The Crying God is considered one of the most demanding gods in the dogma that his followers are to uphold, having many commandments and morals. Unlike many of the other gods that are so demanding of their followers, he is still well received in almost every local due to his open offering of succor for those in need. Almost every miracle cast through his servants has been to either heal or protect someone other than the caster.

One of the most puzzling parts of the magical he grants is that his clergy are incapable of cast a spell that benefits themselves directly and have to rely on each other for their powerful defensive and healing magics. That and the many vows of self-sacrifice that have turned many of his clergy into powerhouses of divine magic.

He does however call a much larger percentage of his followers to be part of his clergy than other gods do, trying to have multiple priests and acolytes in every local that he has any followers.

Adrian

Aside from the visibly decomposing corpse; there are three cages against the far wall, a table that judging by the straps and bloodstains is either a sacrificial altar or for whatever experiments he ran, another smaller table covered with various knives, and a bookshelf with half a dozen books and several scrolls on it. One of the three cages has a dead body not much different from those that are shackled to the wall. Another has the two elven twins I personally came her to rescue and the last has a young teenage girl in it who is covered in bloodstains and is just staring out into space vacantly at the moment. She must have been here awhile. . .

Something about her seems to draw my eye, calling to me. My mouth begins to water as I can’t stop staring, confused as to why I feel a gnawing hunger.

Only a moment or two later does that train of thought end as I hear the voice of one of the elven twins say, “werewolf man who speaks elven, please free us.” I shake my head and walk over to the cage that hold the twins, unsure just how I should treat them.

They’re going to be different than I remember. They’ve already shown themselves to be in the little interaction that I did get before they ran off yesterday. That doesn’t stop me from thinking about my Lysan and Talia when I see them though.

The locks on the cage are easily opened by taking some of the internal components out through Translocation Grasp and not even a minute later I am opening the door to their cage.

“When you ask for help, it’s a good idea to stay with the people that were going to help you” I can’t help but say, mostly to upset Talia.

I am rewarded with a bashful Lysan looking at the ground as Talia glares at me and puts a little more of herself between Lysan and me. I smile as at least that part of them is still the same. In fact Lysan seems shyer than before and I’m not sure if Talia still has that trust problem or if it is pride that caused her to act as she did yesterday. Should I mess with them or hurry up and get what is needed from here so the pack can move on?

“Also while I am part of pack Bloodclaw, I’m not a werewolf and my name is Adrian” I say as I turn to the scarcely filled bookshelf and skim through the titles on the books. None particularly catch my eye as I already have them in Void Cache and they are entry level transmutation. Not something I’ve read through since getting the prerequisite knowledge on mana but nothing that would skip to the top of my reading list.

That is except for one book, Ergänzende Umwandlung und Genetik, I flip through a few pages in the middle to see rituals taken apart and notes about replacing some sections. That explains what the priest had done to himself, at least partially. Though why such advanced work is in German is another question.

I add the books to my Void Cache, before doing the same to the scrolls as I skim through a few of them. They seem to be letters, though are in some sort of cypher. I doubt I’ll ever get anything out of them but as I’ve a seemingly endless extradimensional space to store things in they follow the books into Void Cache.

I make another quick visual sweep of the room but find nothing of particular value or quality, then walk up to the caged girl. I examine her, trying to ignore the strange calling feeling I feel from her. My mouth waters and I feel the need to devour her in a very different way than I do Kythia or more recently Ria. I want to break the metal box that holds her and rip her apart, to slurp up the blood that would spill as I feast on her flesh and taste the marrow in her bones.

I hold myself still for a moment, trying to keep myself from doing just that as I realize why I must be feeling this desire. The girl is draconic, more so than a wyvern or ice drake. For several seconds the desire to feast and my morals against killing and eating people watching in my mind. How I shouldn’t just kill and eat people but that is basically what I had gone to do when I went to hunt that white dragon.

Dragons are fully sentient beings just like humans so why not each this girl like I am all too willing to do to a dragon? I keep calling myself a dragon so haven’t I already been a cannibal? No, I shouldn’t. But it’ll taste so good and I need the strength. . .

My inner conflict ends as the girl who I am staring at asks, “is the priest dead?”

“Yes, can I . . .” I start before she cuts me off.

“What’s your element, draconian?”

“Void . . .” I answer before starting to say I’m a full dragon, but am again cut off.

“Void, devourer of kin and kind” the girl says in fear as she backs away from me in her cage and my stomach gargles at the end of her sentence.

I told my eyes and ask, “are you going to introduce yourself or just keep cowering in fear?”

“You’re not going to eat me?”

“Haven’t decided.”

“But. . .”

“If you want to live, introduce yourself and give me a good enough reason that it’ll suppress my instincts” I cut her off.

“Dannaerithalis and I’m one of the royalty in Drake’s Home. A powerful . . .” she stammers.

“Stop, your name is too long and you’re only making yourself sound more appetizing. You need to tell me a practical reason to keep you around.”

“You can get more over time than all at once” she stammers out in fear as I glare, stomach rumbling.

That comment gives pause to my screaming instincts. I can almost feel my inner dragon grumbling in annoyed acceptance of that reasoning as a possible one to keep her around. I still want to just rip her apart and feast but this has merit; a lesser continual gratification. . .

“Alright, I won’t be eating you. I’ll convince the others that you’re coming with us.”

“You’re not with the clergy of the Holy One?”

“Why would you think I was?”

I never get the answer to that question as K interrupts asking, “what language are you talking in” as she walks up behind me.

“Draconic. Do you think we can talk your mother and Analais into allowing another to travel with us?” I respond.

“Maybe, why?”

“She’s a draconian, probably angry with the church of the Holy One and could help with a dietary issue of mine.”

K raises an eyebrow, wanting to know more so I continue, “I may have an addiction to eating dragon.”

“Is that where that white dragon went?”

“Yep, really tasty and good for me” I say with a smile.

“Is that how you grew up so fast?”

“It was more of recovering what was lost but yes. My racial class advances by eating other dragons.”

K leans in an sniffs me for a second, checking something before whispering “you’re not saying that to cover up infernal rituals?”

“No, dealing with devils is generally a bad idea. Besides you or Kylana would notice rather quickly if I was going fiendish.”

She nods at that but still seems troubled. I pull her into a hug and lick the back of her ear sending a shiver down her spine before whispering “and you keep me far too distracted to have the time to walk down that path.”

“Having fun in a dungeon already?” I hear Kylana playfully call as she walks down the stone steps into the room. Kythia jumping out of my arms flustered while I just grin and say “not now that you’ve ruined it.”

“Would it hurt you to get all embarrassed like my daughter at least once?” Kylana asks.

“Not if I want to keep the powerful stronger than her male image she likes so much.”

Kylana nods at that before a cough from the side reminds me that the I was not alone with K. The draconian girl whose name is far too long for me to regularly use is still in her cage locked up.

I turn back towards the stairs where Analais is now descending and ask, “any problems with adding an upset draconian ally to our likely vengeance against the Church of the Holy One?”

“I thought you didn’t want to rush of into battle?” Analais answers with a question.

“I don’t want to rush off to my death. There are plenty of ways to attack them that don’t include fighting on the front line.”

Analais nods and smiles at that before asking, “did you happen to think of a plan?”

“No, I’ve been rather busy and have only had access to most of my memories for a little over a day. However, ideas I do have.

All of the Althaen, not just the Church of the Holy One, build upon the foundation of two things: a ridged cast system similar to feudalism and the importing of otherworlders. Both serving to protect and fuel the continuation of their system. Disrupting either would cause serious issues.

There is also how I can very easily declare myself a noble and start harming individual houses rather than having to fight all of the houses in a nation at once.”

“Collapsing the system in place would likely allow the demon to finally break the Darkwall Mountains” Kylana says in comment to the first idea and she has a point. Doing so would cripple the army of this kingdom and as it is on the border it could easily become a much larger front line than the passes through the mountains.

“And here I was thinking about just letting Ragnan afflict a few dozen with wild wolves in Daerth was all we would be able to do” Analais says with a smile.

The female werewolves in the room frown at the mention of creating wild werewolves but neither of them say anything.

“Still, may I add another to the group of people that I have following us?” I ask Analais and Kylana.

Both of them nod either in true acceptance of my proposal or that like the previous additions, I may do it anyways. Having received the 'needed' permission, I turn back to the teenage girl in the cage and with a twirl of my hands remove the padlock that had held the cage shut.

Tossing the still locked lock to the side I say, “assuming you can stand, let’s go and get you cleaned up. We’re still going to have to do some traveling today and we should get started unless you know of something I missed when I was going through the stuff in this room.”

“The shelf has a false back, he stored samples and notes behind it” the girl says as she struggles to get out of the cage.

I manifest my claws as I tear the back of the shelves off after taking the few steps I needed to get to that part of the basement. Hidden behind the wood are a large number or vials, each filled with a red liquid though a few are only half full. I can feel some of them calling to me. Asking me to drink them but now is not the time for that.

Regardless of just how much I want to find out which of these vials contain blood of a draconic creature and debate drinking them in sips as fine wine or chugging them in my ravenous hunger and thirst, I stuff them all into Void Cache; adding another task to the list of things that I need to try to get done before falling to the temptation of K's, and now Ria's, embrace.