I crept silently past the slumbering guards, taking care to remain downwind and in the shadows. Step by step, I drew closer to my quarry, and once I was within a quick sprint, all my muscles loosed and I locked in on my target, a scrawny youth who had strayed too far from the village and was unfit to survive. My jaws locked on his throat, quickly stifling any cry, then my companions and I dragged him off, all in silence under the light of the pale moon and distant stars. He would feed my kin tonight. As we tore the flesh from his bones, we sang our praises to the Eternal Huntress who guided us and the Earthmother who provided our prey. Thus the dance continues from generation to generation, age to age. But this night as we finished our meal and our praises, I heard a loud noise, like thunder, and I felt the fire of a million suns spread through my body. The last thing I recalled was hearing the Eternal Huntress calling to me, but I never reached her, nor did I ever get to the Neverending Wilds. The first thing Shieng felt was the electrical bumblebee called the alarm clock. Grunting as she swatted at the nuisance, she crawled out of her dark den. She gazed into the mirror and stared at the pale, world-worn creature that looked back at her. A year ago, her raven hair made people think she was an Asian version of Rapunzel, but now, it was a targetboard wire-wrapped by an overly caffienated (and possibly intoxicated) electrical engineering student. Her muscles had atrophied from months of slavery to the computer, and her eyes, once bright and sharp enough to rival an eagle, were clouded from the artificial lighting underground and sleep deprivation. A tarnished cross on a steel chain completed the dim reflection. Once upon a time, Shieng could pass for Peter Pan's twin sister, but now, she was a grown-up full of grown-up problems. Fifteen minutes later, Shieng trudged to math recitation. She grabbed a seat in the front row, pulled out her night-blue notebook and wrote down all the vital equations the teaching assistant (TA) scribbled on the board. Differential equation after differential equation bombarded her mind before she noticed a presence nearby. The fine hairs on the back of her neck bristled and a small growl escaped from her. Doing her best to ignore the person right behind her, she continued trying to process the TA's ramblings. She felt like she was trapped in a cavern full of snoring drunkards, a huge unsquishable mosquito, and a parakeet high on LSD babbling to itself. As soon as the parakeet finished its soliloquy, Shieng bolted from the room and hauled herself to the subbasement electrical engineering lab. She was about to plop down onto her favorite lab bench when she noticed Daniel, a ghostly toothpick of a boy with finely chisled features and blonde hair sitting at the station next to hers. He glanced at her with a dejected look, then quickly cast his eyes back to the radio he was constructing. Shieng also cast her eyes away, then doing her best not to look at him, she went to work on her project, a DAC (digital-to-analog converter). As she examined the emerald-green printed circuitboard, her mind wandered to the forest to the north and when they used to hike there every weekend. A familiar burning-sweet smell jolted Shieng back to her senses. She looked at the soldering iron in her hand, then the plastic container she kept all her resistors and capacitors. There was a new, still smoking, crater in the blue vinyl. Continuing on her DAC, she still cast glances to her left, while the enemy was gazing in her direction while she wasn't looking. Hours later, Shieng had finished wiring and debugging the digital section of her project. Staggering her way back up to the surface, she found the full moon had already risen, and she felt a loud rumbling inside of her. She stopped by the convenience store to get a sandwich, water, and fruit, devoured it, then headed back to her room. Exhausted from the intensive work, she crawled into her private nook under her desk. The road to redemption is long and arduous, but everyone gets what they strive for. To this end, I will accept the challenge you have given me to redeem myself in your eyes. I shall succeed and join my ancestors in the Neverending Wilds. Shieng bolted up in the middle of the night and hit her head on the low roof of her den. Rainbow-colored stars danced before her eyes, but she crawled out and searched her desk frantically, as if trying to find a misplaced final five minutes before the deadline. Even a badger couldn't dig as swiftly as she could through the sea of circuit schematics, chip manuals, and homework assignments and notes. Finally, she breathed a sigh of relief as she pulled a silver ring inscribed with a wolf's head on it. She examined every detail on the ring, and it was exactly envisioned it, down to the runes on the inside. Without a second thought, she put the ring on her left ring finger and removed the cold steel chain around her neck. The ring felt warm and reassuring to her, reminding her that she was not completely alone. Following her instinct, she wandered outside. As soon as the moonlight hit her, the ring glowed with a piercing blue light. Shieng felt the tingling of hundreds of tiny electric shocks surge through her as she gracefully fell onto all fours. Her eyes could make out all the details of her surroundings down to the nearest ant fleeing from unseen terrors. The intoxicating aroma of prey -- a mouse -- registered in her mind, as did the reek of all humanity. There was a flash of motion followed by a piercing squeak and a crunching noise. The mouse was by far the best morsel she ever had in her life. Suddenly, she felt herself irresistably drawn southwards towards where most of the undergrads lived. As she journeyed south, she sensed the foul reek of beer and cigarette smoke. A few drunken boys spotted her, but they only whistled and called to her before staggering away. She attempted to shout at them, but all that came out was a loud bark. Soundlessly, she quickly made her way to her destination: the big oak tree just east of the southeasternmost undergrad house. In one of the lower floor windows she could recognize the thin silhouette as Daniel. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up again. She wanted to charge through the window and watch his life fade in her jaws, but she could not find the resolve. A long, mournful howl escaped from her as she faced the moon. You have now identified your prey. I now give you this dagger, with which you must redeem yourself. You have two days before you become forever trapped, never able to return to the Neverending Wilds, condemned to remain in that weak form. I will do what I know is right and regain my honor. I will be strong. Shieng was back under her desk with her thin blanket in her cluttered room. On her left ring finger was the silver ring, in her right hand was a dagger. She crawled out and examined the dagger in the sunlight that had dared to peek into her dark grove. It was black in the golden sunlight, but she could see the intricate runes carved on the hilt and the pommel was inscribed with a wolf's head facing left. The dagger was silver in the moonlight and glowed with an eerie blue light, but by day it was dead. She sheathed it and attached it to her belt. She grumbled, then went about to get ready for yet another day. ``Hey, Shieng, want to check answers for quantum with me?'' pleaded the mosquito from her math section. ``Shieng, I don't know how to put this to you, but it's not going to be mathematically possible for you to pass unless you ace the rest of the class,'' chirped the parakeet as Shieng groaned at her midterm score. ``Ugh! It's that furry green pizza stuff again!'' commented a ravenous seagull in the cafeteria. ``...to find tau, it's simply the resistance times the capacitance...'' droned the robot of an analog electronics professor in a sea of snoring. ``I will hold a special review session about DRAM next Friday at noon...'' said the owl of a digital electronics instructor. ``The concert is in three weeks! You need to get that one passage right. Count -- one two three and four one and a two and a three and four,'' chanted the metronome of the conductor as Shieng struggled with the harpsichord. ``Remember, we've got D&D on Saturday at noon and track on Sunday at nine!'' shouted a wolverine as she ran past to turn in an optics homework set. By now it was dusk and Shieng descended the two flights of stairs down into the Moore subbasement yet again. All the schematics of her converter and some extra wire were with her in case she needed it. Everything was going smoothly until Shieng felt her hand drawn irresistably to the dagger on her belt. She looked up from her converter and saw Daniel sitting across from her. At the same time, she noticed the fine lines of care and pain from the last three weeks etched into his pale face. The dagger still called to her, thirsting for his blood, but her hand went instead to the oscilloscope and fumbled with the leads. The ground lead split into two pieces in Shieng's firm tug. ``Oops,'' she said as she watched the probe end fall onto the table. She turned to the side to see if there were more cables, but it so happened that she took the last one by her bench. The only cables remaining were on the next bench, but they reminded her of the broccoli from dinner. In checking the other adjacent bench, she tripped over someone's tool box, grabbed the chair, only to have it fall with a loud clatter. A deep growl escaped as she tried to get back up. A pale hand reached for hers, but recognizing it, she recoiled and shouted, ``Go away, I don't need you!'' Then she stood up and glared so harshly at the owner of the hand that he seemed to age a bit more before her eyes. He gave her a pleading look, but she did not relent, and he slunk back to his lab bench to work on his radio. The DAC was now twice as noisy as before when Shieng hooked up the output to the oscilloscope. Maybe she miscalculated something. As she took out her logic probe and multimeter, she smelled another vaguely familiar burning odor. She looked down on her board and saw that the capacitor she had just installed was leaking some bluish fluid. That capacitor was supposed to be either ceramic or tantalum, not electrolytic, and to top it off, she installed the capacitor backwards! Cursing, she then disconnected the power from her DAC and wiped up the mess as best as she could. For the next several hours, she continued to resist that urge to grab the dagger or to invoke the ring and tried to make more progress on her DAC. Finally, about six hours later, she was able to have a digital section that worked as well as she predicted in her schematics and preliminary calculations. She still felt that intense desire to use the dagger, but she thrust her hand deep into her pocket and found the cross she thought she discarded. The urge became manageable again, and on her way out of the cramped lab, she cast a forgiving look at Daniel. He smiled weakly at her, and as he did, a few of the lines on his face disappeared. Shieng continued on her journey back to the world of open skies. As soon as she let go of the cross and allowed the moonlight to strike her ring, she could feel the moon's radiance and the power of the Eternal Huntress in her body again. What is this other force driving me away from my quest? Why did I stay my hand when I had the perfect opportunity? When I touched that cross, it felt as if some other being had touched my heart and showed me another way to redeem myself, but to do so, I would have to remain here forever. You have one more night to redeem yourself and accomplish what you have been sent to do. But if you fail... I will succeed and feel his warm blood pour over me! I shall slash his throat and tear out his vitals! I will overcome this weakness and return to the Neverending Wilds. Instead of finding herself in her forest-like room, Shieng found herself curled up in the big subbasement electrical engineering lecture hall under the desks with her DAC in one hand, a beat-up book in the other. Without a second thought, she stuck the leather-bound book into her backpack, hauled herself back up to the surface, and went through yet another day, taking care to steer clear of Daniel. What was she thinking last night? The DAC apparently had taken a bit of a beating while she was sleeping. The oscilloscope's green face grinned insanely at her, stuck its tongue out, then frowned. Shieng squawked in frustration at the odd readings. She moved the oscilloscope probes to various checkpoints on the digital section and the beautiful sinusoidal and square waves appeared on the screen. At the analog sections, although they had been buggy, Shieng almost screamed when that same, wicked, crooked smiley face appeared on the scope. No matter where she placed the probes on the analog output section, it was the same. An idea wandered into her, and she disconnected the DAC from the power supply. She took out her multimeter and checked all the resistances. Odd, the resistances were good, and then as she homed in on the last possible checkpoint, the meter's hand swung insanely. Aha! There was a short from a protruding wire and a large solder blob. Taking the hot soldering iron next to her and a piece of copper solder ribbon, she blotted the metallic lump until it was no longer shorting the circuit. The choking-sweet smell of solder and resin filled her nostrils again, but it had a hint of foulness to her. The ring was growing hot on her finger as it never did before, but resolved to at least get the device working, she ignored it. For the next twelve hours, Shieng was perfecting her DAC, making sure it met or exceeded the specifications the professor had set. An inductor here, adjusting a resistor there, setting a bit high, making another low. She could feel the joy in bringing a device to life by her own hands, and as far as she was concerned, nobody else existed in the lab. If she could get this thing working exactly as she wanted to, she would be done with her project three or even four weeks early. Finally, she machined a blue lucite case for her circuit in the machine shop. By sunset, she had a functioning DAC that she could use to convert the digital output from her CD player into analog output to her speakers. She capered wildly as she made her ascent into the surface world. Shieng climbed into her dorm's guardtower and faced westward to watch the last of the sunset. She heaved a heavy sigh as memories of hiking and redwood forests flooded into her mind, but at least she finished her project! Once the last of the sun's scarlet and amber fires faded into ultramarine shadows, she descended from the tower, stowed the DAC in her room, and went outside to enjoy some fresh air, or at least an approximation of it. The moon was rising again, and suddenly she remembered. The ring glowed with a blinding blue light, as did the dagger. Instead of falling to all fours as she did before, she stood upright, her muscles bulging and her senses sharpened. A reflection from a mirror someone haed left revealed a lupine face staring back at her with silver fur and very human eyes. Except for her hands and posture, she was a wolf! She drew the dagger, now with a life of its own, and followed the enchantment to her destination -- the tree she had visited the last two nights. The southern complexes were still bustling with life and music. Hiding behind the tree, Shieng faced the moon, howled, then charged at the lone target that had wandered outside on his way to an evening class. Daniel paused a moment to tie his shoelaces when he noticed a silver blur charging at him. Adjusting his glasses, he saw that the blur was a wolf-like being with a dagger in its hand. The creature pounced on him and pinned him down before he could flee. The dagger was aimed straight at his heart, now racing in pure terror. He closed his eyes, and heard the dagger strike something, but much to his surprise, it wasn't him. It was the ground, and he felt the weight on his body disappear. He looked this way and that for the werewolf, but there was no sign, except for a bluish-grey, insubstantial mist. In the distance, he heard a wolf howl mournfully as if asking for forgiveness. I have failed to redeem myself in your eyes and in the eyes of the people. But I chose to do so, for I have found redemption elsewhere -- through forgiveness and guiding a lost soul through life. I shall not enter the Neverending Wilds with my ancestors. Instead, I will remain here and forge my own path in life. You, innocent one, have worked hard to redeem yourself in the eyes of the Eternal Huntress and in your own as well. You have triumphed over much, including your desire for vengeance, but you have only begun your journey. Soon, you will have a quest bestowed upon you. This is only the beginning? I thought I have already redeemed myself through forgiveness. There is still a rift deep inside you, one that will destroy you if you do not work to mend it. Perhaps redemption is not a poor term -- for the quest that awaits you is one to save yourself. I shall not speak more of it -- you must find it for yourself. What must I save myself from? You know what you must do. Listen to your heart and be true to yourself, then all of the answers will come to you when you search. Like almost every other morning, Shieng found herself in her den, but the ring and dagger were gone. The DAC was still there in its pale blue lucite case. She looked at herself in her mirror to find that she could still smile and that the forces of time decided to delete a few of its marks from her face. A leather-bound book and the small metal cross were peeking from her camouflage green backpack. The cross shone in the dawn's meek pinkish-gold light, and she put the chain around her neck again. Her eyes scanned through the book. Hope and the next adventure were in sight.