After Julius had left, Dick turned to the rest of his man. He nodded his head. It never got less surreal to him, his body shifting and changing into that of a lion. One minute he was six foot four humans looking down at his hands. Then his hands turned into paws the size of dinner plates. Even his thoughts changed. Abstract ideas became meaningless, while some things like family or food were attention-grabbing.

The rest of his men quickly followed their bodies, transforming into large wolves. Unfortunately, their gear didn't change with them, so now there were close to thirty wolves in military gear.

With a nod, Dick padded into the jungle with his wolves following close behind him. They weaved through the jungle moving steadily closer to the Ziggurat.

Once he started into the forest, Dick was assaulted by the quiet. There was nothing, no birds, insects, not even the wind. And then there were the trees. The fruits hanging off the tree were a pulsing white, casting an ethereal glow upon the gnarled roots and twisting branches that reached out like sinister appendages. Leaves took on a disturbingly aberrant form, with contorted mouths and alien patterns, and all of them were somehow the wrong shade of green.

The very ground beneath his paws felt foreign, covered in a dense layer of glowing slime moss that emitted an eerie luminescence. Strange fungi, luminescent mushrooms, and exotic flowers burst forth from the forest floor, their shapes and colours an assault on the senses, challenging the boundaries of familiarity and unsettling the mind.

Despite all of this, Dick felt good, he didn't have many opportunities to let his lion out, and it was so nice to stretch out his paws, even if the location was less than ideal.

The squad waited as two werewolves returned to their position, having scouted ahead of the group.

"Oak, Charlie," Dick said, his voice low and gravely in his lion form. "Report on what you found."

"We found the research team." Oak said, "They've been put to work building the pyramid."

"Ziggaruat," Dick corrected.

"Those Lurkers are wandering around them like watchdogs, but so far, they haven't done anything. We also found some kind of creature overseeing the project. I do not recognize it, but it looks like a mostly purple human with an octopus for a head, spellcaster, I think," Oak reported.

"The humans were weird," Charlie cut in. "we tried to get their attention, but they didn't even acknowledge us."

"How so?" Dick asked

"Charlie hit one of them with a rock, and they didn't react," Oak said, growling at Charlie.

Charlie whimpered, putting his tail between his legs as Dick towered over him.

"That was a stupid move, Charlie. You might have blown our cover."

"I'm sorry, sir," Charlie said. "But we tried everything else, and it was all I can think of."

"Doesn't matter," Dick said. "You put your squad at risk, and that is something I do not tolerate. You are on toilet duty for the entire squad for three months. Any more issues with you, and you're off the team, do you understand!"

"YES, SIR!!" Charlie answered sharply.

Dick turned to his second in command.

"Oak, what do you think is happening with the research team?"

Oak shrugged as much as a wolf could shrug. "Domination magic? It doesn't quite feel like Domination magic, but I can't think of anything else it could be."

"Hmmm. I hate not knowing something." Dick carefully considered the situation. "Alright, take half the pack to try and wake them up. if you can't wake them up, bite them." Dick ordered.

"Wait, what?!" Charlie cut in. "that's illegal! We could go to jail if we bite someone."

"I'm not asking; I'm ordering." Dick said, "It's that, or we leave them. We can't transport mind-control victims in the middle of nowhere. Turning them into Lycans will reset their brains so we can get them out of here, is that understood."

Dick stared down at anyone who looked like they wanted to argue. Once it was clear no one was going to argue, he continued.

"I’ll take the other half of the pack and deal with the monsters and the spellcaster. Do not break cover until I launch my attack." Dick ordered.

🜷🜔🜳🝈🝄🜤🜵

Dick stalked towards where Oak had stated the alien spell caster was located. he had to admit that Oak had undersold how alien the creature was.

Its head was like someone just slapped an octopus on someone's neck. It didn't appear to have a skull, as he could see its pulsating brain through its skin, with only its beak and tentacles being prominent on its face. Its hands seemed to be made out of five tentacles in the vague shape of hands, and it wore a massive long flowing cloak. Its entire body was an opaque purple. A small white shield seemed to surround the creature as well, probably a magic shield.

"What is that thing?" Paul asked.

"Prey," Dick answered, "get into position."

Dick felt his muscles twitch, his instincts pushing at him to launch himself at the monsters, to leap at them and bite down on their throats as he pulled them to the ground. But he did not let those instincts consume him, and he wasn't just a lion.

His body shifted, changing. He became a proper lion man, neither entirely lion nor human but with the benefits of both. Picking up his gun, her lined up the unknown creature in his sights and FIRED.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

BANG BANG POP

The moment Dick pulled the trigger, every other lycan opened fire. The lurkers didn't even have time to scream before they were gunned down. The unknown creature's shield held against the barrage.

As it waved its hand, a sphere of water. In moments the water shield was strong enough or perhaps dense enough to casually block the incoming bullets.

"You dare to attack the Alnune?!" a voice rang out in Dicks head, telepathy. "You dare to fight against the apex of evolution?! I will squash you like the bugs you are!!"

"SHIT!" Dick roared as the Alnune fired a barrage of ice bolts toward his position.

🜅🜛🜞🜕🜋🝉

The moment Oak heard the gunfire, he shifted into his hybrid form. He and the rest of his team shot out of the forest line toward the research team. Some of the Lurkers turned to face them and got a bullet to the face for their troubles.

Oak ran up to one of the research team and punched them in the face. Dominating the human mind was a funny thing. Normally, domination magic sought to get someone to mindlessly perform an action, the same way some would mindlessly walk or breathe. So a sudden jolt of pain should undo the effect.

The human Oak just punched and flopped to the ground, dropping like a bag of bricks. For a second, nothing happened, then the human got to his feet, picked up the supplies he had just dropped and resumed his duty as if nothing strange had happened.

"Fuck, this isn't domination magic!" Oak called out.

"What do we do?" Charlie asked him

"You heard Dick bite them!" Oak ordered as he bit one of the humans.

"But the law…" Charlie protested.

"Charlie, if you don't do as you have been ordered, I am going to shoot you in the head and leave you here for the monsters to eat as you try and regenerate your brain!" Oak growled as he bit a second human.

Charlie bit a third human, not arguing anymore. At the same time, the first person Oak had bitten transformed into a large wolf looking around confused. Unfortunately, they wouldn't be able to shift into a human for at least a day.

"Head back to the tree line," Oak ordered the new lycan. "We blazed a trail back to the exit. Follow it out."

The wolf nodded before running off towards the tree line.

Unfortunately, at this point, their prison break had been noticed, and Lurkers started to swarm on their position. Oak suddenly found half of his team had to start putting down Lurkers while the other half hurridly worked on turning the humans into lycans.

"Charlie! Hurry the fuck up. We're about to be overrun," Oak roared out as he moved to intercept a dozen Lurkers moving in on their position.

Oak's black fur started to turn even darker as his own magic started to flow through him. Shadow and cursed mana started to leak from him like a black haze. Reaching behind him, Oak pulled out two tomahawks. The close-quarters weapons were made from an extremely heavy metal known as Ebony, they could crack bone with ease, and part of Oak regretted that he hadn't been able to use them in the ambush before. The Lurkers armour made his claws largely ineffective, but that was all in the past now.

Oak grinned wolfishly as he shadow-stepped, teleporting directly in front of the first Lurker. He smashed his tomahawk through the monster's abdomen before it could even react to his presence. Its chest piece shattered under the blow.

Oak didn't even wait for the Lurker to hit the ground before he attacked the second one smashing its outstretched claw with his tartan. The curse emanating from Oak's body ravaged the Lurker's body as much as his attack had. The Lurker's flesh started to rot under the curse.

Oak moved on to the next target and the next and the next. Each time he brutalized the Lurker as quickly as he could, each attack a combination of overwhelming strength and curses, but he was losing ground. For every Lurker he killed, three more arrived on the battlefield.

Oak lept to the side as one of the Lurkers swiped at him. But he was too slow. The Lurker's claw slashed through his left arm severing it at the elbow. Oak swore and smashed the Lurker's head with his remaining Tomahawk. Storing his weapon and picking up his severed arm, he pressed his stump against his severed arm.

"Fuck" Oak hissed as the nerves in his arm reattached themselves.

Unfortunately, he didn't have the luxury of waiting for his arm to reattach itself as the Lurkers were closing in on him. Instead, he was forced to retreat as his comrades supplied suppressive fire against the Lurkers.

"Charlie?!" Oak called out as he returned behind the line.

"We're done here; everyone has been bitten. It's time to retreat!" Charlie called out.

"Those aren't our orders, you dolt," Oak growled. "We hold the line here until Dick shows up."

"You're down an arm!? How are we going to hold all these monsters back?"

Oak looked at Charlie with a nasty grin.

"When in doubt, blow it up."

🜁🜇🝁🜤🜠🝃🝟🝊

Dick ducked under a fallen tree as spears of ice impacted all around him. Pinning him and the rest of the Lycans down. This was starting to get annoying. His people were dying while he was stuck here with an alien asshole.

"You lower lifeforms are pitiful." the Alnune shouted telepathically.

"Would you please shut up, you are a walking cliche," Dick growled as he fired off another shot at the massive water shield the Alnune was hiding behind.

"I thought we could shoot through magic shields," Paul protested.

"You ever try and shoot into a swimming pool?" Dick asked rhetorically. "The bullet shatters as it loses all momentum. And that shield has a lot of water tied up in it."

"Are we screwed?" Paul asked.

"No, I’ll deal with it," Dick said.

He really hated using magic. It always took too much out of him.

"Um sir, what do you …" Paul stopped talking as Dick started

Dick began to pull in the mana in the air, condensing it, rotating it into his lungs as his body started to glow a mix of orangish brown and ghostly green. He could feel the pressure inside of him starting to grow.

"Shit!!" Paul said as he pointedly moved away from Dick, clearly aware that something was going to happen.

The magic flowing around Dick started to increase, building like a hurricane. The pressure inside was starting to get uncomfortable as the power built. Even the Alnune had noticed and started to concentrate his ice spears on Dicks position as he finished charging the only spell he knew.

Leaping up onto the fallen tree, he stared directly at the Alnune inside of his water barrier. The Alnune launched a dozen ice spears at him simultaneously, but he was too late.

Dick ROARED.

The roar wasn't just a sound wave. It was a concussive blast of force and mana with enough force to rip apart the nearby trees, flatten the ground and sent the corpses of lurkers flying. The Alnune didn't even stand a chance as the roar smashed through its defences, sending it splattering onto the ground behind it as its defences proved useless.

Dick stood over the battlefield, now little more than a barren wasteland.

"Nice work, boss," Charlie said.

"Thanks, but we need to move," Dick shot back. "Our people are down there fighting. Get moving!"

"Yes, Sir!!" Charlie and the other Lycans acknowledged.

The lycans charge down the slope to meet up with the rest of the team. Dick followed behind them more slowly. He felt spent.

BOOOOM

Dick looked up to see a massive cloud of smoke rising up near the ziggurat.

"Dammit, Oak," Dick complained with a smile before his grin turned into a frown as a heavy Buzzing started to fill the air. "Julius, I hope you're doing better than I am."