The furtive legion escaped from the icy riverbed and continued its trek along the mountainside. After their encounter with the Dragon, they were hyperaware of their surroundings.

  “Do you know who our assailant was?” Kadus asked Zhi. They were under the cover of trees, shielding themselves from any eyes they might come across.

  “I believe that was Tiuente. Not one of the strongest dragons but, as you saw, one of the fastest ones.” She replied.

  “How many furtives did we lose, Moro?” Zhi asked.

  “About thirty, Lady Zhi,” Moro replied. “But I take full responsibility for this, High Onsiel. We should have kept our eyes focused not only on the skies, but on the ground as well.”

  “No, I should have been aware.” Kadus said. “It is my job as the scout to spot any danger.”

  “It does not matter who is at fault. We were duped by the dragons. We saw Teican in the air many times. At first we merely assumed he was there to observe our movements, but that was not all; he was also conditioning us. He wanted us to believe any dragon attack would come from up high, and when they attacked, they knew how to come at us. It was that more than anything that led to our failure to notice Tiuente, and we paid for it with lives.” Zhi remarked with anger rising.

  I should have seen through his tricks. I should not have let him get that close.

  “But the genuine mistake would be for us to ignore this lesson and not learn from it. We know now that our opponent is studying us, seeing how we fight, and learning to adapt to our behavior.” She added.

  “Like we didn’t have enough problems with Titans as is.” Kadus replied. “Now we have to expect them to pull tricks like these.”

  “It is to be expected.” Moro replied. “There are no rules in warfare. If the Titans feel threatened, we don’t know what they will resort to.”

  “Let them try.” Zhi replied. “For every trick they can pull, we can think of ten more ways to outmaneuver them. Titans might think they are clever, but they don’t know what it really means to struggle to survive.”

  “Aye, Lady Zhi!” Moro replied with glee.

  “But it will still behoove us to be on the alert.” Zhi spoke again, but now with a more reserved tone. “We’ve already seen a Giant hiding under the ground and a Dragon flying close to the surface to surprise us. As we move ahead, we might have to move with more caution. We won’t be of any use to the primary force of the Legion if we are dead.”

  “Understood, Lady,” Kadus replied.

  Zhi looked to the sky. There was little daylight left.

  “Let’s set up camp soon. Rest is much needed.” She said, and the rest obliged her orders.

  Before long, arrays of tents went up in a grid-like pattern. The Legionnaires had an orderly approach to setting up camp. Much like the mechanized fashion in which the furtives were taught to fight, they were also taught the optimal way of setting up quarters while traveling. All of this made Zhi think of the last time she had spent this much time traveling.

  This is so different from what Nanaua and I did when traveling with Livia, Corin, and Simeon. We would sleep around a fire and call it good. How did we even make it so far?

  The thought of those times made her smile. Despite everything that had happened since, there was something about those days that could not be replaced. The world seemed a much smaller place in those days. All they had to worry about was the five of them on the road. Now she had an entire force of furtives to worry about. But she put her mind back on the present. That was all in the past; she needed to focus on now, or else none of that would matter. She sat in her tent looking at the maps of the surrounding area.

  “Lady.” Kadus spoke from outside her tent.

  “Come in.” Zhi said, and the sparrowling followed.

  “Really? Lady?” Zhi admonished Kadus. “Should I call you old man?”

  Kadus laughed at Zhi’s reaction.

  “I only do what is asked of me, my dear Lady,” Kadus replied with a broad grin.

  “Of course you do. I am sure that is the only reason you shower me with such titles.” She replied.

  Kadus could not help laughing.

  “Come, this should not take long,” Zhi said as she brought Kadus to the table.

  “This is where I believe we are right now,” Zhi said as she pointed to a spot on the map. “It is only slightly short of where we intended to be by the end of the day.”

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  Kadus scanned the map and looked at where Zhi had pinpointed their location.

  “I would agree with your estimation of our current location.” Kadus replied.

  “Good. I was concerned we had fallen too far behind after our encounter with Tiuente, but we are not too far behind that we cannot make up the time soon.” Zhi replied.

  “You are correct. I believe that at our current pace we should reach the end of this river in about five days.” Kadus replied.

  “And we still expect to find the Leviathans massing there?” Zhi asked.

  “We have yet to hear from Kaisu. He is due to return tomorrow. But I would not expect changes. Seeing more than one Titan in a single area is a rarity. I assume the two Leviathans that had been spotted near the edge of this river were not there by accident.” Kadus replied. “But of course, these were some of the weaker Leviathans.”

  “Hmm,” Zhi said. “Even if they are weaker Leviathans, we still need to exercise extreme caution. Tiuente was middle of the pack for a Dragon, and he was still extremely dangerous.”

  “True, but this is our opportunity to put the odds in our favor,” Kadus added. “Jokasta is correct. If we do not go around Bukulkan’s rear, we do not know what sort of interference might be at play from Leviathans, or even other Giants on that front. His domain is too large for us to know what to expect.” Kadus responded.

  Zhi looked straight to a singular spot on the map. It was a region of immense size, the location they were supposed to encircle. “Strike straight at the Prime Titan’s stronghold. Quite the plan.” She added.

  “If we can’t face the Prime Titan Lords, then our cause was doomed to fail from the beginning.” Kadus replied.

  Zhi looked at him.

  “We won’t fail.” She replied.

  Kadus smiled.

  “But I still want -” Zhi began but was interrupted.

  “Lady Zhi!” a woman shouted as she burst into Zhi’s tent.

  She seemed to be startled.

  “What’s wrong, Será?” Zhi asked concerned.

  “Someone came into our camp,” Será, a dark-skinned human, announced. “She could barely walk. Upon coming in, she asked if we were with the furtive army and collapsed.”

  “A furtive?” Zhi asked.

  “Yes, Lady,” Será replied.

  “Bring her here.” Zhi ordered.

  Será proceeded outside and within moments entered the tent with two other Legionnaires, Moro and Loe. Between them, they carried an unconscious furtive, a sparrowling. They put the furtive on the ground.

  Zhi looked over the furtive and could see various injuries. Her right wing torn, and her right talon badly injured. The furtive was on the cusp of death.

  “What happened to her?” Kadus asked, concerned about the strange furtive.

  “We don’t know.” Será quickly replied. “She stumbled into the camp and shortly thereafter lost consciousness.”

  Zhi focused her energy on the unconscious sparrowling. As the energy left her body, Zhi probed deeper into the furtive. She saw that her injuries were much deeper than she initially thought. Fractured bones, bruised and failing organs, lacerations all over her body. This furtive was on the cusp of death.

  As Zhi poured her energy into the furtive, she slowly gained consciousness.

  “Ugh.” The furtive whined.

  Zhi now mended her bones. She knew from firsthand experience how painful the ordeal was.

  “Ah!” the furtive cried out in pain. Her face contorted as Zhi patched her up.

  “Well, she’s alive.” Kadus replied. “It is never pleasant to have your bones realigned.”

  Zhi finished, and the furtive breathed heavily, jolted awake by the magic that Zhi had poured into her to mend her body.

  The sparrowling, now conscious, slowly sat up. The look on her face was of bewilderment. It was clear she did not know where she found herself.

  She made eye contact with Kadus.

  “Easy now.” He began. “We are not enemies.”

  The sparrowling looked at everyone in the room.

  “I’m Zhi.” Zhi introduced herself. “This is Kadus. Those over there are Moro, Será, and Loe. We are with the furtive army.”

  The sparrowling thought long and hard. Her mind raced with many thoughts.

  “My name is Kolja.” The sparrowling said, her mind still not present with those in the room.

  She looked around the room as if looking for something.

  “The others.” Kolja followed up quickly. “The others in my village. Did any of them come here? Did others survive?”

  Kadus looked at Zhi.

  “I’m sorry, but we only arrived here in this area.” Zhi began. “We- we don’t know which village you speak of. But if you tell us where this village is, we can look for others.”

  “No, no,” Kolja said as if she remembered something. “There’s nothing left there.”

  “What do you mean?” Kadus asked. “We mustn’t be too far from your village. We should be able to go there in the morning.”

  “You don’t understand.” Kolja replied. “The village was attacked. There’s nothing left. Everything was destroyed. The attack came so fast. There was no time to react.”

  “Was there a Titan clash?” Zhi asked.

  “No,” Kolja replied, speaking as she stared into space. “There was no Titan clash. This was a targeted attack by a dragon. The dragon that attacked us was one I had never seen. Before anyone even realized we were being attacked, half our village was a smoldering wreck. But this dragon did not just mean to destroy our village. Any furtive who tried to escape was chased down and slaughtered. Entire families were struck down in an instant. The dragon massacred everyone.”

  Zhi looked at Kadus and stared in horror. The full weight of the revelation settled in.

  “The Titans.” Zhi said. “They have begun annihilating furtive villages…”

  There was only silence in the room.

  “We knew they would resort to underhanded tactics.” Moro said, ending the silence.

  “This goes beyond using underhanded tactics to attack furtives!” Zhi shouted. “They are slaughtering furtives who have nothing to do with our fight!”

  The air in the room started sparking. Zhi’s rage swelled inside her. She thought she had witnessed the worst that the Titans could do. But never in her mind could she have expected such a thing. Her mind could not comprehend such evil. She remembered all the furtives she met when she searched for the pieces of the artifact. Those in Trinixo, in the dwarven town, the forest elves, Yranto. All of them under attack. All of them were to be slaughtered like rabid animals. The rage continued building.

  But there was something else. There was pain. Zhi was used to pain now. Many times she had broken bones, severed limbs, pierced organs, and she could fix them. But this pain was unlike that. This pain could not be soothed with her magic. She did not know what she could do to rid herself of it. She wanted to scream, to fight, to find any Titan she could and punch a hole through it with the largest thunderbolt she could conjure.

  Zhi felt a comforting touch on her shoulders. She looked over to her side.

  Kadus was next to her. Just touching her zapped the sparrowling, but the pain did not deter him.

  “I know it hurts.” He said with a strained voice. “It hurts me too. It’s barbaric.”

  Zhi continued looking at Kadus, one of the few that she had known before Jokasta had been released. One of her trusted friends. She could see sparks singeing his plumage, but he did not react. Zhi did not realize that her powers were spilling out.

  “I’m sorry.” Zhi said. “I just- I never imagined something like this could ever happen. Never in my life did I imagine this could happen.”

  Zhi did not know who those words were for. Were they for Kadus, who had to come to terms with what they had unwillingly set in place? For Kolja, for what happened to her village? Or were they for her, to tell herself that she never considered that the Titans would resort to these tactics?

  “These are dark times.” Kadus said. “We knew we would face difficulties along the way. But in the face of such cruelty, we are left with only one choice. We have to continue fighting, or else we’ll all be wiped out.”

  Zhi was silent. She looked at all the others in the room.

  “Yes,” she whispered. “We have no choice.”

  Zhi turned to look at Kolja. The sparrowling had been silent.

  “I’m sorry you had to go through this,” Zhi told her.

  Kolja was silent as she stared at Zhi.

  “Did you have any relatives join the furtive army?” Kadus asked her.

  Kolja turned towards him.

  “No,” she replied. “When your messenger came, some in my village volunteered, but I was afraid. My family died when I was young in a Titan clash. Throughout my entire life, I did everything I could to avoid Titans. I thought I could live out the rest of my life without ever seeing a Titan again.”

  Kolja finished, and she stared into the empty space that existed in the tent. The pain she felt was one that Zhi could not heal.

  “You must be hungry. Would you like some food?” Zhi asked Kolja.

  “Food?” She seemed confused. “I guess I should eat. It has been three days since I ate anything.”

  Zhi looked at Moro, who quickly sprung into action.

  “Come, we’ll make sure you are fed.” He said as he put his hand out.

  Kolja meekly grabbed his hand.

  “Loe, Será, let’s help our guest,” Moro said as he led her out of the tent.

  The four of them left the tent, leaving Zhi and Kadus by themselves.

  The encounter, although brief, had changed them.

  “Time is not on our side,” Zhi finally said.

  “If we do not hurry and kill the Titans, they will eradicate all furtive kind.” She said.