The Speaker was not a happy Werewolf. When her group was saved by the Alpha, she had been glad. Despite what Kinshra said, the group had needed the help and the Speaker was more than happy to meet up with her mate sooner rather than later. After the initial euphoria of meeting up however, the Alpha grew sullen but the Speaker had expected that. Running off the way she did, the Speaker knew the Alpha would be unhappy and she was willing to grovel for a few days to soothe their relationship.

An unexpected decision from the Alpha made things easier for her. Treznor had never seen a Spider demon before and decided they need to bring the corpse of one of the Spider demons back to the Creator. By now the Kin had an idea of the Creator’s powers and it’s method of creation. The Creator need to absorb the body of a dead creature to understand it before it could transmuted a living version of that creature into…something else. Since they understood this, it has been an unspoken policy among the Kin to bring the corpse of any unknown animal back to the Creator. The Spider demon was without question one of those creatures. Hauling a creature of the size of the Spider demon was surprisingly easy. The Spider demons were man-sized spiders with the upper body of humans but despite that, they were very light and the bigger Werewolves like Darmin and the Alpha could easily carry the body on their own. Light as it was, the corpse did slow them down so Momo was sent ahead to inform the Creator of what had happened. This decision by the Alpha actually gave the Speaker more time to soothe the ego of her mate and by the time they reached the Keg Mountains, the relationship between the Speaker and the Alpha was better than ever.

Unfortunately, no sooner had she had arrived she had to leave. When the group arrived at Big Keg, the Speaker found that preparation for a war was in full swing. Momo had done her job and informed the Creator of what was happening in the south. Rather unexpectedly, the Creator had ordered the Kin to go south to help out the Red Creator and worse was the fact that the Speaker was ordered to follow the army south. As her group knew where the Red Creator’s cave was located, that made some sense but the Speaker had been hoping for some rest. She didn’t really think she was needed as the others, Kinshra and Darman especially, were more than happy to be going back south. However the Speaker knew that the orders of the Creator had to be followed so she focused on the task at hand and gave what useful information she could to the Kin.

The good news was that most of the preparation had been done already and the Creator was in a good mood due to the Spider demon. The Creator had created different spiders before but after absorbing the Spider demon, it created a gigantic spider about the size of a bear. The Creator called it the ‘Giant Spider’ which was confusing because it had already created a ‘giant spider’. That ‘giant spider’ was about three times the size of a normal spider but since this latest ‘Giant Spider’ was the size of a bear, the Creator informed the Kin that the ‘Giant Spider’ name would be given to this spider specie while the previous spider would be known as the ‘Giant Cave Spider’. That name just adds to the confusion but who was she to say anything to the Creator?

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

The Speaker could only comfort herself with the fact that the Alpha was following the Kin south. The Kin had heard of the Morningstar Maze of the Red Creator and like most stories, the tale grew with the telling. The Alpha wanted to see it and he was not the only one. One of them was the Fox Mother. The Speaker had never seen the giant five-tailed fox before as it was a new creation of the Creator and it was a magnificent looking creature. She was also the leader of the Foxkin. The Speaker had seem them already as one of the small fox-face Kin was in the group that saved her and she found the affinity the Foxkin had with the strange creature called the Rem intriguing. More importantly, the Foxkin were mages. Mages was one area the Kin had been lacking and it seems the Creator had worked to rectify that problem. The Speaker was even informed that the Fox Mother was able to work magic that cover a large area.

The Speaker hoped to see that soon. Less impressive to the Speaker were the Bullmen. The Kin don’t really need new warriors and while the muscular Kin looked impressive, the Speaker found their behaviour to be strange and unsettling. Unlike the happy-go-lucky and slightly mischievous Foxkin, the typical Bullman was a loner. To be more exact, the male Bullmen were loners. They wandered alone in the mazes of the lower floors avoiding all the other Kin including the female Bullmen. The female Bullmen prefer to group together and they travel in a herd in the Kar Forest. Unlike the males, the females seems to hate being underground and prefer to be under the sky. The Speaker wondered why the genders were acting so different and could not come up with anything explanation that satisfied her.

Most of the Kin volunteered to fight but luckily for them, the Chieftain was not one of them. The leader of the Ratlings said he would stay back to guard the Creator which was a good thing as most of the Kin would be travelling south. The journey itself was uneventful and the pace even slowed once they hit The Burning Fields. The rest of the Kin did not care much for the ash-covered land though they were interested in the bonfires that littered the land. A problem came up when they got closer to Mount Morningstar. The flyers were their scouts and they reported that the human army was already at the dormant volcano. The Kin had expected this and the plan they had was to let the humans break themselves against the Morningstar Maze and attack them from another side. However as they proceeded towards the volcano, one of the Crowmen came back to report that the demons had launched a sortie against the humans. This was unexpected but the Speaker did not believe this would change their strategy. Unfortunately she wasn’t the one in charge. Kinshra wanted to launch a surprise attack against the humans and the Alpha wasn’t against the idea. The decision was quickly made and the Kin formed up for an attack. The battle was not going well.

In the beginning, the Fox Mother cast a large spell over the Kin to trick the humans into wasting their spells. From what the Speaker understood, the spell from the Fox Mother was an illusion that made it seem that the Kin was attacking the human army. The Speaker was sceptical at first. She had never even heard of a spell that could cover so many people, much less seen it. It was a sign of the power of the Fox Mother that the spell worked as intended but once the fighting started, the superior training and tactics of the humans began to tell.

Despite their power and strength, the Kin was not an army. They fought as individuals and worked best in small group. Their opponent was a trained army. The human warriors fought shoulder to shoulder and the Kin were not able to break their lines. The Kin was losing, and losing badly. The Speaker was not a happy Werewolf.

Then she heard the roar.