Pente (BxB werewolf story)

04 - Monkshood

Edgar felt the adrenaline course through his veins as a thin layer of sweat moistened the nape of his neck. Keeping his breath steady, he pushed harder and faster to match the pace set by Paul and Elliot as the three of them leapt over the Throckmorton property border. He felt his body transform as he sailed through the air for a brief second, his skull elongating, his limbs contracting and his whole body twisting. He felt fine hairs of fur sprout from his fair skin, and he felt his vision and hearing shift, becoming sharper and clearer. His mind changed along with his body, pushing the humanity in him to a side and letting the primal take over.

The clothes ripped off their bodies as they finished the transformation, replaced by various shades of thick fur.

Paul took the head of the trio as the black furred wolf, larger than his counterparts, the fastest and the strongest. His self-assured stride marked him as the leader while the others followed. Edgar too was black furred, but while his brother was more of a midnight black, he had a raven shade. He was sinewy and lithe, with a graceful stride of a cheetah rather a wolf. His eyes had a golden sheen upon them, and it hinted at his special ability of ocular pyrokinesis; the ability to set things on fire with a mere look, as well as manipulate it.

Elliot, their cousin, flanked Edgar on his left. He was a common grey colored wolf, with silver eyes. Out of all the Throckmorton wolves, he was the only one capable of changing the eye color upon transformation, and he never failed to boast about it in human form. His eyes allowed him to see beyond what others saw, a post cognitive ability that allowed him to see trails and paths, ghosts of events that occurred in the past. But his ability was not yet honed properly, and he still had much to learn on how to control it.

Edgar's wolf mind didn't have the ability to hold his emotions in like his human mind did, and memories from the funeral overtook his senses. He relived moments of the funeral, the decorated boat carrying the corpses of his late family down the river, flames that he created rising high in the twilight. Paul's oath to bring justice to the family and destroy whoever committed the heinous massacre echoed in his ears. He remembered the silent crying of Lady Throckmorton and the anger of Lord Throckmorton along with the way Elliana held him by his arm and had herself pressed closer to him, sharing the pain of her cousin; her lover.

Edgar shook his head, pushing all the memories back so he could focus on the present.

There was no time to mourn now, they had work to do.

As the trio rushed through the Moorish fields, the sky started to get darker. The sunlight vanished, and the blue of the sky became completely covered by grey that got darker and darker by the second. The wind rushed pass them ominously, heavy with an ionization that was unique to their destination.

And in no time, the magical town of Monkshood appeared in front of them.

Monkshood was the home of the magic users, a pocket in space and time that only supernatural folks could access. No human ever had the fortune, or misfortune given the circumstance, of gazing at its dark nature, the jet black clouds that swirled above the town in the shape of a hurricane in the greyish sky called the eye of the devil, defending the town from anything that wished to bring it harm, or the malformed trees that looked downright monstrous, like ancient creatures frozen in bark and leaves.

The town was called the sunless realm, as it was forever embedded in the night without stars. The ground was packed by peculiarly shaped buildings that were vastly different from the architecture the rest of the country preferred, built from materials that were unique to Monkshood alone. Some buildings looked like malformed spheres, while some looked like tree trunks. In the middle of the town was a tower that rose high enough to pierce the devil's eye in the center. That was where the leaders of the magicians resided.