The Blue Wolf Completes His Journey
The path from the Empire into the Steppe was not entirely blocked.
The Prairie was a vast land.
No matter how high the Empire’s walls rose, they could not encircle every border touching the open grasslands.
The Empire had revealed its limits against the Prairie.
And those limits had become an opportunity for anyone desperate to flee.
In the Empire, there were too many people with reasons to run: fugitives, escaped gladiator slaves, heretics. People weighed down by crime, defeat, and faith.
Those whose lives in the Empire felt unbearably heavy sought refuge in the Prairie, slipping away from the Empire’s gaze.
They called the outer edge of the Prairie the “Wilderness” and labeled themselves “Wastelanders.”
And here, in this Wilderness, waited those who had fled the Empire.
Their group was small but telling.
A few mercenaries, an old knight, and one woman who believed in foreign gods.
The heretic woman prayed.
The old knight stayed silent.
The mercenary men wrestled between despair and raw desire.
“You actually made it all the way here.”
“Fate screwed us over. Surviving out here on this empty plain is the only way.”
“What else can we do? If we head back to the Empire, we die. So here we live.”
“Damn it. Why did we even try that back then?”
For a moment they bickered over their petty grievances.
Then the conversation turned to the real question—what they would actually do to survive.
The man who led the mercenaries asked the old knight directly.
“Listen, knight. What in the name of the gods are we supposed to do once we reach the Wilderness and actually live there? Be honest.”
“…”
The mercenaries chuckled at the knight’s curt reply.
“Look at that. He actually answered.”
“Finally, something worth hearing. You were ignoring me on purpose, weren’t you, old man?”
“Shut up.”
The mercenaries laughed harder.
The old knight’s single cold glance silenced them.
“Answer me this, then,” the knight said. “What are you going to do? What are you going to live for?”
“You asked me. Fine. I’ll tell you.”
The mercenary leader clapped a hand on his companion’s shoulder.
“Smuggling, mercenary work, banditry. I’ll do whatever grease makes the coin flow.”
“Same as back in the Empire, huh?”
“Of course.”
“Then maybe drop the bandit habit before it becomes a habit.”
The old knight’s words made the leader curse. The knight spoke like a man who enjoyed watching others suffer.
“Don’t lecture me. That’s a warning.”
“…”
The old knight fell silent.
The leader believed the threat had worked.
He had seen the man’s body language—tense, ready to draw steel—and felt certain of one thing: this old knight was the undisputed leader of the small band.
What about the heretic woman…
The woman felt the mercenaries’ eyes on her and began to tremble, then returned to her prayers.
The leader sneered at the sight.
“I’ll tell you something, knight.”
The mercenaries didn’t understand the knight’s way of thinking. They never would.
“Something born to the blood takes what it wants. I lived like a wild dog in the Empire. Why should I suddenly start playing by different rules just because I stepped onto this flat plain?”
The leader was young. The endless emptiness and freedom of the Wilderness seemed to suit him perfectly.
He saw the world as an open space where anything and anyone could be taken.
He believed himself to be a predator in that free land.
The knight merely laughed at the words.
“There are men who think they were born as beasts.”
“Huh?”
The knight clicked his tongue.
“Beasts who eat bread made from grain and sleep in beds… doesn’t that sound ridiculous?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Beasts should drink blood and live like that. Not like you.”
“You’re speaking in riddles.”
“You fools don’t even know whose land this Wilderness is.”
The knight was not even looking at the men.
The mercenaries followed his gaze and froze.
“A wolf…?”
It was a single wolf.
The way it sat so still, watching them, sent an unnatural chill down every spine.
Its fur was the color of earth, so close they had not noticed it approaching.
“…You noticed because of that, didn’t you? Look at us, terrified of a wolf that doesn’t even have a heartbeat. You’re drowning in your own fear, and it’s still going to come.”
“What? Bring it. What could a bunch of dogs do to me?”
The mercenaries laughed again.
The old knight’s mouth curved in a crooked, dangerous smile.
“That’s exactly why I’m here. I drew that wolf here… with the scent of iron…”
“You old hag. Lost your mind yet?”
“Leader, there are more wolves than I thought.”
*Thwack.*
The sound of a finger sinking into soft flesh.
An arrow buried itself in the wolf’s skull.
A man dropped.
“Insane.”
The men had not been swinging wildly. They had spent years facing death.
They dropped low, weapons up.
*Shick.*
A deep, wet sound as the arrow punched through hide and bone.
Another man fell.
The leader stared into the sandstorm, hiding no fear. How could they hide in open prairie? The thing was clearly…
“What is that?”
A shadowy figure wrapped in a ragged cloak.
Their eyes met.
The heart stuttered.
A beast’s eyes, white and empty.
“There!”
The wolf turned, tearing away its cloak for camouflage.
Long braided hair. A body sheathed in well-made armor. A hideous necklace of dried ears and fangs.
An orc.
He moved like a man who needed no introduction.
As the orc stood and nocked his bow, every eye turned toward him.
“Die—”
*Shick.*
“Ugh.”
“Ye—”
The orc shed the useless cloak and opened fire.
“Head shots only—run in straight!”
“Are you insane?”
*Whoosh.*
“What the—”
“Run! The bastards are coming!”
Orcs and their wolf allies poured over the dune.
“Ah.”
*
When the orc reached the battlefield, only the old knight and the woman remained alive.
The knight had survived alone.
He stood over the crushed throat of a wolf-man, waiting for the orc.
The knight spoke.
“You left your words on the ground over there.”
The orc did not understand human speech.
He did not understand the knight’s question.
If he had, he would have answered that he simply cut the throat of a weak creature.
“You used the wolf-men’s scent to chase your quarry?”
The orc still said nothing.
If he had understood, he would have said he had hunted them from the start, set an ambush, and let the kill come to him.
“Looks young. A hunter who knows how to kill.”
The knight drew his blade.
The orc caught the faint smell of oil on the steel—well-maintained, deadly.
“I’ll start by putting down this mongrel.”
The wolf-man’s throat snapped clean.
The kill was swift, perfect, merciless.
The orc felt a sudden, violent urge.
He wanted to swing his own blade, to measure the man’s skill up close.
It was not the urge of a normal orc.
Perhaps it was the urge other orcs would have suppressed with caution.
For a predator like the knight, stepping too close was survival itself.
It was unnatural for an orc.
The orc saw himself as a wolf.
A hunter. A beast.
He had made his survival instinct into law.
So this reckless urge was a flaw.
A flaw of the orc. A flaw of the beast.
He forced his body to stay still.
Even to himself, it was an un-orc-like body.
Thanks to that body, every time he faced a hunter as strong as the knight, the flaw pulled him forward.
[Is that right?]
Between urge and instinct, he remembered one truth.
Thinking back, that day with the centaur, the day he lost his pack—both times.
Perhaps.
He.
[I never wanted to escape the centaur. I wanted to fight him.]
The knight muttered to himself.
“As soon as I set foot in the Wilderness, I run into an orc. Good fortune or bad?”
The wolf-men rose at the orc’s signal.
The knight chuckled.
“My whole body aches. Rotten, useless flesh. Even swinging a sword is too much.”
The orc drew his bow.
The knight’s strength impressed him. Perhaps he was stronger than the orc.
But the orc had decided to hunt and suppress his urge. The old man’s power meant nothing.
The weakness of any aged predator was stamina.
Use the wolf-men to keep moving, keep nocking arrows, and the fight would end.
“Blue Wolf, why do you think I dragged this old body into the Wilderness?”
The orc loosed an arrow.
The knight deflected it with effortless grace.
Another shot. The knight answered again.
The orc kept shooting like it was target practice.
The wolf-men closed in, robbing the knight of any rest.
“…I… I came to die.”
“The time to waste me is before I waste it.”
The knight’s skill still burned, but exhaustion was winning.
“To you.”
The knight pointed his sword at the orc.
“To a beast like you.”
The orc nocked and loosed.
*Ping.*
The knight staggered back, arrow through the forehead.
The wolf-men surged forward, eager to take the prize.
The orc let them finish the job.
At the very end, he clenched his hand that had tried to reach for his blade despite the instinct.
He walked to the last remaining quarry.
A human woman.
If he had known her position in the Empire, he would have called her a heretic.
She trembled, whispering prayers.
The orc knew what she was doing.
He had prayed over his own dead after all.
And the dead humans he had killed had prayed too.
[To whom?]
The woman could not understand orc speech. She only thought of the monster growling words.
The orc could not understand her.
If she prayed because she wanted to live.
[Why do you not pray to me? I alone can kill you here and set you free.]
“Save the faithful from all monsters.”
[If you can pray to me, I will let you live.]
The woman was not swayed by the monster’s words.
The orc had known that.
He took the chance from her.
[Rise. You will be sold as a slave.]
It was an old script, repeated too many times.
[Firmly… despite the monster’s words…]
“Shut up.”
That was the only sentence the orc could properly pronounce in human.
He had learned it from a human slave not long ago.
“…”
Leading wolf-men, crossing the Wilderness with a praying woman.
His name was Narinhoon Ibahtar.
The Blue Wolf.