Gone. Just like everyone else I have ever given a damn about. She's gone. Darc stood in the center of the dungeon's only cell, staring at the broken gate. His companions shifted nervously behind him, neither daring to draw the Drakyr's wrath upon himself by breaking the silence. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, but his nose was not as powerful as the Lupine's, and the last scent of the Human girl was long gone from this place.
Delma glanced over at Volk for reassurance after a time and cleared her throat. Darc's shoulders stiffened slightly. "Darc...shouldn't we check on the others? They couldn't have killed all the Orcon..." she began.
Darc spun around, his eyes simmering with rage. Even the stalwart Lupine flinched. "Others? What others? Cowards. If they died, they deserved it. They failed."
"That's so, but we still need to ask Gorma about the Pyron, if he's still alive. And maybe we can find out where they Humans ran to. The Humans must be punished for this," Volk suggested. His alpha's rage was unsettling. Usually Darc was the calming influence in the group, but this quaking fury was unlike anything the warrior had seen in his leader. It scared him more than a little. Even Delma, the most self-absorbed member of the trio, was on eggshells around the Drakyr. The Humans' invasion of Orcoth had pissed Volk off too, but no more than any mere mention of a Human did. He cast a sideways glance at Delma, wondering if she suspected the true source of Darc's rage at the incident.
Darc finally assented, and the three made their way out of the dungeon and into Orcoth. They stepped around the bodies or Orcon that Delma had known through childhood, and eventually found their way to the arena, where a group of survivors huddled. Thankfully, Gorma had survived, the old sage both reassuring them about their slumbering Pyron-to-be and pointing them onto the trail of the Dilzweld Army that had ransacked their town in their search for Lilia. Fists clenched with grim determination, the trio set off.
They arrived at the Dilzweld camp just in time to hear that Lilia had been drugged and imprisoned, and to be engaged in a battle with a machine-and-Deimos creation as the battleship Megist flew away. Instead of the Human girl he had intended to save, Darc was now saddled with a Pianta "woman" who was as irritating as she was old and withered. Camellia divided her time between fawning over her new "Master Darc", bemoaning the loss of her great beauty (a claim that the party dismissed on its face), and needling Delma.
The latter proved vastly amusing to Volk, but Darc didn't even seem to notice it. Nor did he notice the Orcon girl's poorly hidden satisfaction that the Human girl was, albeit temporarily, out of the picture. This is going to become a problem, at some point. He glanced over at his alpha. The Drakyr sat away from the others. His face was unreadable as he stared into their campfire, stroking the ortena that the Human girl had dropped in Orcoth. In battle he was the same Deimos, vicious and brutally efficient. At night, though, in the quiet hours before sleep took them...he worries about her. That's his Human side showing. What does he want with that Human wretch, anyway?
Delma's face, on the other hand, was as open as a child's. She stared at their leader from where she lay, feigning sleep. A blend of hatred and desire warred over her features, a volatile mix that the fourth companion, Camellia, was happy to snipe at during their travels. It seemed obvious to everyone but Darc that the pretty Orcon girl had feelings for him. What those feelings were, exactly, seemed to change in a flash. She had tried to kill the Drakyr once, and Darc had spared her life despite Volk's urgings to dispose of the traitor. Volk had acquiesced; Darc was the alpha and his decision was final; but a part of him worried that the choice would cost them later. For Delma's part, she had displayed no further urges to harm the alpha, but the act of sparing her life seemed to bind her even more strongly to the Drakyr. She defended him with an almost religious zeal, and her eyes flashed murderously every time Camellia approached him.
The Pianta sage took almost as much pleasure from praising and flattering Darc (and thus, sending Delma into a jealous fury) as she did preening and extolling her own virtues. Her true motives for this flirtation were unclear. No one really understood Darc's motives for keeping the withered flower around, but Camellia herself was using that doubt to wear away at Delma's self-confidence even more. "Perhaps he prefers a dainty, refined woman to some snarling, snapping Devil girl Delma dear. It's not your fault after all, my beauty is peerless. A raving Orcon girl simply doesn't compare!" Volk had had to step into that discussion earlier, literally backhanding Delma away as she leapt towards the Pianta, claws raised.
Every day it grew worse between them, and the source of all the tension hardly deigned to notice! Volk blew a sigh and walked over to join his alpha, who still sat turning the ortena in his hands. "Get some sleep, Darc. Tomorrow we go to Adenade to get the stone away from the Coleopt. I'll take the next watch."
"I'm not a child," Darc bristled. Even his irritation seemed forced. The Drakyr glanced at the sky. "I'm tired. Take the next watch, we leave in a few hours."
Volk bowed his head as his leader wandered off to his own bed. "Yes, my Alpha," he said softly, then turned to watch the night.