If We Were Villains

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The woods were a far and welcome cry from the flatlands of her arrival.
 
Humidity radiated from around the looming trees, their crooked growth sheltering its inhabitants in a pleasant fold of shade. Smothered from behind the billowing forms of forlorn clouds, the sun barreled down as best as it could through their delicate tendrils– to no avail. Even so, the air here felt thick-- tangibly so, as if a wolf could sink their fangs into the depths of it. It was a drastic shift from the arid simmer of the rolling hills she had… cropped up from? It was the best -and only- label she could slap on the manner of her illogical existence here.
 
It aggravated her.
 
Galene was a wolf who knew and understood; not a fool who stumbled blindly across foreign land with no shred of memory to guide her steps. She had been sure she had suffered a concussion– been poisoned, maybe, at an attempt to stifle her own intellect. That was what haunted her the most. The vague sensation that she had been something before this, something great and full of promise. Something she had earned and been given, with the senses and drive she still grasped tightly to.
 
In the weeks of her thoughtless travel, she had spoken with many others. A melting pot of sorts. Wolves from all walks of life and creatures who had spun a story of a very similar, and unsettling, fabric.
 
That the souls not borne from the land had all arrived here in one unusual manner; some with memories of past lives, and others with nothing but a blank slate to guide them.
 
Galene hated being a blank slate.
 
She hated how implausible and senseless it all was. If hundreds of souls had been sucked into this purgatory of a world– how could none possibly know what had caused it? Galene had made it her personal mission to uproot the vague meanings behind it all. If not for the good of all creatures, then also for some satisfying recognition.
 
Okay.
 
Maybe a bit more for the recognition part than she’d like to admit.
 
She perused through damp batches of undergrowth, her paws resounding with muted footfalls against the decaying peat which lined the earth. When at last it seemed she had ventured through the worst of it… an intriguing sight befell her.
 
An inorganic structure reclaimed by the forest, toppling and in ruin. The steady thrum of her heart accelerated to an excitable murmur, her brows furrowing as she neared closer to inspect its intricacies. Meaningless -to her, for now- carvings were etched against the chiseled stones, of which each had been carved of near pristine proportion. From the central belly of the structure stood an enormous tree; its entangled roots jutting outward from the soil, as if jilted by the earth and cast out of its embrace.
 
So enamored by the strangeness of it all was Galene that she missed the shifting of the wind.
 
What she didn’t miss was the rumbling baritone of a strange voice, beckoning her within the depths of the ruins. Feeling out of her element and a bit caught off-guard, Galene trotted forward– her poise confident but her mind unable to harbor such assurance.
 
Sage green met amethyst, the two wolves staring in silence. Analyzing. The male seemed entirely at ease and familiar with the place, which struck a chord of curiosity from within Galene’s breast.
 
“Do you live here?” She queried, eager to cast aside any formalities in light of enlightenment.
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Truth.
 
The very thing she had been searching for– scouring every inch of this place for. Everything about the man’s words seemed to ooze with sincerity, emanating a validity that Galene could not quite pinpoint. Be it the sacred feeling that kindled within these ruins or his mystic aura, she found herself ensnared in his finely-spun web. Entangled in threads of curiosity and desire– a desire to know, a desire to learn. Yet even so, she maintained an air of skepticism toward his uninhibited welcome.
 
Galene was not a wolf of foolish, misplaced naivety.
 
But it seemed the man wasn’t, either.
 
He beckoned her from his throne of roots, their twine encircling him like obedient tendrils. He was a half-and-half ensemble of pristine white and pitch black, their contrasting pigments painting him in a canvas of stark opposition. At his welcome Galene strode forwards, the intensity of her gaze deepening as she did so. He certainly knew how to weave his words into an enticing fabric– feeding just enough to the starving mouths of the uneducated. Enough to satiate a kernel of their thirst for answers and thrust them into a desperate cycle of longing for more.
 
Galene wanted to know more. She wanted to know why she had been sown into the threads of this universe. She wanted to know why she had been stripped of her memories.
 
She wanted to know everything.
 
But she was not a starving fledgling who would flutter and scramble for pieces of it. So she sat, her rump settling with a soft thump against the flattened stone. Her brows lifted in a dubious arch and a frown tugged at the edges of her maw.
 
“The truth of what?” she challenged, analyzing every inch of his inexpressive face. Of how this place had come to be? Of how they had come to be?
 
Or of how they ate, slept, and shit like everything else in this blasted world?
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If it had been any other question to deflect from her own, Galene would have scoffed– deemed them a pretender who masqueraded behind the guise of a prophet. The deep rumble of his baritone echoed, resounding within the cluttered crutches of her head. Does she remember how she arrived here?
 
No. She remembered nothing.
 

Nothing.

 

Nothing.

 

Nothing.

 
The words mocked her. They mocked the very fibers of her existence.
 
A purposeless, meaningless life– drifting through the purgatory of some cruel world for the amusement of a higher power. Was that a life worth living?
 
Why?
 
“No,” she admitted, the defeat strangling any ounce of her previous spark. “I don’t remember anything.”
 
I don’t know who I am. I don’t know why I’m here.
 
All she had was her own name. That was it.
 
“Tell me.” Her voice wavered with an uncharacteristic quiver– emotion forcing her throat to constrict in a tight clutch.
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Her breath hitched, her lungs withholding the precious air with a bated grasp. 
 
You’ve been brought here for a reason.
 
That was exactly what she wanted– no, needed, to hear. The man’s words were like a sweet chorus that sang joyously within her ears. Still, though, a shroud of ambiguity clouded his words. She wanted to know exactly why she was here– how she was intended to sculpt this world into a fitting mold.
 
“Shape it into what?” She questioned, incredulous. “You still haven't told me what this– what we, are.”
 
The chilling touch of his nose, tinted liver and pallid, sent an electric jolt through the fibers of her limb. This was real-- not some longing mirage crafted by the sagging beams of her mind.
 
“Galene.”
 
It was all she had.
 
She thought, she hoped, that was about to change.

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Divine.
 
The word resounded within the dull thrumming of her ears. It sent an electrifying jolt through her tired limbs, through the faltering beat of her heart. Her eyes, once glossed and marred with befuddlement, seemed to clear– like the settling of debris freshly-stirred in a clear pond.
 
Galene quickly decided she liked Madmortigan’s narrative. 
 
How could anyone not? Everything made sense now– her spontaneous existence, the memories stripped so viciously from her. That feeling that constantly plagued her– the itch which nipped incessantly at her feet.
 
This was not some hell that she had been tossed to on a whim. She had a purpose. 
 
To toil in the pursuit of purity and truth-- just as he had said.
 
“Then consider it done,” she spoke, a satisfied rumble reverberating from deep within her breast. Her stare met his own, resolute and unwavering. If she must throttle the world with her own paws and sculpt it to its appropriate mold, for its own sake, she would.
 
“Where should I start?”

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End here?

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