NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="seasong" data-source="post: 762245" data-attributes="member: 5137">Oops - I just realized I never completed this one. This happens AFTER her fight behind the barracks, which is probably why I forgot it. So... here it is again, completed this time.Vignette: The Little SoldierHer year of Service was a surprise to everyone. Despite dire predictions of her own ability, Aggie turned out to be exceptionally fast and deadly with the spear, and what she lacked in strength, she more than made up for with devoted mastery of the forms.Aggie liked the heft of the spear in her hands, the violent dance of movements that allowed her to own the field of combat. She liked formations, orderly processions of shield and spear, the logical application of simple principles to achieve maximum fighting strength with minimum numbers.She was vaguely considering becoming a performer, dancing with the spear, when her group was dispatched to drive off a black hound haunting a vineyard near Eastpass. The plan was to drive it into the open, where it could be set upon by the entire century of soldiers.The first thing to die in any battle, of course, is the plan.Hunter and HuntedA black hound is a malevolent creature of lurking intelligence. While the soldiers were working their way through among the grape vines with spear and torch, it had dug itself a small hole and covered itself in dirt, further concealed by artfully arranged vines. A soldier passed by it, unaware - holding the torch near the vine had reflected back only dirt, and discerning the shape of the dirt was too difficult for so quick a glance.When the soldier passed, the hound confirmed there was no one behind him, and then began stealthily padding the opposite direction toward the Captain.Agina, fear welling like bursting song in her chest, gripped her spear and looked and looked. She half hoped she would stumble across it first, so that she would have a chance to test the half-formed fantasies of bracing the spear against its charge and heaving it overhead into a vine trellis.Instead, she heard the Captain sob, the start of a scream, the low-toned intake of breath, cut too short to rise in pitch. While other soldiers were still not sure what they'd heard, Agina yelled, "ITS BEHIND US! TO THE CAPTAIN!"They ran back, to find the hound pulling meat from the Captain's neck. It fled, and they stumbled after it as it smoothly shifted into a long-legged lope. It hoped to find another vineyard to hide in, to evade pursuit as long as needed.The first thing that dies in any battle is the plan. Agina, after she'd yelled, had moved laterally, trying to determine where it might run to hide. While the hound was zig-zagging down the road and through vineyards, Agina made a beeline upslope, then down, cutting the shortest path rather than the easiest.As she ran, she pounded on doors, yelling "Black hound! Help!" as they opened their doors. Not every citizen who heard her came, but Theralis was built on a militant citizenry, and a few had spears that they picked up and chased after her with, while others grabbed the nearest grape club or stone pestle.As the hound rounded the mountain road as it wound its way along the edge of the valley, Agina and a few dozen civilians ambushed it. That held it long enough for the soldiers to arrive, and the hound died, and took too few with it to brag about.Agina became a squad leader by the next morning. But she never got a chance to try setting her spear against the black hound.</blockquote>

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