Lolo didn’t sleep very well. She spent most of the night curled up listening to Philige sleep, feeling his warmth, and trying not to wake him with her tears.

A little after dawn, she felt Fortus connect with her.

“G’morning, sleepyhead! ‘You ready?”

“‘Just need to put my armor on.”

“Well, do that, because I’m sending you and Standig on a fishing trip.”

“Standig and I are quite the outdoorsmen. Fishing this morning, hunting this evening.”

“Yeah, yeah. You’re natural predators,” Lolo could practically hear Fortus roll his eyes.

“So where do you want us?”

“I need you to storm the castle, see how many soldiers you can draw out. Standig gets the fun job of baiting the toy soldiers. His legs aren’t as short as yours, so he is more likely to make it out in one piece.”

“Are you making fun of how tall I am?”

“You mean of how short you are?” Fortus teased.

“Jerk. Check in with the rest of the team. I’m going to get dressed.”

Fortus broke the connection and Lolo nudged Philige’s shoulder to wake him up. “Hey, love. It’s time to get ready.”

Philige stretched a little before sitting up. “You didn’t sleep well last night,” he observed.

“I’m fine,” she brushed his concern aside with a smile. “Fortus already gave me my first battle assignment. I need to get dressed and go.”

She stood up, but Philige caught her wrist. “Not before you kiss me properly. Lolo, I’m anxious about today too. A battlefield isn’t exactly predictable.”

She knew that he meant there was no guarantee that they would both make it out of this alive, that this might be good-bye. But Lolo knew almost for certain that this was good-bye, despite having every intention of fighting to the bitter end. So she sat back down to “kiss him properly”.

“Took you long enough,” Standig teased when Lolo finally met him at the pass. “Is everything alright?”

“Fine. Let’s get this show on the road.”

They entered the pass and immediately split up. Standig turned south, following the mountains toward The Barren Expanse, and Lolo continued west along the road to the palace.

Apart from a handful of soldiers patrolling the road, Lolo didn’t meet any resistance until the palace came into view. From the trees on either side of her, a horde of over a hundred men emerged to surround her.

“Well aren’t you bold!” That voice sent involuntary chills down Lolo’s spine. “Come to play with me? I felt gypped that we didn’t get to play together much during your last visit.”

Huo Lohse turned around slowly. She’d almost forgotten how evil Takleeph looked. “Still deriving pleasure from the pain of others,” Lolo looked at him with disgust. “You make me sick.”

Takleeph, along with many of the other soldiers, laughed. “It’s not the job for just anyone, I’ll admit,” he said as he stalked closer towards her.

Lolo kept her peace, allowing him to approach, turning to follow him with her eyes as he spiraled in towards her.

“So what brings you to the palace, little wolf?”

“I’m looking for a good fight, actually.”

“Really?!” Takleeph grinned, obviously thrilled by her moxie. “You are certainly a worthy playmate, Huo Lohse Lang.”

Another soldier rushed Lolo from behind, and Lolo reflexively dodged and dropped him while maintaining her eye contact with Takleeph the entire time. “You’re going to have to do better than that.”

Takleeph continued smiling at her as they circled each other. This time a group of five soldiers rushed her from behind and Lolo had to actually look at them momentarily to take them down. “Very good,” Takleeph’s smile widened.

Lolo caught the flash of something small and metallic in Takleeph’s hands and dodged his needle just in time.

Fortus picked this moment to check in. "Lolo, what's your- Oh! Heck, no!!"

"Excellent!" Takleeph laughed and drew his sword. "Most excellent." His pupils dilated and he seemed to shiver with a perverse, erotic anticipation.

"Gross! Lolo, stop flirting and kill him already!"

"Oh, I will. Don't you worry."

Takleeph rushed her. His swordsmanship was erratic, not following any conventional technique or style. And his attacks were less than lethal but all the more challenging to predict because of it. Lolo realized that he wasn't striking to kill. He was striking to inflict pain. He wanted to cut her down slowly. But Lolo didn’t really feel like playing, and the rest of the dragon soldiers wanted a piece of her too.

Using his excitableness against him, Lolo forced Takleeph’s sword arm upward, twirling into him like they were dancing. She ducked under his arm, drew her dagger and plunged it into the only chink in his armor she could readily find at the side of his throat, sending spurts of blood everywhere.

“That is disgusting, Lolo.”

“So, Fortus, my status: I’m here at the palace. So far, I’ve only encountered these bozos and a few guards on the road. This is hardly the army I was supposed to be baiting,” she said, glancing around and waiting for her opponents to make a move.

“That’s because they are south of the palace.”

“Come again?” Someone finally had the nerve to rush her.

“We can see them. They are moving in some strange formation which is why they are visible from here, and there are a lot of them, though I can only guess as to how many.”

“South of the palace?” The daring soldier took a kick to his chest followed by a sword to his thigh.

“Yup.”

“I’ll just clean up here really quick and go howl at the army to get their attention. Check in with me in, oh, twenty minutes?” Lolo said, ducking an attack and charging.

"So, let me get this straight," Tamkhee was still trying to understand the whole ultimates thing as he'd never seen them in action before, "your eyes do that glowing thing, and you can communicate with the others and see what they see?"

"Pretty much."

"That’s handy. Who were you talking to just now?"

"Lolo."

"Status?"

"’Seems to be doing fine. I got to watch her cut down your torture expert."

"Takleeph? Can't say that I'm too torn up about that. That guy was a little too good at his job, if you know what I mean… gave me the creeps."

“You and me both.” Fortus thought for a minute. “Tamkhee? ‘Mind if I call you Tamkhee?”

“I mean, that’s fine. It’s been a while since someone called me by my first name.”

“Ok. Well, Tamkhee, I hope you don’t mind me saying so, but you’ve changed.”

“How so?”

“I don’t know. You’re different from how I remember you-- more relaxed, less aggressive…?” Fortus couldn’t quite put a finger on it and realized, somewhat embarrassed, how awkward the conversation had become.

“Ok?”

Fortus shrugged. “I need to check in with Standig.”

Standig was starting to feel nervous as he entered the rocky, desert landscape. He wasn’t even certain what he was looking for. Every sound, every twitch of movement seemed threatening.

“Standig?”

Standig startled to hear Fortus’s voice but then relaxed, strangely comforted for having another person at least conscious of his surroundings. “I’m here.”

“Status?”

Standig gave Fortus a panoramic view of his current location.

“Haven’t found them yet, huh?”

“Not yet. If they are here, I’ll find them eventually. It would help to know what I’m looking for. They’re supposed to look humanish, right? Just not act humanish?”

“Something like that.”

“And when I find them, I’m supposed to get them to chase me back to the pass, right?”

“Yeah. It’s going to be a bit of a run.”

“I’ll be alright.”

“I’ll check in again soon.”

“Has Standig found them yet?”

Fortus shook his head. "How far into The Barren Expanse was the army?"

Tamkhee fixed Fortus with a look of confusion and fear. "Standig is actually in the desert?!"

"It looked that way, why?"

"When I saw them, I wasn't in the expanse, I was watching from a distance. He really doesn't see anything?"

"Standig, anything?"

"I just showed you, didn't I?"

"Find some high ground."

"Shouldn't I be sneaking up on them?"

"It's a hunch, Standig. Just go with it."

Standig looked for the biggest rock he could find in his near proximity to climb. The added twenty feet of height gave Standig a pretty good view of the flat expanse. "I'm not seeing anything here, Fortus, real or fake."

"Crap. Standig head back to the pass. I've got a feeling that Lolo might be in trouble."

"Lolo!"

"Where have you been?!" Lolo was running just as fast as she could. "That army to the south? Not real soldiers! I don't know where the real soldiers are, Fortus, but I'm coming in hot! And it didn’t take much to bait them. I didn’t even need to howl. They saw me before I could get a rough headcount, but I know this army is huge."

"Have you tried killing any of them?"

"Yes. They don't really die, but they sort of crumble, or break like they're made of stone or clay. Arrows won't do much against these guys, but a good club or axe or hammer or even rocks would probably work great-- crushing weapons."

"If you can do it safely, Lolo, can you try to show me?"

"I'll try. Might take me a minute to set it up." Lolo drew her sword and slowed down ever so slightly to allow the nearest automaton to catch up with her.

Something resembling a hand with long dagger-like fingers reached out to grab her, and Lolo spun around in a tight circle, barely losing any of her running speed, to lob its entire arm off with a strange crunching noise. The toy soldier continued to pursue her until a small orb of light found its way out of the hole in its shoulder where the arm had been chopped, and the whole thing crumbled.

"That was… unexpected," Fortus said.

Lolo picked up her pace again. "They aren't carrying weapons. Their hands are the weapons. Destroying them seems to be a matter of freeing the trapped souls contained inside of them. But the men need to know that the fight isn't over until the automaton completely falls apart. They don't stop from pain or crippling blows. They only stop when the soul escapes."

"I'll pass the message along."

"Fortus, I don't know where the real dragon soldiers are. The hundred or so men I ran into at the palace couldn't be all that's left of their army, right?"

"Not unless the Dragon General has been executing his own men in favor of these dust piles."

"Get the captain's opinion, recall Standig from the expanse, and pass along my report to Ulana and Jadu. For now, I'm just running. If you want to have Standig be prepared to ram into the middle of this army, I'll follow him in and throw my biggest shield up, take a few thousand of these things out for you."

"I'm on it, Lolo."

"Standig, Lolo found the toy soldiers by the palace. Get back here as quickly as you can and be prepared to ram them. Lolo's going to follow you in and drop a shield."

"Got it. Is Lolo alright?"

"Assuming she doesn't trip or something, she'll be ok."

Standig picked up his pace to beat Lolo to the pass.

"Tamkhee, Lolo found the toy soldiers, Standig is on his way back. Lolo didn't find too many real soldiers. Any ideas where they might be?"

Tamkhee shook his head. "At the beginning of the year, our army was huge-- over two hundred thousand troops.”

Fortus whistled. "Yeah, I've been meaning to ask you how those numbers are even possible."

“Let's just say that military service was not left as optional…. But between the battles at the Wolf and Bear Tribes, we lost over half our army. That leaves another one hundred thousand men in reserve."

"Do you think they might have been killed to make more of these toy soldiers?"

Tamkhee's face went a little pale. "I don't understand the logic of killing real soldiers to make fake ones, but it's possible."

Fortus nodded. “I need to coordinate with Ulana and Jadu.” Fortus closed his eyes and concentrated, but Ulana wasn't letting him in. He grunted in irritation and tried again with Jadu instead.

"Jadu?"

"Yup."

"Are the men ready?"

"Just about."

"Hurry it up. We've got incoming."

"Ok. Details?"

"Lolo is being chased by the toy army. I need you to spread some tactical information about them."

Fortus passed Lolo's info along, and Jadu got to work spreading it. The soldiers prepared themselves for an unusual fight, assembling in large ranks, surrounding the pass just outside of Dragon Tribe territory.