Chapter Text
Jharl the Mountain was in a killing mood, and his horde - an enormous group of foxes, ermine, and the lone polecat seer, known colloquially as the Snow Horde - were staying far away from him; the unrecognizable corpse of the second seer, a female pine marten with her wailing newborn daughter clinging to her, was all the reason they needed.
“TO HELLGATES WITH HER!” the enormous, powerfully built wolverine roared, his dark-brown fur cascading down his calloused paws, slashing and hacking the makeshift tents to doll rags with his huge broadsword. “I’LL KILL THEM MYSELF! NOBEAST CAN SAY WHEN I WILL DIE! I AM THE MOUNTAIN! STRONG AND STONE!” Jharl breathed heavily. “Herel, Kuskar, attend me!”
Two white fox captains stepped in and smartly saluted.
“Yes, Sire!” both of them said simultaneously.
“Bring twoscore with me. I’ll see this prophecy undone myself!”
“Aye, Sire!”
The wolverine king knew what would have to happen. He would not be bound by any prophecy, no matter how dire. So what if he had to kill his mate and her kits? He could easily find another in the Land of the Ice and Snow.
“What about the seer’s brat, and the other two weaklings, Sire?” a male ermine named Lustro asked, sidling up to the wolverine with an evil grin. “How do I kill them?”
Jharl let out an annoyed sigh. “Leave the three with the dead. The cold will take care of them soon enough.”
“Aye, Sire.” The ermine sounded a bit disappointed.
“The rest of you, be ready to move to the mating grounds! I will find another mate, and my legacy will remain strong and stone!”
“Strong and stone!” the Snow Horde echoed out, too afraid not to shout the words with their unpredictable, highly dangerous, and now enraged master hearing all.
The pregnant silence stood for a while, and the wolverine let out a furious howl. “Well?! I asked you to move, did I not?! So, pack the camp and move!”
The Snow Horde quickly packed the camp and began the long march to the mating grounds, leaving the wailing pine marten babe behind, along with two others: a tiny white fox babe, an obvious runt born two days ago, and an ermine babe the same age who was clearly going to grow up blind. Jharl and his selected group of twoscore moved in the direction of his mate’s den just a short march away, and soon, the snow flurries fell around the empty encampment.
Unbeknownst to all, Lustro had doubled back when everyone was gone, licking his lips as he drew his dagger, advancing on the three babes.
“A free meal, and you tell me to leave it for the cold,” the ermine grumbled. “A free meal, after all of my service for you…” He raised his dagger, ready to plunge it on the pine marten babe.
He never heard the thing that swiftly ended his life, with only the quickest flash of agony registering in his brain before he expired.
“Coward,” the giant snowy owl spat, extracting his talons from Lustro’s carcass, his fierce yellow eyes on the three bawling, shivering babes. “And as for you three…”
-
One would not expect the Land of Ice and Snow to have anything close to civilization, especially an outsider to the land.
One would be proven wrong by the existence of Castle Gaupefelt, a longtime bastion of the ruling lynx royals.
The lynxes had ruled Gaupefelt for many seasons, often repelling wolverines and wolves alike, neither of whom had the grace of the wild cats. Wolves were inscrutable beasts, sticking with their own packs and little else, for the most part. Barely anybeast ever saw them outside of their northern home, and less still was known about them and their ways. As for wolverines? Violent and barbaric, the lot of them. No, lynxes and wolverines were better off away from each other - and with wolves in the picture, it was for the best that all three stayed away or violence was sure to come.
The beasts of Gaupefelt Castle, a large community of mountain hares, lemmings, beavers, voles, mice, and shrews, relied on the lynxes for protection against the bigger and more insane wolverines, and in response, those old and brave enough happily joined the army, ready to be called to fight for their royals.
It was a good relationship, good enough to last seasons upon seasons…until the Conquistadors came to the shores of the Land of Ice and Snow in their four warships, led by the terrifying Horibilis Ironlock!
The enormous white-brown bear, neither truly polar nor truly grizzly, was an opportunist. Nobeast knew where he came from amidst a horde of muskrats and minks, but one thing was for sure: he had no peaceful intentions. Such a thing was not in his nature. There were no demands for surrender, no parlay, no sign of anything that gave kindness or mercy to his evil thoughts as he stormed the gates without warning, battering them down himself, his thick armor preventing any of the arrows shot up high on the ramparts from hitting him true.
The lynx royals, King Roobrick and Queen Fithersee, immediately went out to face the bear, but not before calling on the majority of the army to protect the inhabitants who did not fight. A group of twoscore loyalists attended the lynx royals. The rest of the army were sent to retreat into the northlands, but for a reason: the mission of the retreat was to protect their only daughter - one so young she was not even named in the custom of the coldness of the land - and form any kind of resistance around her, even as the castle fell.
The lattermost stood no chance as they were ambushed by the horde of outsiders, and those sad few that escaped would be stranded in the cold, unlikely to survive the worst of the winter.
King Roobrick, in spite of his skill with a longsword and shield, was the first to fall, the hybrid bear’s giant spiked mace slaying him with one lucky blow to the side of the head after it broke the shield - and the bones in the king’s arm that held it - to pieces. Queen Fithersee was always the better fighter with her long daggers, even after the recent birth, but even she fell as Horibilis hit her leg with the mace, breaking it - and then broke the other out of petty spite. The queen didn’t yowl out her pain nor beg for her life. Instead, she only glared hatefully at her killer as he swung his mace at her head once. Only once.
And then the sack of the city began. Most of the inhabitants had time to escape, but only after the army was slaughtered to the last brave beast. The muskrats and minks then turned their attention to the civilians who were left. The acts they committed were unspeakable, the worst of any beast to set foot in the Land of Ice and Snow, even more than the brutal wolverines. But none were so horrible as the white-brown bear, who mutilated the bodies of the lynx king and queen in his frenzy, leaving their fresh skulls to spike his banner and devouring everything else, bones and all.
Only one creature amongst the Conquistadors seemed horrified: Calflan, a female raccoon larger than most of her kin, the seer of the horde…but not for the reasons that one would think. For she saw a vision of a lynx in armor - one of power, grace, skill, and ferocity - challenge Horibilis…and win. And she realized…
“Where is the lynx child?” she demanded to a mink captain named Githil.
“What child?” the dull captain asked.
“The babe of the two our leader just killed!” the raccoon screeched furiously. “Where is it?!”
“I dunno,” Githil muttered. “Ask one of the others…”
“Ugh! Must I have to do everything myself?!” Calflan snapped in annoyance before she went to Horibilis and whispered in his ear.
“A lynx will beat me?” the bear laughed, his muzzle dipped in blood from his meal. “Your visions are snow-blind, Calfy. You’re lucky you’re my friend, lest I slay you for blasphemy.”
“If you don’t kill the babe now, it’ll grow up ready to slay you!” the raccoon growled. “My visions have never been led astray!”
“You’re pathetic.” Horibilis waved his seer off before turning to a female muskrat captain. “Doolk, what is the status of my castle?”
“Their army is vanquished, General, and the castle is yours!” Doolk said with a smart salute, knowing that any mention of the Conquistadors’ losses - a fair number, given how the defeated army fought back - would get her killed.
A fellow muskrat who had an injured leg in the battle, Blinkwan, didn’t get the hint, as he said to himself, “Hmph. Lost me best mates, an’ all we get is a stinkin’ pile o’ rocks wit’ only bones ter eat…”
Horibilis heard all, quickly dragging the unfortunate muskrat by the tail and holding him aloft and upside-down.
“Must be that my ears deceive me,” the hybrid bear growled, his foul breath in Blinkwan’s terrified face. “I thought I heard that I don’t care about losses, that nothing of consequence was lost, and that my castle is won. Did I hear that?”
Blinkwan started crying in fear - a very understandable action under the circumstances, but his second fatal mistake in front of the cruel and pitiless commander. “Please, please, General, I’ve been loya-”
Horibilis’s jaws - the crowns of each fang reinforced with the iron that gave him his title - clamped down on Blinkwan’s head, quickly extinguishing the unfortunate hordebeast’s life as he began to feed in front of a terrified Doolk and Calflan.
“Well, well…dinner and a show,” the bear said with a dissonant red smile, as if he didn’t just murder one of his own soldiers in cold blood and cannibalize the corpse, as if he didn’t make a lynx cub barely days old an orphan. “And I get a nice place to sleep in the bargain. This day is the best day of my life.”
What the bear didn’t know was that his brutal killings of the lynx royals would quickly end up as his worst mistake by far, for many reasons that he was too arrogant to foresee.