There wasn’t a sound, the weapon so sharp that the frosty atmosphere gave way. It traveled from one eye to the other, the blade deep into the creature’s brain. Keeping the point in, she yanked the creature towards her, using her elbow to smash the back of the neck around the jawline. It went slack, soon to die in its sleep.

The spear, exiting the wound, turned a bit in her hands, the discolored patches slipping off.

Isirith’s eyes darted to the side, her ears picking up something coming towards her.

It is quite pretty. Strange, but pretty. Tomoee’s world that is.

The third stage of meditation, meditation while moving.

Her mind was calm, and her thinking clear. She felt like she could experience more than she normally did. As if she had eyes on the back of her head. But most of all, everything seemed… sluggish.

It wasn’t as if time slowed, at least she didn’t think so, and even then not by much. Her brain still took time to complete entire thoughts, and her eyes took longer to swerve. It was like her natural instinct and trained reaction took a longer time to process everything. To take it all in.

It was as if a sprint turned into a hard run, a noticeable yet shallow difference.

There. She was quite satisfied with that explanation.

Isirith looked into the reddish-yellow iris, the pupil dilating slightly. Her shoulder jerked, sending the back of the spear into the wolf’s mouth and down its throat. Using its own force against it, she twisted her torso and slammed it into the rocky floor, a harsh whimper escaping it. Giving it no time to recover, she slid it out and in, flipping stabby around in the process.

She let out a breath she didn’t even know she was holding. Isirith was counting the entire time, and that totalled five, the last ones alive in the area. Still, she puffed her cheeks. Tomoee left her to deal with all of these! She could have died! She didn’t like picking up the leftovers, especially when they have teeth as big as her fingers.

Shaking off the fats and solids on the tip of her best friend once more, she started to look around. The dust had dissipated a bit ago, so she could see more clearly. And yet, that wasn’t much, considering there was practically no light entering.

Isirith retraced her steps, eventually coming upon a stick with some fur wrapped tightly around. Placing the spear on her back with premade straps, she picked it up.

She channeled her emotions. Her deep excitement, her high stress, her intense fright, every heavy expression of herself she could grab hold of for now. Internally, she balled it up into a tiny ball before letting it explode out. It was who she was, her passionate side.

A small circle appeared like usual. It was always… off. It didn’t give the impression that it should exist. Yet it did, quite interesting.

She almost completely forgot about the fire in her hand.

Smashing it against the animal pelt, tied in multiple places, it took on a red heat before rising up in a hot orange. Waving it around once or twice to make sure it wouldn’t go out, she resumed her small expedition.

“Hm-hmhmm~.” She hummed a sweet little tune. Isirith was still on a post battle high, and it was taking her a bit to unwind. With a pep in her step not suited for the situation, she chose the simple solution of how to follow Tomoee. Following the corpses.

“Whoah.” That is one big corpse.

The lifeless eyes of one of the creatures she fought earlier looked directly at her. Well, sort of like the ones she fought earlier, only it was over twice her height, and she didn’t even know how many Isiriths would fit into its length.

Well, at least I know why I had to fight five.

Her ears flicked. She heard breathing.

Waving the torch towards that direction, she saw Tomoee leaning against a stone pillar, the area riddled with boulders half her size to a little bit over. Her right hand laid upon the Watatsumi as her right leg was straight out, her left having a bit of a bend at the knee. Her helmet was off, and she looked ‘lost in thought’ as some other-males say.

Hmmm…

With great speed, she thrust stabby at her. As expected, Tomoee simply shifted her head to the side a little, her left hand catching the rod as the tip was right about to hit her nose. Her face twitched for some reason as she casually batted it aside.

Now that Isirith looked closer, her armor looked different at-

“Do not look at me.”

Doing as asked, she turned away.

“This is not a time to concern yourself with me.”

She snatched the helmet out of the air without needing to see it. Her face crinkled in disgust at the smell. It was even worse than that of the makeshift torch.

“I need you to quickly clean it for me.”

Isirith nodded.

Her thoughts were different this time. The anger, the sadness, the happiness, the pain, the feelings. She suppressed anything from rising. They were there, but they were covered, covered in the sound, the silence, the sights, the smells. It roamed over them, not obscuring, but putting a cap on it, preventing it from surfacing.

Water formed into a ball. After so much practice summoning these sensations forth had become easy.

Placing it inside the helm, she shook it a bit, using her fingernails to scrape off grime. It floated in the water until she dumped it out, making a murky puddle she would rather avoid. Without being asked, she filled it up again.

Passing it back, she could almost feel the nod she received. “I will… clean up. Search ahead.”

Using her mancer abilities, she burned her fingertips a bit. The fire didn’t hurt her, only sanitizing her hand. “Okay!”

She kept walking ahead, pretending not to hear the small “Thank you.” she heard.

…

Now that she looked at it closer, there waaaas a barely noticeable entrance to a side area. It was quite annoying that she had to search the entire place and it ended up being a few meters to the right of where she started. Ugh.

Of course, she is quite the sneaky person. In fact, she was the sneakiest. Probably. Maybe. Yes? Of course she is! The only reason she got found is because Tomoee found her, and Tomoee is the best at games, at least, for now.

Rationalizing the situation, she put herself against the wall. Inching foot to foot, she eventually made her way to the opening. Admittedly, her making sounds to emphasize how sneaky she was probably wasn’t that sneaky of a thing to do, especially when the enemies were wolves. With great hearing. And could feel even slight vibrations. And… it also possibly wasn’t the best idea to have a song to go along with her sneaking section. The answer, for now, remained unclear.

Peeking just around the corner with the flaming stick as her entourage, the room became clear to her. There were four of them, wolves that is. Three of them were looking at her, white coats smooth and calm, rather than riled up like she thought they would be. Two of those three were on their bellies, while one was standing up on all fours. All of the creatures were much bigger than normal, but not nearly as big as the really big one.

“Yip!”

There were pups it turns out, biting and gnawing at each other, wrestling around like she used to when she was younger with her sisters. Others were resting in the fur of the mothers, black eyes shut in a comforted way. A few barked and stepped back from her, from the light. The mothers, they simply went back to what they were doing.

Walking further in there didn’t seem to be any signs of alarm. If anything, it looked as if they were accommodating. After a battle, she thought it was time to use a big word, and applaud herself for it.

She looked directly at the closest mother. “I’m smart.”

The mother blinked in response, tilting its head before going back to nudging a child with its nose.

She nodded in content. Good enough.

She felt a tug on the bottom of her pants leg. Looking down, one of the little ones actually tugged at the rim of her clothing. Laying the burning object against the wall so it doesn’t burn anybody, she scooped up the furry predator.

Blush came to her cheeks. Cute…

She rubbed her cheeks against them, petting its tail as it nipped at her. The warmth coming from its small tummy warmed her hands. “Your name is soft.”

She looked at some of the faces looking up at her. Isirith’s cheeks reddened further.

I wonder what two would feel like…

…

She couldn’t see anymore

Her only feeling was a sea of bleached fuzz, biting at her clothes or panting with energy. Her vision was cut short, a cub sitting on her face with its fluffy behind, tongue out and looking expectantly at its parent. She tried to communicate with it but her voice was muffled by the living pillow.

She wiggled her mouth a bit more, the tickling coaxing the pup to get up and turn around, little eyes staring into her own.

“Think you can get off?”

It just continued looking at her, tracing every small movement with its eyes.

Isirith puffed out a breath, whipping its hair around as it started to nibble on her nose. Freeing her right hand she pried it off, freeing her left hand in the process. Soon her torso and legs were released from their comfortable prison, shaking at high speeds to get all the fur off. A surprisingly successful endeavor.

Her eyes locked again with the wolf she made the statement to. It was nursing her and possibly the other litters, all crowding around her stomach area. Isirith winced, unable to imagine doing that and the pain from them having teeth. She raised her eyebrow at the feel-male, but got nothing in response once more

Some of the young weren’t actually asleep, but blind and possibly deaf, unreactant to most stimuli. She tried one of the cubs this time.

She leaned in close. “I’m smart.”

It moved a bit, going towards whatever caused its fur to blow around. A better result, for sure. It seemed this generation was more advanced than the older one, able to acknowledge how great she is. She booped it on the nose for appreciation.

Standing up, she looked down on the mother once more, giving her a look of disapproval at her lack of intellect.

The she-wolf bowed her head to the floor.

Isirith, though a bit startled, smirked nonetheless. Of course they would, s-

They were all bowing their heads.

A shiver going up her spine, she ever so slowly started turning around to see a much taller person she knew very well. The edge of her lip twitched, a nervous chuckle escaping from her throat. How much did she see?

“Yes.”

To be honest, she didn’t know what face to make. I knew she could read minds.

Ignoring the genuflection of the humbled mothers, the now much less plated woman scanned the area in its entirety, appearing quite disinterested in everything.

Isirith pointed to the white and red strips around her arm, “What’s that?”

Tomoee looked down at her, “The last of my bandages, unfortunately. Still, a cast was required.”

Isirith could piece together what a cast was well enough, especially with the visual presentation. Most of it was around her shoulder, but some was around the arm as well, which was supported by a sling. She walked with her Watatsumi in her right hand, which had a few stitches. She placed less weight on her right leg as well for some reason. An odd fashion choice, but acceptable she supposed.

Knocked out of her trance of staring with a small chop to the head, she couldn’t help but ponder what other styles feel-males and man-males might have.

“The shoulder bone took longer to put together, but it should heal in at max six weeks or so.” Something about legs too.

She couldn’t hear her, being too busy analyzing the culture of her race to do much else. How would a lefthanded other-male shake hands if their left hand was covered in this ‘cast’? Would they just NOT shake hands? Maybe they would use their off hand, or just have to use a different style of clothing? Why was she worrying about how she looked in a place like this? Was she just that strong? It could be that…

Tomoee just left her to her own delusions.

…

She hadn’t quite seen a wolf den herself before. She had simply never found an interest in doing such a thing.

If it was anything like the real thing, then her perception of it was quite wrong.

She did not count the part of where they bowed to her, that was obviously different. Tomoe had to frown though, the males were dead, and that would leave the females to themselves. Would they be able to survive, or should she kill the kids out of mercy?

She was rubbing her chin again. She needed to stop.

She made eye-contact with the one that had slightly more azure skin than the others. It bowed its head once again, not daring to stare. They were in a good state, but that would not stop any others from taking over their hunting grounds.

Leaving the deep in thought Isirith, covered once more with fuzzy critters, she made her way to the corner farthest away from the entrance. The others made way for her, shooing their children away.

*Tap*

The katana sounded a small wooden wave, not designated to signal the creatures behind her but the one in front of her.

Pristine silver hide, hazel irises carrying a soft hue, and a gaze that gave no heed to her. It did not disrespect her, but neither did it cower. It was curled up, tail coming around full circle to her head, body positioned as a crescent.

They continued to look at one another.

Gently as to not hurt her knees further, she came to a crouch, leveling with the creature on its stomach.

“Let me see.” No unkindness, but still a command.

It could not comprehend her words, but the language of her positioning and movements spoke enough, the force of Tomoe’s words mixing into a mild understanding.

Sweetly sweeping her bushy limb to the side she looked down at the small bundle in the center. It heaved with every breath, crusted red all around it. Wounds peppered its body, and a deep gash went down its eye until it became as low as its nose. A leg was bent the wrong way, and a small stream dribbled out its nostril.

The mother looked back at her, as if to see her response.

She gave none in turn, too infatuated by the lustrous gold coat of the animal.

As a person of higher society, she had seen much of the precious metal, but none matched to the pureness of its sheen. Tomoe took off the things covering her right hand and brushed the small bushel, recieving a small quiver in response

A different variation of the race, making it considered dangerous in some way. She wondered if the abuse had to do with superstition or safety, as the leader was certainly capable enough to think of either one.

The small thing strained itself to meet her face. It did not look sad, nor happy. It was a look that showed that it simply existed, and didn’t have the energy to do anything else.

Using her hand once more, she traced the front leg of the mother. It twitched. Still, she was not attacked, and felt it for a bit.

It was broken.

Tomoe met pupil to pupil with the female. “I respect you.”

To be willing to suffer an injury to protect those you care about. To not do so would be to revoke the truth.

Her fingers flitted about in the air, testing the heat. It was much hotter in here than the cave, even without the torch. They would rest here, and she would find a way to use the materials. Upon that conclusion, she should move their stockpile here.

“Isirith.”

She spit out the hair she somehow got in her mouth, yet couldn’t get it in one go, “Yesth?”

“Get our stuff.”

And by her moving the stockpile, she meant a certain Isirith. An Isirith who looked very betrayed at the moment.