Frozen Stars Over Wonderland - Chapter 14 (Patreon)

The woods were growing dark, which only seemed to increase the urgency of their sprinting. Another pained howl filled the air, and Alfre drew her sword. She pushed her magic into her legs, increasing her speed past that of her comrades and closer to that of Canus and his wolves. She smelled the blood before she saw it. A thorny rope trap, the type meant to catch florrets and rats my snaring them about the middle. The direwolf must have gotten their paw caught in it. It looked chewed through, and a path of blood droplets led further into the woods. The howls and snarls were louder now. They were close. Alfre pushed her legs faster than she thought possible, pushing past Canus and his wolves, already far ahead of her companions. 

She broke through the tree line into a small clearing, not even big enough to build a tiny home in. The wolf was there, caught in a bear trap, snapping and snarling at a human dressing in a hooded cloak of deep, forest green. Alfre gave a frightening shout and charged the person, catching them by surprise. They turned towards her at her shout, gasping and then shouting in pain as her rapier pierced the flesh of their shoulder. The speed and force at which she ran into them knocked them prone, her landing on top of them, blade still buried in their shoulder. The person, obviously a man now that she got a good look at them, glared up at her with deep blue hazel eyes. 

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?!” he shouted. “You got in the way of my kill!”

“That’s the bloody point, ya scrote!” Alfre hissed. “Where do you get off killin’ a creature like that?”

“I’m a hunter, bitch, it’s what I do.” 

“If you wanted a damn wolf’s pelt so bad you could have done a dungeon like the rest of us decent folk!” 

“Where’s the fun in that? Besides, everyone has normal wolf fur. No one has direwolf fur. Getting that proves I’m the best damn hunter! Better than those Legolas fangirls.”

“You killed my wolf…to prove yourself?” 

Alfre turned to see Canus stalking towards them, fangs bared. Her friends were just behind him, unsure what to do. Traveler looked…unsurprised by the confession. Disappointed, but still unsurprised. 

“Get off him, snowbird,” Canus said with a growl. “He’s gonna make you dirty.”

Alfre yanked her rapier none too gently from Lokki’s shoulder and picked herself up. The hunter hissed in pain, but the look of fear in his eyes when he looked up at Canus was far more satisfying to Alfre. He scrambled back against a tree, unable to run away any further. 

Canus’ anger had calmed into an icy fury that made even Alfre feel cold. He pointed down at Lokki, the smell of grass and a woody breeze filled the air as he glowed with some ancient magic. 

“For taking my wolf away from me,” Canus said, his voice low in both timbre and volume, “the only punishment I see worthy is for you to take her place, from now until the end of your days. Your mind shall remain, unable to forget the crime you committed, but unable to fight the instincts that will consume you.”

Alfre and her companions stared in shock and horror as Lokki’s scream of pain morphed into a feral howl. His body twitched and buckled, fur of a deep midnight black sprouting over his body and his bones cracked and reformed. His clothing ripped and fell to the forest floor as hands and feet transformed into paws, his face elongating into a snout. Where once sat a human man now stood a direwolf with fur of midnight black and eyes of the same hazel blue that Lokki the man had. 

“Holy shit,” Elias breathed. 

“Any arguments against my chosen punishment?” Canus asked, his voice a challenge. 

They said nothing. 

“Good,” Canus growled. He stomped over to the bear trap that kept his wolf in place, wrenching it open with his bare hands. “Perhaps, if a pup is born within the next few moons, I will release him. I’d rather a true direwolf in my pack than that monster.” 

“Jeez, Canus, tell us how you really feel,” Traveler muttered. “Though, I must say, it’s probably a more effective method than killing him. He’d just be sent back to the town.”

“Ah, but what about the pelt?” Izo asked. “He wasn’t wearing it. And if he’s a direwolf then he can’t access his inventory.”

“He might have it hanging in his home somewhere,” Spica suggested. “Where ever that is.”

Canus turned to Lokki. “Take me to your home, boy.”

Lokki seemed to hesitate for a moment, flinching back from the voice. Eventually, however, he turned a loped off into the woods. Canus followed behind him, leaving his injured wolf in the care of Izo. The party remained in the clearing, unsure what to do next. Alfre paced anxiously as Izo saw to the wolf’s injuries. Elias tossed out their tent, sure that they would be spending the night in the Wilds. Traveler and Spica disappeared into the woods, going the opposite direction of Lokki and Canus, and reappeared some time later with armfuls of wood. 

They had a fire roaring by the time Canus and Lokki returned, the beautiful gold and white fur of the deceased direwolf in Canus’ arms. The god of the Wilds hesitated before stepping forward and presenting the pelt to Alfre.

“Take it, as payment for doing all you could,” Canus said quietly. “Efforts such as yours should be rewarded.”

“I wasn’t looking to be rewarded,” Alfre told him, her voice just as quiet.

Canus smiled, a small, sad thing. “All the more reason that you should be. Take it. Winter is coming and it will keep you warm.”

Alfre thought to argue some more, but decided against it. Instead, she simply nodded and tucked the pelt gently into her satchel. As she retracted her hands from the magic bag, Canus reached for them. He brought them to his lips, pressing the softest of kisses to her knuckles.

“Thank you, snowbird.”

With that, he shifted into his wolf form and bounded away into the woods, Lokki and the now healed direwolf hot on his heels.

“You mean to tell me that Canus, one of the big bad gods of Wonderland, kissed you?” Ren stared her down across the table, her bright golden eyes dancing with mirth. “Man, snowflake, and here I thought you were some normal noob.”

A red blush spread across Alfre’s cheeks. “It was just on my hands. It’s not like it was a real kiss or anything.”

“Yeah, but that’s, like, never happened before,” Ren argued. “Even in the game lore, the only god that ever did any kissing was Koseret, and her kisses were reserved to plants.” 

“Can we just move past it, already,” Alfre begged. “I made the mistake of letting Spica tell Doremi what happened. Now the whole city probably thinks I made out with Canus in the middle of the woods.”

“Well, it’s not the worst rumor about you to have,” Silver said, supposedly trying to make her feel better. It wasn’t working. Alfre groaned and slammed her head down on the wooden surface of the table. It hurt, but at least she didn’t have to look at anyone.

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Silver continued. “People will stop caring in a few days. Unless something else happens between you and your boyfriend, that is.” He smirked.

“I hate all of you,” Alfre groused. 

Ren snickered. “We know.”

The door to the pub swung open and Alfre lifted her head to see Ran wander through the door, dark circles under his eyes and a slouch in his usually perfect posture.

“What’s up with you?” she asked, desperate to get the attention off of her.

“The council is trying to establish communication with the other Fell cities on the other continents,” he explained, falling into a seat at the table. “It’s not going well.”

“What, are friends list messages not going through?” Ren asked.   

“No, it doesn’t seem so,” Ran said with a sigh. “It’s like they have a range now, like a radio signal. So we’re trying something different. Summoners are attempting to send their summons out with messages. Like homing pigeons or something. We’re not sure if it’ll work, but it’s worth a try. If it does work, we might be able to set up a post office kind of thing.”

“Sounds like a good idea to me,” Silver said. “But are we sure summons don’t have a range as well. They did in the game, didn’t they?”

“Not in the way you’re thinking,” Ren corrected. “If you got a certain distance away from your summon, it would teleport back to you. They had time limits though, normally didn’t stick around for longer than an hour. But again, this isn’t a game anymore, and we can’t be sure the rules are the same.” 

Alfre tuned out the rest of the conversation as it strayed into different game mechanics she hadn’t been privy to before the Incident. Instead, she picked at the fish and chips that sat before her. This world, a world that was never meant to be fully lived in, was full of questions like the ones Ren and her boys were discussing. It was impossible to tell what did and did not carry over from the game. Even now they weren’t sure that player verses player fighting was indeed banned in the cities. 

She sighed, abandoning her food and standing from the table. She wandered up the stairs, passing by an open door into a tailors studio where Spica was working with the direwolf pelt Canus had given her. Spica had insisted she’d make something nice out of it for her, so it wouldn’t just sit in her inventory and take up space. She hadn’t told her what she was making, but Alfre was sure it’d turn out both very pretty and very functional. 

She climbed several more flights of stairs, passing by Elias and Traveler as they sat and conversed in one of the bay windows that adorned the end of the hallways. She turned down her hallway and slipped into her room. It was still terribly plain; she couldn’t bring herself to decorate it, not with Ren bragging about how close they were to kingdomhood. She closed the door behind her with a soft click. She slipped from her boots and tossed her coat over the back of her chair before falling face down on her bed, falling asleep the moment her eyes slipped closed.