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The wolf did not sneak up on me. There was no snatching the floor out from under me or tossing me into the darkness at random. That is not how the wolf operates. I was sitting in the living room, Bea’s head on my lap, Marceline lounging upside down on a nearby chair, Peridot assembling a new kind of Kamen Rider belt, and we were all watching Down Periscope. The crew was in the middle of singing Louie Louie when the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. All at once. A low growl cut through the air. The boards above our heads creaked as something started walking down the hallway towards the stairs. Each of us turned to stare, frozen in place despite ourselves. All our powers and we were simple deer for the form padding down the stairs. It had no shape beyond darkness. Nothing to see besides burning eyes and glittering teeth. It was a cloud of predatory instinct made manifest. No… no that wasn’t quite it. My mind simply refused to take in its actual shape, to see what it actually was. It was protecting itself the only way it knew how. By blotting out the details. “Run.” Growled the voice. Blood leaked from between those teeth as if it had killed only moments before. Red droplets fell onto the floor and the wall as it spoke. “Run and I will chase. Fight and you will earn another breath. Kill… and you will be worthy of surviving.” There was no arguing with those words. We left everything where it sat. Grabbed nothing on our way to the door. I all but wrenched it from its hinges opening it. We tumbled out into the darkness. I didn’t fall, but somehow I lost Bea’s hand despite holding it in my own with a crushing grip. Another growl, this one louder and mixed with laughter bordering on manic glee, sounded in the air. I pumped my legs all the harder. And suddenly there was no floor to press again. No air to breathe. Cold vacuum stole into my mouth, boiled the water on my tongue and lips, and I tried desperately to grab something, anything. A little push to send me back into air and gravity. But there was nothing except the emptiness of space ahead of me. Endless, star studded void streaked with the color of far away gas clouds in shapes that beggarded describing. A fraction of a second of absolute, mind numbing chaos stole into my brain. If there had been air in my lungs I would have screamed. But it stilled the fear. I found myself breathing again. The air was stale, smelled of death and heavy metals, and I had never taken a single sweeter breath in all my existence. Mon’keigh, why is your mind so full of music? The words inserted themselves into my mind, pressing past my defenses as if they weren’t there. Because they weren’t. Somehow I wasn’t surprised that the faint, constant hum of magic that normally surrounded my body anymore had disappeared. The Beast of Black wanted to see what I could do. What I had learned. An image of that dread beast stole across my mind again. I heard someone nearby curse in a language so fluid and perfect it sounded like music to my ears. I looked over and saw one of the most beautiful people I had ever seen. They were tall and statuesque. Their features could have been carved out of marble with a sharp, hawk like nose and ears that drew out to delicate points at their tips. The eyes were white within white within white. I would have thought them blind except for the way those orbs stayed trained on me. They had skin almost as pale as their eyes, but hair the deep red of freshly spilled blood. The full lips quirked upwards, along with one eyebrow, in amusement. “If I had a kill for every time I had seen that look, my name would even more honored than it is already.” Their voice echoed, literally, with power. Almost like a clap of thunder. “Which would be difficult indeed.” I opened my mouth to introduce myself, but the… Eldar? Yes, that was the word. Where had I picked that up? The Eldar simply held up one hand to stop me. “I have already gleaned anything you could say as part of your introduction. The only reason I saved you was that your mind interests me. It is so very different from those of the rest of your kind. Show me how you came across it.” The raised hand reached forwards. The lights shining on the rusted metal walls seemed to dim. It was reaching into my mind again. Searching for answers. I have lived long enough to have picked up a few tricks of my own, Eldar. I thought into that connection. Surprise showed on their perfect face as I marshalled willpower to bend their mental grip away from my mind. The power was not there, of course, but I had once had mental powers of my own. And some feats took only willpower. I twisted the alien’s reach around and gleaned several tidbits of my own before they severed the connection. They, no doubt, learned much more than I had. Still, the very fact that I had been able to gather anything at all astounded them. And made them wary of slipping into my mind once more. “Warlock Carwyn.” I used their name, the fact striking them like a physical slap. “I am Yorokonde.” They stared at me for several heartbeats before an amused, arrogant smile reintroduced itself to their face. I had a feeling that was their default expression. “It has been several centuries since I have been surprised so thoroughly. You might yet be worthy of being called by your name.” That was as close to an apology to them digging through my brain as I would ever get. “Once again the future has chosen to favor me above all others. Come. I have gifts to help you survive.” And just like that they spun on one heel and began walking away. It was expected that I would follow. I could tell that all followed in the eyes of this one. He?… She?… He?... They wore arrogance like a cloak, but it was one held in place by sheer power and longevity. Their sense of age made Marceline look like the smallest of children in comparison. [-500 CP, Carwyn the Warlock] Still, lacking an alternative at this point, I followed. The corridor we travelled down had metal walls on all sides, every inch coated with rust or dust or both. Splatters of old blood blended in so well with the rust that it was hard to tell one from the other at times. There was sufficient light to see by, if barely. Fixtures set high in the walls flickered or randomly dimmed or simply sat as barely glowing squares. Strangest of all was the sand coating the floor. Hundreds of years of drifting metallic flakes had turned into a dry, red sand that swirled up with every movement. What I marvelled at most of all was the scale everything had been built to. The hallways we walked and doors we passed were all oversized by several feet. Everything was built for people who had to stand ten feet tall, if not more. And they were wide enough that three such people could have walked down it without touching shoulders. Every intersection of corridors had small alcoves, quarter-circles with just enough room for one of the giants to stand in, at each corner. At first their purpose eluded me. Then I realized they allowed one to easily lean out around either corner and see the whole hallway. They were defensive structures. Four soldiers at a crossroads could hold quite a bit of territory with them to lean behind. Eventually Carwyn opened a door similar to the hundreds of others I had seen so far and stepped inside. They didn’t touch the door, of course, but it opened anyways. I peered inside and was surprised to find the room relatively clean. At least compared to everything else. A metal slab in one corner would have made a hard, but serviceable, bed with some kind of padding on it. The Eldar pointed to the opposite corner of the room where a pile of armor and a rifle unlike anything I had ever seen before sat. “These are for you.” They said simply, eyes locked on mine. There was a momentary brushing against my mind. Knowledge planted itself there like someone shoving a seed into soil. Suddenly I knew that the armor was Mesh armor, normally worn by his race’s more common soldiers, as well as how to put it on. I also knew that the rifle was called a Tuelean and that it launched discs of metal sharp enough to slice through my own armor like butter. I sensed a bit of smugness radiating from Carwyn as I realized their own armor could take more than a few blows from my new weapon. That wasn’t even counting their considering psychic powers into the mix. They wanted to make sure that I wasn’t going to get any ideas. Not that I would have. Not right now, at least. “So why are you here?” I asked them as I moved to start putting on the armor. “This is where I am needed.” They assured me, as arrogant a statement as I had ever heard.

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