Gula POV

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"Shit" I said under my breath, on both sides of the tunnel were the two Frojan we left behind clutching at their stomachs with an arrow in them.

Unfortunately, The mage leading the operation wasn't a gloating idiot like the redhead from before.

"It wasn't just Frojan, kill them and that thing!" The blond man in grey leather armor shouted, his green eye and sharp features made for a handsome face but those smooth green eyes showed fear rather than confidence.

The archers were several yards farther back with only the flames to illuminate them in the dark night. The mages were considerably closer but the archers already had their bows knocked with arrows. They fired at our new 'leader' without a moment's hesitation. It already had a hand up and as the arrows flew at us, they suddenly veered off course to the right and seven arrows pin cushioned two of the mages while the other arrows slammed into the dirt.

"Tch. I guess I should be grateful they let me get the spell off at all" The demon said under its breath as we all charged forward.

"M-Metal magic! It has metal magic!" The blond mage said with a hint of hysteria in his voice. But he still pulled out his sword as he and the other two mages charged forward. I saw the plant demon throw another stone thing towards the archers who were just staring confused at what they had seen.

The blond mage summoned water blades to cut us but the Frojan used their water magic to try and control the water, rendering the sharp blades into a harmless mist. The other two mages were a mace wielding brown-haired man with brown eyes and a nasty scar across his ugly jaw while the other was a skinny man with smooth black hair and green eyes who brandished two daggers.

The mace wielding mage went straight for me. His first move was to put up his hand and throw a wall of fire towards me. The Frojan behind me tried to get up a water shield in time, but they weren't fast enough. A tongue of flame managed to slip past the shield and sent searing pain along my elbow and forearm. As I dropped my sword despite my best efforts to get past the agony, the mage turned on the enchantments in his mace and a tongue of flame shot out of it to twirl behind my rear. The flames kept the Frojan back while he took a quick swing at me. I used a feint to the right, but this mage must have been a real veteran to obtain such combat mastery of his magic because another fireball shot from his shoulder towards my head.

I tried to move out of the way, but that only threw me off balance. The mage used the opportunity to take a good swing into my side, sending me flying and fracturing my rib cage. When I landed the pain was excruciating, leaving me only the barest inkling of vision as the rest of my brain lit up with all the ways my body was broken.

The only thing in my sight was the blond mage getting cut in half with the demons' wooden arm blades. My vision flickered when my head turned down from my own lack of energy as I saw the Frojan moving towards the other two mages.

Cold.

It got cold and I felt the energy in my veins receding as I struggled to breathe. As my thoughts of bitter regret and anguish at the injustices I had suffered all my life crowded the last moments of my mind's precious time, there was a new sense of warmth enveloping me.

Despite my increasing vigor, my vision was still blackened, but then I realized I was staring off into the night sky. Looking down I saw the Frojan standing around the mage with two daggers who had some foam about his mouth, clearly haven taken the special poison pill that all the male mages had here. The specialty of this pill was not only to instantly kill the person who took it, but it also destroyed the seed in the men's bodies, a fact we had discovered to great frustration over the years. I noticed someone to my left and my head jerked to them only to find the fire mage with his mace laying in the charred grass a good three feet away.

Or rather I saw his body. His head was not anywhere to be seen.

I quickly felt around my side and sure enough, the leather armor was torn but the skin underneath was good as new. Baloo walked up to me and put out a dark green webbed hand.

"Thanks, I didn't think the new healing herb poultices were that effective," I said as I got back on my feet and went to pick up my sword that was laying in the grass. I looked back over the left side of the field through the bunkers' windows. Apparently no one else noticed us in this mess as far as I could tell.

"Bah. If they could fix a mess that bad it would be a Frojan's ass sitting in the presidents' chair. The demon used a spell to heal you and the two watchers, even after the dual-wielding mage threw a boulder in his face." Baloo said casually as he walked back towards the group of Frojan who were now maintaining a watch past the end of the two bunkers. I came up to the demon who was interrogating one of the archers on the ground.

"I don't know, I'm tellin ya, I don't know." the archer sobbed as his brown hair soaked into the mud and he clutched at a wound in his side. The demon just kicked him over onto the other archers lying injured from bad cuts in the dirt. When I got closer to the vine monster I noticed something about the left side of the demons deer skull.

The left side of its face was cracked open and I could now see a jaw along the left side of its face. A human jaw. I stared at him, numb and... was I feeling hurt?

"W-why did you heal me?" I asked, stuck between anger and fear as I backed off with a hand to my sword. The night was still dark from the clouds and the soft fires only illuminated his outline.

"Generally speaking, I don't like leaving living things to suffer or even inflicting pain unless they're actively a threat. Eating meat is the only exception, though more out of my own desires than any profound moral judgment," He said casually as he put up his right hand and a tongue of flame washed over the archers. As they screamed in agony, I noticed the man's movements. There was no hesitation or restricted movements that would typically come from internal conflict as he burned his fellow man to a crisp.

"Um... I... I don't understand." I said plainly, looking at the writhing mass of burning men on the ground and going over what had sounded like a very non-sarcastic statement in my mind.

"Huh?" He said as he turned to me, the eyes of his helmet offering no glimpse of the man within even as the stream of fire coming out of his right hand continued to blow flames of the pile of bodies.

"Oh, these ones. They're bandits and bandits aren't people or even alive. They're just... corpses I haven't met yet." He said, punctuating the last part. When the bodies stopped moving he turned off the stream of fire and just stood there in seeming thought for a few moments.

"What is your name?" He asked casually as his head turned back towards me.

"Gula," I said, still not entirely comprehending the conversation I was having.

"Gula," He said as if committing the word to memory.

"I wish you well, and who knows? I may need to work with you again in the future. Where would I find you if I wanted a more... long term partnership?" He asked in a light-hearted tone.

I thought about it for a moment then decided that if he wanted me dead he wouldn’t have healed me.

"Depends, typically I'm in the north hunting or I'm here helping on special missions. I expect I'll be moved outback north after this." I said respectfully.

He gave a slight nod before he turned around and inspected the pile of bodies. Seemingly satisfied, he lowered himself before he jumped onto the roof of the bunker facing the forts main entrance. I saw the vines lift over the side of the roof before I heard another rush of air as he took off.

"What now?" Baloo asked as he walked closer.

"You know what all this means, right?" I asked him, my hand still gripping my sword.

"Hey now, we're Frojan and the higher-ups made it very clear we are no to get mixed up in that side of the war," Baloo said as he put up his hands defensively, his deep rumbling voice showing minimal interest in the subject.

This war was one of territory, supply lines, troop movements and bragging rights, but underneath that was THE war. Ever present and always on the minds of orcs everywhere, THE war was not on a map, it had no infrastructure to be supported nor any forts and the only title worth fighting over was but one: Mage.

Our entire species was in a constant struggle for access to the seed of a caster, or if the wildest fantasies of our dreams should come to pass, a scion. Out here, male mages were only ever allowed behind the largest forts with the sturdiest walls. Even so, it was a testament to orc power and ferocity that they had been forced to bring them out here at all.

But the Frojan had no such imperative. Sure, early on in the alliance the Frojan would help us try to get mages, but after considerable losses and the fact that male mages never left any but the most well-fortified positions eventually pushed the Frojan to consider it a purely orc problem. More than that, there was the issue of who was to blame if a male mage got away, so, they washed their hands of the whole thing.

Another, politely unspoken, motivation was that they didn't want us getting too powerful. After all, once allies outgrow their fellows they too can fall to the growing ambitions of their former compatriots.

"So, what now?" Baloo asked, coming up to look past the windows.

"We do our job," I said coldly as I went past the bunker closer to the wall with the rest of my squad in tow. The other side of the camp was still burning but a few halls had been quenched and the staircase on the far left that lead up to the top of the wall was a frenzy of humans moving up it. A lot of men were running back and forth and hadn't seemed to notice us yet.

This was mostly due to the fact that a large number of orcs were fighting along the battlements as the men packed on the staircase leading up the top to the left of the mess of halls trying to get in a shot with their bows or replace their comrades who perished. The wall was so high up that the dark night was only reliably lit up with the occasional torch as the glow of the flaming buildings danced across its lower side so it was hard to tell who was winning and where but the occasional bolt of flame or rock going off telling me the mages were fighting as well but we were in among them now and they couldn't just blast us off the wall without hitting their allies.

We rushed into the haphazard mess of buildings and attacked the water mages and bandits, my sense of smell had almost grown numb to the smell of smoke and charred bodies as I ran over the now scorched grass.

"Men, get back towards our side. Repeat. All men get your fucking asses back to the halls." I saw that the source was a black-haired woman with a long face standing on the top of staircase leading up to the battlements on the wall. She surveyed the carnage passively and made sure to stand to the side to allow troops to reinforce the walls in various positions. But her predatory green eyes went wide underneath her grey cloak when she saw me move from behind one of the wooden buildings to stab a bandit through the throat. The rest of the Frojan scattered among the building and got in a few shots at the men coming up to the wall with flying water blades.

"The Vanguard failed! Form up around the stairs." She said as she moved down on to the ground with air magic as she drew her bow. Unfortunately for her, a lot of the buildings were still on fire and she couldn't use her magic as she hunted us without making it worse or further spreading the fire.

The poor woman didn't know that this game was second nature to outcasts like us. As she lead a squad through the buildings to flush us out, one of us would pop out to let loose a volley of water blades. It injured one of her lackeys badly enough that they had to leave with a guard of two others. The lack of planning in the halls construction also came into effect.

If they had been built in neat rows we may not have had much of a chance, but they had been built in the 'wherever it fits' fashion from weeks and months of unexpected additions. This allowed us to bob and weave in between the smoke and get off cheap shots in the odd bends of the road and blindspots from views obstructed by the occasional odd jutting corner or out house just like in the forests we had gotten so much practice in.

The commander was damn good with her bow and nearly got me and several others a few times. But she was trying to stay back enough so that she could still give orders and keep an eye on the wall. That kept her from being effective and she couldn't spare too many troops to play catch with us.

I can't say how long we hunted and were in turn hunted but at some point, the arrows from the wall stopped aiming at us and started aiming at the men. It was pandemonium as the smoke blinded everything and orcs stampeded down the stairs. I assume at some point the commander was either killed or ran off but when I tag-teamed a group of three scared, confused bandits with Baloo in the wider middle road in between the burning halls, the fighting kind of just stopped. One of them took a water blade to the throat and another took my sword in the heart. As I shoved the dead man off my weapon I looked over the corpses and took in the scenery from behind the upturned cart I had used to ambush them.

There were no humans around.

Still holding my sword in my hand, I looked back towards the bunkers and sure enough, there were just a bunch of orcs milling about the place. There was a minute of almost pure silence as I took in the crackling of the burning wood and the soft wind until a peal of great booming laughter resounded out back towards the staircase.

"Hot damn, ladies. By the bastards beard, we did it!" The commander said, a slight cut bleeding along her left cheek. A roar of approval resounded through the fort as the orcs smashed axes against their shields and yelled to the sky in victory as they stood upon the corpses of dead foes or in the few remaining halls that had yet to be burned.

I felt like my heart was being tugged on by a thousand different loyalties. If it came out that I let a caster getaway, they very well might kill me for my cowardice. That the blood of my grandmother flowed through my veins would settle any doubts about my selfishness in not trying to bring him in. But he was at least a dual element mage and such a sire for our species would be invaluable. Was it not my duty as an orc to bring him in no matter the personal cost to me?

"All right, Frojan get to work bringing down the walls. The rest of you lot get out scouting the roads and taking out anyone coming to check up on the place." The commander said as she made her way down the stairs as she swung her big axe to a merry tune.

I quickly made my way towards the middle by the two ruined bunkers. The thought of explaining the dead mages flashed in my mind before I looked at the two heaps of woods and ash. The bunkers had collapsed outwards with the wall of the burnt building covering the mage who had been smashed with the mages stone slab and the mages by the cave were somewhere in the pile of burnt ashes. While the men who had been cut to pieces with the mages helmet fire looked indistinguishable from the men we killed with the water blades after the grass had caught aflame and cooked the bloody chunks.

"Hey, I saw him too late and didn't know he was human." A deep voice whispered to my left. I turned to see it was Baloo. His blue robe had several cuts and he had a few burns on his arms but he would be good as new in a few days.

"What?" I asked him as I looked around. No one was around us besides the other orcs who were passing through and chatting with no regard to the rejects they were walking by.

"I know you're conflicted about the guy, so I can just say I thought he was a pandigo, pandeegoth-"

"Pandego," I corrected.

"Yeah, that. and I didn't know that it was a human. That way we can give the commander the report but you didn't see the chipped deer skull, so that would give you the cover to explain why you let him go." Baloo offered as he did a slow walk with me towards the wall of the entrance. The other Frojan were already there, pushing water in cracks or forming new ones with spells to help bring the wall down. When the spells worked on the walls it looked like what happens when a river runs over a boulder long enough only sped up several dozen times.

"I'll think about it," I said as I stood back with my arms crossed and looked out over the troops whooping and cheering as they went out through the gate onto the road.

"He offered to work with us in the future," I said mildly as I breathed in the fresh air rolling in over the hill as the last few faint wisps of smoke gently wafted up into the air overhead.

Baloo gave a low whistle. "Damn, to think we may actually win this thing. With the way he tore through mages we'll be in the capital before long," He said excitedly.

"Baloo, he was clearly insane," I reprimanded him.

"Eh, he's got issues, but we can't be too picky. Besides, he healed you and two of our guys so he’s already done more for us than any of our own kind ever have. " He said with a shrug.

I huffed as I walked over past the wall out onto the road. After a good hour of keeping watch, the wall creaked ominously. This was something the Frojan had great practice and experience in, so I left them to it. But a few minutes later the Frojan backed off and pressed against the wall with a big ball of water. After a few more of these pushes the wall teetered as it gradually leaned out into the road. As larger and larger cracks started running up the smooth surface the thing finally gave way as a mini landslide of stone came thundering down on the road in a loud crash.

It took a while to do the other parts of the wall as certain points had been reinforced to make it solid enough to support a staircase, but in time the only thing left of the fort was 4 staircases leading to nowhere and the husks of buildings, all of which had now been either completely burned or re-ignited.

We traveled back into the forest and as we walked along the well-known and lesser-known tracks in the woods, the whole place was alight with the gleeful songs and battle cries of orcs. It was as close to a party atmosphere as any I could recall. Along the way home I even saw several bands of orcs drink and sing openly in the woods while the few human patrols were either running back towards the main fort in a panicked stampede or didn't seem to get the news yet and were nervously looking about the woods as orcs sung songs of victory and reveled in our triumph.

When we got closer to the swamp, the boys and I parted ways at a line of spiked heads overlooking the murky water. I made my way through my typical route of tall grasses and patches of semistable- dirt until I got home.

It was a one-story house with a grass roof and a hard dirt floor. The walls were made up of hard mud bricks and logs with a window in the right side of the main section, the left and right sides of the house being rooms for me and my mother. Coming through the rickety door I saw mother wrapped in a green blanket on her bed in the left door frame and our cooking spot to my immediate left.

Taking off my armor and getting down to my underwear and laying them on my bed, I took a quick dip in the nearby river to wash off the ash and smoke of my days' exertions. Coming back into my house, I went to the right and fell asleep on my straw bed the minute my feet left the hard-packed dirt floor.

The next morning, I woke up with a leisurely stretch as the waft of something delicious filled my nose. I wore nothing but my bra and panties as I came into our main room with a rumbling stomach. The early morning sun showed through the door as my mother sat on a stool and moved a long spoon over a steaming pot in a fire, making some kind of stew with some unknown meat and vegetables.

She was a buff woman with three cornrows on the left side of her head and two long brown braids with the rest of the hair flowing freely down her back. Mom wore her typical white shirt and brown skirt on as she stopped to chop some vegetables on a board to her left while keeping her black eyes with golden irises on the stew. Her nose had a bone ring that dangled above her thick green lips.

"How'd your night go?" Durka, my mother asked.

"Better than I could have imagined, we took down the fort," I said merrily as I got a bowl from the wall of hooks behind the pot that held all of our utensils.

Mother stopped stirring but kept her eyes on the stew.

"Really? How'd that happen? I thought taking the fort was a lost cause." She asked carefully as she dumped some herbs into the boiling pot.

"Well, we brought down the fort but the major fighting wasn't done by orcs but a human mage," I said as I stood by the door with my bowl and spoon in hand as anticipated the coming meal.

Mother's head shot up with an eyebrow raised.

After explaining the whole night, going through those front gates, seeing the 'Pandego', finding the crisped prisoners, and finally his offer to work together, she used a ladle to put some soup in my bowl which I devoured like I hadn't eaten in days.

"So, when will you work with him again?" Mom asked as she took a bowl for herself.

"I'm not. I'm gonna write up a hunting order and see if we can nab him," I said, a decision I had come to on my way home.

Instead of pride, mother looked at me with anger in her eyes as her ridged nose flared.

"Why?" She asked in a rather furious tone.

"Why? It's my duty as an orc, as a wayfarer." I said, confused about where this was coming from.

"Do you think that you took my eyes with you when I pushed you out between my legs all those years ago? I know what they've been putting you through. Giving you these insane missions and pushing you to the breaking point again and again. And I've ignored it as best I can. But this last mission? Setting you up to take the blame for their poor planning." She said as she stood up and took in a deep breath before continuing.

"I know all about our obligations, but they have obligations to us. Obligations they have not been fulfilling. If you can work with him, it would mean you'd come back home every time. Maybe you could even mate him and get a mage child. That would make your daughter the next Borba. Even better than, considering he's a dual element"

Borba was a semi-mythical leader among the orcs in the swamps. She was said to be sired from a fire mage and a popular legend was that her mother, Ghorza, was of such beauty and so sumptuous a woman that she had gotten her child willingly from an unknown mage who had been from the phoenix kingdom.

No one I had ever talked to claimed to have seen her but there was a steady stream of rumors coming from the deepest heart of the swamp. One explanation for her seeming absence was the fact that the last time we had captured a mage the humans had sent a massive squad of elite hunters to kill our prisoner, even though she had been held in the very heart of our territory. If it came out there was a mage sired orc they would stop at nothing to kill her, not just for the danger she posed but also because of the insult she represented to humanity.

"By the bastards’ hands, mom, you go between cynicism and boundless optimism faster than I can blink," I said after I took a big swig of soup.

"Mother. It's my job, no, my privilege to do the most I can for my species. This isn't about me or what I deserve, it’s about the fate of our entire species. All right? Now I'm going to get with Lokan to figure out what elements to put in for the report." I said before turning around to get dressed, but even I could tell I had only spoken with meager conviction. I took out a white shirt and some brown leather pants. My boots from last night were still good and slipped on over my white socks with no fuss.

I went out the door with my mom still sulking in the corner with the soup. Going out I turned left and walked until I came up onto the river. Our boat was lashed around a tree and kept in a large series of bushes. Undoing the knot on the rope and pushing it out onto the river. I followed the slow flow, taking in the bright early sun and looking at the dragonflies and regular fist-sized frogs who scampered about for their breakfasts until I came upon the familiar house made up of trees and cattails made to look like a particularly overrun patch of plant life.

"Lefty, I got some questions for you." I called. From between the tall grass, the head of the blue snake woman peaked out.

"Ah, lefty. Sure thing, come in." She called before retreating back into the grass. I pulled up to the tree nearest to the water and got out of it. After using the rope to secure the boat to the tree, I walked forward until I got around the mass of trees and cattails until I came upon a door sticking out between the trees. It was regular brown wood with no visible handle so I pushed on it. Coming in it looked like a singular large room with the wall being one large round series of boards. The roof provided sunlight through windows on the ceiling which had beams of light shine and reflect off the walls of wood and the hard-packed dirt floor.

The only furniture was a table in the middle with several large pillows in colors of red and purple used as seats. On one of them sitting opposite the door was Lokan. She was a snake woman with hard, dark blue scales running along her upper side with smaller light blue scales running along her belly, lower jaw, and front. Her garb was a purple cape and tight cloth of red that seemed to only have a sash running along her midsection to distinguish it from a simple dress.

"Ah good, what is it I can help you with, Darlingsss?" She asked, her voice showing the elongated accent of her people at the last word. Her red, slitted eyes looked at me with warmth. I moved forward and sat on the opposite side of the dark oak table, the heat of the room being rather light compared to midday when the snake woman would bask in the heat of the sun.

"I got a mage I want to put a report on, but I'm not sure what his elements are," I said as I looked over the tables various scratch marks.

"Elements? Multiple? Have the humans gone daft letting a male like that out in the woods?" She said with a raised eyebrow.

"No, I don't think they know about him at all," I said before I gave her the whole story. She looked at me with slight interest at first with her hand twirling over the wooden table. But as I went on to describe him and some of his feats, her red eyes gradually widened, and her idleness evaporated as she squeezed her palms together in anticipation.

A high whistle was all she said when I finished.

"What visions of horrid splendor. All done by a quad elemental and that wasn't all just magical talent he showed either." She finally said.

"Quad? I thought he had earth, metal, water, and healing." I asked, mystified by this new title.

"You get healing from having the water and air elements, it was a healing spell right?" She asked.

"That's what Baloo said," I responded. The elements and how they all worked wasn't something a backwoods nobody like me would have time or the resources to study.

"And he had metal magic. That covers earth and fire. He's a quad element mage and he's within spitting distance of orcs." A smile crept up over her face to expose her fangs and she chuckled lightly, "If the other humans-s knew their hair would catch fire just from sheer rage at him even talking to you. Much less actually helping you."

"I'd imagine they would probably kill him," I said idly.

"Pffft," Lokan chortled in a dismissive manner. "They'd sacrifice a hundred mages to keep him safe without a second thought. Be careful, whatever you choose. Unless he dies from a chance meeting with a troll or gets caught in an avalanche, there's going to be an ocean of blood if his existence is exposed and he's out here where people can think they can get him."

"Damn straight. We orcs would sacrifice anything for just one caster male. A quad-element would-"

Lokan put up her hand to stop me.

"I'm not talking about the orcs. I talking about the phoenix's sending raiding bands to burn and scour every inch of land this side of the mountains to find him. I'm talking about the dwarves coming out of their territories to entreat and maybe nip in the bud a line of future super mages. The central continent launching their fleets to scour these lands for this most grand of prizes

And the elves." with that last group her eyes grew deadly as she put her hand on the table.

"Even the elves may be tempted to leave their ancient haunts to examine this curio. If everything you told me was true and he's not firmly under the thumb of the Coalition by the time word spreads about him, this swamp and all the lands nearby will reminisce about these good old days of peace," She finished.

I swallowed my tongue as my mind struggled to comprehend the sheer scale of what she was talking about.

"But...But how could you know that?" I asked.

"I've read quite a few history books back when my parents and I were still in the central continent. A while back I read about a similar incident but that one was a fake. Even so, it was before the unification of the Rodring kingdom and that lead to several wars and invasions between the pre-Rodring states before the elves intervened and revealed the deception. Even the dwarves started getting involved towards the end.

That's the scale of what we're dealing with here. We're talking about the start of a line of mages that would probably put the humans on top, or at least the human country that lays claim to him. Whatever you decide, be damn sure about it before you bring down the heat.

Because you're right, you orcs would gladly make huge sacrifices to obtain him. And once they start flooding this area with people to find him the humans will know somethings up and start snooping around. The odds that they won't find out what you're looking for is almost non-existent," She said with a note of finality.

I looked around the room, for what I didn't know, as the realization of what I was truly dealing with hit me.

"T-Thank you Lefty, I need to get home to think this all over." I stammered out. I got off the pillow and walked out the door on wobbly legs.

"Stay well friend," Lokan called. I waved back and made my way back towards the boat. It took longer going upstream but I eventually got back around mid-day. My mother was holding a piece of paper that had come in on a messenger hawk. The brown feathered bird was looking between me and her as it rested on the window.

"What's up?" I asked.

Mother looked up at me, a sadness in her eyes.

She handed the letter over to me without a word.

I took it with a sense of dread and went over the contents.

'Go to the northern region again and resume hit and run operations,' was all the thin strip of paper said.

"Where's the rest?" I asked her.

"That's it." She said simply.

"That... No. No. No. No. No. They must have made a mistake," I said as I rushed back into the house and took a piece of paper from my room and wrote with a small piece of charcoal, 'What is the status of my commendations for my work in taking the midway fort?- Gula'

I tied it around the hawk's leg with a string and sent it off with a piece of jerky.

"All right come morning, I'll see what I got and then I'll send out the report," I said to mother with fake confidence. She merely looked at me with a blank stare and nodded before going back into the house. After writing up my report, the night and morning passed without any incident before the hawk returned. I was out in the yard trying to fish when it swooped down to the window.

I ran up to it and I saw it had a small piece of paper around its leg which I took off as gently as I could without hurting the poor creature. I opened the paper and read it.

'We have reviewed your efforts and have not found any actions that rose to a level meriting such acknowledgments. Resume work in the northern region IMMEDIATELY.'

I felt tears well up in my eyes as I looked up at the clear sky. Running into the house, I threw the paper on the floor and went straight into my room. I stared at the wall of rough wood thinking over all the months of brutal training and agonizing tests. All that blood sweat and tears for not one shred of respect or acknowledgment. All because of that bitch who I had nothing to do with.

I heard a noise to my left as my mother looked at me in the doorway, holding the letter in her right arm.

"Th...They didn't even... Was it the commander or?" I felt my lips shaking as I looked at her.

"Ok, ok. Just let it all out now" She said as she came to sit beside me, taking me in her arms.

I cried. For all my pain, neglect, and lack of love from my own people, I let it all out in the tears I loosed on the shoulder of my mother's white shirt. This went on for a while before my mother finally took my chin in her hand and made me look at her.

"All right. Now that that's out of the way, let's go hunting. I think I saw a flock of chickens a ways off when I went to collect herbs. I'll get our bows and arrows and we'll spend the rest of the day hunting." She said in her sweetest tone.

I nodded as I wiped away my tears. Mother got up and left the room, with me following after a few seconds. In my right hand was the report about the mage that I had prepared the previous day. Taking a deep breath, I threw it into the embers of the fire that had cooked our lunch before going to get my skinning knife on the wall.