It felt like a weird form of self-preservation but against what, she had no idea. Russel had only shown her, over and over again since they met, how willing he was to protect her from any and all threats. And he had also shown her how much he liked her, over and over again. The night at Wrexon in the bath had just been the first instance. There had been many more as they traveled.

She stopped suddenly, realizing her mind was twisting this way and that in an effort to stall her from going back. Getting hung up on her feelings for Russel in such a dire situation was definitely some kind of self-preservation.

No more stalling, she said to herself and forcefully.

She drew her blade out of its sheath and made her way back to where she left Russel behind. It took several long, anxiety-ridden minutes to do so. In her blind running, she hadn’t realized she made it so far away. Finally, she could hear the sounds of the fighting getting louder and she knew she was getting close now. The darkness of night made it hard to see things but as soon as she got within range, she saw the battle well enough.

Enough to give her nightmares for the rest of her life.

The ghouls and oni were terrifying things, that much was true, but they paled in comparison to the ten or eleven-foot monstrosity that was, she could only assume, Russel. He looked like a melding of man and wolf, but only from the demented imagination of a psychotic. His form was easily five times larger than it had been before. Even when he went wolf in the past to help her, it was nothing like what she was seeing. His true, bestial form was like the mutated body of some terrifying animal and man hybridization that went against every law of nature imaginable. His arms were longer than they had any right to be and she was sure he could take a head off the shoulders in one swipe. The barrel of his torso was so overwhelmingly full of muscle; she was awed by the simple fact that he could keep himself standing up. How something that must have weighed over four hundred pounds could keep itself upright was another mystery she couldn't get a handle on. Its head was huge, and a short, canine-like maw had extended six inches outward from his face. Gleaming fangs burst out from between its lips.

And then there were his eyes.

Both of them shone with amber light so bright, they actually lit up the entire area, making it easier to see everything going on.

The ghouls and the oni seemed awed by what was in front of them. Both parties had stopped for the moment as Lola continued to watch. It was like seeing time freeze. For those long, awkward seconds, everything stilled.

As soon as she came back and saw Russel’s true form, she knew she had made a mistake. That monster was not Russel. Deep down, she knew it was him, sure, but at that moment it also was not him. It was like her mind was trying to separate the one being into two separate entities. It felt like the only way she would be able to wrap her mind around what she had seen. That and she felt like separating them into two different beings felt easier on her mind. Less weighty. Thinking of the massive, wolf-like being as Russel quickly became problematic so in her haste to stay sane, that was how her mind chose to cope.

As bad as it was for her to see Russel like that, what happened next was infinitely worse. She got an up close and personal view of that. As she watched, she knew those images would haunt her dreams for months, maybe even years, afterward. No amount of time or mental force would save her from that fate.

Despite knowing that, she didn’t look away.

She kept her eyes on the scene and watched as his true power ripped into the creatures surrounding him.