She ran through the woods, the scent of prey sharp on the evening breeze. Fear, desperation, blood… The scents intermingled to create the irresistible bouquet of the hunt. She was close now, so close, and her predatory instincts were screaming in her head, drowning out any thought or reason… But with her final lunge she felt her leg hit against some kind of wire, and in an instant a net rose from beneath her, hoisting her up off the ground and entangling her completely. Her prey was standing just out of reach, its fear slowly fading as it grinned with infuriating smugness… She howled her frustration, lashing out wildly within her prison of rope and knots… Hood woke with a snarl, and it took her a good few minutes to clear the rage from her head before she realized where she was. Not that reality was much of an improvement. Sure, she had woken up covered in blood and vomit before, and pounding headaches were more or less the norm for her mornings, but that didn’t mean she enjoyed the experience. Besides, being tied to a tree and the stiffness that caused was an unpleasant addition. Add to that the rather forceful demands her body began making and it wasn’t terribly surprising that she was none too cheerful at the moment. “Ulrik! Untie me at once! It will be hard enough to clean my armour without me pissing all over it!” Grumbling a little, the rather drowsy young man released her bonds, and she quickly left to deal with her most pressing issues. Then she gathered some spare clothes from her pack and left for a nearby brook, intending to give both herself and her gear a thorough cleaning. When she returned, quite damp and shivering slightly in the brisk morning breeze, she found that Ulrik had cooked some breakfast for the both of them. The meal, though simple, left them both in rather better spirits and took a great deal of the tension out of the air. “I’m going to need to train.” Hood remarked, seemingly out of nowhere. “Train what?” “That rage… It’s a part of me now. I need to learn how to resist it.” “And how do you propose to do that?” “Simple enough. We figure out how to goad me into a rage, and whenever I fail to control it you give me another whack with the back of your axe and tie me up until I settle down.” “That could kill you!” “Maybe, but I doubt it. I’m tougher than most. Besides, if I don’t learn to control this I might kill someone who doesn’t deserve it, and that’s simply not acceptable.” Ulrik went silent for a while, contemplating this. “You’re not going to let this drop until I agree with you, are you?” “No.” He sighed and rubbed at his temples, knowing full well that his chances of actually winning an argument with Hood were miniscule at best. “You know, if I saw a man training his dogs in such a way, I’d beat him black and blue for his cruelty.” “I’m not a dog, Ulrik. I can make my own decisions.” “And mine, it seems.” “And yours.” Hood agreed, not even bothering to try and deny it. “Fine.” Ulrik groaned. “I’ll help you with this addle-brained scheme of yours. Just don’t blame me if I manage to addle your brains for real.” “I won’t.” “Are you ready?” Hood asked, sitting cross-legged on the ground with her back against a tree. “I am.” Ulrik replied, hefting his axed with the head turned to bludgeon rather than chop. Hood gave him a nod and thought back to the events that had made her lose her senses. What was it that had pushed her over the brink of madness? The fighting? No, she had kept her head for the first part of the fight. And it wasn’t her weakness that had pushed her over either. She’d been perfectly in command of her faculties even after the wolf had thrown her down. She hadn’t truly lost her wit until… Until the beast had harmed Ulrik. Ulrik… Ulrik was hers! Ulrik was pack! That filthy beast, it had tried to take what belonged to her. Thief! Betrayer! Hood saw red and howled in rage as she cast her head about, searching for enemies. Searching for prey… Then she felt a sharp sting of pain, and it all went black. She woke up with her head pounding in agony and her left eye glued shut by dried blood. She didn’t feel dizzy or sick, though, so it had probably just been a scratch. Looking down on herself, she realized she had been trussed up from her shoulders to her ankles with an impressive variety of knots. “Feeling creative?” She asked, her amusement audible even through the pain in her voice. “I figured I might as well take the opportunity to practice my knots.” Ulrik replied from behind her. “Are you sane again?” “As sane as ever.” “That does not reassure me as much as one might think.” “Smart boy. Are you going to untie me?” “In due time. I’m not in a hurry.” “Ulrik…” Hood began warningly. “Think of it as further training. If you haven’t managed to free yourself by dinnertime I’ll let you out.” In the end, it took Hood half an hour to squirm and work her way free of her bonds, and she had to admit it was probably good practice. Not that that stopped her from offering Ulrik a few choice oaths and curses when next they met. After that, the days fell into a sort of strange routine. The mornings were spent travelling ever northwards, and the afternoons were spent with Hood meditating upon her darker emotions until she lost it and Ulrik beat her over the head with his axe, knocking her senseless and tying her up in increasingly convoluted and inescapable arrangements of ropes and knots. But it was helping. With every passing day, it took more and more to push her over the edge, and once or twice she had almost been able to push the rage back after it overtook her. Of course, almost isn’t good enough, and so her head kept familiarizing itself with the back of Ulrik’s axe. Hood woke up with a low growl as something soft and wet gently but firmly pushed against her face. Her head was ablaze with pain and the faint remnants of her last descent into demonic rage, and something was wrong. Very wrong. After taking a moment to clear her head, she was able to order her thoughts enough to recognize what had woken her. “Lumpy?” She looked up at the horse and realized he was highly agitated, puffing and snorting as he paced around the clearing were they’d set up camp. “What’s wrong, Lumpy? Where’s Ulrik?” The horse walked over to the spot where Ulrik had put away his pack, and she realized it was gone. Then, he disappeared into the woods, returning moments later with an old tree branch clasped between his teeth. He was making a face, like the wood tasted foul, and it didn’t take Hood long to realize why. The branch stank of wolf.