Two years ago, I was given a ring by a nearly powerless mage, in a cavern hidden under the city of Rhy'Din. Over time, he'd managed to work into it a basic spell that makes it a sort of pager. He tested it once, and on my end the ring vibrated and gave a slight tug in the direction I would need to go, in the event of an emergency requiring its use.

When I felt the ring buzzing the night before the full moon, I followed it. It was still warm that night, so I had to wind my way through the remaining crowds in the market, feeling the vibrations in the ring growing. That meant I was getting closer. As I passed around a corner, I saw K'lorkanto. He was wearing purple-black robes, with his hood raised to shadow his face, and his posture told me he was in agony. When I rushed toward him, tendrils of black smoke slipped out from beneath his robes and engulfed him. My hands stirred the smoke when I reached for him, and found no purchase. The cloud dispersed as I shot through it, and the buzzing in the ring was diminished, but not gone. He was still in Rhy'Din. South. Something nagged at the edges of my senses as I turned toward the bridge. There was an overturned carriage on the bridge, and the attendant crowd of rubberneckers blocked the way entirely. A slight change of direction, and I ran across the water itself instead, reaching down to snatch out a man who was floundering in the current. Dropping him off on the shore, I raced toward the south gate and saw him again. Putting on a little more speed, my fingertips brushed his sleeve before it vanished into the rising smoke once more.

The buzzing was pointing me northeast now, but I needed to stop a moment to catch my breath. As I stopped in an alley out of sight, I realized that I shouldn't have had to stop. Not yet. Leaning against a wall, I pulled my mask up past my mouth and breathed deep. Trying to ignore the stench of the garbage in the alley, I puzzled over what was happening to K'lorkanto. Whatever it was must also have been tiring me out. It was probably related to his search for a way to regain what power he'd lost, an obsession that had been growing. Tugging my mask back down, I hoped that his quest wasn't going to be his undoing. Pushing away from the wall, I cranked up my speed and tried to catch him before that smoke took him away again.

The smoke was already creeping out of his robes when I reached the alley behind the Dragon, but this time I held by breath as I burst through, missing him once more. Another vanishing act, this time pointing me out of the city, toward the west. I ran out of the city and, with more effort than it should have taken, pushed past the sound barrier. I blew the leaves from the trees as I ran, and likely some small woodland creatures, but I was too late again. Back south, then, with exhaustion pushing at the edge of my consciousness. It took an effort of will to keep placing one foot before the other, but I managed to grab hold of his arm just as the smoky tendrils appeared. I held onto him with what strength I had left, as the smoke snaked around us. He pulled back his hood, and I saw a rictus grin beneath that hawkish nose just before I lost consciousness.

The old mage had lost it. I don't claim to fully understand where the speed comes from, but I know it isn't magic. He did, too. I shook my head, noticing that the fog was nearly lifted from my mind. "My power? Not...not magic." I was playing up a weakness I didn't feel, but I doubt he was in a state of mind to notice my bad acting.

"No, no, of course not." He was muttering, as he opened his book and peered down at whatever was written there. "No, your power is not magic. But it is useful, to one I have been in contact with. And that one can give me my magic." He pulled back the sleeve of his robe, consulting a wrist watch that seemed quite incongruous in that room. "The hour draws near." He moved to the altar, adjusting the position of some small item sitting next to the carcass.

"The hour?" I felt my eyes shoot wide as I realized just what hour he must mean. My mind was clear, and I could feel the full moon. It was rising. It would not be long before I changed. "No...no, K'lorkanto, the moon..."

He snapped his eyes to me, that rictus grin spreading across his lips once more. "The moon, exactly. The ritual requires it." He blinked, grin faltering. "You know the import of the moon? Have you heard of my... associate?"

I shook my head. It felt like whatever he had done had worn off, and I needed to get out of there. I pressed my wrists back against the wall, giving myself a little slack to work with. I don't think I could have broken the ropes by sheer strength, but if I moved fast enough, I reasoned, there would be enough force to do the job. "You don't understand." I snapped my arms forward, and the ropes gave way. He jumped back as I took a stumbling step and began frantically leafing through his book, but it was too late.

My vision clouded as my eyes changed shape, a pain worse than any migraine growing out of my sockets. I collapsed to the floor, nerves on fire while I heard my bones snap. I would have screamed, but my jaw was cracking to accommodate the change as well, elongating. My organs were moving as my bones began to fix themselves, in a different configuration, and I felt hair bursting from my skin over every inch of my body. Even after all these years, it was excruciating. K'lorkanto may have done research, but he hadn't studied me enough. He dropped his book as he stepped back, features twisting in horror. For a moment, I blacked out, the pain and stress on my body too much for my mind to take.

When awareness came back, I was trapped in the back seat. The Wolf was in control.

When the moon sank beneath the horizon, the Wolf was wracked with the same pain I felt upon its rising. I felt it, too, but it was as though it was happening to something else. It is always like that, and the pain didn't become my own until the fur was gone and my bones were knitting once more. Again, if I could control my own muscles, I would have screamed. When I did regain control, after the pain faded, I sat up to survey my surroundings. I had seen through the Wolf's eyes, but it is lower to the ground, and doesn't focus on the same things I would, so when it runs through the woods it is easy for me to get disoriented.

I decided that I was probably somewhere to the south of the city, and a quick dash to the north (stopping at a stream on the way to wash the rabbit blood from my face) confirmed it. Keeping my speed up, I dashed through the city and into the woods to the north - I keep a key hidden under a rock three miles out, for emergencies. Snatching up my key, I got back to my apartment and inside before anyone saw me. I have yet to find clothing that will still be on me after the change.

Once more dressed in costume, I went back south, trying to remember the paths the Wolf had taken, so as to be able to find my way back to the building where K'lorkanto held me. Perhaps it was a bit foolish of me to go back there and risk recapture, but I wanted to find out just what he had planned. It took some time, but I did manage to find the place.

When the Wolf escaped, it had not looked back at the building it was leaving. I nearly ran straight past it - I expected a building, but instead it was a stone door frame set into the side of a wide hill. The hill was covered with dead grass, with a massive rotted tree stump atop it - it was at least twenty feet in diameter, and the place where it was cut must have been ten feet from the ground. As I approached the entrance, I slowed to a walk. I remembered the shadows that scared the Wolf, and that sort of thing doesn't happen easily. When I pulled my mask up past my nose, I could smell the charnel stench that had been coming from the shadows when the Wolf fled, but it was very faint. Whatever made that scent was no longer inside that place.

I had brought a small flashlight with me, and it turned out that I needed it. The darkness inside was absolute until I pierced it with the narrow beam. I took note of the patterns, which no longer seemed to move. I chalked that up to whatever magic or drug he'd used to knock me out. That thought brought me a frown. It had taken the man over a year to gather the power to make my ring vibrate; he couldn't have had the power to teleport or create illusions that real. That meant he had help that did have power. Perhaps, I reasoned, some colleague from before Dean had taken away K'lorkanto's magic.

There were marks at some places along the floor where it looked like fire had flowed sometime during the night, though in that hall I smelled nothing to indicate that. Just the traces of death. Save one, the rooms I passed were all much like the one I had been held in, though they had no altars. The charnel smell increased as I came to my brief prison, and I remembered the many-legged thing that had been burning on the altar. When I opened the door, the burnt flesh odor reached my nose as well, and I saw that the altar held nothing but ashes now. There were scorched sections of the floor and wall, snaking black marks, and little remained of the ropes that had held me. Of K'lorkanto there was no sign, not even a lingering scent.

One room remained, the only one unlike my cell. I had only taken a glance when I first passed it, seeing that it held a number of chairs and a large altar, with a curtain draped across the far wall. Walking up to the altar, I noticed a chain hanging from the ceiling there, and followed it up to what appeared to be a sliding trap door. Casting another look around the room, finding a second chain which would close the door, I pulled the chain and flooded the room with light. There was multi-colored glass set in the ceiling, which must have been under the tree stump I had seen from outside. At first, the design of the glass appeared to be more concentric circles, but as I watched the morning sunlight move over its surface, it changed. I saw, or imagined I saw, a malevolent face forming there, something inhuman. Startled, I shot across to the other chain and closed the door, letting darkness fall on the room once more. I heard, or thought I did, a gibbering noise, and noted that the charnel odor had briefly grown stronger. The Wolf, which had been silent in the back of my mind, whimpered.

I shot out of that place. Once outside, I turned to regard the hill once more, mind racing. Something there was very dangerous ? it was an instinct that ran even deeper than those of the Wolf. I ran back to the city for supplies, and returned later that day to destroy it. It took a number of trips, but I had several clay casks of Byzantine fire, which I placed in that room with the trap door. I pulled the chain, careful not to look at the exposed glass, then drove a fist into one of the casks. The liquid ignited, and I fled the hill before the fire burned back into the cask. Standing a distance away, I felt the earth rumble, heard rending stone, and watched as flame shot from the entrance and through the glass hidden within that stump. Curiously, the flames that shot into the sky were first green, then purple, and finally the orange and yellow I had expected. With a groan, the structure gave way, and the hill collapsed in on itself. I stayed there into the night, moving to quench any fire which tried to spread into the woods, until what remained burned itself out.