Cold had patted the trees lightly the night before, and now everything was quiet in the way things can only be quiet after a fresh snowfall. The unusual weather this far south left the skies a shade of twilight purple; it was ripped as though by force in some areas, scraps of violent red tearing the skies as if the sun refused to submit completely.
Most residents of the town could not remember the last time the weather had gotten like this so close to the Yampi, and as Jacob trudged through the snow, water slowly soaking the bottoms of his socks, he wondered if the eruption of Mt. Aleph had angered whatever gods there might be, forcing a celestial war.
Possible, but unlikely, thought Jacob as he approached the log house, light skittering from the windows. Awe-inspiring though it may be to dream of drawn-out battles between heavenly armies, Jacob had left behind the dreams of his childhood long ago, jaded by harsh reality once he had come of age. He had thought he could change the world. Or at least become a part of it. He had been wrong.
By the time he reached the door, the moon had revealed its waxing-crescent sickle, and the trees and the snow had both reached the same level of oblique colour that was somewhere between violet and black. The door creaked open with some difficulty and warmth flooded Jacob's frozen face like a loving embrace. He breathed in deeply and savoured the clinking of glasses, the raucous laughter, the tense conversations, and he made his way over to the table in the corner that had, for a few years now, been designated by the town in general as his own.
As usual, Jacob's best friend Laertes was sitting, waiting at the table with two pints full of mead. But this time there was a third pint on the table, untouched, as was Laertes' own; the stranger was hooded, and Laertes sat in the corner behind him as if being held hostage by the unknown figure, his face expressionless, gaze boring downwards into some small area of the table that surely had a hole in it by now.
"Sit, Jacob," said the woman, in a surprisingly deep voice that seemed to vibrate the room. Jacob looked around defiantly, still standing up. No one else seemed to have noticed, and now he had had time to process the voice, he had not been entirely sure whether he had heard the voice in his ears.
Jacob was not a large man by any means, nor was he particularly strong; though his muscles appeared to threaten to burst from his skin beneath his cloak, he knew that that was not really his to use right now after all. Conflict, he concluded, might be too risky; so Jacob tried, unsuccessfully, to appear intimidating once more by standing as tall as he could beside the stranger before he gave up and sat down adjacent Laertes.
"Jacob," said the deep voice, which he decided sounded like a demon. Wistfully he recalled his earlier thoughts about gods. "I know w—"
"Stop," said Jacob sternly, impressed with his own confidence. "Shut the fuck up. First things first. Who the hell are you."
"We will have time for introductions later," said the Demon, who looked up for the first time; though its face remained obscured, Jacob could make out two red glints where eyes should have been, and felt the foundations of his confidence shake wildly. "There is important business at hand, and I know—your friend here has very kindly told me—what there is to be gained, first of all, and how I might help you achieve this."
Jacob glanced at Laertes, whose mangled brown hair may as well have been his face, for all Jacob could see of it now. "I have no idea what you're talking about, or what you want, whoever you are. I suggest you take your glass, shut the hell up, and leave." The moment after he had spoken he realized how pathetic he had sounded.
"Strange, Jacob... I am giving you the chance to fulfill your dreams, to travel the world over, unafraid of who you are. Yes, I have observed you for some time now," she added as Jacob stiffened in his seat, which had been painfully obvious and sudden. "But I have also observed others, and only remarked that perhaps you are the one who wishes this power the most. Laertes here—" she motioned at Laertes, who had sunk so low in his chair that it appeared that a stump of hair had replaced where his head should have been, "—has already kindly offered to assist me in my business should you decline. Evidently you both wish to have this power, though the task I offer is one which must be completed alone."
Jacob suddenly realized how insane this all was. Some stranger had the gall to intrude upon his life, his dreams, his friendships, and tempt him as if he was a fish about to bite. He could already feel the tension between himself and Laertes, though his friend's attention seemed to be directed mostly at Jacob's soggy boots and pant legs. He remembered exploring the village with Laertes when they had been young, spending every day together—once they had even ventured as far as Air's Rock before being warded off by an adult. Growing older, they had promised each other that they would search for a solution to their inevitable problems, and travel the world together, from here to Kalay and all the way up to Vale (though this latter destination had been changed to Vault in the previous year due to the seismic activities of Mt. Aleph). Now his best friend was willing to betray him?
Moreover, was Jacob willing to betray his best friend?
Jacob bit. "So," he continued slowly, choosing his words carefully. "What is this task you want me to do?"
"I'm glad you asked," said the Demon in his head, pulling back its hood to reveal a thicket of smooth, blonde hair and the palest face Jacob had ever seen, covered with bizarre red rune-like marks; when Jacob glanced away, in his peripherals he thought he saw her...vanish. "First, I think introductions are in order. And I think your mead is getting warm," it noted with amusement, seeing Jacob's sweaty, tight grasp around the shaking glass in his hands.
**********
On the day that Jacob made his first kill, he became infatuated with it. There was something within him that resounded when the blood had splattered onto his skin and hair, something in the traveler's stunned face that told him that this was how it was meant to be.
After that night at the pub in his town, he had eventually become a recluse. He didn't have any family other than a sister anyway, and she was much older, and married to someone he had only met twice. The funny thing about growing up is, Jacob thought, that you never pay attention to those things that are closest to you until they either become fully available or vanish altogether. That was how Jacob felt now—a primal fury filled his body as he dissected the one in front of him. He had been about 20 kilometres south of his town, staking out a bridge, when the travelers had passed, laughing nervously.
They had never seen it coming: Jacob had leapt down from a nearby plateau, using his powerful rear legs to propel him right onto his target's head, only illuminated by the full moon above. He had been immensely stronger than the man, who had probably not even realized he was dying. His companion had run full-speed back towards the west, yelling in the tongue Jacob recognized as native Mikasallan.
He had dragged the mangled corpse back onto the plateau, gnashing at the sides with his impossibly long and sharp claws. It had been there, in front of a fresh pile of meat, blood oozing slowly through his fur, that Jacob had realized that he didn't even care he had killed someone. He had been suppressing this part of himself for so long... all it had taken was the promise of seeing the world to open his eyes to this new and exciting vice.
After accepting the task back at the pub those few months ago, he and Laertes had not spoken. In fact, Jacob had not spoken to anyone, except when he absolutely had to: he had quit his job, because she had told him he would be provided with food and money. He had quit his neighbours, because she had offered him a place nearby to stay. He had quit his workouts, because she had told him he had all the physical strength he ever needed, and would learn new powers soon. He had quit his friends, because it was required of the task.
Jacob had had to quit his life in order to have one. And he hadn't yet regretted it.
After his first kill, she had returned to him, and she had told him to wait in a cave high in the mountain ranges to the east until someone arrived there for him. Then she would leave, or appear to: when he later checked the doors in the house he found that the locks—one of which could only be done from inside—were all fastened behind her. It was as if she walked through the doors, but Jacob never saw this, so he wouldn't have known. He suspected the stranger had powers that he was soon to learn about.
The next morning Jacob set off to the caves, crunching dead grass below his feet for many miles, and then hiking difficult and long-ago used paths in the mountains; the man had already been waiting for Jacob when he had arrived.
He was a plain man, dark-skinned, and dressed in a simple brown cloak. His eyes levelled on Jacob's as his even voice spoke.
He spoke his name. He told Jacob that he was from a far-away place called Xian, somewhere to the north, and that he had travelled many days to arrive here on the southern continent.
"The people of your town are in close proximity to a sacred testament to the Elemental Force of Air, which, I am sure you know, is called Air's Rock," explained the man, his accent neutral and devoid of emotion. "This place has, for many centuries, affected the residents of your town, but few who live there realize that it is a heat sink of sorts for the Rock."
Rain started to pitter-patter on the rocks outside, gently weaving through the pine needles of the trees above.
"You may know of a man in your village by the name of Maha—" Jacob stirred at the name; Maha had spent much time in his household as a child, talking to his parents, telling him awful and amazing stories, legends, of times past when Jacob's people were slaughtered for purification by surrounding communities, and myths of how his people had risen up and driven them back. He had been too young to understand the full extent of this back then, but he was sure that Maha had been lying about his people rising up. "—this man has been one of the few who has realized his power.
"You may have heard of Mt. Aleph. The woman who hired me to teach you regards this mountain as very important. It, and its recent seismic activity, have much to do with the skills you are to learn—or rather, the skills you already have, but do not yet know how to use... Many people in my part of the world call this power "Chi", but it is most widely called 'Psynergy'... it is a force used by the able..."
Jacob listened intently, his heart beating like a drum in his chest. He realized then that the reason he was being taught how to use Psynergy was not because he had wished to learn it; no, it had something to do with the woman's task. It was for business. It was for his freedom from this hell.
**********
Over the next few months, Jacob's skills in Psynergy increased exponentially; for the first few weeks of meeting the man in the mountains, he could concentrate as hard as he wanted on moving a rock, yet could not move it. However, as he experimented with different areas of his mind, he found a niche: he was somehow tapping into something that was there, that his mind's eye could see, but was simultaneously nowhere. When he let himself slip into this niche, the action occurred so suddenly it startled Jacob as if out of a trance. The man and the cold, dark stone walls offered no condolence when he failed and no award when he prevailed. But he knew that every skill he mastered was one step closer to his freedom.
The hardest part for Jacob was mastering the basic Psynergies of the Mind: reading the mind, taunting it with desires he conjured, plucking out and replacing pieces... he practised first on the children of the village, getting them to hit one another, and then on adults, ruining relationships, initiating fistfights, and thieving items which Jacob then used himself later on. If the woman had hired someone to teach him this Psynergy, he wondered how powerful she was, and was glad he didn't pick a fight with her that first day at the pub. He often wondered why she hadn't simply controlled his mind.
Every month or so, at the full moon, Jacob would stalk the country roads for prey... deer, monsters (which had been appearing more frequently, recently) and sometimes humans. He consumed everything and added their strength to his own.
During the times when he had no lessons or full moon, Jacob would wonder about the wide world, and about the identity of the woman, whom he barely knew. He remembered almost every time he reported to her on his progress (about once a month) that he had asked her her name. Each time she would tell him, and he would nod; but a moment later, it was as if the name had slipped from his mind, and even though its imprint was there on his mind, he couldn't remember it at all.
The cold weather had also remained since that first night he had met the woman. The villagers were now so concerned that they were cursed that many of them had refused to come outside anymore. The snow had stopped, so it was a perpetual autumn; the brown leaves gave no sign of falling off the trees OR being reborn. It was as if Garoh were in a yearlong stasis.
Then, one day, she came to him in a dream—though he wasn't sure if he had woken or not. Jacob thought he could vaguely see the outline of his window looking out at the edges of town, but everything was dizzy, and shapes would resize or morph yet stay completely the same.
"You have been training for many months, Jacob..." said the woman.
"Yes," said Jacob. "I'm ready to do whatever the hell it is I need to do. I've played your games too long now."
"Well, you will not have to wait much longer," continued the woman with the impossibly red eyes, blonde hair shimmering in the ether light. "There is someone I need you to take care of for me, Jacob. Be aware that she has killed many of the people I have tried to obstruct her with. She travels in a group, all the time."
"I can distract her using Psynergy, and lure her away," said Jacob. He was already relishing the thrill of the hunt.
"Perhaps. But this girl is an Adept—she is very skilled with Psynergy and might repel or kill you, should you try."
Then suddenly Jacob understood why she had not controlled his mind: He would need it in order to force Psynergetic use on an Adept. Jacob felt a squirming sensation in his stomach. He had never killed an Adept before. He also remembered the woman's name.
"And... I just need to kill her?"
"However possible."
"Do I get to see my target, then?"
Jacob was now flying through the air; far below he could see the world he wished to travel, and for a moment, for the slightest second, he was so perfectly ...content. But now he was zooming downwards, towards a town filled with short buildings and tropical vegetation. He looked around. Then he saw her; unmistakably this was the girl about which his employer had been speaking, so opposite from her.
She seemed around his age, probably a few years younger. She had brilliant maroon hair, glittering in the dream light, and her eyes shone like jewels. She was standing beside a dark-haired young man. Suddenly she flung herself down on the grass, and stared up at the sky with a huge, smug grin on her face; Jacob walked over to her and looked straight down, so that they were looking perfectly into each other's eyes. He thought she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in his life. Almost immediately her name came to him.
"Jenna," he said flatly.
"Yes, that is her name. The man over there is Felix. You will not need to kill him; he knows and approves of this plan. You need to get rest," she said. "They are in Madra, and soon they will be passing through Garoh. You will need to..." the woman paused, as if tasting the words in her mouth. "Purify yourself. By sacrificing her. To me."
Jacob understood what had to be done. He had just one question. Why kill something so beautiful? He asked the woman.
"Jenna... is a friend of someone else who we are desperately trying to stop," the woman said. "Felix is willing to sacrifice for the greater good. When they find out Jenna has been killed, they will stop on their path—securing the deterioration of Weyard. So you see, Jacob..." she smiled without smiling. "You can change the world. And be a part of it."
Jacob felt himself easing away from Jenna, from Madra, back up—or maybe through—the continent, into his own bedroom once again.
Jacob stared into the dark silence, enveloping him. He asked something that sounded like no words at all.
But Menardi had long since gone, and only the blackness was there to hear him.
**********
The next few weeks, Jacob did not go to the mountain range, nor did he hear from Menardi. Now he spent his time, for the most part, in the forest, just thinking. He had found one tree which somehow stood out to him, and so he sat beneath it, reading old books he had inherited from his parents but never got around to reading: his favourites were an old map of Weyard, with many scribblings (his parents had also wanted to travel but had never gone further than Osenia Cliffs), and Indra and the South: History and Lore from Gondowan to Tundaria.
Jacob was fascinated with the histories and myths of Kibombo and Daila in particular concerning his ancestors. Apparently a few centuries ago, when "Psynergy was still rampant in the world," many Adepts from Indra and Osenia had been concerned with the growing number of vicious attacks on townsfolk. When it had first been discovered that the werewolves were the cause of the deaths, many of the known ones had been hunted down, and every full moon, vigilant townspeople brandishing swords, axes, and pikes, would file out into the streets and hunt any attempt they saw on someone else's life.
It had been an unfortunate event for the werewolves to have been cursed in the first place, and no one quite knew why or how it had happened. The curse turned out to be hereditary. In Angara, police and royal guards had even used warrants to gain access to households of suspected werewolves. Most times they were mistaken, due undoubtedly to paranoid neighbours, but sometimes they would find a pile of fur here, a human hand there. The werewolves found in this way had been publicly executed (in human form, of course), hung from the gallows or burned at the stake.
Eventually the werewolves had vanished, for the most part, from Weyard. The author of the book did not acknowledge Garoh's existence, but Jacob knew the rest: they had banded together and exiled themselves to the hamlet south of the Yampi desert, keeping the secret of their second lives from spreading. Everyone in the town knew everyone, and all visitors were only spoken to with extreme caution. They hunted mountain goats and venison—in human form—so as to suppress the beast inside themselves. If the people had to go outside during a full moon, they would wear specially made hooded cloaks to prevent exposure to the moonlight. On more than one occasion, though, a tourist had ended up missing, or a family member killed, due to moonlight shining through open windows.
It was a sad existence, one Jacob had resented since he was old enough to understand it, and he wanted nothing more than to rid himself of his inner beast, though he couldn't deny its thrill, now that he fully indulged his desires. Now he sat, staring at his sharp fingernails, and wondered if he could ever be truly accepted outside of Garoh.
Jacob snatched a squirrel that had been skittering next to him, and squeezed it with all his human muscles. He did not flinch as he saw the life of the squirrel being extinguished. Its eyes were filled with the same misunderstanding that showed so plainly on all his victims' faces. He lay down the dead squirrel, took out a hunting blade and cut the squirrel into pieces, carefully peeling off the skin and removing any bones. He removed from his rucksack an aged bottle of rum. The liquid warmth felt good flowing through his body, and the squirrel was satisfying. Sleep and the comfort of the alcohol took him there that night, saliva, rum and blood dripping all over his dirty shirt and pooling beneath on the cold earth beneath the dead leaves.
**********
Jacob stood near the entrance to town, smoking a pipe and appearing jovial. The morning light shone down the dirt path and revealed the utter brownness of the world around him. He was leaning against a dirt cliff, almost blending in with his brown hooded cloak, which he wouldn't normally wear. He had been waiting here for several hours now, because something made him feel that this was the day.
He was not sure whether it was the clouds parting above that blinded him next, or the maroon-haired girl travelling between three men and one other girl. The girl of my dreams, Jacob knew. Jenna.
She was giggling at something the blonde girl next to her had said, and a turquoise-haired man looked at her playfully, just for a moment. They were all looking at her, but then the dark-haired man's eyes met Jacob's.
He knew.
Jacob frowned at him and puffed what looked like could have been a smoke ring, if the smoke rings you knew were shaped like clouds of smoke. It took all his willpower to let them simply pass by and keep staring ahead, pipe in his mouth. He could hear the old man babbling on about something. He knew that they would be able to sense him if he followed them, so he remained, appearing to examine the rather interesting grey rock at his feet. He kicked it lightly, watched its erratic path over the ground. Finally, he turned around, and was not surprised to find the strangers were no longer within his sight.
He figured that Felix would try not to interfere; he suspected his life would have been on the line from this mysterious other party Mendardi had spoken of. Jacob sensed that Felix was the sort of person who would sacrifice one life to save hundreds. Well, thought Jacob, I guess so am I. That, and the freedom he had been promised.
The general store was their most likely stop, but Jacob would not be heading there. He would wait for them. The best place to talk and garner information was where people would be willing to give it up easily; no, Jacob would be at the pub tonight, and he would be happy to oblige some tourists simply meandering through Garoh.
The pub was moderately full tonight: a perfect atmosphere, thought Jacob. He wandered through the throng of people who were standing, placing himself, temporarily, in everyone's field of vision. He half-heartedly held conversations with people who hadn't seen him in a while, you know, things have really gone downhill, you should rejoin the construction team while you're young, pays good money, you know that?
But Jacob's eyes were constantly scanning the front doors for signs of the party he sought. The lies he fed his fellow townsmen flowed easily off his tongue as if someone had possessed him, or moreover, as if he had possessed someone else.
Finally, a few hours after sunset, Felix strode into the pub. Most things quieted down a fair amount as the strangers were observed. Everyone who had been speaking of matters to do with heritage quickly changed the subject in the conversation. Voices got a little louder again, but never to the same decibel as it had been before. Everyone seemed to extend one of their ears towards the outsiders.
"Visitors?" asked Jacob. The party did not seem to remember him from before, and the old man was not with them.
"Yeah," said the turquoise-haired man. "Just looking for a place to sit and talk, maybe learn a little about the locals. We're just passing through here."
"We love visitors," replied Jacob, his heart racing, his tone calm. "We hardly get them anymore because the damn seasons have gone all wonky."
"I like autumn," Jenna reflected. "There is no better time to think than when the world's dying around you." Jacob was surprised to hear her voice. It was confident, yet tolerant; mature, yet playful.
"Well..." muttered Jacob, caught off guard. "There are some really good drinks here. Why don't you have a few with me, and you can tell me a bit about yourselves?"
They all nodded, and Jacob motioned to the empty table in the corner, which looked as though it had waited for Jacob since he had last left it. He went to the counter to speak to the bartender to order five glasses of honey mead. For some reason all his thoughts of murder and Menardi and freedom came swimming to him then, when suddenly he realized what was happening.
Jacob tried to block out the thoughts, to push them away, to think of something—anything—else than these things, but it was too late. Jacob looked over. The quiet girl with the blonde hair was staring at him, her hand slightly above the table, pointing vaguely at him. Her eyes widened with a sudden revelation; Jacob felt himself tense, prepared for combat, his muscles stiff with adrenaline, his mind ready to conjure an inferno where she sat. But the girl's eyes slackened, and then he could barely see them again, just under her hairline. She looked slightly sad, empathetic, understanding.
"Your drinks!" said the bartender joyfully, and handed him five glasses on a tray, bringing Jacob out of his trance. Startled, he took a few gold coins out of his pocket, told the bartender to keep the change, and carried the tray over to the table. He sat down next to Felix, now adjacent from the blonde girl, who was sitting beside Jenna. Jacob set the drinks down on the table, only fractions of light reaching it from the main area. The drinks refracted the light eerily onto the travelers' faces.
"I know who you are," whispered the blonde girl, and Jacob stiffened once again. "Your people have been hunted for centuries. It's alright to tell us things, Jacob... we are only trying to pass through here on our way to something else."
Confused, Jacob had no idea what to say. "Um..." he started. "Listen... I don't know what 'people' you're talking about."
The turquoise-haired man interrupted obliviously. "By the way, her name is Sheba, she's from way out west. Our friend Kraden is at the inn, fell asleep already, what an old chump. My name's Pier—"
"Garoh. Its residents are werewolves," Sheba continued, ignoring the other man completely. "You are one. You're trying to hide it."
Jacob was astounded. He wasn't dead yet, so he figured she didn't know about the plan to kill Jenna. But how...? Jacob glanced around him uncomfortably. Something didn't make sense here. Unless Felix... Jacob suddenly remembered the certain area of Psynergy he had not completely mastered, and about Adepts being able to pluck out or insert thoughts into others' minds. Suddenly he understood, and relaxed a little, eternally grateful to Felix. He should've poured a little of his own drink into Felix's glass.
Jacob said nothing to Sheba. Instead he waited for the man named Piers to again break the tension, and after the honey mead, all talk of werewolves had been forgotten, and Felix started rattling on about his hometown, Vale, and each of them agreed that they missed their homes, and though Jacob heard Piers agree, he never heard where the man was from.
Jenna had not said much during the conversation, and looked like she was trying to hide some kind of apprehension. She also looked extremely tired in the dim light, while Sheba and Piers and Felix were talking about how someone called Isaac was "on the wrong path". Jacob decided to use his reluctance to join this conversation to his advantage. He shaped his mind like wet clay so that it fit into a niche, and directing his intentions at Jenna, he began to see images of her mind's eye. He felt no resistance; half-asleep, she had let her guard down and was vulnerable.
Jacob saw that she had fought in countless battles, traveled forests, plains, deserts, and oceans, though he did not know where any of these were. He saw a blonde-haired boy playing with Jenna in a lush hillside village. Was this Vale? He saw her talents in music and athletics, which he supposed she enjoyed; he saw her first kiss (Jacob felt a pang in his throat at this); and finally he saw, in Jenna's mind's eye, Menardi, stern-looking and demonic as ever, standing beside a blue-haired and strong looking man. In this scene he saw Menardi cast a coloured stone into a huge hole: he was on the top of some huge tower, and in the distance was Sulhalla's vast landscape.
Here was Jenna, watching, as the huge blue-haired man and Menardi were confronted by four other people. Here Jacob felt pangs of sorrow which were not his own. It was the sorrow of opposing a loved one for greater good. The young blonde-haired man who had appeared seemed to draw the most of Jenna's remorse. He watched as Menardi and the blue-haired man prepared to fight the other party, and then there was a great light, and a huge figure rose up—
Jacob snapped back to reality in an instant. The pub noise came rushing back into his ears and physical vision to his eyes. Felix, Sheba and Piers were lightly dosing and seemed to have gotten more glasses of mead at some point, as there were many glasses on the table. Piers was actually using one of them as some sort of pillow.
But Jenna was staring at Jacob, sitting straight up, eyes opened wide. She knew what he had seen. For a moment they looked into each others' eyes, and Jenna's relaxed. It was the relieved look of someone who would give anything if someone would listen to them. Someone in need of a friend.
Jenna stood up, her eyes still shining in the darkness.
"Jacob," she said slowly, happily. She seemed to lift the chair from her place and carry it, but Jacob knew that really she hadn't touched the chair at all, that somehow it had moved itself from her corner to the end of the table, next to Jacob. In the darkness he could've sworn he had seen wings sprouting from her back, but of course, this was not so.
Jenna took her new seat next to Jacob. For a moment she simply looked at him. "I didn't want to show anyone that," she said. "But you saw, anyway. You saw and you understood, a little, I could feel it. We're—we're both, you know..."
Jacob didn't say anything. He sipped the last of his mead and sat back in his chair, then glanced playfully at Jenna. She seemed dizzy as she scooted her chair a little closer to his, then let her head fall onto his shoulder. In a moment she was unconscious.
Jacob sat there for a long time, until everyone else had left. Jacob had paid for beds upstairs for Felix, Piers and Sheba, though halfway up the stairs Piers seemed to think that dirty wood was going to be a lot more comfortable than any bed. They left him there, sprawled over four steps, as Jenny shivered lightly in the darkness. Jacob held her tightly. He had a lump in his throat that had nothing to do with being a werewolf.
He wanted to take her outside, to say something to her. About what all this was. He wasn't sure of any of his dreams or wishes anymore. A little drunk, he led her on shaky feet outside into the cold, leaves hissing in Osenia's night winds and passing through his thick mane of brown hair. He held her there for a moment. Then he realized what he'd done.
The moonlight shone on his cloak... and all over his exposed face. He looked up. A full moon glared down at him, exuding a halo of soft white light around it that blotted out the near stars. Jacob felt something deep inside him start to growl. His skin was on fire as thick hairs shot up all around his body. His spine started to rearrange itself, growing large and curved. Jacob knew this was it.
So he grabbed Jenna, who was still mostly asleep, and thrust her inside, quickly locking the doors as best he could before closing them on himself. He would not entirely destroy his humanity... not tonight. And it all dawned on him then. What he was looking for was not freedom from Garoh, or even freedom from his condition. He was looking for freedom from prejudice, from intolerance. And he was fairly sure that he had experienced a short taste of what one may call 'love'. No, he would not kill Jenna. Although as a werewolf he could not stop himself from trying.
He watched in horror as his hands, not fully paws yet, scraped at the door, sending deep splinters into his soft pink skin. He yelled to Jenna something that sounded like "Don't let me in! Keep the door locked!" to him, but probably came out sounding more like a series of barks and growls. His eyesight shifted to bas-relief, and he could now only see two colours. Despite this, his ears and nose transformed, and he could experience a whole new world thanks to these senses. But he had lost control of his body; though Jacob was not playing the werewolf, the werewolf was playing him, and he continued to rake the door with his razor sharp claws, gnawing at the locks.
Suddenly his huge form was cast backwards by an invisible force. It held him there, on the ground, struggling. Jacob yelped and howled in the otherwise silent night. He sensed Jenna on the other side of the wall doing this against her will, and Jacob suspected that should he have access to her mind now, he might just feel her same remorse she had felt for the blonde-haired young man atop the huge tower...
He could not get off the ground, but his body did not cease to try. Finally he was free, after how long, he did not know; the moon had shifted position in the cloudless sky, but still peeked its cheesy face over the treetops. Then he was being held by the neck by the invisible force, made to stand upright, a full twelve feet tall. Jacob's body bared its teeth in rage as the door opened and Jenna stepped out, her hand pointed at his throat. She had a solemn look of understanding on her face, and Jacob wished he could destroy his body and let his spirit float towards her, anything to be out of this nightmare, this monstrosity.
"Jacob," she spoke calmly into the night, occasionally drowned out by the snarling. "I'm so sorry. I... we... should go..."
Jacob's human mind cried out in despair. How could she leave after this? Leave him alone and stranded in this unforgiving world? Then, thought Jacob, how could she not leave. She was on a quest to save the world, somehow, and her death—which would inevitably come about in Garoh if she stayed, somehow—would only cause more negativity to, Jacob suspected, the blonde-haired young man.
"I... I don't know what to do, Jacob," she spoke, her voice shaky. She sounded scared and immensely depressed. "I wish there was some way I c—"
Then Jenna simply disappeared, captured by the night. All was quiet, and Jacob was released from his hold. He looked around. He neither saw nor heard anything unusual. But his scent revealed something that made the human Jacob want to explode with anger.
Running after the scent, Jacob ran into the woods, ran for his life, feeling his mind merge with the werewolf's: for now, they were trying to accomplish the same task. He passed trees, rocks, a river, a hooded woman watering her garden. Jacob followed the scent up a ravine, whose side led up a hill. The cliff top, which had a small plateau looking over Garoh, was only a little farther. It took Jacob only a few bounds to get there.
Rising up and howling in the moonlight, the other werewolf had Jenna at its feet. She was unconscious, or barely conscious, Jacob couldn't tell, and she was badly mauled. Jenna was going to bleed to death.
Without thinking, Jacob sprang towards the other werewolf in a fit of fury. Teeth on teeth gnashed, claws left deep wounds in the sides of the combatants; the sounds could probably be heard for five kilometres in every direction, and indeed, as the sounds echoed off the walls of the cliff, some windows in the village below lit up with candlelight.
The fight didn't last long. The werewolves clashed, and for a split second Jacob's assailant had knocked his head away, exposing his soft underside, but he stumbled backwards and managed to recover. After the initial tussle, Jacob had managed quite easily to pin the other werewolf on the ground, where he bent down and tore out the other werewolf's throat with his sharp white teeth, blood leaking over the rocks and soaking into his fur. He tried his hardest not to meet the other werewolf's eyes. Jacob took a moment to savour it, and howled in the moon; Jacob's human mind, though severely shaken, almost laughed at how cliché it was. Now came the hard part.
With all his will, Jacob tried to control the body of the werewolf. At first he couldn't do a thing, and his body lurched towards Jenna with demonic speed, fresh after his victory. But Jacob controlled what he could, and put his human mind into that special niche. He felt his body turn away. It was painful beyond belief, painful beyond pain, resisting a body that was much stronger than he was. But he was the mind, and after ten or so minutes of struggling, he could feel the werewolf's resistance start to fade.
Minutes later Jacob was lying on the ground beside Jenna, his strength drained, his arms, legs and back bleeding profusely. The moon had finally vanished, and he lay there in the darkness, thinking strange thoughts and wondering if he was going to live. He realized with a jolt that Jenna was also dying. Struggling over to her on his dirty, bloody hands, he leaned over her.
One last time, Jacob reached into that Psynergetic niche and pulled out a healing light. He directed it at Jenna's wounds, which slowly—but completely—healed. He heard her light breathing, saw clouds of steam in the air coming from her nose. She lay there, the most beautiful thing Jacob had ever seen. Laertes' blood ran down the rock plateau and joined with his own. The townspeople, slow hiking up the trail, were the last thing he saw before he fell, with Jenna, into unconsciousness.
**********
A week or so had passed at the inn. Jacob had taken to fiddling with a candle by his bedside, coating his hands with wet wax and enjoying the feeling of the dried form on his skin. Light blood stains ran down his sheets, and there were deep scars in his arms. He had not yet seen his legs.
He had also not yet seen Jenna or any of the others since that night, but he had found a small flower on his bedside table, one that he did not recognize. Upon researching it by requesting a book on botany, he found that this particular flower grew only in northern Angara. He had been told that Jenna was in the bed beside him before he woke up, having recovered her deep wounds miraculously. A small amount of potion was all it had taken to get her up and running, and, Jacob supposed, she was back to saving the world.
Jacob felt sad about his friend Laertes, and supposed that it was his own fault for biting the hook in the first place. He had been so tempted by the notion of travelling the world... he did not want to show who he really was, and had been prepared to kill for it. Apparently Laertes had been too, and Menardi's temptation had been too great. He didn't even consider the "greater good" Menardi had spoken of. He figured he should travel the world first before he cared about saving it.
So he decided that, werewolf or not, he would travel the world, alone. He now knew how to use basic Psynergy, and had proven to himself that he could—in part, at least—control his other body. Spring had returned to Garoh, so after returning to construction for a couple of weeks to save up enough money to buy supplies, he headed off down the road away from Garoh and began to head southwest, to Mikasalla, and eventually northwest, to Gondowan and beyond.
He got as far as the forest south of Garoh when something impossible, something transparent blurred in his peripherals. He spun at the sudden presence and stared at Menardi, her red eyes glaring, one hand clenched in a fist, the other holding a long, red, sickle-shaped sword.
"Yes, I have observed you for some time now," said the Demon, rumbling the forest as she spoke, sudden emotion rising in her monotonous voice. "I have observed you, and you have failed."
Jacob didn't even flinch as her hands rose up, leaves turning around her in a hurricane of violent air, some starting to impossibly catch on fire. His last thought was profound and genuine.
I haven't failed, Menardi.
I got exactly what I wanted.
-OpiateChicken