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They chase the wolf back to his lair. It has been a long hunt through woods and ruins and so many wounds, but the end is near. She feels it in the shaking ground beneath her, in the blood coursing through her veins, in the thousands of voices that have guided her to this place. The Well, the Well - no wonder he did not want her to drink from it. She knows what no mortal born to a broken world should know. She knows how to bring down a god.
Arrows tipped with titan’s blood fly and pierce into his hide. Spells spoken at the beginning of time fly from her mouth and wrap around his limbs and pull, chains of smoke and ash from a civilization gone. Still the wolf rages back with teeth and claw even when a leg gives way, even as one of his many eyes is blinded, and she remembers the way he clutched to her so desperately too. Pride does not stop fighting until his transformation disintegrates and he is nothing more than an elf in tattered armor.
“Stop!” she shouts, stalling Sera’s arrow from finishing their kill.
Already the wounds across his body are healing as she kneels in front of him. Power still leeches from his body and fuels the device of their undoing. There is not much time and yet she takes as much as she can as she drags her fingers across his cheek, remembers the treasured moments by the silver sparks of color in his eyes, tastes bitter betrayals and warm promises on his lips and she loves him, with all the dark and light places of her own heart.
“I won’t let you die alone,” she whispers and smiles, a shaking, tattered banner of victory.
He kisses her forehead, burns her with love and trust and acceptance he should have given her fully years ago, and she wishes for so many things, but this is all they have. “Vhenan…”
She drives the enchanted dagger through his heart and twists. There is a sharp breath, a bright flash of realization in his gaze, before the light of life leaves him and his device goes silent. A quick death, for a man who held on to fate for too long - more time, for the legacy he created - an end, for her. Warmth runs down her hand, drips upon her knees, stains her soul forever, and there is something else that seeps inside, something heavy and consuming and as inescapable as her fathomless grief.
When she throws her head back and screams, it sounds more like a howl.