VORGNAR SEVERUS

His eyes cracked open, the moonlight making them glow in the dark night as the man-turned-beast glanced up at the elven girl swinging her legs back and forth, to think a child like her would have better senses than him even after his injuries hurt his pride but pride was something he buried deep within him lest his 'handlers' saw it fit to beat it further out of him. Or at least attempt to.

He clearly remembered the day they came for him, he lived in a small log house deep in the Arisian forests he built himself with his wife and daughter. He was weak back then, even with his inherited powers, what did it matter if he took the form of a ferocious Warg from the faraway continent if his enemies had an Archmage? Nothing.

Still, he resisted, he was beaten.

They took him and his family in front of the Archmage who asked him to make an oath, an oath that would bind his core and soul to their whims in return for letting him and his family live. In his youthful ignorance he spat on the robe of the Archmage, 'I will never serve' he remembered saying.

Vorgnar sighed, his eyes closing again as he recalled his late wife's face. She paid the price for his ignorance, something he never forgave himself for.

I promise I will find our Leah and save her from those monsters.

He was not much more than a slave for a century, killing whoever the Corvids wanted dead and in the last decade they saw it fit to name him the leader of their black ops unit. He smirked under the cover of the darkness, he lost so much on his last mission. His Core was so damaged he lost 200 levels and his Warg form was one and a half legs into the grave but when that Feathered Serpent brutalized his Core and other Forms it also destroyed the Oath engraved upon the Core.

Good thing I lost that dagger, the girl wouldn't have trusted me even this much. He thought with a grimace, Vorgnar Severus was a prideful but honest man before the Empire made him into their attack dog. Guilt was a constant companion in his life, every action he was forced to take resulted in bloodshed and broken families, he caused grief and heartache to thousands even if he wasn't doing so willingly.

He fought against his oath like never before during his last mission, the last sacred thing he could keep himself away from was child murder and he was willing to die to keep it that way but it seemed fate had something else in mind.

He stood, the girl's gaze locked in on him on his first movement without fail.

"I'll take over," he said in a whisper to not wake the others, "You can sleep some if you want."

"I don't need sleep," said the girl with a tilt of her head, "you sure you don't want to sleep more? Aren't you injured or something?"

"I'm still over level 200 and that injury won't hold me back," he shrugged, walking up to the tree.

"I don't want to sleep though."

"Suit yourself," he huffed, leaning his back against the tree.

This girl almost died because of me.

He had no intention of bringing her back to her kingdom though, he had eyes and ears, and it was clear as day that the girl was ecstatic to be outside and free. Not to say what he knew about her betrothed, he was sent on missions into the sultanate and he came to know some less-than-kind tidbits about the Sultan. It could be said that the primary reason that the insufferable man won the succession was because of his machinations behind the scenes.

His father was alright but the Emperor made sure the successor would be the perfect seedbed for a rebellion.

The Corvus Empire was insatiable, he firmly believed that if they conquered the whole planet they'd turn their gaze to the very stars themselves and start to take those as well.

Time slowly passed as Kali sat alert on her perch, she glanced up at the twin moons and saw them slowly losing their light or more accurately the early rays of the sun imperiously suppressed the comparably gentle light of the two smaller celestial objects.

Dawn was close by and Kali heaved a sigh of relief, she could still hear the far-off thumps of enormous footsteps but by her estimation, it was many kilometers away from them and it'd soon be too far for even her hearing to pick them up. Another day in the wilds survived, she got caught by slaving bandits and ... tortured, yes, that should count as torture shouldn't it? Even if the man merely wanted to see her in pain or to 'train' her as it were.

Kali bit her cheeks as she tried to hold down the embers of fury at the thought but when the fury went away all that was left was what she hid beneath it; Dread. She always had this tendency to conceal her fear with anger, she'd be livid whenever anything managed to make her fear it, it was an instinctive response many of her kind shared if she was correct in her assumptions.

Still, dread was dread. She didn't fear the pain, no, what she feared was that with every bout of pain, she felt her resolve crumble. She was only their prisoner for less than two days and she already began to doubt whether she could actually hold out long enough for her to escape. Pathetic. I'm so pathetic.

She bit her lips so hard she felt blood pool in her mouth and her lips swell from the abuse. Would I have become an obedient, submissive little slave for those disgusting humans if they could actually sap my magic and keep me from escaping?

Her lips trembled as she imagined herself as such and to her mounting horror the image wasn't one she couldn't see turning into reality if she was tortured for longer or under more expert hands. Throwing pain-inducing spells at her was closer to the bastard bandit living out his sadistic dreams than actual torture with the goal of breaking someone or bending them to his will.

'I just have to avoid being caught.' she reasoned but the dread of her body and mind being broken in by a master was not one to leave her just yet, not with such flimsy resolve in her path forward. The reality of it that just now dawned on her was that she didn't trust herself to withstand the worst that the world could throw at her.

I'm not going back.

She gulped, reaffirming the one thing she wanted with all her being and finally, she felt her imagination subside and stop showing her all the nightmarish ways her future could get derailed. It simmered under the surface still, waiting for a moment of weakness but for now, Kali could focus on what was important; protecting her little group.

With a glance at the brightening sky, she leapt off her branch and landed soundlessly on the forest floor, her feet finding two footholds on soft grass next to dry leaves that would have crunched audibly under her weight. She smiled, she could get better, she was getting better already.

Her gaze intersected with the wolfish stare of their resident Daemon, Kali tilted her head and waved at him which earned her a nod and soft grunt. The man awoke a couple of hours ago and has been meditating ever since, his eyes snapping open every so often when she heard an animal wander dangerously close to their makeshift camp.

Dangerous for it that is, she sensed no magic emanating from any of them and Vorgnar dwarfed most of them not only in size but in power, much more in the second than the first. Still, at most, they received a soft bump in the nose from an underpowered Kinetic Strike from Kali which was enough to chase them away without waking the slumbering trio of elves.

Kali carefully hopped her way over to the sleeping bags and crouched down, she first gently shook Selene by the shoulder and the woman's eyes snapped open on the first touch. Kali stared into her eyes with a bit of surprise and the sleepy woman only took a second to understand her situation as she blinked.

"Morning?" she asked in a whisper and Kali nodded, glancing up at the early rays shining through the canopy.

"Morning," nodded Kali before going on to shake awake the other two.

Lexy blinked up at her uncomprehending, a bit of drool still stuck to her mouth and Kali couldn't help but feel her heartstrings being pulled at by the adorable display. She never knew she had a soft spot for children but it seemed she had, or maybe it was for cuteness, she did play with that furry animal back on the mountain too but that couldn't compare to the elven child looking up at her with wide innocent eyes.

"Sorry Lexy but we need to move on soon," she said as the girl shook her head and pushed herself up into a sitting position.

"Okay," she whispered, her eyes still half-lidded as she looked around curiously at the camp. Oh yeah, she was asleep by the time we set it up.

"Wake up you oaf," Kali glanced to the side where Selene was kicking Virendel in the side but the older elf just flipped over to his other side as he mumbled something under his breath. Selene's eyebrows twitched in irritation before a malicious smirk descended upon her features, she squatted down and poured a tiny bit of cold water onto her hand out of her waterskin and with the smirk still on her face she sneaked her hand under the bedsheet.

Kali couldn't see exactly what she did but the girlish yelp escaping from the man's mouth as he sprung to his feet like a cat doused in water evident that he didn't enjoy it. He glared at his sister as his hand caressed his nape as if to clean it.

"Nice of you to finally wake up," said Selene with a serene smile on her face contrasting the previous expression she wore.

"You are so childish," hissed Virendel but a sigh soon followed as he shook his head, "Whatever, we need to pack up and continue on if we want to reach the village."

Kali just watched the duo as she felt a tinge of nostalgia grab her by the throat, her own brother and sister weren't much different from the duo in temperament and the sight managed to bring that to the forefront of her mind.

Kali glanced down as she felt a small hand grab onto her hand and saw Alexis stare up at her with wide eyes, looking every bit like a pleading little animal asking for a treat as she did so.

"What is it?" Kali's lips curved into a gentle smile.

"Berries?" the young elf questioned as she sniffed at the air around Kali.

"Oh," Kali suddenly regretted staying in the same place the whole night and not going out to forage for some berries, "Sorry, I don't have berries now but I'll keep an eye out for them as we travel alright?"

Her answer was an adorably growling stomach as the girl blushed deep red and buried her face in Kali's side.

"Any of you have some food?" Kali raised her voice and the squabble quietened, even Vorgnar looked up from his packing but he just shook his head and went back to work.

"Uhh," Selene started rummaging through her bag, "I have some of this," she held up a dried piece of meat of questionable origin and Kali wrinkled her nose at the overwhelming scent of it.

"Anything lighter?" she asked with a glance at the embarrassed Alexis trying to make herself invisible.

"I do have some nuts left over from yesterday," Virendel spoke up as he held out a small satchel, "I wouldn't mind sharing."

"Thank you," Kali received the leather satchel with a smile as she nudged the girl at her side.

Said girl quickly snatched the container out of Kali's grasp and retreated behind her, next thing any of them heard was nuts crunching under strong elven teeth.

"Alright," Kali nodded thankfully at the man, "Are you two ready to go?"

"I'll be in a minute," said Selene as she quickly rolled up her sleeping bag and threw all the stuff she used for cooking the previous night into a bag.

"I am," Virendel said with his face impassive as ever but Kali felt his tone was maybe a bit too smug, for being more than a thousand he sure was childish but who was Kali to judge? She abandoned everything she ever knew because she didn't want to marry, if there was an award for being childish she was the winner for sure, at least in her mind.

From there on time slipped by quickly and by the time the sun was fully glaring down at the world below they were on their way.

Kali hopped from one leg to the other, she only stepped on spots that could soften her footfalls. Her efforts were more for practice than for practical use as Virendel a few paces behind her was about as sneaky as a boar with the way he was pushing through bushes and ferns. Kali's mind was occupied by focusing on all the sounds she heard as she cataloged and analyzed each and every one of them before she decided whether they were evidence of something significant like a predator tailing them or if they could be dismissed with 99.9% of sounds landing in the latter category.

She searched for correlations between sounds as she did before, cracks of twigs and the unnatural brushing of leaves as something went by being one of those. Still, while her mind was occupied a part of it couldn't help but grow bored with her task and she took to practice sneaking around all the while she kept her eyes on her surroundings, as much as to search for interesting or beautiful things as to notice dangers.

She heard a sharp whistle next to her but she didn't bother turning, she noted the slightly different tilt of the tone with a smirk. She heard that sound quite often since coming into the forest down here, the sound of birds crying out in alarm, trilling for attention or just signaling for each other. The exact sound Virendel made next to her was one she noticed a particular species of fist-sized, red-feathered hummingbirds make but she couldn't tie a meaning to the soft thrill just yet.

Her gaze curiously snapped to where she heard an answering trill from and she caught a hint of red feathers a few hundred meters away among the leaves, it had a cute tone and no hurry in it, no alarm. Then came another, and another. Kali's curiosity grew as all the answers were a bit different with the last two coming from the far left and right sounding just like the trill she associated with the hummingbirds signaling for danger.

Her ears twitched as she flexed them but even as the two trills came from only a kilometer away in each direction she couldn't hear anything that should alert the birds so she looked at the one that should be able to satisfy her curiosity.

"What did you do?" she asked as her eyes glimmered with excitement, it wasn't quite magic but it might as well be in her eyes.

"A simple trick our rangers use to stay away from danger while out in the forest," the elf answered as he thoughtfully glanced around with a few more trills coming in, "the flamesong birds are known for their intelligence and comradery so if one knows how to ask for a safe passage it is quite easy, they know the forest better than we ever could."

"That's what you did?" Kali tilted her head, "ask for a passage?"

"I asked for any danger nearby," he clarified, "these birds can sense the pheromone trail predators use to mark their territories and tend to set up their nests between these territories in the 'no-man's-land' if you will."

"I see," Kali nodded, it all sounded like something out of an adventure book where they had a druid with them, druidism wasn't an acknowledged school of magic but fantasy was still a thing and elves always had a fascination with nature and living along with it, "can you do other things like that?"

"I can," the man smiled indulgently at Kali, "I'm not much of a fighter but I've managed to stay alive for this long with all sorts of tricks up my sleeve."

"Like?" Kali knew she was being dragged along by the nose but she didn't care, she was obviously still listening to the sounds but the older elf was now the prime target of her boredom-relief efforts.

"Just with Flamsong birds, I know a few other signals that could ask for them to guide me to easy prey, water, shelter or even point me in the direction of north."

"You can use birds as a compass?" asked Kali with eyes wide from awe, that's one less trinket one had to carry around.

"Indeed," he nodded, "when one learns the secrets of nature it becomes possible to rely on it, it is far from magic but I'm confident in shaking off most pursuers under the first breakthrough."

Kali found herself quickly losing track of time as she drilled the experienced elf for all she could pull out of him but then she remembered that she had one other question she'd like an answer to. She glanced at the other three in her group, Vorgnar was in the far back and Selene carried the groggy Lexy on her back but all three of them were around fifty meters behind them as Kali found that using Virendel's tricks made avoiding the dangerous parts of the forest much easier and as such he walked next to her.

"I wanted to ask," she asked after she was certain Lexy and Selene wouldn't hear her, "You know what happened to Alexis right?"

The old elf grimaced but he nodded with a long sigh.

"Can you tell me?" Kali asked pleadingly.

"Alright," the elf nodded, "do you know what happens when elves interbreed?"

"Yes?" Kali tilted her head, Zadkiel told her much about such things as he was the child of two different elven races.

"Amongst our kind, there is no such thing as a 'half' this or that, a child is always either the race of the mother or the father," the man said as he stared forward into the dense forest, "that is not the case when one of the parents is a human."

"I know that too," Kali interjected and received a glare in return, she shrunk back a little.

"Half-human Half-elf hybrids are usually called Halvyr, a term without much weight considering they consider you a Halvyr even if you barely show any sign of elven heritage," he shook his head, "after a time, with the elven blood being diluted enough the children stop showing any signs of their ancestry, appearing no different from regular human children."

Kali nodded in understanding, she knew that too and it was the obvious conclusion to come to.

"But humans have their 'Awakening' when they turn ten years old I think?" he thought for a moment but shook his head, "doesn't matter, what matters is what this process does, which is strengthening their magical bloodlines and taking one or several traits and enhancing them, awakening them."

"I see?" she kind of did, but she couldn't grasp the implications. Humans could awaken magical traits from far-off ancestry through some weird coming-of-age ritual.

"One such trait could be a specific magic used by an ancestor, or a constitution that was engraved into their genes but another could be a constitution from a non-human ancestor, all of these usually come with significant visual changes."

"Oh," Kali blinked as the myriad of tiny cogs started turning in her head, "so she isn't actually an elf?"

"She is," Virendel said and seeing her confused look he clarified, "It is possible to only awaken some of the elven traits but those would leave them as a Halvyr and not an elf, what happened to young Alexis is a very rare phenomenon when a human child with only the barest traces of elven blood in their veins grasps that one in a million if not billion chance and gets transformed into a full elf."

"How does that even work?" Kali frowned, "Changing your species shouldn't be that easy."

"It is a topic of debate and with the phenomenon being so rare and undetectable before it happens it is hard to study," he shrugged, "from what I know the Awakening changes them down to the genetic level and they can't even be identified as the children of their parents by that point."

Kali's eyes widened in horror.

"That is probably not the reason for her abandonment though," Virendel said morosely, "I doubt the simpleminded brutes could even understand what genes and magical signature mean, just their daughter turning into one of us should have been enough for them to throw her away."

"Just because she turned into an elf," Kali bit her lips, "I thought humans loved 'collecting' us as trophies or something though?" she asked the one thing she felt might contradict Virendel's words.

"Their nobles do," he laughed mirthlessly, "to them, we are a possibility to enhance their children and strengthen their bloodline but for the common folk?" he grinned at Kali, "to them, we are the monsters living in the forest that eat their children alive or sacrifice their wives in dark rituals, you can bet whenever the weather gets worse they assume we set off some ritual and as such they raid deep into the woods until they find someone to hold accountable."

"T-that's..." Kali tried formulating an answer to that but none were forthcoming.

"It is human nature," he shrugged, his grin fading, "to hate the different, what they can't control, can't understand, especially if it's better than them, they can't stand feeling inferior to anything."

"So in my opinion Alexis' parents probably think themselves the paragons of mercy for only throwing their 'monstrous' daughter into a monster-infested forest instead of outright killing her or burning her at the stake, humans do love their stakes."

Kali's thoughts were occupied by images of the innocent young girl screaming as she burned alive for the rest of the day and she was sure they'd accompany her into her dreams for a while to come.