A Goblin with little to no magic potential and an Alpha Werewolf were not meant to be facing eachother in a western-style standoff.
But there Grimble was. As usual. In a predicament to rival them all.
The Werewolf stood over a pile of corpses. Survivors of a savage world— made victims by a savage beast.
Just as Terrana was.
A victim.
Just as more would be. In her position— for whatever reason or heartless motive.
They'd find themselves hounded and hunted.
And dead.
Just like Terrana.
Grimble's stomach sank. His skin grew hot despite the rain.
The werewolf grinned— wet black nose flexing at the smells of his hormones. At the scent of his anger and despair.
The beast smiled. Jagged teeth gleaming with a pink overglow and bubbling saliva. The alpha opened its jaws slightly— exhaling in short huffs.
No.
It was laughing. Giggling with excitemen—
"COME ON!" Grimble yelled.
The werewolf— an alpha, felt the challenge. The beast couldn't turn it down as Grimble gazed into its foul red eyes.
"Come on. Get offended, you dog." Grimble growled internally.
The alpha took a step forward and roared back at him.
At the same time, Grimble kicked up his shot-gun off the ground and caught it with his finger on the wet trigger.
He pumped it once and fired right into the beasts face.
The Alpha was fast. Too fast.
But Grimble was beyond too close. He was at point blank range.
The werewolf moved in a red-eyed shadowy blur, stumbling only as the spray of silver-laced pellets bit into its right shoulder.
Grimble pumped his shotgun. The shell casing whistled into the dark.
He fired again, aiming lower.
The beast yelped. Spirals of steam and sparking meat sizzled on its right leg.
Grimble pumped his gun again.
A hideous deafening click echoed.
The gum jammed. From the rain most likely.
The wolf charged with a hungry and hobbling gait.
It healed as it moved, growing faster and more whole again with every step.
The beast lunged. Terrana's pendant swung from its thick neck with the rhythym and pulse of a metronome, as if Grimble needed help to understand the timing of his own demise.
The impact popped his eardrums. Wind and rain slashed at his bare face. Beasts of the shadows snarled and yelped from the collision.
But he was still standing.
He opened his eyes to find the alpha in a tumbling scuffle with a large sleek furred feline. A panther in build with its long muscled body and thick limbs.
But not just any panther.
Evidence made noticeable in its snout made of octopean tendrils with glowing Jaguar spots.
A displacer cat. Thirsty for revenge.
The feline took top mount at the end of their scuffle a few dozen feet away from Grimble.
Before the cat could take advantage, the werewolf threw the cat aside and rolled back onto its feet.
The feline was already standing. Its snout of tendrils opened like a glow-petal flower and sent a burst of blinding light at the alpha.
It was like a camera flash cranked up to a million.
The werewolf snarled from the blinding blast.
The feline pounced on the alpha, wrapping its bladed tendrils around the alpha to suck the beasts blood.
Suddenly the lights on the felines tendrils began to glow and flash, manipulating light molecules and the visible color spectrum until it had transformed into a mirror image of the alpha werewolf.
The alpha roared and shoved the displacer beast off before rising back up on two legs.
It laughed again as the feline— posing as an alpha in its own right, growled.
Grimble felt his stomach twist.
The alpha didn't charge or rise to the challenge in any animalistic way as it did before. Instead, it spread its legs and brought its hands up with closed fists.
The alpha was trained in martial arts. And disciplined enough to maintain said training under a full moon.
The cat charged. Grimble ran.
In the rain and muck and sirens he could hear the alpha brutalize the cat, illusions be damned. The Wolven beast shook the grounds with bone shattering punches, kicks and body slams that left the feline bloodied and as dead as the last four.
Grimble sprinted deeper into the grove, blurring past desolate treehouses and abandoned herbal homes.
He couldn't hear the werewolf anymore. He couldn't smell the blood. But the moon still hung high in the sky. Still rising.
Eventually, Grimble came to a stop underneath a braided combination of trees that marked a place of worship. He hesitated, realizing he'd spent many full moon nights in the same spot with Terrana. Under the ornamented branches of varying colors and berries. Against the bark marked with their initials.
Grimble stuffed the thought away as he shakily pulled a paper and pen out of his longcoat inner pocket and began writing.
"Alpha Werewolf. Prefers bipedal movement— likely not raised among the classic Pack-Tribes in the wild. Newly changed— still learning how to handle instincts. Trained in martial arts— likely military or law enforcement aligned. Likely a stagnant positioned veteran on the force connected to Chief Vanagand who was tasked with this job. Could be connected to something….."
Bigger.
It's what Grimble was going to write. But the rain was falling heavier. Thicker and pungent.
In his exhaustion, he blinked and realized rain didn't blot out the ink writings from his pen in red.
It was blood.
Grimble hesitantly looked up into the canopy of the tree to find the looming figure of the crouching werewolf looking down at him with a maw covered in blood.
With a shout, Grimble ran, heading for the tree home colonies that were once filled with Rebel Druids.
The Werewolf howled. A piercing noise of feral ecstasy.
The beast dropped down from the tree and lunged at Grimble, clearing a hundred feet of distance in a second.
The alpha swung its arm in a blur of black.
Grimble screamed as curled talons ripped open his back, knicking his spine along the way.
He fell and rolled, scrambling back to his feet as he turned with his shotgun and tried to fire.
The Werewolf was gone—
From behind, a leg smashed into his ribs, sending him rolling to the left with shattered ribs and a broken gun.
Before he could fully recover, the Werewolf was on him, biting down on his left shoulder with a sickening crunch.
The heat of its teeth was near molten.
The alpha growled and shook him between its jaws like he was weightless, throwing him aside after the fact.
Grimble tumbled deeper into the dilapidated tree home colonies.
No more fight left in him.
As he passed the familiar homes, memories flashed in tandem with the lightning miles away.
Running with children.
Giving Terrana pep talks before her first speeches as a teenage girl dreaming of revolution. Of a better world.
Being inspired by her growth.
Being intimidated by her beauty— made noticeable even when she yawned or burped after lunch under the sun.
The lightning showers faded.
The red glow of the alphas eyes remained.
Blinking as blood splattered with every slash of its claws and tear of its fangs.
Grimble was being torn apart. He could feel his wounds. Pulsing and burning. They covered him from head to toe.
He was finished.
The alpha could feel it. The beast rose up with a clawed hand raised to rip his throat out.
Then it's ear twitched, just as a wooden spear ripped through its cheek and came out the other side.
The alpha snarled and bit the spear into wooden shards before glancing once at Grimble's dying body and attacking the horde of trolls or armed Star-Speakers on the thunderous horizon.
Grimble heard nothing.
He felt nothing but the pulse of his wounds.
Clouds collected and dispersed in the time alone. The moon rays fell on his wounds.
The bites and cuts, laced with the saliva, fur and any other genetic essence of the beast, festered at unimaginable speeds.
It burned in ways he'd never felt.
He couldn't rest.
The moonlight burned.
The wounds howled with a rising ache.
He couldn't die.
He couldn't.
So, he didn't.
Instead, he rolled over and began to crawl with the help of his only good arm.
The ground shook as massive stone skinned shapes and antlered beasts fought the Alpha.
Grimble pushed on until he approached a hole in the ground, leading to an all natural sewer entrance made up of stone walls packed into the dirt tunnel and a rushing river.
Grimble fell inside— half by accident.
He splashed into the water and raced through the abandoned sewer. The cool waters didn't calm the heat of his wounds.
But they did wake him up enough to realize something.
The tingle in his stomach that rose and spread to the tips of his sticky fingers.
"My magic….. is growing. Oh hell."
The alpha fell into the sewers behind him like a physical manifestation of what he now understood.
The beast rose up from the sewer riverway, cleansed of blood and somehow looking more terrifying. More real.
The necklace around its neck gleamed in the scarce moonlight, reminding Grimble of the case.
He worked his magic. He stretched the deafening and vanishing film he could summon. Instead of spreading it around a suitcase or gun, he wrapped it around himself as he held onto the uneven stone protrusions of the wall.
It was easier than usual. Effortless, almost. He bolstered the density of his vanishers magic until his fingers sparkled like the Goblin Mages of older eras.
The alpha searched. Sniffing and spreading the waters in search of him.
Nearing.
Snarling.
Stopping at the sight of his torn and bloodied longcoat caught on a stone ledge just in front of it.
The werewolf snorted with satisfaction before it turned and fled.
Just ten feet ahead of the coat, Grimble lost conciousness and reappeared. Beaten, broken, bloody.
But healing.
Dreaming.
Scheduled to awaken.
Likely not the same as he was before.