“There.”

Two figures, zooming across the night sky, slowed down as they spotted a veritable field of tents. The one who had spoken, Lieutenant Marie, squinted at the fledging settlement and nodded.

“If you’re that sure…” Her partner, Sergeant Aziz, followed suit. Descending into a clear patch of grass, the two began to trek towards the small settlement of beastfolk hideaways. Their trip to the North from Ark City, had taken a week of non-stop flying, and normally, getting to their current destination would have required four to five days. But a freak gust of wind had somehow brought them to the South far faster than it should have been possible.

“I get that walking over is meant to show some politeness,” said Sergeant Aziz, “but surely they need to know that we’re able to fly first?”

“We also want to keep a low profile,” said Lieutenant Marie. “If two people who can fly openly entered this place, this settlement won’t be peaceful after a while. If anyone is monitoring this place, we might have doomed this place by descending from the sky.”

“Fine, you’re the boss.”

The sun was beginning to rise by the time the two reached the settlement. Small walls surrounded the tents, and two people were standing guard at the gates, their eyes filled with a constant fear and weariness.

Sergeant Aziz narrowed his eyes. People on guard duty only showed these two expressions when they were either doing it for the first time, or if there had been a history of attacks before. And by the scars that lined the two guards’ faces, it was unlikely that this was their first time taking on guard duty.

The two snapped to a combat pose as Aziz and Marie came into their line of sight. Sergeant Aziz and Marie raised their hands into the air as they walked towards the settlement in response, and the guards relaxed somewhat.

“Halt! What’s your purpose here?” One of the guards did a doubletake at Aziz, and then raised his spear again. “What’s a human doing here?”

“He’s with me,” said Lieutenant Marie. “Both of us are soldiers, from the Beastfolk Congress.”

“The one at Ark City?” asked the stockier of the two guards.

“Yes. Although…well, it’s gone. The two of us received a rushed message about Ark City being teleported to the Wildlands all of a sudden. It was like the higher-ups forgot about us.”

“Abandoned, eh? Well, can’t say I…we don’t know how that feels like,” replied the guard. “But if he’s with you, then I suppose he’s one of us too. Come along, we’ll get you something to eat, and then you can bring whatever news you have to us.”

He blew into a whistle, and two men began to walk over from somewhere out of sight. Aziz glanced at the whistle — he didn’t expect to see a toy that children in the North sometimes used here. “Where did you get that from?”

“This?” He held up the whistle. “Wasn’t it something common at the Congress? A senator gave a buncha them out to my squad when he came visiting years ago.”

Aziz blinked at that reply. “Huh, that’s odd.”

“What is?”

“No, just that these things were supposedly an invention of the North’s Summoned.”

“North’s Summoned…” The guard repeated. “As in, someone from another world? The Northern Continent has someone like that?”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“You mean ‘what’s right’, buddy.” He bounced up and down on his heels. “Look, if a senator of ours has something that the North invented, there’s probably some sneaky connection between the two of them, right? It’s a whole box too.”

The two stared at the whistle, and then at the guard.

“That actually makes sense,” said Marie. “Come to think of it, for the North to send Ark City an invitation…there’s probably more than what Major Igor told us about the reason behind our presence.”

“No point thinking about this now, though,” said Aziz. “We’ll probably never find out the truth.”

“True,” said Marie. She motioned at the approaching men, and Aziz followed her as they entered the small settlement properly.

Their ushers were apparently the silent kind, but it didn’t affect the sergeant much. Children raced past the small group as they walked past tents and small clearings where men were drilling together. Aziz looked at them, interested. If his memory didn’t fail him, these swords were actually called a gladius — but the sergeant hadn’t used one for a long time.

And well, after coming back from the Northern-Central war, these tactics didn’t really seem to cut it all that much. The shield walls of the beastfolk felt obsolete in the face of artillery fire, and Aziz had recorded proof of that. Still, to continue training in military formations…what are these people intending to do?

The sergeant only realised that he’d entered a larger tent when he stepped into shadow, and for a moment, he froze. Lieutenant Marie, who was beside him, reacted similarly.

They were inside a tent that was clearly modelled after a command tent, where the important decisions of any army were made and disseminated to lower ranking officers, who’d then issue instructions to their own squad. Granted, most of these officers had died in the Second Extermination, but the small group who were assembled in the centre of the tent reminded Aziz of the briefings he used to have a long time ago, before he became a scout.

After all, scouts became increasingly in demand as his predecessors fell to luck or sheer numbers, and by the time the frontlines were at the World’s End chasm, Aziz had been the most senior of the scouts. This was one of the many reasons he’d requested to teach a new generation of soldiers in the ways of the special forces. He wanted to prevent situations where seasoned veterans, the backbone of any beastfolk squad, were taken out to serve as scouts.

The sergeant snapped out of his self-induced reverie as Marie took the lead in talking to the small group who had been talking over issues in the command tent.

His brows furrowed slightly as he took in the faces of the people who were most likely in command of the entire settlement. None of them seemed old enough to be a Warmaster or a Campmaster in the days before the Second Extermination, and the sergeant had to remind himself that people grew up rapidly during times of war.

“Lieutenant Marie, from Ark City’s military.” Marie inclined her head, and then nudged Aziz with her elbow.

“First Sergeant Aziz, from the same,” Aziz said.

Marie looked at him. “You did get promoted recently, eh?”

“Never going to enjoy my increased pay, though,” he shook his head.

The others introduced themselves and their agenda briefly, but having left the diplomatic side of affairs to Marie, the sergeant turned his mind to their words.

This lot wanted to unify the scattered beastfolk, and then recreate their old living spaces. There was no other way to describe their ambitions other than the word ‘crazy’, but their arguments were compelling.

Sergeant Aziz sighed, and watched as a new war began to stir in the depths of the South.