"Fear not the grim reaper,

Nor the bloody cleaver,

For compared to losing those,

Whose love and care you chose,

Mere death would be cleaner." - The Lone Soldier's Limerick, dated from before written history, passed down by word of mouth through the ages.

"Rein? You're back?" answered a voice from further inside the building, at which point Reinhardt's dread finally petered out, and he sighed deeply with relief. He walked quickly towards where the voice came from, but she came out and met him before he reached there.

Elfriede looked as if she had been through some rough times. Her usually neat, straight hair was frazzled, and he could see some bandages peeking through the collar of the tunic she wore. Her left arm was supported in a sling, and wrapped with many bandages, all of which showed the color of seeping blood on them.

Reinhardt didn't say anything more, and instead enveloped his wife in a warm embrace, if carefully so as not to disturb her wounds. He felt Elfriede hug him back with her one good arm in return, and they just stood silently there for a moment.

It was a rather odd, contrasting sight for some. Reinhardt was a full-blooded therian, with features that closely resembled a large predatory feline. His large body - a bit over two meters in height - and powerful, muscular frame was covered with white, spotted fur, and his long, thickly furred, fluffy tail swished to and fro behind him in joy and relief.

In contrast, Elfriede was a human. She was rather tall for a woman, a meter seventy-five or thereabouts, with a lithe, slender build akin to that of a dancer. Her straw-colored hair reached to her shoulders, yet what most would be drawn to were her eyes. Her pupils were a silvery gray, and always looked unfocused, as if she was looking into nowhere.

When they embraced like that, it looked almost as if she was being swallowed into his fur, which was thicker and fluffier than most would have expected. He looked almost twice her size on such close comparison, even.

"Are you all right?" asked Reinhardt after they finally parted from the embrace. In his heart he knew that was a silly question. She was standing right in front of him, yet her injuries truly worried him, and told much about how bad the situation must have been at the fort. "Is Erycea all right?"

"Cool your head. We'll live," replied Elfriede, which elicited another sigh of relief from her husband. While he couldn't help but worry for her and their daughter's safety, he also knew that they were in good hands.

After all, Elfriede was an even better fighter than Reinhardt himself, to the point that out of ten spars he would count himself lucky if he managed to win one. When he considered that the fighting at the fort was apparently so bad to the point that even she was injured so, he was somewhat glad she had stayed to look after their daughter.

"Wait. What do you mean, you'll live?" he asked, as he finally caught onto the unusual wording of Elfriede's answer. She didn't answer him, and instead led him towards a room further in the back of the building, and opened the door.

Inside the room, Reinhardt saw their four year old daughter Erycea, lying on a bed. She sniffed the air as the door opened, and slowly raised herself to a sitting position. Even from where he stood Reinhardt noticed the still-healing bruise on his little girl's shoulder and forehead, as well as how her torso was bandaged rather tightly, and how she favored her left side.

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"Papa?" asked his little girl as she looked at him with bleary eyes. Apparently she was sleeping when he came, and his arrival had woken her up.

Reinhardt watched as his little daughter gingerly stepped down from the bed. He winced in sympathy when she winced in pain from her obviously hurting side, and he went to hug her before she could walk much further.

"My sweet little girl…" he said as he tenderly, carefully hugged his daughter. Erycea was large for her age, around the size of a six or seven year old human child. Her mixed heritage meant that she physically grew faster, especially when compared to children from most other races.

Her features mostly resembled his, with that strong resemblance to a predatory feline, though it had traces that reminded one of a kitten instead on her still immature face. Her figure was a bit closer to her mother's however, with longer legs and a shorter torso, though he knew she could - and still preferred - to run on all fours like he did. Both of their tails wagged to and fro in joy as they embraced.

Unlike him, Erycea had hair instead of fur on the top of her head. Her hair was the same snow-white shade as her spotted fur, and grew down to the small of her back. Reinhardt gently caressed his little girl's hair with one paw-like hand, then rubbed her head gently, something the girl always liked.

"Who did this?" asked Reinhardt as a hard edge leaked into his voice. Now that he looked closer he saw another bruise on Erycea's cheek, and two of her fangs were missing. Sure, they were milk fangs and she would grow another later, but the mere thought that someone had hurt his child lit the embers of rage that smoldered in his heart once more. "Which bastard did this to you?"

"T'was a bad lady," said his daughter with a little sulk. The look on her little face when she sulked like that made it hard for Reinhardt to refrain from petting her again, but he held on until Erycea finished her words. "They hurt mama. I tried to help, but the bad lady kicked me."

"You're my brave little girl," he said as he gave her face a lick with his rough tongue, which made her purr in satisfaction. Even that elicited a wince out of her though, as the action apparently strained her injured side somewhat. "Go rest now. Sleep well, so you'll heal faster."

Reinhardt gently carried his daughter and laid her down on the bed once more, and spent a moment petting her head, before he draped the blanket over her. It didn't take long before Erycea fell into another slumber, and both he and Elfriede quietly left the room, closing the door as quietly as they could behind them.

"So… tell me. What happened?" He asked once they closed the door and walked a bit further so their voice wouldn't disturb the sleeping Erycea. Reinhardt hadn't noticed when he entered, because his wife and child were all that was on his mind, but now that he took a second look?

He noticed that many of the camp followers who shared the building together, as well as some of the older children, sported injuries of varying seriousness. Some people he knew were missing as well, whether it was for more mundane reasons or worse, he was not certain.

"They hit us hard yesterday. Broke into the fortress even," said Elfriede with a completely even tone. "Fuckers didn't seem to know - or even care - about the unspoken rules. The bastards hit us rather badly, though fortunately it was the Legion's folks that found it out the hard way, not ours."

"Since they clearly didn't give a shit about respecting us, we took the fight back to them. A whole squad tried to barge in here, so I faced them," she continued, with a wince on her face. "One of the sons of a whore was good, got me a couple times while I was dealing with his shit-eating friends. Then next thing I knew, Ery jumped in and had her jaws clamped on his throat."

"Ery did what!?" Reinhardt said with utter incredulity in his voice.

"Erycea earned her first kill yesterday. Tore the shithead's throat right off," stated Elfriede nonchalantly, as if it wasn't her four year old daughter who had just killed a man the day before. "He probably didn't think much of her. Just a kid, he thought. At least until he realized that she didn't have fangs for show. Serves the asshole right."

"What about her injury?" asked Reinhardt with a more subdued voice.

"Another of the buggers kicked her off the crapsack. All that did was to cause the git to be missing a large-arse chunk off his throat though," said Elfriede with more edge in her voice. She was just as doting as Reinhardt was to their daughter, so he could guess her reaction to that. "The cunt dressed like one of their officers… so I caught the snatch… alive. Only chopped all of the twat's limbs. Ol' Harscape ought to be interrogating the bloody mink, or trying to, at least."

"Doubt the bitch'll spill, though," added Elfriede in the end, almost as an afterthought. "The shitstain's got the looks of a fucking fanatic. Those types ain't squealers. What about you? How are you back so soon?"

"It's… a long story," said Reinhardt with a dejected sigh. "Want to come with? I'll be giving old Harscape the report. Might as well listen in."

"Works for me."