Other than the Stone Father, the dwarves venerate three other tiers of what they call Patron Spirits or Paragon Ancestors. The divisions are made by how widespread their veneration is, nation, clan or house. These entities are not considered divine in nature, but they are in power, often acting as stand ins for the Stone Father in directing and patroning clergy if they are of nation or clan level. A dwarf, legally or racially, can be elevated to these positions by two methods, post mortem by a council of elders and then ratified by the entities of that level or by declaration of the Stone Father directly. If still alive, as only those the Stone Father declares, are known as Paragons. They may also be removed from their status should a council of all members of the next tier declare it so, which has happened twice. As all records of them other than that someone was removed are destroyed upon their removal, who they were and why are no longer in mortal memory.

Bryan

Once a fair distance away from where we were set to camp for the night, Adrian and me begin to set up the circle and associated paraphernalia for the ritual that I had apparently made in the timeline that he came from. While I do believe him, I can’t help but be ashamed of how much more competent that me must have been, I barely understand this enough to cast it with assistance of additional foci let alone make the adjustments that have been done to the original ritual.

I look at the nearly full moon for a moment, much as with the lycanthropy there is no going back once it is done. “Adrian, please begin.”

He nods and says, “this will probably hurt” before a number of somethings seem to stab into me. I scream out in pain for a moment before it dims to something similar to a large but uncomfortable sliver over several places on my body. I can see blood slowly running down my arm and staining my clothes where they are but I try my best to ignore them.

I speak the words that I must sending shivers through my soul yet I also cannot remember them, as if I never knew them in the first place. The moonlight slowly dims as I pace around the circle and let loose my blood on the focal points of the ritual. Those that are to have the sacrifices to powers the mixture of blood and shadow necromancy.

With each of those seven nodes the shivers of what must be my life draining away grows yet somehow whatever it is that Adrian is maintaining prevents me from actually dying from it as waves of life giving warmth flood me with each beat of my heart. As soon as each is covered in my blood I sit in the center of the circle, or at least I try to before collapsing to the ground.

A cold that has nothing to do with temperature washes over me as the darkness of the night seems to stretch towards me slowly while I can do nothing but struggle to breathe. I am forced to watch as the darkness somehow begins to become something physical. . .

I scream and bolt upright, but nothing around is as it should be. I am not in the woods nor anywhere else I can remember. Adrian is not nearby and all I can remember is starting to panic before a cold darkness swallowed me up. I look around to see only some sort of silver-grey mist around me as I am sitting on some white nothingness. Did I die?

All I can hear is some chuckling in the distance after that very question rings through the mist. It honestly scares me a bit but I begin to walk and then run looking around for something, anything other than this strange silvery mist.

I don’t know how long it takes but seconds add up to minutes than soon become hours or maybe even days in my mind before I find anything but the damn silver mists and the white floor.

I blink up at the billowing silver clouds as my head hurts slightly. Did I hit something? Then I notice something different, that tendrils of black. As I sit up, the mists rush away from me and I can see the dark tendrils growing and spreading outwards and upwards.

Among the tendrils is a wolf just larger than I am, the darkness wrapping around it as it fights against and breaks free of the tendrils. I look around and wonder for a moment just what it is that I am seeing and why, but all such thoughts come to a quick and immediate stop as I feel a coldness around my ankle. With a glance I see one of the tendrils latch onto me and it begins to grow faster than the others in this strange place.

I pull my left foot up and the tendril snaps, but my foot just doesn’t feel the same as before. It feels ever so much lighter but also a slight cold tingle. I shiver as the wolf breaks several of the tendrils holding it at once. As soon as it does, the darkness around me attacks, and I find myself unable to dodge as several wrap around me at once. The chill spreading.

What is going on? Why is this happening? Adrian did not say anything about having to fight something during the ritual. Or did he not know? And what is that wolf? What am I even supposed to do?

I struggle to break free of the tendrils once more but each time I do, more strike at the wolf and each time it breaks free they come after me. Each time they take a tad more strength to break and the feeling they leave behind gets stronger. Ever so slowly however I slowly become numb to their grasp, as if their power was slowly starting to have no sway over me aside from their increasing thickness.

Neither the wolf or me ever seem to tire though I slowly start to notice a change in its fur, where a tendril of darkness and shadow held too long and left a stain. The wolf’s fur slowly turning more black than the silver grey it originally held and I can only guess that a similar change is coming over me. . .

Adrian

As Bryan lies in the center of the ritual’s circle, I can see the shadows cast by the moonlight stretch towards him. His skin slowly becoming paler and hair darker much as it had before. But this time his heart stays beating strong and his spirit stays bound to his physical body. When his muscles begin to twitch and spasm on their own I check to make sure that my twist on the fabric of reality is still holding and doing what I wanted it to.

I smile as I see that it is. He is in no danger of death, but this does seem somewhat different than it was before. An effect of the lycanthropy still in his blood? Should I check on that? No, I wouldn’t want to accidently let all his life slip away. . .

Minutes pass and just as I am about to get out a book due to my boredom he stands, and when he does the shadows of the night seem to stretch and cover the clearing to where I can no longer see the moon overhead. He should not have this level of control yet. Something has gone wrong.

“Bryan?” I ask but he does not answer, he does not even respond. Instead he seems content to just stand there in the darkness.

I feel the drain on Bryan’s lifeforce pick up and compensate for it. As I do he smiles and says something in a language that I know he does not speak. He pauses for a moment before slowly walking to a tree struggling slightly to do so. As soon as he touches the tree however it begins to wither slowly but at a visible pace.

“Bryan!” I hear a scream from a very familiar female voice and let out a groan.

The others were supposed to keep her from interrupting this. Now I am never going to hear the end of this if she does survive running blindly into an arcane ritual she does not understand. Bryan or rather whatever is in currently in control however has no such worries.

“Abagail, female lusts after primary” he mumbles low enough that she doesn’t notice it but I do. I frown, wondering if this is a bad thing or if it is just going to be another voice in his head like his wolf will end up being.

“Bryan, please tell me that you haven’t. . .” Abagail begins before she is stopped by whoever is in control of Bryan’s body pinning her to a tree with one hand over her mouth.

“Sorry, primary isn’t home right now. Unless you want to break a rather specific set of your morals or become part of the fuel for my creation I’d suggest staying away” Bryan says and this time Abagail does stop and turn to yell at me.

I do not even bother listening, something about evil dark magic and such crap as selling my soul. You can only sell a soul to a devil and I know no such thing is involved. There was a warning about losing yourself to the shadows but I don’t think that is the case here.

“So you’re capable of logical thought?” I ask looking at Bryan rather than someone I am seriously considering trying to figure out a selective silence spell.

“Yes friend of Primary and my benefactor. Tell me, is bloodshed or lust more fun?” he asks with a dark smirk.

“You’re really asking that? Are you trying to mess with Abagail?” I ask as we both ignore the girl.

He shrugs, “Primary will eventually reassert control and breaking his things will make him try to keep me from playing later. Also attacking you would be stupid, I could probably get away but then I would have to actually go on a rampage to get what you making Primary able to provide.”

So he is an embodiment of darkness and shadow. Interesting, he already seems to know and accept Bryan as the dominant entity. But what should I do now? Could he also be trying to trick me? That is part of the theme of shadows. . .

He shouldn’t have been formed though. . . Shadow Lichdom has nothing that could cause this, unless. . .

“Shouldn’t you have shown up tomorrow?”

“Yes, but that’s probably changed. I don’t feel particularly strong in tonight’s moonlight as I should, just oh so hungry.”

“How long until you swap back?”

“Dunno, Primary is fighting something in our head. He’ll have to resolve that, then wait until the power from the ritual bleeds off and I go to sleep.”

He pauses for a moment and seems to shiver for a second, his body changing somewhat as he does so. I recognize some similarities to the werewolves of pack Bloodclaw I’ve seen transform. He gets a bit taller but begins to slouch as bones shift and hair grows, yet unlike with them the process does not go all the way.

This was however the last thing that happened before Abagail’s grasp of the situation hit critical mass, screaming like mad she throws out something that seemed like a Magic Missile barrage but they were either overcharged and she was lucky or they were altered somehow on accident as the burst of force when their classing broke against shadow? werewolf? Bryan was far stronger than they should have been.

Several holes are blown in his side revealing tendrils of shadow that grow out of the bleeding flesh as they hold the wound closed. Shadow Bryan looks at his side as the flesh regrows in less than three seconds before he growls. He charges her while becoming more bestial, he grabs her by the neck and lifts her off the ground.

Tendrils of shadow spread from his hand, holding her still somehow. He stares at her, her eyes quickly filling with fear and then terror.

Should I stop this? Then again maybe she’ll finally accept that the world isn’t a black and white coin but a spectrum of grey. . .

“Silly, stupid girl” he growls before ripping the cloth covering her shoulder before biting down on it.

Then just as soon as he does, he vanishes; collapsing into the myriad of shadows cast by the moonlight and warped by the magic of the still ongoing ritual. The draw I feel on Bryan’s life begins to fade as I walk over to Abagail, not worried about her dying from the bite but curious to if Shadow Bryan infected her with lycanthropy and of it’ll feel different from the strain that Kythia has.

The bite isn’t deep but it is enough that without the medical attention she in her current state of panic is unable to perform would eventually bleed enough to pass out. She tries to swat my hands away, but her strength is far to weak to actually do anything to me but be an annoyance, though the movement does accelerate the bleeding and prevent the needed clotting from happening.

Stupid girl, and I can’t just wave my awesome Ravnos Magic and be done with it as it’s still tied up keeping Bryan from dying. I shake my head before calling upon one of the blood magic spells that Kylana taught me, Clot. A generally useless spell for a werewolf with regeneration, aside from on the new moon, but here it is useful to force the blood spilling from her wound to clot and form a scab.

Could I use this to cause a stroke? No, Kylana mentioned something about a body's natural flow of mana and life force resists it internally, I could probably over power that with enough mana. . .