We will allow their tyranny no longer! That they dare to call us subhuman or half is an affront to Huldtar and Narsha’at alike! Let us spill their blood and burn their bones! I will be the first to offer my life and my arm, now join me!

-From the final address of Noonbright Teikhom

We didn’t hesitate to run towards the rest of the swarm to see what Arwa was so interested in. She, and the rest of the wolfstags, kept their noses to the air while sniffing deeply and curiously. Even so, they all gathered together and seemed to pull against the invisible constraints of their masters’ commands to stay close. Sybil seemed to ask them to calm themselves, and they stopped stepping from one paw to the other, but they still looked at me for some measure of permission. Arwa, her antlers taller than my head but her eyes nearly a foot lower than mine, kept glancing between me and the nearby mountain.

“Any idea what’s happening?” I asked Sybil, but she clicked her fangs together in denial.

“They smell others like them.” Joral inserted himself. “Arwa seems to think that the one she smells’ scent is much like that of these pups’ sire.”

“Arwa.” I called, and she pulled herself away from her curiosity and strode closer to me. Even so, she whined and tossed her antlers in the direction of the scent. “You smell others?” I asked, and she whined in response. After thinking about it for a moment, I sighed.

“We don’t know if we’ll lose this trail. They could be good for any number of reasons.” I rationalized before I commanded, “Arwa. Go.”

She didn’t hesitate, lightning crackling along her legs and paws as she lunged into a sprint. All of her pups leapt to follow her, the faint thunderings of their magic accelerating them as the Wave Wolfstags stayed behind. Her steps were sure as she leapt up stones, every movement leading her to a goal she seemed to know instinctively. Joral bowed his head before he leapt to follow her on her path. He wasn’t nearly so surefooted, but each of his steps stretched higher and further than the last. Somehow, his gait seemed suited to continuously scaling slopes, and he was able to slowly gain on the excited wolfstag. It wasn’t long before I lost their silhouettes in the shadows of the forest, but occasional explosions of birds leaping into flight alerted us to the passage of a dozen excited wolfstags.

The forgotten Wave Wolfstags looked at their companions, one male seeming to mourn their departure. I turned to Sybil and asked, “Do you think you should follow them?”

“No.” She answered. “I believe that, if she is able to subjugate them, then they will follow her. If she cannot, perhaps she will find another opportunity to merge them into our flock. If that never occurs, then she was too weak.”

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I flared my frills and moved on from the subject. There would probably be something at least somewhat like a wolfstag here in the Shandise, but if they were to join with the swarm, we’d have to figure out how to feed them as well. Keeping as many carnivores as were already in the swarm fed was already a logistical nightmare, and as the swarm grew so too would the demands for more flesh to feast on. Adding more predators to the swarm seemed to be a fool’s choice to me, but I did find some small solace in the suggestion that there could be plants that we could use to supplement our diet nearby.

A large part of me wished to continue to experiment with my magic, but I couldn’t bring myself to indulge at this time while the swarm needed to continue moving. The herds were happily resting and feeding on the lush green grasses that covered the rolling hills, but we couldn’t expect to stay here for too long. Nievtra still called me, though I didn’t know exactly where it was. With a sigh, I let out the trumpeting call that let the swarm know we were beginning to move out. Oryx bleats and oxfiend moos combined with the hyena shrieks of disagreement to ring out in earnest complaint, but the swarm and the Kou’Tal got them moving before too long.

We continued moving, and I quickly realized that especially the oxfiends would need to be guided to find a much flatter crossing through the Shandise. Even on these rolling, gentle hills, the oxfiends struggled to carry their ponderous mass up the slope. The few times a steeper obstacle presented itself, the entirety of the herd of hundreds of oxfiends skirted widely around it. No boulder was overstepped, and not a riverbed was challenged. The oxfiends would rather travel three times as far to avoid even the most minimal changes in elevation.

Though the vast majority of our scouts and hunters had been sent to seek out the nearest prey or any other useful thing to be found nearby, I sent off the few that remained, as well as plenty of the Kha’Tal rank and file. With their guidance, we found the most effective path forward we could, though even still the oxfiends were occasionally forced to put more effort into their continued journey. Each step forward, I felt the strange familiarity of the mountains settle over me, and I gloried in the scents, the air, the hills, and the sights.

The mountains’ sharp cliffs colored by the hardy greenery was something previously so foreign to me yet their beauty found me occasionally lost in thought observing the peaks. That the peaks could touch the clouds brought a smile of wonder to my face, and each step I took carried an additional bounce that I’d never expected before. The Martanimis jungles were beautiful and I’d loved my time there as a human and keelisha like, but there was something about these mountains that almost divinely settled into my soul. Though she couldn’t seem to communicate more obviously to me at this time, I still felt Nievtala’s happiness. She knew this land, and was pleased we’d made it.

With her approval radiating from within me, I continued my journey onward. Trai, who had been scouting out ahead with those from her pack, ran up to me.

“What is it, little one?” I asked, trepidation beginning to claw at my throat.

“There’s so many interesting new things here!” She replied without answering. “I’ve never seen trees like this before. I don’t really remember the ones from where I hatched, but I feel like these ones are still different. But they’re nice! And I like the birds’ singing. It’s pretty.”

“That’s great, Trai.” I replied, fighting to keep my tone level. “Why did you come back to me so quickly?”

“Ohhhhh. Yeah. Dad says he found something you might be interested in.”