[Folwren]

The remaining four had argued all that day. They tried to keep their heads clear, but the fear that hung over all of them clouded their minds like an insistent and annoying mist. They all trembled for their very lives. None of them had any guarantee that they would survive.

Finally, as evening drew near, they began to voice who they thought should be killed. “Valier must,” they said. “She has to be the guilty one.”

“I am not!” she cried, a hot flush rising to her already burning cheeks. “Look at Farael! Look at his shameful voting record, what happened to Lommy last night!” Her arguments and points continued and no one could put them off. Farael remained silent and mute, staring at her with bitterness in his dark eyes.

Time pressed them. Valier had convinced the Captain and Nogrod. Nothing was left to be done, except execute him.

“You two do it, like you did to Volo last night,” Valier said, stepping back. “I want nothing to do with this. I personally think it’s a man’s job.” A strange smile flickered across her lips, but neither Nogrod nor the Captain noticed it.

“She’s guilty!” Farael bawled out. “You can tell by the look on her face! She’s guilty! Kill her, not me! I didn’t kill Lommy! It would have been a stupid thing for me to do because you would suspect me!”

Nogrod grabbed his arm and started to haul him away, but Farael kicked and struggled, shouting and coming close to cursing in despair and fury. He struck Nogrod to get him to let go and knocked the elderly general to the grond. The Captain had had enough. He drew a hidden knife and plunged it deep into Farael’s left side.

“You are our final wolf,” he whispered harshly in his ear. “Don’t complain when you get your just desserts.”

Farael looked at him, his eyes round and large, gasped once, and then collapsed in a heap on the ground.

A fiendish laugh burst out from behind the Captain startling him. He jerked around, the knife in his hand. Valier was doubled over, laughing until the tears ran down her face. And beside her, stood a tall, dark man, clothed in black and cloaked like one of old.

“The blood of your own friend stains your hand,” the man said. “You have killed your last hope and now hope is no more.”

Nogrod slowly rose to his feet and stood beside the Captain. The stranger’s dark eyes flicked to Nogrod and he smiled in a way that made the two innocent companions shudder.

“Now, despair and die.”

A hideous transformation took place in Valier’s body. Before their eyes, she transformed into that legendary creature, the werewolf.

The sun was just sinking now, and the required darkness of night was falling to cloak the scenes that troubled the earth below.