Chapter Eight:
Shadows on the Wall

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Storms coming down
Everybody's running for cover
Rain's coming down in buckets
I can smell the thunder
Sky's heavy with the color of blood
Shadows on the wall
Make it all the more distracting
I can feel it all
Watch it fall from the ceiling
Out of my hands
-"Running for Cover" by Noah Gundersen

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Their homestead was simply bursting with new life and that didn't include the raptors that had come to occupy the space. Children and adults alike, some were curled next to their fire pit, most were encircling Ash in a ring. Two raptors, both he recognized as Spectre and Clover, flanked her. Their voices were amplified in the cave, sounding loud and distorted to the ear. When he and the others entered, the chatter dropped away for only a moment, eyes turning one-by-one to look at them all. Apparently, from the lack of recognition in everyone's faces, his party and the one Ash had recovered didn't know one another. But their clothing styles were recognizably similar, if the colour coordination was anything to go by.

Allen caught Ash's eye, even if it was just a few seconds' worth of time. She had her mask back in place, implacable and immoveable to bear the brunt of verbal force assaulting her. When her eyes flicked back to the assorted people circling her, her ears flicked. The raptors hissed in unison at the single motion. It drew another bout of silence, stunned this time around. The werewolf carefully crossed her arms defensively over her chest, peering back at them with her eerie mismatched eyes. They simply glittered in the firelight.

"Whatever concerns you might have right now, they don't matter. You'll get off the island, you can be sure of that," she said, her voice raised loud enough to permeate the chatter elsewhere. Eyes drifted to pin themselves to her, and she surveyed everyone once, before stepping away from the circle. The raptors followed, and the people around her split apart to allow her past them.

"If there is anyone—anyone at all—that you believe is still missing from your respective parties, speak up now. I don't trust the Solarii will be idle despite the weather, and I don't trust the weather either, because it will change on a dime. This island is full of surprises, and almost ninety-percent of them want to kill anyone who ends up here."

"And how long have you been here, if you don't mind my inquiry," a new voice spoke up to match her volume. Everyone diverted their attention, turning to view an elderly man with snowy-white hair and beard, sitting complacently beside the fire. His robes were muted reds, hands hidden away from sight in the large sleeves. His golden eyes were calm and patient, and his face was set solemnly as he studied Ash.

"About a few hundred years, at least." Ash answered without hesitation, meeting the old man's gaze evenly. A few of the onlookers looked shocked and even doubtful. Strangely, Allen noted, there was no fear in hearing her claims.

"So you've seen many of us wash up on the beaches of this place," the old man continued, his tone piqued with genuine interest. Several of the others seemed to be paying more attention as well, regarding the werewolf in a new light. She, for the most part and rather predictably, ignored their stares.

"Plenty. Not all of them survive the currents or the storms that toss them here. Others, they run into the Solarii and if they aren't recruited, they're killed on sight. The males have a chance of survival, so long as they don't fight back. The females and children alike have none whatsoever." She averted her gaze, driving home the point with it as she swept her eyes over everyone. "I'm your only friend right now. I don't care if you don't like me. Get over it. I haven't put an arrow in your heart or a bullet in your head. That should say plenty when compared to the Solarii. Give me names or descriptions of missing party members. I'll do another sweep of the island, take out the source of the unnatural weather, and fix the boat that'll send you on your way to civilization."

"Source of the weather—what's that mean?"

"Is there a bender causing all this?"

Allen watched as the rise of new questions began to reach a peak. Clover and Spectre cough-barked and brayed loudly to calm them all down momentarily. Some of the group looked annoyed at the animals, but they didn't venture any closer to the werewolf, not while she was still flanked by them. They looked appropriately cautious of the very large animals.

"That undead bitch Himiko—she's the source. I aim to take her out. Any more questions? Yes? Too bad."

She twirled a finger in the air.

"I want names and-slash-or descriptions. I'm leaving in ten minutes."

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Hungry eyes yearning for answers turned on him as soon as Ash left. She took all but one raptor with her, leaving him with Clover. The garishly green-and-grey feathered raptor prowled close to him, staying within reach, although it didn't exactly comfort him. He was blissfully distracted from her as questions rattled about in the air, some voices more patient and others more demanding. During the rounds, he realized how little he truly knew. Allen knew it was his lack of real interaction with the Solarii, and for the most part, he was grateful for it. The few tales Ash told him were chilling enough. The Solarii had been willing to try and burn a heavily pregnant woman for one of their 'rituals' several years ago and if Ash hadn't intervened, two innocent lives would have been lost that day. They had no qualms killing children, either.

When Allen repeated the story to their guests, it was enough to deter some of them from asking anything else. The elderly man that remained by the fire was gazing deep into the flames, his face stony and troubled. The others chatted amongst themselves, softly and with a nervous energy electrifying the air.

He lost track of time, felt like he was in a stupor as he helped direct those who had other questions besides those about Yamatai when the ground shuddered unexpectedly beneath him. Allen felt like he was about to jump out of his skin at the jolt, believing it to be an earthquake. The island has experienced several in the past few months and they were never pleasant. The grating noise of stone against stone met his ears and he looked up hurriedly to see if the ceiling was caving in on them. He was surprised when he saw nothing falling from up above and instead, it was the floor that was rippling beneath his feet. He had about a two-second warning before he went flying onto his backside, the air knocked from his lungs and spots dancing in his vision when his head struck the ground. Moments or hours later—either would have suited him fine, the time seemed to pass all the same—he felt hands pulling him up to his feet. Vaguely, he thought heard someone snickering.

"Toph, what are you doing?!"

A young girl, drabbed in thick blue clothing trimmed in what Allen suspected to be white fur, was helping him sit up. She patted his back a few times, telling him softly to breathe slowly and checked the back of his head with gentle touches. When she declared him fine, her voice turned sharp as steel, her once-previously soft blue-eyed gaze hardening to glare at another girl. Dark hair was pinned into a bulbous bob at the back and her clothing was a mixture of greens and golds that denoted a more earthy tone to her attire. She was barefoot and grinning smugly.

"I'm fixing up this dump. I've slept in campsites nicer than this."

"This isn't our home, you know!"

"And that lady will thank us when we're done. Or she'll thank me, actually," the girl responded with a shrug and a smug grin. "Besides, there's smoke in the air. It's everywhere, in case you haven't noticed. That's not exactly good, if you don't have proper ventilation and this place just doesn't have it. I dunno about you, but I don't plan on choking to death on it all."

The girl dropped into a fighting stance—or what Allen assumed to be one—before thrusting her arms out and the ground beneath her—it rippled and shook itself like a beast. Clover shrieked as her feathers began puffing up, avian eyes wide and wild at the sight. Allen was up on his feet in an instant, more worried what Clover might do to the girl rather than what the girl was doing to the cave. She seemed more in control of herself and whatever she was doing than the raptor was.

"Easy, Clover, stand down, it's all right!"

He glanced over his shoulder for only a moment, watching in utter fascination as the stone itself thrust forward, changing shape from relatively flat rock to cornered edges. It rippled and contorted, folding in on itself at the girl's will. Then he turned away from the sight, calming Clover and easing her away from the girl. He didn't want to test whether the raptor was frightened or felt threatened by the startling revelation going on behind him. All he cared more about was the safety of everyone in the cave than watching it unfold in a nonplussed manner.

He could sense the palpable tension all around him, thick like molasses and then some. He was almost tempted to leave for the time being. He wanted to feign ignorance. Ash was a very particular person and she didn't seem to take to changes she didn't like all too well. She had taken her sweet time getting used to the idea of him living there, after all.

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"What the fuck did you do my home?"

For all the quietness and unpredictability she tried to conjure up about herself, that statement alone was one of the most predictable things Allen could have seen coming a mile away.

She stared, for once in a true-blue and appropriately flabbergasted manner, her eyes thoroughly whisking over everything without missing any details. She was taking in the changes of her home with open shock.

The cave floor had been smoothed over and leveled out completely. Before, it had been rough and unsteady, rippled and chipped away in several places. The campfire's old place had been crudely carved into the floor near the center of the cave's main chamber, perhaps by Ash's own claws. Now, there was a neat and orderly depression in the stone floor to accommodate a more proper pit. The embers could stay in one place without constant monitoring. The makeshift wooden balcony that had been created as a crude yet haphazard second deck had been disassembled and was no longer there. The planks were still useful and were more or less symmetrical and not warped. They had been rearranged around the fire pit, acting as an upraised platform deck.

Allen believed Ash must have scavenged the pieces from one of the many old homes on the island to put them to better use. How she managed to get them to stick into the rock face, however, was a mystery best left for another time. The old impressions in the walls were gone as well, thanks to the young girl, Toph.

Further on, in front of the wooden deck, there was a proper stove, grafted right into the very wall. From the back of the stove, a ventilation shaft crawled up the length of the wall and into the ceiling. Allen assumed that the shaft poured out the smoke into the open air somewhere.

Then there were the rooms. There were actual rooms and not just holes in the wall crammed with things that were meant to resemble rooms. There were almost a dozen now; the entire homestead had been expanded. His own room had been no exception, gaining more square feet so that he could actually move around in it. Ash's room had been expanded as well, he had seen when he had gone exploring. The guest rooms were no longer as cramped as they used to be, and he helped drag several mattresses from the storage room out into them. They didn't have bed frames for any them, but once it was pointed out to Toph, she quickly alleviated that oversight and crafted frames out of the surrounding rock. There were more proper shelves in the rooms too, if there weren't any bureaus or dressers to store things away into.

Everything had been transformed. Allen could hardly recognize the place. Clover certainly wasn't happy.

And from the look on Ash's face and in her golden eyes—

Wait. They were both gold now.

Something was wrong.

Her eyes were never both gold, not usually. They were normally mismatched—blue-grey in the right and her other eye was always gold. The only times he could recall witnessing both her eyes matching was when she was angry or upset. Allen was sure the changes to her home were enough to throw her off, but not by this wide of a margin. Not unless she was incredibly attached to the derelict décor of her home, but he doubted that very much. Or so he hoped.

When her golden eyes landed on him, he nearly flinched.

"You didn't stop them?"

Her words could have cleaved bone right in half, if her voice had the powers to.

He was infinitely grateful she couldn't.

"What was I supposed to do, knock them out?"

"Yes."

This time he did wince; both at the gruff tone she carried and the callousness in which she answered him with. The others grumbled to themselves. Toph especially seemed annoyed that her "hard work" wasn't being appreciated and complained loudly about it too. Sokka, the older brother of Katara—the girl who had helped him when he fell over earlier—replied that sometimes genius ideas just weren't valued at first sight like they should be. Momo, the flying lemur, gurgled and stared.

Some of the others in the group ignored the scowling werewolf's comments entirely, and instead focused on the people behind her. They trailed inside the homestead, slowly but surely, taking in the sight of the place as they ventured further in. Even Allen had been too distracted by her thunderous expression to take proper notice at first.

Several of those around the newly crafted campfire pit sprang up and rushed forward, seeing someone they recognized. Allen ducked out of the way in time, finding himself stuck beside Ash. She glowered sullenly around at the changes, her ears pressed flush to her skull. The Dakotaraptors had slunk in behind the group, rejoining the woman at her backside. Even Clover came skulking around, hooting softly as she assessed the growing numbers.

"You're not really angry at the improvements, are you?" He asked softly.

She snorted roughly, her nostrils flaring and her eyes still burning like molten gold.

"It doesn't improve the mood," she all but growled out. Her eyes flicked to the man hugging a woman and all his children, smiling in relief. When his smile faded as he looked over their faces, he turned to her, a wordless question in his eyes. He turned to a woman at his side and Allen thought he heard him asking for someone named 'Jinora'.

Ash looked away, arms crossing over her chest. She looked more troubled and upset as well as angry. "I'm going back out. One of the kids got taken."

Alarm rattled Allen's core.

"What?"

"Get me three quivers packed. I'm going back out to get her."

"I'm coming with you."

The words surprised both him and her. He hadn't even put thought into his words when he said them. They simply came, accompanying his instinctual urge to help like an old friend. She narrowed her eyes at him while her lips pressed thinly together. An argument was already forming in her head, he could see it in her eyes. He beat her to the punch, holding up his hand to quiet her before she could start.

"Don't. Please. Don't tell me no. I've already made up my mind. You can't stop me. I'm going to help, in any way I can."

He glared right back when she didn't answer, and her expression didn't dissipate either. She didn't look all that surprised, merely contemplative. For a few seconds, he thought she was going to argue against it. When she tilted her head in a motion that said to follow her, he almost fell over in astonishment. She usually would have argued, but this was a welcome change. His shock quickly turned into elation and relief.

"Better you watching my back than them. Hurry up and get your gear. We leave in five."

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They didn't stay long enough to be cornered and questioned by the others, especially the man who was clearly the one whose child had been stolen by the Solarii. They didn't even get a chance to know about the plan. There was too much going on for their guests to realize that he and Ash had slipped out. Allen felt guilty leaving them to wonder where their hosts went, at leaving them alone. He had almost brought it up to Ash, but he quickly retracted the urge to say something almost immediately. She didn't want to talk about getting things done, she wanted to just go out and do them. Waiting for others to contemplate a plan was wasting time in her eyes.

"Do you think it's all right if we leave them alone?"

"They'll be fine when we get this girl back."

"How can you be so sure?"

She gave him a rather pointed look that said without words how stupid a question that was. He felt his face flush angrily at the way she looked at him. She didn't need to speak to get him worked up. What a gift.

"It's a valid question!"

"Is it really?" She drawled back flatly. The raptors were following them, silent as ever as they disappeared and reappeared amongst the foliage. It was still incredibly eerie to him how noiseless they could become, like they weren't even there. He was sure if they truly wanted that they could get right behind an enemy and kill them without their prey ever being the wiser. It was a truly terrifying thought to consider.

Allen was very glad that they were on his and Ash's side.

They were hurrying into the pine forest that overlooked the shantytown, the raptors resuming their flight in and out of sight further out around them. He caught glimpses of the royal palace in the distance, gleaming gold under the late afternoon sun.

"Where is she being held?"

"They're planning the burning at sundown in the caves beneath the palace. We have to hurry if we want to save the kid."

"The burning?!"

The way she spoke about it so calmly alarmed him. Then he realized how fires couldn't harm her. It certainly belied her blandness about the whole ordeal. He wondered if the Solarii had ever tried burning her, only to find her immune to the flames. Then he realized the child they were after was going to die if they didn't move fast.

"It's all a part of the ritual that Himiko would use to choose her next successor, remember? They would use a fire ritual. The worthy successor was spared of the flames."

"And…the unworthy?"

His stomach clenched into a hard pitted ball, coiling uncomfortably. She didn't look at him as they took a pause at the base of the pine forest, the shantytown laid out before them. Her nose wrinkled in distaste as she scanned the improvised hovel town of the Solarii, seeing things he clearly wasn't.

"Use your imagination."

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They didn't trigger any alarms or cause a disturbance. He was only half surprised. Ash has been at this so long, that having him tag along was only a secondary thought. Leading him where she needed, telling him when to stop, go, move, jump—she barely thought on any of it. It was as though she was merely directing another one of her raptors. They too waited on most of her directions, but took initiative where they received no direction. He did much the same, and she had yet to correct him. Perhaps she approved.

They managed to take out any who would sound off the alarm. She and the raptors would end the Solarii. Allen would merely knock them out. The raptors were truly unnervingly efficient and coordinated in their attacks. It was almost to the point that Allen couldn't believe they were merely animals conducting such complicated movements. They were terrifyingly intelligent, using distraction and feint attacks to corral their chosen victims where they wanted them to go.

The raptors followed him and Ash up to a point until she had to dismiss them. They were just beneath the great bridge that led to the palace grounds proper. Allen continued dogging her footsteps. They skirted the sheer cliffs directly beneath the palace, right into a tucked away cave entrance that led to a flooded walkway. He could barely keep his head above water, being the taller one. She simply couldn't. He could only make out her ears, poking through the surface of the water as she bobbed along ahead of him. He had to stifle his laughter at how comical it all looked in spite of the gravity of their situation that's led them to do this.

When they managed to clear the watery walkway, she gave him a rather sour look that told him she heard his failed attempts to keep from laughing. He didn't bother hiding his grin.

"I just realized something," he whispered as they crept up a decrepit staircase. "You're much shorter than I am."

"I just realized, I don't care," she spat back, although there wasn't as much ire to her voice as he had been expecting. "I can still kick your ass a hundred ways to Tuesday. So please choose your next words with care when you decide to try and get a rise out of me."

She didn't sound angry. Just annoyed.

That alone told him he'd stabbed at one button or another, however tiny. He continued beaming smugly at her backside as they ascended a rubbly staircase, right up until her still-sopping wet tail smacked him square in the face.

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They could hear the Solarii long before they saw them.

They were chanting, it almost sounded like. Upon further inspection as they ventured closer, he reassessed that original observation. They weren't chanting. They were praying.

They were praying to Himiko.

A clear voice cut through the din sharply, like a hot knife through butter, and the praying quit entirely in favour of silence. It crashed over them louder than the praying had. Ash growled deeply in the pit of her chest, a soft rumble that made the very air around her seem to tremble.

"That's Mathias. He's going to start the ceremony any moment," she flicked her eyes to him and they were still both gold and glinting like an animal's in light. "I'm going to draw their attention. Wait ten seconds. Get the girl and get her out of here. Do you understand me?"

He nodded fervently and it was enough for her. Ash drew herself up and stepped out around the rock bend and into the clearing where the Solarii were gathered. He started counting.

Allen didn't make it to three before a horrendous roar drowned out a cry of outrage from Mathias. It was quickly replaced by screams of terror and one clear, consistent statement.

"It's the Fire Walker! RUN!"

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He ran full pelt into hell.

Smoke and ash and embers and roaring flames that took the shapes of wolves and raptors, dragons and eagles, lions and hellhounds and more were in a myriad of multi-coloured flames and they were quickly filling the chamber. Solarii were predictably running away from the fire as it literally chased them hither and thither. He caught a glimpse of the pyre, on the far end of the chamber, pressed flush near what he believed to be a waterfall leading outside the mountain. Bound and gagged to it was a young girl, barely ten if he could judge her age accurately enough. He could see her terror as the flames crept closer. He scanned for a clearing he could chance without running into a swatch of fire, and caught sight of Ash in the middle of the fiery maelstrom.

She seemed to dance in the flames without a care in the world and all her focus went on directing where they went. At times, she wasn't even moving and the fire seemed to move of its own accord, rippling like beasts in their own flesh and blood bodies. Several of them slammed together, a mixture of bright green, soft blue, hot white and blazing red, into a familiar form he was more used to seeing: old Báthory the Tyrannosaurus Rex. The Báthory-lookalike opened her fiery jaws in a silent roar, spear-like teeth flickering and guttering like the flames they truly were. The heat roiling off the flame-beast was intolerable from far back where he stood, he was roasting, sweating. He could only imagine what it was like being right up against the flames.

The Solarii ran in pure, undulating terror, those still present running flat out toward the nearest exit, perhaps back into the palace. Only one man near the pyre stood strong, bearing a spear with a circular saw-blade on its tip. His pale features were hidden beneath a hooded garment, but the effect made him look hellish and sickly in the wake of the flames. Allen assumed that this was Mathias.

He shouted unintelligibly at the werewolf in the middle of the firestorm, swinging the staff in her general direction. The flame-conjured Báthory opened its mouth again in a mock-roar, with only the fire's guttural hiss providing any noise at all. Allen ducked behind heat waves and lashing flames, using it as cover without getting too up close and personal. He felt his skin itch and blister even at this distance. As Allen crept closer, Mathias lashed his staff close towards the girl bound to the pyre, the serrated blade close to her throat. A threat. Allen's blood ran cold. He wasn't close enough and there wasn't a direct path for him to run interference and get the girl.

Ash lunged forward in the blink of an eye, knocking the staff from Mathias's hands with laughable and terrifying ease. Mathias reached for an axe at his side, but Ash was faster—why wouldn't she be? She wasn't bound by the same reflex and speed limitations as the average human was. She slammed the taller man down over her knee, knocked him down with the same fluid ease she'd showed in summoning the fire and crafting it to her will. He went down with a loud grunt of pain, smashing into stone floor with a wheezy gasp. When he flipped onto his back, Ash was leaping again, and she crashed right on top of him, her whole weight slamming onto his much larger frame. Her pawed feet dug mercilessly into his chest. She slammed an open palm against him and then he was suddenly still. At that instant, the fires all died and it was abruptly very dark and quiet in the chamber, except for the roar of a waterfall behind them. The faint glow of the sun pushing through the curtain of water seemed dim in comparison.

The girl bound to the pyre screamed behind her gag, eyes wide as she tried to get free. Allen rushed forward when a lull in the flames came to be, hurriedly and without thinking, he summoned his bladed hand to cut away at the bonds. When she was free, she yanked away the gag and breathed heavily, discordantly, staring with those same wide eyes at Ash. They were wet with tears ready to spill.

"She killed him," she said quietly in a shaky voice. Allen turned and saw the werewolf standing, her arm out. The brace along her forearm and wrist had a blade sticking out from beneath the wrist, coated in fresh blood. He met her eyes and saw they were cool and collected, but they were both still as golden as they were hours ago.

"You need to get her out of here. I can hear them. They're rallying their forces right now and on their way to shoot the place up."

Allen stiffened at that and instinctively glanced at the girl at his side. He offered his right hand to her. She hesitated, taking a passing look at his left hand, still transformed in its bladed form. He smiled at her disarmingly and carefully tucked it from sight to revert it back. "It's all right. We're here to help."

"She killed him," she repeated, glancing at Ash with wide, uncertain eyes. She was pale and shaking, either from the shock of the events or from what's going on now. It was hard to tell.

"And? They were going to burn you alive. Not even I do that to any of the Solarii, no matter how tempting it always is." She gave them both a pointed look and after looking around, Allen saw no other bodies lying about other than Mathias's. She hadn't burned any of the Solarii brothers at all; alive or otherwise. She'd spared them from the flames and had only scared them off. The only one to suffer had been Mathias. Even that had been up close and personal with her blades.

Ash jerked her head at them toward the exit. "Go. Get her back. The pack will be waiting to lead you back." She smiled wanly at him, a glint in her eyes flashing. He couldn't see any blue in her right eye still. "I know how hopeless you are with simple navigation on this island."

He felt his face get red, and he had a response lined up, but the girl grabbed his unchanged hand and tugged him hard, making for the way he and Ash had come in through. Just as they rounded the corner, the gunfire started. He stopped long enough and turned around to see a flash of fire rising, and the shadows on the wall showed a monster briefly rising up to meet the challenge.

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