Chapter 24

Traversing the Veil of the Leaf’s Edge, the Black Leaf bounded eastward through the Himalayas at a breakneck pace with the Lady White Leaves borne piggy-backed. Even here he could followed the blackened swath of Enfaeri’s burning, for the twilit forest within the Veil could be seen afire far ahead. The Power’s destruction was not limited to one of the two dimensions at a time. Rather, it eclipsed both at once, for Enfaeri was not bound by the same laws as the native creatures of Earth. To the demon wolf, both worlds were still as one and the same.

Down from the mountains and into the wood he bore her, and the further and faster Deh Leccend raced, the narrower the swath became. He was gaining ground on the Power. Soon, the path of Enfaeri would be so narrow the heat of the forest fires to either side would be hot enough to burn. They needed a plan, and Deh worked diligently at trying to discern an effectively appropriate course of action -for catch up to the hound they would. He didn’t need to focus on inconsequential physical endeavors. Movement was easy and he could completely autopilot reaching Enfaeri that he might focus on more important matters, like what he might do when they caught the devilish beast. It was only a matter of time.

He was thinking of this when he picked up a peculiar scent upon the air, a thing he had not smelled in thousands upon millions of years. It was the smallest smell, a tiny precursor that belied the whiff of great age and a particularly nasty scent of magic he’d unexpectedly picked up. Even so, it was as unmistakable as his Lady White Leaves’ beautiful perfume.

Deh Leccend gasped audibly.

“What is it, Deh?” Shannon asked upon his stately ear as she clung to him.

Deh didn’t answer at first. He didn’t know where to begin. His mind reeled to what he smelled at work within the world. He could believe what he was picking out of the ashes of ruin, but he couldn’t believe what it implied. It could quite possibly be both a good or bad thing indeed. He grew fierce in his youthful features, lost to the recollection his last breath had afforded.

Then, he grew to grin as he predicted an unexpected turn of events that might avail him a plan of action against the fire wolf. He had little to fear, he suspected. There was literally only one reasonable explanation for the scent he found upon the wind.

“Deh?” Shannon tried again, snapping him out of his reverie.

“What’s going on?” She had to know. The Black Leaf’s grin grew lopsided with certainty as he began to refine his prediction, for there were other forces at work in the world beyond the strength of the Elvine and other than the Powers. Things were unfurling now that hadn’t been since he’d put things to rest ages ago -things that were not Black Leaf, nor White Leaves’ actions.

“It’s the shadow!” He couldn’t hide his excitement.

“What?” Shannon clearly didn’t understand, but she would soon enough. He would tell her all.

“Enfaeri is going to your Japan.” He said.

“Japan?!” Shannon was confused, but within wonder. She’d always wanted to go to Japan, and now she was, although, she’d never wanted it to be under such conditions.

“Why, Deh?”

“Enfaeri is a terrible power, milady. He perceives himself supreme, and he is brash and wild. He will seek to consume anything he perceives within the world to be a challenge. He will not be able to help himself. He is already compelled to go there and challenge an ancient being, someone he considers a possible foe.”

“A foe? Are you telling me we have an ally!?” She asked, reasoning quickly through what he was alluding to.

“Precisely!” He was smiling fully, confidently, smelling the lure that had been set out upon the earth. It wasn’t just a scent of presence and existence. He now predicted it had been exposed to the wind intentionally. The Shadow had to have known his presence would draw Enfaeri like a shark to blood in the water.

“Who?” Shannon had to ask it, but Deh Leccend suddenly considered further the possibility that it was not a good thing.

“Of course, it could be that the Shadow has risen with desires for revenge at what had been done to his kin by the Black Leaves so many millions of years ago.” He reasoned, for it was entirely possible. They were terrible enemies in ancient history.

Shannon had had enough.

“Deh! Just tell me who!” She urged him, almost wishing to bite onto his long ear to force him to tell her. In some ways, she liked it better when he was a machine who told her whatever she wished, and without dally.

“Do you remember what I told you about the dinosaurs, as your kind called them when they discovered their fossils in the ash of their destruction?” He asked.

“Do you remember what I told you about the wyrms?” He added, juxtaposing the two different creatures, for it was indeed true that it was merely human error that created the dinosaurs out of the dragons of the old world. Shannon had to think about it for a while. She remembered that the dinosaurs were actually the dragons, and the Black Leaf had told of their obliteration beneath his kin’s hands.

“Yes.” She answered, but wasn’t certain. She couldn’t remember it all.

“The wyrms still exist.” He began to remind her. “Or rather, the last Lord of their kin still lives on earth. Edelwizir, the Shadow, is there in Japan.” He added, trailing off. Shannon put the pieces together immediately.

“You mean Enfaeri is going to fight a dragon?!” She couldn’t believe her ears, though, she’d seen enough by now to grow to accept such impossibilities as reality. She recovered immediately.

“But, I thought you said you’d laid the dragon’s lord to rest? I thought you said he was put to sleep.”

“Yes, and no, milady.” The Black Leaf answered. “He is like the rest of the Faer Otherkin from the ancient world. Sleep, is a misleading word.”

“Then what does it mean?” She almost did bite his sensitive ear, and the temptation to do so was growing unbearable. She wished he could just tell her things simply, like before. But then she realized, it wasn’t him. He was mostly behaving as he always had with added emotion. She’d simply lost her patience to listen well.

“It means that he diminished himself to obey our mandates. Edelwizir chose living without exerting his power in exchange for a reprieve from death. He still possesses all of his greatness, and it is vast. But he has forever dwelled without using it.” He clarified.

“The great shadow has lived in many places across the globe, an immortal man, who always changes his identity with each passing century. He has been sleeping in that sense. He is a dragon, hiding amongst mankind, and has been so for ages.”

“And he’s in Japan?” Shannon asked for further clarification, but quickly decided that it was the best place for him. After all, the orient had an ancient, deeply rooted belief in godly dragons, and many martial arts tales spoke of dragons, both as men and as spiritual powers beyond compare.

“Yes, milady. He has been there for many lifetimes now. I cannot say for certain why he has chosen to reveal himself to Enfaeri, but I presume he has grown weary of life alone. You see, he is like you and I. He is the last. I believe he’s putting himself to one final contest, to test himself and die gloriously in honorable combat against the greatest foe he can imagine.” The Black Leaf trailed off, growing smug.

“That is of course, the greatest by comparison to the ones he fears.” He hesitated.

“Who would such a dragon fear?” She asked, and received a swift response.

“Me.” Deh Leccend almost laughed, biting back a chuckle. “Or rather, my kin, which I am now all, thanks to you.” And Shannon was left to silence. She didn’t know what to think or say until she ran through all that she’d just been told, and a peculiar oddity struck her.

Edelwizir, the Shadow, Lord of the Dragon kin, was said to be like the rest of the faeri of the old world. He’d been said by the Black Leaf to have chosen to live a lesser life, without using his greatness, but he’d said -to be doing so like the rest of the faeri. That meant there had to be others. Didn’t it?

“Deh?” She spoke up as they raced further from Tibet, bounding across the lands of China and curving northward along all of the southern reaches of easternmost Asia. The path they followed was an utter ruin, a blackened scar of ash and smoke and death. Nothing survived in the wake of Enfaeri, whose power only seemed to grow with every mile he consumed.

“Why did the Elves abandon the rest of the Fae? Why weren’t they taken into the Veil?” She asked, trying to ignore a sudden swath of destruction that had grown so wide in wake of the fire wolf’s travels as to appear as though he’d consumed the entirety of the world. Nothing but smoldering remnants of the twilit forest world remained. It was a vast barren plain of darkness and ash.

“Because they held great fancy and affinity for mankind.” He answered simply, confirming her analysis. There were more faeri in the world than she knew.

Soon enough they were bounding across the violent churning of the Yellow Sea, into and through the Koreas as the path of the fire wolf didn’t seem to slow for anything.

“And why didn’t you tell me about them before?!” She couldn’t believe he would withhold such information.

“Because you did not ask, milady.” He smiled, a simple answer for a simple question. “And it was not much relevant to what little you did request.”

Shannon was taken aback, but then realized he was right. Of course, she’d never thought to ask anything of other fairy creatures. She’d been too swept up in the course of events, too enamored by the greatness of the Elves and Black Leaves to think much about the possibility of others existing. It should have been a reasonable assumption she should have made on her own as well -to think that other fairytales also existed in wake of dragons, elves and godly powers from beyond the third dimension.

It made her see Deh Leccend, and the Black Leaves altogether, in a new and surprising light. Now that she really considered it, Deh Leccend, and all of his kin, hadn’t looked much like the Elvine. Aside from their general physique and stately ears, they weren’t the same. All the Elvine she’d seen had beyond blonde hair finer than silk. Deh shared the texture, but his hair was black as can be. Their skins were all pale like the Black Leaves, but the Elvine were not marked by vine-like markings like the Black Leaf was now. And though their eyes were obviously vastly different from Deh’s depthless opals, they also differed in height. The Black Leaf she knew and loved was far too small to be like the rest of the Elvine.

She didn’t have the gall to ask it aloud, but she had to wonder, just what were the Black Leaves anyway? They certainly weren’t like other elves. And now that she settled into the concept of many types of faeri creatures existing on earth, she had to ponder it. It might even help her understand the Black Leaf to see him as a separate type of creature altogether. It was clear that the Elvine and Black Leaves were obviously aligned and certainly related closely, by both appearances and association with each other within the Veil of the Leaf’s Edge, but Shannon decided she might like to see him as separate from them, even if the true differences between them didn’t turn out to be so great after all.

Northbound they went for a time, following the trail with great ease, but as they crossed along the newly made, far inland shores of the very end of Russia’s Siberian province of Primorskiy, most of the eastern border had been consumed and quartered off by the rising seas. The new sea with no name was formed from the peninsula that housed Vladivostok to Lake Khanka and beyond. It was easily more than hundreds of square miles that had here alone been devoured.

Shannon could only imagine how the rest of the world was fairing, though she held no particular knowledge of where she was. For all she knew, this place could have always been this way. With Deh Leccend’s bounding across the raging waters and their arrival upon the far side, Shannon suddenly realized the swath of Enfaeri’s destruction was lacking. The trail had disappeared, and having been so lost in musings, she couldn’t pinpoint how long ago it had happened. How far had they come from the trail of Enfaeri? She could only wonder where Deh Leccend was taking her when her ever-trusty bearer turned east again, bounding over the roiling discontent of the Sea of Japan to reach yet more Russian country, the Sakhalin, where the majority of the cities were sea-bound and had already been consumed. Even the inland, lowland city of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk was gone, but Shannon would never know this –certainly not from within the Veil. She was merely a rider as Deh Leccend took to land once more and bore her southward towards the Hokkaido isle of Japan.

“Can you tell me about them?” She eventually asked, still unable to stop thinking about other Faeri, or just what to consider Deh himself.

“What would you have me tell?” He responded flatly, knowing exactly what she meant. She still wanted to know about the Otherkin. He could hear it on her tongue.

“Everything.” She smiled, for it seemed things had gone back to normal between them.

“There isn’t enough time.” He answered, forcing her to think of specifics.

“Can you tell me how many kinds there are?” She made a specific request.

“There are thousands.”

“And where have they been all these years, if not kept within the Veil?” She wanted to know all that she could.

“Under your kind’s very noses.” He smiled at human oblivion. “They are everywhere, tied to the land they embody.”

“What does that mean?” She asked.

“Like dryads are bound to a single tree as its brother or sister, the rest of the Otherkin are tied to rivers and lakes and mountains, each as their sibling and caretaker alike.” The answer came fast and simple.

“What do they look like?” She asked, realizing of course that they were likely widely varied.

“There are many kinds. Dryads. Pixies. Sprites. Faeri. Gnomes. Dwarves. There are many.” He answered. “The most powerful are possessed of glamour the human eye cannot easily foil, and which they themselves must make great effort to suppress. Most of the others are masterful illusionists, capable of being and living as Men, like Edelwizir has done for ages amongst your kind. They have been under your noses for so long because they hold great compassion for your people, and are enamored with them. And so, they chose to live amongst Men rather than abandon them along with us.”

“So, what do they look like then, when not being men?” She asked.

“Are they all males?” She added another.

“No, they are not all men. They are many female too, likely more than men, and the ladies are often great in power, as was the Addl’laen’s choice. But again, they look widely different, depending upon their kind. The only tie that binds is the possession of various types of wings.” He answered both questions with ease.

“Oh.” Shannon answered back, sounding stupid. She did feel dumb, but it was not her fault. Mankind was lesser than such creatures, and certainly couldn’t hope to find them out with any degree of ease.

“Where do you think the stories and tales of winged faeri actually come from?” He asked with a slight chuckle.

“I don’t know.” Shannon shrugged. “I just thought I’d ask is all.”

“Well, since you did, I shall tell you, that fairy tales in your kind’s history come from faelings who meddled in mankind’s affairs.” He left it matter-of-factly at an end, setting his sights on a sudden blaze that came into view at great distance.

“There he is.” Deh Leccend announced, at once dropping down from the Veil of the Leaf’s Edge into the doorstep. The twilit world wisped itself away to nothing, and from their elevation, Shannon could see clearly the sky-high inferno that rose off the back of Enfaeri. Sure enough, they’d all but caught up to him, even with their roundabout detour. He’d reached and crossed through the Sea of Japan. Shannon couldn’t help but shiver in the rising fear of his immensity and power, and the prospects of what terror was going to unfurl before her eyes.

Enfaeri had reached the devastation of Japan, which had been wrought thus far by an unknown Black Leaf before she’d made them all into Deh Leccend. The Sea of Japan to the west was writhing in more than Enfaeri’s wake. Tsunamis poured from the awful chaos in its massive churning, and Shannon was struck by an oddity. Even after the fire wolf crossed to the land beyond, the sea was jagged with tremendous swells that could rival small mountains, consuming the shores of and the northernmost tip Hokkaido. A gap that had once lain less than twenty miles between the Sakhalin and Hokkaido land-masses, was now nearly thirty, and the isle was all but vanishing on the horizon.

“Look at the Ocean!” She gasped, pointing off and away, and Deh Leccend glanced at it only halfly. He didn’t need to see it, for he’d seen it before, and knew that Enfaeri had nothing to do with it.

“Yes, I’ve seen it.” He answered back.

“Look to the east.” He instructed with dreadful tones, gesturing with a lifting of his chin to the Sea of Okhotsk and the Pacific Ocean beyond.

“The seas roil beneath the duel of Lleviathaln and Kraquen. Very soon, you may see their coils.” He admitted, explaining everything in such ease.

Shannon stared for a few long moments, fearful but itching to catch a glimpse of the sea serpents, but was quick to turning back to the fire wolf upon the mountains of Hokkaido’s northern tip.

Tiny explosions from her vantage were going off that shouldn’t have been there, as the great isle was being torn asunder by the washing of the undeniable tides. Enfaeri was clearly unwitting of their presence in light of his glee. He was fighting with something that was but only science fiction as far as Shannon and the rest of the world knew.

She knew the Japanese had a great love of machines and robots, as well as giant monsters, ever since she’d seen old Godzilla movies. However, it came as great surprise to see those who remained of Japan’s defenses, actually trying to fight the gargantuan hound, as she presumed was the cause for the detonations that swarmed his blazing form.

The Japanese military, as the American’s had recently discovered, had long been enmeshed in developing giant robots piloted by men to combat not only fictional monsters, but other country’s military forces in the event of any future invasion or attack. No such attack had ever come, but they were still prepared.

They had opened their top-secret vaults in the sudden face of the Dunesil Message. They had put their creations to the test against a sole Black Leaf with only the beginnings of a catastrophic failure that had ended when Shannon had become the White Leaves and stolen away the Black. Now, they were suffering an even more terrible loss, for the fire wolf consumed their tiny robots and missiles as though they were nothing.

It was like watching a great bear attacking a bee’s nest, but this bear didn’t care about getting any honey. He was bent solely on destruction. Fighter jets swarmed all about him in numerous squadrons, flying an intricate assault and unleashing a continuous barrage of missiles from all directions, but largely to no avail. Covered in explosions, Enfaeri was consumed by a great, protective inferno as he moved against the greater toys, ignoring tanks that fired high-tech ammunition at sub-sonic velocities, and various other assailants as if less than irritations by far.

Instead, he moved for the great robotic creations that walked upright like men and fired various armaments into his bulk. Some fired missiles, others were gunners, firing similar high-velocity projectiles at astounding rates, and others possessed some sort of slow-firing beam cannons, presumably mimicking sci-fi tales of photon cannons or high-powered laser-light weaponry.

Amidst it all, Enfaeri’s flesh was shredded in a vicious display of the most advanced military force anyone could have presumed to exist, but the machines were small by comparison to his great bulk. At several hundred feet in height and length, Enfaeri was more than triple the size of the largest machine, and despite his flesh being torn by the high-powered arsenals, he was largely unharmed. The only armaments that seemed to really faze him where those beam cannons, but they fired far too slowly to do any significant harm. And he consumed them, one by one, ripping them to shreds with claws and his triplicate maw beneath howls of delight.

Deh Leccend brought Shannon to a halt at the Sakhalin shores, deciding it would be unwise to take her into the midst of so much firepower. She might be struck and killed by accident. While the fires of Enfaeri could not harm her, the weapons of man certainly were a danger.

“What are you doing, Deh!?” She cried as he set her down.

“We have to help them!” She was urgent, but he shook his head.

“It is too dangerous whilst they work to assault him.” He denied her.

“You must take me to him!” She shouted.

“Not while they fire, milady!” He snapped back.

“If you die, all is most certainly lost. I cannot take you in there until he has ended his wrath upon them!” Deh Leccend was as hard edged as she’d ever seen him in that moment, and she gave up with a huff, reduced to watching helplessly as the fires of Enfaeri consumed the defenders of Hokkaido.

Japan was lost.