There was a minute left until the battle and Boss still hadn't shown up yet. I debated whether to wait for her or not with Canary.

"We need Boss for this attack, Canary."

Canary shut his eyes and then opened them. "No we don't. The Flock needs to be able to know that their leader isn't going to change plans at the last minute."

He was right, of course. "Why do you always have to be right?" I asked, looking over at the Guard base.

The base itself was a simple building, quite unlike Compound one. Its walls looked to be made of rough hewed stone and it was possibly the most foreboding spot on the island for us at the time. There was a constant patrol of griffins flying around it. They'd fly for a few minutes and then switch out with another griffin.

I smiled like I had a carefully crafted plan that would get us in there and fighting. The truth was I had the barest semblance of plan and that plan involved a bit of running and screaming and more than a few barrier spells.

"Flock." It was time to fight. "Here's what we have to do. I need all of you to keep up your barriers spells and long as you can so that we are not obliterated by arrows. Canary, I need you to cast fireball and draw the griffons from the sky down to the ground so we can fight them."

Canary nodded at me and reached into his pouch for the prepared spell.

I turned to Floyd who looked like some kind of odd turtle with hooves. His chosen armor swallowed up most of his body and he could just slowly move around in it.

"Floyd, with your heavy plate armor, your job is to sit there and draw any spells that they try to cast. If I'm right, most will just bounce off." I turned to face Skinner, his grisly cap still on his head.

I had managed to ignore the fact that a similar one rested on my hand. "Skinner, I need your assistance. Once the griffins are taken care of, if we haven't lost that many of the Flock, you and I will try to infiltrate their base and back stab or otherwise disable as much of them as we can before we are caught." I turned back to the rest of the troops while Skinner nodded.

"The rest of you; whenever we get to the top, and I do say WHEN not if, that will be your cue to rush the fortress with your barriers out. If fate smiles down on us, than that will be just enough time for Boss to arrive with reinforcements. If not... I expect every single one of you to fight your very best. Good luck and get hats." I nodded at them.

Each one of their faces grew serious. "Yes sir."

Canary had a grim smile on his face. "Shall I start the ceremony?"

His wording left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. "Go for it."

He closed his eyes and his body seemed to tense up in concentration. "Fireball." He whispered. The small ball of fire clipped one of the griffins in the wing and it tumbled down like an airplane in a death spiral. It would've been comedic if it didn't look so painful. The griffin's face looked like it was torn into a scream and soon he did start screaming.

It was gut wrenching. And then eight griffins flew over from the roof top of the building with their eyes a lit with the fire of revenge.

I had miscounted. I had expected four griffins.

The plan had barely been in action for five seconds and it was already falling apart. "FLOCK! Prepare for attack!"

The griffins were lightly armed with spears and one carried a knife in it's talons. A few of them had chain mail.

After a few moments of thinking, during which the griffins were flying towards us, I realized why; They were not worried about an air strike. All of their ground troops were probably heavily armored goliaths.

The enemy was greeted by a single stone thrown at them that didn't even fly far enough in the air to hit them. It hit the ground and pretty much summarized our chances.

"Flock. FIREBALL!" The griffons were greeted by fifteen fireballs to the face. To be honest, that part of the plan went a whole lot smoother than I expected it to.

They fell down from the sky like shot birds with their feathers aflame. The Flock pounced on top of the griffons and began killing them.

I ran forward and carefully slit their necks. It occurred to me that I was probably going to have a bit of a nervous breakdown once I had the island in control. Everytime my knife passed through there body it felt I was dragging a particularly sharp piece of myself through there. It was a pretty disgusting bit of feedback. Especially since I was holding the knife in my mouth and the griffon blood got everywhere and UGhh.

I nodded at Skinner. "It's our move now. Canary, hold the ground out here and try to be as distracting as possible."

He smiled and nodded. "Yes sir."

I must've had half of my face covered in blood. That's what it felt like at least. I spat the blade out onto my leg so I could use my mouth to channel other spells.

I nudged skinner and pointed at the fort. There was quite a bit of rubble; we had chosen a very strategic spot by attacking from behind the remains of a broken building.

I ducked into the mess of the collapsed concrete and began, to the best of my ability, to sneak around to the side of the fort without being seen. I really wished I didn't have stripes.

It made me paranoid to have striped. My heart felt like it was beating out of my chest and every few seconds that I thought they were looking for anything I pressed myself against the rock and did my best to blend in.

I didn't think it was effective. After a long while of trudging through ruined buildings we were out of cover. I looked around desperately and found nothing we could use. There was only a straight shot from our position to the back door.

I looked at Skinner and nodded. "Run for it."

And then from the front of the fort there was a muffle explosion and a fireball flew over head. I figured that was the best cue I was ever going to get.

I ran up to the door with Skinner close behind me and, without thinking, drew my new knife into my mouth and slashed down the crack of the door.

I heard the distinctive sound of metal cutting metal. I pushed the door open and realized I had successfully cut though the dead bolt.

And then the stealth part of our mission began.

I had to think for a minute just how to stealthily kill someone. Backstabbing sounded like a good idea, but so did throat slitting. I finally decided on a mixture of both.

There was literally not a soul around the back part of the building and I took the time to remember a few details of the innards of the place.

There were more marble floors. Which is bad because I have hooves.

And there went my plan...

I turned to Skinner, and saw, to my horror, that he was taking his skin 'hats' and placing them on his hooves. It was a ludicrous idea but I didn't have any others. "Skinner, give me some of those hats so I can do that."

And trust me, the sensation of slipping your hoof into a sack of flesh so that you didn't make as much noise was just as disgusting as you think it was.

But hey. I was stealthyish.

I mean, I squelched with every step instead of making a clopping noise.

It was an ok trade off. I guess.

The walls had a few paintings on them and I tried not to look too closely at them. It seemed like a very good way to get distracted.

It was very depressing, really. I was taking down what remained of an entire island's government system just so I could rule over it and assert my dominance over everything I could. Because really, I don't think anybody could've at that point.

There was a long corridor to our right and a single metal door to our left. I looked at Skinner. "Which should we go?"

He blinked at me. "You're the leader, you decide!"

I resisted the urge to facehoof. I really needed to get decent henchmen after this.

I walked over to the metal door and tried the door knob. And then blinked. How the hell did I just try the door knob with a hoof? I shook my head. "Worry about it later."

It was locked, regardless. I smiled at my knife and grabbed it back into my mouth from my chest. I carefully cut the dead bolt from the door and pushed it open. It was an armory. Armor and amulets and swords and maces and all sorts of things were still on the walls.

I smiled. I knew exactly where I was going to go when I took this place. And it was a when, not an if. I had to take this place. I was going to take this place.

There was no half way point. I had an entire island depending on me.

I looked at Skinner. "Hey. It's the other way and we need to be stealthy." I squelched my way over to the long corridor and looked up. The corridor looked to be two stories high and on the inward facing side there were stain glass windows.

We made our way across the building in total silence.

And that's when we encountered our first guard. He was slowly patrolling the next corridor in a pattern that I noted to be highly inefficient.

In a flash I was behind him and my knife was buried into his back. He fell on top of me and made very little noise. I dragged his body to the armory far out of the way of the door and journeyed back. I sighed and frowned at the sizable blood trail that led back to the armory. "Well. I didn't think that through."

Skinner chuckled. "Neither did I, sir."

I turned my head so fast my neck cracked. "Did you just show personality?" My eyes were wide.

He shook his head. "No sir. Or at least, I don't think I did."

I clenched my teeth. I had to deal with the varying intelligence of my lessers after this.

I sighed and kept walking forward while trying to ignore the fact that my entire back was covered in his blood from where the guard had fallen against me.

I had my knife at chest level so I could easily reach down to grab it in my mouth when the time came.

The second guard was far more of an issue. Skinner took care of him with his own sharp skinning knife and the stupid guard let out a squeal before Skinner put him down.

I had to note that Skinner had quite the potential for stealth operations.

As it was, his squeal forced us to cower against the walls and wait to see if we were to be overrun. And I was forced to face the reality of my plans. I had to clear out two more dens of things which would not find it any disservice to themselves to kill me and maim my body into a few million pieces.

I closed my eyes and tried to remain calm. I was not meant to be a fighter.

My heart thudded hard against my ribcage like it was a caged demon trying to break free from my cursed flesh.

I blinked. I was getting poetic in my stress.

That wasn't a good sign.

Skinner nudged me. "Are you ok, sir?"

I nodded. "I'm fine. Just... thinking."

He pointed down the hall. "We'll have time to think when we take this place. We need to keep moving, sir." I smiled at him.

"That's right." I unpressed myself from the wall and shook my head to try to clear it. I had too many thoughts cluttering it. I nodded and continued down the hall.

I was gasping for breath when we made our third kill. It had been a close one and the zebra had almost made it away from us before we could fully put it down. My front was spattered with blood from throwing myself into him and slicing open his stomach.

Skinner slit his throat and put him out of his misery.

I smiled. "You are good at this."

"Thank you sir." He seemed like he had more of a personality than I did half the time.

I felt like smashing my head into the stone walls when we killed the fourth one. I pulled out my ruby and slipped into the spell.

There were forty heavily armed troops waiting for the front gates to open to swarm the fifteen or so troops I had. I continued looking in the spell. There was a massive Dog, the likes of which I had never seen on the roof along with

I sighed. "Skinner. We have to split up." I shook my head. There was no way he was going to come back from my mission.

He looked at me sharply. "Sir?"

I pointed up. "The leader is up there. I'm going to distract him." I pointed down. "I need you to distract the group of dogs downstairs."

He looked down. "But sir..."

I nodded. "I know. Both of our tasks are suicidal. Just..." I sighed. This was depressing. I really didn't want to die and odds were that Skinner was the closest thing to companionship I was going to get for a long time. I closed my eyes for a minute. When I opened them, I realized he was crying.

"Nobody told you. There's an Alpha up there. He's going to tear you limb from limb." He shook his head and a few more tears fell.

I turned and looked at him. "An Alpha is the big dog, right?"

He nodded and kept crying. "You are our best hope... most of the others can't think well and I can barely think... When you said you were going to take on the Guard first... we only followed because we knew we'd die honorably. All the enthusiasm... It's real." He looked down.

I looked at him. "What?" I didn't understand.

"They did something to us in the mines. They messed with our heads; made it almost impossible not to take orders. Canary told us that if you took the island you'd figure out a way to fix us..."

I looked down. I felt horrible in a way. Something shifted around my heart. "But I will."

He looked back at me, his eyes watery. "What will you do?" His blood spattered face had clear trails from the tears.

"I'm going to kill that dog. By hell or high water that thing is dead." It was odd. It felt like liquid courage was flowing through my veins. I felt like I could literally do anything. My senses felt supercharged and the air tasted of crimson.

Skinner looked at me for a long moment. "It feels like you could actually pull it off. And if there were ever an Alpha to do it, it's this one. He believes in honor."

I was almost speechless at how much my fellow zebra was talking. "And how should I use that to my advantage?"

He smiled lightly. He had hope in his eyes. "Challenge him to a duel."

I blinked. "A duel?"

The light quickly faded. "I was a Canary in Compound One. Grim, the Alpha, was the head of the place. He was a very active head of the place and took it pretty personal if someone didn't bow to the system quick enough. He'd present them with an ultimatum."

I nodded. "An ultimatum?"

"He'd draw a circle on the ground and grab the slave and place him in the slave in it. Then he'd say that if he took a step outside of the circle before the slave did, that he would give them their freedom. He called all of the slaves into the main room at once to let them watch."

I looked at him oddly. "Sounds... rather lax in security."

"He only did it twice while I was there. Most of the time it was over in less than ten seconds. He would grab their legs and their head and then pull..."

I winced, the mental image rather disturbing. "And then they died."

He nodded. "They just burst open like balloons. I heard a rumor though."

I sighed. "What?"

"He apparently lost once to some guy. He let them go."

"So... I've just got to challenge him and then get him to step outside of the circle?"

"Yeah. You just have to last long enough for him to slip up and then you'll win. I hope."

I nodded. It was probably my only hope.

I paused for a moment.

I was being stupid about the entire thing.

Whoever said I had to play fair?

My eyes lit up and I smirked. "Instead of distracting the enemy downstairs, accompany me back to the armory." I had an idea. A delightfully evil idea.