Chapter Text
The crack of Aphelios' flint and steel echoed dully against the damp of the cave, the melting frost on his tinder refusing to catch. Night was beginning to ease its way into dawn, but the temperature of Targon's northern slopes wouldn't change with the sunlight. If he wished to wake from his sleep, he would need a healthy fire, one that could pierce through the numbing veil of the noctum. He couldn't even feel himself shiver.
Alune's sudden gasp jolted him to alertness, fire forgotten as his eyes darted to the cave entrance, ready for anything. ' I am sorry, Phel .'
There was a shape at the mouth of the cave, but it wasn't a Solari or rogue Rakkor, or any of the innumerable Targonian beasts that roamed the slopes and hunted humans.
It was a single wolverine, slightly larger than a starhound and colored burgundy brown and such a deep violet it neared black. Its amber eyes glowed in the night, locked on Aphelios. Unearthly and eerily intelligent. He swallowed thickly, terrified and resigned. ' I did not mean to startle you ,' Alune whispered. ' But …'
It was unexpected, he understood, and something worthy of being wary towards. Wolverines were inauspicious and rare in Targon, and were incredibly dangerous. Aphelios would have rather been approached by a pack of starhounds, a crystal ibex– anything else, really. Instead he'd been found by an omen of death, a seeker of carnage. Aphelios was hardly superstitious, but even he knew that a wolverine's attention, especially from one so… unusual, was ominous.
The wolverine continued watching him from a distance, eyes thoughtful and glimmering, and Aphelios focused back on the fire he was making. ' Perhaps it will move on soon ,' Alune soothed.
Aphelios didn't know which he'd prefer- the loneliness or the reminder of why he was alone.
The wolverine was still there when dusk fell.
It sat just within sight of the cave as Aphelios woke and lingered on the periphery of Aphelios' vision as he walked, following after him from a distance. Perhaps it thought him as some kind of living corpse, given the traces of blood still staining his hands. He was little more than a moving weapon, and the conflict surrounding him would offer an easy supply of food. Wolverines were well-known for their insatiable hunger and their lust for fighting, after all. He wondered what it wanted from someone like him. Aphelios would make a fine meal. At the very least, he'd make the wolverine work for it.
For weeks it never came closer as Aphelios continued his journey. Following just along his peripherals or hiding near his make-shift shelters. It didn't approach him, not until after a Solari ambush left him with a few sluggish wounds and a tremble in his hands.
He sat under an overhang afterwards, fire weakly keeping the chill at bay, watching it watch him. His task would be easier once he reached the root of the mountains and stepped into the valleys, a trek that would only take a few more days. Aphelios shivered from more than just the cold. Alune's voice was barely louder than a breeze now, the noctum fading from his bloodstream. He could finally feel the gnawing hunger in his belly, the pins and needles of the seeping chill through his gloves, the exhaustion in his bones. He was still so far from his goal. The wolverine still watched him.
He tucked his legs close, wrapped his arms around his knees, and lowered his head. He wanted to stay curled up like this, just for a little longer.
The fire dipped low, and Aphelios fell asleep.
The noise of a growl woke him with a start, and Aphelios reached for a blade before his eyes even opened. What greeted him was the wolverine, closer than ever before and regarding him with an unimpressed look. This close, the golden band along its neck and stretching to its tail was visible, as was a motley of scars cutting through its fur, thanks to the oddly healthy fire light. This wolverine looked young, but the remnants of old battles revealed its true age. Between them, at the wolverine's feet, was a slain rabbit.
The wolverine growled again, ending with a scratchy chirp as it pushed the rabbit closer with its nose. Had it… brought this for him?
Slowly, more out of stiffness than caution, Aphelios unfurled himself and reached for the rabbit. It had been hunted recently, and with care, but wolverines weren't known for sharing food. Aphelios hesitated, cheeks heating a little in embarrassment as he hesitantly murmured, "is this for me?" His voice was broken and rough from the noctum and from disuse, grating on his ears, but to his relief the wolverine chattered, nudged his hand with its warm nose and padded over to lay opposite of him, across the fire.
Aphelios watched it with a mix of confusion and curiosity, before looking down at the rabbit in wonder.
The wolverine stayed.
By his side, this time, and no longer at a barely visible distance but instead getting closer and closer as the days passed until it was trotting along right at his heel. If it wished to fight him, devour him, to squirrel him away under the snow- it was certainly playing a long game. Not that Aphelios would believe it would actually do such a thing.
Not after several days of hiking and climbing and sharing fires and sleeping just an arms length apart. The wolverine caught rabbits and found snowy berries while Aphelios speared fish and caught wildfowl, and as he cooked the meats the wolverine would take whatever he wouldn't eat from between his fingers. The wolverine led him a safe distance around a Solari encampment, and Aphelios carefully picked briars out of its coat after a small tumble. It watched unhappily as he drank noctum and choked, and stayed curled up against him as he slept for the rest of the day.
Alune was a wonderful companion on his journey… but he was alone. He couldn't speak to her without the crutch of noctum, but he could speak to the wolverine and while he was probably just imagining it… the wolverine always seemed to perk up and face his way as if it were listening. Alune was no longer in the physical realm, but when Aphelios felt the weight of his loneliness crash upon him he could reach out and brush his hand through the soft fur along the wolverine's back. It would press its nose into his palm, like a not so silent and very tangible reminder that it was here .
Aphelios knew Alune would always be with him. It was still hard not to feel lost sometimes.
"We are both bad omens," he whispered one day as the sun began to set. "Perhaps that is why we are doomed to be alone."
Aphelios had searched what felt like the whole of Targon before he met the wolverine and had little to show for it. He had been tasked with finding the savior of his people, to ending the war between the Rakkor, with uniting Targon against an unfathomable, unknowable evil. Instead, he had found nothing but rumors, became the most wanted heretic by the Solari, and was no closer to circumventing what might be an apocalypse upon the world than ever before. He would need to leave Targon, his homeland, his people- and he still may not succeed.
Destiny was a weighty thing on his shoulders and he felt crushed by it.
Trapped by his future and bound by his duty.
Aphelios woke one day but could not get up.
It was almost nightfall, the fire needed tending, and his wolverine companion was already shuffling about. But Aphelios could not move out from under his travel-worn blanket. As if sensing something was wrong, the wolverine trotted over, chittering lowly. It licked his fingers where they bunched the fabric of the blanket. Then it licked his cheek and whined pitifully. It was a noisy creature sometimes, making all manner of sounds from purrs to barks to almost human-like laughter, but he'd never heard it make a sound like this before. It was enough to have Aphelios sit up, but exhaustion quickly tugged him back down.
"I'm sorry," he murmured.
The wolverine licked his cheek again, turned, and left him.
Aphelios watched it go and curled in on himself.
Aphelios woke again to a still burning fire and the noises of grunting and claws against stone. In a pile not too far from his face was a heap of various things; sweet berries still attached to a branch, snowdrop flowers of varying hues, pretty pebbles from the stream nearby. The wolverine was sorting through them with its nose, pushing away only the dullest in color with soft grumbles. It froze when it noticed Aphelios had woken up, but quickly trotted over and plopped a palm sized riverstone on the rucksack serving as Aphelios' pillow. A striking vein of turquoise ran the length of it, unpolished and coated in drool as it was. The wolverine sat proudly back on its haunches as Aphelios picked up the stone with trembling fingers.
A gift, it had to be- the wolverine left to find him gifts-
His vision blurred with tears and the wolverine let out a concerned yelp, rushing forward to nuzzle his fingers and nip at his jaw. Aphelios scooped it into his arms, holding it as he sobbed, soothed by its low, gentle rumbling and quiet chirping.
Slowly, the weight began to ease, aided by the wolverine practically forcing him to eat or walk or even bathe with noisy chirps and tugging teeth.
"Bossy," Aphelios muttered after a particularly pushy growl. The wolverine's ears flicked, tail swishing proudly.
With Aphelios' stronger state came a fresh round of noctum and Alune's gentle words of comfort.
' The wolverine still follows you ,' she noted curiously, sometime later. ' You no longer feel afraid of it .'
No, not anymore. There was a shared sense between them; of lonely exile, of a curse to endlessly hunt, to be unwelcome by nature. At least, that was what Aphelios had seen and felt when he looked into those amber eyes, although he'd readily admit that he may have been cut off from civilization for too long and had begun projecting.
' It gladdens me to see you with a companion, ' she said, ' I wish it did not need to be like this .'
He'd never tell her, but the wolverine was a fitting choice- so much so he couldn't imagine anything else complimenting him so completely
The wolverine had given him the prettiest rock it could find, had given him food, had licked his cheek. A creature who fought to survive, who only knew death and violence, elusive and solitary, but had something soft underneath that carried it forward.
The Solari spread across the valleys around Targon like a plague, searching for all they deemed as heretics to convert- then slay if they did not comply. They searched for children and lost souls to indoctrinate, new lands to till or quarry, and, they searched for him . The Weapon of the Lunari, a thorn in their side.
Not by Aphelios' designs, at least. He tried to avoid conflict when he could, but when his path crossed another's, blood often spilled. Lately, it seemed he was always running across Solari.
His companion, with a nose greater than a bloodhound's, struggled to guide him around the larger groups of them, but eventually there were so many that combat became the only option left. The noctum in Aphelios' veins thrummed as he summoned Crescendum to his hands, slippery with blood. The snow was stained with it- both his and the Solari hunter's.
In his peripherals he saw the wolverine that he had instructed to stay put leap into the fray. Its maw clamped around a man's leg, sharp teeth digging into the flesh and pulling a scream so loud and ragged out of the Solari it could cause an avalanche. Formidable as the wolverine was, the Solari's spears were wickedly sharp and most had thicker armor than the one he'd bitten. Aphelios watched as the now wounded Solari kicked his wolverine away and into a snowbank.
His world became red with anger and he snarled as he fought tooth and nail. His wolverine poked from the snow, unharmed and unbothered, but Aphelios couldn't stop until every Solari lay defeated. The last body hadn't even fallen before he was rushing to scoop the wolverine up into his arms, carrying it all the way to a nearby abandoned hunters cabin as his tears began to overflow.
The wolverine had more patience than Aphelios found in most humans, letting itself be clutched at and curled around and sobbed on. He'd always felt too much too deep, and with each fade of the noctum each wave of emotion only seemed to crash upon him harder than before, and right now he was in a hurricane. Anger at the wolverine endangering itself, relief it was unharmed, unbearable fear that something would have happened and he'd be alone and lost all over again.
"Don't die," he begged, words slurring from the numbness of poison and rough from the destruction and disuse of his voice, "don't go, please."
The wolverine pushed its wet nose into his palm, as if saying it was there, licked his tears as he sobbed, as if trying to comfort him, tucked itself closer as if saying it was going nowhere any time soon.
There was a story amongst the Lunari about how there once was a Celestial wolverine, tenacious and powerful, but had disappeared after it challenged the Void. Beasts of brutality, always brought down by the violence they sought. Lessons in hubris, about how those who sought conflict doomed themselves. Aphelios had always found it sad that something would be punished for its nature, for only doing what if has always known.
He didn't want the wolverine to suffer the same fate.
Aphelios whispered the story, his prayers, his pleas, until his tears slowed with sleep.
That day, he dreamed that he felt a hand brush his ear, warm and sharp with claws, but gentle as it soothed the tracks of tears on his cheek.
"I'll always be right beside you," a voice whispered, rough and scratchy as if it hadn't been used in hundreds of years. "We have each other. We don't need to be alone anymore."
Such sweet promises- it really had to be a dream. But the touch felt so real, the warmth so familiar, the voice so steady. He knew who this was.
"We aren't bad omens," the voice continued, "we can be more, together, Aphelios ."
He didn't dare open his eyes and break the moment, he didn't need to. He believed every word. Instead he tightened his grip around the new shape of his stalwart companion and smiled.
