3. Deserter: Aenhever's Tale

Deserter: Aenhever's Tale


  • "It'll be late soon", the priestess Lealiel had said, rather earnestly to Aenhever in particular. There was no beating around the bush about it either. A warning more than a suggestion. The others had remarked upon it but the ranger played it off as nothing, or at least a thing of little concern. He'd returned to his room that night and spent a few dull hours playing a dull card game all by himself. He tried not to think too much about the soft 'click' of the big lock on the outside of his room's door. The game might be known as solitaire. Another name for the game is Patience.

    He played on, he drank a little, and eventually he went to bed. A dull and uneventful end to a day that had been anything but. Conspiracy and intrigue, missing persons, and not least of all Goblins. He slept.

    Two weeks ago.

    Water rolled over an oiled canvas that had been pulled into a squared arch over a foxhole, where entrenched sat a pair of Defenders before a small camp stove that kept a kettle on an even simmer. The pattering drum of raindrops on the cover didn't seem to interrupt the rolling conversation between the pair.

    Roy: "...right, and this ghoul jumped out from behind a tree and shook his balls at you before sinking his teeth into your shoulder? It was probably Cormac, you've been nipped by a celebrity mate."
    Aen: "...who said anything about balls? I'm telling you, it was on its hind legs. I think it's infected."

    Roy reached for the kettle and poured some steaming tea into his tin mug, he didn't ask the other if he wanted any and poured Aenhever a cup anyway.

    Roy: "Probably rabies".
    Aen: "It's not ra-"
    Roy: "Could've been a bear..."
    Aen: "It wasn't a b-"
    Roy: "Aye that's it. You were bit by a big skinny bear, it's that time of year you know. They climb out of hibernation looking like hairless, skinny manbeasts."
    Aen, his eyes squinting despite his frustration: "...manbeast..?"

    Something whistled past them and sunk into a sandbag on the opposing side of their dugout. It wasn't alarming enough to interrupt the ongoing conversation. Roy himself taking a casual sip from his cup while giving the Orcish bolt with only passing interest. He winced a complaint, presumably at how hot the water was before continuing.

    Roy: "It doesn't matter Aen', you know as well as I do, I can't just let you know. What would I tell Sarn't?"
    Aen: "Tell him I hit you."

    Roy, a far broader man with a thick black beard who wielded a bastard sword like a dry stick gave Aen a dull look.

    Roy: "Keep it up and I'll hit 'you'. They hang deserters you daft git, they'd probably hang me along with you."
    Aen: "You'd be flogged at best. You'll be alright."
    Roy, by now angry: "I'm not getting flogged because you got bit by a wild dog. You're not getting hanged for deserting..."

    Another quarrel found its way into the foxhole, this time bouncing back off the sandbag wall and colliding with the kettle and causing it to spill. Roy continued in a yell, frustrated at the casualty of his brew; "..and I'm going to kill that bastard Orc what keeps shooting at me!"

    Aenhever gave Roy a look, a patient look, as an arrow slid its way from his quiver and came to rest on his bowstring. Roy was gripping the hilt of his big sword and responded to the look with an impatient grunt. Aen' stood, shot, watched - then sat down. No more quarrels came from that direction for the rest of the night.

    Roy: "...alright. Hit me, but you owe me."

    Aenhever made a fist and wound back, he gave Roy a sorry look and started his lunge forward - he was stopped by his friend's frantic command.

    Roy: "Wait - wait wait, wait! WAIT!" he puffed out a breath and buckled over with his hands on his hips. He drew in a breath and stood, and squared his shoulders. "...alright go...", and Aen' went through the motions once again - and once again was stopped mid action. Roy put his hands up and stepped back as he cried out "...WAIT! Wait a minute. Er..." the big man looked around and positioned himself to fall back onto his cot, and gave a nod. Aen' hesitated, giving Roy a minute to have another change of heart, the big man made no further complaints, and would receive a keen shiner for his devotion to his friend and comrade.

    As fate would have, a short ways down the line, a captain ordered his mage to illuminate the field with a flare. The mage tossed a coin into the air and spoke an incantation that made the metal turn dull red at first and then burst into a shower of sparks, and then sink slowly from on high as a great glowing orb that cast a bright white light over a massive area between the front lines and the forest. Aenhever's shape was caught in the beam. As were the shapes and shadows of the Orcish horde that had been sneaking out from the treeline to begin the first of their night raids. The two sides clashed. Aen' left the battle far behind him, and he made his way up the mountain trails to a place he'd heard about, where Selune's devotees could help him - if help was needed.

    The rain followed Aenhever every step of the way it seemed. He arrived shortly before the storm hit, perhaps his betrayal and desertion would herald much misfortune to come. It wouldn't take long for him to start paying dear. For now, at least, the bite was just a bite. The strange vision didn't have to be a premonition, and the howling of wolves meant nothing after all.

    "Why have you come?" The lady had asked.
    "I did my duty." The soldier answered.


  • Aenhever stood at the threshold of the glade, where Moonreach Keep’s cold stones dissolved into living emerald and ancient amber beneath the autumnal canopy. The air shimmered faintly, as if the twilight itself hummed with expectation. Moss glowed softly underfoot, and the trees stood as ancient sentinels with bark like folded runes. They leaned subtly inward, listening.

    She appeared where the autumn light thickened: a Fey woman shaped from falling leaves and sunset gold. Her hair drifted as though stirred by an unseen breeze, each strand the hue of ripened wheat. Eyes the color of cider and warm copper regarded him with a warmth that reached deeper than language.

    When she lifted a hand toward him, no words passed her lips. Yet Aenhever felt the pull, like a tide rising within his blood, both human and something older. Her touch on his fingertips awakened a vision as clear as memory.

    Spring.

    He saw himself young again, stepping onto the ranger’s path for the first time. Hopeful, green, untested. The world a place of beginnings; his heart lighter than the bow he carried.

    Summer.

    Heat and vigor. Battles fought with the confidence of strength. Packmates at his side. Triumphs, mistakes, and the fervor of living without counting the cost. The fullness of his dual nature, man and wolf, running beneath a sun that never seemed it could set.

    Autumn.

    The vision deepened in color, rich and somber. Decisions weighted. Friendships tempered like old steel. A time of reckoning, maturity, gathering the harvest of all that had come before. Aenhever stood taller, quieter, aware of what must be protected.

    And then -

    Winter.

    Not death. Not loss.
    But the long exhale.

    A necessary stillness.
    A season of endings that make room for the next beginning.
    A promise that even in frost, life waits beneath the surface.

    When the vision faded, she withdrew her hand. The last leaf drifting from her hair touched the forest floor without sound.

    Her gaze told him what words did not:
    This cycle is yours. This path is chosen, and choosing.

    Moonreach Keep loomed quietly behind him, but in the Fey glade’s amber light, Aenhever understood: every season of his life would echo through both the man and the beast, and neither form would walk alone.

    The glade darkened... not with threat, but with the hush of falling snow that had not yet begun to fall. The autumnal Fey woman watched him with patient, ancient sorrow, as though she held all the seasons in her veins.

    Aenhever felt the vision stir again, curling like frost along the edge of his thoughts. Though her hand no longer touched him, the glade itself seemed to speak, roots whispering beneath the moss and leaves murmuring overhead.

    Winter returned, not as a destination but as a truth he had been circling his entire life.

    He saw himself standing on a lonely peak, moonlight silvering the world. His breath fogged before him, but his body no longer burned with the wild fever of the wolf. No claws under his skin. No hunger pressing against bone.
    Only the cold.
    The clean, clarifying cold of release.

    The Fey woman stepped closer, leaves swirling softly around her ankles.

    Her wordless voice pressed gently into his mind:

    "Winter is the cure.
    Winter is the shedding of the beast.
    Winter is the end that frees the spring    ".

    Images flooded him,

    A ritual circle carved in ice.
    The moon’s pale face seen through drifting snow.
    Aenhever’s shadow splitting in two; one form stepping forward, the other dissolving like breath on the wind.

    He staggered, breath catching. It was not death the vision offered him, but sacrifice. A price. A moment where the cycle must close for another to begin.

    The Fey woman lifted a hand, brushing a leaf from his shoulder. It dissolved to embers at her touch.

    Again, the silent message:

    "The wolf has served its season.
    Let it rest.
    Let it lie beneath the frost.
    What rises after will be wholly yours    ".

    The glade brightened faintly as though dawn had found its way through the trees, and the scent of distant winter clung to the air, crisp and inevitable.

    Aenhever swallowed, the weight of understanding settling across him like a cloak.

    “This… ending,” he finally whispered in his mind, unsure if she would know his thoughts - he continued anyway. “It is not my death?”

    Her lips curved into the faintest smile - an autumn leaf bending before the first snow.

    "No", the look said.
    "Not death.
    Completion    ".

    Beyond the glade, Moonreach Keep waited. Grim, cold, and unknowing. But for the first time, Aenhever felt the path ahead with clarity: A winter to face, a beast to lay to rest, and the promise of a Spring that would belong solely to the man.

    In spring he rose with hunter’s stride,
    Longbow in hand, the wild his guide.
    In summer’s heat, the wolf took hold,
    Moon-lit hunger, fierce and bold.

    In autumn’s dusk his shadow yearned,
    For paths untrod and lessons learned.
    Leaves whispered truths he would not see
    That man, child and beast could not stay three.

    But winter waits with silver breath,
    A quiet road that is not death.
    The frost shall claim the wolf’s old fire,
    And chill the curse of moon-born ire.

    When snowlight cleaves his form in two,
    And ice adorns the fading hue,
    The man shall rise where the beast once fell
    Aenhever freed by winter’s spell.

    "I'll tell you about it later, now isn't the time", he said in a whisper to his companions as they walked from the glade. Leaving the Fey woman behind, along with her strange boy.


  • "I can see it", Aenhever had said, "...you and the others, eventually, when all the mysteries are done and each of you have all you needed or desired. You'll all leave this place. But not me..."

    The moon hung low, timeless and unblinking, over the ancient ramparts of Moonreach Keep. Aenhever stood atop the western wall, the cold stone beneath his boots slick with dew. His bow lay untouched at his side. He no longer hunted, not in the wilds, not in the woods. Not since the curse.

    He watched the tree line below, where the pines leaned in like eavesdroppers. The world was quiet tonight. Too quiet. It was always this way, just before the pull.

    His clawed fingers flexed in their worn gloves. The beast stirred beneath his skin, not yet rising, but never truly resting.

    He had told her, Lokelani, Knight in Silver, that he would never leave. His voice had cracked like dry wood when he said it, but the words had stood firm.

    “I will not leave this place.”

    He meant it. Not while the wolf still walked beside his soul.

    There had been some protest from her. Not so much argument. Only the light in her eyes, that moonlit knowing had offered neither condemnation nor comfort. She had said nothing at first, and in that silence, Aenhever had felt both the weight of judgment and the mercy of understanding.

    So now, he watched. And waited.

    Sometimes, in the stillness, he thought of Yngdír.

    The old Eladrin ranger had moved through the world like an unseen poem, writ in blood, and memory. Yngdír had spoken in low tones, his words shaped like poetry, but sharpened like blades.

    "A ranger is the land’s memory," he once said. "Not just its sword arm. We are its conscience when no one else remembers."

    What would Yngdír have done, cursed as Aenhever was? Trapped beneath the weight of a beast's hunger?

    He would not have run.

    He would have made the keep his forest.

    The thought struck Aenhever like a javelin of frost. Moonreach, this crumbling fortress of stone and wind - it was his woods now. Its empty corridors, its tattered banners, the quiet shrine to Selûne where he knelt when the urges grew too sharp to bear, this was his hunting ground. Not for prey. But for control.

    Control. That was the battle now.

    The last full moon, he had nearly lost it.

    His transformation had come early, violent. He had torn through the barracks door, shredded the altar’s linens, left deep claw marks in the chapel floor. He had the presence of mind to drink the draught Lealiel had given him. And when the red fog lifted, there was no blood but his own.

    He remembered waking beside the altar. The shattered moonstone relic still flickered with divine remnants. The broken bottle. His hands had trembled, not with fear, but awe.

    He had held it off.

    Not forever. But long enough.

    Yngdír would have smiled at that, quietly, sadly.

    "Sometimes the battle is not in the forest at all. Sometimes it's just inside your ribs."

    Aenhever’s breath steamed in the cold night air. He ran a hand down his face, feeling the coarseness of the wolf still etched there. The curse had taken much of his freedom, his pride, the trust of people who once - if reluctantly - called him, a defector from the Defenders, guardian.

    But it had not taken his will. Not yet.

    He turned from the parapet and descended into the keep.

    Below, Moonreach waited in its silence. The walls whispered old oaths. The chapel door hung crooked. The moonlight reached through every crack like fingers seeking him.

    He would not leave this place.

    Not while the beast remained.

    But he would not be its prisoner.

    No. For now he would be its warden.

    And if Yngdír had taught him anything, it was this: that even when the wild turns against you, a ranger stands. Rooted like an oak. Silent as a shadow. Fierce as the storm.

    A foolish thought, he supposed in the end. His old mentor would have tried to kill him with his silvered blade. The way of the Wolves was as simple as that. Aenhever decided in that moment that he still had much to learn.

    So Aenhever watched. And endured.

    And the moon watched back.


  • Aenhever stood before a warped mirror, stripped to the waist, a basin of chilled water below him and a towel slung over one shoulder. A weathered straight razor gleamed in his hand - its edge worn down by years of care and ritual.

    He had sharpened it earlier that evening, a nervous habit more than necessity. The strop still hung from the bedpost.

    It was his father’s blade he'd been told, passed down with a few mere stories, and the name Aenhever itself he supposed. Aenhever didn't know much else about Aen Sr. but his would be a legacy of quiet strength, of men who lived by code and kept their tempers cold. But Aenhever had long since ceased to believe in legacy. The blood that coursed through him now ran hotter, wilder. It did not remember the family oath. It only remembered the moon.

    The blade hissed softly as it moved along his jawline, scraping away the coarse stubble that seemed to grow faster these days, darker, rougher. His movements were deliberate, disciplined. A man maintaining control, even if only in small rituals.

    He rinsed the blade. Met his own gaze in the mirror.

    And faltered.

    His eyes were not the same anymore. The color too intense, the pupils a little too narrow. He looked longer than he should have, waiting for a flicker of something beneath the surface. A twitch. A growl.

    None came.

    But the silence pressed in like a weight.

    Then came the memory, uninvited and unstoppable: the cabin.

    The solitary hunter.

    The change had come. The cursed shape. The instinct.

    The hunt.

    He remembered the silence afterward, the blood on the floorboards, the battered crossbow lying broken ahead of the ruined body of the dead man. The man’s name was unknown to him.

    He didn’t cry often. But now his shoulders began to tremble. A choked sound slipped from him, and suddenly he was seated on the cot, elbows on knees, hands over his face. His chest heaved. There was no holding it back.

    He wept.

    For the man. For the choice. For the part of himself that didn’t come back from that cabin.

    And when the grief passed, he sat still for a long moment, breathing, composing.

    Then, mechanically, he rose. Washed his face in the cold basin. Dried it with the towel. His motions were stiff but steady, forged in the same discipline that had once made him a hunter of monsters.

    He cleaned the razor, folded it, and laid it beside the basin.

    The moonlight caught the hollow of his cheek, and for a heartbeat, he saw in the mirror not a man - but a shape caught between two worlds. Not quite beast. Not yet lost.

    He pulled on his tunic, buckled the leather armor over it, and slung the longbow over his shoulder. A single silver-tipped arrow rested among the others in the quiver by the door. He added it, knowing, once again, he would not use it tonight.

    He no longer expected Selûne’s grace. Her light, once a comfort, now seemed cold and distant. The rituals had failed. The prayers had faded.

    And he understood now what that final hunt had meant.

    The ritual was complete. The last thread of innocence had been severed. There would be no moonlit redemption. No return to peace.

    It would be Malar who claimed his soul in the end. The Beastlord had won.

    But Aenhever still had one choice left.

    To resist.

    Not for salvation.

    But because it was the only part of him still his.

    The forest stirred beneath the stars. Somewhere in the dark, something called to him.

    He did not answer.

    Not yet.


  • The moon hung swollen above the hills, its pale light that would never touch the jagged outcrop of Moonstone so far underground was still ablaze with the eerie, otherworldly glow of the hidden moom far above. Aenhever stood at the edge of the formation, muscles tight, breath short. The pulse of the earth beneath the crystalline stone beat in rhythm with something deep inside him; something ancient. Something hungry.

    The first sign of the Zhentarim came with the sound of boots crunching frost-hardened dusty stone.

    Aenhever’s companions, Locus Operandi, were not prepared for battle. Ashla kept her shield handy, but lowered her hammer. Laura, muttering incantations under her breath, stopped short of casting. Jaxon vanished into the shadows without a word, not wishing to be seen too closely.

    Aenhever's fingers shook as he reached for his bow.

    He could smell the approaching soldiers before he saw them. Oil, steel, cold sweat. When Patrik started the fight, Aen' loosed two arrows with precision, sinking into their scouts' shields before they could signal. But on the third shot, something in him twisted.

    The Moonstones pulsed again.

    His bow slipped from his fingers, wooden stave clattering on bare stone.

    He fell to his knees as swords caught him from either side and from behind, an agonizing series of blows that brought him to within the brink of death. Something surged through his blood like wildfire. He let out a strangled gasp, but what followed was not a cry - it was a growl. Low. Raw. Inhuman.

    The change was not graceful.

    Bones realigned. Muscles contorted. His skin burned, then split as thick fur forced its way through. His eyes turned golden, his limbs elongated, his mind -...

    Fractured.

    The battlefield was swallowed in chaos. Steel met steel. Magic cracked the dim moonstone-lit cavern open. And then came him, a blur of fur and fang, leaping from the Moonstone outcrop with a roar that shook men to their core. He fell upon the Zhentarim like a storm unleashed.

    Armor dented, crushed, beneath his strikes. Weapons clattered to the ground as panic overtook tactics. Trained warriors turned to flee, but there was no outrunning the thing that Aenhever had become. The beast was an unstoppable blur of hate which did not distinguish between enemy and ally.

    A shout pierced the haze.

    “Aen! stop!”

    He turned, panting, eyes wild.

    There stood Locus Operandi, his companions, his brethren in arms amid the bloody eviscerated ruins that once were Zhent soldiers. Ashla's shield was raised, not in defense, but in wide-eyed warning. Laura held a glowing glyph between trembling fingers. Jackson's eyes - usually calm, calculating, were wide with disbelief.

    He growled. Low. Threatening.

    They didn’t understand.

    They couldn’t.

    He pounced from on to the other, striking down Pat and then Ashla, even Jaxon was laid low with ease. He caught Octavia's greataxe as if she were merely playing, and threw her to the ground with tremendous force. It was then he sensed that Laura had broke, her spirit gave - and he saw her running, attempting to flee.. he chased her down and meant to kill her, too.

    In a moment of clairty he stopped short of ripping her pretty face off and shredded only a scrap from her hood. He turned and ran.

    Through the cave network below the keep until he found forest and field, under the unforgiving light of the full moon, Aenhever fled. His form blurred between man and monster, caught in the spiral of his own curse. The further he went, the harder it became to remember who he was - only that he needed to be alone, to escape the gaze of those who had seen what he had become.

    The hunger gnawed at him, ceaseless. And in his madness he caught the scent of smoke, fire, warmth, a place with food, and his instincts steered him toward it. He found a small cabin, within a solitary life, a nobody - a mere bleary eyed but honest man startled awake by the crash of the door. A bolt flew at Aenhever. Poorly aimed, the crossbow was a weapon of desperation.

    Aenhever’s vision darkened.

    When he came to, the fire was out. The cabin, still. He was alone again. The walls, ceiling, and floor painted in blood and viscera. And still the hunger remained. Hours passed. Or maybe minutes. Time had little meaning under the moon. The next presence he felt was different. Not prey. Not human.

    He tracked it across a stony ravine to a figure with wings folded close to its body, sword in hand. A scent of ash and something older, fouler - Infernal blood.

    The creature turned, no words exchanged. Magic sparked at its fingertips. The two clashed.

    The beast within Aenhever had strength. But the creature had cunning and sorcery. Each blow was met with resistance, each attack countered with flame or force.

    But fury has its own kind of power. He pressed the advantage. Forced it back. Pinned it.

    Victory was near.

    Then, suddenly, stillness.

    His limbs locked. His breath caught.

    The creature beneath him whispered a final incantation before losing consciousness.

    Aenhever was held. Paralyzed by spellcraft. Trapped within his own form. The forest too fell into unnatural quiet. He stood there, frozen by arcane force, panting through fangs, blood pounding in his ears. Then, a new presence.

    “Still fighting it, even now?”

    The voice was soft, clear a woman’s voice, calm as moonlight. From the shadows stepped a figure draped in flowing blue and silver. Her hair shimmered like moonbeams, her eyes ancient and ageless. Around her neck glowed a pendant etched with the symbol of Selûne.

    The Moonmaiden, he believed. Or perhaps one who served her. She approached without fear. Knelt before the beast. “You weren’t meant to carry this burden alone.” She placed her hand gently to his brow. Aenhever’s muscles relaxed. The spell faded. But he did not move. Could not. Somehow, her presence held him steadier than any enchantment.

    “There is still a path forward. But it is not an easy one.”

    She turned away, walking into the forest with quiet confidence. The moon was beginning to fall. And Aenhever, no longer just beast, not yet redeemed, followed.

    The moon had dipped lower in the sky, dragging long shadows through the trees like fingers searching for something lost.

    Aenhever moved through the underbrush without sound, the weight of what he had done coiling tighter around his chest with each breath. Somewhere behind him, the Moonmaiden’s envoy walked a separate path. She had given him no destination. Only a choice.

    He chose solitude.

    Or so he thought.

    The wind shifted.

    The scent came first; burnt leather, brimstone, and blood. Familiar.

    A branch cracked. A shape descended from a rocky ledge above, landing with feline grace in a clearing rimmed with stone. Kzagoth. The cambion stood tall, his wings folding slowly behind his back. His skin gleamed in the moonlight, scorched in places where battle had left its mark. A gash ran down the side of his face, still crusted from their last encounter.

    His grin was all venom, though there was little malice or mockery in his tone when he recognized it was in fact Aenhever.

    “Well, well... what do we have here?”
    “The Locus lapdog, still sniffing around the woods?”

    Aenhever stepped into the clearing, bewildered from the aeons that had passed mere moments before - a fraction of a heartbeat perhaps from the last moments of his battle with Kzagoth, the Moonmaiden's handmaid having faded into mere memory - perhaps having never existed at all.

    Aenhever didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. He growled. Low and cold. The sound reverberated off the rocks. Kzagoth’s grin twitched, and faded. “...Oh. I see.”

    With a flick of his wrist, fire flared along his curved blade. His wings flared wide, catching the moonlight. The ground between them tensed like it, too, sensed what was coming. Their fight exploded into motion.

    Kzagoth launched forward, blade swinging in fiery arcs. Aenhever met him head-on, claws flashing, teeth bared. The cambion was fast, too fast, but Aenhever was fury made flesh. He slammed the creature back with a shoulder charge, knocking him into the stone. Kzagoth retaliated with a blast of flame from his hand, searing fur, but the werewolf surged through it, unrelenting.

    Steel clashed with claw.

    Blood stained the earth.

    Kzagoth sneered between strikes.

    “You think they’ll take you back after what you’ve done?”
    “You think that beast will ever let go of you?”

    Aenhever roared and drove him back. One more strike. One more step. The cambion stumbled. Cornered, his defeat imminent. And then -

    Kzagoth’s hand dipped into his cloak.

    “Monsters are best muzzled,” he hissed. "Don’t you agree!?”

    A wand snapped up. Crack! A pulse of arcane force struck Aenhever square in the chest. His limbs froze. The Hold Person spell. That trick. That spell.

    His body locked. His muscles betrayed him. Kzagoth stood panting, bloodied but grinning in his way. He stepped closer, blade dragging behind him. “That’s better. Now, where were we?”

    But this time, there was no victory in his voice. Only fear beneath the anger. Because something in Aenhever’s eyes, something newly awake in him was still watching. Neither beast nor man. But both, and unbroken.

    He awoke later to the scent of rusted iron and old blood. He discovered later that Kzagoth, too, moments later had passed out from his considerable injuries. A stalemate between powerhouses.

    The cold bit through him first deep, marrow-deep, and then came the pain. Dull and constant, like every joint in his body had been set wrong. He tried to move, and couldn't but for the chains that now held him.

    Heavy and Goblinwrought. Reinforced with runes designed for creatures like him, half-folk; half-curse. A cruel collar chafed against his throat, bound to a set of manacles that hoisted his arms above him. His ankles were likewise shackled, spread wide, taut against the frame he hung from.

    A weird crucifix. Built from black iron, driven into the earth like an executioner’s post. Goblin make and crude but brutally efficient. Aenhever’s body hung in partial shadow beneath a crag of stone, somewhere deep in the wilds. The moonlight, thin now in its waning, filtered through the canopy above like silver bars.

    He was not fully a man. Not fully beast.

    His form trembled in-between: fur over flesh, a snout half-formed, claws twitching in fingers still too human. His breath came in growls and gasps, his mind fraying at the edges with the strain of the transformation halted mid-course.

    Kzagoth’s magic hadn't just imprisoned his body, but it had stalled the curse and locked it in a static, agonized state. And then the cambion exhausted from his efforts had passed out and left him there. Not killed. Not freed. Just... hung. Like a trophy or a warning.

    Time bled.

    He didn’t know how long he remained there, hours? A day? Maybe longer. The pain didn’t stop, but it dulled into something his senses could almost ignore. The hunger, however, remained sharp. No food or water. Only the bitter tang of blood dried in his mouth and the ever-present, gnawing pull of the curse scraping against his ribs from the inside out.

    Every so often, a sound like branches moving, small animals nearby, would stir his instincts. But he was helpless. Hung between who he was and what he couldn’t stop becoming. His thoughts turned dark. To Locus Operandi. He pondered on the thought as to whether they even wanted him back.

    This was the second time it had happened among them. The third? By now, would they put him down like the monster he feared he was? Would it be just...

    Footsteps.

    Not illusion. Nor hallucination.

    Real. Measured. Approaching.

    He lifted his head, just barely.

    There, through the clearing, shapes emerged. A shield glinted in torchlight. A cloak fluttered. A spell-light glowed blue against the dark. It was them.

    Ashla.

    Laura.

    Jaxon.

    Octavia and even Pat.

    They had found him. They froze at the edge of the clearing. Not out of fear, but shock it seemed. Aenhever couldn’t speak. Could barely breathe. He let out a low, rattling growl, not a threat, not a warning but plea. Stay back it said.

    Octavia stepped forward first with her canteen, water, his stomach turned - water, it'd surely kill him he imagined. And then Laura was at the base of the crucifix, murmuring relief at the sight of Aenhever - safe, shackled. She knelt, inspecting the locks.

    Ashla approached slowly, face pale.

    The Deep-Gnome whispered “They crucified him…,” and she pointed at some of the less fortunate of the Goblins who'd expired violently in their attempt. "Kzagoth ordered it then he fell unconscious".

    “He's alright,” one of the Locus said, eyes scanning the structure. “This was meant to contain him. Whoever did this knew exactly what they were doing.”

    Aenhever fell as he began to change back into a man.

    Laura held his weight as he sagged, half-conscious. Her, hands glowing faintly. A low breath rattled from Aenhever’s throat. Not a growl. Not a howl. A wordless sound of recognition. Then, to him, the world went dark again.

    But this time, he wasn’t alone.

    Back at the keep, it was the fever that came first.

    Aenhever drifted in and out of it for what felt like days. His body wracked by chills, then burning heat. His dreams were chaos: fire in the woods, his hands stained red, the Moonstones pulsing like a heartbeat beneath the earth. Sometimes he woke howling. Sometimes he woke unable to breathe, as if still chained. Screaming. Often in tears.

    But there were voices in his head. The sensation of soft hands. And always light upon him, sometimes soothing, always exposing.

    He opened his eyes to a dim, warm space. The stone walls of his cell, and flickering lanterns. Modest, remote, and thankfully clean. He was not held as a 'prisoner' or a 'criminal' after all.

    He was lying on thick furs atop a bedroll. A pillow that smelled strongly of Laura. The air around him smelled of crushed herbs, steel, and incense. Rain pattered lightly outside.

    “...He’s awake.”

    The voice was clear. Grounded. Gentle, but unyielding. One of the clergy.

    She stepped into his blurred vision, her pale blonde hair tied back, her robes stripped down to the bare necessities, simple shows and humorously she wore a light gambeson. Her eyes were sharp, but not accusing.

    “Can you speak?”

    Aenhever tried. His throat scraped like dry stone. Yet he managed a word. A whisper.

    “Where…”

    “Safe,” came a second voice. “Well. Safer.”

    Another healer knelt beside him, brushing a cooling cloth across his brow. She was younger than the other, but the streak of silver in her dark hair and the blue-violet glow of her arcane focus at her wrist marked her as someone who had seen battle and survived it.

    “You're still in the keep,” she said. “...in your cell, the same as always Aenhever. But you're far from the Moonstones. From Kzagoth and whatever else you've been raving about.”

    His breath hitched at the name. The younger cleric paused. “They said he left you bound in a transitional state. Whatever wand he used, it stalled your curse mid-transformation. That’s not easy to fix.”

    “He should have killed me,” Aen' rasped.

    The older priestess folded her arms. “He wanted you to suffer.”

    There was no softness in her voice.

    The days blurred after that.

    Someone fed him broth, firm but patient. Another administered tinctures of silver-dampening herbs and channeled healing magic when his muscles seized.

    Sometimes, the beast clawed its way up again. In the middle of the night, Aenhever would wake choking on a snarl, body half-shifted, teeth lengthened, vision red. But someone was always there with a soft hand to his chest and a voice like iron.

    “No further. Not tonight. You're not a prisoner anymore.”

    And the rage would subside.

    Sometimes.

    One evening, as the storm whispered at the edge of the cells, Aenhever sat upright for the first time in a long time without assistance.

    He was handed a bowl of steaming lentils. He took it with unsteady hands.

    “You’re lucky,” she said, sitting beside him. “Kzagoth’s wand, we suspect of Infernal make. It should’ve torn your soul in half, not just your form.”

    “Feels like it did,” he muttered.

    She nodded.

    “Good. That means you’re still you.”

    The cleric entered then, bearing a bundle of wrapped cloth, Aenhever’s old cloak, cleaned and patched. She set it beside him without a word.

    He stared at it.

    “You don’t have to trust yourself yet,” she said, voice softer now. “But trust us. We all heard about what you did. -- And what you didn’t do.”

    He didn’t look up.

    “I remember their faces,” he said. “The Zhentarim. The ones who didn’t even get a chance to raise a weapon. The ones who ran.”

    The younger priestess sat opposite him. Her tone was calm, but firm.

    “You were cursed. You still are. But you’re not evil, Aen'. You lost control. There’s a difference.”

    “I could lose it again.” as he scooped a spoonful of lentils into his mouth, hand trembling all the while.

    “You will,” she said. “We all do. In different ways.”

    The older priestess nodded. “Magic. Oaths. Hunger. None of us are immune.”

    Silence settled.

    Rain on stone.

    Then, a whisper.

    “I wanted to kill him. I wanted to kill Kzagoth.”

    Neither priestess was surprised.

    That night, Aenhever walked barefoot, slowly—to the edge of the his cell, stepping out into the chill air by the iron barred door. The moon was only a sliver now, but it still made his bones ache. He stared up the blank wall uncertain. Ahead of him, the younger priestess stood in the main doorway that lead upstairs.

    He left his cell as Dawn approached, as all were satisfied that the monster was again at least contained.

    The woods were still.

    Not silent, but alive in a quiet, breathing way. Wind whispered through the canopy. Somewhere distant, a nightjar sang a low, liquid trill. The Moonlit chapel behind Aenhever was dark now, save for the soft blue glow of a moonstone set above its archway. Some manner of enchantment, subtle and enduring.

    He sat cross-legged in the glade just beyond it, at the edge of a small clearing where wildflowers stirred under moonlight. No armor. No weapons. Just himself. His body still bore the marks. Faint scars along his forearms. The memory of the crucifix’s iron still lingered as a dull pain in his shoulders. His hands sometimes shook. But the tremors were softer now.

    He exhaled, steady. The breath fogged in the night air and vanished. It had taken time.

    Days of silence. Weeks of tending wounds not just in flesh, but in thought. The beast still lived inside him, but it no longer paced like a prisoner. It rested, like a wolf at the edge of the fire, no longer snarling at the light.

    He had not fully healed.

    But he had begun.

    He reached into his pouch and drew out a simple piece of jewelry, a pendant shaped like a crescent moon. It had been left beside his bedroll one morning. None of his companions ever admitted who had placed it. He held it in both hands now with his pale eyes closed.

    His meditative breath became slower, deeper.

    And in the stillness of his mind, he found a voice. Quiet, uncertain at first, but present. Aenhever prayed in silence as an internal thought.

    “Lady of Silver… I don’t know if you hear the prayers of those with blood on their hands. I don’t even know what I am anymore. I no longer know if I'm a man or a monster. Or if I've become something in between.”

    The breeze shifted, brushing gently across his cheek.

    “But I remember what it felt like, when she touched me. Your servant. The stillness. The light. I didn’t deserve it then. Maybe I don’t now.”

    He opened his eyes.

    The moon hung just above the trees. Waning. Distant.

    And yet it was gentle.

    He bowed his head.

    “But I want to be worthy of it. Of peace. Of balance. Of the part of me that chooses.”

    His voice caught for a moment.

    Then softened. A small part was desperate.

    “If you’ll guide me, Selûne… I’ll follow.”

    He laid the pendant at the base of a weathered stone, half-buried in moss. He didn't need words anymore.

    Just stillness.

    And there he stayed, long into the night.

    Not hunted.

    Not chained.

    Not lost.

    A man in quiet communion with the moon.

    Aenhever.

    No longer running.

    Just being.


  • The storm slammed against the walls of the room with the force of an angry god. Wind shrieked through the cracks in the old stone. Rain battered the roof in wild bursts, threatening to rip it away altogether. The fire in the candles sputtered, their flames a defiant things struggling to survive the night.

    Inside, two men sat at a small table. Their companions nothing but background noise to Aenhever.

    One was still, hunched forward slightly, a hood casting deep shadows over his face. Steam rose from his damp cloak as fever-heat met soaked fabric. His gloved fingers tapped lightly on the table’s edge, slow, rhythmic, the only constant sound beside the din of questions from the others.

    The other sat across from him, cross-legged and loose-limbed, as though he didn’t notice the walls closing in. Every now and then, he attempted a joke and everyone winced at the sour note. To Aen' the room smelled of wet pine, mold, old ash, and the tang of something faintly metallic beneath it all - something alive.

    The one in the hood barely moved. He didn’t speak. He barely breathed. Only watched.

    The way the bard’s foolish lips moved.

    The flicker of his pulse at the throat.

    The slight tremble in his jaw when he thought he was alone in the moment of an ill-times jest.

    The thoughts crept in again, unbidden, like rot beneath bark.

    He imagined the table overturned, the bard Patrik sprawled on the floor. The veins in his throat snapping like the strings of a lute. A flash of teeth. A wet, ragged noise. Heat. Blood. Silence.

    It would be so fast. The storm would cover the sound.

    No more humming. No more jokes. No more clever songs and smug little grins.

    Just meat.

    The bard shifted, uneasy now. His eyes flicked to the werewolf, then away. He straightened his back. Tried to act normal. Reached for his waterskin. Spilled it.

    The werewolf didn’t flinch.

    Only his nostrils flared.

    For a long time, the two men sat in silence.

    One pretending to be calm. The other pretending not to be hungry.

    Lightning flared through the shutter slats, throwing warped shadows against the walls. Thunder rolled over them like distant drums of war. The candles flickered and shrank, casting the room into a dim, twitching orange.

    The bard moved from his chair, slower now, steps careful. His fist was clutched tighter, lips pursed - not out of love, but instinct. A shield of will and feigned ignorance Aenhever suspected.

    The werewolf watched him go.

    Watched the way he strolled across the room, eyes half-closed in triumph, but never quite shut to Aen'. The fear lingered around him like incense.

    It wasn’t satisfying. It was annoying.

    Fear made the meat sour.

    Still… he could smell it. Hear it. Feel it.

    His claws dug into the edge of the table again, slowly. Quietly. The old wood gave no protest. It had been scarred before.

    He turned back to the window, where the storm raged on.

    He stared at the moon. Full, fat, and perfect, and let the hunger burn through him like fire through dry grass.

    But he didn’t move.

    He didn’t kill.

    Not yet.

    Just sat. Breathing slowly. Quietly.

    Choosing.


  • She'd hurt his feelings with the look she'd given him. "I'll wash later when it's quiet", he'd told her. She was disappointed -- the same look in her eyes that was shared by the others. Maybe he did carry the smell of the grave on his clothes. But he was sick still, sick with the disease. He was sweating and feverish most nights now no matter how many moonstones he foolishly set before him. No matter how long he stared into their milky hues. A film of sweat seemed ever present on his brow but was dry and hot as the desert to the touch. It was driving him mad. He had to escape.

    The moonlit glade whispered secrets in a tongue older than man or elf, its voice a rustle of wind through leaves and the distant call of a nightjar. In the hush before dawn, Aenhever crouched by the brilliant moon-pool that mirrored the stars, sharpening his straight razor on a whetstone with long, deliberate strokes.

    Shhhkt. Shhhkt.

    The steel sang. Not loudly, but enough. Enough to make the coming quiet worse.

    His reflection stared back from the water’s trembling skin, sharp-cheeked, silver-eyed, pale as moonlight on fresh snow. Too pale. The kind of pale that gave away secrets. The kind that told of nights spent running under blood-colored moons, of sinew stretching and bones breaking, of the thing inside him that howled to be let out.

    Lycanthropy.

    Not the blessing, as some in Moonreach had called it. Not to him.

    A sickness. A knife-edge gift if any such thing.

    He pressed the blade to his cheek, the fine tremble in his fingers betraying the stillness of his face. With a smooth pull, he sliced away a strip of stubble, letting the cold air kiss bare skin.

    The Cerebrelith waits. This he knows. Somewhere in the dark, in the gloom.

    The thought came unbidden, like a whisper from the void - no doubt seeded by the demonspawn itself. The Cerebrelith: born of the Abyss, cloaked in psionic dread, a tangle of claws, minds, and memories that were not its own. It fed on thought. On will. On sanity.

    Aenhever had gone in circles trying to find the tracks of it for three nights through the high northern Rawlinswood where the trees grew thin and sparse. Found a mage, hole in his head just like the others. The book he kept held some gathered lore on the Kuo-Toa and mentioned a recent report on finding them not quite dead, but broken, hollow. Minds carved out like ripe fruit, left to rot with eyes wide in silent screams. The man and the fishmen alike. He took a Selunite amulet from the man and left.

    He rinsed the razor. Blood clouded the pool for a heartbeat before the movement of the pool stirred it away. Not much. Just enough. He didn’t flinch.

    There were worse things than pain. He knew.

    The lycanthropy gave him strength and speed beyond even elven ken, senses sharp as his blade. But it also made him visible. Vulnerable. The Cerebrelith would hear his thoughts before they were spoken, scent the animal buried beneath the man. Aenhever understood that he would not surprise it.

    But he would face it.

    He wiped the razor on a cloth, the motions almost reverent, then stood. The moon had dipped low now, a sliver of silver hanging like a promise - or a warning - above the treetops. His bow lay nearby, carved from duskwood, etched in runes older than he could guess. The arrows he had dipped in moonbane and ash, for the fiend would bleed somehow, and bleed it must.

    Aenhever ran a hand through his hair. His jaw was clean, his eyes calm, but the thing beneath the calm watched from behind his gaze. The wolf. The hunger.

    It would come out when it must.

    He turned toward the shadowed glade and the shrouded Moonreach Keep where the Cerebrelith waited, half-formed in the tangled edges of dream and flesh, its psionic pulse like a migraine pressing at the back of his mind even now. Even against the potions he'd consumed to ward his mind the thing pressed its will like a battering ram.

    This night would be blood and teeth.

    And Aenhever smiled just a little. Because part of him welcomed it.


  • "You don't talk much about your past" Lokelani had suggested one night.

    This woman whose beauty felt like sin to look upon too long who had command over magic and blade, this Fey-touched who could rob a man of all his senses with a song if she wanted to. A fantastical creature. A knight. She wanted to hear about him? Aenhever brushed it off with something close to a smile and almost certainly said something noncommittal to deflect. What in the world could he tell her - tell 'anyone' in fact. The question troubled him for a long time. Long into that night, into the next too. He found he really didn't talk much about his past or his aspirations for the future for that matter. A philosophy of his great teacher had always been to live and act as if all that mattered was the present. An unshakeable discipline from an archaic Elf. Wasn't he Feytouched too..?

    He could tell her about his time with the Wolves after all. Those once peaceful or at least neutral Rangers who walked the near-beaten paths between the towns and the wilderness. He could tell her all about their silent heroes who always seemed to arrive just in time and then withdraw just as quick once wrongs had been righted. He'd once mentioned a tree that isn't there, a curious wonder of the hidden Den... but what purpose would any of that serve?

    He could tell her about his time with the Defenders. How he was almost locked up, exiled or worse after the civil war. He'd seen the Geese in action not long before that, the courthouse blown to ruin before the fighting broke out in the streets. Aenhever had been in the docks that day when the attack rang out. They moved with purpose, and fought their way to the warehouses by the water's side and had urged the Defenders to keep the peace while they took care of Whyte, and every one of them disappeared inside. The friends he'd lost in the street that day, not just the ones that stood with him but those who'd sold out, the ones that were playing dice a week past and trying to kill him today. There was no time for grief. It was a military tribunial after that, a formal debriefing that seemed more like an interrogation. The city was shaken to its roots after all, they wanted to expose any more seditionists or turncoats that might've been missed. They wanted to make clear their warnings that they would go to extreme lengths to ensure that there'd never be another civil war. The warning almost certainly would include deserters among those who wished to do harm upon the city, and thus face those extreme penalties. But what purpose could that possible serve?

    He supposed she might be interested to hear about the famine and the plague that had burned through the streets like hellfire. Then again did he really want to tell this woman that seemed to glow with innocent light about the depraved things people do when faced with famine and disease. He'd tried his best to push the signs of cannibalism from his mind during the peacekeeping and cleanup back in his early days of soldiering. The hollow look in the sunken eyes of what he guessed were the parents of whatever those gnawed bones in the dirt belonged to. He could tell her that Peltarch was no Silverymoon, but what good would that do?

    That ancient Elven ranger might've given him an apple to shut him up, or recited some meaningless poem that meant nothing in the situation but altogether held the world together like glue. The fact of it would be the same. Aenhever would live in the present. He'd smile, and he'd nod. He might sort his arrows he supposed. The past was the past, the future would be a gift never promised. Today he'd drink cool water and eat, and he'd be thankful to look upon soft - dangerous faces that felt like sin and joy all at once. He'd bear the heartache of having nothing much to say about it and supposed she'd forgive him his silence.

    No-one else ever asked at least.


  • "You can come with us Aenhever", Lokelani had insisted. "..the Druids' Circle would welcome a werewolf on our side..."

    The flash that had blinded him at first had robbed the ranger of more than his sight. He'd prayed in the moment, too, when sensibility had fled him and the beast took over. He saw his friends through eyes that had turned from moonlit pale to a kind of septic yellow - the red/yellow of sweet peach flesh or that of an angry injury moist with infection. He saw each of them all at once for what they were with their weapons drawn against him. The horror in each of their voices, the malice in in the combat stances they took up against him even when that awful man, Zamo, had been right there before the corrupted moonstones. He'd seen their combat maneuvers a thousand times by now, and recognized that all for all they were poised to attack him. Traitors.

    Fury had overwhelmed Aenhever. He responded to their challenge by standing fully upright - his mangled and reformed bones stretched to give him - an already tall man - another foot or two head over shoulders above the others. His black claws were obsidian swords. His dense bone-coloured fur was iron, and no harm could possibly be done upon him. He was Aenhever after all. Lord of all beasts; Malar's chosen. Malar's Chosen.

    He fought doggedly against each of them. His sharp fangs scraping harmlessly off of Ashla's rounded helmet, claws scraping the shields of those who'd borne them. He felt a hammer-blow sink into his ribs, crushing bone and sending shards into his tainted organs. He reeled at the blow but would recover quickly; unnatural healing knitting closed his wounds and regrowing bone and tooth blow after agonizing blow. Spellfire burnt his flesh. And maddeningly -- he would remember all of it. Not the reactions to his becoming - his transformation into the monster, but how he'd felt in the moment. His hunger, his desire - his guts' demand to feast on their blood. Their flesh. Maybe had he not been so critically poisoned and sapped of all of his strength he'd have been more effective. We each must count our blessings.

    He fought with them for an age, swiping and clawing at each that approached or came too close. He slashed the air with his bloody black talons and backhanded at Ashla's shield whenever she came near. He recalled eviscerating a Slaad that was summoned, he'd thrust himself towards it and jammed both his hands - claws first - into the creature, and torn it in two in less than a heartbeat. He swiped at Jackson and missed -- he slashed at Ashla out of range, and as she pulled back the ichorous blood of the Slaad streaked out in ragged ribbons through the air and painted her shield. He was mad with bloodlust, mad and furious with hunger. He wished -- he prayed inwardly -- he might dine upon their flesh.

    It was in that black moment that the voice came to him, riding upon the verse that Jackson or maybe Lokelani, or maybe it was Laura who had spoken it -- who had tried desperately to get through to him even in his current state. He heard the plea from whomever to pay heed and to recognize his friends. The snarl left his grim muzzle and he calmed as the voice reverborated through his shattered/healing bones like a song that buzzed along his jagged teeth. Sense washed over him; sense and regret, and hatred for himself. Guilt. Guilt and urgency. Zamo was on the attack - he was going for Jhaelryna again. Aenhever who'd been too slow as a man to stop the Tiefling from stabbing her in the past caught sight of him in mid leap, aiming his attack at the half-Drow all over again.

    He leapt without thought. A blade grazed his torso, a hammer and an arrow whistled past his head, he collided with Zamo in midair and flung the Tiefling back against the cavern wall harmlessly.

    Aenhever stood over the stunned assailant who looked up to him in horror and disbelif. The werewolf stood fully erect, his head almost scraping the roof of the cave with his piss-yellow eyes staring down at the soon-to-be-dead Zamo. He flexed back and opened his unnatural long arms, and half-howl-half-growled into the dark air, his maw full of dagger-like-teeth wide open and ready to be brought down on the terrified Tiefling. The voice ringing between his ears "No, Aenhever -- no! Don't do it. You mustn't! You mustn't!!", the voice forbidding him from making that final misstep towards Malar and away from Selune, to bite -- to bite and infect... to bite and kill.

    He lunged down, forward, snapping shut his wolfish jaws and delighting in the terrified infernal blood - the wicked, hot, pulsing feast of his lifeblood, the evacuation of all of his living essence from the gaping wound where his head had once been. Now torn and open, a headless wound atop his shoulders gushing its black-red geiser into Aenhever's belly. He savored the moment. ... Savored nothing more than air. Zamo had escaped. Escaped?! The lycan clawed relentlessly and snuffled at the stone where the Tiefling had once been pressed. He dug at bare rock and whined brokenhearted at the rotten loss. How he'd wanted with all his heart to feast on the flesh of that awful devilling that had tried so hard to hurt Jhael' again. A murmered howl escaped him, throaty and distraught. Weakening... weakening until there sat Aenhever - the man - in a stupor, pawing at a filthy wall with the rounded - clawless fingertips that he recognized as his own.

    ...he found himself embarrassed, shamed. He recalled everything. Might've been better had he simply shit his pants or pissed himself. Anything but this. Anything but what they all finally saw him turn out to be. Anything but the beast. The monster.

    His brow knitted to a frown when he finally snapped out of the memory and replied to Lokelani.
    "...you shouldn't invite monsters into your home, Lady-of-Thorns."


  • "..I am sure there are certain presumptions made about 'you', Ranger...", Marielle had said this of Aenhever...

    She wasn't quite wrong. Even among the Locus Operandi there were still those who accused him of being quiet and said openly, often, that he'd startled them simply by approaching. It's not his fault they didn't notice surely, it wasn't his fault that Laura was half blind with her nose pressed against he pages of whichever book; or that Jhael' who presumably could see quite well enough was often likewise engrossed with some thrilling textbook on math or...

    The fabric moved, a makeshift panel or curtain made from crudely cut sack cloth, heavy material - but it caught the wind, and for a fleeting moment was pushed aside by a gust revealing no more than three quarters of a saucer shaped target on a cheap combat dummy's chest. In an instant Aen' had loosed two arrows at it. The first clattering onto the stone wall behind the target harmlessly, the second hitting the cloth as it regained its original position.

    "Well, it went through..." he muttered inwardly as he tugged the arrow from the wooden body. "...though Ashla might not appreciate another one of these striking her on accident...", as he leaned to gather the second arrow. He moved near to his spot albeit at a new angle. He was simulating shooting in close quarters while someone was engaged in melee. When the curtain moved it was safe to shoot, if he struck the curtain - he'd shot a friend. The premise was simple enough.

    His arm ached at the shoulder. Hardly a scar where the poisoned arrow had struck, he'd been shot by one of Jhael's captors what felt like a lifetime ago. A hazy memory, only -- or was it more recent than that? The concept of time was slipping away from him. He'd already forgiven the Half-Drow for conjuring the image of a full moon right in front of him.

    The curtain lifts and ruffles to one side, flapping up at one corner - the sound of a tight bow unflexing along with an almost simultaneous dull thud as one of his swift arrows bites into the target. Another thump, the latter grazing just the edge of the curtain but striking true.

    He surmised, without much celebration at his shots finding their target, that she had done so either knowing fully that it wouldn't affect him - or that it was simply an easy mistake to make. That perhaps he was the fool for making the assumption in the first place that a mere illusion could cause him to turn. Supposing then that he yet had much to learn about this affliction. An amusing thought came to his mind as he drew another arrow and waited. What if that instinctive part of him wasn't fooled because it had forgotten itself. Some subconscious part of him might've forgotten while his frontal brain was terrified.

    Over time he'd include more targets, heavier curtains as well as much lighter ones. Various sized targets that would shift when pulled by the wind to enhance his natural reactive shooting talent. He was training himself out of a soldiering mindset and into an agent who could act independently or as part of a small unit. Yet to Aenhever this was no game, it was life or death for him as well as for the others. He waited for another breeze to catch the cloth, an act he'd repeat again and again, long after his arms got tired and his body hurt from drawing his powerful bow.

    He'd done as Laura had suggested and worn himself out. He hadn't taken up knitting or jump-rope, but exerted himself to the point of physical exhaustion. His body burned, his forearms felt like solid marble - hard, and frosty cold with perspiration. He imagined the warmth of her hand that had clutched him there in terror when the shadows had come. No, perhaps not in terror -- maybe she was trying to protect me. The thought irritated him, a guilty comfort. To have faithful friends.

    There would always be certain presumptions about Aenhever. The easiest ones to guess at, the stalker, the hunter, the woodsman or the soldier.


  • "Not there, please..." Aenhever had all but begged, embarrassment deep in the tone of his voice; "I don't want to see him". Words he'd spoken of their Tiefling prisoner. The white lie in the way he'd asked, I don't want to see the prisoner... he'd really meant that he wished the prisoner wouldn't see him. See him as a monster. Chained.

    Aenhever was in his quarters, a washbasin on the table before a shaving kit. He'd discovered that most of the mirrors available were delicate, silver backed with fragile glass panes on the front. He however had managed to scrounge up a severely out-of-fashion mirror fashioned from polished bronze, its high tin content buffed it out to a silver-like sheen. He trimmed his beard and whiskers into the goatee he liked to wear, and delighted inwardly at the sharpness of his knife as it rasped over his stubbled cheeks and neck, leaving behind smooth, clean skin. He tried to smile into the mirror and found that the lips of the man in the reflection barely moved.

    Oh well.

    He dipped his hands into the basin and washed suds off his face. With his eyes shut tight he could visualize his thoughts. A red haired Elf-maiden stretched out on a bed of moss that smelled sweet and earthy. His shoulders sagged as he chased the thought from his mind before he could start to count the flowers in her hair. The man in the reflection gave him a stern look. An unkind look. An impatient look.

    There was an awkward less pure thought beneath the surface of it all. He was aware of it and wrestled with it. The thought of pressing his lips to the wound on that dark-elf's belly and drinking her blood. The prisoner. It was his fault that such thoughts came to his mind - his man's mind. Infected. The man in the mirror looked somber, hurt... maybe a little afraid.

    Black ooze frothed out from the corners of his mouth, he could feel its warm neutrality fizzing as it leaked down onto his chin and dripped in inky spots down into the washbasin. He swished, slurped, swished, and spat the remaining charcoal mixture into the bowl and bared his teeth at the reflective bronze surface. Were his teeth yellow, he wondered - ivory? Did the charcoal scrub whiten them. Since when had he become so vain, he pondered... yet... his thoughts returned to the secluded grove and the song of the Elf. Maybe the charcoal rinse would absorb some of the foul smells of a man's breath and she wouldn't mind his company so much. Maybe his breath would be less hard after all. Dogbreath, he mused. The man in the mirror was not impressed or amused.


  • Lokelani had half-seriously teased him not so long ago, she'd asked somehow with equal parts belligerence and innocence if he might turn in the night and massacre everyone in the keep in Malar's name. Aenhever's response had been honest enough. That he'd hoped he wouldn't.

    He considered the irony of what Laura had said, too, as the last shackle was snapped shut then locked around his wrist. There was a little humor in the tone she'd spoken her words with, gentle and reassuring. "Perhaps you can find a book to read from the library while you wait it out". He thought about asking in the moment if she'd stick around to turn the pages for him in his outlandish and sarcastic, irritatingly dry way of joking. The days of being merely locked in his chambers were over, at least at the turning the Moonphase. When Selune shone at her fullest; this would be it. Chains.

    The door on the far side of the dungeon shut as the last cleric departed. There were no others down there, perhaps more would come. He imagined in some far away part of his mind where empathy lived that perhaps the Wererat they had killed was once kept down there. Maybe in these very chains. Gods, but they itched - the chains... he thought they might be steel but it seemed at least they were forged from some silver-laced alloy that turned the skin around his wrists a rashy red. Small spots on his skin there had started to turn pale and yellowy, icky pus or some other nasty fluid welled just beneath the surface and threatened to burst open each time he so much as breathed. At least while he was shackled.

    He began to wonder in the darkness if perhaps some furnace was lit beneath this room. His skin boiled and his forehead, at first only moist, became sticky and then wet. His dark hair stuck to his temples as the sweat poured off of him, and he realized his body was trembling. Freezing cold, burning hot, itchy and uncomfortable. The sensation irritated him and he wanted to scratch and itch. He rubbed his back and his shoulders off the stone wall behind him but he felt it would never, ever be enough to comfort him. Not the coolness of the stone nor the rough texture that scraped his burning skin. His breath had become labored, he panted from the mouth, each puff of air forcing spittle from between his teeth and silky tendrils of drool began to dribble down and pool upon the stone floor, mixing slowly with the sweat that dripped endlessly from his infected body.

    The change was neither sudden nor painless. There bound in chains a man became something else. From itching skin burst at first patches, and then whole swatches of mottled greyish fur. It spread like water spilling over any flat surface, little by little - but rapidly, growing to meet those renewed spots as they formed. The fracturing and elongating of his jaw, and skull, the twisting and snapping of arms and fingers, legs, and toes that would become lethal caw. His back curved and his ribs thickened. He, quite madly, could 'hear' his teeth growing as his bones re-set.

    Frantic thoughts rattled through his head. Terror, and contempt. He was starving to death, he knew it was so - and his growling belly made certain of it. Demanded of him and all who would be in earshot (mercifully none) food - immediately.

    Food.

    He could still smell the blood of Ashla, he could smell it on himself. The thought of it sickened him to the core, though the sickness was a delight in which he reveled. She was, he suspected, far more than just another woman. There was something delicious in her blood, something corruptible. Something that could be ruined, if he could only have a little bite. A throaty inhuman whine bubbled out of his maw, as his sharp teeth snapped at the air. The chains that held him rattled noisily as he fought and struggled against them. The silvery steel bindings around his wrists hissing against the lycanthrope's skin as if they were red hot. Fine, perhaps not Ashla then. Not tonight anyway...

    ...but what about Laura, poor blind Laura, whose fingers - he realized - stank of vellum, and dead animals. The glue from her books, the spicy uncommon scent of the ink she used to write with. She was tough and soft all at once. He wondered in his sick mind if the woman's eyeballs would spill foul goo into his mouth as he bit them from her living skull. He hoped they might. Wished it, even. Aenhever in his current stated actually hoped that his friend Laura's eyeballs would eject infected gore into his mouth, and that it would be warm as it slid down his throat. He was starving, and the thought of such a meal maddened him yet further. He frenzied endlessly against those damned chains and screamed/howled in the dark. Frantic and furious, he commanded the keep itself to release him. But in chains he remained, and Laura would be safe this night...

    Aenhever craned his neck and bit down into his own arm, jerking his head to try and tear the flesh and bone away that he might be free. The silvery chains made the taste of his own flesh unbearable, he was unable to commit before a mess of hot vomit splashed onto the floor around his feet. Simply famished, the words echoed in his swimmy mind. And he thought about Lokelani once more. "...I'd start at your ankles and eat my way up..." he'd joked as a man. As a monster he could think of nothing more splendid, the idea was nothing short of culinary genius. Foamy drool pushed its way out from the corners of his muzzle as he whined into the dark. He tried to guess how many bites it would take to reach her knees, her thighs. He thought about how delicious it would be to lift her halved body above his head and squeeze her till her guts spilled out - right into his starving tummy. Would he discard the rest or --

    A voice he'd heard before, not from within the darkness but perhaps from within the hidden part of his consciousness. STOP, she commanded him. She'd asked him once before what his mission had been... or maybe asked his purpose. Wolves had howled that time once upon a before, but no wolves now. Just the voice.

    -- clarity, came over Aenhever. He stopped thrashing momentarily. But the hunger was still present. He was aware of how much it hurt to starve like that, he belched air and gulped it back down as if he might be sick again. Crazed, wild eyes scanned the darkness. His man's mind was aware, too, of the burning of the irons around his wrist and -- oh gods -- his hands were claws, he couldn't speak, terror overtook his mind again and... he was 'so' hungry, so hungry he could eat a --

    -- Jhaelryna, the Dark Elf, .. Aenhever would never call her a 'Dark Elf', but the monster saw her that way. She smelled like porous rocks after rain. Like earth and ozone, like lichan and spice, to his nose anyway. He heard it in her voice sometimes, the way her words would catch. Uncertainty. He wondered what it was that made it so, he wondered if she'd try to fight him off. Or if she'd simply submit and allow herself to be devoured. He imagined she would bite. He imagined...

    Nergüi, and all the blood - wasted blood, it made him furious, it made him hungry. He licked his lips and called out/howled for all to know that he was down here - starving. He thought most of all on how Nergüi had thrown himself at that damned shark. That lucky shark, all it had to do is 'be', and he threw himself right into its jaws. He whimpered in the night, pleading with the out-of-sight door for the Tuigan to come bursting through and throw himself into his jaws like a fool. But there was more to it. He'd leave the man's head alone, empty as it seemed to be. No feast of brains there, no, but guts he had -- guts for miles, he could gorge himself on guts for days. The beasts toes curled at the thought. And his liver, yes, a 'warriors' liver - it'd probably taste like iron, and blood. Perhaps the next time he sees Nergüi he'll bury his face in the man's chest and try to smell if he has a warrior's heart too. He dreamed of how such a heart might 'pop' in his mouth, the hot blood cascading down his throat. He thought of ---

    STOP the voice commanded.

    ---...thought of Selune, thought of mercy on his own damned and wretched existence. He plead with the night, begged of it - of Her - no more. What did he have to offer that would stop these awful dreams -- no, thoughts, for he was still awake -- what would stop these awful thoughts that made him think of evil things. His heart prayed furiously, begged for...

    -- that man in the halls, the visitor, the one that sought 206-Jaxon, idiot, his name is Jaxon-206 and the other, Nezzer. Deserters just like him. Another fine pair, devoid of honour just like him, but no... the man, the Zhent', he reeked too. His unwashed body and the stink of his unwashed companions all over him. The scent of a woman on this villain's cloak excited him, he salivated at the thought of her shrieks of horror. The man reeked of many campfires and campfire cooked meals, he could remember all of these smells that Aenhever - the man - never even noticed. The man smelled dirty. The man smelled like dinner all the same, but he stank. His body stank. Not like --

    Florian, whose skin smelled like perfumed nonsense. Florian whose hair made him gag, and want to puke. Florian whose fingers and legs are far too skinny, who had no guts at all. ... He might scream, at least. Aen's ears perked at the prospect of a screaming Elf. Even if he tasted like poison it would be fun to hear the torment and pain in his voice, pain inflicted upon him to match the pain that the Elf had forced upon Aenhever; to starve him. No greater sin could there be after all than to deny him a meal, poor, hungry Aenhever - who'd surely starve. ... if only he could get out of these wretched chains...

    The beast wanted to break free to slaughter them all. Perhaps in Malar's name after all.

    The man, Aenhever, was honest when he said he definitely hoped he wouldn't...


  • "Accept your fate, or deny it". This is in essence what he old mother, the old Selunite priestess had said. Bit by a wererat and told point blank - fatally, even, that "it is what it is". Aenhever was unimpressed. Hadn't he come to this place with similar quandary? He'd asked in his own words if such a fate awaited himself, to be laid out on the stone floor with a moonstone gem placed upon his chest whenever he might finally turn. That was the finality of it, though he'd used vague language to misdirect his concern to the other with fresher wound.

    Fresher wound. Yes, fresher by days. By weeks at that.

    Last Moon~

    A thin roll of paper-bark, usual dead-drop. He used his thumb to scrub out the black text, and the scribbled mark of the Beastlord that accompanied it. The secretive group of Rangers and Druids had driven Malar from their forest before, they'd do so again. As he scrubbed the words from the bark scroll he'd scrub the enemy from these lands. The thought, he imagined, was profound poetry.

    Riverbanks and mud-wallows offered no sign. He tracked a black bear for a day or two but never saw the animal. His camps were sparing and he kept only a small fire some nights, when the rain would hold off long enough to bother with the hope for such small comforts.

    Aenhever never did mind.

    He whittled some of the time and a spoon was taking shape, albeit rough. He'd found a piece of larch, an unassuming hunk of wood within which only a very hopeful whittler might see the shape of a spoon. But it was at last taking shape, albeit roughly. Amusingly enough - at least to Aenhever - the hue of the larchwood was silvery to the eye. His wooden spoon would finish up looking metallic.

    He began to doubt the message he'd received. The northern world was still holding firm onto winter, though the quick nightly frosts were growing hoary as the chill battled with warmer days. The eerie still of moon-glowing trees that were still in their deep years-end sleep made everything seem broad, and distant. In the frigid night he could hear the groaning song of the trees all about him who'd been awakened by the tease of a sunny afternoon mere hours before a predictable blanket of darkness, and the weight of the cold that followed in its bleak wake.

    Cold followed dark just as the huntress had followed Aenhever. She tracked a man who'd visited riverbanks and mud-wallows, she'd knelt before the spoils of sparse fires that littered dewy early-morning ground and sank her fingertips into cool - not cold - ashes. She'd largely ignored the tracks of what she gathered to be a black bear that trailed ahead of the lazy human tracks. Her cold eyes pondered the platinum, curled shavings of what smelled like larch wood. Her quarry was probably making something foolish, an idol - the thought of a carved unicorn's head came to her mind, then a stone-coloured wooden bowl, or a child's toy. Perhaps, she considered with fleeting amusement, the man she pursued was carving a little bear.

    She would find out soon enough. The huntress had counted down the days, she'd committed fully in spite of herself, to her hunt. A brutal trap laid by celestial bodies, The Black-Blooded One's black blooded deed would be done. The sweetness made her mouth water, her target - a Selunite, delicious in its own right - but also one of Narfell's fabled Wolves. Her blood warmed at the thought of it. Beneath the full moon she would strike. Not with dagger, or with arrow, nor poison at that. She would descend upon the useless Ranger with fang and claw and devour his guts, she'd howl to invite the rest of her pack and they'd indulge in a frenzied feast of blood and gore, and the message would ring out loud and clear through the Rawlinswood. The Wolves of Narfell are dead, and Malar has returned.

    Aenhever sat on his blanket staring down into the greasy red coals of his evening fire, the flames were low and sputtery. It was a miracle that the wet, frozen wood even burned at all. He was quite proud of himself. He reached for his small knife to resume carving. A noise, somewhere out to his left. Twigs snapping, a rumble of activity - something rushing, running towards him. Yellow eyes that shone like lit candles illuminated by moonlight, fangs like daggers spit-shiny in a cavernous maw. The brown bear reared up on it hind legs and spewed out a roar, his paws up high as he readied himself to collapse and bear down with all his ferocious might. The huntress, who at the same time had leapt forth from behind Aenhever caught sight of what was happening as her jaws clamped down, fangs scraping bone at the base of the Ranger's skull as she'd tried to decapitate him with a bite.

    The awkward angle lent itself to the downward swipe from the bear, and in a dizzying yet not entirely bloodless moment the fight was over. The huntress was soundly checked, the maddened bear chasing her and batting her like a cat with a plaything. Aenhever lay face down and unconscious by his sputtering fire. The thin handle of a rough - but passable - spoon of silvery wood snapped beneath him. The world was black and silver, and blood red. Fever rose and faded and the forest aged and grew quiet around him. His wound scabbed and the headache passed. The bear did not return, nor did the huntress. He knew this as a fact, as he stood pondering the scene what could've been a day if not days later. No, the coals are still warm. Less than a day later, probably. He traced the path of the bear, and returned to his camp site. He traced the path of the huntress, though he barely left his camp site before losing her trail entirely. He followed the path of the battle between bear and huntress and found that it ended in chaos. No bear, no huntress. Just wild war.

    He returned to the dead-drop and left a message of his own. [Inconclusive].

    The Orcs past the Western Wall had been engaging in raids after the melt. The Defenders were ordered out as a deterrent. Foxholes and trenches, lined with timber and sandbags. Aenhever was the longbowman counterpart that was posted with big Roy, an oftentimes ill tempered yet remarkably chatty Norwickian transplant who'd proven himself more than capable of bullying Orcs.

    A crossbow bolt fell short of their dugout, the muddy 'splat' barely perceptible above Roy's chatter.

    Roy, after inspecting the mostly healed injury on Aen's neck: "...mountain lions bite like that. My mate Paul's ram had its head ripped right off, them big cats use their in-size-ors to get right into the backbone and it's lights out."

    Aen: "...wasn't a mountain lion, I was in the forest..."