The Lycanthrope

By Claviculae

Chapter 3: Alhafra

Konlar's next five targets were in Alhafra. He planned to travel due north and save time by cutting through the western Yampi Desert.

A day of walking brought him to the sandy borders of that dry wilderness. "Well, I guess it's do or die."

He morphed into a wolf and started running through the desert.

Konlar had underestimated the size of the desert. Not only was it larger than he had thought, it was a maze of rock. Three times he had to turn around and find a different path.

Fortunately, his race had surprising endurance, and could travel for several days without water.

As he was running through the burning sand, a wild lizard jumped out and lunged at him. He jumped aside and assessed his enemy.

It was about eight feet long and had to weigh at least a thousand pounds. Instead of skin, it was covered in thick scales. This would be a difficult battle.

The lizard jumped at him again. He leapt out of the way. He prepared to evade again, but this time the lizard began to breathe fire at him. His fur caught and began to burn.

Konlar dropped to the ground and rolled. That helped, but didn't extinguish all the flames.

He ran away from the creature, his fur still burning, then turned around and ran full speed at it.

When he was fifteen feet away, he gave a tremendous jump. As he flew into the air, he morphed back into a human. His fur was gone, leaving nothing else to burn.

As he began to descend on the lizard, he drew his dagger.

Konlar landed on the lizard's back, plunging the knife down between two scales. The creature screamed and dropped to the ground, writhing around in pain.

He sheathed his knife and began to walk north again, leaving the lizard to die. Normally, he would have put it out of its misery. But right now, time was pressing and he was annoyed at the creature.

Three days of constant running finally brought Konlar out of that fiery wasteland. As he left the sand and wind behind, he noticed a small creek. He ran at it full speed, plunging himself into it and drinking his fill.

After a long drink, he morphed back into a human. He walked over to a large tree and leaned up against it. For the first time in days, he could relax.

Several hours later, he woke up from his nap. "Well, I guess I'd better get going."

It took an hour of walking to reach the small city, but Konlar enjoyed the peace and quiet. This gave him time to think. And lately, he had a lot to think about.

For example, he was tracking down twenty different men with the intention of killing them in cold blood. Three years ago, he would have paled at the thought.

But he was a different person now. He looked back at what he used to be like and was surprised by the change that he had undergone. He used to be a happy, joyful child. He was now a killer.

His attention was drawn away from his thoughts as he entered the town. Alhafra wasn't a large city like Tolbi or Kalay, but it was a lot bigger than a town like Mikasalla. It had several businesses that did international trade, and a great many shops. There were also several forges in the city.

His first stop was at a restaurant to get some food. He found an outfitter and bought some equipment and supplies. After checking the roster at the local barracks, he walked off into the housing district to wait for nightfall. According to the roster at the barracks, all five of his targets were still stationed here.

As he was wandering around, a local soldier walked up and stopped him.

"Alright son, how old are you?"

He glanced at the officer, then turned away. "What's it to you?"

"We have laws in this town about weapons. That's no pen knife you have there." He gestured at Konlar's dagger.

"I'm fifteen and this is my only form of defense when I'm out wandering."

"Sorry son, but you're not old enough to be carrying that around. You'll have to come down to the barracks with me."

Konlar faced the soldier. "Before you haul me off to jail, what's your name?"

"My name is Nathan Holdsta. Why do you ask?"

Konlar's eyes narrowed as he realized that this was one of the genocidal killers.

"Oh, no reason. Just curious." The officer grabbed Konlar's right arm and turned around, preparing to lead Konlar to the barracks. He never saw Konlar's other arm.

Konlar had spun around to his left, jumped off the ground, and slammed his elbow into the back of Holdsta's head. At the same time, he kicked his feet full-force into the back of Holdsta's knees.

The man fell to the ground, completely dazed. Konlar quickly dragged him down into an alley between two houses.

The man regained consciousness to find himself lying on the ground with a knife at his throat.

He looked at the teenager who had him at his mercy. "S-s-son, w-what are y-you d-d-doing?"

"Thinking about killing you. What's it look like?"

"You're g-going to k-kill me because I s-stopped you about y-your knife?" He was quaking uncontrollably.

"No, I'm going to kill you because three years ago, you attacked and burned my town. You murdered my family and friends, and you put my home to the torch. I was the only person that survived. As far as I know, I'm the last of my race."

"What are you talking about? I never attacked..." He trailed off as he realized that Konlar was making reference to the werewolf incident. "You're a werewolf?"

Konlar nodded. "And since I'm the only surviving one, can you offer me any reason why I should spare your life?"

"You need to know that you're not the only one of your race left. Many of the werewolves actually got away during the attack. We couldn't track them, so we gave up."

"First, how do I know that you're not telling me that just to save your skin? Second, my father's body was among those burned. Don't think that just because he was in his wolf form doesn't mean that I couldn't recognize him."

Holdsta groaned as he realized that he had no proof to offer.

"Any reasons at all?"

"None that I can offer proof of. Please don't kill me! I was just following orders. I-"

"Shut up. I'm following orders as well. The order of revenge. I have a roster of everyone involved in the attack, and I'm going to track every one of them down and kill them. And the way it appears, you're next on my list."

The man began to plead again. "Please don't kill me! It wasn't my fault. It was the mayor who ordered us to!"

"The mayor is my adopted father and he told me it was your commanding officer who initiated the attack. Now that you've lied to cover yourself, I think it's time for you to say 'goodbye.'"

Holdsta's scream for help was silenced immediately as Konlar covered his mouth and stabbed him to death.

He dragged the body further into the alley, cleaned his knife, then waited for nightfall.

Konlar hid out until two in the morning, then made his way to the barracks. Fortunately, the only people in his way were drunks stumbling home. They were all too intoxicated to notice a young boy dressed in black sneaking between buildings.

As he approached the front of the barracks, he noticed a problem. Four guards were on duty outside the door. He couldn't kill innocent men, not to mention that he couldn't take four of them at once anyway.

He began to look over the design of the structure. As he studied it, he noticed a small pipe running out a small hole in the top of the door. Apparently, the barracks had been excavated from a massive two hundred by two hundred foot rock formation. Instead of carving chimneys out of the top, which would have been a serious problem in case of an attack, they had merely run metal pipes from the woodstoves that channeled the smoke outside. They all tied into a pipe leading out the front door.

Konlar pulled himself up onto the roof and then crept to the front door where the small pipe was. During the summer, the woodstoves were rarely used aside from cooking. That meant that the pipe was cool and Konlar could hold onto it.

After a half-hour wait, the guards prepared to switch off. Konlar took note and grabbed onto the pipe.

As the ten-foot-tall doors opened and the fresh guards walked out, Konlar began to crawl down the outside of the pipe. As the guards exchanged pleasantries, Konlar continued to crawl down until he reached the level part of the pipe. He dropped his legs down and began to climb forward, pushing his arms to their limit.

He quickly pulled himself up and wrapped his legs around the pipe as he heard the guards returning to the barracks to sleep. They walked underneath him without even noticing.

As soon as they were in their rooms and the outside door was closed, he let himself down and dropped silently to the floor.

He stepped over to the wall, leaning back against it in an attempt to minimize his visibility. He silently crept alongside the wall, stopping when he came to a corner. He looked around the corner to check for guards.

Once he was sure the hallway was clear, he walked down until he came to the door where his next two targets were sleeping. He opened the door quietly, then stabbed them both. He wiped his dagger, then walked out and shut the door.

His next target was across the hallway. He was dispatched of just as easily.

Konlar's final target was a little more difficult. The man had recently been promoted to a high rank. This had earned him his own room. His door was equipped with a bolt lock, which proved to be an obstacle.

Konlar was looking for a solution when he noticed the smoke pipe running along the ceiling. An idea struck him.

He jumped as hard as he could, but couldn't reach the pipe. He tried climbing up the door, but it didn't have anything that could serve as a handhold. The wall was rough, but didn't have any bumps or cracks that he could climb with.

As he was running his hand over the wall, trying to find a way to climb it, he caught his hand on it, tearing the skin slightly. While he was attending to his small wound, he noticed that the wall was much rougher than he had estimated. Suddenly, he figured out how he was going to get hold of the pipe.

He backed against the wall, then ran across the hallway and jumped. As he made contact with the opposite wall, he shoved his feet off of it, giving himself about sixteen inches more height. He grabbed hold of the pipe.

Konlar was now hanging with his feet about four feet above the ground. He threw his weight towards the locked door that he couldn't open.

His boots made contact with the wood, creating a resounding bang. As the officer inside got out of bed to answer the door, Konlar pulled himself up, wrapping his legs around the smoke pipe.

The man opened the door and leaned out into the hallway, trying to find whoever had woken him up.

As he stepped out into the hallway, Konlar unwrapped his legs and let go of the pipe, dropping down on his target.

The man was knocked to the floor, temporarily stunned. Konlar quickly unsheathed his dagger and stabbed the man to death. After a brief pause to clean his weapon, he sheathed it and began to run towards the front door of the barracks.

Two minutes later, he was at the door. Unfortunately, someone had already found the bodies and sounded the alarm. The whole barracks would be awake in a minute.

Konlar jumped and kicked off the wall, grabbing hold of the pipe. He pulled himself up, wrapping his legs around it and hoping that no one would notice.

As soon as the commanding officer had been briefed, he ordered everyone into the meeting hall, including the two guards stationed outside.

As soon as they opened the door, Konlar climbed out, pulling himself up onto the roof and making a quiet escape.

A/N: Well, how was that? I'm thinking about the direction I'm going to take this fic, and I have an interesting idea for it. Anyway, I'm not updating this very often. It's difficult to write this and not repeat previous chapters. So basically, I let this fic sit until inspiration strikes. When it does, I type it up as fast as possible. Anyway, I really want to see some reviews on this before I update again. I need to know if people are actually reading this. How about 10 reviews? If I get 10 reviews, I'll try to think up another chapter.

A/N(2): Before I upload this, I might as well mention that I'm also working on another fic. First chapter should be uploaded within a few days, hopefully. Then again, knowing me, it could be weeks =P

Claviculae

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3/20/04

11:00 AM

93 paragraphs

293 lines

2279 words