Which two indeed. You stay silent for a moment, deciding the fate of the adventurers who are desperately fighting off the wolves. You only need a couple of seconds to realize that the choice is not hard at all. The dwarf Mori did not leave much of an impression on you, so you don’t feel particularly attached to him. And Cassandor’s suspicious personality that borders on omnipotence is too troublesome to be kept around. That and it seems that the boy is the cause of this whole mess in the first place, so it seems fitting that he should be sacrificed.
“I want to turn the orc and the female human into mindless slaves,” you say to the shadow wolf.
“Very well,” Shinde says and loses his physical form, becoming nothing more than a dark mist that sweeps forward into the adventurer camp like a swift gust of dust. Once the dust of death reaches the four adventurers it morphs back into the giant corporeal shadowy wolf figure with the front teeth of the wolf’s jaws snapping across Cassandor’s body. Shinde lifts Cassandor into the air and with a quick thrashing movement of his jaws rips the boy’s body apart, sending the top and bottom flying into opposite directions.
“Nooo!” Mori screams and turns against the wolf with a raised ax.
“Aaaargh! Monster!” Gorrazsh runs at Shinde, aiming to at least cut apart the wolf’s front leg with his two broadswords.
The wolf swipes with its left paw at Mori. For better or worse Shinde’s claws are cut off so the swipe only hurls the dwarf into the trees twenty yards away. Then Shinde lets out a ferocious roar straight at Gorrazsh. You feel the shockwave of it hit against your chest all the way on the edge of the scene. As if an explosion happened with a sound of a lion roaring straight into your ear. Covered in the wolf’s spit, Gorrzash freezes in place, trembling, dropping both his weapons, before falling to his knees himself.
“Rip the other two to pieces!” Shinde commands his pack while standing over the helpless Lyanna and Gorrazsh. “I want my claws!”
Neither Gorrazsh or Lyanna are capable of answering him. Gorrazsh is on his knees. Tears flow from his eyes and saliva starts to drip from his dropped jaw. Lyanna is hysterical—crying and screaming, slowly crawling from beneath the giant wolf.
The entire dire wolf pack, barking and salivating, sprints to the bodies of Mori and Cassandor. You’d think they have not eaten for a week when you see the bloodthirstiness in their eyes. The last thing you want is to get between them and their prey. Unfortunately for the prey themselves—Cassandor and Mori—they are both alive when the wolves sink their teeth into their flesh.
Cassandor, already bleeding out, lets out pitiful, incomprehensible cries of agony, thrashing his arms—the only remaining limbs under his control—while the wolves pin his upper corpse down, biting into his arms, stomach, neck, and face. Soon the boy’s cries are muted as he gurgles and chokes on his own blood. Three or four of the biggest wolves around Cassandor’s upper body don’t bother ripping through the boy’s cloth and instead sink their jaws deep into the gory contents of his stomach that are spilling out from where his torso was ripped from the rest of the body.
Mori suffers a similar fate. In the end, his bulky steel armor provides about as much protection from the teeth and claws of dire wolves as paper would. A few of the dire wolves cry in pain and back off after wounding themselves on the sharp edges of the armor they tore apart themselves. But smarter wolves claw the armor apart and rip it off the dwarf’s body, opening him up like canned food. The sharp, rough edges of the torn steel and the claws of the dire wolves rip across poor Mori’s body like meat hooks, tearing the guts out of his plump flesh. The only comfort for Mori is that he doesn’t suffer for long—his rib cage must have also been broken open, and several dire wolves dug straight into his chest, no doubt consuming the dwarf’s heart within seconds.
Being painfully aware of their nightmarish suffering, you walk toward Shinde, Gorrazsh and Lyanna. You make sure not to look anymore at either Mori or Cassandor, and futily trying to block out the twisted screaming and wailing, that will no doubt haunt you for many nights. Alpha, Epsilon and Elza follow you. Overwhelmed by your own sensations, you fail to notice how any of them are handling this situation.
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Lyanna almost writhed from under Shinde’s body, but a single, deep, throaty snarl from Shinde, accompanied by a death glare, pinned her to the ground. Like Gorrazsh, Lyanna stared back at the shadow wolf, trembling and paralyzed by fear.
Then you hear long howl coming a little distance away from the center of the camp. You look to where the howl came from—the dire wolf that let it out is standing over the mangled bottom half of Cassandor. It now bears a closer resemblance to a chewed up carcass than the remains of a human—most of the right leg cleaned to the bone, the entire scene is covered in blood. At the legs of the howling dire wolf is a torn bag, from which—among other things, such as small glass vials, feathers, and silver coins—you see several black, curved claws sticking out.
Shinde says nothing and slowly walks straight past you, toward the furthest part of Cassandor’s gory remains. You use this opportunity to rush to Gorrazsh and cast [Submission] on him.
“If you care at all about your life, obey my orders!” you command the orc while aligning yourself with him in such a way to look him dead in the eyes. Despite the orc still being on his knees, this still puts your and his eyes at nearly the same height. There is something similar in the orc’s vacant stare to that of Alpha’s, but the difference is that Gorrazsh still has enough spirit in him to seep fear through every pore in his body.
“Actually, I don’t care if you want to live or not. Get up and follow me!” You command the orc and cast [Submission] on him a second time.
Surprisingly, it works! The Orc rises to his feet. Some light actually returns to his eyes that are now two feet higher than yours. He picks up his weapons and follows behind you as you hurry to Lyanna. The girl is lying on her back with tears in her eyes, drolling from her mouth and slowly bleeding out from her wounded left leg.
“Elza, see what you can do about that!” You command you subordinate and summon [Hellfruit].
“Eat this!” You shove the fruit right into Lyanna’s face, pressing it against her full lips and cast [Submission] as you do it. After a second Lyanna does bite into the red fruit.
“From now on, follow my orders like your life depends on it! Because it does,” you order Lyanna, casting a second [Submission] spell on her as well. Then you summon another [Hellfruit] and hand it to her, “Eat it and get up!”
Lyanna obeys your commands, wiping the tears from her eyes. While you have secured two slaves as you said you would, the question is what to do now. Both Mori and Cassandor are dead. Only the sound of their meat being torn, chewed on and fought over for remains.