Third Power

by Robert Childs

  The guard to her left paid her no mind, completely caught up in the unfolding scene and slavering in expectation of a kill. In the next moment, a clawed hand fastened around his throat and hurled him by the neck into the crowd behind them. The motion surprised the second guard but realization dawned too late. Kurella’s fist rocked his head back and sent him sprawling where he sat.

  Scott had heard Kurella’s warning only a moment before his legs went out from under him and threw his shoulder hard to the platform. When he looked up, Gouroth was already on his feet, holding the staff with the point leveled at his chest. Scott knew he had to act, and there was no time to look. Praying he would be in time, he rolled away from Gouroth but misjudged the distance to the edge of the platform. The crowd roared as the young man tumbled out of control over the side.

  Scott remembered accounts from people who survived falls from great heights. He heard all the stories. The common thread in each was the sensation of falling forever; the inordinate amount of time it felt like it took to reach the bottom. Scott decided that was a crock. He hit the earth quickly and pain wracked through the whole of him so severe he lost sight for long heartbeats. In the midst of his pain flashed the human image of Gouroth staring at him contemptuously in his mind’s eye over the superimposed image of his lupine form. And from somewhere…Kurella called to him.

  Gouroth stepped up to the edge of the platform and looked down, his scarred lips curling into a smile. Below him, Scott was lying face down. The young man tried briefly to bring himself upright but collapsed under the injury of his right arm; probably broken. Initiating the change, the king of wolves shifted form once more and stepped off the edge. The wind rushed in his ears and raced across his fur for a few seconds before he landed with unnatural ease, absorbing the shock smoothly with a deep bend of his knees.

  Scott lay only a few feet away.

  Gouroth approached him and grudgingly admitted, “You are no wolf, but stronger than most humans.” Scott did not hear him, his eyes closed against the pain of trying to rise. Gouroth stopped, his feet only inches from the young man’s head. “And yet you go on,” he said. “But here it ends.”

  Gouroth raised his foot to crush Scott’s skull and then Kurella, roaring her fury, buried her shoulder in the small of her father’s back in full charge, the impact almost folding him in half backwards and carrying the two of them away from the young man. Gouroth’s chest thudded into the ground, his daughter above him, but a combined sweep of his arm and body roll threw her away. She rolled with the momentum and together they came to their feet.

  “Kurella!?” Gouroth roared in disbelief.

  “I won’t let you kill him, Father. He means too much to me!”

  Kurella? Scott couldn’t be sure, but he could swear he heard her voice. “Kurella, don’t,” he said, his words barely above a whisper for the broken rib pressing against his lung. Scott clawed at the dirt trying to rise. He looked around trying to find the wolf girl but he could see little beyond the dust in his eyes and the pain ravaging his body.

  “You know our laws!” Gouroth roared in outrage. He pointed a wickedly taloned finger in her direction. “Do not disgrace me further. Be gone or share his fate!”

  Scott heard their shouting, but obscured and muffled, as though hearing them through deep water. Somewhere, he knew Kurella was close, engaging her father and buying him precious time. But he knew she could not save him. He had to find a way to connect with the wolf spirit and stand on his own.

  Scott hissed in pain as his healing body shifted the rib away from his lung. The shift made it easier to breath and lessened the pain, gratefully, and made it easier to think.

  And easier to remember…

  “Is it some kind of magic?” Scott had asked, his memory of that day sharp and clear in his mind. He sat cross-legged in front of Kurella, who had been seated the same before him in the green grass of a field located in Shallow’s Crag well away from the main bustle the Resistance.

  The wolf girl made a face. “Not in the way you’re thinking. In fact, the magic of this world limits the spirit of the wolf.”

  Scott’s brow knit in question. “I’m not following.”

  “From what you have told me,” she explained, “magic is practically nonexistent on your world; but here magic is very much a part of us. It infuses every living thing born here to some greater or lesser extent. The spirit of the wolf cannot displace that magic but fills what remains. And how much that spirit can fill us determines the strength of the wolf.”

  Scott nodded at this, finally catching on. “So someone like Haldorum, who is so filled with magic he can actually make use of it—“

  “Would make a very weak werewolf,” Kurella finished for him. “There must be room for the wolf spirit, and you must be accepting of it, in order to be the wolf.”

  “Kill me if you must, Father,” Kurella told him, her brown coat bristling along her spine, “for I would rather die with the one I love than continue living in a world without him.” Gouroth exhaled contemptuously through his nostrils and attempted to go around her but Kurella sidestepped, barring his path and baring her fangs in a vicious snarl.

  Scott climbed to his feet, free of pain, as the roar of the crowd around him faded to nothing. Suddenly, unexplainably, the once-crowded amphitheater was empty of all life, but otherwise remained the same.

  “Where did everyone go?” he started to ask aloud, but cut himself off halfway through the question. “Kurella! Where are you?”

  From the shadows before him, a great black wolf with glowing yellow eyes and silver-tipped ears coalesced like a phantasmal spirit. It strode toward him out of the dark and grew in size with every pace until finally standing as large as Kayliss himself when it stopped.

  The great wolf spirit regarded the young man with a supernatural intelligence and wisdom shaped across eons, eyeing him, contemplating this human who would be wolf. The large lupine cocked its head slightly, for this human before it resonated differently to its preternatural senses, and it puzzled the great wolf spirit as to why.

  Scott did not move as the huge creature circled him slowly and took its measure of him. He did not move, but tracked the lupine out of the corner of his left eye, then watched it again as it emerged on his right. When it completed its circuit it stopped and regarded him motionless once more.

  “I chose this,” Scott finally said.

  The wolf’s ears perked forward at the sound but that unreadable face gave no other outward sign of either its thoughts or mood, only watched him with those bright yellow eyes.

  Gouroth was about to threaten his daughter one final time but stayed his tongue as the human stood up behind her and looked about in confusion. Scott seemed disoriented, confused, and then called out Kurella’s name, apparently searching for the wolf girl who stood less than ten feet away in her lupine form.

  Kurella turned her body slightly and chanced a glance at her lover. “Scott, are you all right?” He seemed not to hear or see anything at all. Then he spoke again, directing his words to the empty space before him.

  “I tried to force the change. But it can’t be forced, can it?” Scott said. The wolf did not answer, merely regarded him as before. “I tried to will it. But it can’t be controlled. I think I understand now,” he said lowering himself to one knee. “It can only be accepted.”

  Scott bowed his head and closed his eyes, his hand outstretched to the wolf spirit with his palm up. “I accept this gift if you deem me worthy. I open myself to the wolf spirit and ask that I be accepted as one of your own. Not for my sake, but for the sake of the love I carry for another.”

  Gouroth barked in laughter at the ludicrous scene playing out before him. The human had clearly gone mad. The werewolf leader gestured with one hand to the crowd and with the other to the addled boy, and the crowd roared.

  Kurella’s worry and concern played in equal parts on her lupine face. “Scott, what is wrong?”

  Long moments passed and then the huge wo
lf approached the human who would be wolf. The great wolf spirit’s coarse fur touched the outstretched hand as it approached and the young man opened his eyes to meet the lupine gaze face-to-face, black muzzle only inches away. The ancient spirit could not understand what differed about this man from so many others touched with the gift of the wolf, and so it inhaled deeply, taking in Scott’s scent, and marveled at what it found.

  Memories flooded the great wolf spirit with that scent like imprints of a life poured directly into its mind. In seconds, it followed the whole of Scott’s journey from a world devoid of magic to his accidental placement in a world rife with it. But it was the lack of a specific scent that was so surprising. The spirit inhaled again, scarcely able to believe, but there was no mistaking it: this human, born of another world, was untouched by magic. This human, the great wolf spirit realized, was an empty vessel.

  The ghostly black wolf turned suddenly and darted away, startling Scott.

  “Wait!” he called. “Please, don’t go! What did I do wrong?”

  Then the great wolf spirit turned again and charged him mouth open, jaws slavering, growling as it came. Scott threw up his arms across his face as the wolf leaped at him. The essence of the phantasmal creature passed into his body and Scott screamed, his arms flying out wide as the essence of the great wolf spirit suffused him with the power of its very self.

  Kurella had never heard such a scream from any living creature before. Completely forgetting her father, she turned and watched the startling transformation of her lover. All the skin across his arms, back and legs seemed to come alive, crawling like something beneath struggled to burst forth. And then, as though all light no longer shined upon his body, the skin turned dark as pitch until lost to the eye beneath sprouting ebony fur. The cracking of bone made Kurella wince in spite of herself as she watched the limbs of the man she loved stretch and elongate, the muscles along his arms and legs swelling and growing beneath his skin.

  Scott dropped to all fours and then pulled his arms in close, dragging his claws through the earth and digging deep furrows against the ecstasy of the change. He pushed himself up out of the dirt and drew his knees under him. Kurella recognized that reveling, that total loss of self in the surging energy coursing through him like wild lightning strikes charging his every cell, the feeling of each individual atom of his being shifting under the supremacy of the power of the wolf: his face, his eyes…his soul.

  Scott lifted his black muzzle ever so slowly and rose on thick, powerful legs like some dark, sinister spirit.

  Kurella stared wide-eyed in her human form, having lost her focus and reverting during Scott’s amazing transformation. She stared in wonder at what so plainly stood before her now: a werewolf of ebony black and silver-tipped ears, powerful and fierce, standing easily a foot taller than the largest werewolf she had ever seen.

  Gouroth thrust his daughter violently aside and Scott snarled savagely, his lips pulled taut over wickedly curving fangs. The reaction was instantaneous, without thought, and utterly primal. He paused then, clearly surprised by his own reaction.

  “Do not fight it!” Kurella told him. “It is the spirit of the wolf inside you! Use it!”

  “Traitorous bitch!” Gouroth thundered.

  He moved to kick her into silence and Scott snapped into action as a beast gone mad. Gouroth had just enough time to turn back again before Scott barreled into him biting deep into the other’s shoulder. The two struck the ground roaring their fury and hatred for one another, their claws and teeth rending flesh once and again, their blood mingling intermittently in the dust of the earth.

  The two came apart then as Gouroth brought his legs up underneath and vaulted Scott into the air. Scott tucked and somersaulted once to land in an agile crouch. Gouroth was already charging and Scott sprang to the attack from the ground with an upward strike with the heel of his hand that rocked Gouroth off his feet and onto his back. The werewolf leader rolled with the momentum and was back on his feet in an instant. The crowd in the amphitheater leaped to their feet with a roar when Scott lunged with his jaws for the jugular, but Gouroth seized him about the neck and then threw him over his shoulder to the ground. Before Gouroth could sink his fangs, Scott brought up his knee with bone-crunching force. The werewolf king staggered back clutching his jaw and Scott was on his feet once again.

  The chests of both heaved with the exertion of the fight and dust clung in ragged clots to their fur where the blood soaked them. Scott’s chest bled freely with cuts and tears, as Gouroth’s did from a broken jaw and a vicious wound to his shoulder. In scattered places about the rest of his body, Scott’s claws had traced a latticework of gruesome design.

  “What’s the matter?” Scott growled sinister. Gouroth’s eyes narrowed and Scott peeled back his lips over his fangs in reply. The other could not answer, his jaw broken; and this time it was the hand of a werewolf. Such a wound was going to take time to heal, more time than this fight would allow.

  “Come on!” Scott bellowed, and then he roared his challenge.

  Tears crept silently down Kurella’s face as she watched the two of them circle each other. No matter what the outcome of the fight, this day would see the end of someone she loved. There was a momentary pause and then Scott rushed to the attack. Her father side-stepped and seized the young man’s outstretched arm. Scott howled in agony as Gouroth snapped it in one deft motion. Scott whirled and backhanded Gouroth across the muzzle, eliciting an answering howl of anguish as the leader’s hands released Scott and flew to his broken jaw. Scott’s eyes watered with the pain of his arm but Gouroth was still holding his jaw, roaring in agony. Knowing he would have no better opportunity, Scott cradled his broken left arm against his chest and rushed the werewolf leader. Balling his massive hand into a fist, he struck the other with everything he had. Gouroth reeled under the force of it, but came right back with an upward slash to Scott’s rib cage that sprayed Kurella with blood even from the distance at which she watched. Gouroth’s slash had gone up, and he then turned his hand to bring it back down again when Scott seized his wrist and pulled down while simultaneously bringing his knee to bear in Gouroth’s stomach. The blow buckled the werewolf leader over in front of him. Learning from his previous mistake, Scott did not allow Gouroth a moment to recover. He jumped into the air and kicked with his left leg, his heel finding a home in the small of Gouroth’s back before striking out with his right foot between the shoulder blades. Gouroth staggered under the combination, the latter blow knocking him to his hands and knees.

  Scott roared in triumph. He approached his prey from the side, his eyes narrowed and promising murder, and delivered an upward kick that flipped Gouroth over onto his back. The werewolf leader could not even raise a hand to cover his unprotected throat. The claws of Scott’s good hand came to bear. Gleaming red with the blood of his enemy, their razor sharp tips swiftly descended.

  The whole of the arena went still.

  Kurella was holding her breath. She could not see from this vantage point, save for Scott’s back as he remained there on his knees above the still form of her father. She started forward then, the color drained from her face, first one hesitant step, followed then by another, until she was moving steadily. When she reached Scott’s side, she could see his hand poised quivering mere inches above her father’s throat, and Gouroth’s steely eyes looking unflinching into his own. As Kurella looked down upon her father through her tears, there was no hint of fear in him, no sign of trepidation. It wasn’t until his eyes found hers that his demeanor broke and she saw the longing.

  Aching with every word he spoke, “I…will miss you…most…Kurella. Know…I would never have hur-- hurt you. My daughter.” Most of his ribs were crushed and his breathing came in ragged breaths.

  Unable to hold back her grief any longer, Kurella cried.

  Scott slowly looked away from Gouroth to Kurella. He then slowly turned back to look at his own hand, deadly and poised to kill.

  “What am I doing
?” He lowered his hand and before he could move away Gouroth seized him by the fur on his chest with a strength Scott didn’t know he had left in him.

  “Do…it!“ he hissed.

  Scott shook his head. “I can’t.”

  Gouroth pulled him close, his strength already waning, and said, “I…have been strongest…of my kind…since birth. But now the spirit…of the wolf accepts you. Made you strong!” He started to speak further but a choking cough spattered Scott’s chest with blood and stole his words away. Many seconds passed before the choking ran its course, turning at the end into a strangled laugh. “Stronger even…than this…old wolf.” His eyes then found Scott’s, all humor dispelled. “I do not…want to rule forever.” Then to Kurella, “Tell him.”

  Scott looked to her questioningly and she wiped away her tears, which did not cease to flow. “You must do it, Scott.”

  “Are you listening to yourself?” Scott said incredulous. “You’re telling me to kill your father.”

  She closed her eyes and shook her head. “He can accept death from no one but you. You defeated him, Scott.”

  “Do not disgrace me…in front of my people!” Gouroth rasped. Scott could see the man was having trouble maintaining his present form, the skin rippling beneath the fur. Then, surprisingly, he smiled menacingly. “Do not think,” he said, “that it is over for you. With Kurella’s hand…there comes…a price. You are the leader of wolves now.”

  “Wait—”

  Gouroth struck him but the young man did not flinch under the blow. “No!” he hissed. “Only the strongest…no other! For the love…of my daughter…you must!”

  Scott turned to look at Kurella, but she could only nod before turning away as he slowly raised his hand above the werewolf leader’s throat. Scott swallowed then. “I hate you for this,” he whispered.

  Gouroth smiled, the blood trickling down the corner of his mouth. “Do not…disappoint me…human. I will be watching from beyond. Do it.”