It didn’t particularly like Katherine’s idea, but there was no other way to survive this, not with how tired they were, and certainly not without Emhreeil.

  So she tossed it the ‘compass’, which it held with one of its weaker humanoid arms with proper thumbs, and told it to follow the needle.

  By the time it could actually feel the building with its feelers, it was at its limit of both patience and stamina.

  It was powerful. It did not tire easily, [Devourer]’s stored essence in an eternal loop of oxygenating its blood, regenerating its muscles.

  But Emhreeil was heavy, almost as much as itself, and it had been running for what felt like hours, only stopping to bat away golems getting in their way from above, trying to box them in.

  Katherine was much worse off, wheezing and gasping and stumbling and slowing them down. She just wasn’t fast without Emhreeil’s support.

  At some point, it was starting to doubt they would even make it, the golems gaining too quickly from below, too tireless to ever slow.

  Just when it was starting to get ready for a last stand it knew it would not survive, not even with [Maddened Frenzy] active, Scruffy saved the day by digging her explosive gadgets out, and throwing them back into the rapid thumps coming from the darkness.

  Tunnels collapsed, golems tumbled out of gaps into freefalls, far outside its view. The explosions slowed their pursuers just enough for its pack to make the last leg of the journey as the golems dug through the debris behind them.

  Unlike most of the things around it, the ‘guild’ building was made of pure, enchanted metal.

  Makeshift barricades of metal and concrete clung close to the entrance, lit by makeshift pyres set around the street, Adventurers of every kind and type hanging out around the front doors, while above and around, groups patrolled.

  Inside the massive building, it could feel hundreds upon hundreds of people, huddled on the second floor, while on the first, adventurers flit in and out, running makeshift medical bays and command centres.

  The barricades clearly worked, judging by the dozens of golems impaled on them and strewn around the open plane before the building.

  At the sight of it skidding around the corner, several people snapped to alertness, a quick ruckus that traveled through the outer wall of barricades and rushed to the insides.

  Near the front entrance, a giant of a man with an enormous magical cannon strapped to his shoulder stepped up from his cover, thundering forwards with narrowed eyes as he walked atop the barricades.

  The wolf was about to halt, slowing its run with caution when Katherine made the corner, clearly exhausted to the edge of her limits, almost gagging from exhaustion.

  Tension fled the giant’s shoulders at the sight of Katherine, the cannon lowering.

  Deeming it safe, it picked the pace back up, pushing itself forward, steam clouds bellowing out of its nostrils with every breath, its blood near to boiling.

  “Help! We have- wounded!” Katherine wheezed weakly over the distance, as loud as she could, jogging forwards, knees buckling every few feet. “Golems!”

  In the barricades, someone started slamming a bell, the sound loud and obnoxious enough to rouse the dead, everyone from inside that could move hobbling back outside.

  “GET YOUR ASS OVER HERE!” The giant boomed with a voice like a rockslide, seemingly directed at no one in particular, before reaching down his side and hauling a giant metal ladder over the barricade, haphazardly settling it where a gap amongst the rebar spikes showed itself.

  The wolf realized it was relying on humans to survive. Again.

  The fact was mildly enraging, but it didn’t have a choice. Pride took second place to survival.

  So it jumped up the ladder, scrambling up in two quick strides, shouldering defending humans aside to get inside.

  The barricades were set up a hundred-something feet from the half-crumpled entrance of the building between two crushed dwellings, cobblestones and oil lamps glittering red in the musty darkness, dim yellows coming from multiple light crystals.

  The stench of oil and blood suffused the air.

  Relaxing its pace to a forceful trot, it shifted the tentacle on its back, wrapped tight around Emhreeil’s limp, twitching form, the sharp edges of her wing-hands’ claws dragging against the ground and gouging the frame of the large double doors as it forced through the entrance with a tight snarl that had people jumping out of the way.

  Behind it, a deafening explosion shook the warped, half-squashed building, several golems beyond the barricades scattering into what it could only assume were smoking pieces.

  The wolf made straight for the staircase leading to the second floor, enduring the stares and baffled glances with tight shoulders and grit teeth.

  It felt through [Pack Hunter] and its vibration senses as Katherine crested the ladder, being pulled up the rest of the way by the giant and dumped inside.

  She promptly collapsed into a heap, gasping and wheezing for air. It could hear her from inside as it shouldered past the enormously varied humans of the nest.

  It didn’t move to the sick room they had. Emhreeil didn’t need medical attention. She needed time to regenerate, away from people and untouched.

  The building was too packed for that, so it did the next best thing, going halfway up the stairs until they flattened and twisted, ignoring the two scrawny, scared humans guarding the stairs with flimsy spears that parted for it.

  It set her down in the corner of the flat part, out of the way of anyone, and made to turn back and see what it could do to help the humans fight the golems off.

  Emhreeil convulsed again, mumbling something about ‘screaming, screaming’, in a weak, delirious tone, words it didn’t recognize.

  The blood flowing out of her eyes had stopped, at least.

  It paused, for a moment, and turned back forward, quickly using its four arms to tug her into a more comfortable position, bunching her cloak up beneath her head, then licking the blood off her face, nosing at her canine ears, which twitched to bat its nose away.

  Its chest felt oddly… tight, at her circumstance.

  She seemed… mostly alright. It didn’t understand why she just collapsed like that. Was something wrong with her brain? Was it that weird eye-skill she got from the ritual?

  But as the golems thundered down every step and path to them, even from above, it realized it didn’t have time to wonder anymore.

  There was a sense of relief in what was to come.

  Finally, it could stand its ground. There was nowhere left to run.

  A setting it was familiar with.

  It could feel the horde approaching with awful unity, each footfall making the entire building shake and rattle, dust and loose bolts tinkling down into overturned, broken tables, onto boards in the wall covered in blood and written paper.

  It paused, eyeing a blood-splattered piece of parchment next to the door, nailed to one of many wooden boards.

  There was a sketch on it. Something awfully close to the wolf’s current appearance. Two tails, four arms, gold eyes.

  The stares following it around suddenly felt like much more of a threat than a curiosity.

  It quickly trot back out, pushing the thoughts aside, trying to regain its breath, and found Katherine staggering upright on shaking legs, soaked in sweat, barely able to hold a mace someone had given her. Scruffy was carrying most of the gear, almost covered in it.

  It shoved a command at them, to go inside and guard Emhreeil.

  They couldn’t fight these things, not like this.

  Scruffy sent back an image of going to the second floor to chuck her explosive balls around out of the vents, and it approved, pushing them to move.

  They shuffled past it hurriedly.

  It hopped up on the barricades, clawing up haphazardly stabilized chunks of concrete and metal furniture, then walking on the rebar spikes dotting the outside.

  [Echoes of Oblivion] enveloped it, a thin film, just enough to cover the eyes on its flanks from the humans, who regarded it with wariness due to its sheer size and the smoky blackness of its form.

  Their caution felt good.

  Its shoulders were almost at the height of the average human’s bottom ribs. It was no longer a mere ‘dog’. It would no longer be kicked like trash and intimidated by anything. Humans shrunk back from it, not the other way around.

  It was intoxicating. Its chest burned with satisfaction.

  That didn’t change the fact that all this progress would likely not mean much in the coming fight.

  For every ten humans occupying the makeshift barricades and ready to fight, there were fifteen golems. Far too many.

  Beneath the film of shadow on its fur, an eye caught a flash of blue in the crowd of humans shuffling onto the barricades, mere feet away.

  The wolf stopped.

  The blue-haired human did as well, freezing, wide-eyed.

  Slowly, the wolf turned to her, wracking its brain about why she looked and smelled familiar. Its eyes slowly narrowed.

  Letting the shadows on its form shrink back a little, it regarded her with curious golden eyes meeting electric blue.

  It took a few seconds to remember that this was the human that had tried to do something to its mind, what felt like ages ago, when passing a random group of adventurers. An unimportant chance encounter that it would have long forgotten were it not for the bizarre coloring of the human’s hair.

  Immediately, it considered killing her, lip curling in distaste.

  “S-Silthen?” The human loudly called, backing up, glancing behind her and barely stopping herself from falling as she backpedalled.

  A large, armoured man with an enormous sawblade weapon of sorts, covered in sparking red lightning, paused from where he was talking to someone to look around for the blue-haired human.

  “Aitra?” He called, loud.

  Restraining itself, the wolf let out a long breath, and turned back forwards, walking along the outside of the battlements, pushing the shadows back out to cover its eyes once more.

  The human didn’t matter enough to cause a scene with its temporary allies.

  The fight came slowly, then all at once.

  A few golems sprinted onto the wide square before the building, magical arms and spells decimating them over the wolf’s head, scattering them to pieces.

  It was noticing that the humans had organized into two rows. Ranged attackers at the top of the barricade, melee fighters behind them, ready to switch places at any second.

  Behind the wolf, against the building’s entrance, scaffolding and ladders supported a few people who stood as high as they could, either because they needed good lines of sight, or because they had a lot of firepower to work with.

  It was quite brilliant. The wolf could only wish that its own pack would be so numerous as to do such things.

  Feeling the horde nearing, it jumped back into the inside of the battlements, uncertain of what it would do or how. It was not used to fighting with such varied humans.

  There was no need to see the golems, to know they were coming.

  The thunderous beat of their steps was impossible to miss.

  It was synchronized like the falls of a great hammer on an anvil, rapid like a rumbling engine, pebbles and dust rattling around their feet with every deafening thump.

  Hundreds, moving with cold purpose in perfect lines, footsteps like a rapid metronome as they ran.

  The small trickle of machines into the square before them abruptly became a flood.

  Cracked walls shattered, windows broke, golems spewing out of every crack, alleys spitting out a mass of mechanical nightmares by the dozens.

  There was no battle cry. Only the synchronized anvil falls of their footsteps, and the faint grinding, screeching whine of pistons and whirling saws. In the course of a second, a sea of sickly yellow lenses were charging at the barricades, spaced out enough to move without being packed up tight enough for a blast to take out several at a time, several feet between the shoulders of each.

  It noticed the back lines slowing, stopping their charge, just out of sight, allowing the ones in front to move, spaced out, without crowding the field too much.

  That was… smart. Too smart.

  Their mechanical nature and teamwork was the only common point, it noted.

  Not one of them was the exact same as another. Some had four arms of whirling buzzsaws, others seemed to crack their chassis open to show crushing gears lined by grappling hooks, scrambling forwards on twisted, uneven numbers of legs. Some were stocky, some were rail-thin.

  “Why the fuck are there so many?!” The giant screamed, bewildered and enraged, reloading.

  Bombs, fireballs, crackles of lightning and more slammed into the front rows of golems. Some of it was effective, some was not. Not one golem cared to dodge.

  The enclosed space was not meant for this kind of fight. The rubble the building was trapped in from three out of four sides shifted, a couple light crystals fizzled out, the building groaning above them like an injured giant.

  Dust and bolts and pieces of blasted golems peppered all of them as the barrage petered out, tinkling along the floor. The dust cloud hid the horde from the humans’ sight, making some of them hesitant to fire again, and causing many to miss.

  With a quick [Sonic Blast] directed a few feet in front of the main barricade, it pushed the air and cloud back, and ducked back down.

  A few of the golems shot back at the defenders with harpoons at the sudden clear line of sight, one of which hit a mage through the shoulder and reeled him out of the wall like he weighed nothing with a wailing shriek of agony that lasted only moments before he vanished into the swarm of golems, torn into pieces, guts and limbs flying in the darkness, lit by yellow lenses.

  From far above, it felt Scruffy open a vent, and chuck her own bombs into the fray.

  Deeper inside, Katherine lay collapsed on the stairs, next to Emhreeil, taking a breather.

  And in the front, something finally got in range for the wolf to do something.

  Above them, a hundred feet up, it could feel something non-organic sawing through a net of rebar to drop down onto them.

  The eye on its neck quickly found the culprit, and the wolf paused as it watched the form calmly tie themselves down, and rappel on a long length of chain.

  It had seen this weird, wooden construct before, when it first met Katherine by saving her from some group of humans, when it finally managed to reunite with Emhreeil at last.

  The shape lowering itself down with a chain that led to a snap trap shaped like the jaws of a beast, almost leisurely, had been one of them. It had lived by teleporting away.

  Now it was here.

  The wolf continued to stare up, wary, even as the golems behind it finally crashed into the barricade wall, willfully impaling themselves onto the rebar of the barricades so their allies could step on their corpses and get into melee.

  The wolf backed up a little, the construct tilting its head towards it to stare.

  The construct looked different. Its helmet was much more closed, almost a bucket, while its skirt made of chains was thin, used up, the chains sharpened like razorwire along the edges.

  The reeling pulley on its back sat idle, but it was no longer exposed, wrapped in a backpack of metal and steel wire.

  The construct clearly knew it was there, but the wolf could detect no hostility from the mechanized biped as it lowered itself, pulley squeaking as it descended.

  In the chaos, the moment the construct finally snapped its own chain and dropped down amongst the mass of defenders with a thunderous crash only drew some knee-jerk reactions from people thinking it was a golem, from how covered in metal it was, but they quickly ignored it once it became clear it was not hostile.

  The humans probably thought it was human too, beneath all that metal armour.

  The construct straightened, staring at the wolf.

  To their left, in the darkness, explosions and the roaring of machinery and exhaust pipes continued.

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  In its strangely human movements, the magical construct then dropped to one knee, and bent its head low to the wolf.

  A pose of… submission?

  …What was this thing even doing? What did it want?

  A golem crested the barricade, only to be batted off by a giant mace.

  The wolf split its attention, unwilling to keep standing there, but also unwilling to turn its back to an enemy, frozen in indecision.

  The construct of enchanted wood made the decision for it by abruptly straightening, and turning to the makeshift ramparts atop the barricades, smoothly ascending up to help as it unreeled a long spool of chain, clipping a monstrous bear trap at the end, starting to lightly swing it to build momentum.

  The wolf stared in distrust, not moving, observing, gathering its strength for when the golems inevitably broke through the barricades and it all devolved into a melee.

  Something about meeting two threats from its past in one place had it feeling paranoid, no matter how minor they’d been.

  The blue haired female was a coincidence.

  But, the wooden biped obviously followed it, but how?

  The construct used the side of its bear trap like a flail to smash a golem’s head to pieces before smoothly pivoting to launch it at a golem shooting harpoons over the humans’ heads deep in the backline, the chains rattling as they extended. The trap impacted the golem’s chest and snapped shut with a horrid screech of metal, crushing its chassis.

  The pulley on the construct’s back screamed to life, and in an ironic reversal, the harpoon golem was pulled onto the rampart through its own marching allies, and tossed behind the construct towards the wolf with a flick of a wrist.

  It jumped aside, uncaring for the golem. The awaiting human fighters smashed it to pieces in moments without its input.

  The construct genuinely seemed to be helping, but how did it find them?

  Emhreeil would figure that out in moments. It inwardly lamented her current state again.

  The golems were cresting the tops of the barricades en masse, now, and the defenders atop them quickly turned tail and ran, largely being ranged combatants.

  The melee fighters rushed up to cover them.

  The wolf conserved its strength, resting, claws worrying at the floor, watching, observing.

  Through the cacophony of vibrations around it, it managed to notice something truly gigantic walking up one of the cleared paths, at the edge of its range, six legged and heavy enough to shift the rubble with each step. Thankfully, it was moving at a relative snail’s pace.

  The wolf assessed the battle.

  There were about sixty human combatants around it. Around a hundred golems.

  Both numbers quickly changed, mostly the golems, maces and hammers and monstrous vault shields beating them back from the tops of the barricades, summoned magical monsters and magical blasts shooting into whatever gaps could be found.

  Then, for a single instance, one of the golems saw the wolf while it writhed beneath the steel boot of the giant human.

  Like a unified fist, the golems beyond the barrier all suddenly switched paths, squeezing themselves into the middle.

  In the middle, where three defenders stood, the pressure abruptly increased.

  Grasping hook blades pulled one adventurer off, into the waiting grasp of a sea of chainsaws.

  Another’s legs gave out with an agonized cry as a buzzsaw cut halfway through their knee from down low, and their agony was short lived as a dozen metal boots trampled over him.

  The third’s head exploded into gore with a metallic snap as a piston slammed through his face, dropping like a sack of rocks, tumbling down the barricade.

  The concentrated push broke the line, too unexpected to reinforce, and the wolf was suddenly reminded of the fact that these golems were here to kill it, specifically, for… some reason.

  It should have hidden itself until near the end. Why did it even sit here? It could watch from inside.

  It was going to level Intelligence after this.

  The adventurers pulled back from the barricades, the line broken, all rushing for the door behind the wolf, desperate not to have their only retreat cut off by the spearpoint of the golem’s push.

  The mages and others which had sat on the scaffolds around the wolf were the first to move to get inside, jumping off in their hurry.

  The two lines of adventurers crashed on the tide of golems pushing through the middle towards the wolf from the sides, sandwiching them, maces and hammers and axes flashing as they cut them down, a dozen golems crushed in moments.

  Behind the humans, the golems crested the barricades, and moved to wrap around them, two separate groups of humans surrounded on three sides by golems.

  Blood and oil mixed in rivers as sparks and debris mixed with gibbets of flesh.

  The spearpoint of the golems was swiftly crushed and caught in the melee, leaving the wolf to stare at a hateful golem as it was crushed by a mace.

  Fleabag saw the adventurers closest to it eye the large double doors behind it, torn between retreating to the inside and helping their comrades escape the encirclement.

  The problem was obvious. There was no cohesion. The more melee-capable humans rushed inside, the harder those outside would be slaughtered. Those still fighting outside were surrounded and in the crush of bodies, it would be nigh impossible for most of them to turn their backs to a golem and run for the door.

  If the fight went inside… there was not a lot of room to fight in there.

  Beyond that, its pack was inside, arguably at the weakest they’d ever been.

  As the last of the mages and supportive adventurers rushed through the doors and up the stairs to shoot from whatever tiny gap they could find in the walls of the second floor, it gave Katherine an order through the telepathic link, and unsheathed the four insectile scythes on its waist, the tentacle on its back, electricity humming through the slime-vein in its right arm, fire-bladders clenched and ready to spew.

  Venomous spikes unfolded from the thick of its fur, on its tentacle, on its tails, on its shoulders, a shuddering stretch of quivering spikes.

  Lip curling up into an instinctive snarl, fur bristling, it joined the melee.

  —

  A forceful command rushed through the bond, and she startled, trying to parse through it as Adventurers rushed past them on the stairs, up to the second floor, screaming to each other about cutting through the wall, for some reason.

  When she understood what it wanted, she froze, wide-eyed.

  Her eyes lingered on the wide open double doors, on the massive lever, the connected gears, the locking mechanism.

  She stumbled upright, and ran close, slowing the closer she got to the slaughter just outside the doors.

  The dimly lit cobbles gleamed in a brackish mixture of blood and oil.

  Just twenty feet from the doors, Adventurers were desperately pushing back a force of golems which seemed determined to get through the door, whereas on the left and right that she could see, the fight was sixty or eighty feet forward.

  They were pushing through, straight towards the doors.

  A teenager was tossed to the door by a fellow adventurer, screaming and gasping in agony as he stumbled upright, half his face and his entire right arm missing entirely, shouldering past her with a high-pitched wail as she stood there, numb and cold.

  Lock the doors, it told her.

  She felt her throat constrict.

  Lock them all outside, to die.

  She felt her gut curl, her heart clench in a downright painful manner.

  She looked behind her, around her.

  Not a single capable adventurer was still inside the doors. Those with range were all above with the civilians, shooting through holes they’d cut into the metal walls. The injured were grouped further inside, in the back. From the sounds of it, the Guild had run out of healing supplies long ago, and the Adventurers weren’t willing to share with each other, or with the civillians.

  She stood, watching bodies fall, a canine shadow flitting through the chaos like a ghost.

  Emhreeil still lay on the staircase far behind her, incapacitated.

  If the golems broke through, could she defend her with the aid of these people?

  Maybe.

  Maybe was not a certainty.

  A small group seemed to break from the line and run for the door, eyes wild, panicked, trained on her. A particularly massive golem ignored the enemies on either side of it, and ran after them, hateful yellow locked onto them, chainsaws screaming, exhaust pipes roaring.

  A split second was all she had to make her decision, and she made it.

  She grabbed one door, swung it shut, then rushed across to pull the other, quickly yanking down the locking lever, the gears clicking like the teeth of a golem.

  With numb fingers, she pulled the metal bar on the side of the doors down, its weight immense.

  The metallic crash of it hitting the holders rang out in her ears, a coffin lid slamming shut over a bottomless grave.

  Every fist that struck it sounded like splintering wood, even if she knew it was the sound of breaking bones.

  Eyes blank, her gaze dragged, unseeing, as she turned around and collapsed against the door, sliding down to the floor.

  They slammed into the door, trying the handles, then pounded against it. She could feel the vibrations move through her back.

  A chorus of screaming, pleading voices bled through the metal, echoed through the steel and through her bones to bounce around her skull.

  She felt her eyes water.

  Stop it, she tried to whisper, her voice too weak to even do that. Stop screaming.

  Their voices trailed off into agonized shrieks, something metallic scraping and rattling against the door for only a moment with the roar of an engine. The door bucked, hard enough to almost move her.

  A grotesque symphony of screaming steel and vocal cords tore into her ears, into her mind.

  Wet tearing, screams choked and torn like stretched meat before they snapped to silence, still begging to the end as the machines reached them.

  Not one of them finished their sentence.

  The silence came all too suddenly.

  Τhe whirring machine did not cheer nor curse. It simply marched on, like a hammer smashing fruit, retreating into the muffled sound of fighting far beyond the door to continue its grim work.

  A thin stream of blood crept past her leg from the gap under the door.

  Her eyes tracked it as it slithered forth like a snake.

  Their faces swam in vision, wide-eyed, terrified. Green. They weren’t experienced. They just wanted to help defend the guild, each other, the civillians on the second floor. They just wanted to be free, to be someone.

  Just like Emhreeil had been, years ago.

  The tears in her eyes overflowed, and her breaths slowly turned to ragged gasps as she clawed at her chest, as if she could just claw her heart out and make the pain stop, sobbing.

  She’d just killed them. Everyone beyond that door would die by her hand. They would die screaming, and begging, begging for her to help them.

  With the door at her back leeching the warmth out of her, it felt all too clear, suddenly, the fog and haze torn away.

  She was becoming a monster.

  And it was the wolf’s fault.

  Everything was the wolf’s fault.

  She had told herself so many lies. That because it was intelligent, they could teach it. That they could turn it into something softer, more restrained, something able to live among them.

  But monsters don’t bend, they don’t change. They drag you down with them.

  Between all the blood and the screaming and the endless, endless running, she hadn’t even noticed as the rot dug deep behind her eyes.

  Her blurry gaze crept up, the scent of death and excrement and blood choking her breaths out, and wiped her eyes, looking at Emhreeil’s convulsing body, wracked with nightmares, mumbling the same word like an endless mantra.

  “Screaming… screaming… screaming…”

  Once, when she looked at her, she saw someone fierce and kind. Someone good enough to overcome the cruelty of her upbringing, to treat a mere slave like her as an equal, as a friend. A reckless force of nature that just looked forward and kept going, no matter what, no matter the danger, full of compassion and fire and vigour and light.

  Now, she barely recognized her, body mind and soul.

  Katherine remembered how she would bring extra crowns with her, to give to beggars. She’d just feel so bad if she didn’t.

  Now, she murdered without a second thought, looking vaguely satisfied at her blood-drinking meals.

  Katherine remembered a smile she feared she’d never see again.

  In Emhreeil’s figure, she saw neither power nor compassion, but a woman half-drowned, desperately pretending she could still breathe, losing herself with every choking gasp.

  The wolf was the cause of everything.

  It didn’t do anything, it didn’t betray them, but it didn’t have to. They betrayed themselves.

  She had thought they’d change the wolf, maybe not tame it, but guide it, turn it into something they could trust, that could listen to reason or alternatives.

  But it wasn’t changing. It didn’t need to. It just kept being itself, hungry, greedy, wild, intelligent.

  They ended up adapting to the wolf’s world, an inversion of her expectations.

  The lines had begun to blur, and now, she realized that the longer they followed it, the less their reflections would resemble people in the end.

  Blood ran down her pristine hands, and she lowered her gaze to them, choking on the realization.

  It just kept going, pushing forwards, and they followed it deeper and deeper until the light was just a memory they carried, like a long-faded rumor.

  She thought she was strong. She knew Emhreeil was strong.

  But the abyss did not care for strength.

  It just waits, and eventually, they sink.

  Gods above, she’d been so stupid.

  Hope had eroded her judgement, thinking that she and Emhreeil could build something human and equal out of something that was born to devour.

  And now, they were the ones changing, not the wolf.

  She could still remember Emhreeil’s face, her real face, bright, human, flushed and reckless and alive, human teeth flashing in the sun.

  But when she closed her eyes now, that face blurred, twisted, hardened into something she didn’t recognize, morphed into a vampiric pale visage crowned by a pair of dead golden lights framed by a twisted mangled body with three limbs too many, ice and fangs beneath the surface.

  And as she looked at her own reflection in that slow trickle of blood on the floor, she saw that same hollowness creep in behind her eyes.

  She could feel that withered ash, building in her chest like a blockage, until she too would begin to drown.

  The wolf wasn’t just devouring their enemies.

  It was devouring them.