Dulcinox, The Wolf in Shadow
The Wolf in Shadow, Meeting 1
You know little about the Wolf in Shadow, only what you can recall from your meeting:
You find yourselves somewhere decidedly…Else. Somewhere in between. You can’t hear anything, not even your own voice should you try and speak. You seem to be standing in a fog of roiling blackness drifting across the ground at your feet, spreading as far as the eye can see. In front of you emerging from the fog is a plain metal throne, easily 10 feet by 10 feet at the base. Atop the throne is a human-shaped figure in tattered robes, with the head of a wolf leaned dejectedly down upon its chest, and wolf-like clawed hands emerging from the sleeves. The creature is at least 15 or 20 feet tall, though it is hard to tell as it slouches down in the throne. After a moment, you hear it begin to speak.
“Poor souls. You must be…quite…lost to find yourselves at my door. How did you come to be here little…”
He pauses abruptly, then continues, though you made no sound.
“I begin to see. Adragast rails against his cage. The Dominions are open once again. At least…some are…”
He pauses again, longer this time, as though he is weighing a decision.
“Adragast must be contained. Should he break free you will only be his first victims. I can help you, though my power on the Prime is much restrained. The power contained in the orb will surely destroy one of you, but should you each take it up together, perhaps you will survive…”
The Wolf in Shadow, Meeting 2
A second visit to the throne of the Wolf in Shadow was a bit more revealing:
You find yourself standing in the embrace of endless, roiling shadow once again. Silence presides as ever in this…between place. The great wolf sits upon his throne, head bowed, unchanged since your last encounter. His snout ripples as his battered voice rolls over you.
“I’ve seen these small souls once before…perhaps more than once…no matter.
He seems to study each of you intently for a moment, though his eyes do not open.
“Grask howls in his captivity. Should he be freed, his master will begin to seep back into the world through the cracks. This cannot be allowed.”
He lifts his head slightly as though sniffing the air.
“More barriers break down, more Dominions open. As you stopped Adragast by taking his power, so too should you be able to contain Grask. You survived the first Forging, you’ll likely survive another…”
He lets out a long, slow sigh.
“I grow tired of this one-sided conversation. Should you wish to learn more, seek out the Tower of Altemoc. It’s…properties…may allow us to speak without you needing to reach death’s door quite so often……”
The Wolf in Shadow, Meeting 3
Once again, the familiar black realm settles around you as you open your eyes. The great wolf sits upon his unadorned throne, clawed paws resting on its arms.
With a start, you realize Mellifarian’s massive form is laying nearby, a large hill in the otherwise flat plane of shadows. As always, you are unable to speak in this strange realm.
The wolf’s voice rumbles out, sounding closer than ever before, and his snout ripples in a sneer of disgust.
“I never thought to smell Asterion’s rot in my realm again, little souls. You’ve managed to contain her for now, though her avatar very nearly slipped into the realm. Molicepherus with the power of a dragon at her beck and call would have been…”
The wolf shakes his head slightly, dismissing the thought.
“I sense you more clearly than ever, little souls. You’ve grown, but more than that, you’re closer than ever before to the tower. Perhaps…”
The wolf shifts its head in the direction of Mellifarian’s large corpse and draws in a sharp breath through its nose. The dragon’s corpse ripples and begins to dissolve into smoke and shadow. The cloud slowly drifts toward the wolf, who inhales deeply and consumes the shadowy cloud entirely.
The wolf begins muttering, smoke and shadow slipping out of its mouth as it does. After nearly a minute of this muttering, the wolf arches up out of the throne and releases a forlorn howl.
As the howl fades, the shadows part, and in the distance you can just make out the shape of a modest tower in the distance. Without knowing quite how, you understand that the tower is nearby…and within your reach. The wolf slumps back into his throne as though exhausted.
“The Dominions call, little souls…”
The Wolf in Shadow, The Truth Unveiled
My name is Dulcinox. Some call me Keeper of the In-Between; The World Shroud; He Who Watches; The Warden of Catastrophe. That last one is a bit on the nose. You likely know me simply as the Wolf in Shadow.
The tower gives us the ability to speak, but our time is…uncertain. You seek answers…I hope to give them to you, though I do not promise they will be easy.
Your world… …is a prison. You’ve had a taste of some of the inmates thus far, though all pale in comparison to the being for which this prison planet was created. It has no name, though most simply refer to it as Catastrophe.
The great wolf lets out an annoyed sigh.
I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me start again. According to your world’s history, the all-powerful gods of light abandoned this world, supposedly sacrificing themselves to divide the planet and relegate the dark and evil things that go bump in the night somewhere beyond the Lightwell. The Lightwell protects the “good” side of the world from the “evil”.
You’ve met people and seen society in the fractured lands. Do they seem innately evil to you? You’ve lived on the “good” side of the Lightwell – is there nothing dark and evil there?
This lie is spread by the agents of the evils imprisoned here, and it perpetuates their agenda. The gods did not abandon this world, though the truth may be more frightening. Even reducing them to light and dark is a gross simplification designed to keep people from looking too hard at the Lightwell or the Fractured Lands. Often people will take the easy answer in front of them rather than asking the hard question.
The gods, be they good, evil, or otherwise, did create the Lightwell…as a horrible, necessary, terrifying failsafe. Should Catastrophe ever escape its prison, this world and thousands of others like it throughout the multiverse would fall. In the event Catastrophe ever cracked its prison, the Lightwell would ignite, destroying this world and Catastrophe along with it.
To create such a powerful failsafe, the gods had to give a true piece of themselves to the working. Should the lightwell ever ignite, the lives of the gods that created it, many of the most powerful beings in existence, would be snuffed out in order to power the great magical working needed to slay Catastrophe. They built this failsafe knowing they might only be buying themselves time.
As you can likely guess, Catastrophe cracked his cage. That’s where I come in. The gods created me to be the warden of their prison, and to activate the Lightwell if Catastrophe was ever at risk of escaping. I did just that. Unfortunately, the gods miscalculated. The Lightwell, the most powerful working ever created by the gods, powered by their own lives, was not powerful enough to destroy Catastrophe. Though it was outside my purview, I took action. In the split second of time I had, as the lightwell erupted out of your planet, I locked your world away in something….that is difficult to explain.
Time is an interesting concept, and something of a study of mine. Your world now exists in a looping bubble of time, starting from the split second in which the lightwell triggered, and ending whenever Catastrophe cracks the next ward on his prison.
Subjectively, that moment was 600 years in the past. For me, it was far longer. I watched, and studied, through the centuries. Each time Catastrophe cracks the next piece of his prison, I draw on the incredible power of the frozen lightwell, start the loop over, and try again. Eventually, I learned that the first to control the power of a dominion were uniquely suited to gaining power and somehow protected from Catastrophe’s influence. Once the first dominion is opened, should the dominion-bonded die, we reset the loop early to conserve the lightwell’s power, which while vast, is not infinite.
This world has iterated 1276 times, though this is only your 152nd iteration as dominion bonded. It often ends before you are born, and you are often not the first to forge a dominion bond. Still, each of you has died at least 300 times, been born again at least 300 times, and lived at least 300 lives. Through some unknown twist of fate, some improbable fortune, you are commonly the first to open the dominions to this realm. I’m sure you have questions.