The hammers fell and she questioned whether it was time. She realized then that she did not have the will to do it. A life taken in righteous combat? She was not above that. But what the Horde would do would be a cruelty. She did not have the courage to do what she must, and the children would suffer.

She shook her head, and decided then that they would not have the children.

She held each of them as she started.

"One sip, don't worry about the bitterness, it will all be better soon." the lie leapt out of her mouth just ahead of the nausea.

She had been traded from her parents due to her piety, and they had... it was a hard road here. She wondered if it was her treatment that had hardened her. When she told the Guardian Primal of what they had done he had chided her, asked why she had not dressed as a boy to hide herself.

It was then that she refused to unsex herself for their desire. They wanted her to bind herself, to accept their crude glances as she dressed and undressed in the page's chambers. The first hands had been met with fists. The second with a knife.

They had called her cold, unwilling to drink with them when they snuck off during Devotion. The life of a Guardian's wife was far better than signing into the Book of the Blessed. She refused their proposals, their advances. She became strong, but ready to attack anyone who touched her, prepared to kill to defend her temple.

By the time she had given the last draught the first hole appeared. It was a matter of minutes before the chamber was opened wide enough for the first of them to come through. It was a thin creature, its skin the colors of the evergreens of the Guardian's homeland. She hadn't thought of that place of long winters since she arrived there, not yet a woman. Now, she prepared to strike and thought of that place.

Her sword struck true, and she saw the shock in the monster's eyes. Unarmed and unarmored, a scout. The blade glowed in the dark where its blood poured, and she saw what it carried.

Herbs. A pot, and herbs. The smell of the herbs was medicinal and sweet, and the tattoos of the creature showed in its lifeblood's light. Soft whirls of black and red, the glinting of stones in the beast's hair, milky pink quartz and bright blue lapis.

"Mirhapad. Djulad. Mama' Djuladi." the beast fell, but she had learned enough of the monster's tongue. Fool. Healer. I have come to heal you.

The cries of the Hordemen outside were deafening. They pounded at the walls as they tore the false stones away, rending with tools and bare clawed hands. The opening was widened, and the healer was drawn out as a tall monster in a set of armor stormed in, dragging the High Priest by his hair. The armor was close to her own, and the monster opened its mouth in shock.

"What have you done? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?" it demanded in the Guardian's language, its voice full of... anguish? Despair?

She didn't even have time to respond before the beastly knight lifted the High Priest, breaking the poor man's neck with the effort of wringing life from a plump hen.

The soft susurrus of released energy filled the room, and around the Guardian a dozen children, once human and now in the shape of beast whelps, lay in dreamless sleep.