Anna strode outside the walls from a little door set a few dozen feet away from the gate. It looked to be a recent addition from the hasty-looking construction, but the doorway afforded Anna the complete element of surprise. Florian watched from above along with another Warrior.

“Shouldn’t we be down there to help her?” he asked.

The other man looked at him as if he were stupid. “Help Anna? Nah, kid, she’d be royally pissed at us if we tried to go down there. She’s lucky she made it there first; I need some extra meat…”

Florian didn’t know what that meant, but the sounds of wolves snarling turned his attention away from the middle-aged man at his side. Anna held her spear with practiced ease. The first of the golden beasts leapt forward. Anna used her spear to bat the creature to the side, careful not to overextend herself as its other two companions came to box her in.

This was looking bad. Florian went to descend the stairs when the Warrior held him back. “Watch.”

The wolves closed in incrementally, but as they neared, their desire to tear into Anna grew. At long last, one of them opened their maw to intimidate her. Except, all it got for its efforts was a spear lodged down its throat. The attack had been like a blur, and Florian could hardly recognize what exactly Anna had done. Her spear was back in a guard position before the Hellwolf’s body fell, the weapon repulsing the attacks of the other two monsters.

Each time, the wolves attacked with a combination of their claws and their powerful jaws, but it didn’t seem that the wolves had learned their lesson. They continued to provide Anna openings, and she continued to use them to her advantage. The fight was over in just a few minutes. Florian could see Anna breathing heavily, but the grin on her face seemed completely out of place.

The other Warrior released him with a grin. “See? Told you. Now go help her carry them in. If you’re lucky, she might share some with you. If she does, you know where to find me,” the man winked and practically shoved Florian down the flight of stairs. Florian turned to glare at him, but the other Warrior had evidently resumed his patrol.

Florian found his way out through the same door Anna had used only to collide with the tall woman. Heavier than him in her armor, Florian fell on the ground butt-first. Anna laughed, offering a hand to help him up to his feet. Taking the hand, Florian noticed that they felt slick. Anna had been dragging two of the carcasses with her, and her hands had been stained with their blood.

Anna passed him, then, struggling barely at all as she ascended the stairs with her prizes. Florian wondered as to why they were bringing them into Leeds Castle. Were their claws valuable for weapons? Or did Wilfred just have an interest in stuffed monster? Whatever the reasoning, Florian found the only carcass left and heaved it over his shoulders. It was lighter than imagined, and Florian easily carried it back up to the walls. For all his experiences with the monsters, he’d never thought that their armor would feel so negligible. He’d seen that armor repulse Terrence’s sword all those months ago, and even his Bludgeon had struggled to penetrate that armor towards the end of its life.

“So why’d you go outside to deal with them?” Florian asked as he walked up beside Anna.

“They like to scratch at the gate, and they’ll keep doing it until they eventually get in. We need to cut them down during the day so that we don’t have to worry so much at night,” she replied, guiding them away from the walls and towards a nondescript building close to the gate and what appeared to Florian to be a stable.

“But aren’t there more of them at night?” Florian walked inside after her to see a massive warehouse filled with all kinds of raw resources. The strangest thing there, though, was the pile of dead Hellwolves.

“Oh, certainly, and that’s why we need to send people out to keep cutting trees to build replacement gates. Each gate lasts about a month before it needs replacing, and our job during the day is to make sure it stays that way. At night, we mostly just deal with any Hellwolf that manages to scale the walls,” Anna explained, dropping her carcasses by a little counter with a slender man behind it.

Florian followed her lead, watching as the man poked around the carcasses. “They can do that?”

“Not often, but they can. And if they get into Leeds proper, we’ve got a problem on our hands. They tear through the tents as if they’re not there and slaughter whoever they find.” Anna then turned her attention to the man in front of them, who at this point had offered to exchange two pounds of meat for the three carcasses. “Oh, come on, Joel. We know you can get at least two pounds of good meat from each of these. I just want half, and you can eat the rest and sell the scales.”

“Lord Jones intends on sending more food to Rochester. Two is the best I can do, Warrior,” said Joel, his voice brooking no argument. It was a strong stance to take, and the iron in his voice was commendable given that he was talking to someone that had just slain three Hellwolves in as many minutes.

“Fine, I understand. Send it over to the cafeteria for me?”

“That’s the protocol, yes.”

Anna tsk’d, walking outside the building. “That’s always the worst part. They always want more and more from us. And by the end of it all, even we’ll go hungry.”

“Wait, you guys eat those things?” Florian asked, flabbergasted.

“Of course, didn’t you guys?”

Florian shook his head to which Anna’s eyes grew into saucers. Then she smiled.

“Well, you’ll get to have a taste tonight. They don’t taste particularly good, but it’s better than the slop they serve the rest of us in Leeds.”

The thought of fresh meat did entice Florian, despite its rather dubious origins. He had to think back to the last time he had actually had meat not from a can, and the answer came out to be a Christmas two years ago when Taylor had been more generous with their reserves. With his mind set on dinner, Florian made it through the rest of his shift without anything else exciting happening.