"Princess! Baron Gascomer's army is running! Tenli has taken to the field outside!" A man in officer's garb rushed around the camp shouting.
He didn't know where they were. But what he did know was that if he yelled loud enough they were bound to hear him.
"Avisazi, go now, I will hold the line." Azifirat stood shakily. He used his sword as a crutch.
Avisazi rolled her eyes and sheathed her swords, "Don't worry, I am prepared."
She took the medallion from somewhere within the chest area of her armor and held it out.
Azifirat's eyes widened but closed just as fast.
Gerrod, however, didn't get the hint.
A blinding flash stunned him. When he opened his eyes again a figure stood in front of him completely naked save for a kilt made of some sort of silk.
"The innate ability that makes me a noble, 'Royal Card', as long as I have a sufficiently strong enough conductor for my aura I can summon a guard who will then be attached to that conductor." She fell to a knee panting hard, "From now on, your name is Jarafir."
"Jarafir... I accept this honor and in return give you my oath of service till death parts us." Jarafir took a knee and picked up Azifirat.
Avisazi glanced over to Gerrod who was still struggling to keep up with what was going on.
She smiled and glanced over to Jarafir who then shouted, "The Queen is here! She is alive! It is time! Time for true battle! To your stations!"
"Princess!!!!!" The man in officer garb came through out of nowhere and fell flat on his face.
A similar medallion falling from his pocket.
At this moment Gerrod felt his world flip. He turned to look around.
'All of them have some sort of medallion...' For every ten soldiers, one had a medallion of some sort hidden on their figure.
It was not something a normal person could notice since they were well hidden, but he had been in the underground fighting pits for many years and knew well how to see what others didn't want seen.
After all, bad eyesight could mean death.
Mixed in with the regular soldiers were her special soldiers, her 'Royal Cards'.
'Trump Cards.' He thought as he lazily looked over to the front.
With his incredible vision he could easily tell that the enemy had already gotten very close and were about to charge.
But the Royal Cards who took to the field quickly regrouped the army and put them into order at their stations.
"OOOUUU!!!" Tenli charged ravenously.
It was clear that they were starving. They had abandoned their heavy armors because their soldiers couldn't wear them.
Some of them didn't even wield swords anymore. They just ran in with clubs and lighter weapons.
Their number easily doubled Shokan's however, due to their inability to fight properly and the Royal Card's each having the strengths of a hundred men it turned into a massacre.
With thirty Royal Cards excluding the five which now surrounded Avizasi, the battle was put to rest in a timely manner.
But the Tenli didn't stop attacking. They were desperate. Among their ranks, Gerrod spotted children and with them a bad taste rose in his mouth.
He glanced at Avisazi, 'Will you kill children, or will you not? What kind of ruler are you?'
She looked back at him and smiled.
"We do not intent to cripple Tenli, we intend to take them over." She said as she turned back to the battlefield below her eyes sweeping the field like an experienced general, "What good is a dog with no fangs and no loyalty? It will neither be able to feed itself nor want to be fed by others."
'She plans to capture the weak and dying while killing off the more able people, then feed the weak and dying to make them grateful, cut the fangs but feed their loyalty, is it?' Gerrod felt his body let out a heavy sigh.
As he did so he coughed. The taste of blood was still fresh in his mouth.
He shook his head and trotted away to a nearby stream coming down from the mountains.
Even as the battle took place he didn't care. His injuries had mostly healed with his aura's intervention.
His cracked ribs were just that, cracked and no longer broken. While he couldn't very well run he could trot. And so he did.
On his way he made sure to kill everyone and everything that wasn't already dead.
'No reason to let a good meal go to waste.'
He arrived at the stream with a further eight kills under his belt.
His mange had cleared up for the most part but his fur was still tossed and patchy like a renaissance painting before the Renaissance.
He took a dip in the water one paw at a time. He could feel the mild tempered water wash away the heavy blood and uncomfortable loose fur.
As he stood in the shoulder height stream he felt just a little more free. A little more at ease.
His aura which was still in a defensive formation eased a small bit. He closed his eyes to enjoy the soak.
Nothing disturbed him in this moment.
It was only after the sounds of battle had died out that he opened his eyes and made his way back to the camp.
Though... not in his wolf form.
He'd realized that the two responsible for his aura being locked down had died and so he transformed back into his preferred state.
Walking without pain made him feel relieved.
He didn't have any clothes on though. So when he finally did arrive at the camp he transformed back, 'I'm not going to show a child my nakedness, that's just bloody wrong on all counts.'
Normally, he's very thick-skinned but when it comes to children. Well, when it comes to children the Fist God does not fuck about.
He strode into the camp and into the central tent which had avoided most of the damage from the fires.
'Speaking of fires, they put them out very quickly ...probably those fires were apart of her plan as well.' Gerrod sighed and stopped thinking about only making a mental note not to cross her nor call her the 'Tiny Terror' as she is so aptly named.
He paced around the bed for a while. No matter how he laid down he felt cold. The water had washed away the blood all of his diseased fur so he had nothing to keep him warm.
He also didn't feel comfortable under the bed sheets. Bad experiences in the past with people trying to kill him in his sleep lead to that trauma.
Can't move very well under a thick bedsheet, can you?
Finally, he thought of the dogs in his old world and how they did things.
First, he stepped all over where he wanted to sleep. Then he circled for a while.
And finally, he laid down.
Only one side of his body was now cold. He felt he could live with that.
"Pfftt...." He immediately stood up and looked to the source of the sound.
A hole was on the side of the tent where a blue eye looked through. He didn't even have to see her to know who it was.
Once more he dropped onto the bed. Despite how embarrassed he felt inside for being seen acting like a dog, he was just as tired as a dog.
And so he fell asleep for the second time that night.
Come morning most of the area smelled like rotting corpses, especially so to Gerrod who had a super-sensitive nose.
Already irritated before he opened his eyes he growled at the sight of Avizasi meddling with his necklace.
Her eyes flickered and she pulled back her hand, "You're innate ability is intertwined with your soul, not your blood, so it doesn't rely on outside forces to operate. You're rare."
Gerrod's mouth fell open, 'That's the first thing you have to say in the morning??'
In all of Gerrod's 17 years of life, he had never encountered such a shameless girl before.
"A fang tooth necklace. You're innate ability, I've never heard or read about it before. It must be very old. From what I can tell by examining it overnight is that it doesn't give you any abilities, but instead works as a middle man for outside energies and your own energies, like a regulator." Her expression changed slightly as she stared at him, "Not to mention... no one else can transform. Not a single other aura user, be they Stray or Noble to my knowledge can transform."
Gerrod smiled and puffed out his chest, 'I'm amazing. I know.'
"You're a monster. You know?" She sighed, "If Maali or Daray finds out about you ...or worse, the Sadid, do you know what they would do to you? They would flay you alive to see how much you could take, to figure out your origins, to find out... what and... who you are."
Gerrod froze. He remembered the map.
Maali and Daray are both at least five times the power of Shokan.
He didn't see where Sadid is, but if she's talking about them like they're worse than Maali and Daray then it must be a lot worse.
His scars started to itch, a sure-fire sign that whatever that place is, it's a bad idea.
"But not to worry!" She interjected into his colorful thoughts with a charm not befitting of one her age, "I, the Fifth Queen of Shokan, Avizasi Ci Shoka, will take you in as my right hand."
'You know... I 've been getting this sinking feeling for a while now but ...how old is this girl exactly? She looks twelve, or maybe if from a good angle about fifteen, but she talks like she's in her mid-twenties...' Gerrod felt a pang of confusion and also indignity, '...I'm not serving someone younger than me, it feels wrong.'
Gerrod beckoned her to turn around. She didn't.
Instead she brought out a butler's suit from the nightstand by the table.
"Wear this! It's a specially crafted morph suit, it changes it's size to the specification of the wearer's size, when you transform into a human it will change with you, and when you become a wolf, it will... work out? Probably?" And then there are times when he feels like she's really twelve.
Unwillingly, he put on the butler suit which did in fact change to his size.
He could sense that the thread of the suit was really made of some very sophisticated aura knitting which he couldn't yet understand and so put aside.
The suit became a part of him turning into black fur, the bone fang necklace melted in with the suit.
He stared at Avisazi trying to get her to go away in case it didn't work but she wouldn't move.
With no other choice if he wanted to be able to communicate he transformed.
It was a different feeling transforming under his new circumstances. He felt his fur fall out, twist and turn, knit and join. Like an army of ants crawling all over his skin for a portion of a second.
It freaked him out but he didn't show it.
When he opened his eyes he was wearing a perfectly fitted butler suit. His hair which was roguish before had been slicked back. His cuffs were pristine. His pants without wrinkles. White gloves of the softest silk.
He had never felt such high-class clothing even in his old world where he was decently well off.
As he locked eyes with Avizasi his very first words were what he had wanted to ask since the very moment he had met her.
Something that had bugged him for just over a week.
It had nagged him since he first almost killed her.
"Are you..." She leaned forward listening to his deep voice, "Are you twelve?"
Like a glass had been shattered a vein popped on her neck, "What? Is that what you have to say first? Really?!"
He felt a sense of deja vu.
She pounced at him, but he was no longer injured nor malnourished.
With little effort he caught her. Since she was in the air there was no counter force to stop him from stopping her mid air. And there was no way for her to dodge.
Now being held by the face she started smacking him and instantly he felt something crack and let her down a second later.
"Y-you call me the monster?!" He felt his side and realized she'd broken one of his ribs with a fearsome kick.
"You are a monster! How could you grab a cute girl like me like that?! I wanted to say this before too, but were you really going to kill me back then? Would you kill a child? You monster!" She rubbed her face where finger marks still remained red and thirsting for blood.
"I would never kill a child." He barely managed to eek out between his pained grunts as his aura worked it's magic, "And since when do cute little girls wear fifty pounds of armor, running full tilt for half an hour and not get tired?? Since when do cute little girls break grown men's ribs?!"
"Hmph! I'll have you know that I am a little girl! I'm sixteen! In the prime of my youth! And with a weak man like you, how could I not be able to break a rib or two? Stop complaining!" She snapped back viciously, "Now! Be my butler!"
"No!"
"Yes!"
"No...!" He stood up towering over her.
"Yes!" She headbutted his the pit of his stomach.