**Lira Longears's Log, Supplemental**
**Republic Guardian Force Cadet – Class 1**
**Shire Valley Training Grounds recording**
**33 days after Rothgard's Fall**
Steel sings overhead. Mud claims the living. Tonight we learn what tomorrow demands.
The night had settled into a profound stillness. Canvas tents glowed faintly from within where a few cadets still whispered or shifted on their thin mats, but most of the company of one hundred twenty had surrendered to exhaustion two hours earlier. Lira Longears lay sprawled inside her one-man shelter, long rabbit ears folded loosely against her skull, fluffy tail curled tight against her side. Sleep had come hard and deep, the kind that erased the ache in her legs from the day's endless marches and range drills. The air smelled of pine and damp earth, cool enough that her breath fogged faintly against the dark fabric above her.
Then the world tore open.
A thunderous explosion ripped through the tree line to the east, the ground lurching beneath her as though the mountain itself had been struck. Lira jolted upright, heart slamming against her ribs, ears shooting straight up. Shouts erupted everywhere—raw, profane bursts of adrenaline and confusion. Another blast followed, closer, and the night sky ignited with streaks of fire whipping overhead like lethal comets. Their cracking booms split the air like whips, each snap accompanied by the wet splintering of branches and the patter of shredded foliage raining down on the tents.
"Out! Out! Out!" Instructors roared, boots kicking tent flaps aside. "Gear up and move! This is not a drill—move your asses!"
Lira scrambled, paws fumbling for her rucksack in the sudden dark. Her ears flattened against the whip-crack of passing streaks. She shoved her feet into boots, yanked the laces tight with trembling fingers, and crawled out into chaos. Kira was already beside her, twin tails lashing, foxkin eyes wide with raw fear as she slung her own pack. "Where are we going?" Kira gasped, voice cracking. "I can't see anything!"
Torin appeared at Kira's shoulder, single tail rigid, cat-kin ears pinned back. He grabbed Lira's arm, but his grip shook. "Stay low—follow the voices. I don't know where they're leading us, but we move or we die here."
The company surged forward in a ragged, stumbling mass, instructors barking corrections and shoving stragglers into line. They were herded away from the tents and into the dark forest, boots pounding over roots and needles. Streaks of fire continued to lash the night, shattering branches and sending showers of splinters and leaves cascading around them. Lira ran bent low, heart hammering so hard she tasted copper. She had no idea which direction was safe. The ground sloped downward, but every explosion seemed to come from everywhere at once. Bits of wood stung her ears and arms. Disoriented shouts rose from the cadets around her; no one knew where the screaming instructors were driving them.
Kira's grip tightened, her foxkin eyes cutting through the gloom like twin lanterns. "Stay with me—I can see the path!" she hissed, guiding Lira and Garrick around roots and low branches.
Then the flash bangs detonated.
Sharp pops sounded from both flanks of the column, and the forest erupted in blinding white light. Each flash seared Lira's sensitive night vision to nothing. A split second later the concussive cracks slammed into her long rabbit ears like physical blows, ringing them with a high-pitched whine that drowned out everything else. The world vanished in blinding white, night vision gone, hearing reduced to a painful haze. Beastkin advantages stripped away in an instant. Panic clawed up her throat as she stumbled, completely disoriented in the sudden darkness that followed the flashes.
"Thahrnren!" Lira snarled, the rabbitkin curse ripping out of her like a bitten-off scream.
Kira's voice cracked beside her. "Taylzfyr!" The foxkin's twin tails lashed wildly as she groped for Lira's arm, her night vision advantage burned away in the same instant. "Vixshred—I can't see—the lights took everything!"
Torin's grip tightened on Lira's other side, his usual calm fractured. "Shadobled!" he hissed as another round of flash bangs popped among them, white light blooming again. The instructors changed the path once more, shoving the column left, then right, then left again. "Stay with the voices—don't stop. I don't know where they're leading us, but stopping means we stay in the open."
The column blundered forward, completely lost. Tracers whipped by too close, one snapping past Lira's ear with a vicious crack that showered her in bark splinters. "Threnrip!" she snarled again, ears ringing. Kira echoed her with a sharp "Taylshred!" as a tracer shattered a branch inches above her head. Torin's "Peltrip!" cut through the chaos when a third round of flash bangs detonated right among the recruits, white light exploding once more and erasing what little vision had returned.
Borin Ironvein powered forward like a small boulder, dwarf shoulders squared, but even his voice carried an edge of uncertainty. "Keep moving—whatever this is, the instructors want us at the river. I think. Gods, I can't see a damned thing."
Sylvana Starveil slipped through the chaos like a shadow, elven grace strained for the first time. "The river—yes—I hear water ahead," she whispered, voice tight with disorientation. "But the fire in the sky… I do not know where it ends."
They reached the shallows in a stumbling, gasping wave. Moonlight glinted on the surface of the slow-moving river, but the instructors had prepared the crossing. A dense net of barbed wire stretched across the shallows, sagging just inches above the muddy bottom. The water itself was only knee-deep, but the wire turned the entire stretch into a gauntlet.
"Down! Crawl under it!" the Class 2 drill instructor bellowed. "Noses to the mud—breathe or drown, your choice. Move!"
Lira dropped to her belly without hesitation, the cold mud soaking instantly through her uniform. The wire pressed against her back, barbs snagging fabric and skin. Panic surged as she pushed forward on elbows and knees, ears pinned flat, nose barely clearing the surface. Mud filled her nostrils; she forced shallow breaths through her mouth when she could, gagging at the taste of silt. Her fluffy tail dragged heavy behind her, catching on barbs and yanking her back. A barb tore a hot line across her shoulder. "Wahrenkutt!" she snarled, the curse raw and furious.
Beside her, Kira crawled with foxkin desperation, twin tails plastered flat against her back. "Vixfyr!" she gasped between breaths, voice muffled and shaking, as another barb snagged her side. "I can't see the end of this—stay with me!"
Torin slid through the narrow gaps with cat-kin agility, but his breathing came in sharp, disoriented bursts. "Clawbleed!" he hissed as a tracer cracked overhead and a barb raked his arm. "Eyes forward—don't look up. I don't know where they're leading us after this, but stopping means we stay in the wire."
Borin powered through like a living bulldozer, his broad frame shoving wire aside where it snagged, grunting with each heave. "This is nothing compared to a collapsed mine shaft," he rumbled, voice steady but edged with the same uncertainty everyone felt. "Just keep pushing, lass—whatever's on the other side, we face it together."
Sylvana flowed through the wire like water itself, elven limbs finding every gap, but her breathing was no longer calm. "The river remembers," she whispered, almost reverent yet strained. "We flow with it—wherever it leads."
Garrick stayed close to Lira, hazel eyes fierce but wide with disorientation as he shouldered wire aside for her when it pressed too close. "You've got this," he said between gritted teeth. "One elbow after the other. I don't know where they're taking us, but we're almost clear."
Lira's lungs burned, mud caking her face and ears, but the far bank grew nearer with every agonizing inch. Streaks of fire continued to crack overhead, their glow painting the water in fleeting streaks of death. She pushed harder, resolve burning hotter than the panic clawing at her chest. This was the price. This was the forge.
They emerged on the opposite bank one by one, gasping, dripping, and covered in filth. Instructors waited, faces impassive in the starlight, already forming them back into lines for the next evolution. Lira collapsed to her knees for a single breath, then forced herself upright. Kira offered a mud-smeared hand; Lira took it, their grips tight.
The night was no longer quiet. But in the shared exhaustion, in the small nods and steadying touches between them, something unbreakable was beginning to form.