Darkness hung thickly around Axel as he clutched at the Matriarch’s skin. His sobs of grief filled the air as pain wracked his body from each of his wounds. Through the oppressive darkness, sounds reached him distantly. The clack of wood on stone, the scrape of claws across rocky ground, the muffled voices of others speaking. As he cried, grieving for the Mountain Matriarch’s loss, Axel didn’t notice as the darkness around him fell away, chased back by the light of lanterns as people entered the large chamber and came closer to him.

  “Axel?” a man’s voice reached him, familiar and gentle. “Axel, what has happened? What has happened to the Matriarch of the Mountain?”

  “Leave him, Harn,” a harsh woman’s voice came before Axel could gather himself to do more than look up to see the feathered Birdkin man looming over him, surrounded by other people dressed much like Harn in fibrous robes and furred hides. “This child holds his crime for all to see! He has killed the Matriarch!”

  “Peace Illa,” another woman said softly to the Amazonian woman that had spoken as she gripped a stone-studded club with clear intent to use it as Drago growled menacingly. “The child grieves, he did not slay the Matriarch.”

  “But he knows what happened,” an older Elvish man with streaks of gray in his hair said. “Let Harn speak with him. He will get the answers we need. Come Gallex, let us search for the corruption that drew us all here.”

  “Axel?” Harn said gently, kneeling before him and reaching gently toward him. “What has happened? Tell me.”

  “Harn, I- I don’t know,” Axel said through his tears as he clutched the Matriarch’s skin to himself tightly. “I was looking for a Kobold tribe that I had agreed to kill, they wanted the Shaman’s headdress as proof, and when I found the tribe, the Shaman wasn’t there, but the Mother was. They’d trapped her in a cage and they were using their spears to torture her. I freed her and she helped us kill them all. After the tribe was dead, she spoke to me.”

  Sobbing harder at the memory, Axel forced himself to continue.

  “She was so warm,” he said. “Just being with her made me feel like I was with my mother. All she wanted was to keep us all safe. And now she’s gone.”

  “I know, Axel,” Harn said, reaching to grip one of his shoulders comfortingly. “I know. What happened after you killed the tribe of Kobolds?”

  “She took us after the Shaman,” Axel said as Drago whined and Ember nuzzled her head into the skin Axel held. “It was worshiping the Outsiders, and had corrupted itself and its tribe enough that the Matriarch was caught trying to kill them. When we found the Shaman, it was at the altar, praying to the Outsiders and the Mother said that it had been sentenced to death by the world. She told us to fight the Shaman while she prepared to destroy the altar and that’s what we did.”

  “How did she destroy the altar?” the Elf from a moment ago asked as the others gathered around Axel once more.

  “She said the world had a price for giving her the power for it,” Axel said, hunching deeper into himself and holding the bear skin closer. “That price was her life.”

  “This brat killed the Shaman and a tribe of Kobolds?” the harsh woman demanded, clearly unconvinced by Axel’s story.

  “Axel is more capable than he would appear right now,” Harn said defensively, standing and looking at her. “I can attest to his ability to fight myself.”

  “Peace Harn, Illa,” the gentle woman urged them all again. “Tell me, young man, why do you bear the Mountain Mother’s skin?”

  “She wanted me to have it,” Axel whispered, tears falling more thickly. “I was holding her as she went and then her body was gone, leaving me with this.”

  Hearing his words, the woman took a sharp breath in shock as the Elvish man stepped forward again.

  “What is your name?” the man asked, eyes piercing into Axel as though they would pull his secrets from him by any means. “The name the Mother gave you.”

  “She said that I was Axel, Earthen Hunter Wolf,” he said, feeling the connection to the cavern around him and the world beyond thrum slightly as he spoke.

  “Earthen Hunter Wolf,” the man said, kneeling to the ground as the others shared looks around. “An odd name to be given. ‘Earthen’ is usually a part of the name that animals such as bears, moles, and skunks bear. It speaks to their connection to the earth, rock, and soil. ‘Hunter’ is one that is given to those who seek out prey and challenges; tigers, wolves, and bears are some of them. ‘Wolf’ is not a name that any animal has ever used in their name. Perhaps she meant to use it as a way to bind you more tightly to your heritage. All together compounded, it is a name that tells us all how she saw you. A seeker of challenge, bound to the world and ignorant of your heritage. Did she call you one of her cubs?”

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  As Axel nodded the Elf stood and looked around at the others.

  “He comes with us,” he said firmly. “Gather his spoils of battle; the gems, ore, and headdress. Myn, heal him and his beasts. Harn, take him to the surface. We will meet you both there when we are finished here.”

  Without arguing with him, each of the gathered people went about their business as the gentle woman knelt beside Axel and rested a hand on his shoulder before closing her eyes and seeming to pray. As Axel breathed in, he felt a warmth begin to fill him before it settled itself by his broken ribs and began to pull them together once more while the lacerations across his body began to itch and closed themselves while the woman reached out to first Drago and then Ember. Finished, she looked at him and offered him a kind smile before standing and leaving to join the others as they moved through the cavern, lanterns filling the space around them with shifting light as harsh shadows stretched away from the warm glows.

  “Come, Axel,” Harn said, reaching a hand out to him. “We need to get you to the surface.”

  Accepting his hand, Axel allowed Harn to pull him to his feet and begin to lead him to the entrance of the cavern that would lead to the entrance of the cave system.

  As he stepped out of the dark cave, Axel blinked at the soft, gentle light of the moon falling around him as the stars filled the night sky with twinkling constellations and glowing promises of a much wider world than he knew. Looking upward at it all, Axel felt smaller than he ever had as he clutched the Matriarch’s skin to himself and realized that she had never been given the opportunity to see the sky once more before she died.

  “Axel,” Harn’s gentle voice pulled his attention from the glowing night sky above them, back to the world around him as the Birdman gestured to a grouping of large rocks to the side. “Let’s sit there until the others join us, hmm?”

  Nodding, Axel moved toward the rocks and sat on one of them before resuming his study of the night sky, wishing the Matriarch were with him as Drago settled beside him and Ember perched on his shoulder while Stuart shuffled through his hair. Before long he couldn’t keep his eyes open and he fell into a deep sleep, leaning slightly against Drago as he clutched the Mountain Matriarch’s skin.

  Axel opened his eyes to see the empty cabin that Cain stayed in as his AI watcher looked him up and down.

  “You should take a break,” Cain suggested. “Get some food, some sleep, maybe even go on a date. Something to take your mind off of what’s happened a bit.”

  “Yeah,” Axel agreed with a mechanical nod. “A break sounds great right now.”

  Between one moment and the next, Axel moved from Cain’s cabin room to his Pod as the fluid around him began to drain slightly and the entire device entered a filtering cycle. Rising from the support he rested on, Axel removed his mask and stepped out of the Pod, tugging at the zipper to his suit as he moved to the bathroom and took a shower.

  Bathed, Axel sat in his underwear looking around his room numbly before pulling his blanket over his head and fell asleep, ignoring the pangs of hunger that stabbed insistently at his stomach.

  With a sharp jerk, Axel shot up, breathing heavily, covered in sweat as he tried to catch his breath and looked at the alarm clock his dad had bought him when he moved out where it rested beside his bed. As the slightly glowing red numbers seemed to mock him with the lateness of the hour, Axel reached out to grab his phone where it rested beside it and quickly navigated through it to his contacts before tapping one of them and starting a call. As he listened to the other side of it ring, he stood up and searched through his dresser for clothes before grabbing a pair of gym shorts and a T-shirt.

  Dressing, Axel listened as the ringing line stopped and his mother’s voice came through.

  “Axel, honey, what’s wrong?” she asked, her voice betraying both her worry and the fact that he’d woken her up.

  “Mom, can I come home?” Axel asked. “Just for a day or so?”

  “Of course you can,” she said, worry growing in her voice. “Did something happen?”

  “I just want to see you,” Axel said as he finished pulling his shirt over his head and searching for his keys. “We can talk more when I get there.”

  “Alright sweetheart,” she said. “Let me put some coffee on and get dressed. I’ll see you when you get here. Love you.”

  “I love you too, Mom,” Axel said before ending the call and finally spying his keys on the small table beside his bedroom door. Grabbing them, Axel moved into the hall of the apartment he and his sister shared. The glow of the television reached from the living room where his sister sat on the couch in her pajamas, eating ice cream and watching late night television.

  “Hey,” she said as she noticed him entering the room. “Where are you going?”

  “Home,” Axel said, grabbing one of his lighter jackets and pulling it on. “I want to see Mom.”

  “That sounds like a great idea,” Marcie said, standing. “Mind if I come with you?”

  “Free country,” Axel said with a shrug. “Are you bringing the ice cream?”

  “Mm-hmm,” she nodded as she took another bite. “Rocky-road caramel-chunk.”

  “Perfect,” Axel said, grabbing a jacket for her and holding it out. “Let me grab a spoon and I’ll drive us.”