A Rat Turned Wolf II (New)

We break apart and he holds my shoulders at full arm's length. "Shit man, I thought you were dead for good this time."

"Ha! Takes more than a cage and the temple to kill me!"

"Apparently!"
He pulls me in again for a quick hug before breaking off. "By the Lords, how did you manage to break free?"

While I explain the situation, Ren's father joins Ren. "Keer? You're here too?"

The spitting image of a taller Ren, Keer'Klalen nods with a grunt. "We didn't have a choice. All men were required to serve."

Ren nods silently. I had a feeling that was the case. "Well that explains why Ren's here. I know he'd be too chicken otherwise."
He lightly pokes the centre of my brand. I reel back and smack his hand away. "Gah! Jerk."

Wal ropes the conversation back to the purpose before it gets out of hand. "What reason did the humans provide?"

Keer stares at Wal for a long while in silence. He's always done that. Says he can read a person's character if he watches their eyes long enough. With a satisfied grin, he nods. "The knights claimed that Solaris was in need of our service. The templars claimed that Sol required us to fight. The knights promised a monetary reward and the templars guaranteed our place next to Sol."

A monetary reward and they're supplying us with weapons? One or the other is expensive enough. They can't have that much money. Besides. Aroura never mentioned a monetary reward. Naz voiced my concerns for me. All the while Keer, stared him in the eyes.

Ren crossed his arms and looked to the ground. He spoke just loud enough to be heard by all of us. "I think... I think they're just frightened. They might not be telling the full truth. I know they can't have that much money, but maybe they'll pay us when they do?"
He turns to me. "Remember that book you gave me? About the cities close to Solaris. Denmeer was in that book. There wasn't much about it, but I remember it being a city of mages."

Wal growls at him, "In my travels, I've encountered magic-users on extraordinary circumstances. A 'city of mages' is impossible."

"There's a reason every mage makes it into legend." I chimed in.

Ren rubs the back of his neck. "I know that, but my point is Denmeer is terrifying. Even to be called a city of mages, no matter how exaggerated is impressive. Maybe Solaris is actually scared."

Keer places his hand on Ren's shoulder. "I agree. The humans didn't treat us normally. They treated us like people. They're even feeding us."

Before I could point out what should be obvious, a horn blares. The rumbling fills the air and captures the attention of the entire camp. Murphy stands a good distance behind us with a large group of elves with bows. Murphy throws his hand in the air and the elves nock arrows.
Shit! Shit shit shit!
I snatch the wrists closest to me and bolt towards the closest boxes! It only takes a step before Ren and Maheed take their hands back and run with me. I watch in horror as Murphy's hand descends, marking our doom. I dive towards the boxes, although we aren't even close. Arrows zip past me, until one lands straight in my side. I land on the ground waiting for the sharp pain to overcome me, except.

I look down to see the feathered stick laying at my side. "Ugh."
My face falls into the grass as I come to the realization that they were using headless arrows. What was the point of this?

"Where are your shields! Where is your formation!"

As Murphy continues to berate the camp for failing to prepare for an ambush, Ren sighs. "I guess that's the end of our break."

I raise from the grass and ask, "What comes next?"

Ren shrugs. "Murphy's not someone who falls into patterns. Besides, I've only been here a day and a half dolt. You think I know?"

"Form up! Rangers! Grab your weapons and wait there!"

Ren rushes back towards the crowd. "We'll talk later!"
He stopped and looked back at me. "Kar. I'm seriously glad you're-"

"I said! FORM! UP!" The mountains rumble, the sky quakes! Anyone in the city who was still asleep is surly awake now. How is he so damn loud? Any who were dawdling, like Ren, waste no time falling into line. Murphy continues to bark orders as the camp line up by races in blocks. More men like Murphy do the same off in the distance. I guess it's impossible for one person to train a city's worth of people.

The others stand about where we were with new practice weapons. Naz greeted me with a compliment. "How did a family of friendly, wonderful people end up friends with a bastard like you?"

As I test the grips on my new weapons, I answer. "I threatened them obviously. How do you make friends?"
Before he can answer, I voice a worry. "I wonder how many of them think like that? How many of them trust Solaris?"

Wal responded. "Impossible to know. However, it's a matter that doesn't concern us."

Right. I suppose it doesn't. This won't be our city soon. Maybe I can take Ren with me once the battle is over? Convince him to gather our families and we take off. It's not like Nick'll have any money left over if he supplying our weapons. Yeah. That's what I'll do. Naz breaks me out of my thoughts with his own. "Aye. Nothing we can do to for so many of 'em."

I know that. But I want to save my people. We're silent for a moment. We all watch as Murphy scolds the crowd for poor formation construction. For once, Maheed is the first to uproot the silence. "So uhh... Any idea why we're just standing here?"

As he asks that, someone breaks off from the crowd. A tall elf with a full head of auburn hair and golden eyes, even though he's probably the tallest person in Solaris he looks at us from down his nose as though to gain some semblance of extra height. He's enviously handsome which makes me hate him already. "The Eclipse Rangers I take it? You may call me Sir Toross Carnoin. Know you the situation?"

'Know you?' Is that even proper grammar? Wal, the ever vigilant asker of questions he is, said, "Explain yourself elf."

Mr.Handsome glared at Wal before retorting. "I would watch your tongue were I you. You stand before the man who will be commanding you here soon."
I can tell he'll be a great leader already. Not wanting to waste any more time on our antics, he finally explained. "While everyone else will be learning formations and mass combat, you will be trained to eliminate armour and special targets."
A smug smirk rolled across his face. "And you'll be under my command."

I take one overly long and loud breath before relenting. "What would you have us do?"

I stumble back and use my shield to support myself. I'm on my last leg. Or so he thinks. The spike of his halberd comes barreling towards me until I smack it with my shield. Like Wal said. Predictable.
Push forward, and kill! My spear lands on the chainmail surrounding his neck. Right in between all the plates of armour. If my wooden spear was sharpened properly he would actually be dead.

I look around to see how the others faired. Wal just finished bludgeoning his armoured opponent and it looks like Maheed's been done for a bit. Naz just pushed his opponent to the ground and tossed his polearm aside. Now Naz's just pummeling him with his buckler hand. We were told these were old suits unfit for combat so it's fine if we break them further.

"Up! Bring more knights!" Ugh. Stoler just ordered opponents for us. Now we each have to fight two at a time. After we beat them, with great difficultly, he ordered us to fight four. At once. How are we supposed to defeat four opponents at once? Even if they didn't have armour and actual weapons, fighting four people at once is absurd. Damn you Stoler.

Wal says just tire them out. Easier said than done. These bastards were born to fight! After a while, a jarcoban messenger came by and told us to gather for a war game. When we arrived back at the camp, Toross greeted us and informed us that he was going to be leading a smaller force of demi-humans against Murphy. Our job was to 'assassinate' Murphy.

Wal and I dash between trees, jump over roots and smash through bushes. Maheed ran ahead to scout out the archers, and Naz rides on the back of Wal so he doesn't keel over before we get to the fight.
The trees start to clear up slightly and I can hear the commands of the archer leader. 'Nock' and 'loose' echo through the forest. We skid to a halt when we hear a rustling in the trees. Maheed drops down in front of us. "They're just up ahead. They have a squad of human knights covering them"

Naz, the only one not out of breath, laughs. "Murphy's expectin' us."

"Wal and I will deal with the knights. You two take out the archers." They nod in agreement.

We still rush through the forest, but slightly more careful than before. Don't want to alert them too fast. We get close enough to the archers and I use the classic, throw a rock and distract the guards trick. There's not too many knights, but less is always better. A few run off to investigate the strange sound in the woods. They'll be back once the fighting starts, but this is manageable for now.

Wal and I charge from the brush while Maheed hangs back. Wal launches Naz at the knights, he smashes one to the dirt before bolting for the elven archers. Now's our turn.
I open by tossing a cloud of dirt into their eyes! Maheed rushes past, but not after he stabbed one in the neck with his dagger. The knight threw his hand up to his neck before remembering that we're using fake weapons.

With Maheed and Naz taking out the surprisingly vulnerable archers, Wal and I distracted the knights that forgot who they were defending. Somehow, we managed to survive long enough for the archers to retreat and the other two to help us. Now we have a direct path to Murphy.

The archers were on a slight hill, so we can almost see the entire field. It looks like Toross is losing bad. It's hard to tell because they're all wearing the same clothes. But there sits Murphy on the top of his horse surrounded by knights. Time to get our job done. Let's get this over with.

We lost.

Murphy and his knights are vastly superior to the previous ones. More skilled for one, but they also just followed his orders better. They didn't react to any of my petty tricks and they worked together. Unlike the previous humans, they moved as one. Ugh. We're going to have to think of something new to defeat him.

Our punishment for losing was a shorter dinner. The Sun is finally almost gone, so we get to eat. Well everyone else does. The rangers have to run around the camp carrying bags of sand until they decide we can eat. And we can only eat what we've gathered ourselves. Good thing I decided to carry my food with me. Rabbit skins make good bags. Soft too.

As we sit down to finally eat, Ren and Keer join us. They even saved us a bit of bread. "Thank you Ren. Without you I'm sure I would've withered away a while back."

"Yeah, well. You know. It's the least I could do after everything you've done for me and my sisters."

Keer chimed in. "They've missed you, you know? Ren kept coming home with messages from you, but honestly I thought that was just to alleviate your mother's pain. Who would've guessed you actually started working for the Temple?"
He laughs and I'm forced to laugh with him. That's right... He doesn't know I was rotting in a cage for that time... Keer continues to gossip and tell embarrassing stories of the different ways Ren tried to act like me around my siblings. And how he utterly failed at continuing his little sister's writing lessons.

Normally I just let Keer ramble on, but I have to ask. "Ren, how can you possibly mess up writing lessons? Just do the movements, let her write, and correct her where she goes wrong!"

"I don't know how to teach okay? And who cares? Zleale can teach her." Ah, how long has it been since I've seen Zleale? His older sister has got it all. Those long droopy ears, full lips, and those hips. Oh man, those hips!
No! Stop! You promised that you would leave her be out of respect for Ren!
What's the harm in some innocent thoughts?
What could possibly be innocent about that? Besides. Thoughts lead to actions.
I wonder if he would even notice?
He's noticing right now.
What? Oh, hey Ren. "You're not..."

"What are you talking about? Not what?"

His eyes explode in disgust. "You are!"

"I would never! I could never see Zleale in that light."

"So you admit you were thinking about her?"

"No."
Shit. "I was thinking about her friends. Do you remember Freala?"
Oh man, now Freala's hot in my mind. Although she's just hot all the time. Especially with the way she moves all those natural gifts of hers. Even the way she walks could seduce a man with a cursory glance.

"You're a pig."

"Hey. It's not my fault I've been stuck in the woods with these dicks for however long it's been."

"Oi."

"Sorry Naz."

He nods his head at me out of respect. "I understand."

Ren continues to pester me about things I haven't said or done until he's interrupted. "I see the rangers still have life about them."
A stupidly tall and stupidly handsome elf showed up with arms crossed. Empty handed, are you Toross? We don't listen to people who come without bread. "Rangers. I come to you with a request."

I can't help but tilt my head at him. "A request? I pegged you as someone who didn't know that word existed."

He shot me a quick glare, but ignored me. "If you have any food to spare, I would be grateful."

Keer stood up to watch his eyes. "Didn't you get food from the humans?"

"Yes. I distributed it among the weaker our our troops. They could use a few extra scraps before- Never mind. Do you have food to spare or not?"

Naz sighed. "'Ere ya go. Some nice hazelnuts for ye."

He dumped his pouch of hazelnuts into Toross' hand then went back to eating berries from the other. Toross sat down and began eating with us. Keer then asked why he sat here, but Toross didn't bother explaining himself. Oh well I guess.

After the Sun finally crawled out of sight, we met back up with Andre and Stoler. We ran alongside their horses back to our campsite with sandbags on our backs. Now we have to find more food for tomorrow.
Agh! Being a ranger sucks! Just living out in the forest and fighting now and then was fine, but this? I've got small cuts all over from fighting the damn knights and running through the forest, I've barely eaten, and I'm exhausted from running everywhere! Ugh.

The week passed on like that with Aroura coming to visit each night. A good thing too. With her healing, all the little cuts and bruises just erase themselves. Well as many as her mana lets anyway. Apparently healing takes up absurd amounts of mana and if you use too much, you pass out for a while.
The rangers learned some new tricks and we're all better at fighting. I might even be able to take out Stoler before I leave at this rate. Although I wish I could get his bitch sister as well, I have no idea where Summer is. If I take my revenge, it'll just have to be him then.

I barely got to talk with Ren, but I've seen him with the bow. He's gotten pretty damn good. Good job Ren. I knew the cowards weapon would be a good match for you. Hopefully it'll be good enough. Denmeer's army is a day's march away.