Andarin: The Mountains: nicodemus; --

horse stock by colourize @ deviantArt ; photomanipulation by Lore

“ Death is the only god that comes when you call. ”
- Roger Zelazny

I can see what, say the winds, and their voice is cold like a gravestone. We can feel it.

Because winds, winds have no mercy. Winds have no forgiveness. And while they can mimic it, even then, their voice is stolen from me, from others, from the world. The wind’s voice is made of groans and shudders and the cold rustle of pine trees and reeds in a marsh. That’s the wind’s voice.

But the winds, my winds, they are cold, and even as I smile I know they continue – plucking at his own wind like birds of prey, a million tiny beaks and throats – they’ve learned this from Rook, no doubt, the shadows of birds in the haze and the darkness.

Which is why I am here today, they continue, in the voice that is no longer mine – a trade of images and impressions and sounds that make thoughts into words. Not as a leader, neither as a friend, but as a guardian. Andürien’s keeper.

Throwing my head back, I know what he will see: the crystal, black and pulsing, filigreed in silver and red that may be blood, and is. This little trinket has freed me from Betrayal, though I did not know it at the time. It has freed Alcatraz from Severus. The lightning shard, I know not where it has gone, the water one is dead for the moment, or so I think. The fire one lies dormant, somewhere in these mountains. The air one…

I wonder if he will see the implications of what I have just said.

Unsaid, there, is the true reason of my visit.

There’s always an out.

Always.

Even to death.

This is my daughter’s heirloom, I say, though I do not know why. Maybe there’s a reason, maybe there isn’t. It will belong to Jörmungandr soon enough. I have the impression she’ll be a better guardian than I am.

Not that hard; I care little for these affairs of stones and trinkets from bygone days.

And she likes you, oddly enough.

Figures; she is so unlike me, the black one, the dark one, the one who calls herself the Reaver.

The irony.

FENRISULFR
an axe age, a sword age, shields will be cloven;
a wind age, a wolf age, ere the world sinks.