Four More

Andrev’s head was filled with the sickening crunch and creak as Kir severed the first of his five little horns. His entire life, Andrev had avoided touching them, looking at them, acknowledging they were even there. He’d never sensed cold or heat with them - they were like fingernails.

He’d never expected the pain.

Andrev thrashed, screaming and begging and pleading, clawing at Kir to make him stop, but he could feel something inside him curling up, shuddering, withdrawing. The earth beneath him roiled, and the sky turned black.

The other hunters watched.

“Four more to go,” the blonde woman said.

Each

Kir dropped down, planted one knee on Andrev’s chest and pressed. Andrev writhed, tried to dislodge him. Kir grinned and brought the knife lower.

“Do it,” the blonde woman said.

Kana cried out. “Don’t do it - no --”

Andrev didn’t want to think of her, couldn’t think of her, gaze fixed on the blood-stained gold coming closer and closer.

“You’re not a gift from the gods,” Kir said, voice low, almost gentle. “You’re just an animal.” And he hacked.

Andrev screamed. His entire being was on fire. He could feel each scrape of the blade against his flesh, his bones.

Once More

“Andrev!” Kana cried. She was sprawled across the grass, body broken, bleeding. She heaved herself up on her hands, dragged herself toward him.

He shook his head. No. She’d betrayed him, pretended to die, turned him into the monster he’d told himself he wasn’t. But her eyes were wide, pleading, and she was crying.

“Andrev, don’t --”

Kir kicked him in the ribs, spun him over onto his back. Andrev lay there, panting, gazing up at him.

“Not so strong now, are you, beast?” Kir leaned over and sneered, his breath foul, features twisted with hate.

The earth trembled once more.

Won't Last Long

Andrev’s eyes went wide, the breath driven from his lungs even as the searing pain buried itself between his shoulder blades. He staggered forward, landed on his knees. He twisted to look over his shoulder, eyes wide, and saw Kir, who looked shocked and triumphant, clutching a gleaming golden blade.

Gold.

Andrev willed his body to shift shape, to shake off the wound, but it wouldn’t respond. He could feel his power constricting, tightening in his chest, unable to obey his call.

“You were right,” Kir said to the blonde woman.

“I know,” she said. “But it won’t last long.”

She Smiled

The blonde woman signaled, and the remaining shapechangers moved into battle formation. Andrev crouched, ready to spring, ready to take on any form. He charged first. Even as an animal he was lightning fast. He was tiger, wolf, bear, hawk, lion, eagle, slashing, biting, tearing, clawing.

A cacophony of animal growls and roars rent the air, but Andrev ignored them, reveling in the quicksilver sensation of going from shape to shape without stopping. When he returned to his human form, the ground was littered with bodies.

The blonde woman looked pale, shocked.

“I don’t believe you,” Andrev said.

She smiled.

Believe Me

“No,” Rastaban said. One of the men lunged at him, turned into a bear midair. Three more creatures dove at Kana, and Andrev could only watch as they fell on her and tried to tear her apart.

“It’s true,” the blonde woman said, “we would not have found you but for the witches and their magic. But that matters no longer. Your time here is ended. No one creature is meant to have the power you have.”

“If you want to end my power, you will have to finish it yourself,” Andrev said.

The woman smiled. “Believe me, I will.”

Ours Is

“No,” Kana began, started toward him.

“I fought to avenge you,” he said. He turned to Rastaban. “You told me she was dead, that she -”

“I never asked you to avenge me,” Kana said.

Andrev felt rage boil in his chest. The ground shook. “I loved you!”

“That’s sweet,” the blonde woman cooed. “The little boy learned to love.” She sneered at Andrev. “You fool - our kind can never love a human. We do not love - it is not in our hearts. Ours is to create and destroy. And right now - it is our time to destroy you, five-horn.”

And Then He Realized

“You’re not stronger than us,” the blonde woman said, and she rose up from the fray of the other shapechangers. “We are the dragons, the spirits of the earth, the creatures of all forms. We are indestructible save to each other. Your petty magic cannot harm us.”

Rastaban flicked his wrist, and one of the men was thrown to the ground. “We don’t have petty magic,” he said.

Andrev felt his heard wrench. “Kana,” he said. “You were dead. I saw you --”

And then he realized. All those nights, all those dreams - they’d all been real. “Did you betray me?”

Neither of Them

Andrev spun around. He saw her standing on the edge of the fray, beautiful, alive. No. He’d seen her die. He’d seen Rastaban die. What was going on? Unless - unless neither of them were human.

Something about her was different. She didn’t have the same careless, mercurial air about her. The lucidness in her eyes was almost - frightening. The hunters turned and saw her as well, and Andrev heard some of them scream.

“She’s a ghost!”

“She’s a demon!”

“He turned her into a monster!”

“I am none of those,” Kana said. “I am human. I’m just stronger than you.”

If He Wasn't Careful

“Wait!” Kana cried, but Rastaban burst from the shadows, dove into the fray, laying about left and right with a broken spear he’d scooped up from a startled hunter.

Kana supposed it was better that he hadn’t gone straight to using his gift, because he’d likely kill everything in the vicinity if he wasn’t careful.

The wolves howled in pain, shifted back into human form, circled Rastaban. Andrev reappeared as a human moments later.

“Rastaban - you were dead! How --”

“We need you alive,” Rastaban said. “I’m here to help. Come on --”

“We?” Andrev asked.

“Kana,” Rastaban. “Kana needs you too.”

Going In

Andrev leapt into the sky, a fierce eagle, his shriek tearing through the air, but the crows were too many, outnumbered him. Feathers and blood spattered, and then a stag landed on the grass, took off running. The crows swooped, dove, and then a dozen wolves took off after the stag. The stag leapt mid-air, changed direction, and a lion landed in the midst of the wolves.

Yelps of pain made a sharp counterpoint to the fierce roar, and then hunters circled the mass of writhing bodies.

A wolf dissolved, reappeared as a snake.

Rastaban said, “I’m going in.”

To Them

Later Kana would reflect that it was called “a murder of crows” for a reason. Right then, she and Rastaban were riveted to the spot, watching in horror as Andrev’s own kind turned on him.

“How the hell did the hunters summon them?” Kana demanded. “They hated his kind and thought he was an aberration. How --”

And then she saw, on the edge of the crowd, Savva’s wife, clutching a poultice of herbs and chanting. A witch. Of course.

Rastaban dragged a hand through his hair. “They’ll kill him. What do we do?”

“Nothing,” Kana said. “To them we’re dead.”

The Balance of What Should Be

Andrev gazed, awed and confused, at the people who stood on the edge of his camp, an array of strangers dressed like foreign kings and queens from fairy stories, all of them with their heads held high, horns unhidden.

None of them had more than three horns.

“What brings you here?” he asked. “Dalinor is dead --”

“Kinslayer,” the woman spat.

“He was no kin of mine, that he abandoned me to these mortals,” Andrev said.

“You’ve ruined the balance of what should be,” the woman said, “and we are here to punish you.”

Then the air was filled with crows.

Understanding

On the eighth day, Andrev woke when a rock landed near his head. He’d dodged in his sleep, inhuman reactions lightning-fast, and then he saw a little girl standing at the edge of his camp. Her mother handed her another rock.

Andrev rose up, uncurling carefully. He twitched his hands, and then he had claws, ready for slashing.

“I thought we had an understanding,” he said.

A woman said, “You don’t understand anything. Not your power, not who you are. You waste your gifts - a petulant child.”

She was tall, lovely - but for the three horns marring her brow.

The Waiting

The next seven days that followed were fraught with even more tension than before, with the mortals tip-toeing around Andrev’s nest of furs and his cooking fire. On the second day, some of the hunters from various tribes began leaving kills by Andrev’s pallet - a brace of coneys, a pheasant, a string of half a dozen fish. Sometimes Andrev accepted them, sometimes not. Sometimes he lounged in tiger form, eyeing the mortals lazily, tracking them with his eyes, making them twitch as if they sensed his hunger, and others he was humanoid, a boy, weaving grass mats.

He waited.

One Authority

The answer, of course, was to break the sky. Clouds blotted out the sun, and the first peals of thunder were a pleasant counterpoint to the humans’ screams. Lightning struck, and fire broke out across the different camps, and people scattered.


Andrev headed toward the center of the camp, head held high. The humans darted out of his path.

“Hear me, mortals,” he said, and his voice carried over the din of the storm. “The time has come for you to reap what you have sown. From now on, there is one authority in this nation, and that is me.”

An Accord

Andrev hit the ground and rolled, shifted, and the spear was gone, the pain fading as the power washed over him. He rose to his feet in human form, and glee skittered down his spine when he saw the horror on the hunter’s face.

“Did you think you could wound me so easily?” he asked.

“Monster!” the man yelled.

Andrev rolled his eyes. “Yes, yes, why do you people insist on repeating yourselves?” He cracked his knuckles, curled his hands into fists. “We had an accord - you left me in peace, I left you in peace. That peace is broken.”

As Good a Time as Any

The woman began to wail. She swept her son into her arms and rocked back and forth, pleading.

Andrev gazed at them and wondered at how easy it would be, to become the monster they had always imagined him to be. Had they been right about him, or had their words been self-fulfilling prophecy? They had never seen him as human, and he supposed that now was as good a time as any to stop trying.

He leapt at the woman, changed midair. Teeth bared, jaws wide - he’d break her neck in an instant.

A spear pierced his side.

Don't You?

Andrev caught the stone midair before it could hit him; even now his own speed and reflexes surprised him. He studied it, curious, fascinated by the way the light glinted off the flecks of crystal buried in it. Then he looked at the little boy.

“Demon!” the boy shouted.

“Human,” Andrev said. He smiled when the ground shook. The boy’s mother screamed.

“Please, have mercy on my son!”

Andrev tilted his head to one side, curious, laughed. “How easily you ask for mercy, yet how unwilling you are to give it. I think this constitutes a broken truce, don’t you?”

Should Have Known

The truce lasted for a week, which was a full seven days longer than Andrev had expected it to last, or wanted it to last. Kana was dead, Rastaban was dead, and he’d had enough of these petty mortals and their hatred. He wanted to see if he could split the sky, and he was just waiting for them to give him an excuse.

The problem with these people was that they had learned to hate from childhood, so he should have known it would be a child who broke the truce.

A child who cast a stone at him.

First Command

Kana and Rastaban lay in the grass, watching as Andrev sprawled out across his own luxurious bed of furs on the edge of Kir’s camp. The hunters had buried Savva, and the rest of the tribes had been alerted. The demon in Andrev had been awakened, and the humans had a tenuous truce with him.

Kana had seen the hunters rattling their spears, and she suspected the truce wouldn’t last for long.

“Nice job you did on your first command,” Kana said. “Now he thinks we’re both dead.”

“Like you did so well,” Rastaban protested, defensive.

“You’re here, aren’t you?”

To Yours

Andrev considered her request. As an experiment, he held his breath, focused, and he was pleased when he felt the ground shake again. He could control it. Good. Maybe a bit of practice would sharpen the skill - and make the others keep their distance.

“I will let you live,” he said finally, and he saw Kir’s grip on his spear tighten. “Make no mistake, however, that I am letting you live. I could end you all at a moment’s notice.”

The hunters bobbed their heads.

“Good,” Andrev said. “Then leave me to my peace, and I’ll leave you to yours.”

Mercy?

Ket screamed and flung herself to the ground. Several hunters cried out, toppled over. Andrev roared again, felt the earth shake, and he realized he was the one doing it. He closed his eyes and felt energy - ten times the energy he felt when he changed - surge through him, and then he opened his eyes, look at Kir and Ket and the men who’d tried to kill him.

“Maybe I am a demon,” Andrev said. He stretched forth one hand, and the ground rumbled again. “What are you going to do to stop me?”

“Have mercy,” Ket begged. “Please, Andrev.”

Earth, Sky, World

His last ally. Dead. Andrev watched Rastaban’s body fall, and he paused. The hunters noticed his stillness and paused too. Andrev shimmered back into his human form and stared. Then he turned to the other hunters.

“You call me a monster, but I have never killed a defenseless man.”

“Demon!” Kir shouted. “You killed my father!”

Andrev pinned Kir with his gaze and was pleased to see him flinch. Then he threw his head back and screamed. He let the rage and grief pour out of him, into the earth, into the sky, and then he felt the world shake.

Sweeter Than Wine

Andrev threw his head back and roared, the sound utterly inhuman. He leapt, changed midair, and tackled Savva to the ground. The other hunters cried out as a wolf bore down on their leader.

It was simple to paw Savva’s jaw to expose his throat, to sink teeth into the soft flesh.

Hot blood tasted sweeter than wine.

Savva was dead before the hunters recovered enough to take a stab at Andrev, but he was already in a different form, on a different target.

Rastaban waded into the fray, calling for the hunters to stop.

One of them killed him.

Neither Are You

Savva raised his spear, poised to throw.

Andrev let his power curl through him once more, and then he had the claws of a tiger. He reached out, placed his foot squarely on Kir’s throat, and smirked when he thrashed.

“Kill me and your only son dies,” he said.

“Savva,” Ket pleaded.

“He’s a demon! He’d kill us all!’

“You tried to kill me first,” Andrev said.

Rastaban looked aggrieved. “Please, everyone, can we just calm down? We can talk about this like rational people --”

“He’s not a person,” Savva said, jabbing his spear at Andrev, “and neither are you.”

Only If

“Because he is my son!” Ket said.

“That’s no excuse,” Andrev said. “After all, I was supposed to be as your son. Am I not a gift from the gods? Did I not always bring bounteous food? Or am I a demon? You called me a demon for so long - perhaps your words made it so.” He let his power rip through him, and then wings - massive hawk wings - burst from his back.

His experimentation had earned him skills Dalinor had not known.

“Spare him!” Ket begged.

“I will,” Andrev said, “only if you spare me and the other Wanderers.”

Not Far Off

“Andrev!”

Rastaban’s voice broke over the din.

“His Wanderer accomplice!” Savva cried. “Kill him.”

Two hunters pivoted, loosed their spears. Rastaban lifted one hand and both spears shattered midair as if they’d been flung against a wall. Andrev blinked. He hadn’t realized Rastaban’s gift was that powerful.

“Andrev, don’t become a murderer, not for her,” Rastaban said.

“I’m already a monster,” Andrev said. “A murderer is not far off.”

“Please!” Ket, Savva’s wife, broke into the circle of hunters. “Please don’t kill my son!”

“Why shouldn’t I?” Andrev asked. “He would have killed me. Why does he deserve to live?”