THE FOURTH CREATION Part 1 - (CULLEN PART 12)

CHAPTER TEN
THE FOURTH CREATION

Cullen sat with his back against a mossy log and stared into the weakening flames of their campfire. Tik and Sonia had already gone to sleep, both of them knowing that Cullen was troubled by whatever happened in the witch’s house, but since he wasn’t willing to talk about it, they left him be, to figure it out alone.
Cullen was tender and kind in his friendships with both of them, but there was a part of him he always kept separate from others, a piece of him that was private and alone.
Ever since he was a child, and he learned that his parents had left him in the forest to be found, he felt different from other children, different from other people. To finally learn that he was the half Faery Prince as well as the half human Prince, he felt justified in those feelings.
He had watched Sonia go to sleep for a time, and he felt the same feelings of love that he had carried since shortly after meeting her, but now, wondering if he would outlive her by many years had put a burr in his feelings.
He thought about his life and what had happened to him so far. He had lost the memories of the man who raised him and that connection was severed. He had killed a man for hurting his father and he found that he wasn’t trouble by that I any way.
He had learned of a great threat to both man and Faery and he had taken charge of an effort to stop that threat. He had found and fallen into love with a beautiful young woman and he had deep friendships with others. He had lost a new friend as well, poor Arthur had died, killed by the man Cullen had killed, brought back from the dead by some twisted magic command.
While he was sifting through his memories and feelings, slipping into a sense of self pity, Tris’tan entered the camp, still in his wolf form, back from a night run in the swamp.
He was the size of a small bear and his head was twice as wide as Cullen’s. He padded into the firelight, walking slowly and deadly silent as all of his kin could. His ears were blood red and his eyes were ruby crystals. He walked directly to Cullen, circled twice and lay down, flopping his giant head onto Cullen’s lap.
Cullen reacted by reaching out to scratch behind his ears and Tris’tan rumbled with comfort. As Cullen looked down at the great white beast, he suddenly had an image in his head of mountain cliffs on the first day of winter, with sun just cresting the horizon to light the cliff face.
He realized all at once that he had just learned Tris’tan’s true name. He stared, wide eyed in amazement at his half brother-wolf. He was picking up signals from the wolf, like a strange form of communication.
“You are troubled,” the wolf said somehow, by showing Cullen visions of himself sitting with his shoulders hunched and his brow furrowed.
Cullen looked back into the fire and said, “Yes brother.”
“Because you are many things to many people,” the wolf said, this time with images of himself as a mighty warrior and a strange Faery, or nude as a lover. Cullen blushed at that, wondering how Tris’tan could reach him in such a way.
“It’s pack sense,” he explained, showing Cullen images and feelings of being surrounded by furry brethren, loping through the forest, snow crunching beneath their giant paws, chasing the scent of deer.
“You have it because you are mother’s son.” An image of Gwyddneu came with that thought, a woman strong and wise, as both an elf Queen and the alpha of the pack.
“Reach out with it and you can feel your brothers,” Tris’tan urged, sending thoughts of the twins, running free as a pair of white wolves in pine boughs and stone boulders.
Cullen closed his eyes and sent his thoughts outward into the night. He was rewarded by their surprise and immediate response of both pride and comfort. They were glad to feel him, to sense him as part of the pack, part of the larger family of werewolves.
Cullen reached for his mother as well, and found her, also proud but icy, as a Queen must be with her sons sometimes. She welcomed him but not with surprise, as she had expected he would be able to do so.
Cullen’s hand wove through the thick fur of his brother and he felt more connected to them than he had ever felt with another human. And suddenly as though the chill from his mother’s regard had slipped down the back of his shirt, he had a moment of panic when he remembered the experience that he would bury Sonia.
Tris’tan tried to comfort him through the pack sense, but wolves do not lie and he could not pretend that Cullen would age like other humans. It was likely that he would live longer than Sonia.
But the wolf sent images of Cullen and Sonia together, laughing, loving, and kissing in bright sunlight, caressing each other in those tiny ways that two lovers share when they are near each other. Tris’tan reassured Cullen that he had those things now and he could hold onto them for a long time still. Wolves live in the moment, they do not spend time worrying about the future and when they are old.
Wolves live, love and fight with utter freedom, choosing to experience everything they can without fear or other more human concerns. The Asrai know this and Cullen was in fact an Asrai himself.
He was calmed considerably by the thoughts and feelings of his brother-wolf. He decided then and there, to just love Sonia as best he could, and to not worry about aging when they were fighting a war anyway and might not live to seen the next day.
It was simple and he was grateful to Tris’tan. He sat a little longer, learning how to pass images back and forth, to learn to speak the way wolves do. He learned that he too had a wolf-name, a sense of himself as the others saw him.
He was pine trees and ferns, surrounding a moonlit waterfall, the smells of stone and plants, pine and fresh water, all of these things made him who he was to the wolves.
And he realized he had already been thinking that was when he thought of others. Sonia was lavender and dirt, hard work and concentration. Tik was horses and wooden wagons, the sharp scent of oak sap and sunlight.
Grimm was iron and blood, tall like a mountain with billowing clouds all around its peak. The Dreamweaver was parchment and ink, stains and wild hair, but sunlight too. The people who found the most joy in life seemed to always smell like sunlight.
Cullen reveled in this new feeling and senses, shifting through the different people in his life, thinking about them in wolf terms, as scent and memories. As he tried to decide what his father felt like, he suddenly thought about the Host.
They were dark and shadowy, just like in life, smelling of serpents and oil, or great mounds of beetles and the deep stone of the underworld, like steel tainted water.
When he hit on the image, Tris’tan’s head came up to look into Cullen’s green eyes. The wolf kept the look, searching Cullen’s face and then he sent new thoughts towards his half human brother.
He sent the story of the Daoine Sidhe and how the Host became something terrible.

They came across the sea, following the wind, darting across the water, to new land. It was untouched by man or Faery and they made a life there. They celebrated being alive, enjoying freedom, making living an art form.
The Dwarves mined the stone while the elves created a home in the vast forest. There was peace and love and tranquility. They lived off the land, nurturing it in return. It was a simple life with beauty and creativity, art, laughter and love.
Then man came. Savage at first, but in small numbers, they came and tried to make a life for themselves. Fearful of most things, they respected the power of the Faeries when they saw it, and they stayed away from Faery settlements.
Humans grew quickly into vast numbers, outgrowing the groups of Faeries in just a few short years. The eldest of the Daoine Sidhe, the ones that remembered their homelands, wanted to live in peace with humans, leaving them to find their own way, leaving them to grow without interference.
Others, who had been born to the land, felt differently. They wanted to be worshipped by the humans, feared and respected. They wanted to use the humans as slaves, feeling that they were a lower life form and should be used like cattle.
A fracture appeared within the Daoine Sidhe. A rift between peoples created different fractions, different groups and the Host was born. The Host was militant, violent and wanted to enslave the humans altogether.
The others fought them and there was a great war. The Daoine Sidhe battled the Host, using all of their magic and faith to defeat the smaller group of the Unseelie Court. They beat them and sent them away, thinking that in their defeat they would be harmless.
Cullen saw images of elves coming across the ocean and living among the forests. He saw them making music and eating grand feasts and dancing. He saw joy and happiness. And then he saw the humans, shabby and covered in furs, trying to make a life in the fields and forests.
He saw images of dark elves, wearing black armor, doing battle with elves of light. He saw the fighting and felt the love the Daoine Sidhe still felt for their brethren. He felt the sadness when they were sent away.
The Tris’tan showed him new images of what he and the other Asrai had learned about the Host in the centuries since they had been gone. They tunneled, going deeper into the earth than Dwarves, deeper than Goblins, into the very center of the world.
There they developed new magics, created new weapons and they learned to fight, to do battle for everything. The Host’s elves fought for every second of their lives. As children, they were attacked and expected to survive. Many didn’t live through their first few years, but those that did became hardened warriors.
Queens ruled the Hives and the Host redesigned themselves to be more like insects and deep sea creatures. They lived in almost total darkness, deep in the ground, communicating with small natural lights and with smells.
They created schools of war, teaching the children that survived how to fight together. They let the fighters live together, trust one another, form relationships with each other. And then at last, they taught them to kill one another.
Only the strongest, most brutal, survived. Those Queens that lived, ruled Hives of warriors that could face anything. Anything except the sun. and with their magic they brought shadows and smoke with them to blot out the great light and to make the surface more like home.
Many Asrai had died to learn about the Host. Cullen could see the faces and smell the scents of them, all the Asrai that had gone before Tris’tan. All the warriors that had fought to get to this point, where Cullen would take up arms to fight for both humans and Faeries.
Cullen was overwhelmed by both the responsibility and the history that came before him. Centuries of planning had gone before and now the Host was finally returning to claim what they felt was theirs.
Tris’tan gave Cullen images of a Dark Master, some creature that had finally driven the Host forward with their hate and their plan. He sent images of underground cities, filled with Dark Fae, bristling with weaponry and magic. All this was there before him and he was filled with a sense of need. A need to stop them, to fight them, to oppose them in every way.
Cullen felt breathless with it and he opened his eyes to reassure himself that he was still just sitting in the swamp on a little hillock, there before a fire, with his closest friends.
He was panting, but slowed his breathing down and looked at the massive wolf head on his lap. His half brother was watching him with his deep red eyes.
“I understand now brother,” Cullen said. “I understand.”