As written by @Knosis and @Dashmiel
To say Skye wasn’t disturbed by the vision she saw before her, that it did not make all her hairs prickle on end and her wolf _ growl _ on the inside would be a lie. Ragenard’s barely contained rage was evident, and she knew she was toeing the line. She wasn’t done yet though. She stood firm, folding her arms as he continued his tirade against her and the onslaught of insults he threw her way. Her blue eyes had bright amber glints flecked across them by the time he was done.
Slowly she took one step closer and reached up and with the gentlest of touches, laid her hand on his shoulder.
“All I want, Ragenard, is to ‘elp.” She said calmly. Well, as calmly as she could. Her voice shook slightly, though whether from her rage or perhaps being slightly shook was hard to tell.
“I know ya dun wanna move the pack, and I’m not sayin’ it’s goin’ to be forever gone. All I’m sayin’ ya need to back up a step, regroup, an’ come back at this full force. Yer forgettin’, I do end up travelin’ a bunch from city to city. I know ‘ow urban life works for the most part. Ya got youngin’s and green as grass newbies ya wanna get into shape. You’ll ‘ave better luck outside Lutetia than in.”
The world was a maelstrom in need of destroying, and it began with the point of contact on Ragenar…
No, came the thought in response within Ragenard’s mind. It came in
his voice. The one preceding it hadn’t. Ragenard underwent a momentary bout of vertigo and swayed slightly as if pushed by Skye’s touch. It was a good thing he’d vacated the lot or the stories would have him needing to murder someone by the end of the following evening.
“No,” Ragenard croaked, his voice momentarily and uncharacteristically low. When he next spoke, his tone had returned to normal. “We have
bled and
died for these streets longer than I’ve been alive. We are
not going anywhere.
I won’t be known as the Guiscard who gave up the pack’s lands away. We
fight.”
Skye held firm as she felt him sway and moved to grab his other shoulder as well, the concern deeping upon her brow. Had this man slept? She had no clue the turmoil that roiled underneath the man she knew.
She paused, not really hearing his words while she studied over him for a moment. When she finally did speak, it was slow and deliberate.
“You will ‘ave
more death if ya stay ‘ere and fight now, more than if ya prepare outside of Lutetia. Ya can recruit, an’ train an’ gain more ‘elp. ‘Ere? You’re more ‘n likely gonna invite a rat. Yer gonna ‘ave people circlin’ your group like vultures, waitin’ for a chance to eat the Bloodstones up. Then ya’ll be known as the Guiscard who let the pack get
fed to the wolves.”
“Skye,” Ragenard started with a sigh. He cast his varied senses outward, and was satisfied when a look towards the upper left side of the motel’s second story revealed a quickly closing curtain. The sound of the TV in that room rising to an obnoxious—to his preternatural hearing—volume soothed him. The snitches still feared him more than the buck they would make for spying on him in his own home turf.
Ragenard ran a tired hand over his hair before continuing. “I get that you’re being well intentioned, but you have
no clue what you’re talking about. There’s more than just Lutetian pride in play, and believe me when I say there’s evil that would find it
easier to undo kith and kin o’er Iveria’s many’a bogs an’ fens.” His tone had softened somewhat, and the lapse into an Iverian absent an obvious humorous affectation but the desperate wrinkling around his eyes did not abate.
“Safest thing
you can do? Convince Desmond to go join Brendan. To
somehow leave us
cousins behind and pack it back up. I love him, but need him too much to send him away.”
“You’re my fuckin’ family too, dammit!” She growled, shaking him as best she could. “I cannae keep losin’ you motherfuckers cause you’re too damned slow in the fuckin’ ‘ead to see the iceburg ain’t movin’.” She was getting loud again, her frustration and pain that she’d been so carefully moving around was evident in her voice now.
“I ain’t leavin’ without the pack, Ragenard. That includes you as well. And I’ll do what I ‘ave to do to keep yer asses safe!” She shouted, her eyes stinging as she fought back the tears. There would be a time for tears. Now was not that time.
“Yeah,” Ragenard whispered. “It’s usually the same story with you Iverians coming here.” He took a deep breaths, the blue lines in his eyes fading. “You’re a big girl Skye. Do what you feel. Just don’t get in the way of my protection, I’ll knock you out if I have to.”
The woman growled out her frustration. The amber in her eyes had taken over entirely. Slowly, she let go of his shoulders and backed away while clenching and unclenching her fists over and over again. Her eyes glowed with seething rage.
It looked as though she was going to leave. However, the foolish girl charged the large man, leaping up to try to take a full bodied punch to his chin.
Ragenard’s typically preternatural senses rang as they always did, the man supposed. It was hard to parse and be sure with a faceful of slip-o-an-iverian-lass-fist in your face however. Ragenard staggered backwards as physics poked in to remind Ragenard that he ought to have not dropped out of high school before
finishing Physics, because his surprise was about equal to what he saw mirrored in Skye’s face.
Skye what the fuck, is what Ragenard meant to say, but no sound came from his lips. The sound of distant laughter stopped immediately, and was replaced with an inhuman screech of anger that echoed in his head. It didn’t sound like a howl, but Ragenard howled along anyways.
A desire to kill flashed through him and was killed in turn as Ragenard bit the tip of his tongue off. The sound of tearing fabric was immediately followed by a thrumming crash around them, and Ragenard worried he’d finally lost it and couldn’t tell when he was shifted any more.
Is this what lunentia is like, he wondered as he sheepishly looked at his hands. They
seemed human.
Unlike his right foot, which had exploded out of his boot and jeans from the calf on down. It wasn’t the full size of his transformed leg, but it still must have carried the real thing’s power for it was currently buried up to top of the sole
in the pavement. The fur upon it was matted and the white of hair that used to carry color once upon a memory. Beneath the bloody redness, amidst the fur, leathery black skin was visible.
Stopping was so hard after the first strike, but the ‘what the fuck’ factor hit her harder than she thought Ragenard could at the moment.
She simply stared for what seemed a solid minute, her mind trying to wrap around what she was seeing. Then she growled again, forcing her eyes away from his leg to his face. “What. The. Fuck. Is this shit, Ragenard? Are ya even capable of control right now?”
Ragenard could barely hear Skye over the drowning laughter. He briefly looked about in a sort of terrified anger, expecting to see the monster out of his past before him. His breaths left him in explosive staccato bursts as he tested his right leg gingerly.
He couldn’t recall ever feeling more coiled power within his body than right then and it terrified him. There wasn’t a point to greater power in his life. He didn’t want this.
With monumental effort, he got his breathing under control, and another visible ripple roiled under his skin. The fur on his shifted leg shriveled inwards and the limb blackened before it changed to Ragenard’s normally—within his shifted form anyhow—black-furred digitigrade leg.
“You fucking think
Iveria’s got all the answers, Skye? I went to visit Baba about this and even
she didn’t know jackshit about what’s going on with me,” he roared, referring to one of Iveria’s most well-regarded and experienced practicing hedge witches.
He stomped his more “normal” leg a few times, teetering comically off-balance on a shifted leg and one normal leg. Confident that the limb wasn’t going to separate and run off without him, he took another deep breath. The fur retreated into itself and the sound of breaking bones preceded a small grimace before Ragenard managed to shift it back into human form.
“There you have it! I’m more a fucking monster every day! What else are you gonna lay into me for, huh?”
She straightened for a moment, thinking. She’d been to Baba once for her own reasons. If Baba didn’t know what this was, then Ragenard was in serious problems.
“Ragenard, you’re not a monster. You’re a man that ‘as somethin’ more than the normal problems goin’ on. But if that
is gettin’ worse..”
She shook her head before steeling her resolve. This was probably going to hurt. Probably. “I never said Iveria ‘as all the answers. I said Iveria would be better to regroup, retrain, and reorganize. “An’ if what I just saw is gettin’ worse, you’re not fit to lead the pack. You’re gonna need to get tha’ sorted. I’ll be takin’ the pack to Iveria.”
Ragenard moved with preternatural speed, his body no longer swaying. His eyes were now the pure amber of a wolf barely held at bay, and he ended his flash of speed with his forehead mere inches from Skye’s own. His human canines dropped to the ground like porcelain tears as a mixture between a werewolf and a human’s fangs—the sound of laughter at the lie—crowded into his mouth.
“
Don’t,” Ragenard said through the renewed effort to keep his wolf at bay. “There’s no one here Skye. I can let it go. Don’t make me hurt you,” he warned.
The she-wolf impressed herself by not flinching, but there were definitely those awful nerve butterflies knocking around her ribcage. She looked hard into Ragenard’s eyes, her own glowing bright amber.
“I cannae let ya keep sufferin’ an’ I cannae lose more of me family. I’m doin’ what I think’s best.”
She backed off a step, pulling her shirt and jacket off as the sound of bones began to bend a break. She wouldn’t have time to remove the pants.
Ragenard sighed as Skye backed up. What the fuck was it with Iverian women and needing to punch a man around to make their points, he wondered?
He carefully removed his Cut, and tossed it to drape over the seat of his bike.
“Desmond ‘ent going to be ‘appy wit’ me” he muttered, but nonetheless he cracked his knuckles and bounced on the balls of his feet, warming up as Skye’s shift completed.
After a few minutes, Skye’s black fur glistened as the lanky wolf emerged from the shift. She always looked as though she’d had her legs and arms stretched way too far for her form. A low growl rumbled from her chest as she began to circle the man, waiting and watching to see if he’d take the first move.
Ragenard afforded himself one more sigh as Skye finalized her transformation. This was stupid, but he knew she was too stubborn to be turned aside. He also wasn’t going to insult her by not actually giving her what she sought; he wasn’t stupid enough to underestimate anyone given their gender.
Unfortunately for Skye, however, both the pretty slip of a girl and the tall—comparatively speaking, he knew better than to use his own form as a basis for anything—and trim werewolf she became were tied to the same paradigm.
He didn’t make a point of showing it, but he’d watched her plenty. Amidst that looking, he’d also more than had enough chances to assess her bearing, little movements when startled, how quickly her head would snap to sight on a new target. The exuberant and exaggerated moving, jostling, and jumping around on stage.
He judged her wolf at maybe two hundred or so more pounds than his human form. Close enough his strikes would still impart their power in the same order of magnitude, but only so far as he kept his speed up.
Because that was the danger with Skye, he had no doubt. She would be fast. So Ragenard didn’t hesitate to launch the first move. He watched her circle once, twice, and just before she got to twice-and-a-half, he struck.
He pumped as much power as he could without a running start into his muscles and closed the distance between them in a quarter of a heartbeat. They called him hardheaded. It wasn’t his fault that the front of the skull was the hardest bone in a person’s body. But he used it to great effect, launching into a preternaturally fast leap into a headbutt aimed squarely at her obnoxiously persistent snout.
