"They had no idea what they were dealing with, my Lord," Tarrin said. "The only reason I survived was pure, sheer luck. And Dolanna." He looked at his hands. "I rather prefer living like this to being dead, so if this is price I pay to keep living, then so be it."

"You're rather calm about this," Arren said.

"I don't have time to run around screaming in apoplexy," Tarrin said dryly. "I have better things to do."

"He's part Ungardt, Duke Arren," Faalken reminded him.

"Ah, yes, that famous Ungardt no-nonsense stoicism," he mused. "If it were me, I would be running around screaming," he admitted.

"No," Tarrin said quietly, "you wouldn't. It's hard to explain, but part of it makes you accept it. I've only been like this for a few days, and only one of those awake, but it's like I've been like this all my life," he said quietly. "I do have trouble making these new parts move, but they feel like they've always been there. This feels…right to me. If I were turned back to a human, I'd feel like, like I lost a part of myself."

Arren looked at him soberly. "An intriguing side effect," he mused.

Dolanna's scent touched him just as he heard her voice. "The Tower will want to study him," she said from the doorway. She'd bathed, and was wearing a clean dress. The dark circles under her eyes were gone, and she moved with that familiar crisp precision that he knew her to have. "But on the other hand, he will have a chance there to better learn how control his animal half. It is a controlled environment, where the stimulus that could make him lose control can be contained and separated from him."

"Dolanna," Arren and Tarrin said together. "How do you feel?" Tarrin added.

"I feel rested," she replied. "How do you feel, young one?"

"Refreshed," he replied. "Strong. The meal did wonders for me."

"I rather thought that it would," she told him, taking his hand as he stood. Her small hand was swallowed up in his huge hand-paw. She turned his hand over and touched the back of it with her other hand, feeling the short, silky black fur that covered it. "How does it feel?" she asked.

"It feels…like this is the way I'm supposed to be," he told her soberly.

"That is very good," she told him confidently. "The harder you fight against it, the harder it is to control it. Part of the key to controlling it is to allow it to try to guide you, but not to control you. There is a delicate balance in that, and that is what you will have to learn."

"If I ignore it, it starts to scream at me?" he asked.

"Precisely," she said with a smile. "You do not want it to do that." She looked at them all. "We will be leaving tomorrow at dawn," she said. "Tarrin, I have had all of your clothes altered so that you can wear them."

"Uh, Dolanna, what am I going to do?"

"How do you mean?"

"Well, am I riding a horse?"

"I would imagine so," she replied. "You must face the public at some point, Tarrin. You cannot live your life in this room. It is best to get it over and done with at the outset, so that it is not a fear that nags at you."

"I guess," he sighed, staring at his hand.

"Let's take it a step further," Arren said. "Tarrin, you will dine with us tonight," he ordered. "I've told my people what happened to you. Let's put you out where you can see that people aren't going to scream in panic. They may stare, but that's about all."

"A good idea," Dolanna agreed.

"What time is it now?" Tarrin asked.

"Nearly sunset," Faalken replied.

"We'll be dining in about an hour," Arren told him.

"I guess, my Lord," Tarrin said dubiously.

"Well, we have time for one more game of stones," Faalken urged.

"Then we'll leave you to that," Arren said. "Come, Dolanna, you and I have some catching up to do."

"Indeed. I will send a handservant to fetch you at dinnertime," Dolanna told them, and the pair exited as Tarrin and Faalken bowed.

They sat back down and started a new game, but Tarrin's mind wasn't much in it. The idea of going into a public place was admittedly frightening, but on the other hand, it was necessary. Like Dolanna had said, he wouldn't be living in this room his entire life. He'd thought to himself that he was going to have to learn how to live with this startling new change…well, going to eat in the main hall would certainly qualify as learning. He wondered if he and Dolanna were rushing things a bit, but on the other hand, considering what had happened, maybe they weren't going fast enough. The only way for Tarrin to learn, learn how people would react, learn about himself, was to do. And sitting in the room didn't teach him much. Still, the concept of it was frightening. He couldn't shake the vision of a gang of men suddenly turning on him with swords, calling him a monster. He knew that it wouldn't happen, couldn't happen, but the thought was there nonetheless, and nagging fears were rarely rational or logical.

It was both with anxiety and anticipation that he stood when there was a knock at the door. A slim, pretty young girl with dark hair opened the door. She gave a slight start when she saw him, but her expression remained open and cordial. "My Lords, Duke Arren is calling all to dine," she announced.

"I was losing anyway," Faalken said sourly, standing up. "We'll be along in a moment," he told her.

"I will inform his Grace," she said with a little bob of a curtsy, then she departed.

"Dolanna doesn't take no for an answer, does she?" Tarrin asked sagely, noting her comment to report their status to the Duke.

"I've yet to see her do it," Faalken grunted, putting his sword belt back on. "Let's go eat."

Tarrin stepped out into the hall with trepidation. The smells outside were all man, criss-crossing each other maddeningly along the corridors to such an extent that the individual scents blurred into a musky, slightly unpleasant miasma. The smells of food were in the air as well, faint but present. The candles in sconces on the walls seemed bright to his eyes, and he could hear the faint steps of people all around. Faalken stepped out into the hall behind him and closed the door. "That way," he pointed, and they started out.

About halfway down the hall, a scent unlike anything Tarrin ever smelled touched his nose. It was so striking in its utter perverse nature. Where most people gave off the smell of life, this smell was the smell of death. Of evil. Tarrin had no idea how he knew that, but he did. He felt his ears lay back on his head, and he instantly assumed a wide-footed stance. In that instant, he got his first taste of the animal within him. At the smell of that evil, it reared up in his mind and flooded his consciousness with impressions and urges to seek out the source of it and destroy it. It was unnatural, the scent, otherworldly, the antithesis of everything that was gentle and good, against life itself. As a creature of nature, tied to it with mystical bonds that transcended human comprehension, the existence of the evil was an abomination, and it had to be destroyed.

Tarrin put a hand to his head, trying to clear away the homicidal impulses, but it was far from easy. He did what Dolanna said, listening to them but not letting them control him, and not ignoring them.

"What's wrong?" Faalken asked. "Are you alright?"

"There's something here," he said in a low, growling voice, still fighting to keep from charging off and killing whatever it was. "Something evil."

"I can smell it," he said in a low voice. He looked down the hallway, into the shadows near the stairs, and he noticed that the shadows were a bit too dark. Had he not had eyes so sensitive to light, he would never have noticed the discrepancy. At that instant, the instincts howled in his mind, and he barely supressed the notion to charge. "It's up ahead, in the shadows past the stairwell."