A Wolf's Howl, A Fairy's Wing

"I still say we simply wait until a few of these smaller villages are wiped out," Elora shrugged indifferently from atop Erik's right shoulder. "That should motivate them to seek protection in the larger cities, and they'll be all the more grateful for our protection."

Erik, Naeku, Elora, and Ankhur were gathered in Ankhur's study within the palace. Here, they'd decide on what to do next while comfortably seated on luxurious chairs placed in front of a sigil-operated hearth.

As the leaders of their two factions, for so far as they still were separate factions, these four were the obvious choices for discussing these things… not that Emily, Emma, or Astrid had any interest in matters of state.

"That's insane!" Naeku immediately rebutted Elora's suggestions, frantically waving her hands as if trying to get rid of a nasty smell. "These villages house hundreds of people each! We can't just say, 'Oh well, let's see what happens'! These are our people!"

In the four days since they arrived back in Enkare Nkai, they had no new sightings of third-ranked beasts, but they knew it was only a question of time. Fortunately, in the previous two months, they had distributed communication sigil stones to every city and village within their domain.

This way, they'd been able to at least spread the news that third-ranked beasts had now started appearing. Unfortunately, most of the villages were dragging their feet in getting to safety. Some even suspected this whole thing to be a ruse in order to get them away from their ancestral home for… unknown reasons.

"That's true," Elora nodded calmly, not even slightly intimidated by Naeku's tone. "And because of that, they deserve our protection… within the cities. There's simply a limit to what we can accomplish, and the people need to do their part by not acting like suicidal idiots."

"They're not suicidal idiots!" Naeku snarled, furious at Elora's callous attitude. "They don't want to leave their ancestral homes! That's natural!"

"Hmpf," Elora snorted and waved her hand. "Is that what they'll tell the corpses of their children? 'Don't worry, at least you died on the dirt heap our ancestors died on, too?'"

Instantly, Erik and Ankhur inhaled sharply and dared not look at Naeku. So far, the two of them had remained silent on this issue, but Elora's scathing argument forced a reaction out of them.

Earlier, when this issue came up, Elora and Naeku started arguing about it, and the two men judged their best course of action was to let them work it out for a while. Truthfully, both of them leaned more towards Elora's stance, a little reluctantly in Ankhur's case, but either one of them was happy to let Elora take the brunt of Naeku's anger.

Subtly glancing at Naeku, Erik could see she was seething in anger and yet… unable to respond. Her eyes were spitting fury, her breath rapid, and her eyes darted back and forth, but… she said nothing. What could she say? To someone like her, Elora's argument was deadly.

Meanwhile, the fairy looked at her calmly. She didn't appear smug. Rather, she felt a flicker of respect for Naeku's dedication to not only the protection but also the freedom of her people. Even so, she had to understand there were limits to what they could do.

After a few moments of helplessness, Naeku started looking at Erik and her father for help. Not hoping for a good argument to counter Elora because there obviously wasn't one, not in her mindset, but hoping they'd offer a way to protect their people without forceful relocation.

Unfortunately, Ankhur could only shake his head helplessly. Only Erik offered a crumb by suggesting a way to lure people to the cities willingly. "Well… this is the time when we wanted to start implementing our economic system across the kingdom. If we do a good job advertising it to the villages, especially the benefits for their training, this might lure some of them over willingly."

But then he shook his head. "But that's not going to help with everyone." He looked at Naeku with a furrowed brow. "There's nothing else we can do, Naeku. Either we wait until villages start being attacked by third-ranked beasts, or we resettle them by force."

Sombrely, Naeku sagged down into her chair. She hated this situation, but she couldn't find it in herself to blame them. Not even Elora, not really. She didn't like the callous way in which Elora chose the greater good over relatively small-scale death and suffering, but… it's not like there was any other choice.

She had no better ideas, which meant their only choices were death by beast or suffering by forced relocation.@@novelbin@@

Sombre silence reigned for a moment as they all sank into their own thoughts.

Explore stories on My Virtual Library Empire

Eventually, Erik was the one who broke the quiet. "I suggest we table this for a moment. Instead, let's talk about the Humanitas Sangh. We have reclaimed Djibouti and likely earned a reprieve, but the war is not over. They will come again."

"Right…" Ankhur nodded thoughtfully before narrowing his eyes at him. "I'd also like to know what your connection to the leader is… as well as to Audumla."

A mysterious smile spread across Erik's lips as he answered. "Yeah, we probably should have talked about this before. We'd also like to know everything you do about Audumla, the reasons your family once fled Egypt, as well as the precursor to the hunters: the guardians."

Ankhur and Naeku looked at him with surprise. "I— You clearly already know a lot… Honestly, I'm not sure what extra information I can provide," he shrugged calmly. "All we have are a few texts with barely legible writings that make vague mentions of these things."

Instantly, Elora's eyes started shining. "We want to see them!" she immediately demanded, hungry for knowledge.

"That's easy enough," Ankhur nodded, a little surprised by Elora's outburst. Standing up, he walked over to a bookcase near the wall. "Fortunately, I always kept these by Audumla's altar outside of our village. Otherwise, they surely would have been destroyed along with everything else when Enkare Nkai appeared."

He took out three scrolls, likely filled with papyrus, and walked back to the chairs. There, Elora greedily jumped off Erik's shoulder, enlarged herself, and snatched the scrolls out of Ankhur's hand.

"Careful with those!" he immediately exclaimed, frowning. He hadn't expected Elora to be so careless with knowledge.

But Elora ignored him. Instead, a green flash of magic covered the scrolls before she opened them and took out three pristine documents made of papyrus.

She wasted no time in starting to devour their contents…