C. Friedman: Dominion

She moved quickly-so quickly! — stepping into their ranks before any of them had a chance to respond. With one hand she swept her torch about her in wide, aggressive arcs, driving the nearer ones back from her, while her other hand tightened its grip about the blessed sword, preparing for a single blow. She knew that one was all she would get before the pack found its courage again and attacked her. She had to make it count.

A dark mass hurtled toward her from one side. She thrust her torch into the face of the wolf just before it hit her; it howled in pain as its jaws snapped shut about the burning brand instead of her flesh. But its body slammed into her with stunning force, driving her down to one knee; her ribs exploded in red-hot shards of pain. As she struggled to her feet again, the powerful jaws of another wolf closed about her left calf. She thrust the torch down in its direction, heedless of the flames that flared up around her own body as she did so. But this beast was not to be frightened away so easily. It locked its teeth tightly about her leg, and although it could not bite through the polished steel of her greave, its dead weight meant she could no longer maneuver freely.

Suddenly they were all rushing toward her, and if the ones in the front ranks had second thoughts about facing either her fire or her blade, the ones in the back ranks were not allowing them to hesitate. For an instant she was overcome by a terrible sense of deja vu, remembering the sheer mass of the peasant mob that had overwhelmed her companions. And she remembered the blow that had skewed her own aim just as she had moved to strike at the demon; whatever happened to her in this battle, she could not allow herself to fail like that again.

Muttering a prayer to the One God under her breath, she thrust toward the white wolf with all her strength, gritting her teeth against the blinding pain that followed. The sheer force of the move jerked the wolf on her leg several feet forward, and the jaws of others snapped shut on empty air where she had stood only a moment before. Startled, the white wolf began to back away from her, but the other members of the pack were gathered too closely behind it, and it was forced to stand its ground. As Faith’s blade pierced its flank it was clear she had failed to strike the killing blow she’d hoped for, but the wound was long and deep and crimson blood sprayed out of it. She put all her weight behind her sword, desperate to reach some vital organ. But the effort pulled her off balance, and even as the white wolf struggled to free itself from her blade she could feel herself falling. She dropped the torch and reached out to save herself, but it was too late. Powerful bodies buffeted her from both sides, and the fangs of one beast slid beneath her left bracer, piercing at the cloth and flesh beneath it. The ground rushed up to meet her even as the white wolf whipped its head from side to side, trying to jerk itself free from her blade And then there was impact.

And blinding pain.

The sound of a wolf howling.

And darkness.

If the region surrounding the Forest had seemed wild, its interior was chaos incarnate. Currents of creative and destructive fae collided at random intervals, setting the whole of the Forest alight with sprays of ice-blue power. Waves of emotional energy, raw and unfettered, surged across the landscape like angry surf. No living species could possibly establish a stable presence in such a realm, Tarrant thought, but that hardly mattered. Evolution would be driven forward at such a pace here that as soon as soon as any one life-form failed, a dozen new ones would take its place.

To his eyes it was beautiful.

The currents of power that surged about his feet might be chaotic in their manifestation, but they had the potential to become something else-something greater-and he wondered what kind of effort it would take to tame them, to force them to adopt a more ordered course. The creatures that hissed and howled in the darkness surrounding him might be warped constructs, but a strong enough sorcerer could redesign the faeborn ones, and the fleshborn ones could be urged toward a more reasonable evolution. Even the trees overhead, with their warped and tangled branches, could be forced to serve an ordered purpose. Twist the branches even more, divide them many times over to create a fine webwork of filaments, and the canopy would trap autumn’s leaves as they fell, creating a shield of vegetative detritus thick enough to cast the Forest into perpetual twilight. Would the constructs of the dark fae mature more quickly if they were freed from the threat of sunlight entirely? Or would that only increase the power’s volatility, making its creations even less stable, less likely to survive? To Tarrant they were all fascinating questions.

Deep within his soul he could feel an ancient hunger stirring, human ambition surfacing in the black pool of his soul like a drowning man gasping for breath. He had been a scientist back in his mortal life, and his experiments in forced evolution had produced many of the Terran simulacra species that this world now took for granted. But his current lifestyle as an itinerant predator did not allow for the luxury of a laboratory-or a scholar’s library, or any kind of permanent place in which to store the specimens that scientific experimentation required. He’d had to relinquish that whole part of his existence when he left Merentha, and since then his intellectual inquiries had been confined to a strictly internal landscape. It was one of the most frustrating facets of his transformation.

But this place could become his laboratory now. He could mold new species to his will here and test their adaptation, using the volatile currents to accomplish in a few generations what might take centuries elsewhere. His soul hungered for that kind of intellectual stimulation as powerfully as his altered body now hungered for human blood.

But he was also wise enough to question the source of such temptation. That same seductive power which had drawn him to the Forest in the first place now sought to bind him here, and even the thoughts in his own head must be considered suspect. Would he feel the same way about the Forest if were not trying to draw him in? How could one even begin to evaluate one’s options, so close to the center of the whirlpool?

A scream split the night.

For a moment he thought it was a human cry. It had the emotional resonance of one, and Tarrant’s fae-sight could see the ripples of frustration and rage that followed in its wake, clearly from a human source. But the sound itself was bestial in nature, clearly not formed by a human throat.

How very curious.

In another time and place he might have worked a Knowing to gather more information. Here, he dared not do so. Any contact he made with the Forest’s fae would increase its influence over his mind tenfold. No, if he was curious about the source of the sound he was going to have to investigate it the old-fashioned way.

Loosening his sword in its scabbard, he began to head in that direction. He moved quickly and quietly, a shadow among shadows, and the local wildlife must have been moving out of his way, for he saw no other creatures. Even some vines and branches seemed to draw back as he approached, clearing a path for him. Was that possible? He knew of no plants that were sentient enough to control their movement like that, but that did not mean that none existed. In a place like this anything was possible.

Soon he could hear a low keening noise coming from directly in front of him. He stopped moving and extended his senses to their utmost capacity as he strained to analyze it. Canine, he decided at last. Only one animal was vocalizing clearly, but he could hear the huffing and panting of many others. A wolf pack, perhaps? In the world outside the Forest such things were of little concern to him; animals could sense his unnatural nature and generally kept their distance. But here, where so much of the environment was itself unnatural, they might be less inhibited. Or the wolves might be faeborn themselves, in which case they would play by a whole different set of rules. He would take no chances.