The morning after the attack, I barely saw Braman and Dasdan with all the planning and preparation. Instead, I met with the hunters and elders to discuss the plan to go after the monsters that attacked us in the night. I spent a few hours convincing both the hunters and elders that striking back fast and hard was the only way to prevent this from happening again.

In the end, Justal volunteered to go with me to help me take the fight to the wolves. I didn't expect the warriors to do much anyway, and all I needed from them was a guide to the location of where they lived. Before we left, I needed to check on Dasdan and Braman to see if they were ok.

I found them inside Dasdan's hut, quietly talking. Dasdan looked worried, and Braman seemed barely aware of his surroundings. When I poked my head in the opening, Dasdan noticed me, patted Braman on the head, and led me outside. She pulled me away towards the outside of the village.

“Something is wrong with Braman. He acts as if he is dead but walking. He talks but has no feeling. He is not sad nor happy, and I expected him to be scared from the attack, but he acts as if nothing happened. Do you know what has happened to him?” Dasdan asked me.

“I don’t know. I have never healed anyone back from death before. I could try to heal him more and see if it helps. He has my blood in him now, and I think he will be powerful because of it.” I said, unsure of what was happening to Braman.

“Let's go back and see if you can fix what is wrong with him. He didn't even hug me when he woke up. I think something is very wrong.” Dasdan said. “We will figure it out, and then I will go take care of the rest of the monsters that did this to us,” I replied.

We made it back to her hut and entered, finding Braman exactly where we left him, still unmoved and unemotional and having no reaction to us entering other than to glance in our direction. I sat down beside him and took his hands in mine with no response from him. “Braman, it's me, T’Cha’La I will make sure you are all healed, and there is no more damage from the wolves last night. Are you feeling ok?” Braman briefly made eye contact with me, and I saw red gold rolling across them again like I had the night before. However, I was sure it wasn't my imagination this time, and something was off. “I am fine,” Braman said in a monotone voice.

I let my power slowly flow into Braman to check him for injuries I may have missed. As soon as my power entered his body, Braman screamed in pain and lept back much faster than any human could and landed against the wall about two feet off the ground and hung there. Fur started to flow over his arms, and claws were buried in the hut's wall holding him in the air. “They cursed him with their wolf madness. My healing can't fix that.” I said. Dasdan started towards Braman, saying, “It is ok, Braman, calm down. We aren't going to hurt you. Come down off the wall, and we won't try to heal you again.” Braman dropped from the wall and bolted out the door when she got almost within arms reach. We chased him, and he ran fast across the village towards the outside. “I will go catch him,” I said. Dasdan grabbed my arm and said, “No, you will only scare him more. We will wait until he calms down and comes back.”

“Dasdan, I am so sorry. I didn't know this would happen from getting bitten, nor did I know my healing would harm him. I will make the wolves tell me how to cure this curse when I destroy them.” I said.

“It is not your fault the wolf bit him, and you did everything you could to heal him. I do not blame you, T’Cha’La, without you; he would be dead now rather than just in danger.” Dasdan said and took my hand in hers. “I can wait here with you until he comes back and go after the wolves when we have made sure he is safe and home,” I said.

“No, you should kill those monsters before they come back or go after another village. I will take care of Braman when he comes back. He will probably want to be away from other people, so they don't learn about the curse.” She said and pulled me into a hug. “I will do what needs done and come back as soon as possible,” I said before letting go of the hug and running off towards Justal to tell him we were leaving.

Within the hour, we ran towards where Justal already knew the wolves were coming from. We ran for well over an hour before Justal came to a stop and began trying to catch his breath. I walked up to him and healed his fatigue and muscles to speed up his recovery. Justal gasped and jumped away from me in shock as he was once again full of energy, as if he had just woken up from a whole night's sleep.

I asked him, “Are we close?” He looked back at me and said, “Yes, it is just up there over the hill. There is a village nearly as large as ours, and I don't know if they are all wolves or if it's just some of them.”

“You wait here, and I will deal with it. I don’t want you dying for no reason, and they can’t kill me. So I will ask them for the monsters responsible for killing our people, and if they do not give them to me, I will begin killing their leaders until I get what I want.” I said. “As you say, T’Cha’La. The elders told me I am to follow your orders, and that is what I will do.” Justal replied.

“I will return soon,” I said over my shoulder as I took off towards the direction he had indicated. Within a few moments, I looked down on a village very similar to the one I lived in. I had expected something more animal and monstrous, but children ran and played, and women prepared food. In addition, I saw some men here and there doing various things. Deciding it didn't matter what they looked like right now, I knew that the wolves were human when they wanted to be, so I ran at full speed to the village and right to the center in a blur that none of the villagers noticed.

Stopping in the center of the village, I looked around at the people nearest me and said, “Bring me the village leaders, or I will start killing everyone here until they show themselves.” A few women backed away, but some men started towards me, picking up makeshift weapons as they got closer. The first man to reach me said, “Who are you to threaten our leaders? We will kill you now and then feed you to the wolves.” That was all the confirmation I needed that I was in the right place. I shot forward and grabbed the man around his throat and squeezed, pressing my talons deep into his neck. I lifted him off his feet and tossed him about twenty yards into a hut before looking at the next one. “I don't have to kill you. I want to talk to the leaders and find out who is attacking the villages as wolves and killing people. Give me them, and I will leave you in peace.”

An old man stepped towards me and said, “Stand back, all of you. Who are you, demon? Why are you coming after our Wolfmen when you are a predator?” I looked at the old man and asked, “Are you the leader of this village?” he said, “I am one of the leaders. The rest never returned from last night's hunt. I am the only one that is here right now.”

“Then you are the last of your villages leaders that is alive. I killed the rest last night when they attacked my village. Are all of you wolf cursed, or is it just the leaders?” I said to the old man.

“You couldn’t kill all of the wolves we sent out. There were too many for one person to kill. So what happened to our people?” He said. “I killed them all, and if you do not start answering me, I will start killing the people here until I get the answers to my questions, or everyone here is dead, and the problem no longer exists,” I answered.

“Jantar kills this thing,” he said, looking back at a huge man who immediately started running towards me and sprouting fur. “I will show you what will happen if you don't start answering me only once, and then if you don't start to tell me what I want, I will just start killing people until I get what I want,” I said just before Jantar hit me mid-air as the largest wolf I had ever seen. Rather than even try to dodge, I caught him with my arms around his chest under his front legs and squeezed. Bones began popping and crunching as my arms closed the distance to each other as I slowly pushed my hands together until they were clasped behind his back. Jantar was whimpering rather than attacking, and I dug my claws deep into opposite sides of his spine and pulled my hands apart as fast as I could, tossing his top half to my right and bottom half to my left. I flicked the blood from my hands and wiped my face off with my arm before looking back at the leader.

“Now, are you willing to answer my questions, or should I get angry?” I asked him. He looked at the pieces of Jantar, then back at me and said, “What are you?” I looked back at him and said, “Answer my questions. Is there a cure for the wolf curse?”

“A cure? What do you mean? The ability to be the wolf is a gift from the gods that we have been allowed to pass on to our people to give them strength. Once you are a wolf, there is no way to remove it.” he said.

“That is what I thought you would say. So who here kills and eats people, and why do you do it?” I asked. “Only the ones gifted with the wolf's power eat people. The rest of the village are ungifted and only partake in normal food. Eating your enemies grants you strength, and we use that strength to protect ourselves from our enemies.”

I looked at him with disdain and said, “Those animals were killing children and women, not warriors. They are not enemies. They are just people living in peace and harming nobody. I have decided to give you a chance to change how you behave. From now onward, you will no longer attack and eat people. If you do, I will come and wipe out your whole village. I will make sure there is not a single survivor with the wolf's power inside them. This is the only time I will allow you to walk away alive. You can protect yourself from attack, but you will never again attack someone else and never eat another person. I will go out and meet all the other villages in the area and tell them they are under my protection, and if anything happens to them again, I will know who to come for.”

The old man looked at me, and I could tell he wanted to argue, but he was too afraid. He said, “We will abide by your rules and pass them on to the whole village. What will you do about the others who prey on people? The blood demons come around here sometimes, and they are the enemy the wolf was given to us to defend against.” I asked him what blood demons were, and he described them as pale men who drank blood until their victim was dead, and they moved on, and they only came round in the night. “If I find them around, I will tell them the same thing. People are not food, and if they do not like it, they can try to take my blood.” I said.

After finishing up with the leader and agreeing that he would keep his people from ever attacking another village, I ran back to Justal. When I arrived, I told him I would need to find all the towns in the area and tell them the arrangement I made with the Wolfmen so they could come to me if there were another problem. After some discussion, we decided we should go home and discuss it with the elders and send out the warriors who knew the villages better to deliver the news rather than me since I was a stranger to them. So off we went back to our town.