Spooks of the Forest

[Kibe]

(I over estimated his size. I did acutal measurements and 5 feet is way to high. For future reference he sits at 3'6 at the shoulder, still large but not monstrously so.)

Kibe snorted. Dog he could understand, but mangy?! This bastard is gonna get his throat torn out! He thought. With a series of savage barks he rushed forward, going airborne the last few steps in an attempt to slam the guard in the chest and knock him off his feet. He still held back on his wolf minds urge to kill. Killing the guard would just bring more like him and Kibe was definitely not looking forward to that.

[Niabi]

Though the strong metal man stood between the wolf and herself, Nia couldn't help but feel startled when the creature leapt out of the bushes and lunged in her direction. The wolf looked quite angry as he snarled at the man.

As an added precaution, she took a few steps backwards to put more distance between herself an the advancing wolf.

To make matters worse, the metal man seemed to be taunting the creature into attacking him. She had never seen a man taunt a animal in such a way but she assumed that it was a trick that in some way was meant to distract the creature while he planned to kill the creature.

If murder was on the mind of the man, Nia was not going to allow him to follow through with his plan. For now she would stand back and watch but when the time came, she would attack the man if he so much as thought to harm a creature in front of her.

[Silas Mirkyr]

Silas slid his feet further apart and held up his shield to defend against the leap made by the wolf. Normally, he would have side-stepped and attacked from the side, but he knew he must protect the woman behind him. His life was forfeit in comparison to the life of a citizen.

The wolf crashed into his shield and made Silas slide backwards. He pushed is shield forward with as much strength as he could muster, to get the beast at sword-range. He knew that he had the advantage of reach in this fight, and if he could push his opponent back, he could end it quickly.

He grunted loudly. His shoulder had absorbed most of the blow from the wolf, and he could feel the pain in it now. He’d had worse during training, but still, it wasn’t pleasant. But a guard’s life wasn’t supposed to be pleasant. It was supposed to be hard, so that citizens’ lives didn’t have to be.

[Kibe]

Kibe went with the push and landed lightly on all four paws still growling. This guy was good, better than your average guard at least. But he was still gooing to pay him back for calling him mangy. But as he reassesed the situation he realized he had made a mistake.

Over a foot of gleaming steel was in the man's hand. And from where Kibe was standing he was within the swords range but definitely not close enough to use tooth and claw. So he did the only thing he could do, he rushed him again.

But this time he had a surprise for him. As he went in to meet the man again he shifted. Hair sucked back into his body along with his tail while his entire face shifted and re-arranged into that of a short, brown skinned human. Although naked his reflexs and strength were still better than that of a normal man's. The voice of his trainer Runi, the man who had taught him hand-to-hand combat, floated through his mind.

"Whether your opponent has a weapon or not you're gonna have to close the distance kid. And it's gonna hurt."

[Niabi]

Nia was quite shocked when the charging wolf changed into a man. Living her life in the woods within the protection of the glen, Nia had not been exposed to others like herself, others who had the ability to change into the form of mankind.

She had always believed that she was special when it came to this ability, it was something in which her animal friends could not do. She also knew that this power of hers must be for a purpose. It seemed to her that that the best purpose was to use this power to protect those she knew and loved and for her that meant the animals.

He too must be a protector of the woodland friends, she thought.

Until now, she had thought herself to be the only such being to protect the place that she called home. If he were here too, then this must surely be his home as well and he must be protecting his family.

Now there was no way that she was going to let the man with anger in his voice kill the wolf. If there was another such as herself, she would protect him just as she would a member of her own herd.

Nia, with a frown on her face, left the protection of the tree she had backed into and ran over to the guard. She placed her hand on top of his sword arm and made an angry grunting noise at him.

"Nao..kill..waolff"

[Silas Mirkyr]

Silas felt a hand upon his shoulder, and it surprised him momentarily. The strangely spoken words also threw him off. That was the only reason he did not have time to impale the man now running at him. He threw up his shield again, but this time he didn't set his feet as well. The mass of muscle that crashed into him caused him to fall backwards....

Onto the woman behind him. He wasn't sure how much damage he did as he fell. What he was sure of was that he could now see what appeared to be hooves. He threw up his sheild to ward off any coming attacks from the wolf-man as he turned his head to see that the hooves led up to the woman he had been trying to defend.

"What the hell is up with your legs, girlie?" He said, through his heavy breathing. He pushed the thought from his mind after that. He let go of his sword for the moment, and tried to grab his opponent with his now free hand.

[Kibe]

Wouldn't hae been able to do much normally with shield in between him and his prey. But the man reached for him and gave him and opening. As it came for him he leaned back and grabbed his wrist. Then he leaned forward and slammed it flat on the ground bent at the ebow with his forearm on the guards throat. Lastly he looped his free hand under the man's bent arm and grabbed his own wrist. Then he torqued up, creating an effective bent arm bar submission. He would have gone ahead and broke his shouder but the man's statement threw him off.

"What the hell is up with your legs, girlie?"

Kibe looked over himself after a second and noticed the same thing. Hooves that led up to a human body? What in the hell was going on? He took a deep sniff through his nose. She even smelled like deer! He hadn't noticed earlier because the deer he had brought down was still in his nose. Now it was potent when compared with the stinky guard underneath him.

"What in the underworld....." he muttered loud enough for the other two to hear him as his grip relaxed and his mouth hung open.

[Niabi]

The wolf-man hand leaped through the air, landing on the man who stood before her. The man in his shiny metal suit, had been knocked off his feet by the wolf-man and fell on Nia.

"Ummph" Their combined weight had knocked the wind out of her and left her pinned underneath them desperately trying to claw her way out. Her struggling proved to be useless as the men were too heavy for her to free herself from.

"What the hell is up with your legs, girlie?"

Nia didn't understand his words, she understood very little of any words. Men had such confusing ways of communicating with one another. What she did understand though was that the man had been directing his comment on her.

She met the mans' eyes and followed them to where he seemed to be staring. her feet, or rather lack of feet for instead of having feet like other humans, she had hooves. Hooves that would forever remind her that she was an animal instead of a man.

Over many years, Nia had developed a sort of self-conscious fear of her hooves. It was not normal for people to have hooves and it was not normal for animals to have the ability to change into people. She had tried very hard to put her changing ability to good use but still she couldn't help but to feel like an outcast due to her feet.

Her lack of feet had been the reason that many men had been fearful of her, even before she had ever killed them. They pointed and said strange comments she didn't understand as they ran away from her. This use to make her feel sad and alone.

The herd had been the ones to accept her. They never questioned her for being different, they just accepted her as one of their own.

"What in the underworld....." Now the wolf-man had turned on her too.

They outnumbered her. She fought to get away, to run back to the safety of the herd but she was trapped. She couldn't get away. Don't kill me, she thought. Like an animal she fought to get away but it was proving to be of little good.

[Silas Mirkyr]

Silas didn’t give two flying fucks about his arm at this point. He wanted to get out of this madhouse shifter-sandwich. He bellowed a loud, wordless roar from his chest and used all of his strength, which was quite considerable, as he had spent years training to be a Guard, to push up at Kibe and try to get the pair to roll off of the deer-woman.

After this, he continually slammed his shield forward, trying to do some damage. At this point, he wasn’t worried about killing the beast anymore, just getting it to run away. He had to get back to Marn and tell the Captain about this. Two shifters in the forest could certainly account for the disappearances.

[Kibe]

The push sent Kibe back onto his butt. This mother... Kibe thought furious! A red film descended over his gaze and the Wolf moved to the fore.

As the Guards tryed to make a break for it Kibe grabbed his ankle and with insane surge of strength that vanished as soon as it came, he ripped the man's leg off up to the knee with the sound of tearing flesh and breaking bone.

He snapped back to himself in seconds and looked down to see himself holding a human leg. He dropped it in shock to look down at the guard. Without thinking he tore the strips of cloth from the leg stump and grabbed a stick. Then he fashioned a tourniquet that cut of the blood fountaning from the man's wound. At least now he wouldn't bleed to death.

"Go back to your city. And stay out of these woods guy." Kibe said softly, sorrow evident in his voice. He had nothing against killing. But he hadn't wanted to injure the man to this extent, just rough him up and show him who the alpha was around these parts. Then he had given into the Wolf's beserker tendencies and done this. He pushed the thoughts aside as he looked for where the deer woman had gotten too.

(I know we talked about it Silas but not sure if you still wanted to go through with it. Let me know if I need to edit)

[Niabi]

The men had continued to fight one another. Lucky for her though, the fighting happened to take place off her her back. When it had felt as if their weight was about to crush her tiny little body, they had decided to get off of her and take the fighting back to the clearing.

Nia, who had wanted nothing more then to flee to safety, did just that. She scrambled up to her feet and leaped behind a nearby bush. It was big enough to provide her with a place to hide but close enough that she could continue to watch the two men in the chance that she may need to take part in the action.

She had not seen it but somehow the wolf-man had happened to remove a leg from the other man. Good, injuries make men weaker fighters. She had been impressed by the strength that the wolf-man had shown, never had see seen such an act preformed on a man, maybe an animal but not a man. The wolf is strong.

Then the wolf had done something she had not expected, he seemed to be tending to the wound he had just created. "No" She called out from the bushes. "Men kill."

[Silas Mirkyr]

Silas screamed in utter agony. His leg, or, more specifically, his stump, was in pain. He could feel the blood rushing from his body. It was absolutely and completely the worst pain he had ever been in. And to think it was caused by these...these...freaks. This wolf-man and this deer-woman. These half-breed scum. He would remember this. He would remember what had happened, and he swore that he would burn the Forest down.

He slowly began to crawl, his fingers pulling him through the dirt in the direction of Marn. Grime lodged itself underneath his fingernails. And with every inch he pulled himself forward, the pain grew worse. Some part of Silas's mind whispered that the pain was not even going to be the worst part. He was sure to get infected. He was sure to lose even more of his leg at this rate.

It was dark before he finally crawled into view of Marn, and he called out to the guard on watch. He was brought to the barracks, the wound was cleaned and he got sufficiently drunk so that when they cauterized the wound with a torch, he could smell the smoldering flesh but couldn't feel it.

As he lay recovering in one of the barracks' beds, he was approached by his senior officers and asked to give a report of what had happened.

"Sir. I entered the forest in the morning, to search for the missing people, as ordered. About midway between here and Shim, I ran into this half-naked woman. Immediately after that, I spotted a large wolf in the brush. Of course, I drew my sword...my sword! I forgot it in the confusion! Oh, blast it! Anyway. The wolf attacked me, and I defended myself and the woman. At one point, however, the wolf transformed into a man in mid-leap and knocked me over, where I fell on the woman behind me. That was when I noticed that her legs weren't human at all. They were long, furry, and ended in hooves instead of feet. The wolf-man then ripped my leg off, and out of his strange pity, applied a tourniquet and I crawled back here. Sir. We need to find these two in the woods. They're dangerous."

"I will have to bring this to the Captain." The officer said and Silas nodded before drifting off into sleep.

[Niabi]

Niabi had been too distracted in her curiosity of the wolf-man to pay attention to the shiny metal man as he slowly crawled his way back into town. If she had wanted to follow him, he left a nice easy to follow trail of blood behind him but that was not what she wanted. She knew well enough where that path led to, just not what it was going to mean when he reached his destination.

No, she had been staring at the naked body of the man who had been a wolf. He was another like herself, a creature of the woods, a protector of the animals. And an attract one at that.

With nothing more to hide from, Nia climbed out of the bushes and made her way slowly back into the clearing. An aura of magically charged pheromones hung about her as think fog as she approach the wolf. She batted her large doe eyes as she walked past him.

Unlike with humans, she had no desire to bring any harm to the wolf. If he choose to follow her that was his business, if not that was his choice too. Either way she would be in the glen, if he wished to pursue her he would know where to find her.