Monster Party Book 2: Wolves will eat your skin, if you let them in!
Chapter Eight: Scent and a sound, I'm lost and I'm found.
The two ugly womens' home was not made out of gingerbread, or any other sort of consumable material, at least for those who didn't look at life with a termite's dietary interests, so that was one thing going for it.
It was also warm, that was another.
They lead Cal inside, and motioned towards an already roaring fire. Sure enough. in front of the fire was a large pot with something bubbling in it. Well aware that this was the part of the story where somebody was bound to get shoved into said pot, Cal decided that he didn't want to be warm quite THAT baddy.
So instead, he kept his distance and just paced around the cabin rubbing himself. The women were clearly surprised at this but they didn't bother to give him any further orders, in fact they didn't say anything else at all.
They just made sure that he was no longer freezing and then they left without even bothering to speak. They returned about, well Cal wasn't really sure (his timepiece had been in his coat and thus now Gregor's possession) but it couldn't have been a full hour they returned with Devi in toe.
Cal instantly raced to his elfin girlfriend and gave her a great big hug.
"Baby you won't believe how glad I am to see you." He gushed in a rare display of real and open affection.
"You're just happy to have somebody else to warm rub up against." Devi suspected.
"Hey your body is hot, that makes it wonderful to rub up against in all kinds of ways." Cal reflected honestly.
That honesty (or her own desire for warmth) kept her from pushing away. The old women left again, and one by one they returned with the other four members of the group. Alexander, Mirri, and Florence arrived with wolf pelts that they soon fed into the fire.
Once all half a dozen adventurers were gathered together James (who had been the last one of them be brought in) began to look around the cabin.
"Nice place you have here, but it's a little cramped." He reflected. Sure enough the cabin was starting to feel a bit tight now that eight people were there.
"We don't often entertain guests..." Natalya answered.
"For some reason locals seem to think that we're witches..." Elena added.
James looked around their home, the bubbling cauldron, the secluded wooden cabin with only one way in or out, the shelves lined with various herbal ingredients, pitifully squeaking mice trapped in cages, and promptly came to a conclusion.
"Well that's just silly, you can't be witches, there are only two of you!" He reflected.
There was a very long, very awkward silence.
When Natalya spoke again, it was not even with mocking cruelty it was a voice as cold and serious as the weather of Vorostokov itself.
"We also can't be witches because we don't have a cat. Perhaps you'd care to help us with that problem?" She suggested.
Elena might have added something as well, but Mirri slid in front of James, placing herself between him and their hosts.
"Sorry weird sisters, this Kitten is mine. He may not the smartest, he may fall over himself looking for people to help, he may even not even have much in the way of whiskers, but all the same he's mine, and nobody messes with what's mine." She growled.
Once again there was silence until their hosts relented, slightly.
"There were three of us..." Elena began by putting a restraining hand on the other woman's shoulder.
"Antonina... our mother." Natalya clarified still further.
James was about to say something in response, but Mirri promptly slammed a gloved hand across his mouth without even bothering to look in his direction.
"How did she die?" Alexander asked much more tactfully.
"That's a story for seven guests not six." The two chorused together and then they departed from the cabin.
Soon enough they returned once more.
"And here is our young nephew to complete the family gathering..." Cackled Natalya as she lead a large gray furred wolf into the cottage, only a slim piece of rope for a leash.
"He doesn't quite seem himself..." Added Elena as she surveyed the pair's lupine guest.
"Or is is he more himself than he ever before?" They reflected together.
Then each of them placed a hand atop the wolf's head. The animal let loose with a howl of anguish and slowly it returned to the form of Mikhail Zolnik, now naked except for the wolf pelt he awkwardly sought to conceal some fragments of his dignity with.
Taking pity on their guest Elena offered him pants and a tunic which he quickly slipped into as he looked around the room in confusion.
"Aunt Elena, Aunt Natalya, where am I? The last thing I can clearly remember we were in the ruins of Kirinova, and then my father... my father..." He gasped in horror as some memory of a most unpleasant nature struck him.
"The Zolniks apparently has some odd ideas about family bonding..." Cal noted dryly.
Mikhail said a word that somehow the normal convergence of Balok and whatever the locals in Vorostokov called their tongue didn't cover. Not that it especially needed to given the tone of voice in which he said it.
He turned, ready to cast the wolf pelt into the small cottage's fire, when Alexander suddenly snatched it from his hands.
"Fire... fire is needed to purify an object of such fowl magic, isn't that what you said?" Mikhail insisted.
He was still shaken from his recent transformation and thus could not free the pelt from Alexander's grip.
"This one, it isn't like others, I can tell the difference. There's no magic to it, it's just a wolf pelt... Mikhail... the 'magic' is in you." The silver haired man insisted.
Mikhail made one last grab for the pelt... and then his shoulder's slumped in defeat.
"If my father... if my father is that black furred beast, then yes... but how? In my mother's stories the pelts had to be special, had to be magic, how can an wolf's skin be all it takes to unlock the beast within me?" He gasped in horror.
"Wolf fur born of magic is entirely different from the stuff born of blood Nephew..." Natalya warned him while she pulled up a stool close to the fire.
"The time has come for you to know the truth of your family..." Elena insisted as she likewise began to warm her heavily wrinkled hands upon the fire.
"Yes of course... but please just a moment." Mikhail begged.
"It's like, like my entire life my nose has been wrapped in a piece of damp cloth, and only now has it been taken off. All the smells are so much stronger, there are so many I didn't notice before it's like..." His search for a proper analogy came to an abrupt end as his eyes suddenly focused on the man dressed only in a simple white shirt once more.
"Wolf... there's so much wolf in your scent that it's amazing I didn't spot it until now. How, how can you do it? You must teach me to be able to control the beast like you do and not be a slave to it like my father!" The woodsman begged.
Alexander threw his head back and laughed cruelly at Mikhail's pleading. Then his right hand slowly reached up towards his face. He did not remove the eyepatch, he did something that somehow seemed much worse.
He tugged at his eyepatch, and shifted it, so that it covered his left eye instead of his right.
A golden amber orb which reflected rather than captured light gazed back at Mikhail Zolnik from Alexander Diamondclaw's face.
"You think Gregor listens to his wolf and you think I don't? You're adorable! Tell me huntsman, what makes you so certain, that I am a man in magnificent control of a wolf... and not the other way around?" He growled.
Mikhail understandably began to jibber in astonished terror.
"What... what kind of wolf are you?" He gasped having trouble reconciling the conflicting information he was being given between his various senses.
"When we first met you thought I was a Loup Du Nuit, I wasn't lying when I told you I wasn't.
I'm a Loup Du Lumière" Alexander proclaimed proudly.
Then while Mikhail was still slack jawed and spectacles he returned his attention to his hosts.
"Now then, I think you owe us something of an explanation about who you are and why you brought us here." He suggested his eyes momentarily locking on the same bubbling pot Cal had noticed upon first entering the cabin.
"I am Natalya Zolnik, and this is my sister Elena. As we said, young Mikhail here is our nephew, because his father Gregor is our brother." The two eyed member of the pair explained, her voice now seeming completely human and bereft of melodrama or menace.
"As my sister said, there used to be three of us, Antonina Zolnik... our mother. Once, even blighted as we are, we were a family. Until our brother slew Antonina and the two of us barely escaped from Vorostokov. Gregor considers us no threat to him, so he will not waste his boyarsky to try and finish us off.
So, here we spend our days brewing minor potions and trying to survive the chill like anyone else." Elena added in an equally earnest tone.
"The start... I need to know the cursed history of my family from the start, please." Mikhail gasped from the floor.
Natalya began to approach the bubbling pot and started to stir it with a long handled wooden spoon.
"It all begins over three decades ago, during a time when Vorostokov was only a minor province of a larger empire instead of the greatest human settlement in the entire land. There were still seasons then, though winter would come with biting cold, eventually spring would arrive to break its icy grip.
Then came one year when the winter was especially fierce, it arrived sooner than normal and with brutal strength. Crops that had yet to be harvested shriveled and perished, animals needed careful tending less they do the same and even those that lived provided little in the way of milk or eggs.
If the village of Vorostokov was to survive, it would be because the hunters were able to provide us with a steady supply of meat from slain animals. Back at that time Gregor Zolnik truly was the greatest hunter in the land, yet even he was lucky to make one kill a week, most hunters could find little more than the rotting remains of animals the wolves had already devoured.
During once such failed hunt, Gregor came upon a great black wolf that had been badly injured and left behind by its pack. Gregor coveted the hunting prowess of the wolf, and so gripping his dagger tightly he set about butchering the beast.
He committed a powerful ritual with the dead wolf's body, and in doing so he would gain the wolf's strength and shape whenever he donned its pelt. In the shape of this mighty wolf Gregor was able to successfully hunt again, and again, dragging his kills back to Vorostokov.
Where originally he had thought simply to feed the four members of his family, Antonina convinced him to use this power for the good of the entire village. So in the shape of the wolf Gregor hunted again and again, and the larders of Vorostokov filled with meat allowing us to survive the terrible winter.
When spring came the leader of the greater empire we were a part of, Duke Andrei Vladimir came to inspect his holdings and was shocked that Vorostokov had managed to withstand so well against the horrible winter.
The entire village agreed that it was only because of Gregor's skill at hunting. The Duke had brought his beautiful daughter Ireena along with him for the journey and she and Gregor fell in love and were promptly married." The crone recalled.
"Ireena? My mother's name was Sasha..." Mikhail interrupted as he slowly began to regain his composure.
Natalya withdrew the spoon from the pot, and used it to wrap Mikhail's knuckles in disapproval.
"Don't interrupt your auntie when she's telling a story!" She insisted, though it was Elena who now continued the tale.
"So it was that Gregor, Ireena, and Andrei left Vorostokov for the duke's castle. Gregor wanted for nothing there, nothing except the strength that being a wolf brought him, for he had left his magical pelt behind in Vorostokov.
After two months he could bear it no more and and claimed that he needed to visit his family returning to Vorostokov to claim his prized pelt. Making sure to keep it well hidden he stashed it someplace secure so that at night he could sneak off and hunt for the sheer joy of hunting.
Ireena soon enough noticed how many times when she awoke late at night her husband would be gone from their bed. She assumed that he had departed her chambers to tally with some trollop, and to spite Gregor took a lover of her own.
Gregor when he learned of this flew into a rage and swiftly donned his pelt, and easily murdered the man in his home. Ireena not realizing a connection existed between the black wolf and her outraged husband took another lover.
This time Gregor had his revenge while the man was in the Duke's castle, before turning his fangs upon Ireena as well. Her dying screams drew the attention of a maidservant... Suffice to say, one thing lead to another and a large black wolf was the only living creature to emerge from the castle.
He returned to Vorostokov, and as he did he brought winter with him, the green of summer vanishing over the course of a single day, never to be seen again.
That was when the mountains rose, that was when the three of us began to change from ordinary women into what you see before you, and that was the day when Gregor discovered that no matter how hard he tried, prey that traveled on four legs would always elude him.
Vorostokov was not the only village to be swept up in the endless winter though, and Gregor reasoned that if the right steps were taken one would hardly be able to tell the flesh of humans from that of any other animal.
Despite his failures at hunting traditional prey Gregor refused to allow anyone to rise to prominence above him, those who tried, would soon become his next prey.
Our mother eventually convinced him that it would be better to take a softer approach. After murdering those who stood against him directly, Gregor instead infected the others, so that when they donned wolf pelts they would transform just as he did, into wolves under his control. Thus did he create his boyarsky, and hunting with these other wolves he had more success against normal animals, for a while.
It was during this time that he met the woman who would become his second wife, Sasha of Torgov. Sasha showed Gregor much more in the way of trust than Ireena and did not try to discover why her husband would vanish some nights.
She suspected nothing at all, until the night when your brother Alexi was old enough to become a member of the boyarsky. Your grandmother could no longer allow her to live in such ignorance, and so she told her to go into the woods and see what her husband did there.
Sasha discovered the truth, and managed to remain hidden until Gregor and Alexi departed. As she was leaving however she alerted the rest of the pack, who gave chase. The hunted her to the edge of a ravine into which she fell and perished. Gregor was furious when he returned and discovered what had happened.
He found Antonina's scent fresh and strong upon Sasha's body and wreaked his vengeance upon her.
You must understand this young Mikhail, this was not the first time that Antonia had died, but before her death at Gregor's jaws whatever strange power keeps spring at bay would return her to life. This time, this time she stayed dead.
In Vorostokov, only a Zolnik can kill another Zolnik.
Young Mikhail, you are the only one who can gain vengeance upon Gregor and end rule of Vorostokov." She concluded.
Mikhail shuddered and looked at the wolf pelt he was awkwardly holding in his hands.
"You said that those Gregor infected, he could control them when they turned into wolves. I may not have been bitten by his jaws, but all the same he is the reason why I am like this, how long do I have until I too fall under his sway?" He shuddered.
"Hard to imagine that Gregor never thought much of your brains. You have until the dark of the moon, the night when the sky is bare of all but stars. That will be in three days time, but to help you on your quest we also have this..." Natalya gave the pot a few more stirs and then watched its contents start to bubble up.
"When the potion we have prepared is ready, drink of it and you shall be without scent. It will allow you to journey to even the heart of Vorostokov itself without your father smelling you coming." Mikhail looked at his wolf pelt again, shook his head and turned to Alexander.
"Above all else, I am the marshkovik of Torgov, I must insure the village's safety. Against the boyarsky, against a pack of werewolves, Torgov has no chance. Since we can not defeat the werewolves we must break Gregor's control of them... and I can think of no way to do that other than his death.
Whatever he may say, while he may not have slain my mother himself, or even given the order to do it, it is still his callousness for the lives of others that lead to her death. In truth, I can think of few men who have done more to deserve death than Gregor Zolnik. I would be lying if I said I would feel sorry to imagine him dieing at my hands..." He paused for a moment and slowly look around the cabin.
"At my paws..." He growled.
Then he slowly approached Alexander.
"Whatever I am, whatever you are... I need your help." He pleaded. "You never ceased to have it." Alexander promised him.
"You wouldn't be the first True Lycanthrope that Alex has taken under his wing." James confided to him as he removed his his hat, revealing a pair of furry red cat ears growing from the top of his head.
Mikhail blinked a few times and then decided that he simply was going to put this particular revelation aside for later.
"I mean, I knew most of the stuff I could do before I met Alex, but since you're a werewolf and Alex is... of a lupine persuasion himself he's bound to be able to help." James failed to clarify with all his usual exuberance.
Alexander just sighed and buried his face in a his palm for a moment.
"If you two women happen to have some extra heavy furs Mikhail will be needing them, that way the two of us can go outside and talk some in private." He suggested.
XXX XXX XXX
Elena and Natalya were able to provide them with the necessary clothing, though Alexander had chosen to remain clad in nothing but his pants and white undershirt.
"How did you become a Loup Du Lumière?" Mikhail inquired as soon as he got a chance.
"There are three, well four paths to having a human and animal spirit fused into the same body.
The first path, the one you and James have ended up following, is to be born to parents who already have that power regardless of the reason. The second, like the boyarsky, is those who have been scratched or bitten by someone who has the ability. The third is to preform some dark ritual which invites the power upon yourself, that is your father's route. The fourth... the fourth is when someone is cursed by another to have an animals spirit lurk beneath their human flesh." Alexander explained.
"Which path did you take?" Mikhail asked, though he suspected form Alexander's tone of voice that he already knew the answer.
"The fourth." The silver haired man spat out quickly.
"I take it the exact hows and whys are a somewhat sore subject?" Mikhail ventured.
"How readily would you care to explain to some random person that you are the offspring of the Black Wolf which has haunted this domain for so long?" Alexander shot back sardonically.
"Well enough for an answer. What can you tell me that will help me fight my father? Mikhail pleaded.
"Three days isn't much to work with, not to mention the time we'll have to spend traveling to Vorostokov. So we're going to have to get as much done as quickly as we possibly can. To start with, I want to see you put on the wolf pelt, and not transform." Alexander instructed.
"Not transform? But the pelt is what causes me to transform!" Mikhail insisted.
"The pelt is what helps you transform. With sufficient willpower and training a Natural Lycanthrope should never transform unless he wishes to." Alexander insisted.
Mikhail looked like he was tempted to argue but then bit his tongue. He began to remove his heavy fur cloak and hang them from the branches of a nearby tree. He stripped himself down until he was wearing nothing but a loin cloth and only then pulled the wolf pelt tight around him.
He held it there struggling to fight off the cold that Alexander was ignoring without any sort of difficulty though his current outfit was only marginally better suited to their environment.
"When, when can I..." Mikhail chittered, clearly in the mood to either be wearing his heavy furs or a 'proper' wolf skin so to speak.
"It's been long enough, you can transform now." Alexander reassured him, and after a moment he began to do so himself.
Hands thickened into paws, tails grew forth from tail bones, spines shifted and altered, feet grew shorter but wider, blunt nails lengthened and sharpened into lupine claws, and flat teeth became jagged as faces elongated into muzzles. Mikhail transformed into the large gray wolf again, and Alexander became a silver wolf which was slightly bigger.
"Is... is this it...?" Mikhail whined in surprise.
"The first time is always the hardest, we have to completely loose control before we can realize how important it is. Did it hurt to transform?" Alexander replied, the two having no more difficulty understanding one another as wolves than they had as humans.
The surreality of their situation was only added to by the fact that while the rest of his clothing had been pulled into his body and vanished, Alexander's eyepatch still remained. Thus, he had ended up looking like a decidedly nautical themed werewolf at the moment.
"Did it hurt?" Alexander insisted.
Mikhail shook his head and then rather pointedly looked away.
"No, it didn't hurt at all, if anything it almost felt like I... does it feel that good for you?" He suddenly asked so that he wouldn't have to worry about finding a proper end for his analogy.
"It feels like my body is tearing itself in half every time I transform... thanks for asking." Alexander replied in a tone of voice which suggested it was time to change the subject right this very moment.
So Mikhail did exactly that.
"If what my aunts told me is true, then when the time comes, I will have to fight my father. How can I hope to defeat him? He has had years of experience as a wolf, and much as I hate to admit it, they were right, I am but a pup compared to him." Mikhail worried.
"To be exact, they only said that you needed to kill him, it might work just fine if I hamstring all four of his legs for you first. Either way, remember Mikhail, you were born to this power while Gregor stole it for himself.
If you're going to beat him, you should start there." Alexander would have continued the lesson but a moment later a howl echoed in both of their ears.
Seven lean and hungry looking wolves began to approach the larger pair.
"Our territory! Why here?" The lead wolf barked.
Mikhail whimpered and quickly backed up behind Alexander putting the silver wolf between himself and new arrivals.
"What... what are they?" He asked in an unsure voice.
Alexander rolled his singular visible eye.
"They're wolves. What did you think they were?" He explained to Mikhail wondering why an otherwise intelligent man needed such an obvious fact spelled out to him.
"You pup's sire?" The largest of his new arrivals demanded.
"His beta. You his beta also." Alexander insisted.
The other wolves all began to break into barking laughter at this point.
"Him Alpha?" The wolf was clearly skeptical to say the least.
"Yes." Alexander answered without a moment's hesitation. Then he turned to face Mikhail once again.
"Make him rub your jaw." The silver wolf insisted.
"Rub my jaw?" The woodsman turned werewolf blinked in confusion.
Alexander sighed heavily and then faced pawed.
"Well excuse me for thinking that a man who grew up his entire life in a land where wolves were the predominant apex predator might know a thing or two about their behavior! Look, the traditional way for a beta or omega wolf to show submission to their alpha is for the lower ranking wolf to run the top of its muzzle against the bottom of the alpha's, rubbing its nose against the other wolf's jaw. Like this..." Alexander bent his knees slightly tucking his tail around his rear left leg in the process.
His ears flattened out and his back arched while he rubbed Mikhail's jaw in a show of subservience. Once he had completed the lupine dominance ritual he motioned with a paw towards the watching wolves.
"Now go make them do it." Alexander ordered.
"How?" Mikhail worried.
"Look, most wolf dominance 'battles' are carefully designed around the principle of not inflicting serious injury, because if every disagreement over dominance lead to a seriously wounded wolf pretty soon their wouldn't be any wolves left.
Except that you're not a wolf, you're a werewolf, you don't need to worry about getting wounded. Hell, you can have an entire limb torn off and it will still grow back! So go over there, and make it clear to them that you're not afraid of a fight and have no reason to be. They'll fall in line.
By the way, this is the kind of that INFECTED werewolves can typically pull off regularly." Alexander pointed out, making it very clear that he expected Mikhail to find the task well within his capabilities.
Mikhail took a deep breath and then padded forward to confront the wolves who had been quite good sports about waiting for Alexander complete his explanation.
"You alpha?" The largest of the wolves (who was still smaller than Mikhail) demanded.
Mikhail stood his ground and tried to assume the most upright and assertive pose possible.
"Yes." He declared, hoping he sounded more confident than he really was.
"Prove it..." Insisted the wolf.
"Do you really want me to?" "Mikhail growled back.
The wolf looked at Mikhail again and then back at Alexander.
"Why beta have human fur?" It wanted to know.
Mikhail blinked a few times until he realized that they were talking about Alexander's eyepatch.
"Lost eye in hunt. Druid gave it to him..." Mikhail explained.
He wasn't sure if there were actually druids in the forest of Vorostokov, but he figured it was the best lie he could come up with.
"Druid like him. Druid like you?" The wolf pressed.
Mikhail contemplated how to answer that, then decided that given Florence Bastien's relation to Alexander he could actually answer that one honestly, more or less.
"Well enough." He replied.
The wolf contemplated that for a moment, and then proceeded to wag its tail slowly and rub its nose against Mikhail's jaw.
"Druids strong. One like you, we like you." It promised Mikhail.
"We hunt?" One of the other wolves suggested.
"Yes..." Alexander insisted Mikhail could get a word in edgewise.
XXX XXX XXX
In the end Mikhail was glad that Alexander hadn't given him a choice in the matter. He was used to hunting being the kind of thing that took the better part of a day, to bring down a bull elk wold have required the creation of many careful snares and traps to weaken the beast before going in for the kill.
Hunting as a wolf though, he had his nose to tell him exactly where the prey was, four legs that could swiftly propel him across the snowy landscape, and an entire pack of fellow hunters keeping him pace beside him.
It wound up being almost trivially easy, Alexander and the others had been worked together to cut one animal off from the others, and then as the alpha Mikhail had gone in for the kill.
Not used to doing battle as a wolf Mikhail had ended up getting gored savagely by the beast's horns.
Except that it hadn't hurt! The horns had ripped a pair of gashes in his side, but at the same time he managed to get his jaws around the animal's throat and start tearing chunks of its flesh from its body.
It perished soon after, and Mikhail was left to lick his wounds, figuratively and literally.
Granted they didn't need too much in the way of saliva given that they seemed to be closing of their own volition quite nicely.
"Alpha, hurt?" One of the wolves asked him.
Mikhail took another look at the wound in his side, he would have sworn the hole that the elk had made had once been the size of his fist but now they were smaller than a finger.
"No." He replied, rather shocked by the realization himself.
"Alpha eats first." Alexander prompted.
Mikhail looked down at the dead animal before him, skinning it was out of the question, cooking likewise. He was going to have to eat it raw and with fur still attached. He hesitantly started with a small nibble.
It was glorious.
XXX XXX XXX
After they were done eating Alexander explained to the wolves about how he and Mikhail would need to be passing on.
With his new better nose to guide him Mikhail was able to trace his way back to the spot where they had left Mikhail's outfit behind before they transformed. He put it back on and they returned to the cabin where sure enough the potion which would hide them from Gregor's nose was ready.
"Mikhail, I'm not normally very open about this kind of thing, but as you probably know right now we're on a rather strict time limit, so I won't waste time beating around the bush." Alexander informed him.
"Werecat." He said while pointing a finger at James.
"Vampire." At Mirri.
"Dryad, nature spirit." At Florence.
"Elf, has magic rings." At Devi.
"Asshole." He concluded with Cal.
The alchemist crossed his arms in exasperation..
"Hey, some of us just have to make the most of what we're born with..." He replied.
"Mikhail, Mirri will hold onto you're outfit. Cal you're going to ride on my back. Devi, I'm sure you've got some magic to help you travel faster, Florence, turn into something tireless and fast. Gregor isn't the only one who can pull off a forced march around here." Alexander commanded.
AN: Lets talk language again, in the original book the evil wolf pelt using lycanthropes are called Loup Du Noir (don't ask me why this domain is using Mordentish/French when for the most part it has a much more Slavic /Russian feel to it) which translates as "Black Wolves" which is a little on the nose given that the most obvious example of them is Gregor who turns into a wolf with Black Fur. I changed that to Wolf of the Night or something along those lines, because it's a bit more fanciful and it makes sense that they might have been called that in legends which predated Gregor's transformation even.
Thus, in the interest of trying to only include non English stuff when it looks cool/profound upon the page (see James' motto/battle cry in Latin) Alexander identifies himself in this chapter as Wolf of the Light. If I'd kept the original version of the shapeshifter name he'd probably identify himself a Loup Du Argent (wolf of silver as opposed to wolf of black) but at that point on one level we're only talking about hair/fur color so I much prefer the somewhat more philosophical sounding nature of day and night, light and darkness.
The way that the wolves are portrayed in this chapter (the dominance ritual is as close to correct as I could make it) is much closer to the True Neutral, Int 2 (Int 3 is the lowest a PC can go but 10 is the human norm) animals that part of me argues that any infected werewolves should also be portrayed as. On the other hand while an infected werewolf should be Int 2 they're also chaotic evil, (though I'd argue that really wolves are a pack animal, werewolves should honestly be Lawful Evil the same way that wererats are) and they'd be directly under Gregor's control so... well I played it by ear.
Unlike with rats in Richemulot there very much are wolves in Vorostokov that are not under Gregor's power, and while they may only be Int 2, your average wolf is has a wisdom score of 12 (once again human norm 10) so they quickly realize that Alex and Mikhail are both "off" /not normal wolves, (werewolves smell funny to normal wolves, and the aura of invincibility they frequently carry themselves with makes normal wolves fairly quickly fall in line) and realize that it's better to have them friends/leaders then foes.
Also I will admit that in this book we go much deeper into Gregor's back story than we went into Markov's in the last one. What can I say, Markovia used to be part of the Core, and given that Markov used to be an ordinary butcher who got chased out of his old village it's not like people (especially adventurers) wouldn't already know his background. No Ravenloft story where a Darklord isn't victorious is complete without making it obvious why his failures have finally come home to roost so knowing their background is important both for the obvious reason of why the heroes want to know it (know yourself, know thy enemies) and why the audience wants to know to make the story feel more climactic.
Also the being brought back to life thing, back in the Darklords book where Gregor Zolnik first showed up, it expressly says that if Antonina, Elena or Natalya is killed, so long as Gregor is still the Darklord they will automatically be resurrected, so I'm not sure how Gregor managed to kill his mother and make it stick in this particular . I decided that the most reasonable and interesting answer is that only if a Zolnik kills a Zolnik will it be sure to stick, that explains Antonina staying dead, and also makes Mikhail just that much more important to the unfolding story.
As a final note, Alexander talks about there being four kinds of lycanthropes, this definitions are more or less in line with Rudolph Van Richten's Natural Lycanthropes (James) born to at least one parent of that nature, Pathologic Lycanthropes, also known as ordinary people who got bitten/scratched by another lycanthrope, and Maledictive Lycanthropes, which are people who became lycanthropes through curses/magic. Alexander further divides Maledictive Lycanthropes in much the same way that vampires are broken down, into "Dark Desires" and "Cursed" with Dark Desire Maledictive Lycanthropes having wanted to gain the power and Cursed Maledictive Lycanthropes having been transformed by external circumstances. Alexander is still not a werewolf himself, but a Cursed Maledictive Lycanthrope is the best/most accurate frame of reference he feels like giving Mikhail at the moment. (Maledictive Lycanthropes should in theory only have two aspects/forms, Alexander clearly has the full three of a Natural Lycanthrope if nothing else but he clearly does not have a Natural Lycanthropes near orgasmic transfiguration. If anyone was offended by that last comparison, well that's not the words they use but it certainly seems to read that way...)
