The coded message from the tamer Marcus was a lit fuse. It burned in Draven's System Interface, a silent, explosive promise of either a powerful new alliance or a devastatingly effective trap. He gathered his command team in the main chamber, the fire casting long, dancing shadows on their tense faces.
"'The crown is broken,'" Draven read the translated symbols aloud. "'The tamers are ready to listen. Name the time and place.'"
Jaxon grunted, his hand resting on the pommel of his axe. "Sounds like a perfect invitation to get our heads chopped off."
"It's authentic," Leo insisted, his one good eye wide and earnest. "The symbols he used, the phrasing—it's an old tamer code. He's risking everything just by sending this."
Rico nodded in agreement. "Leo's right. This is desperation. They see Voss spiraling, and they're looking for a way out."
Draven listened, his mind a cold engine of analysis. The probability of a trap was still a non-zero number, somewhere around thirty-five percent. But the potential reward for turning Voss's entire beast-taming division was a game-changer. It was a risk that had to be taken, but it would be on his terms.
"We don't go to them," Draven stated, his voice cutting through the debate. "They come to us. Or, rather, to a neutral site of our choosing. We control the environment, we control the terms, we control every possible outcome."
The plan he laid out was a masterpiece of paranoia and tactical precision. He chose the location: a small, abandoned watchtower in a dense pine forest, a place with a single approach, excellent sightlines, and a dozen natural ambush points. He sent his reply, a single, carved claw delivered by one of Kara's arrows in the dead of night. The terms were simple: Marcus and one other tamer. Draven and one of his own. At midday, two days from now.
The next forty-eight hours were a blur of meticulous preparation. While Rico and Leo advised on the psychology of the tamers, Draven, Kara, and Jaxon turned the chosen meeting spot into a deatrap. They didn't just set a few snares. They wired the entire clearing. Jaxon dug pits filled with sharpened stakes, camouflaged with a flawless layer of pine needles. Kara, perched in the crumbling watchtower, set up multiple firing positions, her Essence Fang arrowheads gleaming in the dim light. Draven himself laid a perimeter of Stun Wires and planted Thorn Barrage clusters, all linked to a remote trigger in his interface. Kael, the Rune-Hound, and the Thornling were positioned in the deep woods, a hidden, silent QRF—Quick Reaction Force—ready to be unleashed at a moment's notice.
The night before the parley, Kara found him staring out from the keep's own watchtower.
"You've planned for every variable," she said softly, coming to stand beside him.
"It's the variables you don't plan for that get you killed," he replied, his gaze fixed on the dark forest.
She slipped her hand into his, her warmth a stark contrast to the cold, analytical focus of his mind. "This is our most dangerous move yet."
"Which is why it has to succeed," he said. He squeezed her hand, a silent acknowledgment of the trust, the stakes, and the unbreakable bond that had become the foundation of his entire world.
The day of the meeting was clear and still. Draven and Leo stood in the center of the clearing, a picture of calm confidence. But Draven was anything but calm. His mind was a nexus of information, his senses extended through his network. He could feel the faint hum of the stun wires under the earth. He could see the entire clearing through Kara's eyes, a shared feed from her perch in the tower. He could feel Jaxon's steady, ready presence in the trees to the east, and the coiled, lethal energy of Kael and the other summons to the west. He was not one man; he was a web.
Two figures emerged from the trees, their hands raised to show they were unarmed. One was Marcus, a big, bearded man with the weary eyes of someone who had seen too much. The other was a younger, nervous-looking tamer.
"You came," Marcus said, his voice a low rumble.
"I don't waste my time on false invitations," Draven replied, his tone as sharp as a shard of glass. "You said you were ready to listen. Talk."
Marcus laid it out. The tamers were caught between a madman and his monsters. Voss's experiments were becoming more reckless, the rift-spawn more unstable. They had lost three more men just last night. They were ready to act. They could sabotage the pens, release the beasts, and cripple Voss's army from the inside during his next major push. But they needed a guarantee. They needed to know that Draven and his people were a real alternative, not just another warlord.
As they spoke, a new signal flared in Draven's interface. A red alert. A five-man Voss patrol, loyalists, had stumbled off their route and were heading directly for the clearing. A random, catastrophic variable.
He didn't have time to warn the others with words. He sent a single, sharp pulse through his bond with Kara: Contact. South. Silent.
Marcus saw the shift in Draven's eyes. "What is it?"
"Your loyalty is about to be tested," Draven said, his voice a low, urgent command. "A loyalist patrol is about to walk into this clearing. We take them down, silently, together. No alarms. No survivors. You prove you're with me, right now, and you'll have your alliance."
The tamers exchanged a panicked look, but the desperation in their eyes hardened into resolve. The first of Voss's soldiers stepped into the clearing. Before he could even register the scene, Kara's arrow was a silent hiss, sprouting from his throat. The man crumpled without a sound.
The other four charged in, but they charged into a prepared killzone. Jaxon exploded from the trees, a force of pure, brutal power, his axe cleaving through one man's shield and deep into his chest. Kael and the Rune-Hound were a blur of black fur and snapping fangs, dragging two more down in a whirlwind of violence.
Marcus and the other tamer, after a moment of hesitation, acted. They pulled their own hidden knives and, with the grim efficiency of men who knew their business, dispatched the final soldier.
The fight was over in less than thirty seconds. A brutal, silent, and perfectly executed ambush. The shared, bloody work had sealed their new alliance more effectively than any words ever could.
Marcus stood over one of the bodies, breathing heavily. He looked at Draven, his eyes filled with a new, unwavering respect. "The tamers are yours," he said.
[Ally Faction Gained: Voss's Tamers (Covert)]
[Objective 2: Infiltrate and Turn the Beast Tamers – Complete]
[New Objective: Coordinate the Uprising.]
Draven looked at the carnage, then at his new, unlikely allies. The war had just turned. He now had an army of spies and saboteurs embedded in the very heart of his enemy's camp.