Well, now. How did that happen? The fifteen Wyldlings had crossed the bridge, the excitement had passed and the bodies of the Snake Clan scouts, those that did not have the misfortune to be ripped to shreds by the White Beast, had been disposed of without throwing them down the chasm, which we knew to be somewhat of a goal of the Bloodbraid. We denied him even the little victory of getting his pet wyrmspawn fed by us.

So how did we get here? The two groups had naturally separated themselves, as I was still busy greeting and thanking Cogar, as we clasped our forearms. Now Cogar and I stood in the middle of two very battle-ready groups of people of two races, staring each other down in mistrust and barely hidden resentment.

I saw the grim warriors of the Wyldlings, I say warriors but knew them to be everything but trained warriors, nervously grasping their weapons, which were cobbled together sticks, rocks, and bows, as well as a few scavenged scraps of metal. They looked as if unsure how to react and turned to aggression and promise of violence to cover up their diplomatic insufficiencies.

The humans on the other hand stared the Wyldlings down, a lifetime of fighting the age-old foe, losing the Empire to the likes of them fresh in their memory, as was the loss of all they had held dear to them…the air was loaded. Manus had a manic grin on his face, confidently inspecting the Wyldlings as if deciding who to eviscerate first.

“Why don’t you wipe that silly smile off your face, little man, or do you want me to slap it off for you?” Cogar suddenly growled beside me, turning to the [Guardian Knight].

“Cogar?! A word?” I said loudly, trying to calm Manus with open palms and an apologetic smile.

Cogar bent down to me a little. “What?” He asked innocently.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I whispered angrily.

“Gront has told me that I need to establish dominance early with humans, or they would never respect me. He is the only one who has ever seen a human that was not in chains.”

“You have met me, you stupid oaf!”

“Well, you clearly were the runt of your litter and different from the others. Obviously insane as well.”

I punched him in the shoulder. Hard. Felt like punching a sack of grain. “Pull yourself together, man. Those men and women have lost a lot and have nothing but their honor left. Gront is obviously an idiot and you better show your diplomatic face or I’ll throw you down that giant hole behind you.”

He smiled at me, not bothered by my anger at all, then straightened up again, suspiciously very interested in trying to remove a piece of yarn from his leather vest. He seemed to think for a moment, then he looked up at the humans with an apologetic look on his face.

“Errr…greetings, human warriors. Please forgive me for any offense I have caused. I am Cogar Firehand, Chosen of Bear, [Chieftain of the Bear Clan] and I not only come in peace, I come bearing arms and bringing the strongest of my clan to fight a foe you have in common with the Raven, brother in spirit to myself and clanmate to the rest.” He did that thing with his voice, the calm, precise and flowing intonations that made him so easy to listen to.

He nodded to each human in turn, inspecting them seriously as if to measure their worth and finding them acceptable to be part of the war party of his sworn brother.

“Don’t speak for me, Firehand.” Kara suddenly spoke up, stepping into the circle. “I have not joined the Bear, if he even is alive as you claim, I only feel the absence of his voice.”

She turned to the humans with an intense stare, her eyes wide open, her hand thoughtlessly combing through her short hair. I saw now that she was the only one present not to wear a Dragonamber amulet. They had opted to bring one more warrior instead.

“The song of the Wyld sings about the hole in your souls, where nothing but the thirst for violence lives. Good.” She grinned. “Your thirst is true, your rage not closed away but just withheld. Can you feel it beating in my heart as well? They beat in the same rhythm; the war drums call us to the same fight. I care not for your hate of me. I care not for your resentment, your petty mistrust, or the fact that you are humans. We will find a spawn of darkness and kill him. That is all I care about and all I ask of you.”

“That is a sentiment I can get behind.” Zora snorted. “Let’s kill ourselves a bastard. Diplomacy can happen afterwards. Or a fight, I don’t care.”

Kara smiled a half-smile, apparently surprised in truth. “Oh. You really don’t.”

“For fucks sake!” I growled fuming. “Get moving. You guys are unbelievable. There to the left. Up that slope. Walk that anger off while we make some way towards our goal.”

Cogar repeated the order in his own language to his people. I watched them move, still divided into two groups, as I fell in with Cogar at the rear, catching up on the events of the last months. And I felt the burn mark in my hand pulse, as it had never done before, marching at the side of my sworn brother, as if it were calling out to its twin on Cogar’s his palm.

We only talked briefly about the things that did not matter. He told me that he had been allowed to bring a comparatively large group of his people to the protection of the Mad King, but the protection would only last two days. Which were gone already. We were short on time to save the rest of them from the madness and the bodily changes of the Wyld. They had put everything they had on this one card. We made a decision then and there.

Cogar yelled a name, Bagga, and we stopped. I got out my chest and collected most of the bags and satchels we had among us, filling them up with Dragonamber from my chest. The Wyldling got instructed by Cogar to return to the Mad King with as much haste as he could, to hand out all the Dragonamber to the Wyldlings in peril. We might die the next days. But we would have a couple of hundred souls less on our conscience if we did barter for an afterlife. Cogar clearly was relieved, he really was a leader of these people, even if it meant to lessen his own chances of survival by one potent warrior, and potent they were. None of them had been a warrior, but everyone was level 20 and above, and thus capable of changing into their [Battle Forms].

As we resumed our trek the excitement began to boil in our bones. This was it. The last walk. No more detours. No more odds and ends to collect, tasks to fulfill, things to do, that could occupy my mind. We were marching toward the end. Whose end I could not confidently predict.

Which meant it was my last chance to connect to my new Skill. I had tried to experiment with [Unchained Ancestors] the nights before. And it was very similar to [a Flock of Souls], drawing on the same Dogma of souls, even functioning kind of similarly. But where I knew the souls of my people to be, at the edge of my conscience always watching me, there was nothing that responded to me when I tried to reach something with [Unchained Ancestors]. Just a cold void I was unable to enter. If entering was even what I was supposed to do. I tried calling out with my mind, probing the void, looking for weak spots or secrets…nothing.

I had tried everything. Everything but one last thing I could do.

So, we sat around the campfires, which Cogar had been very particular in arranging, telling stories, or staring into the fire. Overly jovial or serious. As every night before a battle was, depending on how the person dealt with the stress.

Cogar sat at my side closest to the fire, eyes closed and in deep concentration, his breast rising evenly. I waited calmly until he opened them again.

“I’m doing something stupid.” I said to him and smiled, knowing what was to come.

“It’s no fun if you do it to yourself. Let me insult you, then we both get something out of it.” He growled.

“Watch me, brother. If anything is off…knock me out.”

He nodded. “All right.”

“That’s it? I thought I would need to convince you.”

“I want to knock you out. Go ahead.” He grinned.

I grinned back, but I felt a little uneasy inside.

I activated [Unchained Ancestors]. And I felt the void, where I so desperately had hoped to find my ancestors to connect to. Nothing. Just to be safe, I searched again, prodded again. Then I did the stupid thing.

Instead of reaching out...I opened up myself.

Instantly a wave of hellish cold washed through my soul, tearing my thoughts down, breaking the walls around my mind. Time froze. Then something touched me at my very being.

Cold, pure hatred.

The back of my head slapped against the rock I had been sitting against. I opened my eyes as my body shuddered under the cold I had believed to be real. Or was it the hate? Another spasm shook my spine as I recalled the sensation.

Cogar leaned above me, his right claw still balled to a fist.

“What happened? I felt…cold, then you were shaking like a tree in a storm and I punched you.”

“You felt it too?” I gasped, sliding close to the fire under the strange looks from everyone around me, trying to get some warmth. “I’m all right! Just a test. Peace!” I said to the Wounded Pride, who had half drawn their weapons already, ready to pounce on the chieftain.

“What are you doing?” Manus frowned.

“I have a Skill I had to try out before tomorrow. Looks like I won’t be using it.”

“You better not. That looked awful.” Zora added.

The Bickering continued for a couple of minutes until it grew silent around the fire.

“Now I am about to do something strange. Please do not punch me.” Cogar smiled mischievously and then sighed, straightening himself until he sat as straight as an arrow, legs crossed under him, hands on his knees, palm up. He nodded to Kara, who sat beside him. She nodded back, inhaling deeply, and grabbed a small drum covered with a light fur. She began beating a simple rhythm with her thumb.

At first just to catch our attention, but as the conversations stopped around her, she sped up the rhythm, and upped the complexity of the beat, until she was moving with it, swaying with it, being one with the rhythm. And the fires answered, moving with her.

Around us, the Wyldlings knew their part. It was easy enough. Clap or stomp at the right moment and you had the crowd going in what was a mesmerizing sense of togetherness around a campfire in the wilderness. I fell into it rather quickly, but I had let my walls of reservations down around Cogar a long time ago. The other humans did not participate immediately, but I saw a finger or foot twitch with the rhythm.

Suddenly Kara threw her head back, eyes rolling in her head, the manic beating of the drum taking over the basic rhythm the other Wyldlings still held. She howled, screamed, her noise and chaos weaving in and out of the rhythm, taunting it, supporting it.

Cogar stood up to his full height. Dropped his fingers into a clay pot he had taken out if his satchel. I knew it. The warpaint. He drew the lines and swirls across his face, sky-blue color contrasting with his fur and dark complexity.

“I am the unchallenged apex predator. First Hunter of the Wyld. I am Chosen of Bear, I challenged a Spirit Beast and won.” He roared into the night and more importantly into the fire. Then he repeated the sentence in his own language.

The Wyldlings around us howled in answer, screamed, barked, and yapped. Then Kara stepped up to the fire, still beating her rhythm, which was resonating in all of us, vibrating in our souls, bringing out the wild side of us, however deep it may have been hidden.

“Do you lay claim to your prey, first hunter?” She yelled.

“I do!” Cogar answered. Stomp. Stomp. Stomp. The burn mark that bound me to my brother burned anew. It was actually hot to the touch, but the pain never reached my consciousness. It was more like another source of excitement that flooded through my system.

Kara took the pot of clay out of the hands of the [Chieftain of the Bear Clan] and moved around, while the others held the rhythm, me included. She came over to me, first among the rest, as brother of the chieftain, and painted my face with the sky-blue paint. She bent down, whispering into my ear: “[Warpaint of the Hunter]. May the spirits hunt beside you. May the pack protect you as you protect the pack.”

Then she went around. Just two or three lines, drawn with her finger onto the face of each one of us, but together the warpaint looked everything but silly. It transformed the group into a cohesive unit, all feeling the same wild, vigorous drive coursing through our veins. Excitement spread around as the rhythm grew faster and faster, as more joined the group. Even the humans took part in it. Kara did not let them reject her, and they tried half-heartedly, if at all, anyways. Their paint was subtle, though. Who would have thought that Kara even knew what subtlety was?

It was done and the group howled like wolves, myself included. The other humans not so much.

“I claim my prey.” Cogar shouted again. “And I invoke my right as spiritual challenger and Chosen of Bear. Who dares to defy my claim? Who dares to speak up?” He went around, shouting at the painted warriors, fixating them with wild and challenging eyes, daring them to speak up. No one did.

“I call on you, men and women of the Wyld! I call on you as [Pack of the Unchallenged Hunter]. Run with me at first light. Hunt with me until the night falls. Rest now, for tomorrow we only stop to kill. I call on you! What do you say?” Cogar shouted.

Together as one, we roared our answer into the fires, which flared up to the heavens in turn, burning bright and clear, throwing dancing light across our painted faces.