“Here we have the area we call 'The Training Arena', please watch your step.”

The Speaker and her fellow Werewolves followed the demon Doxuhr onto a ledge that overlook a circular room with a flat ground. All the Werewolves were in their human form and as they looked down at the ground below them, they could see several demons already in training. The demons were gigantic creatures with sharp claws, wild hair, and two long horns growing from their heads. However expect for their huge size and twin horns, they looked surprisingly human. The only odd thing about them was their skin color which was either red or blue. Each of them was armed with a big iron club and they were all swinging at a giant stone placed in front of them.

“NO! You guys are big but stop trying to brute force your opponents into submission.  Use your body. Turn your hips. Follow through on your swing.”

As normal-looking as those big demons were, their instructor was anything but. Towering over the demons, their instruction was a bear-like demon who was covered with black fur. Walking upright, he looked strong and was barking out instructions to his pupils. The Speaker was no warrior but the demonic instructor seen to know what he was doing and she wasn’t the only one who thought so.

“That bear demon is an instructor?” Darmin asked. The big Werewolf was looking intently at the action below them and he had a look the Speaker had seen before.  He wanted to go down to test his mettle against the demons below. Males will be males.

“Hellmight was a famed warrior in the area. He was part of a group looking to destroy the master and was so impressive the master decided to change him instead of killing him. Now he’s helping the rest of the demons with their melee combat.”

“Melee combat? You mean you have other instructors here in the mountain.” Kinshra asked immediately.

“Yes,” Doxuhr proudly replied. “We have other trainers for magic, hunting and certain jobs. If you are interested, I could show you the areas later.”

“Why not have everyone in one area? Wouldn’t that be better?”

“Unfortunately we don’t have a jack-of-all-trades expert like the Speaker here. Our trainers are more specialized so it makes more sense for the training to be held at different area.” Doxuhr smiled ruefully at the Werewolf who asked the question before continuing. “Besides, we have the room.”

Indeed they do. What’s the difference between the tunnels in the Kar Mountains and the tunnels in a dormant volcano? The answer was the layout. In the Kar Mountains, the tunnels of the Creator consist of several floors each with a Boss at the end of it. For humans attacking the Creator, they had to face and eliminate each Boss before they could go down to the floor below. The tunnels of the Red Creator were totally different. The tunnels in Mount Morningstar were a continuous series of volcanic tunnels that intersect with each other like a giant maze. Although there were several stairs that led up or down, there were no floors or area that attackers had to clear to advance to the next area. There were in fact multiple ways to get to any area in the tunnels and only the room of the Red Creator had a sole opening.

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This was quite deliberate. Although the Red Creator never properly explained it to the demons, the demons understood that the confusing maze meant that there would never be a time when the demons could be held back by attackers. There was no way any humans attacking the Creator could create a bottleneck as the demons would just use another way to go around the attackers. This was in fact something that the demons did on the few occasions humans had tried attacking their Master. Thus far, they had been very successful. Personally, she preferred the more structural approach of the Kar Mountains but the Speaker can’t argue with the results. She had been informed that no one, even the group Hellmight was in, had ever managed to reach the room of the Red Creator.

“Impressive,” the Speaker said.

Doxuhr beamed in delight and the Speaker smiled diplomatically back at him. Since the Red Creator had named her as the Speaker, the demons of Mount Morningstar had been treating her as a foreign dignitary. It seems the Red Creator had informed the demons of a Creator in the Kar Mountains and somehow it had gave the demons the wrong idea of her role as the “Speaker” of the Creator. To the Speaker, she was just the conduit between the Creator and the Kin. All she did was to relay the Creator’s orders to the Kin and maybe at times helped the Alpha and Chieftain on how to implement those commands. For some reason, the Demons believed that she was more than that. They were led to believe she was more like an advisor and strategist to the Creator. Now that she’s here, the demons have added the titles of diplomat and ambassador to her as well!

The demons had been trying their best to impress her but the Speaker just found the whole thing irritating. She was no diplomat but for the sake of both the Kin and the Demons she now had to be one. Even though it wasn’t her Creator, the Speaker wasn’t about to contradict and correct the Red Creator…even if it was giving out wrong information.

Faking a smile wasn’t new to the Speaker but she did find it exhausting. She had thought she was beyond that now. Eager to show off his home, Doxuhr led the group of Werewolves further into the dormant volcano. The Speaker wished he could go faster. Whereas the Werewolves were given a guided tour, Apep and the demons in their group had been brought straight to the Red Creator for some sort of ceremony. The Speaker was far more interested in that ceremony than getting lost in the maze of tunnels.

The tunnels of the Red Creator were extensive and multilayered, and the Werewolves would be hopelessly lost without a guide. The Speaker had no doubt that was the point of having such an elaborate system in place but she also had little doubt Doxuhr was taking them on a roundabout way to the Red Creator in order to show his home, and the tour was beginning to trying her patience. The group entered an area that was a big cavern. Several man-sized rocks that looked like they were shot out of the ground littered the area but it was the creatures that populated the room that got the attention of the Werewolves. The creatures in the room weren’t demons.

The Speaker had seen enough of the demons to have a rough idea of their characteristics. They came in all shapes, colors and sizes but all the demons had one thing in common; they had horns. The creatures in front of the Werewolves did not. Red in color, the creatures were giant lizards that walked on two legs and had two short arms. They had big heads with powerful looking jaws and a long, heavy tail. They looked strong, powerful, and very dangerous.

“What are those?” Darmin asked voice full of admiration.

“The Master was trying to create something called a “Powerful-Unique-Fire-Flinger” but failed. These were the failed experiments.”

“These are the “failures”?” The Speaker thought that it was incredulous these creatures were considered failures.

“Oh yes! Sad really, they are very powerful but the Master said they were supposed to have wings, horns and the ability to breathe fire.”

“…what are they called?”

“Nothing really. The Master never named them. It just called them “Those Redundant Experiments”.”

“So what do the rest of you call them?”

“The T-Rex.”

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