I had woken Rethi only an hour or two after the sun rose. The boy needed rest even if he was sturdy; if he went into battle tired, then his injuries would fall on my head.

This was likely as much a test of our physical and fighting capabilities as how well we manage ourselves out in the field. Resources were scarce and sleep was hard to get a lot of, or in a good quality. The only real upside to all of this was that I could totally rise above any of those needs, allowing for those that travelled with me time to rest and relax with minimal fear that anything would happen.

If anything did happen, then I was there to deal with it first.

The boy was getting ready, putting on rudimentary protective gear that wasn’t really armour. It was a lot of tough clothing that was flexible enough to not restrict the boy’s movements. I myself didn’t wear armour. There was no real need to. If I did wear armour, past just generally protective clothing, then it’d have to be magical in some way, maybe give me strength or something. As of now, how quick I could move, and the preciseness of my movements was truly paramount.

“Nervous?” I asked idly. The boy gave the barest nod, his face stoic.

“Same.” I said, smile resting on my face. The boy looked up at me sceptically and I returned the look. “Rethi, I’ve only ever killed one other thing, and I almost died last time.” Rethi pondered while he finished up adding the protective padding to his assortment of protective gear.

“But you could survive anything that these wolves could do to you.” I nodded in agreement.

“Sure I can. Doesn’t make me any less nervous though.” Rethi looked down into the dirt, examining the toe of his shoe with a sudden ferocity. “Just because I know I can do something doesn’t make it any less nerve wracking. Especially when it matters.”

“This is just another training exercise though?” Rethi questioned, I snorted amusedly.

“Mayer said to us pretty clearly that traders were being attacked along this road and weren’t making it to the town. It’s more than a test or training, Rethi. This is people’s lives.” Rethi and I made eye contact, a seriousness washing over us.

“This is the beginning, isn’t it?” I just nodded, the task of moving a mountain starts with but a pebble.

“Have you said goodbye to Alena?” Rethi looked at me, his eyes full of iron.

“No need. I’ll be back.” I nodded. She would be angry with him, but maybe that eventuality is better for him than making a promise and never coming back. I began to walk towards the road, a mental map forming of where I wanted to enter the forest a few kilometres down the trail.

Rethi followed me, sheathed sword at his side. A truly sharp and entirely deadly sword this time around. Rethi’s hand rested on the hilt of the sword and as we drew closer and closer to the location we had reached the previous day, his grip tightened on the pommel.

“We’re here.” I said, standing in front of a particularly large opening in the trees, an open maw to our anxious minds.

“Forest wolves are nocturnal, I think. They rest in open areas in large groups during the day, soaking in the sun. We are looking for an area without canopy covering.” Rethi nodded in acknowledgement. We stood in front of the gaping maw of the woods, steeling ourselves to what laid within, the battle and finally the return.

I just hope that we are able to return sooner rather than later.

Without a word I began to move into the forest, the shade quickly covering my body, hiding me from the bright sunlight and plunging me into a much dimmer world. The air inside of the forest was still excellent, just like it had been the first day I arrived on Virsdis.

The air and the feeling of the forest was electric. Maybe it was because of the way that I perceived the environment, overlaying it with how I felt inside, projecting the uneasy emotions. But this feeling was different.

There was a nervousness in the air that pervaded my thoughts. Maybe it was my natural empathy? I wasn’t sure, but it was worrying me. I had thought last night that there was something driving the wolves towards the fringes of the forest, but something that made enough beings nervous within the forest such that I could feel all their anxiousness in tandem was very worrying to me.

We walked through the forest, keeping mindful of how loud our steps were, making sure to get a good look of most angles before taking a path forwards through the increasingly dense forest.

Me nor Rethi had trained our ability to sneak around, but there was a certain amount you learned by simply practicing in footwork and just learning to be mindful of where you stepped. Something that wasn’t at all as difficult as it seemed when it came down to it, especially in comparison to something like the Sharah.

I began to hear things off in the distance, and Rethi seemed to as well. Small growls and yipping could be heard from beyond the few layers of trees that stood in front of us. It was noticeably brighter, bleeding through the various obstructions that laid in its way.

I turned to Rethi, giving him a gaze of warning and received a nod in response, and we proceeded further, taking extra care of each step, approaching to what seemed to be the resting spot. Wolves were more likely to smell us before they heard us, but we could only hope that not giving them any more sensory input would help with not being discovered and sooner than need be.

It was only a few seconds until we reached a girthier tree that block sight from the opening in front of us, a clear hole in the canopy above shining the light through this opening in the forest.

I took a peek around the girth of the tree and saw the collection of at least eleven. It immediately became obvious that they were starved, clearly exhausted. They had a few young with them, who were being fed by one of the adult wolves, yipping and playing, fighting over the strip of meat they had been given.

The rest of the pack were sleeping, shifting ever so slightly in their sleep. I looked to Rethi, seeing him nervously look out to the group of wolves. I tapped him gently on the shoulder and pointed out towards the group of wolves with a commanding expression. His face blanched, but he managed to steel himself to the anxiety. I counted down, with my fingers. Three, two, one.

Then we sprung from cover, moving forward at a speed that we had rarely reached when training. I took only a few steps before I was standing above the sleeping form of my first victim. There was no time to contemplate their deaths, or the morality of killing them. This was a battle, and in a battle, decisions were split second, without the limitations of anything but self-preservation and your goal. I raised my foot, the eye of the wolf only just opening from its sleep, and I stomped my foot down on the poor creature’s neck with enough force to create a terrible crunching sound, an instant death.

Rethi had managed to do similar with his first victim, though he had simply drawn his sword and slid it in between the ribs of the beast, letting out a squealing sound signalling the end of its life. I just about cringed before a growl came from my immediate left. I managed to turn to look at the beast that was trying to go for my ankle, likely to try and pull me down, but I simply whipped my foot out and kicked it with a large amount of force to the thing’s jaw, a crack of bone dislodging, the feeling of the bone bending and cracking across my foot.

It was a disturbing feeling, but another point of information I was able to collect. The blow had destroyed the wolf’s jaw and most of the left side of its skull. It had been well and truly knocked out, if not outright killed. I moved forwards toward the group of wolves in front of me.

I made efficient work of it, not allowing myself to slow down to think about the killing, and turning my brain off and allowing it to simply allow me to dance between the waking beasts and swiftly kicking each one once in the skull. I continued reproducing that first kick over and over, making it a rote attack, only rarely having to stray from the predetermined attack I would use.

In one such case, two wolves thought themselves smart and jumped at my sides, attacking at the same time. Likely to only allow me to tackle one at a time while the other would tear me to shreds. Though, I simply grabbed both of the wolves by the throat and made a fist in their flesh, the fur and skin giving way underneath the strength of my hand, easing my fingers deeper into their flesh and then quickly tearing out their throats with my bare hands.

I didn’t stop to see if they were dead, I didn’t need to. Each wolf I killed was dead in a single hit. I wouldn’t let them live a single moment longer than they had to with the extreme pain that I was sure to be giving them. It was when I reached the pups that I stopped. I had killed eight of the wolves, Rethi was still fighting with the last adult wolves, taking only a smidgen longer to kill half of what I did.

I looked down at the pups, mewling at their dead. I felt the moral person within me experience a piercing pain like nothing I had ever felt before. But the me who was now in control knew that this was the way of this world and the only way that many could survive.

Some would have told me that killing those pups were the only reasonable choice. They might rationalise it from their armchairs, explaining that the forest wolves were vermin, that their attacks on humans were reason enough for them to be exterminated.

But as I looked down at the pups on the floor of the forest, one desperately nipping at my ankle, another nuzzling one of the adult wolves and the rest simply cowering, I decided that I couldn’t let that mentality overtake me.

At first it was the wolves, exterminating them for the good of the town, for those that travelled to and from in their business. Then it was the opposition in a war. It was a scared farmer boy who was all but forced to join the army, a spear thrust into his hands and told to give his life for the crown, deceived with illusions of a grand adventure and an honourable battle.

I imagined myself standing on the battlefield, looking into a trench that was hastily dug, and looking in to see five terrified boys, cowering away from a man who could either kill them in a moment, or pass them by and allow them to live.

Maybe it was idyllic. Maybe it was going to get me killed.

But I wasn’t sure I cared.

I extended my aura of safety for the first time in battle, quickly mollifying the poor beasts. I reached down towards the growling pup that had been attacking my ankle. It resisted against my touch, but before long it leaned into it.

It was after which began the mourning wails. The little beasts laying down, pacified by the safety aura that surrounded me, began to mourn those of their pack who had been lost to our hands. I heard the soft footsteps of Rethi approach me.

“What’s wro–” the boy began, but interrupted himself, staring down into the small group of pups and wailed for their lost ones.

“Look.” I growled at him in a commanding tone. The boy carefully looked towards the keening pups.

“This is the beginning. The start of what we do. We leave them alive, realising that it is a poor decision tactically. We know that enemies that we slay will have friends, and we will always leave them alive in the off chance that they survive and thrive despite the risk. We will commit ourselves to the unreasonable decision of sparing the son and knowing that he will return to avenge the father. Am I understood?” Rethi didn’t need to nod, a wave of accepting sadness resonated through me.

The moment left as I walked away from the pups, back into the forested areas, receding into the darkness once again, seeking another enemy to lay waste to with a heavy heart.

I knew, then and there, that the wails of those pups would never leave my ears. I would hear those wails in every pained cry, every person slain. It would haunt me as an ever-repeating lesson, a disparagement against my own morality that broke and reformed so completely that day.

I sighed, the boy beside me doing the same.

It was no matter.

We moved through the forest with a newfound and bloody confidence.

Our work was not done.