Calamity Awakens

The fortress loomed in the distance, its walls now dotted with fresh watchfires. The movements inside were more deliberate and frantic than before the assassin attacked—more patrols, more sentries on the walls. Harold tracked it all, committing every change to memory.

They'd pulled scouts back closer to their walls, leaving only a few further afield—likely their best, and almost certainly expecting retaliation. The larger groups inside shifted equipment and supplies, moving heavier crates toward the inner buildings. The Marauders knew the assassin hadn't returned. They were closing ranks.

Hours passed in a cold, steady silence broken only by the soft stir of wind and the occasional scrape of Kelan shifting in his sleep deeper in the cave. Harold's eyes stayed locked on the fortress until his vision blurred from strain. Finally, he allowed himself a concession—two hours of rest. No more.

When he lay down, Oathsense hummed faintly in the background, the steady reassurance of Hal and his pack posted at the cave mouth, Kelan resting nearby, and Auren's watchful, uncertain presence further back. It was enough to let Harold drift, the fortress etched into his mind like a battlefield map he'd been studying his whole life.

Harold woke to the muted sound of paws shifting against stone. The cave was dim, the faint glow from a narrow crack in the wall painting long shadows across the floor.

Hal was awake now.

The frost wolf's fur had changed overnight—thicker, layered with streaks of ash-grey running along his spine like war paint. The faint crystalline sheen along his muzzle and claws caught the light when he moved. His eyes were sharper, the pale blue almost luminous, and his presence in the bond through Oathsense felt… heavier. More certain.

The two ashen wolves flanked him like guards, their own stances lowered in deference. When Hal padded closer, Harold caught the faint chill radiating from him—colder than before, but cleaner, more controlled. Hal was already big as a low level pup but now he was the size of a small horse. His tier 2 evolution had done a lot to him and he couldn't wait to see the changes.

Hal lowered his head, touching his brow lightly to Harold's knee, the bond thrumming with reassurance and pride. He was stronger now—and wanted Harold to know it.

Harold's lips twitched in the faintest grin. "Good. We'll need it."

Harold rose with the cold still in his bones, joints stiff from the short sleep. The cave smelled faintly of damp stone and wolf fur, but the air was still. Safe enough for now.

Kelan was already up, running his hand over a small slab of stone, testing its grain before tossing it aside. Typical.

Auren was on the other side of the cave, stringing his bow with the same precision he'd shown the night before. His wife sat close by, still sleeping, wrapped in one of the spare cloaks.

Harold stepped over, boots scraping lightly against the stone. "You going to fight with us today?"

Auren's eyes narrowed slightly, but he didn't stop his work. "You really think I'd risk her safety for a battle that isn't mine?"

"I think," Harold said evenly, "that you've already risked it just by being here. I can't promise safety, but I can promise something else—a clean start. I'm building a settlement. A place where skill matters more than who you followed before. You'd have that. And your freedom. No one to answer to but yourself, for the most part."

Auren glanced at his wife, the smallest flicker of uncertainty in his gaze before his expression smoothed again. "I'll think about it."

"Do that," Harold said, already turning away. "But think quick. Once the day starts, you'll either be standing with us—or running from them."

Oathsense flared as he called his Brands to him to go over the plan for the day.

He quickly pulled up Hal's new status, curious to see what Tier Two had made of him.
Juvenile Frost Wolf Alpha.

The title fit—and explained a lot. It wasn't hard to guess where the "Alpha" came from; Hal had led the other two wolves without hesitation, fighting alongside them like they'd always been his pack. That, and the trail of victories he'd carved in Tier One, had clearly earned him more than just raw strength.

His stats were… impressive. In fact, in his strongest areas, they actually surpassed my own. I'd spread my points to stay balanced; Hal had his spread automatically allocated for what he was built for. His mind stats lagged behind, sure, but maybe that Alpha tag came with more than just muscle and speed—maybe it would push him toward the kind of leadership his race valued. If so, he might just be the beast equivalent of a rare class.

His skills had made a lot of progress for the better. Only the new ones sat at Tier 2—but that was because he'd just made the jump. He'd need time to work them up, same as any other fighter. I wondered if sparring would push those levels faster. We did have a healer now, after all. A few bruises and bite marks could be patched up easy enough if it meant Hal grew sharper.

After checking Hal's status, I flipped to Kelan's and saw his progress matched Hal's stride for stride. His numbers beat mine in the places he specialized—hit like a hammer, stood like a wall—while his mental stats lagged behind. It made me rethink that Brand stat boost I'd passed up. Might've been a mistake there.

They came to me together, footsteps heavy in the cold morning air. Hal padded in close first, breath fogging in slow, even bursts, his limp from yesterday almost gone. The two ashen wolves flanked him, eyes bright and alert despite the night's rest. Kelan followed, rolling his shoulders like he was trying to shake the last stiffness out of them.

I gave them both a once-over. Hal's wounds had closed well—good, but I'd keep him from pushing too far today. Kelan's chest bandage was clean, his breathing steady. He'd be fine to swing an axe if it came to it.

"Well," I murmured. "You'll both live."

Kelan snorted, "That your version of a compliment?"

I ignored the jab, glancing out toward the plains where the fortress still sat squat and stubborn in the distance. "Today's slower. No siege runs, no baiting charges. We take out their eyes."

Hal's ears twitched.

"They've got a screen of scouts out there—spread thin enough we can pick them off. The trick is doing it all at once or close enough so no one gets the chance to signal.

Kelan's brow furrowed. "That'll mean splitting up."

"Only just enough to keep out of sight from each other's targets," I said. "The wolves will shift between you if needed. I'll watch the gaps." My eyes cut between the two of them. "If one gets away, they'll tighten the net around that fortress and I want them blinded. Then we'll have trouble."

I turned my gaze toward Auren, who'd been listening from the side, arms folded tight across his chest. "Auren—now's your time to decide. Are you in, or out?"

He didn't answer right away. His eyes flicked between Kelan, the wolves, and the faint line of the fortress in the distance. The bow at his shoulder looked heavier than it had yesterday, like the choice weighed just as much.

"You said," he began slowly, "that your settlement would be different. Skills valued. Freedom is respected."

I nodded once. "And I meant it. You and your wife get a clean start. No one forces you to do things you'll regret just to survive. You will have to work for the settlement. You can't just mooch off the work of others but If I thought you'd do that I wouldn't have invited you. But if you're with us today, you fight."

The pause stretched. Then he exhaled through his nose, sharp.

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"I'm in."

I nodded my head to him "Good"

We had at least six scouts out there—probably more. The problem was, my perception wasn't sharp enough to sweep the whole plain and catch them all. If we wanted to break their net, we'd need eyes sharper than mine.

"Hal takes point," I said, looking toward the wolf where he stood with his pack. "The three of you move wide and slow. I want every trail, every scent, every sound." Frost curled from his muzzle in answer.

"Auren," I turned to him next, "you're our shadow screen. Keep pace behind them, bow ready. You'll deal with anything they spook before it gets a warning off."

Finally, I shifted my gaze to Kelan. "You're the hammer if it gets messy. If any of them slip through or things start to turn, you come down on them hard. Don't get pulled too far from the center—I'll keep the wolves shifting between you if needed."

The picture in my head was simple enough:

"As soon as we know where they are, we plan the strikes," I finished. "We hit all of them near-simultaneously. No survivors or alarms."

Hal moved first, frost blooming under his paws as his pack fanned out into the wind. They ghosted across the plain, low and silent, weaving between the ashen fields. I stayed back, eyes following their movements through Oathsense.

Auren moved differently. Not like prey, not like a hunter—but like someone who had once been hunted and learned how to stop being both. He would be a valuable addition to the settlement if I could bring him back the way I planned. I think I could do it though.

He cut between the wolves' arcs, slipping into shallow gullies, vanishing behind half-buried boulders. I lost him twice in the snow haze, and each time he reappeared exactly where I'd want him to be if things went wrong.

We started finding them one by one. The first scout crouched in the lee of a rock outcrop, scanning the horizon. Hal froze just fifty meters out, crouching low, before angling away with perfect silence.

The second nearly caught us. One of the ashen wolves drifted too close to a patch of wind-swept ground, not enough cover to hide the large wolf. The scout's head snapped up, eyes narrowing, hand drifting toward his weapon. Before the wolf could take another step, Auren's shadow cut between them, low and fast. He slid behind a drift, sighting down his bow. The man never saw him, the danger passed as quick as it came.

Auren was the one who spotted the third, fourth, and fifth—men tucked into positions I would have sworn were empty. These scouts thought differently than what I was used to and I could feel that I would need to adapt my mindset with magic and a more medieval mindset to properly fill my role. Not all my experiences transferred. "They think like water," he murmured when he passed by me in my hiding spot. "Flowing into the spaces everyone overlooks."

The sixth was moving. A runner, eyes sharp, keeping to a zig-zag pattern that made my stomach knot. If he'd kept moving east, he'd have crossed right into Hal's patrol line. I sent a pulse through Oathsense, pulling Hal wide before the two paths crossed.

Seven, eight, and nine were the hardest—paired watchers with overlapping fields of view. Auren didn't even glance toward them when he found them. He just dipped his chin once in my direction before melting back into cover.

The tenth was pure luck. A flicker of motion—no more than a head turning—at the very edge of my perception. I almost dismissed it as wind through the grass until Auren angled toward it without hesitation. When he came back, he didn't speak, but the faint smirk on his face said enough. All ten, accounted for.

They were spread far enough to make killing them all in one sweep dangerous, but close enough that a survivor could still carry word back to the fortress.

I called them all in so we could plan our strikes.

The first thing I had to kill was the idea of Kelan doing it all himself.

Sure, he could move through the ground like it was water, but that had a cost. Every dive drained him, muscles aching under the weight of stone, the constant pressure grinding him down. He could manage one or two quick kills without slowing to recover. Any more, and he'd be gasping in the stone before the job was half done.

Alright guys….this is what we will do…..

Oathsense throbbed steady in my mind as Hal's pack flowed like shadows across the steppe. They fanned out ahead of us, each wolf's breathing slow and silent.

Auren crouched beside me, eyes scanning the ashen expanse. "One there, crest of that ridge. Another behind that large boulder. Third's moving—see the faint shift in the brush?"
I didn't, but I didn't argue. He knew how these men thought.

Hal went first, sliding through the loose stone until the lone scout ahead didn't even know he was being hunted. A blur of frost and teeth, then silence. The other wolves were already moving.

Auren's bow whispered, the arrow striking just under the skull of Scout #2. He was on it in seconds, pulling the shaft free before it stained the stone too brightly.

Kelan's strike was the most violent — one moment the third man was scanning the horizon, the next he was gone, dragged under with a muffled crack of bone. The stone closed behind him.

No alarms and no screams. Phase 1 had gone quietly and we moved onto phase 2.

The next three were closer to the fortress, but that also meant they were more confident, less careful.

We waited for the wind to rise, the moaning gust swallowing the sound of movement.

Hal's pack struck first, but it nearly went bad. One wolf's tail brushed a branch, breaking the dry branch with a snap. The scout turned, eyes narrowing.
Oathsense snapped between us — I sent urgency toward Kelan, and the man erupted from the ground beneath the scout's knees, shattering them with a twist before the wolf finished it.

Auren took #5, but not clean. The man heard the arrow and ducked — it caught his shoulder instead of his neck. He staggered, turning to run, but I was already moving. I didn't strike him — couldn't — but I made enough noise with my passage to drive him toward Kelan's kill zone. One drag into the earth later, and the stone swallowed him whole.

By the time the wind died, three more bodies lay hidden.

Now onto phase 3.

We took an hour to rest to allow Kelan to recover his mana and gather more qi then we moved onto the next part of the plan.

These last four were the dangerous ones — one in a high perch, three working in pairs.

The air here was dry and sharp, carrying the taste of ash with every breath. The ground was a patchwork of cracked black stone and drifting pale dust, each step threatening to give away position in a puff of gray.

Auren spotted #10, the farthest out, half-hidden on a jagged outcrop. "Move him," he mouthed.
I swung wide, boot scraping deliberately against loose stone. The faint grind of rock carried just far enough — the scout's head snapped toward me. Predictably, he began to pull back toward the paired watchers in the mid-ground.

Hal's pack emerged from the basalt ridges in silence, paws leaving only faint smudges in the ash. When they struck the two-man team, it was a blur of gray and white muscle, jaws closing on exposed throats. The struggle was short — no horns, no shouts, just the hiss of breath and the snap of bone.

Kelan took #9 with precision. The man's perch on a flat boulder looked safe — until the surface buckled under him. Kelan erupted upward, stone-armor shoulders smashing into his legs and hurling him to the ground before the earth swallowed them both.

The last scout — the one I'd herded — froze when he reached the kill site. His bow trembled in his grip, eyes darting for an escape that didn't exist. Auren didn't hesitate; the arrow punched clean through his throat, the shaft quivering once before stilling.

By the time we regrouped, the only movement on the steppes was the restless swirl of ash carried on the wind.

Of course, that was where it went wrong.

The shadows shifted wrong. Not the way the wind tugged at dust, not the way the jagged stone threw black shapes — this was sharper, quicker, alive.

The first assassin came like a blade in the dark. One moment, empty space. The next, a Tier 2 wrapped in the Dao of Darkness, knives in both hands and murder in his eyes.

I didn't even see the first strike, only felt the flare of pain as steel kissed my ribs and skipped off bone. My health bar plunged, a warning glow sparking at the edges of my vision. I staggered, breath hitching—then the second strike came for my throat.

I should have died right there.

Instead, instinct and desperation took over. I reached for mana the way I had in endless, frustrating hours of practice — and instead of guiding it along neat, practiced channels, I pushed.

It roared through me, raw and untamed, threading into every muscle, every nerve. My body felt lighter, faster. My limbs moved before thought could catch up, twisting under the strike, the assassin's blade missing by a hair's breadth.

The assassin's eyes narrowed — the first flicker of surprise breaking through his killing focus.

"Hal! Kelan!" I barked, already shifting my weight, drawing him into the space I wanted him. My axe came up in a parry, the haft ringing under his next blow. Sparks snapped between us in the gloom, and I knew we were seconds from the others hitting.

Hal's answering snarl split the air — a low, cold sound that seemed to crawl under the skin. He came from the side, white fur ghosting in the ash like a phantom, but before he could close, the air rippled again.

Two more shadows solidified out of nothing. Tier 2s, each cloaked in the same oppressive darkness, their Dao swallowing what little light remained. One lunged for Kelan, the other angled to intercept Hal mid-leap.

The steppes erupted into chaos.

Kelan met his attacker head-on, stone plates erupting across his chest and shoulders as he swung his pickaxe in tight, brutal arcs. Every blow he landed came back twice as hard — the assassin's blades flickering in from impossible angles, shallow cuts layering across Kelan's arms and legs. His armor was holding, but it was eating through his stamina fast.

Hal twisted away from the intercepting assassin's first strike, frost blooming across the ground where his claws hit. The other two wolves came in at his flanks, fangs snapping, only for the assassin to vanish in a smear of shadow and reappear behind them. A yelp — one wolf took a knife along the ribs before spinning to reengage.

The first assassin pressed me relentlessly. Even with mana flooding my limbs, every exchange felt like standing on the edge of a cliff in high wind — one slip and I was gone. I used my perception to read the faintest disturbances in the air, the tiniest shift in shadow, but they were fast, and every cut they landed burned more of my health away.

Auren's bow thrummed somewhere to my left — a narrow gap in the swirling darkness let me see an arrow bury itself in an assassin's thigh. The man didn't even flinch, only turned, flinging a blade of shadow so sharp it hissed through the air. Auren ducked low, the edge passing just overhead.

Kelan grunted, driving his pick's spike into his opponent's shoulder, but the assassin rode the blow, twisting his arm to bring both knives into Kelan's exposed side. Kelan staggered, blood spraying across the ash, but he stayed upright, stone armor grinding tighter across his frame.

I risked a glance — Hal had locked jaws around his opponent's forearm, frost spreading up the man's limb even as he hammered his free knife into Hal's shoulder. The ashen wolves hit from behind, driving the assassin off balance and ripping into him from behind.

They were trained for this. To kill in the chaos. And for the first time since coming to the steppes, I wasn't sure we'd all walk away from it.

"Push them back!" I roared, forcing more mana into my legs, surging forward with a low sweep that forced my own opponent to retreat two steps. I used Brandflare and the fight turned in our favor.

The flare of power ripped through my Brands like a spark hitting oil.

Hal's frost surged so violently the air steamed, his teeth sinking deeper into his target's arm until bone gave with a sharp crack. The man's scream cut short as one of the ashen wolves lunged for his throat, dragging him down into the ash.

Kelan's eyes flashed with the sudden rush — his stone armor thickened, every movement hitting with bone-breaking weight. His pickaxe slammed into his opponent's side, the sound of ribs snapping carrying even over the chaos.

The assassin facing me faltered for the first time, his rhythm breaking under the sheer force pouring from my allies. He tried to vanish into his Dao's shadows, but my perception caught the twitch of movement — I cut into his path with the blade of my axe, forcing him to pivot. His skills not responding the way they normally do with Brandflares interference. The tier 1 skill is not enough to shut down the strength of a experienced Tier 2.

That hesitation cost him; Auren's bow sang, and an arrow punched through his shoulder, spinning him halfway around.

That's when I saw it — the brief flicker of doubt in all three of their eyes.

We pressed the moment.

Hal slammed his opponent into the ground, frost blooming outward in jagged cracks, while Kelan drove his pickaxe down like he was breaking stone, ending his fight in a single brutal strike.

Mine tried to disengage, dropping low and sweeping his knife toward my knee — but I stepped into it, deflecting with the axe's haft and shoving him hard toward an opening in the chaos. That was all Auren needed. Another arrow hissed through the gloom, this one straight through the man's neck. He dropped, the darkness peeling away from his body like smoke on the wind.

For a heartbeat, the only sound was our breathing — harsh, ragged, and too loud in the sudden stillness.

I didn't waste time watching them die. My axe was already slung across my back as I moved from one to the next.

Hal was breathing hard, blood and frost clinging to his muzzle. His shoulder wound was deep, but not bleeding as badly as it could have been — ice still numbed the flesh around it. I gave him a scratch along the jawline and a pulse of reassurance through Oathsense. He answered with a faint push of pride before limping back toward the others.

One ashen wolf had a long gash along her flank; the other's hind leg wasn't taking her weight right. I spared only a moment to make sure both were walking before moving on.

Kelan was leaning on his pickaxe, stone armor in shards around his feet. His breathing was shallow, and a bruise the size of my hand was already blooming under his collarbone where a blade had slipped through a weak point. He waved me off when I reached for him. "I'm fine. Just sore."
Auren was untouched, but he was already crouched by the bodies, pulling knives, coin purses, and odd trinkets from their gear. I joined him, taking what could be used or sold — spare throwing knives, reinforced leather bracers, a few vials of poison I'd need to test later.

"Move," I said once the bodies were stripped of anything worth carrying. "We don't wait around in case they had more following."

We made for the cave at a pace that was quick but careful. The ashen wind stung my eyes, and the horizon stayed empty — no reinforcements chasing us.

Inside, the air felt warmer, safer. Auren's wife, Rysa, was already at the fire. She rose when she saw the blood, and her hands began to glow faintly with a simple, steady light. Her healing wasn't strong, but it was enough to stop the bleeding in deep cuts and start the healing.

Hal and the wolves settled immediately near the back, the pack pressing close to him while Rysa worked on his shoulder. He was half-asleep before she finished, frost still curling from his breath.

Kelan let her set his collarbone with the same glow, his jaw tightening only once. I waited my turn, letting her close the gash in my ribs. My health was damn near bottomed out there from the first strike and I wouldn't have survived without forcing my mana through my body the way I did. It wasn't much, but it meant we'd all wake up tomorrow without bleeding into the ash.

One benefit from all the fighting — I had made Tier Two.