Alhazred gently pushed her body off of his, untangling her limbs from his, carefully laying her among the pillows and blankets and furs- she was peaceful as she slept, her worry and rage no longer all over her features. Vulnerable in her slumber.

He knew- by law- by oath, she wouldn’t allow him to wander off on his own. That her soul purpose was to protect him. And he couldn’t risk this.. He had to attempt to make it right with the humans. They promised to be diplomatic, to never bring the teachings of the worlds various religions that quite literary demonized his alien race.

But Talathia distrusted all humans, and her racism towards them could make the talks of peace impossible. He had to find a way to make this work, and if there could be any agreement— she wouldn’t have to work so hard.

So he ventured out, alone, into the night, at a disclosed location the humans told him to meet. He penned the location on paper, leaving it on the bedding beside her. Not that he had worry. Just to let her know where he was.

He then teleported to where the humans told him to meet. Taking on his human form, the one Talathia said looked like Christ.

“ So finally, we meet at last.” Came a voice of a woman. “ We have heard of your attempts to make contact with other humans and it ending terribly, they were fearful of you due to their beliefs.”

“ Oh, hello. Well yes that is correct.” Alhazred chuckled to himself. “ A bit embarrassing on my part, I should have researched their culture before I started aiding them.. Things turned south very quickly, it’s rather frustrating.”

“ Hmm, that is indeed unfortunate. If you could come with me?” the woman asked.

“ Where to?” Alhazred tilted his head. “ I am having trouble seeing you.” He walked closer, and felt the earth belong is feet give way- he fell then, tumbled deep below the earth, in a hole.. Then in a chamber.

“ NOW THROW THE BARS!” with in a instant he was in a cage, draining him of any power he might have had. The bars made of the very metals his kind was weak against, every bit of the cage was formed with the ore. His head throbbed, the floor of the cage an alloy of some kind. He fell defeated in an instant. Unable to move.

“ That was too easy, and here they thought we couldn’t be able to catch you due to your intelegence. But your egerness to learn and make peace made it all to simple. You fucking freak.” His eyes met with a pair of human eyes beyond the bars. “ We’re gonna keep you down here forever, and figure out how to kill your kind and win this war-

“ There doesn’t have be a war! I don’t want to fight you, we just want a new place to call home.” he rasped.

“ None of us want you here, haven’t you figured that out yet? Where’s that bitch she-wolf that always follows you around? Is she going to come killing more of our men?”

“ No, don’t hurt her. She doesn’t know that I’m here. No one is going to hurt you. Please-

“ What about the humans she’s maimed? The ones your brothers and the rest of your kind have killed?”

“ She was only trying to protect me.” He the dizzy spells made him fall to his knees. He couldn’t even shift into his true form. The world around him began to spin. “ She’s a warrior, a knight, it what she was trained to do-

“ Well, that dumb dog of yours isn’t here to protect you. Wow you’re mine, in my care. And we’re going to find out just what it is about these strange that make you weak.” Hate filled the humans eyes as he looked down at Alhazred, his red eyes looked for any source of sympathy in the room, and there was none, there was nothing but fear and hate. The alien closed his eyes in defeat.

Morning came, and Talathia stretched out her long limbs searching for the warmth of her lover. Which shouldn’t have been hard to find, he had many parts of him which were usually tangled and wrapped around her limbs. She shot up out of bed, seeing her lord was gone.

This had never happened before, she was always awake before he would rise. It was then her hands hit the parchment, and saw the cordinets written neatly in his penmanship.

“ That naive fool…” she cursed to herself. Quickly she grabbed her blade, her clothing, and fled on all four limbs towards the location. It would take her more than a days journey if she didn’t stop for food or rest. Praying he was still alive when she got there.

Alhazred found himself strapped to a crucifix, his arms and limbs bound to the wood with wire. “ Someone has a sick sense of humor.” He croaked bitterly. “ Hanging me on a cross like the image of the Christian god? What good is their god if he’s dead.” He laughed.

“ You look like him. I figured it would suit you.”

“ That wasn’t entirely intentional.” He replied. “ Besides didn’t they nail his arms and feet to the cross?”

“ Oh that could be arranged, demon. But. What good are you to me if I injure you, you’d black out from the pain if I did that now- so, we’ll start small. And if I need you to write for me, I have that if I messed up your hands.”

Alhazred looked at the table in what was best described as a torture room. Various metals on the long ends of spears lay on it. Along with something he had never seen before. A long gourd with a whole at the end. It reeked of gun powder.

“ These tips here are armed with various metal tips we forged from stones that fell from the sky. I just need to know which one hurts you the most.” Alhazred sniffed a bit, and tried to wiggle his arms, this was going to be bad.

With a thrust the first spear went in, but nothing happened, he simply bled. Alhazred chuckled at the thought. The second came up “ This one is made from the very metal used to keep you bound up and in side the cage.” It was thrust into his thigh- and that one burned.

“ MOTHER FUCKER!” he screamed. “ YOU FUCKING MONSTER GET THAT OUT OF ME!” he roared. The human twisted it into his side and he shook in agony, and then it was yanked out. “ What the fuck is wrong with you!?”

“ Oh we made it angry.” Another human said in the room. “ At least now we know some of these can hurt you, each of these are from different metals around the world - all of which I will test on you, to let them know if their arrows will slaughter your kind. We just need to make sure to turn your brothers into paste.”

“ Your primitive weapons are no match for my species. We will out arm you. You need to be close to us in order fire your arrows-“

“ Is that so?” the human chuckled. “ Eventually we’ll find a way to shower you sky demons with pellets of these that will lodge themselves in your flesh and slowly poison you. But for now- I just need to let every single kingdom know if them metals that fell from the sky for their points are good enough, for now. We have something. We know you can die.”

“ Then why don’t you just kill me now?” Alhazred bristled. “ Why keep me alive in your dungeon just to torment me!?”

“ Hah, when the rest of your kind is dead, we will. For now, we need to see if test every weapon’s metals will work against you before we send our men out in the fields with them. I need you alive so our men won’t die trying to kill yours. Can you see? You’re actually saving human lives just like you wanted!” Alhazred froze with fear at that moment. These humans were truly terrifying, unforgivable, how long was he going to be trapped down here?

Days had gone by, thick black mud caked Talathia’s fur, wet and tired and hungry as she tore into a fish, ripping the raw flesh as bears watched her, confused, why a wolf ate among them.

After her meal she continued on ward, and finally she found it. Where her lover said he would be. But nothing, no one, was there. She snipped the ground, and then she found a trace of it, him. He fell through the earth, but she saw that it had been covered. However the trace smells of the humans were there. — In the distance she saw it, the entrance to where-ever Alhazred lay.

Before she ran on.. Something told her not to venture there alone. “It’s a trap for him.. It’s a trap for me..” Quickly she ran back to where the bears were.

They looked confused as ever, this strange humanoid wolf woman stood before them. She looked at the river, then to them… Water and ice were her elements, “ If I flood it, with water and their food the bears.. Can…” with her strange incantations she made the river rise, along with the fish, and had the river flow towards the entrance- The bears following their meal.

The humans inside the chamber screamed, and fled as the chaos of bears and water and salmon flooded their cambers, running in terror in all directions. As the bears collected their meals in flooded halls. Talathia ran down the corridors looking for her lover.

Finally at the end of the hall she found him, bloody and hanging and scars along his chest. “ MASTER!” she cried to him and tried to open the bars with her hands- only to have them be burned.

“ Tala..” He whispered.

“ I’m here. Master I am here.” She cried to him.

“ Don’t touch the bars- the humans, it will hurt you.” He rasped. Her eyes darted around the room, and she saw a washed waterlogged human in and out conciseness.

“ Tala… get out of here she’ll--”

“ Are you the one who hurt him.” She pointed the tip of her sword at the woman’s neck. “ You did this to him, didn’t you? You’re the one who tricked him and hurt him. You’re the one who tried to kill my Love.” And the wench laughed at the she wolf.

“ It doesn’t matter now, you vile demons. We know how to kill you. And you can’t get him out of there on your own-

Talathia laughed, a deep mad cackle, as she cut off the limbs of the human. “ Not if I use your hands.” She smiled. “ You keep calling me a demon then I will bloody will act like one. She grabbed the served limb and took the skin of arm and hand- wrapping it around her own hand like a glove- and used it to open the locks of her lovers cage, and then using the human skinned gloves to unbound her lover.. Alhazred collapse in her arms.

“ My love I can’t get us home with my own magic..”

“ There’s no need- let me carry you. Hang on to my back.” And she ran, fled, with Alhazred clinging to her, his arms around her. Talathia stopped along the way and took the remains of another human who helped torment him, and ripped the skin off- creating a cape to sheild him.

“ Just in case the stars aren’t right.” She said, wrapping it around him. “ I know where you’ll be safe.”

Alhazred in his human disguise felt warmth against his skin, his red eyes slowly opened to see his love naked and washing the mud and blood out of her fur. He saw a fire in front of him with a few fish skewered on sticks roasting over the fire, where her own clothing hung above on branches to dry, washed of their blood and mud and other filth from says of traveling on foot.

He himself was clean, and wearing a tunic and pants- where they came from he couldn’t tell. He didn’t even want to entertain the idea of asking.. After looking up.

The skin of the human who aided in his torment, that Talathia turned into a cape, was stretched over head like a awning shielding him from the elements. The human ‘gloves’ lay hanging over a branch.

“ Darling, was the human skin tent necessary?” he chuckled weakly from his resting space. “The stars that hurt me aren’t out tonight.” He coughed, still weak from his assault.

She quickly ran to him, wet and naked and cupping him by his face covering him in kisses. “ I wasn’t sure you were going to wake up.” Tears streamed down her face. “ You were so weak, and barely breathing, and fell into a deep sleep. I stopped here and built a shelter for you- then cleaned myself so my dry fur could keep you warm…” he smiled weakly at her as she rambled on.

“ --You cried tears for me..” He kissed her back.

“ Don’t ever do something so so.. So… STUPID! Don’t ever be so foolish and arrogant and idiotic and SUICIDAL like that again! Don’t ever leave me! I have no purpose in my life with out you, you are my Master!” she all but screamed at him. “ My whole reason for existing is keeping you alive! If you’re killed what purpose do I have!?”

“ But what if you didn’t have to worry about that anymore, free to make your own choices… What if there was no more war?? What’s what they claimed they wanted to talk about--”

“ We aren’t graced with that blessing on this world!! If you were attempting to find that world by talking to the humans alone… it isn’t something we… we don’t have that privilege. They’ll never see us anything more than monsters! A threat that must be eradicated!”

“ My love.. You made a tent out of one of the humans who captured me.” He pointed up with a finger. “ And turned the other’s limbs into gloves.” He gently joked at her, teasing. He knew she was correct but his playful challenges always made her lighten up.

Not this time.

“ He was dead when I skinned him, and that BITCH left me no choice! How else was I supposed to get you out of there!?” She started crying. “ Look, I do not want to live in a world with out you in it.” She frowned at him. “ Never leave my side, don’t you ever put yourself at risk like that ever again! You’re too important! You’re too important to me!!” she cried out letting the sobs wreak her body. Broken at almost losing him. “ Fuck, what kind of knightly behavior is this, coming from me. Sobbing like some love stricken adolescent pup!”