Play of Shadows

01.4 Dark Currents

The world looked simple through a wolf's eyes.

Ann squinted. The night sky peered down at her from a cluster of swaying trees, thousands of stars blinking merrily in its arch. She could hear the other wolves nearby. Stranger yet, she could smell them, each wolf a distinctive presence. There were other scents, too – plum blossoms and thickets heavy with berries, a roosting owl, hares hunkering in a burrow under an old oak.

Ann got herself up and – there was no other word for it, really – trotted toward the others. The wolves were gathered a short distance away. The large white wolf padded over to greet her, its pale fur glinting silver in the dark. Ann bore the attention stoically and veered off to find Grant as soon as the great wolf lumbered away.

"I've got something," she said.

Grant stretched his paws toward the sky. He was lying on a boulder, on his back, looking more like a silly dog than a wolf. "Shoot," he said.

"Only players can see my mask," Ann told him.

Grant looked up at her, then flipped over on his stomach and considered her again, this time right-side up. "All players, or just, you know," he motioned between them with his nose.

"All players," Ann said. Mara and Louis had very vocal reactions to her mask, and they were certainly not on the rescue team.

"That's handy. A few days of touring you around the village, and the game's ours," Grant hummed.

Ann frowned. She didn't like the idea of winning that way – the mask was pretty much a giant cheat in this instance – but could have swallowed it down for the sake of the mission. However... "We can't kill players."

Character death and injury in-game was usually a non-issue, but that was not the case in these corrupt instances. Trapped players were in a comatose state and could not afford to be disturbed by any large shocks. Death via werewolf certainly sounded like a bad way to go about freeing people from their digital prison. They might well end up with a more permanent kind of freedom.

Grant yawned, displaying rows of very large, very shiny teeth. "We've got to end the instance somehow. I guess we could sacrifice the werewolf team instead – there's less of us, so in terms of numbers it is the better option..."

"Are we sure that's the only way to clear the game?" Ann interrupted.

It had occurred to her in the aftermath of that terrible elimination sequence in the village. The Werewolf game traditionally required opposing teams to fight to the death, shearing their numbers player by player until either the Werewolf camp was exposed or the Villagers lost. However, who was to say that this version of the game had the same restrictions? The Werewolves hunted and the Villagers voted out players, but was either side required to kill?

Grant's lazy demeanor evaporated. The wolf shot up suddenly, eyes glinting. "I'm so stupid!" he barked out. "I'll go check right now!"

He bounded away before Ann could get a word in. Ann watched him leap onto the nearest wolf, tail wagging like a banner, and laughed quietly.

Grant was skilled in digging up information innocuously, and would be only hindered if Ann were to tag along. Subterfuge and subtlety were nuances to human interaction she had never mastered. At loose ends, she cast her eyes on her surroundings. The large blonde wolf that usually kept to the white wolf's side caught her attention. It meandered around the periphery of the clearing, pausing to sniff at seemingly random spots.

Ann trotted over. She stopped a polite distance away, somewhat wary of the taciturn wolf. "Hello," she said.

The wolf looked at her, then turned back to sniffing at a shallow puddle.