Three Nights
The Never Ending Quest - Episode 13206
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Lady Andrea Croix paced in the darkness of her confinement like a caged
animal. Perhaps her captors were correct, and she was to be a danger to
herself and others when the moon rose, but that didn't lessen her
resentment of it a bit. In spite of Jarlath's blandishments on how her curse was a detriment to her, Andrea couldn't help but love what she'd become. With each time she'd changed, the warring halves of her personality grew closer together, and the feel of it was like a lover's caress. Each time she had summoned forth the wolf, there was greater control over it, she told herself. It was a bleeding together, and it felt exquisite. Though her respect for the warrior woman Astra of Aquilaria was still great, she couldn't help but think it was foolish of Astra to deny that part of herself. Since accepting the curse and her feral self, Andrea had only felt more powerful, more herself, and more alive than ever before. Night was falling over the ruined city, and Andrea's heart raced with anticipation. Even if she could not run free, she could at the very least revel in the coming change. Licking teeth already sharpening into fangs, Andrea crumpled to the ground, closing her eyes and surrendering herself to the pleasure that coursed through her veins, her joints cracking as she took on a bestial cast... The time passed uneasily for Jarlath and Mahmoud the Elder, the nights shaken by bloodcurdling howls, snarls, and growls; the days accompanied by the muffled sobbing of the imprisoned Andrea. Finally, it was the dawn after the third night, and time to release the young noblewoman. The hulking yet wizened mass of Mahmoud lifted the immense grating from the pit, and together the giant and the boy wizard walked the worn steps down into its depths. When they reached Andrea, Mahmoud's eyes uncharacteristically widened in disbelief, yet Jarlath seemed unsurprised. The young noblewoman was there, snarling at them through bared canine fangs. She was still human, at least nominally, in that she was not a werewolf presently. The changes to her naked form, however, were obvious and disturbing. Her hair, normally shoulder-length, had grown wild and unruly, almost like a mane, stretching downward and dragging along the ground in a tangled cascade. Her ears were pointed and hairy, poking from this mass, and her teeth were yellowed and sharp. Andrea's nails were long and dirty, clawlike, and a strip of long, thick shaggy fur stretched from a splayed ruff about her loins up to just below her breasts. "You realize you've grown worse," Jarlath said in a matter of fact manner. "I haven't grown worse. I want this." "And yet you will have to choose between this and what was left in your care by Fritha, which is your destiny" "We'll go to this grove of yours, if it even still exists, and we will see what we find there. You should know, though, there isn't a chance in hell I'm giving this up..."
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The Traveler
9/20/2000 11:54:01 AM
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