Shrike knows this world is like the maze.
It is a pretty thing, a twisting thing, a thing with shadows underneath. It makes promises of glitz and magic, it offers wildness and reward, and in the end it is empty, empty, empty.
Even as they hunt them, unaware their prey the gods have abandoned their cathedrals and their country, the paint’s thoughts run faster still until they become memory. The mountain shearing up above them in the distance might be Mount Corenth of Ravos; the gods might be no gods at all but beasts of the Rift, sick with magic and power and oh, so hungry.
When lightning flashes above them Shrike tosses her head, eyes searching, half-expecting and wholly hoping to find the flock of thunderbirds returned. She is nothing without a foe, nothing without something to stand and fight, and beneath her feet the grasses shiver and bow. Everything is silver and strange in the storm-light, and she does not wonder whether the roaring in her ears is only her blood or Calliope’s breathing or something else, something more -
and something does hear them running. Something yawns wide to meet their battle-cry the way the maze had not, the way the gods here would not, and oh! Shrike’s battered, fearsome heart swells to meet it, too.
Step for step she matches the unicorn, and her teeth are flashing wide as a bear’s grin even as Calliope turns toward her, wearing her own smile.
And when lightning sears the sky and thunder follows like a war-drum Shrike’s laughter is lost in the wind and the noise as the unicorn takes a step into the feral magic waiting for them.
As she has before, as she will in every world that her sister asks it of her, Shrike follows.
don't do much these days
keep the wolves at bay
keep the wolves at bay
