NOVPUB"Help! Save me please!" Uriel’s pained voice resounded on the swamp, followed soon after by a few gunshots.
"This birds are so annoying!" Uriel complained after blowing the cryptid’s head in a single shot.
"I don’t think so, they’re uhm... beautiful."
Uriel looked at what remained of the cryptid he just shot down. It was rather plain looking and there was nothing special about its appearance, but Luna wasn’t that interested on how it looked and focused instead on its uncanny ability to mimic people’s voices.
"Do you think they might be the stage before a changeling?"
"I can’t say, but the lore is more or less the same. Creatures that lure travelers deep into the forest so they become lost, these ones are too small to actually do any damage to humans, uhm... they probably rely on other creatures to kill their victims and then they feed on the leftovers." Luna explained, speaking fast like she used to do whenever she spoke about cryptids.
Needless to say, Uriel wasn’t thrilled to see Luna poking the corpses of the cryptids they hunted, but he didn’t complain since she also grabbed the flux orbs after dissecting them.
Picking up flux orbs was a chore for him, he didn’t enjoy cutting open the corpses of beasts and strange creatures, but he had always done it anyway because they were too valuable to leave behind, especially now they needed as many flux orbs as they could gather.
Unfortunately, there were too few cryptids scattered on a large area and it took a lot of effort to find them, only for them to drop a measly beast rank flux orb. Hunting in a swampy forest made things incredibly difficult, since the trees provided the perfect cover for all sorts of creatures and they weren’t able to see too far even with their gas lanterns.
"We can’t keep going like this, maybe we should go back and ask Nika to come with us."
"No, this is fun. Also, just because we can’t find swtronger cryptids doesn’t mean there aren’t any nearby."
"Why don’t you turn into a werewolf then? With your heightened senses I bet we’ll be done in a few hours."
"I don’t want to." Luna grabbed hs hand tightly.
"Why not? It’s illogical to have such a powerful ability and let it go to waste."
"It’s because... I don’t want you to think I’m ugly." Luna’s pale face shimmered in the moon, her beautiful porcelain face with her bare expression set in stone didn’t let any of her feelings out, but Uriel knew her well enough to understand her.
"You’re Moonlight! Nothing could be more fitting to you than turning into a werewolf. Besides, I don’t think you’re ugly when you turn."
"Really?" Luna’s eyes suddenly lit up in calm joy.
"The first time I saw you as a werewolf I had no idea it was you, but I still thought your silver fur was beautiful and your body was graceful."
"My... body?" Luna echoed blushing up to her ears. Although Luna’s face turned red easily, she wasn’t shy in the slightest and proceeded to undress herself without so much as blinking. Uriel, of course, turned on his back before seeing something he could not unsee and then continued speaking. "Put my clothes in your backpack."
"S-sure." Uriel placed his hand behind his back and blindly grabbed her clothes and hurrying to store them in his backpack like they were radioactive. Behind him, Luna began groaning and the sound of her flesh and he could hear the sound of his bones cracking and growing at a rapid pace.
This time, she didn’t morph in a tumultuous state of mind like usual and going through that process without adrenaline pumping through her body was incredibly painful.
But that didn’t bother Luna in the slightest, in fact, she was overjoyed to endure it now that she was certain that Uriel accepted her for who she really was and she let out a merry howl as soon as the process was finished.
Now that she was in her werewolf form, the dark corners of the forest couldn’t hide its secrets from her anymore. Her night vision was mostly in shades of grey, but the scents and the sounds allowed her to spot anything and everything on the vicinity.
"This feels good." A deep, coarse voice came out of Moonlight’s maw, startling Uriel and making him flinch.
"You can speak!"
"I can," She said before sniffing the air and then continued speaking. "Fue follets."
"Are you speaking in tongues now?"
"I see them now." Luna said as she ran towards the deep dark and returned with a strange creature on her maw, dropping it in front of Uriel’s feet. It was an antropomorphic cryptid the size of a fist, with two pair of transparent wings. 𝚗𝚘v𝚙𝚞b.𝚌𝚘m
"Hmm, it looks like a fairy, but its face is really ugly." As soon as Uriel finished speaking, several flares lit up in the vicitinity at different heights, most of them were above eye level signalling that whatever made those lights had to be capable of flying.
"You shouldn’t have insulted them... they hold grudges."
"You’re blaming me!? You just killed one of them!" Uriel rebuked, but before it could turn into an argument several elemental missiles were fired towards them. Uriel barely managed to activate Dash before being hit on the face and he dodged the small fire arrow by twisting backwards, without taking his eyes out of the projectile as it passed him.
Then, he scanned his surroundings to find the source of the projectiles and darted towards the enemies doing his best to avoid getting hurt. Shooting down such small creatures was difficult from a distance, but from close enough he didn’t miss any bullets.
Contrary to Uriel, Luna didn’t bother to dodge as she was too bulky on her current form. Instead, she focused on jumping around trying to catch the creatures with her maw. The scene was similar to a dog trying to catch fireflies, only instead of a dog, it was a huge lycantrope with silver fur and brimming eyes.
