Soteria

[Thalia]

She watched the gold shields of Tristan’s eyes, curious to catch some glimpse of the thoughts that swam behind them. He seemed to her a man naturally quiet; his pensive silences did not surprise her, yet the echo of the words he did speak seemed as entranced as the way he watched the water guardian’s vigil, and for that she wondered at what stirred him so. A smile softened her, adrift of understanding but content to be tugged into his currents.

When she had first told Noctua of Need he had warned her of the sinful things to be found in the hearts of man, but Nimeda only ever saw things to be soothed, not judged -- and certainly not ignored, whatever they were, and wherever they were asked. Physical need could be a comfort for many things, or simply shared for its joy. But usually it was something sought from her in the Inbetween place (when it was sought from her at all), not by those who walked the dreamworld knowingly, and who thus understood she was not just a figment of their dreaming. 

She’d accepted the suddenness of Tristan’s arousal openly, welcoming it even, but there was something more tender to him now than she would have expected of pure release. He pulled her hand to rest entwined with his against his chest, tight to the heart she declared to beat so fiercely. The wrap of his palm was warm despite the coldness of the lake’s water still tracking down his skin. It anchored her unusually quiet.

Nimeda knew only what she observed of the wolves and their brethren from afar, but the bonds between them seemed a thing deeply rooted. Such passions as he seemed willing to share with her should have been sated amongst the true family promised him -- for surely there were more suitable partners for those affections in his Waking world, where such need would be better satisfied than in a dream. He had professed to living alone in the cottage, but had seemed on the verge of epiphany to seek what the Grey Lady encouraged him to find on distant shores. The question was on the tip of her tongue, flecked with concern, but then he drew closer and it became something to remember to ask later. She did not think he could simply be lonely. He had not sought her out; she had been the one to pull him here.

If a mountain might grow limbs, its embrace would resemble the curl of his arms. It reminded her of the secret pocket behind a waterfall, not least because the roaring rush of his resonance dampened her sense of the world beyond. Drips fell from him to streak cold trails against her own skin. Even in the eternal twilight of the dream his eyes caught the light, a reminder that perhaps she should not encourage such a diversion. But Nimeda was old. No one ever said she was wise.

Her hand had not strayed from where he placed it against the coarseness of his chest, the other sliding over his hip to accommodate the distance closed. She was not without the flare of her own desires at feeling him flush against her, but though her face hovered tantalisingly close she did not seek his lips quickly; just the breath of them, courted slow in barest touch. Her nose brushed light across his as her heart fell into the rhythm of captivation. She did not know what he sought from her, nor suspected he really knew himself. Yet instinct guided where reason did not tread. 

She’d asked for his trust before she pulled him into the deep of the lake, and he’d given it freely. She asked for it again when she finally touched the invitation of her lips to his, and this time pulled him instead into her own depths. Her kiss was slow, caught to the steady cadence of a pounding heartbeat, and she held nothing back from its exploration or passion. More tempestuous flames were simmered deep, burned like banked coals as she encouraged the weight of chains from his shoulders. She pulled him deeper. It was intimacy she offered; trust that it was something he might choose for himself despite the conflicts of soul and blood. He need not fear losing control. He could not hurt her here.

[Tristan]

++++++

Tristan was frozen as a troll stone. Her lips brushed tantalizingly close. Her hand roamed the breadth of his shoulders, the other grazing his hip. The sensation was light, tickling. She was so different from Long Eye, whose teeth nipped and hands clawed. Though Sierra was not far from his thoughts, being with her was incomparably glorious as witnessing the majesty of night versus day, but while she summoned the wolf, and Tristan answered the call, Sierra wasn't here, and someone else was. Someone older. Someone touched by darkness.

She was slow and careful, though he wasn’t sure if her caress was timid from fear or gentle to induce pleasure. His heart throbbed drums in his ears, pulsing in tune with the cock she surely felt in her hands. The cool air washed his legs next, though he didn’t discard them on his own. They simply disappeared. He cupped the bend of her elbows in return, trailing fingers up the back of her arms. The push and pull of their hands took their turns. Sudden as the clothing disappearing, the grass nestled soft beneath his back, and Nim sat astride his hips. The gentle rock and rotation of her legs throbbed an ache that made him groan. The call was more than pleasure. It was awakening. Then, the paint that marked him a warrior lengthened like shadows, wrapping his shoulders and ribs, stretching longer and thicker like tongues seeming to lick at her bare thighs.

When he opened his eyes, the gold irises of the wolf patinated. Black crept into the rims as if the paint had leeched from the skin until the whole of his eyes were glossed black rocks. It seemed the paint that marked his face and chest wasn’t paint at all. It was alive as sure as the poison of a troll living inside. They were the mark of a troll that lived in the Other world and the Dream world, and Tristan wanted to lose himself to it. 

With Nimeda, he might.

[Thalia]

She led him gentle into the arms of oblivion. Mastery pulled the world to her whim, and just as she coaxed him to let go she allowed herself the same freedom into instinct and pleasure and connection. Desire flamed for the sounds he made and for the slick pulse of his skin under her hands. She was both languorous and unhurried, shivering when his touch responded. The smallest sensations rippled, the cold long forgotten beneath the trail of warmer fingertips. Grass cushioned when she finally pressed him down and guided herself atop.

Below, darkness began to writhe, reaching like fingers from around his shoulders and ribs. 

Surprise widened her eyes, flaring quickly to a curious intoxication. The ink on Tristan’s skin squirmed and stretched like a siren’s call, licking tongues of black flame towards her naked skin. This time the blossoming of resonance was not a reflection of him, but of herself. She discovered harmony in her own darknesses, even as she preferred the light, yet Nimeda did not like the parts of her not easily accepted by others. Neither did she deny them, though. Memories stirred, of blood and bubbles and the strangest lullabies, frissoning through her with a flare of unexpected kinship. 

Captivation ran her fingers fearless toward the marks that reached for her. She recalled how Tristan had flinched away when she had touched them before, even then drawn by their ancient patterns and the stories they told. “Vánagandr, your blood is singing,” she murmured, entranced. Her breathing deepened like the realisation stirred something new in her, and her hand slid forward to find the anchor of that same monstrous heartbeat in his chest. Wonder snared, swept on a tide suddenly begging an urgency that flushed life to her pale skin. The swell of desire for him was almost enough to push her to the edge of release on its own. Instead, she finally found his newly darkened gaze.

Nimeda had never witnessed the eyes of the kin change before, the sun of them eclipsing to the blackest night of every promised ending. The gold flaked away to nothing. Enamoured and wide-eyed, she urged him closer until he pushed up to sit flush against her. The deep angle of him now hazed lust as her fingers traced the wet strands from his temples, trailing his cheekbone like a frame to the new blackness. She already knew the sting of Tristan’s instincts, yet it did not dim the surety of her touch any more than it buried the whim of her affection for what she beheld.

Trust received was given earnestly in kind, and as he had once asked her not to leave him to the chaos of the dreamcity, so she did not abandon him either to the volatility of a nature she had teased awake from the shadows. It was as beautiful to her as the alien shine of his usually golden gaze, though if it seduced her it was not without the thrill of fear. No leash waited for something she thought him better off to embrace rather than hide, but she was not ignorant either of what stirred. She would not push him harder than she thought he could go, though neither did she shy back from seeking that balance.

For a moment she searched the basalt blackness of his eyes much like she had earlier searched the gold, for a hint of the man who lived behind both. There was another hunger in her now, potent but unarticulated, and currently drenched in an incendiary desire. Nimeda did not seek such answers, though, just the freshwater taste of his lips. She murmured his name into them, unsure for which of them the anchor was meant as she sought his kiss. His heart thundered mesmerizing against her own chest, and she guided his hands to cradle the rhythm of her hips, then snaked her own up his shoulders, relishing that swirl of darkness.

[Tristan]

++++++

The heat of Thalia’s chest slicked against his own. His arms wrapped about her back, and his fingers strung through her tangled hair. He was pliant beneath her, melding and molding into the curves of her body. He couldn’t believe the moment was real. Although in his heart he knew it wasn’t, it was Nimeda that frayed the boundaries of what was real.

It was the call of an ancient name that summoned his eyes open. The smoky haze through which he looked beheld Nimeda’s gaze like she was fogged far away. Yet without hesitation, his lips pressed to hers as though ensuring she was still near enough to kiss. Relief rose within. The press of her hands to his temples rolled his head as though he may howl at the moon. He leaned, back arched, chest a broad canvas of hair and ink. If the blood was singing, what bubbled to the surface came alive, playing out across his skin in a symphony of movements.

The paint curled into shapes linked together in one slender stroke of black:

A cat poised with one paw raised
A raven with its beak splayed wide
A triangle inverted between two circles
A bear raised on its hind legs
A jagged mountain peak rising tall

As a sixth symbol, a trollkors, settled over his heart, the chains locked together, and a hellish face replaced Nimeda’s. His eyes flared wide, surprised by the sudden shift. While he was locked under her, he could not flee, nor did he want to, strangely entranced as he was. The hellish face shifted to that of an old woman, her hair stringy and gray, the eyes yellow, teeth sharp prongs. Then the face morphed into the tentacle-crowned beast lady of the lake. So the faces changed until at last he beheld a beauty whose hair was the river Van and her mouth tasted of oblivion, but she was not too different from Nimeda herself. Were these people real? Were they all figments of his deranged mind? Or were they all Nimeda one in the same? Did she change herself or was he inducing the metamorphosis spurned by his own lusts? He was panting, though from exertion or fear, he did not know. The symbols on his chest remained as did the grey fog through which he saw their shared dream. Did she see it too? 

His heart throbbed drums in his chest. He had to change. If he didn’t, he would snap a bite so hard as surely as if the hand of a beloved was thrust straight into his jaws and devoured on a dare.

Suddenly, Tristan scooped her beneath the seat of her thighs, lifted and laid her on the grass instead. Her hair laid dark against the matted bed, but his basalt eyes veered from hers, fearing the next face to emerge. As he lowered himself into her again, the knot of desire stirred fiercely, and he buried his face in the plump flesh of her breasts.

[Thalia]

The ink bled into a revolution of images against his chest. Magics stirred, not just the shifting freedoms of the dream, and Nimeda’s skin prickled at the curl of something ancient woven into his blood. Entwined deeper, even. Her eyes were round, transfixed, her lips slightly parted. Emotion crested, too much of it too quickly to understand, and she didn’t try, but her own heart began to pound as the last flick of the final symbol fell into place.

Tristan’s chest heaved, his obsidian eyes flared and unblinking. Such deep and fathomless voids made it difficult to perceive his emotion, but she did not look away. The tide swept her up into something beyond herself, and she let it pull her deeper without consideration or fear of drowning. Was he afraid? Movement flickered against the black like the stone of his uncle’s grave; looping swirls she could not discern but to wonder what he might see behind its film. Her hand hovered out, on the verge of pressing flush to the symbol on his heart like it might squeeze past the bars, but it was not fear that stopped her.

He scooped her up, and she did not resist. Her edges felt loose, like a thread plucked sharp enough to leave her spinning, and her forehead touched light to his before he laid her down. The lids of his eyes lowered away from her as he did so; it was not something she’d normally notice, and she was not sure why she did now, yet her hand reached as though about to cup the side of his face. A soft gasp stole instead for passions renewed, and her fingers caressed the shaved sides of his head as he shielded it away. Her own eyes closed for a moment, but it was the glyph that burned, and she did not want to sink into how such an impossibility persisted.

“Do you feel how hard it’s beating, Tristan?” Wonder touched her whisper for the vast stir of feeling evoked in her own chest, words falling into the silken breath of distraction for the way he moved. She didn’t know what he had seen, though she knew well the nature of the dream. Neither did she know how he perceived the changes wrought in himself. Nimeda did not submerge herself too deeply into that understanding, though it pulled at her, and if she did not put it to words she did let herself feel it fully. It was why she spoke of her own heart now, sorrows and passions roused as deep and clear as the waters of the lake. 

Her trailing touch found his jaw, threading soft into the thickness of his beard. Her body moved responsively beneath him, thighs wrapping, back arching, and the hot stir of his breath against her breasts was far from unpleasant, yet she coaxed him up for a different reason, urging like the guiding banks of the riverbed until the whisper of her words caressed close enough to taste against his own lips, like the promise of sanctuary. "I do not know what it is you see in the darkness, but I will not leave you alone there." She would not force him to exhume such secrets as he buried himself away from, nor even to open his eyes, yet neither was she afraid of what strange magics stirred alongside ancient chains.

[Tristan]

With a final groan, Tristan sank into Nimeda’s shoulder. His chest heaved hard breaths, and the drums within his heart slowed. Upon disentangling himself from her legs, it was with a pleased smile and peaceful glow to his cheeks he rolled away and laid alongside her. The color to the sky returned, he realized after a few moments. The grass was green again. Nimeda’s skin flushed rosy pink.

Of all the things that were back to normal, he realized it was he himself who was changed. Strange black shapes were splotched on his chest, surrounding a symbol at the center.

His fingers trailed the curvy shape, but the black did not smudge. Awe transformed his expression as he looked to Nimeda for answers, but when he beheld her flushed, naked body, he gasped. Something was etched nestled between her breasts. It was like a flower, surrounded by sinuous lines. Rather than black, it shimmered blue and iridescent.

“Nimeda, look,” he pointed at it, reaching out to graze her skin delicately as he had his own.

Something stirred in the dream before she could answer. His gaze swept far and wide, similar as he had called out to the wolves in the Other World, but what was awakening was not his kin. He shivered a moment. Distant spires seemed to signal across the dream, but one in particular called him by an Old Name. The language was not known to Tristan yet he knew the interpretation. 

He repeated it, “Sun Snatcher,” and was drawn to his feet, though his legs were still pleasantly weak.

It was to the east he searched, yearning to return to the source.

To Iceland.

"My Uncle calls me," he said with a whisper, and a great sadness stirred within. As if it was the sadness of an entire race speaking through the basalt column, and a hand fell across his heart, stroking the troll cross beneath.

[Thalia]

Her arms stretched languid above her head, an idle tangle with her hair spread out against the grass. Heavy breaths slowed, and Nimeda was content to sink into the pleasant ache and drifting afterglow, her hazy smile unselfconscious of such obvious rapture. Beside her the darkness receded from Tristan’s eyes, yet the inky circle on his chest remained in its new pattern. For now she only tilted her chin to watch curious of his exploration, mesmerised by its strangeness and her memory of it rippling alive against his skin. She did not know what summoned it, but the way it had moved fascinated her.

Awe touched Tristan's expression in a way that deepened both her smile and her sense of charm when he finally looked askance to her, until surprise distracted them both. Mystified, her gaze followed the reach of his fingertips.

She saw only undulating waves sweeping a circle before the rest of the glyph was lost beneath the shadow of his hand, and sudden realisation settled into an inquisitive if somewhat wary epiphany as her head pressed back down to the earth. She watched Tristan’s expression rather than the oddity carved now into her own skin. Old things stirred, and perhaps like had drawn on like, dredging secrets from darkest depths. For a moment she wondered if it was actually wise for him to touch it. Awareness of such ancient stirrings did not equate to mastery, or even understanding, let alone of consequence. But, to both misfortune and joy, Nimeda had never been given to caution, so she only surrendered herself to enamourment of his delicate inspection. 

His touch was soft. 

Feeling spread out in ripples, not just the physical trail of his fingers against still sensitive skin, but like a gentle disturbance on the still surface of a pool. It vibrated inwards. She didn't wade too deeply into the consideration of why or how. Much as when Noctua had shown her a glimpse of her Other’s face and uttered her Waking name, it felt like something better left to sink without much inspection, thus the sudden shift of his attention ushered some relief when his gaze drew away. As he rose slowly to his feet, lured to some call beyond her, her hand pressed over where his had been, and felt nothing beyond warm skin and the steady beat of her own heart. She did not study the shimmering symbol herself once her hand slipped away. She did not consider it further at all.

Afterwards she pushed herself to sit up, damp curls tumbling wild down her slim shoulders. “Sun Snatcher,” she repeated. Then added, thoughtful, “Your gold eyes turned black as a troll stone. Their surface shifted like when the Sleeping Ones stir restless in their prisons." She did not have answers, and she did not ask what he had seen, though she was curious to know. Nimeda had a reverence for mystery that did not require explanation, and she spoke of things she had never witnessed before with an equanimity that simply accepted in its fascination. Tristan’s smile had by now faded to something pensive though, which bothered her more than blood snaking alive or the intrusion of strange visions ever could. It was why she did not ask.

She expected him to shift to whatever pulled his gaze to the horizon, but at the whisper of his explanation she instead unfurled to her feet, pulled closer by her own whim. A small smile lingered for the languorousness still warming her weightless as a cloud, though she was thinking of other things now. She didn’t try to capture Tristan’s gaze from where it rested a thousand and more miles away; instead she ran her palm against his chest -- though she did not touch the outer images of the tattoo, as she would neither choose to caress the chains of a prison. “They had no right to do this to you.” There was no qualification on they, and if there was anger, it sank somewhere deeper than she acknowledged. Maybe she only spoke to herself, for the words were quiet.

Her hand lifted to trace her fingers lightly over the roam of his own. She understood what she saw. Enough of it, anyway; its language different, and foreign to her, yet its soul-deep binding familiar on some instinct she did not examine. Distaste stirred like silt in clear waters. Not for what it was, but why it was. For that reason alone she did not like it. But, as the beautiful mystery nestled within its inked boundary stirred her passions before, so it drew now; for the centre mark was not part of the chain at all. Perhaps Tristan felt it on some level himself, given the way he stroked it also.

“This part is different from the rest. I think someone loved you very much.” Enchantment captured her tone, itself a whisper, transfixed as her fingers traced its sinuous shape. She didn’t know what it was, and she spoke more with the musings of an inquisitive soul than as someone in possession of answers. She bit her lip, on the verge of summoning the light of an extra sense to press an inquiry beneath his skin, but she had no wish to hurt him by mistake. Her gaze blinked up, as though suddenly remembering the flesh and blood warmth under her touch.

Feeling stirred words she did not consider before they fell earnest from her lips. “Your blood makes you both, but also neither. Choose to find the good, not just to bear the burden of its conflict. Do not let it rule you, Tristan.” She reached up on tiptoe to tug light and playful on the tip of his beard, seeking his attention. She did not know what weighted him so; shame or sadness or fear. Wolves and trolls were mortal enemies, and the calls of both would ever war in his head. Yet his melancholy was not infectious to her. Neither did the atrocities of Ages past dampen her spirit. The murky weight of her own many buried memories coupled with painful glimpses of future’s hardship might have similarly crushed; instead Nimeda chose to live vivaciously in the present.

She thought of the peace in his smile above her face. Of the bubbles zipping from his toothy grin underwater.

“Your uncle is ever rude with his timing, and you let peace escape you far too quickly, like water through fingers." If it was admonishment, it was fondly imparted. Grey eyes glittered a smile that presently lit the rest of her expression. Her hand pressed atop his, fingers lacing over and through his own. She made as though to tug him onwards, but her grip only flowed away instead. Mischief teased her expression as she slipped back, grinning. Her palm was held out in invitation. “We should go and see what he wants.”

[Tristan]

Tepid waters swirled, but Nimeda was contemplative while Tristan boiled inside. Trolls, wolves. Both demanded to shape his mind, and both would fail. All this emotion built a pressure in his chest that frightened him. He gazed down at her and the heartfelt affection pooling in her eyes, but his thoughts were tugged toward distant shores until the stroke of her fingers flared ashes long dead. He felt like he was being torn in half. His jaw clenched. Fists balled. He heard what she said, but the graze over his heart could not douse what stirred. Love couldn’t undo what was done. His eyes squeezed shut, flashes skimming hot over the surface. Green eyes lit the dark. Hungry teeth snarled. Blood dripped from open jaws.

Only when the tug of his beard pulled to the point of pain did the fog part. Her words sizzled at first, but quickly fizzed to nothing before understanding could claw into his mind. Nobody would tell him what to do, despite their good intent. It grated, and on instinct, rebellion bubbled within. But he didn't push Nimeda aside. Although the risk hung over their heads.

She was right about one thing. His uncle intervened into lives not his to control. They had to speak. As Tristan took Nimeda’s hand, the world shifted in unison. The trollstone writhed in his mind. It wasn’t until icy waters swarmed their bodies that he suddenly worried what it was he would see when they climbed to shore.

[Thalia]

Tristan’s ferocity was a palpable energy writhing beneath his skin, and Nimeda was as curious for the snap of his jaws as she was for the paradoxical gentleness that also seemed to be in his nature. Not that she blamed him for the savagery invoked. Her wide-eyed gaze watched much as she had once watched the vicious curl of Thorn Paw’s snarl meant to chase her from the cottage, unperturbed by the danger now as then. When the wolf had lunged at her, she had fled, and she wondered what she might do if Tristan did the same. But instead he only took her offered hand. For a moment, thinking of his balled fists and clenched jaw, her skin prickled with the memory of how hard the grimnir had crushed her wrist, and she puzzled at the faith of her trust in others. But he did not hurt her.

The world swirled like a hand smeared through wet paint. They dropped straight into the heart of the fjord, not unknowingly; and not entirely her own doing either, though she was glad for it. For a moment she plunged down deeper, relishing the cold jets against her skin. Skirts rippled as they pulled flush against her legs, and her hair wreathed wild when she twisted and pushed forward through a cloud of bubbles. The amusement was purely self-indulgent, a cleanse into cold and dark and silence. For memories roused, old and ancient and sparkly new. She let them wash away, and felt better for the freedom as she darted sleek through the current.

Nimeda did not surface until the shore, when a gasp brought icy air into her lungs. A smile flickered for the sensation as she pulled herself sodden out of the water’s embrace. The troll stone never spoke to her, and she did not expect to be privy to any conversation to follow. She’d sat cross-legged in front of it often enough in the past, reciting her stories to abject silence before she’d ever known anyone else called the cottage home. Even then she’d understood what it was, if not who, and it had not dissuaded the doggedness of her company. Trolls were by nature solitary. Likely Tristan’s uncle had not relished her persistence any more than the wolf when he had discovered her visits to this place. If Thorn Paw was here also, she imagined to find even less welcome. 

It was not the only reason Nim did not race ahead this time, but while neither hesitant, she did turn to wait for Tristan. Her feet crested a perch atop a slippery rock, arms aloft in careless balance as she observed the churn of his emotions now. She’d sliced her soles running last time, but if she was mindful of the sharpness it did not dampen her whimsy. Neither was she wary of her company. She slipped down, nimble despite seeming precariousness. Her eyes were bright with question she did not give voice to. If he did not seem inclined to lead the way, she would.

[Tristan]

Tristan’s hulking arms pulled him to the surface in one wide sweep. Once there, he walked to the shore, emerging like some monolithic creature released from the depths. Perhaps he had? Nimeda called him to the watery lair of another, and kind called to like kind. His face was writ in determination, staring up the slope toward the place he first met Thorn Paw.  

He passed Nimeda poised on the rock. Her dress slapped her flesh like a second skin, and his pace naturally slowed. She waited for him to do something, and he second-guessed the moment. A rumble rippled from dirt to pebble to water, and Tristan’s gaze was drawn away upward. His hand reached for the symbols on his chest as he moved. The last time he was here, he was a different man. The lost boy who ran the world alone, wounded by the uncle who judged him for what he couldn’t control. The man who returned stalked away from the fjord a warrior. The markings on his chest began to churn. The lines of war paint returned to his face. The leather pants creaked. To his hand came an axe that he gripped so tight the wood of the handle creaked.

The ground quaked beneath him as he stomped upward. Sparks sprayed and rumbles reacted. The boulders of the very mountain seemed to respond, but it was the basalt column that he ran toward, a roar growing from his throat as he did.

The trollstone twisted this way and that. Its surface pooled to black glass. Inside, the shadows churned into a silhouette. Úlfar called his name in a mangled language he hated yet somehow understood.

Hefting the axe, Tristan hurled himself at the basalt column. When the blade struck the stone, a thousand cracks snapped the surface. With a snarl, he reared, and thrust his hand deep into the troll stone up to the elbow. The shadow within screamed and tried to flee, but Tristan’s grip found purchase. He clawed and yanked, muscles of his back and legs pulled to intensity fighting and snarling. The battle waged across two realms only he could bridge, but he would not relent.

With a final cry, Tristan pulled, breath heaving. The axe was lodged in the surface of the stone and in his crushing hand something waited. Tristan turned, and when he did, he was only a shadow of himself. Husks poked like teeth from his lips. His eyes were black. The skin of his bare chest swirled green behind the chains of glepneir. The troll cross blazed like blood. What he saw behind those black eyes would etch forever in his mind. Every basalt column across the world howled in reaction. For what had struck the heart of the troll.

More accurately, what snatched the heart of the troll.

“Hear me,” he spoke to the realm of the trolls, language mixing guttural and clipped with theirs. “You sealed your fates. I will not free you. Sleep now and disturb none, or I will snatch all your hearts and wear them as a garland in my beard.”

He was himself moments later. Golden eyes saw the world anew. He looked down at what he held, in awe.

Finally, he yanked the axe from the troll stone. It disappeared and the stone healed itself to quiet contemplation once more. Tristan squat to the ground, leaning his head against the surface like a throne.

He held up the heart of the troll to study it as if it was his own. It glowed a few more moments before falling quiet. He breathed easy, but the trolls were not the only ones to hear his threat. The wolf dream stirred distant as the Endless Stars as if readying for battle.

Let it come, he thought.

With a satisfied growl, he looked for Nimeda.