Archive of Our Own ^beta

He finds you by following the wolves.

This is nothing to boast about (but they will say it was someday and make myth of the mundane). There are tracks to follow for any who dare, tufts of shed fur and fang-scraped bones picked clean. He might’ve asked someone who knows these woods and where not to tread. They would’ve warned him there are maneaters and he would not have been afraid. The den is a gaping maw in the earth curtained by dangling roots. It is not hidden. It is not carved through treacherous terrain. There is a gentle slope, an old and sprawling tree, and a hole tunneled through the earth in its dappled shade. This is where the trail leads. This is where he finds you.

You hear the footsteps of a pack not your own and come prowling out of the earth, teeth bared, but it is not spears and arrows that greet you. It is him, kneeling at the mouth of the den, strange and beautiful. Hair like obsidian spills over his shoulders, nearly long enough to touch the dirt. That is the strong body of a shepherd clad in a loincloth. Those are the sturdy woven sandals and animal bone necklace of a hunter. The swirls, slashes and creatures of ink across the plains of his chest belong to a wise man who speaks to spirits. You have seen men like this but he is different. He carries dawn in his eyes. When he smiles, it feels like the first sunrise that melts the frigid dying days and coaxes the flowers back to life.

You will remember this smile forever (and ever, and ever).

“I have searched for you,” he says. You are startled by the sound of his voice, the clarity, the understanding that unfurls in your mind. “You,” he says, and means kin, alike, timeless one. There are others with him and you understand they are the same as him, the same as you. They have the skin of men but not their eyes. Like you, they have seen more than any man will ever see. “What are you doing there, in the dark among beasts? We are made for the light,” he says. Something, you sense, is being offered. Something shifts with promise like the changing tide. 

“I am weary of men,” you tell him. “Wolves are kinder.” 

He tilts his head, studying your figure hunched in the earthen burrow. “Let me show you something. Follow me,” he says. He does not mean only now, only out of the dark. 

You flinch when he holds out his hand but there is no dagger clenched in his fingers and no violent intention in his fist. There is fresh fruit instead. It is soft and spring-colored, gentle green with the pink blush of ripeness. He sinks his teeth into its smooth, lightly fuzzed flesh, showing you that it is not poisoned. You are hesitant when he holds it out to you but your mouth is watering. Pale juice glistens on his fingers. You do not notice but you are leaning forward and he is pulling away, drawing you out of hiding. You are beneath the moon and stars when you begin to eat out from his palm.

They are kind to you in the stranger’s village. They share their pelts, their food, their shelter, the glow and heat of their bonfire. You are timid, unaccustomed to your own kind, but they are patient. The timeless treat you as if you are a sibling they lost, your return long-awaited. They smear numbing salve on your wounds and ease the tangles from your matted hair. “The world will change,” they promise you. “Neoth will change it.” 

(That is not his name. And yet it was, just for a little while, just for a few. It will not survive the ravages of time, but other lies will.)

He is even lovelier bathed in firelight. He watches from a distance as though your homecoming is something he does not wish to disturb, but he returns when he sees you growing restless, pulling you away from the others. He shows you the fields they tend, the snuffling animals they keep, the grove of trees where succulent fruits grow round and heavy on every bough. He wants you to see the peace and the plenty, the loveliness of all he touches. “What is your name?” he asks. 

“I do not have one,” you say.

“Surely you had one, before the wolves.” 

He leads you by the hand to a splendid hut made of earth and wood and layered, dried grasses. There is pottery, small clay figures, baskets overflowing with herbs, and tools of warmaking. There are more of these than there are anything else: bone daggers, stone-tipped spears, a large bow and a barrel filled with slender arrows. This is the home of a leader; a guardian; a warlord. There is a pile of furs against the wall and this is where he guides you, urging you to sit on the exquisite softness beside him. 

“Then what do I call you?” he asks. 

“Wolves do not need names to care for one another,” you say. 

He smiles at this like he finds it endearing and then he is closer, his hand on your cheek, his breath on your lips. That golden dawn is all you see. “Shall we mate, then, as wolves do?” 

It is not only his eyes. His touch is the heat of a sunbeam through the forest canopy and you are eager to bask in it as long as you can. He lays you down in the furs and takes you just as he promised he would, his teeth in your neck, his body folded over yours. He pants against your nape like a beast in rut and all you know is this heat like the lick of fire, this relentless ecstasy, this aching fullness. He is tireless until you start to whimper and tremble, moaning into the furs as his hips rock faster and his hands map your skin with growing familiarity. 

You feel emptied in the afterglow, made anew with your head cradled against his chest. You wait until the chatter of the village fades to snores and the bonfire’s crackling light dies. You wait until the steady rise and fall of Neoth’s chest grows long and shallow. You wait longer still, staring at the weapons against the wall. And then slowly, silently, like a wolf stealing into the night—you leave.

You make it to the edge of the village before you hear footsteps. 

“Where are you going?” Neoth asks. He looks different in the dark. The moon lines his shoulders and glints silver in the black waves of his hair like crowning frost. You do not think of warmth when you look at him. 

“Back to the wolves,” you say.

“You are not a wolf. You are one of us. Your place is here, beside me.” He takes a step closer but he freezes when you retreat further, darting out of his reach. You are wound as tightly as you were in the den, coiled like a threatening snake. There is a subtle glow to his eyes you only notice now. They look like cooling embers. They dart back and forth across your features, assessing. There he is, you think. There is the warlord. He had hidden him so well you had begun to think you were mistaken. 

“I know I am not a wolf,” you admit. “But I prefer them. They understand my spirit. I am not content inside walls and fences.” 

“You could be more. Much more,” Neoth says, his tone honeyed. He holds out his hand but he has nothing more to offer. He did not expect you to refuse. “You have never met your own kind before. You do not realize what you are missing. You say you are weary of men, but they will not always be as they are now. We can guide them.” 

He steps forward and you step back again. Would he chase you if you ran? Would he catch you? “Then guide them,” you say warily. “You seem well-suited to leadership. I am well-suited to the wilderness.”

“You are wasting your eternity.”
“Who are you to say what is a waste of eternity? How do you use your years, Neoth of the timeless? Slaughter and conquest?” 

“You do not know me,” he says, his gaze burning. You have not angered him but you have ignited something far more dangerous—curiosity. This is not the night he envisioned. 

(They will say it was. They say all things are known to him, all futures accounted for, as if the simultaneous fractal-unfolding of every possible outcome would not erode goodness and hope and caution.)

You do not say goodbye and neither does he. You are nervous all the way back to the den, looking over your shoulder at every rustling, chittering, and snapping branch, but you are not followed. The pack is antsy when you return, licking your face until the smell of men is gone. You do not sleep well, curled up in the earth. You wake before sunrise and wriggle out of the den in sorrow. You do not want to leave. It is a good den. The wolves will miss you and you will miss them, but there will be more in places further from the village. You are thinking of which way to travel, which river to follow. You are thinking of what you will eat as you emerge in the molten sunrise and find him waiting.

Neoth kneels exactly where he did yesterday. The wolves growl at him but their tails are tucked between their legs. He is smiling. He has brought more fruit. You look up at him and he looks down at you with the same cold calculation you saw at the village’s outskirts last night and you understand that the path you walk has shifted beneath your feet, against your will.

*

He finds you in the harvest season. You are picking fruit from your trees. (They will write poetry about this someday. Psalms, litanies, rhymes for children. They will make this something it never was, just as he taught them to do.)

He is taller than you remember. More beautiful. More radiant. The light curls around him in adoration. He dresses in the colorful, draping robes of a king and his hair is neatly parted down the middle, the once wild ends now trimmed to even neatness halfway down his back. He is warm against your back as he reaches over you, plucking one of the tender fruits from the highest branch.

“We grow these in the empire,” he says.

“Is it an empire now?” you ask idly. Of course it is an empire. You watched the village swell into a city, a city blossom into a metropolis, bigger and grander until you could scarcely comprehend it. Fences became fortress walls. Earthen huts turned to sharp mudbrick buildings. They name the stars and make words into pictures. Neoth is proud and still hungry, never satisfied. More follow him than ever before and they look upon him like mortals look at the gods they carve of stone. Two stand close, flanking him. A man and a woman. He does not have to touch them to proclaim ownership. They move when he does as though ensnared in his orbit, following without question. 

“I see no den,” he says, glancing around your quiet grove. “Is that safe, wolf-child?”

“Do not call me that,” you say quietly. He has always done that as long as you’ve known him, wanting names, wanting titles, wanting to make precise order of nature and chaos. “What do you want from me, Neoth?”

The woman regards you intently, trying to piece together a puzzle with no solution. “Neoth? You have known him for some time, then.” 

“I have not known him for centuries.”

“‘Wolf-child,’ he called you,” the man muses, glancing between you and the warlord with growing interest. “We have heard of you. The wild one. You did not heed the call.” 

You turn away from them, tending to your trees. “He has his empire, does he not? You managed just fine without me.”

Neoth who is no longer Neoth sees you retreating before he has begun his advance. He steps forward decisively and this time, the others do not follow. “I wished to see you,” he says. There is the tenderness that lured you from the den once. It nearly works again. He stands beside you as you wrench another fruit from the trees, close enough that you can nearly feel the warmth radiating from him, far enough that you would have to reach out to be certain. He wears finery; thick bangles and beaded necklaces that shine in the sunlight. You have always found gold garish but it belongs on his skin. “It has been some time.” 

“It has,” you say. Your gaze is drawn to the timeless ones behind him, the man and the woman especially. They watch you together, distrustful, as though their warlord is handling something with a venomous bite. 

He sees your measured curiosity. “They are my closest confidants. My advisor and my warmaster.” 

And consorts. He does not say this. But it is obvious in the way they gravitate towards him, their lingering gazes, their eagerness to return to his side. They wear bangles, circlets, beads and gemstones, marked like royal concubines. 

“And what am I?” you ask. 

He sees where you look. He sees realization dawn slowly; a flash of envy before you strangle it. His fingers curl beneath your chin, drawing your gaze to his. “What do you wish to be?” he asks.

It is a false question; a trap. When one names something, they can control it. You step back, pulling out of his grasp. He lets you go but you understand, his gaze burning into yours, that this dance continues by his will. That you are free only because he allows it. That you run only because he has no time to chase. 

“You have an empire. Do they call you Emperor now?” you ask him instead.

He smiles and you are thinking, again, of disappearing. Of seeing where the new paths carved by wagon wheels lead. “They will,” he says. Not with pride, not with arrogance, not with any satisfaction, just the calm certainty of someone who has already seen this day come and go and no longer feels anything. 

*

He finds you in the wastelands; pale dust and nuclear glass. A sky burning. You are limping through the ruins. Of what? It is impossible to know. Everything is ruins, all the way to the horizon. All of the land, all of the Earth—all of it, debris and desolation. No dens, no forests, no cities here where man bleeds itself to oblivion. Shambling shapes crest the dunes behind you. New predators; bandits and scavengers with bulbous gas mask eyes. They have tracked you for days now like the hunters of old, following the blood that trickles from the shrapnel wound in your knee. One-legged carrion birds circle overhead in anticipation, their cries shrill like klaxons.

You struggle with the hilly path, the buried rocks and bones. You stumble and then you fall, catching yourself with your hands and slicing your palms open on the brittle razorblade terrain. You hear the hunters closing in but you hear other things, more fearsome things, ahead in the brewing dust storm, see a silhouette like a moving wall. That is when you see him. 

How can someone change so little in countless millennia? He looks just as you remember. He wears armor now, a gilded laurel wreath. He carries new tools of war and he is even taller, even more staggering to behold, but it is him. Hundreds march behind him clad in gold, the thunderous sound you hear. They stop when he stops and the silence is broken only by the howl of the wind and your own labored breathing. The bandits are frozen behind you, recognizing an apex predator when they see it.

“You were right,” says the one they call Emperor. His voice is strange. It is not merely sound but something that slithers into your mind. “Wolves are kinder than men. So we must make wolves of them and lead their pack.” You see the king, the warlord, and the one wild enough to lure you from your den, all in one flesh. He has always balanced these faces, has always moved between them with dizzying skill, but now he is a chimera of all three; dignity, wisdom, ferocious might. Looking up at him makes you feel like you are looking up at the night sky, gazed upon in turn by countless stars. “I think it is time for you to return to the den.”

“What have you done?” you ask him, your voice thin. There is blood on his armor. Blood on his face. The whole world is drowning in it.

“Surely you understand this was not His wish.” The figure at his side scrutinizes you. He looks frail; slight in build, his hair gray and his robes drab. But he carries a staff, winged and blazing, and there is the unmistakable spark of the timeless in his eyes. “Man is an animal that panics in the dark. We’ll look back on this strife with shame, but war can only end one way.” 

You stare at him. “You wear a collar.”

“And you bite the hand that feeds. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you it was defensive technology because you’re too frightened of your own shadow to see the light before your eyes.” He smiles wryly at your pinched expression. “I know of you, wild one. He’s told me stories.” 

That frightens you. All these moons and seasons and kingdoms later, and he has never forgotten, never given up the hunt. “And what are you to him? Another advisor? A new warmaster?"

“I am whatever I need to be. What are you, wild one? Have you asked yourself?” 

He pulls you to your feet and you wince, staggering forward on your exhausted, aching limbs. The wound in your knee oozes. Your palms meet solid warmth, stronger than steel. That’s strange, you think, to still feel the heat of his body through all of this armor just as you remember it. It makes you reluctant to leave. Claws of metal curl against your back and it feels like a cage door closing.

“I am nothing. I will not fight for you,” you say desperately. “I will not build you a new empire. I have no place in the world you have made.”

“You have always had a place in the world to come,” the Emperor says. 

He says nothing, does nothing, but the ones who follow him move in unison and you understand he has issued a command. They march ahead into the wasteland with single-minded purpose, an unceasing wave of gold. The bandits creeping up the dunes are not fast enough. You see only scarlet glimpses through the Emperor’s clawed gauntlet but you hear the efficiency of the brutality. The crunch of broken limbs; the cleaving of flesh from bone; the heavy, wet spill of entrails dyeing the sands red. It is over in moments, so swift that they never falter in their marching. 

“You’re a precious thing in a world of cold reason,” the timeless one tells you. “There will come a time when He may forget all that makes Him human. You’ll be there to remind Him.” 

He is lying. You are prey that went uncaptured. You are still a wolf to him, after all this time, the animal that crept from his hut in the night when he was certain he had tamed it. The Emperor has eyes like the sun yet there is hunger in him that stars do not know, the appetites of a thousand men, but for just a moment, his gaze softens to something almost sated.

“We are made for the light,” he reminds you. His words unfurl across your mind the way they did when you first met. “Made for the light,” you hear. “Made for me,” you understand. All of you, eternal and human in all the ways he is slowly forgetting, made for him. 

(They will tell this someday and it will be just as it happened. You did collapse. He did carry you. The sky burned and the sand was red and the carrion birds kept crying, but there had been a shift in the world, a sudden alignment. An imperceptible thing if you had not been standing there when it happened, but if you were, it would have felt like the end of something. It would have made you weep.)