Chapter Twelve

Ziara froze. What she'd taken for a branch was the business-end of a clan spear. She reached for her family, but felt an invisible bar clamp down on her thoughts. The spear pressed harder, scraping a thin line against her thick skin. Mouth agape, Ziara rolled an eye back towards her captor.

"I told you not to move, traitor," Tyan murmured in a voice laced with sugared venom.

Once her eye focused, Ziara was not surprised to see the person the clanleader was today: Tyan had faced the winds of Time as Ziara had avoided them. He was an icy grey shell with two bloodshot eyes staring out from a cavernous skull. Truly, his ambitious soul had nearly eaten him alive -- punishment for the dethronement of the clan's true leader.

Tyan slipped close, wrapping a wraithlike paw around Ziara's pulsing throat. He passed the spear off to a junior warrior and unsheathed an iron knife from his harness. This he placed against the point of her jaw, pulling her face up to meet his. "Hello, Ziara," he whispered close to her ear, breath hot upon her white tufts. "I always knew Kernow Flurrith's daughter survived, despite the prattle Shyela fed me all these years." He paused, glancing up; several of his warriors shuffled forward, bearing a captive Sular, Kernow, Zreana and Bayl. The latter two silently fumed; Sular was as quiet as he usually was, only his eyes never stopped moving. Kernow, however, was livid, slashing with his claws and beak, eyes rolling.

"MAMA!" he howled, knocking his warriors into a tree. "Khairachas!" he spat viciously, throwing his voice above their protests as they tried to clamp all of his limbs down. "I challenge you, khairachas! Let her go! MAMA!!"

Tyan's feral, bloodshot eyes glittered in the shadows of the massive oaks and ash. "Bring him forward," he ordered, flicking an ear in Sular's direction. "And silence the whelp."

There was a heavy thud as Kernow was laid flat by two overenthusiastic spearbutts. A strangled cry rattled in Sular's throat, torn between his children and his mate. He hung limp in the arms of the Glacial guards, allowed himself to be forced in honor before Tyan, head down, face in the hard crust. The clanleader twirled the knife slowly under Ziara's chin, a look of pity flooded his eyes momentarily.

"You are a disgrace to your people," he said slowly, eye ridges pulled together over sunken orbs. "You are by far the strongest being on Glacial Prime, yet you crawl upon your belly as a worm does!" Breathing quickly, Tyan flipped Ziara around and thrust her back against the trunk of the fallen tree, claws piercing her skin. Tiny bubbles of blood welled, turning plush midnight blue fur purple. He spoke around her whimpered protests: "Will you watch me kill her as I should have all those years ago? Flurrith's precious little girl? Will you? The racial whore!?"

Cold, hard fury knotted in his belly with each epithet uttered. Ziara's tears overflowed from her cheeks, spilled into a growing pool of her own blood.

"Papa!"

Sular jerked his head around, only to see Bayl and Zreana go under a mound of clan warriors. A keen rasped in his larynx -- then the bodies began to fly ... without wings. Massive Vahazayi strength had allowed the two to break free of their captors. Diluted as it was (Sular could have dispatched them with one foot), it took both of their best efforts to win.

Tyan's voice jerked the troubled Vahazayan back to the clanleader. "Fight me, foreigner, or watch your mate die like the coward you are." He twisted Ziara again so that her eyes met Sular's -- fearful amber and unworldly grey.

"S-s-u ... laaaaar!"

It wrenched his soul. Vai Vaha! oh, how it wrenched his soul!

A black paw moved of its own accord, towards Tyan. The clanleader smiled thinly, gestured with his tailtip in a way that bespoke rudeness.

"Come, coward."

Coward-coward-coward ...

Worthless Vahazayan ... flightless fool ...

"You are not a warrior! Sergeant, look at this fledgling!"

With a casual shrug, he slammed the two warriors backwards, their flight stopped only by the uncaring, stolid forms of the trees. "Ei vaer, vendictaren," he hissed, lightning flashing in his eyes. The brown-grey and white gryphon hit Tyan low, knocking him several times over in succession. They rolled in tandem, colliding with a trunk. There was a sickening crunch as Tyan's backbone slammed against it, bending his entire frame the opposite way.

Blood gushed from nares and agape beak, staining pink upon the pine-strewn snow. Sular stood upright on his hindlegs, wings mantled.

"For the death of Kernow Flurrith and the submission of Ziara Flurrith, I, Sular Ventrishika, label you traitor -- khairachas of the highest order."

-- down went the open-handed, unsheathed paw --

-- "KILL HER!" --

-- a spear thudded into Ziara's side --

"SULAR!!!"

The scream of agony that ripped from the Vahazayan male's throat shook the very roots of the wood; layer upon layer of accumulated snow rained down in shower of white suffocation.

But it never reached the ground.

Bursting forth in a conical of Phoenix fire, Sular's trueform roared to life, towering many feet above all. He darted to Ziara's inert form, huge glittering tears falling without end from diamond-shaped grey eyes. He ripped the spear from his mate's side, fire flowing to cauterize and in hopes of healing. But even as it flowed from him, more blood flowed from her.

In desperation, he linked minds, grabbing onto her essence with ever fibre of his being. Every ounce of power given by God into his ivory blood surged. A force greater than he could muster tugged harder; strength bourn from fury and fear ripped back.

**Hye orth kareyah, Sular Ventrishika ...**

-- and she was gone. A candle snuffed out on a whim.

"NO!!!"

**GET OUT OF HERE!** Phoenix fire exploded in all directions, setting the trees ablaze with its fury. The flames bit large chunks out of the ancient wood until the whole section was transformed into a massive pyre.

In the midst of it all, Sular Ventrishika lay beside his beloved wife and gave himself over to eternity.

Tyan opened his eyes, the stench of woodsmoke heavy in the air. A huge figure loomed in his sight, illuminated beyond recognition by the fire. He blinked, vision swimming.

"Ker--?"

"This is for my family -- burn in Hell, you bastard."

And Tyan knew no more.

The clan surveyed the triplets with unbelieving eyes. Gladly they packed their belongings and removed themselves from the woods, happy to be back upon the open tundra. The news of Tyan's death -- as well as his inner warrior circle -- was met with mixed feelings: the old and the new, those who knew time before Tyan and those whose lives had sprung up under his ambitious rule.

Many days had been spent combing the remnants of the forest, searching for bodies. They found none, of course.

It was Bayl who found the ashes of their parents, intertwined in death as they had often been in life. Zreana had brought forth an ornate cask, decorated with the Glacial and Vahazayi symbols for life. Kernow had gone so far as to approach the site tattooed on either brawny shoulder with the Vahazayi rune for power, stark black against his blue-grey pelt. Together, the triplets placed Sular and Ziara's ashes into the cask, sealed it with streaks of their own blood and presented it to their cousin Tuloc. Where Tuloc entombed those ashes, few could say, but he returned days later, the scent of a great iceberg upon his pelt.

And so it fell to the ex-Currith Clan to chose a new clanleader. Old Tuloc spoke for them: "We prospered under the capable paws of the Flurriths for many generations. We suffered under the chain and games of Tyan Currith, who sought to undo much of what was built over centuries." Placing a paw upon his medallion, Tuloc sat straighter. "Tyan Currith is dead, he has no heir. Who does the clan nominate?"

The roar of the crowd was deafening: "Blood of Flurrith!!"

Nodding to each other, Bayl and Zreana shoved Kernow to the front, grinning back at his startled face.

Tuloc came over and placed one paw on Kernow's head, the other grasping at his badge of office. "Flurrith Clan, behold your new leader! Kernow Flurrith II!"

They surged forward, lifted Kernow upon their backs and shoulders, chanting the time-honored lyrics to honor a new leader. Some moments later, they put him down, Kernow stumbling a bit. He coughed, raised a silencing paw.

"I wish to see a monument built -- not now, but sometime in the future. To my parents, to the love they had for each other. For the sacrifices they had made. For their lives!"

"Flur-rith! Flur-rith!!"

Somewhere amongst the stars, Sular Ventrishika had finally found happiness and peace.

Finis