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!