He washed up on slate and pumice, ground stone tearing at raw flesh that had yet to completely re-knit. An eye barely whole enough to see peered myopically up at the empty hollow in a bend of the river of molten silver behind him.. and he sobbed, silently, throat not yet healed enough to speak. He curled up in a near foetal position, cradling a body that screamed in every joint and motion, in every contact of ground and swirl of wind.

Behind him, he heard the scrape of a leather boot on stone.. and he turned, somehow finding hands and knees and watching... her. His eyes went wide, a croak that left him gasping .. "T.. Tanya."

A beautiful girl, no more than twenty, night-black hair and an easy smile, the sort of girl that men write bad poetry about and dream of somehow keeping. She turned that smile on him, and her voice was the same contralto he remembered.. "Hey, wolf."

He tried to stand up, he reached out to her scrabbling for feet or words or /anything/.. she just crouched there, just out of reach, chatting amiably with him. "Ya know, wolf.. I always did want to ask why ya left. I know now.. makes a lot of sense, when ya get right down to it. Ya remember th' picnic we had the day before? Ya gave me wine and cheese and all those smiles, and I bit, hook, line, and sinker." She reached down then, fingers absently brushing at his cheek. "Wonderful night, wasn't it." A snarl.. and a slap, one that sends him keening back down to the dirt, raw flesh not ready for the raw pain that contact engenders.

"Fuck you. Then you show back up and /kill/ me? It wasn't /my/ fault. You're the one that /left/." Her face changed, then, becoming needle-toothed and strange-eyed. "I /loved/ you. All you wanted was a night. It killed me, wolf. YOU killed me." She stood, then, crunched a few steps away, refusing to look at him. "After you left.. it all fell apart. I just started takin' the drugs 'cause it hurt.. it was /your/ fault. Then you show back up and spout your sanctimonious crap about how I'd 'fallen to the wyrm' or whatever.. and then you /killed/ me." She turned around then - her face more distorted.. but somehow alone. Still her face. "did you even bother to /cry/, wolf?"

He croaked.. trying to explain, struggling for his feet, and this time getting them.. "...cr'd. Didn wan t'.. Lov'd y..."

She reached into her shirt, then.. and pulled out a silver spike, a foot long - a hammer from somewhere. "Loved me? How could you do /this/ to me? It was your fault. YOURS." A snarl, and she was on him, shoving him back into the rough rock wall - the silver spike point first, burining at his shoulder - he tried to catch her hands, but she slapped them away with utter and complete contempt. The hammer fell.. and he screamed again, as the spike drove deep - the sound of some bone crunching under its assault. "You /made/ me." The hammer fell again. "You /created/ who I became." Again, the sound of steel on silver, a peculiar ringing. "You didn't even /TRY/."

The silver held him to the stone - he pulled against it, sobbing.. screaming. Anything. Anything to avoid looking at her eyes.. every word hitting him, the scathing tone cutting far deeper than any touch of silver.

The scent of burning flesh followed her as she walked away.

How long he hung there, he didn't know.. but it hurt. Gaia, it hurt.. he tried, tried pulling himself off of the spike, tried to get free of the wall.. nothing helped. He looked up, blinking away tears at the sound of a low laugh.

The massive man absently cracked his knuckles as he approached.. then his neck. An evil grin there, somehow mirroring the wound that still bled in his chest.. Derek. Gods.. Derek.

"Remember me, Kinslayer?" A snort. "You're still a fuckin' puppy. I shoulda killed you that day at the club, ya know that? " He was leasurely.. taking aim, landing a blow that rocked his head back and tossed him against the spike pinning him to the wall, but eliciting only a whimper. The massive man seemed unsatisifed, then. "Couldn't leave well enough 'lone.. had to go get 'help' from Enid. You shoulda called me out.. instead, you just gnawed at my heels like the fuckin' coward you are. " Another blow, this one bringing something a bit more.. and tears. "You destroyed /us/. They followed /you/. I fought hard to be what I was, you son of a bitch.. and you /took/ them. Fuckin' insufferably noble.. but you weren't noble, were ya. Just out for your idea of 'right' and damn the consequences." Another strike, this one drawing forth a scream, quickly bitten off. "You just never could look past yourself." Another silver spike, another hammer... and soon both shoulders were nailed to the rock., the hammer tossed aside. "It was all your fault, Kinslayer. /You/ destroyed us." A snarl.. and the massive form moved off, down the bank of the river, leaving the old wolf hanging, struggling futilely against the silver that anchored him, sobbing.

He woke again to the burning in his shoulders and the single finger that pulled his head up, slowly ... "Hi, bastard." Pleasant, happy.. and coming from Jeremiah Creed's face, above a torso torn open and weeping blood. "Didja miss me?"

The dead man walked a few steps away, and settled to lean comfortably against the rock. "You made me too, Kinslayer. Was /all/ you. I was /happy/ 'till you took the cubs away.. so fuckin' sue me for tryin' to teach them just how harsh it could be."

Conversational, almost amused. "Then you come back and take my /honor/ too? What a fuckin' prick. What'd I do? You get me cast out.. and then you don't even /try/. You didn't even act to try to fix anythin', ya know? You just stuck me out there with my ass in the wind.. and this after I saved your life." He shakes his head. "Funny, how you make things, isn't it. Everything you touch falls to shit. Wouldn't be suprised if those cubs you were so protective of fall apart too. Ya know.. sad thing is.. you even screwed up with your wife. Couldn't even /finish/ the bullshit you started." He stood.. stared at the nailed wolf for a moment... then, with an almost paternal care.. "You're just like me. Same coin, same side. Funny how that works." A massive hand gathered up both of his.. the mallet from the broken rock picked up, the sudden silver spike being driven, almost lovingly, through both wrists, as Kinslayer screamed. "You made me out of the same stuff you're made of. And.. everything that came after was your fault. Time to face up to it, Kinslayer. Hey.. just think. If your /wife/ hadn't been damned good.. your kids'd be dead too, by the boogeyman you dreamed up." A bright grin. "I kinda like that thought."

Kinslayer sobbed, as the dead man walked away, crucified by shoulders and wrists against the raw pumice.

He didn't know how long it was before the black-furred crinos loped up to him - an eternity of feeling his body burning around those silver stakes, his eyes raw from tears, his throat knotted from the desperate need of something to drink, of the hoarsness from shouting, from.. everything. But.. he saw the balefire-green eyes first, two pinpoints of that eldrich /wrongness/ making their way out of the cavern's shadows. It resolved into a great beast, muscular and oddly beautiful. It gazed at him, settling on its haunches nearby.. and he could feel its amusement.

I never thought I'd see you this way. It didn't so much speak as.. feel to him, a certain knowledge of it, its posture, its very essence. You hurt me the worst, however. I find I'm hungry. Perhaps I'll take my pound of flesh from the spot nearest your heart - only fitting, I suppose. You denied me. You chastized me.. and you ignored me. Then, when anything happened.. you /blamed/ me. Easy for you, Kinslayer. Easy to blame anything else.. even when it was a part of you. Its great muzzle dipped foreward.. and grinned in his face. You made me, and then you blamed me, and then you denied me. And it was all your fault. Don't you see the wonderful cosmic irony in it all? The beautiful symmetry of me being allowed to talk to you, to explain everything? Truth hurts, doesn't it, Kinslayer. This is what you've been wanting for a long time.. the truth.. thing is, you had it every step of the way. It took /this/ to show it to you - quite a production.

I wonder how you lived with yourself.. or I would, if I didn't already know. You just took all of these things you did and said 'Look, it doesn't matter. I did /this/ right'.. and you never, ever, ever, bothered to look and see that you weren't any better than the things you were killing, or the people you destroyed. A fun thing, watching you do that. The almighty Kinslayer, nothing more than a frightened child, unwilling to see himself until it ate him alive.

The old wolf looked up at this apparition, and just said, softly.. barely audible. "It.. was not like that."

The black crinos actually giggled.. claws tracing over the captive's chest.. Wasn't it? No absolution for the damned, Kinslayer, truth is truth is truth again. You forgot about all that you'd done in the few worthwhile things you managed to accomplish. Bad wolf. Very bad - for it was evil on top of evil, and a token good to fix it all.

"N... no." More firm, now. "I did what I could.. always the best I could."

Then why did you kill them? Why did you kill their dreams? It laughed, again, and drew a silver claw across his stomach, idly - burning a line of blood in flesh. I love your guilt, Kinslayer.. how often you fed me with it.

"I did not." A whine.. and then a pause, the dragging pain ignored. More firm.. an almost startled insight. "I.. honestly did not."

You lie. But there is sudden startlement in it.. a drawing away that seems... annoyed.

"She .. didn't die because of me." The old wolf looked... almost in wonder.. at this apparition before him.. "I didn't chose her road.. she did. She wasn't my mistake. I... didn't make them." It is a thunderbolt.. a sudden understanding.. and the spike from his left shoulder rang softly as it fell upon the rock.

The black crinos snarled.

"Derek.. his pack failed on his own actions. I.. cannot.." It's slow, a dawning sunrise. "Accept guilt for acting on my conscience." Again, a soft ringing... and then, softly.. "Creed chose a path of revenge and hate. I did not make that choice for him." A child's wonder, a sudden understanding.. perhaps a real truth laid bare... and the silver spike fell free, to be cought with hands that healed as he watched them.

But I am you, and you are I. And you have killed and killed and killed again. And you have killed those who deserved nothing like it, and you have killed in the relish of the Wyrm. And you have /enjoyed/ killing.. what are you if not a destroyer? You remember what you told Pyotr?

He stared at the spike... slowly understanding... and nodding, once. "I have done these things. And.. I do not forget them." He looks up, slowly. "But.. I am not a destroyer." The spike is reversed, held as a dagger... glanced at, then thrown away, into the silver lake. "I cannot change what I have done." He stands.. firm and solid, fixing the black beast with a simple, human understanding.

You see? You are death.. and worse. You destroy, you kill, you shake the earth by your coming. Those who know you are destroyed by the knowing. Self righteous.. and dragging himself to his full height, the crinos advanced forward.

"No." A sudden movement, and he is there, arms wrapped as tightly as can be around the thing's waist.. "NO!" not fighting, embracing... and laughing, suddenly. "I am myself."

Kinslayer.

"No.. myself." A sudden laugh, a sudden understanding. "I am /only/ myself."

The black crinos snarled, then.. and a sudden movement dragged the human-form back, struggling to get out of that sure contact.. slipping, falling, tumbling down the scree towards the silver river -

And amid all of the screams, screams of ten thousand thousand throats... there was a single laugh. A single sudden shout of joy that reverberated from the very halls of the cavern - and as one, the hairless demon-things looked up... and smiled.

Their charges did not hear.