Brace For the Wolves

by Nathan Thompson

  What do you mean? I asked worriedly. What’s happening outside of Avalon?

  An uprising. All the Dark Icons rose up at once. Directly. It was suicide, but everyone still dropped everything to deal with them, and no one listened to my call for aid. By the time they pulled back and we realized it was just a feint, Avalon had already been lost. And I can’t come back anymore.

  Even in my sleep I could feel her frustration.

  Why? I asked. Is it the portals? Are they down?

  I knew the Malus Members had their own networks, but Karim had implied that no one else could travel between worlds now.

  It’s not just that, Stell replied. I mean they are, but there are other pathways between worlds. But those are no longer safe. And not just because of... him. I felt her shudder, and I didn’t need to ask her to clarify. We both knew who she was talking about.

  What do you mean? And are you safe?

  Yes, she answered after a moment. Yes… I’m fine, Wes. I’m fine. Don’t worry about me. Please.

  Ha. Not likely.

  Okay, fine, I lied. Why aren’t the pathways safe anymore?

  Avalon’s magic helped keep other things out. And Guineve had her own warding skills. But… too many of them are in now. They were never used that often, and now that monsters are discovering them… I just don’t know, Wes. I don’t know how to fix this. There’s just too much.

  Fine. I’ll help you when I can get to you. Just stay safe. I’ll try and get the portals back on.

  What? No, Wes, my friend said back. Don’t worry about all that. This isn’t your fight anymore. I just… I just needed to talk to you again.

  Stell, I growled. I’m not going anywhere. I can’t. I wouldn’t even if I could. Don’t give up. Please.

  What am I saying? she muttered. You’re right. I’ve handled worse than this at the very beginning. I can handle it again. Thank you, Wes. And don’t give up either.

  I won’t, I thought back as her voice faded away.

  I will not give up.

  “I will not give up,” I said aloud.

  Weird mumbling replied. I took it as a challenge.

  “Do you hear me? I will not give up!”

  “Okay, fine! But at least let me sleep!”

  I opened my eyes and saw a dim light resting on my chest, using the front pocket of my shirt as a blanket. Breena had shrunk to her smallest size and was currently trying to grumble her way back to sleep. I started to move, but I was still too tired, and then I remembered that I had gone to bed earlier than everyone else. Breena muttered something else, and then I drifted back off to sleep.

  “Yeah,” I whispered to myself as I closed my eyes again. “I’m not giving up.”

  A few hours later I woke up again, realized that there was a tiny feminine body on top of me, and immediately panicked.

  “What? Who?” I shouted as I jumped back. My surprise was tempered with all of my old worries about being judged for my father’s crimes. I had just learned that he had been framed and murdered, but it looked like my subconscious still hadn’t caught up with those revelations.

  Breena, though, was dealing with her own surprises as my knee-jerk reaction had sent her hurtling through the air. She completed about seven revolutions through the air before her wings arrested her descent and brought her movements under control.

  “What the blinking dewbells, Wes!” the tiny woman chirped at me. “Whatever happened to waking up with just a stretch and a yawn?”

  “Breena,” I gasped. “What were you doing in my bed?”

  “I wasn’t in your bed, Wes!” Breena retorted. “I was in your shirt! There’s a difference!”

  “I meant, why were you laying on top of me at all?”

  “Because you freaked out the last time I wanted to take a nap in your pocket! Give a girl some slack, will you? I had a job to do last night!”

  “What...how…”

  My outrage faded in the face of more confusion. It was at that point that I dimly remembered waking up in the middle of the night and noticing the little fairy woman on top of me. I had been too tired to care then. Now though, I was dealing with all kinds of social conditioning that said waking up next to a woman was Very Bad-Wrong, and that I needed to at least be aware of what exactly had happened. Especially when the woman was this small.

  And my efforts to understand the situation were just met with increasingly disturbing answers. I gave up and sat back down.

  “Breena,” I tried one more time. “On my world, men and women only sleep next to each other in certain situations. And they’re supposed to be clear about it beforehand.”

  “Okay, fine,” she said. “But it’s my job, remember? I said that?”

  “Yeah, and I really don’t think you’re conveying what you mean to convey with that sentence.”

  “Ugh, fine!” She threw one of her tiny fits, and the memory it created almost made me smile in spite of it all. “In case it somehow isn’t clear, Wes, my job is doctor! Remember? Water and Air sprite? Spent a fair bit of my time healing you on most of our Challenges together?”

  “Yes,” I nodded. “With one unfortunate exception that we both agreed to never speak about again.”

  “Yeah, the Guineve’s-lecture-about-boys-Challenge. Never gonna forget that one.” Her cheeks glowed just a little more pink than normal, and for just a moment. “Probably related to why you’re upset. But! The point is! It was my job to watch over the more serious patients, and check for any hidden injuries! So that’s what I did!”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, confused again. “I tried to heal everyone before I left. Did I miss anything? Is anyone still injured?”

  “Physically, no.” Breena shook her head. “But emotionally, everyone’s still recovering from being captured and tortured. Most of them, however, have had long breaks between their abuses and also have already formed emotional bonds with the other captives. Especially since so many families were taken. Even the three Testifiers, those sorcerer-warriors that helped you fight, knew each other well enough to help one another cope.” She looked me in the eye. “There was one person, though, who was repeatedly tortured to death, which should be impossible, who was also kept in isolation from the others. He should be in the worst shape, but I think he’s repressing his experiences until he thinks he has time to process them. Which means he’s probably a wreck inside that’s desperately trying to hold together with thread and bandages. So he really shouldn’t be left alone.”

  “Oh,” I said after a moment. It had been clear that she was talking about me. “I… I guess that makes sense.”

  She nodded, keeping her arms crossed for a moment. Then she flew over and hugged my neck.

  “Wes,” she said, her voice trembling. “I know you’re still holding it all at bay somehow, but I’m sorry it happened to you. I won’t leave again. I’ll do a better job from here on out. Just… stay with us, okay?”

  “Okay, Breena,” I said as I hugged her carefully again. “I’ll do just that.”

  She held me for a minute longer without saying anything. I let her, because she was my friend, and I tried not to feel too awkward about it.

  Don’t get me wrong, I appreciated a friend’s comfort. And I appreciated the fact that Breena was beautiful. That was the problem. She was a tiny, but full-figured, woman, and her small size triggered all sorts of stubborn anxiety that refused to go away just because I learned that my dad wasn’t actually a pedophile.

  I appreciated her beauty, and that made me feel guilty. The fact that I knew how messed up that feeling was didn’t make it go away.

  She let me go, and fluttered back to arm’s length.

  “So that’s why I watched over you last night,” she said finally. “And I’m going to try and keep an eye on you because that’s my job anyway. Because you’re my Challenger.”

  “Thank you, Breena,” I said gratefully. “I appreciate it. And I probably need it more than I know how to admit. But why were you sleeping on my chest?”r />
  “I got drowsy,” she said sheepishly. “And your pectoral muscles are like super-comfy now.”

  “What?” It was my turn to blush. Except for the fact that I never blush, ever, and anyone who says otherwise is a total liar.

  “Wes, I’m going to borrow one of your Earth expressions. You look like you ‘hit the gym.’ And you look like you hit it so hard, you knocked it on its bum.”

  “Really?” I asked, looking down at myself. “How? That doesn’t make any sense.”

  I pulled up my sleeve and found muscles that were even more toned than the ones I had during my football days.

  Body development off of Earth is a little tricky. Before my torture, my body’s Strength, Constitution and Dexterity were all in the 30s, higher than the rating that the greatest athletes back home would have, but I didn’t really look that different. That was largely due to the fact that my projected body only sent back a small portion of its gains to my original body. The result was that I just looked like I had started working out again.

  Now, though, my arm looked like it was full of coiled power, and my stomach felt like it had gained four or six more abdominal muscles. My build was still a little on the slender side, but every muscle I could notice had undergone several degrees of toning. It baffled me completely, because I had no idea where all of it had come from.

  “I don’t understand,” I said out loud. “How can this happen? I didn’t look like this when I was breaking out of prison.”

  “Well, how many Rises have you undergone? Your mind and body reconditions after a certain number.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked her.

  “I mean there are certain stages of your growth,” my fairy friend explained. “I was going to talk to you about that as soon as you were done trying to get me to teach you EVERYTHING YOU COULD POSSIBLY EVER LEARN AT ONCE OH MY LOST GODS THAT WAS SO ROUGH—ahem,” the fairy cleared her throat. “Sorry that slipped out. Back on topic. At any rate, when people overcome their Challenges enough to Rise more than five times, they begin to change in new ways. It’s not super-drastic, and the person in question is usually the last to notice their own change. But it happens, whether they notice it or not.”

  “Really?” I asked. “Um, I’m not going to get spiky blonde or anything, am I?”

  “What?” Breena blinked at me. “No. Of course not. Not unless it’s somehow related to the Challenges you had to overcome to get to your sixth Rise. When you go from Spark to Flash.”

  “Gonna need you to elaborate on some of those words, Breena. Because I don’t remember playing with a fire-starter kit.”

  “See, that’s basically what you’re doing though,” the fairy explained. “What we call Rising is the process of something inside of you elevating and creating a unique kind of light. People of all races, even certain fairies like myself, have been speculating on what exactly that light is, but we can all confirm it’s there. You should be able to feel it just a little. Before your sixth Rise, it was probably too faint for you to notice. Just little sensations of something trying to start up inside of you, like an actual spark going off without being able to catch on something. Now, though, you should be feeling something inside of you briefly activating, like a flash of fire or other light briefly catching, then going out. It’s trying to circulate through you, so that it can be another type of fuel to power you, deepen you, and awaken dormant parts of yourself.”

  “Dormant parts… what?” I asked. “What could that even mean?”

  “I mean that there are parts of people that come alive the more they Rise,” Breena explained. “Well, people, animals, even spritefolk like me. Though Stell designed me to be tied to a Challenger’s own Rising. The thing is, just like a human child gains more awareness as their body grows, a person of any age gains awareness as they Rise from Challenges or other difficulties. What they gain depends on the person, although Stell and I have been able to chart most of the changes. Does that make sense?”

  “A little,” I admitted. “Honestly, though, none of this really happens on Earth. We have a faint idea of how muscles can be conditioned, and how difficulties can make a person mature. Our games even feature how a person can gain levels from winning battles. But the rest is counterintuitive to me.” I shook my head. “We spend a large part of our time examining the long-term effects of trauma, and…” I took a breath. “How it can inhibit us for the rest of our lives. How to work and deal with it. The idea of my suffering changing me for the better.” I shook my head. “It’s new. And it goes against everything I’ve learned on Earth.”

  During my captivity, I had grasped onto the idea of my suffering giving me more power. I had used that as a lifeline to eventually escape from Rhodes’ people back in the dungeon. And even then, it had been a close thing. It had taken a very specific set of circumstances as well as a certain conversation with my childhood enemy to be able to both activate that power and put it to use. Then I had used that power to get myself and others to a safe place. Now that my life wasn’t in danger anymore, I was looking to the idea that I had grabbed onto earlier, and wondering how the hell it was supposed to work.

  “Yeah,” Breena said quietly. “I know. The other Challengers talked about that. This past age, your people have focused on something called post-traumatic stress. It’s real. I don’t want to make you think otherwise. But that’s not all there is, Wes. Not even on Earth. Stell’s checked. Even on Earth your people can experience something call post-traumatic growth. Meaning it’s possible to change beneficially in spite of the fact that something horrible happened, where the person is more, not less, after suffering. That’s a thing too, Wes. I’m going to do everything possible to help you realize that,” she said, sniffing quickly and squaring her shoulders. “Because I’m not just your fairy, I’m your friend.”

  “Thank you,” I said back, also quietly. “I hope to find all of that. From what you’re saying though, I’ve already changed a bit.”

  Breena nodded.

  “I can tell without getting your permission to see certain things, but it looks like you’ve completed your sixth Rise now.”

  “I’m not sure,” I replied. “I… lost most of the progress I had gained from doing Stell’s Challenges after everything that happened in the dungeon.” Even after Breena’s little pep talk, the experience was still hard to bring up. “When they brought me here in my original body, to kill me one more time, I tried to Rise again, and I immediately went to my third Rise. I’m still not sure how I lost my first five Rises, and I’m still not sure how my surviving all the torture counted as overcoming Challenges. But getting to my third Rise allowed me to clear the Malus Order’s building, destroy their portal, and rescue all the prisoners. Then I tried to do another Rise and… and you’ve been blinking at me for like fifteen seconds. What’s up?”

  “Um…” Breena said, then she just closed her eyes and sighed. “Somehow I forgot about this part of working with you. Let’s go back to the very top, where you said you came over in your original body.”

  “Yes,” I said clearly. “This is me,” I waved my hand, “not a projected body. This is the Wes Malcolm Mark I, in the literal flesh, delivered straight to your front door. Free shipping courtesy of my former captors and their creepy portal network.”

  Going through that thing was yet another nightmare that I was currently suppressing.

  “So you’re still a Challenger, and in your original body?” she asked very carefully. “I’m just checking, because that’s a new level of impossible, even for you, Wes.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “And in my defense I had zero control over the experience. What do we have to worry about concerning that fact?”

  My little fairy friend took another deep breath.

  “Hoookay,” she said with a sigh. “What do we have to worry about. Okay, time for an explanation. Again,” she held up a hand, “initially, when Stell was able to have people visit here in projected bodies, they actually grew more slowly than people native t
o our worlds. But when they undertook her calls for aid and became Challengers, their growth surpassed that of all of the normal races. The only difference is that your Traits wouldn’t increase automatically with each Rise.” She saw confusion, and beat me to my own question. “I mean, that, for instance, dwarves automatically get a free point to their Constitution every time they Rise, most elves get a bonus to their Dexterity, and so on. What humans get depends on the world and some other stuff. But at any rate, the point is you already outpaced everyone else’s growth in your projected body, because you were a Challenger. You got more skill points and Trait points per Rise, and it was also easier for you to raise those same abilities through practice and exercise.”

  “I remember us talking about how my gains were higher,” I said with a nod. “It seemed unfair to me at that time.”

  “It wasn’t supposed to be fair,” Breena grumbled. “You weren’t getting stronger to compete in a tournament or something, Wes. You were getting stronger so that you could save worlds. Why would we care about fairness in face of saving millions and billions of lives?”

  “Right,” I said with another nod. “I remember that conversation too.”

  “Now granted,” Breena added with another shudder. “I didn’t expect you to take such horrible advantage of that fact. I mean good grief, Wes. Most other Challengers just stuck to a few skills, strengths and techniques. And it worked out great for them.”

  “That didn’t make sense either,” I argued. “I mean they had to know up front that they got to take some of the power they gained back home, right?”

  “Yes, Wes,” Breena said patiently. “They gained a reasonable amount, took it back home, and were happy. They didn’t show up here every. Single. Night. To train. And when they hit a limit on their skills or Traits? They rested. Until their next Rise, when they could more easily raise it again. They didn’t go ‘Huh, I guess since I hit a limit on one skill, I guess it’s time to work on another three or four! And while I’m at it, I’ll see if I can break that one limit too, because waiting for my next Rise to get stronger is for normal people and suckers!’”