The first few times he had changed into a wolf, it certainly had seemed as if he had become something monstrous; he had felt an overwhelming bloodlust gushing through every vein and artery in his being, accompanied by a volcanic rush of primal power surging through every muscle and nerve-ending in his body, and he had been unable to rein in the pulsating, desperately throbbing urge to howl like a mad thing at the full moon. Lucius had relished in this strange and frightful power that he had been given, and had delighted in the freedom of the rippling wind racing through the pines, the beastly howling of its air-pack given physical form in the body of the great grey wolf that he was somehow able to shift into.
Yes, at first it had seemed like something horrific, or demonic, almost – yet after he had become accustomed to it, he had realised that it was not a curse but a blessing, a gift from the gods. Surely it must have been Diana herself, Goddess of the hunt and of wild things, who had taken physical form in the bear that had mauled him and thereby given him this heavenly prize – it must have been, for Lucius could not think of any other explanation that made an iota of sense.
He had not been a religious man before; the experience of being forced to watch the public execution of both of his parents, who had been convicted of forgery and swindling, and the subsequent selling of himself and his sisters into slavery in his adolescent years had crushed what little faith he had formerly had in the existence of the gods. Being a male, he had gotten off more lightly than his sisters; both had been sold to low brothels to be used and abused by all sorts of scum, while he, on account of the swordsmanship he had been studying from a young age, had been sold to Batiatus’s then-brand-new gladiatorial ludus. The smallest and thinnest gladiator in the ludus he had been, but his incredible natural speed, coupled with dexterous agility, mastery of the blade, and razor-sharp reflexes, had enabled him to defeat opponents twice his size.
He had risen quite unexpectedly up through the gladiatorial listing, and while he had never been a champion, he had fought in the Colosseum on a few occasions, and in the few gladiatorial bouts he had lost, he had been lucky enough to have been granted mercy. After ten years of this, Batiatus had granted him his freedom and had offered him employment as doctore of the ludus.
Lucius had refused, intending to leave the Republic forever. He had journeyed alone for months after turning his back on Rome, heading north with his sights set on the edges of the known world, until upon one chill-biting autumn night, as he had been setting up camp amidst the towering pines of a Gallic forest, he had been set on by an enormous brown bear, which he had then managed to kill in a furious battle that had almost ended his own life.
He had not known how long he had lain upon the carpet of pine needles, bleeding and vomiting and sweating and writhing, passing in and out of consciousness with such frequency that after a while he had no longer been able to distinguish reality from nightmares…
In this state of pain and confusion, he had been convinced that he was in the process of a horribly protracted death, and indeed each time he had slipped into unconsciousness he had prayed that it would be the passing into that final cold sleep … until after days, or weeks, however long it had been, he had finally awoken. Or, perhaps, had beenreborn was the correct term to use, for no longer had he been Lucius Sertorius, freed gladiator and wandering adventurer … no, from then on he became Lucius Sertorius, the Great Grey Wolf.
The first few times his body had changed form it had happened entirely outside of conscious control. He had thought that he was dying, nay, he had desperately wished for death, so immense and crushing was the agony that had blasted through every single nerve in his body as he had writhed and screamed and foamed at the mouth. Through his horror, grey fur had sprouted from his skin, canine teeth like curved daggers had erupted from his gums, and his entire face had stretched out into a lupine snout, replete with whiskers bursting like weeds from his bloodied cheeks.
Each subsequent time it had happened, though, the pain had grown more bearable and less excruciating. Eventually, Lucius had gained conscious control over the process, and could enact it at will in but a second or two with almost no accompanying pain at all.
The liquid, coursing power he experienced while in his animal form far surpassed any adrenalin-soaked triumph of defeating an opponent in the arena. His sense of smell alone had added an incredible and indescribable new perception of reality; scents suddenly had the ability to conjure up three-dimensional images in his mind, pictures that were so physical in their photo-realism that they became virtually tangible. Yes, scents glowed like beacon fires on night mountaintops, screaming out their locations in a sheer and crisp silence that far surpassed anything even the keenest of human eyes and ears could detect.
His other senses, while they paled in relation to the glorious hyperreality of his sense of smell, had also been massively
