Briar woke up as the sun was setting. A nice breeze was drifting through the area, and there was a distinct smell of smoke that came with it. She lifted her head and let out a massive yawn. Looking in the direction of the smoke, she saw the party sitting around a campfire, chatting with each other and eating something.
She stood up and started making her way over to them. Havel, or, maybe Malik, was the first to notice her. He jumped a bit, but quickly averted his eyes, turning back to the rest of the party. That was odd. Was there something wrong with her?
She could’ve checked, but she was just too lazy to do so. Honestly, if it was something that bad, she was sure they’d tell her. She pushed her way between Thea and Jorreck, laying down and plopping her head on Thea’s lap. Thea gingerly raised her hand and started to stroke Briar’s head. It was soothing.
“Hey, uhm, Briar? Any reason you’re, uh, not…you?”
The alarm bells in the back of her mind tinkled a bit. How could she be not herself? That made no sense. She lifted her head and glanced back at herself. She looked fine. All four of her legs were fine, her fur still looked pristine-- was that it? It made sense. She had just massacred a lot of goblins, and there was no blood on her.
She went to turn back to ask if that was what was wrong when it hit her. At some point, probably during the fight, she had changed. Not clothes, no. Those had simply vanished. No, she had transformed into a wolf.
She looked mostly the same as the wolf who’s body she had commandeered, except now she looked faded. If she looked closely, she could just barely make out the ground beneath her. She didn’t look ghost-like, though. No, this was more ethereal, like something mystical was happening.
This was only further proved by the faint wisps of what looked to be fog that floated away from her body. It looked rather cool, actually. It also felt completely natural. She wouldn’t mind staying like this, actually.
Oh, right. Thea had asked a question. What was it again? Right, yeah, why she was like this. Uh, well, hmm. During the fight. What had she been feeling? Mainly anger. But, there was also a sense of…pride? No, not pride. This was more like the alpha of a pack asserting his dominance. Superiority. That’s what she had felt. She knew she was stronger than the goblins, and she had revelled in that feeling.
So, if she wanted to change back, what did she need to feel? Go from a mighty, unstoppable force, to just another person? Equal, but unique? Each person being just as great, and just as flawed.
A yelp from Thea dragged her out of her musings. She tilted her head up, looking at Thea. Shocked eyes were staring down at her, prompting her to glance at herself again. She had changed back into her human-wolf form. That was neat.
This could make things so much cooler. She could transform, just to be intimidating, or she could trick people into thinking they were being haunted. Maybe. Do people believe in ghosts here? Yay, another thing to add to her ever-growing research list.
She came back to herself when she realized Thea was talking. She looked to have been talking for a while, judging by how emotional she looked. Whatever she was talking about must have set her off. Wait, She should probably pay attention.
“-and I don’t care how capable you think you are, you shouldn’t just run off to the very same place we were sent to clear. You should be thankful these goblins were already cleared out. I don’t want to think about what would have happened if you had been here when they were all alive.”
Briar stared at her for a moment, before it clicked. She didn’t know, or even entertain the idea that Briar had caused all of this. That was…disappointing. She should probably clear the air. She didn’t want to be coddled. She wanted to help butcher things.
“They weren’t dead when I got here. Besides, I didn’t run away. They shot me with a dart, and dragged me back here while I was unconscious.”
Thea paused, before a wry grin spread across her face.
“Nice try. Goblins don’t take captives. They kill on sight. I don’t even think they’ve ever created something to knock people out.”
“They didn’t try to knock me out. They tried to kill me, but it didn’t work, so they brought me back here so this important-looking goblin could kill me. We had a nice conversation. Before it tried to fucking kill me.” Briar spat out those last words. She was still upset about that. They were having such a nice conversation, and the goblin tried to kill her.
“Before it tried to what?”
“Before it tried to kill me.” Briar’s anger had quickly given way to confusion. Hadn’t she already said that? Besides, she was pretty sure she had said it clearly, so why would Thea have missed what was said? She wasn’t given much time to ponder it, however.
“So, you’re telling me that they tried to kill you, but you survived and simply fell unconscious, whereupon they drug you back here, talked with you, then tried to kill you again, leading you to wipe them all out?”
“Yes.”
She looked like she wanted to laugh, but something in Briar’s gaze made her hold back. There wasn’t a single shred of humor in her eyes. The grin on Thea’s face slowly fell away.
“And then, after all of that, you just took a nap?” There was a hint of resignation in Thea’s voice.
“Killing all of the goblins was tiring. What was I supposed to do? Wander around until I found you guys and we all leave the forest? No. I was gonna wait for you guys to get here. Much easier.”
Thea sighed.
“Of course. You didn’t think to save us hours of panicking, no~. You decided to be smart and wait for us. Goddamn, why does this make me feel bad?” Thea had slowly tapered off towards the end, making that last part too quiet for anyone else to hear.
“Well, Briar, would you like some food? We’re going to be spending the night in the forest, as hiking back in the dark is a notoriously bad idea.” This time, it was Jorreck who had spoken. He was holding a piece of meat on a skewer out to her, offering it up.
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Before anyone could react, Briar had sat up and lunged for the skewer, grabbing it and devouring all of the meat off of it in a few bites, barely chewing. As if signifying the apocalypse, her stomach rumbled. She had managed to forget how hungry she was.
She quickly grabbed what was left over the fire and ate that too. Her hunger had barely been satiated, however, and the party could only watch on as she bounded off to one of the goblin corpses.
As soon as she tore one of the arms off, they all let out exclamations of surprise, and tried rushing over to stop her, but it was too late. She had already torn off a chunk of the goblin’s flesh.
She recoiled a bit as the flesh hit her tongue. If the meat they had cooked over the fire had been a hamburger, it would have been the god of hamburgers. At least, compared to goblin flesh. Compared to that, goblin flesh was like a hamburger whose outside was leathery, whose inside was slightly raw, whose bun was soggy, and was room temperature at best.
Sure, it was edible, but it was nowhere near the top of her list of foods she’d want to eat. Still. She was hungry. After that initial recoil, she dove back into her meal with renewed vigor. A small part of her wondered why she was so hungry, but then she remembered that the only thing she had eaten for the last two days had been human brain and some jerky.
Back in her old life, she had often starved herself. Not for any big reason. She was just never hungry, and would often go a full week without eating. Even when she did eat, it was more out of necessity, than hunger.
Here, though? She was actually hungry. And she had fallen right back into her old habit of not eating. That was probably why her stomach felt like it was trying to digest her heart. The party watched on in horror as she polished the last bit of meat from the goblin. Briar had left all the organs alone, as she didn’t know how edible they were.
She was still hungry though, and she quickly moved on to another goblin. This one’s top half was just a paste on the ground, so she’d have to make do with the lower half. As she was eating, she failed to notice most of the party wince when she bit into a certain part.
With a goblin and a half downed, she finally felt a little bit normal again. Probably one more goblin should do it. She glanced around, and found an intact goblin. Eating that one too, she finally felt full. She let out a sigh of relief.
She glanced back and saw the party staring at her, expressions of disgust on their faces. It was at this point that what she had just done finally sank in. Strangely, the only thing she really felt was the general disgust that she had to resort to eating goblins, of all things. Anything else, she probably would have been fine.
She wiped her cheek, trying to get rid of some of the blood, and stood, grabbing one of the goblin’s femurs on the way up. That would be for later. She made her way back to the fire, before settling in.
The party glanced at each other, before they came back to the fire too. She received a few odd glances, full of apprehension, but she ignored them. She had a theory she wanted to test instead.
See, she forgot where she had seen it, but she had read that chewing on bones can sharpen a dog’s teeth. Or was it a wolf? Might not have even been a canine. Point is, she had also read elsewhere that chewing on bones can break teeth. Now that she was kinda a wolf, she really wanted to find out.
The bone was too big to fit entirely in her mouth and still gnaw on, so she had to settle for gnawing on that bumpy part where it formed a joint. She had only chewed twice when the bone started to flake.
Goblin bones were apparently extremely brittle. She took the bone from her mouth, stared at it for a moment, then rubbed the end of it with her fingers. A chalky dust came off of it, before the wind took it and blew it away.
Guess she couldn’t test that theory out quite yet. Maybe later. She chucked the bone behind herself, and focused on everyone else. They had returned to eating, though they were much quieter than before. Yval even kept shooting glances at her, but looked away as soon as Briar looked.
Even though she had just woken up from a nap, she was tired again. Like after Thanksgiving dinner. Her belly was full, the fire was keeping her warm, and there was the nice background noise of the forest all around her.
She crawled over to Thea, getting in her lap and curling into a ball. She felt Thea’s arms slowly wrap around her, and a grin flit across her face, too fast for her to even recognize it. She was happy. Happy she had been given a second chance at life, even if it was weird at times.
With that last thought, she drifted off to sleep.
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She was sitting on the couch at her parent’s house. It had stopped being “her” house when she had gone off to college. Two people were sitting next to her, but they were blurred out. The TV was playing football, but she only saw a wall of light.
She looked at the people next to her, and said something, but they ignored her. She repeated it, but, still, they ignored her. She stood in front of them, blocking the TV, and they got angry.
One of them shouted at her, and she started to cry. She ran to her room, and locked herself in. Laying on her desk was a small pocket knife, which she grabbed and flipped open. She lifted the blade, and started to slice. She sliced, and she sliced, and she sliced. The sting of pain kept coming, but all that appeared each time was a thin red mark.
The tears started to come back, and the knife dug deeper. Finally, a small line of blood formed, and it slowly wound its way down her arm. She watched, entranced, as it coalesced at her pointer finger.
There was a knock at her door, but she remained rooted to the spot. The knocking came again, and she glanced up. Laying on her bed was an absolutely massive wolf. It stared at her, and she saw the love and acceptance in the wolf’s eyes.
The blood fell from her finger, and right as it hit the ground, the walls exploded. A wave of vines grabbed the wolf in front of her, before they viciously impaled it. She watched as the life leached from its eyes.
The vines dragged the body off into the distance, before charging back at her. She didn’t move, still confused over what was happening. Right before the vines reached her, the ground flew away from her, and she was in the sky.
She kept going up and up, before she stopped, weightless for all of a moment, staring down at the greenest forest she had ever seen. Out in the distance, the trees turned orange, before they lost their leaves completely.
She then started to fall, and wings sprouted from her back. She tried to flap them, but they wouldn’t listen to her. She kept trying though, as the ground got closer. Right before she hit the ground, her wings snapped open and flapped once.
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And then she jolted awake. Her breathing was erratic, her hair was clinging to her forehead, and she felt exceedingly hot. She gave her heart a moment to slow down, before she sat up.
Looking around, she looked like she was in a tent. Outside was dark, but there was a small, flickering light which she presumed was the campfire. She reached out, unzipped the tent, and got out.
Her clothes seemed a bit stiff, but that could have just been the dried sweat talking. She meandered her way over to the now confirmed campfire. Malik was sitting at it, poking the fire with a stick out of boredom.
Her arrival alerted him to her presence, and he glanced up at her. Shock and horror quickly filled his gaze, and he launched up.
“Uh, just, stay there, okay?”
He spun around and dashed to the party’s backpacks, opening one up and pulling out a first aid kit. He rushed back to Briar, and knelt in front of her. He pulled some gauze out of the kit, and slowly unraveled it a bit.
“I don’t know what you did to your arm to get it looking like that, but we need to wrap it up or it will get infected. Honestly…how did this even happen?”
Briar had finally noticed that her arm was a mess. There were slices marring the entirety of it, and a trickle of dried blood led all the way to her pointer finger. She thought back to her rapidly fading dream.
That was just a dream…right?