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This character is sort of a tribute to LittleDevil-888 and her story Wolf of Penumbra. If none of this makes sense, I encourage you to go read it here www.deviantart.com/littledevil…. And to be clear, I’m making a LOT of speculations on how her world works.

To briefly explain, Wolf of Penumbra is a post apocalyptic, supernatural punk that revolves around bipedal, fire breathing, soul eating, wolf like monsters know as Wulvers who’ve invaded earth from the hell dimension of Umbra. These creatures are sentient (if with practically stone age tech level) and as capable of logic and reason any human, but their highly predatory nature and their habit of devouring human souls has put them on the Shoot-On-Sight list of the militant Umbral Extermination Agency (or the U.E.A). Aside from their superior speed and strength, wulvers are capable of turning incorporeal for a short time and possessing the bodies of other creatures like ghosts, but are weak against certain herbs and a metal known as Sable Iron, which both burn them upon touch.

The third important party in WoP are Shapeshifters, beings who can transform from human to wulver or visa-versa at will. Only one shapeshifter- the main character- has been introduced, having become one after a wulver attempted to posses her, and little is known about them accept that they are immune to the sting of sable iron and I’m GUESSING get an extra power such as being able to throw lightning.

Little-Devil888’s shapeshifter character, Jacqueline, can throw lightning. She became a vigilante with her power and now goes around the city at night fighting monsters.

My character here, Esther, can control plants. And she has taken a very different path…

Ps: To be clear, there’s a lot of crap I’m making up. Nothing has been revealed about wulver culture in WoP so far, so things like shamans and spirit worship might not be a thing. I’m also not certain how Shapeshifters come to be so don’t go assuming what I say is cannon.
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ESTHER, THE WITCH

Known officially as SkullFace by the UEA (and unofficially as The Witch), Esther was a powerful and vindictive wulver shaman/chief who was known for controlling plants and was FEARED for being able to drive people mad with a word.

The truth about Esther is that she was not actually a wulver. She was a bona-fide, human born shapeshifter, (just like Jacqueline in LittleDevils story). She was brilliant and passionate young woman who had had the short stick growing up, living in poverty and with a mother who’d sabotage her life out of jealousy (the woman would pull her out of elective classes, destroy her oil paintings, refuse to sign waivers or pay class fees, and cut her allowance because she “wasn’t working hard enough” at home. She was of course impossible to please so Esther began to steal from her purse.) Everything she had she had to struggle tooth and nail for. She dealt with sexism in class and at work, was bullied and excluded because of her twiggy and unfeminine physique, and had been cheated out of a promotion by a lying coworker. That’s where she learned to get revenge. She broke into that coworkers locker and placed a few heroin needles to tumble out for everyone to see.

Esther was a freshmen in collage at the time that her shapeshifting power was gifted upon her (however that normally happens). After the initial shock of waking up as a lanky, blueish-purple wolf-thing and getting shot at by campus security, she quickly came to love the freedom her new form gave her. She would go out nightly into the woods to take in the sights with new eyes, the innumerable smells with a new nose, the sounds with new ears and to feel the wind through her fur and damp dirt beneath her paws, running with wild abandon.

On one excursions which took her into a mountain pass, Esther encountered a wulver hunting party from a pack situated in a valley further in. It was a tense first meeting. The pack had a tenuous truce with the city and they were nervous about some interloper eating a human and breaking it for them, so they surrounded the confused girl and gruffly demanding to know her business and from which pack she’d come from. However, when she couldn’t understand or respond in their language, they decided there was something wrong with her and took her back (forcibly) to their pack for their shaman to have look at.

The shaman was a perceptive fellow. He had figured out by looking at her that Esther was not just a loner, but a human shapeshifter. He also spoke English fluently so after ensuring her that they meant her no harm, he asked how she knew the human tongue but not her own kinds, curious how she’d answer. He then sat with amusement as she told him she’d been raised by humans as a pet since she was a puppy in a far away place and how she’d escaped and ran here to be free. Not meaning to intrude, of course! She had no idea anyone already lived here! I mean, how could she!? Was there some sort of territory marking she should have looked for or- ?

The shaman stopped her right there and told her he understood. After turning to the packs chief for words, he informed Esther that the chief would forgive her ignorance but that he couldn’t abide any freeloaders poaching on pack grounds. She either needed to hit the road or join the pack. Unsure of what that would mean for her schooling and her cherished romps in the woods, she asked for time to decide. The Shaman and the Chief negotiated two weeks. He told her of course that she’d need to abide by the truce during that time and that entering the city or killing a human would have severe consequences, BUT he assured her that the pack would welcome her with with open paws should she decided to join. “In the meantime,” he told her “feel free to drop by if you have any questions. I know your going through a big uhhhhh… transformation right now. In you’re life, I mean.” Wink wink. Hint hint.

Uh, yeah, Esther got the hint and was thoroughly creeped out. She ran the heck out of there and the shaman bade the chief not to send anyone to follow her. To the pack, the shaman relayed that she was an, escaped captive of another human settlement, that she’d been offered a place in the pack, and that she’d be hanging around the territory for a time until she decide whether to accept or not. The chief, however, he pulled aside to tell in private what this strange girl really was.

The next day, Esther had a heated row with her professor that almost triggered a transformation in public, but an elderly gentleman she’d never met put a hand on her shoulder and it stopped, like a fire building inside her had been siphoned away. To her surprise, the man had the same hair color, smile, and scar over his eye as the old shaman. He too was a shapeshifter. He bought her lunch with a $10 he had crinkled in his pocket and sat down to talk at a café table, apologizing for scaring her other day and offering to teach her how to manage her own power. Sensing that she didn’t trust favors without a catch, he threw in that the chief and him saw value in having someone educated in human ways within the pack. He himself knew a lot, but he was only wulver born and could barely read. She was human and attending collage. If she could meet with the chief every weekend or so to share the things she knew, that would be good enough to consider her a contributing pack member. She wouldn’t even have to live with them! Esther still felt like she was being manipulated somehow, but she couldn’t see a more favorable option, so she shook his hand and they called it a deal: He’d give her some shifter 101 every night and talk the chief into leaving her alone, and she’d come teach them about humans once a week. That night, she went to the wulver village for a weird-@$$ adoption ceremony, endured a gauntlet of curious noses, took a sloppy tongue-kiss from the Pack Grandmother, and then ran back to continue her life in relative peace.

Three important things happened during that time:

1. Esther was majoring in Umbral Botany at the time and realized that the shaman probably knew more about umbral plants and their properties than any human scientist alive. However, he would only teach her the way he knew how by entangling his mysticism heavily into his lessons. Begrudgingly, she agreed and listened to the old goats lecture on about magic, symbolism, and totem spirits. She answered his riddles, memorized various spells, ground up herbs, and assisted him in rituals. At first it was all pretty hokey to her and she tried to listen through the bull crap to glean to the useful stuff, but she was surprised to find that most of his mumbo jumbo didn’t contradict science. More importantly, she found that she LIKED the rituals. They made her feel refreshed and stable and the spiritual aspects of the practice filled an emotional gap she desperately needed. Before she knew it, she had not only been converted to the religion, but had been made the shamans apprentice. He taught her how to be attuned to the “spirits” around her to point where she could will bugs and birds to land in her palm, could hold hellfire in her hand without it burning her or changing color, and- to his total surprise- would make plants sway with the swing of her tail as she preformed a spirit dance. Eventually, she learned how to do it on purpose! She also learned how to draw bits of her own soul and put them into clay vessels for use in spells, rituals and medicine,.

2. Esther was evicted from her private dorm at the collage and couldn’t find affordable housing, so she accepted the invite to stay with the pack. (Sleeping in a cramped hole with a bunch of snoring wulver sticking their feet in her face was a far cry from her own soft bed, but it was way safer than hitting a public bench. People tend to get eaten sleeping outside). During her stay with them, she got to know the pack and found that while they were nosey, coarse, and frequently came to blows over disagreements, they were also fair and looked after each other like family. They even looked out for HER, the newcomer, even when she spat in their faces like a spiteful child and tested their patience. Even when she was caught lying to them and manipulating them because she thought they were doing the same to her. Eventualy she learned that honorable actions were reciprocated here, that even those she disliked had redeeming qualities, and that not everyone who wanted to guide her was trying to use her. She grew to love them. During the summer when school was out, she took part in some of the packs hunts and got involved in a battle with other pack, and in both cases earned a name for herself for her cleverness and for turning surrounding plants against her target. The “little shaman” was brought along as the parties special weapon and good luck charm. Her artisanship also gained a lot of attention. She became renowned for her beautiful wood burnings, paintings, poetry and dancing, and she contributed an ornate mural to the wall of the villages main cave and auditorium.

3. During her meeting with the chief, Esther got to know his son and ended up falling in love with him. The two became mates and had a daughter, and at that point she forsook her schooling, her job, and her identity as a human to become a true Wulver of her pack.

Life was good for Ester. She’d had a community and family that cared for her and appreciated her. She maintained her apprenticeship with the shaman, and when the chief decided it was time to step down and no one challenged his son for the position, she found herself in an interesting spot: She was now an apprentice healer, a mother, and the queen of her pack.

Then things went south:

See, the pack was only barely tolerated by their humans next door. The truce only existed because the mountains around the packs valley were popular nests for bandits. The idea was that as long as the pack kept those mountains clean of bandits and stayed the heck there, they could HAVE them. But the old mayor who made that treaty was out of office, and the new mayor was interested in the deposits in on that side of the mountains So one day he rang up the UEA and told them that their “fuzzy neighbors” had outstayed their welcome.

Without warning, a squad of UEA Elites came to the village with choppers to drive them out. They wiped out half the pack, mowing them down with sabled bullets and pulse fire and gassing many in their dens. Esters mentor was among the slain, her infant daughter succumbed to poison gas along with every pup hiding in the nursery, and her husbands head was taken by the squads leader as as trophy. The rest barely escaped with their lives.

And so the cruel, unjust world of man that had always taken from Ester, the one she thought she’d finally escaped, had extended its arm into the happiest moment of her life and taken all that she loved most. Grief stricken and enraged, she swore before her pack in exile that she would have recompense and vengeance for their loss and for her own. With her husband and her mentor dead, she took up the mantle of both shaman and chief and began a campaign to get back the valley and leave a message that the pack was not to be %#@&ed with. If possible, she would also find the officer who decapitated her mate and cause him unimaginable suffering.

She spent weeks setting the stage. She went back into the cities UEA building as a human, posing as a coffee girl, and had a hay day with a toy her late mentor left her: A hypnotic pendent made from the bulbous abdomen of a wisp, which she could power by feeding it some her soul. She went about to as many hunters as she could catch alone- lingering in locker rooms, seduced into broom closets, in their own cars- to dangle the glowing bauble before their vacant eyes and croon commands into their ears. These commands would remain dormant until she triggered them. Once satisfied that she’d prepped enough pawns, she took her trinket to the site directors office for a meeting about troop stationing that he would never remember having.

After that, Ester met with the leaders of the surrounding packs, even ones who were enemies, invited or not. She impressed them with her power over nature, making the grass and trees ripple around her as she boldly strode in, as if in an invisible wind.if they attacked her, she would catch their fire breath in her hand, entangle them in weeds and use her knowledge of nerve points to paralyze them. While they wondered if she was a goddess or a ghost, she introduced herself as the leader and shaman of the Exile Pack and told them how the spirits of Antumbra had blessed her with their power and commanded her to retake the valley. She told the pack leaders that they must lend their forces in support, not merely because she and the spirits commanded it, but because if the humans maintained the valley, they would use it as a staging ground to attack THEM next and would have no obstacles in doing so. Plus, there was an implicit threat that she would curse them if they refused.

After the packs had been cowed and convinced, everything was ready.

Esther came to a UEA outpost in the swampier corner of the valley by the light of the full moon, armed with her wisp pendent and a sash filled with little sacks she could throw that would sprout bugbear vines and entangle a target. She had dyed her fur black and wore a few vines, letting them dig their roots into the underside of her arms and net loosely together like a creepy shawl. Upon her face she wore a mask made from a wulvers skull, a thing worn by a shaman when channeling and communing with the undevoured spirits of the dead. And when conducting funeral rites. It seemed appropriate.

Phasing through the sable iron fence placed there, The Shaman snuck up to the humble little watchtower that guarded against her packs return (with a humble little rail gun atop). Climbing the ladder, she incapacitated the watchmen with her vine bombs and wisp pendent and called on one of their radios to let the whole outposts know she was there and that she’d be waiting. And when they arrived- most were people she had picked and hypno’d up-… well if she wasn’t imposing enough in her creepy costume, then speaking a single word and making their hands let go of their guns DEFINITELY made an impression. Satisfied that she had their attention, she gave a speech, introducing herself as the “Witch of the Valley” and telling them she had come to reclaim her packs stolen land. “So I’ll give you all this one chance.” She said. “Just one. Remove yourselves from this valley right now or I will bring the wrath of the slain upon you!” Because the captain had the guts to pull a knife and tell her they wouldn’t be scared by some magic trick, she showed him another and spoke the words that triggered all hell. “You. Are. Mine.”

Several of the present hunters suddenly screamed as invisible hornets buzzed about their faces and got under their visors. Several more suddenly thought they were wulvers and attacked their comrades with teeth.. Esther had come down from the tower and was walking placidly though the chaos, arms outstretched, with a rapturous smile like the screams were music. Many whom she had not chosen to be effected by her spell tried to run, but didn’t get far before she raised a hand and had the tall grass pull them down and buried them alive or the willows branches snatch them up and leave them hanging like marionettes. For defying her, Ester made an example of the captain. She held him up before the lucid hunters and pulled his soul out with her hand, drawing it into a jar as to keep as a trophy.

Following that, Esther ushered the rest of her warriors in and established the swamp outpost as their main base for conquest. She ran ahead to the better defended outposts to quietly incapacitate security and then signaled her people to deal violently with the unwary defenders. By the time other outposts knew of their presence, it was too late. In just two days, Ester and the combined packs retook all of the valley. Those humans who survived the onslaught were kept penned up in a cave with carnivorous curtains of bugbear vines guarding the entrance, and for those brave enough to curse or threaten her, she made a point of throwing to a patch of the stuff to be slowly eaten alive. Eventualy, she sent the terrified captives home to share the news of her attack and her apparent power, but not before recording a message on one of their phones for them to show the director. She stated in it that she was the Witch of the Valley, the leader of the Exiled pack, but that they were exiles no more and had retaken their home. She condemned the Mayor for breaking the truce and both him and the Director for the blood of men, women, and pups on their hands. She showed the bones of many soul drained hunters as evidence that that blood had been repayed in ash. “Feel free to send more if you like,” she teased, “But know that they are cursed to fail. This valley is ours. So decrees Antumbra herself. Do not trod upon it. Oh, and Mr. Mayor? If you get to see this, HAVE THY REWARD.”

‘Have Thy Reward’ was another trigger phrase. The Mayor hasn’t spoken since.

Esther continued to defend her turf with psychological warfare and magic tricks, cruelly terrorizing intruders and building her reputation as a witch not to be screwed with. The Director would send no armies for her to bewitch (nobody considered that she had pre-conditioned her victims hypnotically. He just assumed she was using direct mind control). He tried sending drone missiles to blow her forces up, but since Esther was keeping her day job at the UEA to spying on him, the wulvers would always be absent from their camp like they knew what was coming. He tried sending a few stealth hunters into the woods to assassinate the Witch directly, but she’d always be ready and would be waiting in the shadows to play with them. Those who came back (there would always be a few) would come come back days later gibbering horror stories. Esther loved playing cat and mouse with her enemies. She’d throw her voice around trees, make plants move to catch their attention, allow them to see her out of the corner of their eyes for a split moment, and once they were good an paranoid, she’d creep up behind and whisper trigger phrases into a “sleeper lunatics” ear so they’d attack their comrades. Then she’d start making the plants grab them, dragging them screaming into the water or under the roots of trees to be entombed alive. She didn’t always kill. But when she did, she made a show of it.

Esther kept her seat of power in a cave in the swamp where her killer vines could thrive and defend her, but more often than not the one sitting on her throne was one of her acolytes, all her size and dyed in black like herself. she LOVED using her lookalikes to screw with enemies. They would see them walk behind one tree and the reappear from behind another like they were teleporting. She herself would continue her espionage in UEA, keeping an eye on their plans and prepping whatever assassins they sent to be susceptible to her “spells”, and sometimes taking a trip to the mayors house just to haunt him and twist the knife. She’d teach her Shadows the trigger phrases so they could bewitch incoming hunter in her stead. The day to day managing of the pack, she delegated to her mother in law. the old chiefs mate. and the actual duties of a healer she left to her apprentice. Because healing was no longer her thing. She had stopped calling upon spirits of healing in favor of spirits of power and destruction. She’d stopped making medicine and started making poisons. Instead of a Healer, she had become a Destroyer.

Eventually, things began to quiet down. The pack was able to reinhabit the old village without total fear of bombardment, and Esther was finally able to spend time among her people. But she wasn’t the same person. She rarely smiled now and her paintings had become dark and colorless. She found she could not enjoy the bright and lovely things because her devotion to war had poisoned her love of life. She had shunned the Spirits of Peace, and now without them, how could she be at peace with herself? When she saw this, how she had marred her own soul and how it had done nothing to heal the loss of her family, she cried in bitter anguish.

Esther tried to repair herself after that. She tried to focus on the gentler, un-destructive things, like planting an herb garden, conducting healing rituals, building wind chimes, and playing with the pups in the nursery. She gave more sermons that she had before, but instead of focusing on stirring up zeal and anger, she tied to inspire gratitude for their fortune and hope for the future. But in this, her battle was uphill. Her people were still sore with anger and would not forgive the human for the massacre. They were also afraid, fearing another attack while they had their guard down. Her own actions and the intermingling with their more warlike allies had taught them to be suspicious, retaliatory and to enjoy conquest and blood shed

In addition, these sentiments were giving rise to a notion Esther found troublingly popular. See, it was a long standing belief- at least by the packs in Esthers region- that antumbra was a promised land and that the packs had been led out of the harsh “old land” (Umbra) by the spirits to inherit it. It was also believed that man’s technology displeased the spirits as it bred corruption and pollution and that the humans chastisement for it was the Umbral incursion. Therefore, the natural conclusion was that humans no longer deserved dominion over antumbra and that the universe WANTED wulver kind to destroy them and take their spot. This idea was actual total sound in Esther mind. She could see how having humanity gone would benefit her people and felt she’d experienced enough of humanity’s evils to know it was too diseased to stay. But did ALL humans deserved to die? Her grudge was with with society and the UEA, but not with every individual. She wasn’t genocidal! However, she could see that there were still many angry widows, widowers, and grieving parents who wanted nothing more than to see that city next door burn and many of her people were raiding the farms and properties on its outskirts without her sanctioning. Some were already doing it without her sanctioning. And looking out, her spies told her about other packs actively making war with other human settlements. As she saw it, the great replacement was BOUND to happen, and to make it worse, she knew that the allied packs expected her to join the fray. Whether she liked it or not, humanity was doomed.

But hadn’t the spirits saved Ester from this fate? She’d been given a wulver form! Did she have to be the only one? Maybe she could extend the same mercy to humans who were worthy of it and share her blessing.

So, Esther went about to find a way to turn non shapeshifters into wulvers. She conducted experiments with her own shapeshifting power, sought advice from the few shapeshifters she knew existed, picked up books from the library on gene splicing, trans-dimensional interplay (I mean, where else could all her wulvery mass be going to when she shifted? To Umbra!). Finally she believed she’d found a way to do it! And she wouldn’t need any high tech reality %#&ing lab equipment to do it! With her own wulver DNA, a milk jugs worth of black salt, her own faith-based energy channeling technique, a location where the dimensional fabric was niiiice and squishy, and a stick of sidewalk chalk, she could channel her transformative power through a shamanic ritual and manually shape-shift someone else! She needed to a test subject though. Perhaps some brave human volunteer in town? Maybe someone with nothing to lose? She was searching the slums and bars as a human for such a retch when she discovered a different sort of candidate reveling away the weekend in his favorite seedy pub:

An Elite hunter by the name of Reggie. Leader of the team that drove out her pack in the first place. The very man who had decapitated her spouse.

The odious man was, BRAGGING to the entire bar about the “hilarious” ways he had killed wulver and how they deserved every moment of it, and the longer she listened, the more her old anger returned to her. “Why should should I feel sorry them?” He told the crowd around him sloshing his beer as waved his hands. “It’s not like they care when they eat OUR women and kids! Nah, the only thing a wulver feels is bloodlust and the fear we teach ‘em. So we gotta teach ‘em! Besides, They don’t belong here. Yet they’re hell bent on bump’n us out like they own the place! Well they didn’t read the terms of home ownership, did they? : CIVILIZED BEINGS GET DIBS. So says God! And we beat’cha to the @&$%ing wheel, so Earths ours! GO EVOLVE SOME MANNERS. I mean sure, they can talk. Whoop-a-dee-do! Nice trick! But if they ain’t’ gonna pick up a hammer and start making $#%&, then I say they’re just animals pretend’n t’ be people.”

After hearing that, the old hatred in Esters heart flared back in full force. Just animals? NO FEELINGS? That -! Well that settled it! Ester would put her penance on the back burner. Reggie here would be her test subject and her final indulgence in vengeance. She would punish this remorseless, pompous, self righteous murderer and finally avenge her family by taking from this man what he CLEARLY loved ohhhhh so much from him. His humanity. And in the case that he didn’t survive the process, she hoped it would be really, really painful.

In order for Esther’s ritual to work, she needed to have Reggie in a specific mountain crevasse east of the valley, which was sacred to wulvers and where the barrier between the worlds was thin. However, she found that she couldn’t seduce him into meeting her there because, in his words, “I hate t’ burst your love bubble kid, but I’m married”. Tch. Kid. Figures that the one creep she wanted burned the most was faithfully mated and wasn’t enticed by her apparent underage. Irritatingly noble. Fortunately, if she was ever tempted to like him, she just had to remember that her mates head was probably mounted above the bed where he and his own mate fornicated. That usually helped. And how delicious it would be when she left his life. Running from him. Screaming.

Next, she tried to use her wisp pendent on him. She caught him in the parking and then would have put him to sleep and then driven him to the mountain in his own car. But to her shock, when she dangled the thing in his face, he blinked it off and snatched it from her hands. Turned out he was resistant to wisp light. Some humans just are. And while he wasn’t sure how she got the thing glowing, he was pretty sure he knew what she was trying into pull here… Luckily what he thought she was trying to pull was to walk him into a closet like a zombie and use him as her personal love mannequin, so he was too disgusted and embarrassed to report her and let her off with an angry warning. After crushing the pendant. So yeah, she kinda blew that one.

In the end, Ester knew she had to lure him to the mountain with more enticing sort of bait: herself. After all, Reggie mentioned at the bar that he and his team had been called out state for a special job and she BET it was to capture SkullFace. So after getting a fresh pendent, Esther made a final visit to the directors office to make sure Reggie was the one being sent for her, then caught a few of the squad for reprogramming, phoned in anonymously that ol’ SkullFace had been seen outside her Valley, and rushed to her own sighting location on the Sacred Mountain where she and many revenge hungry packmates would lie in wait.

When Reggie’s team arrived at the Mountain, they’d find the Witch of the Valley sitting all by her lonesome in the branches of a tree, about 30 ft up, singing to herself and pretending not to notice them. They wanted to take to take her alive if possible so no one dared tranq her until they had a net stretched out to catch her, and while they worked on that, Ester took the initiative to count and make sure she had them all within earshot. Once sure, she shouted a word that sent half the team into screaming insanity. While their comrades struggled to subdue them, she rappelled down with a bugbear vine, shouted out “Ta-ta, friends! Have fun!” and Reggie turned to see her blow a kiss at him and dart away. Enraged, Reggie abandoned the chaos and gave chase to that cheeky little &%$@&. While he followed, the Pack set upon the sane half of the crew, to keep them busy so the two could work things out in privately. It would spoil her revenge if anyone saw what would become of their captain.

Esther led led Reggie through a tight, zig zagging crevasse in the mountain to the chamber where the ritual would take place. Rounding the final corner and skidding to stop, Reggie saw the witch standing there at a dead end and immediately shot her full of tranqs…. only to realize that it was a decoy made of tar and wood that was wearing her mask. It didn’t take long to figure out that he’d walked into a trap and that the witch was probably RIGHT BEHIND HIM, but before he could whip around, a messy tangle of vines he had walked over sprung to life, wrapped around his limbs and neck, and forced him on his hand and knees. Tethering him to the floor.

Esther had indeed been behind Reggie, and was cackling at how he fell for THAT trick. Reggie expected her to kill him right there, but it was somehow more horrifying when she calmly began lighting tallow candles around the chamber drawing lines of chalk and black salt around him in a sort of pentagram. She gloated in a chipper tone as she tiptoed around the set up, telling him how she remembered him standing over her the day of the massacre, leveling a gun at her head, gloating as she knelt crying over her mates body. How gratifying it was to have their positions switched.

Looking around, Reggie noticed human bones lying around the corners of the room and asked in staged bravado if this was was some kind of sacrifice or If Esther wanted a romantic candle lit dinner before she %@&$ed herself. Cause by all means, she could go and do that (Oh and by the way, she ate like a %@&$ing pig! Pick up your crumbs, lady!). Glowering oh so irritably, Esther explained that, first of all, those bones were not her handiwork. This site was sacred grounds to other wulver packs and many human tribes before them. These could be the sacramental leavings of either. And for his information, this was not a “sacrifice”. This was an experiment. One he might even survive. But if candle light masturbation was something that interested him, she fully encouraged him to pursue it and then maybe GET USED TO IT because assuming this ritual didn’t kill him, she couldn’t guarantee that dear, sweet Lilian would ever love him again.

Any questions about this experiment washed away by cold dread. “How.” asked Reggie, “Do you know. About Lilian.”

“Why, you told the entire canteen about her!” Ester grinned wickedly, and before his bewildered eyes, transformed into the coffee girl from the facility in a burst of green fire. “You’re quite chatty when you’re drunk.”

Esther cut off his dumbstruck stammering to tell him that after today, there’d be no one he could recount this to who’d listen. “But know this,” she said without elaborating, shifting back to wulver form and smiling malevolently. “You are doing your kind a GREAT service. Live or die, your sacrifice will help me give COUNTLESS humans an escape from their own extinction. Oh yes. You heard me. I’m not the monster you think I am. Not like YOU are anyway! I think you’re going to have a lot of time to think about what that word means to you. By the way, I HOPE THIS HURTS.”

Esther crammed a wad of vine in Reggie’s mouth to shut him up, put her mask back on, and began the ritual, lighting colored fires around the chamber and chanting. Don’t ask me all the details yet, but whatever forces shapeshifters taps into to transform, she was channeling them in a different way. With the help of the sites closeness to Umbra, a sample of wulver fur from the man’s own coat lining (In lieu of her own for poetry’s sake), she focused those forces upon Reggie, and for the finishing touch, engulfed him in her fiery breath. Oh yes, this was painful, just like it had been for her, (ah she loved that screaming!). But like for her, the fire was not killing him. The yellow-green flames blanketing him turned a golden color, his own color now, and it it began to unravel his skin like an apple under a potato peeler. The tortured mass underneath grew, and grew, and grew and when the fire died out, a giant, hairy wulver lay in his place, curled up pathetically on the ground and whimpering in pain.

The test had worked. Esthers revenge was complete. She took great pleasure in watching Reggie look over his new body in horror and easily evaded him when he furiously lunged at her, tripping over his own unfamiliar feet. Climbing up the wall to get out of reach, the witch called down smugly that she hoped he enjoyed the new perspective (though she was annoyed that he ended up looking so good) and then let out a howl to let the others know she had been victorious and it was time to go home

But her heroes cry died abruptly in her lungs as a bullet pierced one of them. Blacking out from the pain, the great and powerful Witch of the Valley tumbled from the wall and fell three stories down with a sickening thud.

Esther hadn’t counted on one of Reggie’s men, his second in command, slipping free from the skirmish to follow him, intent on sharing the credit for bagging SkullFace. He had ran with his sniper rifle along the top of the crevasse to the ritual site and watched in amazement as his captain was transformed into wulver. He wasn’t stunned long though, and took the opportunity to shoot the witch when he saw it. But these were not tranqs like he’d been ordered to use. He had switched to lethal rounds. See, while this man loved his captain, he loved his position more and wanted it for himself. This was his golden opportunity to get him out of the way. No one would know that this monstrous wulver was really Captain Reggie, and if the fuzzified captain himself told them, who would believe him? The Witch, however, counted as a reliable witness. No one knew exactly what she was capable of to begin with, so if she was captured and bragged from her cage that she had transformed Reggie into a wulver, who was to say she couldn’t have done so? So she had to die.

Meanwhile, having heard the call to return home, Esters forces broke off from the fight to disappeared into the trees, and the confused Elites were free to join their captain in the crevasse. What they rushed in to find though was a Satan worshipers campsite, Skullface’s body sprawled in a pool of blood, a bear of a wulver staring at them like a dear in headlights, no captain in sight, and a lot of bones that could be his. The wulverified captain tried to explain that he was him, begging them point the guns away and not to shoot, but while it gave the men some pause to hear their captains Bronx accent coming from its mouth, the lieutenant up on the crag riled them up, shouting “THAT DIRTY MUTT KILLED CAPTAIN REG! FILL HIM FULL OF LEAD!” Reggie had seen him on the wall after he shot Skullface. He knew immediately that he’d been betrayed. Reggie’s shadow form saved him that day. It triggered instinctually, and being part human, the sabled bullets passed through his vaporous body without making him to coalesce. He was able to blow though his men that way and then stager back down the path, learning quickly how to run and then hiding once he got away. After the heat died down, he’d try to contact his wife, tell her he was still alive and meet with her to tell her what happened, but when she saw him, she’d scream and run. After that, he’d retreat to the mountains far away from there and live miserably in a cave.

As for Esther’s forces, they realized something was wrong when their leader did not rendezvous with them. They doubled back find to helicopters around the crevice, grimly victorious hunters and men with clipboards swarming about the ritual site like ants. Peering in, they found to their horror and disbelief their priest-queens limp body being measured and photographed like the catch of the month and stuffed into a body bag. There were too many hunters now. They couldn't save her body. The band returned home with the sad news and anguished howling filled the Valley. Esther’s mother in law took command of the pack again and knowing that the humans would no longer afraid to come at them with the Witch dead, she would lead the pack out of the valley for good and their allies would follow suite with their buffer compromised.

Esther, however, was not dead. She had a sucking chest wound and broken bones everywhere from the fall, but when they put her on the table to cut her up, it was found that she was still breathing. Just very weakly. The medics and experts at the lab got her stable and healed up but deemed it to risky to allow her to be conscious for questioning. You know, least she get them with her mind control powers and wreck havoc on the facility. So for a year now, the dreadful Wulver Witch has been asleep, floating dreamlessly in a tube in the corner of a white tiled room, with a mask pumping sedative gas into her lungs. For a while, the sleeping queen was THE exhibit for every scientist in the building to gawk at, (it made splash when they discovered her fur was blue, not black.) but since they couldn’t DO anything with her, she lost popularity quick. She’s all but forgotten, now. Just a white elephant marinating in a tank. Too valuable to dissected and to scary to wake up.

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“This is Friday to Freddy. Freddy call in.”

Esther picks up walkey talky and puts it to her mouth. “Im afraid “Freddy” is unavailable, Mr Friday. Can I take a message?”

“… Who is this?! where the hell is Freddy!?”

“I am Judgment, little ape.” She croons. “Freddy is fine. For now. But do come. Let’s chat before I… dispense myself..”

She waits for a response and smiles when none comes. They were on their way.

Esther turns to one of the scared humans all but cocooned in bugbear vines and tosses the walkie talkie at him unceremoniously. “Thanks Fred.” Sits “now we wait”

She kneels down on the watch platform and begins her meditation. She glances back at her prisoner and smirks at the fear in his eyes. “Take comfort. YOU get to live.” She turns back towards the moon and closes her eyes, smiling sweetly and darkly. “AND you get a box seat….”
…

The Jeeps pull up. The troop pile out.

“Oh Yeah, that looks like a wulver up there.”

“Aright surround it but don’t fire. Freddy and Sam are up there. “

They get out and surround the tower.
“WE GOT YOU SURROUNDED, DOGGY! YA GOT NOWHERE TO GO! PUT YOU PAWS WHERE WE CAN SEE THEM!”

Esther does nothing. She just scoffs.

They look at earth other, not sure what to do now that she’s called their bluff.

Captain growls in frustration. “You know what, I’m taking the shot.”

He raises his gun but then Esther shouts something in guttural wulver tongue.

They all involuntarily drop their guns involuntarily.

“What the.. “

“Hey! What-?”

“um…”

“Butterfingers, gentlemen?” Esther taunts

She watches smugly as a few hastily try to pick up their guns. But their hands can’t hold onto them. One of them mutters “what the hell..?” The captain fumbles with his over an over again cursing louder each tim he drops it.

“Your fingers are cursed.” She said, looking down at them imperiously. “But try if you like Captain Kirt Jenkins …” she phased though the towers railing and began to drift down. “It’s sooooo adorable.”

Captain Jenkins stares. how did this beast know his name? The men back up as this wulver they can’t raise a gun against walks slowly towards them.

“I am The Witch of this Valley.” She introduced herself. She spreads her vine strewn arms out like wings and slowly turns about, bathing them in the moon light. “The spirits speak to me, and bid me to carry out their will!” She rolled her head back towards the hunters, fixing them with a malevolent, yellow-green gaze. “As do the dead. You know? Like that happy little hamlet that was in this very valley? Mothers… Pups… Husbands… “ her sweet smile morphed into a glare of passionate hatred. “Shot dead by machine fire and gassed in their own dens, all while the paw of peace was extended. Sound familiar?! They cry for recompense, gentlemen… and I am here to deliver.”

She turns around fully, locking her malevolent glare upon them. “So I’ll give you all this ONE chance. Just one.” She marched up to the captain to look him in the face. ”Remove yourselves from the valley RIGHT NOW or I shall bring the wrath of the slain down upon you!”

The group is thoroughly frightened. But the captain composes himself and reaches slowly for his knife. “I-if you think we’re gonna run off with our tail tucked because you did a little magic trick- then your dead wrong!”

The captain drew the knife and tried to stab her in the neck, but was surprised when the the knife phases through her. It was sable iron. She shouldn’t have been able to do that.

The Witch gave a toothy smile and shrugged in a se-la-vi manner. “Well then captain….” She chimed. Then her puplils turned to slits and her grin became maniacal. “YOU. ARE. MINE.”

And at those three words, all hell broke loose

Description
This character is sort of a tribute to LittleDevil-888 and her story Wolf of Penumbra. If none of this makes sense, I encourage you to go read it here www.deviantart.com/littledevil…. And to be clear, I’m making a LOT of speculations on how her world works.

To briefly explain, Wolf of Penumbra is a post apocalyptic, supernatural punk that revolves around bipedal, fire breathing, soul eating, wolf like monsters know as Wulvers who’ve invaded earth from the hell dimension of Umbra. These creatures are sentient (if with practically stone age tech level) and as capable of logic and reason any human, but their highly predatory nature and their habit of devouring human souls has put them on the Shoot-On-Sight list of the militant Umbral Extermination Agency (or the U.E.A). Aside from their superior speed and strength, wulvers are capable of turning incorporeal for a short time and possessing the bodies of other creatures like ghosts, but are weak against certain herbs and a metal known as Sable Iron, which both burn them upon touch.

The third important party in WoP are Shapeshifters, beings who can transform from human to wulver or visa-versa at will. Only one shapeshifter- the main character- has been introduced, having become one after a wulver attempted to posses her, and little is known about them accept that they are immune to the sting of sable iron and I’m GUESSING get an extra power such as being able to throw lightning.

Little-Devil888’s shapeshifter character, Jacqueline, can throw lightning. She became a vigilante with her power and now goes around the city at night fighting monsters.

My character here, Esther, can control plants. And she has taken a very different path…

Ps: To be clear, there’s a lot of crap I’m making up. Nothing has been revealed about wulver culture in WoP so far, so things like shamans and spirit worship might not be a thing. I’m also not certain how Shapeshifters come to be so don’t go assuming what I say is cannon.
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ESTHER, THE WITCH

Known officially as SkullFace by the UEA (and unofficially as The Witch), Esther was a powerful and vindictive wulver shaman/chief who was known for controlling plants and was FEARED for being able to drive people mad with a word.

The truth about Esther is that she was not actually a wulver. She was a bona-fide, human born shapeshifter, (just like Jacqueline in LittleDevils story). She was brilliant and passionate young woman who had had the short stick growing up, living in poverty and with a mother who’d sabotage her life out of jealousy (the woman would pull her out of elective classes, destroy her oil paintings, refuse to sign waivers or pay class fees, and cut her allowance because she “wasn’t working hard enough” at home. She was of course impossible to please so Esther began to steal from her purse.) Everything she had she had to struggle tooth and nail for. She dealt with sexism in class and at work, was bullied and excluded because of her twiggy and unfeminine physique, and had been cheated out of a promotion by a lying coworker. That’s where she learned to get revenge. She broke into that coworkers locker and placed a few heroin needles to tumble out for everyone to see.

Esther was a freshmen in collage at the time that her shapeshifting power was gifted upon her (however that normally happens). After the initial shock of waking up as a lanky, blueish-purple wolf-thing and getting shot at by campus security, she quickly came to love the freedom her new form gave her. She would go out nightly into the woods to take in the sights with new eyes, the innumerable smells with a new nose, the sounds with new ears and to feel the wind through her fur and damp dirt beneath her paws, running with wild abandon.

On one excursions which took her into a mountain pass, Esther encountered a wulver hunting party from a pack situated in a valley further in. It was a tense first meeting. The pack had a tenuous truce with the city and they were nervous about some interloper eating a human and breaking it for them, so they surrounded the confused girl and gruffly demanding to know her business and from which pack she’d come from. However, when she couldn’t understand or respond in their language, they decided there was something wrong with her and took her back (forcibly) to their pack for their shaman to have look at.

The shaman was a perceptive fellow. He had figured out by looking at her that Esther was not just a loner, but a human shapeshifter. He also spoke English fluently so after ensuring her that they meant her no harm, he asked how she knew the human tongue but not her own kinds, curious how she’d answer. He then sat with amusement as she told him she’d been raised by humans as a pet since she was a puppy in a far away place and how she’d escaped and ran here to be free. Not meaning to intrude, of course! She had no idea anyone already lived here! I mean, how could she!? Was there some sort of territory marking she should have looked for or- ?

The shaman stopped her right there and told her he understood. After turning to the packs chief for words, he informed Esther that the chief would forgive her ignorance but that he couldn’t abide any freeloaders poaching on pack grounds. She either needed to hit the road or join the pack. Unsure of what that would mean for her schooling and her cherished romps in the woods, she asked for time to decide. The Shaman and the Chief negotiated two weeks. He told her of course that she’d need to abide by the truce during that time and that entering the city or killing a human would have severe consequences, BUT he assured her that the pack would welcome her with with open paws should she decided to join. “In the meantime,” he told her “feel free to drop by if you have any questions. I know your going through a big uhhhhh… transformation right now. In you’re life, I mean.” Wink wink. Hint hint.

Uh, yeah, Esther got the hint and was thoroughly creeped out. She ran the heck out of there and the shaman bade the chief not to send anyone to follow her. To the pack, the shaman relayed that she was an, escaped captive of another human settlement, that she’d been offered a place in the pack, and that she’d be hanging around the territory for a time until she decide whether to accept or not. The chief, however, he pulled aside to tell in private what this strange girl really was.

The next day, Esther had a heated row with her professor that almost triggered a transformation in public, but an elderly gentleman she’d never met put a hand on her shoulder and it stopped, like a fire building inside her had been siphoned away. To her surprise, the man had the same hair color, smile, and scar over his eye as the old shaman. He too was a shapeshifter. He bought her lunch with a $10 he had crinkled in his pocket and sat down to talk at a café table, apologizing for scaring her other day and offering to teach her how to manage her own power. Sensing that she didn’t trust favors without a catch, he threw in that the chief and him saw value in having someone educated in human ways within the pack. He himself knew a lot, but he was only wulver born and could barely read. She was human and attending collage. If she could meet with the chief every weekend or so to share the things she knew, that would be good enough to consider her a contributing pack member. She wouldn’t even have to live with them! Esther still felt like she was being manipulated somehow, but she couldn’t see a more favorable option, so she shook his hand and they called it a deal: He’d give her some shifter 101 every night and talk the chief into leaving her alone, and she’d come teach them about humans once a week. That night, she went to the wulver village for a weird-@$$ adoption ceremony, endured a gauntlet of curious noses, took a sloppy tongue-kiss from the Pack Grandmother, and then ran back to continue her life in relative peace.

Three important things happened during that time:

1. Esther was majoring in Umbral Botany at the time and realized that the shaman probably knew more about umbral plants and their properties than any human scientist alive. However, he would only teach her the way he knew how by entangling his mysticism heavily into his lessons. Begrudgingly, she agreed and listened to the old goats lecture on about magic, symbolism, and totem spirits. She answered his riddles, memorized various spells, ground up herbs, and assisted him in rituals. At first it was all pretty hokey to her and she tried to listen through the bull crap to glean to the useful stuff, but she was surprised to find that most of his mumbo jumbo didn’t contradict science. More importantly, she found that she LIKED the rituals. They made her feel refreshed and stable and the spiritual aspects of the practice filled an emotional gap she desperately needed. Before she knew it, she had not only been converted to the religion, but had been made the shamans apprentice. He taught her how to be attuned to the “spirits” around her to point where she could will bugs and birds to land in her palm, could hold hellfire in her hand without it burning her or changing color, and- to his total surprise- would make plants sway with the swing of her tail as she preformed a spirit dance. Eventually, she learned how to do it on purpose! She also learned how to draw bits of her own soul and put them into clay vessels for use in spells, rituals and medicine,.

2. Esther was evicted from her private dorm at the collage and couldn’t find affordable housing, so she accepted the invite to stay with the pack. (Sleeping in a cramped hole with a bunch of snoring wulver sticking their feet in her face was a far cry from her own soft bed, but it was way safer than hitting a public bench. People tend to get eaten sleeping outside). During her stay with them, she got to know the pack and found that while they were nosey, coarse, and frequently came to blows over disagreements, they were also fair and looked after each other like family. They even looked out for HER, the newcomer, even when she spat in their faces like a spiteful child and tested their patience. Even when she was caught lying to them and manipulating them because she thought they were doing the same to her. Eventualy she learned that honorable actions were reciprocated here, that even those she disliked had redeeming qualities, and that not everyone who wanted to guide her was trying to use her. She grew to love them. During the summer when school was out, she took part in some of the packs hunts and got involved in a battle with other pack, and in both cases earned a name for herself for her cleverness and for turning surrounding plants against her target. The “little shaman” was brought along as the parties special weapon and good luck charm. Her artisanship also gained a lot of attention. She became renowned for her beautiful wood burnings, paintings, poetry and dancing, and she contributed an ornate mural to the wall of the villages main cave and auditorium.

3. During her meeting with the chief, Esther got to know his son and ended up falling in love with him. The two became mates and had a daughter, and at that point she forsook her schooling, her job, and her identity as a human to become a true Wulver of her pack.

Life was good for Ester. She’d had a community and family that cared for her and appreciated her. She maintained her apprenticeship with the shaman, and when the chief decided it was time to step down and no one challenged his son for the position, she found herself in an interesting spot: She was now an apprentice healer, a mother, and the queen of her pack.

Then things went south:

See, the pack was only barely tolerated by their humans next door. The truce only existed because the mountains around the packs valley were popular nests for bandits. The idea was that as long as the pack kept those mountains clean of bandits and stayed the heck there, they could HAVE them. But the old mayor who made that treaty was out of office, and the new mayor was interested in the deposits in on that side of the mountains So one day he rang up the UEA and told them that their “fuzzy neighbors” had outstayed their welcome.

Without warning, a squad of UEA Elites came to the village with choppers to drive them out. They wiped out half the pack, mowing them down with sabled bullets and pulse fire and gassing many in their dens. Esters mentor was among the slain, her infant daughter succumbed to poison gas along with every pup hiding in the nursery, and her husbands head was taken by the squads leader as as trophy. The rest barely escaped with their lives.

And so the cruel, unjust world of man that had always taken from Ester, the one she thought she’d finally escaped, had extended its arm into the happiest moment of her life and taken all that she loved most. Grief stricken and enraged, she swore before her pack in exile that she would have recompense and vengeance for their loss and for her own. With her husband and her mentor dead, she took up the mantle of both shaman and chief and began a campaign to get back the valley and leave a message that the pack was not to be %#@&ed with. If possible, she would also find the officer who decapitated her mate and cause him unimaginable suffering.

She spent weeks setting the stage. She went back into the cities UEA building as a human, posing as a coffee girl, and had a hay day with a toy her late mentor left her: A hypnotic pendent made from the bulbous abdomen of a wisp, which she could power by feeding it some her soul. She went about to as many hunters as she could catch alone- lingering in locker rooms, seduced into broom closets, in their own cars- to dangle the glowing bauble before their vacant eyes and croon commands into their ears. These commands would remain dormant until she triggered them. Once satisfied that she’d prepped enough pawns, she took her trinket to the site directors office for a meeting about troop stationing that he would never remember having.

After that, Ester met with the leaders of the surrounding packs, even ones who were enemies, invited or not. She impressed them with her power over nature, making the grass and trees ripple around her as she boldly strode in, as if in an invisible wind.if they attacked her, she would catch their fire breath in her hand, entangle them in weeds and use her knowledge of nerve points to paralyze them. While they wondered if she was a goddess or a ghost, she introduced herself as the leader and shaman of the Exile Pack and told them how the spirits of Antumbra had blessed her with their power and commanded her to retake the valley. She told the pack leaders that they must lend their forces in support, not merely because she and the spirits commanded it, but because if the humans maintained the valley, they would use it as a staging ground to attack THEM next and would have no obstacles in doing so. Plus, there was an implicit threat that she would curse them if they refused.

After the packs had been cowed and convinced, everything was ready.

Esther came to a UEA outpost in the swampier corner of the valley by the light of the full moon, armed with her wisp pendent and a sash filled with little sacks she could throw that would sprout bugbear vines and entangle a target. She had dyed her fur black and wore a few vines, letting them dig their roots into the underside of her arms and net loosely together like a creepy shawl. Upon her face she wore a mask made from a wulvers skull, a thing worn by a shaman when channeling and communing with the undevoured spirits of the dead. And when conducting funeral rites. It seemed appropriate.

Phasing through the sable iron fence placed there, The Shaman snuck up to the humble little watchtower that guarded against her packs return (with a humble little rail gun atop). Climbing the ladder, she incapacitated the watchmen with her vine bombs and wisp pendent and called on one of their radios to let the whole outposts know she was there and that she’d be waiting. And when they arrived- most were people she had picked and hypno’d up-… well if she wasn’t imposing enough in her creepy costume, then speaking a single word and making their hands let go of their guns DEFINITELY made an impression. Satisfied that she had their attention, she gave a speech, introducing herself as the “Witch of the Valley” and telling them she had come to reclaim her packs stolen land. “So I’ll give you all this one chance.” She said. “Just one. Remove yourselves from this valley right now or I will bring the wrath of the slain upon you!” Because the captain had the guts to pull a knife and tell her they wouldn’t be scared by some magic trick, she showed him another and spoke the words that triggered all hell. “You. Are. Mine.”

Several of the present hunters suddenly screamed as invisible hornets buzzed about their faces and got under their visors. Several more suddenly thought they were wulvers and attacked their comrades with teeth.. Esther had come down from the tower and was walking placidly though the chaos, arms outstretched, with a rapturous smile like the screams were music. Many whom she had not chosen to be effected by her spell tried to run, but didn’t get far before she raised a hand and had the tall grass pull them down and buried them alive or the willows branches snatch them up and leave them hanging like marionettes. For defying her, Ester made an example of the captain. She held him up before the lucid hunters and pulled his soul out with her hand, drawing it into a jar as to keep as a trophy.

Following that, Esther ushered the rest of her warriors in and established the swamp outpost as their main base for conquest. She ran ahead to the better defended outposts to quietly incapacitate security and then signaled her people to deal violently with the unwary defenders. By the time other outposts knew of their presence, it was too late. In just two days, Ester and the combined packs retook all of the valley. Those humans who survived the onslaught were kept penned up in a cave with carnivorous curtains of bugbear vines guarding the entrance, and for those brave enough to curse or threaten her, she made a point of throwing to a patch of the stuff to be slowly eaten alive. Eventualy, she sent the terrified captives home to share the news of her attack and her apparent power, but not before recording a message on one of their phones for them to show the director. She stated in it that she was the Witch of the Valley, the leader of the Exiled pack, but that they were exiles no more and had retaken their home. She condemned the Mayor for breaking the truce and both him and the Director for the blood of men, women, and pups on their hands. She showed the bones of many soul drained hunters as evidence that that blood had been repayed in ash. “Feel free to send more if you like,” she teased, “But know that they are cursed to fail. This valley is ours. So decrees Antumbra herself. Do not trod upon it. Oh, and Mr. Mayor? If you get to see this, HAVE THY REWARD.”

‘Have Thy Reward’ was another trigger phrase. The Mayor hasn’t spoken since.

Esther continued to defend her turf with psychological warfare and magic tricks, cruelly terrorizing intruders and building her reputation as a witch not to be screwed with. The Director would send no armies for her to bewitch (nobody considered that she had pre-conditioned her victims hypnotically. He just assumed she was using direct mind control). He tried sending drone missiles to blow her forces up, but since Esther was keeping her day job at the UEA to spying on him, the wulvers would always be absent from their camp like they knew what was coming. He tried sending a few stealth hunters into the woods to assassinate the Witch directly, but she’d always be ready and would be waiting in the shadows to play with them. Those who came back (there would always be a few) would come come back days later gibbering horror stories. Esther loved playing cat and mouse with her enemies. She’d throw her voice around trees, make plants move to catch their attention, allow them to see her out of the corner of their eyes for a split moment, and once they were good an paranoid, she’d creep up behind and whisper trigger phrases into a “sleeper lunatics” ear so they’d attack their comrades. Then she’d start making the plants grab them, dragging them screaming into the water or under the roots of trees to be entombed alive. She didn’t always kill. But when she did, she made a show of it.

Esther kept her seat of power in a cave in the swamp where her killer vines could thrive and defend her, but more often than not the one sitting on her throne was one of her acolytes, all her size and dyed in black like herself. she LOVED using her lookalikes to screw with enemies. They would see them walk behind one tree and the reappear from behind another like they were teleporting. She herself would continue her espionage in UEA, keeping an eye on their plans and prepping whatever assassins they sent to be susceptible to her “spells”, and sometimes taking a trip to the mayors house just to haunt him and twist the knife. She’d teach her Shadows the trigger phrases so they could bewitch incoming hunter in her stead. The day to day managing of the pack, she delegated to her mother in law. the old chiefs mate. and the actual duties of a healer she left to her apprentice. Because healing was no longer her thing. She had stopped calling upon spirits of healing in favor of spirits of power and destruction. She’d stopped making medicine and started making poisons. Instead of a Healer, she had become a Destroyer.

Eventually, things began to quiet down. The pack was able to reinhabit the old village without total fear of bombardment, and Esther was finally able to spend time among her people. But she wasn’t the same person. She rarely smiled now and her paintings had become dark and colorless. She found she could not enjoy the bright and lovely things because her devotion to war had poisoned her love of life. She had shunned the Spirits of Peace, and now without them, how could she be at peace with herself? When she saw this, how she had marred her own soul and how it had done nothing to heal the loss of her family, she cried in bitter anguish.

Esther tried to repair herself after that. She tried to focus on the gentler, un-destructive things, like planting an herb garden, conducting healing rituals, building wind chimes, and playing with the pups in the nursery. She gave more sermons that she had before, but instead of focusing on stirring up zeal and anger, she tied to inspire gratitude for their fortune and hope for the future. But in this, her battle was uphill. Her people were still sore with anger and would not forgive the human for the massacre. They were also afraid, fearing another attack while they had their guard down. Her own actions and the intermingling with their more warlike allies had taught them to be suspicious, retaliatory and to enjoy conquest and blood shed

In addition, these sentiments were giving rise to a notion Esther found troublingly popular. See, it was a long standing belief- at least by the packs in Esthers region- that antumbra was a promised land and that the packs had been led out of the harsh “old land” (Umbra) by the spirits to inherit it. It was also believed that man’s technology displeased the spirits as it bred corruption and pollution and that the humans chastisement for it was the Umbral incursion. Therefore, the natural conclusion was that humans no longer deserved dominion over antumbra and that the universe WANTED wulver kind to destroy them and take their spot. This idea was actual total sound in Esther mind. She could see how having humanity gone would benefit her people and felt she’d experienced enough of humanity’s evils to know it was too diseased to stay. But did ALL humans deserved to die? Her grudge was with with society and the UEA, but not with every individual. She wasn’t genocidal! However, she could see that there were still many angry widows, widowers, and grieving parents who wanted nothing more than to see that city next door burn and many of her people were raiding the farms and properties on its outskirts without her sanctioning. Some were already doing it without her sanctioning. And looking out, her spies told her about other packs actively making war with other human settlements. As she saw it, the great replacement was BOUND to happen, and to make it worse, she knew that the allied packs expected her to join the fray. Whether she liked it or not, humanity was doomed.

But hadn’t the spirits saved Ester from this fate? She’d been given a wulver form! Did she have to be the only one? Maybe she could extend the same mercy to humans who were worthy of it and share her blessing.

So, Esther went about to find a way to turn non shapeshifters into wulvers. She conducted experiments with her own shapeshifting power, sought advice from the few shapeshifters she knew existed, picked up books from the library on gene splicing, trans-dimensional interplay (I mean, where else could all her wulvery mass be going to when she shifted? To Umbra!). Finally she believed she’d found a way to do it! And she wouldn’t need any high tech reality %#&ing lab equipment to do it! With her own wulver DNA, a milk jugs worth of black salt, her own faith-based energy channeling technique, a location where the dimensional fabric was niiiice and squishy, and a stick of sidewalk chalk, she could channel her transformative power through a shamanic ritual and manually shape-shift someone else! She needed to a test subject though. Perhaps some brave human volunteer in town? Maybe someone with nothing to lose? She was searching the slums and bars as a human for such a retch when she discovered a different sort of candidate reveling away the weekend in his favorite seedy pub:

An Elite hunter by the name of Reggie. Leader of the team that drove out her pack in the first place. The very man who had decapitated her spouse.

The odious man was, BRAGGING to the entire bar about the “hilarious” ways he had killed wulver and how they deserved every moment of it, and the longer she listened, the more her old anger returned to her. “Why should should I feel sorry them?” He told the crowd around him sloshing his beer as waved his hands. “It’s not like they care when they eat OUR women and kids! Nah, the only thing a wulver feels is bloodlust and the fear we teach ‘em. So we gotta teach ‘em! Besides, They don’t belong here. Yet they’re hell bent on bump’n us out like they own the place! Well they didn’t read the terms of home ownership, did they? : CIVILIZED BEINGS GET DIBS. So says God! And we beat’cha to the @&$%ing wheel, so Earths ours! GO EVOLVE SOME MANNERS. I mean sure, they can talk. Whoop-a-dee-do! Nice trick! But if they ain’t’ gonna pick up a hammer and start making $#%&, then I say they’re just animals pretend’n t’ be people.”

After hearing that, the old hatred in Esters heart flared back in full force. Just animals? NO FEELINGS? That -! Well that settled it! Ester would put her penance on the back burner. Reggie here would be her test subject and her final indulgence in vengeance. She would punish this remorseless, pompous, self righteous murderer and finally avenge her family by taking from this man what he CLEARLY loved ohhhhh so much from him. His humanity. And in the case that he didn’t survive the process, she hoped it would be really, really painful.

In order for Esther’s ritual to work, she needed to have Reggie in a specific mountain crevasse east of the valley, which was sacred to wulvers and where the barrier between the worlds was thin. However, she found that she couldn’t seduce him into meeting her there because, in his words, “I hate t’ burst your love bubble kid, but I’m married”. Tch. Kid. Figures that the one creep she wanted burned the most was faithfully mated and wasn’t enticed by her apparent underage. Irritatingly noble. Fortunately, if she was ever tempted to like him, she just had to remember that her mates head was probably mounted above the bed where he and his own mate fornicated. That usually helped. And how delicious it would be when she left his life. Running from him. Screaming.

Next, she tried to use her wisp pendent on him. She caught him in the parking and then would have put him to sleep and then driven him to the mountain in his own car. But to her shock, when she dangled the thing in his face, he blinked it off and snatched it from her hands. Turned out he was resistant to wisp light. Some humans just are. And while he wasn’t sure how she got the thing glowing, he was pretty sure he knew what she was trying into pull here… Luckily what he thought she was trying to pull was to walk him into a closet like a zombie and use him as her personal love mannequin, so he was too disgusted and embarrassed to report her and let her off with an angry warning. After crushing the pendant. So yeah, she kinda blew that one.

In the end, Ester knew she had to lure him to the mountain with more enticing sort of bait: herself. After all, Reggie mentioned at the bar that he and his team had been called out state for a special job and she BET it was to capture SkullFace. So after getting a fresh pendent, Esther made a final visit to the directors office to make sure Reggie was the one being sent for her, then caught a few of the squad for reprogramming, phoned in anonymously that ol’ SkullFace had been seen outside her Valley, and rushed to her own sighting location on the Sacred Mountain where she and many revenge hungry packmates would lie in wait.

When Reggie’s team arrived at the Mountain, they’d find the Witch of the Valley sitting all by her lonesome in the branches of a tree, about 30 ft up, singing to herself and pretending not to notice them. They wanted to take to take her alive if possible so no one dared tranq her until they had a net stretched out to catch her, and while they worked on that, Ester took the initiative to count and make sure she had them all within earshot. Once sure, she shouted a word that sent half the team into screaming insanity. While their comrades struggled to subdue them, she rappelled down with a bugbear vine, shouted out “Ta-ta, friends! Have fun!” and Reggie turned to see her blow a kiss at him and dart away. Enraged, Reggie abandoned the chaos and gave chase to that cheeky little &%$@&. While he followed, the Pack set upon the sane half of the crew, to keep them busy so the two could work things out in privately. It would spoil her revenge if anyone saw what would become of their captain.

Esther led led Reggie through a tight, zig zagging crevasse in the mountain to the chamber where the ritual would take place. Rounding the final corner and skidding to stop, Reggie saw the witch standing there at a dead end and immediately shot her full of tranqs…. only to realize that it was a decoy made of tar and wood that was wearing her mask. It didn’t take long to figure out that he’d walked into a trap and that the witch was probably RIGHT BEHIND HIM, but before he could whip around, a messy tangle of vines he had walked over sprung to life, wrapped around his limbs and neck, and forced him on his hand and knees. Tethering him to the floor.

Esther had indeed been behind Reggie, and was cackling at how he fell for THAT trick. Reggie expected her to kill him right there, but it was somehow more horrifying when she calmly began lighting tallow candles around the chamber drawing lines of chalk and black salt around him in a sort of pentagram. She gloated in a chipper tone as she tiptoed around the set up, telling him how she remembered him standing over her the day of the massacre, leveling a gun at her head, gloating as she knelt crying over her mates body. How gratifying it was to have their positions switched.

Looking around, Reggie noticed human bones lying around the corners of the room and asked in staged bravado if this was was some kind of sacrifice or If Esther wanted a romantic candle lit dinner before she %@&$ed herself. Cause by all means, she could go and do that (Oh and by the way, she ate like a %@&$ing pig! Pick up your crumbs, lady!). Glowering oh so irritably, Esther explained that, first of all, those bones were not her handiwork. This site was sacred grounds to other wulver packs and many human tribes before them. These could be the sacramental leavings of either. And for his information, this was not a “sacrifice”. This was an experiment. One he might even survive. But if candle light masturbation was something that interested him, she fully encouraged him to pursue it and then maybe GET USED TO IT because assuming this ritual didn’t kill him, she couldn’t guarantee that dear, sweet Lilian would ever love him again.

Any questions about this experiment washed away by cold dread. “How.” asked Reggie, “Do you know. About Lilian.”

“Why, you told the entire canteen about her!” Ester grinned wickedly, and before his bewildered eyes, transformed into the coffee girl from the facility in a burst of green fire. “You’re quite chatty when you’re drunk.”

Esther cut off his dumbstruck stammering to tell him that after today, there’d be no one he could recount this to who’d listen. “But know this,” she said without elaborating, shifting back to wulver form and smiling malevolently. “You are doing your kind a GREAT service. Live or die, your sacrifice will help me give COUNTLESS humans an escape from their own extinction. Oh yes. You heard me. I’m not the monster you think I am. Not like YOU are anyway! I think you’re going to have a lot of time to think about what that word means to you. By the way, I HOPE THIS HURTS.”

Esther crammed a wad of vine in Reggie’s mouth to shut him up, put her mask back on, and began the ritual, lighting colored fires around the chamber and chanting. Don’t ask me all the details yet, but whatever forces shapeshifters taps into to transform, she was channeling them in a different way. With the help of the sites closeness to Umbra, a sample of wulver fur from the man’s own coat lining (In lieu of her own for poetry’s sake), she focused those forces upon Reggie, and for the finishing touch, engulfed him in her fiery breath. Oh yes, this was painful, just like it had been for her, (ah she loved that screaming!). But like for her, the fire was not killing him. The yellow-green flames blanketing him turned a golden color, his own color now, and it it began to unravel his skin like an apple under a potato peeler. The tortured mass underneath grew, and grew, and grew and when the fire died out, a giant, hairy wulver lay in his place, curled up pathetically on the ground and whimpering in pain.

The test had worked. Esthers revenge was complete. She took great pleasure in watching Reggie look over his new body in horror and easily evaded him when he furiously lunged at her, tripping over his own unfamiliar feet. Climbing up the wall to get out of reach, the witch called down smugly that she hoped he enjoyed the new perspective (though she was annoyed that he ended up looking so good) and then let out a howl to let the others know she had been victorious and it was time to go home

But her heroes cry died abruptly in her lungs as a bullet pierced one of them. Blacking out from the pain, the great and powerful Witch of the Valley tumbled from the wall and fell three stories down with a sickening thud.

Esther hadn’t counted on one of Reggie’s men, his second in command, slipping free from the skirmish to follow him, intent on sharing the credit for bagging SkullFace. He had ran with his sniper rifle along the top of the crevasse to the ritual site and watched in amazement as his captain was transformed into wulver. He wasn’t stunned long though, and took the opportunity to shoot the witch when he saw it. But these were not tranqs like he’d been ordered to use. He had switched to lethal rounds. See, while this man loved his captain, he loved his position more and wanted it for himself. This was his golden opportunity to get him out of the way. No one would know that this monstrous wulver was really Captain Reggie, and if the fuzzified captain himself told them, who would believe him? The Witch, however, counted as a reliable witness. No one knew exactly what she was capable of to begin with, so if she was captured and bragged from her cage that she had transformed Reggie into a wulver, who was to say she couldn’t have done so? So she had to die.

Meanwhile, having heard the call to return home, Esters forces broke off from the fight to disappeared into the trees, and the confused Elites were free to join their captain in the crevasse. What they rushed in to find though was a Satan worshipers campsite, Skullface’s body sprawled in a pool of blood, a bear of a wulver staring at them like a dear in headlights, no captain in sight, and a lot of bones that could be his. The wulverified captain tried to explain that he was him, begging them point the guns away and not to shoot, but while it gave the men some pause to hear their captains Bronx accent coming from its mouth, the lieutenant up on the crag riled them up, shouting “THAT DIRTY MUTT KILLED CAPTAIN REG! FILL HIM FULL OF LEAD!” Reggie had seen him on the wall after he shot Skullface. He knew immediately that he’d been betrayed. Reggie’s shadow form saved him that day. It triggered instinctually, and being part human, the sabled bullets passed through his vaporous body without making him to coalesce. He was able to blow though his men that way and then stager back down the path, learning quickly how to run and then hiding once he got away. After the heat died down, he’d try to contact his wife, tell her he was still alive and meet with her to tell her what happened, but when she saw him, she’d scream and run. After that, he’d retreat to the mountains far away from there and live miserably in a cave.

As for Esther’s forces, they realized something was wrong when their leader did not rendezvous with them. They doubled back find to helicopters around the crevice, grimly victorious hunters and men with clipboards swarming about the ritual site like ants. Peering in, they found to their horror and disbelief their priest-queens limp body being measured and photographed like the catch of the month and stuffed into a body bag. There were too many hunters now. They couldn't save her body. The band returned home with the sad news and anguished howling filled the Valley. Esther’s mother in law took command of the pack again and knowing that the humans would no longer afraid to come at them with the Witch dead, she would lead the pack out of the valley for good and their allies would follow suite with their buffer compromised.

Esther, however, was not dead. She had a sucking chest wound and broken bones everywhere from the fall, but when they put her on the table to cut her up, it was found that she was still breathing. Just very weakly. The medics and experts at the lab got her stable and healed up but deemed it to risky to allow her to be conscious for questioning. You know, least she get them with her mind control powers and wreck havoc on the facility. So for a year now, the dreadful Wulver Witch has been asleep, floating dreamlessly in a tube in the corner of a white tiled room, with a mask pumping sedative gas into her lungs. For a while, the sleeping queen was THE exhibit for every scientist in the building to gawk at, (it made splash when they discovered her fur was blue, not black.) but since they couldn’t DO anything with her, she lost popularity quick. She’s all but forgotten, now. Just a white elephant marinating in a tank. Too valuable to dissected and to scary to wake up.

________________________________________________

“This is Friday to Freddy. Freddy call in.”

Esther picks up walkey talky and puts it to her mouth. “Im afraid “Freddy” is unavailable, Mr Friday. Can I take a message?”

“… Who is this?! where the hell is Freddy!?”

“I am Judgment, little ape.” She croons. “Freddy is fine. For now. But do come. Let’s chat before I… dispense myself..”

She waits for a response and smiles when none comes. They were on their way.

Esther turns to one of the scared humans all but cocooned in bugbear vines and tosses the walkie talkie at him unceremoniously. “Thanks Fred.” Sits “now we wait”

She kneels down on the watch platform and begins her meditation. She glances back at her prisoner and smirks at the fear in his eyes. “Take comfort. YOU get to live.” She turns back towards the moon and closes her eyes, smiling sweetly and darkly. “AND you get a box seat….”
…

The Jeeps pull up. The troop pile out.

“Oh Yeah, that looks like a wulver up there.”

“Aright surround it but don’t fire. Freddy and Sam are up there. “

They get out and surround the tower.
“WE GOT YOU SURROUNDED, DOGGY! YA GOT NOWHERE TO GO! PUT YOU PAWS WHERE WE CAN SEE THEM!”

Esther does nothing. She just scoffs.

They look at earth other, not sure what to do now that she’s called their bluff.

Captain growls in frustration. “You know what, I’m taking the shot.”

He raises his gun but then Esther shouts something in guttural wulver tongue.

They all involuntarily drop their guns involuntarily.

“What the.. “

“Hey! What-?”

“um…”

“Butterfingers, gentlemen?” Esther taunts

She watches smugly as a few hastily try to pick up their guns. But their hands can’t hold onto them. One of them mutters “what the hell..?” The captain fumbles with his over an over again cursing louder each tim he drops it.

“Your fingers are cursed.” She said, looking down at them imperiously. “But try if you like Captain Kirt Jenkins …” she phased though the towers railing and began to drift down. “It’s sooooo adorable.”

Captain Jenkins stares. how did this beast know his name? The men back up as this wulver they can’t raise a gun against walks slowly towards them.

“I am The Witch of this Valley.” She introduced herself. She spreads her vine strewn arms out like wings and slowly turns about, bathing them in the moon light. “The spirits speak to me, and bid me to carry out their will!” She rolled her head back towards the hunters, fixing them with a malevolent, yellow-green gaze. “As do the dead. You know? Like that happy little hamlet that was in this very valley? Mothers… Pups… Husbands… “ her sweet smile morphed into a glare of passionate hatred. “Shot dead by machine fire and gassed in their own dens, all while the paw of peace was extended. Sound familiar?! They cry for recompense, gentlemen… and I am here to deliver.”

She turns around fully, locking her malevolent glare upon them. “So I’ll give you all this ONE chance. Just one.” She marched up to the captain to look him in the face. ”Remove yourselves from the valley RIGHT NOW or I shall bring the wrath of the slain down upon you!”

The group is thoroughly frightened. But the captain composes himself and reaches slowly for his knife. “I-if you think we’re gonna run off with our tail tucked because you did a little magic trick- then your dead wrong!”

The captain drew the knife and tried to stab her in the neck, but was surprised when the the knife phases through her. It was sable iron. She shouldn’t have been able to do that.

The Witch gave a toothy smile and shrugged in a se-la-vi manner. “Well then captain….” She chimed. Then her puplils turned to slits and her grin became maniacal. “YOU. ARE. MINE.”

And at those three words, all hell broke loose