[Fenrir's POV]
I had never been afraid before.
I was built at level 300. Nothing in the forest could touch me. Nothing in the dungeons had made me more than tired. Even when I couldn't beat Father in a spar, it never once felt like fear. It felt like looking up at a mountain.
This felt like the mountain was falling.
All of us, every golem in the city, stood in rows in the great square, and none of us could move. My sister stood beside me. Her hand had found mine without either of us deciding it. She was shaking. Jarn was three rows ahead, her back perfectly straight, and I could see her sword hand trembling at her side.
Father stood on the podium in a form none of us had ever seen. The weight of him pressed on all of us like deep water.
Then the voice of the world spoke to me alone.
[The Unchained Wolf]
Difficulty: Legendary
The Golem King's ire has been unleashed, and all of Golemkind trembles before it. The Prince of Wolfkind was made for one purpose before any other: to stand at his father's side.
Will you?
Clear Conditions: Stand beside the Golem King while his ire is unleashed.
Reward: ???
So this was the quest that had to do with him.
I let go of my sister's hand.
"Fenrir," she whispered. "Fenrir, don't. You'll..."
I stepped out of the line.
The pressure doubled the moment I did. It was like walking into a wind made of stone. Every step toward the podium was harder than the last. My human form wanted to fold in half. My wolf form wanted to lie on its belly and show its throat. I could feel thousands of eyes on my back, and I could not let any of them matter.
At the bottom of the podium stairs, my legs gave out. I climbed the rest on my hands.
Up close, Father's new form was even worse. The mask had no expression. The eyes behind it were his, gray and tired, but there was something in them I'd never seen, and I understood suddenly that I was looking at what he must have looked like the night after the hospital. After the kitchen table.
He wasn't just angry.
He was angry the way people get angry when the alternative is to break.
I wasn't afraid of him. I was afraid for him.
As soon as I understood that, the weight on my back changed. It didn't get lighter. It just stopped being something that was pressing on me, and started being something I could hold up with him.
I got my feet under me. I stood up next to my father. Then I did the only thing I could think of. I ducked my head under his hand, the way I used to when I was small and fell asleep on his shoulder.
His hand shook.
Then, slowly, it moved. Once. Back to front. A head pat.
"Fenrir," Father said quietly. His voice through the mask sounded like it was coming from a long way away. "You climbed the stairs."
"You're my father," I said. "Of course I climbed the stairs."
I didn't plan to howl. It came up out of me the way breath does.
[Third Person POV]
The howl rolled out of the city, over the forest, across the continent, and kept going.
In the Eternal Kingdom, players on the walls flinched and looked west. Wolves in every forest on every continent of Satisfy lifted their heads at the same moment and answered, and then lay down. In Kesan Canyon, Piaro paused with a piece of meat halfway to his mouth, and Duke, on his shoulder, spread his wings.
[The wolf that was Unchosen has chosen.]
[A boss golem has broken through to Legendary rating. A global event has been triggered.]
[A Legendary Boss has awakened: Fenrir the Unchained.]
On the podium, Fenrir's black fur burned away from the tips inward, like paper catching fire, and what grew back underneath was silver. Something moved behind him. A second tail unfurled beside the first. When he opened his eyes again, the blood red was gone.
They were blue. The exact blue of his sister's.
When he settled into his human form, he was taller than before, his skin had warmed to a light tan, and the slight build of the child who slept on his father's head was gone. He looked like a young man who had spent his whole life training with a sword, because he had.
He looked like he belonged to the family on the podium. Because he did.
Title: [Prince of Wolfkind] has been upgraded to [Fenrir the Unchained] (Legendary).
All wolfkind, enemy or ally, will follow his orders.His stats rise by 1% for every allied wolf fighting alongside him.While standing beside the Golem King, he cannot be moved against his will.
Title: [Son of the Golem Maker] has been upgraded.
Likeability with all golem-type entities +300%.Nearby golems' attack and defense increase by 10% every three minutes. Stacks up to 30 times.
The pressure in the square didn't vanish, but it changed. It had been a flood. Now it was a tide that knew which way it was going.
Juliet broke ranks next. She didn't climb the stairs on her hands. She ran up them three at a time, threw her arms around her brother, and leaned back to stare at him.
"You match me now!" she said, delighted and furious at the same time. "You did it on purpose!"
"I didn't do anything on purpose."
"You matched me on purpose, and you didn't even ask!"
Three rows back from where the line had been, Jarn had both hands over her mouth. When Fenrir finally looked up and found her in the crowd, she lowered them, and smiled at him with her whole face.
Fenrir forgot to breathe. It turns out golems can do that.
[Daz's POV]
My son had climbed the stairs on his hands.
I kept patting his head, because if I stopped, I think I would have started shaking and not stopped. Juliet was hanging off his arm. The whole city was looking up at the three of us.
The anger was still there. I could feel it sitting in the middle of my chest like a coal, and I wasn't going to put it out. Somebody out there was building golems to throw away. That was going to be answered.
But the coal had something around it now.
I looked down at Haven, at the foot of the podium, holding her shepherd's crook with both hands and watching me with worried eyes.
"Can you still feel them?" I asked her. "The broken ones?"
"All of them, Father."
"Then call them," I said. "Let's go bring our dead home."