Chapter one, end.

[cog_nomen]

High pitched whining greeted his ears before he fully realized he was conscious again. His blood felt thick in his veins, his limbs heavy. When he sat up, his head pounded. Dropping his head into his hands, Conlan groaned out a protest against the pain. It had been a long time since he'd performed alchemy, and time had not made it any easier it seemed. His muscles were all sore, burning the way that overexercised muscles will when called to task the next day. His eyes spoke to his brain in a confused way, showing fuzzy images of his curled fingers, red streaks seeming unnaturally bright.

Conlan wiped the blood away on his pants. Rising unsteadily to his feet, he paced off the effects of the magic, waiting for his head to stop pounding and his vision to clear from the fog that overtook the edges. He realized, after a few minutes, that the whining had stopped. He turned his attention toward the alchemic circle, found the mud pile disturbed, and tracked the direction of his comrade's distinct footprints to a spot on the ground where they dissapeared.

Looking up, he was amused by the tangle of limbs and nets. Laughing hurt his head, but he did it anyway. He wasn't certain how long he'd been out, but the Thusswolv looked absolutely miserable behind it's mask of hatred as Conlan's eyes passed over him. Thenotay was similarly entangled, and the alchemist shook his head, noting the chimera's single-minded hold on the wolv's tail.

With his walking stick he tripped the other nets one by one, a half-circle of protective traps springing emptily into the air to swing to and fro. He returned to consider the situation, looking up at the creatures suspended in midair. He observed no real damage to either creature - in fact Thenotay seemed to have gotten the better of this fight. The unnatural angle of the wolv's leg bothered him, but he suspected that the creature would have done worse to him, had it not been netted. He gave a low whistle that hurt his head, and he chuckled at himself.

"Thenotay, let go." Making his way toward the release for his chimera's net, Conlan's voice rose rusty behind him. He cleared his throat, it felt sore, like the rest of him. When the chimera complied, opening it's jaws to let the Thuswolv's tail slip free, the creature gave a stifled whimper. The alchemist suspected it hurt a lot more then the creature let on, but did not intend to make an issue out of it. "Have you had enough revenge?"

"I was making sure he didn't get any ideas about freeing himself, Master Conlan." Lowered to the ground, Thenotay began to rearrange his limbs and disentangle himself from the net with the aid of his teeth. A surprised snort drew Conlan's attention back up to the Thusswolv.

Hands on his hips he considered what to do. Here, the creature was glaring down at him hatefully, and giving him absolutely no reason to suspect the true intelligence that Thusswolv possessed. Had he not known better, he'd have suspected the creature to be just a beast.

"Leave him." Thenotay said, freed. The inorganic also regarded the wolv from beside his master. He stood almost as tall as the alchemist at his shoulder, putting his head on even with Conlan's when he held it at a relaxed angle. "He was sneaking up on us again."

"What's your name, wolv?" Conlan chose to ignore his chimeric companion's advice for the moment being.

A snarl answered, and a paw flailed forward as fast as an eyeblink, catching the Alchemist unawares. Claws grazed his cheek, drawing thin cutsin his flesh that began to bleed. Before he could react Thenotay had siezed the offending paw in his mouth. Conlan sighed, and reached up to steady his companion, laying his hand on the metal plating that covered the chimera's shoulder.

"Let him go, Thenotay. We must remember that he's been captured. You must never corner a beast." Pausing to wipe his blood on his sleeve, Conlan suspected he'd lost more than he'd have cared to today.

"I'm not a beast." The creature rasped, it's paw tucked up tight against it's netted chest.

"So you can speak. I'd wondered if your race had forgotten how." Conlan egged the creature on, hoping to keep it speaking. If he could find out why it had come, then he might know where to expect the next attack. "Do you still have names, or do you just bark at each other?"

"You're a murderer, and I will kill you."

Conlan suspected that it wasn't the beast's name. Rolling his eyes in Thenotay's direction, he gave the Chimera another reassuring pat. "I haven't killed anyone-"

"You destroyed the Thuss!" The wolv spat, his anger causing the net to spin as he shifted, aggravating his leg by the occasional wince he gave. It was most undignified, and Conlan was - to a point - only amused.

"You seem fairly alive to me, unless you are some sort of... animated corpse." Conlan had seen it done, but it was a complicated process. And messy. Muscles remembered how to move, but not how to think. Things decaying did not hold together as well as things that were constantly self repairing. Usually the creatures fell apart in a month, if they did not destroy themselves with their utter lack of intelligence before then. "You seek to punish me for a crime I did not commit."

"You're an alchemist. They've marked you to die!" It was the truth, alchemy was an illegal practice, punishable by death. Villages had the right to root out and kill anyone suspected of alchemy. Conlan suspected that it would someday cause trouble when it became an excuse for neighbors to seize coveted land from each other. He hadn't seen a witch hunter in many years, but they had made their living on the blood of others. He suspected that they had turn to simple accusation as proof enough recently to keep their belts tight and their horses shod.

"Indeed. But I sincerely doubt you've come all this way from Tura to uphold the law." Conlan wiped his cheek again, a fresh smear of blood on his sleeve. "You came to punish me, and I tell you, I have not committed what you accuse. The Thuss are not dead, merely separate. You're evidence enough that they are certainly still healthy." The wolv growled, and began to claw at it's netting again. Conlan did not know what it would do once it got free - with a leg dislocated at the hip it surely could not fight or flee. The drop to the forest floor was not one that the alchemist would desire to take, either.

"Very well." Conlan stated, doing his best to sound cheerful though his face hurt and his head was pounding - these were just the two most outstanding of his aches. "How about I atone for this murder I have not committed. The law says that there is punishment or repentance for every sin. If I save your life, Sir Killyou," The alchemist slurred the words together into a mocking last name, "Will that atone?"

"I'm not in danger..." Frosted white fur came down in a small tuft as the Thusswolv twisted, yelped. Conlan simply arched his brows, and looked up at the creature.

"Thenotay, I suspect you were right." Without another word, alchemist and chimera both turned their backs. Conlan hefted his much lighter pack, and eyed the chimera pointedly. "You're heavy, you know."

"I'm sorry, Master Conlan." It sounded genuinely apologetic, but a turn of it's expressionless head made the apology feel lighthearted.

"Wait!" They were not two steps out of sight when the wolv reconsidered. Perhaps he did understand reason, though this was more like threat. Thenotay gave his master a knowing look, then turned his head over his shoulder to consider the Thusswolv.

"Leave him," The chimera warned, without much hope that his advice would be heeded.

"If I let you down, and fix your leg, do you promise me that you won't harm me or my companion? That we'll never see you again?" Conlan was already starting to untie the ropes that fixed the Thusswolv to the counterweight. The creature held still, eying him mistrustfully.

"I can't just let you go..."

Conlan released the line, plunging the Thusswolv several feet before hauling it up short again. The impact of the wolv's weight on his arms painful, but the yelp that he garnered from the action worth it. "I'm usually very reasonable, Wolv. But you damaged my friend and made me take back up an art I swore never to practice again to save his life. I will leave you hanging here."

Silence answered, for a long time. Then the wolv made the smallest of nodding gestures. "Alright. I won't harm you if you'll let me down and put me right - but if this is a trick..."

"No trick. Thenotay, help me lower him." Between the alchemist and the chimera, the remainder of the wolv's descent to the forest floor was slow and easy. Conlan disentangled the creature from the nets, and though he was growled at, gave his injuries a once-over. The dislocated leg would be a problem, the scratches and bite were bleeding, but mostly superficial.

"Putting it back in place will hurt." He warned, gently flexing the sturdy hindpaw he held in his hands. The corners of the wolv's mouth turned back in a snarl, and Conlan shrugged his shoulders. "Brace yourself."

With one hand on the Wolv's tender hip, the other braced somewhere above his hock, the alchemist suddenly yanked and pressed with a practiced motion that eased the joint back into it's socket. It didn't hurt any less than he promised, and the wet grinding of bone on bone revealed the motion had set the joint properly in place. The wolv jerked away, roaring, huffing. Saliva ran from the edges of it's mouth, an instinctive response to the pain. It sank back down, exhausted, panting. It lay, Conlan noted with some amusement, on the edges of the spent directive circle.

The alchemist also sat down, and began to tape up his own wounds. Thenotay paced between them, protective, until Conlan called him off. "Sit down, you'll make us both nervous."

"I'm being cautious." The chimera rationalized, voice rasping forth surprised. It sat by the alchemist, watching the Thusswolv's sides heave.

"Caution breeds caution. I don't intend to harm him any more than he intends to harm us."

"Master Conlan - I should remind you..." Thenotay lifted the foreleg that had recently been re-attached, to indicate that the Thusswolv very much intended to harm them. Conlan took it differently than intended. He often did.

"That's right, I meant to find out how he'd found us." Bandaged, the alchemist rose. From his bag, he pulled a sealed tin, and approached the wolv. It snarled. "I promised to set your wounds straight, and I haven't even seen to your tail." Circling around, he crouched by the creature's hind-end, taking up it's tail to survey the extent of the damage. His fingers poked gently through peppered fur, the tip of each dark hair a rich cream color, leaving a frosted red-brown color as the overall impression. Up close, it was mottled, striated. Fur was a fascinating thing, Conlan found, bands of color on individual hairs coming together to form patterns and markings that seemed unique to each animal. The tail was dark at the tip, as were the Thusswolv's feet. Gradually, from the shoulders forward, he darkened, with only the faintest dusting of cream on his ruddy muzzle. There were no other markings. Conlan smiled faintly, having an inkling of what to call this creature if no name was forthcoming.

"It's unbroken." His hands undid the catch on the tin, revealing a cooling salv inside. It was made from waterleaf and beeswax, with just the faintest touch of numbing footslip. He suspected that there was filler in it, as well, but hadn't questioned it's contents when he'd purchased it. "And my friend has no saliva, so it won't fester." Sitting back as the Thusswolv regained it's feet warily, Conlan crossed his arms over his chest.

"And now that we've proved that you can talk, other than barks and howls, I'd like to speak with you."

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