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On a hot summer night would you offer your throat to the wolf with the red roses?
Will he offer me her mouth?
Yes
Will he offer me her teeth?
Yes
Will he offer me her jaws?
Yes
Will he offer me her hunger?
Yes
Again, will she offer me her hunger?
Yes
And will she starve without me?
Yes
And does she love me?
Yes
Yes
Renfri woke under a tree. Sunlight was beginning to peer through the branches and she raised a hand into the air to block out the rays. They were too bright and she felt overstimulated, overdrawn. Slowly, so slowly, she tried to get to her feet, using the tree to keep herself stable. Her legs were shaking and her clothes were in tatters around her. There was a blue cloak, her blue cloak on the dirt ground in front of her and she bent down to grab at it, flinching as her muscles rebelled at the movement. She pulled the cloak around her as quickly as she could, shivering in the cold morning air, leaning back against the tree.
She couldn’t remember how she had gotten here. Her name was Renfri, she was a former Princess of Creyden, a girl of the black sun and she was...she in the middle of abandoned ruins huddling in a cloak.
Breath out. No use for it now. Renfri pushed off the tree and moved towards one of the gaping holes in the ruins. Her steps were hesitant, slow, but she made progress and soon was looking out at...Blaviken. Suddenly it all came rushing back. Stregobor was here so she followed, running into the Witcher, Geralt of Rivia in the tavern, talking to him, meeting him in the town, and then….she put a hand to her stomach as if there would still be a gaping wound. There was nothing. She shivered again, but it was no longer cold.
She managed to wrap the cloak tight around her and make her way through the morning market, no one seemed to recognize her and Renfri was glad for it. The few people who looked her way she quickly hurried past, not wishing to interact with anyone. Her mind was racing with half a dozen different thoughts and ideas swirling through her mind. How had she ended up here? Where were Stregobor and Geralt? How long had it been since their battle? Most importantly, how had she survived?
None of her questions were answered as she made her way through town and onto the outskirts where a few farms sat. She spotted some pants and a shirt on a clothesline nearby so without a moment of thought, she grabbed them and darted into the treeline, getting dressed quickly. They were ill-fitted but they were better than nothing. Renfri hated how exposed she felt, no knives or swords or even food. She couldn’t talk to any of the villagers, wary of them recognizing her. So she did the only thing she could and walked into the woods, moving south in the hopes of finding a town.
She didn’t have a map and couldn’t think of what town was the closest, was it Tridan? Novigrad? Aedirn? A headache began to form in her temple and she pressed a hand to her head.
There was nothing to do but walk on and hope for the best. She had hoped that she would eventually reach a town but there was none forthcoming. Every step she took in the woods only seemed to push her farther into the unknown. It seemed that the trees were getting thicker and there were less sounds of carts and horses. In fact, even the birds’ song was to be dying down. The voices of nature were growing quiet as she walked. There was a feeling that something was pressing down on her. Something was following her. She wanted to escape, but how could she escape somethings she didn’t even understand?
The light began to dim as twilight fell. Renfri tried to find any source of light, even a campfire from a wanderer. There was nothing. Then the light of the sun began to be replaced with the light of the moon. It was full. And then the moon overhead began to light up the night sky, casting everything in a silvery glow she felt it.
A deep gnawing ache began within her. It twisted her and she felt the twist in her soul become the twist in her body. Her bones cracked as they reached into positions a human bones should not reach. Her arms twisted down as her spine reformed curving, growing smaller. Nothing about the human body was meant to compress into a space like this and Renfri felt it with every lance of pain stabbing through her, reshaping her. Her hands, no paws. Went onto the ground and she watched as claws and fur sprouted over her body. She was changing into a monster and there was nothing Renfri could do to stop it.
The pain made her almost want to black out, but she focused. Once she was fully transformed looking down at her reddish brown pelt she looked up at the moon and remembered.
Stregobor had carried her body back to his lab. The Witcher had stood guard over her body but was run off by the townspeople. Stregobor had immediately collected her body and began to run experiments on it. He was unable to perform an autopsy, her body would create a shield that kept him away. He was however able to channel magic through her. Stregabor had wondered for years what kept the girls of the Blacks Sun running and if he could have access to their own magic. So with his abilities he pushed and channeled magic through her trying to draw out the core of her abilities from her cooling corpse. Then he found a spark still buried deep within her. He pushed at it, causing it to billow in her dead chest. But it wasn’t enough, he needed more. So he began to collect souls from creatures in the nearby forests. Trying to feed their magic into hers so that maybe she could be reborn, controlled by him alone. None of the souls work. Not the soul of man or elf or dwarf. Nor vampires or mermaids. Then he found the soul of a werewolf and he fed it into her and something in her spark of a soul left in her corpse latched onto it and then Renfri awoke.
However, it wasn’t the subservient princess Stregobor expected. She wasn’t a shell for him to control like so many legions. She awoke a wolf, tearing into the guards around her feeling their blood on her teeth. She ripped through them without a second thought not conscious of her own mind. Only aware that she was here trapped and she needed to kill. Stregabot ran about, dispelling all the illusions around his magnificent keep in order to hold onto more of his power in order to escape her fury. He ran, leaving Renfri alone in the ruins of what once was his majestic kingdom. She snarled, pacing the empty corridors for most of the night as the moon watched on until sunrise came and she collapsed onto the ground almost painlessly shifting back into human form.
Renfri came back to herself now in her wolf form in the woods, looking up at the moon. She shivered under her fur for the thought of what she had done. She was a killer, yes, but she had never been that brutal. There was something more to her now she could feel it in her chest, a wolf curling around her. She hadn’t managed to remember what happened that night the trauma and newness of the event had blocked it out. But this new transformation made it all to clear. She supposed she was lucky she kept her human form when she transformed. Whether that was a cause of her own magic or of the way struggle or created her, she did not know.
She knew little in the ways of werewolves, but she knew that she needed help. Renfri had never known someone to be transformed into a werewolf through purely magical means. It was almost always transferred by a bite or a cut or blood. She had to find a mage. One who would help her, one who was not associated with Stregobor.
This likely meant finding a graduate from Aretuza. From what Renfri remembered, Aretuza and Ban Ard had no lost love for each other. Unfortunately, every nearby kingdom seemed to be run by men with male mages in their courts. Should have to find the nearest female mage. So she ran south, searching. she was so much faster in this form, seemingly never getting tired. Propelled by her own magic and will power her paws raced along the ground. there was a sense of freedom in this form a sense that no one would recognize her that she was powerful enough to take on anyone who might threaten her. It was liberating.
The further south she raced the more Renfri began to realize that she could hear sounds now. She was no longer in the middle of the woods; she was heading closer to a town. Then she saw the red banners. She was in Aedirn.
She couldn’t remember the gender of the court mage of Aedirn. But the sun was beginning to come up and soon she would transform back. Renfri figured if she could disguise herself and get into the palace she could ascertain whether or not the mage in the court would help her. Transforming back into a human was almost painless. Achingly so. It was almost as if her transformation into a wolf was a punishment and her transformation back into human form was the reward. Magic played such cruel tricks, but this was experimental so she had to ask herself if this was an internal reflection of her own desire to fight for every thing she has yet earned in life.
Renfri looked at her reflection in a stream near one of the farms on the outskirts of Vengerberg. She looked like her wanted posters, grimy and dirty and unmistakably the shrike. She looked in the very early morning light to the small cottage where people like sleeping that she could see through the windows.
She had to disguise herself, but she couldn’t think of how. Then her eyes fell on a pair of sharing scissors. Perfect. Renfri cut off her hair until it was rather close to her scalp, giving her the appearance of a farmhand. Combine this with the dirt under her nails on her nose in the rough spoon clothes that she had stolen from these farmers. She would easily be able to blend in with merchants in the marketplace without them giving her a second glance assuming her to be a local worker.
As expected, no one thought anything of her disguise, very few looking at her and giving her strange glances the way she received as she left Blaviken. Renfri made her way up to the castle. Of course she wouldn’t be able to walk right in, it would rely on having to sneak in. She walked around until she found her way to the sewers where she could already see the smoke from the kitchen rising into the air. She watched as a cook around the corner threw out some of the garbage from the day's meal she walked over and with one swift motion hit them in the face. Her punch seemed to pack a little more power than usual and the man fell back immediately unconscious. It seemed her strength and improved them as well. Perhaps her transformation wasn’t as cursed as she believed at first glance. However there was still the worry of keeping her human mind during the transformation. How could she be certain that she wouldn’t turn into a mindless beast once more, slaughtering every person that crossed her path?
She ducked into the kitchen and grabbed a tray of food, bringing it into the dining hall with a cane and his court date. She spotted the mage at once, wearing elaborate robes with gold trim on the edges. It appeared it was a woman. Not just any woman, a gorgeous woman with long black hair and glowing violet eyes. Renfri had traveled the continent enough to know that those eyes weren’t human, and that cemented her decision. Who could understand her situation better, who could have more empathy than someone who is considered inhuman themselves? This mage would be perfect. Now the only thing that was necessary was to wait until nightfall and wait until the mage was vulnerable and would be alone.
Renfri stuck to the shadows for most of the day. The difficulty was breaking into the palace. Once you were in there, well it was possible to stay there practically indefinitely. Almost every castle had small nooks and crannies no one ever thought to look. And as long as you look like a servant, people assumed you were supposed to be there to serve them. No one ever thought about the possibility of infiltration until it was too late. The sun began to get low in the sky and Renfri made her way to the tower. Mages always lived in the towers. She could feel the itching of a transformation on her back. It was the last night of the full moon but she resisted it trying to push it off until she could have access to us mage.
Renfri felt a fearless grow into her and then she realized that the reason she had kept her mind the other night was because there were no humans around. She realized that keeping her human mind was directly tied to not being around anyone to lose her mind to. She began to feel a thrill of fear that she would release a monster into this castle. These people had done nothing to her; she tried not to kill unjustly. Suddenly her desire to find a mage turned into less of a reasoning to break her curse and more of a necessity in order to keep her contained. Maybe this mage would be able to manage what Stregobor couldn’t, maybe her willingness would play a factor in the magic.
Renfri felt her teeth begin to lengthen so she ran pushing past other servants and bursting into the tower of the mage without a second thought.
The beautiful woman turned around her hair casting over one shoulder.
“And who do we have here?” she said, words falling from her lips in a haughty tone.
“Help...me,” Renfri said, her voice deepened and coming out as a half growl due to the lengthened fangs she was now sporting.
Once the woman saw all of Renfri, she stepped back, a trill of fear running through her frame.
“What are you?” The woman asked and Renfri swallowed a howl.
“I was cursed, please, you have to help me, I will kill everyone in this castle if I’m not neutralized in time.”
The woman came over, tilting up Renfri’s chin and her violet eyes looking directly into her, “And what would you give me in return?”
Renfri shivered, “I would give you your own life and the lives of everyone in this castle.”
“You offer me my own life but would you give me yours?”
“Yes, yes,” Renfri begged, hoping beyond all reasonable belief that this mage would be kind to her.
“And might I have a name for the person’s whose life I now own?”
“Renfri.”
The woman’s eyes flashed, “Hello Renfri, I am Yennefer. I’ve heard of you, Princess of Creyden. You are supposed to be dead.”
“Tales of my death are greatly exaggerated.”
“Then you won’t mind telling me how you are still alive.”
Renfri felt her back arch in preparation for her bones reforming, saying with a growl, “You stop this transformation and I’ll tell you anything you want to hear and then some.”
Yennefer chuckled, a low sound, then went to her closet and brought a ruby red cloak. She muttered a spell over it and then pulled it over Renfri’s prone form. Immediately, Renfri felt the transformation begin to recede and she sighed in relief.
“What was that?” she asked.
“A cloaking spell,” Yennefer said with a laugh.
Renfri growled, the sound coming up unbidden and Yennefer held up her hands.
“It’s a simple stasis spell. It holds off magic while the user wears it. Mages use it to pause rituals regularly.”
Renfri nodded and Yennefer went to her bed, motioning Renfri to follow.
“Now,” Yennefer began, looking deep into Renfri’s eyes, “I believe you had information on that bastard Stregobor.”