At least two months had passed. A day like any other if not for the whipping wind carrying the northern snows into the highlands. Frigid temperatures, but the city was enchanted to the point where the chill would not fall below a certain threshold. The forges churned, the adventurer activity died down, and Tyr kept working at this or that. All sorts of projects, plenty of them failures. But some, like Benny's armor, were a resounding success. He'd made similar gear for the others, but they were relatively minor things. For some reason, Benny's lacquered harness and rectangular, tiered pauldrons in the style of his people came out different than the rest. A labor of love, the kijin called it, accepting it without argument. Only sincere thanks, not a lick of bashfulness or the 'oh no, I couldn't!'. Tyr valued that. He didn't want these people to feel like they were in debt, most of it was just practice. There was no more game to be played, even the thought of that made him sick. All of the things he'd done to justify himself in the past.

And through it all, he never stopped training.

It was easy to train here. There were so many powerful individuals all around that he'd never had a shortage of sparring partners. Girshan, though. He was the roughest of them all. Never holding back, because he didn't need to. Tyr's flesh would heal, and the boy only felt so much pain at one time. A limb could be torn free and he'd either grow it back or reattach it. Whole again in naught but a few minutes. Sometimes it took longer, but those instances were rare. Tyr's armor was such an unfair advantage that he'd stopped using it. Both bare of chest and slamming into one another with blunt wooden training armaments.

Currently, they were at a record of fourteen and five. In Girshan's favor...

“Don't let it get you down. You are getting much better, believe me. Your improvement is almost irritating. I fought for twenty two years in the military, and was an adventurer for almost two decades after.” Girshan nodded in appreciation of Tyr's character. Tenacity, an unwillingness to quit, and most of all – that self hate that was necessary for true growth. Ever time he lost, the boy would look so disgusted. Not with Girshan, but with himself. Asking a dozen questions and training even harder. With his refusal to sleep on any sort of normal schedule, he barely stopped. Always desperate to put his hands to work. When the forges slowed down and no more work was coming in to justify his addition to their team, he'd gone about and sniffed out other tasks. On one day in particular, Girshan had found him gardening for the old man serving as logistics quartermaster. A man who had injured his back and couldn't turn his small rooftop plot to prepare his winter planting.

Nobody could make heads, nor tails, of the person Tyr was or was trying to be.

“I didn't know you were so old.” Tyr panted. Girshan was strong, stronger than he expected. All of his 'abilities' were short term in nature. His magic. Beyond that, he was a fine fighter, but no better than Tiber in skill. Someone Tyr felt that he could beat in a real fight. But Girshan had magic to aid him, and some of it raised his strength to truly absurd levels. Hypothetically, Tyr could wait it all out and only close in for a kill once the effect had worn off, but without his armor, he was much slower than Girshan. His magic too blunt and lacking in creativity to surprise the beastkin, even if it had grown more powerful than before.

“I'm not old.” Girshan growled disapprovingly. “I'm not yet in my fifth decade, little man.”

“Really?” Tyr asked, frowning. If that were true, then the age of conscription in Sinea must've been five or six years of age. Perhaps younger... Unfortunately, he didn't get the chance to ask for any sort of elaboration. Benny burst into the small arena contained within the guild hall. A floor shared between all guilds and chapters dedicated to tests of might and training. He was panting, wearing all his armor with his battle axe resting in the sling about his back. Red faced to display how far and fast he had sprinted to find them here.

“What's happen--” Benny had no need for an answer. The lights in the tower dimmed before flickering to a familiar red. Navi's voice coming from everywhere at once.

“Emergency quest issued. Please gather at the association tower and await further instruction. This is not a drill. Emergency quest issued. All non-combat personnel are to lock their doors and remain inside their homes or attendant facilities. Emergency quest issued. This is not a drill...”

This repeated several times, but they didn't wait to hear it. It was still in the dead of night. One of the only times of the day where Tyr was free to do as he pleased. Not quite midnight, but close. The others were still in bed, but it didn't take long for them to rouse themselves from their short slumber. Some were adventurers, and the rest had once been slaves and pit fighters. Well used to waking at the drop of a hat.

“Navi! What the fuck is happening!?” Tyr cried, still sprinting through the halls. The others headed toward the lift, and he for the balcony. She didn't answer, but again, no answer was needed. The streets of Aurora were a mess. So far below, he couldn't easily make out their forms, but he was sure of it. There were monsters running amok in the streets. Those few citizens that had been out and about on the thoroughfares and patrolling guards were little more than red stains on the cobbled road. He picked out one figure in particular, an old man with a cane doing his damnedest to keep an emaciated and patchy furred dog headed creature from climbing onto his roof. Defending that precious garden of his rather than obeying the orders given him. All of the structures in the place were fortified. But he could only think of his damn plants. Those grown in honor of his late wife. Winter Hibiscus.

Without hesitation, Tyr jumped, feeling the harsh winds so high in the air tear at his skin until the warm embrace of his mothers armor surrounded him. Free falling for but a moment before crying aloud, tearing the slightly more functional auronite bladed club from his dimensional ring. “Freerunner!” The air seemed to still. The runes patterning his greaves blurred before erupting in flashing blue light. Wreathing the lower half of his body and dragging him forcefully and painfully onto the vertical wall of the tower.

He kept running, gritting through the discomfort as torn ligaments repaired themselves, running straight down the building before reaching the height of the next tallest structure and throwing himself aloft. There was a pull, and an almost magnetic sensation as his boots erupted once again in light, sailing through the air from building to building. Just as the creature prepared its wicked claws to crush the old man, a cannonball named Tyr arrived, pasting the stone with its body, himself included. Picking his broken parts off the tiles of the roof before turning to look into the mans eyes.

“You can't remember her if you're dead.” Tyr said, doing his best to measure his tone and speak as softly as possible. His name was Yuri, a man with similarly western features to Daito, only diluted from generations of his family inter-breeding with those of the republic. He paused, looking at the just budding roots of the soon to flower hydrangeas before allowing himself to be relocated inside his home and office. Safe behind the thick wood of the doors and the bars that locked shut behind them. It was touching, but Tyr didn't understand it. To labor around a living memorial of love for decades after a person had passed took a kind of gentleness of spirit that he wouldn't know was possible. But he knew to love it for what it was. Having tended to the earth and roots himself... He wished he could feel what that man felt. A deep and abiding love that could extend long beyond death. A deep sense of sorrow and loneliness ran through his soul before he shook it off.

There was work to do. Killing to be done. And he wanted that, too.

–

More dog men. Slamming into his flank and trying to gouge away his innards. Benny swept them away with the axe gifted to him by Tyr, protected by a suit of armor made by the hands of the same man. It was hard to say how much time has passed, but it hadn't been much. Still, it seemed like an eternity. Slaughtering mindless mana aberrations had been so easy... But these creatures... “What the hell are these!?” Benny yelled, wrestling with the last of them. His axe haft pinning it by the mouth to the ground as it harried him with strikes from its claws. Kirk did the rest, driving the pointed tip of his front-most leg through the creatures skull and ending it once and for all.

“Werekin. Werewolves to be exact.” Girshan growled. There was a reason that dog related beastkin were uncommon, and this was one of them. They had a tendency to go berserk. But even beyond that, these creatures in particular were just that. Creatures. They were not true beastkin, and something was terribly wrong with them. He'd heard of Luna's curse, but wasn't so sure that this was it. These had never been men... It was like... They were manufactured. Stronger, faster, and more resilient than they should be. With a decent mana signature, but that was all. Nothing else. Nothing that would signify the signature of sentient life. Pushing Girshan to the edge as he battled them alongside the others. Backed into an alley near the tower and fending them off in anticipation of reinforcements.

“Beastkin?” Jura scowled, never stopping in her endless barrage of black arrows into the stragglers yet remaining. Even as she said it, she doubted it. They didn't act like thinking beings, more like true monsters. Lycans. People were shouting, all in a panic. Adventurers and civilians alike, they didn't care. Hunting monsters was all well and good when it was in broad daylight with the right tools, but not here. They'd been dragged from their beds or caught in unsecured locations and dragged away by force. Even the steel rankers among them were cowering in the shadows. Girshan spat.

“Healer! We need a healer here!”

Healers were only ever there when you did not need them. That was the rule. Arm and prepare oneself accordingly. They should've brought potions, but these soft bellied republic adventurers felt too safe, always orbiting installations like this. Or hunting the common monsters in the fields with all possible advantages at their back. Abe could heal, but there was that rule again. He was gone. Not dead, presumably, but Girshan was certain he wasn't. Abrath was a formidable adventurer even without his magic, but he'd take an inopportune trip to the archives at precisely the wrong time. Thankfully, he had to be close, still in the tower along with all of those books most likely.

“We have to move.” Girshan said. “Now.”

“But the order...” Xavier was still young. The word of law was just that, the law. But in times like these, a more experienced approach was needed. Aurora was swarming with werekin and they came from everywhere and nowhere. Somehow bypassing the defenses of the city and running amok. Here in the center, out in the open, there was nothing to be done. To add insult to injury, the tower reception area had locked as soon as they'd left. As to why... Nobody could say. Damning most of them to a cruel death in the streets.

He snorted, pulling the young kijin with him by force. The others followed. Jura, Yana, Benny and his team. “Damn the order.” Girshan replied. “We'll all die if we stay there, we only have so much energy. We have to find a choke-point or a structure that's opened to use.”

What in the name of the gods are they doing? He couldn't help but wonder. Why evacuate the tower when it was the greatest bastion against the foe. Why order people into the streets? Nothing made sense, no matter what angle he considered it from. They crossed through the streets of the administrative quarter, running as fast as their feet could take them. Girshan didn't care much for his own safety, but Yana's was important to him. She was like a member of his own family. Same clan, same marks, same blood – even if not in the literal sense. That wasn't to say that the others were not important, but his priorities were what they were.

All the while, beasts assailed them. Harrying their every step. But all of them were veterans from a multitude of conflicts. Girshan was a soldier, and they were all adventurers. Monster slayers, no order needed for Benny to begin equipping his team with bags of powdered coal. That which was useful against the werekin, coat them in the stuff and set it aflame and they'd die as sure as anything. Others joined them, eventually. Recognizing them from their time in the astral space. That Blue Rose paladin and her juniors.

Everyone was in a panic. The association had given them an order to gather, and what remained of the adventurer presence in the city was swiftly being whittled down. Conveniently located in the most open area of the city and locked outside the tower. Cut off from any expected support and simply waiting to die.

“Where are we going!?” Lina shouted above the din. These structures were practically independent fortresses, but not everyone had the prescience to lock their doors. Aurora as with any adventurer city was supposed to be one of the safest places on the continent. There was very little in the way of crime, and the full time residents and association employees here were largely trusting. Going to bed without suspicion due to the presence of so many powers milling all about, and the overabundance of guards. Guards that, based on what she saw, weren't doing much better than they were. And there were a lot less of them, most of them dead or dying in the streets. Or hiding...

“The only place we can go.” Girshan snarled, bodily lifting a werewolf from its feet and driving it into the flagstones. Hard enough to break its back, with a blow from his hatchet to end it, cracking it's skull like an egg and revealing the brain matter inside. Another quandary. 'Monsters', or existences predicated by mana rather than a true sense of life, were largely identical in power. There were few exceptions, and if there were, they would bear some stigma or mark. White fur, for example, among werekin. A sign of abnormal strength. These werekin however, were all fairly identical within the bounds of their aesthetic appearance – but their level of power was not. Some were a fair equal to him in strength, if not in mind and strategy. That one had been small, weak, and brittle.

Not all werekin were like this, mad things with a lust for blood. Some, like the foxen, considered it a gift. Beastkin typically appeared more 'human' than animal, this was the general rule. Once one became a were, this would result in a mixed inversion. Foxes, bears, and most avian derivatives would all retail their sanity for the most part. Simply regressing into a more bestial form for the latter, while the foxen would gain strange abilities and the freedom to choose when they changed their skin. Wolves only changed during a silver moon, appearing to be incredibly ill or possessive of some visible malady any other time. Frail and worn. It was a blood moon night, Luna's crimson orb hanging baleful in the sky with the second and smaller moon hidden behind it. Girshan had more important concerns, now, though, the turn of the moons not making sense wasn't of much help.

It doesn't make sense... A werewolf, a cursed beast, was a known cousin to the greater and diverse body of beastkin. Not all were blood mad and wild, but they tended to trend that route eventually. But in such numbers...? Impossible. Moreover, these were all broken in the mind even beyond what he'd experienced when hunting their ilk in Sinea. Beasts had compulsions, urges, and their humanoid relatives maintained bits and pieces of these. Little things in their ways or behavior, not just in appearance. With werekin, those compulsions were magnified a great deal and exacerbated until even a vegetarian member of their race was baying for flesh and blood. But it didn't change their greater nature, and that was how they could be fought. Werewolves in particular retained enough instinct and intelligence to roam in small packs of five or six. Ambush predators that would never approach such a large settlement confidently.

They would pick off stragglers, lone hunters, and traders. Biting that which they could not overcome through sheer force and waiting on the fringes amid the shadows of night for the thing to die of infection. Or become one of them. Results were mixed, and Girshan was no expert. He knew how to kill them, and gave little face to the study of their lifestyle.

“The only safe place in this city is the citadel.” He continued, more collected this time. There wasn't a shred of mercy in his eyes as he butchered his way through the city. They were not his kin. Those of the wolf and panther had been warring for centuries. Saorsa might be accepting of canids, but Sinea was not – all he saw in their eyes was the old enemy. Those who skulked about on their island in the eastern sea. “If we can get there, we can at the very least leave these noncombatants with the priests and decide what to do from there.”

“Understood...” Lina cursed herself. She had been put on leave with the church pending an inquiry for incompetence after losing yet more squires in the astral space. On the verge of being expelled from the order that had raised her. And yet, even when presented with an opportunity to lead and earn some glory – she had frozen. Unable to see past the chaos, failing to develop a proper plan. Allowing both her and her remaining men to fall into the disorganized mob currently being led by a slave. Ex-slave, perhaps, but it tasted like ashes on her tongue. She did not hate him because of his past, but because he was cool and composed where she was not. Because his tone carried calm authority, and because he and his party had taken detours throughout their frantic escape to drag civilians off roofs and fight to save them.

Putting their lives on the line while paladins, the 'champions of mankind', were impotent and too shell shocked to think to do the same. Some great cosmic justice. Karma. Had to be. Punishment for refusing to heed Willis' words of warning, and getting him and the others killed while she was allowed to live. She was caught between these thoughts, the cold fear of failing yet again and being stripped of the only thing that mattered to her, and at the same time understanding that deprecating thoughts were a poison. Faith was a balm, but she couldn't feel it now. Her lack of it was poisoning her mind and she was aware of it.

“Get yourself together, lady.” Benny glared at her, doing the unthinkable – an inhuman race grabbing hard at her collar and pulling her into a straighter posture. She and her party were slow, jerky, and did nothing but mill about aimlessly. Two of the six didn't even have their weapons drawn. Slowing down the rest of them while Benny frantically scanned the streets for any sign of his brother. “Aren't you paladins supposed to be fearless?” All the while, he kept an eye on that red moon above. Crimson light pouring unnaturally bright rays into the tight confines of the ground level alleys and passages to make everything appear as if it was covered in blood.

“Let's go!” Girshan shouted. Belting across the main thoroughfare like a bull, dragging the edge of his hatchet against his arm to divert the attention of the werewolves. They smelled his blood and came running as expected. Jura slid to his flank, letting her bow disappear to be replaced by an incredibly beautiful black spear, glistening in the fel light. Yana with her pendulum and Xavier at her side, swallowing the blue steel manatite provided by Tyr to see his flesh bulge and crystallize until he appeared a golem of ice. As tall as ever and half again, a more reactive change than he'd ever experienced.

“Get the people inside the gate!” Girshan shouted to Benny. “We'll be right behind you!”

That was his promise, even as he and his party planted their feet in grim determination. Disappearing beneath a howling tide of black fur and gnashing jaws.