Chapter 156 The Fenwalker

Chapter 156 The Fenwalker
Zuri's composure went first, then everything under it.

The scepter slipped from his grip and clattered against the floor. He dropped to his knees, eyes burning with something too large to be simple awe.

Before him, radiating an aura that pressed against the air itself, stood a twenty-foot wolf. Mist curled slowly off its fur, and its eyes burned like twin torches set into the dark.

Fenris.

No — more than Fenris had ever been. Its power dwarfed every wolf Zuri had ever felt in his long life. This was not a wolf among wolves. This was the progenitor of all of them. The Wolf Spirit itself, given form.

"Zuri?" Yuna stared, just as stricken.

"It's the Fenwalker." His voice broke around the words, tears already tracing his cheeks. "The collective spirit of all wolves. Warchief Shuma Akula is the Fenwalker."

"What?" Yuna's gasp carried across the space between them. "That's... impossible. How could..."

The Fenwalker shifted, slow and silent, its great bulk folding down into something smaller. Something human.

"My father died at the hands of the Primordial Darkness." The words came out of Zuri in pieces.

"I never knew." Yuna's voice softened. "I'm so sorry, Zuri."

"But the Fenwalker?" A broken laugh escaped him, tears still falling. "An exalted being, my father?"

The form finished settling.

It was, without question, Warchief Shuma — broad through the shoulders, hair braided tight, a grey beard threaded with beads, the crimson still burning in his eyes that had always marked his authority. His bear-hide cloak stirred in the cold wind.

He dropped to one knee.

"Please, rise." Zuri crossed to him and caught him by the shoulders before he could finish the bow. "You will not kneel to me."

"I must." Chief Shuma didn't move. "I stand here for the Allfather, in a time when the world needs every hand it can find. Let me serve. Give me a role, god of the Darkmoon, as you have given every other."

"Father. It's really you." The tears came again, harder this time.

"Zuri?" Something cracked in Shuma's voice too — recognition, sudden and overwhelming. "Is that truly..."

Zuri laughed through the wreckage of his composure, the boy underneath the god surfacing for just a moment. "It's me. It's really me."

Shuma stood, still staring like the sight might dissolve if he blinked. "I..." He never finished. Zuri had already pulled him into an embrace too tight to argue with.

"I thought I would never see you again." He sobbed openly now, with no thought at all for who might be watching, what title he wore.

Shuma smiled, an expression Zuri had never once seen cross his father's face while he lived.

"You shouldn't weep over an old warrior like me, son. Where's your dignity?" He pulled back just far enough to look at him properly.

Zuri wiped his face with the back of his hand. "I've held it in for so long. They tell us we're supposed to be strong. It was never easy. You left when we needed you the most."

"I left when it was my time to leave, son. There was no coincidence in it." Shuma studied him, something like pride breaking through the grief in his face. "Look at you now. You've grown into more than I could have hoped. The Darkmoon. By the Allfathers, I could not be prouder of you."

"A lot has happened since you've been gone, Father. This is who I am now."

"I can see that plainly." Shuma set a hand on his head, allowing himself the small, human luxury of simply touching his son.

"How..." Yuna stepped forward, hesitant. "How did this happen?"

Shuma turned to her and folded into a formal bow. "Trivia."

"Father, this is Yuna." Zuri's laugh came out embarrassed now, almost boyish. "The moon girl I told you about, in secret, back when I still could."

Confusion and awe crossed Shuma's face in equal measure as his gaze swept from his son to the three burning faces layered behind Yuna's own.

"By the Allfathers. Son, she is Trivia's Priestess?"

"I am Trivia now, Warchief Shuma." Yuna's voice carried warmth despite the weight of the moment. "I never knew of your passing. It never once reached me. No one told me. It totally eluded my sight."

"Son, you have an eye for the very best of them." Shuma laughed, and something in the sound was almost boyish itself. "Gods, I feel human again. What is this feeling?"

"But how did it happen?" Yuna pressed, gentle but insistent.

"When I passed," Shuma began, "I did not cross into the halls of Valhalla, as we were always promised. In truth, there was no Asgard left to cross into. I was all that remained. Where the ethereal plane was meant to stand, there was only darkness. Eternal, and starving."

"The Primordial Darkness." Zuri's voice had gone quiet.

"Yes. The pantheon of the Allfathers had already fallen, its gods scattered to every corner that would have them. Odin hid himself away in the World Tree, where all paths still converge. My spirit was drawn there, called by his own hand. He was never a god of many words, he never needed to be. One look told me everything he wanted of me. He gave me the mantle of the Fenwalker: Save the wolf-kin. Become their collective spirit. Stand ready to serve the hand that would one day save this world."

"Odin chose you," Yuna said quietly.

"He judged me worthy of it, Holy Trivia. And I intend to carry that judgment through to its end. So, son, let me be of use."

Zuri nodded, slow. "There is so much I want to tell you. It can wait, I think."

"And I will be glad to hear every word of it, son, when this war is won." Shuma set his jaw. "Until then, make me your weapon. Give me my task, my Lord."

Zuri nodded again, and the godhood settled back over him, his tears drying from his face as it did.

"Great Fenwalker. Protect the wolf-kin with your life. Fight for the Selkaharin with fire and fury. In the name of the Darkmoon, trample the army of Darkness wherever you find it. This is your charge now."

Shuma answered with a low, rumbling growl of assent. "As you wish." He gave one final bow, and his form unraveled back into the Fenwalker's great shape.

A single huff, loud and final, and the mist around him began to curl and gather. He surged away, leaving behind a gust of wind and a trailing line of light that lingered long after he had gone.

"We need to go," Yuna said, watching Zuri, who still hadn't looked away from the horizon where the light trail was fading.

"Zuri?"

"I'm with you." He blinked, pulled back into the present. "I can see Erebus now. He's watching. Waiting. He's expecting us."

"Then let's answer the invitation." Yuna struck her staff against the ground, and light rose around them both, circling tight. "Erebus will get exactly what he asked for. Served on a platter of gold."

"Alright." He stepped close and took her hands in his. "Let the Darkmoon meet the Darkness. One on one."

The light around them swelled into a pillar of roaring flame.

"Zuri." Yuna's voice reached him through the vanishing fire. "That foolproof plan of yours, the one you gave your subjects, to take on the Primordial Darkness and bind it. Was that the truth? Or were you hiding the real one from all of them?"

The pillar of flame collapsed to nothing.

And both of them were gone.