SURPRISE!!!!!!!!

DOUBLE UPDATE!!!

COULDN’T LET IT END JUST LIKE THAT HEHE, ENJOYYYYY AND DON’T FORGET TO COMMENT!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Apologies for any errors, didn’t get to get it editedd 🙁

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Luciel’s POV

I’ve been bracing for it since the moment he left. No, since the one before it when he’d looked at me with so much fear. Too frightened to move, too scared to begin.

I have been waiting for this, and yet, when they call my name, no part of me is prepared.

“Luciel!”

I turn from my gaped view of the cresting tide and face Maeve as she appears before me. Her eyes are wild in a manner I have not glimpsed in aeons.

He is injured.
Returned to his pack.
On the verge of defeat.
Crying.

“He is on the surface.”

I stall just as my fears do. “What?”

“He surfaced,” she hisses, slower, her voice vibrating like a bowstring. “And he found Busara!”

My mouth falls open and stays just so.

He surfaced? He wasn’t supposed to do that. Few did that, but more importantly—
“He found Busara?”

“Yes!” She hisses and then she and her wild eyes are turning from me. “Come see it, now.”

Maeve runs, and I follow, so close on her heels that when she stops after breaking into the very cavern the Trail had started from, I have to push her from my path to keep from crashing into her. Her distraction saves me from being punished for it.

That distraction soon becomes mine as well for the space that had emptied is now teeming with restless members of the clan that all stare up at the flickering projection of light cast onto the largest wall.

I look as well, not at the moving picture made of magic, but what it shows, which is a greyed wolf racing across the surface and kicking up a thunder of snow in its wake.

I had thought him quick when he left, but I had been mistaken. Peter unleashed is a bloodhound.

“What is happening?” I ask without parting my gaze for even a moment. “Someone, explain this to me.”

“He found Busara first,” a familiar voice, Telta, says from some hear corner. “Not the ash.”

I look away from the projection and to her because the absurdity of her words demands it. “That is not possible. The ash is the first find. Always.”

“Not always,” Maeve counters stubbornly, and I have to stir my annoyance away from her.

“Yes, not always,” I agree through my fangs, “but seeing how rare it is, we can call it so.”

Looking back to the spelled surveillance, she holds her tongue for now.

Whether by mage or fledging, or even if the satchel carried rocks instead, the satchel was almost always found first. One in every thousand defied that norm, and yet…

“He tracked me,” Busara’s voice confirms before he breaks from the crowd. “I do not know how, but he did find me.”

“The wisest speculation is that he followed the scent of the ash and ocean that lingered on him,” Maeve informs from my side. “It is the only explanation that makes a modicum of sense.”

I stare at Busara, even as fresh words avoid me.

I was well aware of how strong a werewolf’s sense of smell was, but how in all the Realms had Peter be able to track that rather than the glaring scent of the ash itself that had been left undisturbed? Had he ended up so far off course that he had scented the traces on Busara first, or has it been on purpose? And in any case—

“What of the second league?” I ask, gaze flying back to Maeve just as she drops her’s to meet it. “To those meant to line the path to him?”

Black eyes bear into mine as she shakes her head. “What use is there to impede a path that’s already been walked?”

Gods be good, how had we even gotten here.

The first Trial was simple in nature.
There was an element of nature to be found and its last carrier hunted too. The timer for the finding of both was set by the ocean’s temper and the favour of the Gods. Simple.

To make it more challenging, the clan, just after its forming, decided that after nature’s ash was found and its carrier became the next target, the second league of the Trial began.

While the carrier stayed hidden behind them, those in the clan who’d been waiting within the tunnels, began their task of increasing the difficulty of the Trial we all had to face by blocking paths.

They filled open spaces and created sound in others, distracting and frustrating, but nothing more, because the second league was to test how one bypassed a number greater than them, and it was a test of wit.

Force was not needed. Allowed, but not needed. So while Nkosi had used brute force to shove past those in his way, and Maeve had timed their runs to trip them and send them sprawling across the ice, I had smashed the paths of the tunnels they filled until only one was left.

It was always easier to cull a trapped force.

Peter had done no such thing, apparently, because he’d found the carrier before the satchel and so none of those waiting within the clan had even been activated.

He’s bested the second league first.

My gaze finds its way back to the projection, and I feel myself drifting closer to it until I stand beside the man responsible for it.

“He almost saw me when he surfaced,” Atieno murmurs behind glowing yellow eyes. “I was not expecting it— I was not even listening for it, and then, there he was breaking from under the snow like a bloodhound.”

I look to him with hard eyes, searching for evidence that he has started to peer into my thoughts, but his expression remains plain outside of his shock.

It seems we have all been forced to feel so.

Peter skids to a stop where ice meets water and refuses to melt. He pants heavily, weary with exhaustion, but not yet bested by it if the way his head snaps all about is any indication.

Murmurs fill the cavern, echoing the very thoughts that race through my mind.

What would he do now?
What was the plan?
How do you win this, Peter?

The answer would be simple enough if the muscle in his chest lay as still as mine— a dive into the ocean and a purposeful hunt beneath the waters for every submerged tunnel opening until he found the one ash.

Such had been Arriya’s path.

But Peter is warm-blooded, and his genes will not see him through the frigid temperament of the tepid ocean, not without casting him home first.

What are you thinking?

He huffs as if to quiet me, and then, his snout is pressed to the snow as he tracks.

“He means to sniff it out from above.”

I do not mean to give voice to the realisation, but my lips are yet to seal properly since learning of his plot.

“Surely not,” Maeve dismisses, but I hear the doubt in her voice as she watches the white wolf do just that. “There are countless layers of ice between him and the tunnels. He can not smell through them.”

“Is that not how he found our Pylen?” Busara asks and silence is all that Maeve returns.

He had, and if he were capable of that, then who was to say that he was not capable of more.

The grotto seems to think so for its space falls silent for the moments that pass before he weaves his way between invisible paths.

Peter stalks over the ice and snow as though it is his, as though he is a scavenging beast of the Plains brought to our world. And while beast had not been what I had first thought when he’d shifted, showing me his wolf for the first time before running headfirst into his first Trial.

Majestic had been the words, and it still might be, but right now, he is a different creature from the one that started this.

The wolf I watch is confident, and while it is not my first time glimpsing confidence from him, it has never been this plentiful.

“He has ten minutes,” Atieno whispers at my side, “if that much.”

Something in my chest tightens. I resist the urge to palm it.

“He can not make it,” Maeve states, and it is only fact. He has not found the path he is looking for, and the tides are already lapping at our banks. But…

My fingers curl at my sides, and do not loosen— promises to never slacken instead, until Peter suddenly stops.

All conversation in the ice follows suit.

I do not blink. I do not move a muscle.

Blue eyes burn brighter, glowing like the hottest of flames before he takes off across the ice again, but not the way he came.

Instead he heads towards… No.

I hear myself draw in a breath.

“No way,” Busara breathes, but yes. Yes.

Peter races towards the nearest tunnel entrance as though he is chasing the wind, and though he should know nothing of it, he stops above its entrance and starts to dig.

Thirty seconds and he makes a hole. Sixty seconds and he’s in.

The clan does not speak or breathe anymore. No comments are made or wasted as we watch in awe as the omega wolf who still stammered speaking to us dashes through the tunnels as though he carved them himself.

There is no hesitation in the paths he chooses when they split or narrow. Not allowing for a second of doubt or fear. Only confidence— spades of it.

He can not make it. But he will.
He will not make it. But he must.

My knuckles ache.

Will he make it?

Peter breaks from the tunnel’s innards and meets the ocean’s wrath as it roars and crashes onto the small bank made of blackened soil. A mere three feet sits the small grey pouch already leaning its way.

He made it. He—

The ocean rears back, gathering its strength to finally claim its prize and drag it into her depths, but Peter darts forward first.

My chest rattles, and I step forward.

Panic explodes within my chest, but a hand comes around my arm before I can drag him back to safety. I yank myself free, but can not do the same with my mind. 

What was he doing? The foolish boy! The ocean would claim him and the satchel— drag them both inside!

I watch it try, watch it curl over him just as he dives into the space beneath, but he’s already turning, already veering back the way he came as his paws already kick up behind him.

Chained by fear, I hold my breath as I watch his jaws clamp around the pouch before he tries to run.

Come on… come on!

Peter’s blue eyes glow as he scuttles over the sand and runs back up the banks just as the water comes crashing down and claims his shadow, but not him.

Not him or the satchel.

A cry rises into the air, loud enough to jolt me from my shock and allow me a real breath. I claim it greedily, filling my lungs with air I should not need, but find that I do while the rest of the clan cheers for the wolf that has just bested the first Trial.

The entire cavern trembles with the force of it and I find myself welcoming the upset.

He did it. He actually did it.

✧

When Peter makes it back to us, the clan is still singing his praises, and they do not quiet even when he hesitates at the sight of them.

He stands at the edge of it like a fitful ghost, assessing from his second form. Still holding the satchel from his canines, Peter darts wild blue eyes all around as though he is waiting for an attack or still within the Trial. It takes me far too long to realise that that is exactly what he thinks.

“Atieno,” I call, snapping a finger, “clothes for him, and something warm.”

Atieno and two more mages are at Peter’s side within the one of the boy’s heartbeats, and while they hold fresh clothing aloft for him, his eyes remain set.

He does not stop his search, not even when they pass over me— not until they land on Busara.

Immediately, he shifts.

Fur thins and curls inwards to be replaced by plains of open, pale skin that shivers in every place, but his hands.

Those are uncharacteristically firm and unrelenting as he snatches the satchel from where it still hangs from his teeth, and clamps his other hand over his slackened cuff just as it is about to fall.

He squeezes it back into shape around his thinned arm, holding it tight, and then and only then, does he allow himself to be clothed.

The praises do not relent through it all, but Peter does not acknowledge them. He does not even seem to hear them in truth as he points a finger through the crowd.

It aims for Busara.

“T-The vampire,” he stammers.

The clan quiets to hear him.
He swallows and says it again.

“The vampire.” No stammering at all this time.

Raising the satchel high, he takes a breath and then another as he looks around for the first time. “The-The ash. I-I got them both.”

Peter’s heart beats soundly, as do the mages, but his is louder, stronger. Especially the longer he holds his treasures up within the silence.

It lingers in the air for long enough to return fear to Peter as he begins to crouch into himself, but then, laughter.

Loud, unabashed laughter that threatens to break him— I see it in his eyes, the way he begins to surrender more of that confidence— until he realises who it comes from.

“We know, Peter Heil-Calderon!” Radu roars with a feral smile made of fang and ice alike. “You bested your first Trial! We know!”

Peter blinks at him and then at those around him, noticing belatedly the smiles, the excitement and perhaps even the current that’s been surging through this space since we glimpsed his maddened rise.

The cheers begin again, and this time, Peter hears them.

He jumps at first, always so surprised, but shock does not become fear the way it has before as he looks around with eyes wide enough for me to glimpse the shock within them, and the disbelief aswell.

That is before he even looks at me but when he does, I see the flash of hope before his lips tilt up into a careful smile that seems to be for me alone.

My chest tightens again, and refuses to give, just as my gaze refuses to part from him.

———————-

BAD BITCH PETER HAS ARRIVED!!!!!!!

THOUGHTS?????

Thoughts on the second half of the Trial???? Thoughts on the rest of it being from Luciel’s POV???? ON PETER’S SUCCESS????

we all knew he was getting through but it was soooo fun seeing how and also from other eyes. It’s also fun every time the clan proves to be actually good people I love it

Also Luciel, sir, I’ve never seen anyone so unaware of their own interest. It’s hilarious!

These two were short but together made for a bigger chapter/saga, and I hope it is one you enjoyed!!!!

It’s the last extra of the month then Aiasthlyn next!

Until next time,
Byeeeeeeeeee humansssssss