"What's your name?" the younger woman asked me as we trudged through the snow back toward the caravan.

  "Helena," I replied. "What about you two?"

  "Phoebe. And my mom's name is Juliana." Phoebe was in better shape than her mother so she was helping her walk. One of her legs had been broken in the scramble to get away from the goblins and she couldn't bear any weight on it. Phoebe had slashes on her arms from when she had tried to fight the goblins off but luckily none of them were particularly deep so her bandages were good enough for now. Piper would probably be able to heal both of them up without any trouble.

  "Nice to meet you." I kept things short with the two of them, mostly because I was staying alert for any goblins I might have missed on the walk back. We were almost back to the caravan now and the first light was trickling through the pine trees. It would have been a nice picturesque scene if it wasn't for the inherent danger of the forest in a world with monsters in it.

  One of the snow leopardkin were the first to spot us when we got close to the camp. It was the younger sister Talia. She was one of the people watching the perimeter. "You found survivors?" she asked in shock.

  "Yes, both of them are hurt and one of them broke their leg. Where's Piper at?"

  "Piper's waiting by the lead wagon while the boys work at dragging the broken carriage off the road," she replied.

  "Is our carriage destroyed or is it salvageable?" Phoebe asked.

  Talia shrugged, "Not sure. I didn't get a close look at it." She turned back to me. "Go ahead and take them over to Piper. I'm still patrolling the surroundings."

  "Got it. Come on, this way," I told the two dogkin as we headed over.

  Piper ran over the moment she saw us and helped Juliana over to a mat that had been laid on the floor. "Any sign of other survivors?" she asked me.

  "No signs of other survivors. I saw a corpse but that one looked old," I replied.

  "Did you kill all the goblins?"

  I shook my head. "No, I focused on getting these two out first, but I don't think there were many left."

  Piper frowned. "I think you should go finish them off before—"

  "Who are those people!?" The drakken who had tried to stop us from saving Korr'tak suddenly rushed over looking angry.

  "Survivors from the goblin attack," I said while turning to him.

  "You! You're supposed to be our guard! You can't go running off to help other people when you're supposed to be protecting us!" he yelled.

  "What's going on here?" Korr'tak asked. He was looking a lot better than he had when I saw him earlier. More put together.

  "The guard you hired for us ran off again!" the drakken huffed.

  "You realize the first time I 'ran off' was to go save Korr'tak's life, right?" I asked.

  The drakken's lip raised enough for me to see his large gritted teeth. This guy was baring his fangs at me. I clenched my fists as hard as I could to reel in my instincts. It took all of my willpower not to just gouge out his throat for challenging me like this. I stood up and walked away from him. I could hear him continuing to yell over my shoulder as I put distance between us. I had to go get Maxwell to smooth things over, things could go bad if I didn't walk away right now. Fuck that guy. I'll go kill the rest of the goblins to blow off steam.

  I followed Maxwell's familiar scent right to him. He was one of the people patrolling the perimeter of the paused caravan. "Maxwell!" I called out.

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  He turned to me and waved as I walked up to him. "Helena, are you okay?"

  I took a breath after realizing how angry I must have looked. "I rescued two of the people who owned the caravan in the front. When I took them to Piper for healing one of the caravan guys started yelling at me." I paused and switched to using the rings. ("It took everything I had to walk away from him without tearing his throat out. Will you go talk to him and smooth things over? I'm going to go back and finish off the goblins I left, I need to hurt something.")

  "Sure, you go ahead. I'll talk to Valkin about covering this length of the perimeter. Some beastkin also suffer from bouts of anger, I'm sure he'll understand."

  "Are you sure it's okay to tell him about that part? He's already wary of me," I asked with concern.

  He nodded. "Trust me, Helena. I'll smooth things over, just go finish off all the goblins. We can't leave those to fester here and make this road a nightmare to travel."

  I took a deep breath. "Okay. I'm going then."

  Following the earlier scents, I walked right back into the woods and avoided anyone from the caravan so I wouldn't have to talk to any of them. Some of the anger I had tamped down simmered back to the top as I thought about how that guy was yelling at me. I had never been so quick to anger before but that guy's facial features triggered a response from my umber hound side and it was one of the first times I had to completely reject my instincts without being able to redirect that somewhere else. That situation could have gone very badly. It was a close call.

  Not long later, I reached the mouth of the cave again to find new goblins at the front. They were sitting at the fire again and bickering as if nothing had even happened, they didn't seem any more alert after the other two goblins had gone missing. I let myself shift back into my umber hound form and let the rush of anger unwind in me like a released spring. A fraction of a second later my claws had driven themselves through the head of the two goblins and I flung the bodies into the pile where I had thrown the others.

  I growled and entered the cave once again. I had to steady my anger and quiet my growling so I could click my tongue to take advantage of my improved hearing. They hadn't replaced the ambush goblin yet. I continued forward until I reached the crossroad intersection I had traveled before. There were more goblins here, six were having an argument. I couldn't understand their language but they seemed to be fighting over the possessions of the corpses I had left.

  Tired of observing, I dashed forward and started to kill them. I slashed my claws through the chests of two of them before grabbing a third and flinging its body into two others. I rent my claws through the last standing one before turning and stomping on the three that I had knocked over. Goblins had never been a challenge for me, even when I first woke up as an umber hound hybrid, but the fights were pathetic now. The dagger they had been fighting over was covered in rust and grime, it wasn't something worth bothering with.

  I continued forward through one of the other tunnels I hadn't checked before. Like the other paths in this crossroad, these tunnels were longer than the others. I gagged when I reached the end. This place was like a graveyard. It was where the goblins dumped the corpses of other dead goblins that died in their den. Goblins were already gross and disgusting but these ones left out to rot were even worse. I wish Luna was here to burn this to ash. This place was another dead end though, so I could turn around and head back to the crossroads.

  I turned down the last path, careful not to get turned around. Not long down the tunnel, I could hear more goblin chatter. The remainder of the living goblins were through here. I slowed my gait, not wanting to be spotted too soon so that I could get an idea of how many would be down here. Two guards were sitting near the entrance and I took them out before they could react and dragged them back into the tunnel before we could be seen. When I was finished with that I peeked around the corner into the large cavern the goblins had taken over.

  There were a lot of goblins here, much more than I had expected. A few hundred maybe. Above the cavern was a large hole in the roof that let in some of the morning sun. I wouldn't even be able to smoke them out, the cavern would let any trapped smoke out through the ceiling like a chimney. I again wished Luna were here, killing large crowds was her specialty. I think there may be too many here for me to kill before the caravan gets impatient while waiting for me to return. The thought irked me. Why should I care about their impatience? I saved Korr'tak's life and that drakken had the gall to yell at me for rescuing others.

  Before I realized what I was doing I had run into the large crowd and started killing the goblins in front of me. A loud horn blew and I continued to tear through every goblin I could find. They fell away like shredded paper as I let my claws tear through them and I embraced the rage inside of me. After I had killed a few dozen, a bolt of inspiration hit me. I mentally wrapped my hand around that knot of mana in my chest and squeezed it while thinking of that fire-maned zebra from the dungeon.

  My body shifted and I felt warm. My limbs lengthened until I was comfortably on four hooves galloping through the goblins and spreading trails of fire in my wake. I leapt over and trampled the goblins as my fire spread to their makeshift huts and mats. Some of them leapt at me and tried to stab me but I felt faster than ever. My reaction time didn't slow from my umber hound form so it was simple to dodge and weave between the ones that had tried to attack me before they were lit ablaze by my trailing fire.

  The flames lapped at my hide but they didn't hurt me, couldn't hurt me. I realized at that moment what I had gotten from eating the zebra heart. Immunity to flames. Different from heat, to the chagrin of my past self who had sweltered in the heat of that floor, but pretty strong nonetheless. The fire spread through the cave and the air began to turn black with smoke as everything around me burned. The distinct instincts I felt from the fire zebra wasn't worried about the smoke so I wasn't either. Soon I found myself near where I had started and I turned back to see the devastation I had left in my path. My mane crackled and my instincts told me that there wasn't much air left in the cavern, most of it was fueling the burning all around me. This wasn't much cause for concern because whatever magic let me spread my flames also let me breathe the smoke and ash in place of air. I assumed it would be unsafe to shift back though.

  I walked the outside of the cavern looking for other tunnels or exists and eventually made another full circle to where I started again. I had killed all of them in the inferno I created here. I looked up at the hole in the ceiling. It wasn't noon yet, I had made good time.

  Carefully I entered the cavern in my zebra form while tightening my hold on my flames. I had to be careful on my hooves here to avoid twisting my legs on this uneven ground, or so my zebra instincts told me. I walked through the cramped tunnels on shaky hooves through each of the paths to destroy everything and hopefully stymie any other goblins' attempts to resettle here. It wasn't until I reached the mouth of the cave and I was sure there was enough air for me to breathe again that I shifted back to my human form.

  I panted as I leaned my body against the dry wall of the cave's mouth and wiped the sweat from my brow. The exertion of holding that form for as long as I did had winded me. I hadn't even realized how taxing it was until I shifted back. I walked over to the four goblins I had left in the bushes outside and tossed them back into the spreading fire inside the cave. Soon the snow and lack of oxygen would snuff out the flames here and hopefully there would be nothing left for the goblins to rebuild with.

  After sniffing the air and catching a scent, I walked back toward the caravan.

  Hello! This was an exciting one to write! Helena is starting to practice her new transformation powers a little bit. It's a really cool power that's kind of limited in use right now, but this seemed like the perfect place to test things out! I hope you enjoyed! Thanks for reading!

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