Rowen was quite confused by the story unfolding before him. If he was interpreting all that was being said, Shendron was in a fact a werewolf (or some for of werewolf anyway), and his father was the most famous of all werewolves ever to live. And as far as he could tell these monsters before him were part werewolf, a situation which would be detrimental to normal people, but in this case proved to be to their advantage. It also seemed as if the monsters were in fact quite intelligent. Damn. Brute strength was easy. Intelligence was a little trickier. Both at once were trouble.

Shendron seemed convinced of the fact that he would somehow be able to control one of the creatures; this seemed doubtful to Rowen, but this was definitely no time to argue. He did as he was told; if Shendron could indeed do as he claimed with a little help, Rowen was quite willing to give that help.

The two Zulnarets were circling the adventurers, moving in opposite directions so as to try and split up the friends. Rowen knew that he would have a hard enough time taking care of the creatures from one direction, but he would not be able to protect Shendron and himself if he had to work in two different directions.

Just then, the Zulnaret on Rowen's side stopped. Its head whipped backwards and with a howl it clamped its hands together. It seemed to be trying to fight itself, almost as if its hands had a mind of their own and would not do what it told them to do. This was obviously Shendron's doing. Too late Rowen realized that he had been too transfixed by the events on his side of the room that he had been neglecting the other Zulnaret. It had advanced towards Shendron and backhanded him across the room. The first Zulnaret regained control of itself for a moment while Shendron pulled himself up off the floor, but quickly lost this advantage as Shendron concentrated to regain power over the beast. Rowen moved into action quickly. Realizing that he need not defeat the beasts if Shendron could gain control of the first, he teleported to a spot just in front of Shendron to try and protect him from the fast approaching beast. At least his bubble would buy him some time while the creature decided what to do with it.

As the beast kicked, scratched, bit and raged at the protective layer, Rowen sought a way to distract the creature, as this would be much simpler than trying to face it head-on. He grabbed Shendron’s water pouch from his side and threw some water onto the floor. From the water he formed a Water Elemental Brabbet: an enormous, clumsy, stupid and powerful type of being that would pose another puzzle to the Zulnaret. The Zulnaret had eventually gotten through the gel-like layer, and was now on to round two.

The Brabbet came straight at the Zulnaret, spewing torrents of water at its foe. More irritating than damaging to the Zulnaret, the water still managed to stop the monster moving forwards because of the sheer force of the water. The Zulnaret shot the familiar dark snake forwards, but the poison just changed the appearance of the Brabbet, giving it a strange dark glow. The poison was only effective against living tissue.

Rowen turned to see how Shendron had been progressing. The other Zulnaret was now sitting on the floor with its hands covering its eyes and its head trying frantically to turn away from the hands, but to no avail. The take-over was almost complete. Excellent!

Wait! What was that? A shadow in the distance. Rowen was sure he had just seen a small human-like figure fleeting past in the distance. No time to worry about that though. He had a Zulnaret to deal with…