97

You've never seen the elders' training room before, but you know of it by reputation. Hidden behind the mundane offices and libraries lies an enclosed square of a room, its padded walls scarred by a hundred claw marks. The smell of feral rage lingers in the air along with a hint of stale sweat.

Upon entering through the single reinforced door, you know that all the rumors are true.

When a werewolf ages past the point of prime physical adulthood and begins the perilous descent into dotage, the lines between wolf and human begin to blur. In their advanced years, humans sometimes lose their sense of self; their memories and ability to reason fade away, grasped back occasionally in a limited fashion before slipping again through the cracks.

Werewolves, it would seem, suffer from a similar malady, and with far greater frequency than their human counterparts. The feral wolf inside them, long held at bay by the constraints of rational thought and morality, begins to break free as the mind deteriorates, eventually taking over and leading to a full mental break. The resulting creature is no longer the wolf it once was, the humanity of its former self wiped clean, the first victim of the ravenous beast locked within every werewolf.

Ahote confirms your thoughts. "This is where we come three times a week to exorcise our demons. We let the wolf out to play, our fellows locking the door behind us so we can't do any true harm. Even I can't be certain why this process works to stave off the inevitable—perhaps it purges an excess of certain hormones or metaphorically feeds and sates the beast within. But that's not why we're here today."

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