User blog:Redknight910/WWYd TES Fandom User

Prompt: Hircine's Chosen

I accept Hircine's challenge, my reward to be decided upon completion, my punishment, to be trapped in the native plane of these hellhounds I'm to hunt. After making my preparations, readying my equipment, I give the Lord of the Hunt confirmation, and he opens the portal in front of me.

Stepping through I find myself in a forest, the sounds of beasts both great and small all around me. There's other, more exotic sounds, sounds of intelligent life. But I'm after something particular. Something more wild than any beast could be. I take a few deep breaths, focusing on the scent I was shown. The creature hasn't gone far, it's scent still strong on the wind.

I set out into the woods, my dragonscale armour and bone bow at the ready. I pass several strange creatures, one even a strange kind of spider daedra. I track the hellhound to a cave, and I carefully enter, a spell of night vision allowing me to see in the darkened interior, and many bat-like creatures hanging from the roof.

I move carefully, quietly, my senses on edge for the slightest shift in my surroundings, eyes darting to every motion or sound as I go deeper into the cave.

After a few minutes I find myself against the wall of a large chamber, my prey resting in the centre. I knock my bow,line up my shot, and take it. The arrow flies true, but something sets the hellhound off, directing it to roll out of the shot's path. That's when I get my first real look at it from the front.

Clearly female, covered in black fur and ashen skin, with flaming marks around a pair of blood-red eyes. She growls at me, ready to move.

"What kind of stupid crazy do you need to be to attack a hellhound?" I don't get my chance to respond before she's charging me down. I throw an invisibility spell up and move, keeping myself subtle. She stops for a moment, then breathes in deep.

"I can still smell you, prey." My hackles go at the sound of that word. This thing. Calling me prey.

I fire two more arrows, one grazing the thing's shoulder, before it's on me, grabbing at my invisible form. That's when I make my play. I call upon the Huntfather's blessing, feeling my flesh and bones warping, bending into my far more powerful form.

I roar as the transformation finishes, looking down, now, at the hellhound, which has an astonished look on it's face. I use that shock to my advantage, swiping at her with my paw, howling to summon my spiritual pack. I feel something else tugging on my instincts, but I ignore it. I'm here for the hunt.

The hellhound makes for fine prey, it's strength and speed worthy of a hunter's respect. But not my mercy. My packmates harassed it, while I made precision strikes, wearing it down as I prepared for the kill. It was weakening, one of my spectral packmates had the creature by one arm, it's other busy fending off the second wolf, and I made my move.

Lunging in from behind, I felt something unkowingly tightening snap. My claws reached out, but they shortened back towards me. My powerful legs burned as they warped back into human shapes, and my core swiftly followed. I tumbled, falling slightly short as my form reverted, but I was undeterred.

I took the dagger from my belt and went to slit the throat of the creature, when I felt something. I felt a pain, growing in my arm, which I only now realised was still furred. The pain felt like a message, like killing this creature was something I shouldn't be doing.

I pulled away, looking at the huffing beast, before striking it on the temple. If this realm would deny me the kill, then I would take it back to Hircine alive. I tied as much rope as I could fit around it's arms and legs, binding them as tightly as I could, before dragging the creature back through the woods.

As I did, I heard a familiar, booming voice, though it was tinged with something odd. Something... feminine.

"You have done well, mortal." The Huntsman called through the air. "You have captured the unbreakable beast. Name your reward, and it shall be given." Just as I was about to make my claim, I heard a different voice, echoing through my mind.

'Aren't you a strange one.' I looked around, seeing nothing at first, but then spotting it, high in the trees above me. A figure, with a spaded tail, the wings of a bat stretching out behind her, and horns, arching into a living crown across her brow.

"What are you?" I growled, still trying to find the portal back to the Hunting Grounds.

'I'm just a simple passer-by. Looking into an interesting occurrence around here. And I think I found it.' She spoke without moving her lips, and with the grace of a master acrobat, she descended the tree.

'You aren't from here. Are you?' She tilted her head at me, curious.

"No. Now, I have no time for your games." She held out a hand, and I felt an incredible amount of magical power hold me in place. I snarled, reacting with the change, calling on the strength of Hircine's Ring to grant me another transformation, but what happened instead was an odd suffusion.

My once black fur turned a ghostly white, like the woman's own, and my form didn't change, except to tighten, my muscles pulling taughter, my magicka reserves palpably deepening. I could feel myself growing more powerful. The woman stopped porjecting herself onto me, instead staring in shock.

"Wha- what is this?" I didn't respond, instead just pounced on her, my veins boiling with a strange heat. She quickly pushed me aside, but I could tell it was taking far more for her to hold me in place this time. Over the initial shock, she looked at me with a combination of curiousity and a slight amount of awe.

"Such a powerful werewolf... did I do this? No, no, what's this you have?" She forced my hand up, examining the wolf-headed ring on my furred hand. "This has... this has something... something powerful within it. Something strange...." As she spoke I could feel the power growing again, and I tried to change.

This time I felt the power surge from the ring, bringing me back into my powerful form, my fur still bone white, but I felt more powerful than ever.

I broke the hold the woman had, as she once again faltered in surprise. I took a swipe at her, tearing a chunk from the tree behind her without even touching it, but missing her as she leapt back up into it. I felt another great impulse, and resisted it, for a moment.

'Calm yourself. I wish to speak with you.' I growled, but the unrelenting force holding me down forced my compliance. I let the power recede back into the ring, and felt that force holding me on my knee give. The woman landed before me again, out of arms reach, but still close enough to converse.

"You... how did you do that?" I looked at her for a moment, trying to size up the lithe creature.

"I was given a gift by Lord Hircine. It allows me to-" She shook her head, pointing to my arms.

"I meant how did you absorb my power? I've never seen anything like it." I look down at my seemingly permanently-furred arms, realising my legs are in a similar state, and think.

"I... do not know...." She hmms for a few moments, before muttering to herself.

"Perhaps if there was... but that would require vast amounts of power..." she looks back up at me, "this... Lord Hircine. Are they a god of some kind?" This... this figure hadn't heard of the daedric princes?

"Hircine commands the plane of Oblivion known as the Hunting Grounds. He gifts mortals who please him, and curses those who disappoint." She nods a little, thinking some more.

"You... you're from a different world, aren't you?" I give her a cautious glare, but she simply nods again. "That would explain it. The void of spirit or demonic energy must have been filled with my own, giving you a portion of my power...." She holds out a hand, and though I expect another wave of force, I'm greeted with nothing.

"Would you kindly come with me? I... I think we need to do some tests on you." I growl at her, getting ready to move at the slightest motion.

"I'm not some test subject for a mage's experiments." She shakes her head, sighing.

"No, I need to see if your form is stable. You could currently be a walking bomb of demonic energy, waiting for the slightest thing to set you off." I think about that, wondering what this energy is, and if it's related to the sudden surge of magicka I felt.

"I must return to my world, you've delayed me too long already." I turn to retrieve the hellhound, when she catches my hand.

"Please, you could greatly destabilise your world if you returned like this." I look at her angrily, but her face seems... worried. And curious, but mostly worried.

"Very well." I mutter, pointing a finger at her. "But keep it brief." I growl, to which she nods.

She takes me to another small fortification, more a reinforced outpost than anything, where several cold mages put me through various magical tests. After they finish the last one, they quietly talk to the woman who dragged me out here, who has a growing look of confusion on her face.

Finally they finish, and she approaches me, looking conflicted.

"Well, you're not going to explode. Not in this world at least, but your world...." She sighs, taking a deep breath. "If you went back to your world, it's quite possible you'd spread our energies, creating a potential cascading energetic destabilisation, which would either turn your world into a rough copy of this one, or cause several universes to explode. That's the simple way of putting it." I give her a wide eyed stare for several long moments before responding.

"So... I'm stuck here? In a strange world, with strange creatures, and no idea of what is going on?" She nods slowly.

"On the bright side, thanks to your intake of my power, you're one of the most powerful mortal creatures in this world." I then get a rushed histroy/arcane lesson on what this world is like. From the sounds of it it's going to take some getting used to. Especially with the burning urges that keep making me want to do things.