Despite the animal outweighing me considerably still, I managed to land on it, clung to its back. It rolled, slashed at me with all fours. Whilst I ignored the pain of its defensive fury, my talons tore and sought purchase in its flesh. It roared again as I gnashed at its throat, a sound that became strangled as I bit deeper, seeking its life force as we tumbled and fought in the darkness. Each savaging the other, dirt and stones spewed everywhere about the hillside. As I suddenly felt a warm gush, the cat thrashed, its growls gradually choking off liquidly as it stilled and gave a last spasm, claws releasing from my back and shoulders.
I swallowed the warm salty fluid flooding my throat, lapped the rest, ripped further at the throat, seeking more; relishing the victory as, even in beast form and through intense pain, I shuddered in near-orgasmic delight. However, it was not enow. The hunger remained, though I sought to sate it further by slashing into the warm belly of the sabrecat, spilling its entrails and consuming its heart in a few crude bites. Instinctively, I knew this was what I craved – and yet not.
My beast mind turned toward the two mauled corpses that lay in the back of the shallow cave somewhere above, even as my lupine body led me thence. Almost all humanity suppressed, I tore at the woman and then the man, shredding remnants of clothing, ripping apart ribs to get at the cold hearts within, treating them both as had I their killer moments before.
I awoke to a cold, weak sun already drying the dirt-encrusted blood all over my naked frame; pebbles, bones, and other detritus clung to me as I frantically clawed at my eyes, trying to relieve my near-blindness and orient myself as to where – and what – I was. The pain was still there, through greatly diminished. I lay for the nonce, both relishing it and wishing it away.
Appalled at where (and how) I found myself, I did not want to believe what my blurry eyes and memory told me. I was a werewolf, but I had not contemplated all that meant. Must I actually eat humanoids – or their hearts, in particular? The pain had not been mitigated until I had done that very thing; only now did I feel almost good, the best – aside from my filthy condition – since I had partaken of Aela’s blood. Thus, was I now obliged to rely upon chance encounters with the corpses of human-kin killed by predators? That seemed an accident unlikely to be relied upon for sustenance. Regardless, I somehow knew even that would not be enow, yet I still refused to acknowledge the alternative.
Somehow, as Azura’s star gave way to daylight, I made my way back to our tent whence Vilja and Lydia awaited me in slumber. Myriad thoughts assailed me, almost keeping my mind from vigilance against predators or, perhaps worse, humans whom may espy me and wonder at my naked and bloodied condition, and seek to take advantage. I do not remember how I managed to bathe in the frigid stream nearby and crawl, shivering, into my sleeping fur without disturbing either of my companions.
Vilja lay in her own bedroll, snoring softly, a modest pale breast with its ever-erect nipple poking saucily at me through her almost sheer white nightgown. The sight instantly touched off another kind of hunger in me, but I could not satisfy it just now. Instead, I pretended to awake with them a short time later, wondering how long I would have to keep up this deception.
The second night was worse, only better.
IV Questions
Four nights ago…
In our camp outside Fort Amol, my craving undeniable, I fidgeted the early night away, nervously rising from my bedroll in the tent to pace and dawdle outside by the campfire, and back again. Vilja, Lydia, and I had cleared the stronghold of its evil conjurors earlier that day, and I had only to await my companions going to sleep before I could scavenge the remains. I was partly sickened, partly seething with anticipation; I squirmed in my bedroll, unable to assuage the yearning. Although I felt it most acutely in my innards, my female parts were inflamed as well, my nipples swollen and over-sensitive, sex moist and tender even though I knew it had little to do with sex. Furthermore, despite my keen awareness of my two comrades, I would acquire no solace from either (or even both) that way.
In any case, I was almost certain that Lydia was not inclined toward other females, and as for Vilja, I was unsure; I suspected she would be receptive, eventually, but I had yet to build adequate trust between us to broach the subject. I was assisting her as she sought the whereabouts of a stolen, purportedly magical, flute, as well as something to do with investigating the mysterious contents of a magic bottle that I had helped her recover but a few days ago, a short time after meeting her.
I decided the time was right to slip outside and, nude, make my way carefully in the dark away from the tethered horses and into the night. I willed the shapechange, and in heartbeats, I was a beast. The rest I do not care to remember, other than it was still not enow; the bodies were cold, unfulfilling.
Thus, I returned, my savagery unmitigated – perchance even worsened out of frustration –managing again (or so I thought) to remain undetected as I slid, shaking with cold and fury, back inside my bedroll.
“Where do you go at night?” Vilja asked me as she distributed bread, ale, and goat cheese later that morning.
I sensed Lydia studying me surreptitiously as she ate; doubtless, she wanted to pose the same question but dared not, as I was her thane.
“To the bushes.” It was partially true, to void the indigestible remains of my meals from either end.
“For so many turns of the ’glass?”
“Do you lie awake timing me with an hourglass?” I demanded, suddenly angry. “What do you care how long I spend behind the bushes?” I stood, hurling the remains of my unwanted breakfast – it turned my stomach anyway – into the campfire. “Strike the camp – we’re leaving now!”
“I’m sorry I upset you – or questioned you,” Vilja apologised a little later as we rode up the Throat of the World to High Hrothgar. Fine snow swirled about us in a bitter wind, frosting her fur mantle, long eyelashes, and the blonde hair not quite tucked inside. Her beautiful Nordic features displayed anxiety. “It’s just that I worry about you. I don’t want to see anything happen to you.”
I was unsure whether to be flattered or even angrier.
“I’ll not speak of it any more, if you wish.”
“I wish,” I snapped, heeling my mount away from her. That was the first time the thought of how she might taste – her heart, that is – prickled in my mind, which distressed me and caused me to express my anxiety for my travel mates as even more anger, contrarily directed towards the very objects of my concern.
The purported 7,000 steps up the peak to the abode of the Greybeards was perhaps decidedly less on horseback – but, being no pilgrim, I had no compunction about ‘cheating’, as one or two of the locals around Ivarstead grumbled when they saw that we intended to ride up to investigate my summons for supposedly being ‘Dragonborn’.
I did not yet know what that meant, beyond a few myths about supposedly being of ‘dragon blood’ (surely not in a literal sense) and able to absorb dragon souls and to Shout, in their ancient language, using Words of Power. Certainly, I had already slain several dragons, and I had sensed something each time, as their skin and flesh melted away in a fiery tumult about me that left aught but a few scales, bones, and myself untouched. Untouched, that is, aside from the feeling of some kind of power and knowledge burgeoning inside me that I sensed had yet to be unlocked fully.
Thus, this trek up the Throat of the World. I had already learned a few Words – one being Fus, which staggered opponents – but, again, I knew that I had but scraped a patina of rust from the sword, as it were. I would learn more from the Greybeards, and they would set me on yet another series of quests – but I digress.
V High and Low Places
A few nights ago…
I return to my tale, relating what betided over the next few nights of my hunger.
Having ridden up the 7,000 steps in somewhat more than one turn of the ’glass, I spent two agonising nights with the Greybeards, learning what they were willing to teach me. Though the descent took a little less time than the climb, it was already well dark, and so we took separate rooms in Ivarstead at the Vilemyr Inn, myself in one, Vilja and Lydia in another.
While Lydia is my housecarl – my being Thane of Whiterun – I had assigned her to watch over Vilja, to which she reluctantly agreed some days ago. Thus, it was relatively easy for me to slip out into the night.
I was so restless I felt ill; my head twice its size, so that it surely must burst my helmet – which made it doubly a relief when I was able to shed all my armour other gear and stash it some distance away, including my smallclothes, lest they be shredded upon my transformation anyway. I further suffered from starvation, as I could not eat real food, and I am certain that the Greybeards had known something was amiss, if not precisely what. Lydia and Vilja were doubtless aware of my… distress, so much so that they avoided me; we had spoken hardly a word on the way back down the mountain. Even so, throughout my forced confinement, due to my extreme discomfort I had yet been unable to think of anything beyond my hunger – when I was not in lessons with the Greybeards, at least.
Happily, bandits – not to mention necromancers, witches, cultists, and myriad other miscreants – are liberally strewn about Skyrim. I had also forgotten that there was a civil war seething athwart the land; thus, fresh corpses were almost literally at every crossroads. Even so, I realised that I was once again fortunate to come across a recent battlefield of the war between the Imperial Legion and the rebel Stormcloaks. I had ample bodies to feed upon, and yet this night I was to come to the realisation that scavenging would not suffice.
By instinct, I made my way back through the benighted forest toward Ivarstead, having consumed enow to make up for the last few days of deprivation. Despite the surfeit – or perhaps because of it – I still felt sick and unfulfilled. Nonetheless, one animal hunger being mostly assuaged and removed from that part of my mind, I was seriously contemplating taking Elda, the Vilemyr whore, up on her unsubtle offer upon my return – “I’ll tire you out for only five septims!” – when my thoughts were interrupted by cries of “Die, monster!” It would seem I had loped easily into a bandit camp. Suddenly assailed on all sides, instinct took over once again.
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