A request fic for Procne, who had given me many wonderful ideas I am now working on. Thanks for the continuing support. I hope this turned out as well as you could have envisioned.

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The villagers of Madra advanced with torches and pitchforks raised high, no matter how cliché it was. The village of Garoh trembled in anticipation.

Not everyone was as understanding as the Miksallans when they found out about the hidden village of werewolves in Ocenia. Mostly small factions with petty grievances, they came and went often. Never before had come such a large wave, and never with such black intentions.

The eradication of all werewolves and creatures of the sort.

Of course they called it purification. Not murder, or genocide, or even destruction. Purification was a much… cleaner term, no messy emotions to go with it.

It was the deep of night on the full moon when they came, of course. Any other time they came they would have seen normal people going about normal, everyday things. Things they themselves might have been doing, had they not been on a murder mission at the time. No, come at the midnight when the people of Garoh could be branded the other, the stranger. When it would be easier to simply carry out their mission for the 'good' of the world.

Maha knew all this, and he knew that whoever planned this attack knew it as well.

This would be the final confrontation. After this, there would be no more village of Garoh. The only thing still untold was if any of the villagers would survive to make a new life among humans.

Maha knew that there would be no escape for him.

Even had he been able to change back to his human form, Maha would have stayed. He was the oldest of the pack, their safety was his responsibility. He knew that if he remained in Garoh for the villagers to find him, they would make a spectacle of the burning. He could contribute little else to the pack by living, but his death would give them the chance to escape unpursued. And maybe a chance to stop the killings, but Maha highly doubted that.

So he waited.

The village remained empty for a moment, before teeming over with swarms of hunting villagers. Maha stood poised a moment behind the door of his cave, then swept through the entrance with a blindingly brilliant Reveal.

The searchers were taken aback for a moment by this magnificent creature suddenly appearing before them. Then they rallied with a loud cry of "For Weyard! For our children!" and crashed upon him like a wave.

Maha stood, not blinking, barely breathing, utterly dignified.

They threw rocks and prodded him harshly with their sticks, even bloodying him a little. In their fervor, they forgot all about the rest of the pack, as Maha knew they would. They tried to tie him up while the constructed a makeshift stake to burn him at, but he would not allow such a degrading thing, even the hour of his death.

When they were finished, he needed no prodding or lashing to walk over to the stake, but again refused to be tied to it. He merely leaned his head back to hest on it and wrapped his arms backwards around the stout pole they had erected in the middle of the village square. He retreated back into his mind before the final torture began.

The people hunting him accused his people of worshiping an evil god, and getting cursed because of it. The strange thing to him was that if the god these people worshiped had asked them to go out and kill like this, people who had done them no harm, Maha could find no description for a god like that, other than evil. Whether or not he believed that he and his people were cursed was another matter entirely.

Maha was briefly sad that he would never get to travel around the world, never get to see the age of alchemy, age of acceptance, tolerance. Never get to meet the other werecreatures of the world. There were so many things he regretted, but then again there were a few things he was proud of. His own pup would live in this new age; get to see the world as it changed irreversibly. He would find many friends and allies among the people of the world, people who had known his father, known him for what he was and accepted it happily.

Maha noted with total objectivity that the pain had slackened slightly as the people moved away from him. Smoke started wreathing up from the hodgepodge pile of wood below him. The end had begun, and a bittersweet sadness filled Maha. Sadness for these misguided people, for the world they lived in, for the pack song that had been interrupted by word of the villager's coming.

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Flames quickly engulfed the figure on the stake. Some small wave of regret and sorrow passes through the villagers who had set light to the blaze. They quickly dissipated into the night just like the smoke of their fading fire.

Each one's thoughts focused were on the single victim of the attack, noble and silent to the very end.

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Thanks to all for sticking with.

-Kit