I accepted…but…

Erika thought as she stood before a massive carriage loaded with resources and equipment, Lano gesturing at it. “You will pull this for me.” He said plainly, before putting both hands into each other’s sleeve and moving onward. “Don’t dabble.”

“Uh-Y-Yeah…” Erika replied, grabbing hold of the two wooden planks shooting forward form the carriage, where she figured beasts of burden would be tied to. Gripping tightly, she evened her breaths.

Is this…part of his training?

She wondered, starting to pull, steadily but slowly moving after him.

All around her civilians loaded up carts and wagons, stores closed down and soldiers rallied elsewhere. Willow Front, was to be abandoned. With the non-combatants heading for Shallow Creak, and the fighters rallying under the Alpha’s banner, on a route for Bleak Moon Fort.

Glancing about, she then recognised some large cages being prepped for transportation, yet, they weren’t headed with the civilians…

“Elder Lano-”

“Yes Lady Draconia?” Lano replied, causing Erika to stumble in her words, a brief exchange of silence followed which Lano later broke. “You are, royalty, yes? Then it is only customary that I regard you as such, teacher or not. Now, you are curious about the cages, yes?”

Erika nodded.

“Those are bound for the battlefield too, wild beasts who wandered too far from their territory into the Lycan’s. They use them as fodder, released into the battlefield before the clash and lured into the enemy campsites. A dark mixture of Demon…and Dragon, but under control of no hell.” Lano explained, as one such beast’s cage came into the light, revealing a mangled monstrosity of fur and leather, four legged and radiating ferocity. “They call them Draem, for such a thing to exist, must have been dreamt up by some dark god. The Draem, are as far as you’ll find for cousins in this world, Lady Draconia.”

Horrified by the sight, Erika nodded once more.

There’s no turning back now.

Erika told herself, turning away from her surroundings to gaze onward. Her hands slightly shuddering at the thought.

They gave me food and shelter, they even trained me! I’m not running away like the rest…

I’m headed for war…Forefathers and Foremothers…watch over me!

Elsewhere…

Kailu sat about a campfire, not quite cold but simply staring into the blaze as rough men sat around chatting all about. A campsite spanned all around him, half-covered in snow, the trees and white gave them camouflage.

“Captain, it’s starting.” Said a roguish human man who approached him, sleek light brown hair and green eyes with a very defined chin.

“So, it begins.” Kailu growled, standing up, everyone went silent as he did. Not only the men at the campfire nearby, but the entire camp of over three hundred strong bandits. “This, is a revolution. The escaped Lycan powers are now preparing to make a last stand within their lovely little forest, and the vampires are sending absolutely everything their way to crush it. Now, we wouldn’t be gentlemen if we simply ignored this chance, no?”

A round of cold chuckles followed.

“Rain,” Kailu returned to the roguish man, “Pick our best five and tell em to figure out where they are most likely to clash, numbers on both sides and the speed at which they travel.”

Rain nodded and after gesturing at four men and a woman, he gathered them up to brief them.

“The rest of you, get ready, we are bound for a battlefield.” Kailu warned his followers, watching as they scrambled to pack the campsite.

Glancing from man to woman, there were no elders or children here. A mixture of thieves, frustrated ex-slaves, and would-be cattle for some lord. Over two years, Kailu had gathered them, fought with and survived alongside them.

In return, they had all vowed their lives to him.

Even though he had never asked them to, Kailu turned to the one who did, his calculative gaze falling on Rain. An odd young man, once bound to be turned into a ghoul for the city he was born in, Kailu had also been on the run from the city guard after storming into a Lady vampire’s household.

Having stumbled onto the ceremony, and with his people’s past, Kailu simply couldn’t let the man meet his fate. Even if it meant killing a couple dozen more assailants, he already had a few hundred after him at the time.

Owing Kailu his soul, Rain made it his life’s work to gather anyone like him behind this monster that had saved him.

All of it, now coming down to this moment.

“They’re off.” Rain said after sending the scout party out, following Kailu into his captain’s tent. “Something wrong captain?”

“You’re the real captain here, I’m just a stand-in figure that fits.” Kailu mused, “Are you sure about this, facing off against the Vampires as they frenzy over the Lycans?”

Rain chuckled, “You’re the strongest of us all, how can you not be the captain?”

“I told you before, if it means achieving my goal, I’d happily hand you all over to the dogs.” Kailu mused.

Causing Rain only to chuckle further, “If I had a coin for every time I heard that! But, yeah, I’m sure.” Rain then said, his expression going solemn as he sat down over a chest. “My people might never be free of the vampire’s clutches, but the Lycans…they have long proven to be stronger, and have yearned for freedom much more loudly than any of us. Unlike us also, they succeeded in escaping, then here we are…barely four hundred men and women, trying to live free but still leeching off the empire’s blood.”

“I will save them, Xilfir, I will save them all.” Rain exclaimed, “And who knows, maybe, we’ll find your little princess amongst them.” He then said with a joking sneer, “Maybe she’ll fall for me eh? The Good Bandit and a dragon princess! Imagine that, haha!”

Kailu groaned, but also smiled, “I’d rather not, her father would quite well kill me, and you.”

Rain laughed, “Ah what can I say! The ladies love me!”

“You won’t have a chance to say anything.” Kailu chuckled, “But also, Lady Erika is unlike the rest…She is like her parents, a Dragon.”

Rain’s laughter slowly died down, “You really are bound to them hard huh?”

“Of course, I owe them my entire people’s lives. My soul, is theirs to do as they wish.” Kailu replied.

“Isn’t that too though, a kind of slavery?” Rain then asked.

“Maybe, I don’t know, thinking hard on these things isn’t something I usually waste time on.” Kailu said, “Unlike you, prophet.”

“Hah! Prophet! Good one sir!” Rain exclaimed, slapping his knee and laughing out.

“Always the loud one too.” Kailu grumbled as he put on some equipment, a belt, sheathed daggers, and a sword.

“Hey someone has to counter your gloominess! The men would be running off into the woods shouting tyrant if I wasn’t uplifting them!” Rain added with a chuckle.

Taking up a long-barrelled gun, Kailu glanced the weapon from end to end. “No matter the threat faced, no matter issues about, and no matter the discrepancies that come with. A leader must stand above all, glorified by his followers, his rule must be followed without question. In that same line of thought, if the followers do not trust their leader as they do in their faiths…then we are all as good as dead. That, is what my master, once told me.”

Turning around to face Rain, “Another teacher though, also told me that the leader must be questioned. They must be doubted and put to the test. That is the role of the leader, to be on a constant state of both glorification and mistrust. The followers always exist in both states, simultaneously. For faith is gained through time, the seed of doubt never dies and must be always cut away like the weeds of time.”

“Hah, some wise teachers you were brought up with.” Rain mused, standing up from the chest, he suddenly grabbed hold of the rifle from the center, meeting Kailu’s cold glare with his own. “Don’t worry, if you need to, throw our lives away as you wish. You saved us, else we’d have spent these past two years enslaved, maybe even dead. You gave us freedom, and for that, we can never repay the debt we owe you. Our souls, are for you to do as you wish. We are after all, forest wolves. And even if we all die, if it means bringing that smug ass blood lord’s entire plan burning down, with her banner of the wolf disgraced by us. That, is worth dying for.”