The hall of Luukas Fire-Bringer was almost deathly quiet as Mara followed her mother and brother in. She saw many of her kin gathered to the sides of the walls and Gareth standing beside her father’s throne. Not one had any softness to their expression, but Mara knew better than to expect warmth from the warriors of Sjaligr. She was a contamination to them, a severing from the flow of Creation through the world that granted them their powers. Bringing them a dark oracle did nothing to endear her to them.

Mara felt about an inch tall as she looked to her father’s seat, raised slightly from the rest of the floor by a series of stone steps. The only things offering her any comfort were her mother’s presence to her left and Aallotar to her right. The wildling gave her hand a squeeze, holding with a tightness that told of Aallotar’s own tension.

Though, for all the men gathered around with weapons at their sides, the wildling did not appear frightened. Mara wasn’t certain if it was courage or ignorance of the danger they posed.

“Luukas, what is the meaning of this?” Eirlys asked, a calm authority in her tone. Mara saw many shift at her presence. The smithing of Eirlys Silver-Song was a chief reason for Sjaligr’s prominence and fortunes. Few wanted to anger her, even knowing she was the unceasing protector of the spell-breaker.

Mara’s father seemed unreachable by even his beloved wife’s voice, sapphire eyes hard and cold as he gazed down at the huntress. “Gareth sought Kalevi and carried back an oracle of his own,” he said. “It seems our sleeping demon will find its place at the right hand of those who seek the destruction of Sjaligr.”

“And you trust that he gave this message with impartiality and in its fullness?” Eirlys said.

Gareth’s face twisted in anger. “Are you accusing me of lying, sister-in-law?” he demanded. His hand stayed away from his weapon whatever his fury, well aware that his brother would put him in the ground for harming a hair on Eirlys’s head despite their disagreements.

“You would say anything to rid yourself of Mara,” the chieftain’s wife said without backing down an inch, the steel in her voice no longer hidden behind softness.

Luukas gripped the arms of his throne. “Beloved, this is no longer a matter of Spell-Breaker’s curse,” he said coolly. “Nor Gareth’s disgust for it.”

Mara gripped Aallotar’s hand so tightly that the color bled from her knuckles. If it pained the wildling, she gave no sign.

Eirlys seemed to straighten imperceptibly. “Mara is my daughter, Luukas.”

“I know,” Mara’s father said, leaning back slightly in his seat. “But the gods have spoken. The spell-breaker will destroy Sjaligr and all its people if permitted to live. I am sorry for your grief.”

Mara felt a sudden cold and light-headedness sweep through her body. She’d always known that her father cared nothing for her survival, but for him to actively pursue her death was new. What poison had Gareth poured into his ear? Or, worse yet, what had the oracle revealed?

The color drained out of Eirlys’s face, but she in no way softened. “You cannot do this, Luukas!” she said fiercely. “I will not permit it! If you would have me at your side, Mara leaves Sjaligr alive.”

“And in exile, what do you think the spell-breaker will do?” Gareth challenged. “Kalevi saw her standing at the right hand of Void!”

Aallotar lunged for Mara’s uncle, teeth bared like an animal’s as her golden eyes flashed. Mara barely kept hold of her, wrapping arms around Aallotar’s waist to pull her backwards. “Don’t, Aallotar,” Mara said near her friend’s ear. “We need to run, not fight.”

“Guards, remove the feral. Banishment is more than suitable for a foreigner who has committed no crime yet,” Gareth said, gesturing to several warriors waiting to each side. “This judgment does not require an outsider.”

Mara felt a stab of horror. “No!” If she allowed Aallotar to be taken too far from her side, her friend would revert into bestial, raging form.

Eirlys put a hand on her daughter’s shoulder, eyes still locked on her husband’s. “Whatever you do to my daughter, Luukas, you do to me,” she said more quietly.

Mara’s brother looked terrified as he saw resolve crystalize in their mother’s face. He turned to face his father and uncle. “Father, imprison her,” he said swiftly. “The spell-breaker cannot destroy chains and bars as one of us could. She would be alive, as Mother wishes, and far from aiding the enemy.”

“And if she escapes?” Gareth said ferociously. “Your merciful impulse would doom us all, Viljami.”

Guards stepped forward even as Mara’s family quarrelled. Mara let go of Aallotar just long enough to draw her sword and shrug her shield down to her arm. “You cannot take her,” Mara said with all the ferocity that she could muster.

It was a movement that drew everyone’s attention. “Mara, let her go,” Eirlys said, holding up her hands. “Do not make this worse.” 

Viljami drew his own sword, leveling the point at Mara. “Drop your weapon, Spell-Breaker,” he warned. “A kinslayer’s fate is death. You will be beyond saving.”

Aallotar lunged at the guards closing on her, but a shield caught the blow of her fist rather than one man in armor. The wood cracked audibly at the blow but did not sunder. The mesh of shields and swords surrounding Aallotar separated her from Mara.

If she struck at a guard and drew blood, Mara knew she would seal her own fate. She looked over the shoulder of the guard closest to her, gaze meeting Aallotar’s furious and fearful golden eyes. “I won't leave you,” she promised, advancing towards the guards with her blade still firmly in hand. Even if it meant dying, she was not about to let Aallotar succumb to her curse and do the unthinkable.

A blow hit Mara in the back of the head before she could react, dropping her to the ground. A boot pressed down on her side, pinning her to the stone floor. “Don’t be a fool,” Gaius said gruffly as he disarmed her, throwing her sword across the hall. “You’ll get yourself killed. Your friend will be fine.”

“No!” Mara shouted as the guards seized the wildling and dragged her towards the door of the hall. “No no no no!” She struggled up to her feet, breaking Gaius’s pin, only to have him grapple her and hold her in place. Her old wounds left her too weak to fight her mentor completely off, but she struggled with teeth and fingernails to free herself. Even scratching bloody marks down Gaius’s left cheek wasn’t enough to force him to let go, however.

Aallotar fought ferociously to return to Mara’s side, cracking bone and even dropping two guards with her hands, strength increasing the further they pulled her from the huntress. “Mara!” she cried out. A spear’s haft caught her in the solar plexus, dropping her gasping to her knees. Temporarily debilitated, they pulled her out of the hall and slammed closed the great doors.

Tears streamed down Mara’s face as she struggled against Gaius. “Let me go!” she shouted. “You don’t know what her curse will do!”

Her father looked sharply over at her at that. “What have you brought into my hall, Spell-Breaker?” he demanded.

His answer came from the other side of the doors. A low, deep growl split the air on the other side, rising in pitch and volume until it became a banshee’s howl of agony and rage. Screams erupted from the other side and the doors shuddered on their hinges as something flung a body against them. Horrible, sickening crunching sounds crackled through the air on the other side, chased by a rumble of rage that made a chill settle into Mara’s bones.

Gareth grabbed his spear as Mara’s father drew his sword, both refocusing on the new danger. Suddenly Mara was not at the forefront of their minds. “Bar the door,” Gareth said. “The guards will contain any—”

Before the men could bar the doors, the wood portal opened with a slam so powerful it almost broke the hinges. Mara retreated backwards towards her father, grabbing her mother’s arms as Gaius released her to draw his blade. There, in all her savage glory, was Aallotar the beast.

A lupine monster the size of a draft horse at the shoulder, savage golden eyes glared into the room above a snarling maw dripping blood and the foam of the mad onto the stone. One hand-like set of claws dragged the body of a guard, his chainmail defenses ripped like moth-eaten cloth by the razor-sharp nails at the end of the twisted paw’s shape. All trace of humanity was gone from the wildling’s new shape, replaced by a rage so deep and powerful that it shredded all sense of self and sanity from Aallotar’s mind.

“Kill it!” someone shouted, but Mara couldn’t even pay attention to who. She was too busy getting her mother back, away from it.

The guards all around the room charged the beast, their weapons rebounding off its hide as if it was encased in god-hardened steel. Mara understood: no weapon made of man could slay something bound so by the curse of the Life-Giver. Aallotar would rampage through Sjaligr, killing every living thing she encountered, before roaming on. At least, if Mara didn’t intervene. “Stay here!” Mara hissed to her mother before letting go, preparing herself for the sprint at the beast.

“Viljami, don’t!” Eirlys shouted as her son advanced on the creature with his sword drawn. “You have no magic!”

“Storm-Born, return!” her father shouted, his fear just as powerful as her mother’s at the sight of his only son and heir approaching Death itself. 

Mara almost stumbled as she moved forward when she saw her younger brother nearing the raging beast that was currently devastating her father’s honor-guard. Aallotar snapped a spear in her jaws before parting the man’s head from his shoulders. Then she turned straight towards Viljami, chest and face drenched in blood. Hackles rose all along the transformed wildling’s spine, wordless fury reaching a fever pitch. The creature’s whole body tensed to leap at the son of Luukas Fire-Bringer, to crush him in her jaws.

If Mara hesitated, her brother would die. Whatever his flaws now, she still remembered the little boy who would fistfight every bully who made her cry. The huntress sprinted straight for the beast. “Aallotar!”

The creature’s head turned at the sound of her voice, jaws opening to savage the huntress’s flesh.

Mara slid down onto her knees, passing beneath the jaws. She collided with the beast’s chest and wrapped her arms around Aallotar’s neck, face pressing against the fur matted with gore from her victims. “Come back!”

The wolf-like monster’s head snapped back, a horrible wail tearing free from its jaws. Bones cracked beneath its hide, twisting and deforming before shrinking and again shaping towards something more human. Fur faded back into hair and bare skin, claws shaping back into fingernails. Aallotar’s body seized and shook like an epileptic’s as she again became the wildling that Mara knew. The wail turned into a human noise of fear, pain, and horror.

“I have you. I have you,” Mara promised, threading fingers through Aallotar’s hair. She held the wildling fiercely against her body, letting her friend sob into her shoulder. “I have you. I have you.”

Viljami grabbed his sister’s shoulder to pull her away, but she kept clinging to the wildling in such a way that he didn’t have a clear path to stab at the shapeshifter without hurting her. “Mara, leave the creature!” he ordered.

“If you want to kill her, you’re going to have to kill me first,” Mara said over the force of her friend’s cries, not a shred of doubt in her voice.

“Do that and the beast will return permanently,” Eirlys said, approaching. She was shaking in fear of the creature, but there was a distinct note of pity in her voice. “Get away from them, Viljami. Mara saved your life, the least you can do is give her space.”

“Very well,” her brother said, lowering his sword and taking a step back.

“Chain them,” their father ordered, voice booming over the sounds of the dying. “Together. If the spell-breaker’s curse contains the creature, fine. I will decide what to do with them tonight.”

Mara knew she wouldn’t be able to fight anything off and take care of Aallotar at the same time. “I have you,” she said again to soothe, even though she knew there was no answer to the wildling’s pain. It would have to run its course.

If there was one thing that Aallotar dreaded and hated above all other things, Mara knew, it was being reduced to the creature that imprisoned her better nature.

Guards pried them apart but kept them close together, just close enough for Mara to cling to Aallotar’s hand so her friend had some kind of contact to ease the agony. Bitterness welled in the pit of the huntress’s stomach as she looked towards her family and Gaius. Hate was a familiar feeling, but she’d never felt it so strongly before. Hearing Aallotar weep ripped apart her heart, leaving only poison in its wake. “I will never forgive you for this,” Mara said, her gaze sweeping across them.

“Mara,” Viljami said, his expression welling with guilt for the first time in a long, long time.

She lifted her chin, meeting his gaze with burning anger. “You’re too late for that, Storm-Born,” she said with that same bitterness as a gall on her tongue. “It’s Spell-Breaker, remember?”

He looked away, shame coloring his face.

Mara clung to Aallotar’s hand with everything she had as the remaining guards pulled her and Aallotar towards the narrow steps cut into the stone beneath that led to Sjaligr’s frigid dungeon. “Are you happy now?” she shouted at them, fingers tightening around Aallotar’s. “You have your curse like you always wanted!”

“Mara—” her mother tried to say.

Everything boiled over inside Mara, the years of relentless abuse and the sudden shock of her friend’s torment breaking through her careful crust of calm. “I hate you!” she screamed. “Void take you all!”