"Ne-e-early done," Oleth murmured absently from the floor of the cage, where he'd spent the last hour drawing out and setting up a fantastically elaborate exorcism ward. Sulos marveled at its precision and ingenuity.
"What's this lesser mandala for?" he asked.
"I'll show you -- in just a minute," Oleth added, quickly arranging the requisite talismans, spellstones, gems and rare earth in their places on the diagram. He knelt back to double-check his work, dusted off his hands, and called for his assistant. "Diran -- the mouse, please."
In that moment, with the priest kneeling on the floor of his cell and the aide fetching from the corner of the room, Sulos experienced a sudden and disturbing insight:
Their guard is down. I could take them both out and escape, now. He clapped a hand to his head in dismay. What am I thinking!?! I'm here to find a cure; if I leave now, I'll be a werewolf forever! What's gotten into me?
It can't ... it can't be the demon speaking... He glanced down at the design on the stone floor, and its lunar references reminded him that a new moon was at hand. Then the unsettling impulse subsided entirely, and Oleth was placing a large glass bowl in the secondary mandala. It contained a live mouse.
"This," he began proudly, "is where I hope to contain the dormant demon, since zoanthropic demons seem to have a strange and almost universal aversion to the astral plane..."
"You only forgot one thing," Sulos pointed out. "Lycanthropy is spread like rabies, through bodily fluids -- I'd have to bite the mouse."
"If it was a full moon, yes -- "
"No, it works any day of the month," Sulos corrected him mildly. "I could bite you right now, but human teeth aren't really sharp enough."
Oleth and Diran froze in their tracks, suddenly sobered.
"You've seen evidence of this?" the priest asked quietly, after sharing a glance with Diran. Sulos nodded.
"I'll write it out for you," he offered, getting to his feet. "Where do I sit?"
"Oh, just in the center there," Oleth gestured, suddenly remembering his business. "Let me just get out of the way -- " He left the cage and locked it behind him as Sulos tried to settle himself in the center of the ward without marring it. "Is everything ready, Diran?"
"Yes."
"Excellent..." The healer-priest raised a hand, and light spells flickered on in each corner of the vault, until it was brighter than Sulos had ever seen it. "Now, if you'll just relax," he addressed the werewolf "all you have to do is sit still. This might take a while." Diran was already seated rather informally on the table, observing closely.
Sulos folded his legs in and sank into a meditative state as the chanting began, letting his awareness fall in on itself as the spell progressed. It was holy magic -- very old -- one of the most ancient and basic spells of containment taught to priests in training. The familiar rhythm regressed to the borders of his consciousness as he sought innerspace.
He knew the demon would be there, outside the range of his conscious mind. It was sleeping, but already disturbed by the magic happening outside.
I hope you've packed your things, he taunted it quietly. You've rather overstayed your welcome, haven't you...
The demon grumbled and coiled fitfully, but did not regard him. It never did; he was just a noise in the meat, a flea in a mattress. Well, tonight he would send it on its way. Oleth had progressed from the spell of containment to the exorcism proper, and Sulos felt greatly emboldened -- the demon was awake, and anxious. Very distantly, he could feel his body changing...
He darted inwards, looking to break the thing's monopoly on his powers, and knocked it off balance. It shrieked shock and confusion at him, and he took hold of it with fierce zeal.
Now I've got you! Triumph sizzled through him in every color. You took my life and now I'll break you, I'll break you -- He tightened his grip, meaning every word, and the demon squealed and whined pain, fear, disbelief. And then --
-- a tearing --
-- a pain beyond pain --
Something wrenched him from his very center and flung him against a wall of darkness, where there was floating...
He came awake slowly, still weightless and ringing with shock. Slowly he realized he was outside the cage ... it was beneath him. Inside, Oleth was bent over his sprawled body trying to revive it, and Diran was on his feet, watching tensely. Two of the light spells had gone out, and a faint black haze lay across the room at knee height. All that remained of the mouse was a fine red paste coating the inside of the bowl.
"He's breathing," he heard Oleth say, somewhat faintly. "I don't quite know what's wrong with -- oh my god -- "
Sulos could see Diran react and Oleth answer him, but he heard none of the exchange as he drifted very slowly down beside the cage. He felt like a worn dishrag; weary, sick, and suddenly profoundly bitter.
The wrong spirit, he muttered at the healers. You've exorcised the wrong spirit... It was difficult to think more through the stifling lethargy; it began to feel like an effort to watch, as he came to rest a few feet from his body. Oleth looked tense; he seemed to have realized what had gone wrong. Sulos watched him appeal to Diran, who looked around quickly and began rearranging the spell drawn on the floor with more than his usual speed.
Wonder if I'm dying ... what if I'm already dead... Sulos mused, just before black dreamlessness overtook him, and all as lost from view in the dark.
He woke again, slightly annoyed by the frequency of the unannounced periods of unconsciousness, and it took him a while to realize that his disembodiment had been rectified. He sighed with overwhelming relief, and settled himself deeper within his body. Everything felt ... very bright. He didn't mind, but it made him curious. Distantly, he could hear Oleth writing again.
He tried to sit up, and when he could only move his head a few degrees from the side, Sulos felt a vague panic bloom -- he couldn't move. It was worse than silver poisoning.
"He moved!" Diran said quickly, and the writing stopped.
"X, are you awake?" he heard the healer address him by his informal pseudonym. "Can you hear me?"
Sulos tried a smaller muscle group, and managed to get his eyes open. He was not inside the cage -- it seemed he was lying on the table at the front of the room. Oleth, bending over him, relaxed visibly.
"Oh, good," he said. "I don't want you to be alarmed; you're just in astral shock. There's nothing wrong with your body, you'll be fine in a few days. Something went wrong with the exorcism -- can you speak?"
Sulos pried his jaws apart.
"Not ... easy," he whispered, with still more effort than he expected.
"Don't get frustrated; it will get easier in a little while. I'm afraid we had to flood you with white magic to stabilize you and put the demon back to sleep... Were you meditating during the exorcism?"
"... Yes..."
Oleth sighed a pained little sigh. "Damn... Well, you're in no shape for debriefing, now -- let's hope you find it easier to speak when you wake up." And another sleep spell carried Sulos back into the darkness.
"Would you please not do that?" he asked loudly the moment he regained consciousness, and heard Diran jump, then cross the room to him.
"Are you feeling better?"
"I feel fine; I just can't move," Sulos answered wearily, and tried to sit up on his elbows. "Where's Oleth?" It took less effort to move than last time, but still considerably more than it should have taken.
"He's at home right now, but he'll be back shortly," Diran told him quietly. "Perhaps you'd like to go back to bed?"
"Yes. Please. Better than a table," Sulos answered, finally abandoning his attempts to sit up. "Those sleep spells of his are beginning to get tiresome." Diran scooped him off the table, rather easily considering they were nearly the same size, and before Sulos had time to get dizzy he was bundled back into his soft nest of pillows.
Oleth sat crosslegged in the center of the cage for the debriefing.
"How far did you go into trance?" he asked over folded hands.
"All the way," Sulos responded, finally comfortable. Oleth looked surprised only momentarily; Sulos had been the most advanced priest of his generation, after all.
"Did you have a specific goal in mind? What were you doing when the spell took effect?" he questioned.
"No, it was ... force of habit, more than anything, I suspect," Sulos admitted with a sigh. "I had no plan; I just thought things might go more easily without my conscious mind making interference. I went far enough... I saw the demon at my center," he finished.
"You what? You saw it? Please, explain!" Oleth urged.
"It was dormant. There wasn't a whole lot to see," Sulos confessed. "The hold magic was definitely bothering it, thought -- I didn't attack it until it woke up on its own, during the second spell -- "
"You attacked it?" the priest nearly shouted. Sulos nodded.
"It was pure impulse," he explained. "I could finally see where it was attached to my lifeforce, and I didn't want to waste the opportunity."
"You attacked it. Well, that explains everything," Oleth muttered, sounding very old. "Its guard would have been up. Yours ... would have been down," he clarified.
Sulos grimaced. It was another day and a half before he could walk again.
Professional werewolf hunters don't wait for bounties to be posted. They don't even bother to wait for the full moon. They inspect the less reputable, crowded, and poorly lit areas of a town, keeping a close watch on any drifters or vagrants who have turned up since the last full moon. They have numerous ways of detecting a latent werewolf; the simplest of these is to approach a suspect from behind with great stealth, and press a wet silver piece against the side of his neck. This will raise a coin-sized blister on the neck of a true werewolf.
It's no secret to us who the real monsters are.