Smolder

Chapter 14

Russell just made a new discovery— Arron tends to disobey the laws of physics whenever he's shocked.

When they came to their group Russell's eyes first moved to Lupa too. He didn't need to be a admirer of art to decide that Lupa was a magnificent wolf.

Most of the camp fires had died down to smoldering embers as almost the entire camp was sleeping. The mellow light from the moon was the only light available. In that light, Lupa's whitish grey fur looked snow white. Her eyes glowed a flickering icy blue. The ears were relaxed back, her tail down. Vivi stood by her neck, slowly running her hand through the fur. Orpheus stood crouched near the head, examining something in her jaw. There was also a figure crouched down near her feet, possibly an elf.

Russell would've admired her for a while longer, but Arron's reaction was even more interesting to look at.

He let out sub-human shriek and almost toppled over backwards.

Almost.

Instead of actually falling to the ground, he stopped himself at an impossible angle. He stayed like that for an entire second, before defying gravity and jumping back up and fumbling to bring out his sword.

"Who.. what..why is there a wolf there?" He stammered.

Everyone turned their heads. Lupa's blue eyes lit up as she looked at them. Russell got a look at Lupa's mouth. Her teeth were blunt, tips covered with glowing green slime. The figure crouched near Lupa's feet looked up and Russell saw who it was. It was Len.

"Stand down Arron," Elli said in an assuring tone," this is Lupa."

"That is Lupa!?" Arron looked even more baffled.

"She! Not that!" Vivi snarled, still affectionately running her hand through that fur.

"What happened to her teeth?" Russell  mustered the courage to ask.

Len rose up from the ground, "her previous owner sawed them off. Probably so that she can't bite him in her wolf form," then Len looked at the paw and said " a common practice in enslaving werewolves and vampires."

"Is-is she gonna be okay?" Russell couldn't even imagine how that felt. It was too painful to even imagine.

"Well, I put some iaekansher on her teeth. Elf magic usually takes a few hours to work only on flesh, but since this is to the bones, it can take a couple days," Len said as he scratched his head. Then he pointed down at her toe and said, "but you gotta remove that when she's back to human size."

The toe looked absolutely normal to Russell.

"Remove what?" Russell asked.

"There's two root iron ring around both her index finger. When she turns they go inside her flesh and wraps around her bone. Luckily, it's not silver. If it was..." Len didn't finish that.

"But, why?" Russell was even more baffled, "Why'd he give her a ring?"

"To stop her from using her ice," Len scratched his head, "I think."

Oh, Russell thought. Root iron shrinks radically when cooled. And if it's as tight as the elf says, cooled down, it can snap her finger off.

"I think I can take care of that." Russell had almost forgotten that Gloir was with them.

"And who are you?" Orpheus raised an eyebrow as he looked at Gloir.

Before Gloir could reply, Vivi squealed, "Gloir!"

Gloir looked at Vivi and smiled through his ragged beard, "Hey Shorty!"

"Hey, you troll!"

"He's my boss," Russell explained, "he's a really good blacksmith."