“That’s not just a wolf. That’s a werewolf.” Thomas exclaimed, putting words to my thoughts.

  I quickly ran through what I knew about werewolves. They were humans, or at least humanoids, who had the ability to turn into a large wolf. Their bites had a chance to infect others, although whether it was fast or slow, I did not know, nor did I know whether it affected your willpower. Would a good person turn into an evil person if infected with lycanthropy, the disease or magical effect that creates werewolves?

  “They can only be hurt by magic or magical weapons,” Connor said between clenched teeth.

  Thomas turned his head. “My mace is not magical.”

  I cast a quick spell, and the mace glowed.

  “It is now, I said.” I cast one of my two weak magical spells that enchanted weapons. I figured it was pointless to explain that it would only last four hours. One way or another, that detail was irrelevant.

  The werewolf threw back its head and howled.

  We braced for the rush as the other wolves attacked. Thomas had his mace, but no shield. His chainmail would help him against the wolves more than our mage robes, but he was limited in his spell attacks. We would likely depend on his mace and healing from him.

  Nat had her shortword in one hand and a long dagger in the other. She had not opted for throwing daggers. She wore leather armor, which would be better than cloth robes, but only slightly so.

  Connor’s robes burst into flames, causing us to step away from him or get burned. It would have been nice to get a little warning, but we were all on edge. He withdrew a wand which he held in his left hand, and drew a dagger in his right. I knew that Addie and Wilma could both fight with a wand in each hand, but I had never seen either of them with a wand and a weapon. I wondered what training Connor received to allow him to do that.

  And then there was me.

  I had two options. Fight with my rings and spells, or take the time to retrieve my newest creation from my backpack. I didn’t have a way to conceal it, so I routinely kept it in my pack. It was not difficult to reach, just time-consuming.

  And we didn’t have time.

  “Yeah. Maybe we don’t worry about components. Spells may be a good idea.” Thomas suggested in response to Nat’s earlier reminder about alchemical components like claws and fangs. He tightened his grip on his mace, and a burst of white light surrounded us.

  All the wolves backed up quickly, but the werewolf actually whined briefly.

  “Good to know,” Thomas remarked. “Seems like Holy Light affects more than just undead.”

  The werewolf took a couple of steps forward from where it had retreated and entered the radius of the magical light. It’s fur smoked slightly, but there was no other effect besides a deeper and angrier growl.

  “But not quite a barrier,” Thomas added.

  And the wolves resumed their rush. This time, the werewolf joined them. His target was Thomas, either because he figured the armored cleric was the biggest threat or because the Holy Light was already doing damage.

  They engaged, and while the werewolf snapped at the cleric’s leg, Thomas swung the mace and connected soundly against its ribs.

  Thomas must have had some adrenaline pumping because their masses were about even, but the werewolf slid sideways with a pained yelp.

  Nat was the next to engage, and she swung both sword and knife against a leaping wolf. I didn’t have time to see how it went because I turned my head back toward two wolves rushing me.

  They were fast.

  My thoughts were faster.

  Grandmaster illusionist Shantra Shining gave me a couple of rings. One was a gold ring with a powerful illusion called Greater Phantasm. It was a powerful illusion spell as realistic as the caster's mind could make it. It supported sounds, sights, physical touch, smells, and tastes, and could last for weeks. But it was in a tied silk bag in my robes.

  However, she also gave me a silver ring that I was wearing that could help immediately. I concentrated on the silver ring placed on my right pointer finger and triggered the Single Use Spell effect, Greater Stun. The spell pits the caster’s knowledge plus magic scores against a target’s endurance. I figured wolves might have greater endurance than humans, but taking out two or three of them at once was better than nothing.

  The spell went off with a silver flash, just like illusionists' robes, and three of the wolves went down: two in front of me and one of the two that had gone for Connor, despite his Flame Armor.

  “Thanks.” He gasped while pointing his wand at the remaining wolf and ignited its fur on fire. With a howl of pain, the wolf darted off into the scrub, probably setting things on fire.

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  I hoped that spell effect did not come back to bite us. In fact, I hoped the wolf did not come back and bite us, either.

  As I looked out into the scrub after the fleeing wolf, my distraction cost me.

  A third wolf that had either planned to attack me or Thomas decided to avoid the werewolf and take a bite out of me.

  It had come in low and went for my lower leg. The wolf was trying to hamstring me like it would a fleeing deer.

  I was not fleeing, but I was probably more deer than I was wolf at this level.

  As the teeth sank into my leg, and I wished it had missed me, a second ring effect was triggered.

  A copper ring on my right-hand thumb flashed yellow, and the wolf’s damage simply didn’t matter. I took the tear in my leg, but no damage was done. I had never seen the ring’s effect before, but my friend Biff, who gave it to me, assured me it was dead useful.

  The skill effect was called Lesser Ignore Damage. He said it would be equal to ignoring the damage of a dagger strike or a glass bottle shoved into your face.

  His examples were way too specific for me to think he had simply made them up. His life as a brawler was tough. And so was he.

  The wolf that had bitten me looked surprised that I had not fallen. Not that I was an expert on wolf expressions and body language, but it had backed off and tilted its head to the side as if to say, “Well, fall down already.”

  My reply was a five-point Mage Blast. Now, I know a full-powered spell like that was not enough to take out a dire wolf, but it did wonders on a regular timber wolf.

  And another wolf went down.

  I turned to help the others and saw that Nat had handled her wolf without issue. Both her blades had seen action, and while I was looking at her, she was looking fearfully at Thomas.

  The wolves were just a distraction. The real threat was the werewolf, and Thomas was facing it one-on-one.

  The human that lay behind the wolf had to be especially cruel, which, in this case, may have saved Thomas’s life. It was playing with him. It knew that it was a true alpha and was at no serious risk from Thomas other than a few well-placed hits.

  Thomas was bleeding from half a dozen wounds, and it was impossible to tell if they were from claws or fangs.

  Connor shot a bolt of fire into the werewolf’s side. It did damage, but not enough to slow it down. Despite several hits from Thomas and the blast from Connor, the beast still had three-fourths of its health remaining.

  But Thomas didn’t.

  I activated a gem in one of my Dwarven copper rings. It was a ring with five 7pt rubies. I cast ten points of health on Thomas, which took him up above half. He was still wounded.

  “Time to meet your maker, priest!” The werewolf growled as it tensed for a deadly lunge.

  But it stopped, freezing in place as a single, clear note filled the air around us.

  Connor and I both turned to see Natalyia focused intently on the wolf and sang a single, pure note that froze it, and the unfortunate Thomas, in place.

  Connor and I were also standing still, but with a jerky movement of her hands at us, we understood that this spell effect was only going to last as long as she could hold that note.

  And her breath.

  “Gwydion, what’ve ya got?” Connor asked as he sheathed his wand and pointed a hand at the werewolf.

  I thought about my rings. I couldn’t use Master Gizmo’s attack rings here. We would all die. I had a lot of low-level elemental attack spells or could summon lesser elementals, but they wouldn’t work. Or at least, not fast enough to save Thomas.

  And then I thought about a ring I made for my journeyman trials. I was able to pull out an extremely rare effect for each of the five gems. The Tourmaline would be the choice. Alone, it would not work, but if Connor had a big gun spell, the two combined might do the trick.

  “Lightning Bolt,” I replied.

  “Perfect,” he said, his voice going cold. “I’ll use Fire Blast. Both are powerful area of effect, so let’s get on either side of Thomas and attack at the same time.”

  I could tell that Nat’s voice was getting quieter. Her spell and her stamina were coming to an end.

  The elementalist and I rushed to get on either side of Thomas so our spell effects would not hit him. One of our spells could kill him in his current condition. Both would certainly do it.

  The combined spell effects might be enough to kill any of us, in fact.

  “Count down to zero from three,” I said.

  We both said, “Three, two, one-”. Neither of us bothered to say zero. But we released our spells at the same time.

  The werewolf had just begun shaking its head as Nat’s bardic magical effect began to wear off.

  In timing that would have been made for cinema, it looked up at us and growled, “Pathetic mages-”

  And got a total of twenty casting points of fire and lightning damage in its face. We were not quite point blank, which I was glad of given the heat and current, but we were close enough that neither of us could miss a stationary target.

  The resulting explosion, despite a couple of yards distance, threw me, Connor, and Thomas backwards. We landed at Nat’s feet, where she was bent over and gasping for breath.

  Thomas was the first to sit up. “I think you got him, guys.”

  We looked at the exploded remains of the werewolf, paused a moment as our brains caught up, and then Connor and I both burst into laughter as we slumped back to the ground. Our nerves were so on edge that it took a while to get us to sit back up again. Each time we tried, Connor or I would say something like, “Yep. It worked.” And we burst out loud again.

  The AI whispered into my ear. Enchanter Gwydion earns a spell or skill point to be placed as desired for completing the Wandering Were quest. Spell and skill points must be reclaimed at a guild hall or sanctuary. Additions and notes have been added to your Book of Quests that remain unread.

  That’s sweet, I thought as my chuckling eased up.

  Connor wasn’t quite done as he let loose a snort that got Thomas to laugh as well. As I thought about it, Connor had to deal with some dark business at the end, maybe this was his way of balancing the scales in his head.

  Nat said, “Alright, boys. Enough. Get up, we still need to get to the graveyard.”

  And that idea shut us right up.

  In the quiet caused by our sudden silence, Thomas asked, “Are there any useful components?”

  “Not on the werewolf. It reverted to its human form and was not wearing anything. Literally, nothing.”

  I looked at the remains of the werewolf, and my stomach churned.

  Connor said, “I’ll handle this. You all check the wolves for components.”

  I cast my See All Magic and Enchantments spell, and looked over the wolves. I pointed out five fangs and half a dozen claws for us to collect. Nat removed them all with practiced ease using a silver dagger.

  While we didn’t talk about it, Connor had summoned a fire elemental and had it slowly burn the remains to ashes. He may have been wondering the same thing I was, and that was whether werewolves were able to regenerate. But nothing comes back from ashes.

  As we waited for Connor to finish, Thomas healed my leg so I didn’t keep bleeding into my boots, and I fished out my bag of rings and made some choices that I should have done before walking out into The Scrub.

  I added a second copy of Biff’s skill, as well as replacing the tourmaline in my trials ring and pulling out another Lightning Bolt spell.

  I also fished out the gold ring Limited Group Teleport from Mistress Longbrow, replacing my silver Limited Teleport ring, but that would only work for me. Now I had a way to get us all back to Keelwell if needed.

  And I hope I wouldn’t need it…