Larka

Long ago, when belief in Tor, Fenris and Sita became the formal religion among the wolves, those who possessed the Sight, being associated with the cult of Wolfbane the shape changer, were suppressed and persecuted.  In response, a seer named Narmin made a prophesy at the ancient citadel of Harja.  It spoke of a time when the Sight would return to several wolves, when a marked human child would be born and subsequently kidnapped to be raised by wolves, and when the Man Varg, a wolf looking through the eyes of the child, would reveal to the Lera the greatest secret of the world.

It was many years after this, after Narmin’s verse had become the stuff of legends as well, that Larka was born.  As the pure white wolf foretold in the prophesy, her birth heralded the human’s as well, and when the child was stolen, the other members of the tribe began to hunt the wolves in vengeance.  Born at the same time was Larka’s brother, a pure black wolf named Fell, and two unnamed pups that were stillborn due to the harsh winter weather.

Immediately, Larka’s family was visited by Morgra, a wolf who had been exiled from the pack years before for killing a cub.  She had the Sight, and she offered her protection to them should they accept her as part of their family once again.  However, after being given some time to think the offer over, Palla, Larka’s mother, refused, and in return, Morgra cursed the pack.

Shortly after this, Palla and Huttser (Larka’s father) brought the children on their first hunt, at which time something strange occurred – somehow, Larka managed to leave her body for a short time and see through the eyes of a raven that had come to scavenge upon what the wolves had killed.  Terrified, she ran into the forest and fell into a grave in the earth.  She was able to be rescued, but Khaz, another member of the pack, fell into a spike-filled pit created by the humans and died.

Shortly after this, Brassa, the pack’s elderly nurse, died of a growth inside of her, but not before confessing that she had always known that Morgra’s murder of the cub was an accident while trying to save its life, but she had been too scared to tell anyone.  She also advised the pack to leave the old boundaries, in hopes that doing so would break the curse.

Huttser was unwilling to believe in this curse, but he did agree to go to see Tsinga, a fortune teller who lived on the edge of the boundaries and could teach Larka something of the Sight.  On the way there, however, Kipcha, secretly Khaz’s lover, fell off of a log that they were using to cross a river, and she crashed on a rock at the bottom of a waterfall, dead.

Eventually, the pack did make it to the Vale of Shadows, where Tsinga lived.  Tsinga taught Larka a little bit about the Sight, as well as noticing something about Fell that horrified her, though she would not say what it was.  After the pack left, the Sikla, or weakest wolf, Bran, returned to ask her something, but found her dead, killed by the Balkar, or Night Hunters, Morgra’s army of wolves.  Though they tortured him, Bran did not betray the rest of the pack’s location, and after he had sent the Balkar in an incorrect direction, he warned the rest of the pack before dying of his own wounds.

The rest of the broken pack continued to flee.  By now, it was winter once again, and the river that marked the pack’s boundary was frozen over and able to be crossed.  However, due to Huttser’s inability to see a dangerous crack in the ice, Fell fell through, was swept down stream, and presumably drowned.  Palla and Huttser then began to attack one another out of grief, and Larka and Kar, another wolf around her age that had been taken in when his parents had died, fled.

Soon, Larka and Kar were so exhausted from running that they were unable to hunt for food and instead took to scavenging in a human camp.  Unfortunately, they were spotted, and the humans set fire to the nearby area.  Larka managed to escape with the help of the eagle Skart, but Kar was presumed to have perished in the flames.

Skart lead Larka to Tsarr, another wolf with the Sight, and Jarla, the female wolf who was the caretaker of the stolen human child, for it had been them who had taken it from its home.  Initially, Larka wanted to kill the child, but she let it live, and Tsarr and Skart taught her more about the Sight, especially the joys of using it and even, when necessary, how to close it off.

Eventually, Larka learned that a Drappa named Slavka had formed a Greater Pack from all of the free wolves and gathered them in the valley of Kosov, the place where legend stated that Wolfbane’s promised feast for the flying scavengers would occur.  Slavka was avidly against talk of Wolfbane and the Sight and was quite insistent on killing the child and Larka, even going so far as to threaten to force Huttser and Palla, who had been captured by her pack on the river, to fight each other to the death should she not hand over herself and the child, to whom Larka had given the name of Bran.

Larka set out to rescue her parents even though it would put her and Bran in danger, but before she got to the valley, Morgra, alongside the one she referred to as Wolfbane, succeeded in summoning the Searchers, shades of the dead whose touch would leave the living vulnerable to the mental command of those touched by the Sight.  This had driven most of Slavka’s greater pack to insanity, and much of the pack had died at the hands of humans that lived in a settlement just outside the valley.

When Larka arrived, Slavka made to kill her, but several of the other members of the Greater Pack did not agree with Slavka and instead went to Larka’s side, so Slavka was forced to back down.  Larka then performed a ritual to enter the Red Meadow, the land where the Searchers live, to attempt to call them back to their own world.  It was revealed that they could not be called back until the power of the Man Varg had entered the world.  Larka nearly lost herself to the Searchers, but fortunately, Kar, who had not died in the fire and had finally found his way back to Larka, managed to call her back to the land of the living.

Their reunion was short-lived, however, as it was revealed that Slavka, now under Morgra’s control, had stolen Bran and taken him to the Harja citadel, which lay hidden just above the valley.  Morgra’s intentions were obvious: she wished to fulfill the prophesy, gain the Man Varg’s power herself, and enslave the Lera forever.

Larka, Tsarr, and Kar went to a back entrance to the citadel while the rest of the rebels attacked at the front with the hope of distracting Morgra’s forces.  However, the one known as Wolfbane was waiting for Larka, and while boulders blocked Kar’s path and prevented him from following, Larka specifically told Tsarr that she would face Wolfbane herself.  But when she went to face him, she was shocked to find that he was…

Fell, her brother, who had not died under the ice but instead had been taken in by Morgra and brainwashed to think that he was Wolfbane.  However, a psychic discussion between the two of them quickly dispelled that, and the two of them raced off to face Morgra together.

Morgra’s powers had grown immensely, enough so as to prevent the other wolves in the area from moving at all.  However, with Fell focusing all of his mental energy on her, Larka was able to focus and look into Bran’s mind herself before Morgra could.  And therefore, she obtained the power of the Man Varg, and she unlocked the vision of a shocking secret – that Man was just like all other Lera.

After this vision was over, Morgra tried to convince Larka to use her newfound power to either enslave the Lera or kill her.  Larka did neither, having never asked for this power, and announced that the verse meant that all those who chose to be free would be free before requesting that Kar return Bran to his human family.  Morgra then decided to attack Larka physically, but before either of them could do anything to stop it, the bridge that they were standing on began to crumble, and although Larka attempted to leap onto a nearby ledge, desperately wishing nothing more than to be a normal wolf and have cubs with Kar, she and Morgra fell into the chasm.

Of course, perhaps something heard her wishes not to die, for just as she was about to hit the ground and die, she saw a flash of white light, and the next thing she knew, she was in a strange, human-made complex…