The air in the human camp reeked of decay. Morning had come, but it brought no relief to the soldiers. The screams of the wounded echoed in the clearing, mingling with the buzzing of flies that clung to every open wound and discarded bandage. Seven men lay dead, their bodies hastily shrouded in tattered canvas to keep the rot from spreading. Another ten sat in grim silence, nursing injuries that would likely kill them in days. Feverish sweat clung to their brows as the infected wounds festered, the venom-laced shrapnel ensuring no clean deaths.

  Garrick was dead.

  The soldier who stared at Garrick’s shrouded form felt a pang of guilt twist his gut. Garrick had been a good man, a friend in the misery of this sweltering jungle. His name was Osric, a young soldier conscripted into the duke’s forces only a year prior. Garrick had been one of the first to take him under his wing, showing him how to lace his boots properly to avoid jungle rot and sharing tips on rationing water in the sweltering heat. They weren’t close friends, not exactly—there wasn’t time for that out here—but Garrick had been a steady presence, a reliable voice in the chaos of the borderlands.

  Osric owed him more than he’d ever managed to say. When their unit was dispatched to Oldscar to assist with Fanfaron’s expedition, it had been Garrick who eased the tension among the soldiers. “Just another posting,” he’d said, slapping Osric on the shoulder with a reassuring grin. “We’ll knock some goblin skulls together and be back before you know it.”

  Now, Garrick lay beneath a shroud, his body motionless, his humor silenced. Osric felt his throat tighten as he glanced at the mangled leg that jutted out from beneath the canvas. That same leg had carried Garrick through ambushes and scouting missions, had marched beside Osric’s own across countless miles of jungle.

  Yet, Lord Fanfaron seemed more distraught over the loss of his prized horse than the men who had fallen. He paced near the edge of camp, his polished armor still pristine, barking orders that no one wanted to follow.

  Lady Sinérose, the mage, wasn’t having it.

  “This is madness!” she hissed, her fiery hair wild as her temper flared. She stood in stark contrast to the lord, her robes scorched at the edges from fire spells cast during the night’s chaos. “Do you not see what we’re facing here? You’ve lost half your fighting force, and yet you want to press onward!”

  “A mere setback!” Fanfaron barked back, his tone as arrogant as ever. “We’ve wounded beasts, not gods! The rest of the soldiers can continue while the injured return to Oldscar. The goblins and their lizards will fall—”

  “They’re not ‘mere beasts,’” Sinérose interrupted, her voice sharp enough to cut through the noise of the camp. “Do you even know what we’re dealing with? I’ve seen it with my own eyes. I cast Identify on one of the largest ones during the battle.”

  Her words drew the attention of the soldiers. They leaned in, their fear making them eager for any explanation.

  “What I saw wasn’t a Noble Variant, my lord,” she said, her voice steady but grim. “It was a Sovereign Variant. Mature. A Primordial Sovereign.”

  The camp went still.

  Fanfaron sputtered, waving his hand dismissively. “Legends! Myths of drunken scholars. Sovereigns don’t exist outside of dragons.”

  “They’re rare,” Sinérose shot back, her eyes blazing. “So rare that most think they’re a story. But I know what I saw. It’s not just a lizard. It’s something far more dangerous. And it’s only level 7.”

  Her final words landed like a blow. Level 7. If it could do that much damage now, what would it be like at level 20? Or 30?

  “I’ve read the texts in the duke’s library,” she continued, her voice lowering as she glanced around the camp. “A Sovereign is something unique. They emerge only under the most peculiar conditions—a confluence of life, leadership, and dominance. No one has confirmed their existence in centuries, but if the legends are true, we’re facing a creature that commands its domain in ways we can’t comprehend.”

  The soldiers murmured among themselves, the weight of her words pressing down like a storm cloud.

  “We’re leaving,” Fanfaron declared, though his voice wavered. He glanced toward the corpse of a man who had died moments ago, the fever and blood loss claiming him in broad daylight. The sight seemed to unnerve him more than the screams of the night or the mages words. “We’ll return to Oldscar and regroup. This expedition isn’t over—it’s merely delayed.” he said, staring at the corpse.

  The trek back through the jungle was slower than expected. The remaining soldiers moved in a ragged column, the injured carried on makeshift cots or dragged along with grim determination. The once-proud knights kept their heads low, their nerves fraying with every rustle of the undergrowth.

  “Something’s out there,” a soldier whispered, his eyes darting to the dense shrubs.

  They were right.

  The humans had grown paranoid, their movements jerky and disorganized. As venom-laced shrapnel hits the men in marching order.

  Just then a man in the front of the column is drug kicking and screaming into the underbrush, his screams dont last long.

  “Stay together!” a knight barked, his voice cracking.

  Moments later, a spear launched from the trees, striking one of the remaining horses in the neck. The beast reared, throwing Lord Fanfaron to the ground in a tangle of limbs and mud. His shouts of panic filled the air as he scrambled to his feet, his polished armor now smeared with dirt.

  “Retreat!” he bellowed, his voice trembling. “Fall back to Oldscar!”

  The soldiers broke into a disorganized run, their retreat more a rout than a retreat.

  Jannet’s tail flicked as he moved silently through the dense underbrush, his obsidian-black scales blending seamlessly with the jungle’s shadows. The group was spread out, each taking their assigned positions with the precision born of years of survival. Baby Goblin and Lil Guy had taken to the trees, their agile forms almost invisible as they moved branch to branch with their slingshot. Below, Randel crouched near the bushes edge, carefully loading one of the makeshift spears into the y shaped aiming stick while Michelangelo and Raphael prepared to fire. Rose and Jannet led the assault from the ground, their hulking forms coiled and ready to strike at the humans’ exposed flanks.

  The jungle around them pulsed with life, the distant cries of birds and the rustling of leaves masking the faint creak of leather and metal from the retreating humans. The plan was simple: harass the humans, spread confusion, and bleed their forces as they fled back to their nest. Every trap, every ambush, was designed to sow panic and disarray.

  Jannet’s reptilian mind churned with focused simplicity. This wasn’t just about survival anymore—it was about dominance. The humans had come too close, encroaching on their home. Now, they would pay.

  The first strike came from the trees. Baby Goblin let out a tiny chirp, signaling Lil Guy to pull back the loaded slingshot. The mud-covered projectile—a venom-coated bundle of sharp stones—sailed through the air, striking a cluster of humans at the column’s rear. The sharp crack of impact was followed by screams as the jagged shrapnel tore into flesh, the venom seeping into their wounds.

  “Perfect,” Jannet hissed to himself, watching the humans scramble like frightened prey.

  Michelangelo and Raphael, stationed further along the column’s path, worked in tandem with Randel. As Randel loaded the spear—a sharpened branch tipped with fire-hardened points—the two lizards aligned the Y-shaped launcher. With a flick of their powerful tails, the spear shot forward, piercing the neck of a horse. The horse fell with a cry, gasping as the wound gushed, braying in pain as the group around it hesitated, unsure whether to help or flee. Its rider stuck in the mud panic clear on his face as he shouted monkey-like noises in fear.

  From his perch above, Baby Goblin giggled as he prepared another shot. Lil Guy mimicked the sound, his enthusiasm contagious as they pulled back the sling’s cord. The next volley struck the center of the group, peppering the soldiers with venom-laced shards. The humans’ formation fractured further, their attempts to regroup hampered by the unrelenting strikes from above and the ground.

  “They’re scattering,” Jannet thought, his tail twitching with satisfaction. This was what he wanted—to push them, to break their cohesion, to make them fear the jungle itself.

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  As the humans scrambled to retreat, Fanfaron’s polished armor caught Jannet’s eye. The man stumbled in the mud, his once-pristine appearance now smeared with dirt and blood. Jannet’s tongue flicked out, tasting the fear in the air. This one would be a prize. The man screamed in a pleading monkey-like tone, the language not registering with jannets lizard thoughts. He looked a little like Richard, so pathetic and weak like this. His cries were silenced with a single skull crushing bite and despite being such a weak man Jannet thought he didn't taste half bad. Dripping with gore Jannet lashed his tail into a nearby tree, sending a rain of leaves and debris onto the already-panicked humans. Rose roared, a guttural sound that reverberated through the jungle, driving the last humans into a full rout.

  The chase continued like this for a day, the lizards harrying the humans all the way to the edge of Oldscar. From the treeline, Jannet and his group watched as the humans stumbled into the town, their shouts of alarm echoing off the ramshackle buildings. Oldscar was unlike anything Jannet had seen before. A sprawling collection of wooden and stone structures nestled within the jungle’s edge, it teemed with humans moving in organized chaos.

  To Jannet’s reptilian mind, it was both fascinating and horrifying. A human nest, this close to their home, was an existential threat. He studied the town with cold calculation, noting the watchtowers, the gates, and the clustered groups of soldiers. This was no simple camp—this was a fortress of human life, a place where their numbers and strength multiplied.

  “We’ll need more,” Jannet thought, his eyes narrowing. More traps. More fighters. More power.

  He turned to his group, his golden eyes gleaming with determination. The battle had been a victory, but the war was far from over. As they retreated into the jungle’s safety, Jannet’s mind raced with plans. They had won this skirmish, but Oldscar was a reminder of the humans’ resilience. To truly secure their home, they would have to grow stronger, smarter.

  The jungle’s teeth had bared themselves, but the humans had not yet felt their full bite.

  The world outside Oldscar had never felt so treacherous. Osric leaned against the jagged wall of a half-collapsed ruin, his breathing ragged as he surveyed the broken remnants of his party. From the twenty-five brave men who had marched out under the duke’s orders, only six remained. Their armor was dented, their faces pale, and their spirits crushed under the weight of the unimaginable.

  Only one knight sat nearby, remarkably unscathed, his polished armor barely tarnished. His pointed mustache twitched as he scanned the darkened treeline, still glinting with an air of self-satisfaction despite the carnage. Next to him stood the mage, her wiry frame hunched but uninjured, a shimmering barrier of protective wards still flickering faintly around his cloak.

  “We need to regroup,” a soldier said, his voice steady and composed. “The duke will need to hear about this. Whatever foul creatures attacked us were no mere goblins.”

  “No kidding,” Osric muttered bitterly, wincing as he shifted his arm. The gash there, just below the shoulder, throbbed angrily. It was no ordinary wound—dark veins spidered outward from the cut, and the flesh around it burned with infection. He gritted his teeth, trying to ignore it, but the truth gnawed at the edges of his mind: this wound wasn’t healing.

  Goblins, they’d said. A routine extermination of a troublesome horde near Oldscar. Easy work for seasoned soldiers like them. But what had emerged from the shadowed woods that day was far worse. Too intelligent. Too organized. The massacre had been swift, brutal, and utterly unexpected.

  Osric’s gaze shifted to Lady Sinerose as she mounted her horse, her silhouette framed by the dying light of the evening. She had insisted on leaving immediately, determined to bring word back to the duke herself. Her sharp, calculating eyes swept over the ragged group one last time.

  “This wasn’t goblins,” she said, her tone firm. “Something else is out here. Something bigger.”

  Osric caught her words and shivered. The infection in his arm seemed to throb harder as if agreeing with her. He clenched his jaw, pushing away the dizzying wave of nausea that swept through him.

  Across the clearing, Joss crouched over the carcass of a horned rabbit, a hunting knife in hand. He wasn’t part of the expedition—just a local hunter who had come across the survivors by sheer chance. His weathered face was pale, his usual easy demeanor replaced with a haunted look. The stories he’d heard from the soldiers were enough to shake even someone like him, who was no stranger to the dangers of the borderlands.

  Joss muttered something under his breath as he worked, his movements tense and hurried. Osric didn’t catch all of it, but the words “lizard” and “cold eyes” stood out.

  “Did you say something?” Osric asked, his tone sharper than intended.

  Joss glanced up, his knife pausing mid-cut. “Just thinking out loud,” he said, his voice tight. “About something I saw in the woods a few weeks back and then years before that when my brother died. Something… strange.”

  Osric raised an eyebrow but didn’t press. There was something in Joss’s expression—an unease that mirrored his own. The hunter had been one of the first to warn the townsfolk about the dangers lurking near Oldscar, but no one had taken him seriously. Now, with half the expedition wiped out, his warnings didn’t seem so far-fetched.

  The den was alive with the warmth of victory and the comforting aroma of roasted meat. The group gathered around the central fire pit, their scales gleaming in the flickering light as they tore into freshly cooked blade chicken and strips of roasted water buffalo. Even #1, propped up on a moss-padded bed of vines, joined in the feast, his hulking form relaxed as his wounded limb began the slow process of regrowth.

  Randel, Michelangelo, and Raphael sat close together, chittering softly in satisfaction as they gnawed on their portions, their tails flicking with delight. Baby Goblin and Lil Guy, their usual boundless energy now softened by the safety of the den, huddled together with their meal. Baby Goblin’s hands darted in quick movements, occasionally offering a piece of meat to Lil Guy, who responded with a pleased chirp.

  Rose’s presence was as steady as ever. She sat protectively near #1, her eyes flicking between the group and the den’s entrance, ensuring their peace was undisturbed. Though her claws and scales bore faint marks from the recent battle, she looked unshaken, her posture calm yet vigilant. Jannet watched her for a moment, his chest swelling with pride and gratitude for her unwavering strength.

  The fire crackled as Jannet took his place at the head of the group, his obsidian-black scales shimmering faintly in the firelight. For now, he let the celebration continue uninterrupted. The victory, though small in the grand scheme of things, was a significant triumph for their family. They had driven the humans back, protected their home, and lived to tell the tale.

  But Jannet’s reptilian mind was restless. As much as he relished this moment, the image of Oldscar loomed large in his thoughts. The human nest, with its towering walls and organized chaos, was a threat too close to ignore. If they wanted to secure their territory—and their future—they couldn’t rely on these small victories alone.

  “More chicken!” Baby Goblin squeaked language not needed for the meaning of his words, his tiny green fingers waving at Randel, who obligingly tore off a charred piece of meat and handed it over. The scene brought a flicker of amusement to Jannet’s otherwise serious demeanor. He let the group enjoy themselves a little longer, their laughter and light chittering filling the den with a warmth that was rare in the harsh jungle.

  When the food was nearly gone, and the lizards began to lounge in post-meal satisfaction, Jannet raised his head. A faint hum of memetic resonance spread through the group, catching their attention. All eyes turned toward him, their bodies still and waiting. Even Baby Goblin quieted, his wide eyes fixed on Jannet with a mix of awe and curiosity.

  Jannet began slowly, his golden eyes sweeping over the group. “We’ve won a battle,” he conveyed through memetics, the resonance tinged with pride and caution. “But the war is far from over.”

  The group’s focus sharpened, their tails twitching as they absorbed his words.

  “That human nest,” Jannet continued, his tone carrying the weight of what he had seen, “is a threat. A nest of their kind, with walls and gates, with more of them hiding inside. They will not stop. They will return, stronger, and they will not rest until they believe they own this jungle.”

  The weight of his words settled over the group. Rose straightened, her claws flexing slightly as a low growl rumbled in her throat. Randel tilted his head, his usual lighthearted demeanor replaced by a rare seriousness. Lil Guy and Baby Goblin glanced at each other, their bond apparent even in their shared silence.

  “But this jungle is ours,” Jannet declared, his tail slapping the ground with finality. “And we will make them respect it.”

  He allowed the statement to linger, the memetic resonance reinforcing his conviction. “To protect what’s ours, we need more. More strength. More numbers. More of our kind to stand with us. The humans have shown us their strength, their cleverness. They build nests with walls and gates to keep themselves safe. We can do the same.”

  Baby Goblin’s eyes widened as he interpreted, his small hands mimicking the motion of building as if he understood the concept on some instinctive level. Lil Guy nudged him, chittering softly, and the two exchanged a glance that was almost conspiratorial.

  “We’ve come far,” Jannet continued, his hiss softening slightly as he looked at #1, whose arm was already showing the faintest signs of regrowth. “We’ve survived because we’ve worked together, grown stronger together. But now we must grow again. We must become something greater.”

  He turned his gaze to the den, the place they had built with their claws and cunning. “This den is our home, but it’s not enough. We need more—more space, more defenses, and more allies.”

  Randel let out a soft trill of agreement, his tail flicking as he exchanged a look with Raphael and Michelangelo. They had grown skilled in building and crafting, their ingenuity a cornerstone of the group’s survival. The thought of expanding their home seemed to ignite a spark of excitement in their eyes.

  “And when we’re ready,” Jannet concluded, his golden eyes burning with determination, “we’ll take that human nest. We’ll make it ours. They’ll come to fear us, to understand that this land is not theirs to take.”

  A ripple of agreement spread through the group, their body language shifting to match Jannet’s resolve. Even Baby Goblin, so small and fragile compared to the others, let out a tiny hiss of approval, his determination evident in the way he straightened beside Lil Guy.

  For a moment, Jannet let the group absorb the weight of his words. Then he stepped back, the memetic resonance fading into a softer hum of reassurance. He watched as the group began to chatter amongst themselves, their energy renewed by the idea of growth and victory.

  Jannet turned his gaze to the den’s entrance, the dark jungle beyond beckoning with both promise and peril. They had won a battle, but the war for their home was only just beginning. But first, they would need to prepare. The jungle was vast, and somewhere within it, more of their kind waited to be found.