[Crow]

He’d loved the quiet as a boy here. Alone and untethered, growing like a wild weed, he’d spent hours playing his little shadow games in the dark bowel of the forest, imagining visceral horrors to overcome, slipping through the trees. Nowadays — quiet was violent, itching at him like a swat of ticks, grinding his teeth and hollowing his thin belly.

Crow wasn’t used to being bored. Didn’t much like it. Maybe that was why he lingered here with his daughters and his king-son rather than roam off for different pastures. Tell me, stranger wearing my homeland’s face — what’s next? What may I pry from your grasp? How might you amuse me?

The civilians here could come to him at their own risk; Crow was ever an arrogant sort interested by leaders. There was Cocytus, of course. The crippled salamander, Azuhel’s bitter shadow. And the third, who’d taken most of the morning to track down. When their paths crossed —

“Oh, what a great big boy you are,” crooned the black wolf, his unbalanced eyes slitting with the hint of a smile. “And familiar, too... I wonder who was looming behind the red woman and my son when they decided to take this place?”

[Crow]

The Magus paused in step when the Crow cut neatly into his path. Falco’s ears flicked forward that the old familiar tune of the black wolf’s humming voice and his hawkish gaze fixed on the remaining yellow eye as it narrowed in amusement. The memory was not as clear to the Magus as it was to Crow; he had been very young when Crow almost bought him off the auction. His potential had never been fully realized in Oukoku-kai and neither had Crow’s so their potential relationship had never bloomed into fruition. It may have been better this way. Falco had never been a very good puppet.

“The heathen life suites me, as it does you, I suspect,” Falco said. His lip twitched. “You’re a free wolf now, in some ways. How does that feel? Liberating? Or is the sudden emptiness of it so vast and incomprehensible that it’s absolutely maddening?”

That’s what they taught them in Oukoku-kai after all, or something similar, but it was just as likely Falco was making a cryptic reference to the changes in Alteron. His face gave so little away in that moment the answer was to be defined in Crow’s reaction.

“’Looming’? I like that. A fitting description of my new role.”

[Crow]

They sized each other up, one with the arrogant air of the career Yellow and him with the mercurial foxiness of the natural White. Falco may have remembered him from that dusty old auction, but Crow... well, he had many years on this big important boy, and a lot had happened meanwhile. Near-death. New life.

“I’ll always remember what they taught me,” purred the black wolf, “and the wonderful games we played. But — I grew too big, you know? Not...” A breathy chuckle. “... in the same way you did, obviously.”

He was after all a far cry from the troubled kid he’d been when the cult had scooped him up and told him he was special. Worthy of command over life and death, gods and mortals. It had been the best and worst thing that could possibly have happened to someone like Crow.

“You stand on a hell of a fault line, you know. This place eats kings like the tar pits ate whoever I gave them.” A grin that was almost playful. “Are you ready?”