Here we are, don't turn away now,
We are the warriors that built this town
Here we are, don't turn away now
We are the warriors that built this town
From dust.

Will come
When you'll have to rise
Above the best and prove yourself
Your spirit never dies!

Farewell, I've gone to take my throne above
But don't weep for me
'Cause this will be
The labour of my love

Warriors, by Imagine Dragons, from the album Smoke and Mirrors, released in 2015

It was a tough and bloody battle, and there had been numerous losses from every one of the Packs. It simply couldn't have been avoided- no matter how skilled or how powerful, losses were inevitable with a battle as large as this. There were multiple devastating losses, and countless more injured. From the wolf pack, they'd lost a few, the losses striking hard and fast, without remorse or regret.

Paul, brave and hot-tempered until the end, had been killed while fighting off three Vampires who ganged up on him. Injured, he had been a fraction of a second too late to avoid a lethal bite, the venom flooding through his veins and dehabilitating him quickly. Rebellious until the end, he went down fighting, only stopping once the three of his attackers were down.

The next loss, mourned for by the entire Pack, was Sam. He had gone down protecting the group who was healing the injured. You would think this would increase his chances for survival, but he was swarmed, and with it, they took a wolf away from their Imprint. His body was laid beside his Pack, ready to be buried later in the customary fashion. They would always remember the one who had lead the Pack when Jacob could not.

Their last one was one equally upsetting, resulting in Seth shutting down, soothed by his newly found Imprint who was snuggling against him in a comforting presence. Leah had gone to join her father. The sheer howl of terror that Seth emitted once she disappeared from the pack mind, her message unknown to all but Seth, was one that still rang out in everybody's ears, haunting them and teasing them like his sister no longer could.

Spirit was lingering around him, warbling to him in wolf a message that was just for him. Shadow had lost two of his children: Torrent and Forge, both killed in different ways. Poor Torrent had died of an electric shock, sent through his water powers and coursing through his body with the strength of an pylon. By the time one of the eagles had killed the one responsible, it had been too late, and the wolf had fallen over, his muscles still spasming with the electric shocks.

Forge's death had been the most brutal, arguably, considering how he died. He'd been picked up and accidentally killed by one of the Elephants, who had been mind-twisted into picking him up with the curl of his trunk, and smashing him against the ground, splintering his rock-like skin into small shards into the ground. Once the same Elephant had recovered, he had gathered up the shards, clean and natural-looking, and wrapped them away in a small bag, keeping the broken shards of Shadow's son together, in one piece.

He laid him next to his brother, ready to be buried in whatever way Shadow chose. The same Elephant had much remorse and had yet been unable to see Shadow. Norta and Yson, imprints to one another, had died as mirror images of one another. This was not uncommon in shifter history- because if the Imprints were strongly intertwined, then the shock of one's death would kill the other. Norta had, like so many others, been bitten and injected with venom, just after killing the vampire who had inflicted the wound.

The volume injected had overtaken her quickly and she fell soon. Yson had frozen, according to the others who had seen him, and had died on the spot, collapsing on the ground, a Vampire's decapitated head still in his jaws.

The Alaskan bears had been one of the few packs to loose only one member. A tragedy all the same, but a few less than the others. Søren, the twin of Iorek, had fallen in battle, his deaths being one of the most subtle. As subtle as an avalanching swarm of rubble could be, anyway. Molten rocks, summoned by one of the Vampires, began to gather on top of the bear, pinning him to the ground.

While he resisted the weight for a long time, they began to increase until there was the amount that was like a molehill resting on his back. The crack reverberated throughout the battlefield and the pile caved in on itself, the rocks sliding like they were on ice until the bloodied, normally pure white fur, of Søren emerged, and with that realisation, there was a thundering roar emerging from Iorek, and he became a whirlwind of fury, slashing and killing like a machine.

Then, there was Hathi. The wise old, grey pelted, elephant who had been almost a mentor, teaching them the ways of shifter history and the like. He had fallen in a peculiar way, not through an injury or venom bite, or anything of the like, no, he simply laid down after the battle, and curled up, his trunk wrapped around his grandchildren, and fell limp, body frozen as if a statue.

His grandchildren were still by his side, not moving at all, statues almost, themselves. The felines, both the Scottish wildcats and the Canadian Cougars had come out with no fatalities. Injuries, yes, with a few needing a few days to heal, but otherwise, no fatalities. Similarly, the capuchins had sustained no fatalities, as of yet, but they were both unconscious, with several broken bones.

Finally, the eagles. They had one fatality, one of them who had been thrown into the ground violently, shattering several bones. To top that off, as if that hadn't been enough, Victoria's boy toy, Riley, had pressed his heel into them, crushing their abdomen and finishing them rather quickly. The only consolation was that Yuriko had died quickly, without feeling too much pain beyond the initial crash landing.

There was one other death.. but rather, he was not dead yet. He was largely ignored by everyone in the battlefield, being kicked around like a glorified football, rolling around in the mud, and every so often reflecting a spark of sunlight. Someone picked him up and tossed him in a bag- ready for Bella to deal with later.

Charlie sat in a procession with the other aware parents and tribal leaders, his hands trembling every so often and his knees bouncing. He hated being unable to help his daughter, his child, someone who he had failed to protect so much. Sitting on the sidelines was unbearable, but he knew that realistically, in this fight, he would be more a hindrance than a help.

Should one bite from a Vampire- God, he was still getting used to that- land itself upon his skin.. well, bye-bye humanity. Two of the younger wolves... Colin and Brady he thought they were called- were pacing outside. Deemed too young to participate in the battle, they had been commanded to sit out, to guard the imprints and parents who were waiting inside the tribal house. For what seemed like an eternity, the time trickled by, no sign that anything had gone a miss.

For those who were unaware, it seemed like a normal day. But for him, it was one of the longest days imaginable. There were no positives to knowing that his daughter was out there fighting something he couldn't get rid off, like the big bad monsters under her bed, but it did give him time to go over what he thought about the whole thing. Still, he was trying very hard to stay calm.

Kim and Rachel were quietly talking to one another, concerned voices evident and the slight trembling of their hands. Emily was in the kitchen, stress-baking or whatever it was, and Billy and Sue were looking over some things. Old Quil was dozing, somehow, leaving him by himself essentially. He felt like an outsider.

To think, Bella could have ended up.. dead.. had the wolves not intervened. Or worse, a Vampire, doomed to stay within the shade and drink blood. The wolves, well, the Quileute's seemed to believe in fate, but Charlie was still sceptical of it. Then again, werewolves and soulmates were apparently things now, so maybe he had to re-evaluate his beliefs.

Bella... she seemed better almost, after becoming a wolf. She was happier than she ever had been with Edward, and had become... more confident, more resilient. There was no longer such a constant worry about her knowing that she could stand up for herself now… it was by no means gone, but knowing that she wasn't going to be steamrolled over any more, it was a little more reassuring. She wasn't his baby girl any more.. but he would always hold her close in a way that he couldn't for years.

She was very graceful in her movements, no sign of trepidation, and the splodged fur she had, unique, suited her well. She wore it with pride, even if the ways of her becoming a wolf was extremely painful. He was in deep thought thinking about Bella, how she could be injured, or hurt, or worse, killed, before he heard a scream and a clash of something smacking against tile.

Charlie, through years of condition and muscle memory, jumped up and dashed through to the kitchen, seeing Emily clumped onto the floor. Her skin was pale, taking on a waxy sheen, and her legs were twitching. Her face was in a fierce grimace, and she was coiled in almost a fetal position. Charlie crouched down as the others came pouring in, and he took her pulse. It was thumping radically, strong but stuttering, and along her arm, there was a cut, from the broken glass shattered on the floor.

Rolling her into the recovery position, the girls took over cleaning the wound and sweeping up the glass, as he braved the outdoors to see the form of Brady, howling. Remembering that this was a teenager, and feeling his instincts tell him that something had happened to Sam. The boy ceased his howling soon after and gave Charlie the most devastated look imaginable.

"Sam?"

He asked quietly. His response was a slow, deliberate, shake of the head, and a whine. His stomach plummeted.

To think all of this had happened because of a virus, Carlisle mused, sad. How didn't he recognise that his own son was ill.. it was detestable. Since Edward had gone missing, abducted from underneath Emmett and Jasper's noses. They hadn't even had him back that long. Alice was driving herself crazy, trying to throw herself into her visions, in an attempt to see anything relating to her brother. Her eyes were almost a permanent onyx by this point, and she was only drinking whatever Jasper put in front of her.

His son was just fixed by her side, suffering from the negative emotions of everyone in the house. Emmett and Rose had taken some time by themselves, sullen, lost, with guilt eating at Emmett as he had his share of believable fault. Esme was quiet herself, sad and upset, throwing herself into house decorating and gardening. With no leads, Edward's trail just ending as quickly as it started, there was no way of finding him.

Outside of Alice's visions, or lack thereof, where she just saw strawberries, flowers, trees, red, and ash, there were no leads. He took a breath, not needed but habitual by this point in his centuries of existence, and pondered about the virus. It was peculiar that out of the seven of them, Edward had been the only one to contract it. With half the Vampiric populace being unaffected, it was extremely unlikely that only one of their coven of seven would be effected.

There was no definite way to know how it was transmitted, and by looking through the recorded case, there was no correlation between sufferers. At first, Carlisle thought it had something to do with mental gifts, but some of the other sufferers- or at least, the ones who's records he'd found, he had no owed favours left- didn't have powers. So how does it originate? How does it transmit? How does it thrive?

He had a few samples of Edward's venom, in hopes that perhaps it attacked the user's venom- like some viruses attacked the capillaries in the human body. But the venom was difficult to analyse- highly corrosive and even harder to look at under a microscope, it was difficult to see what exactly was in there. The only thing he had was his own venom, and it wasn't the best thing to compare it too, considering that he couldn't compare the changes between Edward pre-virus and Edward after-virus.

Everybody's venom, like a twisted form of DNA, was uniquely identifying, so his venom was going to be different to Edward's. Still, he poked at it, keeping it carefully separated. He was invested now- and he had to kill it. Or find out why the cure worked, and then use it to eradicate the disease. Because as it was, it was tearing apart families, and not everyone had a Lover's blood to heal them- because what if their love was a Vampire?

They were lucky as it was that the cure had worked on Edward in the first place- without the use of Bella's blood from the source. If what Bella had said was true- Edward taking blood out of her at any given moment, then perhaps some of that blood was lingering there, ready to be used to amplify the cure. He sighed at the mention of Bella.

Though they hadn't shown it particularly well, especially with just leaving her chasing after Edward. There was no justification behind what they did, and Carlisle couldn't condone it. She was only human... emphasis on the past tense. They'd turned her into a shifter, after narrowly saving her humanity from James.

And when they tried to preserve human-life, they needed to revaluate it when it came to mental health- because they needed to be ashamed of what they did. And with a heavy heart, and a heavy sigh, Carlisle realised that he had likely not just lost a son, but also a daughter.

Bella woke up to an odd scene. Limbs hurting, pulling, tight and sore like she hadn't warmed up before a workout, and she was laid on a white cloth, pristine and smoothed out. This was a scene she had woken up to too many times by now. She wanted to get up and move but chose to wait a moment first.

Peering around, she saw a neat row of animals, hooked up to certain Ivs etc. At the far end, it looked like there was a group sitting together, along with what looked like Sue. Jacob's form was on the bed next to her, lying down in a traditional dog-like manner. Patches of his russet fur were bandaged up with white padding, and his ribs were wrapped tightly with braces. Still, he was awake, looking at her curiously with his tongue lolling a little.

"Bella!"

He exclaimed, somewhat joyously, despite the despair audible in his voice. She turned her head, her head feeling a little heavy due to the bandage wrapped around her ear, which had healed over, scabbed, but still torn. Jacob flinched and she steered her thoughts away from her torn ear-she didn't want to remind him about it. She scratched her face, the equivalent of rubbing her eyes, and looked around again, before fixing on him.

"How are you feeling?"

Jacob shrugged, wincing a little as he moved, and grooming his left front paw. I could see a similar needle sticking into his front paw, secured by bandages.

"A little rough. And sick. I only woke up a few minutes before you did. All I know is that.. is that Sam is dead."

Bella consequently threw up what little she had left in her stomach, and quickly drew the attention of Sue and the others, who fussed around them, checking them over yet again and quickly moving Bella to a cleaner bed. It would be her reaction to the other.. deaths, that Jacob wasn't looking forward to.. because he knew that others would be dead. He did not know who, but the whispers.. he picked up both 'he' and 'she'. Just how many had died for their cause?

Author's Note

So I took the questions that you all asked me, and I tried to answer as many of them as I could within this chapter.

I'm sorry again that this is shorter than usual, I've got my prelims starting next week and I'm so underprepared. I need as much time as I can get to revise, and that tends to take a chunk out of my time.

I hope my chapters will resume to their normal length once prelims are over.

So, QOTW: If you could remove one thing from History, what would it be? Honestly, there are a lot of things to choose from.. so probably either the Holocaust, the guy who created exams (although perhaps that's a little harsh) or shootings in general. All of them are bad, regardless of where they take place.

Anyway, see you all next week!

~Cait