A crack of thunder caused a figure to sit up. Sweat was forming on his palms as he panted heavily. He put a hand to his face, feeling the canid snout of his. It was feeling warm – a fever perhaps?
“No.” The figure got out of bed, letting his paws touch the ground heavily. He put a hand to his chest. Underneath the fur and fat his body had, he could feel a rapid heartbeat. “I’ve… I’ve been in contact with these sick individuals for weeks now and have symptoms. Why… why now?”
Walking to his mirror in the dark, the creature could see his reflection scarcely. It was a reflection of an obese werewolf. One he had grown accustomed to for ages. Ever since he was an adolescent, he had been cursed with being a werewolf. For the longest time, this very curse was what defined him. He had only just begun to shape who he was, and it was all torn away by something that changed his body. The werewolf put a hand on the mirror while the other covered his eye. He could swear his sclerae were black and blood was dripping from his eye.
He felt a moment of panic but then settled down, thinking it was a delusion. “Feverish? No. I’m not? Am I? My thoughts are cohesive… I think? Am I sick?”
The werewolf started his mental process for when his cognitive mind was in question. It was simple arithmetic, counting up the exponents of two. “Two, four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four… 16,777,216….”
It took the werewolf several minutes to complete his exercise, but he was at least lucid. “Okay… but why am I feverish?”
The werewolf heard a yawn come from somewhere in the room. Jumping, the werewolf bolted around and blurted out, “Who’s there?!”
“Max, Sarge.” The voice was tired as a figure lifted itself from a bunch of blankets across the room. “Night terrors again?”
“Uh….” The werewolf thought for a moment. “N… no. Just my thoughts again.”
“Ahh, that it?” The small figure lifted its arms and stretched. A flash of lightning revealed it to be a small, blue kobold. “I fell asleep on your belly again, sorry. Found some blankets after I woke up and slept there for the night – I hope you don’t mind.”
The werewolf didn’t say anything. He knew who this person was, but through his fear-stricken awakening, he was having trouble recalling who it was.
“I see what you meant by being called ‘Knight Wolf’. You have some armor in your closet. Kinda old and rusted.” The kobold walked over to the werewolf and reached up to pat the werewolf’s belly comfortingly, as he could not reach the werewolf’s shoulder. “It was a bad dream, I bet. You should get some sleep. You’ve been working yourself too hard.”
“That why I’m feeling feverish?” Sarge put a hand to his head and groaned. He then remembered seeing his eyes bleeding. "Are... are my eyes bleeding?"
“Bad dreams can do that. You wake up mid-dream and your body starts to heat itself back up.” Max squinted his eyes to stare up at the werewolf. "And no, your eyes aren't bleeding. Delusion, perhaps. You were woken from dreaming, probably!"
Sarge finally remembered who he was talking to. “Max… we were trying to find a cure for the plague that’s been going around.”
“Yes….” Max yawned. “You’ve been up for almost a week. You needed sleep. Now get some more.”
“But… I haven’t solved anything!” Sarge panicked, turning back to the mirror. “The only thing I could think of is-“ his voice quivered as he spoke, “my werewolf curse.”
With the howling winds banging against the window, Sarge could feel the air thicken with his words. Several moments passed as Max receded his hand from Sarge’s belly. “Your curse? Why?”
“I have been in contact with the plagued individuals for over a week now and have not contracted the illness.” Sarge turned to face the mirror again. He could still see the outline of his body in it. “It’s probably because I’m a werewolf. I have the blood of a monster that is immune to the disease.”
“Do you truly feel you’re a monster?” Sarge felt Max lean against his leg. “Quite a smart monster, if anything.”
“Well…” Sarge looked down at the kobold and sighed, leaning back on his feet, Sarge dropped to the floor, landing on his haunches. “Yes. I’m a werewolf – a creature known to be violent, rip out throats, eat people alive… all those things they write about in stories.”
“Last I checked, you cried when you accidentally squished a spider.” Max walked to the front of Sarge and pressed both his hands into the werewolf’s belly for support as he rested his chin on the soft fur. “Only thing monstrous about you is that appetite you pride yourself in.”
Sarge gritted his teeth. He didn’t like the teasing about his crying, but he knew it was true. Sarge could not bear to see someone or something in pain, let alone if Sarge had caused the pain in the first place.
“I’ve done research into this. I used my body to find out what it’s resistant to. Turns out a lot of things do not affect me like they would a human. This includes the plague.” Sarge looked down at the kobold’s silhouette. “I’ve not yet felt short of breath, horribly dehydrated, or even remotely fatigued to the point of being bedridden. Those are all the primary signs of the plague.”
“I feel we both know the answer here, but why do you not do it, then? Why not put some of your werewolf blood into a potion? Volatile when mixed with Fever Few, sure, but it’s proven to be a decent solvent for certain potions involving the shifting from human to werecreature.” Max flicked his tail inquisitively.
“It’s a dilemma.” Sarge lifted his hands and stared at the palms. Though too dark to fully see, he could see the dark patches where his pads were. “I can give people a cure to what will kill them, but at the cost of their identity. I’d be completely forcing them to have an entirely new life.”
Max stayed silent as he got off the werewolf’s belly, walked over to the nightstand, and pressed his hand on the top of a corked bottle. With the applied pressure, the bottle lit up, shedding a pale blue light across the room. Max turned back around and walked over to the werewolf again, returning to his previous position from before. “Go on.”
“Uh…” Sarge put a hand to his cheek. “It’s always worried me. Being a werewolf had changed my life completely. As far as I knew, I could never return to being human… and to this day, that almost rings true.” Sarge leaned back, resting his weight on his arms. “I don’t wish lycanthropy on anyone.”
“If all it does is change your physical appearance to that of a wolf, can it be so bad?” Max lifted a finger and pointed at his head. “I mean, I’m still myself, but I used to be a human. I ended up turning into a kobold.”
“You were worried you were going to lose your mind?” Sarge looked away. “So was I. So AM I.”
“It seems you’ve got more worries than just a plague to cure at this point.” Max sighed. “But I guess we have to test your cure theory some way. Starting with a hypothesis on what will happen if you use your blood in a potion to cure the plague.”
“The hypothesis is that people will become werewolves, but not be as lucky as I was.” Sarge put his hands to his temples and started massaging them. He could remember the stories of werewolves and the effect it had on his family. “If werewolves are like the few that attacked my family, then it means anyone who becomes one has a chance to become like that.”
“What if we were to stop that part of the transformation?” Max asked.
“If we could, then I’d not be so worried. I can’t just assume it will be alright. If I create it as a cure, I must also prepare for the consequences of harming people some other way.” Sarge felt his eyes begin to water. “It already took me so long to get people to even remotely like me. I don’t want to squander that by forcing people to be like me!” Sarge lifted his arms up as he stared at the ceiling. “I don’t know what to do outside of turning people into werewolves!”
Max cocked a brow as he looked away. Sarge recognized this as the kobold being deep in thought. “They’ve called multiple healers and alchemists to find a cure for this plague. Have any of them found anything?”
“They’ve called ‘alchemists’.” Sarge rolled his eyes, squinting away a stray tear. “Literally meaning ‘anyone who wants to try can do it’. I read the fineprint, Max.”
“So did I, but I hoped that wasn’t the case.” Max’s expression turned dark. “And healers can only use what they know to stop something.”
“I’m running out of options, Max.” Sarge grimaced, falling backward with a small thud. He stared up at the ceiling, feeling a wave of fatigue wash over him now that his heart was no longer racing. “I either let people die, or I ruin their lives.”
“This plague, do we know where it came from?” Max asked, climbing on top of the werewolf’s belly. The kobold sprawled himself out so he was laying belly-side down. Lifting up his chin, he continued to speak to the werewolf. “Is it some form of organic entity or… is it magical?”
“Fifteen year old woman was reported to have contracted it one day. I requested a detailed report on all things she had done three days prior to becoming sick. I tested different samples of food, water, et cetera that she supposedly had eaten. Small traces of biological manifestations, but all of which I had seen before. I even tried treating people with a bit of the miracle cure I created.”
Max’s eyes widened and he put a hand to his cheek. “But… the miracle cure works on any biological aliment.”
“Exactly.” Sarge put a hand to his eyes and covered them. He remembered the look of joy and surprise on the family’s face when he had arrived that day. He had a small flask of the miracle cure on him that he gave to the woman before collecting information on the ailment. Dismayed, he saw that the cure had no effect on her. This was unprecedented.
Hours later, Sarge had received the manuscript of recorded activities from the woman’s parents. There were very few abnormalities in her routine. Getting food, drinking water… and then going out into the forest. Of all the parts of that manuscript, the forest was by far the oddest part. Sarge tried to get more information but the parents did not know what the woman had done in that timeframe.
“Maybe it’s a curse? I had asked.” Sarge stated, shaking his head. “No. Since when does a curse spread?”
“Uh….” Max rested his head on the werewolf’s belly fluff again. “Did you not just say that lycanthropy was a curse?”
“Yes, I did… but it’s different!” Sarge folded his arms over his chest and huffed. “Lycanthropy has drastic changes that happen in a matter of hours. The gestation period of this plague is two and a half days, meaning it’s something biological, right?”
“Or something… pretending to be biological?” Max asked inquisitively. “I’m not well-versed in curses, but if I wanted to make a curse, I would make it seem like a sickness.”
Sarge grimaced. “But then my lycanthropy prevents me from getting sick?”
“It’s either sheer luck or your curse is counteracting the other curse.” Max rested his hand on his elbow and yawned. “I should stop lying on your belly. It’s making me nod off again.”
“Get some sleep, Max.” Sarge frowned. “You’re not really helpful alchemically when you’re tired.”
“Nor are you.” Max chided. “I’m not going to reverse another pig transformation on you from a botched potion!”
“Reverse, huh? If only I could do that,” Sarge yawned, “with this plague.” Sarge tilted his head back and saw the opened closet. A few blankets were neatly stacked on the floor – Max’s temporary bed. With the light from the nightstand, Sarge could see the glimmer of his armor. Max had alluded to it before, but Sarge hadn’t donned that armor in a long while. It was funny to see it sitting in his closet like this. When he had first obtained the armor, he had sworn to become an adventurer that everyone would admire. He was going to change the world one way or another.
Sarge felt Max’s head press against his belly. The Kobold curled himself up and was now starting to sleep. This left Sarge to mull over everything in his head. The data of the plague, samples he had taken, mysterious forest visit, his knight armor and… his blood. Sarge had dealt with curses before. He even had a few curses on him to this day, but he never thought of them spreading. As an alchemist, there wasn’t much he could do to break a curse. If only he were an adventurer.
A flash of lightning lit up the room, burning an image of the armor into his vision momentarily. He squinted his eyes shut to try and rest his eyes. He noticed a shape. It was an insignia he had become all too familiar with. The Symbol of Knight Wolf.
A chevron atop a diamond with two triangles on the two bottom-facing sides of the diamond. A symbol that meant “To always aspire for your goal but keeping yourself grounded and compassionate towards those around you.”
Sarge opened his eyes. “It’s a curse.”
“Hmm?” Max asked, half asleep.
“A curse! It’s a curse!” Sarge lifted his hands up to prevent Max from falling off as Sarge got into a sitting position. The kobold seemed upset that his bed was now gone.
“You are talking like you have figured something out. Didn’t we just discuss this… how long ago was I awake?” The kobold rubbed the back of his head. “I was dreaming about ale.”
“But I did!” Sarge gently dislodged the kobold from his legs as he stood up. “I’ve been thinking about this all wrong!”
Max got to his feet, brushing himself off. “Let’s hear it.”
“I was thinking of this from an alchemical standpoint! But, if this is a curse, then I need to think of it as something else. I need to think of it like an adventurer would!” Sarge pointed to his armor in the closet. “I’m a werewolf, yes. I’ve been cursed with lycanthropy for my entire life, but that lycanthropy is the very reason I donned that armor in the first place!”
Max’s eyes lit up. “So am I going to be able to see this fabled ‘Knight Wolf’ you’ve told me so much about.” His smile twisted wryly. “For someone who spoke of treasure, you never truly showed it.”
“I will… and I have a plan!” Sarge walked to the closet and pulled out the breastplate to his armor. He could see the insignia glisten under the pale light. “Can you hold down the fort for me for a day or two, Max?”
Max cocked his head to the side. “I… can, but why?”
“The one bit of data on that entire document that left open ends was the trip into the forest. I didn’t want to go in there, and most people were afraid to. ‘It’s not my job to go in there!’ they said.” Sarge turned to face Max.
“When did this responsibility land on you, Sarge? You’re already overworked and tired from trying to cure the plague.” Max scratched his head.
“That’s an alchemist’s job.” Sarge smirked. “And I am an alchemist.”
Max blinked, seeming unable to reply to Sarge’s odd wording.
“Finding out what happened in that forest? That’s an adventurer’s job.” Sarge grabbed his cape and flipped it around himself. “And I am an adventurer.”
“You think it’s connected?” Max asked.
“It very well could be. I’ve tested everything possible except for that forest.” Sarge clenched his fists as he looked down at the ground. “I’ve got no other options.”
“Perhaps not.” Max walked over to Sarge and hugged around the werewolf’s legs. “I’ll watch your house for you. There are a few experiments I needed to work on, though, so I hope you don’t mind if I use some of your reagents.”
“Go ahead.” Sarge bent over and picked up the kobold, giving the blue lizard a hug. “But there’s also another thing I want you to use.”
Max leaned back so his face wasn’t full of werewolf fur. “What is that?”
Sarge’s expression became dark. “My blood.”
~~~~~
Another story involving two alchemists! Seems Sarge is confiding in the help of the famed alchemist, Max the Kobold to help him stop a plague that's ravaging villages.
~~~~~
Max © nyhgault
Art/Sarge/Story © pikminpedia Me
“No.” The figure got out of bed, letting his paws touch the ground heavily. He put a hand to his chest. Underneath the fur and fat his body had, he could feel a rapid heartbeat. “I’ve… I’ve been in contact with these sick individuals for weeks now and have symptoms. Why… why now?”
Walking to his mirror in the dark, the creature could see his reflection scarcely. It was a reflection of an obese werewolf. One he had grown accustomed to for ages. Ever since he was an adolescent, he had been cursed with being a werewolf. For the longest time, this very curse was what defined him. He had only just begun to shape who he was, and it was all torn away by something that changed his body. The werewolf put a hand on the mirror while the other covered his eye. He could swear his sclerae were black and blood was dripping from his eye.
He felt a moment of panic but then settled down, thinking it was a delusion. “Feverish? No. I’m not? Am I? My thoughts are cohesive… I think? Am I sick?”
The werewolf started his mental process for when his cognitive mind was in question. It was simple arithmetic, counting up the exponents of two. “Two, four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four… 16,777,216….”
It took the werewolf several minutes to complete his exercise, but he was at least lucid. “Okay… but why am I feverish?”
The werewolf heard a yawn come from somewhere in the room. Jumping, the werewolf bolted around and blurted out, “Who’s there?!”
“Max, Sarge.” The voice was tired as a figure lifted itself from a bunch of blankets across the room. “Night terrors again?”
“Uh….” The werewolf thought for a moment. “N… no. Just my thoughts again.”
“Ahh, that it?” The small figure lifted its arms and stretched. A flash of lightning revealed it to be a small, blue kobold. “I fell asleep on your belly again, sorry. Found some blankets after I woke up and slept there for the night – I hope you don’t mind.”
The werewolf didn’t say anything. He knew who this person was, but through his fear-stricken awakening, he was having trouble recalling who it was.
“I see what you meant by being called ‘Knight Wolf’. You have some armor in your closet. Kinda old and rusted.” The kobold walked over to the werewolf and reached up to pat the werewolf’s belly comfortingly, as he could not reach the werewolf’s shoulder. “It was a bad dream, I bet. You should get some sleep. You’ve been working yourself too hard.”
“That why I’m feeling feverish?” Sarge put a hand to his head and groaned. He then remembered seeing his eyes bleeding. "Are... are my eyes bleeding?"
“Bad dreams can do that. You wake up mid-dream and your body starts to heat itself back up.” Max squinted his eyes to stare up at the werewolf. "And no, your eyes aren't bleeding. Delusion, perhaps. You were woken from dreaming, probably!"
Sarge finally remembered who he was talking to. “Max… we were trying to find a cure for the plague that’s been going around.”
“Yes….” Max yawned. “You’ve been up for almost a week. You needed sleep. Now get some more.”
“But… I haven’t solved anything!” Sarge panicked, turning back to the mirror. “The only thing I could think of is-“ his voice quivered as he spoke, “my werewolf curse.”
With the howling winds banging against the window, Sarge could feel the air thicken with his words. Several moments passed as Max receded his hand from Sarge’s belly. “Your curse? Why?”
“I have been in contact with the plagued individuals for over a week now and have not contracted the illness.” Sarge turned to face the mirror again. He could still see the outline of his body in it. “It’s probably because I’m a werewolf. I have the blood of a monster that is immune to the disease.”
“Do you truly feel you’re a monster?” Sarge felt Max lean against his leg. “Quite a smart monster, if anything.”
“Well…” Sarge looked down at the kobold and sighed, leaning back on his feet, Sarge dropped to the floor, landing on his haunches. “Yes. I’m a werewolf – a creature known to be violent, rip out throats, eat people alive… all those things they write about in stories.”
“Last I checked, you cried when you accidentally squished a spider.” Max walked to the front of Sarge and pressed both his hands into the werewolf’s belly for support as he rested his chin on the soft fur. “Only thing monstrous about you is that appetite you pride yourself in.”
Sarge gritted his teeth. He didn’t like the teasing about his crying, but he knew it was true. Sarge could not bear to see someone or something in pain, let alone if Sarge had caused the pain in the first place.
“I’ve done research into this. I used my body to find out what it’s resistant to. Turns out a lot of things do not affect me like they would a human. This includes the plague.” Sarge looked down at the kobold’s silhouette. “I’ve not yet felt short of breath, horribly dehydrated, or even remotely fatigued to the point of being bedridden. Those are all the primary signs of the plague.”
“I feel we both know the answer here, but why do you not do it, then? Why not put some of your werewolf blood into a potion? Volatile when mixed with Fever Few, sure, but it’s proven to be a decent solvent for certain potions involving the shifting from human to werecreature.” Max flicked his tail inquisitively.
“It’s a dilemma.” Sarge lifted his hands and stared at the palms. Though too dark to fully see, he could see the dark patches where his pads were. “I can give people a cure to what will kill them, but at the cost of their identity. I’d be completely forcing them to have an entirely new life.”
Max stayed silent as he got off the werewolf’s belly, walked over to the nightstand, and pressed his hand on the top of a corked bottle. With the applied pressure, the bottle lit up, shedding a pale blue light across the room. Max turned back around and walked over to the werewolf again, returning to his previous position from before. “Go on.”
“Uh…” Sarge put a hand to his cheek. “It’s always worried me. Being a werewolf had changed my life completely. As far as I knew, I could never return to being human… and to this day, that almost rings true.” Sarge leaned back, resting his weight on his arms. “I don’t wish lycanthropy on anyone.”
“If all it does is change your physical appearance to that of a wolf, can it be so bad?” Max lifted a finger and pointed at his head. “I mean, I’m still myself, but I used to be a human. I ended up turning into a kobold.”
“You were worried you were going to lose your mind?” Sarge looked away. “So was I. So AM I.”
“It seems you’ve got more worries than just a plague to cure at this point.” Max sighed. “But I guess we have to test your cure theory some way. Starting with a hypothesis on what will happen if you use your blood in a potion to cure the plague.”
“The hypothesis is that people will become werewolves, but not be as lucky as I was.” Sarge put his hands to his temples and started massaging them. He could remember the stories of werewolves and the effect it had on his family. “If werewolves are like the few that attacked my family, then it means anyone who becomes one has a chance to become like that.”
“What if we were to stop that part of the transformation?” Max asked.
“If we could, then I’d not be so worried. I can’t just assume it will be alright. If I create it as a cure, I must also prepare for the consequences of harming people some other way.” Sarge felt his eyes begin to water. “It already took me so long to get people to even remotely like me. I don’t want to squander that by forcing people to be like me!” Sarge lifted his arms up as he stared at the ceiling. “I don’t know what to do outside of turning people into werewolves!”
Max cocked a brow as he looked away. Sarge recognized this as the kobold being deep in thought. “They’ve called multiple healers and alchemists to find a cure for this plague. Have any of them found anything?”
“They’ve called ‘alchemists’.” Sarge rolled his eyes, squinting away a stray tear. “Literally meaning ‘anyone who wants to try can do it’. I read the fineprint, Max.”
“So did I, but I hoped that wasn’t the case.” Max’s expression turned dark. “And healers can only use what they know to stop something.”
“I’m running out of options, Max.” Sarge grimaced, falling backward with a small thud. He stared up at the ceiling, feeling a wave of fatigue wash over him now that his heart was no longer racing. “I either let people die, or I ruin their lives.”
“This plague, do we know where it came from?” Max asked, climbing on top of the werewolf’s belly. The kobold sprawled himself out so he was laying belly-side down. Lifting up his chin, he continued to speak to the werewolf. “Is it some form of organic entity or… is it magical?”
“Fifteen year old woman was reported to have contracted it one day. I requested a detailed report on all things she had done three days prior to becoming sick. I tested different samples of food, water, et cetera that she supposedly had eaten. Small traces of biological manifestations, but all of which I had seen before. I even tried treating people with a bit of the miracle cure I created.”
Max’s eyes widened and he put a hand to his cheek. “But… the miracle cure works on any biological aliment.”
“Exactly.” Sarge put a hand to his eyes and covered them. He remembered the look of joy and surprise on the family’s face when he had arrived that day. He had a small flask of the miracle cure on him that he gave to the woman before collecting information on the ailment. Dismayed, he saw that the cure had no effect on her. This was unprecedented.
Hours later, Sarge had received the manuscript of recorded activities from the woman’s parents. There were very few abnormalities in her routine. Getting food, drinking water… and then going out into the forest. Of all the parts of that manuscript, the forest was by far the oddest part. Sarge tried to get more information but the parents did not know what the woman had done in that timeframe.
“Maybe it’s a curse? I had asked.” Sarge stated, shaking his head. “No. Since when does a curse spread?”
“Uh….” Max rested his head on the werewolf’s belly fluff again. “Did you not just say that lycanthropy was a curse?”
“Yes, I did… but it’s different!” Sarge folded his arms over his chest and huffed. “Lycanthropy has drastic changes that happen in a matter of hours. The gestation period of this plague is two and a half days, meaning it’s something biological, right?”
“Or something… pretending to be biological?” Max asked inquisitively. “I’m not well-versed in curses, but if I wanted to make a curse, I would make it seem like a sickness.”
Sarge grimaced. “But then my lycanthropy prevents me from getting sick?”
“It’s either sheer luck or your curse is counteracting the other curse.” Max rested his hand on his elbow and yawned. “I should stop lying on your belly. It’s making me nod off again.”
“Get some sleep, Max.” Sarge frowned. “You’re not really helpful alchemically when you’re tired.”
“Nor are you.” Max chided. “I’m not going to reverse another pig transformation on you from a botched potion!”
“Reverse, huh? If only I could do that,” Sarge yawned, “with this plague.” Sarge tilted his head back and saw the opened closet. A few blankets were neatly stacked on the floor – Max’s temporary bed. With the light from the nightstand, Sarge could see the glimmer of his armor. Max had alluded to it before, but Sarge hadn’t donned that armor in a long while. It was funny to see it sitting in his closet like this. When he had first obtained the armor, he had sworn to become an adventurer that everyone would admire. He was going to change the world one way or another.
Sarge felt Max’s head press against his belly. The Kobold curled himself up and was now starting to sleep. This left Sarge to mull over everything in his head. The data of the plague, samples he had taken, mysterious forest visit, his knight armor and… his blood. Sarge had dealt with curses before. He even had a few curses on him to this day, but he never thought of them spreading. As an alchemist, there wasn’t much he could do to break a curse. If only he were an adventurer.
A flash of lightning lit up the room, burning an image of the armor into his vision momentarily. He squinted his eyes shut to try and rest his eyes. He noticed a shape. It was an insignia he had become all too familiar with. The Symbol of Knight Wolf.
A chevron atop a diamond with two triangles on the two bottom-facing sides of the diamond. A symbol that meant “To always aspire for your goal but keeping yourself grounded and compassionate towards those around you.”
Sarge opened his eyes. “It’s a curse.”
“Hmm?” Max asked, half asleep.
“A curse! It’s a curse!” Sarge lifted his hands up to prevent Max from falling off as Sarge got into a sitting position. The kobold seemed upset that his bed was now gone.
“You are talking like you have figured something out. Didn’t we just discuss this… how long ago was I awake?” The kobold rubbed the back of his head. “I was dreaming about ale.”
“But I did!” Sarge gently dislodged the kobold from his legs as he stood up. “I’ve been thinking about this all wrong!”
Max got to his feet, brushing himself off. “Let’s hear it.”
“I was thinking of this from an alchemical standpoint! But, if this is a curse, then I need to think of it as something else. I need to think of it like an adventurer would!” Sarge pointed to his armor in the closet. “I’m a werewolf, yes. I’ve been cursed with lycanthropy for my entire life, but that lycanthropy is the very reason I donned that armor in the first place!”
Max’s eyes lit up. “So am I going to be able to see this fabled ‘Knight Wolf’ you’ve told me so much about.” His smile twisted wryly. “For someone who spoke of treasure, you never truly showed it.”
“I will… and I have a plan!” Sarge walked to the closet and pulled out the breastplate to his armor. He could see the insignia glisten under the pale light. “Can you hold down the fort for me for a day or two, Max?”
Max cocked his head to the side. “I… can, but why?”
“The one bit of data on that entire document that left open ends was the trip into the forest. I didn’t want to go in there, and most people were afraid to. ‘It’s not my job to go in there!’ they said.” Sarge turned to face Max.
“When did this responsibility land on you, Sarge? You’re already overworked and tired from trying to cure the plague.” Max scratched his head.
“That’s an alchemist’s job.” Sarge smirked. “And I am an alchemist.”
Max blinked, seeming unable to reply to Sarge’s odd wording.
“Finding out what happened in that forest? That’s an adventurer’s job.” Sarge grabbed his cape and flipped it around himself. “And I am an adventurer.”
“You think it’s connected?” Max asked.
“It very well could be. I’ve tested everything possible except for that forest.” Sarge clenched his fists as he looked down at the ground. “I’ve got no other options.”
“Perhaps not.” Max walked over to Sarge and hugged around the werewolf’s legs. “I’ll watch your house for you. There are a few experiments I needed to work on, though, so I hope you don’t mind if I use some of your reagents.”
“Go ahead.” Sarge bent over and picked up the kobold, giving the blue lizard a hug. “But there’s also another thing I want you to use.”
Max leaned back so his face wasn’t full of werewolf fur. “What is that?”
Sarge’s expression became dark. “My blood.”
~~~~~
Another story involving two alchemists! Seems Sarge is confiding in the help of the famed alchemist, Max the Kobold to help him stop a plague that's ravaging villages.
~~~~~
Max © nyhgault
Art/Sarge/Story © pikminpedia Me
Category Story / All
Species Wolf
Gender Male
Size 1280 x 941px
It always sucks to feel responsible for something so heavy, doesn't it?
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