“We’re going to send out a small reconnaissance team,” she whispered. “Joe, Mont, Marf, and myself will head it up, together with three of the domain guard, Zorg and two onikin, and one of the frogkin. Air support is pointless in woods as thick as these, so the falconkin will stay put.”
Everybody agreed with Aymer’s plan. Ordinarily, reconnaissance was done with a much smaller team, but Aymer had specifically chosen Mont to join them, expecting that his leadership might be necessary depending on what they encountered. The rest of the expeditionary party read in her orders that even Aymer herself was prepared to go to battle to help whoever it was in need.
The team formed quickly, with Aymer, Marf, and the frogkin taking the lead. Next were the onikin, with Mont and the rest taking up the rear. It wasn’t long before they heard a young woman’s voice and, soon after, the voices of others.
“How many times do I have to tell you that I’m not a lostblood?! Dammit! Why doesn’t anybody here speak the continental language?! Ugh!”
Two men barked something indecipherable. They must have been speaking the native language of the beastkin nation. Unfortunately, they spoke quickly in their anger and Aymer could not make out their words through the whipping of the wind through the trees. The third among them, however, spoke the language of the kingdom.
“Shut up!” he barked. “Stop saying you not lostblood! You lostblood! You obey pureblood!”
Exactly what the man meant was unclear, but the situation was not good. Three options presented themselves to Aymer—they could run in, see how things developed, or ignore the woman’s predicament and pull back. Aymer tried to calculate the best course of action, but as she did there came a scream and a roar. The woman ran right for them, and before Aymer could issue another order, the woman was right in front of them.
The woman had black hair, and from her head sprouted two furry ears. She also sported a lithe tail, but outside of these two characteristics she appeared otherwise human. She reminded Aymer of the lostblood brothers. She wore light armor, likely for the mobility it afforded her, but her clothes were dirty and torn.
Everybody responded differently to her approach, but Aymer was the first to react, whispering before anyone moved.
“Don’t kill anyone!”
She did not like the idea of the domain guard’s eagerness for battle resulting in tragedy. Next to react was Mont, who could not believe his eyes.
“What’s a Meowgen doing here?!” he cried.
Next, the domain guard sprung into action, slipping around the young woman to meet her pursuers. As for those pursuers, they quickly found their shoulders impaled on onikin arrows. They slumped to their knees, crying out in pain, but after a few quick punches from Joe and the domain guard, all were unconscious.
Aymer bounded over an instant later to check on the situation.
“No casualties!” she reported, though it was unsure whom her report was actually for.
The young woman had been involved in a strategic move by the imperial navy. She had boarded a small vessel and sailed west where an investigation or survey was to take place. Before arrival, however, her group had encountered a storm that saw their boat capsize. Fortunately, she had been saved by a fishkin woman, but she did not speak the continental language—which in the kingdom was simply known as the language of Sanserife.
Unfortunately, the inability to effectively communicate meant that the young woman had been unable to convey that she hailed from the empire and wanted to return. She also had no way of knowing which sea they’d been sailing and in which direction she needed to head for home. As such, the fishkin woman had simply brought the young woman to the Beastland Kingdom.
The fishkin had thought herself to be doing a kindness, yet in truth it was anything but. The greater Beastland Kingdom knew nothing about the empire and instead assumed the young woman was herself a citizen.
“I am not! I’m an imperial citizen!” she’d cried. “All I need you to do is contact the Meowgens! Tell them I’m here! They’ll send help! You’ll be rewarded! You just have to get in touch with the empire, which is beyond the kingdom to the east!”
The young woman had done her absolute best to explain, and indeed she had been forced to do so over and over, but even those who understood what she was saying had not listened.
Instead they had thought her delirious, simply because she looked like any other lostblood they knew. The lostblood people were deeply despised, and in some places they met with fates far worse than mere discrimination. Because of how bad things were for the lostblood, everybody had simply assumed that the young woman had developed a fantasy in her mind to escape the hell that was her reality.
The young woman had thus found herself thrown into prison, where she had been fed scraps and treated as less than even an animal.
One fateful day, a group of men up to no good had come to the prison, and the young woman had been able to catch them by surprise. She had attacked them, stolen a key, and launched a jailbreak. However, after so long in prison, she was weak and malnourished, and it had not been long before the men had caught up with her. As they bore down on her, evil grins on all of their faces, she had been suddenly saved by Aymer and her expeditionary party.
The domain guard had supplied the young woman with one of their spare cloaks, and while Aymer mended her clothes with her sewing kit, the woman had been provided a simple meal. In return, Aymer had asked for information and had sat upon Marf’s head and listened as the young woman spoke of her experiences until now.
Aymer, having heard her out to the end, responded, “Ah, I see... It’s been an incredibly rough road for you, hasn’t it?”
Aymer sorted out what she’d been told, thinking things through.
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