I’ve started to understand why my mother brought me here often as a child.

If you leave the herd-land and tell them to just fuck off, people seem to get really offended and tail you for a while. If you tell them that you’re off gathering new recruits, they, instead, do exactly what I wanted them to – fuck off. It was a fine art, this leadership thing, and while I thought I’d been ready for it, I guess I wasn’t. All I was ready for was the ability to tell people what to do, and to have them have to do it…

Who knew I’d spend so much of my time doing things I didn’t want to?

At least, out here, there was little chance of having some crazy caravan of entourages from a foreign land arrive one after the other to eyeball our realm like it’s a tourist locale. Determined to get back and finish up this wolf business with the Time God, so we can get our metal guardians back to working right, I’ll show them what a wonderful summer vacation spot my herd land is.

By Time’s Beard, my mother and her friends killed people for arriving unannounced. You’d think they’d have better tact, considering the severity of what had come before…

Maybe I’m just being too nice, I think to myself, my coffee black body moving through the trees, my buck shaking his head with a roll of his gold flecked, green eyes behind me. He’s about to tell me that attacking people just isn’t all that sensible when a sound catches my attention, and we make our way towards it together.

Arriving on the bay equine, I almost sigh, wishing I could have better luck with finding others like me out here. However, I also know that a recruit is a recruit, and that Tiamat would probably be pretty pissed at me if she’d heard I was going about refusing entry to anyone based on their physical attributes. So, with a proudly lifted crown and a competent step, I approach, an impish smile already playing on my lips, to hide away the scowl of “I don’t wanna” that wishes to live there instead.

"Welcome to Helovia," I say, nodding my head, the light shining on the length of my onyx and gold tipped horn; peering about my flank, towards my hindquarter, my wary companion eyes the male with reservation, having met too many hostile horses in Helovia to so easily trust anyone, especially here, in the forest of strangers, "I am Lord Rikyn, of the Aurora Basin, and my companion is called Duir. You been here before?"