||BOOK 1 of THE WALKWE|| Assassins' Creed with Werewolves || for content review purposes please, note that while Volya is 17 in the first book, he is 18 in the second book.
Ancient magic and werewolves ain't supposed to be center-stage for a pop-st...
He pointed at the mortarless stonework plugging the cave's entrance. Centuries of fine dust, wind-blown and from run-off, seeped into every crack. The movements of the mountain during the eruption further compressed and cemented it in place. "All I could think about was how we're going to break through. Studying the walls wasn't exactly a priority."
Damir whistled under his nose. The archeologists obviously didn't forget to keep their eyes peeled no matter how hard it got. "Let's see what else we could discover."
A shadow appeared out of nowhere, walked through Damir and started chiseling the symbol.
Volya's jaw hung open. He didn't even close his eyes! His vision just twined into the present and ancient past.
"There is—" He cleared his throat. "Damir, there's a square beneath the spiral."
Damir ceased his whistling at once.
"I see the centaur who carved the runes into the stone." More shadows flickered in and out of existence like an overlay. They were out of focus, slipping in and out of his field of vision. Some had an annoying penchant for sitting at the very edges of it, making it all too easy to lose them in the vibrancy of the present day.
Volya focused so hard the bones in his skull creaked.
"She was here. The girl who did it." His throat turned to parchment paper. The parchment paper after the cook drew the tray out of the oven, so dry, it crumbled at the faintest touch. He sounded like a ghost communing with the living from the nether.
"Who do you see, brother?" Nadezhda asked, lifting her hand in a gesture demanding silence.
The waterfall willfully disobeyed. Everyone else didn't look like they were going to talk anyway. But, hey, something pleasantly tickled in his chest when Nadezhda called all the attention to him.
"It's fragmented. I see the centaurs placing their dead in the cave. Coming back as if they were... I dunno... visiting the bones? Can you visit the bones?"
Damir nodded. "Yes, that makes sense. It's a ritualistic practice associated with ancestral worship."
"They are bringing more of their dead to place in the tomb."
Damir nodded again.
"The only child turned into a young woman now. It's Ushpi's daughter." Volya stumbled, then went on describing what he saw to the Walkwe and Damir.
Her shadow aged every time she reappeared at the wall. Fewer accompanied her. More remained behind in the tomb. Finally, she was all alone, visiting the bones of everyone in the world who had been like her. Volya saw her carrying the stones. Carving the symbols again. Disappearing for so long, he had thought that the vision had ended.
His audience fidgeted after his silence stretched.
"Wait!"
The heads, human and werewolf, whipped to him. Eyes burned with anticipation.
Ushpi's daughter's shadow came back and sat by the entrance.
His voice quivered and he could do zilch about it. "She came here for the last time, years later after abandoning the place. She was the miracle and the bitter reminder of their failure. She had died right here."
He pointed weakly at the gateway. "Ushpi's daughter. For some reason, I had never dreamt about her."
No conduit. Not of our blood, the mist-wolf whispered.
"Ushpi's daughter," Volya repeated, brushing off his invisible friend's explanation. "I don't even know her name."
You never will. There's no way.
Where there is will, there is a way. Liam had taught him that.
Stubbornly, Volya clung to his belief that the others, the Yamnaya descendants, or even those not related to either Walkwe or Yamnaya, had magic in their blood too. That there was a way to reach them. Bond with them. Make peace.
Damir dropped his toothbrush. "We... we often name the remains that we study, even fragmented bones, if we don't have the individual's name from the written sources."
Volya slowly lifted his head to meet Damir's glance. "I think I would like to do that."
There was only one name that was fitting. The name that belonged to someone else who experienced the profound loneliness of being the only one of her kind. Someone who couldn't even guess why such fate had befallen her.
"Anabelle," Volya said. "I name her Anabelle."
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