Humans.
The Boar remembers them, just as it remembers mist rising over a lake at dawn, as it remembers running, chill air in its nostrils, as it remembers the dew-stricken morning as it ran, and ran, the only sounds its hoofbeats and the baying of the hounds behind it.
It remembers the spear in its flank.
Humans.
Their skin pinked by the cold, air steaming in front of their mouths. The hounds held, uncertain, whining — they knew the look in the boar's eyes, even if the humans commanding them did not. The hounds knew. The hounds always knew.
When the Boar — still just a boar, not a god, just a mute starving beast, lost in winter — turned, the hounds broke away, howling and threading through the legs of the horses. One human, caught off balance, fell to the snow with an abrupt squawk. So clumsy, so slow in his heavy furs. He rose to his knees, shouting at the hounds and his horse and the sky, wiping blood from under his nose as his companions laughed.
Humans.
They smelled like shit and woodfires, old meat covered in rank spices, and the last breaths of the creatures whose furs they wore. Filthy humans, missing teeth, missing eyes or fingers. They thought the hunt belonged to them by right. They had forgotten it was a game: the eater, and the eaten.
The boar had not fed in days. The storms of winter had kept its hunger banked low, embers instead of flame, but seeing the blood on the snow, feeling the spear in its side, the boar turned its face to the man struggling up out of the snow.
It roared.
And its hunger woke.
A god was born from ice and mud, hunger and pain. And its eyes first fell on those who thought themselves safe, whose bowels turned to water when the roar broke against them, and filled them to brimming.
Humans.
They rode until the horses fell, and then they ran in their stinking furs, throats gone raw with screaming. The Boar thinks they might be running still, if it had not caught them all, men and horses and hounds, and used them up.
Well. The horses and hounds it used, and is still using now, its dream-and-mud-bred servants.
And the humans?
In the dead of winter, any mouthful is a meal.
You never planned that she would die first, did you?
The question is so rhetorical it can only be an insult, and that is precisely how the Boar means it.
Of course Donatello never planned for that possibility. He is the one with plans inside of plans, one clever trick nestled within another. Even in the darkest, the most hopeless of moments, there has always been a half-formed idea ready to be brought to the forge and fired into steel. Whatever the battle, Donatello believed he would always be able to get his family out alive.
Always.
Donatello has no one to blame for the ruin of his hopes but himself. He said he did not believe, and the Boar cannot accept such defiance. And so it came, with a message written in the frail lines of this human's body.
In the illusion of the human's body. The Boar savors terror, like blood upon the snow, and while the human's soundless, creeping death was sweet to watch — sweeter still to watch Donatello's grief rise and bloom — it has larger, colder plans for her: a true death to make ghosts flee their stone beds.
Even so, it gives the Boar nothing short of joy to watch him cradle the empty body in his arms, his face slack with shock as he tries to wake her. And watching the dawning realization in his eyes ispleasure, sweet and warm, spreading like the roots of a weed — pleasure the Boar has not felt in ever so many years.
This pleasure is tempered by the knowledge that Donatello was marked by the Other long before the Boar knew he lived. If only, if only the Boar had known such a creature existed! What happy confluence raised Donatello from a mute beast, what alchemy transmuted bits of flesh and bone into this chimaera? More than that noxious fluid is at work here. Oh, the Boar is displeased, the Boar is furious, that Donatello is not his. It has contented itself with unworthy servants for too long, their flesh not fit for eating when they have outlived what little use it can find for them.
Human servants are the easiest to find, to bend and warp as the Boar sees fit, but they can only bear its power for so long. In the end, they are no different than that last hunt, small stinking creatures, weaker than dragonflies in winter.
Karai had potential, for all that she is human, torn between the ash-blackened hearts of her fathers. The Boar offered her satisfaction, the contentment of the sharpest blade, the truest arrow. All it asked was her heart. What use did the lost little girl have for that?
And yet, she resists. And she will pay for that resistance, oh, yes, she will pay, and the Boar must swallow as its mouth waters. She will pay, this night she will pay. The Boar will take what it is owed.
It is a god. It deserves the faithful. It deserves power. Donatello, a monster to look at, has power coiled rich and salty in his muscles. A puzzlement to find such power and defiance here, in the murky, silty sewers beneath the city, but the Boar has found power in strange places before.
The Boar remembers, with the red-soaked vision that serves as its memory, a nun, dust on her feet and scars on her hands, who dared to defy it as openly as Donatello. She had been the Other's champion then, its hoof print as clear to the Boar as if she had wore it on her skin. And like Donatello, she had refused to believe. What an ugly woman she had been, harder to look at than the creature sobbing his dry grief at the Boar's feet. But those scarred hands had held faith, enough to turn the Boar's stomach to water, and she had driven the Boar and its servants from her village with nothing more than a few shouted words of Latin and that damned faith.
It did not matter that her faith had nothing to do with the Boar; what mattered was the faith itself, the act of fording a river and trusting that one would not be alone steering against the current.
The Boar chose to retreat and wait, counting out the thin, onion-skin years of the nun's life until she lay in her cot, struggling for breath. Then it broke her, with visions of the blood-fed fires.
She died, blind and screaming. Then the Boar fed upon her people in a meal that lasted weeks, and left her bitter bones to fall to dust in the center of her empty village.
It hungers too much to wait until Donatello dies. The city teems with life, each tiny fear and lust a morsel meant for the Boar's tongue, and so it must break him now before it makes a meal of the lives walking the streets above.
Such a pity, to break this marvelous creature. With that mind, and the discipline the rat-father instilled in him, Donatello is a jewel, lacking only the proper setting.
Perhaps the Boar may sway him.
Perhaps Donatello will be more receptive to satisfaction.
What an odd concept, satisfaction. In all its long centuries spent cycling through sleep and starvation, the Boar has never known satisfaction. It is sated for a time after feeding, and only then can it rest. When it wakes, it hungers. There is no end. There is no final cure for its condition, and even if there were, the Boar would not accept it. What power it has, it has raised from its hunger. Without hunger, the Boar is — nothing. Simply a white pig with gleaming tusks and red, runny eyes.
Hunger is what makes it a god.
So the Boar does not understand satisfaction, does not wish to understand it, though it understands that the lure of satisfaction has its attractions for those lesser creatures. Never once has the offer been refused — not in the end. Not after the Boar showed them all that they could see. They all fall as prey, and the game is the Boar's to win, over and over.
The Other has not been seen in an age. It can still lay its mark upon its chosen champion, but it is weak, and cannot help them. Donatello is alone, chosen unwillingly for a task he cannot possibly accomplish. If the Boar felt pity, it would feel it now, to watch the slow truth crawl into Donatello's head. Whatever comes next, he will never forget what the human looks like when her life has been snuffed out, when all that is her is washed away and her body is as blameless as dry leaves.
Donatello will never recover, will possibly never feel joy again — but he will want satisfaction, and the Boar can offer him that much.
"Do you hear the wind blow, Donatello?"
Yes. Yes. Of course he does. The wind has not stopped, not for a second. It will never end. Until this world shudders through its last breath, Donatello will hear the wind, and see her face.
The Boar crouches down in front of him in a whisper of silk. It lays a gentle hand on his wrist, stroking along the line of muscle. He is so strong, this one; the Boar can taste it in the ruined stutter of his pulse. When Donatello tries to pull away, a thick, grinding moan pouring out of him, the Boar squeezes his wrist. "Do you?"
"Yes," he whispers, not taking his eyes off the human's face. "I hear it." He pulls his hand away, and the Boar lets him. It even smiles at him, but Donatello does not see. He just stares at the human, and the Boar finally spares her a glance.
It is unimpressed. There have been prizes among humanity, near-worthy adversaries whose wills made the mountains look like piles of dust, but this human is not one of them. All that is special in her was made, not born.
The Boar wishes it had killed her in truth, rather than in image alone, for it can smell her soul, and she is not even worth the effort it would take to break her in its teeth. Oh, but the Boar knows that the light and spice that once flavored humanity's souls are fading. No more will it feast as it did in its youth.
At least, it muses, hooking a finger under Donatello's chin and forcing him to meet its eyes, there is is quantity to make up for quality. And it still has Karai's punishment to enjoy, once its work here is done. The offer must be made.
"Have you ever wondered, my dear, my brave Donatello," it says, "what you would have become, had she not taken up so much of you?"
"So much —" Donatello draws the body closer, as if he can somehow force meaning back into cold flesh when all hope is gone. "No," he hisses, shrinking away from the Boar, mouth curling. "You — you killed her. Killed her. Why? Why?"
The last word is a cry, the echoes throwing themselves against the walls like trapped birds. His tearless grief is a living thing of teeth and fury, rising to scourge the Boar's glamours — and the body in his arms flickers, sliding out of existence for an instant before the Boar can replenish the spell.
He broke the glamour, the Boar thinks, and for the first time in memory, it feels astonishment. The sensation fades in a hot rush of fury. How dare he resist?
"Oh god —" Donatello shakes his head, staring unblinking at the body in his arms. Then, with slow, gentle care, as if even this glamour were precious, he stands, and lets the body slide from his arms. The loss pains him; were he any weaker, he would not be able to let the glamour go. She has so much weight in that head of his, a whetstone tied to his back.
As soon as it touches the floor, the glamour scatters like fireflies. The spell needed Donatello's belief to sustain it as much as the warhounds need Karai's breath to go about their work.
Shock keeps Donatello from reacting for a few fragile seconds. The Boar knows it should use this time to counterattack and cut Donatello off from his defenses — but it moves too late.
"April…is…" Donatello's hands clench into fists, heavy as stone, heavy as faith. Oh, this is terrible, this is calamity. He believes, but not in the Boar. He believes in what he loves.
Before Donatello can inhale to howl, or do more than stare at the fading light, the Boar summons a new spell — not a glamour, not this time. For this, it needs a possible truth, and a little wind.
Then the offer can be made.
It feels the moment Donatello hears the wind rise. For all that his flesh is bitter, as he slips under, his terror is sweet, sweet as nectar on the tip of the Boar's tongue.
There's more color than blood splashed across the courtyard this time: blue and orange and red, flashes of green, moving too quickly to truly see.
And fire, fire against the stone. True fire, and then the blaze of a woman's hair where it tumbles out of her black hood as she runs screaming across the battlefield, drawing a wakizashi from a sheath at her side.
Last night, Donnie saw her twisted in a pool of her own blood, and again his chest aches when he sees her face. She's just as much a stranger as before, old before her time and ugly with rage, but something — something —
She's screaming a name, her face hard as weathered stone, eyes bloodshot and spitting tears.
"Karai, I'm here! You want to finish the set? Come and get me!"
No, Donnie tries to scream, and throws out both arms to try and catch the woman as she sprints past. He misses, and she keeps running, screaming Karai's name without end.
And Karai rises beside a slumped and broken body, blue scraps fluttering from her fist.
She is as grey as the stone beneath her feet, her hair cropped to a thin shadow on her scalp. She faces the woman, the combatants between them making way as Karai draws her own wakizashi and beckons the woman on.
The fight is over in two moves: the woman doesn't get a single blow in, too blinded by rage, before Karai's blade slashes through the air and the woman's vest opens, pale freckled skin bared to the light. Then Karai's blade moves again, and the woman's skin is lost to red ruin.
Donnie wants to cry out, but his mouth is sealed, and all he can do is watch as the red-haired woman falls to her knees, her wakizashi tumbling from loose fingers as she tries to staunch the flow of blood. Karai kicks her in the gut, and the woman slams to the ground, writhing as Karai crouches over her.
"No!"
Raph's voice, saying what Donnie can't. His brother bursts out through a clutch of Foot ninja as they grapple with a group of unarmored fighters, roaring, faded mask tails fluttering as he moves. He looks so old, his shell cracked and leaking under a battered jacket, but Donnie's never seen Raph run so fast, or his brother's face so desperate.
The woman turns her head, blood already leaking from her mouth, and stretches out her hand. Her face is softened by terror, all the hard lines gone. She was pretty once, before grief ruined her, but now she only looks young and lost.
Help is so very far away, whispers the song of the wind.
The woman mouths Raph's name, straining against Karai's weight on her chest, but Raph stumbles over a loose stone and goes down, still roaring. He doesn't get up again, but squirms on his stomach, reaching for the woman with a beaten, bloody hand.
Karai's blade catches the light as she raises it over her head, and this time, Donnie does scream, unheard, as she stabs the woman through the heart, over and over, until the wakizashi breaks in half.
Then Karai turns to Raph, and smiles.
None have resisted past the second seeing. The Boar confronts them with the worst of their possible truths, and they crumble. Some go mad. Some never wake from the un-dreams. And some decide to serve, so the nightmares can be averted.
The Boar lets Donatello rise slowly from the courtyard. In his dull and unfocused gaze, it sees the brother fall, and the woman die by Karai's hand, teeth gritted as the blade travels through her to meet the stone under her back. It tastes her horror, her resignation, it tastes the red brother's desperation, and the futility of it all is spice upon spice.
What a hearty dish this family makes! And what the Boar cannot eat, it can still enjoy, Donatello's grief compounding as he sees how hopeless his situation is.
Savor later, it instructs itself. Make the offer.
"I know you think me cruel, my brave boy," says the Boar, in its most soothing voice. It lays its hand on Donatello's wrist again, stroking his skin, losing itself in the sensations. Oh, he is not merely powerful, this one, he is singular, his only flaw the human taint riding his bones. That will be easy enough to remove.
"Cruel," says Donatello, his voice breaking. He clenches his hands, over and over, not blinking at all.
"I am not," the Boar says. It lets its voice slide into a wheedle, and it even smiles at Donatello with its wretched human mask, though he does not look up to see it. "Consider this a lesson, a message, a test, however it pleases you, dear boy. But do not think me cruel."
Donatello looks up. He is weary. He is haunted, full of ghosts with voices like fire.
He is ready for the offer.
"I am the kinder choice," the Boar purrs, resting its thumb against Donatello's pulse. It should keep its distance, this the Boar knows, but the promise in Donatello's veins cannot be resisted. And why deny itself any pleasure? It is a god. It has no need for patience.
"What you saw would have come to pass but for me and my influence. Your brothers would die. Your master would die. Everything you hold in that warm heart of yours would wither and die, and you would see it all, but for me."
"You…" Donatello shudders, and the Boar pushes, breaking through the last of his mind's defenses to present him with one final image: the brothers, scarred, doomed, full of cold age, clothing themselves in battle-worn scraps.
This, the Boar knows, is what will break him. Barely a flicker of power, and the brothers' faces crumple, eyes flat and useless, and are worn away like stone.
Donatello sags, the weight of the vision being poured into him too heavy to bear. The Boar does not bother with conjuring images of death, oh, no, not this time. Not this time, all it needs is their voices.
Donnie, Donnie, help —
We need you —
Donnie, I'm —
Now, thinks the Boar, full of joy, and hungry, ever so hungry: joy for Donatello's surrender, hunger for the meal to come. It leans toward Donatello, its mouth at his ear. The offer is simple: come with me, and they will live. One life for three, and all I ask is your heart.
Donatello jerks away with his teeth bared. The Boar can only wonder at him as the vision-thread snaps in half, and his mind closes itself against the Boar's power. It could worry and gnaw a new entrance, but before it can begin, it meets Donatello's eyes.
His white eyes, narrowed in fury, and for a second, for an age, there is no room in the Boar for anything but unease. And then — such effrontery! Such gall, bitter as wormwood — Donatello turns his back on the Boar, a stone door between its mind and his.
The Boar could kill him, and it wants to, oh, it would so love to see him split open, red from neck to navel, but it controls itself. So Donatello withstood the second seeing; what of it? He is the first to do so, but he will still snap like a fistfuls of twigs when the Boar comes again.
And oh, it shall come, with horrors fresh and bloody, with the offer thick in its mouth, and it will open him if he dares such resistance again. The offer shall be made; it will have him, or he shall bleed.
It is a god. He is still nothing but a beast. There is no question in its mind that the offer will be taken. The offer is always taken, in the end.
And yet, what the Boar hears in the roar of Donatello's pulse as it fades away sends another thread of unease through its substance.
Donatello believes — not in the Boar, but that he will kill it.
In the darkness, in the absence of air, the Black Bull stirs in its sleep. It is a young god, and it sleeps so soundly that it barely hears the call echo across the empty spaces between the world and its resting place. A song of grief, a song of rage, song without end, blessed be the voice that sings it.
The Bull wakes to its champion's voice.
The White Boar — cursed be its hooves, cursed be its tusks, may its flesh rot upon its bones, may it wander without rest or kindness until the end of all days — has begun the game anew, and stands ready to greet the Bull with fresh horrors. It has gathered unto itself a cohort of monsters, living and dead, and waits the Bull's reply.
The Bull wishes for sleep. For peace. Youth is no cure for exhaustion, not even for the Bull, so it rises from its bower and shakes its heavy head.
A city, this time, is the prize. The Bull does not sigh, but it lets its weary head hang low, and allows its eyes to close. So many tiny lives, fragile as light through glass, and all of them must be saved.
The Bull already knows it will not be able to save them all. It has not yet recovered from the last game, an untold age before. It lost that game; two cities were ground to rubble, and the Boar roared as it feasted. Roared, and roared, its triumph making a mockery of laughter.
So many lives.
The Bull is tired. It can barely lift its head once more. The champion has been chosen; what else is there for the Bull to do? It cannot enter the world to guide the champion, it is yet too weak. It can give no help, no aid, no —
The Bull does not smile, but its head, crowned by horns older than words, grows light. Ah, but there is one thing it can do, that the Boar cannot.
It can adapt.
Two, after all, is greater than one, and in a game with no rules, who is to stop the Bull from choosing again?
It calls across the divide, a low song, a song of summons, and feels the tender brush of a mortal mind against its own.
Wake, calls the Bull, wake, wake. I name you both Champion.
Together you will be mighty.
Be not blind. Be not mute.
Be not afraid.
Be not alone.
April opens her eyes. She has to squint to focus in the dark room, but she can see Donnie slip inside his room and shut the door. He leans against it, eyes too wide, and simply stares at her. Stares, and stares, like he's afraid she'll disappear if he blinks.
"Donnie?" She sits up, still half-asleep, and reaches out to him like a little girl. "Is everything okay?" A joke about Jenny dies on the back of her tongue as a wave of — grief? Longing? Disbelief? Something between all three, as murky as the Hudson after a hard rain — reaches her.
Donnie dredges up a smile. A horrible, blank smile, a smile that's as much a lie as what he says next.
"Everything's fine," he says. "Fine."
She tosses the blanket away and starts to swing out of bed, her arms already full of him, ready to take the weight of whatever's in his head.
Oh, god, she thinks, as that murky feeling touches her mind again, edged with keen, brutal ice.The Boar —
"Donnie, what happened? Let me —"
Before she stands up, he shakes his head, and shoves himself back against the door as if it's the only thing holding him up. "No, I'm sorry — I just —" His voice fails, and he shakes his head again. "Just…wait, please?"
Donnie never asks for much. April nods, as much as it burns in her to not go to him, to not share this weight. They're partners, that's what they do — but she stays where she is, fists clenched at her side.
He stares at her for a long time, and April lets him.