the dark urge

Terrible, gruesome images flitted past Henri’s eyes. Spilled offal. Dripping blood. A knife, in his hands. The first cut.

“Fantastique,” Henri groaned.

He opened his eyes.

The first thing he noticed was that he did not have hands. Instead, large clunky paws were stretched out before him, their golden colour vibrant against the stony lake pebbles underneath.

A jabbing pain in the back of his neck told him that the werewolves had gotten him. Tragic. Now he would have to piss in a bush every full moon. Or more often, for it was broad daylight, and Henri was decidedly not human anymore.

For one brief, lovely moment, he entertained the thought that perhaps the rest of his party had at last expired. At last, Henri could be free of them. Mais non—he could smell a familiar scent on the wind. At least one of them was still alive, somewhere. And also probably in a wolf body.

He sighed. And then, with nothing else to do, he dragged himself to his feet. He looked towards the bleak, miserable expanse of a frozen lake behind him. What a sad little place. He rather liked it.

He trailed along the edge of the shore, not stupid enough to try stepping on the ice.

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A route that swung wider than his recent normal brought the samurai off the mountains' foothills, his roving nose low and ears tipped tall. Initially lured after a promising trail that distracted his late morning's patrol, focus started to wane at a point well after his outskirts, now that his options expanded considerably into the wilds beyond.

The lake was closer than he realized already by the time the thought hit, and with plenty of afternoon's daylight to explore on left, it didn't feel like a proper stopping point. After weighing the options there, he decided to keep going for the shorelines--at least for a quick pass to investigate before he returned to the peaks and its royal family. He knew it could attract others here, prey and predator alike. A fixture of the land like this was difficult to miss, so he wondered if he might find something there. Maybe he wouldn't return empty-handed, after all.

After picking a path he liked down the last stretches, he could open up to a cruise again after the landscape allowed. For as well as he could tell, the ice was no different than he remembered, but with winter's grip tightening, he wondered if it would change soon, expand its reach, perhaps? He so rarely left the mountains, not since the shift before the summertime, so he didn't know yet what would be normal on a greater scale. This had not even been here at all this time last year. Or maybe they had not been here, but whatever the case was, he distracted from this quickly spiraling thought; he saw another moving shape along the lake ahead of him. Possibly skimming its edge, much like he was.

He watched long enough to see the form grow more definitively canine. Interested enough, he decided to keep going towards them, steering for an intercepting path to see what they would do with--be it meet him in the middle, or try to avoid entirely. He was open for interpretation, well out of cover and looming dark in the daylight.

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On this bleak, frozen shore, Henri felt the mood had been set appropriately. A lone adventurer on a quest to rescue his comrades. The last bastion of sanity against the cold, cruel heart of nature—in the form of a French wolf, no less. At the very least, he assumed he was a wolf. It would be strange if a wolf’s bite changed him into something else entirely.

“This curse was not well designed,” Henri commented to himself, sounding rather disappointed. It was then that he realized he was no longer alone.

An enormous black wolf was striding towards him. Well, enormous from Henri’s view, anyway. Henri eyed the beast’s long limbs. He would almost certainly catch him, if he ran. Assuming the wolf thought he was worth catching; the beasts in the village had dealt with him already. Uncertain of what he should do next, he continued on his current course, though not without eyeing the stranger with suspicion. Would he be able to speak to him, he wondered? Tafty’s powers allowed him to communicate with all sorts of beasts. Perhaps this wolf might have something to say.

Or at the very least, he might be persuaded that Henri did not taste at all pleasant. The bite on his neck stung, and he was not keen on getting another.

Abruptly, Henri stopped in his tracks. He spoke.

“Do not eat me,” Henri instructed coolly. “It will make you very sick.”

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Met with a wise suspicion, he held steady enough on this approach, closing in. The ranging Ostrega definitely did not recognize this wolf, at least not from anywhere he could recall anymore.

Do not eat me. His ears pricked first, recognizing the appreciable audacity first. He still narrowed his eyes with all of his suspicion, and swept out his ears to match. Alright. “Don't worry, I'm more on the lookout for bigger game today,” he replied, quietly humored in his own way by such a greeting but good thing he came here with no intention to hunt some other canine without cause. And honestly if he had to guess, even if he weren't contaminated, he would hardly feed all of Reiko's growing brood these days, anyway.

But given what he heard, exaggeration or not, Antares did give him a little bit more distance when he paused. “But I've never met a poisonous wolf before,” he pressed, almost into a question though not quite as he lifted his head, obviously interested to hear more. Then again, he might not even be entirely a wolf. Not much like the ones he was used to in the mountains, at least from a good look. So, what was he doing here too?

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