My hunters continue to pursue me across these wide and unfamiliar lands. Even though I constantly evade them, they somehow pick up my trail soon after. They have even convinced the locals to help in their pursuit. I suspect their shamanistic magic is what is allowing my enemies to follow. I know that I could easily end this if I was not weakened from their first ambush. These mortals are truly irritating.
* Final Journal Entry of Nyctimus Lykaeus, 1564 A.D.
Within the mountains and forests, a primal force is about to reawaken. Within a stone coffin buried deeply beneath the earth, a man takes the first breath he’s had in a very, very long time. As he inhales, it is accompanied by terrible pain throughout his body, as if thousands of needles were simultaneously being poked into him. But that doesn’t matter to him right now as he pushes the pain aside. What he truly wants, truly needs right now, is to escape.
He first feels around to discern how much space is available around him. It is a very tight fit, the coffin built almost exactly to his size to the point where he can barely move his arms. There is a small pocket between himself and the lid, maybe between one or two feet. He reaches out with his senses, checking for any enchantments. They are there, but are very weak and almost drained of all power. Consequently, he also notices the same for the stone embedded in his chest. He keeps himself from questioning why they are so weakened, but notes these in favor of his escape.
He focuses on his body, on the hidden power and strong bloodline within him. In response, the pain intensifies to the point where a normal person would scream like a hellhound. But he is not that weak, and he hasn’t been “normal” for millennia. His muscles and veins bulge and grow outward, making the space he’s held in even tighter. The building strength is focused into his arms, with hair growing alongside them until his biceps become the size of a man’s head. Short claws form at the end of his fingertips and skin turns into a toughened hide.
He stops the transformation halfway through, folding the claws into a fist before launching an uppercut to the lid with as much force he can create. The attack lands solidly with a very audible crack of the stone and a bit of dust falling on him. He begins alternating his punches, the cracks widening and dirt starting to fall through on top of him. But he doesn’t worry about being further buried, he doesn’t need to breathe to continue living.
Debris starts falling down continuously at a moderate rate, just needing one more decent hit to get through. His legs begin the same process of transformation, already thick muscles bulging and getting bigger. Bones break apart inside him and reform, his lower body becoming more wolf-like in appearance. He curls and bends his monstrous legs over his chest and aims to where he thinks the focal point is. He then springs them forward in one powerful and fluid motion and the stone lid completely shatters, bringing with it an avalanche of dirt and rocks.
He quickly dug himself upward using his claws. The task was time consuming, filled with slow progress and constantly falling back down with the unstable earth. Finally, what would seem like an eternity but really only lasted five minutes, his hand burst through the top. The rest of his body soon followed and he crouched down on his arms and knees, panting for breath. The exhaustion was more so from the pain that was still constantly flowing through him, rather than the physical exertion he just went through.
He mentally willed his changes to revert and once again became a normal-looking human man. One with a body covered in dirt and grime and clothes that were so tattered that they were almost falling off, but still human. He began hobbling over to lean by a tree, one of many in the partially dense forest he was in. He noticed a faded stench of burnt wood coming from multiple directions, still too strong and too varied in direction for it to be from simple campfires. There was a forest fire recently, within the last year or so. With luck, that could mean a lack of humans in the area.
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The man closes his eyes to focus while keeping his heightened hearing attuned to his surroundings. His name is Nyctimus Lykaeus, a true King of Werewolves. He remembered the months before his capture, when he came to a new and unexplored land, only to have been followed and ambushed. The gem that is now in his chest being forcefully embedded into him, and then feeling searing pain that only worsened through any use of magic or transformations, and being unable to take it out because of those same enchantments. He was able to escape and ran away. He continued to evade them until they cornered him again, and a great fight ensued, one that stories would be told of. But, the battle ended with his capture and forceful slumber.
His eyes opened as he finished recounting those events. Nyctimus did expect to awaken sooner or later, as his hunters wouldn’t have gone through all that trouble if they knew how to kill him. What he didn’t expect was to wake up, alone, buried within a stone coffin.
‘How long have I been sealed, sleeping?’ he wondered.
It was long enough for the ambient energy of the world to lessen, but that didn’t narrow it down. The world’s energy is always fluctuating, rising and lowering randomly over decades and centuries. He was fortunate enough to survive to an era where the enchantments holding him went into a metaphorical state of starvation. He ignores why and how that was possible for the moment.
The werewolf recovered enough of his strength to move again. The pain isn’t entirely gone, but it has numbed enough for him to handle it. Searching for a path, he hopes to find a village or town to gain his bearings, and a new set of clothes. He assumes at least one has been developed in the area since he was sealed.
It doesn’t take long before he notices a bright light shining over a hill. He becomes confused and suspicious of what could make such a powerful source of light. As he crests over the hill and looks down from the cliff he is facing, his suspicions turned into absolute shock. Sprawling far below him was a valley of light and metal. That’s the only way he can think right now to describe it. There was an innumerable amount of lights shining from thousands of buildings, some of them so tall that it seemed impossible to his mind.
He hears an unfamiliar sound coming from far off in the sky, getting louder as it came closer. His body stiffens fully, worried that Zeus or some other God was about to appear. He would’ve preferred that instead, but what really emerged was another metallic thing that was flying in the distant sky. It wasn’t directly above him, but the shock was enough to make him, regrettably, trip and fall on his backside.
He let out a deep, annoyed growl, temporarily allowing his face to partially shift despite the current consequences. Despite his reaction, this isn’t something that was unfathomable to him. He has witnessed through his long life the drive humans have to build and improve on their technology and science, and has even secretly helped in that endeavor on occasion.
“How did these mortals come to create these marvels?” he asked in a whisper, “How, no, why did the Gods even allow them to build this? Was a deal struck to permit this? Maybe the humans have discovered a way to reliably harness magic directly? No, the local ambient world energy is too sparse for even the consideration of creating half of this. I doubt they found any method to bypass that obstacle.”
He sees various roads throughout the enormous city, with more pinpricks of light moving at high speeds. Some sort of fast vehicle is what he guesses. Maybe one of those roads comes up into these mountains. Getting up, he focuses on visually navigating the pathways the roads make. He finds one that goes into the mountains, heading far off to his right. He heads there, about to see what his future holds.