AR Chapter 448

[Ruskil POV]

Through the forests near the pass where the true Alpha, he who would be the Zaaktif, led his people to freedom and glory, Ruskil led his pack. Every Saharliard except for four were Sik’Tal or Kha aspiring to the caste, and the pack moved in individual trios. The plans and strategies that he’d come up with while in the sand pits of Nievtra had found that solitary action was foolish, leaving the scouts too unprotected and easily picked off, and while pairs were an improvement, trios were the best. There, they could still hide from detection without too much difficulty while also being able to take care of any minor issue themselves, were any problems to make themselves known.

Ruskil, let out a high, long cry, one which mimicked that of the common mountain hawk that frequently hunted in this area. To all of his people in earshot, they would understand what he was calling for. Three minutes passed before the first trio passed by his position. He’d planned to stand in the center of the pack’s range, and group one, under Kiski’s direction, swept past, and, with a four fingered fist held high, signaled that they’d seen no traces of the MIsti Hawar. They trailed past, making barely a single sound in the underbrush as they stepped towards the far side of the formation. Each trio would find a new position to begin their scouting in, not trusting entirely in the eyes of their fellows. Verify everything they saw, and they could make more certain that they weren’t missing any subtle signs.

Each of the 15 trios made their pass without incident, each one signaling that they found nothing. That wasn’t a surprise, as autumn had only recently begun to make a slight chill in the middle of the lengthening nights. Every piece of information that had been torn from the lips of the prisoners had indicated that the Misti Hawar would only begin their final struggle once the nights had become longer than the days, and that time was a moon and a half off yet.

Every day was spent in silence, not a single word crossing any of the scouts’ lips as they never gathered together, never spoke, and only communicated by hand signals, animal cries, and body language. Truth be told, Ruskil preferred it that way, the honesty of one of his people‘s bodies couldn’t begin to be compared to the duplicitous nature of words. Instead, he simply enjoyed the quiet and the peace that came from working to effectively do what the Huntmaster and Spymaster commanded. Took and Foire were, before anything else, inspirations of how to be an effective Keel, and Ruskil looked forward to joining their ranks. He knew he was far off from doing so, having only evolved to become Khatif less than a full moon before.

That was of no consequence, nothing to lament. Through the example of the Zaaktif, it was obvious that there was no need to be born a Keel, but that one could seize that position by the strength of their claws and fang. Without even a breath, he mouthed the words, “Through the flaming crucible of war are we refined, through the quenching in the blood of our foes are strengthened.”

There were extensive experiments being done to understand exactly what the difference was for those born a Kha and those Khatif, and the only difference that Ruskil knew of was that those like him, born among the lowest caste, frequently never found any magic, but instead specialized in the strength of their bodies while growing to adulthood faster. He was no different, and by the strength of his body would he prove his superiority, just as the Zaaktif had. That was how he’d clawed his way to Alpha, and due to his birth, he was strong enough now to stand on the front lines, ready to begin the war and defend the hatchlings, the weak, and the grayscaled from these fools. And once the battle began in earnest? He would lead the charge into the Misti Hawar’s homeland, into the heart of their cities, and into a battle of extinction, one in which the foolish furry foes would find that every day, the Empire grew stronger, more determined, and more capable of wiping the entirety of their people from the face of the planet. So Nievtala declared, and so the Zaaktif commanded.

When the trilling call of a warbler echoed through the forest, Ruskil was only slightly surprised that the information wrested from the tongues of traitors and cowards was incorrect. Signs of the Misti Hawar had been found, and it was his assignment to verify it now.

Looking at the four who stood with him, one a healing Sou’Tal, two Hak’Tal warriors, and a single Kou’Tal tamer, Ruskil gestured for them to follow as he hurried off to find the source of the call. The warbler’s cry passed from one trio to the next, subtle intonations letting those further away know that they were to gather with the rest while those closest to the sighting were to exercise even greater caution and observations, in order that they all may be prepared for ambushes from those who’d left the trail in the first place. That wasn’t his immediate concern, though, and as the Alpha, Ruskil was one of the first to cross through the narrow trails and freely flowing creeks to arrive at the site of the Misti Hawar’s incursion.

Before long, he stood before Kiski’s trio, where she pointed at a series of deep gouges cut into a tree. Though his initial inclination was to think of a bear, or perhaps, even a strange ant as the responsible party, Ruskil paid closer attention, trusting in his most competent tracker’s intuition. As his nose approached the cut, he could smell the taint of the shadow magic. There wouldn’t be any wyrms this high on the mountains, especially not this early in the season, so it had to be Misti Hawar. The only question that remained was how old the marking was.

As one of the many Sik’Tal entirely incapable of identifying magic or understanding it, Ruskil left that particular aspect of investigation to his subordinates, and they quickly signal that the marking was no more than three days old. Of course, it couldn’t have been much older than that, or else even the heightened magical sensitivity of a Sik’Tal would fail to identify the origin of something like this. As such, the question was if the Misti Hawar had made this mark in their retreat or in their approach, and beyond that, why they have left such an obvious mark. This was a deliberate marking, so why would they have done this, knowing that the Empire, down to the last citizen, would want them dead?

It was Ruskil’s duty to learn that.