I sit on the driver's seat of the wagon and watch the passing scenery of the pine forest while thinking about what happened. Two months have passed since I fought Ollie at the capital and the king asked me to rescue his heir and children, with the emphasis on the "save the heir" part of his request. The trip to this eastern fort Ollie mentioned as the place he is keeping the royal children in would have only taken three days of riding alone, a week if I brought troops, but Ollie had insisted to be given two months. I don't really mind as it gave me the time I needed to come up with a plan, but Ollie has probably set something up too with the time he had granted for himself. 

The first part of the plan was to make use of my own bluff that I used against Ollie, while the second was to regain my old strength, with the added benefit of having this new werewolf form. So after instructing Lewin so that he could prepare everything according to my plan, I headed west, traveling back to the encampment I spend my first two months in and began hunting the local wildlife. The wildlife has gotten even worse now that the third orb was broken, and the outpost has been attacked multiple times by different kinds of animals, each bigger and stronger than the ones that attacked during my stay, but the fortified camp managed to rebel most of them in somewhat successful manner. Losses were great too and most of the creatures retreated instead of being killed, so I hunting them for food was met with a metaphorical form of thundering applause. The royal degree that I brought with me to prove that I worked with the clearance of the king managed to guard me from being attacked by the people guarding the outpost.

After few weeks of hunting, I had gained more than just my old size and strength back, so I made the preparations to return to the capital. I did take a souvenir from my hunting back with me, as I figured that it would come handy in my plan. Arriving to the capital with two weeks to spare before having to leave for the eastern fort, I added an extra step on my plan, as the third was to take the sharpened machetes from the workshop with me before heading for Ollie. Well, it was more like an addition for the third step; instead just getting the machetes I also had them make me thick leather armor and helmet. Couldn't be done before the hunt as my height, size and muscle mass increased during it, so making it in my size would have to wait after the hunt and I wasn't sure if I had the time. I chose leather armor because when I'm fighting Ollie I'm going to be relying on my speed, not my strength, so anything restrictive was dropped out of the options.

Lewin did his job perfectly on the both assignments I gave him, making what I asked him to make and recruiting both Sam and Gareth for the job of helping me. I brought William with me from the outpost, with the permission of the king of course, so I'm stacked with weapons and allies for the fight. Going over everybody's part on the plan on the final day after having confirmed that we had all the necessities and that they did work, we headed east on freight wagon drawn by six horses.

And now I can see the eastern fort in the distance, so I knock on the wooden board separating the driver, me, from the occupants of the wagon and then slow the wagon down to a crawl. Listening as the wagon is emptied while still on the move albeit slowly, I scan the surrounding for any sound or sight of Ollie. Nothing is seen or heard as the wagon is emptied with the distance slowly shrinking, so I wait patiently till the last of the equipment is taken and then whip the horses back up to the speed we were going earlier. 

Coming out of the pine forest surrounding the fort and passing through the man-made clearing in the front of the fort, I arrive at the gates. Wooden gates, made from oak and reinforced with iron that open like a set of doors instead of coming down, as there is no moat surrounding the fort. The fort itself is built from large slabs of granite used to form the curtain walls and round towers one can see from the outside, with the towers having cone-roofs made of red colored flat-tiles. The walls are worn down and full of small cracks with moss growing out of them, and some of the conical roofs have caved in. I can't exactly make out the shape of the area encircled by the walls, but I can tell from the positions of the towers that it isn't any basic shape, most likely the walls were built to accommodate the topography of the area. No banners or flags can be seen in any of the flagpoles, but the fort was said to be abandoned. Makes you wonder why though, as the fort is in good shape if one accounts the fact that it hasn't been taken care of for decades, and it could still definitely house a large group of soldiers. Is it because it was built before the desert had outstretched so close?

My thoughts are interrupted by Ollie flying out from the courtyard and perching himself up on the wall directly above the gate. His even more mutated now, but that really doesn't surprise me. Only slightly taller and bigger, but now he had four pair of wings growing from his back, two bigger pairs stretched open, and two smaller folded closed over his chest and stomach. Left arm had grown bigger than the right that had seemingly split in half, causing two right arms to sprout from the shoulder. His face had also malformed from the owl-like round to accommodate the fact that the right side now had five eyes when the left only had four. 

"Arrived and on time too? Color me impressed."

"Cut the crap and tell me where the children are!"

"Ah, for them you have to play my game, I did make it for you after all."

"Rookie mistake, taking the revenge personal. I'm so very ashamed of you Ollie."

"...You're not taking this very seriously."

"And why is that I wonder, could it be because after all you done you just keep losing to me? Or the fact that no matter how you plan and boast you can't kill me? There's also the thing that no matter how much stronger you get compared to me, I still win every fight. And now we are here, playing some heinous game on the lives of the innocent, 'cause you're too scared to even fight me anymore."

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"DON'T GET TOO IMPUDENT!"

"If it gets you that mad then come down here and fight."

Ollie looks down from his vantage point without moving a single muscle to descent. I smile and continue:

"See, you're up there so you can take flight before I can reach you in case I ever try to. This game is made so that I waste most of my energy and healing stock before you start the actual fight, no? That kind of plan is the only thing you have left anyway, you can't attack me in my sleep 'cause I don't sleep and trying to ally with the fourth whenever he comes is probably a wasted effort for you. You're scared of me and for a good reason; if we ever fought again, I'd kill you. Want to prove me wrong? Yet again that would be easy, you'd just had to fight me fairly."

Ollie looked at me for minute or two before continuing:

"The game is simple, I have stashed the five royal brats on the still standing towers and the heir in the tower built atop the central building of this fort. You have ten minutes to to reach any of the children, with the order of going counterclockwise starting from this gate and ending with the heir. Take more and I simply kill the kid waiting in the tower and move on to the next one. The kid is considered safe as long as you manage to touch him or her before the time runs out, so you don't have to waste time taking them anywhere before the game is over. Of course you can start from the last one, the heir, if you want and move backwards in the order from there, giving you nice 60 minutes to reach the heir. This will result in death of the first two of the children at least, as I will be going through them in the first order. Deviate from either of these orders and I will start killing them randomly without time limit."

"Oh nice, you rigged the game so that I can easily accomplishment what the king wants, as long as I forsake my own opinions and let the innocent kids die, very nemesis like of you. But do you seriously expect me to believe that any of the kids are alive, knowing you I suspect you killed them as soon as you left the capital."

"That was something I thought of doing, but you said it yourself, only way I can kill you is to have you waste your stamina and...'Healing stock' you called it? So if you arrive to the first tower and find the kid dead before time ran out, you simply quit. That would hamper my plan, now wouldn't it?"

"And how exactly do I know how much time has passed?"

"Whit a clock, duh."

Ollie throws me a wristwatch.

"With both of having one these, we can easily both tell when the kids die."

"I'm kinda worried about why you have two wristwatches, but I'm just going to go with that you stole the second one from the third... Who you said was swimming in the middle of the ocean... After the stuff destroying possession event... I don't really think that's the case."

"I didn't actually come here alone, when I was being pulled into this word I was with my friend, whom I grabbed to save myself from being pulled in, which didn't work and we both ended here and got chased by the owl. After getting into safety of the altar, we overtime threw lots of our stuff on the bags we had, as we were stranded in the desert, and stuff like wristwatches got really sweaty and uncomfortable. So long story short, after putting our stuff in the safety of our bags, we eventually touched the orb and the owl demon spirit appeared and beckoned one of us choosing to become host or something. My friend of course started talking on and on about how we would share the power and use it to help people. While he was going on with monologue I picked the heaviest rock I could find and you can guess the rest."

"You're a real dick, you know that right?"

"But enough of me, why did you arrive in a wagon that could easily host ten men?"

"To better take children to safety, my dear Little Red Riding Owl."

Ollie swooped down from the gate top and smashed into my wagon, tearing of the roof. Looking around to see nothing, he next tore through the floor to see if there was a hidden compartment there. Of course both of those actions were utterly useless, but I didn't use the time he spend wasting his to attack him, for the worry that the kids were actually still alive and attacking him would cause him to kill them, if he managed to slip away.

"Satisfied with destroying my wagon? Now the royal children have to make the trip in broken down wagon."

"Trust me, with the way I have taken care of them these past two months, they're more than used in living in.... 'Unsatisfactory' conditions."

Ollie flew back up before continuing his speech:

"There's nothing in the distance that would hint that there are people with you, but..."

"But?"

"There is an unusually big boar out there."

"Huh, that is weird; this area shouldn't have any boars."

Ollie looked alarmed after hearing that and continued to gaze the boar for a long time before turning back to me.

"You asshole, I remember hunting boars in these forests."

"Oh, my mistake."

"You're a real dick, you know that right?"

"And here I thought that you were supposed to be an owl, not a parrot. But then yet again, you have shown yourself to be a chicken too. You also taste like one now that I reminded myself of that."

"ENOUGH! Let's start the game."

With that we set our wristwatches on the same time after checking that they still worked and I prepared myself for the game.