Lolo had gotten up to follow Standig to the stream for a drink when she heard Standig tell Philige that she couldn’t know about the attack on the Wolf Tribe. Her home was under attack?! And Standig wasn’t even going to let her know?! If he wasn’t willing to tell her, he certainly wasn’t going to let her go fight either. But she had to. This is exactly what she’d been training for, right? Lolo broke into a cold sweat from her spiraling anxiety.

“Ulana,” Lolo whispered and tapped her on the shoulder as Standig walked back into the circle, “can you cover for me?”

“Why? Is something wrong?”

Lolo put a hand over her stomach. “It’s that time of the month.”

“Ahhh! Gotcha,” Ulana smiled. “‘Gonna go lie down for a bit?”

Lolo nodded, trying hard to look uncomfortable instead of panicked.

“Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it,” Ulana said with a small wink.

“Thanks.” Being careful to be out of site before dropping the act to sprint through the trees, Lolo left.

“Where is she going?” Standig asked, immediately on edge.

“She’s fine,” Ulana said. “'Just has something to take care of.”

“What, exactly does she need to take care of?”

“It’s private.”

“Private? What sort of private?” Standig demanded.

“Well, if I told you that, it wouldn’t be private anymore, would it?” Ulana laughed.

Standig tried to take comfort in how casually Ulana was treating the conversation and resolved to finish his meditating.

Lolo ran all the way back to her room to pull on her armor and leave a quick note on her mannequin for Standig to find later… hopefully much, much later. She then ran to the military base to find Choloo. The base was in a state of organized chaos as soldiers ran about preparing themselves for battle. No one noticed the little wolf wander into the stables or ride back out again. On foot, the distance from the Leader’s Lodge to Pack Hall took about four hours assuming there were no stops, and the pace was quick. With the bears planning to leave in an hour and a half, they likely wouldn’t arrive at Pack Hall for another six hours or more. On horseback, Lolo could get there in under two hours at trotting speeds. It took a lot of restraint for Lolo not to spur Choloo into a full gallop. Two hours felt like an eternity.

“Where’s Lolo?” Standig came out of his meditation to realize that Lolo still hadn’t returned.

“She’s fine,” Ulana still insisted. “She won’t be back for a while.”

“Seriously, Ulana, where is she?” Standig stood up to get in Ulana’s face.

“Don’t try and intimidate that information out of me, Standig,” Ulana laughed. “Trust me.”

“Why is it so important where Lolo is anyway?” Fortus asked.

Standig shot Fortus a dark look.

“It was just a question,” Fortus said, getting defensive.

“How long has she been gone?” Standig asked.

“Maybe an hour, hour and a half,” Ulana shrugged.

“And this private matter? Should it take this long?”

“It might take all day.”

“And that’s not at all suspicious to you?”

“No. I assure you, it’s perfectly natural, actually,” Ulana said exasperated.

Standig glared at her but ended the interrogation.

“Let’s eat and start our combat training,” Fortus regrouped.

She could hear the battle before she saw it. Huo Lohse dismounted Choloo before turning the last corner to set her loose in a field with a stream. She’d done her part, now it was Lolo’s turn to do hers. Trembling a little, Lolo drew her sword and checked to make sure that her throwing knives were secure. Deep breaths.

She exited the woods to find Pack Hall breached. The dragon army was enormous, tens of thousands of soldiers, and those were only the ones she could see outside the walls. The main village to the east was burning, and it was evident by the bodies of civilians mixed in with the handful of fallen soldiers that the dragon army didn’t care to differentiate between targets. The wolf army had been forced to retreat back into the hall. She was truly on her own. It occurred to her that, as one person, she likely wasn’t going to make much of a dent, but she knew she had to try anyway.

“What would Fortus do?” she found herself thinking. “What strategy would he come up with? I’m a primordial. That has to count for something, right?” She was terrified looking at the threat in front of her. “If only there were something I could do to seem like a bigger threat.” She had an idea. It was a long shot, but any strategy besides simply charging seemed worth attempting at this point. Closing her eyes in a sort of meditation, Lolo tried to communicate with her wolf spirit with a ‘thought conversation’ as Standig had so eloquently put it. “I don’t know if you can hear me, but I need your help,” she begged. “Please help me protect my pack.”

Lolo felt her wolf spirit stir in her chest and was startled when she responded. “We need more time.”

“We’re out of time,” Lolo was feeling desperate.

The movement in Lolo’s chest became more intense. “I’ll help you.”

“What do I do?”

“The first battle is a battle of the mind.”

Lolo found herself taking a deep breath as a calming sensation crept from her chest through the rest of her body.

“The second battle is a battle of skill.”

The “lightning feeling” that Lolo had gotten used to right after her nighttime meditations suddenly shot through her veins.

“The final battle is a battle of endurance. This is where we are most vulnerable.”

“We don’t have to hold out forever. Reinforcements are on their way,” Lolo thought.

When Huo Lohse opened her eyes again, they had turned an electric green. Instinctively, Lolo howled. The sound seemed to reverberate off of everything it hit, and the field in front of and the forest behind her exploded with silver light. The dragon army before her collectively recoiled as they looked around for the source of the howling.

Someone spotted her as she approached. “It must be the young Alpha! That was the Alpha Call!”

“How do they know about the Alpha Call?” Lolo thought. “The black dragons… the exchange.... They must have figured it out.”

“Kill the Alpha!” someone shouted. And pretty soon, much of the army echoed this cry. A group of twenty men led by a lieutenant were dispatched to collect Lolo’s head.

“Come to surrender, little girl? Or have you come to die?” the lieutenant sneered.

“I’ve come to kill,” she smiled serenely.

“As you wish,” the lieutenant said, drawing his sword.

In less than a minute, all twenty dragon soldiers were dead. Lolo looked up. In a strange way, it felt like she was hunting instead of going into battle. She set her sights on the next wave of soldiers, letting them come to her. Wave after wave sought to kill her, and wave after wave were hewn down. After a group of over one hundred men fell without landing a single attack against her, the dragon army finally recognized Lolo for the threat that she was. No one was willing to charge at her.

Throwing her head back again, Lolo howled, and for a second time, the field exploded in light. This time, there was no doubt where it had come from, and this time, surrounded by the bloody bodies of the hundreds of men she’d slaughtered, there was also no doubt that she was a force to be reckoned with. Smiling, she charged.

“Standig!” Ulana squawked, pulling her sword up short. “Pay attention! You’ve been distracted all afternoon.”

“Sorry.”

“What’s going on with you?”

“I’m worried about Lolo.”

“Oh, for goodness' sake! I told you, she’s fine,” Ulana grouched.

“Then why can’t you tell me where she is?”

“Fine. But you’re going to feel like a real tool when I tell you.”

“I accept that.”

“She was having girl problems. Do I need to go into details?”

Standig blushed and shook his head.

“What’s going on with you two?” Fortus interrupted. “Why aren’t you practicing? We only have an hour left.”

“Fortus, I’m going to go check on Lolo,” Standig said.

“Really?!” Ulana was irked.

“I’ve just got this feeling that something isn’t right.”

Fortus sighed. “Let’s just call it a day then.”

Standig took off through the tunnel at a jog. “Girl problems? Really?” If she really was in her room, the worst that would happen is an awkward conversation. If she wasn’t in her room…. Standig pushed that thought out of his head as far as possible.

“Lolo!” Standig shouted, knocking on her door. The lack of even movement from within sent up all kinds of red flags. “Lolo, I’m coming in.” He opened the door to find her room completely empty. Standig started to panic. He looked around, saw the wardrobe where Lolo kept her armor, and flung it open. The armor was gone, but there was a note in its place with his name on it. Fingers trembling, Standig unfolded the note.

Standig,

The quickest way to a wolf is through her pack, and you can’t stop me from protecting mine. Forgive me. I know you just wanted to protect me.

Lolo

Numb and dizzy, Standig walked out to find the rest of the team waiting for him.

“Well, was she in there?” Ulana asked, arms crossed in irritated defiance.

“Ulana,” Fortus hushed her seeing Standig’s pale face. “Standig?”

“Get your armor on and meet me at the stables,” Standig’s voice was barely above a whisper.

“What? Why?” Ulana was slow to pick up on Standig’s cues.

“Standig, where’s Lolo?” Fortus asked.

Standig shook his head and started for his own room.

Fortus got in his way and grabbed the oversized bear by the shirt. “Tell me where she is, Standig!” The fact that Standig was trembling was not lost on Fortus.

Standig took a deep breath. “This morning, Philige came to tell us that the Wolf Tribe was under attack.”

There was a moment of horrified silence.

“And you kept it from us?!” Ulana was suddenly furious.

“Lolo found out, didn’t she?!” Fortus was too frightened to sound threatening.

“I don’t know how,” Standig shook his head. “Fortus,” Standig was pleading, “we’re not ready. But Lolo… she….”

Fortus was shaking now too. “You were going to keep this from her to protect her from herself.”

Standig swallowed hard.

“She’s got about a five hour headstart on us,” Fortus calculated quickly. “Standig, if she’s dead, I swear I’ll kill you.”

“If she’s dead, you’d be doing me a favor.”

Philige arrived at the Wolf Tribe just before sunset to find a field covered in thousands of dead dragon soldier bodies, but tens of thousands of dragon soldiers still very much alive. Scanning the bodies, he only picked out one or two Wolf Tribe bodies which seemed odd.

“Tribe Leader,” Ernkit got his attention and pointed to the front gates of Pack Hall.

A bloody line of corpses led up the hill to where a single fighter was completely surrounded by Dragon Tribe soldiers and arrows that had missed their target. However, instead of being in trouble, the fighter was winning, and the dragons didn’t seem to know how to even attack them. As Philige watched in awe for a moment, the fighter threw back their head and howled. The flash of silver light gave her away instantly.

“Lolo!”

Catching sight of the fresh Bear Tribe troops, Huo Lohse was momentarily distracted. Philige watched in absolute horror as a soldier slammed his sword against her back. Lolo spewed a fine mist of bloody saliva and staggered forward, but instead of going down, she whipped around and dropped her attacker almost instantly. Durfein’s armor was doing its job at least.

“Charge!”

The Bear Tribe soldiers shouted as they broke into a run. Dragons and bears clashed. What the bear soldiers lacked in experience, they made up for in size and brute force, and the worn dragon soldiers crumpled against them. The dragons fell back to form a stronger defensive line, making it much harder for the bears to pick them off, and making it impossible for anyone to get to Huo Lohse.

Lolo was getting tired. By the time the bear army arrived, she’d already been fighting for nearly five hours. Because of Fortus’s intensive training schedule, she was used to fighting for about four hours in a stretch, but four hours with breaks between sparring matches to get water and switch partners. The electric buzz from her wolf spirit had all but faded as well, and she still didn’t know how the Wolf Tribe was doing behind the great walls surrounding Pack Hall. Having blocked the front gate, she had at least prevented more enemy soldiers from entering the hall en masse, though they were still getting in over the walls with their ladders. Her goal was to simply continue holding the gate. She kept telling herself that she just had to hold on a little longer. Just a little longer….