Disclaimer: The only thing that has changed since the last update is that I have finished with my first year of college. Yay. I swear I haven't slept this well in months.

Of Chitaru's reasons to crave revenge.

Interlude: A Lycan's Hate

If there was something that Chitaru would never forget about the night she lost it all, it was the fear. Over ten years had passed since then, and she was more than capable of taking care of herself, but she still felt the fear deep in her bones. Maybe one day she'd forget the screams, the fire, the cruel laughter, the blood, the pain, but the fear would never leave.

Fear was something you had to get used to when you were a free lycan. Hide amongst humans, surround yourself by your kindred in a lycan settlement, live in solitude somewhere secluded, nothing could get rid of the fear. Vampires were ruthless, cruel and bloodthirsty, and they sometimes got out of their way to kill lycans for fun. The only thing better about humans was that there was no way for them to tell what you were, and that they weren't such big threats, but even a human could be dangerous these days.

After all, it had been a human the one to rat the Namatame settlement out to the forces of Empress Karami of Azuma. The same human whose life they had saved months before.

Chitaru didn't really remember the human anymore. If she tried to recall, she could only remember his hair had been a somewhat dark color, maybe blue or black, and that he had been of pale skin and gentle smile. He'd been liked by all children in the few weeks he was there recovering, but Chitaru had been small enough at the time that she was almost always with her mother.

The danger of humans, it seemed, didn't rely on brute strenght as in the lycans' case, or in experience and deceptiveness as was the vampires'. No, the cause of the danger they represented was much more simple than any of that: they were literal middle ground between both races. You could never be sure if a human was loyal to vampires or preferred lycans, because even a declared affiliation could be turned around in a second.

With the Empire's power and lycans' weakness, however, many more humans were deciding their loyalties to the vampires early on their lives. And that wasn't good for the lycans.

But they had found hope, in the figure of the newest rebel cell. The Namatame settlement had been one of the last ones not joining the resistance, as they had been somewhat pacific, but that had clearly been a mistake.

Probably.

Chitaru, last of the old settlement, was sure that sooner or later they would've been attacked, and not even the resistance was strong enough to fight off the vampire armies yet. It was a work in progress, one that she ended up joining two years after the massacre, when an old lycan found her and brought her home. The woman had been a member of the resistance, and Chitaru followed the path of her adoptive family without much thought.

Chitaru was fifteen when she was finally made a full member of the organization. And even though she'd been wishing to just join and help fight for their kindred's freedom, she wanted to be out as soon as she was in.

It had been her adoptive sister's death what put her in the ranks, after all. Every vacancy was filled as soon as possible, most of the times by relatives recently of age. So, it fell to Chitaru the responsibility to take over her sister's duties in the resistance. That also meant moving to another town when they asked her to a few years later, despite such a thing meaning that she had to leave the place she'd called home for a little over eleven years, where she had learnt to be happy again after surviving the massacre, and the place where her adoptive mother lived and her sister and father were buried.

But after moving to the human town caught in the crossfire, she knew she not only feared or despised the vampires: she hated them and wanted them all dead. And if she ever saw one of the faces she did remember, she'd kill them. For her birth parents and her unborn brother, for her adoptive family, for all the enslaved lycans, for the future generations. For the small, happy child she considered a younger sister and the girl's real older sister, so that they wouldn't have to know war.

The attack against her settlement was still deeply ingrated in her memory. It began with dusk, the setting sun behind the vampire forces as they marched into the small village with bloodlust in their eyes and one banner representing them all. Guiding the group were a bored-looking blond man with brass bladed knuckles and a purple-haired woman with twin machetes in her hands and madness in her gaze.

The screams began when the woman in front of the group rushed forward, cackling with delight, and swiftly cut off Chitaru's father's head. She still remembers the glint in the golden eyes as the woman raised her head and looked directly at her, past all the lycans in between and the starting fight, but a call from the blond man distracted the woman long enough for Chitaru's mother to hide her – again. She ended up beneath the wolf statue in the square, eyes shut tightly and hands pressed against her ears as she tried to muffle the screams and the laughs, small body trembling and tears falling down her cheeks.

The massacre could've lasted an eternity, but in truth it was only a few hours. When the noise subsided and the vampires finally left, Chitaru hesitantly opened her eyes to a sight that would've made her sick as an adult but scarred her four-years-old self for life.

All buildings were on fire, with no exception, and the many trees spread around the village were no more. There were bodies everywhere, all of them lycans, all of them proof of vicious brutality. It was dawn, and the rising sun highlighted the ground covered in blood and the many horrors done to her kindred. The smell of burning flesh was still strong, as had been since it all started, and it was only logical that small Chitaru emptied her stomach next to the wolf's front legs.

The statue was the only thing still standing in the village, though splattered with blood and gore. And there was one thing that stood complete, clean and proud amongst the chaos: the vexillum brought by the vampires, its silver crossbar embedded in the wolf's back and glinting under the morning sunlight, mockingly displaying the vampires' dominance over the lycans.

The only thing that was registered by her mind at the moment was a deep red in the cloth, and yet, when she joined the resistance and was shown the different standards used by the vampires, she instantly recognized the one that pierced the wolf's back.

The red she remembered hadn't been because of the bloody landscape playing tricks on her mind, nor blood stains on the cloth. No, it had been part of an infamous standard: a double-headed phoenix occupying a field of a hellishly maroon tincture with a black band across the top. Even being shown it in its full form (that is, on top of the united standards of four clans), she immediately recognized it. How could she not, having had such a sight burnt in her memory for as long as she could remember?

As soon as she got over her shock and pointed to the golden bird, explaining that it was the one used by the vampires who attacked the Namatame settlement, she was met with grim faces and quiet exclamations of wonder at her survival.

The attack had been made by the forces of the current Imperial House. Only theirs, and at least two different clans, she was told, judging by the fact that the only standard present in the assault had been the double-headed phoenix (called the 'Mightiest Phoenix' by the vampires, which seemed rather presumptuous in her opinion).

That day, she swore to get revenge against the Imperial House of Kuzunoha and destroy it one vampire at a time, one family at a time, until each of its four clans were completely gone.

That standard would be permanently ingrained in her memory from the morning after the massacre to her very last breath.

As my quick investigations have told me (could be wrong somewhere), the meaning of what has been told of the Kuzunoha standard is roughly as it follows:

Maroon: patient and victorious in battle

Black: constancy, grief

Chief (band across the top): domination of will

Gold: generosity

Phoenix: rebirth, resurrection, one is created from the ruins of another

Double-headed: authority or dominance over two different realms (East and West, church and state, etc)