Chapter 123 – Purpose

  “Never thought I would be given homework by a goddess…” – Val complaining over breakfast.

  Kurt opened his eyes and found himself in an unexpected location. “Why did I come to the cave and not the forest?” he asked aloud, wondering why he had broken the trend of showing up in the dreamscape meadow then having to walk to the cave.

  “Probably because you came here with the intent to get answers.” Said the raspy voice of the wolf that was his guide and so much more.

  Turning, Kurt saw that the giant wolf was sitting just inside the entrance of the cave, looking at him curiously. “Huh, I thought the walk here was kinda part of the experience.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Hmm, kinda like an enlightenment thing like ‘the path to knowledge must be walked to be attained’ or some other proverb.” Kurt said while walking over to stand slightly closer to his more beastly half.

  “Kurt, that is the dumbest thing I have ever heard. And I have been around for thousands of years.” His wolfs ears flattened and it gave him a healthy amount of side eye.

  “Dumber than ‘the government only has your best interest at heart’?” Kurt quoted.

  “Ok, maybe not the dumbest but its still pretty stupid for someone as smart as you.” The wolf shook its head before turning to him. “So, why did you come? Would it have anything to do with the strand that your child found?”

  Kurt wasn’t sure what to make of that but his mind seized on one word in particular. “My child?”

  “The one you gave the gift to. The human soldier-for-hire.”

  “How is Justin my child?” Kurt was very confused for a moment until it finally clicked. “Wait, because I bit him?”

  The wolf bobbed its head up and down in a nod. “That is the basic idea, yes. You created him so he is your spawn. There isn’t any power over him like with the vampires, only the dominion you have as Lupus Rex. To some extent, all the werewolves are somewhat your progeny and you share a spiritual connection with them, but that is a topic for later.”

  “Right… so about those things?” Kurt asked, circling back to the original topic. He would deal with the whole ‘all werewolves are his’ at a later time.

  “Hmm, yes. The Strand as they are known.” His wolf bared its fangs in a silent snarl. “Come, see now.”

  The wolf got up and began walking down the gallery of illuminated wall panels. Kurt followed, looking at the scenes that he had been shown before. They walked down the length of the gallery until they got to the scene where the wolves had left on their first great hunt.

  Stopping at the edge of the panel, the wolf touched the seam with his nose, huffing a breath out over the small gap. He backed away a moment later and turned to look at Kurt. “This is something you should have learned about later, but it seems we will have to cover it now.”

  Kurt watched in silent wonder as the wall opened and slid to the side. Somehow the gallery expanded, shifting and shuffling to allow another wall to slowly grow from the gap. The panel that appeared was just like all the others but as it came to light, it showed a scene that he hadn’t seen before.

  Where the previous panel had depicted the Origin leading his host into the night, this one was apparently some extra context. The werewolf army had flowed into the countryside, going farther than any of the human hunters had dared venture and finding many a monster lurking in those hidden places.

  These monsters were of the usual variety. Some sort of lesser devil or even giant arachnids and the vampiric thralls seemed to be common. It seemed that these monsters were just the little footnotes to what was being hunted as Kurt watched the alphas work with the Origin.

  The man seemed to emit an aura, one that Kurt recognized as the divine energy he could now sense and collect. That aura had a sort of ‘cleansing’ effect on some of the monsters and the shadows that spread from darkest depths of the earth. Some of the places that his aura touched seemed to smoke or vaporize into a black mist and a few monsters even turned to ash in his presence.

  The next panel showed the Origin, shifted into his werewolf form, standing before a wyvern. Its skin looked sickly and it bulged in awkward places, looking like it was bloated. Suddenly, one of the alphas circling behind it lunged and tore a massive gash along the dragon’s flank, revealing a writhing black mass within.

  Like a popped water balloon, the wyvern then shed the remainder of its skin, turning into ribbons of half rotten meat as they fell away to reveal the abomination within. The shape was a mass of the eel like things that Justin’s team had fought, each one looking like necrotic muscle and sinew as they reformed. The mass of Strand then assumed a roughly humanoid form, with long arms and a hunched posture before it attacked the Origin.

  The scene ended there with the next panel showing the Origin standing over the smoking and rapidly decaying remains. Around him, the other werewolves lashed out at the Strand that were trying to flee from their former conglomerate, making sure they didn’t escape. It seemed that after the collective body had been destroyed, individual worms broke away and fled.

  “That is horrifying.” Kurt said with a snarl as a shiver ran up his spine and he felt his hackles rise. “To think they can form something like that… I don’t know what to call it.

  “We call them a ‘lesser construct’.” His wolf said.

  Kurt didn’t miss the choice of name used for these. “That implies a ‘greater’ construct…”

  “Indeed, it does.” His wolf agreed. “But that isn’t the worst of it.”

  “It gets worse?” Kurt didn’t want to think about how big of a monster a colony of the Strand could make.

  “Much.” Said the wolf as the last panel lit.

  Kurt faced it and watched what looked like a well-to-do man sitting at a desk, using a stylus to carve on a clay tablet. He wasn’t sure what this scene was supposed to show but then noticed the man had an aura.

  Squinting a little, Kurt leaned in to get a better look. The man had a sort of inky black haze floating around him. It only took a moment for Kurt to recognize it as the same hazy, vapor-like cloud the Strand had around them. He recoiled away from the image, his stomach threatening to rebel despite him being a projection of his soul in this space.

  “It infects humans?” Kurt asked, fighting the urge to be sick.

  “Not just humans but yes.” His wolf also seemed to be on the verge of gagging. “Though, only those willing or already significantly lacking in certain qualities.

  Kurt turned away, not sure why he was so revolted at the idea but also not wanting to see any more of it. “What are they? The Strand I mean.”

  “They are why we exist.” The wolf said, following Kurts’s lead and stepping away from the panel. “The divine being that made the Origin,” he nodded to the first scene in the gallery. “Made us to fight these things. It is hard coded in us to be revolted by them and have natural resistance to them.”

  Suddenly, the wolf smirked, showing its teeth. “That plan backfired a little but he got most of the result he wanted.”

  “What was that?”

  “The Origin was one of the experiments that was successful. He was made to fight these monsters and raise an army to do it by spreading the werewolf version of lycanthropy. Even now, the Avatar pushes us forward, drives us to grow stronger, to be better predators to fight them.” Answered the wolf.

  “Ok, but what are the Strand? Or what is the Strand?” Kurt asked again.

  “A god.”

  “A god?”

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  “In essence, yes.” The wolf elaborated. “They are a sort of hive mind, all part of the same whole that exists in one of the realms that lay at the very edges of reality. While each strand isn’t a divine being, their race as a whole, is. They are the patrons of such creatures as the wendigo and some of the wraiths that sometimes cross the void.

  “This is why we have such visceral reactions to things like the wendigo. Anything that preys on the mortals of Earth are generally your enemy but the creatures from that realm are even more so.”

  “So, we were made to kill gods?” Kurt ventured a guess at where this was going. “And its not just limited to Strand…”

  “Yes. And how do you fight a divine being?” Asked the wolf with a very leading tone.

  Kurt thought for a moment, looking at the panels that had been lit up for him. “With your own divinity and faith?” He answered hesitantly, thinking of the memory the Avatar had recently shown him.

  “Half right. Faith is just how you restore power when spending ‘authority’. Divinity is really just an overall ability to use the authority. That’s the part where the god that made us got more than they bargained for. One of the old gods reached a little too far in his madness and made something that could challenge them.” The wolf answered. “But he also instilled some… control. I think you will learn about that later, not today.”

  Still not quite understanding, Kurt had to follow up. “Ok, so I knew about faith and the general divine thing but what is authority? How does it play into us fighting the Strand and… other gods?”

  The wolf was silent for a moment before responding, clearly debating on how to explain the concepts on the lecture scale of Barney to Einstein. “Think of authority as an innate purpose or perhaps a skill. Let’s use a dryad for example. They have a natural purpose to tend to plants and are born with the skills to do so. It is what they were born to do. They use their authority to act upon the world, change it as they see fit using mana as fuel.”

  “And werewolves were created with the purpose of hunting and killing Strand and other such creatures.” Kurt filled in, transferring the concepts to his situation. “Thus, we have in innate authority to destroy them.”

  “Yes, now you get it.” The wolf said, a lupine smile tugging at the corners of its mouth. “The faith you gather is just a different, more potent, form of mana that you can use to exercise your authority. The more you gather and use, the higher up the ranks you move toward the lofty peaks of godhood. Perhaps you will soon be ready to learn about domains, but not quite yet.”

  “How does that play into the whole hybrid thing?” Kurt suddenly asked, skipping over the domain comment. He was wondering if his heritage had a part to play in this grand conspiracy.

  The smile never fading, the wolf replied with wide eyes. “I think that is best for you to figure out on your own as you grow in power. For now, just focus on the Strand and you will soon find answers to your questions.”

  “Uh huh. And why are the Strand coming back around now?” Kurt wondered, turning back to face the mural. He thought the wolf was there to provide answers to his questions but had learned that pushing wouldn’t get him anywhere.

  “It’s a recurring problem.”

  “How often has this happened?” Kurt asked. If this had happened a couple times in ancient history, it would… His thoughts were cut off as several panels at various points along the darkened gallery suddenly lit up. They were scattered down the length of the seemingly endless wall at random intervals, but none revealed the actual image just yet.

  “Well…. Shit.”

  *****

  Val wasn’t asleep. Well, her body was asleep but apparently her consciousness had an appointment to keep. At least the place she woke up was a nice place, unlike where Kurt went on his little nocturnal wanderings.

  “Hmm good… evening? I actually have no idea what time it is.” Val said as she sat up and looked around. “Wait, weren’t you too supposed to be white?”

  Val was greeted by two giant foxes, both of them curled up and looking over the fluff of their tails. They looked like little lumps of fuzzy blackness. Both of them stared at her, their golden eyes slightly squinted and filled with humor.

  “They liked the look of your fur dear.” Said a lovely voice. “They wanted to ‘try it on’ for a while and decided to surprise you. I am sure this will only last a little while, a century at most until they go back to white, sooner if they find another color that strikes their fancy.”

  “Lady Inari.” Val greeted, standing and turning to face the goddess who sat on a small cushion with a tea set between her and another matching pillow. She bowed deeply, speaking in a reverent tone. “I am hono-“

  “Just sit, Val.” Inari said with a sigh while waving her hand over to the pillow across from her. The slight upturn of her lips showed that she was at least amused and not completely frustrated.

  Val quickly walked over and sat, kneeling formally on the pillow to mirror the goddess before her. She waited, looking expectantly at her… what was Inari to her? Val wasn’t particularly religious, so she didn’t feel strong faith or devotion. But at the same time, she felt a sort of connection that she couldn’t quite explain. Finally, she just decided to do the smart thing.

  “Lady Inari, what are we? Like what am I to you and vice versa?” She asked after the goddess just stared at her for several long moments.

  “Is that really what troubles you?”

  “At this very moment, yes.” Val answered, being blunt. If she was honest, it wasn’t her biggest trouble, but it would help her define things and ease her mind enough to move on to those other topics.

  Inari looked at her for a moment longer before answering. “Friends is perhaps a misnomer. I know we said that on your last visit, but I was also not expecting to talk to you again. Alas, it seems we will be talking much more often.” She paused before continuing, humming slightly as she debated the idea. “Perhaps a mentor would be best. I am not your patron, at least not yet and I have much to teach you.”

  Val accepted that answer. She wasn’t going to argue with having a deity as a mentor. “Why are we going to be talking more often?”

  “Because dear, your divinity is condensing, and your soul is now powerful enough to project itself here based on our previous connection. Originally, I assumed you would just be an exemplary member of your species, despite being… eh, abnormal.” She faltered on how to describe Val being a hybrid. “It would seem I was wrong in my initial assessment, and you may soon find yourself amongst my peerage.”

  “But why would you need to talk to me on a regular basis?”

  Considering the question for a moment, the goddess eventually answered. “I don’t wish to give you any ideas so I will speak plainly. I don’t want competition.”

  “Lady Inari, I would never-“ Val blurted, unsure how the goddess got the idea in her head that Val was competing, but was cut off.

  “And yet you are.” Inari said, raising her hand to stop Val. “Whether you intend to or not is another matter but by nature of being a kitsune, even half of one, you infringe upon my authority, my domains.” The goddess went silent then, looking at Val expectantly.

  For her part, Val thought about what she just heard. Taking her time before answering carefully. “How can I prevent that?”

  A smile, not yet showing any teeth, graced Inari’s lips. “A good question. It is why I called you to be this evening. Now please, sit and listen for a few moments. While I am sure you will compare notes with the scion of Lycaon, our path is much more nuanced and open to direction than his.”

  “Kurt.”

  “Pardon?” Inari asked, eyelids fluttering, momentarily flustered at the interruption.

  “His name is Kurt. For all that he is a scion or the avatar of a dead god, he is still my Kurt and his own person outside of his inheritance.” Val declared, deciding that she wanted to set the tone for how she viewed her lovers.

  Inari stared for a moment before nodding. “My apologies, Kurt it is. As I was saying, his path is set, with only a few options for deviation in his ascent as far as I know. Yours is much more open to guidance, as long as you have the will to do so. Now, listen closely but let me know if you have questions.”

  Val listened as the goddess explained how she would be able to establish domain after she began to gather her divinity and project authority. All this information was new to her and she had to stop and ask clarifying questions several times which Inari explained patiently.

  Through it all, she was beginning to understand the pressure that Kurt had set upon his shoulders. Val at least had a choice in the matter of growing into this new power but she felt bad that he did not. One way or another, he would be dragged up that mountain and the only input he had was if he would still be himself if he reached the top.

  They talked for what felt like hours, but eventually the conversation came to an end when Inari held up a hand after answering a question, stopping Val from asking more. “Our time grows short and there is still much to tell you. I will call upon you again soon, but I think we have reached a good stopping point for now. There is also something else I wish to tell you.”

  “Yes, Lady Inari?” Val said, curious about the sudden change in topic.

  “Just know that Kurt will see you growing in strength. I am unsure how he will react, but I wish for you to be prepared.” Inari began then continued after seeing Val wasn’t going to ask a follow up. “Secondly, when your other mate begins to come into her power, you would do well to coach her. She will need the love and reassurance you and Kurt provide.”

  “Kristi? She does the whole god thing too?” Val was almost too stunned to speak… almost.

  Inari smiled. “All hybrids do. That is why the others tried to limit your power. They wanted to insure you would not grow into a threat and sought to keep your kind suppressed but only moderately succeeded.”

  “WHO!” Val nearly leapt to her feet at the information.

  Raising her hand, Inari motioned for Val to settle herself. “Please, while I cannot tell you, I have a feeling that you will discover more of that information very soon. At least if the old daemon has his way.”

  Val instantly knew who she was referring to. Jay was of course investigating things behind the scenes. She also had no doubt that he had insider knowledge of some things that he hadn’t shared with them just yet.

  Taking a calming breath, Val sighed. “Very well. I will have to trust you on that.”

  “Indeed.” Inari agreed. “Now, remember what we talked about and how to pull yourself to certain domains. The authority will come naturally, if slowly. The sooner you begin the work, the less at odds we will be and the easier time you will have in the future. I still recommend that you try to aspect toward your affinity for shadows.”

  Val was about to respond when the goddess leaned forward and tapped her nose. “Until we meet again.” Were the last words that echoed around in her mind as she suddenly awoke in bed with Kurt and Kristi.

  Sighing, Val took a moment to think about what she had learned. She found it surprisingly easy to recall the information and order her thoughts. She just had to figure out how to bring up the topic to Kurt.

  Just as she was beginning to get anxious about how she would address it, she remembered that it was best to just be blunt with him. It was honestly one of the many things she loved about the man. Some might call him simple, but she liked to refer to it as straight forward and he was almost painfully honest.

  She shimmied backward a little. Wiggling herself tighter against Kurt as her tails swept over him. She almost yelped when she felt his arm wrap around her waist and pull her tight against him. A moment later, hot breath in her ear carried the whispered voice of her first mate.

  “Oh, it seems the big bad wolf has caught himself a little fox.” He nipped at her ear, using just a little pressure. “What ever shall I do with you?”

  Yeah, Val suddenly wasn’t concerned about talking with Kurt anymore.