Elöthian is the eldest of the Elvenhan and father to the rest of the Pantheon save his wife. He claims to have been a mortal at one point, a powerful wizard beyond the scope of what we can do now that was king over his people and his people venerated him. Over time and generations this turned to worship, and he ascended to divinity. While the dwarven gods accept his story, the Althaen Pantheon almost unanimously declare it heresy of the highest order. This has led to many executions of the elven faithful and more than a few crusades; most performed by orders of the Holy One.

Adrian

The bleeding slows as the clots form under the spell but Bryan, nor Shadow Bryan, does not return in the few minutes it takes me to make sure she is not going to get herself killed tonight. At least she is either too unstable for her meager skills with mana to work or she burned all of her pool on that add magic missile earlier and a pair of handcuffs is enough to hold her as a regular human. Well that and a gag to save my ears and hopefully not draw anything more towards the area.

The shade-lich ritual probably drove most everything away but that isn’t a guarantee. Now what to do with my friend’s quickly going insane girlfriend? Wait for him to show back up or return to the others? I probably should stay but babysitting Abagail shouldn’t be my problem and K has been smelling particularly appealing all day. . .

So I do the only thing I can think of to finish this up as soon as possible, I pick Abagail up and walk towards Bryan, or at least the direction I can feel him in. I. After all, I am still maintaining a hold on his life force at the moment.

It takes only a few minutes before I find him under a tree, more bestial than before eating a small family of rabbits. I don’t care about the scattered blood as I place Abagail on the damp earth, ignoring her muffled protests and taking note of how he still maintains the spark of intelligence in his eyes.

“You have to look after her. I expect you to make your own way back and not intrude on my tent when you do. Do you understand?”

“Yes” he somehow manages to say without stopping his feast and I happily turn to leave for some fun time with K and Ria if I can get K to agree to it again.

If only I could remember how I got her to back in Daerth. . .

???

I grin when the Ravnos leaves me to finish my meal and watch over Primary's bitch. Savoring to warmth of the blood running down my neck with each bite I take, the crunch of the weak bones as they yield their marrow to me, and the taste of flesh as I slowly eat the rest of the small colony of rabbits I caught with my shadows.

Oh how easy it was to bind them and pull them to me. Too bad they died as they passed through the shadows to reach me, but the distance was short enough nothing took part in my prizes. With each I feast upon, I can feel how Primary will take longer to take back over. With each I grow stronger, but it also adds strength to Primary, so I can never truly become Primary.

Once my feast is finished for the moment I stretch ignoring how I’ve shifted further into my natural state of a wolf and look over at Primary's bitch to be. She reeks of fear and has soiled herself as she was watching me eat. I don’t get what Primary sees in her. Intelligent but stupid, she is smart enough to understand what everyone has been trying to teach her over the last week but refuses to acknowledge it.

I look over her body and can feel Primary’s physical attraction to her but surely that can’t be it. There are prettier girls in his memories, but they weren’t as willing as she seems to be before actually being mates.

I close my eyes for a moment to feel if there is anything in the nearby shadows, but it seems that I’ve already taken what is in range of that ability. Great so now I’m alone with a girl that while pretty I don’t want. I can only hope that the shadow wolf that forms from her will be more interesting.

Bored and with maybe two or three hours before Primary takes back over I run my eyes over his bitch again, would it be worth it?

No, but I can still have some fun. . . With a claw I cut the rope that binds her and growl, “run little girl and hope Primary takes over before I catch you. I’ll give you a head start.”

I grin as she finally decides to do something other than scream and shout. She runs even if she is crying and I give chase. Never quite catching her even if I do give her scrapes and minor cuts. . .

Her muffled screams are also rather fun when I jump out of a shadow just barely out of reach . . .

Bryan

When the shadowy tendrils finally stop attacking me, the wolf is long gone and they have covered the entirety of wherever it is that I am. I don’t however have much time to look around before this strange world spins and falls apart revealing the woods that I remember traveling through earlier today and the slowly brightening sky of dawn.

I sit up and feel queasy but strangely strong and powerful, then I notice Abagail laying in the dirt covered in small cuts and grime. Flashes of running through the night, howling and laughing, the scent of blood both her’s and something else’s flash through my mind.

What happened during that ritual while I was wherever my mind went? I rush over to her and my guilt skyrockets as she flinches from my touch as I pull on the divine sphere of Healing. Her wounds were only superficial, but she cowers from me.

“Are you okay? What happened?” I whisper, and she shivers.

What did I do? Could she have been right and turning to the powers being offered me be wrong?

“Please no, don’t do. . .” Abagail mutters by doesn’t otherwise respond to my touch and the healing.

Abagail doesn’t end up waking up before the others stop by and Analais says we need to start moving. So, I spent most of the day carrying her around as we walk.

Adrian

When K and me leave our tent in the morning to find that Bryan had not returned during the night I am not overly worried but when we go to him after packing up camp, well Abagail’s appearance of being treated as a play thing is concerning. I had not thought that Bryan was capable of doing such a thing.

The frowns on everyone’s faces however does not come from some sort of judgement on the state Bryan apparently left her in, at least the frowns of Pack Bloodclaw doesn’t. Kylana actively tries to leave us off worse went martial practice comes up but the frown on the elves might be a condemning one. Ria, like always, ignores it completely as she is perfectly happy just following me around.

Bryan quickly ends up carrying Abagail for the day, but I am far more distracted by the conversation that Kylana starts with me and am not paying attention to Bryan or really anyone else.

“Adrian, there is something about the Pack that you need to know” the conversations starts.

I turn to Kylana and she continues, “unlike most werewolf packs, we know our progenitor. The first werewolf that is the source of the lycanthropy that we share. His Gift was given to him by another, one who created it.”

“Why are you bringing this up now?” I ask, and it is K who answers saying “the Giver of the Gift to the first werewolf of our line visited last night while you were off helping Bryan.”

“Why didn’t you mention that last night?” I ask, this sounds important.

“Well, I . . .” K begins before her mother takes the opportunity to tease her daughter, “oh, were you too distracted?”

K stammers some before Alana turns the table on Kylana saying, “no more than you were last night.”

“Alana, not now. This is supposed to be serious” Kylana mutters towards her friend.

“You’re the one that got on this subject, and I know you’ve been just loving every single. . .”

“Alana, I’d rather not know what you, Analais and my mate’s mother do in your den” I interrupt.

“Can I at least tease her some more first? She’s been trying to hog our mate all to herself.”

“Later” K answers and Alana seems to accept that though I have no idea why.

“You shouldn’t get to at all” Kylana says while frowning but both of the other females don’t say anything in return.

“Kylana, so who is this Giver of the Gift and why did he visit?” I ask.

“Damû Rámeri, more commonly known by the title the Blood Elf.”

Damû Rámeri? The blood mage that wrote the fucked-up books on lichdom I have? Shit, this could be bad.

“What did he want?”

“Information, apparently whatever it is that you used to kill those Althaen drew his eye. Well, not it in an of itself but rather that they died, and he couldn’t determine the source. He . . .”

“Is he hostile?”

“No, praise the moon it is not so. None of us are demons nor do we venerate the Holy One, so long as that is true we are not his enemy. He wanted to know about you and the soon to be yearling Bryan.”

“Yearling?” I ask, not sure what the word is for.

“A title we call the recently turned, those who have only been in the pack for less than a year” K informs me with a whisper and I nod.

“We told him what he wanted to know though not in as much detail as he would have liked. He knows that you are a dragon of some sort but was confused on the type that you call yourself, it is not one that he recognized. We also told him you are a Ravnos, though it only seemed to confuse him, he muttered something about all Ravnos were humans.”

That makes sense, Gramp. . . Geldath told me the same when I asked him about magical creatures back home. He never did explain why there were very few of them still around. He hinted it was Rome who did it, pointing out that they killed strange and dangerous creatures. Damû knows that I am a Ravnos, that could be very bad if he gets the idea of trying to steal my power, though I don’t know if he even can steal it.

After pausing for a moment to let me think, Kylana continues, “he did promise not to be hostile towards you and he has always kept his word with the Pack. He left muttering to himself, but I don’t think that he truly left.”

“He’s probably observing, gathering information and deciding if you can be of use in his vengeance” Analais adds in.

“Vengeance?”

“There are two things in existence that he hates, that he has focused his entire immortality on destroying or gathering the resources and power to destroy.”

“And those are?” I ask as they were never mentioned in any of the books that he wrote.

“The Abyss, and the god known as the Holy One.”

I smile, while I am unsure if the god himself is at fault for the actions of his church I can get behind destroying it. Wanting to destroy the Abyss though, well they do have an important role in the multiverse. At least if Geldath’s teachings and the books I’ve gotten ahold of can be trusted on the subject. Without the conflicts that they are involved in the balance of the planes will shift to stagnation.

“He wants to see if I could be an asset worth investing in to use as a weapon then?”

Analais nods. I won’t just be a weapon that he can use as he wills though I don’t see a problem with helping him. both the Church of the Holy One and the Demonic Hoards are hostile to me. It only makes sense for us to aid one another against mutual enemies. That doesn’t guarantee that we’ll be allies though, I’ll have to be careful. . .