'Two grenades, three clips for the rifle, and a pistol. Not much in so little time.'
Arnquist wasn't so fanatical as to just...die for the cause, but he would die to protect what he knew...in this case, a column of soldiers who he ordered to leave him behind.
He wondered. The men afflicted became female...but he didn't feel any shifting down there...or in the chest. Just the ears. And the senses. Still...something was wierd...
The door caved with a tremendous crash, and he heard claws on concrete. He looked over his shoulder and saw them racing for him. He jumped, trying to buy time to get a finger into a grenade pin...
And saw the room spin, and when he found his feet, the wolves were skidding to a stop and turning around to find him again.
'The hell?'
One of them was faster, charged...but then time seemed to slow, like in that movie..."The Matrix." He was seeing motion, and reacting to it. Perhaps a hair faster, but he was guiding this slow-mo scene like a special effects editor. He felt tight in the face, and the ears.
He whipped back around, grenades up, and a pack of she-wolves looking astonished and angry.
Perhaps it was a desperation coming from the mind that knows it's about to die, but the impulse that hit him was true.
'could it be?'
The ears.
The speed.
Arnquist held his grenades up. "STOP! You want me? Fine. But let me talk with your leader. Let me talk. Maybe we can work something out. Because if you try to turn me or kill me..." He flicked his left finger, popping the pin out of one of the grenades, "we all go up in a silver thermite fireball."
The word "elf" came to mind.
"Your choice. We talk, or we die."