Gregor's blood thundered in his ears as he aborted his own attack and jumped backwards from another one of the werewolf's swipes. The claws missed him and shredded a tree effortlessly, a poignant reminder of what would happen to him if he wasn't fast enough. It was times like these that Gregor was glad he had gotten into the habit of wearing loose, light-weight garments all the time. His black, woolen clothes stretched to accommodate his movements and Gregor's leather greatcoat, only tight around the shoulders, danced around him like a cape. Gregor planted his boot-clad foot into the earth behind him and presented the dangerous edge of the longsword to the werewolf, ready to punish every move with a double-handed counterstrike.

For some reason, a peacock screamed on the other side of the fire. Gregor almost looked away but his training kept his eyes fixed on the werewolf. The creature was obviously distracted as it flinched with what Gregor assumed to be surprise. That seemed a little uncharacteristic, though. Why would the wolfman be--

His train of thought was interrupted as the peacock call rang again and the werewolf slashed both of its arms at Gregor in a cross-swing. The inquisitor's lungs forced out an instinctive yell and he deflected the gore-stained claws with the flat edge of his blade, ducking low to drop his center of gravity. His arms were immediately heavy with the brute strength of the attack he'd just redirected and the werewolf smashed its arms into the ground, throwing up debris that splattered across Gregor's torso and face.

For a third time, the peacock screamed. By now, Gregor had caught on to the fact that it was Loka who was doing this, immediately followed by the realization that it must be something magical to affect the werewolf so strongly -- and being able to perfectly replicate the call of a peacock was a peculiar talent in-and-of-itself. Unsure if Loka was helping or somehow egging the werewolf on to kill him, he was relieved to see the maddened were-beast turn away from him and towards Loka. It was the best possible opening Gregor could have asked for.

He didn't waste a second of it. Raising his longsword above his head, Gregor brought it down in a powerful diagonal slash that cut across the werewolf's back. The blade itself produced a shrill, trilling noise as it cut through the abomination's flesh, immediately followed by a flash of foul-smelling steam and a shower of blue sparks. The werewolf, already howling in agony, redoubled its efforts as the magical properties of Gregor's longsword set its flesh aflame. Gregor's eardrums threatened to burst with the sheer volume of the werewolf's abhuman throes.

Now it truly looked like something straight out of a nightmare. Ghastly rimefire, pale as ice and cold to the touch, spread across its back and shoulders, vaporizing the black fur and eating away at the monster's flesh. Its snout was warped in a horrifying snarl and its eyelids had peeled back so far that the whites of its eyes were visible in the blue-and-orange light of the flames. The injuries it had sustained were awful and extremely painful but unfortunately not incapacitating -- or lethal.

Desperate to to get away from Gregor's sword and to silence Loka, the howling wolfman lept at the Deva through the bonfire.

Well, she thought to herself as the ravening monstrosity stormed through the smoke and flames as though they weren't there; It worked.

The beast trampled the burning wood, steaming with its own sick inferno. Everything was red, now, shot through with black lines of pain. Something hot trickled from her nose. She tasted mouthfuls of blood she knew weren't there and nearly choked. She had been braced to call up the flame, show it the mandala, blind it or force it back, but she was still weak, and the power of the warped creature hurtling toward her was too much.

Her concentration shattered with her courage. She panicked.

She fled back into the nightmarish darkness, not caring that she might never find her way out, but the crack and splinter of treetrunks being shattered behind her was closing too quickly to bear. She tripped and fell, her hand closing on a heavy stone, rolled over and threw it at the gigantic silhouette, harmlessly. She groped in her pockets and threw half a bread roll, the little makeup tin. She threw something thin and glittering that bounced off one mad, bulging eye, and at that the beast drew up short, shaking its massive head and bellowing in a deafening, tortured squeal that was almost human. She flung herself away as one thick-hewed limb tore blindly through a young birch less than a foot from her head. The beast was reeling. It was the one and only chance they had waited for. She filled her burning lungs and let out one last, tripartite shriek, holding the final note at a piercing, unbearable fever-pitch.

For a second, the inquisitor merely stared at the darkness of the wood, lowering his sword as Loka and the werewolf disappeared between the trees. Gregor could hear his own loud, hard breathing and the drumming of his blood in his ears and felt the adrenaline pull on his muscles and tug on his tendons. He could just stay here, by the fire, and wait for the werewolf to tear Loka apart... and that would be the end of that. Not his problem anymore. Back to the way things were, by himself, as he had been for years.

With a resigned sigh, Gregor cracked his neck and gave chase. He lept over the broken tree-trunks, blinking rapidly to force his eyes to adjust to the gloom. His longsword had tasted powerful blood now and its reflective qualities had turned into an autonomous glow, faintly illuminating Gregor's path. Ahead, he could hear the high-pitched whine of the lycanthrope and wondered what Loka had done to it. Gregor grasped the hilt of his sword with both hands and advanced, ready to strike down the first thing he saw.

And that was the werewolf. The rimefire on its back was almost extinguished by now, having lost its potency over time, but the glow was unmistakable. Gregor could make out that it was distracted by something, shaking this way and that, sounded more like a dying pig than anything else. Now was the time.

"In the name of the Emperor and in accordance with the Imperial Creed, I, Gregor Ravenor Nykerius, do sentence you to die," Gregor said, his words resonating in the dark woods with authority. "Your fate is sealed."

Upon hearing the inquisitor, the werewolf turned around, one of its eyes ugly and bloodshot. It opened its fearsome maw in one final roar of defiance, cut short by the thrust of cold, glowing steel being shoved into its gullet. Gregor had dashed forward with all the speed his legs could muster and planted his blade between the werewolf's gaping jaws. Gurgling, the wolfman sank to its knees and slid off of Gregor's sword. It landed on its side, heavy and limp.

It was dead.

Gregor didn't take any chances. He raised his sword in the same two-handed grip and decapitated the motionless abomination with a single strike. Only then did he exhale sharply and stumble back, his hand reaching out behind him to find support against one of the trees. "Loka?" he called out, his voice suddenly hoarse.

It was over.

She didn't need to have seen it to know. The unbearable pounding in her head subsided, the buzzing of the creature's madness drained away with the terrible red sun and the suffocating blood-taste of its mindless rage. The maelstrom had passed. There was only the dark, quiet forest, the distant crackle of smoldering wood, and the baleful full moon glowing silver through the black canopy above.

She stayed down on the damp, invisible carpet of leaves, sitting up against the splintered birch. The scattered little fires still burned in a glowing red and orange haze through the trees, and Gregor's silhouette stood dark against it, his sword radiating a pale light like Koptic opal. The beast lay like a foetid hill at his feet. He seemed to slump, when it was finally over. As though the exhaustion of the ordeal had finally caught up with him. Like a loyal, rigid old guardsman when the Queen has passed and he can again allow himself to suffer. He took a weary breath, his aspect like bitter spice on her tongue, and called her name.

She sat in the darkness and stared silently at the fallen beast a long time before answering.

"I am here," she said at last. Her voice broke, just a little.

Gregor, waiting for Loka to respond, closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths; he could smell the foul stench of the dead wolf, the wetness of the wood and the smoky scent of the dying embers. Everything seemed absurdly quiet now. All creatures in vicinity had fled during the fight, leaving the forest devoid of its usual sounds. Only the wind was there, caressing the canopy above him.

He felt his heartbeat slow down and after being satisfied that he had sufficiently calmed, Gregor opened his eyes again and straightened up. His attention was caught by the faint glow of his blade and he watched as it dissipated, returning the longsword to its ordinary appearance. Gregor wiped the blade down with the edge of his coat and sheathed it. He bent down to pick up the werewolf's severed head, wrapping his leather-clad fingers in its coarse fur -- it would serve as evidence of his vanquishing of the beast and, being honest, made for a good trophy. Gregor briefly considered sending to his father.

Upon hearing Loka respond, Gregor made his way to her with slow, measured steps. He could faintly make out where she was sitting now that he knew where she was but her features were obscured by darkness and he had no way to gauge how she was doing. He stopped at her feet and reached out his free hand, looking down on her wordlessly.

Loka could see the Inquisitor's hand extended to her, from her position slumped at his feet. Her jailor. Her savior. She kept her eyes on the headless, mountainous carcass of the wolf, and pretended not to see.

She stood quickly with a heavy creak of leather, her coat sliding backward up the trunk of the shattered birch, pulling back her hands.

"I am alright." she said, tightly. She filled her lungs, drawing in the river of midnight scents, letting it out in a slow, shaking breath. The wolf stank of corruption and sweat and fresh, hot blood. Like the blood of the victims it had taken, smeared across the surface of its lair. The moon bore down on her relentlessly, and she felt very, very far from home.

"I am alright." she said again.

She stepped around the pooling blood as though repelled and bent low, searching, not finding her bread -- as if she would spit upon it now even if she had been starving -- but eventually spotting the glint of her cosmetics tin and plucking it up before looking carefully around for the other item. She turned and looked back to Nykerius.

"Must you bring that with us?" she eyed the enormous, shaggy head sidelong, still dripping darkly onto the forest floor. "Will the Inquisitor's word not suffice that... that the creature is dead?"

Loka stood up without taking the offered hand and Gregor withdrew, his eyes narrow under the raptorian arch of his brow. While Loka searched the forest floor for her belongings, so did Gregor look for his hat. He found it on a branch of one of the many birch trees, undamaged, and planted it firmly back on his raven-haired head. A glint of silver caught his eye while walking back to the werewolf's corpse and Gregor sank down on his haunches. "Flayers take her," the inquisitor hissed.

Upon returning to the clearing, Loka opened her mouth before Gregor had a chance to speak. Her question bespoke of her ignorance. Gregor chuckled, an unpleasant sound colored by his mood, and shook his head. "I should have known someone like you would not have been able to deduce this, but the inquisition is a secret organization. Half of the peasantry is terrified of us and the other half doesn't believe we exist. Would you speak truly to a man you knew to be judge, jury and executioner? Hiding in plain sight is essential to this line of work. So yes, Loka," he said tersely, "I must bring the head."

After a brief pause, Gregor held up the silver fork he'd found. There was no mistaking where it came from. He'd eaten with a fork like that no more than three days ago. "If you take something that doesn't belong to you again," he continued, his voice cold and sinister, "I will take one of your fingers. Do you understand me?"

The Koptic woman had the decency to look ashamed as Gregor produced the glittering silver fork. But when he pronounced his judgement, she flinched as though slapped. Her lips twisted downward, helplessly. For a moment, her beautiful face was a raw canvas of pain, her voice weak and miserable in the emberlit darkness.

"I needed it." she whimpered, pitifully. "They had so many. They had hundreds! They did not need this one. I thought that it would be alright--" She pushed the palm of her hand into her eye and turned away, apparently busying herself with tightening her belt.

It was a moment before the belt was satisfactory.

"...Yes, I understand." She told him, in a strained voice. She turned back to face him, her eyes still downcast, her voice bitter. "I understand a lot of things."

She held out her hand for the fork, her gaze still lowered, and fixed on the dark trickle of blood spreading between their feet.

The strength of her emotional response caught Gregor off guard. He listened as Loka defended herself, his eyebrows rising higher with every word. There was obviously some powerful cultural disparity at work here, he realized. After her affirmation of her understanding, Gregor opened his mouth to say something but couldn't find the words. He wanted to explain himself, make her comprehend that obeying the law was of great importance to him and that his anger was nothing personal, but the fact that she had the gall to expect him to give the fork back to her meant that he was at a loss for words. Instead, he stuffed the fork into his greatcoat's left pocket, his mouth clenched in a thin line and his raised brows sinking into a deep frown. He sighed, beckoned for her to follow and started making his way back to the road. The grim look on his face and the severed head clutched in his right hand invited no further conversation.

The moonlight filtering through the canopy above was slowly mixing with the fiery orange of a misty sunrise. Gregor could feel the fatigue in his limbs and the hunger in his stomach -- the prospect of deep sleep in a proper bed and a hearty meal urged him on. They wouldn't sleep in the carriage, he decided, even if Oaksheart didn't have a tavern. He was sure he could commandeer a room for himself and Loka somewhere with the leverage of the werewolf's head.

"We will stay in Oaksheart," he announced, not bothering to look over his shoulder at Loka while they walked. "I want to learn how the creature came to be here and how it got infected. Did you notice how wild and mad it was? It must have been new to the curse. Something infected it, and recently."

Loka walked sullenly with her arms wrapped around her body, following where the Inquisitor lead.

She had needed it. Of course he couldn't understand. But she had been right. She knew when she needed things. The little silver blessing had saved her life. She had done the right thing.

The werewolf's head bounced sickeningly against Gregor's thigh as he marched. They would stay in Oaksheart, he said. Did you notice how wild and mad it was, he said.

"Yes, I noticed," she said, bitterly. "It was as if the world was screaming at me. I could hear its blood, inside my head. Taste it."

She looked back miserably at the fading fires, and the charnel pit that the man-beast had made its home.

"The village is this way." She pointed at an oblique angle through the impenetrable thicket of shadows. "I can still smell the..."

The bottom dropped out of her mind.

Loka trailed off, slow realization creeping up her gut. Her head turned sharply from the direction of the road to look back at the distant shadow of the lair. To regard the loathsome severed head, thick with male pheromones, gripped in the dark shape of the Inquisitor's gloved hand. She craned her neck to stare straight up at the pallid, drifting northern moon.

The moon. That odd and yet familiar scent to the blood. So that was it. The answer had been right in front of her all the time.

"There is another," she said, bleakly, as the moon disappeared behind the heavy bank of cloud. "It's a female."

Gregor's head whipped around at Loka's last words. That there was another one wasn't all too surprising -- an infection spreads, after all -- but how could she possibly know it was a female? The inquisitor came to a halt, Oaksheart's road within vision behind him, and narrowed his eyes at the Deva.

"A female? Explain yourself and your witchcraft -- what is this of tasting its blood and seeing tracks in the forest, anyway? And those screams that drove the wolf into an even madder frenzy? I have seen many unnatural things in my days, but never that," he said. He spoke quickly and a little too loud, but the tone of his voice was not unkind. There was a hint of curiosity and, in his last three words, a begrudging undertone of admiration. Her contributions to the hunt had been very valuable.

Loka fidgeted under the sudden scrutiny. There was no elegant way to tell him. She would have to be subtle.

She struggled hopelessly with the notion for a few valiant seconds before it burst out of her in an explosive sigh.

"The moon turned," she explained, impatiently, "It was bleeding. The womb was bleeding! I can tell the difference!"

She walked in a tight, agitated circle, gesturing, wet bracken cracking underfoot. "I did not understand earlier because there was so much. But it was all over the road, where the bodies were." She made a vague motion with both hands in the direction of the muddy track. "Everywhere. ...Perhaps that is why it was in such a bad mood."

She sighed again, long and plaintive in the murky dawn.

"...I do not know how to make you understand how I know, when your life is the murder of those who see as I do. You call it witchcraft, but it is so much more than this. I feel things. I am close to a God. A real God. Not an empty house built over a prison. How could I see things as others do?

"So yes, I taste love and hate and see perfume on the air, and felt the madness boiling inside that... thing. Being near it hurt. It hurt!" She almost shouted it at the gore-stained head, as though it might wake up and apologize, "But this, it showed me how to make myself painful to it, too. I knew how to call to it, in a voice it could not tolerate. So I did. And it worked." She folded her arms around herself, shrugging with a creak of wet leather. "It seemed like a much better idea before it worked. If I were stronger, and had nicer clothes, I could show you more."

She ran her gloved hand down her cheek, staring at the monstrous severed head through the dim half-light. "...Please do not threaten to cut anything else off." she added, quietly.

She pushed on without waiting for a response, crunching toward the edge of the wood, but paused at the brink of the embankment and looked back, resting one hand on a slanted birch.

"...Why did you talk to it?"

A variety of expressions waxed and waned on the inquisitor's face as Loka explained and defended herself. The revelation that she knew the other werewolf was a female by the scent of its monthly bleeding elicited the same reaction from Gregor as it does all Montgardian men whenever reminded of that biological phenomenon -- he blinked rapidly and the corner of his mouth twitched as if a small fly had just flown into his eye. It was considered indecent and a taboo for women to discuss that with men. That Loka could smell the difference was repulsive and Gregor was silently very pleased he did not have her abilities right now.

He rolled his eyes when she defended the existence of her God. Gregor was resoundingly atheist and did not believe in the existence of any gods, be they Montgardian or foreign, and found the explanation for her powers insufficient. He resolved to question her further, later. Gregor merely watched her for a few seconds when she stomped past him, turning to follow her with his glacial gaze, his face cast in shadow beneath his hat by the light of dawn as the sun slowly crested the horizon. Nicer clothes?

Gregor followed her without a word, content to let the issue rest for now, when Loka asked him something. It took a few seconds for the meaning of her question to pierce through the fog of his fatigue and reverie. Comprehending, he chuckled. "Because the law requires that I, as inquisitor, must first declare an appropriate sentence for the condemned's crimes before administering the Emperor's justice, and the condemned are to hear their sentence before it is carried out," he explained patiently, searching Loka's face for hints of confusion or understanding. "A situation in which self-defense is necessary to save myself or others is generally sufficient to skip that step but I try to slip it in there regardless. I'm an inquisitor, not a lawless murderer."

Loka turned from the Inquisitor to the road at the bottom of the embankment. The shadows stretched long across the mud and hip-high grasses as the sun reluctantly heaped itself above the wretched moor, and the nocturnal mist had begun to lift, thinning into a bleak white haze. The rent torsos and scattered limbs of the dead travelers remained where they had been found, the blood slowly congealing into a dark, foetid mass. The first insects buzzed mindlessly from one to the next, filling the morning air with a droning cacophony that set her stomach twisting.

"It couldn't understand you," she murmured, tersely. "All it understood was pain."