Hunger. It rang inside of her, a dark whisper that swirled around her mind with a soothing caress. It had persisted through simple meals hunted down quickly by both her and her companion, the white-furred feline never giving second thought to her as she tore and ripped into tender and young flesh. Stags and wolves, even foxes if the need arose. Yet none of them were sating her hunger.
It made her pause before eating, now. That last shred of the human Brinella that seemed to be at war with the beast she was becoming. "Had become?" With every rend of stag beneath claw, she seemed to feel herself drip out along with the creature's blood, and the thought sickened her. Twice now she had passed on eating, knowing that even sating the bodily hunger would not make the animal go away.
Her companion had noticed this, and perhaps it was that alone that made his steps faster. In the course of the week they had traveled, he had slowly taught her what she needed to know. Harnessing the healing nature of the earth came with a struggle, as if it balked at helping her do such, but she could manage enough to soothe her angry wounds after a day of climbing over sharp rocks and tripping over tree roots. Shortness of breath that seemed to travel with her near-constantly when running after the massive guardian was now absent.
She found that running was easier if she dropped to all fours, but the heavy satchel and thick cloak made the movement awkward. For now, she would sprint on her hind legs, and hope it would be enough to get her to keep up with the easy lope of her companion.
The woods thickened around them, brambles growing wild and decorated with roses that seemed to pulse in time with the lingering heartbeat Brinella felt beneath her hands as she ran, or sat, or even slept. She swallowed hard as the bounding run of the feline scared a pack of rabbits, her incessant hunger screaming for her to chase them, devour them, feel their blood on her muzzle again. With a low, unsettled growl, she shook her head again.
"Gather these." Her companion paused beside one large tree, his tail flicking out to brush along a strange bush that the woman had never recalled seeing before. It was similar to the growth of Silverleaf that she knew so well, but the leaves of this seemed to glow with their own light, a soft white that shimmered like a beam of moonlight on a lake's surface. She felt some guilt at taking even a few leaves from the plant, but her companion wouldn't accept it when she took three of the delicate seeming leaves, and let his unhappiness be known with a sharp nip to her fingers. "More. Strip the bush while I find food for you before we move on."
She watched him leave, her look a wounded one. It wasn't the harsh nip to her fingers that hurt her, in truth it had been barely felt. It was his tone, so familiar and yet a distant memory. As if she had listened to it for her entire life, and then it had been absent for a year. Brinella waited until his tail had left her line of sight before turning back to the bush, leaf after leaf of the delicate plant dropped into a pouch she retrieved from the satchel over her shoulder.
Minutes passed, her ears flicking back and forth without conscious thought. The wind shifted, and her heart jumped. A deep growl started in her throat that matched the starved rumble in her stomach. A sharp scream tore through the air, and before it had even ceased and then started again, before she could realize that it was a scream within her, her own scream as the darkness pressed in and suffocated the last shreds of humanity she bore, and the worgen took over.
Blood. Eat. Feed. Kill. Kill. Kill. Her paws scored deep trenches into the ground as she ran, pausing only to catch the scent of scarlet lifefluid that seemed to twist through the trees and call to her like a long lost lover. The irritating voice in her mind, the sense of her humanity that struggled against both the darkness and her impulse, was shoved out multiple times, climbing again to the forefront only to be beaten back until it seemed at last to give up. It curled up in the corner of her thoughts, sobbing helplessly as the cursed and animalistic instinct she followed now twisted dagger-like pain into the frail human spirit. With every step she took, Brinella's sanity died.
Her eyes held no human sentience by the time she broke into the clearing, breaking into the middle of a battle that seemed centered around a strange hunting lodge set in the middle of a massacre. Worgen flooded in from the trees and shadows, falling upon women with pale skin and bloodshot eyes, killing swiftly and then passing on to the next. One such couple fell to the ground before her, and without a second thought, Brinella's claws dug deep into both fur and skin with no regard to enemy or friend.
Both struggled, weakened by each other and now no match for the famished youngling that tore into them both. Moments passed, their blood still flowing down torn and sundered flesh when she left them behind to find others, picking off the weak and injured and feeding for only moments before she was gone again. They fled before her, turning claws and bows on her as if she were the only true enemy there. A sound blew, a shrill whistle or roar, she wasn't sure, but they fell back. The worgen vanished into the woods once more, and the frail humanoids that smelled strangely of death retreated as well, leaving their dead and dying to be consumed.
She was not alone long, the sobbing within her having long stopped, a child locked in a dark closet, holding her head and trying to blank the world outside, pretending it didn't exist. So entrenched in her feeding, she didn't notice the new presence until it slammed into her with a roar that would have made even the most stalwart adventurer scream. It only angered her, the two barreling down a steep incline to slam into a tree.
Dimly, Brinella was sure she felt something in her chest snap, a sharp pain blooming there as the attacker growled and left her whimpering beneath a paw. "Don't make me do this." Her view cleared for just a moment, swimming, and against all odds, she struck again. Red bloomed stark against white fur, and her measly scratch was met with a thick and heavy swat of a paw, and she felt herself falling.
Somewhere, her head struck stone. A pained yelp left her, and she landed again. Rage flooded up through the pain, and despite wanting to lay down and curl up, despite wanting to mend her wounds, the beast within howled back up at the form of the white-furred male. The cliff she had just fallen down was nothing to her now, adrenaline rushing through her body and giving her strength she never knew she had. The feline fled, and in her anger-fueled state, she didn't realize she was being lured until too late.
Back to her bags, and then past them. The two were hunter and prey, the brambles scratching fur and leaving deep marks. When at last the white cat vanished from her sight, the woman pulled up short. Her own undoing. Slammed into again, it was humanoid fingers that grabbed around her throat, hauling her deeper into the gloom beneath an enormous tree. Voices shouted around them, but the two were locked into a combat that looked to be to the death.
With some difficulty, the new assailant lifted Brinella, and her next sensation was of drowning. Liquid filled her mouth and she drank, it crept into her nose and down into her lungs, and she was only given a moment of reprieve as her head was drawn out to meet the same thing twice more. By the last, her struggles had died nearly entirely, her vision fading in and out as others chanted. She heard talking, yelling, even screaming. There were hands on hers, her vision stabilizing just enough to catch a face above her own, and in a heart and body wrenching moment of pain, all darkness seemed to fade away for just a moment.
"Cor... Cor!" Her voice was normal, rough with the sound of pain, and her hands reached up to touch the sun-weathered face above hers. Black hair, thick and long, fell around her own face, but it was the eyes that caught her attention for that moment. In that hectic, pain-filled moment, it was the eyes like ice that caught her attention and held it there. "Addy... said she loved you..." No more, she couldn't speak anymore, his lips crushing against her own in that familiar embrace they had shared a thousand times before. It swept her breath away, and with her breath, her senses.
"Ragged bunch, the lot of 'em." Winnie tilted her head at the boat that had just landed, her shoulder rolling briefly beneath the enormous mace she had easily tossed over it. Her flame-colored hair glinted in the setting sun, and the bronzed armor that encased her short and voluptuous form was no less ornate under the golden rays. "Can't blame 'em, ye know? Handful o' survivors after that attack, should be glad to be among tha livin'." Her steel eyes landed on the figure that had been there almost constantly since the first boat had landed.
Lydros shrugged slightly, his luminous gaze on the sunset while his saber companion batted fish from the edge of the pier. "Can't expect them to enjoy much here, dwarf. How many of them do you think are here to join back with family?" His eyes went to the dwarf, then followed her own gaze to the lone woman. "You said you wanted to fish, Win. Not stare at the backsides of wolf-women." His tease was not lost on the dwarven woman, who puffed out her chest and cracked a gauntlet-covered hand against the back of her companion's head.
"Hmph. Dunnae be thinkin' tha I look at all the backsides that come along, lon' ears." She dropped the mace with a thunk beside her friend, jerking the fishing pole from his fingers and plopping down beside him. "Jus' aboot all I seen involvin' that one, anywho. Where'd tha ale go?"
The elven hunter grinned, patting the small cask beside him as Shade pounced upon a flopping fish. "Right here, my friend. Right here."
"Han' it o'er. I have a feelin' I'll be needin' it with ye here – Oi!" Winnie glared at the elf, and then at the now floating cask of ale that had once been at his side. "Ye bloody..."
"I'm sorry, ma'am. This is the last boat. There's no one else there." The captain stroked his beard a moment, eyeballing the wine-headed woman. "A few stayed back, but none like the one you described." The sad eyes she leveled on him for a moment before dropping them to her feet, made him shuffle his feet. "I'm sorry."
Brinella waited until the Kaldorei shipmaster left before turning back to the boat, trying desperately to ignore the tears pricking at the back of her eyes. It was the same as she had heard since waking three days after her shift, human and curled against the side of a slumbering bear. No matter how sure she sounded, no matter how earnestly she spoke, the druids had claimed that she had never come in with a male - be it man, worgen, or beast.
She had stumbled in with a handful of the herbs, they claimed. They had used them in a ritual to restore her balance, and in doing so, had gifted her with the ability to be human again. She had grown calmer since then, but it was not the calm of peace that lingered in her. It was defeat. They had no reason to lie to her, no reason to make her think otherwise. But his scent was all over her.
When they had piled survivors into the boats, she had waited until the last had boarded and gone below decks, had waited until the land could no longer be seen and all that was there was the endless sea and stars, before she too went below. Over the course of weeks, she had listened and learned without heart to the lessons of the few druids who accompanied them. She felt that if she did, maybe that feline would visit again. Maybe she could prove that her flight from her town was not a dream, and that she had not done it alone.
Cor had been there. He had helped her flee a certain death, had buried his own sister, had guided her through the woods, and in the end... her hand touched the side of her head where the lump that had formed from her fall still ached distantly. He had dragged her to sanctuary. "He had nearly killed you, too..." Yet even as her internal voice admonished her, she knew she had deserved it. The blood of victims still coated everything she ate, and she had lost weight from not wishing to eat anything. When she broke down, it was only just enough to keep her functioning, and nothing more.
His eyes haunted her sleep, her waking hours tormented by his kiss. She could not have imagined that, the bruises still on her lips from just how crushing that contact had been. Cor had been there, and had saved her time and time again, and then... now the tears appeared, her palms rubbing at the forest-green eyes that watched the horizon so eagerly. He had vanished, and no matter how many times they said there had been no one, she knew different.
As the sun set, her form shimmered and changed. Fur sprouted again, changing red hair to brown, and the bronze markings that had appeared on her sun-kissed skin at her first shifting grew as well as she dropped to all fours. There was some comedy to the wolf-woman being able to turn into a feline, or a bear, but it was better than the nightmares her worgen body brought her. Not nearly the size Cor had been, but no less majestic, the woman sat back on her haunches, watching the last golden rays vanish, chased below the sea by blues and deep greens. He had been there...
"So why aren't you here now, Cor? Why aren't you where I need you now, like I needed you then? Is Clyde with you, too? Why won't you answer me now? Why... why?"