Chapter 1: The Werewolf
In the darkest reaches of the woods, a dim yellow light softly painted the snowy surface. A young, drow woman buried herself deeper into her soft, red velvet cloak as she trudged through the snow, a gloved hand clutching a small, iron lantern. The dense forest refused the full moon's light above, the world dark and eerily still save for the echoing crunch of snow under her brown, leather boots. Beneath her she hurriedly followed a set of paw prints, intent on chasing down this beast.
For two weeks, she stayed as a guest in a village named Gil that claimed to be terrorized by a werewolf. She introduced herself as Riela, a simple sellmage, when she first arrived, only asking for shelter from the cold. In exchange, she gave them magical assistance, but soon her status as a court mage was discovered and they begged her for help against the werewolf.
"You must understand," one of the locals pleaded. "We have no means to defend ourselves against such a creature. Please help us!"
The villagers were simple kinfolk, largely wolfkin, who lived at the farthest edges of the queen's territories and so their pleas for help unfortunately slipped through the cracks. For years, livestock diminished at the hands of the werewolf, but strangely enough there was never a kin death. Even stranger, the slaughtered cattle were usually the sick or elderly. Even with this, the village was still gripped by fear and they begged her for a solution. She was hesitant at first since she was retiring, and it's been some time since she's encountered such a seemingly dangerous mission, but she couldn't help but sympathize with the villagers.
She interviewed the witnesses while writing down their accounts and other notes in her journal. The villagers could only describe the creature as very large, almost as large as a stable, and that it was always too dark to fully see, and that it moved too fast for them to make out any further details. One witness claimed it had piercing, light blue eyes but it also had sweeping horns, which puzzled her, but she made note of the strange detail.
When Riela suggested that the werewolf could be someone among them due to the strange circumstances surrounding its victims, the villagers grew quiet. It was just as they feared, but she told them not to start pointing fingers at each other just yet.
"It could also be someone living within the vicinity of your village, like the woods," she said as a possibility.
"Oh no, that would be very unwise of them," one of the villagers claimed. "There's a group of mages out there."
"Mages?"
"Yes... For years they've been doing all sorts of experiments on the wildlife there. We can't hunt them either, it's all bad meat, and anyone trying to live within the forest would have been caught and turned into one of their abominations."
"I see..." Riela rubbed her chin with her index finger. "And I'm guessing they've threatened you before, which is why it was never reported."
The old villager solemnly nodded.
"I'll get to the bottom of this. Do any of you know where these mages may have taken residence?"
"I do," a voice spoke up from the crowd. "They live up in that old watchtower southeast from here, but how would that solve our werewolf problem?"
"I can take on both cases at once," Riela reassured. "And maybe there is some sort of correlation between the two, but whatever it is, I will ensure your safety as one of the queen's court mages."
The villagers sighed with relief. She continued interviewing the rest of the villagers that day. Most of them were elderly, and wouldn't necessarily fit the profile of being as active as the werewolf was described, but she still kept her wits about. The crowd slowly dispersed as she excused everyone she spoke with, and then she was finally left with a very shy and nervous wolfkin named Khadi.
They talked to each other while she drew up a route to the mage's tower in her journal. She learned that he was a laborer for the mill, and that he allegedly, like the rest of the village, wouldn't dare venture out at night during the full moons. During an awkward silence he ended up staring at her, admiring her soft, full lips and round, lilac face. She tucked a tuft of silky, black hair behind her pointed ears.
"If it's okay to ask," he nervously began. "What brings you to our village?"
"Ah, I was simply passing through," she said. "I was actually on my way to visit my family's house. They live outside of Eribus, you see, but I wanted to see the sights around Gil before meeting them."
"Oh," he said quietly and turned to look at her. "But you're by yourself?"
She looked up from her journal and smiled. "Worried about someone like me?"
His wolf ears flattened and his eyes shifted about. "I- uh-well," he stammered out.
She let out a soft, fluttering giggle that made his ears perk up again. "Don't worry, you aren't the first."
He couldn't maintain eye contact with her soft, orange eyes and looked away. She couldn't help but eye him a little herself while he remained facing away from her; he was a very average-looking wolfkin— brown-furred, yellow-eyed, sort of above-average height and broad-shouldered. He wore a plain, pale green tunic and matching trousers that stopped above his ankles, and he wore a straw hat with holes for his ears. He definitely looked like someone who did a lot of heavy lifting, but he was still endearingly soft in the midsection. She went back to her journal with a smile on her face, pleased with what she saw.
"Oh, and," she began without looking away from her journal. "Don't go thinking about helping me visit the mage's tower, I wouldn't want to put any of you in danger."
