Queens of the Ancient [AW Event]

To say that things had taken a massive, bizarre turn in Erani’s afterlife would be an understatement. She’d been making her way through the gauzy, ethereal images of her own memories and past, exploring the giant redwoods she’d grown up in as a pup until her yearling-hood when it had all gone wrong, listening to the echoes of the pack that had walked there.

The scenes had shifted, taking form of the den she had claimed in the cliffside long ago in the old lands of Alacritia, the dream of death – a herald of the eruption that had prompted the Exodus? – and the night she’d nearly died to Blackmoon assassins.

And finally, the redwood in the north that she and Cairo’s children had taken shelter in to rest. A place of new beginnings. It was here that they had slept for the first time in the new lands before Cairo had found and led them to Valhalla’s new home.

She ruminated on the memories as she often did between visits from her great grandchildren, and from her daughters and sons, and her grandson and his mate. Here in Somnium, while she couldn’t look down and see all within the living Realm, she had family, her love, and fleeting visits from loved ones that had yet to join them.

Though she had no need to breathe here, she’d still settled in, breathing in deeply just for the sensation, as ephemeral as it was. Touch was insubstantial here, something she did sometimes resent in her family’s visits. She missed the solid pressure of her daughter’s hugs, the occasional pain of Regulus stepping on her as a big-footed pup still learning his own strength. She even missed the pangs of birthing, even if she’d only gotten one litter to experience it with.

Death was blissful, and yet she did miss the pains and aches from life, as odd or deranged as it might sound. She missed the sting of astringent scented herbs in her nose as she chewed a poultice for a patient’s sore joints or raw wound.

Existence here could be so predictable. And perhaps it was this discontent that had triggered the change in her existence now. She’d settled on the cliff in old Valhallan lands above her old, likely long-buried by ash, den, paws crossed and dangling off the edge, gazing out over the lands and the memories of wolves as dead as she was now, going about their lives of then. Guinevere and Cairo patrolling. Children scampering. Blitzkrieg slowly healing from his injuries.

It was an old scene, and old memory. She’d been so naive then. She’d never thought that she would have her own children. She’d never realized that she’d find a love that wasn’t a true love, or that Cairo would, in his last conversation with her, tell her he loved her. She’d never known that Guinevere would fall so ill, or that she’d be forced to choose between her loyalties, and that Cairo would win for that loyalty. So many things that she’d not seen coming, some good, some bad.

Her eyes had closed, and then the atmosphere had shifted. Her eyes had opened, and she was no longer in Somnium. Her hackles bristled in alarm, before the late Queen Healer had composed herself and allowed her mind to work, and her eyes to take in the surroundings.

She knew these lands. They were achingly familiar, if changed. She’d seen glimpses in her descendant’s dreams when they visited. But it wasn’t just the wall and the tower she could see vaguely silhouetted against the top of the hill that held the cave she’d found as a pregnant new mother. She wished she could have seen Surreal’s second litter born into the alcoves as they had been, and the third. She’d been blessed enough to see Regulus and his sisters into the world before it was her time to leave it behind.

The changes that alarmed her were the mushrooms, crystals and fireflies, the full moon that dwarfed the streaked stars in the sky, and the corpse of a hare that – no, not dead, she realized as it twitched and gasped for a breath – was riddled with the fungi and the minerals, orifices weeping. All of the fungi and crystals, and the oozing … pus? Mucus? glowed in some way.

It was unnerving, and strongly reminiscent of the plague she’d fought against. Tears of blood, hallucinations and fear, and death. She could only hope that prey was the only animal being affected, but her gut said it was far from that hopeful. And if that was the case, what could she even do to help? These symptoms were a thousand times worse than the plague she remembered. And she’d been alive then.

She glanced down at her own paws. The change in the atmosphere she could feel, but the ground beneath her paws was as insubstantial as it was in Somnium. Or… perhaps it was she who was the insubstantial one. A spirit among the living?

If this wasn’t a dream called up by Aurielle or Ardyn, her most common visitors, then she needed to figure out what was going on. Had Regulus or Surreal been displaced? Cormalin?

Carefully, she took a step. Though she couldn’t feel it, she also didn’t fall through the ground, and so she kept walking, ears swiveling and fathomless sapphire eyes searching. As she reached the boulder under the two Oaks she stopped, gazing at the place, memories floating about her mind. Meetings, dramatic changes in the course of her pack’s history, Cairo collapsing at the sight of his children fighting, his daughter defending her place from Syrinx when he’d come from nowhere and attempted to claim the pack.

So many pieces of history. And even the boulder she herself had once sat upon to address the pack was riddled with glowing flora and minerals that most definitely had not been there in her time.

Her ears flicked back at the tread of paws, and her head turned to focus on the familiar figure drawing near. Fearless, poised with grace as she turned to face the other, definitely living wolf.