So it ever was. So will it always be. Such is the nature of evil.
The night has begun to give way to dawn when he jolts awake suddenly, his chest burning with a fire that cannot be quenched save for one thing. Death. His lips tingle and his tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth in the need to taste the ashes of this death, to quell the god that has awoken him so fiercely. Get up! It demands, its voice pounding into his silver ears. He arises from his tangle of limbs, eyes wide and snapping to the slumbering figure of Paravana. Was it time yet? You must go! The Shade demands this of him and he cannot deny his god lest he become a puddle of nerves and shredded tendons in the den he shares with his captive. With his protege. His eyes soften, a thing not usual for the prickly creature, for in some way Paravana has made her way into his being. He cannot say heart because love is a thing most strange to him yet he feasts his eyes upon her. She is beautiful and it had taken so much time, so much training to get her to where she needed to be.
Whether she was ready or not, she was coming.
Resolve firming he steps towards her, pushing his maw roughly into her face to jolt her awake.
"It is time." She should know what this means because she had asked before how he would know which ones the Shade wished to be culled. He had tried to explain to her that the god was within him and that he would know, that if he did not obey he would be ripped apart on the inside as punishment. She had become much more manageable over time. It had taken one test in which she had thought herself clever enough to best him for her to learn that Underidge was her own personal shadow. He had thrown her down and bit her neck once, deep, to remind her that she was his. She was his acolyte and she would not leave.
Who had come for her? No one. No one would save her, he had told her, because she did not need saving. She WOULD be saving if she helped him. Saving the world. See, he had said, see how we cull the herd of deer from the old or the sick? Why is what his god and he did any different? Over time she had begun to say the same things even if he wasn't sure she did such out of understanding or just to get him to think she understood. It didn't much matter because at this point he had no choice.
He turns from the den now and steps out, pausing with a low growl that is meant to make her speed up.
"Stay by my side." With that order he lopes forward, pressing his body to the extreme so that the frigid winter air cuts through his thick fur and wakes him up fully. He is careful to keep his silver eyes on her, even in his peripheral vision, and he guides her out of Glorall and towards the treeline on the opposite side of the Aplos River, having to crash through thin ice on the shallow end. No doubt the water would crystallize into ice as they ran but he couldn't find it in himself to care because the burning was spreading and he needed to relieve it, his pants unable to quell what is in his mind.
Finally they arrive in a small clearing and he zeros in on a den that looks as if another has recently taken up home. He pauses in the shadows, mist puffing around him, and he turns to Paravana.
"He is in there, the one that the Shade requires. You are to lure him out by any means. Consider this your initiation, acolyte." The last sentence is almost reverent and he grins at her in a very toothy manner, the first time he has shown actual excitement in her presence. Would she follow through?
UNDERIDGE
THREE - MALE - NO HEART - STARSHADE'S SOUL
OF GLORALL - ENDERLY X BANSHEE - KILL COUNT (II)