CHPT 270: To Fight a Shape-Shifter is to Fight two beings at Once...

"CLASH!"

Dolion's commanding tone washed over the field, pulling everyone into a high-speed flow of transformative combat.

Samuel blasted across the field, smashing his palms and shoulders into his opponent in unison with the rest of the fighters, creating a unified sound of collision that rumbled through the Deviant menacingly.

They'd started another round of combat in what seemed like an endless series of events. And the Clash was the first step of the Shifter's Dance. It was a performative aspect that worked more as training wheels for the newly changed than a viable combat stance.

The Clash was as much of a strength exercise as it was meant to get the ball rolling in beginning the shift that the newly changed hadn't yet mastered. The shift most easily comes as a response to pain, and colliding bodies with someone else is the perfect medium to feel just enough to understand the feeling of the shift and progressively bring on more of it as the battle waged on.

The longer you held the Clash, the longer you could maintain the Shifter's Dance before fully releasing your true form.

"HOLD.....HOLD IT!" Dolion yelled while he followed along against his current opponent, Dier.

Samuel could already feel himself beginning to change. To try and slow it only made the process more painful. His opponent seemed to be in the same boat.

"I'm gonna get you this time blondy...." His accented opponent said through clenched teeth as sweat trailed down his snow-white skin and dripped onto the silver fur covering his arms.

Samuel snarled, "Try anything fishy and I'll deep fry you, Bengal."

Bengal snarled and tried to use his height advantage to push Samuel down instead of backward only to fail. What Samuel lacked in height, he made up for in bulk. And with Bengal standing at six foot four, their two inch height difference meant nothing in the face of Samuel's fifteen pound weight advantage.

"You're not losing your grip already, are you stripes?" Samuel questioned, calling the Lupine by the oddity of his fur pattern.

He laughed off Samuel's reply as steam rose from his bubbling shoulders and high cheek bones.

At first, Samuel hated that about Bengal. One of the Lupines he'd decided to share his meals with, laughing at him in combat. It aggravated him to no end in the beginning. But after some time, he learned to appreciate the change of pace. It was nice to hear someone other than Jack able to laugh amidst the sea of snarling monsters.

"TEN MORE SECONDS!" Dolion roared, not a bead of sweat fell from him while his opponent Dier was already steaming like everyone else.

Samuel and Bengal strained. The muscles beneath their black cloaks bubbled and filled with feral power, black claws punctured flesh soon after.

Bengal began to shake and pull. Samuel held him, applying more force as his strength climbed.

The sounds of snarls and barks took over the field, growing in volume by the second. The collective change of the pack was urging every member to transform fully. The final seconds were always the hardest. Until they weren't.

"Release!"

Samuel and Bengal pushed off of each-other, bumping backs with the other fighters around them who were all steaming and inches away from going wild.

He eyed his opponent, prepared to fight him for the thousandth time.

Bengal was an odd opponent when compared to the other Lupines of the pack. He didn't know much about the boy other than that he was a Noble from Islandia with a name so hard to pronounce that the others simply called him the first thing that came to mind. Bengal-- Stripes also worked. His difference first came in his physical build. Sure he was tall-- physically imposing at least, but he lacked the lean bulk of the rest. He was more wiry in build, it made him fast-- and when combined with his impressive reach, he was able to catch Samuel with some good cuts more than a few times.

The second sign of his difference came in his nature. His boyish grin combined with ghostly pale skin and shiny sable-black hair that just barely covered his blue eyes made him look as if he was always up to something like a child that never knew when to stop playing. To see that expression on someones face in their circumstances spoke volumes of what Bengal had seen back home.

Him and Samuel didn't speak much-- too busy fighting and trying to master their transformation, but when they did. Bengal didn't speak highly of his life before Dolion. Then again, no matter how successful, the life of a child amongst a family of Hunters in Islandia could only be every shade of unpleasant imaginable.

Samuel knew this for a fact ever since he found himself in Islandia not long ago, facing the black ice castle of their sleeping king, littered with Lupine Monsters, Vampires and WereWolves leashed like dogs.

The place was colder than death, and the cracks in the permafrost that created condensed Wild Magic deposits called Wild Rifts only made the Monsters that roamed the white tundra even stronger. He couldn't imagine roaming that place as a young boy as Bengal had.

And just as him and his family were about to die at the end of their failed hunt of the Lupines, Dolion changed the boy as a sick form of revenge that he made the family see in their final moments. To Dolion-- and Samuel's, suprise, Bengal spoke highly of accepting and embracing the change.

It was safe to assume he didn't like his nomadic survivalist family much. And all that time spent in the cold, witnessing the power of the beasts they hunted must've allowed him to grow a keen form of interest in one day becoming one.

Never cold again. Never weak. Never far from another meal. He must've been tortured by them to look at Dolion as his salvation.

Either way, Samuel didn't care. He just needed a scrapper at his back that would help him rise through the ranks within the incredibly large pack. And a scrapper Bengal was.

Something he mentally prepared himself for as the wiry young Lupine finally exploded from his spot in the grass, just as everyone else on the field had.

Movement re-emerged in an instant, and Samuel wasn't exempt from that fact.

FWOSH!

He met his opponents charge, feeling the cool winds ruffling the thin veil of fur covering his arms as he unleashed a combo and punches, kicks and claw swipes.

Bengal bobbed and weaved every strike before creating distance to use his reach on Samuel. He bounded away from the strikes and slashed at his face.

SWIP!

"ARGH!" Samuel let out a stifled roar as three lines of red opened up on his cheek.

"You've got to be a bit faster than this, blonde boy." Bengal poked in his cold Russian accent while he bounced lightly on his toes.

Samuel growled, "Don't bite off more than you can chew, you skinny bastard..."

The growth of violence ripped their conversation to shreds as the surrounding Lupines wrestled and crashed into them, throwing them back into the fight.

Without hesitation, they rolled with the flow, dodging, twisting and striking in every form imaginable. Sometimes punches landed, other times incisors tore through flesh followed by claw's knees and whatever else did damage.

The next time they split, everyone on the field looked unrecognizable.

Samuel's muscles bulked to a threatening degree beneath his cloak, followed by his height climbing at least six inches and his body being sheathed in smooth golden fur. The half-state he stood in was more painful than he could imagine. It wasn't meant for them-- to hold back their true natures as such felt wrong...on an instinctual level. He knew that much, but it helped in combat. It lent more strength and speed without having them completely transform.

"Damn you and this fire..." Bengal spat through a partially shifted snout and sharp teeth while he paced around the ring of purple fire Samuel created in an attempt to burn him.

Samuel didn't reply. He stared instead.

Bengal's wiry form didn't change as he went through the motions of shifting. His limbs just seemed to grow longer, strapped with slim cord-like muscle and tight grey skin that disappeared under the smooth silver hair he sprouted in a flash.

In an instant he ripped off his black cloak and shook like a dog, allowing more of the change to come forth in the process as smoothly as butter.

His snout lengthened-- longer and slimmer than most, lined with razor sharp white canines as his eyes burned from blue to a fiery orange.

The flaming beacons of violence peered through him endlessly, no longer interrupted by his silvery-black bangs. His hair now swept down his back in a spiked silver mane lined with the black of his human hair in the form of stripes. The stripes littered his mane and ran across his toned back and capped shoulders like deep black claw-marks. Bengal, what a fitting name.

Samuel snarled at the sight of his true form. The sight of Bengal reminded him of the last Lupine he saw with stripes, "Claude...."

He could remember almost perfectly, seeing Claude under the light of the Moon. So similar yet so different with fur as black as night itself and moving as silent as the wind. He had stripes too, only under the moonlight could Samuel see them, running across the outsides of his arms, legs and ribs like scars.

Samuel spat on the floor in disgust, his saliva burned through the grass like acid, "Less talking, more fighting."

Bengal cackled like a hyena from his extended maw and dashed.

The silver striped beast went straight for his face, instead of dodging, Samuel used his innate defensive capabilities with his Aura to cover his face and headbutt him.

CRACK!

Bengal's snout crunched as it smashed into his purple Aura, before he could recover, Samuel punched him in the gut and quickly spun around to pick him up from behind and suplex him into the cold earth.

They hit the ground in a tornado of gold and silver fur, biting and clawing at each-other while the surrounding Lupines fought and stepped on them carelessly.

Despite Samuel's bulk, Bengal was further along in his transformation and used his claws as if he'd had them since birth. With his feet, he ripped gashes open in Samuel's quads and abdomen while biting at his shoulders and face like a dog with rabies.

He was losing.

"GET OFF!" Samuel roared as purple flames erupted from his jaws like a dragon.

FWOOSHSHHH!!

Bengal leapt off Samuel, feeling the heat graze his chest and snout in the midst of stumbling away.

Once at a safe distance, he halted and prepared to face the golden Lupine. Only, he wasn't on the ground anymore.

CRUNCH!

"AARP!" Bengal yelped and rolled away in response to Samuel shoulder charging his backside. He rose to his feet in a flash. Just in time to receive a punch to the ribs and a slash to the face that caused blood to leak into his vision and partially blind him.

SHWSH!

CRNCH!

Bengal rolled with the hook and sent another slash to Samuel's face, aiming at where he thought Samuel was since his vision was compromised.

FWOO!

His claws met nothing, causing him to spin around in search of him.

Just barely missed. He could hear the Lupine moving behind him, playing against his lack of sight.

"NO!" He snarled as he spun in an attempt to block what he assumed was another punch to the snout.

He was wrong. He knew so as he watched Samuel move beneath his defenses-- fully transformed on all fours with dark fire lining his muscles like glowing armor.

"RAGH!!"

***

That was the epitome of the Shifter's Dance. Never cease movement, fight dirty-- naturally, and allow the change to take you over progressively. Making you progressively more dangerous and harder to follow in combat-- one second you're blocking punches, and the next you're fighting off bites. It was like fighting two different people in a way. He'd learned its effectiveness.

"STOP!" Dolion's voice halted the violence of everyone. Sometimes his words had that effect. They seemed to be lined with absolute control and even dictate consciousness.

Samuel froze over Bengal, holding his face to the floor with one hand while the other hovered over the Lupine's throat shaking with the urge to finish the job.

Everyone else was in a similar state. Halfway towards closing their jaws around throats, or ripping open chests. They moved to split and end another session of training.

"Don't!....Don't move!" Dolion snapped, freezing everyone again.

He began moving, footsteps audibly sifting through the long-grass, closer and closer.

Samuel felt himself shrinking in fear, but the command to stay still locked his bones in place like they were encased in cement.

Even as Dolion landed right in front of him after jumping an unbelievable distance, he could barely even flinch.

The Alpha watched him through glowing yellow eyes. His face as grim as always...and he reeked of a sour, almost decaying scent. Jealousy. The scent calmed in response to him violently running his hands over his long braid of hair.

"Hm. Maybe your fathers strength runs through you more so than I imagined. Well done, pretty boy. You have the basics of the Shifter's Dance down well. I think I'd like to see you face someone a bit more...challenging this time around. Follow."