This content might touch on topics that are sensitive or triggering for some readers. Trigger Warning for mentions of gore, violence, nightmares, cannibalism, horror, etc.

First there is a smouldering heat. A scatter of coals across the ground, a distant glow along the horizon. Teased with a breath, a whisper, red-hot glowing brighter, fire-orange, scorching. Skilled paws that tempt the flame higher, higher, until it is no smoulder but a raging inferno.

Hot, hot, too hot — the massive beast groans in his sleep, shifting uneasily as the nightmares blanket his mind. Draven has made a critical error, giving in to the bone-deep exhaustion. Between his injuries, the subsequent weakness, a notable lack of a proper meal, and his activities with the snow wolf goddess, he could not fight any longer.

Bjorn crooned a gentle lullaby and eventually those liquid pools of silver closed and darkness reigned once more. Darkness that was —

burning, burning; licking at the treetops and disturbing the flock. They take flight in a cascade of oily feathers, and then he is there, soaring, diving. The landscape twists and shifts and warps as he approaches the first pride. Laughing children, lionesses with swollen bellies, boasting of their prosperity. Lazy men, fat and happy, oblivious to the looming danger.

Shadows grow and consume, casting the land in to darkness, birthing the beast from flame with an ominous laugh.

Befriending them in a whirl of rapidly changing images, before he lay ruin upon them. Chaos made more sweet by the addition of betrayal, as he abused the women and tore the children to shreds. Bathing in the blood of innocents, coating himself in their entrails as He drove their crying mothers in to the dirt.

Men made to watch, eyelids stolen by the ink-black flock, forever wide-eyed and screaming.

Pride after pride, land after land, growing bold and careless in his greed. Swallowing them whole beneath the knowing eye of the ageless moon, watering the ground with their blood. Bathing in it, all with that poisonous laughter on his lips.

Reaching for the too-soft fur of the innocents, a whirl of claws and teeth and vicious snarling sounds and pleasurable groans. Relentless, vicious, brutal; body after body, flesh torn to ribbons, chests cracked wide to pluck out still-beating hearts.

Endless hunger driving those claws onward, forward, to the next and the next and the next.

Grasping, tearing, ripping; his claws —

— are a maelstrom. Mental made physical, terrors brought to reality with a vicious snarl, a whirl of flesh, a tornado of fury. Blinded, caught between a nightmare and reality, his mind unable to differentiate the two. Balancing on the edge, the cusp, descending in to madness. Panicked sounds punctuate the quiet, laying waste to the peace of the hidden grotto.

Marks on the wall and the floor and the furniture — but this is not his bedroom. There is no ice wall to meet his claws, no bedside table to greet his teeth.

There is only moss
and fern
and flesh
and fur
and snow
and madness.

she awakes softly, slowly.

it is sweet, truly, how he coaxes her from slumber. gently do his paws twitch, his body trembling; the beginnings of his nightmarish visions are easily mistaken for him shaking her by the shoulders. a little noise of discontentment rumbles from her throat, not wanting to wake just yet — despite herself, despite everything, she does not ever sleep as well as she does with the brothers. whether it’s wrapped up in her own bedfurs and harou, or here in the strange grotto with @Draven at her side, slumber holds her tight and does not want to let go.

but, ah.

she has no choice.

quickly, his gentle hands become curling claws and she gasps, eyes flying open. it is far, far too late to stop what is happening, what has already happened. the eye might be awash in visions, but it seems as though they’ve leeched into her — coaxing her into a false sense of reality. one that quickly splinters as raw, piercing pain shoots through her, slamming through her delicate frame.

( fern and moss, flesh and fur; there is one thing that you have forgotten, draven —)

her cry is silent, gasping, as his claws find her throat. it’s a glancing blow but it is terrible, blood welling in the path of his claws. they tear and rend, blood splattering hotly down her front and his, staining their mattress of this little isolated honeymoon and the ground below is quickly painted red. awashed in the blood of the lamb, her gaze meets his — seeing the moment that reality focuses his eyes, the exact same time that hers go glassy.

( —there is also all that blood. )

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Screaming -- always there is screaming. Agonized cries as claws rend flesh apart, teeth driving deep in to muscle, glancing across bone. Pained shouts, gurgling moans, but worse than that is the wailing of grief and loss.

It is the soundtrack of his sleep, the horrified yelling, the guttural sobs plucked from the heart and soul of His victims. Trauma heaped upon the too-soft mothers as he possesses every bit of them while gnawing on parts of their children.

Screaming, and then silence.
Detached, empty, traumatized silence.

Blissful, almost, when there is only soft sobs and --

-- gasps.

Oh and blood! So much blood! He aches for it, yearns for it, even in the tangled monstrosities of his nightmares. Rumbling groans as it splatters across his tongue, and it is the taste that wakes him.

It is too real. Too vivid. Too satisfying.
(his dreams never satisfied like that)

-- so much blood --

He jolts in to awareness, jerked from walking sleep to sharp reality. Draven is awake, but is he not still dreaming? With all this blood?


His gaze drops to his chest, to where it has splattered, and he lifts a sharp-clawed hand to drag through the thick spray. Puzzlement, confusion, distress; a tumble of emotions as his brow furrows and he struggles to make sense of it all. Why was there so much blood?

Realization reaches him slowly, as if he must wade through mud (or viscera, gore, entrails, fur, pieces) to gather it. When it does he shudders again, and focuses on her. On her, just in time to watch the life slip from her eyes. Oh and surely it must be a dream for there are those screams, again. The ones birthed from the hearts of loved ones, agonized, traumatized.

Draven does not realize that they come from him.

He is too busy lunging forward, grasping at her, fumbling. "Tell me what to do," he pleads, he begs, as true panic leeches in to his voice for the first time, ever. "Tell me," and now he is barking, angry, scared as he plucks the moss from the ground and presses it against the vivid slash on her throat, desperate to shield the world from such horror.

"Please," a whisper, a prayer, mumbled over and over in to the ruin of the grotto; begging for guidance (for mercy) from the Goddess he has slain.

time seems to freeze.

her thoughts are slow, heavy, tumbling around her head. yet there is a not a single coherent one in the bunch. it is flashes of feelings, of vague understanding — why is she so hot, suddenly? why is the ground below her solid and warm, and not the caverns? why doe she feel so weird? and certainly there is no realization yet, no understanding of the morning that has dawned before them. she grasps at reality, grasps at the world that just refuses to come into focus; it’s only when her eyes meet his does something click.

and then —

the clock is ticking.

reality slams bodily in, a physical thing. and, hot on its heels, so does panic. a keen pulls from her, high-pitched and sharp; it is a sound borne solely from fear. red-hot, electric fear — it courses through her veins, sparking with electricity, as her hands tremble and raise. her movement is slow, sluggish — her paw bumps against his, as @Draven has beat her to the punch. she pushes her own paw against his hand, weakly — an answer in its own right. keep pressure, stop the bleeding. was she still bleeding? all she can smell is copper and all she can see is red; it splatters so prettily across his mane, sure to dye the lighter strands with its essence. wouldn’t that look nice? wouldn’t that —

she doesn’t hear his words, can’t hear them. not over the sound of his screams and the muffled rush of her own blood in her ears. it’s as if the world has been turned down low, muted against her will. she hears her heart pounding, a stubborn creature even still, and her other hand goes to the satchel around her neck. or, well, it used to be around her neck. it’d blocked some of draven’s attack and in his state, he’d rended it, tearing the strap clear in half. instead it lays in the space between them and she reaches her paw in, searching blindly.

wrap — she wheezes, the word gurgling out from ruined throat; she cannot find what she’s looking for, cannot find the fur she keeps in her satchel for this exact situation. she can’t look down to see because his paw is in the way, and she cannot look away from him. the little wolf knows, with every fiber of her being, that if she looks away from him now, she will die.

( she knows, of course, that his hand beneath hers grows slippery with her own blood, so she might bleed out, regardless. but his gaze is a lifeline she clings to, desperate; furious with stubbornness and the will to live. )

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Fear has a unique flavour. It coats his tongue in a bitterness, burning through the tastebuds. It is sharp and acidic (as if he had chewed a lemon, whole) and the sour taste makes his toes curl. This is not the welcome fear of conquer -- that has an entirely different taste, cloying and sickly sweet -- but the fear that lurks in shadows and corners. Monsters beneath the bed, pulling at your sheets, creeping elongated figures up to snatch at toes and fingers.

This is the fear of nightmares and he is drowning in it.

Draven coughs, chokes, his paws awkward and clumsy. Bjorn is not a beast for saving, he does not possess the delicate (feminine) touch of the snow-soft maiden. His claws are created to ruin and rend, to tear and shred with no thought to the after.

(until the after pulls screams from his throat; until the after drags his heart from his chest and crushes it beneath an inky black weight)

Faolan panics and so, too, does he. As if it is contagious it slides beneath his skin, entering through --
his eyes (that see her, spread before him, coated in blood)
his ears (that hear her plaintive cries, her wheezing directions)
his nose (that smells the copper in the air and the fear that accompanies it)
his tongue (that can still taste her, sweet, fresh, crisp, perfect, stained forever with her blood)
his skin (that presses sodden moss to a wound that won't stop, won't stop, won't stop)

WHY WON'T IT STOP!?

Faolan fumbles with a single word gurling from her throat, reaching for the satchel, an action so familiar he knows it instantly. Ice eyes have not strayed from her until then, flicking down and then away, searching, searching

-- oh, and how he had wanted to tear it from her neck, to lay it bare before the world.
not like this... not like this --

he spots the damned thing and it is a lifeline for his clumsy paws, reaching, digging, looking for the pieces that he only recognizes from her own handiwork. (it has fallen aside, cast off in his chaos, tatters that barely cling to his leg). with a paw still pressed against her neck, pointedly looking away from the blood that floods over his toes, he grasps the (too-soft) fur from her possession, holding it up for a second (triumphant) before his eyes return to her.

to her, to her -- with apologies still pouring from his lips, fear clawing up his throat -- his broken Goddess.

never again do his eyes stray. not as he grasps more moss from the ground (he noticed how it soaked up the blood, thought that might be pertinent) and swaps it for the ruined piece he had first used. casting it aside, replacing it, and using two paws to press the fur over top.

"stay with me, don't you dare leave me, fao." quiet murmurs, likely unheard over the roar of blood in his ears (and hers?), himself barely aware that they have gone from thought to tongue.

"i need you," admissions poured so carelessly as he holds the fur in place and his ears perk forward, desperate for her guidance.

the moss helps to absorb the blood, sopping it up and pulling it away. what doesn’t get caught by the moss dribbles down her, painting the front of her chest a brilliant crimson. it’s almost pretty, the way it stands out against her wintry fur, but there’s nothing pretty about the way she gasps. struggles to pull breath into her lungs, struggles to keep her heart pounding at an even clip. how funny, then, that her eyes are the one thing that works perfectly — lingering on him, holding him tight. her eyes for the eye.

until, of course, he looks away. he has to. still she whimpers, an unintentional noise pulling from her chest, an answer to the physical loss of his eyes upon her. she wants to glance down and see what he’s doing but she can’t, she can’t; it’s only until her hand is pushed aside as his other one replaces it that she knows. the press of different fur is there and she lets out a noise, pained and terrible, as she leans into the touch. pressing as hard as she can into it as he holds it steady and true — swallowing down only some of the whimpers that follow. there’s no stopping the tears though, they fall unimpeded, tracking their way down plush fur and blood splatter.

it doesn’t hurt as much as it should, she knows, realizes belatedly. was that shock? or was she truly dying?

no. no.

she can’t. not here, with him — not here, in this grotto hidden behind a waterfall. what of sheol? sheol would never know what happened; more selfishly, faolán would never again spend a night curled up at her sister’s side. the thought is unthinkable even as her shoulders shake harder, blown pupils fading still. her eyes remain open, though, and she presses closer to draven — to encourage the blood flow to slow and stop, to pull comfort from the man who’d slit her open in the first place.

s-sap, she wheezes out, stuttering terribly over it — it might be a simple word, but it sounds like it’s been pulled from her throat with physical force. a terrible thing, to be sure, but her hand twitches towards the satchel still. slather the sap on to help glue her skin together, to help stop the flow of blood still oozing from underneath his paw. she can’t see how bad it is, can’t see if it’s all useless to try in the end, but her heart pounds still and refuses to stop. that’s all she can think of to do, her thoughts so scrambled, but —

still, she does not look away from him. still, she holds onto him.

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seconds tick away, minutes pass and he does not stop. draven works dutifully despite his clumsy paws, heart lodged firmly in his throat. it pounds hard, there, choking him with his own panic and fear.

oh and that sour taste never truly leaves, not even when he grasps the fur she needs, not even when she presses back against his touch. there is not enough force to relieve him; her touch is weak, fluttering, lacking the usual bite.

-- what he wouldn't give for her sharp touch again, for her claws on his flesh, pulling his blood from beneath the skin. not the other way around, it was never meant to be the other way around.

the grotto swallows her whimpers and cries and it nearly kills him to tear his gaze from her, to find what he needed amidst the unknown herbs. draven makes a mess of her tidy little satchal (ruined, bloodied, destroyed) and there is a distant knowing that she will be angry. he fixates on this for a minute, thinking of how he will have disappointed her, clinging to the vision of an angry faolan if only to erase the reality of a dying one.

(why won't it stop!?)

"shh," he murmured, as if he might soothe her. the beast long tamed, here, away from the prying eye of his God. soft and gentle, with a needy ache to erase her pains and fears and sorrows. "it's okay. i'll fix this. i'll fix you..." promises spilling from his tongue, melted-ice eyes boring in to hers. catching them again, holding them tight, refusing to look away. not for anything.

--

time was irrelevant. draven would have worked for hours if that was what it had taken; in reality it was scarcely even one. his work is messy, sloppy, untrained, but in the end the bleeding stems (the scar will not be pretty, the sap was too sticky and the blood too slippery) and he manages to follow her instructions. mostly.

he doesn't look away from her; not once. and once her neck is bound he gathers moss from their ruined bed and wipes it, tenderly across her chest. as if he might erase the stain he had made; as if he might undo the damage he had done. swipe after swipe in an almost desperate way to clean away the blood that had splattered across them both.

"i'm so sorry," unsure if she is even awake to hear his mournful gasp; hoping she sleeps, rests, and does not see the tears that slide down his cheeks.

his mouth moves and still she does not hear him. the shapes his mouth makes, too, make no sense to her. it’s as if he’s speaking from under the water, all garbled and nonsensical noises. if she knew what he was saying, if she understood the intent behind those words, maybe the little wolf would find some sort of pleasure in it all. yet there is nothing but the clawing panic, a body fighting to keep itself afloat and alive; there is nothing but this, and then —

time passes strangely. it goes in leaps and bounds, yet she observes it dully. the same type of queer interest you might give to a passing television screen. she stares at @Draven if only because nothing else makes sense; it feels as though this is all happening to someone else, somewhere else. another dream, maybe, but instead of harou warming her bed it’s her own blood. it feels like gallons and gallons of the stuff, she feels weak and her pulse sounds thready to her own ears, but there's no real way to tell. she thinks she speaks to him, thinks she offers instructions but she has no idea; she is awash, drifting in and out, until much later.

by the time the wound stops oozing blood, she is a nightmare to behold. blood cakes into her fur, mats already forming, and she is exhausted. she knows it’s her own body trying to protect her ( much like her mind, too, throws up guards to keep her from truly comprehending ); shock was a wonderful thing, when used to her advantage. yet the little wolf is too tired, too broken, to even think of such a thing.

she comes back to herself in bits and pieces. warmth startles her, eyes focusing to see draven looming. his cheeks are wet ( she does not notice this ), his voice is fraught ( she does not notice this ), and he is still here ( she does notice this ). a questioning noise rumbles from her but it’s quiet, muffled — it hurts to speak, to allow her chest any movement. still a paw raises, a halfhearted attempt to gingerly touch the bandages he’s done — as if going to inspect his work. her arm doesn’t quite raise and cannot quite reach.

belatedly she realizes that the wound must not have been too terrible, because she is still alive. had his claws hit her any other way, she would’ve bled out right in this grotto — nothing draven would have done would have stopped it. maybe the satchel had taken the brunt of it? or maybe it was simply fate guiding his hand.

fate.

what a cruel thing....

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draven had not dared leave her. not once, not even when she snagged moments of rest and silence. there were minutes where he thought her asleep where he reached for bits of wet moss nearby, thinking of what he might need and what she might ask. he had gathered the bits and pieces of her satchel, tidying what he can, organizing it as best as he is capable.

there are snippets of lucidity where he realizes what he is doing and scoffs, mentally. laughing at himself for being so soft, so gentle, his inner voice making a cruel mockery of it all. the mighty God bending to the whims of a maiden, too weak to let her die (as if he had not slaughtered so many before her). a mighty God using moss and furs and sap, his toes sticky with it. but --

still he does not leave her.
still his eyes hold tight to hers (when they are open).
still he rests his paw upon her, as if afraid she'd disappear the moment he could not touch her.

eventually her eyes focus, and he rumbles a soft sound, a quiet acknowledgement that bears more emotion that she likely ever thought him capable of. it is a saving grace that she would surely not hear it, not when she is so worn and broken before him.

"shh," he repeats, abandoning the moss (and his cleaning) to grasp her too-small paw, doling out a firm squeeze that he thinks is meant to be reassuring. or something like that. draven fumbles his way through all of it, a lost child given a test he never studied for. "it'll heal." he says as if he is certain. he speaks as if he does not doubt himself or his hack-job of bandaging.

apologies rise behind his teeth and yet now he bites them back, afraid of the lucidity in her eyes and the knowing that she would hear them clearly. "i didn't mean..." instead there are excuses, explanations, a half-managed gesture accompanied with a pained expression. wide eyes that stubbornly cling to hers, searching for something in their mismatched depths.

"i'll get you water," he offers, because he cannot stand to bear whatever silence might loom between them.

because he needed to do something to make this better.

her arm cannot quite raise and it’s so strange, so alien, to not be in control of her body. it is different than the times before; wild and wanton in her bedfurs or on this very mattress, or howling with bloodlust and a hunger so deep and demanding it drowned out everything else. nothing compared to this, the weakness, the throbbing pain that only grows and grows the more she’s aware of it. the more she’s awake, and she is awake now.

how funny, then, that this is what the bjorn brothers do best:

they pull the wool from her eyes, and show her the world.

his hand catches her own and he gives a little squeeze, strangely comforting given the circumstances. it makes her stop trying to paw at the bandage he’s wrapped around her, and makes her focus solely on him again. again, as if she’s ever looked at anything but im. her face, open and waifish, tilts up towards @Draven, ears twitching at his words. at his voice, low and almost… soft. scared?

inside her chest, her traitorous heart pounds. alive, alive.

the moment stretches, taut as a rubber-band, and then it snaps. a noise rumbles from her throat as he turns, unable to move her body to still him but she hopes her voice will do it for her. after all, he listens to her sometimes — even if she is not in control, here. and, looking at him, she doubts he is either. still, the little trill echoes softly in the grotto, and when she speaks, it’s with heavy effort. her voice is soft, thready — her ruined throat twitches beneath the weight of it, sparking a fresh wave of pain:

why?

why had he done it?

why had he saved her?

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