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“You’re still overthinking it, Ren, you have to let the instincts guide you,” Kieran said calmly from where he sat on the steps leading up to the kitchen.
Ren, splayed out on the stone, groaned and pushed himself up to glare at his friend.
“You just told me yesterday to not lose myself in the instincts,” he groused, tired and sore from trying to coax his magic into working a completely different way from anything he’d learned before.
“I know,” Kieran said with a sunny smile and laughed when Ren flipped him the bird.
“It’s a fine line to walk. You have to let go of all the things only two leggers worry about, but you can’t lose yourself in the simplicity of the animal mind,” Kieran lectured again, gently. He beckoned Ren over to sit beside him and offered him a waterskin, which Ren drank happily.
“You know the halla, you know the griffons, I’m sure you’ve met mabari. They’re all smart but none of them worry about the same things that people do. I’ve never met a halla that worried about what they’re wearing,” Kieran continued and grinned when Ren threw back his head and laughed.
“Try again, and remember, let everything else go,”
“Mind like a bear trap, and more stubborn than a mabari,” Falon murmured softly, standing with Charan on the balcony overlooking the library. They were looking down at their sons and smiled when Sassy’s laugh echoed up to them. Their golden son was chasing a pair of cats around the library, one a dark furred tabby and the other a cat perfectly grey.
The grey cat missed a leap from a bookshelf and ended up caught in Sassy’s arms, where it yowled its displeasure.
“I win!” he crowed, only to yelp when the tabby jumped off the couch to land on his shoulder. He dropped the grey cat, which of course landed on its feet and dashed away. Before Sassy could recover the tabby leapt from his shoulder and took off in the opposite direction.
“Cheat!” Sassy yelled after the tabby before he took off after it.
“Sounds like someone else I know,” Charan said with a knowing look. He snorted in amusement when Falon turned his head and pretended not to hear.
“Mierda! Cielo! Come and get your sons!” Zevran’s shout startled Charan and he dashed out of the kitchen. He skidded to a halt at the top of the stairs and had to put his hands on his knees to try and regain his composure.
Zevran scowled up at Sassy, who stood over his father with his arms crossed and a shit eating grin on his face, crushed under the hulking furry bodies of a pair of wolves. One a dark grey, almost black, and the other a slate grey with a tinge of blue. The darker wolf flopped over, making his husband grunt from the weight, and stretched out just far enough to lick Zev’s chin.
His noise of disgust was audible from the stairs.
“I see how it is, they’re only my sons when they’re in trouble,” Charan called back once he’d gotten control of his laughter. The grey wolf’s ears perked up and it looked up at him with a canine grin, tail tip wagging madly behind it.
“They’re part mabari, and very intelligent,” Falon said dismissively and stepped around the massive wolf dog at his feet with practiced ease. He had three of the beasts, two black and one grey, and each weighed probably more than Lucanis did.
They’re magic. Spite whispered in his ear.
“Why do you have them here?” Viago asked with the careful tone of someone keeping a tight rein on their temper. Lucanis lost the thread of their conversation when the lighter coloured beast ambled up to him and sniffed at his feet. He waited calmly for it to finish its investigation and nearly jumped when its massive head swung up and its eyes met his.
One gold eye, one silver.
Rook!
“Ren?” he blurted while Spite let out a gleeful noise from over his shoulder. The wolfs’ head tilted first one way, then the other and his ears twitched as if he strained to hear something.
Can Rook… hear me?
The wolf made a high whining noise and its tail started to twitch behind it, as clear an answer as he could give in this form.
ROOK!
Lucanis and the wolf both flinched at the volume, though neither of them chided Spite for his excitement. The wolf instead buried its nose in Lucanis’ stomach and nudged at him until his hand came up to stroke its head.
“Seems my new pup has found a master. Perhaps once he’s better trained I’ll gift him to you,” Falon mused as he walked up to them and laid a hand on the beast's back. His gaze was knowing and his smile invited Lucanis to share in the joke.
Lucanis looked down at the wolf, then at the other two and realized now why the Hero had a reputation for keeping pet wolves. Charan and Kieran. He looked down and buried his fingers in the lighter wolf’s thick mane of fur, scratching idly as he considered the advantages of this charade.
Ren could come with him everywhere and no one would be the wiser.
“He’s a beautiful animal, I’d be honoured,”
The wolf laid pressed up against his shins the entire meeting and listened calmly to Spite as he talked and talked, delighted to have Rook’s ear without need for an intermediary.
Viago had hunted with hounds and hawks before, knew how dangerous a dog's teeth could be, and he still felt shivers of apprehension run up his spine as he watched three shapeshifters hunt in tandem.
Animal brutality mixed with human cunning.
Their target was a rogue Crow, one who’d seen fit to take gold from a foreign monarch, and he’d proven slippery from the usual Crow methods of dealing with their own. Viago had been asked to flush their prey from any likely hiding spots in Treviso and now stood back to let the shapeshifters work.
Ren trailed their quarry silently in the form of a great white owl, eerily silent despite his size, and had more than once dived down to rake bloody wounds into their target when he tried to ascend to the rooftops.
Kieran stalked the streets below as a giant striped cat Viago had been told was native to Seheron, also unnervingly silent for such a monstrous animal. His paws were larger than dinner plates, his claws the length of a man’s finger and his teeth strong enough to punch through most armour.
Charan, as the most experienced of the trio, stepped between shapes with disgusting ease as needed. He’d flown with Ren while the sun was still up as an eagle bigger than Viago’s torso and had joined Kieran on the ground as a wolf when the moon rose.
Viago crouched at the edge of a roof next to where Ren had perched as an owl, giant eyes glaring down at the street. He leaned over just in time to catch Charan’s wolf tail vanishing into the building.
A mere second later he heard the man they were hunting scream in pain and watched as he was dragged out of the building by one arm crushed in a wolf’s jaws. He winced when the tiger appeared from the shadows and the man began to screech and beg. Even for a traitor it was a nasty death, his screams cutting off with a wet gurgle as the tiger closed its massive teeth around his throat.
He turned to the owl that was his beloved when it hooted at him softly and was surprised when it hopped close enough to carefully step up onto his leg. He was glad for the thick leather of his armour as he eyed the bird’s bloody talons where they pricked gently through the layers close to the big artery in his thigh.
“Your ability to make friends is truly extraordinary,” Viago mused to himself as he brought one gloved hand up to run it gently down the birds’ back. The owl hooted, leaned into his hand and closed its eyes in contentment.
“I want to try it. The boys and I have been studying it for almost three months now,” Charan told the table at one of their dinners hosted at Villa Dellamorte. The Lighthouse was fantastic, but not really set up for hosting larger dinners like this one.
“It’s really an amazing animal. I want to try it in a place that’s flat and open. Its speed must be incredible.” Ren agreed from where he was seated beside Lucanis at the head of the table.
“Tevi’s notes on the recovery of the one she has have been invaluable. Only da’s gotten it totally right, we think, but Ren and I are close,” Kieran chimed in from the middle of the table.
“A hunting party then?” Illario asked, eyes bouncing between Lucanis and Falon seated at opposite ends of the table.
“If you think you can keep up,” Charan agreed, with a hint of challenge in his usually amiable voice.
Their hunting party ended up being Teia, Lucanis, Illario and Sassy on horseback to follow behind the three shapeshifters.The three best riders of the Talons and Sassy for his experience with being the backup for shapeshifters, despite his groaning.
They’d made it to their hunting destination, the flat plains just north of Naporta, and Lucanis was taking the time to acquaint himself with the horse he’d been provided. She was a pretty thing, thin and long legged with wide sturdy hooves made for running on sand. Her mane and tail were coal black, but her brown coat shone golden in the sunlight.
He was distracted from his horse by the emergence of the beasts the shapeshifters had been so excited to become, and his first reaction was doubt with a tinge of disbelief.
They stood maybe three and a half feet at the shoulder and their limbs were long and delicate looking. Their spotted pelts were striking though and their teeth longer than most dogs. Lucanis had heard of some nobles that kept these cats for hunting. Cheetahs, that was what they were called.
“Here,” Sassy called and tossed Lucanis a thick strap of leather before turning to hand Illario a similar one. The largest of the cheetahs ambled up to the blond and Lucanis was surprised when it bowed its head to let Sassy strap the great padded collar around his neck.
Lucanis flipped the one in his hands over and took note of the stiff leather handle sewn into the back and looked down at the cheetah he presumed was Ren as it came to sit before him.
“Collars? They’ve never needed them before,” Illario asked with the third cheetah sitting at his feet. The collar in his hands was dyed bright blue, the one in Lucanis’ hands a pale grey and the one now around Charan’s neck white.
“Just in case. When they’re hunting sometimes the instincts can be…overwhelming,” Sassy said with a rueful look as he checked the fit of the collar around Charan’s neck.
Lucanis hummed absently as he bent to fit the collar around Ren’s neck and check much like Sassy had that it wasn’t too tight. Ren leaned up to lick his cheek with his raspy cat tongue and gave a high, bird-like chirp before he turned away.
Lucanis turned and double checked the straps of the saddle on his horse before he threw himself up and onto her back. He soothed her as she danced in place, impatient to be off.
He turned and watched Kieran and Ren as they darted about playfully, springing over each other with ease and tripping each other. Charan meanwhile had shaken his head like a dog and was striding off into the waist high grass, leaving them behind.
Sassy, up on his own dancing horse, whistled sharply and with that the party was off after Charan. The human members of their party kept up nicely to the loping cats and enjoyed light conversation as they rode.
Charan kept an easy pace at the front of the party and led them across the vast grassland with practiced ease. Kieran and Ren took turns zipping into the long grass to lay in wait and pounce from their hiding spots onto one another or a long-suffering Charan. They seemed to be getting comfortable in their new forms, tripping and bumping into each other less and less as the day wore on.
They’d set off in the early part of the morning and the sun was really starting to heat up and burn when they found a herd of gazelle in the distance, a hundred pounds each easily.
Lucanis reined his horse in alongside the others and watched as the three cats, limbs stiff with intent, vanished into the tall grass like ghosts. Lucanis lost sight of their spotted hides quickly and switched to watching the gazelle instead.
He couldn’t tell which of the three exploded from the grass at lightning speed and sent the gazelles scattering in all directions with panicked bleats but as soon as it did the game was on.
“Let’s go!” Sassy whooped and spurred his horse into a gallop, his golden hair flashing in the sun as the rest of them gave chase. Lucanis gave his horse her head, focused on staying on and not losing the shapeshifters in the distance as they rode.
Lucanis had heard nobles waxing poetic about the capabilities of their hunting cats and he could understand why now. Watching them hunt took his breath away.
One of the cats was hard on the heels of a buck and kicked up great plumes of dust behind it as it twisted and turned to keep the buck in its sights. The other two were close behind but had yet to engage, until the first of the trio tripped and rolled quite a ways from the built up momentum.
The other two ignored their downed third and focused on the buck as the second hunter stepped up to continue the chase. The buck wailed in despair as it ducked and dodged but one wrong turn brought it too close to the third cat, who launched himself a startling distance to slam into the buck's shoulder.
The blow to its shoulder combined with the paws raking at its back feet sent it tumbling over with a cheetahs teeth already clamped around its throat.
The full high speed chase was over within thirty seconds, before the riders could even reach them. Lucanis could see now by the collars that Charan had the gazelle by the throat while Ren and Kieran kept its thrashing limbs from kicking him.
Sassy jumped down from his horse and with no preamble reached down to put the herbivore out of its misery by cutting its throat. All four of the human shaped hunters froze when Charan growled at one of his sons and didn’t release his grip on the dying gazelle.
“Grab them,” Sassy ordered and pointed at Kieran and Ren who were still dodging flailing hooves without taking his eyes off the cat shape of one of his fathers.
Lucanis slipped down from his horse and darted forward to wrap his hand around the handle of the grey collar. Ren growled his displeasure and almost pulled Lucanis off his feet as he strained against the hand dragging him back.
Sassy had Charan’s collar in hand and pulled hard until the cat choked and let go of the now dead gazelle. He turned them bodily away and with more daring than Lucanis reached down to scruff the animal and give it a hard shake.
“Da! Let it go! Let the form go,” Sassy barked. He released the cat in a flash of light and smoke that left Charan at his feet in elven form once more. The older elf raised a hand to his head like it was aching as he stumbled to his feet.
“Boys! Change back!” he hollered in turn, despite being shaky on his feet. Lucanis dropped the handle of the collar just in time to let Ren drop to the ground in a similar flash. He crouched down and pressed a hand to Ren’s forehead while his husband groaned.
“That’s not fun,” Ren whispered, voice raspy and exertion from the hunt lingering despite the shift back. He was panting hard, his face was flushed and his heart racing.
“Noted, instincts very strong at that speed,” Kieran groaned from where Illario was helping him sit up.
“Let’s get out of this heat,” Sassy said as he helped his father drink from his water skin and dumped what Charan hadn’t consumed over the elf’s two toned hair.
“Please,” Ren agreed weakly as Lucanis pulled him to his feet and helped him shakily onto his horse. Ren seemed determined to cuddle as close as he could to Lucanis’ back, despite the saddle and the concerning temperature he was running at.
Sassy handed Teia his reins and waved them on with his brothers to take up a protective stance over Charan sprawled in the grass next to the dead gazelle. So they departed back toward the estate at a gentle pace, in deference to how delicate Ren and Kieran felt.
“Hunting is one of the core instincts of any form. Fight or flight, hunting and territory are the ones we’ve learned not to play with. The speed at which cheetahs hunt caught me off guard, da and Ren too I think,” Lucanis overheard Kieran say softly from where he was curled up in Illario’s arms, as much as one could on horseback. Lucanis made a point to not think about that, when they had a spare horse.
They made good time back to the estate when Charan had gathered himself enough to take his griffon form to carry their catch back and easily caught up to the riding party.
An exciting day, all around, and a glimpse into the dangers of taking another form.