Aveline, Rachel, and I remained intertwined in a familial embrace for several more minutes. I couldn’t even describe how relieved I was to discover them unharmed. Eventually, though, I had to separate from them.

  There was still one more person I had to check up on.

  I pulled away enough to look at them, my gaze flickering between theirs. “You two are okay?” I asked, just to be sure.

  Aveline nodded silently, while Rachel let out a shuddering sigh. “Aye, we’re fine. We were havin’ lunch, and then there was this horrid pressure. Felt like my organs were getting’ squished by a great big hand. Never felt anythin’ like it.”

  “Then Fade…” Aveline started uncertainly. “He got us into the basement, and it was better. But then, he…” She trailed off.

  I could feel the corners of my eyes tense, and they flickered up to meet the concerned gaze of Rachel. “Is he still down there?”

  She nodded slowly, her mouth twisting back and forth for a moment. “Aye, he is, but…be careful, Nate. He ain’t actin’ like himself.”

  I set my shoulders and nodded. Reluctantly, I untangled myself from Aveline’s arms and stood up. Maybe it was my imagination, but when I looked down into the blackness of my storage basement, I felt a chill run down my spine.

  It looked like nothing more than a great, yawning, hungry mouth descending into the bowels of the bluff.

  I shook my head to clear it of unnecessary thoughts and looked down at Rachel, still clutching at Aveline on the top step. “It’s safe, now. You can go inside, but…prepare some bags. We’re leaving for the Bastion after this. There’s absolutely no way we’re staying all the way out here with whatever…this is, going on.”

  Rachel glanced up at the frozen magenta lighting streaking across the sky, visible through the glowing dome of the wards. She shuddered and nodded, making the sign of the Gyre. “Gyre protect us, but ye ain’t gonna get an argument outta me, Nate. Come along now, Lina,” She said, standing up. “Your Pa’ has something to see to, and so do we.”

  My daughter and the woman I was increasingly starting to think of as my sister stood up to leave. But just before they passed out of sight, Aveline glanced back at me in concern.

  And then they were gone.

  I took a deep breath and raised one hand flat out before me. In moments, I’d cast my light Spell, and a floating ball of sunlight appeared to hover over it, not much bigger than a baseball. I set my shoulders and descended into the void of my basement.

  I was…incredibly startled to find an actual mist had somehow descended upon the interior, as I descended the steps. It was like a localized fog had somehow sprung up in here. The sight of it, illuminated by my Spell, was almost familiar. It tickled my brain for a moment, and then I remembered what it reminded me of.

  Fade’s inner world, his very soul, had appeared similarly to this back when we had bonded. A low foggy mist had obscured the emerald green grass within.

  I frowned, eyes darting around the space. The entire basement was filled with stacks of both forged Oninite bars, as well as piles of raw ore. They glittered black and blue in the dim light cast by my Spell, and yet…

  I didn’t see Fade anywhere down here.

  “Fade?” I called out, my voice echoing oddly among the Oninite. “Are you…there?”

  Silence was my answer in the physical world. But in the spiritual one…

  I heard something across my familiar bond.

  It was…wrong, though. Distorted. Instead of the young, boyish voice I had come to associate with my familiar, I heard what sounded like a form of almost…static. It almost seemed to growl at me, low and menacing.

  I think it was only because of my extensive combat experience that I reacted in time to what came next. I felt it more than saw it, as I sensed a low shape lunge out of the darkness.

  Straight at the back of my neck.

  I spun around in an instant, raising my left forearm in a blocking motion before me.

  A silvery gray mouthful of razor-sharp fangs crunched down into the leather of my covered Primordium arm. I almost wanted to wince at the screeching noise of tooth against unbreakable metal, but resisted.

  My attacker reeled back in pain from the unexpected, metallic setback, and I saw my chance. I lashed out and grabbed the antlers of the person who had attacked me with both hands, and held their head still. They snarled and struggled in my grip, trying to lunge at me again with snapping jaws, held back only a few inches from me by my grip on their head. Lupine paws scrabbled against me for purchase against my thighs, penetrating my pants and scratching my skin.

  I took a deep breath and shouted. Both in the physical and the spiritual.

  “FADE!” I bellowed, my voice echoing both in the basement and across our familiar bond.

  In my hands, the wolf assaulting me…stilled. In the dim light of my Spell, floating off to my side, I could see that his emerald green eyes, so hauntingly similar in shade to my own, were disturbingly cloudy. I wasn’t even sure he could see me.

  I couldn’t see an ounce of the intelligence I knew and loved within my familiar.

  And yet…he had still reacted to his name.

  Determined, I leaned in closer to him, enough that I could feel his hot, hungry breath on my face. “Fade,” I called, this time solely over the bond. I widened the throughput that connected us, hopefully allowing him to feel my love and concern for him. “Are you there? Can you hear me?”

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  To my relief, I saw a spark of intelligence flare into being within his eyes. It was groggy, though, as he was waking from a deep, deep sleep. “Nate…?” I heard across the bond, though it was…different. The sound of his voice was faint, coming through the familiar bond weakly, as if from a great distance. Still, his struggles gradually slowed, and as they did, I lowered us both to the floor. When we reached it, I gently laid his head in my lap and released his antlers. Luckily, he’d stopped fighting me and chose to rest there limply. I almost dimly noticed that the fog in the basement had vanished with startling swiftness as I cradled him.

  I set my flesh hand on his head and cautiously began to stroke it. “Fade, what happened?” I spoke aloud. “You…suddenly screamed something and went silent. Then, you tried to attack me? I don’t…I don’t understand.”

  He was silent for a moment, leaning into my hand. “I don’t either…” He eventually replied, with greater strength in his mental voice. “I’m…sorry, Nate. I don’t know what…” Fade chuffed aloud briefly. “No…that’s not true. I think I know why I went…feral like that. Nate,” He said, sitting up to look me in the eye. “I can’t feel the Concord anymore.”

  I furrowed my brow. “What do you mean?”

  “I can always feel it, Nate,” Fade said with iron-clad certainty. “Since Taran started teaching me, I learned to sense it, just out of view with the physical realm. But now I can’t. And that shouldn’t be possible. It’s just…gone. It’s like I’ve been cut off from it, somehow. I think that messed me up, made me act more like…”

  “An animal?” I finished for him quietly.

  Fade bowed his head. “Yeah,” He said in a small voice. “The only reason I came back was because you called out to me, through the bond. It was like I was waking up from a…a coma, or something? I don’t know how else to explain it.”

  I was quiet as I absorbed the implications. Whatever had happened seemed to have cut Fade off from the Concord as well. I could only assume that had also caused his behavior, and I had somehow brought him back from that state. That had…dire implications, about what might have happened.

  Both to the Concord itself, as well as to all the other Spirit Beasts on Vereden. Shurenga, her children, Taran, and all the others I didn’t know about…

  I sighed as I got to my feet, Fade staggering to his only a moment later. “We…can’t do anything about it now,” I said. “We’re leaving the lighthouse. We’ll go to the Bastion with the girls, while we try and…figure things out, I suppose.”

  Fade stilled. “The girls…” He whispered, looking away from me. “I didn’t…hurt them, did I?”

  “No,” I said firmly, laying a hand on his head. “You didn’t. They were just worried, that's all. Now c’mon. It’s time to put our heads together with the others and figure this out.”

  I’m not sure he believed me as we exited the basement.

  It only sank in when we met back up with the girls, and Aveline immediately threw her arms around him in a hug.

  …………………………….

  It took the four of us time to navigate our way back to the Bastion. The crowds at the gate leading into the city were still absolutely packed with the panicking crowds of Blutstein. I think the only reason we were let into the city was because the regular guards recognized me and waved us through.

  Even then, the state of the city once we were in…

  It was pretty dire.

  The pressure from earlier may have only lasted for scant minutes, but it was hard to overstate just how crushing it had been. Most people, I’m sure, would have been able to withstand it. Even if you were low level, a status granted you a measure of additional durability that simply couldn’t be ignored.

  The problem was, though…

  Sometimes that wasn’t enough, or you didn’t have one.

  Over the confused, scared crowds who were filling the streets of the lower layer, it was easy to pick out the sounds of mourning. The wails and cries of bereft families carried far, after all, even over the din of the guard trying to keep order in the city. Wagons were visible on every street corner, loaded up with human shaped forms. Sometimes they were thankfully covered up with funerary sheets, while others…

  Were not.

  I did my best to shield Aveline’s eyes from the sight of both the small, still bodies I found and the wrinkled, crooked ones. I hadn’t truly understood the immediate impact of the earlier episode until I saw it myself. Both the youngest and the eldest among us were the most vulnerable to a period of drastically increased Atherial density, and seemed to have…succumbed to it. Not all of them, thankfully. I saw more than a few frightened children, wailing infants, and stoic elders standing in the streets with their families.

  But there were enough to infer just who had suffered the consequences of this event.

  While I shielded Aveline from the sight of a too still infant lying in its screaming mother’s arms, I made sure to burn it into my retinas.

  I needed to find out who or what had caused this…

  And deal with it.

  All four of us were somber as we finally navigated to the fortress of the Lowerstone Bastion. There was only a single guard on duty when we reached it, but I wasn’t upset by that. I had seen quite a few Polaris Reach members out on the streets, helping with the aftermath of the…attack, I suppose. My soldier waved us in at the sight of me, and I found the yard…mostly empty. But I could see hundreds of scared pairs of eyes peering out of the rowhouses for the refugees, so it wasn’t a mystery where the majority of people had gone.

  I entered the Bastion proper and was promptly stopped by the sight of Bait standing in the atrium tensely, tapping a foot. At the sight of Aveline, Rachel, and Fade, he visibly relaxed. Aveline was used to the sight of my clone enough that she accepted a hug from him. But when he turned to me, he bore a frown on our face. “You need to get to Kyronkar,” He said abruptly.

  I sighed, rubbing my brow. This long day was only going to get longer. “Is that where everyone is?”

  Bait nodded. “Most of the Order is out on the streets, while the leadership and Bleddyn were called to the monument. I stayed behind because I knew you were going to come back soon,” He said, tapping his head. I nodded along.

  Of course he would be able to guess my intentions.

  He was me, after all.

  “But that means I can get the others settled here, while you attend to our duty,” Bait continued, resting a hand on Aveline’s shoulder. “Fade can stay-”

  “NO!” Fade suddenly interjected, causing both of us to jerk. Normally, Bait couldn’t hear Fade’s voice, nor could he speak across the bond. It was only when we were all in close proximity to each other that he could hear Fade at all. “I…I don’t want to be away from Nate right now. I don’t know if I’ll…revert again…”

  That was…a good point. It was only thanks to my checking in on him that the Spirit Wolf wasn’t still acting like a feral animal. Best to keep him with me.

  At Bait’s troubled look, I just shook my head. He’d learn what had happened later, when we could afford to merge. “Fade will stay with me, and we’ll get going,” I said quietly, to his accepting nod. “Rachel, Aveline…” I said, kneeling down to my daughter’s level. I smiled as best I could at her. “I probably won’t be gone long, alright?”

  Aveline studied me for a moment, strangely somber for a child. But perhaps it wasn't so strange, thinking about it. After all, Aveline had seen more than her fair share of death to understand it. “Be safe, okay?”

  “I will,” I promised, standing up. Then, with a nod of mutual understanding from Rachel, Fade and I left the very fortress we had only arrived at. As much as I understood just why it was so chaotic out on the streets, I had no patience for navigating them a second time. We needed to get to Kyronkar quickly if we were going to be part of whatever was happening. When I transformed to my full winged state again, Fade didn’t need any prompting to jump into my scaled arms. We’d practiced this before, so it wasn’t hard for me to shoot as far into the sky as I could manage, and then soar toward the highest tier of Blutstein.

  It was time to get some answers.