"Is something the matter? You've seemed a little put out, since the exorcism," Oleth commented. Sulos could not answer immediately.
"... It's your sleep spells," he revealed from across the cage, and paused again.
"Yes?"
"They're ... they're very irritating." He hesitated again. "I get enough blanks in my memory each month just from the full moon, without you strolling in and slapping down another at the least appropriate moment," he added. "I mean, it's bad enough being a lab animal without being treated like one!"
Oleth looked like he'd been slapped.
"Oh," he said. "I'm very sorry, Mr. X... I'd never considered it in that light..."
Each man thought inwardly for the next few minutes.
"I'd only meant to spare you suffering," the priest apologized again.
"I'd rather suffer," Sulos nearly hissed darkly, not moving. "I'd rather know I'm alive, I'd rather know I'm still human, or still shaped like one, at least," he finished.
"My most sincere apologies," Oleth offered with a bow. "It was boorish of me to disregard your perspective."
"Just ... please ... don't do it anymore. I want to be human for as long as I can."
"I -- I'll try... I'm sorry; my first impulse is to end pain," the healer explained, still embarassed.
"I understand."
"I'm very glad, Mr. X -- in that spirit, would you consent to a non-instrusive, non-magical experiment?" Oleth asked.
"What's that?" Sulos blinked.
"I took your orihalcon idea and ran with it," the priest admitted, lifting a flat square box from the table. "But I'm afraid you'll have to put it on yourself..." He displayed the contents to Sulos.
A single, plain necklet of orihalcon rested in the velvet-lined case. It was a very simple circle of thick round wire, too thick to break or damage, but still not too heavy for a human. The clasp was flush with the surface of the metal, so compact as to resemble a puzzle lock; there were no protrusions to catch and snag, and no means to unfasten the piece without opposable thumbs.
"... I don't want you to feel 'collared,'" Oleth finished, still a little shamefaced.
"How -- how did you -- " Sulos gasped inarticulately.
"Well, as a healer-priest, I have enough experience, inventions and breakthroughs behind me to garner substantial funding from a number of sources," his host smiled. "Mostly it goes toward my teaching; but when I told them -- in utmost confidentiality -- that I really did have a live werewolf to work with, they just jumped right out of their chairs."
Sulos' blind elation turned to blind terror. "Oh gods, you're not going to bring them here!?"
"No, no; I told them, they don't get to meet you until you're cured -- you have no objections, I hope?"
"Umm..." Sulos had not considered the repercussions of success. Of course Oleth would have to present proof of his cure to the research community and his financiers -- but how many of them would recognize him? How many would remember him?
Well, it's been nearly six years...
"... No, but ... can we keep my identity secret, still?" he requested.
"I don't see why not," Oleth answered as Diran unlocked the cage to pass the box through. "Would you care to try it on, now?"
"But the full moon's not until tomorrow -- "
"Yes, I know. But if it doesn't fit comfortably, there's still time to remedy that," the priest pointed out. "It's very important that it fits comfortably."
Sulos lifted the necklet from the box. It was slightly lighter than he expected -- perhaps hollow -- finely polished, and warm from the presence of strong magic users.
If this works, he pondered. ... If this works, will I have to wear it continually, or just once a month? If it works, I'll never do magic again ... not that I've been doing much. I'm already ruined...
He raised it to his neck, and as the clasp clicked home, he felt something -- turn off -- inside himself. It was far inside, the sort of thing he'd never noticed until it was snuffed out like a candle.
"Ohh..." he said.
"What is it? Is the fit -- is it all right?"
"Yes, it's very comfortable," Sulos answered, very absently. "It's just that ... something's turned off," he explained.
"Can you tell what it is?" Oleth asked.
"No -- it's too far in. It's like... It's almost like I'm dreaming." He began to touch his own face, as if to be sure he was still awake. "Okay... Can we leave it on? It's going to ... take some getting used to..." he trailed off, already falling into a light investigative trance.
"I think that's for the best," Oleth murmured, studying him closely. "All we have to do now is wait."
Oleth waited. He wrote of his findings, his conclusions, his hopes, and all that he'd read from Sulos' ledger. Diran busied himself with a variety of routines, cleaning, bringing meals at the appropriate hours, and preparing the laboratory for the monthly event.
Sulos continued to meditate, varying from light to mid-level trance, where he could better examine the effect the orihalcon had on him -- but it took time. He ate only when he was prompted, without breaking trance. Both men paused and looked up when he finally spoke.
"Okay," he said. "I'm still not sure what it's doing exactly, but I think I'm getting used to it." He glanced up at the meager, bluish secondhand light from the ventilation windows, and sighed. "We'll see if it works soon enough."
He was right; he had spent nearly twenty-four hours exploring the necklet's effects.. Already Oleth could see the claustrophobic anxiety of last month descending on him, as well as the tension of the experiment, which fairly filled the room. Sulos began to pace again, not speaking, until the cage grew too small for him to bear, and once more he took a seat in the center of the cage and tried to even his breathing.
Diran only watched. Outside, night had fallen.
Sulos' eyes unfocused and suddenly he seemed to be attempting meditation again. His hand flew to the smooth orihalcon collar.
"I don't think -- " he stammered " -- oh shit -- " and he fell forward on knees and elbows, doubling around his midsection with a cry of pain as the demon asserted itself. His face and teeth grew pointed while his limbs changed and lengthened, and black fur sprouted down his spine and over the rest of his skin, exactly as Oleth had observed the previous month.
This time, however, something was obviously wrong. This time the changed limbs had staring bones instead of rounded muscle, and the formerly thick and shining pelt was now dull and mangy with malnutrition. The beast in full possession rose unsteadily to its feet -- a black timber wolf the size of a man, collared with orihalcon and hazardously emaciated. It was starving.
"Oh gods," Diran muttered. "That's not right!"
Oleth swore by the holiest thing he could think of. "No effect," he gasped. "None at all! It only negated his own magic -- "
"I thought the demon did that," Diran commented quietly, and a sudden insight fired off in the back of the healer-priest's head. He glanced sharply at Diran, then back at the cage.
"No, it must -- it must feed off his magic," he realized. "Storing it up for the monthly transformation -- and now that we've cut it off with orihalcon -- "
" -- It's using the energy of his own body," Diran finished, having caught on only a beat later.
"Foooood," the beast moaned, and began to snuffle around the cell for anything edible. "Hungry, hungry," it grunted. On reaching the pillows it paused, pounced suddenly on the first one and began trying to tear it to shreds.
"It's the down in the pillows ... he must think there's a bird in there," Diran concluded.
"The reversion is going to kill him," Oleth said, and neither of them spoke for quite a while.
The beast rooted eyes-deep in the burst pillow, spilling feathers across the floor of the cage before deciding the cushion contained nothing but feathers.
"Foooooood," it howled again, and began to try its luck with the other pillows. Oleth and Diran watched with silent frustration. Feathers went everywhere, and when it ran out of pillows to kill, it attempted to eat the down. A few hours later it lay in the center of the cage, whimpering, salivating, and gnawing on the collar of Sulos' shirt from time to time. The two observers jumped as it howled quite plaintively for food again.
"I have an idea," Oleth began quietly as the werewolf whined. "But we'll have to move quickly to pull it off, because he's not going to get any less hungry."
"What do you have in mind?"
"At some point -- before the reversion or during it -- his metabolism is going to crash. He'll either lose consciousness or have a heart attack, and that's when I've got to get in there and remove the collar," he proposed.
The beast gave one long last squeaky whine, and rose on shaking legs. The last human influence on it was gone, replaced by feral desperation.
"Meat," it rasped, spit drizzling from its jowls. It faced the men at the front of the room, stepped back once, and rammed the front of the cage.
The humans nearly jumped out of their skin. There was a considerable dent in the silver at the front of the cage. The werewolf backpedaled with the rebound, pawing at its burnt face and shaking its head, but hunger drove it forward once more. The dent in the cage front grew larger.
"Meeat," the creature panted during a pause in the assault. Its fur was dropping off in bits and clumps from starvation. It backed away as if in thought, and began repeatedly ramming the door of the cage.
Diran began a spell when the door began to warp, and held it ready. "D'you think he'll make it?" he asked.
"No," Oleth said. "The more he burns himself on the cage, the further it weakens him -- and his time's almost up, anyway. This is really going to be touch and go."
Maddened by the smell of live prey and the impending reversion, the desperate beast shot forward again and wedged its muzzle in the new gap between the cage door and the cage wall, spraying saliva as it snapped at them. The healer-priest gasped and fell back a step, and it continued to drive itself face-first into the opening. It was past speech, now.
"Shall I?" Diran offered, boosting his spell. The smell of charred fur and flesh began to fill the room from the werewolf's extended contact with the cage, and the smell of ozone from Diran's restrained Giga-Bolt.
"No, wait! It's almost over!" Oleth insisted. A few tense heartbeats later, the beast backed out of the hole it had made, rubbing its burnt face against its forearm. Its pelt began to fall away faster; underneath, it was down to skin and bones. The creature flung its hair away with a shake, and moaned as the reversion began. It was always somewhat less taxing than the initial transformation, but this time there was absolutely nothing left. The tail vanished almost immediately. Limbs dwindled and withered, the rib cage pulled back and contracted, and the skull returned to its original shape as he slumped among the feathers in the center of the cage.
Still in transition, the subject resembled a somewhat lupine human when he threw his face up and gave a sharp, painful cry.
"Hold your spell," Oleth commanded his aide, getting out the key to the cage. With a hand on his chest, Sulos gave a second, more desperate cry, and collapsed on his face. "Hold it, hold it -- " Rapidly, the healer let himself into the cage, turned the werewolf on his back and flung off the collar. Then he took Diran's wrists and pressed his hands against the prominent breastbone. "Now!!"
Diran unleashed his Giga-Bolt directly into Sulos' chest.