Adventure of Alice Feilth 2

The clearing lies under a bruised dusk, black pines hemming in a ruined woodcutter’s hut. Alice Feilth stands at the edge of the churned dirt, the door sagging off one hinge, the air sour with old blood and wet fur.

Inside, the woodcutter is sprawled near the hearth, still and ruined, half-hidden by shadow and sawdust. Outside, wolves circle the hut in a tight, hungry ring, shoulders low, eyes bright in the dark.

One wolf breaks from the pack and pads toward Alice Feilth, lip curling back from yellow teeth. The others keep pace behind it, growling through the trees.

It stops just beyond the broken threshold, claws digging into the mud. The beast does not enter. It waits, as if something in the hut is still worth claiming.

A gust stirs the door, scraping it against the frame. The pack tightens its ring, heads turning toward Alice Feilth, then back to the corpse, trapped between caution and hunger.

Alice Feilth presses the device to his skin, and moonless fire crawls over him in a silent ring.

Bone lengthens, hips shift, and his lower body pours away into a pale, scaled tail. The change hits cleanly, with no hesitation.

He settles in the mud as a lamia, bust and serpent body gleaming faintly in the dark, silver eyes fixed on the threshold.

The wolf at the door recoils, paws skidding, and the pack behind it breaks its circle to stare.

For a breath, the clearing goes still, wolves hesitating between hunger and caution at the sight of the new predator.

Alice Feilth snaps his tail around the wolf's chest and hauls him off balance. Mud spits under their paws as the wolf slams sideways into the doorway, teeth bared but suddenly trapped.

The other wolves recoil at the shove, ears flattening as the hut's black mouth swallows their leader half inside.

Alice drags the wolf fully into the ruined hut, his coil scraping the broken frame and jolting the hanging door loose with a harsh crack.

Inside, the dead woodcutter's shape is only a dim heap in the floor shadow, while the wolves outside hesitate at the opening.

The pack backs away from the entrance, hackles high, leaving the clearing to Alice's coiled body and the stunned wolf in his grasp.