In order to save the world from eternal night, Red must find a way to unlock the dormant power of the Sun Goddess running through her veins without killing herself and everyone she loves.
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The shifting coals gave way to fiery trenches as they descended into the Vale, borne on the back of a pale, wretched creature that would have called itself a wyvern under more fortunate circumstances. Hunter's eyes worked hard to adjust to the ruby glow, which only barely highlighted the shape of things moving in the dark; or perhaps misshapen was a better word to use, given the angles and proportions that defied his memory of what living beings were supposed to look like.
The first time he'd come here, the stunted wyvern had grabbed him with its talons. Rogan had laughed from his perch in the saddle as serrated bone sawed into Hunter's back with every wing-beat. As if that wasn't insult enough, Rogan had called for it to drop him midair, right over one of the gashes of bleeding light — into a pit full of baying fellhounds.
They'd swarmed, snapping and scrabbling, their eyes bloodshot and feral with hunger. At first Hunter thought they were dumb animals, barely kept in check by the star-spangled choker-chains wrapped around their necks. Some pulled so hard on the chains that they puked, leaving Hunter slipping and sliding as he beat back waves of the ravenous creatures. It wasn't until his foot came down on a snout with three white stars, stamped just above the tip of its nose, that he realised the far more horrifying truth.
He'd vomited, then, stepping back as the desperate hounds rushed forward to lap it up, their ribs poking through their sides. Hunter had seen that mark before, on one of the pups he'd 'liberated' from a rival pack at his father's behest. They brand their children, Rogan had told him, pointing out the constellations on every pup's face. It's barbaric. And so Hunter had orphaned them gladly, confident that he was making a positive difference in the world.
What a fool he had been.
When he reached out to the minds of the fellhounds, what he found made his stomach turn all over again. The muzzles were clearly Nya's work, but they lacked the benevolence he had come to associate with his Goddess; they stunted the mind as well as the body, preventing pups from morphing and growing to their full potential. Trapped and isolated in the trenches, the fellhounds were deliberately starved and lashed to the point of madness, so that they would enter a frenzy the moment they were loosed on the battlefield.
Only the muzzles kept them at bay, as Hunter quickly realised by experimenting with Nya's Grace. Her power was a leash that he could yank on at any time to pull Her twisted creatures in whichever way he desired. It wasn't until he'd learned how to wield them with impunity that Rogan had finally deigned to throw him a rope and he was able to climb out of the pit.
The beast below him flapped erratically, jolting Hunter's mind to the present. It was one of the wyverns that had been hatched in the trenches and denied the sun in its formative years, resulting in milky scales, near-sighted eyes and stumpy, tattered wings. Hunter rivalled the beast for size in his wolf form, and it struggled to carry itself in the air, let alone Hunter over long distances.
