*POV: Mother Fox*

When I first noticed the smell of smoke, I gathered up my pups and headed towards the forests only source of running water. Surely if we cross that the fire won't spread to the other side and my pups will be safe.

While running through the forest at a pace I knew my pups could keep up and still be ahead of the spread of fire. I look back every so often to see if any of them fall behind.

I am so proud to have more than half my pups almost fully grown. I was so sure that at least half would last like my first litter and that this litter would never end up like my last one. I will never let that happen again, to have all of them be killed in my last meadow while I was away hunting larger prey to feed all of them for their first winter. Plus finding another mate for the next little was tiring. I am not cut out to explore and find suitable male foxes to breed with.

It's good that months prior to this I took them running through the forest, so they could learn to traverse through it without much difficulty. Sadly I notice some of the pups aren't keeping up. So I slow down and encourage them from behind to keep going at the current pace.

*howl* *howl howl*

Telling all my pups that we are almost there and safety is just ahead should help encourage them a little more.

I noticed that Dark Red is keeping to the back watching over her brothers and sisters. I seriously thought that she would be a trouble pup. She kept running away when she was newly born, even if that means dragging her body along then grass. But putting her in a couple time outs probably did the job. I'm glad she's making sure no one fall to far behind and that she'll caught anyone I might miss.

Thirty odd minutes into our mad trek toward the river, a group of Jade Deer cross our path. I can't look back at this point so I can only hope that all of my pups make it through. Weaving in and out of the legs of these deer is treacherous, hopefully my pups make it through.

*pant* *pant* *pant*

Finally I'm out of that! Turning around from my current spot, while heavily panting, I look to see how close my pups are. I start counting my pups and I see the one Dark Red named Snickers being the last among them to make it through. For a while I was having a hard time thinking of a way to identify this pup, so when I heard Dark Red calling him Snickers I decided to keep it.

I waited a couple more minutes for Dark Red, since it seems that she's the only pup that has yet to make their way out of the deer. To my dismay the deer are finally gone and I'm left with the decision to abandon Dark Red or wait for her and watch the fire get closer.

When the smell of smoke and burning wood reach where me and my pups wait for Dark Red, I make my decision. I have to abandon Dark Red in order to make sure that the rest of my pups survive. It kills me to leave her, especially with how much time I took to discipline her so she could be a good role model. But I can't have any more pups die on me, it's too hard. All I can do is hope she makes it out alive somehow.

Gathering my remaining pups we continue towards the river. With that little rest waiting for Dark Red, most of the pups have caught their breaths and have enough energy to make it the rest of the way. And this time, I'm making sure that my ears are on high alert so we don't run into any other herd of creatures also fleeing the fire.

I finally can smell and hear the sound of the river in the distance. Quickly notifying my pups that safety is close their spirits are renewed and they push forward even harder.

Looking at the river, I see more bushes on the other side than when we were here not too long ago. I don't think bushes can grow that fast, but I need to get my pups to the other side of the river. There's no time to worry about minor details like that.

The river itself is not flowing too strongly today so I don't have to worry about my pups getting dragged down stream. Finding the shallowest section of river I can, with the time I've got, I start herding my pups across one at a time. Eventually all of my remaining pups are across and I start pushing them towards the newly grown bushing.

All of the sudden *snap*

I turn towards the sound and see that one of my pups have stepped on something that oddly doesn't look like grass upon further inspection. However, that's all the time I'm given to react, because in the next instant all of us are hanging in the air in some sort of contraption.

Looking around, I notice that there are other creatures in a similar situation, however, they aren't moving. From above a fog of yellow gas touches me and my pups. Followed by my vision slowly blacking out, I struggle with all my remaining strength to try and escape. But my attempts are futile as the darkness consumes everything.

*POV: Human*

Finished with setting the fire to the edge of the forest, me and my men make are way slowly towards the river where we set the traps. Once in a while a brave creature would jump through the flames and into the open field. Of course we would slaughter these creatures, being this brave and bold they wouldn't make good pets for the nobility, we plan to sell these creatures on the black market after all.

Reaching the river where all of our traps are, I notice that most of them are full and have been replaced with empty ones. Looking through all the occupied crates I see Jade Green Deer, Metal Wolves, Ash Foxes, Bark Salamanders and Cloud Rabbits. Nothing too exotic, but the foxes and wolves will make good pets for the more battle oriented noble children, while the deer and salamander will probably be sold to the alchemic and herbalist customers.

Yelling at my men, I tell them that we have a good enough haul to start shipping the first set of crates.

Couple hours later the fire that we started finally reaches the river. Some of my men happen to know water magic so they start to dose the fire until it was no more.

With all but one or two empty cages, me and my men pack up and head to our campsite which is a day and a half ride from our current location.