We Have No Choice but to Seize the Throne
A jeep tore across the grassland. Built from a civilian model and rebuilt until it was several times tougher and harder than anything sold to the public, it ripped along a dirt track the wild had packed down rough, and charged ahead.
Dust boiled up behind it. Inside rode Last Day's Sunlight and Thunder's Footsteps.
"So even your foresight can fail. You were so very certain there was no king on the peninsula, and now look what a spectacle we've made of ourselves."
Hair to the shoulders, yellow as a sunflower, and skin just as sallow. Last Day's Sunlight, one of the werewolf elders, wore a wicked little smile.
"Trying to mock me?"
"I only stated the facts. A man who knows as much as you do, putting on airs for no reason."
"Hah."
Biceps raked as if by lightning. The great muscles of the chest had split the skin, flesh unable to hold what bulged beneath. Neck and flanks were scarred as if seared shut with fire. He was another of the werewolf elders: Thunder's Footsteps.
"A spectacle we have made, I'll grant you. I have seen, in my life, every sight a man ought to see and every sight he ought not—but that a day this shameful would come."
"It was a killing blow, yes. Well. The fault was not yours alone. It belonged to all of us. Pride, and arrogance with it."
"Comfort, is it. I am ever so grateful."
"Gone senile, have you? I soothe you, and still you grumble. You are no different now than you were at five."
Thunder's Footsteps clapped him hard across the shoulder. Last Day's Sunlight made a show of the pain and rubbed at it.
"And the talk with him. How did it end? Is there a way?"
"I was just about to take it out."
Thunder's Footsteps drew a black test tube from inside his clothes. Last Day's Sunlight's face turned vicious in an instant.
"That... filth. What is it?"
"An awakening agent he sent. An elixir of a wholly different order from what we tested on our own bodies."
"Have you truly lost your mind? How is that an elixir? Radioactive waste would be better than that thing."
Last Day's Sunlight hitched his hips, trying to put even a little distance between himself and the tube.
"Now, now. And where do you think you're running?"
Thunder's Footsteps' hand moved like lightning. Before the man famed as the fastest in all the clan, Last Day's Sunlight surrendered his palm without a struggle.
"Agh—! In all my life, to touch a thing more dreadful than horse dung!"
"Compose yourself. I understand how you feel. But for us, there is no way but this."
Thunder's Footsteps smiled, bitter.
"Have we not already smashed the bridge back?"
"......"
"Had the king appeared only a little sooner, we would not have come to this..."
Last Day's Sunlight clicked his tongue at the one weak moment of his only friend.
"What meaning is there in supposing, now? We did not stop at riding the tiger's back. We became the tiger."
"Would a wolf not be better than a tiger?"
"Does that matter?"
"I prefer the wolf. It is the last thread of conscience left to us, and our last light."
And why had the two of them been driven this far in the first place?
All of it, for the clan. They had pitied a people wasting the years in search of a king. They had wanted to prove a clan could live well with no king at all. They had wanted something—anything—to get better. And so they had walked a road that should never have been walked.
He still thought of himself as a wolf of fierce pride, but the body had already changed as far as a body could change.
A single remaining thread of reason was all that let him pass for a wolf at all.
But that conscience looked otherwise in another's eyes.
Last Day's Sunlight's face twisted into something cruel.
"Conscience? Can you put that word in your mouth now?"
"Last Day..."
"The kin you brought him and offered up number in the dozens by themselves. I am no different, nor are the ones who fell in with us. If you truly had a conscience, you would have stayed evil from the first breath to the last. Since when did you become a hypocrite?"
"Heh heh heh. Last Day, your phrasing has grown crisp. The side effects seem to be coming on. Allow me to put you to sleep with my own hands."
"If you can."
Both men's irises bled red. Veins flushed a bruised blue, as if the blood had burst inside them, and muscle swelled like balloons.
Kreeeak. The wave of their killing intent warped the body of the car. The young werewolf at the wheel cried out in panic.
"We'll—we'll be there any moment!"
Perhaps the shout, wrung out of nothing but the will to live, reached them. The red drained, and the elders' eyes were white again. As the moment that had been a breath from bloodshed settled, the youth nearly lost consciousness where he sat.
"Stop. You go back on your own."
"Yes..."
They halted the youth, who could drive no farther, and Last Day's Sunlight and Thunder's Footsteps walked on their own two legs toward the city that held this country's only airport.
"I can feel it. The screws are coming loose, little by little. How long, do you think, can we remain in our right minds?"
"I don't know. Perhaps we've already left them."
It was not the first time the madness had broken out, nor the second. Each time, they could be calmed only by pouring violence out of themselves.
"We're already finished."
"So we are."
"Then..."
Last Day's Sunlight's eyes stained red.
"Now that is a thing I like to hear."
Thunder's Footsteps flashed fangs wet with blood.
"I wonder just how our king will thrash."
"Oh, I do hope he has a bearing worthy of a king."
The two elders walked toward the city, cackling.
The shadows at their feet stretched on without end, as if to stand for the road they meant to walk.
Huff. Huff.
Four days had passed since the declaration of a battle royale for the throne.
Na Wangrang lay sprawled on the bare earth, breathing out nothing but a thin thread of air.
"Shall we rest a moment?"
"No...! I'm fine!"
Na Wangrang clenched his teeth and forced himself up. He rose on nothing but grit, teeth grinding through his lip, and looked at the sparring partner in front of him.
"Please. One more lesson."
"Very well. Then we go once more."
Elder Wildflower flicked his wrist. Na Wangrang kicked off and shot forward.
Thud! Elder Wildflower turned the punch aside with ease. Na Wangrang did not stop. Following instinct, he threw one fist after another.
For a man who had never learned to fight, it was a rather convincing path of combat. To Elder Wildflower it was less than a child flailing.
He shoved the rising worry down by force and corrected him.
"Too much power in the right fist. Set your weight harder through the left foot. Turn the waist a little farther, and keep your eyes wide."
Tap. Tap. Tap.
A single finger stabbed into every corner of Na Wangrang's body. Each poke struck like a live current.
"Kh!"
He swallowed the groan that forced its way out and swung again. It hardly landed.
"Hah."
Elder Wildflower sighed at punches losing their force and kicked him flying. Na Wangrang rolled, undignified, once more.
"We'll stop here today. Go in and rest."
"Hah. Hah."
Na Wangrang panted and gave no answer. Elder Wildflower tipped his chin. Peril, Yamaga, and Sharl, who had been watching, came running at once.
"You've worked hard."
"Here is water..."
Water and a towel were pressed to his dirtied body. The hands that worked over him were as devoted as if they were bathing a pet, searching out every inch.
"Your Majesty. May I offer a single word, even at the risk of my life?"
Elder Wildflower said it flatly, looking at the sky.
"...Yes."
"Please withdraw the order."
The three pairs of hands stopped dead.
"No amount of training will mean a thing. Your Majesty cannot defeat them."
Loyal counsel, delivering a cold truth. Elder Wildflower pressed down the loyalty howling from the depths of his soul and offered, in all sincerity, the words he believed the king needed.
"Withdraw the order you gave, and gather an army. Gather allies, and prepare for war."
"No."
"Your Majesty!"
Elder Wildflower's face crumpled in anguish.
"Do you know who they are? Elders! The strongest warriors in the clan! Fiends of battle who have tasted blood for decades! The king you are now cannot possibly stand against men like that!"
"Whatever else it is, words I've already spoken can't be taken back."
Na Wangrang braced his trembling knees and barely got to his feet. The trio flustered and scrambled back.
"This is the road I chose. Even with no chance of winning, I won't turn back."
"Death waits at the end of it. If the king dies, whom are we to follow?"
"You can serve a new king."
"And what do you mean to tell the king's family, left behind?"
"......"
Na Wangrang let out a breath.
"Elder. Am I that hopeless? Do I not have even a scrap of talent for fighting?"
"...No."
The talent was sufficient. No—it overflowed. In a mere four days he had caught the clan's beggars, and one could not afford to scorn them for the name. The children of the grassland were taught hunting and combat from the time they were small: fists, kicks, and the work of killing, studied properly. Weak, they were not.
Physical limits made them poor material for true fighters, yet the art was taught through to completion, and the king had taken the essence of those years into his body in four days. A miracle too great to call talent. Unfairness at its very height.
But his opponents were elders—the finished work of genius upon genius, talents honed for decades. Given five years, or even three, he would surpass them. This was not that time.
"Then that's enough. I'm better in a real fight. You know that. It'll be different once we fight."
"Your Majesty..."
Elder Wildflower grieved. Was it the recklessness of youth, or had responsibility crushed him into this?
"Your Majesty, may I offer a word?"
Peril raised a hand.
"What is it?"
"You said Your Majesty is strong in real combat. So—that real combat."
"Have it now."
Silence.
Something creaked, long and grinding.
"Reign of the Lofty Summit... You rotten wretch, you want to die..."
Bang!
A hand closed on Peril's throat. Their face drained white in an instant.
"Khak!"
"I will execute you where you stand. No—I will make you suffer for eternity. I will cut off your limbs, tear out your tongue and your eyes, and throw you down as feed for horses. You will eat your own piss and shit and die in misery..."
"Elder. Let go."
"Your Majesty...?"
"That's an order. Let go."
The hand came away with a flat click.
"Cough! Cough!"
"You truly mean to do this...?"
"Yes. Step back."
Na Wangrang jerked his chin at Sharl and Yamaga as well.
"You two step back too."
"...Yes, sir," they answered as one.
Peril got up, rubbing at their throat.
"...You won't regret this?"
"Don't make me say the same thing twice. I'm tired."
Na Wangrang looked at the moon.
It was the last quarter, and it hung with uncanny precision directly over his head.
"...It's been a while. I suppose I'll transform."
He had never once tried. His father had told him not to.
"I am the king of the werewolves, after all. Fighting as a werewolf is the proper thing, isn't it?"
"...!"
Fur pushed out through Na Wangrang's skin.
Peril felt that something had gone wrong.
"One request."
A wolf's howl slammed the length of their body. The crotch of Peril's trousers soaked through.
"Don't die."
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