Seraph looked hesitant at the thought of tying up Elaina but she looked to her friend then. "will you allow us to do that Elaina? I hate to but with how uncertain you are we cannot be certain you can control yourself after what may be happening."
Elaina just shakes her head.
"No, I-- I don't want to be bound. If you can barricade me in a room I should be safe enough," she says quietly.
"At the least, we should bar the room from the outside once Seraph is out," Asta murmurs to the others. "That and ready restraints in case we need them. Which I hope we won't."
"And I'll stand watch. Elaina, you won't be alone during this time."
Seraph nods to the others and moves out of the room lingering at the door as she turns to look at her friend before leaving her to barricade the room. "No matter what happens, we won't abandon you or send you away Elaina. Be strong and like Torod said know that you are not alone."
She moves out of the room then and helps to barricade it.
Before Seraph barricades the door, Elaina hands her all of her gear save the clothes on her back.
"Thank you," is all she can manage before they close the doors.
And now, she waits. She prays.
Desna, Ashava, please help me not turn into a monster. I want to help, but...
She looks up, imagining the stars in the sky, and sighs.
She doesn't know what to do next, and that worries her.
Seraph was beside herself and so she did the only thing she could do. She waited, outside, with the stars and moon above as she thought on ways she could help her friend. She draws her massive blade and sets it tip down and at the ready, hoping desperately she wouldn't have cause to use it. If anyone looks at her in a concerned way she shakes her head. "I will use only the flat side to avoid undue harm to Elaina, but what else can I do?"
"You can sit down so you don't exhaust yourself waiting."
Asta sits down nearby, quarterstaff across her legs, and closes her eyes while Croft settles on her shoulder.
"Wake me if anything happens."
Torod also stays just outside the door. He sits on the ground in meditative prayer, beseeching Erastil and Ashava and any other god who will listen to help his friend during her trials. He also takes a cue from Seraph and lays his sword across his lap.
Elaina had somehow dozed off during the wait, but as the moon rises, something begins to happen.
Her eyes snap open and her body begins to shake as pain beyond anything she'd ever felt before tears through her body. She thrashes on the ground, screaming in pain between desperately gulping air into her searing lungs. She rolls up onto her knees her arms wrapped around her stomach.
===
Elaina stands in the middle of a maelstrom. The transformation had turned her mind into a swirling mass of pain, but for now, she was in the eye of the storm. She wasn't alone. Facing her stood someone who looked almost exactly like her, save for three details. Her hair was white, her ears were those of a wolf's, and her tail was also that of a wolf's.
"Well, shall we get this over with," Her look-alike asks before charging Elaina. The ranger, however wouldn't go down that easily, and sidesteps the tackle before getting ready to fight hand to hand.
===
Elaina screams in pain once more, her tail had worked free of the sash that had concealed it. and it arched above her back, white fur had begun to grow from it, and also had started to grow on her cheeks and hands. Her hair had already turned white, and her teeth had grown into those of a wolf. She staggers about on all fours, her body wracked by pain as her transformation continues.
===
Elaina cries out again as her opponent lands another solid blow in her belly. The fight had been fairly even, but now, she is losing. Her white-haired shadow, her more savage self, holds her up by her hair for a moment.
"Pff, no wonder you needed me," she says, "you're pathetic!"
The white-haired Elaina tosses the black-haired one to the ground, and gives the beaten girl one final kick to seal her victory. The black-haired Elaina gasps in pain as the wind is knocked out of her. She's too beaten to continue fighting, she had lost, and she only prayed that she had not lost herself permanently.
"P-please," the black-haired girl begs, "m-my f-friends, d-don't hurt m-my friends."
"Sorry, but we're a little hungry if you haven't noticed, and they are the closest thing to eat."
===
WIth one final cry that turns into a howl half-way through, Elaina changes. Her clothing is shredded as a large white wolf takes her place. Piercing sapphire eyes look about for prey to hunt as she slowly circles the room and sniffs the air. Blood-red markings cover her hackles, back, and tail. The wolf sniffs the air, stopping at the door the others were waiting outside. She smelled them. She smelled prey.
Like a lightning bolt, Elaina charges the door, she'd break it down and eat, yes eat. She's hungry. The hunger demands she eats. Eat them. Eat them and sate the hunger!
She slams into the door, but the door refuses to budge. There's prey on the other side, meat to feast on, and she need to get to it! She scratches at the door, growling and snarling in frustration.
Seraph had been kneeling her blade leaned against her shoulder as she prepared, she had hoped that Arshea would be willing to give aid. But at Johd worried cry and the sound of the barricaded door creaking from an assault from within.
"Prepare to restrain her. No matter what happens to me." She invokes Arshea's shielding hand on herself.
"If you can hear me Elaina! We will stop you! Even if it kills me!" Let's hope she can hear me. She braced herself for the coming storm...
Asta directs a glare into the werewolf's eyes through one of the gaps, then seems to notice the glow in the bear's cave.
"Keep her bottled up as best you can," the Witch says as she hikes up her skirts and starts to run for the cave.
Torod also stands. He leans against the door to try and help it hold.
Elaina shakes her head like she's shaking off water before fixing Asta with a glare of her own. she backs away form the door slowly prowling the edge of the room. He eyes fixed on the door even as she reaches the opposite end of the room.
Like lightning she charges the door again.
With a yelp she smacks into the door, but her failure only seems to anger her even more. She growls at the door, the one thing between her and the prey that dared defy her. Again she rushes the door.
The crack of wood and a triumphant howl announce Elaina's freedom. She sniffs the air, searching for the one that had dared look at her as an equal, but she needn't have bothered, the prey was running. It had a head start, but she was faster.
Recklessly, she moves to charge past the others, but she'd left herself open in her haste to run down the prey that had sought to prove it was equal, or even dominant over her.
"Look, whoever is supplying this, give me a hint!" Asta shouts. "Can I move this thing or...?"
Can Torod Aid Jhod in holding the door? I presume that Seraph would do the same.
"You expect me to get her in here? I need to take something out? Please, hurry!"
Elaina backs away snarling at Jhod, Torod, and Seraph. Her eyes glowed with baleful, blue fire as the fur on her hackles rose. She felt two calls now, the call to put the prey in its place and the call of whatever lay in the cave it had fled to. Again she rushes at the shield wall, showing nothing but reckless abandon as she knocked over the three trying to hold. There was a scent on the air now. Its scent. The prey that thought itself a wolf, an alpha. There was only one alpha here, and it was her!
She charged into the cave and found it looking at something. The something could wait. She needed to show the prey its place! With a snarl, the white furred wolf launches herself at Asta, her maw wide as she sought to show this prey what it meant to cross a wolf!
Elaina tackles Asta, sending her to the ground as fangs like daggers sink into the place between her neck and shoulder, tearing and crushing as the pair fell. Claws like razors rip at Asta's chest and belly, leaving bleeding gashes in their wake.
Then all is still.
Elaina stands over the witch, bloody fangs bared as her breath comes out in short angry bursts. The fur on her paws and muzzle are stained dark with Asta's blood. The wolf could finish it. She could kill the prey, but then it wouldn't know fear. It wouldn't know to never cross the wolf again. Sapphire blue eyes, glowing with a baleful light, bore into icy blue ones. The wolf was searching for something.
She was searching for fear.
Consciousness is fast fading , but Asta's face is a cold mask. Her voice, chill chimes.
"Look up," the Witch rasps, "and face them."
A pale hand points at the mirror before falling limply to the ground.
The wolf looks up, and vanishes.
In its place is a young, pale skinned girl on her hands and knees over Asta. Blood-red markings cover her shoulders, back and the top of her white fur covered tail. Her long hair is white like snow. Wolf's ears poke out of the hair, the tips just passing the top of her head. Blood covers her hands, feet, and mouth. Her sapphire eyes look back down from the scene playing out, and fill with horror as she sees what she had done.
Asta was bleeding, and it was all her fault.
The nude girl falls back, sitting on Asta's legs as she slowly holds her hands up to her face and tears begin to fall. She'd hurt them. The very thing she'd tried so hard to prevent from happening had come to pass, and it was her hands stained with her friend's blood. The girl screams as what she had done fully sinks in. She sobs over her friend, the girl, even young than herself, that had tried to help her despite her own foolishness.
The girl looked up once more and saw the chanting figures. They could help! They had to help if she was going to save Asta. Her hands and feet slip as she moves to where she could drag Asta to them, making no attempt to protect her modesty.
"Please," she cries out in Elaina's voice to the figures in the mirror as she drags Asta to them, "Please help her! She's m-- Sh-- She's m-my friend. Please, I don't care what happens to me! Help her! Save her!"
In desperation she reaches out to the figures, her hand trying to go through the mirror.
Elaina lets out a cry as she's doused by a jet of frigidly cold water that sends her tumbling back. It washes the blood from her, but leaves her shivering from the chill. She crawls her way back up and pounds the mirror with one hand while the other helps to hold her up.
"Please! Help her," she screams at them as she tries again to catch their attention.
Elaina manages not to get blown back this time, but what little composure she had is broken as she curls up in front of the mirror and cries, begging for someone, anyone, to help between her sobs. Even after Jhod channels the divine power of Erastil into healing their wounds, Elaina continues to cry.
"I don't know what they want from me. I don't know what they are saying! H-how am I supposed to do this," she sobs.
Seraph wasn't one to stand idle and despite the mad rush of activities moves to aid her friends in their hour of need. However her face was pale, almost like she was going to be sick as the binding covenant strained at her failure to protect Asta, at all.
Noticing the markings on Elaina's back again she scrutinizes them more closely. She sets her hands on Elaina's shoulders lightly to make the nude woman hold still, a warm rush flooding through her as she healed her companion as well.
"Be calm, breath. Now. What are those markings on your back from Elaina?" Her eyes flashes as insight flooded into her...
Elaina just curls up tighter at Seraph's touch. Like a cornered pup too afraid to fight back.
"Please, leave me," she begs, "I don't want to hurt you too."
The markings are not particularly significant beyond being another sign of her fiendish heritage. What is strange is the lack of any kind of runes with in the ulfen (celtic) knotwork. They would, however, be a good way to identify any impostors given that she's only shown these twice in all of the time you've seen her.
She doesn't let Elaina shrink, to Elaina's surprise Seraph's grip on her shoulders tighten. "Not going to happen. I won't let you go unless you kill me." A bitter chuckle comes from Seraphs throat as she adds. "Besides a wolf bite doesn't even compare to an ogre. So find your fierce determination and think. You are not chumping out now."
"I almost killed her," Elaina whispers, "I almost killed Asta. I don't know what to do. I don't know what they want. What am I supposed to do?"
She shivers, still soaked from her attempts to help Asta.
"Someone translate what they're saying... singing for me," Asta rasps. "And get off my legs. Please. You smell like wet dog and I'm not sure this temple has laundry service in yet."
Torod brings a blanket and drapes it across Elaina. "I don't want you to kill me either, but I am going nowhere."[/b]
Torod translates the phrase from Sylvan.
"We sit and we slumber, and wake with the breeze,
And join hands and dance away under the trees,
By day we are many, tonight we are none,
Our legs cannot carry, yet with horses we run.
What are we?".
Strawberry risks the water and cold to pad up to Elaina and lean against her. Strawberry vibrates with a low growl/purr that helps to add her warmth to Elaina.
"Shadows," Asta slurs as she weakly sits up. "Is it shadows? I think... Ugh."
"I'll give it a try." Torod relays Asta's guess in Sylvan to the prancing elves of Ashava.
Elaina can't help but give a watery chuckle at Asta's comment.
"S-sorry," she apologizes as she sits there, still dripping wet from the water. She nods to Torod as he drapes the blanket over her and smiles at Strawberry as she curls up against her back and purrs.
"I'm sorry," she apologizes again, "and thank you," she adds, looking to the others.
"Stop apologizing, you goose," Asta says while she waggles a hand at Elaina, "and help me up."
The Witch shows no apprehension at all about offering her hand to her friend, only annoyance at being on the ground.
"What do you mean?" she asks of Jhod while she is getting to her feet one way or another. "What is this supposed to be?"