As Paddy stood with her arms raised, expecting the adulation and cheers of her people, an unsettling silence took hold of the forest. The usual triumphant cries and whoops of victory from the Tree Top Centaurs were conspicuously absent. Paddy's gaze swept across the faces of her kin perched high in the trees, but their expressions were not of celebration but of confusion and disbelief.
Her eyes drifted back to the carnage below, to the Aztec warriors whose lives she had claimed. The ground was a macabre tapestry of blood and severed limbs, a grim testament to the ferocity of the battle. But something was amiss, a detail that nagged at the edge of her consciousness.
