Wolves and Men

“I know how to find an opening, just don’t know how to pass through,” said William.

Katherine shrugged her shoulders, “I know how to find and enter the Plain.” While Charles shook his head.

“Ok so a bit of a knowledge gap, no worries there. Katherine, for the sake of training, please don’t help the others.” Katherine nodded in agreement. Jacob smiled and nodded before turning to William. Looking at the Enforcer he asked, “Would you please tell me where the best place to enter the Whyte Plain is?”

William looked around the place and let his body feel out toward the unseen planar rift. He felt the sickly chill almost immediately. It made his skin crawl a little but he continued searching. Jacob had asked where the best place was, so he slowly walked toward the center of the dome trying to feel where it was the coldest. He did feel a stronger chill off to the right and away from where they were standing. Feeling the rift was becoming easier, but trying to discern a difference in the intensity of the chill was strange. It wasn’t just the chill that wasn’t really there, but something else that he couldn’t hope to describe. He pointed to the spot he had found.

Jacob gave him a small clap. “Well, that was better than some on their first attempt. Now can you describe how you came to that conclusion?”

William looked at his pack mates. “I just felt around me. The Whyte Plain feels like, well like a chill, but more diseased than that. Like a cold sweat from someone who’s sick. I just felt around for the most intense concentration of that feeling.”

“It’s an accurate description, though a bit morbid,” said Jacob. “But yes. The planar rift between us and the Whyte Plain does feel something akin to what William is talking about. Now, Charles, I want you to try and feel what William is talking about and tell me where the best place to enter the Whyte Plain is.”

William and Charles practiced for a while, with Katherine having quiet conversations with Jacob off to the side. The two younger men spent the time trying to feel the rift between them and the Whyte Plain that was all around them. The sensation was changing a little in William’s mind. It wasn’t like a disease per se; he was starting to feel something else as well. Maybe whatever it was he was feeling was how the Plain felt before it was corrupted.

“Why is the Plain the way it is now?” asked Charles, breaking the silence around them.

“It was a mistake, made by other Shape shifters,” said Jacob with a bit of curtness in his voice.

“What?” Katherine breathed. Even Aceso jerked her head back as if she’d been slapped.

“Yes, they were trying to help those that had passed into enthrallment of the vampires,” said Jacob. “You know that vampires have the ability to influence bats, rats, and other creatures, right?” The group nodded. “Well, they can also enthrall wolves.” Jacob walked over to a row of stone benches that had been placed along the inside of the curvature of the dome. He sat down heavily and beckoned the rest of them to join him.

“A long time ago the area surrounding this mountain was rich with wolves. Aside from the Grizzly and Black bear, wolves were the apex predators. When California was being settled and populated the wolves started to thin out, this is common knowledge, but what isn’t so common knowledge is the fact that the wolves themselves were being turned on each other.”

“By vampires?” William asked.

“More or less,” Jacob answered. “See, with a denser wolf population there is a better chance for a richer Shape shifter population. Now, humans did their fair share of wolf hunting, believe me. But vampires also had a lot to do with it.” Jacob looked out over the dome and started speaking to no one in particular. “Wolf born werewolves can resist the call of vampires, even before they are reborn as Shape shifters. Imagine being a young wolf in a pack and all of a sudden, the pack starts to veer off from their patrol territories without reason. Your pack mates start attacking humans for no real reason, running head long into other wolves’ territory knowing that it means a fight and death for the intruding wolf.” He looked at Aceso. “How would you feel?”

Aceso was quiet for a long time. “Confused, angry and very sad.”

Jacob nodded, “The vampires wanted to cull the population of Shape shifters here so what better way than to kill off the wolf populations before they could produce Shape shifters in the first place. After a while even that wasn’t enough for the vampires.” He looked at William. “Vampires began to refine their control over the wolves.

“What do you mean, refine?” William asked.

Jacob replied, “Instead of just having wolves getting themselves killed, they started to experiment with having wolves attack each other. The vampires would call wolves together to a point in the forest. There they would play games with them. Games designed to see and test their control over wolves. Like seeing just how long they could keep a wolf silent while having two other wolves attack him. Or taking a superior wolf and making him lose a fight and be killed by a much smaller and inexperienced wolf. The experiments were brutal; I guess the vampires considered it entertainment.”

“That is barbaric, by anyone’s standards,” Charles said.

“Quite right. But they also served a greater and darker purpose,” Jacob continued. “Up till this time we werewolf Shape shifters have only been able to change during the moon cycle we were born to. The vampires wanted the wolves to hunt us down where they could not. Our scholars have theorized that during this time more wolves killed wolf born werewolves than humans killed human born werewolves. The wolf was the vampire’s perfect weapon.”

“With the Shape shifter population thinning out rapidly, our sages were forced to try to come up with a solution. Their answer was drastic but hope inspiring. See, we had believed that there was no way to break vampiric mental domination, it just couldn’t be done.” He looked around at the dome around them. “Maybe they shouldn’t have been so idealistic.” Jacob shook his head.

William asked, “What do you mean?” Jacob didn’t answer right away. “Jacob, what happened?” William asked again more forcefully.

The Elder gave a half smile, “The Sages captured several enthralled wolves. Given the chance to run free in the mountains the wolves would return to a semblance of normalcy but never really normal. They were unsure of themselves and the natural instincts from hundreds of years were dulled. Capturing them was easy, almost a mercy to them. What our Sages did to try to break that vampiric domination over them was essentially their ‘best guess.’ They tried everything from isolation, to starvation, to wolf interaction, standard rehabilitation stuff. Nothing worked. Then they started experimenting with their Earth bonds and the Whyte Plain itself.”