What the punk had done legally amounted to kidnapping, although without the powers of the game, probably never would have been attempted without a weapon. Leomen were powerful creatures and while their highly "civilized" nature meant that they were less easily moved to violence then any other race of man, this did not mean that the COULDN'T be convinced to. The fact that the Pride agreed to aid Jensen and his Pack stop Kurse was proof of that.
But, he did have the game and used it to his advantage, turning the male leoman into a love doll that somehow loved him. Now, part of his only motivation was because someone else had cursed him with the inability to perform for any flesh and blood woman. So, like any pervert, he sought out the next best thing, a "love doll", and it made him feel loved in a strange way... which ultimately proved to be what he really wanted. And that was where the leoman's transformation powers came in.
As he thrust into the leoman love doll he had made, he never noticed a long lion-like tail sprout behind him. Golden fur grew out of his body and his muscle mass enlarged. He let out a growling moan as he felt his member enlarge inside the love doll until it was what was the common size for leoman males and barely fit inside the doll. Retractable claws grew out of his fingers as his hair turned golden and began to lengthen and circle around his head and chest, becoming a rather impressive mane. The last change that seemed to occur was his face pushing forward into a lion's muzzle.
"I love you Leona," the punk spoke to the love doll and then heard a disembodied voice reply.
"I love you too, Leon," the doll replied through some form of telepathy, "I hope we're always together."
And then something strange happened. The punk had never gone by the name "Leon", yet his love doll had addressed him as such, and he didn't know the name of the leoman male he transformed, so how did he know her new female name was "Leona"?
In his confusion, he looked down to see his hands. His fur was smoothing out, hardening. He could feel his body seeming to harden all the way through to his core, becoming a solid plastic/rubber-like substance with enough malleability that the body could be posed or used in various positions and with a permanently visible erect member. He tried to speak, but as he did so the conversion of his body into a "male" love doll reached his face.
And his cycle was complete. He was a male Leoman love doll with a female Leoman love doll, both the result of various "furry" fans whose love of "animal people" had prompted various adult themed businesses to create the dolls. The Leon and Leona Love Dolls. They were owned by a young couple of "furries" that engaged in various acts with the two dolls to enact their own fantasies, usually involving themselves being accepted into the Pride...
++++++++++
Joella sniffled as Meranda's body was buried. Her "mothers" had told her she was mauled by a bear, but never explained why she had been sent into the woods alone. The fact that she was killed struck heavily at her heart as, unlike her "mothers", she truly wanted to help the people they had driven mad. And no one of the people she had tried to help was dead. Killed by a "bear".
"I'm sorry I couldn't save her," Joella said the girl's grieving parents.
They looked to her and then to Golgotha, Gomorrah, and Gaal standing nearby.
"You did your best, dear," the mother said softly, "and it isn't like you could hurt a bear. If you had been there, the bear would have killed you too."
"And that would have been a tragedy," Golgotha spoke as she came up to hold Joella's shoulders, "what would your friends do without you?"
"I don't know," Joella said weakly.
"We're sorry for your loss," Gaal said to Meranda's parents. The real feelings weren't there, obviously, but the magic behind them made the parents believe that witches were sorry that Meranda was dead.
Now, in a way they were sorry, but it was not the sort of "sorry" one compared with the loss of a friend or a charge that one was looking after. The witches saw the child familiars the way a carpenter looked at a saw. As a tool to accomplish their planned world of chaos. Joella was the only one that they probably cared about.
++++++++
"Wait, "mauled by a bear"?" Maddex wondered as Lilly and Cassandra hugged him, while he did his best to keep their ears covered, "even if the geass wasn't there, a Leoman male would have been more then enough to drive it off. I mean the bears that range this far east aren't the 800 to 1,000 pound Grizzlies. These are roughly 500 pound Black Bears, about the same size as a Leoman male. Surely someone would have looked twice at that excuse and said that it could not have mauled both... either Meranda would have escaped while the bear and "Frank" fought, or Frank would have killed the bear while it tried to go after Meranda."
"Frank's death was blamed on Marie and Linus by the witches with the story that they blatantly murdered Frank and left Meranda alone in the woods to be attacked by the bear," Marie-Eliza explained, "It would leave Marie as a "wanted" person in Glendale, but thanks to the witches own magics, no "law-enforcer" in Glendale went looking for Marie and the other Hunters."
"What happened though after the final battle, though?" Lawrence though, "all sources say that Golgotha, Gaal, and Gomorrah were killed IN Glendale. Wouldn't the "law enforcement" of the time have arrested her then?"
"By that time, even with the creation of the curse, the people the witches had "brainwashed" through their magics had realized that ALL of their troubles had been caused by the witches all along," Marie explained, "it would add to some of Joella's heartbreak as parents came in to reclaim their children from the "orphanage" and as the Pack claimed Francis and Julianna... it would still leave most of the former "mob" members with no one to raise them other then Benjamin and Magdalena and their family, but even they couldn't look after all of them."
"What would happen to them?" Betty asked.
"Once Draco's mission was firmly established they would work with Benjamin and Magdalena to provide care for them, but that is an epilogue to the tale," Marie sighed.
+++++++++
"We need to replace Meranda," Gaal commented, back in their manor, "the Dog can wait for now... but with Meranda gone, all our progress is slowing."
"And where are we to get the replacement?" Gomorrah asked, "that dog that killed Solome made sure that we lost all of the candy that we had made. We can't replace Meranda that way, and we can't be certain that transforming some new "resident" into a replacement Meranda would work as well. Remember the members of the "mob" haven't worked as well as replacement familiars in comparison to the ones that have eaten the candy."
"The candy..." Golgotha then sighed, "the candy..."
She then snapped her fingers.
"That's it," Golgotha then spoke, "the dog that killed Solome was owned by one of the Leomen..."
"But we have our Leoman here," Gaal commented, "burying Frank in our own "private" cemetery."
"No not the Witch Pride," Golgotha answered, "the Glendale Pride. A little female cub and her sister."
"They have refused Joella's attempts to bring her here," Gomorrah reminded them, "Much like the evil Lupman that growled at her to "go away" when she went to collect the pups we colored brightly, the Glendale Pride will not give the cub up. It would be one of the only things that they would truly fight over..."
Golgotha gave an angry growl at the mention of the Lupman pack. She still fostered her dream of revenge to kill each and every adult wolf in that pack in as slow and painful method possible, and to be honest, she wasn't so sure all of their children should be spared either... after all, they had already picked up the nickname "the Big Bad Wolf Pack".
"True they may fight," Golgotha answered as she brought her focus back to the matter at hand, "but then they may not "fight" at all. Our familiars are protected from ANY potential threat. The only reason Meranda died is because the Dog is somewhat protected by her Evil God that likes to make people old and enslave them to his will..."
+++++++++++
"That isn't how God operates," Lawrence interrupted, having learned much from Anne, "God does want people to follow and worship him, but he's given each of us our own free will. The right to make our own choices. Those that follow him do so willingly, not because God has made them follow him."
"And aging is a physical process," Maddex added, "the witches should have seen that despite all their magic they couldn't really stop it without constantly applying more magic."
"Yes, but remember, the witches didn't see things that way," Marie-Eliza sighed, "they saw what they were doing as liberation... which from a technical viewpoint is correct, but it wasn't right. They were living in a fantasy world where everything they did would make everything better from what they experienced, and if certain people had to lose their free will they gave the excuse that they were freeing them from what held them down before and that made it okay. And by that point they had no interest in hearing a different opinion. Golgotha and Marie's dream "debate" should be more then enough proof of that."
++++++++++
Meanwhile, the hunters went through their own slow recover. Vatican had managed to set the bones in his wings while Linus had set Katherine's. Part of her wondered how they knew how to do that. Gargoyles, being solid stone, had no bones to break, so he couldn't instinctively know how wing bones were arranged. Draco might have known and gave him instructions, which Marie accepted, but again Linus was another matter.
From what he had told her, he was an "unusual" Puritan who studied into things a lot more what most other Puritans did, which maybe he did... but a vast amount of his knowledge seemed to be second nature, but he hadn't done anything to indicate that he was a warlock, so Marie was hesitant to make that comment. But there was still a lot about him that none of them knew. It was strange and made the man a mystery to follow, and left Marie wanting to know more about who he was.
And then there were the events of their arrival. Their defeat at the witches hands, turning to grave robbing, and having to kill a child and a leoman to defend herself and her wounded friends. The defeat and the sin. It left Marie second guessing a lot of things.
"Troubles, Marie?" she heard a voice from behind her.
She turned to see Katherine approaching, leaning heavily on cane/crutch that Vatican had carved out of a small tree, to reduce the weight had to place on the leg that she had broken, though it didn't feel or look that bad. Her fur was slowly beginning to grow back, though the fur on the side that had been burned was growing much more slowly then normal, and was almost patchy in its coverage.
"You don't want to know," Marie sighed.
"Come on, you can tell me anything," Katherine replied.
"In a way, it's everything," Marie sighed, "we got beaten badly because of me. I got you all hurt, and we failed."
"We'll get another shot at them," Katherine said optimistically, "they didn't kill us. And you've said it won't go completely bad until the end of the year. We still have some time."
"I know... but, it's still the fact that I failed," Katherine spoke, "I mean, I'm supposed to be the Inquisitor here. Now, I'me expected to return reports of heresy trials and burnings of those who won't come back to the church... but you and I both know that that won't happen, but still... I'm supposed to be better then this. A better leader that doesn't get her friends broken and beaten to within an inch of their lives... a better warrior who doesn't need to dishonor the dead to accomplish a mission... who doesn't murder children who are only VICTIMS of the witches's madness."
"From what you and Linus told us, that girl attacked you," Katherine commented, "You defended yourself."
"Like any court would accept that argument," Marie dismissed it, "that I was in mortal danger from a child... especially with Linus beside me armed with a musket."
"That's probably because no law court would ever believe us if we reported the threat that these witches pose," Katherine spoke, "it's why you told me the church has been so against black magic."
"It doesn't make the guilt go away, Katherine," Marie sighed, "I've killed, yes, but most of the time, it's been the undead, and the rest of the time, it's been adults who have committed crimes. Not children, who are supposed to be the most innocent of us."
"The girl never would have attacked you if it wasn't for the witches," Katherine reminded Marie.
"Yes, and for that alone, will go on to insure that the witches are stopped," Marie sighed, "but I'm certain God won't forgive me for this. When this is all over... I fear I will be seeing the witches again in hell."
"Don't say that Marie," Katherine urged, "You are one of the kindest people I know. I mean, you were nicer to me then most others were. And you're not doing this for power or money. You're doing this to prevent a great force of evil from practically destroying the world. I'm sure God knows that and would make and exception for you because of that."
"An Indulgence? The Council would never allow that to be given to me," Marie retorted.
"Well, it wouldn't be official," Katherine gave a slight smile, "but then if you are let in anyway, does it really matter whether it is official or not?"
Marie only sighed and patted Katherine on the shoulder.
++++++++++
On the other end of Glendale, a young leoman cub chewed on a Gold Deer bone, while humming some strange tune that no one could recognize. Her mother was off on a hunting trip, with her sister Mal'akh following to learn how to hunt, while she were left under the protective eye of their father. She barely noticed a knocking at her front door.
Her father slowly approached it.
"Yes?" the adult male leoman asked in a calm voice to three women standing before his door.
They were of course the witches, but as what commonly happened with many of Glendale's citizens, the powerfully built male ended up with a sort of glassy eyed look as the witches made sure that he would agree to whatever they wanted.
"You are Mahershalal Bialyk?" Gaal inquired.
"I am," he answered, "and you three are the foster mothers of the girl who came here asking me to give up my own flesh and blood to the "shelter" you have been running."
"We only mean for her to be safe and cared for," Gomorrah offered, "and you and your whole family would be more then welcome to visit... or even stay with her. The Witch Pride is more then willing to accept new members."
Mahershalal thought for a moment and then shook his head. The Witch Pride members all seemed rather odd to him. Still very civilized from what he could see, but still odd. One of his Prime Mate's friends had told him and his Prime Mate that their males actively hunted.
"No, they have their Pride and I have mine," Mahershalal then spoke, "they have done no harm, and have helped us and the Lupmen keep the Gold Deer population in check, but my place is with my Pride. And my little Mal'akh and Aimilíona are my cubs. They are precious to me."
"But you will not lose Aimiliona," Golgotha spoke, "we're doing this for her own good. She will be cared for."
"Cared for..." Mahershalal answered slowly.
"Yes," Golgotha answered.
"Please wait a moment," Mahershalal spoke and then moved back toward his living room where Aimiliona was still chewing on the bone. "Dear, I think you've gotten all the marrow that you can out of that. There are some people here who can help you... hopefully restore you to the way you were."
"Mum...mum...mum..." Aimiliona responded, but stood up, still chewing on the bone.
The cub followed her father to the witches.
"Mum?"
"We're here to help you, young Aimiliona," Golgotha spoke, using as much magic as possible to insure that Aimiliona didn't remember her first meeting with the witches. She extended out one hand and then took Aimiliona's paw and left with the cub.
Mahershalal only watched from his doorway, and hoped his daughter would be returned to him.