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It's finally here. My DnD group finally started playing our Werewolf: The forsaken game. I'm excited for everyone to see and follow he pack's story as it unfolds. As what's gonna be a common warning for this series, Werewolf: The Forsaken is a very grimdark and gory series so if you don't like that sort of stuff, please avoid reading.

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It was daunting. The largest she'd ever seen for a patient. A short, latina nurse, her hair kept tied in a bun, Gabriella, looked at the nurse's station's computer screen and the patient file it showed. It was a massive file. Containing 15 years of medical files, psych evals, police reports, in-hospital incident reports. You name it, the poor man had documentation for it. She couldn't help but pity him as she filed yet another incident report for the patient. It was the fifth violent outburst from him this week alone. Eleven the week prior.

She could tell he wasn't always so rageful and violent. He had violent tendencies, yes. But not to such an extreme degree. Having had a mental break from visiting his childhood home two weeks ago. His previous incident reports were always against other patients, never the orderlies (until they got involved at least) or medical staff. But ever since he'd arrived at the asylum the week prior under police escort, he would attack everyone and everything in sight. Even things that weren't there.

She logged the incident report and closed the file with a shudder. The attacking of nothing shouldn't have unnerved her so much. She had seen plenty of patients that claimed to see things that weren't there. But there was something off about this patient. She looked at the file name; Lupo, David. Many things were off about him. A great many things.

She knew she should get back to work, but she couldn't help but re-open the file and scroll through the myriad of previous psych evals from his many admittances into asylums. David seemed to have the uncanny ability to know things he shouldn't. Three days prior he singled out one of the nurses when he was being detained by orderlies. He screamed himself hoarse about the nurse being swarmed by a buzzing swarm of fat, black flies. Flies that would land on the nurse, and lay burrowing maggots into his skin. The nurse called in sick the next day with an extremely virulent strain of stomach flu.

Gabby opened an incident report and its accompanying psych eval from a similar incident three years prior from an asylum in Utah. David had broken out of his room and attacked a fellow patient. He claimed they were going to attack and kill many of the patients and staff. But the patient didn't have any violent tendencies. But after the orderlies searched their room, they found a stash of improvised weapons. David explained how he had known by saying he could see a dark spectre following the patient. Whispering dark thoughts into their ear.

She tabbed over to the accompanying psych eval. The psychiatrist's notes explained it away as David had simply subconsciously noticed micro-expressions in the other patient, and in his psychosis, perceived them as this spectre. It made sense to Gabby. It was logical. She tried to apply that logic to her coworker he tried to attack a few days ago. He must've noticed a change in the nurse. Seeing him occasionally rub his stomach from a forming cramp. Saw him stop to catch his breath more often from the onsetting fatigue.

She tried to explain it away. All those occasions he knew things he shouldn't. But she still had a niggling thought at the back of her mind. Chipping away at the foundations of all her explanations. What if there was something more to that uncanny ability of his? Something… supernatural?

She pulled her crucifix out of her scrubs and kissed it, and muttered a quick prayer in Spanish. The thought lingered in her mind, like his eyes did. Those horrible, piercing golden eyes. Human eyes didn't look like that. His medical files from before the event that led to his mental troubles (the poor thing saw his entire family get killed by a bear when he was just a small child) said that his eyes were dark brown. She wasn't aware of anything that would cause such a drastic change in eye colour. But different from his file they were. And they unnerved everyone, even the most steadfast psychiatrists and police officers. Whenever he looked at someone, it was never at them. It was always through them, occasionally trailing away as if following a fly buzzing around the person's head before he would snap back to them. Laser focused. Like a wolf staring down an injured animal.

And they would shine. Those in the night shift told her about it, one of whom she was filling in for tonight. She looked towards the high security wing, where they kept the violent patients for the patients', the staff's, and the violent patient's own safety. They'd tell her about how when they passed his room they'd see two gleaming specks in the dark. Looking straight at them, following them as they passed by his door and feeling his gaze through the wall well after they were out of sight.

She sighed, closing David's file and stood up from the desk. She had put off her rounds long enough. His eyes unnerved her enough already. She wasn't looking forward to seeing those eyes following her in the dark.

***

His thoughts were muddled. Like they were smothered by a heavy blanket. He tried to rub his eyes but he couldn't move his arms. He couldn't move anything but his head, which lulled around on his pillow as his golden eyes followed a strange, confusing mist that was swirling around him. He snapped at it. His teeth loudly clacking as he tried to bite it. The mist reacted to his bite and flew to, and through, the nearby wall.

David shook his head, trying to shake off the effects of the sedative. They used a lot to bring him down. Too much. But they had to. It had taken seven orderlies to just pin him down after the first, second, and third shot of sedatives did nothing.

Why had they dogpiled him like that? His thoughts were still so slow. His focus was still weak. Not being able to grasp a single string of thought. Each thought fell through his fingers like he was trying to grasp wisps of smoke. Minutes passed and he was finally able to start grasping at individual threads of thought. He slowly, painfully slowly, weaved them together.

It was coming back to him. Ever since he returned home and found his old baseball. Where was it? He asked himself, his thoughts getting muddled again. His train of thought easily derailed in his current state. He had it in his hand but dropped it. Why did he drop it?

He breathed faster, on the verge of hyperventilation. Adrenaline purged the remaining sedative from his system as he saw him. For just a fraction of a second, out of the corner of his eye, he saw his brother. Shouting at him. But David couldn't hear him. He never could when he hallucinated Michael. When he tried to look at him he was gone. Leaving him alone in the dark, sterile cell-like room. The only light coming from the cloud covered moon in the window.

He tried to sit up in his bed, but couldn't move. He looked down and saw that he was strapped down to it with padded leather straps. His arms, legs, even his chest. Only his head was left free. He tried to pull himself free, thrashing. But what little movement he could achieve was with what little slack the straps on his arms and legs allowed, the strap along his chest allowed nothing.

Not being able to move angered him. Them loading him up with what should have been a lethal amount of sedatives angered him. Everything angered him ever since he returned to his childhood home. The anger never went away, burning in his chest like a bed of coals. It followed him as a cloud of embers that only he could see. But it wasn't a hallucination, it never was. He knew it wasn't because, like all the other things he saw, they would affect things around him. He would see how the embers would swarm around the people near him, making them more irritable. More likely to hurt him. But trying to get the embers to stop would make them worse. They would dig into the person, burning their skin without the person seeming to notice it.

All his attempts to stop it seemed to encourage it, and the more he tried the brighter and hotter the embers would become. Getting to the point where they looked like they were going to burst into full flame. They were there now, streaming in from under his door and flew straight for him. He tried to get away from them, the straps wouldn't even allow him to so much as worm his way to the otherside of his bed.

The embers seemed to jitter with glee when they saw David thrash on his bed, helpless. They swirled around him, getting brighter as he tried to snap at them. They funnelled closer to him and he screamed as the embers grazed his skin. The embers' touch burned him in a pain that wasn't pain as they stoked his rage. He thrashed in his bed, and yanked at his restraints. The leather of the straps dug into his wrists and felt he was going to rip off the skin from his hands.

Just as fast as the embers struck, they stopped. They pulled away from him and towards his room's door.

David snapped at the embers, trying to bite the embers, then he saw what made the embers leave him. A dark miasma was seeping through the cracks of his door. Bringing with it dissonant whispers, too faint for him to make out. Or even if they were even really there to begin with.

The embers flared, and the miasma reared like a snake in response. As the two spectres faced off, David thrashed even more to try free himself from his bindings. He pulled hard against one of the straps wrapped around his wrist. He flexed his arm with all his might, a roaring scream ripped out of his throat but all he achieved was a creaking complaint from the leather of the strap on his arm, and the metal of his bed's frame.

The two spectres suddenly stopped their display as a soft silver light filled the room from the window. The clouds had moved past the moon, and allowed it to flood unopposed into David's room.

David craned his neck to see the window, something about the light called to him. All he saw was the crescent moon. But it was so much more than that. It was a loving mother's smile. But also a lunatic's manic smile. The light pierced into David's eyes as they dilated and his head slammed back into his bed as if punched. He clenched his teeth, grinding them. Pain wracked through his entire body. Through every nerve. Through his very soul. It was a burning, transcendent pain he had never experienced before in his life. It obliterated not only all thought, but also the final restraints to his rage that David had been so desperately trying to keep in check since he returned to his childhood home.

An unnaturally deep roaring howl tore from David's throat. It shook the walls and rattled the window and light fixtures. It pierced the walls of his cell-like room, stoking Lunatic screaming from all who heard it in the ward. Nothing could stop his pained, rageful howl. Not even the snap of bones in his forearm as he wrenched it free from the frame, the metal of his bed frame screeching as the strap was torn from where it was secured to. The bones in his forearm cracked back into place and grabbed his head as the howl deepened even more as his jaw crunched forward into a growing muzzle.

***

The asylum was silent, the only sounds being the buzzing from fluorescent lights on the ceiling. The screams had quietened down, the patients having finally settled down and gone to sleep.

Gabby walked down the hallway as she did her rounds. The doors she passed all opened slightly to let her poke her head into each patient's room to check on them.

All except one.

One door was closed. It wasn't meant to be. It was protocol for the doors to be unlocked for the patients' safety. Any violent patients would be strapped down onto their beds. She tried to open the door thinking to herself, I swear, if the orderlies locked the door of a another patient thy didn't like so they wouldn't be caught beating them...

It didn't budge.

She tried again to the same effect. The door handle rotated properly so it wasn't locked.

She turned to a nearby orderly sitting down in a chair reading a magazine, “Hey, Phil. This patient's door is jammed. Can you get it open for me?"

Phil groaned and closed his magazine. He stood up groggily and tried to open the jammed door to the same effect. He shoved his shoulder against it, opening it slightly making something on the other side of the door loudly scrape against the floor.

“Something's blocking the door," said the orderly as he continued to shove his shoulder against the door.

The patient inside was trying to commit suicide, realised Gabby. She took off to get help from the gathering staff who heard the commotion to restrain and help the patient when she heard a low, bloodchilling growl.

Phil heard it too, who had stopped his attempts to bust in the door. Before he could realise what he heard, the door shattered outwards and he felt the breath forced out of his lungs in a short gasp as he felt a blinding flash of pain in his chest. He looked down in shock and saw a large black furred arm in his chest, a padded leather restraint around its wrist.

Gabby was struck frozen in terror at what she saw. The arm yanked back into the room, and Phil collapsed to the ground. He feebly tried to apply pressure to the gaping hole in his chest before his arms went limp and fell away, his eyes glazed over.

She drew in a shuddering breath when she saw what stepped out of the room. A great, monstrous lupine beast. Eight feet tall, and covered in fur so black it was a physical shadow that blocked out the light of the ceiling lights that its large pointed ears grazed against. The only colour in its dark form were its eyes. A pair of golden shining eyes. She knew those eyes.

She was the first to scream, and the screams didn't stop until the last of the gathered staff were nothing more than body parts strewn across the hallway. With Gabby the only intact body, her eyes rolled back into her skull. Her legs stiffened, arms bent toward the centre of her body, and her shoulder nothing more than shredded meat and bone from where she was bitten.

***

Three figures stood outside the front doors of the beige coloured building. A tall, musclebound african-american woman, her hair in a military buzz cut except for a small mohawk. A small waif of a barely adult white male, and a haunting looking white male.

The small younger male stood in front of the automatic doors briefly. When they didn't open, he turned to the other male and asked, “Lucas?"

Lucas, the other male, stepped forward to the door. He placed a hand against the doors, and after saying something in a growling language, his fingers slid into the glass and metal of the doors. He pulled his hand back and the door followed, bending and deforming like clay until the doors were pulled open.

“Jesse, hack into their security system to find the Nuzusul and wipe the cameras," said Lucas, as he turned to the smaller male but found him gone. He looked around before he saw the smaller male already inside at the front desk tapping away at the computer.

“I'm in," called out Jesse as he brought up the security camera footage.

“He on camera?" asked the tall woman.

“Not yet," answered Jesse.

“Though I've found where he's been," continued Jesse and turned the monitor around to show the other two. Both Lucas' and the woman's eyebrows rose when they saw the remains of the slaughter.

“I was hoping to find him before he Changed," grumbled Lucas.

“Clearly Luna had different plans," Jesse said as he turned the monitor back towards himself.

He then gave a small gasp, “Oh. Found him."

“Where?" the other two asked.

He pointed to behind him and to his side, “Over that way and-"

Jesse then cringed at what he saw on the monitor, saying, “Oh, that poor dude."

“Jesse!" called out the woman, “Focus."

“Oh yeah," said Jesse and pointed back to the area, “He's over that way, swiping at nothing."

Lucas walked over to where Jesse pointed and said, “Yeah, that's definitely the Ithauer we're after."

“He's also coming this way," added Jesse. “Fast."

“What?!" snarled Lucas, his form quickly changing. He grew taller, his ears grew to points, black hair-like fur grew over his body, and his mouth extended into a proto-muzzle. By the end he looked like a wolf-man from old werewolf movies.

The beast they were after then crashed through the wall, a patient in his maw. The pair slid across the floor and with a wrench of his head, the black werewolf tore the patient's arm off from the shoulder.

He dropped the arm when he saw Lucas and charged him. He swiped at him with his claws and struck Lucas in the side, his claws dug in deep into the skin and the pair rammed into the reception desk.

Lucas yelled out in pain and grabbed the arm in his side to try and restrain the rampaging werewolf. He wrenched it upwards with a loud crack from the black furred arm

“Tsu'mara!" Lucas snarled in pain.

Tsu'mara, the large woman, came from behind in wolf-man form and brought an arm around his neck. Putting him into a tight chokehold. The werewolf snapped at her face, but the chokehold and her careful dodging made each loud snap of his teeth miss.

Lucas used the werewolf's distraction to produce a large hypodermic needle and stabbed the werewolf in the chest, slamming the plunger down to inject the modified tranquiliser directly into his heart.

The werewolf roared in rage and pain. He was already in a blood rage, but the needle enraged him even further. He snapped at Lucas' face, but Tsu'mara's chokehold held him back. The werewolf's jaw snapped shut with a loud clap less than an inch from the wolf-man's face.

With a growl Tsu'mara twisted the werewolf down and slammed his head into the reception desk with a loud crack and made Jesse grab the computer monitor to stop it from falling over from the force of the impact as he typed away to wipe the security data. The werewolf's movements started to slow and become sluggish, from the blow to the head and the tranquiliser finally kicking in.

Lucas tried to take advantage of it and decided to headbutt the raging werewolf in order to try and put him down.

It didn't work.

If anything, the second strike to the head refocused the werewolf's rage. With his free hand, he grabbed Lucas by the head and smashed his head into theirs in return and Lucas stumbled back holding his head.

Tsu'mara dropped the chokehold, and grabbing the werewolf's head with both hands, drove his head through the reception desk, shattering the particle board it was made out of. The werewolf fell into a limp pile on the ground. The werewolf, unconscious, shifted into human form. A tall, gaunt man with olive skin and greasy black hair. His face was bloodied and his skull clearly fractured. His arm was bent at an unnatural angle, and his breathing was reduced to snorting half breaths.

“You almost killed him!" chastised Lucas shifting back to human form.

“He'll be fine," said Tsu'mara as she herself shifted back to human form and the man's arm snapped back into place on its own. She knelt down and picked him up, gently cradling the unconscious man in her arms. She felt his ribs pop back into place and his breathing return to normal.

“You wipe the camera feeds?" she asked Jesse.

“Yeah, also wiped his patient file," said Jesse while pocketing a USB. “His name's David Lupo by the way."

“You sure it was his?" asked Lucas as he started wiping their fingerprints from everything they touched and may have touched.

“Who else would have a file that large?" said Jesse with a shrug who started to wipe down the keyboard.

A loud cracking caught both of their attention and they looked over to see Tsu'mara, still holding David, kicking the deformed front doors to break them and cover up its unnatural deformation.

The pair followed her to a plain white van. They carefully set David down into the back of it, who twitched in his unconsciousness as the fractured bone in his face started to reset. They climbed into the front and drove off into the night. Leaving the slaughter behind.