Shinead Sidhe had a bad day. To be frank, she had a couple of bad days lately, around a week and a half worth of them. If those days were scattered around in different months, it wouldn't have been much of a problem, but they were concentrated one after the other.

Being sent on an important mission to deliver documents wasn’t bad in itself, Shinead actually liked running around the Domain on her own, and she just loved to do important things for the Greater Elven Good. Every last Elf should have dedicated themselves fully to the betterment of the Domain and as such making Fenria perfect.

It wasn't bad that she was intercepted and defeated either. The Domain needed martyrs to serve as role models for later generations after all! Being defeated while doing an important delivery wasn't much of a role one should aspire to follow, but fighting and dying in the line of duty was. It would have been better if she survived and completed the delivery, but she was only Level 5, so she was content to die a heroic death for the Clan and the Domain.

She could have lived with just surviving the encounter even if she lost the delivery. She would have been a failure and would have to work hard to make the failure be forgotten (maybe she could have died a heroic death for Clan and Domain later). But, she wouldn't have been a disgrace.

Thanks to a wandering monkey, she survived. She was ashamed to owe a blood depth to a creature, she vowed to get rid of or at least force them to their place below their Elven Masters. The monkey even touched her! And ogled her, when she was forced to give him the traditional ritual vow of blood debt. Ogled her so hard, his eyes almost fell out of their sockets! Lust was written all over him! That dirty monkey! If this happened in the Domain, the pig would have been castrated, but only after Shinead had extracted reparation from him. Probably by pocking out his eyes.

But obviously, this was not the Domain, but Monkeylands.

If only she didn't owe him a blood debt! As the monkeys used to say, a Red would happen to him, even here, outside of the Domain. She knew she was attractive – no vanity there, her Character Parchment said her Charisma was 16 – but such ogling and openly displayed lust was just offensive and against the law.

To make things even worse, he provided her with clothing and weapons! Was this monkey retarded or grew up in a cave?!?

Not that the clothes and weapons were any good, but if an Elf ever saw her in that getup, she would be the laughingstock of the whole Domain for the next couple of centuries! She would have rather gone naked – she did not have any problem with nakedness, as it was proper for any good Elf – if not for the obvious lust and horniness of her "savior". Running around naked with such a creature would surely lead to him getting ideas – she assumed, it was still a real possibility.

That he found her family dagger and gave it back without much haggling just gave insult to injury.

If all this came out back in the Clan Headquarters, she would be destroyed. Even if her superiors didn't just execute her for the shameless failure she was, she would have been kicked out in short order (what mostly amounted just to a slower death). She sent the monkey to a dungeon cave to hopefully die or at least fornicate as much as he liked. Everyone knew after all, that Humans (as they demanded to be called) could procreate with basically everything. Shinead couldn't even start to comprehend, how lawyers came into existence. She left for the Clan's Headquarters to be destroyed.

She shouldn't have worried about being destroyed – the Clan Headquarters was destroyed. As were the Barracks, the Archer Turrets, the Supply Depot, the Training Grounds, the Supporting Village, the Crafter Quarters, the Research Lab, the Spider Mine… Everything was destroyed.

Everyone was dead.

Save for her, the disgraced, shameless failure.

What could have done this?!? There were high Leveled Elves in the Clan, were they mass-rushed by some slimy creatures with a hive mind? Who was stupid enough to destroy a Red Elf Clan this utterly? Looking around, it was done fast and from within. No one would be able to sneak inside, the Spider Mine would have made it impossible, and no one would betray the Clan this way! Not even with mind control or parasites. There were countermeasures in place just for such possibilities.

Shinead walked around in the destroyed base. That burned-out husk was the infirmary, that pile of rubble was the barracks, those broken walls belonged to the headquarters, that flattened stretch of land was previously the training grounds… Well, technically it still was the training grounds, only the targets were burned, as you would need heavy magic to de-flatten a piece of land. Or that thingy the peasants used. Plow, plough, or whatever it's called.

From the tracks and clues, it was obvious that the Clan was able to rally some defenders after the first shock, and tried to get the few non-combatants to safety. As it was proper! The fighters would mount a glorious last stand in the face of overwhelming opposition and die standing. Their names would go down into history, there would be novels and poems and paintings of the last stand, and they will be role models for later generations! The surviving auxiliaries would make sure, revenge would be extracted from the depraved perpetrators!

This is why the Clans made sure, there were no survivors or they knew, having a stiff upper lip just invited unfortunate accidents.

Obviously, the attackers had the same idea: the auxiliaries ran into an ambush and were killed even before the last stand came to a conclusion. How badly the soldiers were burned and mutilated, Shinead was unable to name them, she just figured, no High-Leveled leader was included. Those she found in the secure bunker below the headquarters. Dead and looted all the same.

That was a problem. Without knowing the names of the participants, how could she make role models out of them? How could she immortalize them? Without eyewitnesses, how could she know the details to commission an epic poem or painting? She would be forced to be satisfied with a generic Last Stand of the Swift Arrow. Personal touches would elevate the value and the impact of role models.

First, she had to pay respect to all her fallen kameraden. Fortunately for her, Elves didn’t subscribe to the barbaric custom of putting dead bodies into the ground or the equally horrible habit of burning them. Burying a few hundred corpses would have been more than she was able to accomplish, with Strength and Endurance both only at 12, it would have taken her a very long time. Not to comment on any of her Skills that had a least a rudimentary connection to digging a hole into the ground…

No, she did the funeral the Proper Elven Way: lining up the bodies on the training ground, beginning with the highest Leveled and ranked down to the youngest auxiliary. Putting a funeral coin – gold for the higher leaders, silver for the officers, copper for common hunters, and iron bits for the young and auxiliaries – on their right eye, covering the faces with red cloth and planting a small flower next to their heads.

At least, she tried to do it the Proper Elven Way. First, she did not know the correct range for so many people, then she had problems identifying the dead to put them into their proper places in the row, and finally, she had no money or cloth at hand. Searching through the ruins – it was neither scavenging nor looting, it was her home, after all – turned up only a handful of funeral coins and not much more in way of foreign currency. Together it was barely enough for half the fallen. With cloth, she was equally unlucky. Cloth burned more easily compared to metals, so not much was left in a usable form. Stripping the dead for funeral veils was out of the question, and, of course, blue cloth was out of the question too, that was the color of marriage. She had to do what was left.

Cutting the funeral coins and currency into half she managed to get enough for everyone, and settling for just a strip of cloth (in whatever color it was available) instead of a full veil, she put together a marginally acceptable funeral row. Everyone with [Last Rites] at a high enough level would have flown into a fit, but this was the most Shinead could put together.

Searching through the rubble and ruins for the clan regalia and for anything of value took her at least as long as to pay her respect. Of course, being a low-level hunter for the Clan, she was not privy to a lot of hidden treasures, armories, and caches, but the most important ones she knew. Accidentally, the most important ones were the easiest to find, and all were mostly looted. Strangely, the Clan regalia were not looted, just thrown in a corner and used as a toilet by the attackers. The gall! Just for that, every last Red would torture the perpetrators to death! A very, very slow death. If this ever came out, of course. Having the regalia desecrated in such a way would mean, the Swift Arrow Clan would be destroyed not just physically but in spirit.

No epic poems or paintings, no material for role models, but just a cautionary tale of a nameless Clan (or rather a clan, since they wouldn't even warrant the capital letter) which stooped so low, that the regalia was used as a toilet and no one was able the avenge the slight.

Shinead spent a whole day cleaning the regalia the most thoroughly they were ever cleaned. She vowed to never, ever talk about this to anyone EVER, and kill every last one of the attackers, shit down their throats, find a necromancer, rise them again, and nail their still-thinking corpses up at the ruins of the Clan village. And kill them again every year for eternity.

Even if she had to lead a monkey around his nose.

Before leaving the ruins, she went back to the Inkmaster's office. Of course, the more valuable (or at least valuable-looking) implements were looted, and most of the rest were destroyed, but the catalog of approved tattoos, markings, and signs carved into the walls was still intact. She searched for and found the most severe of vows and promises there was known to the Clan, and carved it into her left breast, directly over her heart – as it was the approved place for such. Everyone who saw it, even non-Reds, would know she was out for revenge and would not rest until the promise was fulfilled. Not even death would stand in her way!