A lone figure trudged through the endless white of the snow plains. He was a Caracal-Lynx, tall and lean with long tufts of black fur sticking out from the tips of his ears.

  He wore a wide-brimmed cowboy hat pulled low to hide his face. On his chest, pinned to a tattered leather duster, was a shiny piece of metal.

  It was the Crest of the Gunslinger.

  He hadn't been sold as a slave. He had simply found a portal sitting outside the mountain range and walked into it out of curiosity. He woke up in this frozen graveyard and started walking.

  A group of six wolves on patrol spotted him.

  They circled him quickly, their spears pointed at his chest.

  "Who are you? Speak up or we'll gut you right here," the lead wolf barked.

  The cat didn't say a word. He just kept walking, his boots crunching in the snow.

  "I said stop!" the wolf yelled, baring his teeth.

  "This is your last warning, trash!"

  The wolves charged all at once. The cat's hand moved faster than the eye could follow.

  BANG! BANG! BANG!

  Three shots rang out in the cold air. Three wolves hit the snow before they could even scream. The cat stood there with a heavy iron revolver in his hand, smoke curling from the barrel.

  He reached into his mouth and pulled out three of his own teeth. Because of a regeneration strand he had taken from a beast long ago, new teeth clicked into place instantly. He loaded the teeth into the cylinder of the gun and kept moving.

  He didn't get far before a massive army of wolves blocked his path. Hundreds of them stood in rank, led by the same wolf leader who had kicked Lemony off the cliff. The leader looked at the fallen patrol and then at the golden crest on the cat's chest.

  "A Crest..." the leader said, his voice dropping the aggressive tone.

  "You aren't a sacrifice. You came through a warrior's gate, didn't you?"

  "I'm just passing through," the cat said. His voice was cold and dry.

  "You're a Rank 2 Scion," the wolf said, eyeing the golden metal.

  "Look, Gunslinger. We don't want trouble with your kind. If you want to leave, I'll show you the exit myself. Just go back to the real world and forget you saw us."

  The Gunslinger adjusted his hat. "I don't feel like leaving yet."

  The wolf leader growled, but he didn't attack. He knew a Rank 2 could wipe out half his men before they even got close.

  "Listen. We have business here. We have to destroy a base built by trash survivors. It's a cleanup job. If you stay out of our way, we stay out of yours."

  The Gunslinger looked toward the distant mountain ribs. He looked annoyed, like the whole conversation was a waste of his time.

  He didn't say anything else, he just turned around and walked back into the shadows of the rocks.

  The wolf leader watched him go until he was out of sight.

  He spat into the snow and turned to his army. They weren't just here to kill. They were here to harvest the strands from the survivors. Every creature in that hidden base had a soul that could be turned into power. If the wolves took enough strands, they could rise through the ranks just like the cat.

  "The three days are up!" the leader shouted to his army.

  "The preparation is finished. We move on the base now. Kill every last one of them!"

  Koro, Ve, and Pippin crouched behind a jagged rock.

  The massive bone walls of Fort Rib loomed over them. It was a dark, ugly place that smelled like old blood and wet fur.

  "Why didn't you tell the others we were doing this?" Ve whispered, checking the edge of his blade.

  "If we have a plan to take this place down, shouldn't everyone know? It would give them hope."

  Koro didn't look back. His eyes were fixed on the guard towers.

  "I don't trust everyone back there. Someone is always looking out for themselves. Especially that old man, Horg. He's lived too long to be honest. If he thought he could trade our lives for his safety, he'd do it in a heartbeat."

  He turned to the tiny creature sitting by his feet. Pippin was bundled in so many layers of dark cloth he looked like a rolling ball of wool.

  "Pippin, you're up," Koro said.

  Pippin gave a small nod, his goggles reflecting the dim gray light. He took off, moving across the snow so fast and so light that he didn't even leave a footprint. He found a small drainage hole in the base of the bone-wall and squeezed through.

  Inside, Pippin stopped and twitched his nose. He expected to hear the shouting of soldiers or the clanking of armor. But it was quiet.

  He scurried through the corridors, hiding under floorboards whenever he heard a sound. He reached the main courtyard and blinked. It was empty. The stalls were deserted, and the fires were nothing but cold ash.

  "Why is it empty?" he whispered to himself.

  He kept moving toward the operator room.

  He only saw two wolves walking the perimeter, and they looked bored, not like they were guarding a high-value fortress. He reached the tower and climbed up the back wall, slipping into the room where the lighthouse controls were kept.

  There was only one wolf there, leaning back in a chair with his eyes closed. Pippin didn't see any other guards in the towers or the hallways. He checked every corner, thinking maybe they were hiding in the shadows to spring a trap, but there was nobody.

  He didn't have time to wonder where they went. He jumped onto a stack of crates and reached for the main lever.

  The wolf in the chair snapped his eyes open.

  "What the—"

  Pippin slammed the lever down. The massive lighthouses outside flickered and died. The wolf lunged for him, but Pippin was already out the window, sliding down a banner.

  "Intruder!" the wolf yelled, but his voice sounded lonely in the empty fort.

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  Outside, the darkness was the signal. Koro and Ve didn't wait. They charged the main gate, Koro using his massive shoulder to smash through the rotted wood. They burst into the courtyard, weapons ready, expecting a hail of arrows.

  Nothing happened.

  Pippin dropped from a ledge and landed near them, panting. "It's empty! There's only three of them in the whole place!"

  Koro looked around the silent courtyard. His heart sank. If the army wasn't here, it meant they were already somewhere else.

  "The base..." Koro realized, his voice trembling.

  Ve growled, his fur bristling. "We don't have time to think. Let's take care of these three first and see if they can talk."

  The fight didn't even last a minute. Koro smashed his fist into the first wolf's chest, sending him flying into a bone-pillar with a sickening crunch. Ve moved like a blur, his blade flashing once, twice, and the second wolf was on the ground clutching a slit throat.

  The last one, the operator, tried to scramble away, but Koro grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and slammed him into the dirt.

  "Where is the army?" Koro roared, his face inches from the wolf's snout.

  The wolf coughed, blood spitting from his split lip.

  "Already... already there. You're too late, trash."

  Pippin stepped forward, his small face pale.

  "They're heading to the secret base, aren't they? Someone told you where it was."

  Ve turned sharply, his eyes wide.

  "Pippin! Don't tell him we have a base!"

  "It doesn't matter, Ve," Pippin said, his voice trembling.

  "Koro was right. Someone betrayed us. There is no way an old tortoise like Horg survives a wolf patrol while a flier like Sissy and a fast cat get caught. He gave them the location to save his own shell."

  The realization hit Koro like a physical blow.

  The anger that rose up in him wasn't just heat; it was a cold, sharp blade. His muscles tightened until his armor creaked.

  "I'm going to kill him."

  It wasn't a threat.

  It was a fact.

  "I am going to rip that shell off his back with my bare hands."

  Without another word, Koro turned and bolted.

  He didn't wait for Ve or Pippin. He ran with a desperate, wild energy he didn't know he still had. His heavy boots hammered against the frozen earth, kicking up clouds of snow. Ve tried to keep up, carrying Pippin, but Koro was driven by something else.

  As he ran, his mind started to slip backward.

  He remembered the smell of smoke from decades ago. He remembered the screams of his brothers and sisters when an army of pirates attacked their old village.

  He had been out hunting. He had seen the black smoke on the horizon and ran just like this. He had been too late then. He had reached the village only to find cold ash and empty silence.

  "Not again."

  "Please, not again. I promised I'd protect them. I promised Crysorgo."

  He pushed his body past its limit. His lungs burned like he was breathing broken glass.

  The wind whipped against his four eyes, blurring his vision with tears of rage and fear.

  "You coward, Horg! You pathetic, selfish old man! I'll kill you! I'll kill all of them!"

  He kept running until his legs felt like lead.

  He rounded the final rib that shielded the entrance to their home. He skidded to a stop, his heart hammering against his ribs so hard it hurt.

  In the distance, thick black smoke was curling up into the gray sky. The silence of the mountain was gone, replaced by the faint, rhythmic sound of wood splintering and the distant, high-pitched shouts of the wolves.

  Koro's knees buckled.

  He dropped to the ground, his hands digging into the snow. He stared at the rising smoke, his face twisted in a mask of pure, shattering grief.

  "No... No.... I was too late."

  The base---the only home he had left in the world---was burning.

  Koro slammed his fists into the frozen earth again and again. The snow turned to slush under his knuckles. He shouted until his throat felt like it was bleeding, a raw sound that carried across the plains. Then, he just stopped.

  The energy left him all at once. He rolled onto his back, staring at the gray sky, letting the cold seep into his fur. He had made a promise to protect them, and now they were smoke.

  "They're burning you survivors like trash. But I don't believe you're trash. You look like a normal creature to me."

  Koro bolted upright, his four eyes searching. Standing a few feet away was the cat in the cowboy hat. He was leaning against a jagged bone-shard, his long ears twitching. He looked completely out of place in a war zone.

  "Who are you?" Koro grunted.

  The cat adjusted the brim of his hat, his face half-hidden in shadow. "A man with a gun and a long walk ahead of him. You can call me the Gunslinger."

  "Leave me alone... I'm tired of this. I'm done." Koro said, his voice cracking.

  The Gunslinger didn't move. He just looked toward the rising smoke.

  "I know. I know. Just by seeing your pathetic face."

  "But... why would you stop here when you're so near? You've got legs. You've got a pulse. Staying in the snow is just a slow way to die."

  Koro sat up slowly, wiping the soot and tears from his face. The Gunslinger was right. He couldn't just sit here while the fire was still burning. The anger he felt toward Horg hadn't gone away; it had just settled into a deep, burning coal in his stomach.

  "How about we team up? I've got an itch to shoot something, and you look like you need a path cleared." the Gunslinger asked.

  "Whatever you want," Koro said, standing up.

  "Just let me get my hands on the traitor."

  The two of them took off, a massive four-eyed beast and a lean cat with a smoking revolver, racing toward the pillars of black smoke.

  ----------------------------------------------------------

  Inside the hideout, the air was thick with the smell of burnt hair and copper. Over fifty creatures had been slaughtered in the initial rush. Their bodies were piled in the center of the main hall. One by one, the wolves extracted the DNA strands from the corpses.

  "Look at this one," a wolf laughed, holding up a faint green strand taken from a rabbit-kin.

  "Increased hearing? That's it? How am I supposed to rank up with this garbage? These people are weak."

  "Just keep harvesting," another replied, tossing a body aside.

  "A hundred weak strands make a strong one eventually. We'll be Scions by the time we finish the pile."

  On the far side of the hall, Old Horg was shaking. He stood next to the wolf leader, his eyes darting toward the exits.

  "You said I could escape. You said once I showed you the way, I was free to go."

  The leader didn't look at him. He was staring at a massive door at the back of the hall. It was made from the same reinforced marrow as the mountain ribs, thick and impenetrable.

  "After everyone dies, including your leader. Your leader locked himself in there. It's a password-protected vault. We can't break it from the outside."

  "I hope you can solve it," Horg said, his voice trembling.

  The leader grabbed Horg by the neck, his claws digging into the old man's skin.

  "Do you know the password?"

  "No! No, I swear! Only he knows it!" Horg cried out in terror.

  The leader spat on the floor and shoved Horg away.

  "Fine. If we can't get in, we'll make him listen to his people die. Kill every creature we find behind the other walls! Make sure the screams are loud enough to go through that bone door!"

  The leader looked around the cavernous home.

  "I can't believe trash like you lived here for decades."

  "Centuries," Horg corrected weakly.

  "That's a long time to wait to die," the leader sneered.

  Suddenly, a wolf at the entrance screamed. The sound was cut short by a heavy thud and the sharp crack of a gunshot. The leader spun around, drawing his sword.

  Through the smoke and the fire, two figures stepped into the hall. Koro was covered in blood that wasn't his. Next to him, the Gunslinger was already reloading his revolver with a handful of his own teeth.

  The leader's eyes widened. He recognized the cat with the gold crest.

  "You... you're back."

  Koro didn't look at the leader. His gaze locked onto Old Horg, who was trying to hide behind a pile of crates.

  "Horg!" Koro growled, the sound vibrating in the very floorboards.

  "I'm here for my promise."