"Tharr's no Vampire, fool. 'Ats a crawling human."
"Human et be, argh? Good. Not had real brains fer nights now…"
Snatches of conversation in a guttural form of common speech floated past Blazingwarri as he slipped in and out of consciousness.
"Errre, meat. Rrwake up!" A dim, growling voice reached Blazingwarri's mind. He opened his eyes, and tried to focus.
"Rrrrake up. NOW!" The voice growled again, this time accompanied by a non-to-gentle kick that threw Blazingwarri's limp form against a hard, cold wall. The cold did more to help him wake up than the kick had done. He forced his eyes open and tried to stand, but nausea forced him back down again.
A bark of laughter from the werewolf that had kicked him. "Meat scared, yearh? Scare ruins tha meat, fool!" Blazingwarri focused his eyes on a shaggy, yellowed creature towering over him, with two red eyes blazing like rubies from the TzHaar's volcanic realm. The shock was enough to make him lapse into unconsciousness again.
P>"Meat. Drink." Blazingwarri turned his head away from a foul-smelling liquor that made him gag. Rough, clean-shaven hands grabbed his head and forced the liquid down his throat. Blazingwarri felt the drink burning its way through him, energizing his blood, waking him up.
"What was in that drink?" Asked Blazingwarri to no one, as his eyes focused.
"Grrreatest werewolv potion. Trak of snails, frrresh blood off the leeches, dirt from the swamps, crushed human bones all stewed in a ghoul's skull at the strength of the moon." The werewolf obligingly recited. Blazingwarri wanted to sick again. He shrank against the wall as the werewolf, in the form of a young, blonde-haired youth, approached him.
"Meat good fer anything, not meat?" It asked. "Got us here once a human what did off with a vampire lord. You can do anything like that?"
Blazingwarri's head swirled. He was a respectable fighter, but nothing up to the level of a vampire. What other skills did he have that might be of use to a werewolf…
"I can make armour… and weapons." He said.
The human wolf's eyes lit up. Without answering it jogged to a heap of crates and went through them, throwing loose articles out onto the floor. Some items were so familiar they made Blazingwarri's heart ache, like chicken feathers and a blacksmith's hammer. Others were less familiar, and were things he didn't want to think about.
An iron bar thunked on the floor in front of him. "Make something." The werewolf ordered, tossing another few iron bars over towards the hapless prisoner. Blazingwarri couldn't help admiring the creature's strength and aim, even when in human form.
He picked up the hammer, and was going to ask for an anvil but stopped as his mind's eye saw an anvil found in those crates, and tossed effortlessly towards him… He would make do with a bar of harder metal. One of the bars tossed towards him was the delicate blue shade of rune, that belied its true strength. "You got any more of these?" Blazingwarri asked, picking up the rune bar.
The werewolf huffed, and threw a few more of the ice blue bars over. Blazingwarri peered into the crate the werewolf had been pulling the bars out of. He almost gasped with surprise. There was a positive fortune in that crate, in rune and adamantite bars! There were also a few red bars. It crossed Blazingwarri's mind that these bars may be the coveted dragon metal, but that metal had yet to appear in any mine or bar… 'Must be a trick of the light. Those bars are probably bronze.' Thought Blazingwarri.
Blazingwarri had never handled anything higher than mithril before, but this wasn't really the time to argue levels. With a bit of effort he bashed the rune bars into a solid block that would serve as an anvil.
"What's meat doin?" A growl from the door. Blazingwarri looked and was surprised to see the giant figures of twin transformed werewolves at the door.
"Meat's maken us defense over vampires." Snapped the werewolf in the house, who, Blazingwarri noticed, had extended an overgrown fingernail and seemed to be carving a mural into a steel bar.
"Whats happening ef he don't make good armour?" Said a werewolf at the door.
"I'll gash him." Spoke the blonde werewolf in the house, casually.
Blazingwarri fought his fear down and concentrated on the task at hand. 'What's the best armour for a werewolf?' he thought. 'Vampires generally attack the neck.' He remembered from his early days spent in Varrock library.
'Maybe a collar would do. But to allow freedom, a collar of chainmail.' He looked at the amount of iron bars in front of him, and wondered if he could make a tunic of chainmail. It wouldn't be too hard. Just like an ordinary chain shirt, only larger…
Carefully, Blazingwarri set to work.
Some hours later, Blazingwarri had completed the chain tunic to his satisfaction.
"Finished." He told the werewolf in the house quietly. The human werewolf had remained sitting cross-legged since Blazingwarri had begun, carving into the same old steel bar.
It gave a growl of acknowledgement, and bounded over to snatch the chainmail from Blazingwarri's hands. It sniffed the iron, and felt it greedily before grabbing Blazingwarri's arm and hauling him out the door and down the stairs into the middle of the village.
"Yer not eaten this meat. Meat's making us armour…"
A bronze coloured werewolf strutted around, the chainmail tunic covering its neck and torso. Blazingwarri heaved an audible sigh of relief as he learnt that he wasn't going to be butchered by the werewolf community. Instead, from what he understood, he was going to make enough armour for the whole village. He knew that werewolves were part of the evil in Morytania, and making armour for them would only be helping the enemy, but when it was a choice between making armour and being eaten, well, Blazingwarri wasn't one for moral heroics.
"Come to usss…" A whisper floated through the darkness.
"Asss thy become one, of usss…" Same voice, different direction.
"Who… are you." Muttered Raneundead thickly, as he stumbled through the blackness, blank fear robbing him of all sane thought.
"Here… come to usss, friend…"
"To uss…"
"Follow me, become ussss…"
The voices overlapped one another, became more urgent, screaming with all their whispered strength to be heard.
Rane chased after the voices, and splashed down into a cold pool of water. The darkness didn't allow him to see the Hands reaching for him; it swallowed his scream as effortlessly as if it had never been uttered.
In all of Runescape, only two good beings heard Rane's last scream echo in the dark. One was a friend, still doggedly traveling south with one foot in the Salve River so as to not loose his way, and the other, a mysterious nature spirit, intent with making the swamp bearable for those passing though…
Freak heard the scream, and knew it to be Rane. He was not however, foolish enough to venture into the midnight swamp to find his friend. "Rane!" He called with all his might. No answer. "RANE!" He bellowed. The land remained stubbornly silent. Terrible thoughts crossed Freak's mind as to Rane's fate, but, being the stubborn optimist he was, he assumed he had misheard, and that Rane was still alive and well somewhere.
He continued his southerly trek, giving the ghastly scream no more thought.