“It was common practice to have adults or veterans in the vicinity when blooding rookies, partly because it was often the case that many of them lost control of themselves one way or another in the process. Some might revel too much in the bloodshed, others might well shut down in response to the mental shock of the process. It was hard to tell until someone was truly placed on the spot, honestly.” - Dione Carlisle, Veteran Mercenary.

“You’re back, I see. What’s the word?” asked Erycea when she noticed Rhiannon had returned. She was familiar with the girl, who was a year her senior and had joined their group after the Theodinaz campaign. Rhiannon and her twin brother Llewelyn were Karenina’s children, and both had joined Erycea’s little group almost as soon as their parents brought them into the mercenary Company.

“Okay, seriously. How the hell did you find out!? What even gave me away?” asked Rhiannon as the girl sulked in her hiding spot. Other than her voice, there was no sign whatsoever that the girl was around, at least until she emerged from the bush she was hiding in, covered in clothes patterned with browns and greens to blend in with the forest. She prided herself in being a very good sneak, yet Erycea always caught her every time, somehow.

“I guess I could tell you, after all these years, to commemorate our first mission,” said Erycea playfully as she looked at Rhiannon. Then Erycea tapped at her nose with her index finger as she gave the other girl a meaningful smirk. “It’s your scent, Rhia. I’ve been friends with you for nearly a decade now. I can literally smell you from afar, so you ain’t got a chance at hiding from me, ever.”

“Oh, fuckdammit,” cursed Rhiannon as she sulked some more, while her twin brother patted her back in sympathy. Where Rhiannon was a scout for the group, Llewelyn was part of their shieldbearers, though he usually stayed near the outer edge of the shield wall since he could not really compare with the ones who held the center despite being a healthy, brawny youth. “No bloody wonder you always found us so easily when we played hide and seek as children.”

“Anyway, what’s the word from Hakim?” asked Erycea once more. Hakim was placed in nominal command of the operation, so her squad of thirty-six - there were not that many children from her group that had come of age yet, though in a few years more would likely join them as those whose ages were closer to Alycea would grow up - would listen to them for the operation unless they deemed the command idiotic.

“He said that we’d strike at sunset,” replied Rhiannon. While operational command was given to Hakim, the two squads were expected to fight independently while at the same time not get in each other’s way. Given how the mercenary Company itself was technically composed of many detachments, it was merely a taste of what they could expect going forward.

“Sounds good to me. Those bandits are all human, so the shift from light to dark would trouble their eyes a bit,” said Erycea with a nod of approval. A good portion of her own squad was human, but everyone who trained under the mercenaries had also trained to adapt to shifting levels of light, as well as how to fight in dark conditions. Those with therian blood like Erycea herself naturally had no need for such training though, given how they had far better night vision compared to humans.

“Well, guys, you all heard that. We hit these lowlives at sunset. What do you guys say? Let the rookies take the first blood, or do we clear the way for them to mop up?” said Erycea as she addressed the rest of her squad, who had relaxed and sat around her. They were hidden deeper in the forest, so there was no risk that the bandits would hear them.

“I say we hit the bastards hard till they shit out their teeth,” said Ayrie with a chuckle from her perch on a tree branch. As the oldest of the squad at nineteen she was technically no rookie by any measure, as she had worked amongst the mercenaries for the past five years. She had voluntarily joined Erycea’s squad when she and many others joined the Company though, together with some of the other children who had joined ahead of the rest.

“Gross, big sis,” said Gustav with a mockery of a scandalized voice from beneath. The boy, who was sixteen by then, had not grown much taller, barely reaching Erycea’s shoulder at his height of one fifty-six. He was as broad as he was tall, though, with his arms easily as thick as an adult human’s waist. The beard that he fondly kept since young had also grown into a luxurious curtain that covered his chest by then. “But yea, I say we show them bandits no quarter and go all-out from the get go. No reason not to.”

“Add my vote to that. I say we let the rookies get the bandits looking at ‘em then we steamroll them from the side,” said Vladislav. At seventeen, the therian boy was already over two and a half meter tall, not quite as large as his uncles and aunts or grandmother yet, but he was definitely getting there. Together with Gustav, Tasha, and Vera, he formed the core of their shieldwall, as he easily lugged around a tower shield taller and broader than he was.

“Count us in. About time we see some action,” added Valeria, the quarter-orcish daughter of Soledad who had joined their group after Erycea beat her down years ago. She sat besides Beth, Clara’s daughter, with whom she had become fast friends. Beth herself nodded and gave a thumbs-up gesture to signal her agreement with the plan.

One by one, the rest of the squad voiced their assent to the plan, and so Erycea and her squad prepared themselves for action, as they waited for the sun to set beneath the horizon…