Tokara first chapter

The little girl awoke with a scream in her throat. The fire around her blazed with a furious and uncontrollable intensity. The house that was once so stable and comforting crumbled around her, as bewildered and terrified she stumbled down the steps, searching for air to breathe. She just wanted to breathe, she couldn't focus on the sounds of the panicked masses fighting for escape or the explosions of the unending onslaught. Nor could she hear the wails of the mothers losing their children before their eyes. She could only focus on tearing herself away from the searing pain within her lungs...

Dezba tilted her head back exposing the lighter fur under her jawline running down her chest. The moon shone dull behind the haze of smoke. She felt a a yearning howl threaten to rise in her throat and turned away. The last glowing flames slowly formed the remaining ashes that lay where the once beautiful and peaceful village of the Yitesh people lived, nestled in the foothills of the grand mountains. A more lush landscape, with such vitality and beauty did not exist for many hundreds of miles around Yitesh. Though the worst of the attacks had taken place over two nights ago, the stench of death and destruction were too overwhelming for her powerful sense of smell. She pulled a small, damp leather cloth soaked in a poultice of mixed herbs and magicked from the strap of her lower garment and held it over her muzzle as she walked. She felt her ear twitch, at the sound of a howl and knew that the rest of the tribe had already passed through the village. But she lingered, sensing something was not right. She picked up am unusual and unsettling scent. The hair thick gray fur on her neck stood up and she followed cautiously. There amongst the brush in the outer edge of the forest was a girl. A human girl! No more than five years of age. She lay limp on the ground, breathing but unconscious, no doubt a child of one of the village families. She bent down to touch the girl's cheek, still warm, the blood was running smoothly through her veins, but she was very weak. The anxiety within her subsided and Dezba felt a strange twinge of sympathy for the child. "The girl is human," she thought "but my tribe is the one responsible for all of this destruction. Our warriors unleashed such a dark fury upon them." And that fury had been as much for the resources as for the hatred of humans that had been passed down for so many generations that it was deeply embedded within their hearts.