Ravenloft 1. Chapter 1

Author's Note: Here is where I will be posting all the side stories that show off various aspects of the backstories of our protagonists, to start with a defining moment of the life of James "Firecat."

Monster Party Side Story: à mal rat, bon chat

Eleven year old James Patte came running when he heard the door to his home opening with his usual energy, not even the traditional gust of cold (at least as he thought of such things) Richemulotian winter deterred him.

What was unusual was who came through, it was not his mother or father, nor was it one of their neighbors, all of whose faces he was familiar with (granted James had never been the best at fixing face to name). Despite all of that, he had no trouble at all recognizing who had just entered his home...

There was nothing truly elaborate about the way she dressed, though her outfit seemed to be made of the finest material imaginable. The only concession to her wealth and power as other nations recognized such things was an emerald stone worn about her neck which wonderfully matched the color of her eyes.

James drank in the sight of this woman his jaw going slack as he realized that yes his eyes were not playing tricks on him, Jacqueline Renier, La Grande Dame herself was standing right in front of him.

He broke into the best bow he could, but his exuberance overwhelmed both his good sense and excellent sense of balance. Before he knew it, James had bowed so deeply that he fell face first to the floor.

The ruler of Richemulot laughed deeply but not cruelly at the youngster's misfortune.

"So this is the miniscule mouser I have traveled to see himself? It seems he has not grown into his paws quite yet." Jacqueline inquired raising an eyebrow slightly.

Martha and Charles Patte followed their liege into the home and shut the door behind them.

"Yes, do forgive my son his follies, we had expected a summons from one of your messengers much like you gave me when I first arrived. None of us, least of all James, considered the possibility that you would come to us in person instead!" Martha explained clearly feeling only slight less surprised than her son was.

Jacqueline placed a comforting hand on the copper haired woman's shoulder.

"Do not trouble yourself over much. It is important for me to remind myself that there is more to Richemulot than Pont-a-Museau every so often, and this matter gave me a perfect excuse for such a journey." She offered comfortingly.

As James scrambled awkwardly to his feet Charles and Martha set about gathering chairs around the most respectable table in the home, James' father holding one out for Jacqueline and gently scooting it in once she graced it with her presence.

James prepared to slink from the room before he brought any further shame upon himself, his parents, and his family in general as was certain to happen if he remained for long in Jacqueline's presence.

La Grande Dame was having none of it though.

"Why so hasty to depart my miniscule mouser? Did you not hear your mother say that you alone are the reason for my arrival?" She coaxed.

James hesitantly took a chair of his own at the opposite side of the table from Jacqueline slinking into his seat as if he might yet find a way to vanish completely if only he wanted it ferociously enough.

He could not bear to think that he had done something which would force Jacqueline Renier herself to come all the way out to the small village of Bon Crêpe!

"Now then, as I am sure you all I know, under my rule I have striven to give carte blanche to all the people of the mists who wish to emigrate to Richemulot. Let elves feel free to revel in our forests, dwarfs toil beneath our surface, halflings seek hidey holes within our cities, one and all are welcome. Are we so gauche to believe that one intelligent being is superior to another simply because of the shape of its ears, thickness of its beard or its statue? Please!

This ruling applies not just to traditional forms of demi-humanity but also, some of the more, exotic flavors. Which brings us to the subject of you, and your mother... werecats." She drew the word far longer than it needed to be and James felt a lump grow in his throat.

"An elf and a dwarf or halfling are easy enough to spot on sight. But lycanthropes are another matter entirely. Some might seek to hide their abilities or nature from those that surround them. You two wisely have not. After all, how can a ruler make just decisions if the truth his hidden from them?

My generosity is so great that it extends to you as well, however what you must understand my miniscule mouser is that if you repay my benevolence with treachery, you will reap the wrath of all of the entire Renier family and all of Richemulot." She announced most decisively.

"I wouldn't dream of it!" James pipped up, now struggling to sit up as straight as he could eager to earn Jacqueline's approval.

"Ahh the utter untempered certainties of youth, he reminds my own Jacques." She murmured her face softening for just a moment, before becoming stern if not certainly not hostile once again.

"Just as I expect the citizens of my realm of great material wealth to provide more in the way of taxes for good of the nation, I expect those with exception physical talents to contribute exceptionally to the good of Richemulot.

For a man of a strong back and sound tactical mind he will lead his fellow villagers in weapon drills, for one of mystical learning, they shall not simply pursue power for its own ends. Likewise, clerics and priests must be ready to heal the sick and not pester people overmuch lest they focus on the world to come to the exclusion of this one.

For your mother, I understand she has helped preserve much precious knowledge, and save the lives of many children by exterminating the rats that used to invest this village and its library in particular. In this way she has been the perfect example for all who might immigrant to Richemulot, she has worked tirelessly while not being so foolish as to think she could conceal her secrets from the Renier family.

In your case my miniscule mouser, do you know how you must repay Richemulot for kindness it has shown you?" She asked almost tenderly.

James had no idea what the answer was, but all the same he went so far as to actually stand on his seat to try and bring his eyes level with Jacqueline's.

"I don't know, but I'll do whatever I can! The folks of this village are so nice to us, they even cut a cat-flap in our door for me and mom to use!" He gushed.

Jacqueline chuckled once more, but as seemed her nature joy soon faded from her features.

"If you do not know your place, then as is my right I shall assign you one.

What I tell you now is for the ears of your three only, should I find that you have told a single soul, I will have you all banished, to Falkovnia." She decreed.

The weight of that threat (if Vlad Drakov saw fit to make slaves of elves what would do to werecats did not bear thinking upon) hung heavy upon the room and was able to still even James' frequently flapping lips.

"Darkness and evil breads in the sewers of Pont-a-Museau. Wererats cavort in numbers that might make one wonder if they don't outnumber the true humans. I would welcome even such creatures, but they flout my rule at every turn, spreading filth, disease, and death throughout the city.

I can not abide my subjects suffering under their pestilent paws any more than under the Hawk's talons. Yet, even my hands are all but hopelessly tied, for how can you fight a foe who has the numbers of an army yet can hide as swiftly as a thief?

The Renier family has so far been spared the personal ravages of the beasts, but I doubt it is pure luck which has protected us. Rather the wererats are cunning enough to know that should strike even one of my distant cousins... I would have no choice but to strike back, even if all of Pont-a-Museau must be put to the torch to drive them from their hidden strongholds.

Such a conflict would be disastrous for Richemulot's occupants both wererat and otherwise, for I am certain in our weakened state the foe to the north would swoop down upon us once again. So be it, family is sacrosanct, there is nothing, NOTHING more important in this world than protecting one's family." James found himself nodding along in silent agreement with Jacqueline's impassioned words.

Though the Patte family consisted of only himself and his parents while the Renier family tree was sprawled like the cities of Richemulot themselves, love for one's kin united peasant and noble alike.

"For the moment I have no choice but to bide my time, and await the day I fear will arrive all too soon when the wererats do not fear me any longer. If that day comes, I will expect you my miniscule mouser to be the first into the sewers of Pont-a-Museau." Jacqueline announced.

"Me?" James gasped feeling himself threatened to be crushed under the weight La Grande Dame was placing on his shoulders.

He took a deep breath, curled his right hand into a fist and then with his left threw up a salute not even Vlad Drakov could have found fault with.

"If you wish it, I would journey there and plunge into the darkness this very day!" He promised Jacqueline.

Once more James' sheer exuberance seemed to bring the ruler of Richemulot a little respite from the dreadfully serious matters they were discussing.

"Too bold by half and half again! No single cat, even a single werecat has a chance to purging those sewers. All the same, there will be times when we have a chance to strike back against the beasts.

Boldness it seems is not limited to lycanthropes of the feline persuasion. Every so often there are stories of solitary werecreatures stalking the streets of the capital. Those singular wererats, above ground, without support of a full warren of comrades, they must be instructed on how unwise it is to earn the ire of Jacqueline Renier!" She did not go so far as to bang her hands on the table as more theatrical ruler might have, she did not need to.

"Such matters are to be attended to later though, a proper ruler must think in terms of decades and generations not months and years. Today, all I require from you is quite simple, because of your near unique nature, an oath of loyalty to some minor official is not enough.

Just like your mother before you, my miniscule mouser, you must avow your loyalty to me in person." She informed him.

James' head swam, he sunk back into his seat for fear that he might tumble from it were he not careful. He was unsure what words she might want to hear from him, if the normal oath of loyalty alone would do or if she wanted something more personal. So he simply recalled his parents advice and when in doubt followed his heart.

"Let me journey to the other side of the Core or the islands beyond, let my shape be that of man or beast, my loyalty to you Jacqueline Renier shall not change. Let not rumor, secret, or scandal sway my soul. I shall hide no knowledge from you and offer you my utmost service for the glory of Richemulot!" James promised momentarily wondering how he had gotten through all that without half swallowing his tongue or blushing as red as his hair in the process.

"A queen could not have asked more from her most favored knight." Jacqueline responded graciously and then snapped her fingers.

A courtier, attendant, or some other brand of servant entered into the Patte household a large well crafted bowl covered by a piece of cloth in his hands.

"Let me show you that the Renier family does not take such a solemnly sworn oath lightly with an offering of my own. I am given to understand from my past conversations with Martha, werecreatures find these winter months harsher than any human, for they can not simply store up grain or cooked meat in preparation for them.

With that in mind, allow me to lighten this particular burden somewhat..." As Jacqueline spoke the servant pulled off the cloth with an impeccable flourish.

Not that its contents came as much of a surprise of course, if the sounds alone hadn't already given it away then the smell would have.

It was filled to the brim with hissing squabbling rats whose tails had one and all been tied together into a great twisted knot causing each one's efforts to escape to undo the work of his fellows.

"Meat that could not possibly be any fresher. Eat heartily my miniscule mouser, for it is my wish that with passage of time you shall become a truly resplendent ratter." La Grande Dame of Richemulot commanded.

James had no intention of disappointing her.

He reached into the bowl headless of the hissing snarling vermin, his left hand's fingernails transforming into sharp pointed claws with which to cut the tail from a rat's body allowing him to separate it from the others.

"Sic Semper Rattus!" He promised Jacqueline and then set about consuming the pest.

(Scene Break)

Jacqueline Renier closed the door to the Patte residence behind her, a look of immense satisfaction glinting in her eyes. Even if serendipity had started her down this path her brilliant planning had kept the course from wavering.

Martha Patte had wandered into her domain quite shortly after her grandfather's death (and her subsequent ascension to the head of the Renier family and rule of Richemulot) and originally Jacqueline had intended to invite her to Chateau Delanuit ostensibly for the reason of swearing fealty, then reveal herself as a wererat and rip Martha limb from limb with the aid of her family.

Once they'd been face to face however Jacqueline discovered that unlike the actual animals they changed into werehousecats did not seem to immediately realize that La Grande Dame was something to be feared and shied away from. If anything, her policy of carte blanche had left Martha feeling more indebted and loyal to her than most of Richemulot's fully human immigrants!

That, that had opened up some very interesting possibilities.

So rather than give the order to attack Jacqueline had done the opposite, making it it clear to all the wererats of Richemulot that the Patte woman and her family were going to be under her personal protection and not to be trifled with. She'd even gone so far as to insist that they leave this particular village alone, not that a small hamlet of only a hundred or was a promising hunting ground for wererats in the first place. The subsequent lack of rodent related activity had made the villagers feel indebted enough to Martha that they openly accepted her, just as their ruler had silently wanted them to.

Then, exactly as Jacqueline had hoped Martha had taken a virile enough local man for her mate and produced a kitten. Jacqueline would have preferred additional spares, but a girl couldn't quite have everything she wanted.

So now that young werecat was being raised with a head full of stories about the grandeur of Richemulot, the glory of the Renier family, and her own personal splendor in particular.

It was all leading up to the kitten's inevitable fate of providing Jacqueline with something every ruler regardless of gender desired, their own personal executioner.

Yes, Richemulot was a country run by wererats for wererats, and nothing (certainly not one foolish werecat) was going to change that. But, it was in the nature of wererats to be treacherous (she only needed to reflect upon how at first her family had been all smiles and congratulations when she'd disposed of her ill-tempered and ever disparaging grandfather Claude but then only too quickly they had begun trying to unseat her in turn) and if she wished to establish a true Renier dynasty with power passing from mother to son rather than just bouncing back and forth between whoever had just succeeded in the most recent round of backstabbery, steps would have to be taken.

Ironically while she ruled for her fellow wererats, the very humans whose children her kinfolk snatched from their cradles in the night offered her much more loyalty and respect than the rodent themed lycanthropes who her family had made Richemulot a paradise for. The wererats of Richemulot seemed (especially the other members of her own family) to give her her naught but grudging obedience and backbiting (or at least what they imagined to be backbiting, Jacqueline had more spies and counter spies employed in dealing with her own family than she had keeping an eye on Falkovnia).

Being Grand Dame of Richemulot meant Jacqueline faced a careful balancing act between keeping her wererat subjects fed, her human subjects happy, and everyone the right mix of too loyal or too frightened to think about planting a silver dagger in her back.

That was where the young James Patte came in, someone with physical prowess comparable to (perhaps even surpassing) a wererat, and yet gave her the same empty headed devotion as she got from most of her other human subjects. If she couldn't find a way to make that combination work in her favor then she didn't deserve to rule Richemulot!

Given a few more years he should make a splendid instrument for reminding the rest of the Renier clan of why she was top rat.

Yes, it wouldn't be enough for her just to kill the ones who angered her anymore, no they'd have to be made examples of, their death's excruciating in the extreme!

First she would see to it that they were cut off from their fellow wererats, or even any normal rats among whom they might try to hide camouflage themselves and escape. It would not need to be for long, only half an hour at most.

Yes, how sweet it would be to know that they would be given a taste of her truest terror, before any of them were allowed to perish they must know just how horrific a fate it was to be alone!

Then, then let the dreadful mewing of the werecat fill their ears, and their minds be gripped by the terrible knowledge that a hunter had come forth who could match them shape for shape. Let her vengeance come with jaws that bite and claws that catch!

Let the fool Drakov keep his bizarre fetish for pointy sticks, death by cat, now there was a form of execution that would make even her unruly relatives sit up and take notice!

Jacqueline began to ascend up the stairs that had already been laid out for her by another servant and entered into her private carriage.

The door was closed behind her, leaving her in necessary but hated solitude.

Much as it pained her, it simply wouldn't have done to brought any of her family with her on the trip. It would have tipped her hand, (though she suspected her twin Louise doubtlessly had already realized by now why Jacqueline cared so much about a single family of werecats, still it would not do to openly confirm such theories so blatantly) and neither could she sit up front with her human carriage driver. Le Grande Dame always had to maintain a certain air of majesty about herself after all, and her current driver while competent had done nothing so exemplary as to earn the honor of her company.

She had managed to make the entire journey here alone and yet not let it unnerve her to the point that it affected her performance before the Patte family, no she would just have to withstand the trip back as best she could.

At least she had the knowledge of her success to grant her some comfort.

"Sic Semper Fidus Rattus!" She declared proudly.

The statement brought her such wicked glee that for a little while she did not terribly mind the lack of company.

FN: So, let's talk about language. To start with the title of sub story is French (or at least my best approximation of French which will apply to just about everything I say about languages other than English in these notes) for "To an evil rat, a good cat." It's a play on a French phrase "à bon chat, bon rat" translating to "To a good cat, a good rat." that is usually used to describe a meeting of two equals (two very skilled duelists for example). Fittingly given the warping of the phrase in this side story, La Grande Dame, and her peasant servant are anything but equals.

It also neatly sums Jacqueline's plans for James in one sentence, an evil rat will have the service of a good cat.

The name of James' village is quite obviously French for "Good Crepe", a "joke" that probably only makes sense to me.

Thirdly, James' family name has nothing to do with cooking, it's actually French for "Paw". Also during James' oath of loyalty it is worth pointing out that "rumor" "secret" and "scandal" are the terms used in Richemulot for copper, silver, and gold pieces respectfully, so it's actually a bit of clever word play where he is saying that neither deformation of her character nor bribery will make him betray her.

If you don't get Jacqueline's linguistic jujitsu at the end there its pretty simple. James' traditional motto as we've seen in the past is "Sic Semper Rattus" or "Thus Always to Rats". When he says it, the "Thus" typically has an implicit meaning of "Death".

Jacqueline's version translates as "Thus Always Loyal to Rats." By inserting that one word she's turning it from a battle cry against rodents to a reflection of how James has pledged his devotion to the biggest most powerful (I'd say most evil but after reading Scholar of Decay Louise Renier seems to have her twin sister beat on that front or at is more conventionally cackling bitch sort of evil (granted since Jacqueline is in power right now she doesn't have to spend time figuring out evil schemes to seize what she has just how to keep it (on second thought near the end of the novel Louise reflects on how she once drowned a puppy as a young girl thereby giving her an unquestionable lead in the "who is more evil" race))) wererat in the entire domain, and he doesn't have a single clue.

I can't say with perfect certainty to how in character Jacqueline is being here but I think it's quite plausible. As mentioned previously, I've read Scholar of Decay which seems to be the biggest source of information in it much more sparse stuff in the box sets or even the Gazetteer on Richemulot (it's full of great stuff on Richemulot as a nation but unsurprisingly being written in universe goes more into Jacqueline's history than her psychology).

To touch on the stuff I was trying to reflect, despite her own chaotic nature, Jacqueline has a real love for control (early on in the book she chastises her son for giving into his inner rat and biting his tutor and talks about how he must not be like his father who lacked control) and if she wanted control of James, oh but does she have it.

She's willing to make reasonable trades (lets a scholar poke around in abandoned buildings in exchange for telling her what he finds, is willing to let said scholar rescue his brother from her cousins who were going to drown/eat him so long as he doesn't hurt them in the process) and bide her time.

It's pretty clear that given her monophobia (fear of being alone) she'd prefer to be a iron hand in a velvet glove style ruler (she'd rather be loved than feared, really really rather be loved), and it seems to be working for the most part.

I don't know if any other source portrays her as being audacious enough to admit to the wererat problem in Richemulot but in turn effectively suggest the Darklord of the domain is some evil head wererat down in the sewers, but given her force of personality, conniving mind, and popularity among the lower classes there's probably no reason that she couldn't pull it off to villagers who have only been to the capital once or twice in their lives.

In short, like many people of the "evil" alignment in D&amp;D Jacqueline can be perfectly pleasant and charming company, so long as she is getting her way. Once she isn't... that's when she'll concoct elaborate revenge schemes that involve having you hunted through the city, mauled three quarters of the way to death and then eaten alive.

Also if setting up complicated plans to try and keep her son in power once she's dead (and thus won't personally benefit regardless of if he succeeds or not) seems overly maternal/selfless, just in keep in mind she's also doing it to spite Louise/all the other family members who figure her son Jacques won't last a week once his mother departs.

Anyway, to close this section on one last note about language, given that James' family name, and Jacqueline's plans to use him to dispose of wererats who earn her ire without him realizing the truth of the mater, I guess say makes him quite the Werecatspaw!

No need to bring out hooks and rotten produce ladies and gentlemen I'll see myself out.


	2. Chapter 2

FN: I'm proud to say this story was the first to make use of my new proof reader so hopefully it'll be even better quality than what came before!

Monster Party Side Story: My heart's crippled by the vein that I keep on closing. You cut me open and I... keep bleeding, keep keep bleeding love!

Mirri rolled into the town in the late afternoon with two things on her mind, feeding, and chaos.

Like many other predators, dusk was her favorite time of day to hunt. In her case, it combined two attractive features, it was still too bright out for anyone to have the started worrying about vampires, but at the same time it was already just a little dark and only going to get darker, which meant if things went wrong time would be on her side.

All that meant that feeding should be easy once she had found a good target, and when and wherever she fed chaos would follow.

One of her favorite strategies was to take a quick little nibble on the neck of some unimportant homemaker while her husband was out working.

Sometimes the husband was so foolish he actually mistook fang marks for more conventional "love bites" and would storm out in a rage to accuse some longtime rival of doing the deed. Even if they did realize what they were looking for, they'd never accuse a beautiful woman who was content to walk around in the sunlight.

Who knows, if she stuck around long enough she could keep right on feeding from different women until they started burning some local recluse at the stake thinking he was the vampire! That was one of the main reasons she liked to feed on women more than men, because it inevitably lead to people looking for a male vampire. Humans were just so set in their ways; it was almost too easy sometime!

Speaking of too easy, as Mirri crossed into the town, her nostrils flared with sudden excitement. She'd only just set foot in the place and already she was picking up the scent of someone who was bleeding.

Either this was her lucky day or somehow some enterprising vampire hunter managed to get here before her and set up a trap. That should have been the next best thing to impossible though, how could they have predicted where she was going when a lot of the time she barely knew herself?

Best not to over think things, she just headed in the direction she smelled fresh blood from. All the while, she coordinated her two main hunting senses, scent to bring her closer to the target and hearing to make sure whatever her target wasn't surrounded by vampire hunters lying in wait.

Things kept going her way however, she could smell blood and only hear one heartbeat. Once she got close enough to get eyes on target, she began to lick her lips in anticipation. There was one guy all on his own who was sitting around in the shade of a tree with its back to a building playing a harmonica, who also had blood dripping from his neck.

Mirri couldn't help but blink a few times in surprise, unlife was never ever supposed to be this good to someone as bad as her. There was no way that she was just going to walk blindly right into this one.

She circled around, went up the side of a building, and swiftly turned into a bat. There were still no nearby human heartbeats except for that of this one lone bleeding man. She flapped down to the tree he was sitting under, returned to human shape, and then gazed down at him.

Now that she was looking him over carefully she saw that her target was not even really a man, not much more than a boy in truth. If this was some kind of trap then it would have to have been set up by someone with a serious hate for vampires to use someone so young as bait.

Maybe somehow she'd drawn the attention of the infamous Rudolph Von Richten himself? Well that was an honor she could do without, but best to get this little bizarre farce over with. She shifted her weight and dangled upside down from the tree branch like an actual bat.

"You know, that wound on your neck might get infected if you don't do something about it." Mirri pointed out.

The youth looked up at her and then suddenly shook her head.

"You've got the wrong hair color." He answered without a moment of hesitation.

"What?" Mirri spat back.

The only thing that she hated more than someone trying to kill her was someone not taking her seriously.

"What, you only like blonds?" She demanded in irritation.

"Redheads." The young man insisted, but then he patted a section of the dirt as if inviting her to take a seat.

"You may not know it yet, but this town is being plagued by a vampire that can walk around in the daylight. The only thing anyone knows about her for sure is that she has red hair." He explained.

Mirri sniffed in revulsion, it looked like she might have to give this place a pass when it came to sticking around for a couple of days. Two vampires that walked around the daylight was one too many especially two female vampires.

On the other fang, just because she'd probably be putting this place to her back soon didn't mean that she was going to turn down a free meal.

"So you decided that your plan for how to hunt this vampire down was to sit some place by yourself, after taking the time to open a wound in your own neck. Do you hunt werewolves by going swimming in spices, beating yourself about to the head to make sure you're nice and tender, and then hamstringing your legs for good measure?" She suggested wryly.

The bleeding youth proved immune to her sarcasm however.

"Hunger makes monsters of more men than malice." He spoke those pretty words with belief that was half endearing half disgusting.

"That doesn't mean there aren't ones driven by malice." Mirri dropped down and began to look deeply into his eyes.

Let's see how readily he was going to spout off empty platitudes after she'd finished giving him a nice hefty dose of her charm gaze...

Before she could really get started though he twisted his head to the side refusing to meet her eyes.

"Look if you want to feed, that's fine... but I want to talk okay, and my name is James." He introduced himself.

Mirri blinked several times, not really making heads or tails of this. She shrugged it off though, the world took all kinds, and she'd heard the sort of sounds some people made when she fed, maybe James had some sort of death wish (or undeath wish as the case may be), his heart was certainty beating fast enough to suggest that he was feeling quite turned on.

Wait... his heart...?

Mirri drew away from him for a moment, because he'd been the only one around and her own heart was still she'd assumed his heart was just beating a little bit faster than normal. Now that she actually bothered to focus her attention on it and start counting...

Kali's Kneecaps, his heart had to be going something like twice as fast as a normal person's! How could he be sitting here and smiling at her? With a heartbeat like that he should look like he was about to fall over dead!

She reached out a finger and pressed it against his neck. He didn't draw away from the coldness of her palm, and she confirmed by touch as well that his heart was beating at a greater speed than that of any other human she had ever heard before.

"Why is your heart going so fast...?" She demanded, unwilling to go anywhere near James' blood till she had some idea what was going on with his body.

She'd heard stories that nasty things happened to vampires who drank the blood of those who had consumed holy water recently. She had no idea how long "holy water" could remain truly "holy" within someone's body and at what point it turned into decidedly unhallowed u***.

Not only that, but she doubted holy water could make someone's heart beat the way James' did.

"Isn't it natural for a young man's heart to beat faster when he sees a pretty lady...?" James answered with a playful grin.

"Funny, like a house of mirrors." Mirri growled, he'd sounded genuine about the entire calling her 'pretty' thing but she hadn't died yesterday.

James removed his hat, and Mirri gazed in surprise as he revealed a pair of furry red feline ears hidden underneath it.

Well, this was a turn of events even she hadn't planned for. Ears like a cat were easy enough to hide, but heart, now that was a lot trickier, at least from a vampire like her.

"So why does a monster like you care if the people of this small town are being menaced by a vampire? You couldn't be trying to eliminate the competition; there isn't much overlap between our respective hunting grounds. We want blood, you want meat, or is it milk in your case?" Mirri teased.

James just shrugged.

"Nope, you got it right the first time. That said, I'm hunting down this red headed day walking vampire because it's the right thing to do." He declared proudly.

Mirri promptly threw her head back and laughed.

"The right thing? What sort of pathetic excuse for a werebeasty are you? Get in touch with your inner animal. Meow at the moon, let your fur grow out some, raise some havoc!" Mirri demanded, feeling genuinely affronted that James could be such a softy.

"I am in touch with my animal nature, thank you very much." James promised her, his voice suddenly growing much colder.

First the gaze thing and now this, he picked strange matters over which to stand up for himself...

"I'm a werehousecat, that means I hunt rats. All kinds of rats. This red haired vampire... she doesn't drink people's blood, she kills them." James snarled.

"If you think that I've never killed people before..." Mirri left the statement hanging, but James did not rise to it.

"If bare my neck to you, are you going to drink from anyone else in this village?" He asked his eyes almost seeming... sad.

That wasn't right. He should sound indignant and suspicious like he figured that Mirri would go back on her word the first chance she got. Instead, James sounded like he was genuinely expected Mirri to live up to it and would be disappointed if she didn't.

"Fine I promise..." Mirri muttered after a moment's hesitation.

It hardly mattered either way, if she felt like breaking her word she could always blame it on the red headed vampire that was already plaguing the town. Not only that, but Kali was after all a goddess of trickery, it wasn't like she would look down on Mirri for going against her word should the desire arise.  
"There, I gave you my word like a good little girl. Now that we've handled all the appetizing little details of the matter, how about we move onto the main course?" She suggested.

To his credit James didn't need to be told twice. He turned around and gave her a clear view of his neck which still had a small gash in it from which blood flowed.

Mirri leaned in and began to lap it up eagerly.

Then James began to laugh, no he began to out and out giggle.

There were sounds that Mirri was used to her prey making while she fed from them, m*** of suppressed passion now bubbling to the surface, screams of pain, animalistic grunts were all commonplace, but giggles were not on the list of acceptable utterances.

Angrily she pulled away, her features creased by a deep frown.

"Well, now you know why I prefer my prey to be hypnotized ahead of time. If you still insist on 'talking' I would appreciate you showing some restraint. Also, keep in mind I won't be doing any of it myself since my mother raised me not to speak with my mouth full, " Mirri demanded.

At least to his minimal credit James seemed somewhat abashed.

"Sorry, it's just that your tongue was cold... it tickled." He admitted.

Mirri sighed and decided that she'd forgo using her tongue for a while. Instead, she just leaned right in and got to work with her fangs in order to try and open the wound a bit more.

She started to feed, and to her surprise James' body began to writhe. He wasn't pulling away from her or trying to escape he was actually... pushing himself closer to her.

That was new, Mirri was used to feeding from victims who were either fast asleep or charmed by her gaze into a bovine passivity.

James was neither, in addition to the sweet taste of his blood, the werecat pressed his body tightly against her own, as if he was trying desperately to bring some warmth back to her corpse cold body. That was stupid, warm skin much like conscience and a heartbeat were things that Mirri had said goodbye to forever long ago.

James had to know that, and yet he was still trying, even Mirri couldn't help but find his pathetic devotion... adorable?

Was that why he had asked her not to charm him? Because he wanted to show her... what? That it didn't matter that she was drinking his blood; he was still trying to make it a more pleasurable experience for her...?

Mirri wrapped her arms around him and embraced him tightly as she continued to sup from his neck. When she finally concluded drinking as much blood as she could stand she pulled away from him slowly.

"By the way, my name is Mirri." She finally admitted, realizing only after the fact that she'd started drinking his blood before telling James what her name was.

That wasn't very... 'nice' of her. With those thoughts on her mind, she took a moment to lick a few final drops of the warm fluid from her lips.

"Thanks for letting me know, so do I taste good, Mirri?" James asked.

To Mirri's surprise while the feeding had put a certain flush back in her own cheeks, James wasn't showing the normal pallid skin she would have expected from one of her victims.

"You tasted fine I suppose..." Mirri answered, being purposely aloof in regards to how much she'd enjoyed drinking from him.

"So same time tomorrow?" James offered.

"What?" Mirri blinked a few times, unsure of what to make of his suggestion.

"If you plan to stay in town for a while... you should probably keep drinking from me rather than someone who isn't as hale and hearty as I am. If you want, you could feed from the front of my neck next time..." James suggested.

Mirri was so struck by the nature of his offer that it took her a few moments to realize all the implications of it.

"The front?" She repeated, wondering if he was simply trying to be helpful, or if he was fully aware of the implications of his words.

"I thought it might be less obvious to anyone looking at me that I'd been drained by a vampire recently without needing to wear really high collar shirts. Granted, if we're worried about the wounds showing I suppose you could just drink from my femoral artery..." He offered without a hint of shame.

"What cheek!" Mirri slapped James, but not hard (granted a 'hard' slap from Mirri had been known kill people), though he still wouldn't forget it any time soon.

"What kind of a lady do you think I am?" Mirri insisted, every inch the affronted noblewoman and he a gentleman caller as if the pair of them were aristocrats at some fancy ball instead of the monsters they truly were.

(Scene Break)

So Mirri decided to stick around town for a little while longer. After all, it wasn't like she'd ever gotten her meals quite this easy before, and in truth James did taste better than anyone else she could recall drinking from recently.

Being a lady of some breeding of course Mirri waited until their third meeting before he drank blood  
from the front of his throat. Doing that from someone who was aware of it was a new and exciting experience, not that Mirri was willing to tell James of course.

None the less she decided that it couldn't hurt to wait around in town. It was enough to drive Mirri up a wall and make her so confused that she was willing to remain in one stupid town for far longer than she ever expected, for far longer than she could recall staying in one place since she'd been alive.

She kept reasonably close tabs on James, because she could... even when she wasn't meeting with him to drink his blood. After all, it was not as if she had much else to do around town, no need to concoct elaborate schemes about how to get her daily blood supply.

She wasn't sure if he knew she was there or not, Mirri was quite adept at stalking prey after all, but they said werebeasts had keener senses than normal humans. He obviously would not be able to hear her heart beat the same way that she could fill his ears with the rapid "parum-pum-pum" of James Firecat's heart though.

So she waited and watched James as he got involved with a red haired woman.

Mirri was certain that this was the woman James thought was the vampire, even though he hadn't told her as such. James had been very careful to avoid talking about his "work" to her, possibly out of concern for the fact that she might tell the redheaded vampire what she knew out of some sort of professional curtsey.

He was worried over nothing of course, Mirri like most vampires, who saw humans as walking talking blood filled bottles, also tended to see her fellow vampires as walking talking corpses who were all determined to drink from HER blood bottles, and what gave them the right to do that?

As she watched (Mirri had decided to take on the form of a cloud of white mist, this late at night she'd be virtually invisible and the redhead wouldn't notice any "living' bodies hat lacked a heartbeat) she discovered that James' suspect had a heartbeat also.

Granted the confusion she felt over that was second to her general sense of indignation. Mirri was quite frankly a touch upset at the fact that James had decided to take this crimson haired strumpet back to what she rightly considered to be their (make that HER) special spot.

Okay, yes it was the perfect place for something to go down in the town with no one paying attention. James was doubtlessly trying to get a rise out of the female vampire, so Mirri would just have to float around waiting until things got resolved one way or another.

How were they going to get resolved though?

What if that redhead wanted the same sort of deal with James that Mirri already had? He somehow managed to get along just fine with her feeding from him, but would even his seemingly endless supply of energy be able to sustain two vampires? Mirri hopped that ruby haired harlot was much less reasonable about such matters than she was; it would serve her right after all!

What right did she have to get something as glorious as Mirri's sloppy seconds?

After managing to work herself up into a fine fury, Mirri finally returned her attention to the situation going on below her. The redheaded b*** was holding James in her arms now.

Well two of her arms... all of a sudden she was growing a lot more of them.

/Vampires... vampires don't do that..\ Mirri reflected, unable to come to any other conclusion as the redhead began to sprout six additional limbs.

They didn't look like arms, they didn't even look like legs either, instead they were huge chitinous appendages. Her entire body was crackling and transforming, as it began to practically explode outward.

She became a gigantic blood red spider with a black hourglass mark on its abdomen, sort of like a black widow in reverse. A black widow in reverse, except instead of being miniscule it was large enough to have been able to squish a man underneath one of its huge hairy legs.

"Spi... spi.. spi..." James fidgeted about trying in vain to break free from the creature's grip until it leaned forward and jabbed its fangs into his chest.

Mirri wasn't going to take any more of this s***! She reformed herself from being an inoffensive cloud of smoke into a very corporeal and very offended vampire. She dropped out of the sky, turning the momentum of the fall to her advantage as she slammed into the back of the bloated she spider.

"LET HIM GO!" She demanded before delivering a sledgehammer like punch into one of the monster's eight eyes.

The ocular organ practically exploded beneath her fists leaving it covered with all sorts of horrible stuff that would best go uncontemplated.

More important than the physical damage done was the spiritual, she could already feel the thing's life-force being leached out of its body and into her.

"That's why you have a heart beat... you're still alive! Well let's see if we can't fix that..." Mirri ruminated with a wicked smile.

The beast let loose with a growl and withdrew its legs from the vice like grip they had seized around James.

She then jerked her body back and forth and tossed Mirri off. The thing moved with shocking speed and before Mirri could recover from her tumble it jammed its pincers into her stomach.

A moment later Mirri sat up and grabbed hold of the fangs which had the audacity to pierce her skin.

"Here's the thing Charlotte, I'm sure you have some really nasty venom in these suckers, but I'm already dead. So since they aren't going to help you right now, mind if I borrow them?" As Mirri spoke she tightened her grip on the pincers, and proceeded to yank them right out of the creature's maw taking still more of its life-force with her.

She rolled away and the monster began to scream and beat its legs against the ground. All of a sudden from seemingly countless hidden tunnels beneath them, a veritable torrent of spiders started to crawl out of them, clearly intent on supporting their larger mistress.

"Oh no, spiders!" Mirri screeched in a faux girlish voice.

"Do you know what eats spiders you oversized fly chaser? Bats." Mirri snapped her fingers theatrically and sure enough in the time it took all of the spiders to emerge a colony of bats under Mirri's control arrived.

A number of normal sized spiders that had been heading for James' slack body suddenly found themselves getting snatched up by Mirri's mammalian backup. They were quickly starting to send the tiny arachnid army into a rout while Mirri rushed forward to attack the creature again.

She began to rub a bare hand on the underside of the monster's bloody jaw.

"Let me make this perfectly clear, HE, IS, MINE!" Then she drained the last of the beast's life-force right out of its skin.

It promptly collapsed under the weight of its own body.

"Any questions?" She addressed the arachnid's corpse.

Predictably her question was answered by naught but silence.

"Didn't think so." She then took the time to stomp the creature's eyes into bloody puddles, and its entire body into mush just to be on the safe side to make sure it didn't reanimate in a few days' time.

That task done she turned her attention back to James. He'd gotten bitten by the huge spider just like her, but he was probably suffering a hell of a lot more from its poison.

"Hey, are you okay?" She asked as he laid on the ground his fingers twitching ominously.

"Spi... spi.. spi..." He repeated the same word over and over again. Were they even words, or was he just suffering some sort of spasm?

"Spider..." Finally he managed to force the full word out and Mirri nodded slowly.

"That's right it was a spider. I made it a very dead spider. Now, are, you, okay?" She demanded once again.

With almost insulting quickness James regained his feet and began to brush himself off.

"Aside from needing to patch some new holes in my outfit, I think I'm fine. But um, thanks for dealing with that thing. I mean, I could have maybe fought it off but..." He rambled.

Mirri looked him over, not sure if she should be glad that he was okay, or angry for making her worry about him. Hell, where did a walking blood bottle like him get off causing a vampire like her, any sort of emotion at all?

"Wait, you're okay? If you're okay what were you doing laying on your back the entire fight?" Mirri asked, quite vexed by this turn of events.

James shuddered slightly and looked down at his midsection and his wound. Sure enough, his werecreature bonafides were being confirmed by the speed with which his flesh was mending.

"Well umm you see Mirri... Ever since I was young, I've had had this thing and so... well... um... I'm really afraid of spiders. So when that thing turned itself into a huge spider... I sort of freaked out..." James admitted.

Mirri looked at him and just sort of stood there for a few moments.

"So it wasn't the terrible poison that was coursing through your veins paralyzing your body and bringing you to death's doorstep, it was just the fact that you couldn't handle the sight of such a big spider." She concluded..

"It also didn't help when it summoned up a whole bunch of little spiders for whatever that is worth." James clarified.

Mirri hung her head in irritation, unable to believe it.

"You're gonna have to be a lot more impressive when it comes to monster hunting if you ever expect me to drink from your femoral artery." Mirri informed him.

James batted his eye a couple of times at Mirri as if he was still half paralyzed with fear. "Are you serious?" James insisted.

"Like I said, what kind of vampire do you think I am?" Mirri insisted considerably upset with what he was insinuating.

"Well apparently you're the kind of vampire who wants to hang around with me even though that other 'vampire' is out of the picture now." James pointed out.

Mirri paused for a moment, as she finally realized the full weight of her own words.

She'd meant it mostly as a joke, but did she really plan on sticking around with this stupid furry purry werecat? She put a hand to her mouth, as she felt her fangs growing just a little bit longer as she contemplated the idea.

"Well, maybe for a little bit longer. Just till it gets boring." Mirri promised him, and promised herself.

That was all this was, a way to make her life a bit easier for a couple of months. That was a miniscule time frame for a human being let alone a vampire. What harm could there be in keeping this kitten around till she grew tired of him?

Author Commentary: For those who are interested the title of this sub story comes from the song "Bleeding Love" by Leona Lewis (you can hear it online as part of an amv here /watch?v=ViOaFFg9NuY) and it's just about the most perfect encapsulation of Mirri and James' relationship that I could possibly imagine. Give it a listen and see if you agree with me.

As for the monster that the two ends up fighting, it's a Red Widow. It's a monster that is unique to (or at least originates in) Ravenloft. It's basically a gigantic spider shapeshifter that seduces men, takes them someplace private, and then transforms into its true shape, that of a gigantic crimson arachnid. At that point since it was already holding its victims in its arms and now has a lot more (and a lot larger) arms to hold them steady a victim on his own unlikely to be able to get free so it will have no trouble biting them and injecting its poison.

Its bite alone is relatively harmless (d3 damage) but the poison is of the classic D&amp;D save or screwed nature (save versus poison or your dead) obviously James did make that save though due in part to his arachnophobia he failed the horror check invoked by watching the Red Widow take its true form and went into mental shock (basically James' mind hit a Blue Screen of Death and needed some time to itself in order to restart properly).

If the victim is subdued then the Red Widow will either feast on their blood and body, or it will inject its young into the body at which point when they hatch they'll do a chest burster from aliens though at least the victim is "lucky" enough to already be dead by that point. All of this means that while the Red Widow is a horrifyingly (in several different senses of the word) successful ambush predator, it's also completely unsuited for the task of fighting undead.

It's base bite damage is not going to break through Mirri's damage reduction, and if it did it would immediately get healed by Mirri's fast healing, and to reiterate something you'll probably see a number of times in these author notes... undead are immune to all poisons and diseases that were not created with them expressly in mind.

The Red Widow has six hit dice, thus why Mirri was able to kill it with three physical attacks, even leaving aside the physical trauma of her blows, her energy drain on its own (two negative levels each round if she can land a blow) would slay the Red Widow.


	3. Chapter 3

Monster Party Side Stories: I'm howling at the moon and sleeping in the middle of a summer afternoon.

Florence Bastien awoke to the gentle singing of birds. Such sounds were nature's way of letting her know that all was right with the world... or at least her tiny little corner of it.

She was a guardian of nature who knowingly maintained a most unnatural arrangement within her small glen. Still, no force in the world, not even Gaia herself could convince Florence to willing allow those she she was protecting to be harmed.

The sun shined down on her, and she spread her arms wide to better accept its light and warmth. She was so wonderfully fortunate to be able to draw so much strength from that light. It sustained her and her magic, between it, and water of the small bubbling brook within her glen she needed to kill neither animal or plant to sustain her life.

Today, today would be a good day, she was sure of it.

She gently picked up her staff, it had once been a rotten and broken tree limb which had naturally come loose with age. Strengthened by her magic however it was once more firm and strong, the last tool she would have desired, but a tool she always kept near just in case.

The harmony of her glen was suddenly shattered a piercing howl.

Florence's blue eyes went wide with shock, this was not the first wolf howl she'd heard, but it was the strangest. Such was the genius of the four legged predators that they could convey all manner of information simply through the timber of their voices, or minute aspects of the howl.

There was no hidden knowledge, no carefully modulated control behind this howl, it conveyed only one message; pain.

It was filled to the brim with pain, never had she heard a being in so much pain able to voice its suffering so loudly!

Florence quickly set off in the direction of the howl, for she was always lavish with her gifts of healing and sustenance; hunter and hunted, animal and demi-human, all were equally welcome to share in the bounty of her glen.

She was not sure if it was deliberate intention or blind luck that had caused this suffering beast to travel to her, nor did she care. All Florence Bastien lived for was to create a small corner of the world that she could call her own and see to it that those who lived there did so without suffering.

There was another howl even louder than the first, then the wolf burst into view.

"Sweet Gaia..." Florence gasped in shock.

The creature might have been wolf like, but it was clearly not a wolf. It was too large, its fur a strange glistening silver color, and its back paws... It had the front paws of a proper wolf, but its rear end was misshapen its legs ended in manner suggesting that they belonged to something bipedal.

The creature looked at her with eyes that suggested it had little to no idea what it was actually doing anymore, only that it wanted to spread its suffering.

"If I'm going to heal you'll I'll need you to be still." Florence insisted and then let loose with a magical spell.

Countless vines and blades of grass grew and twisted at her command, striving to entangle the wolf beast from several different angles at once making it incapable of harming anyone.

The creature responded with a simple shake of its silver fur, and promptly burst free from her magical restraints as easily as if they'd been made of dry parchment. It began to advance on her with an awkward but determined gait.

Florence gazed deeply into the beast's eyes, she'd never seen her magic fail like that before. There were those that were fast or strong enough to escape it, but this thing... it was like her restraints hadn't even been there at all!

Florence Bastien was a dryad, but she was much a creature of grass as one of tress. Grass sways in a windstorm that will topple the stoutest tree.

She tossed aside her staff and held her hands out openly in surrender.

"I will make a very poor meal for you and I only wish to aid you." She promised showing the thing that she was now completely at its mercy.

Some tiny spark of understand must have fired with the beast's mind for it stopped advancing upon her.

Instead it lowered its face toward the ground and began to bat at it with its paws awkwardly. It produced an awful wailing sound that was somewhere between a wolf's howl and a human scream.

"EEEEEEEEEEYYYYYYEEEEEEE!" Was the best Florence could do to decipher it.

After working at the strange activity for several dozen seconds it gave up and gazed out at Florence once again.

It was only then that she did not simply see, but understood.

There were countless small claw marks around the creature's right eye as if it had tried to pry or gouge it out with paws that were horrifically unsuited to the task. Its left eye had significantly fewer marks (probably the result of overzealous mistakes) and... and it looked human.

It was green instead of golden amber, and it didn't seem to glimmer the way the other one did when light fell upon it..

Then the beast began to whimpered pathetically thrashing around on the ground as it once again tried with renewed determination to mutilate itself. Florence took a few steps back, she had no desire to come near it while it was in such a frenzy.

"You need to calm down... you need to be still..." Florence gently told the monster, not trying to use any sort of magic beyond the simple soothing tones of her voice.

"Whatever you are... I can help you... if you can just give me a chance. What, what do you really want?" She said in a voice so soft it was practically a whisper.

Either by chance or because of its undoubtedly excellent hearing the beast slowly stopped rolling wildly about on the ground. It gazed up at Florence, tears streaming from its mismatched eyes.

"You don't like your right eye... correct?" She asked tenderly.

The beast's heads bobbed up and down repeatedly in an enthusiastic nod.

"Why?" She inquired, hoping that the question wouldn't send the creature into another bout of mindless rage.

Her hopes were dashed however as the creature promptly fell to the ground yet again. This time however it wasn't trying to dig out its eye, it wasn't trying to do anything at all as far as she could tell. It just rolled about wildly upon the ground, and as it did so its body emitted a series of horrifying sounds.

Bones jerked and realigned themselves wildly as its lower legs began to grow harrier transforming into proper lupine legs, but at the same time its upper body began more human.

Now from the waist up the creature had the body of a man with mismatched eyes and matted silver hair.

"I want my body back..." He gasped out pleadingly.

AN: I'm well aware that this is much shorter than James and Mirri's first meeting. I'm likewise aware that in point of fact this raises more questions than it answers. What did you really think I'd give away the true nature of Alexander Diamondclaw after only two books? Sorry people that's a secret I'm keeping very close to my chest indeed. Still enjoy your edge piece of the puzzle, and expect to get a few more of them as I continue expanding the Monster Party series.


	4. Chapter 4

Monster Party Side Story/Prologue: Come on now, who do you, who do you, who do you, who do you think you are? Ha ha ha bless your soul... You really think you're in control?

It was hard for the man to think clearly. He had no idea who he was or where he was, or even what exactly was wrong with him.

All he could be sure of was that, surely there must be something wrong with his mind at the moment, mustn't there?

It felt like... it felt like there was someone else inside his head!

Words were constantly being shouted and images inserted making hard for him to get his own thoughts in order. He could feel an intense pain in the base of his neck, he tried to raise a hand to the wound but discovered that both of his arms were bound by chains.

"Ah you are avake zis is good!" Announced a clipped voice.

In fact the voice was so "clipped" that it only bothered to pronounce half of the letter "w" rather than the whole thing.

"What is going on?" The man whimpered, just as it was hard to think clearly, it was hard to see much of anything.

Most of what he saw was just the inside of a white mask and only managed to glimpse the world through two small holes for his eyes, leaving his peripheral vision was several hampered.

"Ve are about to enter into ze next phase of your treatment 3d." The voice replied at once.

A dirty blond haired man dressed in a brown cloak wearing a pair of studious spectacles walked in front of "3d", and two ice cold blue eyes gazed down at him.

"That's not my name! My name is..." The man bound to the chair began but was promptly cut off.

"You remember your name? Previously it had always eluded you! Still, I'm afraid zat ve can not make exceptions to ze rules! Being named rather zen numbered is a privilege you have not yet earned." The blue eyed man insisted.

"Being named is a privilege?" 3d repeated, having trouble grasping the concept for some reason, yet it sounded strangely familiar.

"If you have forgotten my own, it is Doctor Wright. So how are ve feeling today 3d?" Doctor Wright inquired politely.

The man bound to the chair shifted his gaze about slowly he was dressed in an incredibly drab gray robe.

"My clothes... what happened to my clothes?" He grumbled angrily.

"I am afraid zat if other patients see people moving about vithout ze same garb zat zey must wear zemselves, zey vould see zem as outsiders. At ze very least zey would be frightened. For some of ze more volatile patients zis fear could translate into an outbreak of physical violence. Zus, ze masks and robes are worn to protect both our patients and visitors.

As for myself, in order for me to be able to treat patients effectively, zey must see me as an authority figure. By making it clear zat I am not constrained be ze same rules zat zey must adhere to, I display my so called superiority to zem. Only vith such a relationship in place can zey accept treatment and begin ze long road to recovery.

You must understand 3d, you vere presenting a most horrific malady of ze mind vhen I first arrived." Doctor Wright rattled off the words in a dry manner suggesting he had said them a great many times times before.

"Insane? I'm not insane..." 3d insisted even as he tried to piece his shattered mind back together.

**FOLLOW DOCTORS ORDERS!**

It was like stumbling through a dark night only to be near blinded by a brilliant light.

That thought blazed through 3d's mind with a certainty that was unlike anything else he could imagine.

"What... what sort of insanity?" 3d eventually pleaded.

"Vell I am afraid zat ze stress of managing zis asylum got ze better of you. It caused ze onset of vhat I believe vas otherwise a dormant hereditary condition. A most horrific disease known as porphyria." Doctor Wright confided calmly.

"The asylum? That's right, this is my asylum! What do you think you're doing to me you bastard?!" 3d roared in anger.

"Be still." Doctor Wright commanded in a tone neither angry or frightened, simply stern.

**FOLLOW DOCTOR'S ORDERS! **

3d stopped trying to break his chains... chains that seemed strangely thick even for being used to bind a lunatic.

"Why... why are you doing this? I'm not insane!" He exclaimed in a voice that was somewhere between petulant anger and genuine confusion.

"Porphyria is a most horrific disease, vith most unpleasant symptoms. I am afraid 3d zat ze way zat sunlight aggravated your condition, combined with ze need to ingest blood as part of the treatment lead you to eventually be stricken vith ze delusion zat you vere a vampire! A vampire running an insane asylum! Vhat an absurd notion no?" Doctor Wright chuckled.

A vampire?

More of 3d's memories seemed to come into focus as he thought about that word. He could see the backs of countless necks flashing through his mind, he could see the liquid flowing from open wounds... but it wasn't red, weren't vampires supposed to drink blood, wasn't blood supposed to be red? Before he could go much further though Doctor Wright interrupted his train of thought.

"As ze illness took you, your orderlies vere kind enough to call me to treat you and take over running ze asylum. Now zen, are you afraid of garlic?" The blue eyed man explained.

"Not in the least, love the stuff." 3d answered at once.

"See? Real vampires hate garlic, not just ze spice but because zey can not stand to eat actual food of any kind. You are not a vampire. Say it with me please 3d, 'I am not a vampire...'" Doctor Wright instructed.

**FOLLOW DOCTOR'S ORDERS! **

"I am not a vampire." 3d mumbled.

"You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane." Doctor Wright confided to him.

"I am not a vampire!" 3d repeated with more conviction.

"Much better. Now, as you can see, it is just about dawn. Zrough use of complicated mixture of magic and a few tinctures I created ve have managed to drive the illness from your body.

I am afraid zat ze damage it has done to your mind vas a bit more extreme. Today as I said, ve vill be taking an important step toward helping you recover. Since you are finally physically vell again, ve are going to expose you to actual sunlight for ze first time in far too long." Doctor Wright informed him.

That explained why 3d seemed to be strapped down to a mostly comfortable (BUT VERY STRONG) chair out in the middle of a courtyard.

"The sun? I'm not afraid of the sun!" 3d insisted.

"Zat is also very promising. Fear of sunlight is a common symptom among zose who believe themselves to be vampires. Much like an attraction to startled women in nightdresses or desire to sleep in a coffin." Doctor Wright reflected.

"My coffin? My coffin!" 3d thundered feeling that he was on the edge of thinking about something very important but his mind was suddenly bombarded with countless images of a life that he'd never lived, a life that he never could have lived unless for some reason he had a respectably sized pair of breasts under his robe.

"Be at peace 3d! Please do not provoke yourself into a relapse by letting your imagination run avay vith you." His doctor pleaded.

**FOLLOW DOCTOR'S ORDERS! **

"Zis coffin you speak of, it is only an imaginary item, fabricated as part of your delusion of being a vampire. You must trust me 3d, ze have searched zis entire asylum room by room without finding a single trace of such a thing. It exists only in your mind." Doctor Wright insisted.

3d sat still for a moment and watched the rays of the rising sun slowly edge their way closer and closer.

They began to edge up his feet and they brought with them only a pleasant warmth.

"Zere see is zat so bad?" The doctor offered in a pleasant enough tone of voice.

3d was about to reply but it was at that point that it suddenly felt as if his own body was tearing itself apart and the only thing he could do was scream in pain as he began to evaporate.

"Orderly Catwarrior, the patient is refusing to submit to his treatment!" Doctor Wright called out.

XXX XXX XXX

A hazy mist that one might assume as having a vaguely human shape vanished through a small crack in one of the asylum's walls.

A moment later another a small cloud of white mist followed it through the exact same tiny opening.

Inside was a large ornate wooden coffin.

One cloud of mist poured into it, while the other one pooled outside it and took on the form of a woman.

Her hair was midnight black hair except for a streak of solid white running down the middle. Her eyes were ruby red and at the moment she was dressed in a simple white jacket and shirt with black pants, of the items in question cut along masculine lines while a white hat rested atop her head.

She lightly tapped the coffin with one of her white shoes and then nodded to herself when it didn't react in the slightest.

"You know... according Doctor Rudolph van Richten, a vampire's coffin is entirely psychosomatic in nature. We don't actually need them, we just feel most comfortable sleeping in them because the soil of our homeland provides us with a thin tie to our mortal lives." The woman muttered to herself as from the bag she produced a bottle larger than its container.

She bit down on the cork easily winning it free and then spat it out. She began to empty the content of the bottle atop the coffin.

"I'm not sure if I believe him or not, or maybe it just varies from vampire to vampire. I've slept in perfectly normal beds without a problem in the past, have you though? Maybe I'm special because I went from human to vampire with the celerity of blowing out a torch, none of this laying around dead for three days first stuff for me.

"More to the point, most vampires when severally injured or in some sort of mental distress naturally return to their coffins." As the woman spoke she produced another bottle and began to repeat the process.

"I mean... I like my coffin. I've got it made of Falkovnian trees so it's this wonderful black color with black leather and I have my family motto engraved on it in gold thread. It's traditional for vampires to have coffins, and it has to be a coffin though, we're better than the living, that's why you've never heard of a vampire with a cut rate casket have you?" She pointed out as she now began to produce several small sticks from the bag and laid them here and there around the coffin in a seemly random pattern.

"The thing that you need to remember about being a vampire though, is that whatever doesn't kill you will make you stronger, eventually. So in the vein of your 'treatments' don't think of this arson, think of it as an interesting experiment on helping your mind break ties with unnecessary nicknacks." The woman advised as from the bag she now produced a bottle of some thick black substance.

She spread it across the coffin before retrieving a simple block of flint and steel knife from the bag.

"You see, you're never going to properly grow as a vampire until you can bring yourself to unlive without this thing." Were her final words before she struck one against the other.

Sparks flew and landed in the mix of oil and what had once been ordinary sacramental wine but had been distilled into something that was quite possibly extra holy but quite certainly extra flammable.

The coffin burned, and burned, and burned, until there was nothing left of it and its occupants but ash and their dirt it had originally contained.

"Oh dear, even if you do find a way to come back from that I'm afraid it's going to take an even greater trick to resurrect your coffin!" The woman reflected with mock sympathy.

Then she transformed back into mist and flowed out of the room.

On the other side of the gap that she'd filtered through she returned to human form and smiled at a tall silver haired man with a green left eye and an eyepatch slung over his right.

The man was dressed in a black outfit of a vaguely martial nature with a few silvery runes inscribed upon it.

"Well that was sorta fun. A girl doesn't get to drink the kin-nectar of a darklord every day after all. Still, it was almost too easy to make him believe that he was insane..." The woman pouted as if somehow the victory had left her unsatisfied.

"Smash a hole in the wall, we're stealing every ounce of his soil. After that, sweep all the ashes up into a bottle, which we'll then fill to the brim with holy water, put put a stopper in the bottle and then make sure to toss it into the ocean when we leave this island.

If he finds a way to come back from that, well good for him, but something tells me we'll well out of his domain first. Now get to work, I've got to go find the man we were brought here to rescue, hopefully he's still sane enough to recognize the pass phrase." The silver haired man commanded before he turned and walked away.

The black haired woman sighed and started to punch at the wall, her ordinary looking fists leaving noticeable dents in the brickwork with each blow.

XXX XXX XXX

"Metus has claimed Erasmus' body." The silver haired man said softly to a figure dressed in a simple gray robe, his face covered by a white mask which was devoid of features other than eye-holes, a parody of a smile, and the symbols '10a'.

The figure in the robe whimpered and babbled meaningless, mindless sounds that couldn't even be called words.

The silver haired man sighed and shook his head it seemed that this inmate wasn't the one he was looking for either.

"Another failure." He muttered to himself and turned to leave.

"BUT HIS SOUL HAS BEEN SET FREE!" The occupant (say better prisoner) of the asylum suddenly shouted at the top of his lungs.

The silver haired man spun on his heel his own face alight with a wide smile.

He swung the door to the cell open and his black gloved hands easily tore the white mask to shreds revealing the face of a haggard man with blond hair that had been streaked gray with age.

His blue eyes were wide and seemed to constantly shift back and forth in fear.

"Monsters... monsters everywhere. They're all... they're all against me... you're here, you're here to eat me..." The older man babbled.

The silver haired man slowly helped the other to his feet and lead him out of his cell.

"It is not insanity but wisdom to be able to look at a 'man' and see the 'monster' that dwells underneath. Still, you might be surprised at just how many of us actually approve of your work.

Come along please Doctor van Richten, you have some very rich friends in Mordent who are very interested in seeing you once more sound of mind and hale of health. You can trust me to get you back to them, or my name isn't Alexander Diamondclaw."

AN: To start with unless you have a strong stomach I would suggest against googling porphyria (do a yahoo search of it that'll be perfectly fine though (sarcasm)) since the pictures that go along with most descriptions of the disease are not pleasant to look at.

Suffice to say, it is a real life disease and also probably exists in Ravenloft, it has a great many symptoms that are most unpleasant to view or contemplate, though it's more likely to make a group of random peasants who see someone suffering from it think they have found a vampire than its victim itself become deluded into imagining they are a vampire. Still if you're trying to convince an insane vampire that they're still alive, porphyria is probably the best route you can go.

The real name of "3d" is actually Doctor Dominiani /Dacluad Heinfroth, but I guess part of the nature /theme of this story was not using names very much so I decided not to name him in story.

This short story is based on the first of the Bleak House trilogy, and adventure called "Whom Fortune Would Destroy" with the unsaid half of the title being "she first makes mad." as writing by Publilius Syrus in Moral Saying's first century B. C. (at least according to the Ravenloft adventure book in question).

I personally prefer the Greek version of the saying (can't find particular person to attribute it to) "Those the gods would destroy, they first make great." which in my personal opinion is a PERFECT fit for Ravenloft since that the entire point of how the Dark Powers play with their darklords, making them "great" and powerful but denying them what they truly want most.

The adventure is interesting to read (well parts of it are interesting to read parts of it I felt an intense desire to skip over I'll get to that later) but I'm not sure how much fun it would be to actually play out. A lot of it rests on the principle of having the heroes get their back shoved against a bunch of no win situations and then having them be treated in a dehumanizing manner, while they have their minds ripped away from them. If Thoughts of Darkness is comparable to a bad drug trip where all your nightmares come alive and try to murder you, then Whom Fortune Would Destroy is best compared to 1984 or at least the tail end of the book mixed with One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

It's adventures like Whom Fortune Would Destroy which give Ravenloft a reputation not as a land of gothic horror but a land where you better make sure to bring a couple extra character sheets with you because whatever character you start out playing isn't likely to last through the adventure.

It includes a number of delightful ways for the villains to induce various kinds of insanity in the heroes from dissociative identity disorder (or "multiple personality disorder" for those who aren't keeping up with the latest version of the DSM (that's the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of mental disorders") to particular phobias, to believing that you've had certain limbs amputated, to stealing your memories to... yeah you get the idea.

I'm not opposed to the idea of an adventure based around the heroes having less gear/less access to their normal equipment /tricks, you could have an interesting adventure where the characters need to go undercover as prisoner's (either with or without the guards knowing) in some prison either to find out some information another prisoner knows or rescue someone. The problem is that this adventure feels too... too mean to me.

I'll give an example of the level of mean that is present in this adventure as written. Take the prison adventure idea I mentioned above, it offers opportunities for heroes to be heroes, sneaking about gathering information, making deals between various factions of power in the prison, despite the fact that they are in a rough spot they are still masters of their own destiny and are able to rise above the standard riff raff in the prison and accomplish more by working together just like they would normally even if they don't have magical swords and armor/have had their spell components taken away.

Now, imagine that one of the situations in that set up involved the rules for detailing something decidedly unpleasant happening to one of them during a group shower. Good taste keeps me from saying more.

This adventure is THAT mean, except it's on a psychological level rather than physical.

I mean if any of your players have relatives who have suffered from long term debilitating mental illness... well it's likely that one of two things will happen; either they will cry, or they will stoically reach across the table and punch you right in the face.

The other big problem with the adventure is that a great deal of it plays out with the group not able to work together, they may not be put in the same cell (well the book as written say they are but if the villains were smarter they wouldn't put them all in the same cell), each one is going to be mentally tortured in a different way, even leaving aside the sensitive nature of what is going on, it's something between, awkward, unpleasant, and boring to either listen to something happening to someone else that is strictly out of character knowledge or spend a lot of the time listening to nothing because the DM only comes into talk with one person at a time.

I know I praised the Wolf Run situation back in the second Monster Party Book for splitting up the characters/ forcing each one to think on their own for how they would outrun werewolves, so why am I hating on that idea now?

Because the Wolf Run was a one time event to shake the characters up, here though, unless they are astoundingly lucky they are each going to have multiple sessions which are designed to induce various mental illnesses, and while being separated from your fellow players once in an adventure will make you feel frightened and alone, having it happen multiple times in the same adventure just makes you realize how much this is slowing down the game.

Also this adventure awkwardly bumps up against that old saw (or at least what I hope is an old saw) about how it isn't a DM's job to tell a PC how to play their character. Telling someone "okay you failed that will save, so now I want you to act like you've got a pathological fear small spaces for the rest of the adventure" is likely to make players cry fowl and I wouldn't entirely say that they're in the wrong.

Then there's the way it is written. I've seen a lot of stuff in Ravenloft designed to mess with the heroes, there's Thoughts of Darkness as I previously mentioned, this adventure, and then there's something that describes what I feel is the gold standard of how to play with the minds of your characters, The Nightmare Court book.

Why do I like the Nightmare Court approach? Because a lot of what it does gives an appropriate feeling of "less is more" with lots of room to play around with how a character's dreams are altered or messed with, and what sort of affects this can have on the character. Also there's something wonderfully mystical about dreams that can already inspire feeling of helplessness within us even in real life, for except for a few people who are lucid dreamers we are all prisoners of our subconscious minds when we dream, unable to do anything but try to wake up as events unfold which we may not understand and certainly do not control.

Not only that, but at the end of the day the Nightmare Court stuff had an appropriately uplifting system built into it. Every time that the evil villains used their powers against you to explicitly make things worse in your dreams, they were also weakening their hold over you, moving you one step closer to the point where you could actively drive them from your dreams.

Since the entire point of it is to make you repeat more or less the same dream several times in a row, it's possible to "fail forward" where so long as you are putting up a good fight and forcing the villains to expend their powers eventually you can reach a point where after say a month you are well stocked and ready to drive them off, so long as a failure is not fatal it makes you stronger, which is how RPGs are supposed to work in my opinion.

(Because of how much I like this system/its fluff expect to eventually see an 8 chapter Nightmare Court Novella getting posted as part of this 'story' a few bits at a time over the next few months)

In this adventure, the entire thing seems designed to create a downward spiral of inducing as many mental illnesses in the players as possible and each one makes the heroes less likely to escape, the villain gets to have things entirely his own way.

Not to forget that the way that he induces these mental illnesses... its almost disappointingly banal when you get right down to it.

You put someone in a room that is designed to have walls that can slide inward to make it grow smaller and smaller every time they take the measurements, yeah that's how you exacerbate any already existing traces of claustrophobia.

Put someone in a room then fill it with bugs, Insectophobia.

Put someone in a chair and then turn on a spell that causes pain whenever they leave the chair, that's how you instil a sense that doing ANYTHING is always the wrong choice and it's better to just catatonically lay there and do nothing.

It feels like insanity and messing with your characters minds is much better accomplished when done through metaphor and a certain amount of "magical tea party" or at the very least rules which are much different from standard rules, rather than just tossing great big "congratulations you now have a 75% chance of doing nothing each combat round" penalty at players.

Also now that I stop to think about it (a phrase I seem to be using a lot in these notes) I realize that this adventure has way too many "magical I win buttons" for the villain. That's almost not a metaphor, there are magical spells that will put everyone to sleep in some rooms for example, and obviously since the villain and his minions are vampires they are immune to it.

Ravenloft is supposed to be a low magic environment, that's something I try to reflect in my stories it's why Cal uses potions and Devi magical artifacts rather than either of them having any sort of magical powers. The only member of the group who can actually cast spells is Florence... who like any proper druid can be a force of nature unto herself when she cuts loose but due to her temperament it's not something she does very often. So yeah having easily reusable magical spells all over the place... that's just TOO explicitly magical for Ravenloft where magic tends to work through warping people (as in you know giving a werewolf or vampire extensions of the powers they already have like making Jacqueline's ability to cow rats as a wererat into mental influence on all rats within her domain) rather than giving the vampire a building that has a magical sleep aura installed.

To make things worse still, most Ravenloft adventures tend to be written with a certain amount of catharsis in mind at the end. You get attacked by killer puppets, have them take over your bodies while you're trapped as a puppet locked in wooden cages and soundly mocked about it in The Created, but it eventually leads to you getting to lock the head evil puppet inside a theater as its burned to the ground. You get constantly chased/hounded by werewolves throughout Dark of the Moon, but then at the very end you get to chase Gregor, possibly even overcoming his ability to control werewolves so you can use the curse he forced on you against him!

The bad guy, however powerful, however strong, should still suffer a fairly resounding defeat at the end of the adventure, even in Ravenloft.

In this adventure though, at the end the most the heroes can probably hope for is being able to run/sail away from the asylum and the island it is on having rescued Rudolph Van Richten, and hopefully not picked up too many new mental disorders in the process.

That in my opinion is a really shitty pay off for an adventure that puts the heroes through hell in a way that's worse than even the traditional Ravenloft adventure...

Before you say 'well it is a trilogy, you can't kill Darth Vader at the end of A New Hope' you should know that I feel it doesn't apply in this particular case. The villain of this adventure does not show up in either of the other two that make it up. Thus there's no reason why the adventure shouldn't have been written towards making sure he gets his oh so richly deserved comeuppance.

I could have written an entire book around this adventure in theory. It'd start with Alexander explaining to the group the fact that Rudolph Van Richten had supposedly checked himself into a mental asylum of his own free will, but two weeks after doing so was no longer in written contact with those he had been beforehand.

So the Weathermay twins of Mordent were hiring Alexander and the group to go and rescue him since Alexander presents himself as a great fan of the Doctor's work who is willing to accept only a small fortune in payment to risk his life in a situation that has proven too much for even Rudolph Van Richten to deal with.

Then of course Mirri complains, not because she feels upset over all the other vampires Rudolph van Richten has killed, but because she's afraid that he'll try to kill her at some point so naturally she'll need to kill him instead and then they won't get paid.

James meanwhile of course is all too happy to get a chance to finally meet the famous Rudolph Van Richten (either his usual impenetrable sense of optimism or the fact that Van Richten expressly mentions being friends with a werewfox at one point is keeping him from worrying over the fact that Van Richten doesn't have the most positive of opinions of lycanthropes) whose books he's all read.

The group goes there, get shipwrecked, gets 'rescued' by a bunch of cerebral vampires, realize that they're all cerebral vampires (well vampires/undead of some sort) Mirri can hear the fact that they lack a heart beat) so then a great big fight breaks out where Florence basically uses the fact that they're on a wooden ship to her advantage to start "breaking"/"remaking" the ship to stake vampires left right and center. The cerebral vampires get their coffins burnt/smashed destroyed and then their ashes pitched over the side of the ship into the ocean meaning even if they do come back to life they won't last very long.

Then they basically arrive at the asylum ready to kill anything without a heartbeat first and ask questions later so they start tearing the asylum apart one vampire at a time (the fact that vampires dress just like the insane prisoners doesn't help when Mirri's ears can tell one from another at a hundred paces) and eventually work their way up to the Doctor Dominiani who runs the place. The Doctor lacks any truly special combat abilities so eventually they defeat him and then its time to rescue Rudolph and go home.

That or we'll get to see how the famous sleep aura that gets used so liberally in the story isn't going to work on Mirri, or on Florence once she goes into plant mode and since Dominani's entire thing is mind affecting attacks for the most part, which don't work on vampires and won't work on plants... Mirri and Florence alone can go Alexander's Angels on his ass.

I could have done all of that, but I decided not to because this adventure is so dark and mean that I wanted to cut to the end of it.

So I did exactly that and showed only the most importance/important parts.

In particular, the part where the darklord de jour gets exactly what he gets to coming to him.

In this particular case it starts with Mirri managing to drink his blood during a fight between him and the group. Once that's done, the kin-nectar rules are fully in effect, because when a vampire drinks another vampire's blood interesting things start happening.

It creates a mental link between the two vampires, and the one that did the drinking is allowed to give some "reasonable" mental commands to the one who got drunk from. In this case, obviously the command that Mirri is giving is "Follow Doctor's Orders" but at the same time she's also constantly projecting her thoughts/memories into Doctor Dominani's head.

Given that like most darklords he's not in possession of the most sane of minds to start with (in fact being half crazy is his curse isn't it?), it really isn't hard to imagine that Mirri could give him a Kin-Nectar induced case of schizophrenia, since after all, one of the main symptoms of that disease is someone hearing voices or seeing things that aren't really there. So drawn your own conclusions about what it would be like to have someone else projecting their thoughts into your mind, even if they aren't trying to control you, that would still be quite disconcerting and get in the way of you thinking clearly to say the least.

Then, after that, once he's been drunk from and temporarily passed out from blood loss, staked in the heart or otherwise incapacitated, you get Dominiani dressed up in one of his own dehumanizing full body robe and mask outfits, the kind he makes everyone (except himself) in the asylum wear.

Next step you go and do what he does to the patients, refer to him by cell number rather than by name and if he isn't insane by the time his treatment's starts he certainly will be by the end of it!

The "doctor" talking to him in this case is of course Cal, doing his very best (or worst as the case may be) Lamordian Doctor voice.

There is a reason why I hate/don't like to write accents. They're a pain to write, and they don't tend to add anything to the story, just the mental work of needing to decipher what a character is actually saying.

Still, I wanted to drive home the "stereotypical Germanic Interrogator/Doctor voice" in this particular situation so Cal is replacing all "Th"s with "Z"s and "W"s with "V"s (excusing his own name because his vanity prevents him from calling himself "Doctor Vright") because who wouldn't trust/take orders from a man who speaks like that?

Cerebral vampires are actually immune to sunlight, which is why Dominiani doesn't burst into flames when the sun light washes over him. On the other hand, they are still required to spend eight of every twenty four hours in their coffin.

So while the light doesn't kill him, Cal just keeps him trapped and talking until he "runs out the clock" and Doctor Dominiani has no choice but to go back to his coffin. In the adventure as written his coffin should simply be in his room, and actually rather easy to find, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt and instead wrote the story with him having a coffin hidden in the sort of place which only a vampire would be able to get to without knocking a wall down, something all smart vampires with established homes should probably to do.

Needless to say, much like that saying about send a thief to catch a thief, if you want to track a vampire back to its coffin, you send another vampire.

At which point Mirri pulls the necessary materials from Devi's bag of holding which she'd been lent for the mission, and by 'necessary materials' I mean everything short of a bellows to help feed a fire.

So, having covered the coffin with some heavily flammable substances, she lights it on fire.

When a vampire has been reduced to resting in its coffin this typically means that it is all but completely helpless, and that can be a great time to cut off its head, stuff with holy wafers and so on and so forth.

For those interested the "perma kill" procedure for a cerebral vampire involves wrapping them up in a straight jacket before doing any of the above, but how the PCs could possible be expected to know that I have no idea.

So it's reflected in story that even Mirri who is the group's expert on undead doesn't quite know what you would need to do to make sure Dominiani never came back.

On the other hand though, while they're helpless this gives you a chance to destroy /defile (possible "refile" since a vampire's coffin is by default something of an unholy object isn't it?) the coffin because most vampires depend on their coffin to sleep in for survival every bit as much as they do having blood (or cerebral fluid in Doctor Dominiani's case) to drink.

Vampires can sometimes come back to unlife after being burnt to a pile of ashes by having blood poured on them, but you're going to need a "wish" spell (something in my version of Ravenloft you have to be mage roughly on par with Azalin to cast) to bring a vampire's coffin back form being a pile of ashes, and Cerebral vampires are described as needing to sleep in EXACTLY the coffin they were buried in, so without that coffin, as I read the rules they're doomed to "die" again with 24 hours of coming back to life since there is no way they can sleep in that coffin, that coffin doesn't exist anymore.

As for Mirri, she lacks this particular weakness (needing a coffin) in part because she instead has the weakness of not being able to automatically return to a coffin to recuperate if seriously injured, something I mentioned back in the first book's commentary.

Also she is immune to that weakness because it is part of the nature of the curse the dark powers laid on her that I'll go into in another side story (the one which reveals how and why she became a vampire). Suffice to say for now, Mirri is, and always has been a more mobile type of vampire than most, which is reflected in both her strengths and weaknesses.


	5. Chapter 5

AN: This side story takes place during Book 3: "On a blue Sunday morning lies a body just oozin' life." Whatever you do, do not read this story until you have read that entire book or else you will spoil several plot twists. Don't say you haven't been warned!)

Side Story: This is war, this is pure insanity, dementia, you're driving me crazy!

"Fair enough, how about you lot stand with your hands against a wall real still like while we search you for the murder weapon?" As the doppelganger Sudji spoke he took a moment to examine Paridon's half a dozen newest arrivals.

He'd been close enough nearby (after all, the sooner the body fell under his "official domain" the sooner the single shaped residents of Paridon could start being told all they should know about the matter) to pick up information about their arrival from Roja telepathically.

They hadn't been part of the plan, but things could be adapted quickly enough to make room for them.

After all, if agents of the Flickerflame himself could be kept blind from which human face his master was hiding behind what chance did these fools have?

Hell, Sudji might be able to see to it that they took the blame for a few of Roja's murders before being quietly disposed of!

To get that particular ball rolling of course he'd need to know more about them.

He opened his mind to the thoughts of the silver haired man who seemed to be leading them. After a few false starts he managed to slip his way in... and was not prepared for what he found inside.

/Well wolf we wolf again, wolf just wolf this wolfn't have wolf end wolf me wolfing off wolf few wolfen sword wolfs to wolf them wolf down.\ Only a lifetime of passing for an ordinary human, and more recently over a year of pretending to be someone who actually cared about which human killed or stole from which other human kept his surprise from showing.

Sudji had read a lot of minds since he discovered his powers as a doppelganger. Even that stupid wolf in a man's clothing had an easier mind to read than the one he had just peeked into though! It was like trying to read a book that had been written in two different languages!

"Well of course, but all the same I'd like to make sure you don't have any smaller weapons on you that might have done the deed..." Demanded Sudji, continuing to peer into the strange mind.

/Oh wolf, if wolf bothers wolf look wolf all wolf James' wolfs then wolf's going wolf find wolf that wolfs by wolf chance wolf. Which wolfn't even wolf into wolf what wolf happen wolf he wolfs James wolf off wolf hat wolf get wolf better wolf at wolf face. This wolf going wolf get wolf before wolf gets wolfer.\ The silver haired man thought.

Was he doing this on purpose?

Sudji had encountered all manner of foolish attempts by people in the past that they had believed would make their minds hard to read. None of them had ever come anywhere near this though.

If the doppelganger kept it up he was certain that he'd wind up with a pounding migraine before long.

He'd just have to focus his attention on one of the others, he could piece together everything he'd need to know easily enough once he found a mind he could actually read. For example how about he took a look inside the head of that woman in white?

/Bloodgetoutbloodoutbloodbloodgetoutbloodbloodogteutbloodbloodtteougbloodbloodbloodtegtoubloodbloodbloodtougetbloodbloodbloodbloodgteotubloodbloodblood...\ Was a rough approximation of what Sudji 'gained' by trying to read her mind.

One of his eyebrows went up for a brief moment.

To someone who was more familiar with exactly how much effort doppelgangers put into self control, this was the equivalent of turning around and running away while waving your hands about and screaming at the top of your lungs that your religion's final days were rapidly approaching.

Suffice to say, he had no intention of ever again trying to take another look at that mind.

Instead, Sudji turned his attention towards the blood haired man who was coming to the forefront of the group while shouting something or other. He got inside his mind on the first try and was able to perfectly understand what he found in there.

At the very least he could understand the form it was presented in, the content though...

/Oh no...\ Sudji reflected.

XXX XXX XXX

"Sir Edmund Bloodsworth, there's an Inspector Logan here to see you?" The servant announced somewhat fearfully.

Bloodsworth dismissed him with a simple hand motion and soon enough he was alone in the room with the current commander of the Paridon Guard.

"We have a problem Roja." Sudji drove that particular point home hard by using the true name of his clan's patriarch, though to anyone over hearing it would sound like nothing more than some sort of fanciful nickname.

"What could possibly so serious that you needed to visit me personally Sudji?" Roja shot back.

If he'd needed to import information less urgently then he probably could have just done a simple patrol of the area around the mansion, leaving himself close enough to Roja that his superior could read his thoughts.

Instead however he'd needed to come here in person, and Sudji planned to visit a few of the city's other nobles on unimportant matters before the day was through, just so that the Bloodsworth family didn't end up sticking out in retrospect.

"We've got some new arrivals... and they're well outside ANYTHING we thought about when preparing our plan." The creature with the face of Inspector Andrew Logan insisted.

"Why does what they're like make much of a difference? We knew this, or something like it was going to happen sooner or later. The people of this city aren't entirely as easy to butcher as cows in a pen.

The single shaped fools were going to band together in a vain attempt to protect themselves sooner or later. If the leaders of this group are from outside the city, so much the better, as it will allow us to more easily turn the average resident of Paridon against them when the time is right.

We will make them think that their greatest guardians are naught but monsters." Replied the one with the face of Sir Edmund Bloodsworth.

"That's exactly the issue at hand Roja.

They ARE monsters.

A dryad, a lycanthrope, a vampire, an elf, an asshole, and a... I haven't been able to pick up enough of their thoughts to be able to figure out exactly what the man who calls himself Alexander Diamondclaw really is.

What we can all be certain of is that they are monsters. Monsters, monsters, monsters." Sudji insisted.

"Why are you getting so upset over this? If they're monsters, well imagine how much less effort will be required to turn the public against them." Roja insisted.

"You're overlooking something.

There are no monsters in Paridon.

How long have we all worked carefully to make the single shaped fools who populate this city feel safe and secure in their beds? Their ignorance has always been our greater strength.

There are other clans besides Mulor that are aware that someone is preparing to challenge the Flickerflame, though they have no idea of who or how. So long as their own safety and security is not threatened they will not object to someone replacing him, they will probably even welcome it, since it will give them delusions that one day they could run the city.

If however during ensuing conflict the people of Paridon are given reasons, real concrete reasons to suspect the truth, then there will be repercussions.

Unless we are completely and utterly victorious, our entire clan will be exterminated for taking such drastic actions. Our plan was to convince the residents of this city that those who might try to defend them were monsters... but the monsters were supposed to be nothing but smoke and mirrors.

Having them be real actual monsters... that's a complication which we can do without." Sudji explained.

"So what do you suggest we do?" Roja demanded.

"We need to start killing them, now. The sooner their numbers are winnowed the easier this will be. I'll impersonate Bardan in case anyone sees me to make sure the crimes get appropriately tied back to Bloody Jack, so that Inspector Logan will have explanation for why he comes up empty handed trying to investigate them.

Meanwhile, I'll have Gimbal taking my place at the Paridon Guard, he'll walk into my office, lock the door and spend some time shuffling papers so no one notices my absence. However that particular attempt goes, we also need to start mixing up the same collection of chemicals we used the last time someone tried to track Bloody Jack by scent.

Given that they have a lycanthrope with them I'd be surprised if this group doesn't try to do it sooner or later." Sudji suggested.

"Then stop talking to me and get it done." Roja commanded.

XXX XXX XXX

His ambush point was perfect. His knife was coated with a venom that would slay someone in seconds once it entered their bloodstream.

The door swung open and he struck.

He felt the blade shift from plunging through empty air into something hard. It struck with enough force to knock his target to the ground, so he screamed out "You are meddling in things that are none of your affair" and then took off running.

Once he was a safe distance away and had changed his shape several different times he turned his mind reading abilities outward to see what he could pick up.

After shifting through a few useless minds he hit upon one with some relevant information.

/Damn, I really am gonna have to give the guy who sold me that metal collar some good word of mouth, the thing saved my life!\ Was how it went.

Sudji nearly bit his tongue in half in anger.

XXX XXX XXX

"Lets assume you suddenly went insane and tried to murder me. Well, I wouldn't even need to lift a finger to defend myself! " The alchemist chortled.

Sudji sat there and seethed as unobtrusively as he could manage.

Oh yes, there was nothing more he would have loved than to have ended this right now. To kill the liar who sat across the room from him.

He was a liar of the greatest sort of that there could be no doubt.

Even with all the duplicity that went into being a doppelganger Sudji doubted he had told as many lies as this single shaped fool.

He didn't even need his ability to read the blond haired human's mind to spot most of them either. Yet what choice did Sudji have but to play along with those lies?

No other choice at all when the alchemist couched his untruths in the fact that he was a foreigner and Paridon had throughout it's entire history been separate from the world outside the city.

If the being pretending to be Inspector Andrew Logan claimed to have any such knowledge of the land outside of Paridon then he'd need to explain it.

The great irony of their situation was that Sudji simply was not that good at storytelling. It was easy to lie when you have the telepathic ability to read the mind of whoever you were talking to. Making up a long story to justify those lies on the other hand... that was something else entirely.

Sudji was able to keep the alchemist dancing along to his tune, as long as he kept his own lies as simple as possible. If he tried to compose a story even more complex than the ones the alchemist spun, things might start to get rather complicated.

Complicated was not the way that Sudji wanted them to be, life was already complicated enough given that they were busy trying to complete a series of murders while casting defiance into the ever changing face of the Flickerflame.

Yet, what choice did clan Mulor have but to push forward? By now surely the Flickerflame must have at least a general outline of what they had planned. Even if they did actually decide to knuckle down and turn over the Fang after the sixth murder, there could only be one possible result.

The Flickerflame would thank them for fulfilling their duties as Bloody Jack, and then have them all murdered the first chance he got, certain that only an unexpected turn of events had renewed their "loyalty" to him.

The only hope they had to survive was to fulfill their original plan. Their original plan which had no room in it for monsters like vampires, lycanthropes, dryads, and the asshole he was currently having a discussion with.

If only, if only he could draw his blade and end all of this right now...

The problem was that the alchemist was all too right, even though the "cat" and the "wolf" were both out of sorts at the moment, they weren't that out of sorts.

Both of them together were certainly more deadly than Sudji, and even if the alchemist was wrong about the speed of their reaction, Sudji placed the value of his life a fair bit higher than one single shaped asshole.

No, what their current situation called for was to Sudji to give this blond fool a bit more of that evidence he loved so much.

Tonight he'd have Gimbal impersonate Inspector Logan then join up with the alchemist to go hunt Bloody Jack, while he took on Bardan's shape a second time.

After Roja and Bardan fled the scene of their third murder he and a few of Bardan's servants would attempt to ambush the group.

The sight of "Andrew Logan" being viciously attacked should be more than enough to make the alchemist rethink any theories he was having about "him" being involved in the Bloody Jack murders.

The only weak point of the plan was the possibility that Bardan's servants might get overzealous, but he doubted Gimbal would allow himself to be too seriously hurt.

What could possibly go wrong?

XXX XXX XXX

Where had it all gone so wrong?

It had been bad enough needing to use his shape shifting powers to work that lead bullet out of his body before turning into some no account member of the Paridon Guard and going to the Temple of the Divine Form to get the wound healed.

Getting shot had been one unpleasant surprise, but it paled in comparison to the one that Sudji now found being presented to him.

It was a list of names chronicling all the people who had bought black cloaks from Ire McMoran within the last few months. His own name, well the name of Inspector Andrew Logan was on it.

What should have been the perfect alibi might end up giving the alchemist still more fuel for fires that Sudji would deeply prefer he not ignite. That meant that Sudji needed to do SOMETHING with the list to keep his attention elsewhere or else sooner or later even rusty gears might begin to grind.

Looking over the list again a thought occurred to him.

He still was not sure exactly what Alexander Diamondclaw was, but on the other hand there had never been a werewolf in Paridon for as long as Sudji has been alive.

That must be what he was, and if he was... well one wolf could be used to deal with another.

Yes, that would keep them too busy to be thinking over the list themselves, and also lead to them pulling a thorn which had been festering in the side of Paridon's doppelganger community for far too long.

There were no monsters in Paridon after all, and by the end of tonight he could make certain that there was at least one fewer.

He'd have Gimbal take care of impersonating the wolf's servant and he'd give that alchemistic asshole enough evidence to choke a horse with!

Either way it was win win.

XXX XXX XXX

Either way it was loose loose.

Sudji could try to close his mind to the soporific lyrics of the wolfwere's song, or he could keep reading the thoughts of the man who was trying to kill him.

He couldn't do both.

Why... why were they working together?

Wolfweres and werewolves were supposed to hate each other even more than they did humans!

Why was Alexander Diamondclaw able to have that song wash over him and not be effected in the slightest?

The only saving grace up until now had been that when Alexander been wielding that sword, his thoughts had become steadily more and more human. Sudji had been able to read them properly and he continued to do so trying to dive deeper and deeper into the silver haired man's(?) memory looking for the truth of the matter looking for a weakness that he could use against him before it was too late...

"Standing in the pouring rain,

All alone in a world that's changed.

Running scared now forced to hide,

In a land where he once stood with pride..."

Sudji finally managed to peel back past Alexander's surface thoughts, and penetrate deep enough to find his memories.

He searched through them wildly, with each passing second flicking through months of Alexander Diamondclaw's life looking for what was going on, looking for the truth of of what sort of monster he was.

"But he'll find his way, by the morning light..."

Then he found it.

He found the moment when Alexander Diamondclaw had become a monster.

Oh no...

Oh no!

OH NO!

It was with dreadful clarity that Sudji finally understood exactly what sort of foe he had found himself in a fight with.

"Sounds across the nation, coming from young hearts and minds..."

It made him long for blissful ignorance, at least for as long as it took for Alexander Diamondclaw smash his head into Sudji's leaving his thoughts hopelessly jumbled.

While he couldn't think clearly he couldn't defend himself, on the other hand he also couldn't feel the pain as Alexander began pummel him into complete helplessness.

End Chapter.

AN: Hopefully this adds a little richness to the Monster Party story it was designed to augment.

Originally I planned to have the results of reading Mirri's mind be the magical/mental equivalent of a dial-tone (I'm sorry the brain you've dialed is not currently working, please check back at another time...) but then decided against it.

It was much more fun/interesting to instead have Sudji encounter the equivalent of a the sort of eldritch abomination that man (or doppelganger) was not meant to know.

In this case my particular spiritual jumping off point was Giygas' style of speech during your fight with him in Earth Bound. I'm not sure if that's the right way to go about it, but the end result is to suggest that if you spend too long trying to read an undead mind not only will you not learn anything, but you're likely to need to start taking Madness Checks before long.

As for what he finds inside Alexander's mind. Well it brings to mind a line of Batman's from the Justice League Cartoon series: "My brain's not a nice place to be."

Feel free to come up with whatever you theories you want on why his thoughts as Sudji read them up sounding like a parody of the Space Wolf fluff (every other word is "wolf" or variations on it).

For more examples of the difference between lying and storytelling, take note of how when James asks how "Inspector Logan" (actually a doppelganger other than Sudji) how he got his scar, the doppelganger is promptly left flabbergasted.

There's a very good reason for this, Sudji may or may not have spent enough time around the inspector to have mind read him to the point of knowing how he got the scar before killing, but this other doppelganger certainly never got told that information, because on the face of it, it's utterly unimportant to the task of impersonating the Inspector that night next to things like where he lives, and details of his current life.

He can't tell a simple lie that James will automatically believe based on reading on James' mind and telling him what he expects to hear, so instead he's forced to come up with an awkward half excuse of not wanting to talk about it at the moment.

Likewise back in the mortician's place, because Cal is concocting excuses for the implausible nature of James and Alex as a wolf and cat team, he weaves them into a story that he can think of no possible reason for Inspector Logan to be able to completely disprove.

Sudji can read Cal's mind, he can know that Cal is lying, he can know exactly why Cal is lying, but because Cal's lie comes with a caveat of "I can think of no possible reason for him to know with perfect certainty I am lying." Sudji is left without grounds upon which to call Cal on his bullshit.

In short, the doppelgangers ability to deceive is in a great many ways painfully dependent upon their mind reading skill. On the other hand, why would they have ever learned to lie in the particular style that Call/humans use, when they come from a society of telepaths? Needless to say, once the group dons their rings of mind shielding it has unpleasant consequences for Roja and the rest of his clan.

Also if you didn't know it yet, yes "The Flickerflame" is the "official" doppelganger title for Mr. S/the Darklord of Paridon due to his body constantly changing from one shape to another.


	6. Chapter 6

Monster Party Novella 1: When logic and proportion have fallen sloppy dead.

Chapter One: Backward, forward, outward, inward.

Not again, not again. Not again... how could it be happening again?

The young girl huddled under the table, pulling her knees tight against her chin. How long could she stay here? How long could she keep herself from wanting to do what she always did in the dream? The warning was right before her eyes, clearly displayed on a plaque above the doorknob.

"One bad turn deserves another." What it meant, what it would bring, how many times had she already experienced it?

She wasn't even sure anymore.

She simply sat beneath the table and cried.

"What am I going to do... how am I going to get out?" The girl sobbed to herself.

"Well there is a door right here, but there might be another one the way you came." A voice called out to her.

It was a voice she almost recognized and for a moment her fear was replaced by curiosity.

"Why do you grin?" She called out, slowly crawling from beneath the table.

Perched on a gargoyle overhanging the small door frame was a most bizarre (for a given definition of "most") creature.

It had a decidedly catlike muzzle and ears, but its front paws were polydactyl to the point that they almost resembled human hands while its back ones were more traditionally feline, but still a bit oddly shaped.

The creature's fur was bright red with purple stripes, and neither its odd coloration or shape seemed reason enough to keep a smile from its face.

"Its in my nature to grin. Do you ask why the inchworm measures?" It answered her.

The beast was quite large for a cat, in fact it was larger than Alice!

"Well if it is in your nature to grin I suppose you must be a Cheshire Cat, but I would think you're much too large for that." Alice contemplated.

"Then I suppose I am a Chesh-Dire Cat." The so named creature replied.

"What manner of creature is a Chesh-Dire Cat?" Alice demanded in irritation.

"Well what kind of creature would you expect it to be? Just like any sort of dire creature, it is like the original except more so. You've heard of a Dire Rat I'm sure?" The Chesh-Dire Cat insisted.

"It's a nasty very big rat." Alice replied at once, her parents had warned her that though such creatures were very rare in her homeland, if they were to ever visit Richemulot she must be on her guard against them.

"Well if a common rat should have a right have right to be dire, why shouldn't a cat?" The Chesh-Dire Cat concluded.

Alice pondered that for a moment and decided that for better or worse the strange creature had a point.

"Well Chesh-Dire Puss while I am glad to see you, I'm afraid you've come a very long way to do very little." Alice informed the unnatural creature.

"Why? There are two of us here now, and that means there must be twice as many things we could do! We could talk, we could see what's beyond this particular door..." The Chesh-Dire Cat reflected as it slid off the edge of the gargoyle and landed before the small door turning about to face it.

"I'd rather not. The doorknob is cursed, see the inscription?" She shuddered, knowing that place her hands upon the doorknob was to invite doom of one form or another.

A brow furrowed for a moment and then someone the Chesh-Dire Cat managed to snap its paws.

"How is a crow like a like dessert?" It asked Alice.

The young girl puzzled this one over and always having been rather good at riddles soon enough had an answer.

"I suppose to a cat like you there its more a matter of there being no difference at all." She replied.

The Chesh-Dire Cat wrinkled its face (as much as a cat could) and twitched its whiskers for a moment.

"That's not a terrible answer, but I was thinking that in bar form both of them are good for opening things that have been shut tight." It reflected, as all of a sudden the creature was wearing not just its fur, but a bright red jacket as well.

From the folds of his outfit the Chesh-Dire Cat removed a shimmering metallic object. With one swift blow it knocked the doorknob loose from the door.

"You see a dessert bar will make even the most stoic of men open their mouths to eat it, and a crowbar..." The Chesh-Dire Cat insisted upon explaining.

"Do you truly need to prove the answer to your riddle twice over?" Alice demanded feeling her time was rather being wasted.

"Well I wouldn't want to leave you feeling in suspense on my account. Now then lets just wahoooieeeeee!" As the Chesh-Dire Cat cat spoke it laid its weight upon the tiny door which swung open, revealing that there was no actual floor on the other side of it.

Alice cursing herself for not having warned the good natured beast to be more careful ran forward as fast as she could trying to grab hold of some part of it before it vanished completely from view.

She managed to just barley get two hands wrapped tightly around his tail and held onto it for all she was worth.

"I won't let you go!" She promised the Chesh-Dire Cat.

Now that she was over the edge of the door frame she could see a massive swirling ocean below her.

"That's is a most welcome reassurance, but could you pull me back up as well?" He asked rather awkwardly.

Alice heaved as best she could, but the tail was no part of a cat to get a proper grip on, and the feline in question was bigger than her to start with. The harder she pulled the more tired her arms got and the more unsteady her footing became, until eventually both of them were dragged over the edge.

"You could have let go, I always land on my feet." The Chesh-Dire Cat admonished her as the pair plummeted towards the water below.

"What good is landing on one's feet going to do when falling from this high up?" Alice shouted back, having to half scream to make her voice heard above the wind.

"Well then why don't you land on my feet instead?" He offered, and before Alice could reply he reached out across the gap between them and wrapped his arms around her.

He even went so far as to force a paw over Alice's eyes, leaving her with no choice but await their inevitable landing. The wait was far too long, and yet far too short at the same time, as with a great "SPLASH" they broke the surface of the water.

The shock of the impact knocked his grip loose and Alice kicked her way to the surface spitting out water in the process.

A moment later to her relief another head bobbed up beside her.

"You can swim?" She was a little surprised at her companion's good fortune on those particular matters given the general feline aversion to water.

"I can kitty paddle well enough to keep my head above water, but we may need to find someplace to actually swim too soon." The Chesh-Dire Cat answered.

Alice managed to win a hand free from the water long enough to wipe her eyes a little clearer as she inspected the vast featureless ocean. Then she suddenly saw a gleam of something shiny and pointed in its direction.

"That way, lets go that way!" She directed, and the two took off as best they could.

Before long they reached the source of the once tiny speck of light that Alice had noticed.

"Ahoy there, men overboard!" A voice squawked out.

"There aren't any men, just a girl and a cat actually! Also until we've been on board your ship I don't think it's possible for us to go over it..." The Chesh-Dire Cat called out in response.

"All the same we'd very much appreciate being rescued!" Alice adding wishing she could have used her hands to gag her companion before he somehow managed to talk them both into being left to drown.

"Mr. Sparrow toss them a rope!" The captain called out.

A moment later there was a soft "plink".

"Terribly sorry, it seems we're a bit out of position. If you can get a bit closer you're welcome to come aboard!" The booming voice admitted.

Left with no other real choice the pair kept right on swimming drawing closer to the craft. Taking a deep breath the Chesh-Dire Cat pushed Alice up out of the water.

The strain of it caused him to momentarily vanish beneath the waves, but as Alice clambered to safety he managed to win his way to the surface again.

Alice raced over to the miscast rope and dragged it along with her, lowering it down to the Chesh-Dire Cat (not wanting to repeat her previous failed attempt at pulling it up by hand) who climb up the rope and out of the water.

"Do try to stand back, this might be a bit awkward..." He advised her but before Alice could ask what exactly he meant the creature began to shake itself so vigorously that it was a wonder that he didn't come apart in the process.

Droplets of water splattered across Alice's already soaking wet dress along with landing just about everywhere else sending up a soft series of "plinks" as they landed.

"I've heard of a ship in a bottle, but never one being taken out to sea before." Alice reflected as she looked around.

Sure enough, the vessel was a reasonably sized nautical craft, but it was surrounded by an even larger bottle. Perhaps it was for the best that the bottle was so big, if it's neck had been much narrower neither Alice nor her companion would be able to squeeze through it.

"Well it's the safest way to travel my dear. You see, these waters are quite treacherous. If we were to go sailing on a normal ship and we hit some rocks hard enough they'd breach the hull and we'd all drown. If we go sailing in a ship in a bottle, well the bottle ends up getting broken rather than the ship!" The apparent captain of their vessel explained as he flapped over.

He was as far as Alice could tell, a very large bird.

Much like the Chesh-Dire Cat he was wearing clothing (though his outfit did not directly match the color his feathers) but other than that only his size, and ability to speak lent him an otherworldly air.

"I am Captain Dodo, and this is my first mate Mr. Sparrow..." The bird explained while using a wing that seemed to end in something closer to fingers than feathers.

"Sparrow being my family name of course, my first name is Jack." The other bird added, much like Captain Dodo he had on a sailing outfit complete with fancy hat.

"You do seem to be a bit wet, perhaps we should have a midterm race to help you dry off?" The Dodo suggested.

"What IS a mid-term race?" Said Alice.

"Why that's quite a simple my dear. A mid-term race is a race between those who can't be bothered to make an effort and those who shouldn't have been allowed to in the first place!" Answered the Dodo.

An awkward pause hung in the air which suggested that both Alice and her companion didn't think this was much of an answer.

"Needless to say, the losers will have to give the winner a little present of some sort." The Dodo insisted.

Alice stuck her hands into her pockets and realized that they were empty.

"I used to have some little treats with me, but they must have gotten washed away by the wave..." She lamented.

"I wouldn't be so sure of that... it looks like you've still got ten delicious ladyfingers..." The first mate ruminated his beak shining ominously.

"Now then everyone get into a circle around Mr. Crow's nest. Start running, and don't stop until I call out that the event is over. If your legs stop moving the you're out!" The Dodo commanded.

Alice whimpered to herself, she very much did not want to take part in this race now, but somehow she doubted anyone would listen. So the only thing that she could do was join in the race and hope that she won.

The Chesh-Dire Cat positioned itself behind her while the other birds joined in at various positions and the Captain began to strike up a jaunty tune that got everyone to move. Alice ran, and ran, and ran, but it didn't make a difference, all too soon she began to slow down.

As she felt her muscles start to burn and her breath grow more and more ragged she hung her head and fell to the ship's deck keenly aware of the fact that she was going to loose.

"Whoops!" Her feline follower called out, the Chesh-Dire Cat bent it shoulder's slightly and and with one smooth motion managed to scoop Alice up and cause her to rest upon his shoulders.

While there he began to shift his shoulders back and forth every few moments, making Alice's legs bounce rather listlessly with his own movements.

"I say, is that entirely within the rules?" Called out Mr. Crow the ship's lookout who was behind them and clearly took some umbrage at this behavior.

"Her legs are still moving aren't they?" The Chesh-Dire Cat smirked back.

Captain Dodo made no comment one way or another and the race continued.

Though the bird directly before Alice had seemed tireless, it was only once she was seated in place upon the Chesh-Dire Cat's shoulders that she realized the true meaning of the word.

He just kept running, and running, and running, as though he didn't have a care in the world.

Alice had no way to measure time other than how one by one the birds began to drop out of race.

The first mate was the last of the birds to give up, and only once it was clear that there were only two contestants left "in the running' did the Chesh-Dire Cat allow himself to falter.

He dropped to his knees forcing his passenger to slide off. Alice having been refreshed by her period of not having to run easily kept moving until the Dodo brought and official end to the race with her as the winner.

Though it hardly felt like she deserved it, compared to the alternative some unearned praise didn't seem quite so bad.

One by one the birds with varying degrees of resentment approached her and handing over bright or glossy feathers as tokens of their defeat.

"You can have this... you'll probably get more use out of it than I do." The Chesh-Dire Cat told her as he reached into a pocket of his red outfit to produce his own forfeit.

It was a small black stone icon of a cat seated studiously upright upon all four paws. Looped around the cat's neck was a thin piece of string that Alice put around her neck to keep the statue in place.

As she did so, suddenly Alice felt something she hadn't for a very long time.

She couldn't put a word upon it, but part of her wondered why had she been so afraid?

The next thing Alice knew however the entire world was nothing but strong winds, and greyness. Then she was hit by something heavy and knocked onto her back.

"Oops, didn't mean to do that at all." The Chesh-Dire Cat cat apologized.

Alice for the moment didn't really care.

She pushed the cat aside and looked around, wherever she was it didn't look anything like where she had been before, and there was no sign of the ship or anything else she recognized.

It didn't matter though, she still had the stone cat around her neck, its tiny weight felt like a great blessing. Even the weight of the weight of the Chesh-Dire Cat's body on top of her felt reassuring in a way.

She could find a way to beat this... couldn't she?

End Chapter One

Author's note: The Chesh-Dire Cat's scream is about as close as I can get to transcribing one of these...

watch?v=MUL5w91dzbo

Also some of you may be thinking "wait a moment... this doesn't really sound/read like Ravenloft, this reads like an entirely different fictional setting/novel that I won't be so crass as to name.

You are correct that this "novella" /series of chapters (it's going to be 8/9 or so long so too short to give it a "book" unto itself (also there are other reasons that I don't want to mention at the moment since they would give away some of my plans for the plot) and I may update it once a month at most) is unlike just about all of my other works, not directly based on an adventure from another Ravneloft book. HOWEVER I am still using something heavily inspired by Ravenloft source material, the "hows" and "whys" will become more and more clear as other chapters come out. For now you simply need to know is that yes I have a plan and I know what I"m doing.


	7. Side Story: A superior existence

Monster Party Side Stories: A superior existence, with no one to control you, where you can always do what you like!

Miriam Kantrar thought about her future. It wasn't very pleasing in all honesty.

Oh yes, she had a much "brighter" future than most residents of Nova Vassa, after all her family was wealthy, but what good was money if you couldn't buy what you really wanted with it?

What Miriam really wanted was freedom, and freedom was not something that it looked as if her future would contain. No, what her future would contain was Sir Cerul Bolshnik, who both of her parents had agreed she would to marry since his his family was even richer and more powerful than her own.

The entire rest of her life was planned out before her thanks to her parents, she could see the years stretching out before her, marked by the tedium of pregnancy and child rearing, until she went to her grave, her body weakened and warped by age. Death at least might offer some release from the tedium... assuming what the priests of the Lawgiver said wasn't true.

Alas all too solid proof of the Bolshnik family's power and wealth was in her hands at the moment, a scroll which would grant someone a great boon, supposedly from the Lawgiver himself... The seemingly simple piece of paper had been given to her as Cerul had become her official fiancee. So, now that she had it, what was she going to do with it?

A wicked gleam suddenly filled Miriam's green eyes.

She knew what she could use the spell for, and it would punish both her parents for agreeing to marry her off to an oaf and Sir Cerul for seeking to transform her into his own personal matrimonial hunting trophy!

"I wish that never again would blood flow between my legs!" Announced Miriam loudly.

In an instant the scroll she'd been holding burned itself to ashes and yet her fingers were left unsinged.

Had the spell worked? She supposed that she could not be sure for another week or two until her next cycle, but if it did... well it would bring some measure of happiness to her life to know that she was now incapable of providing the heir so many people saw her only as a means to.

Who knew, if she had been born infertile, people might have had to consider what she was good for beyond being an incubator...

Still, it would have been nice for there to have been some acknowledgment of the scroll being true and not just some charlatan's attempt at such a powerful mystical item.

Then she felt it.

There was a strange flutter in the air, like some invisible bird had flown into the room... She felt an ominous weight pressing down upon her as if a huge avian had decided to perch upon her shoulders.

"The blood must flow... the blood must flow..." Whispered a ghostly voice in her ear.

"If not from your legs then where? If not from your legs then where? Your eyes? Your eyes?" The voice spoke in a strange sort of half echo, as if it was both male and female at the same time, the two sides of it waring with one another as they whispered their cruel demands.

She would not let this bizarre voice make her into some sort of carnival freak weeping tears blood! She would have what she wanted and retain her beauty, for if she was not beautiful then men would not have sought her out so forcefully in the first place.

"Not from me. Never let blood flow from me." Miriam answered.

The beating of wings intensified, and now there was the sound of hundred of disembodied laughing voices.

"The blood must flow. The blood must flow! If not from you, then from where? From where?" The voice demanded to know.

Miriam felt her heart skip a beat, as for just a brief moment she wondered if whatever strange force she was being taunted by was the voice of Mytteri itself?

Mytteri who delighted in the suffering, who existed only to destroy, who was at the root of every evil act! If you believed what the priests of the Lawgiver said at least. Anyone, anything, who could make foes of such men could not be entirely without merit in Miriam's eyes.

"Let blood flow from others... I will make the blood flow from others." She promised.

The fear passed suddenly as the wing beats started to become stronger and stronger, but they no longer buffeted Miriam. Instead, they swept around the room like a whirlwind in whose very eye she stood.

She felt her pulse quickening as puff after puff of air was lain upon her, like being massaged by a thousand tiny invisible hands.

As they continued, their combined miniscule efforts began to add up, like a clay pot being shaped by caress after caress while it spun on a wheel.

In her mirror she could see her skin always fair growing pale, but it was not the empty sallow of death... no there was something almost vibrant about her skin, like the shining a star in the sky or well polished alabaster!

Her face was altered also, tiny imperfections which had plagued her at every turn fading away as her appearance already beautiful became extraordinary! Beneath her skin she could feel still more changes that were being visited upon her, as her muscles (always a bit more prominent than was fashionable thanks to Miriam's preference for an active lifestyle) became yet more taught and powerful.

She closed her eyes and gave herself in completely to the metamorphosis.

She could not explain, could not comprehend why such a simple wish was wreaking such great changes upon her body, but hardly mattered. Not when the changes were one and all rapturous to experiences!

Her heat beat faster and faster with each passing moment until it felt like it might end up busting from pure joy.

CRASH! Yet another gust of the strange wind must have knocked the mirror loose and sent it tumbling to the ground.

No matter, Miriam could always afford another. Perhaps she should buy an even larger one, all the better with which to gaze in rapture upon her wondrous appearance!

Then suddenly she felt stabbing pain in her mouth, there was something wrong with her tongue, had she accidentally bitten it while in the midst of her spell educed euphoria?

It was only a minor concern, at least compared to the sudden burning pain in her chest, it was no mere fanciful turn of phrase to say that her heart felt as though it might burst! No, now it beat discordantly, unnaturally, and fitfully, the pain of it driving her to her knees.

Such a wondrous body, was this how Mytteri sought to torment her, to give her such a striking appearance, and give her only scants seconds to enjoy it, instead of a natural lifetime?

The pain grew greater with every beat of her heart, and Miriam collapsed upon ground.

If she had been able to draw breath she would have cursed the foul thing within her chest which brought her so much misery.

Be still, be still, be still she pleaded silently with her heart.

Then it was.

"Yes... you will make the blood flow..." The voices repeated one final time and then they and the wind they had brought with them vanished.

Miriam lay upon the floor and eyes shut tight against the pain slowly creaked open slightly.

The pain had vanished, sure enough her heart had gone still and with it's beat silenced she was... she was free.

Free to enjoy this body, one which was even more beautiful than her old one had been! Nor was that the only one, she felt stronger, and... she felt like there were other things she could do also...

Miriam had no way to know it, but her eyes were no longer bright green, instead they were ruby red.

Still had she been able to see them, she would have approved, for even their unnatural color only added to her comeliness.

There was a series of sharp knocks on her room's door and then Sir Cerul's voice bellowed through it.

"Miriam, half the castle could hear those noises! What are you doing in there?" Sir Cerul Bolshnik demanded, clearly worried that someone else might in some way defile his soon to be prized possession.

No risk of that now, let some fool brigand try to take her virtue now, Miriam felt like she could have broken a knight dressed for war in half with her bare hands let alone some random cutpurse or rapist.

Speaking of breaking knights...

"Oh my dear intended, it was most strange and frightening to behold... please join me, I shan't feel safe until I am enfolded in your arms.." Miriam mock swooned, summoning up the most vapid and submissive tone of voice imaginable.

If Sir Cerul noticed the change in his fiancee's temperament he evidently chose not to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Speaking of mouths... as Miriam stood back up and cautiously probed her own she realized what had caused her tongue some momentary discomfort, it was her teeth.

As part of the transformation she'd undergone her eye teeth had grown larger and now came to sharp points. That was... just and right, thought Miriam, though she could not say why exactly.

She remained passive and meek as Sir Cerul entered the room and he wrapped his his big and strong strong arms around her.

But they were not big or strong enough, not anymore.

"I am here, now you must tell me what has happened!" He demanded angrily.

"I got my wish." Miriam answered honestly as she gazed deeply into his eyes and his entire body began to go slack.

Clearly he was so overawed with the sight of her new beautiful body that he couldn't bring himself to think or speak.

Miriam tenderly ran a gloved hand along along his throat her interest now fixated upon the pulsing vein which resided there.

"Thanks to that delightful spell I am truly feeling a new woman. Here, let me shower you with kisses and withhold not an ounce of my affection." She promised him.

She kissed him most passionately near the base of the neck and her new teeth punched through his skin with ease.

She pulled away momentarily and watched as an ever growing crimson trickle began to flow forth from that wound.

Without a thought, without hesitation or a hint of reluctance she opened her lips once more and began to lap at the blood like a cat at a saucer of milk.

"The blood must flow... but not from me. Not anymore..." Miriam Kantrar declared with wicked glee as she feasted.

End Story

AN: Just to be clear Mytteri is roughly equivalent to "rebellion" in Vassi, but "it" is not used in regards to the concept of rebellion but rather as an evil "anti-god" who opposes the Lawgiver. It/he/she/shi/ is basically the Satan equivalent in Nova Vassa.

Granted, in "reality" Mirri is much more likely to be talking to some offshoot/aspect of the Dark Powers, or she could have been talking to... well the possibilities are pretty endless when you get right down to it! If you have any problems with someone from far in Nova Vassa's past interacting with the Dark Powers, see my comments in the Book Four commentary chapter where I go over my response/theories for how to make that more or less fit into continuity.

Anyway, there are three kinds of vampires in Ravenloft, or perhaps it would be better to say there are three main ways to become a vampire in Ravenloft (I can't recall what book this information is based on sadly, but if anyone knows anything that directly contradicts it they are free to let me know), since all three types tend to have pretty much the same power set/strengths/weaknesses: 1: Dark Desires, 2: Cursed, 3: Traditional.

Traditional is the easiest to describe, it is what you think of when you think of a vampire, they became that way because they got bitten (probably in the neck) by another vampire and had their blood drained.

Dark Desires by comparison is when a person is preforming a particular evil ritual with the direct intention of transforming themselves into a vampire.

Cursed is a bit more loosey goosey but it typically works like this, a person is wishing that they were younger, that they were stronger, that they'd never have to grow old... and someone/something pays attention and decides to turn them into a vampire as a way of granting their wish. Notably Strahd Von Zarovich one of the most famous vampires in Ravenloft and its first darklord falls into this particular category.

If you were paying attention it should be fairly obvious that Mirri falls under the category of "Cursed" vampire. Granted, by all rights a "Miracle" spell (the spell contained within the scroll Mirri had been given, which is sort of like the divine magic version of a "Wish" spell, though somewhat weaker, although it is still stronger than a "limited wish" ) probably should not be able to turn you into a vampire, but in the demiplane of dread, Mirri's utterly selfish wish was the capstone of an utterly selfish life full of the petty little evils of nobility. Thus, it drew the attention of the Dark Powers who decided to see just what she'd be capable of if they took the "petty" part out of the equation.

Remember how back in the book four author notes I mentioned how the five year cycle of princes in Nova Vassa only seems to end up leading to princes who try to inflict as horrible fates as possible upon the next people in line before they come to power? Mirri is one of the "great Nova Vassan success stories" for a given definition of "success" at least.

You set up an entire system based around dehumanizing the poor, treating other nobles as backstabbing threats to your power who might turn on you at any moment... and eventually you wind up with some "people" who hate the game so much that they refuse to play it, though they've learned the rules well enough to take advantage of those that do.

Mirri is "all cat" much like Malken, though she lacks his malevolence, or at least has a smaller share of it. Mirri is fairly frequently amused by the suffering of others, but only so long as she can actually see it happen in front of her. She doesn't feel the need to try and oppress/corrupt/drag down an entire nation, which is another piece of the particular puzzle of why she didn't become a darklord before she met James.

Originally I was going to have her start with a similar backstory but have her be a more traditional vampire (IE the kind who gets bitten in the neck by another vampire), but after reading the Van Richten's Guide to Vampires it occurred to me that honestly such a history wouldn't fit the proper trajectory of Mirri's character.

Ravenloft is every bit as much of a dog eat dog environment for vampires as it is for humans (if not more so) and master vampires will routinely destroy their own spawn the moment they started to show a chance of surpassing them.

On the other hand, she could have been a vampire bride, but that would imply a level of physical, mental and emotional intimacy which didn't fit Mirri's personality either, not to mention her maker would still probably destroy her once she started showing thoughts about wanting to become independent from them.

So I wanted to create a back story for Mirri that involved her becoming a vampire without needing to explain what happened to the master/mistress vampire who made her in the first place. I made that decision because having Mirri liberate herself from a master vampire would imply strength of spirit that honestly she doesn't really have, or at the very least we've never seen her show before, (Jander Sunstar she isn't) and also it would have suggested that there was a period of her back story during which she was experiencing honest too goodness suffering.

If Mirri had spent a lot of time suffering under a master vampire of some sort, it should have been reflected in some way in her character. For Mirri to be as happy with her unlife as she is, it makes sense if there was no a long period of it where she wasn't allowed to do what she wanted. Mirri's biggest regret in regards to becoming a vampire was the discovery that she could no longer see her reflection, and thus had to rely on others to know just how beautiful she now looks. #FirstUnlifeProblems.

So the "Cursed" brand of vampiriacy suits Mirri perfectly and also helps somewhat explain why her abilities have some major divergences from those of a standard vampire.

The entire point of Mirri's version of being a vampire is that she has completely divorced herself from the "ruler" aspect of her personality to embrace the "monster" aspect. Her power set is designed around allowing her to be much more mobile than most vampires... but also she HAS TO BE more mobile than most other vampires! She isn't allowed to own a castle full of undead servants, she isn't allowed to rest on her laurels the way most other vampires frequently get to.

On the other hand, the fact that she plays "monster" rather than "ruler" or rather than trying to combine them both like say Strahd Von Zarovich or Urik von Kharkov, Jacqueline Renier, or Harkon Lukas, who want to be both monsters and rulers, that's the sort of behavior which seems to quite frequently vault someone to darklordship, and the fact that Mirri hasn't engaged in it, is probably still another of the reasons why even though she's been bloodsucking her way across the Core for several centuries, she didn't become a darklord before she met James.

Also it is entirely possible that one of the main reasons (or at least side reasons) Mirri thinks Othmar is the current darklord of Nova Vassa is simply because she hated his great great great (etc) relative who wanted to force her into a marriage. Vampires can hold grudes for very long times after all...

Finally, this story was originally going to end with Mirri tossing her intended's exanquinated corpse at the feet of her parrent's bed, and telling them that she is a daughter of Mytteri but rather noticeably leaving them alive (as opposed to Strahd who murdered pretty much EVERYONE who was attending wedding he disagreed with) but decided not to since it's immeterial (as I've already made why she hasn't/won't be likely to become a darklord at the moment), and I think I think the story is stronger ending where it does.


	8. Novella 1: Chapter Two

Monster Party Novella 1: When Logic and Proportion have fallen sloppy dead.

Chapter Two: Dynamite with a laser beam.

"I say Chesh-Dire Puss do you have any idea where we are now?" Alice could only wonder as she looked around.

The only thing she was certain of was that they were along way from the ship in the glass bottle, for there was no sign of a sea or ocean in sight.

There were however, a number of tiny little brooks running straight across the land from side to side, and the ground between each brook was divided up into squares by a number of little green hedges that reached from brook to brook.

"Looks like a battlefield..." The Chesh-Dire Cat replied.

He was right of course, as before them was seemingly the remains of a great battle that had only just concluded, or indeed was in the process of concluding.

Dead men lay here and there, and tattered white banners bearing the symbol of a likewise colored rose had been cast down and trod upon.

Most prominent of all was that here, there and everywhere the victors had raised flags bearing their own symbol up for all to see, a large dark red blood-drop.

Yet if it was a battle there only seemed to have been one army taking part in it, or at least one human army. It was possible to spot a great many soldiers be they knights, men at arms, or even a few men in cloaks who might have been mages. They one and all wore white, except for where their own blood had stained it red.

Their bodies were being carefully examined by a large collection of ruby colored statues, all of them crafted in a vaguely feline manner, from the size of an ordinary housecat to a mighty tiger.

It was only after watching the proceedings for several moments did Alice finally realize something, the cats were neither dinning upon the slain soldiers, nor simply examining their bodies for shiny entertainment, but instead purposely manhandling (cathandling?) them into neat little rows.

"Are... are the cats the other army?" Alice pondered, unable to find a more logical explanation.

"Ridiculous! Who could control such a collection of felines?" The Chesh-Dire Cat insisted.

Then suddenly a pair of housecat sized red statues raced up, the rising onto the hind legs before the second jumped atop the head and shoulders of the first and blew into a small trumpet in its paws.

"MAKE WAY! MAKE WAY FOR THE QUEEN!" It insisted loudly.

"I say the speak rather good Mordentish for cats." Alice reflected.

Then she abruptly risked a glance in the direction of the Chesh-Dire Cat fearing that she might have given offense.

"All cats are capable of learning the tongue, it tis simply that few care what is said in it, and fewer still bother to use it themselves." He replied his manner still most cordial.

The army of cat statues began to stretch themselves out low pressing their heads against the ground in preparation for the arrival of their monarch. A proud and regal lioness statue paced onto the battlefield and upon its back road the woman who must obviously be the queen, if only because she was the only 'living human' anywhere nearby other than Alice.

Like the cats she had a body crafted entirely of bright red jewels, but unlike them she was not perfectly uniform of color. Instead it was as if several different materials had gone into her creation, creating subtle shifts in the hue of her clothing and her stiff long hair. A magnificent crown rested upon her brow, each ruby cut into the same blood drop shape as present on her flags.

"Victory!" Cried out the Queen with delight.

"Victory!" Was roared back at her from every throat in her quadrupedal army, even the lioness she road upon.

She promptly slid off the back of her mount and approached one of the fallen men in white. Though she seemed to be solid as a rock her movements were swift and sure to the point that one might even call them graceful.

She seized one of the dead men, and without a second thought tore his body (armor and all) in half. Blood and other viscera leaked from both ends of his body and the Queen allowed the crimson fluid to flow down into her eagerly waiting waiting lips.

"Oh my." Was all Alice could think to say faced with such a macabre sight.

After she finished draining her chosen morsel the Queen tossed its broken halves aside and began to survey her surroundings once again. It was at this point that her eyes (or the twin ruby gems that passed for them) locked upon Alice and her companion.

"Who dares not bow in my presence? Bring them to me!" She commanded.

A great host of brightly colored feline statues rose to their feet and sought to carry out the command.

"Should we run?" Alice half whimpered suspecting that both her and the Chesh-Dire Cat might soon suffer the same fate as that fallen soldier.

"Where to?" He replied stoically, gesturing behind them with one of those not digits that was not quite a thumb, but not quite not quite a thumb either.

Sure enough while the land ahead of them was divided by serene brooks and minor hedges, behind them lay a seemingly endless wall of twisting thorny vines that stretched as far as the eye could see.

Escape seemed quite impossible, and even if they wished to try, in no time at all they were surrounded by a mass of glittering cat statues bearing shining sharp fangs at them.

While it might be considered impossible for humans to herd cats, these cats proved quite adept at herding humans, the ones behind and the ones in front took steps in perfect synchronization and she had no choice but to move in the direction they desired or trampled under paw.

Soon both she and the Chesh-Dire Cat were brought before the Queen who had remounted her lioness in preparation for their arrival.

"Where do you come from and where are you going?" She demanded imperiously.

Alice had at least the good sense to curtsey before the mono-color monarch and tried to answer as best she could.

"I'm from Mordent, and for where I'm going, I'm just trying to find my way home." The young girl explained, her hands clutching tight to the much smaller (and so far as yet still inanimate) statue around her throat.

"I don't know what you mean by your way," said the Queen: "all the ways about here belong to me!" She insisted proudly.

"Who were you fighting and why?" The Chesh-Dire Cat abruptly interjected.

"The Queen of Diamonds..." The cat riding ruler replied with a haughty sniff of contempt.

"The problem with queens is that a land without one is in a very bad way, but a land that has more than one is in an even worse one. So I resolved to resolve the matter by testing her resolve on the field of battle." She explained, even as some of her subjects were dragging over another of the fallen bodies.

Without missing a beat she leaned over, grabbed it off the ground, tore it in twain and began to guzzle down what remained of its lifeblood.

"Why do you do such a ghast... curious thing?" Alice asked, barely able to keep her tongue from landing the rest of her in a great (or at least an even greater) deal of danger.

"I find it takes all the blood I can get just to keep the same amount inside me." The Queen replied.

"Why must you keep blood inside you in the first place?" Alice pressed feeling very foolish indeed, for asking such a question, though unsure how anyone could ever stop being foolish if they never asked questions at all.

"What, and let my beautiful colors be worn away by the rain and wind? Blood within to slowly seep out and dye the body red without, that is the only proper way to live." She insisted.

It was only at this point that Alice realized that while the Queen might have asked about what she was doing, neither of them had spoken one word concerning who they were to the other.

"I'm Alice Liddell by the way, and if you were fighting the Queen of Diamonds I suppose you must be the Queen of Hearts..." She guessed.

The Queen reached up and took off her crown, she began to lazily inspect its jewels, before finding one in particular she liked. She plucked it from its resting place, studied it again, and then flicked it at Alice contemptuously.

The tiny stone must have been carefully cut, for in turn it opened up a large cut on the side of Alice's cheek as it flew past.

The young girl yelped and pressed her hands to the wound to try and hold back the bleeding.

"The problem with queens is that a land without one is in a very bad way, but a land that has more than one is in an even worse one. There is no queen in all the land who I hate more than the Queen of Hearts.

I hate her not because she commands an army greater than my own, I hate her not because she oppresses my favorite servants, I hate her not because deep down she is but a whimpering girl unfit to rule, I hate her not because she is a cruel tyrant... I hate her, BECAUSE PEOPLE KEEP MISTAKING ME FOR YER!" The most definitely not Queen of Hearts exclaimed, her point being punctuated by the lioness roaring in Alice's face with such force that she fell to the ground.

"What is your title then?" Alice pleaded hoping she might yet escape in one piece.

"I am the Sanguine Queen." The Sanguine Queen declared proudly.

"Are those words really supposed to rhyme?" The Chesh-Dire Cat interjected scratching his own furry ears, clearly deep in thought..

Alice precocious as she was had never heard the word before and so had no opinion to venture on the matter, which was well enough for the Sanguine Queen was clearly somewhat irked by the Chesh-Dire Cat's opinion on the matter.

"When I use a word," the Sanguine Queen said in a rather scornful tone "it sounds just the way I choose it to sound, no more no less." She insisted bluntly.

"If you hate the Queen of Hearts so, why were you attacking the Queen of Diamonds?" Alice pipped up as she slowly regained her feet.

"Because the Queen of Hearts is all the way on the other side of the chessboard." The Sanguine Queen huffed in irritation.

Seeing that Alice's wound still continued to trickle blood the Chesh-Dire Cat tore of some of his jacket and bound the scraps about her cheek to give her a makeshift bandage.

"Really, I don't see her or her army..." Alice insisted squinting as hard as she could, without any success.

"There are chessboards, and then there are chessboards. The Queen of Hearts is on the side of the greater chessboard, and we are only on the second space of it. That is entirely too far for me to travel with any reasonable speed." The Sanguine Queen "explained" at least for a somewhat loose definition of the word.

"But you're a queen, aren't you allowed to travel it all in one go?" Alice suggested, since she knew at least a little of the rules of regicide thanks to her father.

"Only if the path is clear, which it isn't. The Queen of Hearts has her pieces all over the place and so I'd have to stop and deal with each one of them in turn." The Sanguine Queen reflected morosely.

"If this Queen of Hearts is truly as terrible as you say she is, then perhaps I'll never find my way home again, or even your way to my home, as long as she rules." Alice contemplated.

"Besides, though I may feel like a pawn of some great unknown force now if I should make it to the other side of the chessboard then I'd be a Queen wouldn't I?" She added feeling her confidence rising.

A large furry paw pinned her to the ground as the Sanguine Queen's mount pushed her back to the blood soaked ground.

"You seem to have quite rudely ignored my wisdom, so let me repeat it a third time, there will be no forth. The problem with queens is that a land without one is in a very bad way, but a land that has more than one is in an even worse one." The Sanguine Queen hissed as the lioness statue somehow produced a rock solid tongue with which to run over its gleaming teeth.

"Well I'm much too young to be an actual queen, I suppose I'd only be a princess instead." Alice quickly amended.

The Sanguine Queen contemplated this for a moment and then had her mount take a step back.

"I suppose I could live with a princess." She relented.

Alice was much more concerned with the question of if the Sanguine Queen would let her live as a princess, but pointedly did not say so.

Then she turned her attention to the Chesh-Dire Cat and slowly ran a hand along the scrap of his jacket he'd wordlessly given her scant moments ago.

"If you really are a Queen then you should knight my dear Chesh-Dire Puss, he's already saved me twice over, from downing and terrible birds!" Alice suggested eagerly.

"If you had come near to drowning once I'd have expected you to learn something from it and not go near enough to water to risk having it happen a second time..." The Sanguine Queen noted dryly.

"I meant once from drowning and once from birds." Alice clarified, blushing slightly.

"Do be courteous enough to simply say what you mean in the future." The Sanguine Queen commented, before turning her neck in the direction of the Chesh-Dire Cat.

"Resourceful sort of fellow is he?" She inquired, looking him over from top to bottom as he abruptly broke into a bow.

"I did take a few losses in my war against the Queen of Diamonds, though I've never been terribly fond of knights. After all, who has ever heard of a knight that has been able to keep up with a queen?" The Sanguine Queen admitted as she motioned for another of her feline servants to bring over a sword from one of her many slain foes.

She then got of her lioness and without a word the Chesh-Dire Cat got down on his knees.

"Thus do I rook thee Sir Cat." The Sanguine Queen exclaimed loudly enough for all present to hear as she tapped him on the shoulders with the blade.

"Rook thee?" Alice said in a mildly confused voice.

"As I said, I've never been overly fond of knights, but I could always use another rook. Especially if we are to deal with the Queen of Hearts. To bring war to her the first thing we must do is..."

She never got a proper chance to finish explaining her plan as all of a sudden the world around them spun.

There was a soft "whump" as as the Chesh-Dire Cat was thrown to the ground, a much louder one as Alice dizzily landed atop of him and a loud "THUNK" as the Sanguine Queen landed a few feet away from them.

They were now in a seemingly ordinary house, except that everything seemed to be about twice as large as it should have been. "

Such an uncouth method of travel is beneath me." Groused the Sanguine Queen.

"I shall try to position myself differently next time, then if nothing else you will be above me." The Chesh-Dire Cat offered.

"Do you ever have any idea where we are?" Alice asked, not wanting to further disturb someone's house simply because she had the misfortune to be sent there by magic.

That was when she first heard a ticking sound.

"Dreadful as it may sound, I think I know where we are..." Warned the Sanguine Queen as she pointed toward a bright brass plate above the door with the name "S. Rabbit" engraved upon it.

"We have wandered into the home of the Silver Rabbit." She concluded.

The ticking got louder.

End Chapter.

AN: The conversation about the pronunciation of "Sanguine Queen" is complete nonsense, even by the measure of a lot of the other stuff said in this and the previous chapter.

Alice being from Mordent is speaking Mordentish the low form of which is completely equivalent to real world French (or at least that's the theme I've been running with through all my Ravenloft works). So "Sanguine Queen" would be something more like "Reine sanguine" according to google translate. Thus, there shouldn't even be a rhyme possible, there only is because we're reading the character's speaking French automatically translated into English. It's like that joke in Going postal about "the gods being concerned with prophets not profits" which is near incomprehensible to those hearing it when said aloud, but perfectly obvious to the readers.

In English "sanguine" is pronounced so that it rhymes with "pin" rather than "Queen" but, what can I say it fit far too well for me to turn down the chance. Also time for another game of vocabulary word of the day, if you don't know what "sanguine" even means, it has two distinct definitions, the first is basically "cheerful", "optimistic", you know the way that James normally acts. The second definition is "bloody" you can guess which definition applies.

Also yes this book Is still taking place in Ravenloft, and is very much inspired by some Ravenloft related materials... though of course it's also inspired by some other works of fiction that I'm still not going to name, because by this point you really have already figured it out by now.

That said the Sanguine Queen has reason to be upset given how frequently people, even beside Alice believe she's exactly the same as the Queen of Hearts.

Also are you starting to pick up on a certain theme of how this particular story is unfolding, then you should probably be able to guess, exactly who/what the Silver Rabbit will end up reminding you folks of. If you haven't picked up yet... well trust me it will be every bit as outrageous as the first two chapters...


	9. Novella 1: Chapter Three

Monster Party Novella 1: When logic and proportion have fallen sloppy dead.

Chapter Three: Scooping up the field mice and boppin' 'em on the head!

"We need to hide, now!" Insisted the Sanguine Queen, sounding quite unlike herself.

"Why?" Alice immediately replied.

"The Silver Rabbit is the Queen of Hearts favorite messenger. He specializes in sending one particular type of 'message' and bears me a great deal of ill will. Like I said, we need to hide!" She explained.

"Where should we hide?" The Chesh-Dire Cat inquired, his brown eyes rapidly scanning the room.

"There's a mouse hole over there, but while we are small, not quite so small that we could fit inside." Alice regretfully informed her companions.

"This sounds like a situation that calls for a good stiff drink!" The Chesh-Dire Cat suggested pointing towards a large bottle sitting on the table that bore a tag with the words "drink me" written upon it.

"Do you really think that will help us hide from the Silver Rabbit?" Alice pondered.

"So long as we do not try to hide in the bottle itself it can hardly make things worse. Quickly you two stand on my shoulders!" The Sanguine Queen insisted.

"Tis no place for a Rook to stand on the shoulders of his Queen." The Chesh-Dire cat proclaimed proudly.

"I am crafted of the finest rubies in all the land, do you think that you can lift me?" The Sanguine Queen pointed out derisively.

At which point the Chesh-Dire Cat grabbed her and hefted her onto his shoulders, in a show of strength equaled only to its chivalry.

Even so positioned, the Sanguine Queen was not quite tall enough to reach the table or the bottle that resided upon it.

Alice took a deep breath and joined her two new friends in their attempt, climbing first up the body of the Chesh-Dire Cat and then much more carefully over the rocky form of the Sanguine Queen. When she was perched on the monarch's shoulders she was just able to get her hands upon the table and pull herself up.

"How shall I bring the two of you with me?" She shouted down, as she'd already failed once to pull the Chesh-Dire Cat up over a precipice and saw no reason to expect her second attempt to go any better.

"We do not need to come up to you, simply send the bottle's contents down to us!" The Sanguine Queen shouted back.

The ticking grew louder still.

Alice did not ask questions, the bottle was quite large, about half the size of her entire body, but she was still able to push it over with ease. It's cork came loose and its clear fluid began to dribble first across the table and then down to the floor.

Alice got down on her knees and drank from the mixture, and the world became a stranger place yet. Everything around her grew and grew and grew! From her position atop the table she was able to see the equally reduced in size Chesh-Dire Cat and Sanguine Queen fleeing for the safety of the mouse hole.

"That is all very well for them, but where shall I...?" Alice began but never quite managed to finish.

"Someone's been drinking from my bottle!" A voice cried out as the door to the house opened and in hopped the Silver Rabbit.

Alice being a child of some means had so far only encountered rabbits in storybooks, yet even with such a limited frame of reference she was certain that there was something wrong with the Silver Rabbit.

Its large floppy ears, small cotton tail, pink whiskered nose were the right enough, but precious little else about it was.

It "hopped" as it moved, but each hop seemed to really be more of a "pounce", especially once she noticed that it had claws.

Its front and back legs were more or less perfectly identical to one another, suggesting that it had clearly been built with something other than short bounces and jumps in mind.

Its left eye was covered by a black eyepatch and its right was a distinctly "not at all rabbit like" golden orange color. It wore a fancy black coat and around its neck was a shinning golden collar from which a timepiece of the same material hung, ticking loudly all the while.

In short the Silver Rabbit would have looked no more at home in a hutch than an oversized seahorse would in a stable.

Its single eye fixed itself pointedly upon Alice almost at once.

"Correction, someone's been drinking from my bottle, she's still here!" It reflected.

Now that Alice was able to see the mouth of the Silver Rabbit up close, she noted that his teeth might best be described as: large, sharp, and numerous.

"If this was your bottle how did you plan to open it? You haven't got hands at all..." Alice asked, as indeed the Silver Rabbit was far more animal like than the Chesh-Dire Cat.

In response, the Silver Rabbit reached out and seized the bottle in its its jaws. There was a great crunching sound, followed by a short pause for it to consume the small portion of the liquid (though his size did not change in the slightest) that had yet remained in the bottle.

Then there was a rapid fire "clink, clink clink clink clink clink!" noise as the Silver Rabbit proceeded to spit out chunks of broken glass with such force that they embedded themselves in the wall.

"Oh my!" Alice couldn't help but utter again.

"I am chief rabbit for a reason." The Silver Rabbit proclaimed, proudly striking up the loftiest pose any lagomorph could possibly be capable of.

"So I see..." Alice admitted, thinking that she might yet have a chance if only she played to the rabbit's obvious sense of vanity.

"I also see you have a very fine time piece, but do you not have trouble using it?" Alice pointed out to the Silver Rabbit.

Indeed with the creature's body shaped the way it was, it would seem that only those who looked upon the rabbit would be able to see his time piece and never its actual owner.

"It was given to me by the Queen of Hearts so that I might inform others of when they were about to be late." The Silver Rabbit replied.

"Late for what exactly?" Alice pressed.

"Lateness not so much in regards to a what but a who. A general, all encompassing state of lateness as it were." The Silver Rabbit declared, taking a moment to smile and thus showing off its many teeth again.

"It is a very poor sort of gift to give someone that only helps those other than the person it is given to." Alice pondered, for if all her 'gifts' were of such a nature she could understand why the Queen of Hearts was such an unlikable person.

"She also paid for the house and garden." The Silver Rabbit noted gruffly.

"Ah." Alice half gulped, worrying that she had just given fresh offense beyond her initial quite unintentional entering and the follow quite intentional drinking.

"You've still not told me who you are..." The Silver Rabbit chuffed, its breath alone powerful enough to knock the young girl off her feet, though luckily not off the table.

"Alice Liddell..." She abruptly squeaked in reply.

"A fitting enough name, though Little Alice might fit you better still." The Silver Rabbit reflected, its tail twitching slightly, as if wishing to move more than it was truly capable of.

"Have you ever stopped to think that I may not be so terribly little, it just you are so terribly big?" Alice asked, as she slowly stood back up.

"Size alone is utterly uncoupled from morality Miss Liddell. The more fool I though for expecting a burglar to know much of the latter." He expounded taking a moment to cross his paws contemplatively.

"I would not have broken into your house if I had a choice. In fact, I've been feeling rather choice-less for a very long time." She lamented.

"Sit down, stand up!" The Silver Rabbit barked at her at once.

"Which one am I supposed to do? I can't do both at once, or do you mean do one after the other?" She begged the Silver Rabbit to clarify.

"Sit up, stand down then! It doesn't matter to me which you do, I was simply trying to give you a choice." The Silver Rabbit explained.

Alice would have boxed the beast's ears for such comments, if only it were not for the fact that either one of the Silver Rabbit's ears could have mostly likely knocked her flat with one well placed flick.

"I meant a choice that mattered!" She clarified, half wailing.

"Every choice matters. If they didn't, then we wouldn't call them choices in the first place, instead we'd call them laws." The Silver Rabbit insisted.

"Still, tis a very small an limited choice that only affect's one posture. If you were to offer me a proper choice, I'd much rather see your garden than your gullet." Alice told the Silver Rabbit.

The Silver Rabbit took a moment to listen to the ticking sound of his timepiece, then shrugged.

"Sounds as if you still have time enough for both. Jump down and hold tight to the collar about my neck or you'll shortly break your own." He commanded before positioning himself by the table so that she might do exactly that.

Alice decided it was best not to quarrel with such an order, deciding as many before her had that a possible death in the future was still preferable to a certain one right now. Besides, if the Silver Rabbit was very fond of his garden he might get distracted and give Alice chance to find her own mouse hole to hide in.

At her reduced size the jump down felt quite long, and Alice in turn felt quite proud and heroic for having managed to successfully grab onto the golden collar. That done she pulled herself along it to a position more or less directly in the middle of the Silver Rabbit's ears.

"Am I just to keep calling you Silver Rabbit all the time, or have you another more informal name you prefer?" She asked, only at that very moment realizing she'd never bothered to ask the Chesh-Dire Cat if he had a name to call his own.

"My owsla refer to me as U-Elilzornhrairrah." The Silver Rabbit declared, seeming to swell larger still with pride at such a grand (or at least long) name.

Indeed, it was a name that seemed to be every bit as large compared to Alice's as his body was next to her own at the moment.

"You, eey, leel, zorn, hur, air, ah?" Alice timidly tittered, trying to twist the tongue through the tricky title.

"Ooh, el, zorn, ah, rarre, rah." The Silver Rabbit corrected her.

"Oh, I'm terribly sorry to have mispronounced it." Alice apologized, even if it was still all so much nonsense (even compared to much of what she had just been through) to her ears.

"It flows much more evenly in my native tongue." U-Elilzornhrairrah insisted.

"If such is the case, then perhaps there is a less literal translation I might use?" Alice suggested, thinking that if she should have to call her oversized mount "U-Elilzornhrairrah" all the time then her own time would run out quite swiftly indeed.

"In the Hedgerow you speak so poorly, simply calling me The Big Bad Bunny will do." The unorthodox rabbit explained as he began the trek out toward his garden.

Alice abruptly found herself very grateful for the golden collar, for The Big Bad Bunny seemed to feel that one should never take a simple step if a jump would suffice, and so her journey was a bumpy one indeed.

It got bumpier still once they left the house and Alice found herself in a large garden, one part of which did not seem very well kept.

"EMBLEER FRITH!" Spat U-Elilzornhrairrah in a tone of horrified shock.

One more grand jump took them to the portion of the garden that was desolated.

"What... what could have done this?" He gasped in a horrified voice.

"A deer?" Alice suggested knowing that such creatures had ruined many a garden back in Mordent.

"No chance of that, my stock of flayrah is untouched." The Big Bad Bunny insisted gesturing with a paw towards a section of the garden when a great many large vegetables grew.

"No, this was not a crude attack on the stomach of my garden but a stab at its very soul.

My lovely Lilly, my resplendent Rose, my delightful Daisy, my vivacious Violet, stems smashed, petals plucked, peduncles pulverized, and filaments flattened! My Queen, where is my Queen?" The Silver Rabbit cried out in a voice that mingled horror and pain like few Alice had ever heard.

He used his paws to rapidly sort through the fallen flowers but evidently did not find what he either sought (or feared) to discover.

"No sign of her... then she might yet live... WHAT DO YOU KNOW OF THIS?" U-Elilzornhrairrah demanded in a voice so loud he almost shouted Alice's hands loose of his collar.

"Nothing!" She pleaded.

"PROVE IT!" The Silver Rabbit demanded at once.

"I'm much too small to have harmed flowers as large as those, besides, if I had come out here, surely I'd have left foot prints in the ground." Alice pointed out, hoping to buy herself a little more time with this explanation.

Shockingly, it worked.

The Silver Rabbit did another quick examination of the ruined flower garden and found no sign at all of tiny foot prints disturbing the ground.

"A valid point." He eventually replied in the tone of one who is not angry, but devoutly wished they could be furious.

"I do not even know which Queen you're speaking of. This place seems to have more Queens than all of the Core put together!" Alice lamented.

"The queen of my garden, my most favored foliage, the Queen of Poisons." The Big Bad Bunny growled in answer.

There was yet another bone jarring jump as the Silver Rabbit leaped amid his foodstuffs, and plucked a few leaves with his jaws, before twisting his head around to deposit them on his back.

"So long as you're going to ride there like a slightly oversized flea, make yourself useful and hold onto these spinach leaves for me in case I am hungry later. Now, I will go into the Tugley Wood and hunt down the one responsible for this travesty!" U-Elilzornhrairrah vowed in a most decidedly unrabbit like manner.

For a few moments Alice used one hand to hold onto the pieces of greenery and the other to hold the collar.

Finding this an uncomfortable (and unbalancing) position she pressed the leaves tight against the collar and proceeded to hold onto both with both hands as the Silver Rabbit headed into the Tugley Wood.

His legs no longer all left the ground at the same time in great hops, no, now came the sure strides that Alice had expected him to be capable of from the start, his movements becoming as swift and smoothly flowing as quicksilver itself.

XXX XXX XXX

"HAVE YOU BEEN IN MY GARDEN? HAVE YOU JUBJUB?" The Silver Rabbit demanded of a large fat red bird that he had pinned beneath his mighty paws.

"I know far better than to do such a foolish thing! Maybe it was the Bandersnatch!" The bird tweeted back forlornly.

XXX XXX XXX

"NOT SO FRUMIOUS NOW, ARE YOU?" The Silver Rabbit demanded of an even larger black feathered bird it had caught with no more difficulty than its previous prey.

"All of us birds are too smart for such a thing!" The Bandersnatch insisted.

"Too frightened of me you mean! Still, there were no paw prints in my garden, whatever did it could fly!" Insisted U-Elilzornhrairrah.

"The Jabberwock has wings also!" The captured pleaded pitifully.

"He does at that." The Big Bad Bunny agreed and slowly released his latest prisoner.

XXX XXX XXX

"Jabberwock, did you despoil my garden?" The Silver Rabbit asked.

He had not gone straight on the attack in this case, but Alice could hardly blame him.

The Jabberwock was a tremendous beast, it resembled a green dragon from the neck down, though its face seemed almost rat like given its large buck teeth. Unlike every other occupant of the Tugley Wood they had come across, the Jabberwock was larger than the Silver Rabbit, something like twice his size at least!

Yet despite all of this, the Silver Rabbit had sought him out without hesitation and even at this very moment Alice could feel anger boiling off of him to such a degree that it was a wonder she didn't catch fire.

"What will you do if I refuse to tell?" The Jabberwock replied, its voice thick and oily, the kind of voice that even Alice was wise enough to shy away from.

"Then I'll huff, and I'll puff..." The Silver Rabbit, paused for a moment to do exactly that.

Then from its lips came a great horizontal typhoon (something that struck Alice as quite strange, even though she had never seen the more traditional vertical version) which crossed the distance between them and knocked the Jabberwock head over heels despite its size.

"And I'll bash your skull in." U-Elilzornhrairrah concluded.

The Jabberwock clambered back to its feet, its once mockingly smug expression now replaced with one of open anger.

"You wish to know who despoiled your garden? Very well, let me put your mind at ease, it was I..." The beast cackled evilly.

"WHY?!" Snarled the Big Bad Bunny.

The Jabberwock raised up one of its claws and uncurled it, revealing a mostly deflowered daffodil.

"It was me..." He sneered, seeming to take an almost visceral pleasure in the revelation.

"THE QUEEN OF HEARTS WILL HAVE YOUR MISBEGHOTTEN HEAD!" Promised the Silver Rabbit.

"Foolish oversized rodent, who do you think ordered me to do it? The Queen of Hearts had decided that the time has come to sweep her land free of all other possible pretenders to the throne. That includes your dear Queen of Poisons." The Jabberwock explained, taking a moment to drop the already dead flower and purposefully trod upon it.

"If you so much as laid one perfidious talon upon her pistils..." The Silver Rabbit began.

"She's still alive... for now. She's languishing in the Queen of Hearts Dungeons, far away from the sun she loves so very much, and you will do nothing about it or else..." The Jabberwock began but never got a chance to finish.

"What I will do is turn a great big mound of hraka like you into fertilizer for my garden!" The Big Bad Bunny insisted.

He began to draw in breath again, but before he could release it the Bandersnatch spat forth a great ball of flame.

The Silver Rabbit jumped aside, and the tree he'd been in front of moments ago was burnt to ash in an instant.

Alice was highly tempted to point out at this point that the fight had nothing at all to do with her in the slightest. Sadly, she doubted the Silver Rabbit would be kind enough to bound off and leave her someplace safe before returning to the battle.

As for the Jabberwock, well he seemed so villainous that he might find Alice's death a pleasant bonus. So instead, she had little choice but to cheer on her champion, such as he was.

"Pummel his flank Ooh, el, zorn, ah, rarre, rah!" Alice cried out.

Now that she bothered to actually say it aloud properly with some passion, Alice noted that the name itself almost sounded like a cheer!

"Oh believe me, I will endeavor to do a great deal more than that." The Silver Rabbit vowed before jumping out of the way of yet another fireball.

"Bounce for me little bunny, bounce for me!" The Jabberwock cackled producing one blast of flame after another.

"I'll bounce on your head, I'll bounce on your grave!" Replied the Big Bad Bunny.

Then he suited word to dead and jumped right for his foe.

The Jabberwock stood ready for him, though and the pair soon found themselves grappling, the Silver Rabbit's large paws against The Jabberwock's mighty claws.

Despite his smaller (for a given definition of "small") size anger clearly lent strength to the Silver Rabbit and he managed to keep The Jabberwock locked in battle.

"Burn like your flowers..." Cackled the Jabberwock and then let loose with another ball of flame at point blank range.

The Silver Rabbit raised up its head as best it could, and to her shock Alice recognized that he was trying to protect her.

The ball of flame struck with a physical force that knocked them clear of the grapple, while its heat blackened the Silver Rabbit's fur, and assaulted her as an almost oppressive heat, trying to scorch every hair from her body!

The Silver Rabbit ended up slamming against a tree, purely by luck it was a small tree, and so Alice was not squashed like a bug. None the less the impact came as such a shock she was only just barely able to hold onto the golden collar.

"Are you all right?" She asked her companion.

"That's all I can stands, I can't stands no more..." The stricken Silver Rabbit wheezed.

Alice was glad to hear that he was still alive, but it sounded as if the sense had been knocked out of him even if the wind hadn't been.

"Little Alice I'm starting to feel hungry..." He suddenly pleaded.

The Jabberwock puffed out a small ring of flame, this time more with the air of a gentleman enjoying his pipe rather than any sort of weapon. Then he began to advance upon them, clearly intending to rip the Silver Rabbit apart rather than simply scorch him to cinders.

Alice was not certain what good a few leaves would be able to do, but by the same token, there seemed nothing else to do...

No, she did have a choice, The Jabberwock had still not noticed her, she might flee from the Silver Rabbit, and surely would be too small to be noticed by such a great beast.

That was her choice... and for Alice was no choice at all.

She grabbed the leaves and climbed across his head feeling as if she was being forced to work her way up a small silver hill. Then she had to gently work her way down his face, carefully sliding down past his nose, and then gently (and cautiously) slid the leaves into the Silver Rabbit's mouth.

Then certain, that whatever was going to happen next she was going to need a good handhold, she kept climbing until she was able to grab hold of the other side of the golden collar next to the still ticking time piece.

The Silver Rabbit greedily chewed the green leaves, and it seemed to have much the same effect upon him as drinking the liquid from the bottle did upon Alice, except in reverse.

He grew, and he grew, and he, and he grew! Even his fur was growing, for fresh brand new patches of silver now covered every spot The Jabberwock's flames had burnt black.

For a wonder his golden collar grew also or surely it should have snapped in half.

The Silver Rabbit rose to his feet, and now that he stood up Alice realized that she was looking down at The Jabberwock, for the Big Bad Bunny had become so big as to be half again his foe's size!

"Oh my!" Was all the green scaled monster could gasp confronted with this most unpleasant surprise.

For another brief moment the pair continued to size one another up in an ominous silence. A silence, devoid of a sound that Alice had grown so accustomed to by this point that its lack was louder than its presence ever could have been.

"My watch has stopped ticking. Your time is up Jabberwock." U-Elilzornhrairrah growled.

The Jabberwock quickly coughed up another ball of flame, this one seeming even larger than any that had come before.

"Look, out!" Alice shouted, though given where she now hung, she was uncertain that her words would carry to the Silver Rabbit's ears, however big they might be.

For a certainty he made no attempt to dodge.

Instead the Big Bad Bunny huffed and he puffed, and he spat out another horizontal blast of air.

It struck the fireball with such force that it might have been an extremely bright balloon for all it resisted, as it was promptly blown back into the body of the one who had created it in the first place!

The Jabberwock's green scales were charred black by the impact and he was slammed against a tree.

"You will never see her again!" It croaked, either too proud or too steeped in evil to beg for mercy.

"One of us certainly never will..." The Silver Rabbit promised.

Then he crossed the distance between them with a single leap.

The Jabberwock's claws came up, but this time there would be no great contest between near equals, the Silver Rabbit soon smashed The Jabberwock's claws into the ground breaking scale and bone alike.

"One, two! One, two! And through and through!" Cried out U-Elilzornhrairrah as he spun around (how such a great beast could turn so swiftly was a mystery to Alice, almost as great a mystery as how he could do it without her ending up being thrown clear) and began to pummel The Jabberwock's head with kicks from his back legs.

One of those kicks knocked the beast's head clear from his neck and the Jabberwock was no more.

"He certainly deserved it..." Alice reflected, for she was hard pressed to imagine a more unpleasant creature of any type in all her life.

"It and more." Replied the Big Bad Bunny who suddenly seemed to shrink back down to the same size as he'd been when Alice had first met him.

Now that the battle was over and done with, the Silver Rabbit took a moment to mournfully rest his head against a tree in morning.

"Twas vengeance not justice though. He'll never harm another precious flower, but I am little closer to rescuing my own Queen. To do that, I'd have to break into the dungeons of the Queen of Hearts herself..." The Silver Rabbit lamented.

Alice had heard of opportunity knocking. This, by comparison was opportunity picking the lock to your door, and making itself at home in your living room, waiting for you to come down for breakfast.

"I have already acquired a friend or two who already have grievances against the Queen of Hearts, perhaps we could help each other?" Alice suggested.

The Silver Rabbit took a moment to think this over before he came to a conclusion.

"I've heard worse ideas."

XXX XXX XXX

"Sanguine." The Silver Rabbit growled down at the rather tiny queen.

"Silver." The Sanguine Queen spat up at the rather large rabbit.

"Friends?" Suggested the Chesh-Dire Cat rather forlornly.

"I have no great love for traitors." The Sanguine Queen harrumphed with her arms crossed.

"I did not betray the Queen of Hearts, she betrayed me. Besides, I have no great love for pfeffil regardless of how many legs they go upon." The Silver Rabbit insisted.

Clearly this alliance might require a bit more work than Alice had initially expected.

"You said that you could use rooks. He is as rook like as anyone I've ever met..." Alice suggested, not quite surely what she meant, but certain that she meant it with great conviction.

That half spoken, she turned to face the Silver Rabbit.

"I gave you the leaves, which was quite a nice thing to do given you previous promise to eat me! If that favor does not spur you to action, will you turn up a nose at a chance to rescue the Queen of Poisons and skulk about alone in this home?" She chastised the Big Bad Bunny.

"To dispose of one Queen only to rescue another seems no true net gain for me." The Sanguine Queen ruminated.

"My love has many names, and rules no land. If her title truly bothers you that much, I can use another." The Silver Rabbit offered, still a touch warily.

"I suppose I could find some use for him. Welcome to my army." The Sanguine Queen eventually admitted.

"Welcome to my owsla." The Silver Rabbit replied.

Then suddenly the world around them seemed to twist and turn.

There was another soft "whump" as the Chesh-Dire Cat went flying.

There was a loud "WHUMP" as the Sanguine Queen landed atop him.

Then another surprisingly soft "whump" as the Silver Rabbit collided with something, and a few moments later Alice herself landed atop him.

Their sizes were much more even now, as Alice was once more roughly as large as herself (say better as large she liked to think of herself being) while the Silver Rabbit was now only as big as a very (very) large dog, or perhaps a rather (not so) small pony.

"Where are we this time?" Alice cried out, wondering what new sort of danger might await the four of them now.

"Perhaps you should try reading the sign?" The Chesh-Dire Cat suggested before there was a sudden flash of thunder.

Looking up Alice noted that there was indeed a sign, and a quite large one.

"The Sane Watchmaker." It said, and stretching out a short distance away from it was the path to a very large castle.

There was another flash of lighting.

"Splendid, I think I need to get my own time piece rewound with the Queen of Hearts in mind." The Silver Rabbit declared cheerfully enough.

Alice, the Chesh-Dire, and the Sanguine Queen were all of a noticeably less sanguine opinion.

AN: U-Elilzornhrairrah is probably reminding you folks of someone by this point.

I'm also not sorry for that joke regarding how eating things increases the Silver Rabbit's size. You might think this doesn't make sense given that he was able to drink something without shrinking and thus like most residents of... his homeland, is immune to having his size shifted by eating or drinking, but stop and consider exactly what he ate, and feel free to groan in understanding.

By the way, the reason I'm currently loving writing this side story is that it gives me an excuse to go revisit a few very fond childhood memories/resources.

The entire genesis of this scene had its start an episode of the New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, which does indeed feature the phrase "The Big Bad Bunny".

From there however, it grew out a bit and I promptly found myself turning my attention to another if not quite as beloved, at least every bit as good source of information.

This Novella in trying to properly reflect the works it is based on, involves a lot of word play as you may have already noticed. Chapter two had a great many chess jokes ("I Rook thee Sir Cat" probably stands out as my favorite since it was one I came up myself) and this chapter has at least some clever word play as well.

The name/title "U-Elilzornhrairrah" is to the best I can figure entirely valid (and his pronunciation of it is as correct as I can make it) in the language it derives from. It very much does not translate to "The Big Bad Bunny" but it does translate to something that pretty perfectly describes the Silver Rabbit.

I'll explain what it translates to in my author comments for the Novella because I don't want to spoil the surprise/joke but I'll be most impressed/amused if anyone reading this can actually put the pieces together.

By the way, if you still need a proper mental image to hang on the "Silver Rabbit", imagine a large wolf with the ears, nose, and tail of a rabbit, wearing an eyepatch, with silver fur. This would not be nearly as funny if the Silver Rabbit was not completely unaware of the fact that he's clearly the wrong species, much like how Carrot Ironfoundersson is completely dedicated to being a dwarf, even though he's six and a half feet tall.


	10. Side Story: Feel like a monster

Monster Party Side Story: I must confess that, I feel like a monster!

"You expect me to believe that?"

"You expect me to believe that?"

"You expect me to believe that?"

The words echoed in Alexander Diamondclaw's mind over and over again.

How many times had he said them? Each time he heard them now it felt like having a piece of his soul ripped away.

He saw their pleading faces, saw their eyes calling out for mercy to a man who had nothing but contempt for them.

"You expect me to believe that?"

Hearing his own words were like having a sword made of ice jammed hilt deep into his stomach.

What… what had he been doing? What had he been thinking? Why was he only able to understand, only able to see clearly now? Now that it was too late for him to make a difference….

"I… I was just trying to..." He began to whimper.

"You expect me to believe that?" His own voice shouted him down.

The sad truth was that for once his past self was all too right, what defense could he honestly offer for his actions?

"I'll never do it again… I understand, I understand how they felt..." Alexander pleaded pathetically.

"Do you really expect me to believe that?" His past bellowed yet again.

"You're not human, of that we can be sure. Why do you continue to waste our time with such obvious lies? Why should we allow such a monster to live?" Alexander's past hounded him at every turn, there was no escaping it.

"No….. its not like that, I'm in control right now… The Wolf serves me, I am in control… I am in control." Alexander repeated the words over and over again trying to fill them with honest conviction rather than hollow fear.

"You expect me to believe that? Humanity will be well rid of filth like you." Alexander's past insisted.

"I won't be like all the others in the stories, I'll be better, I'll be..." Alexander whimpered.

"You expect me to believe that?" His past cried out yet again.

Alexander tried to speak, but words wouldn't come. Tears began to roll down his face, but only from his left eye, his right remained dry.

The world around him spun and 1suddenly he wasn't laying on the ground anymore, instead he was seated in a thick chair. Firm manacles secured his arms and legs to the chair making it impossible for him to stand up.

Looking to his left and right he saw more men and women in chairs, manacled in place just like him.

Men and women who had been trapped there for so long that they had died, leaving their decaying bodies to sit and gaze forward forever more.

Ghostly music began to play and a curtain began to rise.

A horrific beauty took center stage and began to dance. Her hair was short and blond, her skin pale, and her eyes… the light cast by the ornate chandelier hanging above somehow never quite managed to fall upon her eyes… In her subtle brilliant movements Alexander saw all his past sins brought forth anew.

He was utterly transfixed, like a bird caught in an adder's glare, unable to look away even as he felt himself being hollowed out by the sheer depths of his guilt.

"This is your idea of eternal suffering? Well I supposed I would be eternally bored..." Scoffed a contemptuous voice from behind him.

SNAP!

The unexpected sound temporarily pried Alexander's attention away from the dancing woman.

Tilting his neck he discovered that awkwardly "seated" on the chair behind his own (which was conspicuously lacking in manacles) was a large silver furred wolf. At the moment it was standing up on its hind legs, and had just bitten clean through the restraints that had bound Alexander's right hand.

"How, how, are you not affected? How can you..." Alexander babbled in confusion.

Only after the Wolf's teeth had effortlessly crushed the chains attached to Alexander's left arm did he deign to answer.

"I don't know what you're seeing, but all I see is some human waif prancing around in a silly outfit, the blood on it isn't even fresh!" The Wolf insisted irritably.

"You have to understand, you have to realize..." Alexander insisted to the Wolf (he was so overcome by the woman's dance that he did not care that he was arguing for his own imprisonment) who showed no particular interest in listening to him.

Instead it hopped down from its seat, and from this new position on the floor was able to bite through the restraints around Alexander's right leg.

"Human, close your lips unless you have something worth saying.." The Wolf's voice answered from its new position before getting to work on the final restraint.

SNAP!

It proved no more a challenge to the Wolf than any of the others.

"There, we might be joined, but I refuse to suffer for the mistakes in YOUR past! Now lets go somewhere else and have fun." The wolf insisted as he emerged from under Alexander's seat.

Alexander stood up and the entire macabre theater faded away just as quickly as it had come into being, leaving just him and the Wolf alone.

He turned to face the mighty beast who seemed to have extricated him from the worst of his nightmarish torment.

"I can't… I can't live like this. How can a man live with himself when he is so thoroughly without honor?" He pleaded with the Wolf.

In response the Wolf angrily clawed at the ground kicking up dirt in Alexander's face.

"Honor? There is no such thing as honor! We've both experienced firsthand what happen to those who rely on others to act honorably! The greater the 'honor' the greater the betrayal!" The gigantic silver furred beast scoffed, its rage seeming to make it grow larger still.

Alexander did not want to believe the Wolf, but he could not trust his own words, could not trust the thoughts that lead to those words.

"How… how is it you've proved to be more righteous than I am?" Alexander beseeched the beast.

"Because I never claimed to be righteous in the first place." The Wolf answered.

Alexander knew that the Wolf was right. He knew that after what he had done he wasn't worthy to walk among men.

"Now then, what was that I heard you saying about me serving, SERVING, you? HMMM?" The wolf inquired, suddenly seeming more amused than angered.

Alexander threw himself to the ground before for the Wolf in supplication.

XXX XXX XXX

Florence Bastien slowly opened her eyes and as she felt the rays of the sun shine down on her, she finally allowed herself to be fully roused from slumber.

"Must you always make so much noise when you sleep?" She asked her traveling companion a touch testily.

When there was no response she finally bothered to spare a glance in his direction.

It seemed that he'd gone to sleep a man, but woken up a wolf. He must have suffered from a horrific nightmare, since over the night his body had spasmed with enough force to toss aside his eye-patch.

With a heavy sigh she walked over and retrieved it for him.

"Did you loose something?" She asked the silver furred wolf.

It gazed back at her with mismatched eyes and said nothing.

Florence's expression became one of bored irritation as she glowered at the 'animal' before her.

"You know, I've heard you speak human tongues even as a wolf. I know you can do it, even if I've never met another shapeshifter who could." She pointed out.

Still he refused to say a single world, opting instead for a passive expression of cowed submission.

"We're going into a town today to get more supplies, you should try to make yourself presentable." Florence 'suggested' as she hung the eye-patch over the wolf's right eye.

Finally the silver furred wolf reacted, shaking its head back and forth as best it could.

"You may not have noticed, but right now you're one of the largest most brightly pelted wolves I've ever seen. People are going to notice, they're probably going to scream. Humans tend to view me less than kindly because of my skin, I don't need you helping." She pointed out.

Once again the wolf responded with a flurry of head shakes.

"You don't want to transform back to your human shape?" Florence asked in surprise.

Now the wolf began to nod enthusiastically.

"Why?" She demanded to know.

Back to that looked of passive fear and a refusal to speak.

"You know, as much as I won't miss the sound of your voice, this isn't going to work. You're going to get an angry mob out for both of our throats. Will you be proud of yourself when that happens?" Florence demanded to know.

The wolf again refused to answer.

With patience that left her arboreal heritage on display for all the world (not that there was anyone else around at the moment) to see, Florence Bastien decided she might as well play along with this particular bizarre game.

She shifted the eye-patch over to cover the wolf's left eye, then she went to a nearby tree and coaxed a vine from it to wrap tightly around the beast's throat.

"There, that's the best I'm going to be able to come up with on short notice. If anyone asks you're a dog, an absurdly large dog understand?" She warned the wolf.

He nodded in agreement and event lets his tongue loll out and tail wag in an expression approximating empty headed canine joviality.

"I gave up my grove for this?" Florence muttered as she covered her face with one hand.

Since there was nothing else that she could be done about her companion's bizarre desires she began her normal morning prayers to Gaia, something told she'd never every spell she could get her hands on before long.

AN: Hey remember over a year ago when I finished up book 2 and wrote a side story featuring Alex and Florence that raised more questions than it answered?

No reason to bring that up in particular, just wanting to test your memory, it is an important part of cerebral health after all!


	11. Side Story: I was lost and I was gone

Monster Party Side Story: I was lost and I was gone, I was almost dead inside. You and me against the world, its a beautiful night!

Dryads did not dream, at least not the way that humans did. They did not experience strange fragments of lives that were never truly their own, of events that might yet happen, or had never actually happened.

Dryads "dreamed" instead of memories with perfect precision. Their minds recalled events that had happened to them in the past of such great importance that they left an unshakable imprint behind.

Their subconscious mind could no more shake such moments than the rings of a tree could avoid telling the tale of feast and famine alike.

In the dream that truly a memory rather than a 'dream' Florence stood at the edge of her glade.

She stood there and stared into the face of evil.

The grass did not turn brown and wither away in his wake nor did trees prematurely shed their leaves. It didn't mater, such fanciful events would have been unecessary. There was nothing 'unecessary' about him though... there was only a dreadful coldness, and a soul colder still.

He was the first visitor to her grove that Florence would have turned away if given a choice

Except that she did not have a choice… and they both knew it.

"So, you are the newest dryad to grace my land." He declared, his voice dry and uncaring.

"You are not the first, you will not be the last." He added before she had a chance to say anything, almost sounding as if he would have been perfect content to carry on the entire conversation by himself.

"What shall I call you?" It was likely the only thing about Florence that he could not determine on his own.

"Florence Bastien." She answered, knowing it would be folly to try and deny him anything, folly that she was sure to commit sooner or later.

"Very well. So long as you understand this about me dryad there shall be no strife between us; I am never quick to destroy that which can be controlled." He announced, in a voice that was chilly enough to freeze water.

"What… what do you intend me do if you are indeed able to 'control' me?" Florence whimpered, dreading the answer.

"I am not some savage who believes in requesting more than his subjects can possibly give. Each of my subjects is to have their skills determined and put to some use for which they are well suited. Everything having a place, and everything in its place.

Any kingdom worthy of the name is a clockwork contraption of tremendous size, except made up of people instead of gears. It functions properly only so long as all its component parts turn in perfect alignment." He explained.

Florence said nothing, because he in turn had said nothing about how she was to "turn" in his service. yet.

Sure enough, faced only with silence, her visitor explained himself still further.

"This place is very beautiful I have been told. Beauty is of no interest to me in and of itself… but it is of interest to others. Others will come here in time. You will simply do what comes naturally to you, greet them warmly, listen to them. Listen to them, to the trees, to the flowers, and whatever other parts of nature you can commune with. You will listen… and you will pass this information along to me." He insisted.

"If I refuse?" It was a foolish question, but Florence could not prevent herself from at least the childish pretense that she might be capable of refusal.

Speckles of beautiful and deadly crystal blue began to edge out across the green grass at his feet.

"The frosty chill of winter, a period of lying fallow, and then a new harvest. Is that not the way of nature which you so adore?" He answered.

Somehow the words were all the more awful for how passionless they were, as even in the face her utmost resistance, he would still not even bother to hate her.

"I will not refuse." She admitted, for the brilliantly clear crystal had continued to creep ever closer to her until she finally submitted to the inevitable.

"Kneel." He insisted.

She knelt.

XXX XXX XXX

Florence Bastien awoke with a gasp, her always slightly green face now turning a pale lime color.

That single soft sound was enough to wake her companion from his sleep, and his mismatched eyes looked tenderly into her green ones.

"Thinking about him?" Alexander Diamondclaw inquired, knowing that there was only one being in the entire world who had ever managed to truly frighten Florence.

"Yes." The dryad admitted in between taking deep breaths as her face slowly returned to a more normal color, or at least what she would call normal.

"But you're going to kill him someday, aren't you?" Florence asked, a touch timidly.

"I'll crush his skull beneath my paws, or simply smash his arms instead so you can finish him yourself. It is just a mater of waiting until the time is right. When we're both strong enough or when he is weak enough." Alexander promised her, leaning in to kiss Florence gently on her forehead.

"We are getting stronger aren't we?" The dryad murmured in surprise.

Alexander took a moment to flex his arm, and for a brief moment it bristled with massive muscles and silver fur before returning to its human but still impressively toned state.

"You magic is getting better. As for me, the more the Wolf and I agree with each other the better the results. Thank you, for helping me improve myself, in so many different ways." Alexander praised her.

"His magic will always be stronger than mine, but you… he will try, but I doubt even he could truly prepare for you." Florence insisted, cradling Alexander's face in her hands and kissing him on the lips.

"That's just a nice way to say I'm too stubborn to realize when I should give up." Alexander insisted, blushing slightly.

"No. I've never met anyone like you before. You are Mac Tíre Cáiliúil, and every child in every corner of the Core will know your name when you slay him." The dryad insisted.

"Even between the two of us… it still might not be enough." Alexander couldn't help but wonder.

"Be a wolf. Let that be your guiding star, and you will never have reason to feel shame again love. If you do not think that we alone are enough to do it even now, then be a wolf, and build a pack." Florence offered.

"A pack?" Alexander rolled the idea around in his head for only a moment before he came to the obvious conclusion.

"You have the best ideas. You are my true guiding star." He declared before wrapping his arms tightly around Florence in a loving embrace.

"You are a hunter with no equal. You are the firm soil upon which all my hopes and dreams are planted." Florence replied back.

"Then I suppose my kills are your fertilizer." Alexander stretched the metaphor a little further with a chuckle.

Then his body began to grow larger and hairier as he transformed.

Florence Bastien buried herself in his soft silver fur and this time her sleep was pure untroubled.

End Chapter.

AN: What a difference time and character development can make. If you couldn't guess this story takes place a significant amount of time after "I feel like a monster" and is obviously intended as a companion piece of sorts to it.

If you didn't realize it already, that side story's song lyric comes from the song "Monster" by Skillet a harrowing song about the singer trying (and feeling distinctly like they are failing) to deal with their own inner daemons.

This story's song lyric also comes from Skillet, but the lyric is from "Good to be Alive" a song about how amazing it is to be with someone you love and come what may life is great so long you face it together.

The journey from one to the other is marked by a trio of "redemption checks" (the rolls you make to recover from Dark Powers Checks you failed and thus take steps to make sure you don't wind up becoming a creature of Ravenloft or worse yet a darklord) on Alex's part. As you may recall he failed four of them before meeting Florence, but didn't realize the enormity of his mistakes until after he'd successfully made his first redemption check.

Yes, before he met Florence, Alex was hanging from the bottom run of the ladder of morality and it took some very drastic events to turn himself around.

Needless to say. since they repeatedly warn authors about show don't tell (though granted they only seem to "tell" us this, I've never seen anyone show me that particular lesson….) I don't want you to have to just take my word for it.

So I plan to sprinkle some more side stories here and there showing how Alex went from using his wolf shape to hide from his human sins to effectively using his hybrid shape as a gigantic fuzzy teddy bear for Florence to snuggle with.

You guys are interested in that stuff even if James, Mirri, Cal and Devi don't show up right?

Expect the first one of those to show up next week. It'll be called "I've told a million lies" and deal with some more of the direct fallout of Alex vowing live as a wolf.

Also, see if you can guess who Florence was talking to in her dream/memories. I feel like I'm being more than obvious enough (IE it is a character that exists in Ravenloft cannon) all things considered..

If you can guess who it is, then you should be able to guess a lot more about Florence and to a certain degree Alex's back story. How much of It can you piece together at this point?

This was the final corner piece of that particular puzzle and while there's an important middle piece (just what exactly happened with Alex's right eye?) you should now be able to figure out a rough outline of his life prior to meeting Florence.


	12. Side Story: I've told a million lies

Monster Party Side Story: I've told a million lies, but now I tell a single truth...

It had been amusing for the first month, it had been bemusing for the second, and now in the third it was down right irritating. That wasn't helped by the fact that she could see no signs of her companion's behavior changing any time soon. In short, unless she wished to spend the rest of her life traveling around with a wolf whose bright silver coat drew even more attention than its tremendous size, steps would have to be taken.

Luckily, Florence Bastien was a dryad, and from wasps that would lay their eggs inside of spiders so that their young could eat the arachnid from the inside out, to fungi that would transform ants into brainwashed servants, nature was filled to the brim with all sorts of nasty ways to get what you wanted. In this case, she was going to employ a somewhat less severe tactic, no need for open parasitism when simple mimicry should get the job done.….

XXX XXX XXX

Alexander Diamondclaw yawned mightily as he woke to another day of his life as a wolf. He was adapting well all things considered, he barely ever felt unnaturally low to the ground these days. The fact that he was such a large wolf might have helped some of course.

He began to gently roll himself across the ground, feeling the grass rub pleasantly against his fur and wondered if there were any streams nearby he could use to wash himself

"Feeling well?" He heard his companion's voice call out to him.

Alexander wasn't going to answer, he was quite firm in his desire not to speak a single word. Still, he did not want to be discourteous so he at least turned his head in her direction.

"What are you doing?" He instantly gasped.

A three month long vow of silence shattered in the blink of an eye.

Florence Bastien was down on all fours and completely naked.

Well, "completely naked" for the same value of the phrase that he was completely naked himself and had been so for the last three months.

No that wasn't quite true, Alexander had an eye-patch on (to hide his left eye (which would have looked as out of place on a wolf as his right did on a human)), and Florence didn't. So she was just a touch more naked than he was, but eye-patches rarely did much to protect one's decency.

Luckily for Alexander's sense of propriety she wasn't going skyclad while preforming some sort of perverse druidic ritual.

It was simply that between the time he'd gone to sleep last night and when he'd awoken, Florence Bastien had turned herself into a wolf.

A wolf with a coat of mossy greenish brown fur that seemed nearly as outlandish as his own silver one, but she was more clearly a wolf than anything else Alexander could think to call her.

"What, are you so discriminating about your company that suddenly I'm not good enough for you?" Florence inquired pointedly.

When she spoke Alexander could see her teeth more clearly, and though they were pointed just like his, they were a deep brown color (though looked no less strong for it) rather than the more traditional white.

"Why are you doing this?" Alexander whined, his confusion and surprise winning out against his desire to be utterly silent.

"I got tired of you foisting all the 'human' tasks off on me. If you want to retreat into being a wolf, well so can I!" Florence insisted smugly.

She looked even stranger as a wolf then she had while trying to pass for a human. It was all too obvious that she was almost as much flora as fauna, especially given the twisting blue and purple flowers that bloomed upon her brow.

"This isn't about cowardice, this is about protecting people!" Alexander insisted.

"It is certainly not about protecting me. Not when it means I have to do all our shopping for supplies. You aren't exactly the kind of person someone forgets, but you still draw less attention in towns than I do.

At least that is how it works when you're human.

You're always so full of sayings about how you're no coward. I'll grant that I have never seen you flee from a foe I would face myself, yet there clearly are many things you are tremendously afraid of. Transforming back into a human for one." Florence countered.

Alexander just stood there fur bristling for a moment.

It'd been months since he'd spoken to anyone, even Florence, it was thus taking him a while to get his mind in order and hold something approaching a proper conversation rather than just shouting whatever thoughts first occurred to him.

"Cowardice is letting yourself be ruled rather than guided by fear. So yes… yes there are things that I am afraid of, chief among them myself. Before I met you… I told so many lies, so very many, that I couldn't even tell which ones were lies and which ones were the truth.

As deadly as I am with tooth, claw, and blade… I killed more people, far more innocent people with my words. That's why I decided I should live like this. This way there's no danger of anyone ever trusting anything I say… assuming I say anything at all." Alexander explained, and then turned away from Florence, his early morning lupine euphoria now replaced with deep human melancholy.

/Oh great, here we go again...\ Moaned Alexander's internal Wolf.

The beast had no patience for Alexander's dour moods, much preferring to revel in the simple joys of battle and bloodshed.

Alexander refused to rise to his bait though, just as he promised himself that he should refuse to rise to any more of Florence's goading. Even if she should transform back to her human shape while remaining just as bereft of clothing he would say not one word.

Instead, he simply stood there, waiting, waiting for he knew not what, but waiting all the same.

His keen wolf ears could hear the sound of Florence's paws padding across the ground as she drew closer to him. He flicked his tail diffidently, not caring about what she said or did in the slightest.

That was when his ears picked up another sound, one much more high pitched than anything else that had reached him this morning save for some bird song. This sound was neither from a bird or joyful though. No… it was high pitched crying, like that of a human child.

Alexander's ears titled and swiveled, and his nostrils flared, drawing in huge snorts of air as he desperately sought a scent trail. He was able to pinpoint the sound's direction if not its exact location, and that would have to be enough.

He and Florence might be able to dwell unhindered within this forest, for they were both creatures apart from human civilization. In fact, the pair were probably more horrifying than most 'proper monsters' they did actually encounter.

A crying child, making noise sure to draw attention to itself, and utterly defenseless… that was another matter entirely.

/Just when I thought today would be boring...\ His internal Wolf rejoiced that something… anything had spurred Alexander into action.

Alexander himself payed that comment no mind, just as he payed no mind to the sound of Florence's paws beating out a steady rhythm behind him. A steady but fading rhythm, the distance between them increased as he ran faster and faster, his claws gouging furrows in the soil as he tore across the forest swifter than any fleeing deer, possibly swifter than even a frightened hare.

He was going to get there first, he was going to get there before Florence, and far more importantly he was going to get there before anything else could get to that child and do it harm!

He heard the crying sobs again, much closer this time and began to bleed off speed so he could make sure that he didn't end up running straight past his target.

As he drew nearer he was able to determine more about the child in question, his ears were and nose were keen enough to be all but completely certain that he was dealing with a young girl. He couldn't put into proper words how his lupine senses were able determine human gender at the moment, but by this point he trusted them all the same.

/Glad to see you're not second guessing everything I tell you anymore.\ His internal Wolf 'congratulated' him.

Still resolutely ignoring the beast, Alexander slowed down to an almost sedate pace, and as he padded out from behind a tree he finally laid his eye on the girl.

She was a little slip of a thing, probably ten years old at most, dressed in a bright red cloak with a few tufts of auburn hair poking out from underneath it.

She sitting with her back to a large tree, head tucked against her knees, sobbing. Resting just before her was a wicker basket with a white cloth wrapped tightly around it.

"Good day little lost child..." He greeted her softly and gently.

Alexander had never married, let alone had a child of his own, but a man would have needed a heart of stone not to try and comfort a young girl in such a sad state.

She stopped sobbing and looked up at him. Then she rubbed her blue eyes clear on a sleeve of her red cloak so that she could see him more clearly.

"Why exactly is it a good day Mr. Wolf?" She asked inching away from him slightly.

Oh right.

/I'm an idiot.\ Alexander cursed himself.

/I was wondering when you'd finally admit it!\ His internal Wolf chuckled mightily.

Alexander had gotten involved in a conversation with Florence only a few minutes ago. Somehow (probably because it'd been so long since he'd talked at all) it had slipped Alexander's mind that he had no difficulty speaking human languages in his lupine body.

So while he might have failed to keep silent he was still living up to his oath about not transforming back to a human… and thus had approached this lost and frightened girl in the shape of an especially large silver furred wolf.

Clearly if she hadn't been all but paralyzed with grief a few moments ago the girl would have already been running for her life.

/I hope she tries to flee, then we can chase her!\ His internal Wolf happily suggested.

"I'm not a wolf, I'm a dog." Alexander tried to reassure her.

/I'm really bad at this. I'm really, really bad at this… I've kept my tongue still for three months, but the moment I open my mouth I start lying again...\ He couldn't help but harangue himself.

The girl slowly began to rise to her feet, picking up the wicker basket.

"Curl your tail?" The girl told him, keeping her voice remarkably steady despite the circumstances.

"Excuse me?" Alexander spluttered, more taken aback by this bizarre request than the girl herself had been by the prospect of a talking wolf/dog.

"Papa taught me how to tell dogs and wolves apart, wolves can't curl their tails." The young girl insisted, clearly finding some solace in her father's words.

/Outfoxed by a female who has yet to be in heat. What glorious tales will be told of this day...\ His internal Wolf grumbled.

Alexander tried, and even when trying to mix some mild shape shifting into the attempt was utterly unable to curl his tail.

"Yes, I suppose I am a wolf. I only lied about being a dog to try and avoid frightening you further..." He admitted awkwardly.

/You know from a certain point of view you are still lying to her.\ His internal Wolf observed, sounding endlessly amused by this fact.

/Shut up! I'm not going to tell her the actual truth, truth. It is so crazy that I barely believe it myself...\ Alexander growled mentally.

His internal Wolf was less than helpful at the best of times, but he seemed especially so at the moment.

Luckily Alexander could hold such mental conversations quite literally at the speed of thought and didn't end up missing anything the girl said back to him.

"Well that's very considerate of you Mr. Wolf." She replied, her eyes starting to dry somewhat.

"What have you got in your basket?" Alexander inquired, trying to sound like he was having a perfectly normal conversation with the girl and very much not planning to eat her.

/Well of course we're not planning to eat her! I mean just look at her, there's barely any meat on her bones! What's the point of eating something so scrawny?\ His internal Wolf added, unhelpful as ever.

"Medicine… for my grandmother..." The girl stuttered slightly.

"Nobody has heard from her in town for a while, and my father has gotten sick with something nasty while my mother isn't around anymore. We're worried that she might have come down with the same thing as my father, so he sent me to go and bring this to her." The young girl explained.

Alexander inhaled deeply through his nostrils, trying to tilt his head in such a way to suggest that he was breathing in the scent of the basket rather than the girl. Sure enough, it had a mildly unpleasant herbal smell mixed in with what was probably a freshly baked loaf of bread.

"How did you wind up out here on your own? Don't you know how dangerous it is for little girls to go wandering off with no one to protect them?" Alexander desperately hoped that he was conveying sympathy and worry rather than hungry delight to the poor defenseless girl.

Alexander had the mystical ability to speak any human language he knew in the shape of a wolf, with one awkward exception; body language. He was thus very much aware of the fact that every time he tried anything approaching a reassuring smile, all he ended up doing was showing off his very large mouth full of very large very sharp teeth.

"My father said that I should stick to the path… but then I saw a lovely collection of flowers. I started to pick them up for my grandmother, and by the time I'd found enough of them, I'd lost the path. Now I don't know where I am..." She whimpered, starting to turn her head this way and that in a desperate search for some familiar landmark.

/Did the basket ever belong to her grandmother?\ His internal Wolf interjected.

/I really don't see how that could make much of a difference.\ Alexander replied.

/Oh then I guess you've just been spending the last few months with a wolf's sense of smell for fun then. That's a real shame, I bet you'd have no trouble escorting this awkward bundle of skin and bones to her grandmother's house, if only you could come up with some way of finding out where exactly it was.\ His internal Wolf condescendingly chuckled.

Lacking for any better ideas save simply guiding the girl back to the nearest human settlement, Alexander decided to give it a try.

"Did that basket once belong to your grandmother? I might be able to pick up her scent and find the way to her house..." Alexander explained, taking a few awkward steps closer.

He made sure to keep his body lowered, with his lips and ears drawn back, for all the good that was likely to do him at the moment.

The little girl looked as if for a moment she was sorely tempted to try and whack Alexander firmly on the nose with her basket. Then she must have realized exactly how big a wolf he was, and that she'd be more likely to break the basket than seriously harm him. She placed it down on the ground and took an a single step away from it.

"If you grab it and run off with it Mr Wolf I'll… I'll..." She was unable to come up with a convincing threat and so was forced to settle for simply wagging a finger in his face defiantly.

/You know I'm almost starting to like this waif, she has spirit if nothing else.\ His internal Wolf noted wryly.

Alexander very slowly drew close to the basket and leaned in, resting his nose upon it lightly as he inhaled deeply.

In the body of a wolf, smell was not just a sense of the moment, but also of the past as well. The only words he could properly find to describe it was like how extremely hot or cold objects maintained a trace of where they had just been whenever they were touched, except obviously without the accompanying pain.

Beyond the bread and medicinal smells he had already detected lay still more human aromas, and as they traveled through his nostrils a map began to trace itself in his mind. He was fairly certain that he could figure out how to get this girl to her grandmother's house, and could also deduce the location of the path she'd most likely wandered off as well.

"What are you doing?" A voice called out to him from behind.

Turning around he saw that Florence had finally caught up with him, and that she hadn't bothered to abandon her lupine form either.

"I'm not about to eat her!" Alexander gasped in horror realizing how the scene might look to the dryad.

At which point all four of Florence's legs abruptly collapsed and she fell straight to the ground. A hyena could not have produced a more sustained or louder barking laugh than she did.

"You? Eat a little girl! You… eat, a little, girl? You really…. Hahhhahahhaahahahahah ahahahah… I can't…. breath… you…. Eat a little girl? HAHAHAHA!" She wheezed out in unrestrained mirth.

"What is/are she/you finding so funny?" Alexander and the girl in question asked at more or less the exact same moment.

"You… you're worried that I might think that you'd…. oh Gaia, I haven't laughed this hard in my entire life!" Florence cackled, still laughing, but no longer quite so heavily convulsing.

Then Alexander was struck by the realization of his latest problem, in her current shape Florence could only speak "wolf" and thus the little girl had only the roughest guesses at what the dryad was saying.

"She knows me well enough to be amused by even the suggestion that I might contemplate harming you." Alexander answered, hoping that the little girl in question wouldn't think he was only trying to lower her guard.

"Oh, she looks pretty." The young girl reflected, her compliment sounding nearly as awkward to Alexander's ears as most of the things he'd been saying recently.

/She actually does look rather fetching now that she's got a proper body and doesn't have all that clothing in the way. Do you think she'd be willing to mate with us at some point before she transforms back?\ His internal Wolf eagerly pondered.

/Shut up, shut up, shut up! I am not going to ask her that and even if the impossible were to occur, which it won't, we would 'mate' properly as a man and a woman not a pair of animals rutting in the dirt! Which as previously mentioned isn't ever going to happen because I don't think of her that way, she really doesn't think of me that way, and she's a dryad while I'm human! Humanish at least! Do you have any idea how impossible something like that would be?\ Alexander mentally screamed.

/You're no fun anymore.\ His internal Wolf huffed in disapproval.

"If my companion would regain her wits, we can hopefully get this all sorted out. Florence, this little girl is trying to get to the cottage of her grandmother who no one has heard from in over a week, but she wound up getting lost.

Luckily there's a strong scent trail on her basket. So the two of us are going to escort her through the woods and make sure nothing bad happens along the way." Alexander explained his plan more than loud enough for both Florence and the young girl to hear it.

Hopefully that would be able enough to get this entire awkward situation sorted out.

"What is her name?" Florence asked Alexander.

"What is your name?" Alexander repeated.

"My father said not to tell my name to strangers, and I'm sure that goes double for strange wolves.." The girl answered once she was able to understand Florence's barks and woofs.

"Her father said not to tell her name to strange wolves." Alex repeated instantly.

"I can understand her just fine, you don't need to translate back to me." Florence reminded him.

"This situation is so absurd I couldn't be sure." Alexander barked back in what he devoutly hoped was wolf alone.

"Anyway… now that there really aren't any more lingering questions that need to be resolved, I think we should take the girl to her grandmother's house." Alexander declared, hoping that he wouldn't get interrupted a second time.

His hopes were abruptly shattered.

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Florence needled.

Alexander had to resist the urge to rise up onto his hind legs and whack her so soundly that she'd wind up kissing the dirt she claimed to draw magical powers from.

"Am I sure it is a good idea? Not really, I feel like a titanic fool at the moment, but what are the alternatives? We let her wander through these woods by herself? Compared to that, yes I am sure us going with her is a good, is a great idea!" Alexander insisted, his ruff bristling with indignation at Florence's unexpected callousness.

"Not the part about us escorting her." The dryad abruptly clarified, having the good graces to look suitably abashed for saying anything that might have been interpreted her wanting to leave the little girl alone and unprotected.

"I only meant both of us escorting her. If it is true that no one has heard from her grandmother for a while and she lived by herself then something horrible might have happened to her. If that is the case, it'd be better for one of us to go ahead and make sure whatever dangers befell her aren't still lying in wait for the girl. Don't you agree?" Florence pointed out.

To his chagrin Alexander could find no flaw in that logic. Goblins in particular were know for overrunning isolated human dwellings and turning them into crude war camps. If there were a score of the spear wielding monstermen waiting for the girl at her grandmother's home it would be best that she simply went back to her father.

"You're right, you go." Alexander eventually answered.

"You go, as you've just so convincingly proved you're faster." Florence argued back.

"The two of you can't even communicate without me around!" Alexander gasped in irritation.

"I can understand her just fine. Besides, if I really need to, I'll just transform back to my "human" shape. I'm not pigheaded about such things." The dryad declared, shooting him a condescending look.

"What are you arguing about now?" The girl cut in, though at least she sounded more intrigued by than afraid of their bickering.

That probably meant she didn't incorrectly suspect that they were secretly plotting to devour her behind her back (metaphorically speaking)… probably.

"We're discussing which one of us would be best to escort you to your grandmother's house. I've decided that my companion should do it, since you have such an interest in flowers and nobody knows flowers better than her." Alexander answered awkwardly.

The girl seemed to find this unobjectionable which meant that Alexander had finally discovered a way out of this crazy conversation.

Now all he needed to do was get to her grandmother's house before they did, confirm that there was nothing dangerous going on, and then just wait for them to arrive.

At which point he and Florence would be able to leave the girl behind, and get back to their argument about him staying in lupine form.

Nothing could be simpler!

/I hope it gets still more complex, watching you abase, humiliate, and confound yourself is endlessly amusing!\ His internal Wolf chortled at Alexander's suffering.

Fighting back the urge to have another bitter argument (Alexander suspected that he was the only man in the world who could get into three arguments with only two other people around) he completely ignored the ill meaning wish..

Instead, he simply focused his attention on the mental scent map and raced through the woods. Not needing to worry about sticking to any traditional path he was able to take shortcuts and shave quite a bit of time off of how long it would take the young girl and Florence to make the same journey.

Soon enough he located the small cottage that must surely be the home of the girl's grandmother.

There were no obvious signs of the place having recently raided by goblins, but by the same token there was something strangely still and unnatural about it.

/Bang your head against the door, make your voice really high pitched and claim that you're her granddaughter come to visit!\ His internal Wolf advised.

/Now you're just suggesting the most asinine thing you can think of!\ Alexander reproached the beast who for all his faults normally at least sounded sincere in his suggestions.

Alexander took a deep breath and began to examine the place more slowly, carefully thinking about what he was going to do. If whatever illness was going around had claimed the girl's grandmother and the girl herself arrived only to find said grandmother unexpectedly deceased then Alexander was certain she'd end up blaming him.

Since he was trying to spare the little girl whatever suffering he could, he decided that he might as well just poke his nose around inside long enough to see if he could pick up the scent of death.

/No good deed goes unpunished, so we might as well commit some bad ones.\ His internal Wolf pointed out.

While he normally kept a certain amount of "distance" (for lack of a better word) between them, Alexander could now feel the beast grow closer and more attentive, like a hawk perched on its master's shoulder in preparation for the hunt.

/I'm just trying to make to make the best of a bad situation while being true to myself.\ Alexander growled back, hoping the words weren't yet one more lie from him today.

Alexander slowly padded up to the door, it didn't look like anything special, but that could still make opening it an especially challenging task for him at the moment.

This would be so much easier if he had hands and a traditionally bipedal body.

No sooner had the thought crossed his mind then he shook his entire body no less thoroughly than he might after a downpour.

Yes it would be easier if he had opposable thumbs, it would be easier if he was a human, and it was easier for a man enslaved to drink to rouse himself to some task or other after having downed a full mug. He had to beat this as he was, what was the point of swearing an oath if it was abandoned at the first sign of hardship?

It was safer for everyone and better for his sense of honor if he remained a wolf. So Alexander awkwardly rose up onto his back legs, bracing his front two against the door and took the handle into his mouth. Ignoring the unpleasant metallic taste, he twisted it and let the weight of his upper body push hard against the door.

There was a slight creek as the wood door swung open and Alexander was now able to pad his way inside.

The "click clack click clack" of his claws on the wooden floor sounded impossibly loud to him.

/Maybe you should let the grandmother know what's going on so she doesn't have a reason to be afraid? To the lady of the house, please feel no fear, I'm just a large magical talking wolf who ran into your granddaughter earlier today and am now trying to tie up loose ends!\ His internal Wolf eagerly suggested.

When Alexander (wisely) did nothing of the sort it tried a different approach.

/Maybe the old grandmother won't be quite so old and she'll be one of those withered spell casting crone types. Someone with enough of a spine to challenge us. As amusing as it is to see you tying yourself in knots, it is still not quite as good as a proper chance to wet our lips upon the blood of a foe...\ The amoral beast continued, warming to its newest theory.

"Withered crones who cast spells don't have beautiful..." Alexander began to explain the improbability of that suggestion, but halfway through he stopped.

His nose twitched, picking up a new scent that abruptly drew his attention. It was a large pot of bubbling meat left unattended on top of a stove, and it smelled like someone had recently slain either great boar or a very plump pig judging by the size of the pot.

Yet for some reason he couldn't put into words, Alexander felt his hackles rise up in anger at the scent and his entire body seemed to be flooding itself with adrenaline.

/I thought you'd gotten better at interpreting my senses. Fine, since you clearly need me to spell out the blindingly obvious to you yet again, I'll do my duty. Only because the alternative is you standing around hopelessly confused for the entire day though! There's nothing porcine about the nature of that meat...\ Alexander's internal Wolf pityingly pointed out.

He was indeed hopelessly confused for a brief moment, then a horrifying clarity struck him.

Oh this was bad.

/Oh this is good!\

Taking a few deep breaths to settle his fur into position and get himself under control he kept moving in the direction of the home's one human smelling occupant. She was laying in a bed, which judging from the recent scratch markings upon the floor had been recently moved.

Its current resting place seemed to have been chosen for the fact that the sunlight currently streaming in through a single window would never touch it.

Oh this was worse.

/Oh this is even better!\

Having half a guess what to look for, Alexander's keen lone eye almost instantly noticed a few miniscule sparkling glass shard laying upon the floor, doubtlessly the remains of a smashed hand mirror.

Ohh this was gonna be terrible…

/Oh this is gonna be awesome!\ His internal Wolf countered, practically panting in anticipation of what was bound to come next.

The monster that wore the shape of the girl's grandmother did so spectacularly. Even with his wolf sense's Alexander could detect nothing at all objectionable or repulsive about her. Only his phenomenal memory of his father's childhood stories (well that and the pot of meat) forewarned him of what was inevitably going to come.

As far as "his" eye could tell at the moment he was simply looking at a somewhat wizened white haired woman who seemed to have finally noticed his presence. She sat up on her bed and squinted at him through wrinkled eyes.

"Well, to what do I owe the pleasure Mr. Dog?" She asked Alexander, sounding completely at ease with the prospect of random (large) animals traipsing about her home.

/Tell her we're here to kill and eat her, then jump on that bed, rip out her throat and start gorging on her flesh!\ His internal Wolf suggested.

/I am no going to tell or do that!\ Alexander insisted.

/Well here I was trying to help you with your quest to only tell truth. Some thanks I get...\ The beast scoffed in disappointment.

"I was wondering if there was anything to eat..." Alexander inquired, trying to wag his tail in appropriately friendly manner.

/You also didn't correct her when she thought you were a dog.\ His internal Wolf abruptly added, further twisting that particular knife.

/She doesn't really think we're a dog, I'll be truthful to her when she's truthful to me.\ Alexander retorted mentally, though privately he admitted this was a pathetic excuse for a deliberate lie of omission.

"Oh I do think I've got a lovely pot of stew large enough to share that should be done cooking any moment now..." The monster chuckled managing to sound completely good natured rather than devious or cruel.

/You know if you're wrong about this you're gonna end up killing an innocent old woman...\ His internal Wolf unhelpfully reminded him.

/Are you refraining from championing your own interests simply to vex me now? What problem have I ever encountered before that you did not believe should be solved with violence?\ Alexander shot back in irritation.

/Your personal squabbles with the dryad, those you should resolve by mating with her.\ His internal Wolf replied all too proudly.

"I'm not much in the mood for stew… right now what I think I'd like to eat most..." Alexander paused for a moment and raised his nose, sniffing deeply to be sure of what scent he was detecting before answering.

"Is toad!" He declared bearing his fangs.

With speed that gave the lie to its appearance of an aged woman, the monster threw aside the thick blanket she'd draped across herself, hurling it straight at Alexander.

Only the fact that he'd expected exactly this particular ploy allowed him to jump backwards swiftly enough avoid getting entangled the flying fabric.

With the blanket out of the way it was possible to tell that the woman had been joined beneath the covers by an oversized and extremely ugly looking toad.

"Be still!" Cackled the monster as she fixed Alexander with a penetrating gaze.

Any attempt she was making to employ some some of mystical evil eye against him fell to shambles before Alexander's own evil right eye.

/Feel free to stop referring to my eye as 'evil' any time you wish. Morality is no concept for wolves, not that those of you who claim to understand it do an especially good job living up to such standards...\ His internal Wolf noted.

"I'd rather not." Alexander growled back at the monster, continuing to dance about on his paws before it.

Seeing how easily he'd managed to shrug off her magic, the monster reached underneath her pillow and began to rise to her feet. From that hidden storage place she produced a large wicked looking oversized (to the point that it was almost like a short sword) serrated knife.

"If you can talk then I suppose you'll do well enough for a meal." She chuckled to herself, stabbing away at him.

Alexander surrendered ground before her attacks as the knife gave the monster a far greater reach than he had.

Despite having the body of an old woman the monster was able to move with shocking speed, and Alexander had no doubt that its limbs were far more powerful than one might guess at first glance.

/You best have some sort of plan, if we just keep falling back it won't be long till we've 'fallen' right out of the house.\ His internal Wolf grumbled at how defensively Alexander was fighting.

/What do you suggest?\ Alexander shot back.

/Let me have control.\ His internal Wolf suggested.

Then Alexander somehow instinctively had the gut sensation of a pair of wide (falsely) innocent eyes puppy dog (wolf cub?) like eyes pleading with him while a tail wagged back and forth.

Alexander himself despite spending three months as a wolf was still getting used to fighting a pitched battle while he quite literally had two left feet (and two right ones for that matter) and no hands to wield a blade with.

/Fine, lets see you do better.\ Alexander sighed and relaxed the vice like grip he'd been maintaining over his own body.

In all honesty, he didn't especially need it these days, while his internal Wolf might be blunt as a slab of iron, the beast was deceptively intelligent.

After their initial constant struggle for control of his body which lead to equally constant shapeshifting and eventually an awkward stalemate of sorts (that much to his chagrin he'd needed Florence to mediate) the beast had become content to simply wait its turn… even if it did tend to dispense no end of amoral advice to help it pass the time.

To his internal Wolf's credit Alexander felt no mental shackles seek out his limbs, found no gigantic imaginary dungeon cell (in the sense that it only existed inside his mind, it might still imprison him all too effectively) rising up around him even as he was at his most vulnerable to such a maneuver.

If anything, his internal Wolf furnished him with the equally internal equivalent of a well cushioned reclining chair, he wanted Alexander to have a good view of what was about to unfold.

The switch happened faster than the blink of an eye, one moment the monster was stabbing away while Alexander was contemplating what to do, the next he sat passively back as it became all but wholly the Wolf's problem.

It was a problem the Wolf did not intend to suffer for long.

As the serrated knife came stabbed down towards his cheek, he swung his head low, and launched himself forward.

The knife sliced off part of a lupine ear and a nicked the back of his neck.

/This is still…. This is still my home!\ Alexander protested as he had little right (or desire) to refer to it as his 'body' at the moment.

/There is no glory without suffering, no victory worthy of song that did not involve some risk of defeat!\ His internal (or was it now external?) Wolf proclaimed smugly, too euphoric over having command of their body in battle to care about a little pain.

The monster wasn't quite quick enough, and as over a hundred pounds of wolf plowed into its legs the creature was instantly knocked prone.

As risky as the Wolf's maneuver had been, Alexander couldn't deny the underlying tactical logic behind it. Sure enough, now the "reach" of the monster's knife did it no good, for the pair lay intertwined upon the floor with not even even a hair's breath between them.

What had once become a fight now quickly degenerated to a brutal brawl.

That wicked knife stabbed out straight at their head, as if the monster meant bury it up to the hilt in their skull.

Their neck twitched and the knife managed to cut off a section of their other ear this time, but that price paid, their teeth were able to close firmly around the outstretched wrist

/It is not cannibalism if we don't chew… it is not cannibalism if we don't chew...\ Alexander repeated to himself over and over again in the brief moment before the inevitable, though not being in control of his body stretched it out considerably.

Skin, flesh, muscles, tendons, and bones all alike were pieced, penetrated, and crushed beneath the power of their jaws as they slammed closed with the strength of a portcullis.

/Yeagh! Forget your questionable dietary restrictions, who would want to chew on something that foul?\ His internal Wolf was clearly every bit as revolted as Alexander at the moment, if for entirely different reasons.

It got the job done though, and the dreaded knife fell from now limp fingers.

The monster's other arm reached out for the knife trying, to grab hold of it with fingers that still worked.

In response, the Wolf kicked out with his large paws, and battered the monster about its stolen face. The monster became temporarily dazed and they were able to roll away from it.

/Wait, are you retreating?\ Alexander couldn't help but cut in.

It was hard to imagine that this day could get any more absurd, but somehow it was, the ever battle frenzied beast was choosing not to continue a fight!

/I could kill her now if I really wanted to… but we've got to make it properly dramatic for the bards!\ His internal Wolf insisted.

/I'm never going to talk to anyone, ever, about anything that happened today.\ Alexander promised, certain that he'd finally found at least one oath he could keep.

/I'll get a chance to tell someone sooner or later.\ The beast likewise promised as it raced across the house, heading back into the kitchen.

Screaming curses both magical and invective the monster pursued them.

They leaped up onto the stove, though there was barely room for them and the bubbling pot at the same time.

/You are the most absurd beast imaginable.\ Alexander sighed as he realized exactly what his internal Wolf was scheming.

/You have no soul for drama.\ The beast chastised him.

Then even to Alexander who had a strangely "elongated" view of time at the moment. it seemed as if two things happened completely simultaneously.

First the monster paced into the kitchen, knife in hand.

Secondly the door to the cabin swung open and there stood the little girl in her bright red hood.

/This is horrible...\ Alexander whimpered.

/This is splendid an audience!\ His internal Wolf chortled.

"Ah young sweet tender flesh!" Hissed the monster, turning towards the girl.

What next flashed through Alexander's mind had no proper translation in any language of which he knew.

It was an up-swelling of pure raw undiluted hatred murderous rage that probably made his internal Wolf swell pride.

In an instant Alexander's mind was up off of its mental chair and seeking to seize back control of his body.

This could have created a great struggle between him and his internal Wolf, except that for once they both had the exact same goal in mind.

Powerful silver furred legs kicked out at the cauldron.

It was knocked off the stove and up into the air, its contents spilling out instantly, and at least half of which ended up upon the monster.

Boiling hot water washed over the horrible creature, scalding its stolen skin in a most horrific manner. Then as if that particular fate was not enough (which in both Alexander opinion it wasn't) the cauldron itself slammed into the monster's head.

There was a ringing sound that might have done a church bell proud and the monster crumbled to the floor.

As it lay there, its body began to change, seemingly warped far worse than even a cauldron full of boiling water should have been able to. Her skin turned an ugly yellow color with open sores bursting into existence to ooze a horrific white fluid. Her irises turned red and her pupils midnight black, as her hair became wet, dark, thick, and oily like rotting seaweed. Her body withered and twisted making her look half bloated not unlike the toad she'd been accompanied by shortly before.

As the horrible thing lay there on the floor, its fingers began to twitch and it scooted perhaps an inch or so along the ground closer to the young girl.

That was two inches too far where Alexander Diamondclaw was concerned.

In a blur of silver he jumped from the stove to land on the monster's back like a balista bolt of furry fury.

"NOT NOW, NOT TODAY, NOT EVER!" He declared, then without further ado tore the monster's throat out with a single bite.

/You know, when you actually bother to pull that stick out of your ass and start beating people about the head with it, you're pretty good at this.\ His internal Wolf offered him unwanted praise.

Almost instantly Alexander broke into a series of coughs, heaves and hacks, no wonder even the Wolf had been revolted, even rotted meat would surely have tasted better than the monster's flesh!

Only once he'd managed to awkwardly banish the monster's foul taste from his lips and throat (but he sadly suspected its memory would haunt him forever) did the rest of his situation catch up with him.

He was currently sitting in the middle of the a kitchen belonging to her grandmother, copious amount of blood staining his lips, in the body of a gigantic silver wolf, with what the young girl would still surely consider to be her grandmother's corpse under his paws.

/Quick, tell her you're an enchanted prince who can turn back to a human if kissed by a fair maiden!\ His internal Wolf suggested eagerly.

/How? Just.. how? How do you expect that to make this any better?\ Alexander demanded, far too confused to even be properly enraged at the moment.

/I don't, but I want to see how she reacts to it!\ His internal Wolf "explained" for a given value of the term.

Alexander understandably refrained from taking the Wolf's advice. Unfortunately while he knew exactly what not to do, he had no idea at all what deeds to actually preform at the moment.

So he stood there awkwardly, no words emerging from his lips in any language of man or beast.

The young girl approached and dropped her basket.

Then, with all the strength her tiny little body could summon up, she kicked the monster's head. The girl was no stronger than she looked, but given how much damage Alexander had already done, that kick was nearly enough to decapitate the dead monster.

"My grandmother doesn't have yellow skin!" The little girl declared spitefully.

Then she leaned in and wrapped her little arms as far as they could go (about three fourths of the way) around Alexander's throat.

His mouth continued to move, and no words continued to come out.

"What is your name Mr. Wolf?" She now asked him eagerly.

/You owe me this...\ His internal Wolf growled, clearly preparing itself for fresh offense.

"Mac Tire Cáiliúil." Alexander answered.

He had no desire at all to attach his name to this particular farce bordering upon fiasco.

"All right Mac Tire Cáiliúil, my name is..." She began, but Alexander awkwardly raised one of his large paws and gently placed it against her mouth to muffle the words.

"You really shouldn't tell me. Why did your father teach you how to tell the difference between dogs and wolves if it wasn't so that you could avoid trusting the later? Trust me, it is an important lesson." Alexander insisted, all too aware of what would inevitably happen if the first thing this little girl did tomorrow was waltz off into the woods to try and make friends with other wolves.

"So I should trust you, about the importance of not trusting you, because you're a wolf?" The little girl asked, clearly having a bit of trouble grappling with the logic behind Alexander's words.

/She isn't the only one.\ His internal Wolf reflected.

It was at this point that to his surprise Alexander actually drew a little inspiration from the Wolf's words, well his past words, and only in a very broad outline sort of way.

"If it makes it simpler, I suppose you can at least half trust me, but you really shouldn't trust any other wolves at all." Was the lesson he chose to settle for.

"Even other wolves with silver fur?" She inquired tenderly, still rubbing herself against him.

"Especially other wolves with silver fur. You should only trust wolves with silver fur who wear eye-patches." Alexander insisted.

There, that was such an obscure bordering on flat out ridiculous situation that he doubted it would be able to do the girl much harm, there surely couldn't be any other wolves with silver fur and an eye-patch out there!

"You also aren't to go wandering into the forest looking for more wolves with silver fur and eye-patches! We're far too clever to be found unless we really want to be, and you'll only end up being found by the other untrustworthy sort of wolf." Alexander amended, hoping to define the category of "trustworthy wolves" down to the point of more or less complete nonexistence.

"So I can trust you about trusting you, because you're a very special wolf?" She teased him playfully.

"Why should I lie to you?" Alexander 'answered' her as best he could at the moment.

Then giving into awkward not quite human not quite wolf instinct he spread his lips apart and tenderly ran his tongue across her face affectionately.

The girl giggled happily and tugged at his fur playfully.

"Now I must be back to my father's village in time for dinner..." She reflected, finally letting go of him to pick up her basket again.

"Make you sure stick to the… I'll come with you." Alexander started to simply make a helpful suggestion, before deciding to just handle the matter himself.

Considering how much he'd done already for this girl, he'd sleep much more soundly if he was able to be utterly certain that she made it back to her father's arms rather than leaving the possibility of some freak accident befalling her on the way back to haunt his dreams.

XXX XXX XXX

Alexander's right eye was able to see young girl clearly even from quite a ways off. That was a very good thing as at the moment he had to keep himself half hidden behind a large tree while she headed back into her he village. Considering how everyone in the village was bound to react to the sight of a gigantic silver furred wolf beast, he was perfectly content to keep his distance.

"She's safe." Florence Bastien declared softly, as if even seeing the truth laid out before him might not be enough to convince Alexander.

"As safe as any human, as safe as any little girl..." Alexander couldn't help but half moan to himself.

"I'm glad she liked flowers." The dryad added abruptly.

"Why am I not surprised?" Alexander reflected, bristling at her non sequitur.

Although the dryad seemed to simply have a heart big enough for plants and people alike Alexander was unable avoid finding something slightly unseemly about such a deep love for something that wasn't human.

"If she hadn't liked flowers, she wouldn't have gotten lost, and if she hadn't gotten lost, she wouldn't have run into us." Florence insisted.

"Yes, and what a shame that would have been. What young girl can consider her upbringing complete without the delightful experience of being accosted alone and defenseless in the middle of the woods by a gigantic wolf?

I'm sure the that she'll rest much easier having been made to endure the splendid sight of said previously mentioned wolf tearing out the throat out of a monster which has stolen her grandmother's face!

The only victory I can claim in the matter is that somehow I managed to get through it all without having to explain to her where the stew came from..." He half moaned, half whimpered in mortification.

"Alexander… if she hadn't gotten lost… if she hadn't hadn't run into us… if she'd stayed on the path… what would have happened when she got to her grandmother's home?" Florence pointedly inquired.

She paused plenty of times while delivering the question so he would have more than enough time to reach the obvious answer.

The truth that occurred to Alexander was so horrible he couldn't bring himself to say it aloud.

"If she hadn't gotten lost and you hadn't stumbled upon her, then she would have joined her grandmother in that stew pot." The dryad finally declared, confirming his suspicions.

"When you set out to travel through a forest, I think sometimes you have to get lost to find where you were truly meant to be.

I know it may not be obvious… but…. I'm glad I got lost with you Alexander Diamondclaw." Florence sniffled slightly as she spoke, droplets of some strange golden liquid starting to form around her eyes.

She held out a hand to him.

/I break my oaths far too easily, it doesn't matter if I make them to myself or others...\ Alexander groaned inwardly.

/Why don't you just cry a river, half drown yourself in it, and call on me to drag our body to safety again? Be a sire! More seriously, you should ask her to mate now while she clearly fancies us!\ His internal Wolf insisted.

Alexander ignored him.

But he could not ignore that hand.

Very slowly, he began to reach out a limb of his own towards her. By the time their bodies touched, he did it with a hand rather than a paw.

XXX XXX XXX

"And then the gigantic good wolf, gobbled up up the evil monster that at first looked exactly like my grandmother!" The young girl explained happily to her recovering father.

End Story.

AN: So yes, this story is in many ways a deliberate homage to Little Red Riding Hood, but Tepest is after all the domain most prone to fairy tale situations (though typically the dark kind) which is why it has three evil witches as its darklords.

By all rights there probably shouldn't be any people living off on their own in Tepest, the way that the grandmother in the Little Red Riding Hood story does, it is just asking to have something horrible happen to you. That said, back in book five, Bryonna's family evidently used to do exactly that, before they got killed off by goblins, which is yet more proof of why safety in numbers is important.

So yes, it can/does happen and there should be nothing breaking your suspension of disbelief about the grandmother living off on her own.

Getting back on topic, with any luck this story serves as both an effective homage and an interesting character study/character building experience for Alex. Also this is the closest we've ever gotten to fully seeing inside his head (give or take the dream side story I previously did) and yes, this is what Alex's mental state tends to looks like. As James can happily attest, this is not how natural lycanthropy works, at all.

It is also not how afflicted lycanthropy works, because an afflicted lycanthrope's animal side is, well an animal, it should be Int 2, while Alex has to deal with a lupine presence that while it might have simple goals is by no means simple minded.

By all rights it should not be how maladaptive lycanthropy works either, since that should once again be dealing with an animalistic side born of a curse that is no more intelligent than any random animal. Oh, also there's the little matter of how afflicted and pathological lycanthropes shouldn't even be actively aware of their animal side...

Honestly, what Alex is having to deal with is probably best compared to Tristen and Malken, except as you can probably guess Alex and his lupine mental presence get along at least a little bit better than those two do.

Also if you were confused about what the toad had to do with anything, it was the Hag's familiar. Yes, Alex might have missed out on a chance to burn the Three Sisters to ashes back in book 5, but he did half boil one of them alive and then tear out her throat once upon a time. This failed to be a long term problem for the sister in question, since the other two were able to restore her thanks to the Cauldron of Life. That's a magical artifact that if they put the dead body of one of the three into and do a special ritual it will cause their dead sister to come back to life if you didn't know.

Luckily for Alex, to hags he smells like a wolf when he's a wolf and like a human when he's a human (to lupine themed creatures though he always has a trace of wolf about him, he's magic like that) so they weren't able to recognize him…


End file.
