“A lesser known fact about therians, particularly those that had features of predatory beasts, was that as a people, they were often strongly influenced by their instincts. Legends had it that if such a therian were to taste the blood of another person, then their instincts would drive them to seek out violence.
Whether this legend had truth to it or not was unknown, but it was a noted fact that such therians were often found working as mercenaries or other professions where violence was part of their daily life. There was probably some truth to those legends, though whether it involved the blood of another person or something else entirely, nobody could tell for certain.” - Bonaventure Joffur, researcher of therian cultures from the Elmaiya Empire, circa 102 VA.
Fort Ascher brought great changes to the Free Lances as a Company, and it also brought changes to Reinhardt’s little family - and they were a family by then, as despite the relative lack of romantic inclinations from either Reinhardt or Elfriede, they had admitted that they did enjoy each other’s company, and it probably helped that the sex stayed amazing, as they stuck together to raise their child, and formalized the marriage a year later - amongst others.
Probably the biggest change to their family, however, was how Erycea, while she outwardly seemed unbothered, was disturbed somewhat by how she had killed a man back at the desperate struggle in the fort. While Erycea showed no outward signs, the incident had left its mark on the little girl’s psyche, though probably not in the way most people would have expected.
Elfriede was probably the first to notice, when she spotted the little girl spying at her daily training with her sensory perception. She had long ensured that her child had not felt burdened by the life she took, and while the little girl showed far more capacity for empathy than her mother, she fortunately knew better than to assign any of it to the enemy.
Instead, what Erycea had apparently felt from the incident was just how powerless she was. The little girl knew all too well that what she managed to do, she only succeeded in because the enemy was far too distracted to notice her at the time. The little girl had felt that powerlessness all too keenly and decided that she did not want to have any more of that.
When the little girl had discreetly - or so she thought, as there was little anyone could hide from Elfriede as long as they were in the range of her perception - attempted to repeat the workout her mother had done, both Elfriede and Reinhardt had talked about it between themselves, before they accosted their daughter together.
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They had not reprimanded the girl, though, as instead they gave her pointers on the sort of exercise that’d be more suitable for her young age. While Reinhardt had wished for the child to have a peaceful life if it were possible, he was not against her training either. After all, a healthy body was an asset no matter what sort of life one planned to live in the future.
Erycea had trained until her youthful body could handle no more, the active way she used to scamper and run around channeled entirely towards her training instead. Naturally, the sight of her workouts attracted the attention of other children near her age, many of whose parents were also part of the mercenary company’s fighting force or support crew.
Even while the Theodinaz campaign proceeded to its conclusion, a group of like-minded children had gathered around Erycea and worked out alongside her. Much like how Reinhardt used to be called the “Little Boss” by his contemporaries, the children had in turn called his daughter the same way, as the Company was already under his command by that time.
Given the formal joining of Mischka’s smaller unit into the Free Lances, her group’s dependents naturally came along, and amongst them were several children near Erycea’s age who had shared her desire to no longer be so powerless. They too had been in Fort Ascher, had seen others kill and be killed in their defense, and wanted no more of the helplessness they felt as they could only watch it all happen before their eyes.
The little group of children soon expanded to a couple dozen, and as many of those children had non-human blood in them, they were far more physically fit than what one would have expected of children their age. Where other children played, they trained themselves to the point of exhaustion. Some of the other parents - for those who still had their parents - had expressed their worry, but after some discussion, agreed that a healthy body was never a bad thing, and that some of the adults would keep an eye on the children to ensure that they had not overdone their training.
During the Company’s stay at Norouz, some of the locals looked at the group of little children practicing as if their lives depended on it with curiosity. Some had thought that the mercenaries were cruel for making even such young children train so hard, at least until they learnt that those children did the training entirely out of their own desires.
The desire to no longer be powerless was probably something hard to fathom for the local populace, who were used to being the downtrodden ones, where both the nobility and the rich would tread upon their existence on a daily basis. Even so, the sight of the children’s efforts resonated with the hearts of a few individuals, who later chose to leave everything they had known behind and instead throw their lot with the mercenaries.
It was also during that period of time, at the end spurt of the Theodinaz campaign, that another major change occurred in young Erycea’s life. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, she became a big sister, as her parents brought a young human baby - one so young and small that they were still helpless and completely reliant on others for their living - home and told her that the girl would be her little sister.
That was the first time Erycea met the little girl who would go on to become her little sister, and at the time, the first thought that came to her mind was just how adorable the baby girl in her mother’s arms was.