Chapter 14, Build a Legend

Tanya

Dealing with a fallen Kingdom is not something I had expected to do after crossing the mountains. I knew there was a possibility, and I was kind of hoping that there would be like an heir or something to easily replace lord Farthegn.

Unfortunately the dark sorcerer, as my men had started to call him and I was still not sure how that name had taken off, was unmarried and had no kids. I would assume his quest for the conquest of Fenris had so enraptured him that he'd forgotten the important part of setting up a kingdom: having someone to take over when you're done.

Without an official heir, at minimum one of proper age, his Kingdom would have fallen apart the moment he got sick or died. Then all his so-called progress would have been for nothing, resulting in a serious backstep in the civilization of this planet.

Everyday I found more reasons to be glad I'd murdered the former Lord of this land with my bare hands. Though without him around chaos would ensue and all his so-called games were lost anyways. Really I should have just packed up everything and set course for home, what happened here after I left should have been none of my concern.

However I realized quite quickly that leaving the situation as it stood would just require me to come back over here to fix it, sooner or later. I was not one to waste time and I had two weeks before I needed to start making the trip back across the mountains. So, like a good salaryman, I got to work.

Jarl Bretakollrsson wanted his castle back so I let him have the castle back but I asked if he'd be interested in signing an alliance with the Russ. That way he would appear to be the legitimate government replacement after we left. This would also spur trade relations across the mountains, which I figured would lead to a better, safer, and less warlike community. At least I hoped so. It could result in me coming across the mountains again. but at least then I'd have troops and supplies here already with general knowledge of the territory. Not to mention Jarl Bretakollrsson had watched how effective my troops had been during the combat and had started to implement some of my methods into his own formations. At the very minimum the troops here would have similar training and thus be better able to work with my troops if something like this ever happened again.

He took a minute to consider it before finally agreeing, which showed a lot of hope for the future in my mind.

The wolf priest had also agreed to this situation, as they themselves had had Independence before Lord Farthegn had tried to force everyone under his rule.

Once that was cleared up came the… well, clean up operations. Out of the seven minor Lords that had made up the support structure of Lord Farthegn's Kingdom, I had two on my side. Another one was out of the fight and waiting in his castle to find out what the world would look like after the war was over. Two were dead and another two my prisoners. I held quite a number of cards so I got to work playing them for a more peaceful situation after I left. I couldn't exactly do anything about the one waiting to find out what the world would look like after war but I could do something about my prisoners. I simply pointed out that with their forces ravaged terribly the jarl Ali Geitirgestsson, who had sat out most of the fight here, could easily pick them off one by one, thus they might be wise to align themselves with jarl Bretakollrsson.

They immediately got the hint and asked to speak with him. I had him brought to the tent where I was meeting with these prisoners and they pledged allegiance to him, setting up Jarl Bretakollrsson as a strong ally in the region.

As for the land of the two Lords who were dead, there was not much I could really do about that. Most likely they would be divided amongst jarl Bretakollrsson and jarl Geitirgestsson. A situation that was not set up for a return to the complete peaceful standards I would enjoy having but it would do and it would be safe enough for my army to return home without worrying about a massive murderfest going on behind me.

But that settled, I allowed my troops and sub-commanders to raid Lord Farthegn's vaults underneath the castle. As much as Jarl Bretakollrsson had been an ally, I needed to make sure my army was good and happy. And he didn't say that the vaults underneath the castle were what he wanted: he said he wanted the castle. With men carrying tons of wealth and other items I began the Long March home that would take us back through the mountains and to the borders of Russ where I would report the victory, receive whatever reward I was guaranteed to receive, and recluse myself back to my home with my wolves, where I hoped to not be bothered with such situations in the near future.

Marching through the lowlands was the easy part though, as all we had to do was appear somewhere and anyone who would threaten us backed down. I figured that the bandit population would be on the rise, now that the major military forces in the region were devastated, but they seemed pretty low on the ground as no one attempted to accost us. Of course being a large army tended to dissuade even enthusiasts from such behaviors. That and the Ice Fiends had probably kept such banditry down before the shift in control. There were also large populations of wolves that apparently had moved in while I had been dealing with Lord Farthegn.

I spotted them watching us the entire time we were heading back towards the mountain pass to our homeland and got the main story of how they had shown up to help finish off the Ice Fiends in the final battle. It was interesting and I wondered if that Thunder Wolf was the one I had fought in the mountain pass but I figured it was probably not, that would be a ridiculous coincidence for that wolf to have been the exact same Wolf. Most likely some other Thunder Wolf with his own wolf tribe saw an opportunity to deal with the Ice Fiends and claim the territory of the wilderness for himself.

Every creature was motivated by their own needs and wants, so I saw no reason why it would want to aid us in this fight unless it somehow helped itself.

Which is what I assumed while we were marching through the glacier mountains that separated this region from our home region. Then another Thunder Wolf appeared at the front of our column with his pack and I knew that something terrible was about to happen.

I found out about this while I was in the middle of the formation; watching for problems to appear. Being the golden quote expert monster Hunter unquote it was basically my job to make sure that any mass of wolves or any other nasties didn't hit us from the sides.

But because of the appearance of the wolf I had to abandon this job and move to the front to find out what was going on.

Eilifsson was at the front of the line, looking at the mass of wolves with what I thought was a bit of trepidation. I couldn't really tell for certain as his helmet did a good job of hiding the features that would give me a definite opinion on the matter. His heavy armored soldiers had done a wonderful job at the battle a few weeks before, so I had given them the honor of being at the front of the column. They seemed to be able to battle through most monsters after all.

Riding on Geri's back up next to him I asked, "So what do we have here? Hungry wolves trying to accost us or are they trying to rob us? I know I said we would run into bandit activity later but I didn't think the wolves would turn to it."

I got a chuckle and sub Commander yellow nodded his head in the direction of the wolf. "That's the wolf that showed up during the battle," he said matter of factly. "In fact… I'm sure that is the wolf that knocked you off the cliff on our first trip across the mountains."

I looked at it, squinted, and asked, "Are you sure? It could literally be any wolf. I know that Thunder Wolves are rare and very territorial but I don't think it would have tracked us down like that. It was probably just some other Thunder Wolf summoned by the thunder that rained down during the fight."

"Nope, that wolf has the same scar on the nose." I looked again and noted that there was indeed a scar on its muzzle but that was not definite proof of anything. Frankly, I didn't really remember all the features of the Thunder Wolf I'd fought in close quarters combat several weeks back. Shrugging, I dismounted from Cunning's back and patted him on the shoulder to tell him to wait.

Looking up to sub-Commander yellow I said, "Well, keep them in back and I'll find out what this thing wants." Before starting to walk across the open cliffside to the wolf.

The roadside was not narrow as some good eight men could walk side by side without issue here but it was slippery and I had to be careful because of the ice. Once I got up to it the wolf sat on its haunches and looked back at me while I studied it. We stared at each other for a good few minutes before I shrugged and said.

"Unless you have the ability to speak through your mind I'm not going to be able to tell what you want just by sitting there and looking at me. Still, I rather hope you don't have that ability. The last wolf that did, I had to kill."

The wolf made a scoffing noise as if it understood me. In fact it probably did, its head was at least as large as mine so who knew how well the brain cavity had expanded on these wolves. What the wolf did next though surprised me a bit as it laid its head into the snow, grabbed something that had been hidden there, and shook it loose before tossing it to me.

Grabbing it I looked at it and saw that it was white hair, or fur, coming out of scaly skin that had been molted like a snake by my guess. Just going by the size of that piece, the darn thing was probably big enough to eat a human whole.

The wolf looked at the fur and then down into the valley that we were heading towards, one of the stopover points for our journey home. I followed its gaze and saw that the glacier at one end of the valley, which had been solid on our trip here, was now not so solid as the base of it had been melted by the looks of it and a cave-like structure sat there in a pool of water.

"Warning me about some kind of threat?" I asked. The Thunder Wolf nodded, which confirmed my theory on its intelligence. It looked past me to the men who were gathering to see the conversation between me and the wolves, then it nodded at the fur pelt again.

"They'll have more details," I offered and the Wolf nodded. Which seriously was kind of impressive. I could tell my wolves were intelligent from my time with them, maybe not fully on the level of humans but definitely able to learn and understand with time. Even the common Fenrisian wolves were somewhat intelligent and they would accept the lead of the Blackmaned so it was good enough.

Thunder Wolves appeared to be on a whole another level, as intelligent as humans. Possibly even more if they could instantly understand the local language, or maybe they were just that old? They were easily the size of tanks and elephants, if elephants could live a long time then maybe these wolves could live a ridiculously long time and it had been able to learn a lot in these years? Or maybe they were an example of an old dog learning new tricks, for all I knew.

I nodded my head before saying "Thank you for this warning. We will come up with a plan to deal with whatever is down there. We will also leave you whatever meat is left on the beast after we've killed it, as payment for this service and your help."

The wolf panted with what I could best approximate as a wolf smile before nodding and wandering off, heading up a rather steep cliff further into the mountains. Unfortunately it looked like it was not going to help out in whatever conflict was about to take place in the valley below. As it just did them a good service by giving a warning of the creature down there, and probably saved them from a surprise attack, I wasn't going to hold it against it.

"Fine!" I held the fur-lined scales in my hand and walked back to the gathering group of commanders as they removed themselves from their positions in the line to find out what the holdup had been.

Holding the fur-lined scales up for them to see, I said "Apparently Mr. Thunderwolf has issued us a warning of an unknown creature living in the valley below. Are any of you familiar with this beast?"

There was a notable pause before the leader of the adventures guild and wolf scout leader Styr said "Alfather hammer! That's an Ice Wyrm skin… Those skins are worth their weight in gold." I looked at said skin in appraisal. If that was true that probably could pay off any food expenses for the next two years.

"Ice Wyrm, you say? What is an Ice Wyrm and how do we defeat it?"

"We don't! We find some other way around," the leader of the Wolf Scouts answered, as if that was a matter of course. "Large Ice Wyrms are incredibly dangerous even at the best of times and attempting to kill them is something only a demigod should attempt." It was at that moment he seemed to look at me harder then continued, "That being said… Ice Wyrms can detect motion through the ground, they can feel the vibrations of a person walking. The only one who's ever successfully killed an Ice Wyrm and been able to live to profit used a weapon that created a thunderous mass of fire that shattered much of the ice in the region south of the Russ."

Yellow Commander nodded his head in agreement before adding, "The clan Gummer still profit off that corpse their ancestor created even now. It was such a large Ice Wyrm that bits of it still are found to this day and since they had enough to purchase the area where the last of the bits had probably rained as their property… They've controlled the market on Ice Wyrm skins for the last 100 great years."

If this was an animated work I have the distinct feeling my pupils would have turned into money signs. The beast had set up a family to live for 200 years, that… That was impressive, that was beyond impressive, that was financial stability on a level I don't believe anyone in my entire family line had ever experienced!

Even if my life span was as long as Fenrisians, which was relatively long from what I've been able to learn as King Russ was 60 great years old or nearly 120 years, that would mean I would have 80 years of excess wealth to invest into my future and making sure my wolves were taken care of in case something were to ever happen to me. Granted if the army helped me I would have to share the kill with them but from the implication alone I don't think it would break the profitable status of killing this beast.

Turning to look down at the valley I rubbed my chin and thought. The creature was drawn to sound, I didn't have any explosives which was obviously what they were talking about… hold on don't I have explosives? An explosive spell would actually work, I would need something to draw the beast's notice as I couldn't just fling a rock at it and hope to hit. I would assume this beast was much faster than that and with the way they talked about it I would also assume it moved through the Earth with some speed.

Which would mean someone would need to get close to put the explosive spell right on it or near it. Any of my wolves or the men under my command who attempted that would just end up dead, which meant that was my job. Probably for the best anyway, handling an explosive spell that was active was not a safe situation at the best of times. And I would need to be the one to do that.

So I would need to be near but I would need something to distract the beast, something big and loud and… looking at my army, I had that covered. I also had another option as I felt around for the rune beads that could create some noise.

I had an idea. It was not a good idea, it was not the best idea, but it was an idea that could work from what I estimated. So the real question was: should I do it? Setting up my army for having a windfall of wealth would ensure that I was seen as a good person to have around and a prime member of the community, those were both useful things to have talked about you in the long term as it meant that people were more willing to deal with you or take a bit of loss during trade negotiations.

But I could organize things to march by it, maybe. Turning to Eilifsson I asked "If we reorganize ourselves, how long would it take us to get around this situation?"

"That's the problem, this is the major pathway between our coasts. This valley is a chokepoint that all roads go through and one of the reasons we don't like to move through it at this time of year is because of Ice Wyrms. They do tend to live in these valleys in the glaciers and eat anyone who comes through. Most of them are very small and easy to deal with but there are big ones, like the ones which the Wolf warned you about. Those are not only maneaters in size but have the full armor that make them hard to kill and worth their weight in gold."

"We could attempt to go around this valley, there are other passes that go into other valleys if the ice has melted enough… but if it's this warm the other Ice Wyrms might be up and all we'd be doing is preventing ourselves from getting home as fast as possible, meaning more Ice Wyrms will get up. This route was chosen because there's only one such situation like this along it, others have multiple."

"Well, that settles that," I said. "We need to kill that thing. And I think I have a plan to do it though we're all going to need to work together and be careful. Since we're going to need to work together I will split the profits from this kill: whatever you can carry away of its skin you can keep." I said, seeing the telltale lighting in people's eyes as they realized how much wealth that would be. Of course most of them would grab more than they could carry and then, once they realized they had to carry it all back, the road would be scattered with skin. That was a problem for the next army or trade group that had to come down this road. Probably not even a problem, that would just be a boon.

Turning to the group that contained all my commanders, I began to explain my plan.

Tanya

I carefully walked across the ice-covered floor of the valley. From what I understood, during full on summer, this area was a low lake at the end of the glacier and you could usually walk across it with some difficulty. At least that was the belief of those who had come across this road during summer time. That did not happen often because the Ice Wyrm was more active during summer as it could easily maneuver its way through the sandy floor of the lake.

Looking around I could see there had been attempts to sidestep this issue by building bridges across the parts of the lake that were only a foot or two deep. They had seemingly attempted to build a bridge that was 3 ft higher than the water level. These projects appeared to have always failed as there were plenty of holes and debris around them. That's the problem with monsters that lived underground, you couldn't tell they were coming till it was nearly too late.

At least humans couldn't, I could. Unexpected genetic ability created by whoever created this body or unexpected adaptation I had acquired on this planet, hard to say. But I could smell that creature through the Earth itself. Didn't matter that it was under layers of ice, snow, dirt and rock, I just could smell it. It was a familiar smell of death, one that I had only experienced in the life that I could barely remember. It was a stench that reeked of the dead, the dying, the sick.

Why did it smell like this? I couldn't say, perhaps it didn't clean its teeth. Perhaps it was like the Komodo dragon and developed some sort of viral poison from the things it caught in those teeth. Perhaps it just stunk because it could stink, trying to scare away predators that could harm it.

The monsters of this planet were numerous, the reasons they existed were unbelievable and frankly trying to figure out why something existed on this world was like trying to figure out why humanity existed in the first place. Which of course was probably random chance but did not help when there were creatures like being X screwing around and giving the impression that they had created the universe.

A laughable thought the more I thought about it, considering how terrible they were at their job.

But, besides that point of contention, the ability to smell the beast even under the ground gave me a lot more control of the situation then most anyone else would have. As such I knew exactly where it was and how it was slowly moving towards my location as I took a few steps onto the thin ice. The fact it was not moving fast meant it was more an ambush predator, which was good for me. An ambush predator would imply that there were restrictions on how it could attack.

Restrictions I could use for my benefit and, looking along at the 3 ft by 3 ft boulder harboring some of the most powerful explosive spells I could think of engraved on its sides, I needed those restrictions.

If I had more time I probably would have let some poor animal walk across this ice and observed what it did but without that I couldn't do a thorough investigation.

So I was left with option number two: create a situation that would lock the animal up.

Waving a signal to the army that had gathered around the entrance of the valley the beast was waiting in, my men began to pound their spears and feet onto the ground, creating seismic vibrations at quite a level. Such a level that I was able to instantly detect a shift in the direction of the creature's movements, its slow movement towards me had slowed even more as it turned to sense in the general direction of my army. No doubt it was trying to figure out what kind of creature could make such a racket. The distraction gave me quite an opportunity to move quickly in the direction of the creature, just to the side of where it was as I could see a group of heavy stones larger than me. I had a feeling that if I got up on top of them he couldn't get to me quite as easily as it could on the ice, which would force it to come to the surface.

From there it became a waiting game of drawing it in and, well… Force feeding it the boulder and hoping that its explosion killed it, since I doubted the explosion outside of it would do much being given that its hide was considered good enough for armor.

Now in a good position I signaled the army to stop making a racket, which they did slowly but effectively. I could tell that the Ice Wyrm was now slowly moving towards the army still since that was the last thing it had heard but I got to work on part two of the plan.

Carefully I put the explosive boulder down in front of the pile of giant rocks I was standing on top of. Then I put down my rune beads, but not before setting them to cast a spell continuously. Carefully I placed it on the ground and let it do its thing before hiding as far back on the rock as I could.

The rune beads thumped as they jumped, fell back on the ground, waited a couple seconds and did it again. With some varying in the time every 2 to 3 seconds it would have a charge go through it and thump itself into the air before landing on the ground.

In a sense I turned it into an automated noisemaker, one that was directly targeted at drawing the notice of the Ice Wyrm.

And, by the slowly growing stench of the creature, I knew it was working. I wondered how slow it would stay, right up until the moment it just gave up on its slow hunting style. The ice in front of the boulders began to crack as something rushed underneath it, causing snow and other debris to be thrown into the air as the creature underneath the ice rushed at the noisemaker. That's when I got a good idea of just how big this creature was, because the amount of debris was closer to a tank driving through a river and the on the wave is made in the water.

In the last few moments the swelling of the ice that was causing it to fracture stopped as the Ice Wyrms seemed to sail underneath the rocks I was standing on. I could feel it causing a slight quake in the Earth as it moved. Circling below, evaluating its target, before the creature burst through the ground right underneath the rune beads and the explosive Rock.

I could see why people had called it a worm, its face was scaly like the dragons I had fought but it was obviously just a long snake-like creature. Really kind of reminded me of dragons from Eastern mythologies more than Western mythology ones, which is what I'd seen so far. Except instead of flying through the air it flew through the ice. Also it was not as intelligent as the creatures of my home country's mythology, as it readily swallowed the beads and the explosive rock before looking around, obviously annoyed that it had not gotten whatever was making that racket.

Looking was probably not the correct word, it didn't seem to have a pair of eyes anywhere on the body, but it did seem to be trying to move its sensory organs to detect me. Perhaps it assumed that because it didn't taste any blood or material it had not got its prey. Which was unfortunate for it but good for me. The white-furred torso shifted and turned, allowing the head to look around out of the dirt and reminding me a bit of those photos of the Loch Ness monster where the head was on a long neck. Must have extremely good neck strength, I thought, considering how heavy that skull must be to be able to smash its way through the rocks and debris of the underground.

The creature then sniffed the air quite audibly, which annoyed me. I had assumed that it was blind and relied on sound after my first few moments of seeing it but now the creature's head turned in my general direction. It had definitely smelled me and, as I drew my sword, I was really hoping the explosive would go off already.

The creature opened its massive maw, displaying its rows of sharp fangs and letting out a roar as it lunged towards my location on the rocks.

Jumping out of the way I slashed at its face, cutting a bit into the skin I thought, but I saw no blood. Obviously the skin was a lot thicker on the face, to prevent damage from sharp rocks and such. This was not a situation I enjoyed at all, I was fighting a creature that had no noticeable weaknesses and which was well on its way to chomping me into small pieces.

Quickly I rolled and scrambled further into the large rocks that made up this miniature island in the middle of the lake. The creature held itself up higher, trying to get above said island so it could strike down at anywhere I attempted to hide. Thankfully, before it got a chance to remove my existence from the census data, the rock inside it detonated.

With a bang the neck of the creature exploded outward, spilling Orange guts and blood everywhere and sending parts of the skin flying away in ribbons as the rock shredded the neck.

The head of the creature wobbled on what was left of the neck for a moment before the weight literally ripped it off, the head coming to rest on top of the rocks just a few inches from me and nearly completing its objective of removing me from life.

The neck I couldn't see very well but I assumed it just simply fell over and slumped around the stone island. disconnected from the creature's control it probably would lay there until my men and wolves got the chance to harvest everything they needed from it.

As for myself I avoided most of the damage, I had taken no wounds from the explosion, the rocks having covered me from any shrapnel. Did not save me from the fact that I was now covered head to toe in orange goop.

Trying not to breathe in the disgusting mixture of blood and viscera I pulled myself up, looking around to see just how massive the devastation was. I was surprised to see that it wasn't too terrible.

Sure, my island was now a gore-covered mess and the rocky ice around it was in no better shape but the explosion had been successful in killing the creature and doing nothing else, so I would count that as a win. Seeing that the soldiers of my army were already celebrating as they saw me pop up, I assumed victory had been fully achieved and there was not like a second head on the other end of the wyrm I had to worry about. Or that this was like a Hydra and would grow another head. So far animals had to respect the laws of nature but I didn't put it past the animals of this planet to pull something like that, as dragons kind of did break those laws. Especially the way they flew, those wings weren't big enough in my opinion.

Blinking I walked out of the boulders and tried to wipe away the muck from my face, which is when I got an interesting surprise. I tasted a bit of the viscera and realized it tasted like pumpkins, which was a strange flavor for meat to have but… All right, guess we would be eating well tonight if it tasted that good.

Tanya

I was correct in my theory that we would eat well that night. not only was the beast very flavorful but its meat was rather easy to preserve. I wondered where that smell had been coming from but quickly figured out that, yes, it indeed came from the head. There were shreds of animals and such inside the teeth, caught there and festering.

Not the most hygienic of creatures but I'm sure the ability to poison things that are bigger was handy. No doubts it could also be used to bring down flying creatures if you got a lucky bite on them before it flew away.

But that was not my concern. My concern was about the men who had gone to task trying to free the teeth because apparently the bone was as good as ivory. And it was interesting to learn that you could use the creature's skin or scales to protect yourself from its teeth. That would imply these creatures probably didn't fight each other often. If its own species could perfectly counter its main attack vector then I doubted that they ate each other.

But that was besides the point. We quickly had a great meal that night and packed up what worm leather and other materials that we could salvage from it then began the last leg of our journey home.

And, as I had estimated, what could not be kept was thrown to the side of the road. Soldiers dumped spare Shields, silverware, anything that I'd allowed them to gather while on campaign. I imagine the trade convoys on this road would be very thankful for these resources over the years. I also imagine that some of these men planned to come back and try and gather it on their own time, probably with carts.

None of my concern if they wanted to risk their lives going through these mountains fighting monsters. Unless they were going to pay me I wasn't going to be too interested in what they got up to.

But it was a quick last leg of the journey. After a week of travel we were back on our side of the mountains, celebrating a successful war. Well, semi celebrating. We'd arrived into our South mountains, hit the first town, and I'd allowed the men to buy as many drinks as they wanted. Something that I mainly forbade during the trip, except for special occasions, so that men would be as active and perceptive on their night watches. The celebrations unfortunately went on for a couple days, most of the men making rather good fools of themselves with the amount of alcohol they drank. I would have moved the army on and got back to King Russ in order to have my mission completed but it was hard mobilizing the men with the way they were acting. Finally I decided the best option was to send a wolf Rider in charge of the Housecarls to King Russ, to let him know that we were returned to the lands with victory and were trying to make it to the castle to report in full.

I would have preferred to do it myself but I hoped that at least my attempts would be seen as it were, dealing with the nature of armies.

I received a response the next day, informing me that the army could disband and I could meet him myself at his castle for an official celebration of the end of the war, which was a quite acceptable order in my opinion.

I gave my thank yous and acknowledgments to the command staff, wished warriors of the army a happy summer and was off with my wolves, heading towards the king before the evening rolled in. No doubt the army would slowly disband, each Force returning to their lord to bring them wealth and Glory, but that was their tales. Mine was to just go home and get the mission completed so I could go home and take care of my wolves.

By that evening I was already walking up the steps of the castle, having been let in by a Housecarl that had stayed to watch over it.

They led me to the Great Hall where the King was sitting on his throne as various local and lower nobility had their conversations.

"Tanya! Tanya, come in. Come in!" He said, seeing me enter.

Bowing, I said "King Russ, I come bearing the news of a great victory on the other coast. Lord Farthegn has been defeated and removed from power, the new Lord in charge of that region has sworn to be our allies. I have brought the spoils of victory, and a bit of a hunting trip sidequest." Several Housecarls were behind me and I stepped out of the way as they brought then unfurled the white-furred scales of the Ice Wyrm that I had packed on one of my wolves. It was enough for him to make a new Cape so I was hoping it would be appreciated quite a bit.

The king stood up from his throne and stepped down to walk towards me, looking over the white fur as his men held it up. He nodded at me in approval.

"A wonderful gift," he said, running his hand down the fur before turning to me. "And you say that Lord Farthegn is dead? Even more of a success than I had hoped, you are truly sent by the Allfather." He exclaimed cheerfully before he took a step away. "Tanya, would you do me the honor of kneeling before me?"

Oh? Oh, this could be unfortunate. No doubt I was about to get some form of lower nobility. Hopefully the territory that I would have to deal with wouldn't be too hard to control. I wanted to take care of my wolves, not run the countryside. Well hopefully it won't be too bad, I thought as I took a knee and bowed my head.

One of the Housecarls came forward, bringing with him a small ceremonial Ax. With a hand the king picked it up and carefully laid the blunt end of the ax against one shoulder then the other.

"Tanya of the wilderness, you have proven your Worth to the people of Russ! Because of you the world is a safer place, not only from monsters that hunt Us in the nights but also from monsters that would hunt Us in the day. I bestow upon you this honor and pronounce you Tanya Russ, my daughter." The crowd erupted in applause and calls of Joy at the pronunciation. Everyone seemed quite happy, except myself.

It felt like my stomach dropped a good few feet below the ground as I realized how much my position in the world had just been raised. I was no longer just some wilderness wild woman who'd wandered into civilization. I wasn't even a local Noble, I had gone straight to heir of the king. I had to take a couple heavy breaths to settle my mental faculties as I realized how heavily I had been played. I had known the King was childless but I never thought he was looking to create an heir when he'd sent me on this mission. I thought too short-term, the near indestructibility of my body had allowed me to become too self-assured with my existence and now I was paying for it. Oh no… I had to say something or I'd look even worse and I could not refuse.

Clearing my throat, I said "Thank you, my king. It is an honor to be your daughter and I will serve the kingdom well."

I was then slapped backhanded across the face, which was a shock to the system even seeing it coming. "And that is a family ritual passed down through our line, to always remember we are not here to make ourselves profit. We are not here to abuse our people, we are the Russ. We either serve the people or we don't deserve to lead them. Do you understand?"

I noted my understanding, though I took some amusement in the way he was shaking his hand as if he was in some pain after slapping me. Having a stronger skull paid off in that one moment.

But I was now trapped. I'd basically been told I would either take the position, serve with honor and serve the people, or I would be removed from the Russ. I doubt they could kill me, but you didn't need to kill someone to exile them. You just needed to burn down everything they loved to do that. Was that the threat he was putting forward? I doubt it but it was something to make it clear that if I did not serve up to the people of Russ's opinion they could remove me. I would need to be on my best behavior and serve the community as best I could, or everything I built could fall apart.

Writers note:…. Tremors best movies series in the world sue me.

Beyond that look like some got her last name.

And now… now I have to figuere out how to fill the next 29 years in the timeline.

Edited by: Preier, M.G. ,Scranity

Community edited by: AlphaOmega

Community editable doc (Chapter 14) No story suggestions in the community editing document, Keep all story suggestions and comments in the thread

Supporters: Neso, Markus, Mackenzie Buckle, Silver Wolf, Daniel Martinez, Falk H, Mana Rope

Reviews
Templarsith: ah formr lord not going to be speaking much... pretty sure she strangled him
Ozpin52: survey says very likely.
Chronolocked: very how is she post to claim retirement if she never hits retirement age?
Green Espada: thank you was bit worried it would not hit right
e10620ac: here you go!
SomePervyGuy: well was it wolf bring the lighting, or strom Tanya bring call the wolf and the lighting... that is the question...
Zweivendous: perhaps in couple chapters
The armed forces: oh it will be it will be...
Qinlongfei: ah your knowledge is fine since this fic just for fun.