Before you read: Again, for people who aren't familar with the game, a balverine is a werewolf. There's information on my profile about them, as far as what they look like : )
Chapter 8
Watanuki sliced as carefully as he could through the skin of Doumeki's lip, but time was essential and he had work to do before balverine jaws came after his hand. He moaned with sorrow at the blood that welled up, steaming with the energy of the transformation. Next he parted skin beneath those beautiful eyes, delicately along the spine of each ear, and at the tip of a sharply pointed nose. With deft moves he smeared the gore over the Hero's mouth, onto his teeth, into each eye, ear, and nostril.
Grunting with the effort it took, Watanuki bent the convulsing body over the inside hole and made an incision on Doumeki's neck so his own heartbeat sped the flow of blood from his body to the dip in the ground. When the bottom was covered, he heated the metal of the knife with a word and messily cauterized the mark.
Doumeki's bones made alarming crack, snapping sounds. The warlock yelped and stumbled out of the circle when the man's half-formed torso lunged for him. He stammered the right words, forcing them from his mouth, and dove for the ground to complete the salt circle. It plinked closed in the same instant the loudest, most grotesque crack! sounded, and the color drained from Watanuki's face as the howl of a newborn balverines hit the night air.
The warlock gave the beast a melancholy smile, pushing sweaty hair back and leaving bloody smears on his forehead. "Cut it close didn't we, friend?" He offered with a shaking laugh.
The balverine rumbled in weary confusion. The salt barrier eliminated its sense of smell, and its own blood blinded it. Somehow still, though, its head followed the spellworker as he walked away to plunge his head into the rainwater barrel.
Shaking drops from his eyes, Watanuki knelt before the outside hole. The knife flashed, and he held his bleeding wrist over the dip. It didn't take much to cover the bottom, but his head swam as he seared the wound with hot metal. Blinking tears away, he dropped ingredients from his pouches and stirred them into the puddle of gore with a finger.
The mix of blood and herb hissed and shuddered, melting into the ground. On the other side of the salt trail and sticks, Doumeki's blood bubbled, popped, and steamed.
Watanuki peeked, and loosed a heavy sigh of relieve at the sight of the rosy fog. Despite the anomalies, and the warnings in his master's book, the rite was working correctly. The Archer would be human again come sun up.
--
Doumeki's body felt strange to him when he woke the next morning. His eyes throbbed in time with the beat of his heart, and his skin felt sensitive as if freshly grown.
Watanuki was jolted awake by the staccato beating of the Hero's fists against the raised salt-barrier
The cure worked, but Doumeki was left with a few, lingering signs of his infection. His hair for the most part remained dark, but was now veined with at least seven shades of brown by Watanuki's count. It was longer and shaggier, nearly reaching his shoulders unbound. The warlock argued him into submission when he grabbed it up in a handful and pulled it around, clearly intended to chop it off, and he tied it away from his face in compromise. His left eye had returned to its normal pale, golden color, but the right still shone with a lupine glow. The former was, in comparison, notably dull. This the warlock flippantly waved off as a side-effect of their initial bargain.
Happily, most of his five senses were considerably sharper than they had been before. But Watanuki's favorite change was the one apparent in the Archer's body chemistry—in the man's scent. Before, the Hero had smelled earthy, like leather and steel. Now, underneath all of that was something…smoky. Difficult to describe, and hopelessly intoxicating.
Doumeki was persuaded to stay for the rest of the day and the coming night, and resigned himself to enduring Watanuki's newfound habit of grabbing and clinging to him. To his arms, his neck, his waist—whatever the warlock could reach at a given moment. To start it made him twitchy and uncomfortable, until he noticed how incredibly bright and sincere the young man's smile was when he was allowed to flatten his cheek against Doumeki's shoulder. The Archer decided to leave him be then, and before he left the next morning he didn't notice it anymore.
Word spread with its usual speed (that is, as fast as mouths can move) of the Archer's change. Theories were formed, few that even approached the truth, but aside from the Hero himself only the warlock in the clearing was aware of the actuality. It did not occur to Doumeki to plead for the caster's vow of silence; it never crossed his mind that the warlock would tell anyone.
He returned to the Rose Cottage a few weeks later, when a break between clients presented him with more spare time than he knew what to do with. Watanuki received him happily, resuming his grappling as if no time had passed. As Doumeki helped with daily chores, the warlock told stories of his origins in the snowy mountain peaks, of the exotic language taught to him by his sun-darkened mother of the southern sands. In return Doumeki spoke of his grandfather, of his family's eastern roots and their idol god that was strange in Albion. He stayed for longer than he had first intended, and the hour by the time he reached the Guild was almost indecent. Watanuki did not go inside that night, choosing instead to make a pillow of Mugetsu's belly and watch the fire Doumkei had built burn. He licked his lips where they tingled from the kiss the Hero had permitted him to place by his eye.
Well, there's one mini-arc over and done with...This chapter *has* been scanned for errors, but it was months ago, and if I wasn't too lazy to do it again now I'd no doubt find more, along with things that need tweeking. I'll get around to it, I promise. Until then, please forgive anything you notice.
-Oceans