Twenty-seven men made up the numbers for our garrison north of Titanspring yet only a meager three of them had seen battle and tasted blood. Commander Endrew Blare was one of them, having fought in both the Great War and the rebellions beforehand. Along with Blare, Jarov Skyward and Conner Londring had also fought in the War, both nothing more than commoner conscripts plucked off their farmland to aid in the fight against invading denborn. After the War they found it difficult to return to their old farming lives and were granted placement in the garrison shortly after Blare had taken the job as well. With Connor and Jarov currently in the west for weapon and armour pickup Blare stood as the only battle-hardened soldier left here at the outpost and it clearly showed by comparison. The rest of us were hardly more than twenty years of age and had no idea what a war was truly about, a fact that Blare was quick to remind us of if we ever overestimated ourselves.
        The garrison’s main purpose had long since changed. Twenty years ago it served as an early warning response outpost, meant to detect invasions from beyond the Thicket Mountains and report it to Titanspring so as to keep them informed and prepared for raids. The garrison, mostly made of second-tier prospects for Titanspring’s city guard, were ordered to keep the invaders at bay for as long as they could so the guard could ready themselves at the city gates. During the course of the War, the outpost had been destroyed four times then quickly rebuilt and restocked with more men. Titanspring itself never fell. Needless to say, the garrison served its purpose, but its soldiers didn’t live very long lives.
        Without a war to fight or enemies to stay wary of the outpost has become more of a dumping ground of the city guard’s more tiresome duties. There was an unspoken agreement between the guard and us that any complaints from outside of the city’s walls were left up to the garrison to deal with while the guard dealt with the problems inside of Titanspring, though most of these issues seem to be found in the lower quarter in the various brothels and pubs and the guard was more than happy to deal with them. Meanwhile half our time was spent riding along the roads to Engal and its neighbouring settlements and the other half was spent up on the watch tower freezing our manhood off watching for riders to unload some of our frustration onto.
        As loath as we may have been to look up to the guard, it was still a job we all clamored for. Whereas during the War the garrison was full of barrel-bottom picks from the guard, now it had become a sort of stepping stone to reach the guard’s heights. Many soldiers are promoted from the garrison to the guard should they prove themselves, though it’s a rarity as there is no way to display our strength unless there is a city-wide tourney, and there hadn’t been one of those since King Yannick visited seven years ago, two years before I had joined the garrison myself.
        I believed the guard was not completely beyond my reach, however there were more than a few men here that would sooner wear the polished red armour before me. Deven Clearbrook stood as our unanimously chosen champion who had been more than a match against Jarov and Conner but could not yet find a weakness in Blare the mighty. Still, he trained more than all of us combined and dreamt to wear the armour of the Silver Wall, the crown’s drifting guard that travels the kingdom under secret orders, doling out orders or executions based on their judgment which is, by extension, the judgment of the king. It is a highly coveted position filled with only the strongest and bravest of all knights, barring the ones in the capital that serve as the king’s constant protectors. Even so, the Silver Wall is an immense accomplishment for anyone should they reach the level to be considered for a spot, and we’d all scoff at Deven for even bringing up the notion of achieving such a rank. Were it not for Sir Rolof Dennarion, a knight of the Silver Wall whose lineage was nothing more than the common filth you’d dredge out of the lowest parts of Grayverne, as well as Deven’s respectable devotion to his dream, we would have still been laughing. Some of us believed he may very well make it while others continued their scoffing, but whatever our opinions there was one sole fact: he was our superior.
        His path is a long one and his steps many, but my destination is far shorter. The guard is as far as I care to climb as there isn’t much else to grab onto after that. Becoming a knight is troublesome and attaining lordship isn’t possible within one lifetime as far as I’m concerned. It’s best to gain what you can and leave everything beyond that up to chance. It’s a somewhat depressing motto, but it’s realistic.
       
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        The dark-haired denborn orphan watched me with unblinking eyes, Blare’s pelt held tight to her pale skin by scaly grey-green hands; hands with claws that could very well rip my throat out if I wasn’t cautious. But my mind was elsewhere, focusing on the eyes that I had just recently been able to see. They were a near colourless blue like the misty ocean, shining brilliantly in the weak light of the overcast sky. Their pupils were darker than night sky and seemed to swallow the light. She stared back at me, not just in the eyes but all over, eventually accepting the possibility that I wasn’t an immediate threat. Her body began to shake and her mouth spoke wordlessly, managing to find her voice in broken syllables.
        “. . . am . . . Eng- . . . plea- . . .” she said in a near whisper.
        Her timid voice broke me from my reverie. “Apologies. I am Argyn Gallandro of the northern garrison of Titanspring. This is our outpost. You were brought here last night and have a fever, so I would recommend you lie back down until you are healthy.” I noticed her nakedness and felt abashed. “There is a reason for why you’re undressed . . .”
        “Why am I here?” Her voice shook with the same intensity of her body, not from the cold or embarrassment but from growing fear. “Why am I here and not in Engal? Why am I not in Engal? Why?”
        “It’s better for you to rest right now. I’ll explain-“
        “Where are my parents? Where are my mother and father?” Her eyes brimmed with tears until one broke free and slid down her scaled cheek. Others followed pursuit and they all dripped one by one off her chin, and as I watched her cry I couldn’t find a way to speak. She was asking She repeated her question a couple more times but by then she already knew the answer.
        She began to sob loudly, hot tears coursing down her face in rivulets and over her green scales that glistened in the moisture. The eyes I had stared at grew cloudy in their rain and it was the last I saw of them as she covered her face with her hands. She cried with all her heart until it was all I could do not to join her. I sat all the while, not wanting to talk but not wanting to leave her on her own either. I figured I would wait for her crying to end, no matter how long it took. I would wait some time.
        Her crying tapered off to whimpering then to sniffling. She crawled under the covers of my bed and shortly after her sobbing fell away to nothing she found sleep. I realized her arm still needed to be rewrapped but I decided to leave her until she woke up again, and hopefully by then she would be a little less upset.
        Her horns were the only part of her I could see on the bed. She wrapped herself in my sheets like a caterpillar in a  cocoon and slept clutching the pillow like a child’s doll. I pulled up the curtains to give her darkness, but left a slit open so a small shaft of light could keep the room from being too gloomy. Her breathing was still heavy from the fever, and when I touched her forehead her skin was burning to the touch, but she seemed peaceful in her sleep. Her tears had dried and left glittering trails along her face and her eyes were puffy and red. Her dry lips, cracked from the heat of the fire and the cold from the autumn weather were still full of colour and shape. She looked remarkably human in this state, until a small yawn showed rows of noticeably jagged teeth and fangs.
        Common knowledge dictated that denborn emotions are as difficult to interpret as an animal’s and their eyes don’t tear up the way a human’s does in sadness. Despite being proven false to me now, I found it hard to feel surprised with all the post-War propaganda spouted by every doomsayer on a street corner. Denborn are frightfully more human than I imagined, and I wondered how many other human traits they possess.
        I only hoped the belief that denborn cannot dream is mere assumption as well. For her sake.
 
---
 
        The girl woke up two hours later. There was still plenty of light in the day but she made no attempt to leave the bed. Instead she stayed huddled inside the sheets, wrapping herself tighter like a ball of twine, and would sit gazing at the deteriorating foliage outside the window. Winter was almost here and the greenery was all but gone save for the pines. Trees shirked of their leaves looked like deformed hands with many fingers sprouting from the ground, clawing towards the mist-shrouded sun. Beren always had this mist which rolls in thick in the morning and fades away for the most part of the day, but never truly disappeared. It would hang above the land like a second sky of pure white until the winter where the land would be too cold for fog at all. It was worse in the west but the Titanspring region still had its fair share. Today the fog wasn't so bad. I prayed the somewhat clear sky would help the orphan's mood a bit.
        I changed her arm's wrappings and gave her dinner without either complaint or comment, she simply stared blankly out the window towards Engal until the sky grew too dark and foggy to see even the ground beneath the sill. The patrol's lanterns below could only fend off so much of the fog that with a few steps in any direction it would become nothing more than an orange blur. Engal most likely didn't have intrusive fog like this, if any fog at all, though I doubt the girl was thinking about that while she was staring out the window.
        I had left her alone the majority of the day. I spent the hours playing the fool to everyone's japes. Insinuations were made at my expense, everyone assumed I had taken her to my room for recreational purposes, but no matter how hard I denied it they would all pretend it was the truth. Without a given name, they called the girl a title of their own devising; Horny Harriet and the Breeding Trough were among top contenders, but the name that stuck best for them was "Argyn's mistress." I ignored the derogation intended for her and laughed off such intended for me as it was just playful jabs, but the score was known to everyone in the outpost. Argyn Gallandro had taken a denborn girl for his own and won't let anyone else near her, even though no one knew why including myself.
        Jarrhen never showed his face for the rest of the night. Aron Plinth said he had run off to Titanspring to indulge in its pleasures, but I saw it as nothing more than him licking his wounds. Unfortunately, Jarrhen doesn't let go of grudges easily and he always repays humility in full. You’d always have to be careful about how you cross him in the training yard as he was never a gracious loser. That being said, I could handle my own against him and his lackeys if need be, but I can’t say the same for the girl in my bedroom. She may be a monster, but so is Jarrhen.
        I did spot one Pattric Lakehearth however, but without Jarrhen he was a different man. He didn’t joke with the others or even glance my way, which made me more unsettled than I cared to admit. He was always a silent, brooding kind of character . . . when he wasn’t with Jarrhen, of course. It led me to believe that Jarrhen may have latched onto him before anyone else could and somehow managed to infect him with his influence, but as the stories rolled in I began to learn that Pattric’s inherent quietness may have a more disturbing origin than mere shyness.
        Apparently Pattric was once a soldier of the city guard, as surprising as I first found it. He certainly knew his way about a sword more than me, but for one as rotten as him to be strutting around on those ramparts . . . Whatever the reason, he had fallen into our ranks and had chosen not to speak of it. Since he not only looked like a rat but acted as one too I suspected it might have had something to do with his aversion to doing any of his duties, though he makes it plain to see his nature has a dark tendency to it so his demotion could have more to it than I care to know. Jarrhen always acts like he wants to see this dark side of Pattric’s blossom and finds fun in provoking it, and it seems like a weakness of Pattric’s as he lets it happen and follows Jarrhen instead of the other way around. Something told me there’s more to Pattric than meets the eye, but as for why he lets Jarrhen hold his leash was beyond me.
        Back in my room the orphan girl still hadn’t grown to trust me yet. She wasn’t very active and she let me go near her to change her wrappings, but whenever I make a movement or noise there were flickers of alarm in her eyes. One way to look at it was that she hadn’t completely lost her self-preservation instinct yet, so at least there’s that.
        Her hair was still unwashed and clumped in parts, not to mention singed at the edges. I wiped off most of the grime from the exposed parts of her body but her skin was slick with sweat from the fever. I sat on the aged wooden chest by the window and stretched my aches away. The girl's diamond eyes had seemingly lost their shine.
        "What is your name?" I asked softly, though I didn't expect an answer and I didn't receive one. "What kind of denborn are you? I don't think I've seen such horns before."
        What I said was true, I had never seen anything in the world quite like her before, though I had seen plenty of denborn in my life. Titanspring's guard wants nothing to do with denborn affairs and they dump all their troubles onto us so I'm no stranger to their kinds. I've probably met more denborn than humans in my life.
        Not that denborn are all that different from humans, aside from their monstrous appearances. They have fights and battles and wars (or did, before the Great War ended them all) yet they also build houses and relationships and communities and plant crops and, most importantly of all, bend their knee to the kings of Veradan, including King Yannick of our country of Beren. Rather, it was the denborn themselves that offered to pledge fealty, but history has it rewritten that they were subjugated to the kings' power forcefully. Our kings have a fondness for omnipotence and they want future generations to acknowledge the fact.
        Slowly and surely the kingdom of Beren became lousy with the creatures it once sought to kill. Eventually there were more races of denborn in the kingdom than there were noble Houses, and they had taken their own towns as well. None of them were terribly large things, but as isolated communities they were left to their own devices more often than not and the king’s servicemen had grown more lax in their comings and goings about these towns. They may very well have been their own small countries with no one around to govern them but themselves.
        There are the Khemir, winged beastmen with feathers of every colour that make their streets look like a dancing rainbow; the Capssini with their thick limbs and brawny stature that make them perfect for the mines they labour in over by Peaceguard in the west; the bartering Vanitar that work in conjunction with one another and have amassed an uncomfortable sum of coin that they store in their established capital town of Gelden on the southern coast, and the vagrant Archaia that spend their lives on the roads between settlements and have no capital of their own. These are races that I have seen with my own eyes but there are countless more that I have yet to see or even hear about in the world, but to us humans they are all denborn; a derogatory blanket term for all the races that defied us in the War.
        And this was one race that I couldn’t find in memory. Her horns were gnarled like strangled roots and one of them was stilted in growth, her scales shone with more colours than a rainbow yet kept a consistent green at times. Her tail was short and stumpy but the rest of her body was thin and lithe yet showing no signs of malnutrition. Her claw-hands were most peculiar of all, they seemed like they couldn't grip anything. I wondered how cruel the gods were to give a creature such hands that serve no purpose. -She may as well have been born with nothing more than stumps beyond her wrists,- I thought, but with her disproportionate thumbs she ended up being able to at least hold the sheets that she wreathed herself in.
        “I understand you’ve been through a lot, but I will need to ask you a few questions.” I sounded gentler than I had wanted, but the girl made no sign of noticing. Her dirty bangs still hung like a dark cloud over her eyes and her head lulled back and forth slowly, as if she was sleeping while sitting up. “We will need as much information as you can manage.”
        I began my round of questioning but I soon realized it wouldn’t have results. The girl kept her silence. And as the sky turned a violent orange with purple chasing I gave up, falling into silence along with her, defeated. I avoided asking about her family or the other residents to keep from upsetting her, strictly inquiring only about whoever might have committed the crime, but after it all I considered probing her a little more just to get a reaction. She had denied my existence as it were, or perhaps she was lost in her own world, a world where Engal still stood and her family still lived. She hadn’t seen the ruins of Engal, so perhaps she’s trying to imagine what the land would look like without the brick lain buildings and stables. Part of me hoped she would never see the devastation for her sake, but sometimes such closure is needed to rebuild what’s broken.
        Whether it was out of pity or sympathy I chose not to provoke her, instead I pushed the plate of cold stew she had not yet eaten closer to her and left the room. -I’m running away,- I thought to myself. -I believe I can’t help her, and for all I know it may very well be true. But what if I can help her?-
        The question set my stomach to roiling as I walked through the feasting tables of the outpost, not even hearing their hooting calls as I set my mind to ponder.
        -And if not me, then who else?-