Chapter 6

Aspen felt angry at himself as he left, both Sabrina and the small healer fox staring at him. Aspen couldn't stand being there for any longer, embarrassment overwhelming him of how he'd behaved. The downright awful moves he had tried to use, his anger taking full control of him as he fought, making his moves sloppy and brash.

He slammed the door of his room as he entered, slumping onto the floor, the cold wooden floors making his hands cold like his magic.

He hated that his father had died, one of the sole people he knew he could talk too in the castle, but he also felt such a passions hate for what his father had brought about him. Being the leader of the army was such a daunting task, something that required an absurd amount of organization and emotional maturity, two things that Aspen knew he wasn't proficient enough in.

He knew that he would have to command the Anthros, to bring them to fight soon enough. He remembered how the reptilians had become more and more daunting from their small territory in the swamplands, how they had begun to try to use their small numbers to fight the canines, their efforts being put to an and immediately. But if all of them were to unite... he knew it could raise a severe problem.

It was such a tiring thing for him to both feel angry and sorrowful of his fathers death, for now he would have to face whatever neighboring countries wished to start a war, and he knew they loved to war, the entire continent always having some sort of disagreement for the land, no one wanting to fall low enough to be taken over.

He felt he had to clear his head, of all the raging thoughts that would give him a headache eventually if he didn't find someway to quell the flurry of thoughts.

The Arctic wolf sighed, pulling open the sliding door that led right outside the castle, right into the nearby forest that surrounded most of the city. He'd always found it such a clearing and peaceful thing to be in this place, in the past always going deep into the forest in an effort to escape his fathers high expectations and constant reminders of how he must start maturing, taking more responsibility.

But the truth was that he wasn't ready, even now being 26 years old to take on the responsibilities of leading the army, even after constant fussing over not appearing weak, the thought of bringing hundreds of Anthros to war felt like an impossible task.

It felt like being away from the city hadn't been able to ease him, even though practically every time he'd gone in he always felt an instant relief, but today it was almost as if he were incapable.

The Arctic wolf froze, his eyes going wide as he took in what laid in front of him on the path. Right there on the cut-out path of the forest, he could see the normally brown dirt covered in blood, the substance looking almost like it was smeared all across the path.

Crimes in this kingdom were among the rarer occurrences to happen, murder being among one of the least common, everyone residing in the kingdom being watched carefully by the guards who went through town, making sure none were misbehaving, anyone found guilty as a crime which as taking the life of another person would be sent to prison for life.

Aspen stood too stunned to speak as he looked at the trail of blood, the amount of it quite startling.

He quickly followed the trail, his eyes wide as he practically ran ahead, the amount of blood mesmerizing, the amount of it seeming almost impossible for only one person to have.

His breath rattled as he ran, desperate to find where this awful trail of blood led. But the trail immediately stopped, not a corpse in sight, whoever had been killed taken away, nothing but the dense amount of blood strewn through the path.