pack of brave, loyal wolves seemed to be having their own set of doubts and seemed to have also changed their minds. Stepping aside, the barricade of fanged-fur parted down the middle and opened like a set of flood gates. Fenrir’s wolves stepped aside and allowed the other wolves to pass. And now, unadulterated and free to ascend the stone staircase, the snarling dissenters did just that.

  But not all of the wolves participated in uprising. Fenrir gazed out at his rebellious family and saw some of the smaller, meeker wolves sifting towards the edges of the herd, peeling off of the mob and trickling into the carved corridors that led into the stone throne room. Most hesitated and gave a final reluctant look before they left. The more fearful objectors didn’t waste any time and disappeared into the tunnels with quickness, escaping the impending battle and the chaos to come… and towards a life of cowardice. More descendants—like the ones Darius admired, thought Fenrir. Descendants? Cowards who would abandon their family. It is their right, to not fight in a war not of their choosing. It is their choice. Perhaps they deserve peace, but they do not deserve god-blood, nor do they deserve the power it brings. Fenrir sighed. May they find satisfaction with their decision, he thought, and may their last days be worth the shame of abandoning their family. May they be worth the stain of cowardice that scars their souls and the souls of their descendants.

  The last one had made its way to the stone corridor near the back of the throne room. The deserter—a small wolf with black stripes, a white underbelly, and a bushy tail—paused his retreat and stared up at Fenrir. Then it looked down the tunnel, at the tail end of the other deserting wolves, then back at Fenrir. Looking as longing as a wolf could look, the small wolf seemed to be trying to figure out a way to both stay-and-go. Then it made its decision and looked up at Fenrir, seeking his approval. Is this okay? If I run, are you going to hunt me down and kill me? Fenrir nodded to it and gave his indifferent assurance. Leave us if you want, if you must. The little wolf ran away, and Fenrir returned his attention to the ones that stayed.

  They were still ascending the stairs, slowly padding up the wide stone staircase with cautious, slow, strategic intent. The wolves’ long ivory fangs glistened with saliva, and their hearts thumped with fear-driven revolution. The ocean of multi-colored wolf-fur—midnight-black, arctic-white, hazelnut, salt-and-pepper, grizzly-brown; the colors all striped, spotted, or blended—swayed like painted waves. Along their backs, the fur was spiked, prickled with adrenaline, and they were ready for a fight. And with that, everyone—everyone except Fenrir—was waiting for the climactic battle to begin.

  Fenrir’s wolf pack—his pack of large, loyal, fierce wolves; they were no longer sentries. Instead of guarding the staircase, they were now standing aside and lining the walls of it. Like they knew Fenrir was looking at them, they couldn’t do the same. Looking away, the giant wolves knew their shame and could not look upon Fenrir’s fate. But Fenrir knew.

  His once-loyal wolves had made their decision. They had decided on the wait-and-see approach. Choosing to not pick a side, to neither join in nor oppose the current rebellion; their intentions were clear. They would wait and see who the winner was.

  Right now Fenrir had a more imminent, personal problem. Closer to him, atop the elevated platform and about fifteen feet away, four sharpened spears—his newly-anointed children on the other end of them—were aimed upwards and angled at his face. And with each ticking second, the sharpened spear-tips were edging ever closer.

  Fenrir couldn’t help but to feel betrayed, and in the moment, he couldn’t help but to wonder if Darius was right. Did I really fail them? Calculating the answer, Fenrir’s thoughts were still cloudy, and his mind was stuck in a thunderstorm of shock and self-doubt. Did I really do it? he wondered. Did I fail my family? Was I that bad of a father? How many children had I lost? After so many eons and too many Cleansings, how many had died? How many children did I watch as they died? How many deaths were caused by my decisions—my bad decisions? How many wolves were killed by my errant judgement, by my faulty leadership?

  Fenrir felt the wet blanket of failure being draped over his shoulders, and he bit down on his lip in sadness. Then, feeling an anguish known only to the parents of wayward children, he wondered where he went wrong. I did my best, he told himself. I raised them the best I could, the best I knew how. It was the truth, and he almost believed himself. But like any true self-loather, the feeling was fleeting, and Fenrir wouldn’t grant himself any absolution. In a manner of seconds, he was back to condemning himself and questioning every decision that he ever made that could have led up to this moment. The verdict is already in, Fenrir thought, I should have done better.

  His eyes glistened with solemn tears that would never come. Finally blinking them away, Fenrir soaked deeper into his pit of misery. It didn’t matter now. Successfully blinking away more sorrowful tears, Fenrir realized that it didn’t really matter if he could see or not, not now. It’s over. Again he looked around at his family of wolves, the ones ascending the stairs and the ones pointing spears at him. He still loved them. Looking over their snarling, slobbering mouths, his mind flooded with slowed realization, and his eyesight blurred from the flurry of activity. He wondered if he ever really saw anything at all.

  This mutiny, this he certainly did not see coming. Fenrir’s entire flock had turned on him. At least my death will be painless, he thought, this betrayal has emptied my heart and filled it with pain… And there is no room for any more (pain). Even a thousand spears or five thousands gnashing teeth would hurt less, and even then, at the very least, that would grant me a release from this pain, the release of death. The family I love—the family I created—hates me. Now they will kill me.

  And Fenrir couldn’t help but to think of his father… and how he killed him. The patricide of the gods. In Fenrir’s case, his father—Aslern, Aslern was his name—had gone mad, lost his mind. After numerous Cleansings, more than Fenrir could remember, and for some reason, Aslern had become obsessed with god’s blood… and he became a cannibal, of sorts. Feeding on the flesh of lesser-gods and creatures of all breeds and sizes—all now extinct—and even his own pack, as Aslern’s hunger grew, so did his madness. Over the years, Fenrir watched his father—the Great Wolf-God, as he was known—become increasingly aggressive and combative. Speaking madness on more than one occasion, Aslern would shout, “The blood of the gods! ‘tis the essence of life and death! Death and destruction! Life and creation! Let us drink of it and become the kings of gods and the creators of our own destruction! And theirs!” And though Aslern never attacked him, Fenrir watched as his father committed more atrocities than he cared to remember.

  Aslern’s rage and hunger went on for decades, maybe longer. Though Fenrir had tried to block out the memories the best he could, they were still all-too-vivid, even now, even after all these years. The torn flesh, the assortment of scars that covered his father’s powerful legs and thick armored arms, the madness, the giant wolf tearing through mammoth lizards—flying ones as well; giant two-headed apes with stretched-out necks; herds of long-tailed stone jumpers.

  Fenrir remembered this one-time—the time Aslern had torn through a pack of squirrel-tailed river bison, giant bison with big bushy tails filled with quills. And Fenrir remembered as he was left with the task of plucking the hundreds of steel-like quills out of his father’s blood-matted fur as the old-wolf mumbled crazily—from his own inherent madness as well as the bison’s poison-laced quills.

  Laying on the polished stone floor of a cavern not unlike Fenrir’s throne room, Aslern lied limply on ground while twitching periodically. Sweating in pain and hallucinating from the poisoned quills, a lesser god would have died days ago while a saner one wouldn’t have gotten himself in this position in the first place. The wolf-god, currently in the form of a giant wolf the size of two elephants, laid on his side and whimpered. Aslern’s giant black tongue was limply sagged o
n the floor, puddled between his large, drawbridge-like muzzle and his portcullises of ivory fangs. Normally Aslern’s fangs would have been snapping—clacking loudly as they did so, tearing through giant chunks of flesh and crunching through bones and bark alike, but right now they were strangely calm. As expected, the poisoned quills had sapped almost all of Aslern’s energy. Equally unexpectedly, the poison did little to calm his riled words.

  “The gods!” yelled Aslern. “They’re monsters! Monsters, they are! The blood of gods—the poison of life, that’s what it is. Poison! Poison, Fenrir! Pois… Fenrir. Fenrir, my son—the only one worth a damn, the only one who knows what loyalty is. One day… One day, Fenrir! You will become the new wolf-god. You will become like me… like me, your father. Then you will see. When I have filled my belly with the poison of life and cannot—Ouch! Damn it, Fenrir!”

  Aslern’s giant wolf head snapped upwards. His giant yellow eyes locked onto Fenrir and glowed and narrowed, and he whimpered and growled. The side of Aslern’s muzzle curled up and revealed a row of fangs that were as large as broadswords. About to yank out another poisoned quill, Fenrir paused and stared back at his snarling father.

  Perhaps Fenrir should have felt threatened, but he didn’t. Perhaps he should have been afraid, but he wasn’t. Instead Fenrir was angry, angry that his crazy father was crazy, angry that he was again cleaning up after Aslern, angry that Aslern had driven away the rest of the wolves. He met the giant wolf’s snarling teeth with a scowl, waiting for his father’s next move. When there wasn’t any, Fenrir finally nodded silently at his father, not even muttering sorry or giving any explanation. Then, with his eyes still locked onto his father’s own, Fenrir yanked out the long poisoned quill and tossed it into the pile with the rest of them.

  Aslern finally laid his head back down, and Fenrir gave him one more dirty look then went back to searching through the giant wolf’s fur, searching for more poisoned quills.

  As well hidden as it was, Fenrir soon found another. Between two giant clumps of bloodied wolf-fur the size of bushes, somewhere near the middle of the giant wolf’s ribcage, it was deep hidden beneath the bush of bloodied fur. Strange, Fenrir thought, I didn’t even see it, the quill—I felt it, but I didn’t see it. Fenrir thumbed through the patch of fur. The quill was deep; a deep piercing quill that had struck too deep and too close to his father’s spine.

  About to yank the quill out, Fenrir thought about warning his father about the pain but decided not to. And after gripping the end of the deeply rooted quill, Fenrir yanked hard on it—like King Arthur pulling Excalibur from the stone. When it didn’t give, Fenrir yanked even harder. The quill got caught on Aslern’s flesh, and it was like pulling out a fish hook. Aslern’s agitation grew, and each yank of the spear-like quill sent the giant wolf twitching and whimpering.

  “Stop it,” Fenrir ordered. “You keep twitching and I’ll never get the damned thing out.” He yanked again, even harder. Aslern twitched, and the ground shook beneath Fenrir’s feat and he almost toppled over. Instead Fenrir snatched onto a thicket of Aslern’s fur and kept upright. Then, still angry at his father, Fenrir yanked on the quill again. This time, he got it out. With a sigh of relief, Aslern’s head flopped onto the floor, and Fenrir tossed the bloody quill into the pile of all the other bloodied quills.

  Like a loyal son taking care of his drunken father, Fenrir went back to work, searching for more poisoned quills. Still standing atop the ribcage of the giant wolf, he searched through the forest of black, white, and gray wolf-fur and tried to clean up the mess of his father’s own making. And when Fenrir finally found another patch of deeply rooted quills, he let out a frustrated sigh then went back to work.

  Aslern, Fenrir thought contemptuously, the great wolf-god. Poisoned and bleeding form his own stupidity, great indeed.

  It was strange. While most of the other wounds were akin to something a dog might get after attacking a porcupine, the deeper ones were from Aslern’s own stupidity and the depth of it. After tearing through more squirrel-tailed river bison than he needed to feed on, Aslern went on to chasing after and tearing through the few remaining ones that were already fleeing in terror. And Fenrir watched. He watched as his father torn through an entire family of bison—hundreds of them… just because he could. Now, reflecting on his own situation, looking at his own family of wolves, Fenrir thought: Is this justice? Is this my retribution, for letting it happen, for letting my father become a monster? Is this what justice feels like?

  Fenrir should have been thinking about the current uprising and his imminent death, but his thought returned to his father and that night.

  That night so long ago. The pile of bloodied quills was twice the size, and Fenrir’s anger mixed with his pity for his father. He patted Aslern’s side and yanked out another quill. Large as the spears that were currently aimed at him, Fenrir examined it, watching as the long silvery quill secreted a clear liquid (poison) from the tiny pores that covered its shaft. He watched as his father’s blood beaded up on the tip of it—like his blood would soon cover the tips of his children’s spears. Fenrir watched as Aslern’s blood swirled around the clear poison on the quill, as it ran over his meaty knuckles, and as it dripped off the tail-end of the quill. Then he tossed it into the pile. And after another sigh, Fenrir silently went back to thumbing through his father’s massive, bloodied, fur-covered ribcage and searching for another one.

  The grueling task had Fenrir grimacing at his father’s madness while also empathizing with the old wolf’s pain. Then, after finding and yanking out another quill—yanking on it angrier and more forceful than the one before it, Fenrir secretly wished that his insane father would just die—or at least stop talking.

  Aslern did neither, and after a wolf-like whimper and a throaty growl, more words radiated from somewhere within the giant wolf’s throat. “Fenrir,” Aslern growled. “Fenrir, listen to me. The gods’ blood. It is poison. It’s poison to us, to the world—but it’s here. It will always be here. As long as life exists, so will the gods. And as long as the gods exist, so will their blood, our blood. Always. Always and forever. Fenrir, son, I do this for you. The poison, the blood of the gods, it has to go somewhere. It has to. It just has to. Creation! Destruction! The blood… the blood must not touch the ground, the soil. Remember, son. Otherwise… otherwise life will be tainted, further tainted… always and forever.”

  Fenrir ignored the madness of his father’s words and stepped over his giant ribcage. Finally taking a knee on one of giant, curved middle ribs and making sure Aslern wasn’t looking, Fenrir unleashed another hateful scowl in the direction of his father’s giant, yapping wolf head. Then, as Fenrir’s poisoned, puffy hand wrapped around another quill, he again thought about killing his father. Just push it in, he thought. Just push the quill in, all the way in, and let the poison do the work. Then push in another one. Push in as many poisoned quills as it takes to kill your crazy, foolish father. Then let him die. It’d be an act of kindness, Fenrir thought, trying to rationalize his desires. It’d be an act of mercy, he told himself, purposely trying to convince himself to do it.

  Fenrir huffed instead. Then he yanked out another poisoned quill and threw it into the pile with the others.

  “You’ll see, son,” Aslern moaned. “One day, you’ll see. One day you’ll become the wolf-god, and then you’ll see. When that day comes, be better—be better than me. But, Fenrir, son, you must remember—remember the blood. It’s poison. Poison!”

  Eventually Fenrir finished pulling out all of the poisoned quills, and while some of the wounds left scars in the giant wolf—bald spots in Aslern’s forest of fur, most of the wounds healed as quickly as Aslern’s lesson would be forgotten.

  As for Aslern’s bloodlust, after decades of hunting, he was finally done. Though his aggressive nature remained, Aslern’s hunger subsided.

  And for reasons never explained, Aslern became reclusive and avoided everyone… even Fenrir. By then, though Aslern’s hunger was gone, it was to
o late, and Aslern was consumed with a madness known only to him. The Great Wolf-God quit taking human-form and remained as a wolf—a giant wolf, twice the size of an elephant—for decades. For true wolves, this was unheard of. Aslern did it anyways, and the giant wolf moved into a great, gray mountain and exiled himself from the world.

  Like Tolkien’s dragon, Smaug, Aslern took his asylum within the great caverns and catacombs of a giant mountain that sank far into the earth and grew high into the heavens. Although, unlike Smaug the dragon, Aslern did not horde any gold, jewels, or gems. Instead, he rested upon the innumerable bones of his many meals that he had consumed and collected. And after decades of feeding on creatures large and small—creatures lost to time before time even began, Aslern’s collection of bones had grown quite vast in quantity and quality alike. The bones filled the many caverns of the large mountain, but most were held within the cavern that Aslern called home. It was mountain of bones within a mountain. As such, the mountain eventually became known as the Mountain of Bones. Though the bones and mountain are now long-gone—lost to the changing seas of time and a river of lava (from one Cleansing or another), the cavernous mountain and Aslern’s collection of bones were once a magnificent and eerie sight to behold.

  Like all things, and like the Mountain of Bones would eventually do, Aslern met oblivion as well, and he would do so sooner than the mountain would. The only difference being that the mountain would die drowning in a river of lava, but Aslern’s death… his death would come at the hands of his son, the sharp edge of a glaive, and between the jaws of the would-be wolf-god.