Wolf had left the deep, dark wood, and found himself upon a well-worn road. At once he was overcome with relief to know that something as familiar as a road existed in this strange and foreign place – he was not alone. He had not entered the afterlife or an endless plane, but some other-realm. It lived and breathed, brighter perhaps than the dying place he had come from.
Or rather, the place he had been sent from.
He cast one last glance to the wood, to the place where he had seemingly roused from death. The last vestiges of the magic cast upon him slowly slipped away; a resounding goodbye if there ever was one. That he should walk again when he had known his end was a more telling account of what had happened than he may ever receive.
A ragged gasp tore from his lips as the reality of his afterlife came upon him once more. It was a strange mixture of acceptance and disbelief, of nightmare and grief. He could not compartmentalize this: to die and live again, to rouse in a world not his own - he might have survived them, but –
Everything was gone - everything except the ring on his left hand, and his heartbeat. Even then, there was something off about the rhythm that filled him with dread. In the quiet moments within the oaken wood he had found himself worrying at it - wondering at the empty place where there had once been something else pounding through his veins.
The wolf was gone from his blood, and the empty scabbard at his side was just as haunting. He wondered if they had been left behind in the greying, ashen place - or if they had fallen somewhere in the space between here and there. The thought alone made his heart quicken, and where once the wolf would have roused in his breast or the sword would have gently whispered in warning, there now was a resounding, unending silence.
For the first time in his life, he was utterly alone.
"Are you nearly finished?"
So overcome he had been as to not hear the wagon come upon him, but there, slouching miserably atop a well-wrought wain sat a farmer tucked beneath a woolen cap, a frown pulling at his weathered face.
Wolf blinked at him. "Pardon me?"
"You're blocking the road." The farmer groused, his frown deepening as he took account of the younger man's disheveled, bloodied appearance. He canted a wary eye at the wall of the dark trees looming at the road's edge - and then, without another word, urged his sweet-eyed mule on with a crack of the lines, forcing Wolf off the road lest he be trodden on.
The farmer rumbled off down the road - but it was enough. Wolf saw the wagon laden with wares, the sorts of which he knew would sell at market. With a grim set to his jaw he followed.
It was a night and a day before they came upon the city. It pulsed with life even from afar, thrumming with something akin to a heartbeat - but more. He felt it before he saw it, and when he finally did see it, he was in it.
He found himself swept away from the farmer and his wagon, cast into a river of people and horses that swept along the cobbled shores of a wide road laden with kiosks and shops. Around him there rose the dulcet tones of life, of a city that loved and was well loved by its people. It was so unlike the place he had come from, or rather, as it had been in those last moments. The taste of ash and blood and grit sat heavy on his tongue - and always would, he imagined - but here… This place was alive.
It was in that moment, standing among a hundred and a hundred beating hearts, that he smelled it – he felt it. It was akin to a lightning strike in the middle of a dry night; alike the first breath after nearly drowning. It tasted and felt so unlike everything around him, unlike everything that had been made and born in this place. It was from –
"Home," Wolf said, lifting his gaze to the crowd that moved and flowed around him - and they did flow around him, for he stood taller than most in the crowd, the breadth of his shoulders and state of his bloodied, torn tunic causing more than one person to skitter out of his way with rolling eyes akin to sheep.
He followed the thread - the feeling of an old life - as it wove through the crowd, meandering the streets until it led through the door of a small, forgettable tavern. Upon entering, he found her immediately - the source of familiarity.
Wolf took a moment to consider her, to consider the cut of her clothes and the drape of her dark hair. She was not a person he had known in his previous life, and yet the relief he felt at finding her was staggering.
He made for her, standing a respectable distance from her side. He took care to splay his hands upon the countertop – they were still covered in grime, nails ringed with his own blood. The placating gesture felt akin to baring his throat.
For a long moment he stood in silence, jaw tight with unsaid words. He waited, wondering what he might say, how he might broach the subject of here and there. It was only as he opened his mouth to say something that the bartender approached, asking the lady what she might have before turning to him.
The bartender, as had the farmer, cast a wary eye at the deep rip in his tunic from shoulder to sternum - and the blood that stained it. "Spirits?"
Wolf wet his lips. He glanced at the ring upon his hand, wondering at the room and bath and meal it might buy – and then shook his head. "Water, if you would," he bade in a low, rasping voice.
The bartender frowned at Wolf's request, displeased with an unpaying customer, before he moved off with a nod.
Wolf watched the man bustle away, waiting until he was out of ear shot before he sighed. The tension had not left his body, but he turned his gaze to the woman beside him and in the same low voice spoke, "your magic is not from here."
And while he had no magic of his own, he hoped she might notice the last threads of the spell once cast on him– fading, fading, gone.
