The Ambush Outside of Morbone (Short Story Draft)

This is a project I've been sitting on I plan to revisit later, but I polished up the scene. I plan to use this character for later projects, but I'm happy in introduce her here. She's in the same universe that Gnoll Tales is set in.

The curse had taken everything from Basilea, and in its place it had given her death and sadness. It had given her madness, and pain, and yet deep down, deep below in herself, there was hope. There was more than the curse inside of herself. Oh she hated it; she hated the wolf that nestled deep down inside, but it was not to blame. Just as she was scared of it, it was scared of her.

It had taken her too long to realize that, and now as the blood on her claws dripped onto the snow, she realized things would never be right, not as long as she continued to fight the curse. It was a strange time to have this realization, but everything had lead up to this. In the distance there was safety, but how safe really would it be for her?

“You foul monster,” gasped the man, under her.

She shifted her gaze form the distant city, down the fallen man in the snow. Somehow, he was still alive.

“You will…” he coughed wetly, “pay for this.”

Basilea lowered her head and looked at him over her snout. The hole in his stomach was her fault, but should she blame herself for his death? He’s tried to kill her first.

The man tried to raise his hand in a gesture to use his last strength to call out to the magic of the world, maybe to strike her down, or maybe to try and heal himself, she couldn’t tell.

“No...” she rasped, “you did this…to yourself. I…” she looked up at the distant city. The lights in the valley were visible from here, and she knew there was warmth and comfort there, for a least the human part of herself. She turned her attention back to the man. “I want to live.” Talking with a muzzle was something she still had difficulty with, but she was getting better. She didn’t use to want to talk when she was a wolf. Now she did.

“You traitor… “ gasped the man, holding up his hand. Before he could make the gesture, she caught it in one of her handpaws to block whatever he wanted to cast.

“No,” she said again. Carefully she formed her words in a mouth full of sharp teeth not made for speaking. “You chose…your death.” That seemed almost too erudite to the werewolf, but she was learning. She was finding the balance between the wolf and the woman inside her. Deep down she felt the she-wolf inside huff, and just want to bite the man’s throat and end him. It would have been a mercy killing at this point, but Basilea did not move to do it.

“Abomination!” cried the man, but weakly. The blood loss was starting to kick in.

She hunched down so she could bring her muzzle down and look him straight into his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” said the werewolf, “but you knew…the cost of…your hunt.”

The man, for all his sense, spat blood at her, landing some between her eyes. She growled at him then, deep and low. The wolf inside wanted to just turn him into meat. The woman inside too wanted to growl, because she’d tried so hard to make things right. She’s tried so hard to be small and unseen. She really was sorry, yet no mater how hard she tried to wash her hands and her paws of the blood, she couldn’t. She couldn’t change what she’d become.

The werewolf hunter, for his part, didn’t wet himself, and didn’t shrink back from the beast hulking above him. He must have accepted he could die trying to find her, and both halves of herself had to admire that. Even the hand gripped tightly in her paw did not seem to shake, Instead, he glared at her with eyes hard and stone, and he waited for his death.

She could have let go of his hand and let him lie there to die, but he was a mage, and mages were dangerous. She knew that, because once she had been a mage too, before the curse, before that night and the death that followed.

She would need to kill him, because loose ends like this always invited questions. Also, she could see the crest on the man’s cloak, and the clasp.

“He sent you…didn’t he?” The woman wanted to ask how could the man call her an abomination, when he had worked for the vampire that had manipulated her. The hunter had come to find her because of Borislav, but that was too much nuance to ask in her strained voice. The inner wolf just wanted blood. The wolf had the simpler answer, and possibly the better one.

“Yes, and he will find you. He will come for you. He will destr—”

She bit the man’s throat then and let her fangs sink in, the man kicked once and then lay still, and the werewolf let go of him and sat back on her haunches to think.

The body before her was damaged and obviously torn to shreds by an animal. The falling snow would give her some help to make her get away, but that depending for how much longer it fell.

Instinctively, she lifted her muzzle up and sniffed.

The sky was damp and wet with the smell of snow still on the air, so perhaps it would fall for a few more hours. That would be enough time for her to sneak into the city and disappear, but the body was a problem. She would need new clothes also. She’d destroyed most of the ones she’d worn when he’d ambushed her. She had a spare shirt, and a simple dress, but she wanted back the warm pants she’d been wearing. Her wolf forms was warm, but her human form was not. At least her cloak had fallen to the side and didn’t seem too damaged, so that was a plus.

She shuddered in a way that made all the fur on her body stand up briefly. Even though she’d been cautious, she’d been found, again. She’d kept running, keep trying to get away, but if they’d track her here, they surely would track her elsewhere. If they were still coming, that meant Borislav had to still be alive, but he couldn’t be. She’d killed the vampire herself. She’d made sure he stayed dead too. There was no way he could still alive, and yet the man had spoken as if he was.

The werewolf shuddered again, both halves of herself realizing she’d failed in her own hunt. She didn’t know how, but somehow he’d survived.  Basilea would have to puzzle her way through that, but there was nothing she could do about that right now. If anything, she was practical, and she needed to leave as few tracks as she could, not that werewolf kills were ever easy to clean up.

She moved away from the dead body and she began to scrub her fur with fresh snow, trying to get some of the blood of her fur. Her wounds seemed to be superficial, which meant they’d heal quickly, but she needed to still get her paws clean.

No, her hands. They were her hands, even if they now had fur, claws, and paw pad on each them. She could still use them like hands, although the claws made it difficult. She knew she could file them down a little, and they would be more manageable, but their sharpness kept her alive.

When she’d got them reasonable clean and rubbed snow over her body, she stood up and walked back to the body to consider what to do. This storm was a steady kind of snowstorm, not a blizzard that kept people inside, so it is possible someone might come up the nearby road. Thankfully, she’d had the wisdom to dash off the road at the first sign of trouble, but she wouldn’t be surprised if there was a row of rocks for a campfire somewhere under the snow.

The clearing on the hillside was also visible from the city, but far enough away that someone should be able to see her. Night wasn’t too far away, but even though snow was starting to collect on the body, it would be found. Unless wild animals found it, the only way to get rid of it was to eat it, and that made the woman inside sick. The wolf inside also was less then enthused about that. The man was not pack, but it still felt wrong. They were both better than Borislav, and humans were his prey of choice.

There was also the issue of the gear the man had. He had a pack, just like her and she carefully inspected it while she is debated what to do. Sadly, there was little of value to her in there. The clothes would be useful, but she’d rather not take them. His sword, which she pulled out of the snow where he dropped it, looked well oiled. It would fetch a few coins, but it was stamped with the sigil of Borislav on it. Selling it would come at a risk.

Outside of coin purse, which proved to be rather modest, there wasn’t anything worth taking. This didn’t bother the wolf that much, but it annoyed the woman. They weren’t even giving her anything for her trouble if she managed to live through the attack.

A victorious howl seemed in order, but there could be others, or maybe it would keep the villagers away. No one wanted to face a hungry wolf in the snow, and certainly only the foolish or very brave wanted to face a werewolf without some form of protection. Magic usually was the best form or protection, but the man had gotten unlucky; she’d heard him before he’d been able to strike her.

She looked down at her paws again, the ones that were normally hands, and she looked back at the man. Maybe she could solve her problems with magic, even though it was difficult for her to do it now.

She walked a little bit away from the fallen man and turned to face the body. She made a motion with her handpaws quickly, as if holding a ball and called out to the powers beyond this world, pulling at threads she had let lie for years. The curse had taken so much from her, but she could take this back now. She could speak in this form, unlike when she’d first changed.

The word of power was rasped out, and then she threw out her handpaws. She pulled hard against threads of magic and the ball of fire flew out and struck the course.

Immediately the inner wolf was driven back, but she pushed against the instinctual fear. Fire meant danger, fire meant death, but this wasn’t a random fire. This was her fire, and she had summoned it. As the wolf tried to mentally run away, the woman inside grabbed it by the tail and made her look at the magical fire.

Even though it was magical, Basilea could feel the heat. This was raw untapped power, not the refined magic if one seasoned and well trained. This was her magic, something she was training to master, before the curse had come and she’d found it harder to call out to pull the threads to her. This was who she was before Borislav had turned her to his ends. The spell was unfocused, and her tutors would have called it sloppy, but she managed to cast it in her half form.

She stood up tall then, tail wagging with excitement, keeping her eyes focused on the fire, and the unintentional pyre she’s made. She let her long tongue roll of her fanged mouth, ears focused, and she felt finally at ease. Then she let the wolf go and took her human form.

It was cold, and her feet were icy. She’d forgotten to salvage the man’s shoes, and she cursed herself for that. Even though they would be too big for her, she could have wrapped cloth around them.

Well, she could wrap her feet, and maybe could buy some boots in the city. It would have to do.

Quickly she pulled her remaining clothes out of her pack and wrapped her feel with her only other clean tunic while the fire still burned. Before she set off she looked at the dying down fire and then turned away from it. Her nose told her exactly what it was, but maybe, if she was lucky, the snow would cover her tracks before anyone who saw the results of her spell came.

Maybe.

Staying to worry just mean that less snow would fall before the snowstorm ended, so she headed toward the distant city. If someone else came looking for her, she would have to transform again, she was going to be stuck in wolf forms then until she stole some clothes. She really didn’t want that, but the wolf, liked that. It preferred that actually.

She always been cautious not to make the wolf too happy, less it take full control of her, but as she trudged through the snow, she felt a sense of pride about what she’d done. Finally, she’d been able to balance her two sides and cast magic in her half form. She’d not thought about doing that when she’d started to force words through a muzzle, but the further she got from Borislav, the more herself Basilea and the wolf feltf like themselves..