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"writing": "[b][u][center]The Bonds of Need\nChapter 7\nFor a-lycotonum\nBy Draconicon[/center][/u][/b]\n \n \n \n \n \n\n\n\nThe streets of Egorian were as clean as Absalom's had been filthy. It was not to say that the island city had been a dirty, dangerous place – at least, if you knew where to go – but it had contained its messier places. There were alleys that you learned to ignore, places that you automatically avoided, neighborhoods that you never entered after dark. Never consciously, just always knowing what was and wasn’t safe for you and yours.\n\nIn Egorian, there was nothing of the sort. While Vitus’s danger senses were going crazy thinking about the Hellknights and the patrols of other bound soldiers in service to the higher-ups of the city, there was nothing to worry about in the various alleys that he, Neena, and Shereeza passed by. Not once did he have the worry of a knife waiting to stab him in the back or some thief high off his mind on some quasi-legal substance waiting to do some unspeakable thing. In fact, other than the reasonably surety that he’d be considered a fugitive and someone to arrest on sight, he felt safer than he had felt his entire life.\n\nAnd that concerned him.\n\n“Is it always like this?” he muttered under his breath.\n\n“Like what?” Neena asked, the dark-skinned human rolling her eyes. “Safer?”\n\n“Quieter. Deader.”\n\n“It’s the price that you pay when you want things to get done right.”\n\n“You call this right?” he muttered under his breath.\n\nShe fixed him with a glare, but neither of them could afford to take their eyes off the third member of their party for long. Shereeza had already pulled a few feet ahead of them and Vitus was forced to pull her back with a hand on her shoulder. She whipped her head around, starting to grow a muzzle under her hood –\n\n“No. Control yourself,” he muttered.\n\nThe black-furred muzzle sucked itself back under the cloth, and the shaded elf under it nodded in understanding, temporary though it was.\n\nHe bit back a sigh of frustration as Shereeza fell in step just ahead of them again. Their outfits weren’t great for disguises, but here in Egorian, the only thing that they really had that fit in were the hooded robes that some of the merchants wore. They weren’t comfortable, and they were hardly the sort of thing that invited someone to talk to them freely, but at the very least, they were hooded and kept the other marks of their…inhuman nature…from being so obviously visible.\n\nOf course, being dark, they weren’t precisely comfortable. The heat of the desert around the city wasn’t kept at bay by the lakefront, merely moderated by it, and he still felt that warmth like a constant companion in the dyed cloth. Sweat droplets ran down his chest, stained his pits, and sucked themselves into the most inconvenient places. More than that, he could feel some of it soaking around the corners of his crotch, soaking his thighs, his balls, and his sheath.\n\nThat was the hardest part to deal with; he kept feeling the constant stimulation down there, the way that his thighs bumped his balls, the way that his barely-hidden tail kept wanting to come out of the illusion and feel more comfortable in the open, and most of all, the way that his cock kept trying to rise out of his sheath. There was no illusion that could completely hide that, nor could he stop himself from feeling the way that ground against the inside of his robe. Oh, that was more than a little distracting, more than a little.\n\nBut he had to ignore it. The three of them, black-robed and hooded, were the only ones able to wander around the city. Neena was an unknown, and Shereeza was marked as a slave in her illusion, someone that wouldn’t be questioned with her owner around, and so far…\n\nWell, so far, Vitus was known more for his Hellhound form than his human one, so he should be safe. For now.\n\n“Do you smell anything?” he muttered.\n\n“I smell…something, Master, but…it’s faint.”\n\n“Try and follow it.”\n\n“I am, but…”\n\nHe gritted his teeth. It was hard, he knew. They’d discussed how difficult it would be even for a full-blooded Hellhound to track someone through the city with a fresh scent, let alone the faint stuff that they still had of Robin. He could barely remember her scent, and he’d been a Hellhound around her almost the entire time he’d known her. Shereeza had only just started getting used to being a Hellhound over the past few days.\n\nHe knew that, and it was still almost impossible to completely contain his frustration on the matter.\n\n[i]Try,[/i] he told himself. [i]Try to be better than a dog.[/i]\n\nHis Hellhound half was of similar mixed opinions. On the one hand, it wanted Shereeza to do what was needed for the pack. On the other hand, it was all too aware of the difficulties that she faced, and it wanted to stand up for her.\n\nIt resulted in a problem for both halves of the sorcerer, and he grumbled as he walked through the streets behind his turned female. Neena followed behind him, brushing her hair out of her face and grumbling under her breath.\n\n“I don’t see why I had to come along,” she grunted. “I’m not exactly the one with a sharp nose here.”\n\n“You’re also one of the few people that the Hellknights don’t know about,” Vitus muttered under his breath. “And your master said that you had to help us, so you’re going to fucking help us. One way or another, we’re getting her back.”\n\n“You could make this much easier just by going back to Absalom. Why do you have to do this the hard way?”\n\n“Because it’s the right way.”\n\n“It’s going to get you killed. And me in trouble.”\n\n“Only if we do it wrong.”\n\nShereeza turned down an alley. He followed her, only to sigh as they reached a dead end. He left her to sniff at the corner, knowing that it was just barely possible that this was a secret entrance to some dungeon, but it was incredibly unlikely. Incredibly.\n\nNeena rolled her eyes, leaning against the side of the stone building that rested on one side of the alley. The empty store on the other – abandoned due to the setting sun, probably closed until the next day – was more clay-based, softer against his back as he leaned back and got comfortable.\n\nIt was hard to look at her and not feel some degree of pity. Knowing what she was and who she served, he could only imagine the sort of lies that Brundir had told her, or the tricks that the other man had pulled. The aasimar knew how to play the game of lies and truths, how to make offers that no sane person could refuse, and most of all, he knew how to dangle just enough affection in front of someone to make them believe that they were special. Vitus remembered that last one incredibly keenly; even if it had turned out to be less of a lie than he thought, he remembered all too well the times that his mind had been blasted out of his skull for the sake of the aasimar’s lusts and wants. There was no love that could countenance that sort of treatment.\n\nAnd he had been one of the lucky ones. He knew that there were countless other servants of the aasimar that were in far worse straits than him. Shaking his head, he slowly looked toward the sky, his hands in the pockets of his robe.\n\n“So…what’d he put in you?” he asked.\n\n“…What do you mean?”\n\n“You know what I mean,” Vitus said, shaking his head. “What kind of outsider did he put in you? What’s giving you power? What are you slowly turning into?”\n\nNeena didn’t immediately answer. He could hear-see-smell her shifting around, the ‘space’ that her body took up filling in a different sort of awareness for his canine side. The smell in particular was surprisingly informative; all the fucking and slow-shifting to a greater canine version of himself had probably made his nose more sensitive. The sweat pouring off her created a sort of vision in his mind every time that he breathed the scent in, and he could feel it moving around as she shuffled about in annoyance.\n\n“…Raptor,” she muttered. “He put a…dinosaur spirit in me.”\n\n“…Could be worse,” Vitus admitted, crossing his arms. “It could have been some kind of slime. The way that he experiments, I’m a little surprised that he didn’t try and put something in me to match the Hellhound.”\n\n“Why would he –”\n\n“Why would he put yours in you?”\n\n“…I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”\n\n“You already know what I’m going to say,” Vitus sighed, shaking his head. “He wants control. He likes devotion, but you know what he’s like. If he doesn’t get what he wants from you, if he thinks that you’re doing something that you shouldn’t be, he gets irritated. He…doesn’t care as much after that. If you aren’t smart enough to guess what he wants, and at the same time keep in line with all his rules –”\n\n“He’s not like that.”\n\n“He’s like that, and you know it. He would have shoved anything that he had a good contract with right down my throat if he thought that it’d allow him to control that Hellhound side of me any better. The only reason he didn’t was because I’d have noticed that, and that side would have fought back. And probably Melchiresa; she’s been pushy enough about me doing what she wants that she’d probably have done something to pretend to be on my side.”\n\nAnd that was something that he knew would be coming due before long. Forty-eight hours of near-nonstop fucking with another Hellhound had pushed him closer and closer to being her creature, and he doubted that the increase in power came consequence-free. Doubtlessly she’d show her face before long, and then he’d have to deal with whatever she demanded. And considering what she’d pushed for last time…\n\nHe didn’t have to look down to know what Neena looked like. Vitus had seen her in the wagon, stripped, sweaty, and pushed to the brink of pleasure over and over again. She had a powerful body, and her dark skin was surprisingly alluring when it was soaked all over like that. She took thicker things than she looked like she’d be able to take, and had been able to focus through the pleasure to use her magic to save herself from perpetual bondage when she finally stopped being watched.\n\nShe was smart.\n\nShe was sexy.\n\nAnd she was surprisingly capable.\n\n[i]If it wasn’t for the fact that she was so wound up with Brundir…[/i]\n\nBut she was, and that was why Melchiresa wanted her turned or dead. The fact that he hadn’t done either meant that things were on thin ice with his…patron, for lack of a better word, and he had no idea if he was going to get out of this in one piece.\n\n“Look. I know that it isn’t what you want to hear. But he’s using you. Just like he uses everyone. I don’t think that Brundir is even capable of seeing anyone as equal to him; you’re either a tool to be used until you can’t be used anymore, or you’re someone that he fears enough to respect until he can surpass them. Those are the only two settings that the man has. And –”\n\n“Vitus.”\n\n“I don’t know why I’m telling you this, but you have to see it by now. Seriously, he didn’t do anything to try and help you. He would have abandoned you. And –”\n\n“Vitus!”\n\n“What?”\n\n“She’s gone.”\n\n“…What?”\n\nBringing his head down, he glanced back to the spot where Shereeza had been sniffing around. There was a small hole in the rear of the alley, one that led through to –\n\nClank.\n\nClank.\n\nClank.\n\nIt took one breath through his nose to know that they’d stumbled on a backdoor entrance to something official, perhaps even to one of the barracks, and another to know that Shereeza had gone through without saying a word. Vitus slapped a hand over his eyes, muttering under his breath as he knelt by the hole and peered through.\n\n“Why didn’t you stop her?” he muttered.\n\n“One less Hellhound in the world isn’t going to hurt anyone.”\n\n“You realize that she knows who we are and that she could end up spilling the beans to everyone.”\n\n“She’s too loyal to her ‘Alpha,’” Neena said, shaking her head. “She wouldn’t.”\n\n“She doesn’t [i]have[/i] to. She knows. They get a mind-reader in, then they can divine the information out of her without any torture. She doesn’t have any protection, remember?”\n\n“…I…didn’t think that far ahead.”\n\n“Clearly! Come on.”\n\nTo her credit, Neena followed right on his heels as they crawled down the tunnel in the wall. Whether it was out of fear and self-preservation or something else, he had no idea, but she was quick to follow regardless. He kept his head down in the dark and sniffed, digging through the various scents of mildew and metal and more in the tunnel for Shereeza’s heated, furred one. Thankfully, it was strong enough that he could track it with ease, and he followed it through the dark stone tunnels.\n\n“What is this?” Neena muttered behind him. “I’ve never heard of something like this.”\n\n“I have no idea.” Vitus grunted as he came to a T-junction in the tunnel, tossing his head left and right as he sniffed. “Feels like some sort of old tunnel that the builders made or something. It doesn’t feel like anyone’s been down here in a while, though. What the hell was she thinking?”\n\n“Presumes that she was thinking at all.”\n\n“Oh, shut up.”\n\nThey were forced to squat or crawl through the tunnels, and at times the ceiling pushed down hard enough that it scraped against their backs. Just as often, however, it suddenly swooped up, forming a bubble with narrow cracks against the ceiling. Vitus ignored the first few, but at the third one –\n\n“Did you see that dog running around?”\n\nHe froze in place, holding a hand back to stop Neena in her tracks. The other woman kept quiet, slowly creeping up to squat beside him as two masculine voices talked to each other just overhead.\n\n“I saw something, at least. She’s leading Squad C on a merry chase, that’s for sure.”\n\n“Think it’s something that the captains will want to see?”\n\n“Probably the Hellknights, if there’s anyone that wants to keep her alive at all. Beasts like that are hardly worth keeping around. Can’t domesticate them, really.”\n\n“Oh, I don’t know. I heard Onoria was having some luck with that rat that she brought in.”\n\nRat. That was something. He perked up his ears, but they were already starting to fade, their voices getting quieter and quieter as they walked away from the grate in the floor. The last thing that he heard was something about Squad C going to have to make a decision of whether to take the dog prisoner or to bring her back to…something. He couldn’t make out the last word, and he knew that if he couldn’t, there was no way in hell that Neena had caught it.\n\nWhen the sound had completely died away, he reached up to the slots in the floor, tracing them with his fingers. A little nudge here, a little there –\n\n“It’s a trap door,” he muttered under his breath.\n\n“What – oh my god, it is.”\n\n“It must have been how the old builders went from place to place when they were still putting Egorian together. They tunneled between the different buildings so that they could keep them looking so…organic,” Vitus said, shaking his head. “And if there’s holes like this all over the place, then –”\n\n“They could hear you, too.”\n\n“…Good point,” he muttered, pulling his hand back. “Still…worth knowing.”\n\nWorth knowing that there were holes in the floor in some of the official buildings, and worth knowing that the tunnels connected them from place to place. That was something that might come in very handy in the future; he doubted that any rescue operation would go smoothly enough that they could just leave the same way that they came in, and having a tunnel to retreat into would go a long way towards giving them a way out.\n\nIf the tunnels connected to Robin’s prison.\n\nIf they had a way out of the city.\n\nIf. If. If.\n\nVitus shook his head. That was something to worry about later when they actually knew where Robin was. For now, Shereeza needed to be found and saved. He lowered himself and kept crawling through the tunnels.\n\n“What are you going to do when you catch her?” Neena asked.\n\n“I don’t know. Something.”\n\n“She needs discipline.”\n\n“Not going to argue that,” he muttered. “But so do you.”\n\n“I follow my master.”\n\n“Not particularly well, if you can’t follow his orders to help out and complain all the time. You’re not exactly doing what you promised him.” He looked over his shoulder. “Even if you don’t agree with me about him being a manipulative, controlling asshole…don’t you think that someone that wants to get his attention should be doing their job better than you are?”\n\n“…Are you always so logical?”\n\n“No, but you bring out the worst in me,” he said, shaking his head as he turned back to the tunnel ahead.\n\nShereeza’s smell led him to another hole in the wall, presumably where she had burrowed her way through and out into the open streets again. One look confirmed that they were out of the outer city area that they were staying in, and the knowledge sent a shiver of fear down his spine. If they were caught here, things would be far worse than they would be near the inn. They had to find Shereeza, get her back to the hole, and get out as fast as possible.\n\nBefore he could make a move, though, Neena grabbed him by the shoulder. He looked back as she rolled her head around her shoulders, cracking it to each side.\n\n“Give me a second.”\n\n“What for?”\n\n“You want me to help you, right?”\n\n“That would be a step forward.”\n\n“Then let me handle this.”\n\nNeena gritted her teeth as she pulled her hood back. Her dark flesh pebbled, for lack of a better word, running back from her lips over her cheeks and down the sides of her face. It went from bumpy to scaly, and from scaly to shimmering as the flesh turned to something else. Little feathers began to take shape along the back of her neck, and her teeth pushed further past the corners of her mouth.\n\nHe took a step back as she shifted her footing, long claws sprouting from her toes. Her heels rose off the sandy streets for a moment before coming back down, and the back of her robe lifted up ever so slightly as the beginning of a tail started to make itself known. She popped and cracked quietly as the scales spread under the robe, probably covering her entire body as she huffed and puffed from the transformation.\n\nIt was not just a physical thing, though. Vitus had enough knowledge of magic to know that she wasn’t casting a spell; she was embracing the spirit of power that Brundir had given her. It was coming forward, giving her something to use for the hunt, and –\n\nAnd then it was done. A partial human, partial raptor turned her face to his, and she smiled. The number of fangs on display was quite high, but she still smiled.\n\n“What do you think?” she asked.\n\n“Fearsome.”\n\n“That’s good, but – ugh. I’m not going to be able to wear this.”\n\nShe pulled off the robe. What was underneath was nearly as fascinating as the changes that he had been able to see with the hood and garment still on. She hadn’t gone fully to a raptor, but she had given herself significantly to the new shape. Her face was pulled forward in a significantly larger snout and her ears had pulled in, leaving only holes behind. Her neck was longer, though not completely extended, and her backside and hips had plumped up with muscle and a thickness that promised a run that wouldn’t end anytime soon.\n\nHer breasts had shrunken, though that was something that only his Hellhound side was that bothered by, and her muscles in the core had grown stronger under her scales. And…\n\n“…Enjoying yourself?” Vitus asked, nodding toward the space between her legs.\n\n“Mmmph…maybe a little,” Neena admitted.\n\n“I guess that’s to be expected; I don’t think anyone’s ever [i]not[/i] enjoyed that.”\n\n“Heh…” She smiled; it was a strange thing to see. “You stay here. I’ll bring that idiot back.”\n\n“Oh, no. You are not going hunting on your own.”\n\n“…Hunting?”\n\n“…Hunting.”\n\nJust as she looked a little shocked to hear the word, he was surprised that he’d used it. It hit him harder than he expected, too. When this had been just a rescue mission, he’d been annoyed, frustrated, perhaps a little anxious. Now that he phrased it that way, he could feel himself…grinning, almost, excited about the idea of hunting something down, of chasing it into the ground and earning his prize. It left him growling deep in his throat, and there was a disturbing hunger for the blood and flesh of others as he imagined what he could do with a proper hunter at his side.\n\nThat wasn’t normal. He hadn’t been like that before his enforced break with Shereeza in the room with him. What had happened –\n\n“Hunting it is, then.” Neena chuckled. “Let me show you what a real hunter can do.”\n\n“I’ll make you eat those words before you eat [i]my[/i] prey,” Vitus said.\n\nThey both grinned even as they both leaned away from each other. Fascination and shock warred with each other until fascination won out. Instinct, the urge to chase and hunt and overpower prey, was running through both of them at a rate that Vitus didn’t entirely understand.\n\nBut if it let him find Shereeza before she could be caught…\n\nHe shed his robe, tossing it in the tunnels with Neena’s, before letting the illusion fall. The Hellhound came out, black and red-furred and panting with urgency. He growled deep in his throat, and the two hunters were off in the fading light in the sandy streets.\n\n#\n\nRunning.\n\nRunning.\n\nThey were running together, their thoughts vague and more like feelings than planned ideas. Alley to alley, leaping to the rooftop, darting from shadow to shadow they went, and the scaled one and the furred one together matched their speed.\n\nHere.\n\nThere.\n\nUp.\n\nDown.\n\nThey tracked the scent through the sandy streets, breathing the dust and the dunes, the sun and the water, and the endless people that had crossed the streets through the day, tracing the smell of fur and sulfur and the burned place. They tracked it until they smelled the scent of metal and leather, of blood and bone, and followed the jumble together to the marketplace that was already closed down.\n\nNot closed. Sealed off.\n\nNeena and Vitus squatted on rooftops at the end of the marketplace, her arms pulled to her chest, him on all fours as they looked over the edge. The armored squad was slowly circling the marketplace, sealing off the routes between the different stalls and slowly containing the stupid Hellhound in the middle of it all. They had already cut off four different routes of escape, narrowing it down so that Shereeza would only be able to escape through one specific route. They’d set up a trap there, a basic hunter’s tactic that the two of them saw through.\n\nRaptor and hound looked at each other. They knew what needed to be done, and moved without words.\n\nVitus snarled as he leaped from the rooftop, landing on top of one of the soldiers and nearly breaking his back. It would not have been enough for a Hellknight, but it was enough for a basic warrior. The impact slammed the human into the sand, and the hound held him there, keeping him from breathing just long enough to knock him out. A kick sent him flying to one of the nearby alleys, and then he was off.\n\nHe could smell his allies. His Pack was strong, swift, moving about. Shereeza had already scented him and was changing her patterns, darting around, causing chaos in the middle of the market rather than trying to escape; she knew that she had to keep the attention of the rest of the two-leggers on her, keep them from noticing the other hunters closing the circle. Play the part of the wounded prey.\n\nCircling, circling until he found another warrior. Someone kneeling down, someone putting together a barricade. He snuck up from beneath, creeping low like an animal through the brush, under one stall and then behind another, before leaping without a sound.\n\nCrack.\n\nNo death, no matter how much he wanted to bite down on the neck and rip out a throat. No, no, no death, that would bring the law down on them too hard for them to resist. No, had to keep moving, had to keep fighting, hunting, humiliating them.\n\nDragging the body behind a stall, he kept moving, kept sniffing for more prey.\n\nTwo, four, five, six he caught, and he could smell-see-feel Neena doing the same on the other side of the market. They were slowly completing the circle, darting around to see who could beat the other. He could smell her excitement, the slight human-sweat to her scales that marked her as something more than a beast, the rutting need that was building under her tail that came from the pleasure of the hunt.\n\n[i]She would be good Pack,[/i] the Hellhound thought.\n\nVitus agreed.\n\nThey reached the far side of the market, seeing each other at the same moment. The raptor didn’t say anything; she scratched the ground with one hybrid foot – raptor talons and humanoid soles – six times. Six prey, six downed. Vitus grinned as he did the same. Six prey, six downed.\n\nThere was only one left, the commander that had gone down the path toward the market center. They looked down the unblocked route, seeing the caped man slowly creeping along. One shared look was all they needed: the winner would be the one that took him down.\n\nThey lunged around the corner at the same moment, breaking all pretense of stealth for a single charge. The thud of raptor feet and hound paws was louder than either of them expected, and the captain turned at the last second. The crimson cape flared in the air at the same moment that the hunters leaped for their target.\n\nNeena went high.\n\nVitus went low.\n\nThe Hellhound won.\n\nRipping the guard’s legs out from under him, the human went down as the raptor sailed over his head. Vitus yanked the human back before smothering his face, covering his mouth with a paw-hand and putting pressure on his throat. One, two, three seconds before he was out cold, barely able to breathe at all.\n\nAnd then it was done.\n\nThe Hellhound wanted to howl in victory, but Vitus still had just enough of a grip to keep it from doing anything so stupid. Little by little, he clawed his way back to the ‘front’ of his own head, and as he did, he managed to assert more humanoid features along his body. Not all of them, not by a long shot, but enough of them to feel human again, even if his tail still stood out and his ears were still canine rather than human.\n\nNeena did the same, growling and huffing as she shed her scales, pulling herself back to a human form. Again, mostly; he could see more scales on her than she’d had the first time that he’d seen her naked. He imagined that the transformation cost her a little bit of humanity every time that she committed to it.\n\n“You’re…good,” she admitted. “Very good.”\n\n“So are you,” he said, shaking his head.\n\n“Good Pack.”\n\nThey turned as one to Shereeza. The Hellhound crept out from behind the stalls, huffing and smiling a dog-like grin with her tongue hanging out.\n\n“She is good Pack for you,” Shereeza said. “Should be part of our Pack. Hunts well.”\n\n“I do not belong in [i]your[/i] pack.”\n\n“Not mine. His.”\n\nIgnoring the other Hellhound’s attempt to recruit their temporary ally to something more permanent, Vitus knelt down by the unconscious commander. If they were lucky - if they were very lucky - then the soldier might have some orders on him. Orders, stationing papers, anything that might give them - \n\nBingo. Vitus smiled as he pulled a small sheaf of papers from the officer’s belt, unrolling them. He read through them quickly, scanning for anything that might give them what they needed, and his grin grew all the larger. \n\n“Okay…we have two possibilities,” he said, committing the details to memory before he put them back where they belonged. “Two different prisons for ‘prisoners of interest.’”\n\n“Can we get there from the tunnels?” Neena asked. \n\n“I don’t know where they are, just [i]what[/i] they are,” Vitus said, shaking his head as he got to his feet. “They only had place names for their prisoners, but that’s more than what we had. If the Cinnas can come through on the whole contact thing, then maybe we can get some more information from someone a little more…connected. But for now -”\n\n“Retreat.”\n\n“Mmm-hmm.” He grabbed Shereeza by the arm. “And this time, no running off.”\n\n“Yes, sir. Sorry, Master.”\n\n“We’ll talk about that when we’re back at the inn. And Neena?”\n\n“What?”\n\n“...Good job. It was…good hunting with you.”\n\n“...”\n\nThey ran. The tunnel wasn’t that far away, and with luck, they would reach it before anyone could call the guards on the naked people running through the streets. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n[b][u][center]The End[/center][/u][/b]\n\nSummary: Vitus goes hunting for information, and then has to go hunting for a companion. \n\nTags: No Sex, Transformation, Male Nudity, Female Nudity, Arousal, Erection, Series, Hellhound, Raptor, Human, Hunting, Fighting, Corruption,",
"writing_bbcode_parsed": "
The Bonds of Need Chapter 7 For a-lycotonum By Draconicon
The streets of Egorian were as clean as Absalom's had been filthy. It was not to say that the island city had been a dirty, dangerous place – at least, if you knew where to go – but it had contained its messier places. There were alleys that you learned to ignore, places that you automatically avoided, neighborhoods that you never entered after dark. Never consciously, just always knowing what was and wasn’t safe for you and yours.
In Egorian, there was nothing of the sort. While Vitus’s danger senses were going crazy thinking about the Hellknights and the patrols of other bound soldiers in service to the higher-ups of the city, there was nothing to worry about in the various alleys that he, Neena, and Shereeza passed by. Not once did he have the worry of a knife waiting to stab him in the back or some thief high off his mind on some quasi-legal substance waiting to do some unspeakable thing. In fact, other than the reasonably surety that he’d be considered a fugitive and someone to arrest on sight, he felt safer than he had felt his entire life.
And that concerned him.
“Is it always like this?” he muttered under his breath.
“Like what?” Neena asked, the dark-skinned human rolling her eyes. “Safer?”
“Quieter. Deader.”
“It’s the price that you pay when you want things to get done right.”
“You call this right?” he muttered under his breath.
She fixed him with a glare, but neither of them could afford to take their eyes off the third member of their party for long. Shereeza had already pulled a few feet ahead of them and Vitus was forced to pull her back with a hand on her shoulder. She whipped her head around, starting to grow a muzzle under her hood –
“No. Control yourself,” he muttered.
The black-furred muzzle sucked itself back under the cloth, and the shaded elf under it nodded in understanding, temporary though it was.
He bit back a sigh of frustration as Shereeza fell in step just ahead of them again. Their outfits weren’t great for disguises, but here in Egorian, the only thing that they really had that fit in were the hooded robes that some of the merchants wore. They weren’t comfortable, and they were hardly the sort of thing that invited someone to talk to them freely, but at the very least, they were hooded and kept the other marks of their…inhuman nature…from being so obviously visible.
Of course, being dark, they weren’t precisely comfortable. The heat of the desert around the city wasn’t kept at bay by the lakefront, merely moderated by it, and he still felt that warmth like a constant companion in the dyed cloth. Sweat droplets ran down his chest, stained his pits, and sucked themselves into the most inconvenient places. More than that, he could feel some of it soaking around the corners of his crotch, soaking his thighs, his balls, and his sheath.
That was the hardest part to deal with; he kept feeling the constant stimulation down there, the way that his thighs bumped his balls, the way that his barely-hidden tail kept wanting to come out of the illusion and feel more comfortable in the open, and most of all, the way that his cock kept trying to rise out of his sheath. There was no illusion that could completely hide that, nor could he stop himself from feeling the way that ground against the inside of his robe. Oh, that was more than a little distracting, more than a little.
But he had to ignore it. The three of them, black-robed and hooded, were the only ones able to wander around the city. Neena was an unknown, and Shereeza was marked as a slave in her illusion, someone that wouldn’t be questioned with her owner around, and so far…
Well, so far, Vitus was known more for his Hellhound form than his human one, so he should be safe. For now.
“Do you smell anything?” he muttered.
“I smell…something, Master, but…it’s faint.”
“Try and follow it.”
“I am, but…”
He gritted his teeth. It was hard, he knew. They’d discussed how difficult it would be even for a full-blooded Hellhound to track someone through the city with a fresh scent, let alone the faint stuff that they still had of Robin. He could barely remember her scent, and he’d been a Hellhound around her almost the entire time he’d known her. Shereeza had only just started getting used to being a Hellhound over the past few days.
He knew that, and it was still almost impossible to completely contain his frustration on the matter.
Try, he told himself. Try to be better than a dog.
His Hellhound half was of similar mixed opinions. On the one hand, it wanted Shereeza to do what was needed for the pack. On the other hand, it was all too aware of the difficulties that she faced, and it wanted to stand up for her.
It resulted in a problem for both halves of the sorcerer, and he grumbled as he walked through the streets behind his turned female. Neena followed behind him, brushing her hair out of her face and grumbling under her breath.
“I don’t see why I had to come along,” she grunted. “I’m not exactly the one with a sharp nose here.”
“You’re also one of the few people that the Hellknights don’t know about,” Vitus muttered under his breath. “And your master said that you had to help us, so you’re going to fucking help us. One way or another, we’re getting her back.”
“You could make this much easier just by going back to Absalom. Why do you have to do this the hard way?”
“Because it’s the right way.”
“It’s going to get you killed. And me in trouble.”
“Only if we do it wrong.”
Shereeza turned down an alley. He followed her, only to sigh as they reached a dead end. He left her to sniff at the corner, knowing that it was just barely possible that this was a secret entrance to some dungeon, but it was incredibly unlikely. Incredibly.
Neena rolled her eyes, leaning against the side of the stone building that rested on one side of the alley. The empty store on the other – abandoned due to the setting sun, probably closed until the next day – was more clay-based, softer against his back as he leaned back and got comfortable.
It was hard to look at her and not feel some degree of pity. Knowing what she was and who she served, he could only imagine the sort of lies that Brundir had told her, or the tricks that the other man had pulled. The aasimar knew how to play the game of lies and truths, how to make offers that no sane person could refuse, and most of all, he knew how to dangle just enough affection in front of someone to make them believe that they were special. Vitus remembered that last one incredibly keenly; even if it had turned out to be less of a lie than he thought, he remembered all too well the times that his mind had been blasted out of his skull for the sake of the aasimar’s lusts and wants. There was no love that could countenance that sort of treatment.
And he had been one of the lucky ones. He knew that there were countless other servants of the aasimar that were in far worse straits than him. Shaking his head, he slowly looked toward the sky, his hands in the pockets of his robe.
“So…what’d he put in you?” he asked.
“…What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean,” Vitus said, shaking his head. “What kind of outsider did he put in you? What’s giving you power? What are you slowly turning into?”
Neena didn’t immediately answer. He could hear-see-smell her shifting around, the ‘space’ that her body took up filling in a different sort of awareness for his canine side. The smell in particular was surprisingly informative; all the fucking and slow-shifting to a greater canine version of himself had probably made his nose more sensitive. The sweat pouring off her created a sort of vision in his mind every time that he breathed the scent in, and he could feel it moving around as she shuffled about in annoyance.
“…Raptor,” she muttered. “He put a…dinosaur spirit in me.”
“…Could be worse,” Vitus admitted, crossing his arms. “It could have been some kind of slime. The way that he experiments, I’m a little surprised that he didn’t try and put something in me to match the Hellhound.”
“Why would he –”
“Why would he put yours in you?”
“…I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”
“You already know what I’m going to say,” Vitus sighed, shaking his head. “He wants control. He likes devotion, but you know what he’s like. If he doesn’t get what he wants from you, if he thinks that you’re doing something that you shouldn’t be, he gets irritated. He…doesn’t care as much after that. If you aren’t smart enough to guess what he wants, and at the same time keep in line with all his rules –”
“He’s not like that.”
“He’s like that, and you know it. He would have shoved anything that he had a good contract with right down my throat if he thought that it’d allow him to control that Hellhound side of me any better. The only reason he didn’t was because I’d have noticed that, and that side would have fought back. And probably Melchiresa; she’s been pushy enough about me doing what she wants that she’d probably have done something to pretend to be on my side.”
And that was something that he knew would be coming due before long. Forty-eight hours of near-nonstop fucking with another Hellhound had pushed him closer and closer to being her creature, and he doubted that the increase in power came consequence-free. Doubtlessly she’d show her face before long, and then he’d have to deal with whatever she demanded. And considering what she’d pushed for last time…
He didn’t have to look down to know what Neena looked like. Vitus had seen her in the wagon, stripped, sweaty, and pushed to the brink of pleasure over and over again. She had a powerful body, and her dark skin was surprisingly alluring when it was soaked all over like that. She took thicker things than she looked like she’d be able to take, and had been able to focus through the pleasure to use her magic to save herself from perpetual bondage when she finally stopped being watched.
She was smart.
She was sexy.
And she was surprisingly capable.
If it wasn’t for the fact that she was so wound up with Brundir…
But she was, and that was why Melchiresa wanted her turned or dead. The fact that he hadn’t done either meant that things were on thin ice with his…patron, for lack of a better word, and he had no idea if he was going to get out of this in one piece.
“Look. I know that it isn’t what you want to hear. But he’s using you. Just like he uses everyone. I don’t think that Brundir is even capable of seeing anyone as equal to him; you’re either a tool to be used until you can’t be used anymore, or you’re someone that he fears enough to respect until he can surpass them. Those are the only two settings that the man has. And –”
“Vitus.”
“I don’t know why I’m telling you this, but you have to see it by now. Seriously, he didn’t do anything to try and help you. He would have abandoned you. And –”
“Vitus!”
“What?”
“She’s gone.”
“…What?”
Bringing his head down, he glanced back to the spot where Shereeza had been sniffing around. There was a small hole in the rear of the alley, one that led through to –
Clank.
Clank.
Clank.
It took one breath through his nose to know that they’d stumbled on a backdoor entrance to something official, perhaps even to one of the barracks, and another to know that Shereeza had gone through without saying a word. Vitus slapped a hand over his eyes, muttering under his breath as he knelt by the hole and peered through.
“Why didn’t you stop her?” he muttered.
“One less Hellhound in the world isn’t going to hurt anyone.”
“You realize that she knows who we are and that she could end up spilling the beans to everyone.”
“She’s too loyal to her ‘Alpha,’” Neena said, shaking her head. “She wouldn’t.”
“She doesn’t have to. She knows. They get a mind-reader in, then they can divine the information out of her without any torture. She doesn’t have any protection, remember?”
“…I…didn’t think that far ahead.”
“Clearly! Come on.”
To her credit, Neena followed right on his heels as they crawled down the tunnel in the wall. Whether it was out of fear and self-preservation or something else, he had no idea, but she was quick to follow regardless. He kept his head down in the dark and sniffed, digging through the various scents of mildew and metal and more in the tunnel for Shereeza’s heated, furred one. Thankfully, it was strong enough that he could track it with ease, and he followed it through the dark stone tunnels.
“What is this?” Neena muttered behind him. “I’ve never heard of something like this.”
“I have no idea.” Vitus grunted as he came to a T-junction in the tunnel, tossing his head left and right as he sniffed. “Feels like some sort of old tunnel that the builders made or something. It doesn’t feel like anyone’s been down here in a while, though. What the hell was she thinking?”
“Presumes that she was thinking at all.”
“Oh, shut up.”
They were forced to squat or crawl through the tunnels, and at times the ceiling pushed down hard enough that it scraped against their backs. Just as often, however, it suddenly swooped up, forming a bubble with narrow cracks against the ceiling. Vitus ignored the first few, but at the third one –
“Did you see that dog running around?”
He froze in place, holding a hand back to stop Neena in her tracks. The other woman kept quiet, slowly creeping up to squat beside him as two masculine voices talked to each other just overhead.
“I saw something, at least. She’s leading Squad C on a merry chase, that’s for sure.”
“Think it’s something that the captains will want to see?”
“Probably the Hellknights, if there’s anyone that wants to keep her alive at all. Beasts like that are hardly worth keeping around. Can’t domesticate them, really.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I heard Onoria was having some luck with that rat that she brought in.”
Rat. That was something. He perked up his ears, but they were already starting to fade, their voices getting quieter and quieter as they walked away from the grate in the floor. The last thing that he heard was something about Squad C going to have to make a decision of whether to take the dog prisoner or to bring her back to…something. He couldn’t make out the last word, and he knew that if he couldn’t, there was no way in hell that Neena had caught it.
When the sound had completely died away, he reached up to the slots in the floor, tracing them with his fingers. A little nudge here, a little there –
“It’s a trap door,” he muttered under his breath.
“What – oh my god, it is.”
“It must have been how the old builders went from place to place when they were still putting Egorian together. They tunneled between the different buildings so that they could keep them looking so…organic,” Vitus said, shaking his head. “And if there’s holes like this all over the place, then –”
“They could hear you, too.”
“…Good point,” he muttered, pulling his hand back. “Still…worth knowing.”
Worth knowing that there were holes in the floor in some of the official buildings, and worth knowing that the tunnels connected them from place to place. That was something that might come in very handy in the future; he doubted that any rescue operation would go smoothly enough that they could just leave the same way that they came in, and having a tunnel to retreat into would go a long way towards giving them a way out.
If the tunnels connected to Robin’s prison.
If they had a way out of the city.
If. If. If.
Vitus shook his head. That was something to worry about later when they actually knew where Robin was. For now, Shereeza needed to be found and saved. He lowered himself and kept crawling through the tunnels.
“What are you going to do when you catch her?” Neena asked.
“I don’t know. Something.”
“She needs discipline.”
“Not going to argue that,” he muttered. “But so do you.”
“I follow my master.”
“Not particularly well, if you can’t follow his orders to help out and complain all the time. You’re not exactly doing what you promised him.” He looked over his shoulder. “Even if you don’t agree with me about him being a manipulative, controlling asshole…don’t you think that someone that wants to get his attention should be doing their job better than you are?”
“…Are you always so logical?”
“No, but you bring out the worst in me,” he said, shaking his head as he turned back to the tunnel ahead.
Shereeza’s smell led him to another hole in the wall, presumably where she had burrowed her way through and out into the open streets again. One look confirmed that they were out of the outer city area that they were staying in, and the knowledge sent a shiver of fear down his spine. If they were caught here, things would be far worse than they would be near the inn. They had to find Shereeza, get her back to the hole, and get out as fast as possible.
Before he could make a move, though, Neena grabbed him by the shoulder. He looked back as she rolled her head around her shoulders, cracking it to each side.
“Give me a second.”
“What for?”
“You want me to help you, right?”
“That would be a step forward.”
“Then let me handle this.”
Neena gritted her teeth as she pulled her hood back. Her dark flesh pebbled, for lack of a better word, running back from her lips over her cheeks and down the sides of her face. It went from bumpy to scaly, and from scaly to shimmering as the flesh turned to something else. Little feathers began to take shape along the back of her neck, and her teeth pushed further past the corners of her mouth.
He took a step back as she shifted her footing, long claws sprouting from her toes. Her heels rose off the sandy streets for a moment before coming back down, and the back of her robe lifted up ever so slightly as the beginning of a tail started to make itself known. She popped and cracked quietly as the scales spread under the robe, probably covering her entire body as she huffed and puffed from the transformation.
It was not just a physical thing, though. Vitus had enough knowledge of magic to know that she wasn’t casting a spell; she was embracing the spirit of power that Brundir had given her. It was coming forward, giving her something to use for the hunt, and –
And then it was done. A partial human, partial raptor turned her face to his, and she smiled. The number of fangs on display was quite high, but she still smiled.
“What do you think?” she asked.
“Fearsome.”
“That’s good, but – ugh. I’m not going to be able to wear this.”
She pulled off the robe. What was underneath was nearly as fascinating as the changes that he had been able to see with the hood and garment still on. She hadn’t gone fully to a raptor, but she had given herself significantly to the new shape. Her face was pulled forward in a significantly larger snout and her ears had pulled in, leaving only holes behind. Her neck was longer, though not completely extended, and her backside and hips had plumped up with muscle and a thickness that promised a run that wouldn’t end anytime soon.
Her breasts had shrunken, though that was something that only his Hellhound side was that bothered by, and her muscles in the core had grown stronger under her scales. And…
“…Enjoying yourself?” Vitus asked, nodding toward the space between her legs.
“Mmmph…maybe a little,” Neena admitted.
“I guess that’s to be expected; I don’t think anyone’s ever not enjoyed that.”
“Heh…” She smiled; it was a strange thing to see. “You stay here. I’ll bring that idiot back.”
“Oh, no. You are not going hunting on your own.”
“…Hunting?”
“…Hunting.”
Just as she looked a little shocked to hear the word, he was surprised that he’d used it. It hit him harder than he expected, too. When this had been just a rescue mission, he’d been annoyed, frustrated, perhaps a little anxious. Now that he phrased it that way, he could feel himself…grinning, almost, excited about the idea of hunting something down, of chasing it into the ground and earning his prize. It left him growling deep in his throat, and there was a disturbing hunger for the blood and flesh of others as he imagined what he could do with a proper hunter at his side.
That wasn’t normal. He hadn’t been like that before his enforced break with Shereeza in the room with him. What had happened –
“Hunting it is, then.” Neena chuckled. “Let me show you what a real hunter can do.”
“I’ll make you eat those words before you eat my prey,” Vitus said.
They both grinned even as they both leaned away from each other. Fascination and shock warred with each other until fascination won out. Instinct, the urge to chase and hunt and overpower prey, was running through both of them at a rate that Vitus didn’t entirely understand.
But if it let him find Shereeza before she could be caught…
He shed his robe, tossing it in the tunnels with Neena’s, before letting the illusion fall. The Hellhound came out, black and red-furred and panting with urgency. He growled deep in his throat, and the two hunters were off in the fading light in the sandy streets.
#
Running.
Running.
They were running together, their thoughts vague and more like feelings than planned ideas. Alley to alley, leaping to the rooftop, darting from shadow to shadow they went, and the scaled one and the furred one together matched their speed.
Here.
There.
Up.
Down.
They tracked the scent through the sandy streets, breathing the dust and the dunes, the sun and the water, and the endless people that had crossed the streets through the day, tracing the smell of fur and sulfur and the burned place. They tracked it until they smelled the scent of metal and leather, of blood and bone, and followed the jumble together to the marketplace that was already closed down.
Not closed. Sealed off.
Neena and Vitus squatted on rooftops at the end of the marketplace, her arms pulled to her chest, him on all fours as they looked over the edge. The armored squad was slowly circling the marketplace, sealing off the routes between the different stalls and slowly containing the stupid Hellhound in the middle of it all. They had already cut off four different routes of escape, narrowing it down so that Shereeza would only be able to escape through one specific route. They’d set up a trap there, a basic hunter’s tactic that the two of them saw through.
Raptor and hound looked at each other. They knew what needed to be done, and moved without words.
Vitus snarled as he leaped from the rooftop, landing on top of one of the soldiers and nearly breaking his back. It would not have been enough for a Hellknight, but it was enough for a basic warrior. The impact slammed the human into the sand, and the hound held him there, keeping him from breathing just long enough to knock him out. A kick sent him flying to one of the nearby alleys, and then he was off.
He could smell his allies. His Pack was strong, swift, moving about. Shereeza had already scented him and was changing her patterns, darting around, causing chaos in the middle of the market rather than trying to escape; she knew that she had to keep the attention of the rest of the two-leggers on her, keep them from noticing the other hunters closing the circle. Play the part of the wounded prey.
Circling, circling until he found another warrior. Someone kneeling down, someone putting together a barricade. He snuck up from beneath, creeping low like an animal through the brush, under one stall and then behind another, before leaping without a sound.
Crack.
No death, no matter how much he wanted to bite down on the neck and rip out a throat. No, no, no death, that would bring the law down on them too hard for them to resist. No, had to keep moving, had to keep fighting, hunting, humiliating them.
Dragging the body behind a stall, he kept moving, kept sniffing for more prey.
Two, four, five, six he caught, and he could smell-see-feel Neena doing the same on the other side of the market. They were slowly completing the circle, darting around to see who could beat the other. He could smell her excitement, the slight human-sweat to her scales that marked her as something more than a beast, the rutting need that was building under her tail that came from the pleasure of the hunt.
She would be good Pack, the Hellhound thought.
Vitus agreed.
They reached the far side of the market, seeing each other at the same moment. The raptor didn’t say anything; she scratched the ground with one hybrid foot – raptor talons and humanoid soles – six times. Six prey, six downed. Vitus grinned as he did the same. Six prey, six downed.
There was only one left, the commander that had gone down the path toward the market center. They looked down the unblocked route, seeing the caped man slowly creeping along. One shared look was all they needed: the winner would be the one that took him down.
They lunged around the corner at the same moment, breaking all pretense of stealth for a single charge. The thud of raptor feet and hound paws was louder than either of them expected, and the captain turned at the last second. The crimson cape flared in the air at the same moment that the hunters leaped for their target.
Neena went high.
Vitus went low.
The Hellhound won.
Ripping the guard’s legs out from under him, the human went down as the raptor sailed over his head. Vitus yanked the human back before smothering his face, covering his mouth with a paw-hand and putting pressure on his throat. One, two, three seconds before he was out cold, barely able to breathe at all.
And then it was done.
The Hellhound wanted to howl in victory, but Vitus still had just enough of a grip to keep it from doing anything so stupid. Little by little, he clawed his way back to the ‘front’ of his own head, and as he did, he managed to assert more humanoid features along his body. Not all of them, not by a long shot, but enough of them to feel human again, even if his tail still stood out and his ears were still canine rather than human.
Neena did the same, growling and huffing as she shed her scales, pulling herself back to a human form. Again, mostly; he could see more scales on her than she’d had the first time that he’d seen her naked. He imagined that the transformation cost her a little bit of humanity every time that she committed to it.
“You’re…good,” she admitted. “Very good.”
“So are you,” he said, shaking his head.
“Good Pack.”
They turned as one to Shereeza. The Hellhound crept out from behind the stalls, huffing and smiling a dog-like grin with her tongue hanging out.
“She is good Pack for you,” Shereeza said. “Should be part of our Pack. Hunts well.”
“I do not belong in your pack.”
“Not mine. His.”
Ignoring the other Hellhound’s attempt to recruit their temporary ally to something more permanent, Vitus knelt down by the unconscious commander. If they were lucky - if they were very lucky - then the soldier might have some orders on him. Orders, stationing papers, anything that might give them -
Bingo. Vitus smiled as he pulled a small sheaf of papers from the officer’s belt, unrolling them. He read through them quickly, scanning for anything that might give them what they needed, and his grin grew all the larger.
“Okay…we have two possibilities,” he said, committing the details to memory before he put them back where they belonged. “Two different prisons for ‘prisoners of interest.’”
“Can we get there from the tunnels?” Neena asked.
“I don’t know where they are, just what they are,” Vitus said, shaking his head as he got to his feet. “They only had place names for their prisoners, but that’s more than what we had. If the Cinnas can come through on the whole contact thing, then maybe we can get some more information from someone a little more…connected. But for now -”
“Retreat.”
“Mmm-hmm.” He grabbed Shereeza by the arm. “And this time, no running off.”
“Yes, sir. Sorry, Master.”
“We’ll talk about that when we’re back at the inn. And Neena?”
“What?”
“...Good job. It was…good hunting with you.”
“...”
They ran. The tunnel wasn’t that far away, and with luck, they would reach it before anyone could call the guards on the naked people running through the streets.
The End
Summary: Vitus goes hunting for information, and then has to go hunting for a companion.