CHPT 248: One Guarantees Descent, Another Guarantees the Unknown.....

Riding the mind of another-- seeing life through the eyes of someone else. It's an experience like nothing else. In the beginning it can be traumatizing. Being able to see, smell and hear-- yet losing the feel of the limbs you see moving across your vision every day because they aren't your own can take some adjustments.

It can leave you broken. You become pointless, unmoving and parasitic. Simply a spectator, a spectator in someone else's life after you've already lost your own.

Sometimes a simple thought can enter your mind, floating over your formless psyche like fog.

"Why didn't I just stay dead?"

A dangerous yet reoccurring thought in the beginning of one's journey as a "guide". The only way to banish the dark thought is to bring forth light. Light comes in many forms.

For Arne, the light of purpose is what kept him sane and currently keeps him focused.

He'd been given a purpose. A simple one that bloomed and coalesced with his past experiences. Leaving him with a job-- possibly the most important job in the world. The most important job he'd ever taken.

More important than the life threatening Coven-Raids and Walker-Hunts he'd lead his pack on when he was among the living. More important than his many Pack-Wars between his own and the offspring of Remus. Even more important than his lifelong hunt for the family that was taken from him and ultimately started his wild life as a Lupine of Romulus.

The job centered around molding Claude into the man-- the Monster he needed to be to survive and accomplish his dreams. Dreams that looked more like Nightmares than anything.

Either way. No matter how grisly and violent. These were his goals. All Arne could do was help, guide, teach and watch the results unfold. Well thats all he was supposed to do.

If he were to give a review, it would be the highest he could give. He'd never tell Claude that though. Overconfidence is the downfall of many. Something Claude didn't need, and could have if he realized the things he was accomplishing were relatively unheard of.

At 15. He'd slain a HellBred Plated Snake, Hexenbiest, Arachnoid, two Undead Giants and a number of other things. All while showing remarkable shifting capabilities-- such as glimmers of unlocking his Partial Transformation already and an affinity for Wild Magic that he'd only ever heard of two others having. The two brothers that started the warring Shape-Shifter races.

As his teacher of all things Lupine once told him, "Expect the unexpected from the illustrious Potentials."

Potential. A double edged sword at the greatest of times and an omen of a malicious future at the worst.

He'd seen it in Claude often.

Potential.

Potential for good. Shown in saving his friends and the villages in the wild forgotten by the Heroes. Shown in trying to work with the Enforcers and ridding them of their Raider problem.

Potential to lead. Despite his awkward and unapproachable nature, he'd speak his mind when it was needed, impress his values onto others and follow his own code if he didn't like what was already set in stone. What he lacked in charisma he had in conviction.

In light of these good qualities. He also had others. Things much darker. Something brought on by the world he'd been thrown into..or maybe it had always been there.

A darkness shown through brutality. Leaving a giant snake as a pile of hollow scales and bone. Ripping humans to unrecognizable shreds. And tearing apart a giant Arachnoid to rip out it's spine to show as some sort of trophy to his family of Wild-Born.

All these instances are justified in a world such as this-- but he was undeniably getting darker.

All it took was one large-scale mistake or loss. That's all it would take, and maybe he'd lose interest in the many lives or the world that would chew him up and spit him out in a heartbeat.

Leaving him even darker, with twisted morals and the title of an enemy to mankind. Maybe enemy to all life.

He knew Claude didn't want that, and he'd fight tooth and claw not to meet such a fate. But the mind is as powerful as it is malleable.

Opinions change, prospective morphs as the lens you view life through tints and cracks.

And to say Arne didn't have his own motives would be false.

To say he didn't want Claude to succeed in life where he failed would be false.

Claude was his own man. Just as much as he was Arne's second chance.

A chance that could slip at the drop of a hat.

A chance that could flip and turn into him witnessing Claude's descent from dark Hero to living Nightmare.

Chances, choices, risks, danger. Words that had never meant as much as they did while Claude, his pack and his dying friend occupied the forest.